Thurman#1

It isn't about mental toughness. Or more specifically, that's one component but quite a small part. And again, the NFL pretty much accepts that guys get ruined. Josh Allen himself has been quoted on this. It's not nearly as clear exactly what ruins guys, but it's pretty much accepted at this point that it happens. And it ain't toughness that's the big problem. It's about how difficult it is to very quickly master an immensely complex system. Which is why some guys are considered NFL-ready and others are considered projects. The project guys aren't less tough. They know less. They have a great deal more to learn. They often have mechanical changes which need to be made, and mechanical changes aren't made as easily when you're on the field trying to survive. Guys in that situation who reach the limit of what they know and get in trouble have an overwhelming likelihood to revert to what worked for them in the past in complicated situations of jeopardy. So if their mechanics were cleared up in college they're reverting to good habits. But if the mechanics have bad problems they're reverting to bad mechanics and bad habits. It's got nothing to do with toughness. It's far more about how humans learn and how they cope with adversity. The NFL is a spectacularly complex series of systems. Aaron Rodgers, as pointed out above, was bad for his first three years and then the light came on in his fourth training camp. That wasn't because he'd gotten tougher. It was because McCarthy had made major mechanical changes to his motion, because he's spent years in film rooms figuring out how NFL defences worked and how to counter their various strategies and had had time to work out not just the major outlines of what he had to do but to move on to the subtleties. And that's not even mentioning what McGinn talked about as far as he'd had crappy relations with other players but watching Favre handle the huddle taught him how improve himself. Brady was the fourth stringer for a lot of his first season. But by the beginning of the next season he was 2nd. Again, that wasn't because he'd gotten tougher. He had been able to understand the game better. He had a much better framework as far as understanding defences, offences and the rest of it. Handling adversity isn't the problem. Not having the tools to handle the complexity, that's where problems tend to develop. Some of that can't be developed, but plenty of it can. There's a reason that airlines have pilots spend thousands of hours of flight time, hundreds and hundreds of hours on simulators and as co-pilots before they get to pilot the plane. And flying an airline is far far less exacting and complicated than being an NFL QB. Some guys are ready to be NFL QBs, and others aren't. And some can be developed, ala Brady, Rodgers, Mahomet and Brees, though some will never have what it takes. But getting the correct scaffolding is huge. There's a lot of variety in how much people can learn, how well they learn and how each person learns. But even more there are things people have in common, limitations on learning, ways people learn better. And doing something immensely complex when you're not ready doesn't help you learn it. See you on the boards.

Nothing in your quote from Benjamin says he's checked out. It says he's frustrated and angry. Which is reasonable in a guy having a bad season.

This. Kids from that background have a huge advantage in reaching the 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

42 catches this year? 41 catches last year and 9 before that? I'll need to see an awful lot more. Is this guy really a first rounder? How much separation is he getting? The one route on that tape where he cut, it was really rounded off. He's skinny, will he hold up? Great balance and determination, though, that was impressive.

Yeah, putting him above Orton, Fitz, Flutie, Bledsoe and Tyrod, and really Rob Johnson, VanPelt and Trent for that matter, is based on pure hope. He's got a shot at being really good, but he hasn't been, and any rating that doesn't reflect that begs the question of what they're actually rating. Hah!!! Good point. You got me smiling here, and that's hard to do when talking about 21st century Bills QBs.

The offence has been terrible but it's not so much because of poor personnel decisions. It's more because we had massive salary cap problems we had to solve and haven't committed a ton of financial or draft resources to the offence. Which is reasonable this early in a rebuild. We had too many holes to fill on this team. There were always going to be holes in this roster with their cap problems and the need to bring in a franchise QB without a high draft pick to start with. On offense, they've drafted Allen, two 2nds who you agree appear to have both worked out (Dawkins and Zay) and two 5ths, a 6th and a 7th, in two years. Of course they still have a lot of holes there. Croom's been a pretty decent pickup for a UDFA. Chris Ivory is another good pickup. Isaiah McKenzie looks decent so far. The bottom line, though, is that they simply haven't committed many resources to the offence yet. There weren't enough resources to go around.

They all matter. But yeah, he matters the most, by far. And we simply don't yet know what he is.

Yeah, absolutely, as should anyone be. Your opinion that they've drafted "OK on D, horribly on O" says a lot more about you and how you're forming opinions than it does about how well they've drafted. Defense: 2017 1st: TreDavious White 2017 5th: Matt Milano 2017 7th: Tanner Vallejo 2018 1st: Tremaine Edmunds 2018 3rd: Harrison Phillips 2018 4th: Taron Johnson 2018 5th: Siran Neal That's excellent drafting on defense. These are all very very young guys, of course, But for all but Vallejo (7th) and Neal (5th), they're all either producing above what you'd expect from their draft slot or looking like they have a very good chance of doing so soon. Offense: 2017 2nd: Zay Jones 2017 2nd: Dion Dawkins 2017 5th: Nathan Peterman 2018 1st: Josh Allen 2018 5th: Wyatt Teller 2018 6th: Ray-Ray McCloud 2018 7th: Austin Proehl Thinking that's horrible makes it likely you're either not paying attention or not understanding what you see. "They essentially have nothing from their drafts on offense"? That's a laughable opinion. Wanna say something more reasonable, like, "They still have a lot to prove"? Fair enough, they do, as does nearly everyone drafted that recently. But Jones and Dawkins both look good. Allen ... who knows, it's still incredibly early. With Teller it's still early days, but so far he's outperforming his draft slot and looking promising indeed. The rest, a 5th, a 6th and a 7th haven't showed much but that's pretty typical for guys picked that late. That's a case of not putting many resources into the offense - outside of all the picks it took to bring in Allen - but decent to promising results so far with those they did choose.

This is a hiccup. If there are bunch more incidents then it might be a worry.

How many points did KC have against Arizona with 11 minutes left in the game? 20. Arizona absolutely slowed up the Chiefs. How many points did the Saints score against the Browns? 21. And 24 against the Ravens. And the Broncos held the Rams to 23 points. So they've all been slowed down. Would the Bills be able to do it? The best we can say is maybe. The defense is playing extremely well this year. But the odds against the Bills offense scoring enough to keep the games close are high indeed.

A better time to win? A season or two from now, when our record is, say, 9-3. Or how about the first Super Bowl against the Giants? There are lots of better times to win.

Thanks for your civility. I appreciate it. You ask for my honest reply, and you're not going to like it. Yeah, I absolutely think there's a good chance things wouldn't have gone as well for them without that year / years to learn. A smart, hard-working QB can use a first year on the bench to groove changes to mechanics that can turn out to be career cornerstones, changes that might never have been grooved if not. Mahomes famously stood ten yards or so behind Smith at practices and did the same drops, same movements and saw the same things, and he also spent a ton of time in the film room learning defences and how to handle them. Young QBs can spend a ton of time doing mental reps and film study and can put things together mentally so that when they get their chance, they're far more prepared and ready, so the reps are more valuable and they can concentrate on details and subtleties far more than the rookie who's just trying to survive. The Chargers thought so too. They didn't put Brees in despite having a QB in front of him who was having an awful season. They won 5 games that year, they were really bad and bad QBing was a big part of that, as the guy in front of Brees was the post-Buffalo Doug Flutie, throwing 15 TDs and 18 INTs, putting up a dink-and-dunk 6.6 YPA and an absolutely awful 72.0 passer rating. They didn't keep Brees on the bench because they wanted to keep their playoff chances alive or because they thought the 39 year-old Flutie was the future of the franchise. They did it because they thought it was the best way to give Brees a better chance going forward. And it's very very clear that with Rodgers at least, he indeed made huge steps forward during his time on the bench. He was awful in training camp his first three years or so, but when he came in for his fourth year, with very little game experience under his belt, he was very suddenly a great deal better. Look at this interview of long-time Packers beat writer Bob McGinn: The MMQB: "You documented how fortunate it was that Aaron Rodgers didn’t have to play the first couple of years—he just wasn’t ready." McGinn: “He was a very poor player here for his first two summers and regular-season practices. Fortunately for him, and he knows that down deep, he didn’t have to play early. His delivery was a mess, bad body language, he didn’t know how to deal with teammates. He learned so much from Brett Favre on how to in some ways be one of the guys and relate, and he became much more of a leader. He was really poor and how many great players have ever had a start like that? Not that many. A lot of scouts look at that exhibition tape those first two years and he was a little bit better the third year, but not to any degree, and then he just really developed. He lost a lot of close games in ’08, but by ’09 he was playing great and by 2010 he was maybe the best in the business. " https://www.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/13/themmqb-exit-interview-bob-mcginn-green-bay-packers-milwaukee-journal-sentinel-nfl-beat-writer The widespread NFL opinion on this is that yes it is possible to ruin a QB by playing him too early. No, not every QB needs time on the bench. Some are ready. Others will never be ready no matter what you do. But some guys need development more than others. It doesn't hurt and it's extremely helpful in terms of better understanding by the time you get out there. Hell, Josh Allen himself has himself been quoted saying this.

Hunh? Three first-round picks? No they didn't. Are you counting 2015 #38 pick Preston Smith? I'm going to assume that's what you meant. But I'd argue it's way too early to judge the success of those moves or that kind of tactic, especially with the two 1sts being a rookie and a 2nd year guy at this point. If the Redskins spent two first-round picks and a 2nd as well on their D-line and didn't field a good team (arguable, since they were on a 10 - 11 win pace before Smith went down, but let's assume they weren't good) does that mean it's not a good idea to pick three D-line guys high? Or is it just too early to see how good Payne and Allen will turn out to be? Or did they just make some bad picks in terms of people rather than personnel. In a year or two will that line be destroying QBs? Since they brought in Alex Smith as an FA might that have been a good complementary set of moves? IMHO it's very far from clear, and while drafts generally make up the core of your team, you have to look at all personnel moves together, I think. You make an interesting point, though. It could turn out to look like a real mistake a few years down the line, but I don't think that's a sure thing yet.

Slow down the Rams, Chiefs or Saints? Yeah, probably. They're genuinely a good defense. Make it a competitive game? Nah, our offense isn't going to score much at all. They're genuinely bad. Only well-balanced teams are likely to cause problems for those three teams you mention. The Redskins spent $91 mill on their offense this season and $66 mill on the defense. Just sayin' https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/washington-redskins/positional/ And the Niners spent $105 mill on the offense and $61 mill on the defense. As evidence that you should spend less on the defensive side to avoid being bad, these two teams don't really make your point.

Hi, I'm an apple. Would you like to compare me to an orange. One team is in a rebuild. The other made the AFC championship last year. Since sucking is part of a rebuild, you don't get punished for suckage unless your owner has zero patience or just doesn't get it. Neither of these seems to be the case with the Pegulas. The Jags were expected to be good. There'll be some kind of consequences. Hard to say what, though. As for who will be gone next year, I think they might keep Dareus. He's wildly underperforming when recieving $16 mill a year, but keeping him next year would only cost $10 mill. In other words you'd be getting Lotulelei-like performance, but at a Lotulelei-like price. Not bad if they feel he still fits as part of this defense. My guess is they'll give Marrone another year. Hackett will likely depend on what Marrone thinks. The problem with the Jags is that they're already $12 mill OVER the cap next year. There'll be salary cap cuts somewhere and it would be hard to defend just kicking all of the salaries down the road after a year like this one. They'll have to cut some guys they would rather not. Dareus could easily be one of them, I'd guess.

I like Alex Smith, but who Mahomes sat behind is entirely immaterial to the effect sitting had on him. Probably the four best QBs in the league are Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes. None of them were top five picks. They were very different types and were chosen in different areas, 6th round, 2nd round, #24 and #10. They did NOT all "have the luxury" of sitting behind a great player who will teach him everything or having "2 brilliant offensive coaches." One of the few things they do have in common is that they all sat out for their rookie year. Probably the four best in the league and they all sat as rookies and let the game come to them. And yeah, learning from mistakes is really important. So is learning from doing the right thing. But it doesn't have to be your own mistakes and good plays you learn from. It's perfectly possible to learn from other people's mistakes. You can learn reading defences from watching film ... in the early days of your career, it's probably far more effective as you can concentrate on what the defence is doing and what you can learn from it rather than worrying about what you need to know to start the next week.

Yeah, they could've. But it's not like St. Brown's been terrific for Green Bay with Rodgers throwing to him. 162 yards. Is he significantly better than Foster? You can't fill all your roster holes in one year.

If by "a highly productive offence," you mean the 16th best offence in the league, then yeah, that's what they did. They caused it to drop quite a lot ... in a rebuild. By the way, what did they do to the defence, which was ranked 19th that year? How's that going these days? You didn't mention that, for some reason.

God, I hope not. 500:1 shot, IMO, but I sure hope we don't win another game. Making the playoffs and being crushed the minute we play a good team is nothing to be especially happy about. It would only mean a few more players unavailable to us in every round of the draft. Did Mahomes need to play all those games during his rookie year? Time on the bench can be just as useful as time in the game, especially if you're really not yet sure what's going on around you and even more especially if you have some mechanical habits that need to be grooved but won't if you're spending your time during the week memorizing game plans and your times during the game trying to survive and often going back to old habits.

No they certainly did not have a valid argument. Yes he was bad. No, demanding dropping a WR after his first year makes zero sense at all. The rest of your post is right on, though.

Hey Scott, yeah, after next year the pressure will be on. But as long as we see improvement, they'll very likely get a year after that even if they're still losing. And yeah, after the 2000 season we rebuilt. Didn't work out. They really didn't have a choice with that one as Butler put the team in such serious salary cap jail that they had to do a massive personnel dump. Same with Nix, yes, that was a rebuild too. In neither case did we get a QB to give the team a real chance to build into a powerhouse. Nix did a great job on defense but not having high draft picks hurt badly. But no, Jauron was a reload after 2005, not a rebuild. They thought they could win quickly with him, but turned out to be more seven-win seasons. Yes, ineptitude and bad decisions. And thinking a rebuild was all that was necessary has been a consistent bad decision. What are these? 8 3 8 6 9 5 7 7 7 6 4 6 6 6 9 8 7 9 Win totals since 2000. And what you see is a team that never got good enough to get into the playoffs except by lucking in last year and never got bad enough to use the draft to get some major impact players, particularly at QB but at the other impact positions either. It's the record of a team reloading and reloading and reloading. Two minor rebuilds, neither deep enough nor painful enough. And in the years they did have a good pick, they picked Mike Williams and Marcell Dareus. Lose one more game in 2010 and we can pick Von Miller instead of Dareus. Two more losses and we are in tiebreakers with Carolina for a shot at Cam Newton. No QB, no gold ring. No rebuild, far lower chance at a QB. As for your opinion that McDermott and Beane don't look better, I couldn't disagree more. Other new regimes have never admitted the bad shape they were in. And they never worked things to get a guy like Josh Allen here. I'm not convinced yet on Allen, far from it, but he at least stands a chance of being a franchise guy. The parade of Tyrods and decrepit Fluties and Bledsoes, the Rob Johnsons and Alex Van Pelts and Cassels and Ortons and Holcombs and Losmans, the Trents and the Fitzies and the Manuels ... has at least finally been noticed and they brought in a guy who at least has a legitimate chance to break that horrible skein of unimpressiveness. Yeah, it took trading away a few guys they probably would rather have kept, all things being equal. And yeah, they got rid of a lot of guys to get them back to cap health. If Allen becomes a franchise guy it will have been worth every extra loss. But their drafts so far look excellent, they're back in good cap shape starting next year and it happened extremely quickly, and they at least got a QB who might be the real thing. You're certainly right that they still have a ton to prove and that they could easily fail. I still have a lot of areas I disagree with them in. But they're making smart plays and their thinking is modern. They've gotten off to the best start of any regime we've seen since Levy in terms of smart moves. But they could easily still fail. Easily. But I'm more hopeful with them than I have been in a long long time.

Agreed that he was stretching it. But you are too. He didn't sell off all of his good players for picks. We're the #1 defense in the league for Pete's sakes, they have some talent. And yeah we could have kept more picks. But coming out of that draft without a potential franchise QB would have been a massive massive mistake. And they didn't know how much it would cost to trade up for one of the top four. And the Bills young talent has looked really good, actually. Just young. A ton of room for development as years pass. And guys like Milano, Taron Johnson, Wyatt Teller, Zay Jones, Dawkins, Jordan Phillips and Tre'D who you're leaving out because they don't fit your narrative shows the weakness of your argument. Our young talent has been pretty damn good. It's not having enough older experienced talent that has held us back so far ... and that's how things generally look early in rebuilds. Way too early to say this rebuild will succeed. No way to know. But they have a good young group of talent in place that has a very decent chance of growing together and being quite good, though yeah it will depend on the guys they continue to bring in and how/if this group, very much including Allen, continue to improve.

And a whole bunch of other things. It'll depend on how well all their decisions come together. It's a wildly complex system. Agreed that drafting well is the most important thing. So far - leaving Allen as an unknown out of it - they appear to have drafted quite well, I think.

Again, not a single fact to back up your position. Got a looooooooooooooooooooong history of that. Dumb questions ain't evidence and they say more about the asker than anything else.

You don't judge a HEAD coach by his offense. You judge him by his offense ... and his defense ... and his special teams. That's why he's the head coach and not the OC. You also need to understand that rebuilds are going to suck, and yeah, this is a rebuild. The Pegulas know, just as they knew there would be screaming and howling from people with no patience or perspective. What we're getting here this year is sure not pleasant. But it's also not what we've been getting since 2001. The problem for most of the time since 2001 has been a consistent belief that we were close and didn't need to rebuild. A feeling that Bills fans would hang in there through a bunch more five, six or seven win seasons. We DIDN'T rebuild much through those awful years. We're rebuilding now. It's very very different. But yeah, painful. But at least this pain has a purpose, more so than yet another seven-win season with a mediocre lineup and no QB and no chance of getting a good one unless we stumbled on a Brady or a Wilson or a Brees further down in the draft. That's why we should be patient. Not being patient hurts only yourself. It's your own blood pressure that is the only thing affected. Either way they're going through with this till they see if Beane and McDermott have done well a couple of years down the road when you can begin to judge.