Thurman#1

Bills. And I'd have a lot of confidence in that bet.

Really? A lot of coordinators for Belichick and Daboll failed elsewhere ... as coordinators? As head coaches, yes. But as coordinators, the record is positive overall, I'd argue. And Daboll isn't a head coach here, he's a coordinator. I totally disagree with you that our offense has been conservative or uncreative this year. Unsuccessful, yes. But not all that conservative. We've seen the wildcat, we've seen gadget plays, the read option ... And being unsuccessful with a crappy offensive roster early in a rebuild doesn't necessarily mean the coach is doing a bad job. It might be that the plays would have worked if they'd been better executed. It could be partly Daboll's fault, but there are some smart people on both sides of the issue of whether Daboll is doing a good job. IMHO it's just not conclusive.

2017 champion Eagles: #7 offense, #4 defense 2016 champion Pats: #4 offense, #8 defense 2015 champion Broncos: #16 offense, #1 defense 2014 champion Pats: #11 offense, #13 defense 2013 champion Seahawks: #18 offense, #1 defense Very arguable indeed. The defenses average a lot better than the offenses during the last five years that you mentioned.

Day 1 or Day 2? So, rounds 1 - 3? Shaq Lawson says hi. He was picked in the 1st round by the Rexy administration. John Miller was a 3rd for Rexy. As for cutting so many, it may be unusual but the situation was unusual. They needed draft capital to trade up to bring in a QB and they were in awful cap shape. Both of those made it difficult to keep the roster together. And part of that is simply because we had done a terrible job of holding onto high draft picks in the previous years. A lot of that was because of the constant scheme changes causing decent players not to fit anymore. When McDermott came in, there were only these guys left on the team of previous 1st, 2nd and 3rd rounders: 1) Lawson - still here 2) Ragland - didn't play well in the new scheme 3) Adolphus Washington - wasn't good enough 4) John Miller - still here 5) Darby - cap and scheme problems 6) Watkins - cap concerns and a need for draft capital to get a QB, production and injury concerns 7) Preston Brown - didn't make the team eight) Robert Woods - cap concerns. Looking back, a bad decision IMHO 9) Stephon Gilmore - cap concerns. I hated this move but they had to cut cap 10) Cordy Glenn - future cap concerns and a need for draft capital 11) Marcell Dareus - couldn't get to meetings. But he also saved a ton of cap starting next year and hasn't played up to his salary even in Jax 12) Eric Wood - would still be here if not for the injury Gone before McDermott got here: the 2015 1st rounder traded away for Watkins, Kiko Alonso, EJ Manuel, Cyrus Kouandjio, Marquise Goodwin, TJ Graham, Aaron Williams, Kelvin Sheppard CJ Spiller, Torell Troup, Alex Carrington, Aaron Maybin, Jairus Byrd, Andy Levitre, Leodis McKelvin, Chris Ellis, Trent Edwards, James Hardy, Marshawn and every other 1st or 2nd rounder that came before. So out of all the previous 1st, 2nd and 3rd round choices, only 12 guys were left on the team before they came in.Out of those 12, Lawson and Miller are still there, so that leaves 10. Preston Brown, Adolphus Washington and Ragland didn't play well enough in the new scheme and we managed to get a pick for Ragland. That leaves 7. Dareus they wanted to keep but he made it impossible, Eric Wood was forced to retire. That leaves five guys gone in two years that were there and might have been good enough to stay and play. Darby, Watkins, Woods, Gilmore and Glenn. That's not some kind of extraordinary situation, especially as Darby didn't appear to fit the scheme and is having a bad year in Philly, though he may well improve again, Watkins is still underperforming his salary as he has every year, and Glenn had real injury concerns and we had a younger, cheaper guy we thought could play the position. Not that extraordinary for a team that is rebuilding, a team that had promised the owners to straighten out the cap by the end of this year and needed draft capital to trade up in a QB-rich draft.

Nah. You don't "ride the coattails of Belichick and Saban." They don't hire guys they don't respect and they don't tolerate hangers-on. Belichick had him as a coach from 2002 - 2006 and then hired him again in 2013 and then promoted him. That doesn't happen with Belichick unless you're doing your job and doing it very well. And the Boston Herald reported that if McDaniels left, they would see if Daboll was available. And that if McDaniels had left last year Daboll would have got the OC job. https://247sports.com/nfl/new-england-patriots/Bolt/Bill-Belichick-would-check-in-on-Alabamas-Brian-Daboll-if-Josh-McDaniels-leaves-the-New-England-Patriots-113078544/

QBR has some bizarre results. And nobody really knows why, because it's an opaque stat. Ryan Fitzpatrick is tied for the third-best QB this year. And Trubisky is #7. And again, nobody knows why, exactly. And last year, Dak Prescott was the fourth-best, Keenum, #2, was a bit better than Brady, who was #3, and Blake Bortles was the 12th best just a bit behind Brees at #9. Oh, and Tyrod Taylor was the 14th best last year and the 9th best the year before. Watson has a ways to go before he shows himself elite. But he's playing at a level that's above average so far this year.

Yes. Which shows that you can predict the outcome of a large group of people. But not what will happen with one individual. With one individual you can say "Only about 1% of all QBs who appear on a roster become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 5% of all drafted QBs become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 20% of QBs picked in the 1st and 2nd round become franchise QBs." Or you can say, "Only about 40% of 1st round QBs become franchise guys." Or you can say, "Only about 50% of QBs picked in the top ten picks become franchise QBs." Or you could go back and figure out how many years three or more QBs were picked in the top top ten what the results were for those guys." Or you could try to slant it against Allen as far as possible and you could say, "Only about '28% of QBs picked 2nd to 32nd are successful.'" All of those are more or less true, though I didn't bother calculating the exact numbers. Each tells less about any one particular QB's probably outcome and more about how you selected your group to try to produce the result you wanted. Or you could do the best you could to look at one particular guy. You could say, "This guy has all the physical tools. And he was picked top ten. In a year when four guys were picked in the top ten, which means the later guys might well have been picked far earlier if the two picked #1 and #3 hadn't come out the same year. Or not ... who knows, but it's possible." And you could continue, "He's a small school guy. Those guys come in less prepared, they're more developmental. And he can run. That'll help him a bit. But it's hard to judge him by his college experience because the guys on his team just weren't good enough to compete with the good teams and that handicapped him." And that the converse was also true, that he played a relatively easy schedule, making it again harder to judge how he'll play against NFL competition. You could go into injury history, the fact that he was widely considered a guy who would need a year or more to sit and develop behind somebody and didn't get the chance to do so. And that in the NFL, surrounded by a poor offensive roster but with an excellent defensive roster helping keep games in reach, he has played one really good games and five at varying levels of badness. And what you'll come out of all of that with ... unless your prejudices have made up your mind for you and you're trying to prove your point rather than do an intelligent prediction ... is that there's no way to know and we'll have to wait and see. Intelligent reasonable guesses could probably fall anywhere between, roughly, a 15% and 60% chance to play well.

No, history shows that many don't and many do and you don't know which is which. That's what history shows. You can parse it a million different ways, but what history shows about the results in an individual case is only that we simply don't know what will happen.

Good advice. Add the words "... condescending and insulting ..." and you should strongly consider it yourself.

I wouldn't take personally a statement that is opinion and not really very thoughtful opinion. Please don't worry about my feelings, and don't take this personally yourself. Why would I take offense at something that I think is mostly wrong? One or two might be (relatively) garbage. Some might not fit. Some might be replaced cheaper. Some might be cheap to sign. And there are also some guys who are good and will cost some money. I mentioned Jerry Hughes, Jordan Phillips, Eddie Yarbrough, a year or two of Lorax and guys who could easily become more expensive depending how they play the next year or so such as Julian Stanford, Ducasse and Terrelle Pryor. They could very easily and reasonably spend a pretty good chunk of money on this group and an extra $2 to $5 mill on a few of the cheaper guys as well. And the guy you were responding to in no way said that the whole $90 mill is going towards our own players. So if that's what you were responding to, you were missing the point. And again, as I pointed out, there is no requirement for them to spend all or most of the $90 mill next year.

Um, no, it's a fact. Getting a QB who might be a franchise QB is building a foundation. That's already a fact. Not all foundations work out well. But this is indeed a foundation stone for them, along with the defense. What we'll see about is whether the offense they're building the foundation for is successful or not. That is indeed up in the air. We should see the answer over the next two to three years. Nah. They didn't fire Rex because he regressed by a win. They fired him because he was coming across as a clown and because he hadn't delivered on his promises. Unlike McDermott, Rex promised a no-pain reload that was going to turn under his brilliant leadership into an excellent team very quickly. He couldn't deliver on any of that. Whereas McDermott and Beane have been realistic about what's coming ... namely the pain of a rebuild followed by hope. They made their goal being a consistent competitor for championships. But they made it pretty clear it wouldn't come in the short term. When / if it becomes obvious they can't deliver, they absolutely should be called to account. We'll have to wait to see how that turns out down the road.

Who is up for a contract? Kelvin Benjamin. I get it if people don't want to re-sign him, but he's up. If he comes cheap, who knows? Jordan Phillips. He's looked really good. Eddie Yarbrough. IMHO they'd really like to keep him. Lorax. He won't get anything long-term but I bet they'd love to keep him another year or two. Derek Anderson. They might want to keep him as a QB mentor for Josh. John Miller, Jordan Mills, Ryan Groy and Jeremiah Sirles. Not a lot of cornerstones there, but they might easily want to keep a couple of these guys, with the intention of bringing in guys who will outplay them and make them second-teamers. Terrelle Pryor. Not sure what he is, at this point but they could easily want to keep him. Guys who they might want to re-sign this off-season or during the year next year rather than wait till they become FAs in 2020: Chris Ivory. McCoy, though I doubt it. Bodine, Ducasse, Hughes, Julian Stanford. No, they won't sign all of them, not a chance. But many? Yeah, the ones they think fit. Would that take $90 mill? Not even close, of course. But do they have to spend all of it? Or even 90%? Nope. The league as a whole has to spend 90% of it's cap, but that isn't usually a problem. Look at the Browns and Colts, who each still have more than $50 mill on the cap right now. SF has $36 mill and Tennessee $23 mill. The salary cap is $177 mill this year and the Jets still have $19 mill. That's five teams that spent less than 90% this year. We may well be one of those teams next year. But I'd expect them to bring in a bunch of low- and mid-priced guys to fill holes and build depth. Spending it won't be a problem. But if they have a bunch left, that's also not a problem.

Yeah. Zimmer's good. Quinn's really good. Offensive guys are the latest trend, but the bottom line is that it's not which side a guy comes from, it's how good a head coach he is. We did that cutting and trading in a salary cap purge and because a number of guys didn't fit the system. They've made it very clear they will build through the draft and fill in with FAs, but not highly-priced ones. And this is the blueprint of nearly every team that's been consistently successful in the NFL in the last fifteen or twenty years.

Mario isn't the kind of guy they're going to want to sign. He was maybe the #1 FA available that year. This FO have made it pretty clear that they want to build through the draft, get their core players there, and fill in holes with low- and mid-priced FAs and re-sign our own guys. Look at how Carolina handled FAs while Beane and McDermott were there. There were no Marios signed. Some good players but the Panthers weren't chasing the high-priced guys. Expect more of the same.

Yup. He was awful here. And better again back in Washington afterwards. He appeared to really miss Washington and pined away here. That was a bizarre situation.

Yeah, we do. Clearly it's you who don't. The 0-16 Browns got some good players to come in FA in the offseason after that without overpaying. We will too. Yup, good point. Every team every year has to avoid bad decisions - as much as possible, anyway - in FA and the draft. Having a lot of cap room doesn't mean it will be used well. Fair enough. Although I always bridle a bit when people mention Walker as a bad pickup. He wasn't. He was a good pickup, used badly. They brought him in as an RT and he was playing very well indeed at RT. Then the results of not signing Jason Peters or anyone capable at LT hit and they switched Walker to LT. And that was never going to work. Walker was huge and didn't have very good feet. At RT that was OK but at LT he simply wasn't athletic enough and he failed. Wasn't his fault the Bills played him at the wrong position. You let him spend as much of it as he wants. The fact that you want him on the hot seat doesn't mean that's where he is. The Pegulas knew a horrible year was likely while many people were able to avoid that understanding and are now shocked.

They blamed the Bills for sucking for a long time. Because the Bills sucked for a long time. Overall I like the Pegulas. But if true, this is juvenile.

Tate is up in the air, IMHO. He certainly might stay in Philly, but he might not. OK, so ... Randall Cobb Donte Moncrief Tavon Austin Golden Tate Ryan Grant John Brown Jermaine Kearse Cordarrelle Patterson kevin White Mike Wallace Chris Hogan Cole Beasley Quincy Enumway Adam Humphries Tyrell Williams Cody Latimer Phillip Dorsett Kelvin Benjamin TJ Jones Josh Bellamy Martavis Bryant Brandon LaFell Devin Funchess Darrius Heyward-Bey Russell Shepard Andre Roberts Dwayne Harris Rishard Matthews De'Anthony Thomas Justin Hunter Geremy Davis Deonte Thompson Jordan Matthews Robby Anderson Geronimo Allison Terrelle Pryor Chris Conley Josh Gordon Got this on Spotrac. There are some decent guys here. No, not all will become FAs and not all would come to Buffalo, and there are some names there people might not want to see here (Benjamin, for instance) but we've got a lot of cash to spend and that's all it generally takes to bring in someone. And this doesn't include cuts or possible trades. I just took three seconds to copy that list. It was old. Sorry about that. But if your point is that we need a #1 receiver and there isn't one on that list, well, yeah, but how often does a #1 get to FA? I mean there are how many of those guys? 10 - 15? One of those guys gets away occasionally but not most years? Teams hang onto them if at all possible. Of course we were never likely to get a #1. DeSean Jackson's been around a bit. But what other #1s? Was Jordy Nelson a #1, particularly by the time he left? We hoped Sammy would be a #1 but he isn't, surely, at least so far. You may come up with a few others but it sure isn't common. You generally get them from the draft. But there are guys out there who would be upgrades and would help put good pieces around a QB.

So, what you're saying is that the offensive roster is absolute crap, right? And that therefore what we should do is fire the offensive coaches? You realize that doesn't make sense, right? The coaches you fire are the ones who have decent players and get crap production out of them. What you do with coaches who have crap rosters and get crap production out of them is what you should do with every coach anyway ... you take all emotion out of the decision. You collect all the information you need. You avoid knee-jerk reactions. And then you make an ice-cold analysis, grinding through all the info. And then you make an ice-cold decision. What you DON'T do is get all pissy and angry and moan and scream and pick out an easy scapegoat and blame everything on him. Even good coaches need good players. And no, it's no wonder Allen has completed 54%, thrown 2 TDs and 5 INTs while only putting up a YPA of a horrible 6.0 and a passer rating of 61.8. He's a rookie. And a rookie who was trumpeted to the hills before the draft as a guy who would need a ton of development ... a fact promptly forgotten by Bills fans once we drafted him. And yeah, back in 2016, we were #1 in the league in rushing. Yeah, boy, I remember those great days ... sigh ... when we were the 16th ranked offense in the league. We were terrific at running and also way below average at passing. It wasn't like we threw out a great offense. And a lot of the problem is having lost Incognito and Wood, which was not a decision made by this regime. Dude, it really is true. No, they didn't say they were rebuilding. Nobody does. Not even Cleveland. Not in these PR-conscious days. But yes, they've hinted over and over again that this year was not going to be good. They did that because they knew they were rebuilding. It's been there. I wouldn't mind sitting Allen or playing Peterman a bit.

Actually, you do. Giving up a third for Benjamin was a risk but we still had plenty of draft capital to get Allen. And Allen won us that snow game without which we don't reach the playoffs. And as for Glenn and Dawkins, we needed to get a top four QB. Shipping out Glenn made it a much more likely thing. And Glenn was injured and hadn't been fully healthy in a while. And was coming up on a major payday. This kind of move is made all the time. It made complete sense. You're right it's not a tank. You have to look to hockey and basketball for those. This is a rebuild, a near-complete one. If they still suck in another year or two then yeah, we'll know. As it is it's simply too early to know. Rebuilds take a lot of time and they suck. That's the horrible part. But they can get you a franchise QB when other ways often can't, and they can be the foundation of great teams. No, it's far from guaranteed. But when you're going from a 7-9 record on a team with a crappy cap situation and Tyrod Taylor at QB and a roster no better than decent, it's probably the best chance you have for success.

No, we don't know how bad this HC/GM and offensive staff are because they went into this season knowing it was going to be a mess. They've tried to tell anyone listening not to expect much this year. But you didn't listen. They aren't surprised it's a bad year. Only you folks who didn't get it did. And while some offensive coaches have looked very good recently, so have some defensive coaches. As usual, it's not really which side of the ball a guy comes from, it's how good a head coach he is. You look at the teams - this year - with five or more wins and it's pretty close to even. What's not even is that they pretty much all have good QBs, which is what we got by trading a lot of talent away and then using a ton of draft capital and Cordy Glenn besides on bringing in Josh Allen, who might eventually become good. As for coaches succeeding quickly, yup, they went into situations with good young QBs on board, with more talent and better cap situations and were able to reload rather than rebuild. We didn't have a QB or much talent and our cap situation was horrible. Reloads under those situations are almost guaranteed to fail. So we rebuilt instead. And yeah, that takes awhile, as nearly everyone knows. You'd be looking for an offensive coach. Yeah, whatever. Fine.

Who those picks eventually got traded to and what those teams used them for is completely irrelevant. Buffalo owned them and used them to get a QB who might eventually become a franchise QB. You said: And that's just dumb. Using the 12th, the 53rd and the 56th picks and Cordy Glenn besides to get an offensive player is anything but neglecting the offense. It's building the foundation for the offense.

Got a riddle for you. When is the #16 offense a top ten offense? And the correct answer is "Um, what?" You're talking about the 2016 offense, presumably, and they were the #16 offense, that's a fact. If you're referring to the fact that we were the #10 team at scoring, that's correct, but it's NOT a stat that even comes close to isolating the offense. It's a team stat, maybe 60 - 70% offense but with a ton of contribution from the D and the STs. When the Bills offense scores a pick six, the offense hasn't accomplished anything even if scoring goes up seven points. And when the defense intercepts and returns it to the two yard-line and the offense loses 10 yards and kicks an FG, that looks great for people who think that scoring is an offensive stat. But it's not. That was not a good offense. It was a decent offense, an offense that could run the ball extremely well but was well below-average at passing.They had the 11th-best average drive start, and that's because they had a higher than average number of really good starts. And in turn they left the defense the 23rd best average drive start. As for how that's different from Rex, there's a vast difference. Rex came in promising he could reload. He was just so daggone terrific that he was going to compete for a title - and soon- with a QB like Tyrod. "Is this thing on? Because it's going to be on." He didn't need no stinking rebuild. McDermott and Beane on the other hand knew that with the salary cap a shambles and no real QB that they were going to need a rebuild. They didn't promise any different. And while the offense is certainly worse this year at least the defense got a ton better and they brought in a potential franchise QB so that the future has real hope. Rebuilds this complete suck. That's who they are. That's what they do. And being handed a crappy cap situation made things even worse.

Well, yeah. Of course. It's what happens when you do a near-complete rebuild.

Yup. But that's what happens in a near-complete rebuild. There were a number of people who before the season kept predicting that since we'd won nine last year that we were going to be good again, maybe better. These people kept hearing the FO hint that it was going to be a tough season. They saw pundits say the Bills were going to win three to seven games. But they were way too smart to believe that and kept telling everyone the Bills were better than that and kept predicting eight, nine, ten wins. And now they're furious with the FO, not understanding that the problem isn't with under-performance but with their own pre-season overoptimism.