Thurman#1

This one. Bill Walsh says hello. So does Jimmy Johnson. Pete Carroll. I could go on.

Yeah, remember how Bill Walsh got fired when he went 2-14 and 6-10 his second. So little to be gained from years like that. Hang on, maybe I can find a better example. Remember the Panthers sucking for several years and getting Newton and Kuechly the next two ... oh, wait. The Eagles sucked in Andy Reid's last two years there and turned that into a bunch of players who helped them win the SB. The Saints went 7-9 two years in a row and got Sheldon Rankins, Michael Thomas, Marshon Lattimore, Ramczyk, Marcus Williams and Alvin Kamara out of it. There's plenty to be gained by sucking, as long as it's during a rebuild or you use it to fix your cap and draft well. Rebuilds don't guarantee success. They just maximize the chances of it.

You keep saying, and so do others, that Daboll has a putrid record as an OC. And it just isn't that simple. What people think of you as an OC is dependent on a lot of things, including how good (or in Daboll's case, astoundingly bad) your QBs and offensive rosters are. Daboll's QBs have been Matt Cassel backed up by Brady Quinn in KC, Matt Moore backed up by Chad Henne in Miami. In Cleveland in his first of two years, 2009, his starter was Brady Quinn, backed up by our own Derek Anderson and the next year Delhomme was the original starter for Cleveland and he went 2-2, but the 35 year-old suffered ankle problems that hobbled him for the season and Daboll was left with Colt McCoy backed up by Seneca Wallace. Remind me, has anyone had success with that pack of mugs since they got out from under Daboll? He's had crap rosters and people know that, and yet he's still widely respected by people like Saban and Belichick. It simply isn't clear that he's been bad. He may well have gotten the best out the dross he coached.

I think you're misunderstanding the understanding the Pegulas have of how long rebuilds take. For McDermott to go after next year something along the lines of a complete team meltdown would have to occur. I don't see any way Beane goes. After four years, now, a team that is still looking anywhere near this bad would put the coach in immediate danger and the GM on a very warm seat. Agreed that we have a pretty decent chance to be alright whatever happens.

In terms of complete or near complete rebuilds, there's really almost no such thing as a "two-year rebuild." Unfortunately, they take as long as they take. Being very good in the third year is pretty rare, though there are examples such as the Walsh 49ers. If you're not very good in the fourth year that is probably an indication of some kind of trouble. Rebuilds aren't as precise as teams would like, especially when you've got a QB like Allen who is widely considered to be a bit of a project.

Yup. Ignoring need sounds great, but it's not a real-world solution. No team can afford to ignore need, and none do. In the later rounds, yeah, ignore need. But if you go through nearly any draft, look at every team, you'll find that pretty much every team drafted one of their top three or four needs in the first and second rounds. It's the way the world works. As you say, Hucklebuck, that doesn't mean "passing on a 97 Cornerback to draft a 71 WR." Precisely. But there's a reason why very few guards, non-rushing ILBs and safeties go in the top ten, and it ain't because there are fewer good guards than there are good QBs. You want to avoid wild overdrafts at all cost. But if you have a young Patrick Mahomes you don't draft a QB even if a QB is the guy you have ranked highest. You just don't. Yup, exactly. They nailed those picks. Both guys are playing far better than their draft pick would lead you to expect and doing so very early in their careers. As for the OP, we need WR, RG, RT, a replacement for Lorax as he ages and a pass rusher to platoon with Murphy and eventually take over. Those'd be my top priorities. Kelvin Benjamin and Zay Jones have both picked it up a lot in the last two to three games. They're no longer necessary to replace, though it wouldn't be a shock if we let Benjamin go because he might be too expensive to re-sign.

I think you're seeing something that's not there. Of course he moved without his family. He had to be there the next day. And the kids were in school. And he's got a one-year contract and no guarantee after that. Why would he move his family? But if the Bills like him, they could give him another contract. There's nothing in anything that he's said that would preclude that. Fair enough. It doesn't work very often. Just more often than any other method of becoming unsucky.

If you could perfectly tell how good a rookie QB is from only watching him in practice, life would be a whole ton easier. You often can't. If it wasn't sometimes quite difficult to tell what kind of guy you have, the Chargers would never have drafted Phillip Rivers after three years of seeing Brees in practice and two years of seeing him in games. Your argument that they should have known is simply not reasonable. Sometimes guys who look quite good in practice aren't good in games and sometimes they are. That's life in football. We knew Tyrod wasn't good enough to be with us the next year by then. We knew it was a good year to draft a QB the next year. We knew the team wasn't particularly good, as they were 5-4 against a not very good schedule (5-11 Jets, 11-5 Panthers who had been in a slump and were 5-4 at the time, 5-11 Broncos, 10-6 Falcons who had been in a slump and lost Julio and were 4-4 at that point, 7-9 Bengals, 5-11 Bucs, 6-10 Raiders and 5-11 Jets again) and we were likely going to be 5-5 regardless of who played QB against the Saints. And we obviously didn't know what we had with Peterman. It certainly didn't turn out well. But that doesn't mean taking the risk was indefensible. It wasn't.

Just because nobody would trade a rookie Goff or a rookie Wentz for Tyrod didn't mean Tyrod wasn't performing better that year. He was playing around 20th to 22nd best, probably. Which when that is your ceiling is just good enough to make sure that teams will constantly be trying to replace you. Yeah, there were a bunch more guys that teams hoped had the potential to become better than Tyrod. But around 20 - 22nd is probably how well you would rank his performance each year he was on the Bills, though the first seven games or so before teams got a bead on how to defend him he looked like he might really be something. It's called a rebuild. Rebuilds involve serious pain. It's part of the deal, unfortunately, especially rebuilds where the last GM left the team in a bad cap situation. And it's not like the team they inherited was any better than sub-mediocre. So yes, the guys who have started the rebuild should get to finish it. There are a few exceptions, such as if they totally lose the locker room or start making visibly dumb decisions and statements ala Rexy, but none of that has happened yet. At some point they will have no excuses, they will have to stand or fall by their record. A year and a half into a near-complete rebuild is not that time. Horrible pain at that time is built into the process.

It makes you an excellent choice as a sinker for someone's fishing gear. Plus Superman can't see through you.

Well, if they said it wasn't what McDermott wanted, I agree with them. I'm sure if there was a legit, high-odds way to take a team with sub-mediocre talent, no QB and serious salary cap trouble and turn it around without a painful rebuild, they probably would have tried it. There isn't. They didn't want this. They accepted that it was a necessary though painful part of a turnaround. And that's nonsense that we've been rebuilding for 18 years. They've been below average for 18 years. There's a difference. For most of those 18 years they kept kidding themselves that they were close and reloaded and reloaded and reloaded again and again. Very few rebuilds during that time.Which is why we kept having draft picks of #9 and #11 and #14 and couldn't come up with a decent QB. You're right that having the cap space and draft capital doesn't mean they'll be successful. We can definitely agree that far. They have a ton to prove. But at least they have started the process intelligently. There's no particular reason to think they will overpay. That's not their philosophy. They want to build through the draft and fill in with FAs. Which is how the teams with long-term success achieve it. They'll draft some duds and some hits? Um, yeah. So will all 32 teams. So far their drafts look pretty damn good, though. Tre White at #27? Zay Jones has taken a while but actually shows signs of becoming good over the last two or three games, or as good as a WR can be with these QBs. Dion Dawkins? Matt Milano in the 5th? Josh Allen is still a question mark. No way to know what he'll be. I wanted Mayfield, Rosen or Darnold myself, but Allen still might turn out to be a good one, or not. Too early to say. But Tremaine Edmunds, Harrison Phillips in the 3rd and Taron Johnson in the 4th look like a very nice draft on their own for a team that found it had to sacrifice having a 2nd round pick to get their future QB hopeful. But there's no Gregg Williams in McDermott, that's nonsense. He doesn't brook nonsense and he will cut you if you don't meet expectations but there's nothing out there showing him as a screamer or a disciplinarian. If anything he's been shown to communicate really clearly and well. Not that that guarantees success, nothing does, really. But there's no reasonable comparison with Gregg Williams and his airhorns at 6:00 a.m.

Again, that's nonsense that we underperformed on the field last year. Complete crap, from the guy who said this about the 2017 Bills earlier in this thread: I just googled the 2017 preseason power rankings. Here are the first 20 I found: https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2017/9/5/16255238/2017-nfl-power-rankings-curated-week-1 This was the most complete one, a compendium of five and here are the five listings of where they ranked in pre-season power rankings: SB Nation 30th Yahoo 29th NFL 26th ESPN 26th CBS 27th Of the next 19 I found, https://buffalowdown.com/2017/07/12/buffalo-bills-power-rankings-not-friend/ (Mediocre, in the 5th of 6 categories: 1) Super Bowl contenders, 2) Playoff contenders, etc. And the Bills fell into the 5th of 6th tiers, Mediocre) https://thecomeback.com/nfl/2017-nfl-preseason-rankings-no-24-buffalo-bills.html (#24) http://www.sportingnews.com/ca/nfl/list/nfl-power-rankings-2017-preseason-cowboys-packers-raiders-seahawks/1plnhfw1tgz4z1dtnbqfz31qu0/slide/24 (#24) https://www.metro.us/sports/nfl-preseason-power-rankings-to-kick-2017 (#27) https://www.numberfire.com/nfl/lists/15441/2017-nfl-power-rankings-preseason-edition/16-buffalo-bills-0-45-nerd-17 (#16) https://whbl.com/blogs/sports/6680/nfl-power-rankings-2017-preseason-rank-of-all-32-nfl-teams-1/ (#27) https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2730051-nfl-power-rankings-2017-examining-pecking-order-after-week-3-of-preseason (#29) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/09/05/2017-nfl-power-rankings-the-new-patriots-have-lapped-the-field/?utm_term=.bef96d7bd18f (#30) https://kfgo.com/blogs/power-rankings/6680/nfl-power-rankings-2017-week-1-1/ (#27) http://blog.masslive.com/patriots/2017/09/nfl_power_rankings_which_teams.html (#27) http://theunderdogsports.com/2017-nfl-preseason-power-rankings-25-32/ (#29) https://ninernoise.com/2017/09/01/nfl-power-rankings-2017-week-1/8/ (#26) https://lastwordonprofootball.com/2017/07/21/pre-preseason-power-rankings/ (#24) https://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/NFL-POWER-RANKINGS-Where-all-32-teams-stand-11339889.php (#30) https://www.atlantafalcons.com/news/matt-tabeek-s-wildly-important-nfl-power-rankings-patriots-falcons-begi-19319759 (#30) https://www.betitbest.com/sportsnews/de/news/pft-preseason-power-rankings-no-23-buffalo-bills-5544830 (#23) https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/preseason_nfl_power_rankings/s1__23081 (#22) https://sconniesportstalk.com/2017/09/05/nfl-week-1-power-rankings/ (#28) https://thepowerrank.com/introducing-2017-nfl-win-totals-report/ (#28) Those were the first twenty I found. Do you notice any trends about where the Bills were ranked, Avi? For me, the words, "expected to suck" leapt to my mind. "Underperformed," my ass. Did you find, in any of those, the phrase, "good coaching and competent QB play away from being annual contenders for the playoffs" as you wrote? Or anything like that? But hey, maybe I slanted things and didn't link to all the tsunami of positive expectations you have insisted was out there. So this is my third time to challenge you to come up with all the positive expectations you referenced. Still waiting, Avi.

While I sympathize with your idea that maybe we should have picked up Mahomes, I doubt McDermott's thought was "I'm good." Probably more like, "I'm not a personnel expert. Should I stake my career on picking up a QB recommended (or not recommended - we don't know) by Doug Whaley, the guy who loved EJ Manuel? Or should I wait a year for a draft that's supposed to be loaded with QB talent when I have (hopefully) a talented GM on board to help make the call?"

Yes. $32 mill in dead cap space by trading away Dareus, Glenn, Taylor and Ragland. But you do know that we also saved us a lot of money at the same time, right? We saved around $4 mill last year and $9.9 mill this year and $40 mill over the next few years. The cap trouble we were in was going to continue to haunt us down the line unless they cleaned out a bunch of stuff, and Dareus was given a contract far too large for his contribution from around 2016 and onwards. Trading Glenn saved us $9.25 mill in salary and $2 mill in roster bonus this year, not to mention around $20 mill over the next couple of years. For a team that has a pretty good LT on a rookie contract, that's money well-saved. The $16 mill Tyrod cost us in dead cap is almost exactly what we saved ... $10 mill salary and $6 mill roster bonus, but $1 mill of the roster bonus was guaranteed. Ragland? Jeez, you're worried about the $750K he costs us in dead cap when we saved $1.7 mill last year and this year in salary and workout bonus? Please. You've just as completely missed the point with the guys you mentioned in your second paragraph. By signing and cutting Coleman they incurred $2.955 mill in dead cap ... and saved $2.955 mill in salary. Zero net cap effect. McCarron cost us $4.1 mill in dead cap but the Raiders took on his salaries of $3.9 mill over this year and next, a net cost of $200K against the cap. Newhouse also has a net cap effect of zero, and we got a draft pick for him and for McCarron. Same with Kerley, zero net cap effect. The net cap effect of those four contracts was $200K and they got draft picks in trade. None of those things makes your point. We were in serious cap trouble before those moves were made. Making those moves got us into a position where next year we're not just out of trouble, but actually in great cap shape.

Neither guy would have come here, much less for peanuts. There may be some out there who would but neither of those two. Rishard had some old conflict with one of the Bills coaches, as was commented on here ad nauseum, and Gordon wanted a place to show off for future contracts. He wouldn't have come here to be thrown to by Allen and Peterman.

Yup, a solid bridge guy. As long as you don't mind using a different scheme so Tyrod can be maximized rather than put in the scheme you hope to go with in the future so the new guy can learn it and learn how teams react on defense. And as long as you don't mind paying Tyrod $16 million when you're in a serious cap jam and have promised the owners to sort it out by the end of this season.

I'll book it: And book this: Draft day next year it's going to snow two feet in Nashville!!!!!!!! Book it!!

Yup. He engineered a rebuild, and this is what rebuilds look like this early. It is painful, but that's the way these things go. We'll see over the next few years how good a job they've done. Yeah, we've been really bad for a long time. No, the vast majority of that isn't the new regime's fault. Yes, some fans have been very patient. Of course, some have screamed, moaned and whined for the whole 18 years, but let's look past that. But no, the fact that we've been patient for a long time doesn't mean more patience isn't needed. "No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant." - Warren Buffett Rebuilds are one of those things that just take time.

40 - 60% for both. They have a lot to prove. I'm very hopeful but I'm from Missouri, though I've only been there for about 48 hours.

You sure were wrong. Why would you think things couldn't get worse at QB than having a QB who was around the 20th to 22nd best in the league. There are 10 - 12 QBs worse than that every year, and those usually include the rookies who end up starting and plenty of other very young guys. Of course it was capable of being much much worse, and it was always likely to get worse for a year or two. That was the likelihood. We had a chance if McCarron had been good, but with their Whaley-inherited salary cap woes, they weren't going to get a more expensive vet, and the flier on McCarron didn't work out. That was too bad, but bad QB play this year .... the second year of a rebuild and the year we drafted a rookie well-known to need a ton of development ... was always likely to be worse. So, no, Beane and McDermott work for an owner who understands rebuilds. In the third and fourth years, their seats will indeed become hot if things don't look up. Not this year. The Pegulas get it.

Agreed that it's not all the QB's fault. What's at fault is that it's year two of a rebuild ... of a team that has made defense the priority early. The second year of major rebuilds are painful. That's the way things go. In the third and fourth year, either things get better or you start to realize that it may be a coach issue or a GM issue or both. Right now though, it's what everyone should have expected.

Yeah, no, indeed. Our WRs were even worse than this year. Zay Jones and Benjamin have both started to look pretty decent the last two to three games. Brandon Tate, Deonte Thompson, Jordan Matthews and the rookie Zay (plus Kaelin Clay and Taiwan Jones) weren't as good. They just weren't. They did have a slightly better QB throwing to them, but that didn't make them better, just in a slightly better situation. Bwah ha ha ha ha. Oh, that's precious, Avisan, really. It's clear you didn't mean it to be, but that's hilarious. Yeah, Humber, Preston Brown and Alexander, the early starters last year, were better than Tremaine Edmunds, the second-year Matt Milano, and Alexander. Right, gotcha. Right, average defense at worst. Great, go find all the preseason forecasts that predicted that, especially the "at worst" part. Some thought we'd be average but I'd love to see all of your links to the articles predicting we'd be average at worst on defense. In the real world, the D-line looked OK but nobody expected Tre to be as good as he was so early. The D looked like it might possibly be decent but equally might be pretty bad, and the O looked like it would be sub-mediocre. Not going to bother going point by point through your nonsense, but last post you amazingly said this: ... and I challenged you to produce a few of those articles that mentioned "being annual contenders for the playoffs." Surprisingly, you didn't link to any of them in this post .... Still waiting ...

But as for high draft picks not mattering, that's utter nonsense. They're not the only thing that matters, but they matter plenty. And as for them not mattering for the Bills for the last 20 years, they are part of the reason we sucked for so long. We reloaded and reloaded and reloaded and even when we did occasionally rebuild we got unlucky and had to do it with generally lower draft picks. We had the #4 pick one year and got Dareus instead of Cam Newton. And other than that, where were all the high picks? We pretty much didn't have any. We kept being "good" enough to draft 9th, 11th ... on and on and not high enough to get real impact players.

There really is no such thing as tanking in the NFL. It's a hockey term and maybe another sport or two. In football, what they do is rebuild.

If his is revisionist, that puts it on the same footing as yours. Yeah, we backed in, but let's see some links of a bunch of forecasts mentioning "being annual contenders for the playoffs." Our recievers were worse than the ones we have now, the right side of the OL was (and is) weak, our LBs were considered very weak with Brown, Humber and Alexander as the expected starters and the safeties looked solid but not nearly as good as they ended up playing. We weren't expected to be good. Yeah, we were very lucky to sneak into the playoffs. But the defense considerably outplaying expectations absolutely came down to the new regime. And that's nonsense about identifying offensive talent. They have put their emphasis on the defense. They've used very little draft capital or FA money on the offense. But of the people they did bring in, Jones and Benjamin are finally beginning to play well, Dawkins looks like a huge success and Ducasse has been pretty solid, a significant FA bargain. The verdict is still out on Allen, of course. That could turn out to be an awful pickup. Or not. Too early to know.