Thurman#1

No offense, but your needs mean nothing here. Mine too, I'm not pointing you out specifically but I don't run around talking about what I need from the Bills. Anyway, Benjamin had a pretty good game last week. If the holding penalty hadn't taken away one of his long completions (35 or 40 yards, wasn't it?), he'd have been very productive. Yeah, he looked bad earlier, but knee-jerk reactions like you're suggesting don't make sense.

Eli is still playing. Yes there have been changes, but no, most of the rules protecting QBs were already there. How much has average yards per attempt gone up since that year? In Eli's rookie year, QBs averaged 7.1 yards per attempt. Last year ... oh, oops, 7.0. You're trying to pull the old trick of squeezing the sample size to eliminate outliers. And yeah, squeeze it down to a year or three and you'll eliminate the other examples but you'll also make your whole (dumb) statement even less interesting. "There has never been a QB to do that - not once - in the whole entire storied history of the NFL's ... um ... last three years." Weak, extremely weak, same as comparing him to a QB with 79 career passes and thinking it means anything. Again, thinking you know something this early says more about your poor reasoning processes than it does about Allen.

Yeah, this D is too good, most likely.

Sure he'll have to take live reps. Eventually. But practice reps can make a huge difference, as they did with Rodgers. But yeah, sooner or later game snaps are necessary. Later would likely be better in this case.

Assuming players at the right value were available when we had a pick ... 1) RT/WR 2) WR/RT 3) C 4) OLB 4) G 5) CB 6) G 6) WR 7) Depth 7) Depth Eli Manning says hi. And he was taken out for most of the first half of the season and had a better supporting cast. Thinking a final answer can be seen now says more about your reasoning than it does about Allen.

Really? I said it was attainable? Where? That's your own interpretation, your own way of desperately trying to find something wrong. If only you'd occasionally react to what was actually there instead of making things up entirely. Clearly it's asking too much. But here's what I actually said: But as usual you were too busy deflecting, backbiting and entirely missing the point to respond to what was actually written. Instead, you just made up something and pretended I'd said it. I was - obviously - using the subjunctive. "Would." Only someone utterly unconcerned with anything but responding with insults would take that quote and say "as if it was attainable." You made that straw man up out of whole cloth. The reason you get "bombarded" is because you're missing the point. It has in fact only been five games, well six, actually. It is in fact far too early to make definitive or even early conclusions. If "him" is Allen, yeah, he hasn't played well. How could anyone disagree. And if you think I think everything this team does is great, you're even further out in LaLaLand than I'd previously guessed. That's just stupid. I've been more critical of the Bills than positive, overall, which made sense for the whole playoff drought. My biggest issue was probably Tyrod and QBs and I was relentlessly pointing out that we needed to draft a guy high, that Tyrod would never be a franchise guy. If anything I'm smack dab in the middle, though I like this regime more than I've liked one in a long time. Dunno how they'll do but they've at least got a plan and are making intelligent moves like rebuilding and drafting a QB early, though I'd rather have had any of the other three than Allen. But I think Allen has a legit chance ... with time, possibly an awful lot of time and development. But as for this regime, I'm not convinced, just hopeful. They've got to prove it. But it's way way too early for them to have yet proved much of anything. And in no word here do I say the current group of WRs is good. Just that the past group the OP was pining for wasn't all that great. They're overpaid and overrated. I wanted them to keep Hogan and Woods, but teams with cap problems have to cut guys they maybe would like to keep.

From the guy who comes to the Bills boards and says nothing positive about them ever, I consider that you think that to be proof of high quality. And you're the one who's deflecting. Pretend that the receivers are the only reason for the problem if you must, but you're wrong, as usual.

Yes, I did. Do you disagree? Would you consider it UNimpressive for one WR? Yup, and 2,500 yards for a group of four receivers really is unimpressive, particularly for four guys who are being thrown to by Brady, Goff, Mahomes and Garoppolo/Beathard.

Yeah, because between them, Hogan, Watkins, Woods and Goodwin have put up a massive 1071 yards combined over the first six games of the season. For one guy that would be pretty terrific. For four, not especially impressive. I mean, yeah, that's a better group, but when you look at their salaries, they're not producing all that much despite an extremely impressive bunch of QBs throwing to them.

You're simply wrong about having plenty of cap. They didn't, particularly after Whaley screwed up the cap and even more so after they told the Pegulas they would clean up the cap by the end of this year. They should've kept McCarron? Fair enough. If you think that would've been a big upgrade when he was the #3 guy in the competition here, I applaud your optimism. As for Tyrod, he was too expensive. Would've cost 'em around $9 mill extra, and we're a team with $10 mill available, a team that like most teams likes to keep around $5 mill available to handle injury replacements. Not to mention that we're a team preparing for the long term and we knew Tyrod was not it. You don't spend a huge chunk of your before the season free cap on a guy who's a Band-aid, who you don't want long-term, for a year when the situation you're in means you're pretty certain to suck. And yes, a bit better. It's not like bringing in a guy who's still out there like Anderson is likely to make a big difference. This is a poor offense.

Which is what happens when you're earlier in a rebuild and dealing with a rookie QB always thought to need a lot of development and at the same time dealing with a horrible salary cap situation left to you by the last administration that you promised the owners you'd correct by the end of your second year ... which is fast approaching. This year was always going to look bad. Many on here wanted to pretend that wasn't so, but it was always the likely outcome unless Josh Allen somehow started playing like a veteran ... again, extremely unlikely from minute one. It might have been a bit better with a better veteran QB. But McCarron sucked and they didn't have the cap money to get someone better.

This may be the poorest assumption from facts I've seen in months.

People here seem to think that because some fans think Phillips is a cancer or a bad locker room guy that it's true and that McD and Beane think the same. And that's simply not true. They're trying to change the culture and you can bet that if they thought Phillips would screw it up they wouldn't have brought him in. And that if he does screw things up, he'll be gone quick, with virtually no bad effects for the Bills at the miniscule amount they're paying him.

Jeremiah's smart. Sure he's wrong a lot. Everyone is when they're trying to predict the future often. Nah. It's fine as long as what you're doing is evaluating what we've seen so far, without assuming that what we've seen so far is what we'll see going forward. EDIT: I see this has become a thing in this thread. Sorry, John, didn't mean to pile on. You're a good poster. Harrison Phillips or Taron Johnson. This shouldn't worry anyone. Allen was seen as developmental and Edmunds was seen as terrifically athletic but needs to learn not to overrun plays and to hit the right holes. Allen was never going to be good this early and it was unlikely with Edmunds.

It really was. I remember also not really believing Hostetler had hung on. I think that the Bills would probably have won it if that had happened.

If you have $100 when you go into the grocery store, what's the optimal way to spend it? ... depends.

Literally zero players? Literally? Yeah, I get all worn out by all the "Trade Edmunds" and "Trade Tre White" threads. Hate to be the grouch, but it sure looked to me like part of that was just that Minny had an absolutely awful game. Yeah, some of it was us playing well, but they came out flatter than the Bonneville Salt Flats. But they legitimately look like they're coming together into a force to be taken seriously.

That was the year his light came on almost at the end of the regular season. He played like the young Manning for most of the season and then in the last few games of the regular season he figured things out, right in the middle of some horrible weather. That Pats game that was the last game of the regular season he looked sensational. Elite is roughly top three to five in the game. Eli certainly doesn't fit there. But neither does his contract. He's the 13th highest paid QB in terms of average salary. That's roughly what he is, IMHO. As I pointed out earlier, it's fair to say that signing a good QB to an NFL-standard contract contract makes everything else harder. But Eli no more than any other QB.

You're either trolling or clueless. Saying McD has proven he has no clue how to build a modern day NFL offense is like saying a woman who's four months pregnant has proven she can't develop a baby to full term. In both cases it's so early that anyone who thinks he can make a final judgment is saying far more about his lack of understanding than he is about McD.

Nah. Pretty much nothing about this is measureable. You can come up with one number but there are hundreds that factor in. It's all opinion. Educated opinion but opinion. Peterman might still be very successful. The odds dipped after that recent game but it's not like Allen passed significantly better than Peterman did under the same circumstances. What Allen did in that game was run better.

Yeah, he needs development. Hopefully development will be enough. It's just nonsense, though, that mental reps don't help. They do, a great deal.

I somewhat agree. But I'd say that the reason he's been a good playoff QB is because when they made the playoffs they had a good team and he was having a good year. He is up and down but it's more season to season, than game to game, IMHO.

Make the best offer and they will come. Make a lower offer and they won't. That's how 95% of players make their minds up about contracts. It's only when the offers are more or less equal that other things come, for most guys.

I'd disagree with that, personally. He's had a long career, and he's been paid for most of it after the first contract. It's somewhat true of every high-paid QB. But I wouldn't say it's more true of Eli than of any other.

No, he's not elite. Never has been. Has never claimed to be. Yes, he's been a top ten QB for most of his career after the first four and half years, though he's also had some bad years when he tried to take the whole team on his shoulders. But he's never been that guy.