Thurman#1

Heh heh. Yeah, good point.

The entire background. Making decisions before you know much ... and being proud of it ... is solid evidence of problems in your decision-making methods. The legality of her being there, for one thing. What Shady originally promised her, for another. What she told and asked him for a third. What legal recourse Shady has been taking for yet another. And more. What else do we need to know? A lot.

Nah. It's just that the amount of coverage has multiplied by a factor of ... what? 100? 1000? And since 90% of pretty much absolutely everything is going to be crap and mediocrity, you get a ton more crap out there than ever before. You also get a lot of excellent journalism. But it's buried in the vast tsunamis of crap. Same with everything, really. Remember when you used to be able to go see a pretty good movie each week? Now? Crap crap crap. Still good stuff out there but you have to search and search through the gigantic piles of stuff that strives for adequacy and mostly comes close but fails to get there. It's what happens when everyone wants good coverage but not to pay for it. and everyone has access to platforms and dreams of fame.

Rosen should not be equated with those other guys. Nor Watkins (a salary cap and draft capital move if there ever was one). Probably Cutler besides, a guy whose career was ended by inconsistency rather than immaturity. Having said that, yeah, I like that they're building around character guys. Get enough of them and your locker room becomes a place where people work harder and get better.

Sometimes the story involves the writer. This one did. When it does, it's OK to report it. A war correspondent doesn't have to leave it out of the story if he gets shot in the leg, for instance. The Shady at the TV studio story is obviously a much less serious incident than my hypothetical there, but the point is the same. When the story overtakes the reporter and he becomes involved, there's nothing wrong with writing about that. I know, kinda funny. But in the OP this is presented as the conclusion, where in the story it's just somewhere in the middle as an interesting / funny note in paragraph 11 of 20.. Fair enough to think it's irrelevant. To me, though, it helps paint a picture.

The reporter was admitting that what he said ... tipping badly ... was frivolous. He wasn't accusing Shady of being frivolous by tipping badly.

Yeah, there were plenty of guys I didn't want playing for the Bills. Hobert was not a bad player, but was the only one I ever really despised. Too lazy to bother studying the playbook.

Great. Love it!!! Thanks for posting.

Oh, yeah, one day. My guess is it'll be when Brady retires or is injured. Won't be that long, is my guess. But outside of a serious Brady injury, this is highly unlikely to be the year. Fair enough .... ... as long as nobody with a positive outlook will pee on my Wheaties with their positive opinions. You folks will keep totally silent when anyone say something realistic, won't you? No? Well, then expect disagreement from the realists. This is a discussion board. One thing those two teams had in common ... their new young quarterbacks were both in their SECOND years, not their rookies seasons. That's pretty huge.

If you really think so, read this: https://buffalonews.com/2015/11/21/torell-troup-one-pick-ahead-of-gronk/ In no way was he anywhere near the worst. And it was his devotion to duty and to doing his best that led to the injury. Excerpt: "Through the 2011 lockout, Troup trained with a vengeance. He reported to training camp at a chiseled 319 pounds, eager to break out. Practices began at St. John Fisher and the kid who had 23 tackles and no sacks the year prior was dominant for stretches. “Honestly, I was killing the offensive line,” Troup said. “Eric Wood, I’m good friends with him, but they couldn’t handle me.” One day in the lunchroom, head coach Chan Gailey and General Manager Buddy Nix couldn’t contain their excitement. The two asked Troup to sit down with them and told this bull in a china shop they had no clue what he did over the offseason, but, wow, were they ecstatic to see this all transfer to game day. Their words added more fuel to Troup’s fire. His tear continued. Teammates today still remember Troup’s raw strength. “Low center of gravity,” guard Kraig Urbik said. “Super strong. Legs were very thick. Strong dude – he was tough to move for sure.” “He was a strong dude,” Wood said. “Big, powerful guy,” added veteran Kyle Williams. “He’s probably not your pass rusher, but a guy who could stack things up at the line and make plays at the line of scrimmage and do some good things there.” Reached by phone, Nix instantly remembers this camp well. “Those big guys are hard to find! Especially him,” Nix said. “He had some movement ability and was really a strong anchor guy.” As Nix recalls, the Bills were shifting to a 3-4 scheme when they took Troup and needed a nose to take on double teams. He doesn’t remember teams being scared off by Gronkowski’s injury history, but the Arizona tight end was the one with the shoddy Carfax report. Back surgery sidelined him his entire final season at Arizona. Troup? He missed a few games due to a knee scope as a freshman but was healthy in totaling 52 tackles (12.5 for loss) as a junior and 35 tackles (five for loss) as a senior. Then, without warning, his world started to crumble down. In a one-on-one pass rushing drill against Wood, Troup used a head bob to freeze the center. He smacked Wood with his right arm and Troup’s hand snapped, breaking the bone underneath his right knuckle. Initially, Troup thought he jammed the finger. By the time he reached the trainers he said his hand looked like a baseball glove. Troup missed one week of practice, wrapped the paw in a club and was prepared to punctuate his knockout summer in the preseason finale against Detroit. To this day, he cannot pinpoint the play, the moment, but during this game he fractured his lower back. “I played all through the game doped up,” he said, “so I couldn’t feel it.” On Wednesday, it felt like he pulled both hamstrings. He received an epidural. Tests later revealed the fracture. A disc in his back was slipping and pushing against nerves, causing burning and numbness down his legs. Troup sat out the first three weeks of the season and returned. “It’s easy to look back now and say, ‘I should have sat my ass down,’ ” Troup said. “But I was young. I was stupid. And it cost me my career.” ‘They wanted me to play’ In New England, there was a revolution. Gronkowski became Tom Brady’s No. 1 target, torching secondaries for 1,327 yards and 17 touchdowns en route to the Super Bowl. Back in Buffalo, there was only misery. Pain. Buffalo’s 5-2 start bled to a 6-10 finish as Troup eked by day to day. Teammates told him to stop playing. Coaches, he said, instructed him to play. His routine was simple. Pain pills for practice: Troup took usually took 7.5 or 9.5 mg of Percocet or a different medication. Toradol for game day: He used this magic potion to completely numb his body in the trenches. Despite serious side effects, players have treated this drug like Popeye’s spinach since the mid-1990s. Misuse can lead to kidney failure, liver damage and gastrointestinal bleeding. In a recent lawsuit, former NFL players claimed Toradol’s blood-thinning effects also worsen the effects of concussions. But Troup needed to play. He took the 1.5-inch, 22-gauge needle injection and suited up for six games. In addition to this, he took muscle relaxers. “They doped me up so much I couldn’t feel anything,” Troup said. “Now that I look back at it, I don’t really understand why I played. We weren’t having a great season. But like I said, if somebody told me to play … I didn’t know better. If somebody told me to play with my head cracked, I would’ve played.”

It wasn't fans on boards saying this. "The game plan was to make [Tyrod] a quarterback," is what the Ravens said after holding the Bills offense to seven points in 2016. And we heard it from several other teams. It may be a cliche at this point, but so is "Look both ways before you cross the street." Some cliches are cliches because they're dead on target. And this is one Oh, and find us somewhere where teams said they wanted to make Aaron Rodgers be a quarterback. Please. They may try strategies like trying to keep Rodgers in the pocket, but making Aaron Rodgers a QB is not something you'll hear a team claim was their game plan. Oh, and that's more nonsense about Belichick. His defensive and offensive schemes are both complicated and multi-faceted. It's why they make a point of bringing in guys who are football smart. They have to be. Agreed that having Brady is huge but their defense has been a major part of their success over the years and a lot of that is scheme over talent. And you may have something there in your last paragraph about throwing guys open. After all, if your first read is Deonte Thompson covered by Jalen Ramsey, you're likely doing a poor job figuring out what reads to make.

Not even close to first. We hear it every year all through the off-season. And the first was a month or two ago from some other benign nut. Every year the Pats are over and the Bills have arrived till the season starts. But it is indeed more than confidence. It's well past that into wackiness.

Glad he's gone. Not surprised he looks amazing. This is the season of "He looks amazing." And having said that, the absolute best of luck to Tyrod. He gave us his best.

Fair enough. So Brady is bad. Four picks in his sixth game. I get you. It really was a bad game, yeah. But a bad, even horrible game or series of games as a rookie (or even a 2nd year guy playing his first games like Brady) doesn't mean your career will be awful. The people who say that one bad game as a rookie or even several bad games as a rookie mean you suck are simply wrong. Some guys who play badly as a rookie suck. Others turn it around. Good question. Whyncha call up McDermott and ask. Probably it's just something he's overlooked. Can't be he knows more than we do, certainly.

While I agree with some of this, I just wanted to point out that it is NOT unprecedented to see completion percentage improve by almost 10%. Brett Favre 1987 Southern Mississippi 40.7% Brett Favre 1988 Southern Mississippi 55.8% Brett Favre 1989 Southern Mississippi 54.1% Brett Favre 1990 Southern Mississippi 54.5% (college totals 52.4%) Brett Favre 1991 Atlanta Falcons 4 attempts the whole year Brett Favre 1992 Green Bay Packers 64.1% on 471 attempts and a career total of 62% Interesting to note that Favre sat for a year before his major improvement occurred.

How many of those QBs selected in the first round who played the first week were the third QBs selected that year? How many went outside the top two or three? And how many of them were widely considered before the draft as developmental guys who would need a year or even two to be ready? General odds aren't particularly general. And then a smart team has to think about this ... should we do what the majority of teams have done in the past? Is that a good reason to do something, that most teams seem to do it that way? Second, should we flat-out pretend that all first round QBs are alike? Or should we take into account the obviously huge factor that many on the boards want to forget about when in the first round guys went, among many other kinds of individual differences? Third, should we totally ignore what has separated successful and unsuccessful QB development as so many want to do, the way that Transplant is doing in this post? "... over the last ten years 76.5% of the QBs drafted in the top 10 started week one," says Transplant. Desperately spinning the fact that that's only 16 guys total, and that of that 16, 12 of the 16 guys (75%) went in the top three, not just the top ten. In fact, 10 of those 16 guys went in the top two, not just the top three. And that all of those guys, every one of the 16, was either the first QB chosen that year or was the #2 pick after another QB had been chosen #1. Whereas Allen was chosen #7, the third QB chosen. Allen doesn't compare to the situations of guys like that. In fact, here are all of the other QBs chosen in the top ten but not the top three during Transplant's chosen time-frame .... Tannehill Jake Locker Blaine Gabbert Mark Sanchez. Should we try to model ourselves after how teams developed those four? Tannehill and Sanchez started Game #1. Gabbert played in Game #2 and started #3. Locker played in five games, significant time in the 10th, 13th and 14th game. I say YES!!! These are the guys you want to use as models. Develop our guy the way that Tannehill, Locker, Gabbert and Sanchez were developed. What could go wrong? Just so folks know, I'm reasonably hopeful about Allen. Love his story and his work ethic beyond his obvious tools. But he's very unlikely to be well-served by playing early.

Tough tough question. Let's look at things objectively. Hmmm. What has changed? Answer: Absolutely nothing except the emotional status of the fans. Wow, well, clearly that's a good reason to imagine that the odds on Allen playing have gone up.

"Fact is Kaepernick is better than Peterman and McCarron," you say. You seem to be having major confusion between facts and opinions. What you have there is an opinion, and not a particularly solid one. We don't know yet who Peterman and McCarron are. Nobody does. Nor are the odds what you say they are. Call Vegas and try to get odds on a proposition bet that Kaep will have a better career than Allen. Think you'll get even odds? And yeah, if whoever we have at QB - likely McCarron or Peterman - manages to run up a YPA this year equal to the whopping 6.8 Kaep posted in his last year, there will indeed be disappointment. Not to mention 186.8 YPG, also not a figure to inspire jealousy. Yes, Kaepernick didn't throw dangerous balls so he kept his INTs down, but also his throws generally, and also his yards, his yards per attempt and his productivity overall. Hard to imagine that situation in Buffalo, but what do you think the Bills might do if they had a QB like that, a guy who also racked up a ton of sacks even if he could run? Hmmm. Hard to say what they would do in a case like that.

If McCarron posts those stats it would be a disappointment, with only the INTs stat looking good. Is Kelvin Benjamin still broken? Is he on another team? Or did you misunderstand why they brought him in, which was not just for one year. The Bills spent $1.1 mill on Jordan Matthews, who was apparently more seriously injured than he or the Bills had hoped. But $1.1 mill was a very small risk. Beane has been OK with his offensive player evaluations so far. He just hasn't spent much on the offense in F.A.. Which isn't his way anyway.

Rosen "slid" to #10, while QBs were being picked right and left. People weren't saying at #5 ... where's Rosen going? Where's he going to fall? It was still "Where will Rosen and Allen go?" Rodgers slide to #24 after the only QB picked before him went #1. There isn't much in common there. Teams that wanted QBs ahead of #10 were mostly picking other ones this last year. Whereas with Rodgers the teams that wanted QBs were going with other positions. That and with this group teams traded up to get one of the top four QBs, to #7 and #10 specifically. Nobody traded up to get Rodgers.

Quick point for you and what seems like half the board at various times ... an opinion with which you disagree is NOT a "fallacy."

Except not. Chances of Beane being gone after the 2019 season are probably around 10 - 20% max. Two years is not going to be enough to know about Allen. After two years as a guy who was always seen as developmental, he's likely to still be having problems even if he eventually works out very well indeed. Most people before the draft said he was going to need a couple of years of development. 2021? Yeah, if Allen's not successful by then and they haven't lucked into someone else ... fair enough, having picked a bust high in the first drastically raises your chances of ending up as maybe director of East Coast scouting on some other team. But two years after picking Kyle Boller in the first in 2003 - he became GM in 2002 - Ozzie Newsome wasn't gone, was he? Two years after picking Byron Leftwich at #7 (where have I heard that number before?) James Harris wasn't in the unemployment line. Took five years. And plenty more examples where those came from.

I disagree 1000%. Staking your career on ONE draft pick can easily be the best and smartest move at the time. It might well have been the correct move this year. Assuming, for example, that Darnold and Mayfield work out and Allen and Rosen don't, and that Beane had the QBs rated, say Darnold - Mayfield - major dropoff - Allen - Rosen ... spending all our draft capital for this year and maybe some from next as well in a move up for Darnold or Mayfield would have been the smart play. It would have left us without a potential terrific MLB but with a great QB. That's a lot better than without a potential franchise QB but with a great MLB. We'll see. I still have plenty of hope for Allen after a year or so of development. Safer, yeah. But safer but unsuccessful means squat. This was the year to get an excellent QB. Not just some QB. And maybe he did. But if he didn't, it will look bad in retrospect.

Hit or miss on Allen, it's WAY WAY WAY too early to say. So far, I am a major fan, but we simply don't have enough info yet.

This.