Thurman#1

On the contrary, it was certainly very obvious to them that they were likely to have problems at OL once Incognito and Wood left, and even more so when they traded Glenn as well. Nobody's dumb enough not to notice this. But they had other priorities they decided to handle first. You can't prioritize everything. Attempting to do so only shows a lack of priorities. Another thing that should be very obvious is that you can't address every weak area each year. They had problems this year at one CB, at LB, at OL, at DL and at WR. Oh, and did I forget QB? There was never a chance to fill all the possible holes so things would look just fine this year. Particularly for a team which had been in serious cap trouble and with a GM who had promised the owner to get rid of that cap problem this year. It simply was not going to happen. It's bizarre to me how people expect every hole to be filled even though it doesn't happen on even the best teams with relatively few holes. It's what makes it difficult to be an NFL GM. There is no perfect solution and even good solutions tend to take several years before things start to look good if you're starting with a lot of holes. And we are.

What's apparent is that anyone who thinks he can judge a GM this early in his tenure isn't correctly grasping how the system works. His grade is an INC. And will be so for three or even four years. The guy has been here for a year and a half and run one draft. Not a single player he drafted here has played more than one NFL game. It's not just early, it's far far too early.

Getting a QB high was an absolute necessity. Far from making no sense, it was the only move that did make any sense, except maybe bringing in Alex Smith or Kirk Cousins. Calling it a waste is missing the point. There are very very few ways to bring in a guy with a legitimate shot at being a franchise guy. When you have one of those chances you have to go for it even if it's expensive. They had to get a guy who might grow to become the franchise QB we've needed for so long. Unless they wanted our run of prolonged mediocrity/badness to continue. And yeah, OLs take time to develop. So do QBs. But it's a hell of a lot easier to draft a good OL even if you're winning than it is to draft a good QB. And yes, moving up delayed filling the holes on the roster. It's worth it. Same as in house construction, building a good strong, stable foundation delays the building of the walls and the installation of the plumbing and everything else, really. But it's necessary to build that strong foundation regardless of the delay. Same thing here. It's necessary to bring in a legitimate potential QB because it's almost impossible to get one when you have a good enough roster elsewhere to consistently win eight or nine games. You never get the chance to draft a potential franchise guy. This is the only way to get it done, and also the smart way. If we're rebuilding as you say (I'm not sure I agree, but put that aside), then you have to keep understanding what a rebuild is. It's not something you do if you want to have a great chance to win the year you trade up and draft your QB. You are sacrificing the short term for the long term. Which is a great idea if the long term is very successful, and true rebuilds increase the chances of extreme success. What was your prediction for the year? Did you think we'd win eight or nine or ten games? People who predicted a lot of wins this year weren't quite understanding how long it takes to build consistent success when you're switching schemes and the regime before you put you in awful salary cap shape.

A solid plan? Yes. And it involves waiting to see what happens with the guys they kept, observing the consequences after far more than one game, and acting accordingly. A solid plan that would make us look like a good offense this year? Nope. That was always a fairly low possibility. And that's OK. Football personnel plans should be long-term. If we'd wanted to look as good as possible this year we should've kept Tyrod. Or brought in Alex Smith or Kirk Cousins.

Did Allen fuel a massive outpouring of points when he came in? Guess not, so should they cut him too? As usual, the intelligent answer does not involve making immediate decisions on too little information. Yeah, picking a quick scapegoat feels better. But rushing to judgment is bad policy. When will they cut him? In camp next year or the year after, possibly, or they'll see him go after his four years here to possibly get picked up elsewhere. We'll find out which of these by doing what good decision makers do. Grinding it out, gathering data and making sure there's enough to make as good of a decision as possible.

Not true. Yeah, he sat for nearly two years. He then played 5/16ths of his second season and all of his third. To say the least, he did not look good. I mean, his passer rating did not exceed 65 for those two years. And he still looked awful given three games to start in each of his next two years. He looked awful in Tampa. Given three games to start his first year in SF he looked very good. But had he developed or was it a lucky three games? His poor performance the next year when given three games would argue it was a statistical anomaly. It really wasn't till he'd been several years developing in SF that he looked good consistently. If anything the evidence indicates that he only started to look good after sitting the bench for a while in a place where they knew how to develop QBs.

Fair enough about your plan. But Peyton Manning coming out of college was widely considered one of the most NFL-ready QBs of all time. Josh Allen not so much. He may possibly be ready but the evidence certainly isn't convincing.

What you've proved here isn't that quarterbacks can develop while getting smashed. Oh, and Favre is a counter-example. He's a great example of a QB who developed sitting on the bench learning from film. He spent his whole rookie year on the bench. Steve Young's career also runs counter to what you're saying. He spent his first year and then eleven weeks of his second year on the bench. Then he played solidly for a year and a half and was so awful that they let him go. Only after sitting a ton behind Montana being developed well and correctly did he become the Steve Young we know today. What your evidence shows is that SOME quarterbacks can develop while getting smashed. All of the guys you reference here were considered NFL-ready coming out except for maybe Favre. And there are tons of examples of guys who were smashed and didn't develop. Trent Edwards is not the least of these examples. Remember when he DIDN'T look like Captain Checkdown? David Carr is the most obvious but there are a ton more.

... or it takes time for QBs to develop and it helps to have good offensive personnel around them?

No, you're spinning like crazy. He did take away the job he had but asked him to keep writing for the paper. That is in no way "expendable." And both Graham and Sully have said that from many responses, the complaints were very few. Enough, apparently, but have BNBlitz subscriptions soared since Sully left? Nobody has said so. I don't hear any of the folks here saying, "Now that he's gone, I'm signing up." Not that I've read all ten pages. But if there have been one or two, have there been many? And not all promotions from within would mean everything staying the same. And while newspapers are disappearing, their sports sections are generally considered the strongest circulation drivers. It's the other stuff that people are finding elsewhere. Why else would they try to sell the BNBlitz separately.

It was like that. And as you point out, so was watching the Bills. They've sucked or been mediocre with extreme consistency. It was Sully's job to describe that, not to fill lives with sunshine. So yeah, fair enough that you or anyone doesn't want to read that kind of thing. But for sunshine, you've got Murph and Chris Brown and all the rest of the buffalobills.com crew. And now the BNBlitz.

Fine. I'm sure it's mutual, but if you really didn't care, you wouldn't post. You say as much. You don't click links to the Kardashians, right, yet you posted here. Jerry's time at the BN is indeed over, because he decided to step down, and his reasons for doing so are right on. Sully's writing developed on a newspaper, and newspaper - columns anyway - developed around writing columns which are thoughtful and reasonably though not perfectly neutral. And then the BN turned to a fan site, which is a site where neutral articles are not what people are looking for. They're looking for actively positive slants. Graham pointed out the same thing when pointing out why he left. Fanboy articles aren't what Sully and Graham signed up to write. Pretty reasonable to be a bit pissed when someone hires you and then changes your job description almost completely. And yeah, many here are happy. Again, this also is a fan site and most on here actively don't like much that's negative about the Bills, even when it's well-deserved and spot on point.

He's a fine writer. Not to everyone's taste but it's not an accident he got offered a job as a columnist at the third-biggest paper in America at the time (9th biggest now, Newsday). And turned it down to come to Buffalo.

it wasn't that clear that they wanted to keep him. They should've. But they waited and waited. The offer was a ton of money but it seemed that that regime was looking for a different kind of guy, that they wanted road graders and thought Levitre was a finesse guy.

Yeah, I've never heard two guys have two separate views of the same incident. Must've been lies. I like Tyrod as a person, but this is sad. It's small. Move forward, dude.

Thang is we don't know yet whether what is due is blame or credit or whether the fans were right or wrong. We do know that McD has a ton more info on the situation than we do.

There's no particular reason to think that there's a direct relationship between time with the 1s and how far ahead or behind a guy is. In fact, how confident are you that Allen had the most time with the 1s? McCarron started game 2 and game 4. Not that that matters anyway. Plenty of coaches put other guys in once they know which guy will start. Lamar Jackson got the most time in Baltimore. Was he real close too? Mayfield got a lot more time than Tyrod. I could go on.

Yeah, learning from the bench didn't work for Brees, Rodgers and Brady, the three finest QBs in the game, so why should we ... Oh, wait. It did. There's a reason why virtually all coaches believe that spending time on the bench helps guys. And the reason is because it does work. Same reason why pilot schools don't say, "!@#$ it, they don't need simulator time, nobody learns from that, just throw 'em behind the stick of a loaded 727." It all works. Mental reps work. Time to practice mechanics work. Time to study film of NFL defences works. It all works. That doesn't mean that everybody needs it. But it does mean for a rookie riding the bench that if all he learns is how to hold a clipboard he's not going to turn out to be a good NFL QB. McDermott is among the people who believes that time on the bench works, and we know that because if he didn't, Allen himself wouldn't have specifically said that "... sometimes quarterbacks can get thrown in there too early and that can have a snowball effect on them during your career. So coach is going to do the smart thing." - Josh Allen https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2018-nfl-training-camps-bills-wont-rush-josh-allen-into-starting-qb-role/

Yeah, but he believes he'll get more. Nothing wrong with that. And nothing wrong with the Steelers not wanting to pay him more either ... or the players reacting angrily for that matter. It's all a part of today's game, an interesting situation. And by the way, this is a small point, but worth making ... they aren't trying to pay him $70 million. They're trying to give him a contract which would pay him $70 million if he stays on the team for the duration of the contract. I don't think the details are out there yet on how much he would make if he got a career-ending injury after one year, or if he wore out in two years and was cut. The exact details of contracts are very important, making contracts much more or less inviting than just the final figure. We've all seen back-loaded contract offers like SF's offer for Nate Clements where the final figure was huge but the last year or two had him receiving a large percentage of that big figure. He had never been intended to receive that whole figure and sure enough was cut just before those huge numbers kicked in. Is the Bell contract like that? I have no idea, but we don't know, do we?

It's an old idiom or cliche. You can find it in the urban dictionary. It's a very old saying. Was around when I was a boy and that was a while. Means you can count on a person for consistency. It's been around since before Steady Eddie Murray, who was a terrific player by the way. Very consistent. And a Hall of Famer. EDIT: Here's a 1962 vintage "Steady Eddie" balancing game. Murray's rookie year was 1977. And Milton Bradley didn't make up the name, they just used it. It's been around a long time. https://www.amazon.com/Steady-Eddie-Balancing-Original-Version/dp/B00B5TOHBS And Hockey Hall of Famer Ed Giacomin was another Steady Eddie. Mel Allen used to call Yankee pitcher Ed Lopat (1944 - 1955, 166 - 112, career ERA 3.21) Steady Eddie. Again, it's a really old phrase.

As you should. It was really smart on 6/29, three days into camp, and still holds up. Great post. I see, so being wrong is OK if you can argue that you may possibly have been "awfully close" to being right? Got it. Hey, if you think that 55% completions vs. 80% completions is "awfully close," I guess that's your business.

My reasoning was wrong? That's a laugh. In TransieWorld, it's dumb to be right? Apparently we should listen to the guy who continues his spotless record of being absolutely wrong about QBs, wrong without exception, continuously, relentlessly wrong. You thought I was ridiculously wrong when I said he had a very small chance to start. And yet ... I was right. As per always in my arguments with you. Remember when you said Tyrod was "near-elite"? Yeah, me too. Exactly the response you predicted in your last sentence, right? There's two reasons for that. First, because I was right and you were wrong. Again. But second, I wanted you to feel that you'd been right in at least one prediction. Get you the feeling, since it will be a new one for you. Maybe if you enjoyed it, you could ease up on the massive doses of Kool-Aid. Nah, didn't think so. I asked too much. For all those times you were wrong, who was on the other side? Me, among many many sensible others. You're not getting it, but the reason that you're wrong is that your reasoning is wrong. Consistently, relentlessly. It's come to be a self-evident truth that when you tell someone their reasoning is off, it's a fantastic sign that that person is on the exact right track. McCarron was traded because he wasn't as good as Peterman. Or Allen. McCarron underachieved and they were able to get a 5th for him. That's why he was traded. Duh indeed. As usual you're taking data points and applying massive dollops of confirmation bias until it looks to you like they mean what you believe. You could say the same thing about me except for one thing. I'm the guy who's been relentlessly consistently right. And not because I'm some genius. I'm not. I simply don't take positions that aren't fairly obvious. Which is the way to go if you want a realistic viewpoint. Which you clearly don't. It's been fairly obvious that they wanted to give Allen time to develop, unless he'd improved massively. And he'd clearly improved but not enough. That quote from him after game three when he talked about going to the line and not understanding what the (preseason vanilla) defence was showing was one of many tipoffs that he needs more time, but again, it was obvious from before the draft, back when you insisted - again, relentlessly - that Allen was a loser who would never be a decent starting QB. Remember that, Transy? It's also been fairly obvious that Allen was simply not winning the QB contest, from way back in offseason workouts. I'm not making any statements on when Allen starts. For the simplest of reasons ... it's wildly unpredictable. The Week One starter was the opposite, extremely predictable. But when or if Allen starts is not easy to predict. Peterman could suck or be great, or more likely be good for several weeks until teams start to figure out how to defense him and he has to learn to adapt and he either does or - like Tyrod - doesn't. Peterman could be injured. Allen could develop slower or faster than expected. Too many unknowns, so I'm not taking any stance beyond acknowledging the unpredictability of it. Could be three or four weeks. Could be next season. Again, though, the Week One starter not being Allen was predictable as hell. It was absolutely zero surprise. In fact, the operative word was ... Duh, Transie.

Of course you're sticking with what you have said all along. You stuck with Tyrod right up to the end too. That's who you are. That's what you do ... to paraphrase Terminator. You pick a guy and think too much of him ... with absolute unwavering consistency. And yeah, Bills fans wanted Allen. That's what most fans do. They pick the heralded new guy and want to see him immediately. They choose the short term over the long term. They take the perspective of a person wanting entertainment rather than the perspective of a guy whose job prospects depend on the long-term success of the team and the QB in particular. And as for Allen not starting the first game, one word ... Duh.

The article you link to does NOT show that Brees throws slower than Peterman. I checked the Sports Science episode it refers to and yeah, Brees threw at 52 MPH. But he wasn't throwing for speed. He was throwing in an attempt to hit a very small target from 20 yards away. Which he did an amazing 10 out of 10 times. And all 10 times he threw he threw at 52 MPH. But clearly when you're going for accuracy you're not going to throw it as fast as you can. Generally at the combine guys are throwing as hard as they can when their speed is measure. But more, speed and velocity can improve over a career, so it's hard to know whether Peterman is throwing at the same speed he was at the combine. He spent all of last off-season working on his throwing motion trying to improve his speed. In any case, the comparison between Brees and Peterman is a major reach. Though you can probably find a few similarities, the major comparison - success and ability as an NFL QB - shouldn't be even looked at until/unless Peterman has a great deal more success than he currently has mustered.

Nah, as FadingPain said above, they don't base their bets on what they believe will happen. They base it on finding precisely the line that will as evenly as possible divide bettors into negative and positive on the bet.