Thurman#1

Ah, I see. You don't get it. Fair enough. I'll try to make it even easier. Winning that game didn't put them in. They had to wait and get help in a game that they had absolutely no control over. That's luck, without a question. Luck over and beyond the luck they got in having an extremely easy schedule.

Man, you're missing my point. Yeah, the thought that went into figuring out playoff criteria was not luck. But how those criteria affected the results? Virtually all luck. Agreed their conference had nothing to do with luck. AFC every year. But how crappy the teams in that conference were this year? Very very lucky for a 9-7 team. The way to avoid that luck and win with talent and skill? Win 11 or 12 games. Missing my point again in the second paragraph. I don't know how much more clearly I can put this. Teams that win a ton of games aren't lucking in. Do you hear this? Win 15 games and you're not lucking in. Win ten and you're likely going in simply because of how well you did. Win nine games and get in? Yeah, you're lucking in. Not just the Bills. Any team in the league. Most particularly so, though, when you win nine games with a very easy schedule and the two toughest teams you beat are mired in losing streaks and playing badly at the time they play you. The Bills put themselves in position to make it when Baltimore lost only because the wild card competitors in the AFC were a spectacularly weak-ass group of four 9-7 teams. In the better NFC, 9-7 teams went on their offseason breaks the way God intended.

Best guy might not be the important benchmark. Allen might be the best of three guys who suck. If so, we shouldn't throw him out there. The most important thing that will happen this season is whatever happens to Josh Allen. His development (or regression or stasis) dwarfs anything else that will happen with the 2018 Bills. If you're going to screw him up by putting him out there, I don't care if he's the best, sit him till he understands what's going on. Now if either McCarron or Peterman or both are playing well and Allen is simply better, great, that means he's ready. But being the best of three doesn't mean you're ready. He shouldn't go out there till they know he's ready, that he's not going to have his confidence destroyed and lose all the gains he's made to his mechanics as he concentrates on other things. Watson had played at Clemson. Allen at Wyoming. I hope he stays out all year. I wouldn't be surprised to see him play part of the season. I greatly doubt we'll see him in the first game or two. Too much to learn.

Um, the part where I said, "I've made a stew," might maybe serve as a hint. Perhaps you're purely joking? It wasn't clear to me. Stew was one of the few dishes I was actually pretty good at.

Who would they sign? KB, as you say. Lorenzo Alexander, Kyle Williams, Groy, Vontae, Jordan Mills, John Miller, Colton Schmidt, Logan Thomas, Nick O'Leary, Humber and Yarborough are all FAs in 2019. Dunno how many of those they'll be interested in, but probably some. And they could extend guys a year early who might be leaving after 2020, guys like Hughes, Clay, McCarron, Ducasse, Adolphus Washington, and perhaps another guy or two they might pick up this year on one-year prove-it deals. Few if any guys who would appear to be absolute needs, but you never know who might improve this year and look a lot more vital to keep.

I'd expect them to start signing their own guys, for one thing. And then to bring in a bunch of low- and medium-level FAs. Maybe since they have so much one big-ticket guy? Seems a reasonable guess.

Unfortunately it's not so. Plenty of guys who are good zone blockers aren't good at man, and vice-versa. Plenty are, but plenty aren't. They require different degrees of athleticism, strength, and so on. You often see turnover on the line when schemes are switched, and there's a reason for that. It'll be interesting to see how our guys do, and how long it takes them to pick things up. And whether there'll be some positions which turn into glaring needs for next offseason.

Nope. That was actually a metaphor. A poorly chosen one, maybe. How 'bout, how the stew is steeping instead. I've made a stew.

Doesn't mean much at this point, especially when you don't get much about what it is they're excited about. But hey, excitement is better than a lack thereof. Maybe it will translate into production on the field down the road. We probably won't know for two or three years down the road, but who knows. Interesting conversation anyway. Thanks for posting it, OP. I listened all the way from the part you highlighted to the end. Yeah, this. I'm honestly hoping we treat him like KC treated their new guy. Just sit him. Maybe put him in for the last game to see how the cake is rising. Can't imagine them starting him earlier than game 5 or 6, though, unless injuries force things.

This may be the bizarrest post I've ever seen. You say things aren't luck and then you try to tell why with absolutely zero logical relevance. None. When Julio was injured wasn't luck? Yeah, OK, dude. How the Ravens got a lower difficulty of schedule wasn't pure luck of schedule? Unh hunh. Yeah, great point. They were lucky in many many ways. That Julio was injured and that they caught the Falcons in their only three-game skid, their lowest point, and the Chiefs at their lowest point as well, in a four-game skid for a team that only lost six games. But mostly lucky that they were in a weak AFC where 9-7 teams actually had relevance. 9-7 teams in the NFC sat home and shut up, because their conference was simply better.

Agreed, if Luck was healthy the Colts might have been a decent team. As it was it was very lucky indeed for the Bills that there were four teams in the AFC that won more than nine games. That's absolutely terrible. And very lucky for the mediocre teams that luck into the playoffs because of the lack of actual good teams. Questionable. They got nine wins. There was absolutely some luck involved in that - Julio Jones' injury being one very obvious example - but at least they won nine of the sixteen games they were scheduled in. What was luck was that in most years and for most teams, nine wins means only a slightly lower draft pick than the eight-win teams. Lucky for them, for instance, that they weren't in the NFC, where a 9-7 record would have gotten seeded somewhere between 7th and 9th, with no 9-7 teams making the playoffs. Only the teams that are lucky enough to get nine wins in a very weak conference make the playoffs. The Bills were particularly lucky as the tie-breaker - strength of schedule - that put them in the playoffs depended on a bunch of computer nerds in the NFL office who put the schedule together.

Some people find this kind of thing really funny. Not me, personally.

Hope you're right. From what I can see Phillips is an absolute masher against the run game but I don't see him getting a lot of sacks unless QBs hold the ball a long time. To me he seems like a different kind of player from Kyle Williams. Both are great with their hands and both are really strong. But Kyle has always had an explosive burst that gets him penetration where Phillips seems to get his penetration from excellent hand technique when he gets it. He's just not as explosive that I can see. We'll see, though. You could be right, and it would be great for the Bills.

Agreed. If he stays healthy and gets on the same page as his QB (and/or vice versa) he has a chance to be a very good one.

Tre White, part of Zay Jones and part of Tremaine Edmunds, right? The Bills had to throw in other assets to get Jones and Edmunds, correct?

Sure, he was mostly negative. But not totally. Anyone remember the 2011 column when the Bills had a 5-2 start under Gailey and Jerry's column was about the fact that he thought that at least that far in he thought Gailey should be one of the top candidates for Coach of the Year? He had plenty of positive columns, but yeah, a lot more were negative. But again, when you look, the bad things he was saying were mostly about bad teams. Bad GMs, bad coaches. Bills fans have been really really tolerant over an awful lot of years. I was around in his first few years when he was covering a good team in the Bills. And yeah he said some tough things, but he was more positive than negative. More negative than many Bills fans liked even back then but he said a lot of good things about those good teams. He's always been a curmudgeon, a grouch. And some people just hate that, and that's fair enough. But he's had bad teams to cover, an overwhelming majority of them. It made sense most weeks to say bad things. I agreed with him maybe 70% of the time but always thought he was a good read. He made me think. I agreed with Bucky a lot less, but I enjoyed reading him too, though to a lesser degree. Good luck to both of them, and to the Buffalo News. And the Bills as well.

Please. Nobody's saying effort and accomplishment weren't used or important. We didn't see any players falling asleep on the field. But that's not what it means to luck into something. The Ravens also tried as hard as they could and accomplished as much as we did, 9 wins. Luck absolutely was the main factor in us getting in. Yeah, we worked hard and accomplished a lot. So did the Ravens. So did all the 9-7 teams. But none of those 9-7 teams were good enough to got 10-6 or 11-5 or 12-4. So whoever squeezed in with a 9-7 would have to rely on luck. Without that luck we don't get in. That's lucking in. Any 9-7 team that makes the playoffs is lucking in. Making it with that record means you are very lucky ... very lucky that your division sucks if you win the division with a 9-7 record, or very lucky that your conference sucks if you make it in as a wild card with a 9-7 record.

Teams with good GMs and a regime that's been in place for a while tend not to have depth problems, But yeah, the rest of the league does.

Agreed that we are weak on depth. I just am not worried about wins next season. We're not likely to be good enough to do serious damage anyway. So depth isn't a big concern for me. Going into the second year of a new regime you're very likely to have depth problems. They shouldn't be unexpected. So I agree with your perception of this roster, but I'm not worried about it at this point and I find it very predictable.

"Sling the duke"?

$19 a month is for people like us. The teams pay a lot more and get a lot more data. Right, PFF aren't perfect talent evaluators. But probably a lot better than all the folks who don't do it for a living and talk about how people pass or don't pass the eye test for them. https://www.si.com/2015/01/25/pro-football-focus-nfl-neil-hornsby-cris-collinsworth-analytics "To be fair, PFF has come a long way since 2013, so much so that it’s now widely used by NFL teams and players. It’s good to see the Bengals are among them. PFF, while not perfect, is easily the best source of advanced analytics that accurately measures a player’s abilities in the NFL. In a 2015 article, Collinsworth told The MMQB 13 NFL teams were using PFF’s team-specific subscription service and in 2016 he said they were up to 24 teams. So, the Bengals are not alone in using PFF for data mining." https://www.cincyjungle.com/2017/6/30/15895074/study-details-how-bengals-advanced-analytics Two of dozens of articles I've seen about it. PFF doesn't pretend to be perfect. Nobody would. They're proud of their methodology, they think people can get a ton of value out of it, and the fact that teams buy their stuff says they're right. But they're upfront about not the fact that they aren't perfect at knowing what will happen. I don't know, it doesn't seem to me they're "building themselves an out." Sounded to me like they weren't sure what was going to happen, though their opinion was not good. Seemed to me they brought up Hackenberg because they are convinced he's never going to make it, but they don't think Allen is as hopeless as they think Hackenberg is. I didn't re-listen or anything but that's what I got from it.

We were his last team. Doesn't bother me.

You're right. That's why nobody knows which players in the NFL are good. Nobody knows the play calls, line calls, route combinations and individual jobs on plays, so nobody knows which players are any good. PFF is very good. They aren't perfect, of course ... nobody is. And they're better at rating certain positions than others. But they're painstaking, careful and professional. Many NFL teams buy PFF data to use. They don't do that because PFF suck. But predicting how guys will transition between college and the pros is projection, not simply observing and understanding. Even the NFL teams themselves aren't all that good at it, though they're better than anyone else.

They're also saying that guys like Allen can have terrific NFL careers if they follow a path like Newton (the guy who our head coach and GM have history with) and Wentz have. They're saying he can be successful without improving his accuracy. And yet he apparently has improved his accuracy through mechanical improvements with Jordan Palmer. It's a question whether he'll maintain that improvement, but if he does then he should be a better guy than their analysis says he is.

"There is something to work with. He isn't Christian Hackenberg." I don't see anything bone-chilling in this whole thing. "When you compare him with the other three or four highest rated QBs in the class he's just behind them in key important areas." Yup, that's why he needs development. That's why he should sit for a while. It's worth noting. Could Beane have made a mistake and picked a bust? Yeah. Could Allen instead be a guy who with changes to his mechanics and time to pick up the pro game without the pressure of starting turn out to be terrific? Yeah, also possible. That's been the word on him since the beginning. He needs development. I do disagree with one thing they're saying, that guys like Rodgers and Brady can make lousy supporting casts look good. Not so much. Every QB needs a good OL. Without one even the Bradys and Rodgerses are going to look bad. Yeah, they can make lower-level receiving corps look good. But Allen, as has been documented, was under consistent pressure and running for his life. Even the best QBs have problems with that kind of situation. It's a universal about the position. They were right about Edmunds' run fits, he had a lot of problems in that area, but seems to be football smart and willing and capable of improving. He got better. I thought they were interesting about Harrison Phillips not being Kyle Williams II. I'd bought into that, but they make an excellent point, the styles are quite different.