Thurman#1

Dallas appears to be working with a QB who is not capable of being a top ten type guy without a near-ideal situation. And that's not a good thing for Dallas, because it's hard to set up and maintain a near-ideal situation. I'm hoping Prescott doesn't develop any further. He seems like a good person but I hate the Cowboys. The 'Boys dumped Romo a bit early, thinking Prescott was ready and a franchise guy. I love the fact that now it's a really open question whether he'll ever be a franchise guy. Put those same missing pieces around Brady and you don't even notice they're missing.

You know, people say that EJ was never supposed to go in the first round as if it was a fact. It's not. Mayock thought he might go in the first. NFLDraftScout had him 1st-2nd, and more specifically mid-to-late first as his high and mid-second as his low. Gil Brandt had him as #27 in his top 100 big board, behind Geno, but in the top 32. Yeah, there were people - and not a few - who thought he was picked too high. But it wasn't a unanimous thing. At this point it's very clear he was a bad pick, but people saying that everyone knew he was a third rounder are talking out of their hat. Having said that, I agree with you that there are some real weaknesses in the Manuel-Allen comparison. Allen is indeed more highly touted.

I did go figure. And what's strange is that most of those games when he had Watkins and Woods, 10 or 11 of them, came in the first year when teams hadn't yet figured him out in that offense. You didn't miss out any hackneyed Taylor-bashing cliches. But you did hit all the hackneyed Taylor-fanboy cliches and made a good start on the Peterman-bashing cliches. Peterman did indeed play pretty poorly. Certainly worse than Tyrod. But at least Peterman was a rookie. I wish the best for Tyrod. I hope he kicks butt in Cleveland. But I'm glad he's not here anymore. And yet when Cassel had much that same team he had a Tyrod-esque year. Sure it's a team game, sure you need players and coaches. But Brady does more with less than anyone else in the league. It's why he's likely going down as the GOAT.

Not at all. Yeah, they went 10-5 with Cassel at QB. In a year when they lucked into a very easy schedule. The year after they went 16-0 with Brady.

Was Cassel really all that successful? Check the stats for Brady in that offense the year before and Cassel in his year. Was Cassel's performance in Brady's ballpark? Tom Brady 2007 68.9% for 4806 yards, 50 TDs and 8 INTs, 8.3 YPA, 21 sacks, 117.2 passer rating Matt Cassel 2008: 63.4% completions for 3693 yards, 21 TDs and 11 INTs, 7.2 YPA 47 sacks, 89.4 passer rating Tyrod Taylor 2017: 62.6% completions for 2799 yards, 14 TDs and 4 INTs, 6.7 YPA, 46 sacks, 89.2 passer rating Which is more similar, Brady and Cassel, or is it Cassel and Tyrod? Give Tyrod a similar number of attempts to Cassel and their yardage numbers would have been very close.

Brady doesn't know where he's going 90% of the time. It just isn't that easy. If it were, more people would do it. He gets a really intelligent knowledge of what his first read should be ... yeah, maybe 60% of the time. He still has to look and see if it's open or if the safeties or somebody is doing something unexpected or if the CB is doing a great job covering the route. No, Brady doesn't go through progressions every play; plenty of times he goes to his first read. Yes, he goes through progressions a lot. And he does it faster than nearly anyone else, which helps him a ton. Commitment isn't the problem. Making the correct decision before you commit is the problem. NFL defenses work hard to make you go through as many reads as possible. Offenses battle back to try to reduce the number. It just isn't as easy as you're making it out to be. Yes, well-designed offenses and a smart playbook help a ton. But it's not as if a well-designed offense eliminates QB decision-making. If only. There are ways to simplify things for young QBs. The Bills should use those ways. But given time to watch the tape, defenses will figure out what you're doing and stop you from doing it. Still, for a beginning, it's a good idea, and doubtless something they'll be looking at.

That's certainly on the low end of likelihood. But as reasonable as any other reasonable guess. Mine would be closer to five or six wins. But if McCarron is better than expected I can see that rising significantly.

Me too, and there's more. NFLDraftScout sez this about Wallace: "No Full Workout-Heel on 1st 40/Affected his 40 Yard Dash Times," and they listed his fastest 40 time as 4.45. EDIT: I see others have already posted it. But worth noting the 4.45 they list.

I actually do 'em every day. There's a pullup bar around 150 yards from my desk at work and I do a few when I come to work, when I leave and when I'm feeling beat. And I'm a bit older than Howard. Twelve years ago I made it a goal to do 10,000 during the year. Made it with a few days to spare, but it wasn't easy and part of the reason was because at that time I had to walk around three-quarters of a mile in Tokyo to find the closest bar in a nearby park. Should've bought a home bar, but I figured the wife might not have been thrilled, though she was absolutely great in supporting me that year. I had a mental map of every outdoor pullup bar or reasonable facsimile in western Tokyo. Can't do 'em now like I did then but one is an absolute piece of cake. Howard needs to get off his butt.

Yeah, Brady may take a fractional step downwards, but another Pat seems to be improving to take up the slack. No, you're right. Yolo, that every year people start talking about how this is the year they start to fall apart. And my suspicion is that for yet another year they're going to be excellent. But yeah, for the first time last year and this year we're seeing cracks in the façade. I love it. It's not a big deal anymore than it was a big deal when Bruce Smith would skip half the offseason. Brady doesn't need the extra time. But it does say something about his priorities and his relationship with Belichick. And IMHO his priorities are part of what made him special and his relationship with Belichick is part of what made the team special. I would expect an extremely tiny fall-off, and that Brady starts looking at what he'll do after football. And I love to see him thinking that way.

I guess if you really really reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally stretch it you could. But which games were the right ones was actually totally out of the Bills control. They got lucky with how that turned out. They won nine. And they got lucky with how the other three nine-win teams won and lost games ... games that were totally out of the Bills control. They were also very lucky that while in 2016 both AFC wild card winners had to win at least ten games, this year the AFC was quite a bit weaker. Same with 2015. And, you know, 2014. You have to go back to 2013 to find another year when a 9-7 team won an AFC wild card. Of the eighteen years since 2000, in only six years has nine wins been good enough to get a team into a wild card slot. I think 2017 is the only year since 2000 that a 9-7 record got two teams in, and since we were the second, that makes us very very lucky indeed to be in such a weak AFC.

Yup, each time I correct you. And each time you miss the point and say the same thing. The bottom line was that four teams won their way into the AFC playoffs, the Pats and Steelers with 13 and the Jags and Chiefs with 10 wins each. Nobody had to win or lose for those teams to make the playoffs. They simply won enough games. The next group of four all had nine wins, and so it came down to all of them having to rely on other teams having won and lost the right weeks. Whoever won those tiebreakers did so not because they won enough game to get into the playoffs. What those four teams - including the Bills - did was win enough games to make the playoffs ... if they got lucky with some games totally outside their control.

Good story and a great example of the kind of thing that makes people good folks. I've always liked Tyrod as a person. Not as my team's QB, not anywhere near recently, but he's always carried himself with class with the one small exception of the racist thing, which I thought was nonsense. But one small problem in three years is an extremely high average for human beings. I'm with you, I wish him the absolute best.

Josh Allen's place is learning. Yeah, you'd have to think he'll start down the line but that's certainly not his place now. And McCarron played pretty damn well when given his shot. No, I don't think he'll be our long-term guy either, but he's certainly showed potential. Yeah, this. And the shoe contracts offered to guys who aren't starting yet are mostly the shoe companies being proactive. They want to control the guy's rights down the road if he gets terrific. Proactive deals pay less than superstar deals so you have to think about that as well. Overall, though, a guy who hasn't won the starting job yet is going to get offers but especially a guy like Mahomes was probably not getting really good offers. Still, a nice decision even if maybe an easy one depending on the offer.

It isn't the media. It's that other guys seem to be struggling less. It's OTAs, it's early, it doesn't mean much ... but yeah he seems to be struggling a bit more. Which is what expectations were in the first place. It's not Rodak's responsibility to be in anyone's corner. They're supposed to strive for neutrality and even-handedness (an impossible goal but you can get pretty close). But Rodak's coverage is about in line with the rest. I'm no big Rodak fan, but he's OK. You'd expect Allen's teammates to be in his corner, and they do seem to be supportive of all three QBs. They've got their backs, which is as it should be.

Dude, if this were a difficult challenge, I'd enjoy it. It's not. Your objection here is ridiculous. You say they played well enough that when they got lucky and the right team lost - through no responsibility whatsoever of the Bills - they were in a position to take advantage of that good luck. Luck is certainly not just a "random occurrence of something not expected." Expectations have nothing to do with it, nor does randomness. A quick look at the dictionary provides a more reasonable one. "Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions." - Oxford They could have controlled their destiny by winning more. They didn't. And because of that they had to rely on chance in a game they had no control over, not to mention the luck that the AFC had only four good teams and that their schedule turned out very weak indeed. None of which was in their control.

I guess it is indeed where we disagree. The reason you're held back doesn't matter squat to your results. Fair enough that we disagree. I've been wrong before, and not a few times. But IMHO if there are only three pilots available to fly your plane and none of them are real good, you don't put the best of them out there, you cancel the flight. The Bills can't cancel the flight, obviously, but they can limit the damage of a crash by having one of the guys who ain't their long-term future absorb the injuries while the guy you're developing spends more time on the simulator.

I disagree with that. I don't think it was political conservatism but social conservatism that dropped him. I think an awful lot of the coaches out there don't want any kind of free thinker, whether politically conservative or liberal. At heart a lot of them want a young guy who will shut up in the locker room and go the Crash Davis "gave it 110%" route for the press. I think that hurt him with some of these teams, and I think his injury history hurt him an awful lot too. I wanted him over Allen personally. I think that if Rosen stays healthy he's going to be a very good one. Not as convinced of that about Allen, though I think there's an awful lot of reasonable room for hope.

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.