Thurman#1

"Why did an offense featuring Christian McCaffrey and DJ Moore fail to produce," you ask? Lemme fill you in on the biggest part of it ... because that offense featured Christian McCaffrey for a grand total of three games. The other huge part of it was that Teddy Bridgewater was the QB throwing to DJ Moore, except for the five games when PJ Walker was instead. The third part was that the OL just was not good. Maybe if Okung had stayed healthy or if Paradis had played in Carolina like he did in Denver, but neither of those things happened. Paying that much for Bridgewater was a mistake. You can't say that he's good because a team paid a lot for him, that simply doesn't make sense. They paid a lot for him because they hoped he'd be a lot better than he was. He wasn't. Oh, and Bridgewater didn't go 5-1 the year before in New Orleans. That was a team, the New Orleans Saints. Wins and losses are a team stat. Bridgewater was the QB at that point, but he didn't win the games, the Saints did. Bridgewater played quarterback. He did it pretty well. But pretending that Teddy's play was the major factor in the 12-10 win over the Cowboys or the 13-6 win over Jax is just silly, nor did the offense look very good in the 27-9 loss to the Rams. The three games where the offense performed well were Tampa, Seattle and Chicago, and the Bears were a pretty good defense that year at #8, but Tampa was average at #15 and Seattle was #26. Bridgewater seemed a decent bet at that time, but it was a bet that did not pan out, and it wasn't like the offense was dragging Bridgewater down and when he went elsewhere he started dominating. Does Brady get some of the blame? Absolutely. As does Daboll get some of the blame for the times he was awful with bad QBs before surprisingly turning out to be damn good when he got a good one. The OL absolutely gets some of the blame. But expecting great offensive production from a team without a good QB isn't going to get you much of anywhere. 10-12 is precisely my guess as well. But I agree that there's far more uncertainty this year than in the recent past for this team.

Win-loss record isn't an offensive stat, it's a team stat. Brady isn't responsible for the D or the STs, and pretending he is just doesn't make sense. The offense did perform better under Brady. That is something he can hang his hat on, but he still has a lot to prove. As would anyone after 10 games.

This!! This, exactly. You can say a lot about the NFL and how it's run. Much of it fairly bad. But they're not stupid enough to risk hundreds of billions over time to win tens of millions. They're just not. Is it possible that an individual here and there does something venal and stupid? Yup, absolutely. But that they're stupid enough to risk it all for such a relatively small return? No, you'd have to be stupid to a massive, massive degree. It'd be like a guy crawling out to the Wallenda's highwire across Niagara Falls to pick up a nickel taped to the middle of the wire. They make bad decisions, reasonably often, as do most or all of us. But they're just not that clueless.

Yes, it's KC in the playoffs, that's right. The Cincy game looked like the whole team being emotionally deadened by that bizarre season with Hamlin dying on the field, Knox's brother dying, the shooting at the supermarket, the dozens of deaths in the two terrible storms and on and on and on. One bad game. That's what it looked like and the Bills themselves said they just didn't have any juice, which isn't something they've ever said otherwise. The Chiefs offense hasn't been stopped by much of anybody in the playoffs. That's why they've won three of the last five SBs. KC's offense has a history of performing like this, not too well until they need to, and then doing what needs to be done. All Pros are not particularly a good measure of overall roster talent. It's a measure of how many elite players are on the team. That's only one particular way to look at talent. The D does NOT suck in the postseason. Against everyone but KC they've been very good in the postseason. And again, not many teams have stopped that KC offense in the postseason. You said it yourself. It's the inability to handle KC in the playoffs so far. That's the problem. Or put much more quickly and better ... this.

This is a pretty weird post, IMO. This is unlikely to be one of the NFL's weakest divisions. More likely well stronger than average, though the Pats don't look likely to be pulling in their share of the plaudits. And as others have said Josh has had strong weapons through most of his career here. Beasley, Diggs, Cook, Kincaid, Knox, Singletary, John Brown, Sanders, Gabe Davis, all "important offensive weapons." Probably none but Diggs and a year or two of Beasley played at elite levels. But a lot of good players there. The D has been damn good as well, except against KC in the playoffs. There are plenty of games when Josh needed defensive help and got it. When we beat the Giants 14-9 last year for instance. When we beat the Chiefs in season last year 20 - 17. When we beat the Dolphins 21-14. Those are just last year. The D had many good games but plenty came on days when Josh also had good days, which isn't surprising since Josh has a bunch of good days. But so did the D despite a horrendous year for injuries.

I'm of the opinion that I have a semi-reasonable idea what's likely this year. But I've been wrong before. We'll see. And I'm ready too.

Well, if there's ever a sign that you're talking with a person who's not worth spending time on, it's that he constantly repeats your meaning back to you and completely misstates it. You've done that two posts in a row. I'm not interested in folks who relentlessly pull straw men out of the ether. Have fun playing with yourself.

Yeah, this is what it looks like, though the details are what it is all about.

What is with you people? Do you seriously believe nobody goes to jail in San Francisco? Or that there's no crime in places like Houston? Enough with the knee-jerk nonsense. Let's just hope for the best for Pearsall

Unless he loses the locker room, McDermott is here for awhile. Some people don't want to hear it, but that is simply the most likely and the most reasonable result.

Where does anyone say he's awesome? Not including sarcasm? I'll wait. Good signing to the PS does not equal awesome player.

This is what the anti-STs guys always say on here. "Is the extra guy on STs going to win games?" The actual answer is that it's more likely to help the team than what a different 53rd man would add to the offense or defense. Where are all the 52nd and 53rd men winning all these games that you folks seem to assume are all over the place among teams that don't do what we do with our STs guys. Fact is you do see guys on the last couple of guys on the roster make a difference on O or D but it is extremely unusual. Generally if the 52nd or 53rd guy has to play one week, the team is picking up someone better on waivers to use the next week. Whereas the specialty STs guys on the contrary play a bunch of snaps and sometimes make big plays, a nice tackle on a kick, a good block that though usually unnoticed may spring a guy for extra yards, and occasionally a Matakevich will make a beautiful play by recovering that surprise onside kick the way he did or forcing a fumble, or just a guy like Codrington not fumbling, which nobody notices, but it can nonetheless be hugely important. You're right that Codrington is unlikely to score against the Jets. Even more unlikely to make any impact would be a #53 guy sitting on the bench. And again, we didn't trade a 2024 6th. They're already used. We didn't even trade next year's 6th, a 2025. We traded a 2026 pick!!!!!!!!! 2026!!! Hell, we got back a 7th in the same year. This was a tiny price to pay, and it's not like it would likely have brought us a starter or a quality backup if used elsewhere.

That you see a Meh roster overall is on you. Vegas has them as varying between the 6th to 8th favorites. That ain't meh. It ain't elite either, but it ain't meh.

Breaking news: Kick returners are sometimes judged on other bases than speed. This may shock many. One of those other factors is how well they guy runs back kicks. Codrington ran back two kickoffs this season for a total of 75 yards. 6th highest in the league among all who returned even one kick. And four of those other five guys only ran back one kick, perhaps (underline perhaps) being so good on one kick from luck. He ran back three punts, qualifying for the official list, which requires three or more returns. He was 2nd best in the league on that list of the 20 guys with 3 or more returns. https://www.footballdb.com/statistics/nfl/player-stats/punt-returns/2024/preseason?limit=100&sort=pravg Considering that this preseason is the only data we have to work with on the new kickoff method ... No, they really could probably not have found something better on the street, based on available evidence. They could have found someone faster. There is a difference. I get what you were doing. But adding in the last sentence made pointing out his actual results this preseason seem worthwhile to me.

She (Robillard) has 461K followers on Instagram. Cody has 81K. She's a bigger deal than he is among the sad group that follows this kind of story.

I could not. And an in-shape wrestler who practices consistently is going to kick the ass of a lot of the confident. A lot. 50 or not.

I do believe that's reasonable, but Pegula isn't the decision maker. You wouldn't want him to be. He has a voice, as he should. It's one of the best things about Pegula. He found a guy he trusts and he listens to him. Two guys he trusts at this point. It's interesting to think that they might possibly have picked Mahomes.

Yes, John. This nailed it. People want to ignore this about McDermott being stuck with Whaley, who had been in on the EJ Manuel pick. Ignoring that ain't reasonable.

I would disagree. There were physical questions involved. You can't narrow it down to mental / dedication yet, IMO. Here are the "Weaknesses" from Zierlein's evaluation: "Weaknesses "Below-average strength and could struggle against physicality. Unable to hold off challengers and save catch space when contested. Rolls into intermediate breaks with excessive gather steps. Ball-tracking inconsistencies will pop up at times. Focus drops are part of the package." And a fairly damning final bit: "Sources Tell Us “He’s not as explosive as (Jalin) Hyatt was coming out, but I look at him in a similar way with what he can do for your offense and what you won’t ask him to do. He’s a better route runner than Hyatt.” - NFC scouting director I don't really get a sense yet, but it does seem that fans and draftniks had him higher than the teams did. Hah!! Nice! Nicely put.

Nah. That's nonsense. Every chance that with a Trubisky or other upper level backup we go .500 or pretty close. Hell, teams Trubisky started games for have gone 31-26. "Scrub" is just not a word that should be used for the starters. Allen of course, but also Kincaid, Cook, Dawkins, Torrence (not so far this preseason but I think that's how it turns out) are all above average. One to three others who might also turn out that way assuming health and progression, though we don't know right now. I get it, it's more fun to get all ridiculously angry and yell and scream, but it only blurs the grip on reality. Yeah, if Josh goes down for more than a few games we're not winning a Super Bowl. But same with nearly all of the top QBs. Probably all of them to be honest, unless it happens late in the season and you somehow get a backup who plays the best streak of his life the way that Foles did and Ds don't have time to figure out how to defense him in that offense. It's wildly unlikely. Now, if Trubisky has regressed, should they bring someone else in? Yeah, sure. I'm not convinced that's the situation, but it's possible. The Bills know better than we do, but nobody is perfect at these decisions.

Yup. And the Bills are nowhere close to the stupidity side of the line. They're not perfect. They make mistakes. But not many. Mentioning stupidity in the same sentence as Beane and the brain trust just does not make sense.

DOH!!!! You're exactly right. Wow, that's twice within a few posts I've screwed up. Thank you, seriously, for correcting me there. I really do appreciate it!! Having said that, two games is not statistically significant in terms of these stats. Cincy DID win one of those games, the only one of the teams he suggested that did. Again, looked to me like Mahomes just had a bad game that day. Wanna say that some of that was caused by Cincy's D? Well, it's a reasonable conjecture. Looked to me more like Mahomes just not having it, but impossible to prove either way. In the other game, KC never trailed. Kept getting a lead, giving it up and going back into the lead. Cincy's offense just never made KC sweat, or that's what it looked like to me.

Fair enough about AJ Brown and the Eagles. Good catch. Thanks for pointing out my mistake, I sincerely appreciate it. But even accounting for that, the Eagles are still not all that different from the Bills since 2017. And no, you absolutely do NOT have to compare the decisions teams made despite already having talent at WR. That evens out over long periods of time. They draft someone high, then they're not as likely to do so for a while. After they haven't, then they will tend to do that. That all evens out over time. Yeah, the Bills waited till they got rid of Diggs. But that came early and unexpected. When they still had him, they well should have felt more comfortable. But again, last year the Bills had Diggs, and they still picked Kincaid. Might they not have picked Keon if they still had Diggs? Yeah, maybe, who knows. The somewhat nutty idea I was replying to was that "They should have been drafting one in almost every draft in days 1 and 2." And no, that's nuts, nobody does that. All of your exceptions there, I believe, are accounted for since 2017. The need goes up and down for everybody.

Except for the Bills, those are all one game samples, except for SF which was two. Not large enough to be at all significant. More, all but one of those games were KC wins. If there's one thing we know about them it's that when they're behind, especially in the playoffs, they come on and tend to score a lot, and when ahead or not worried, they just aren't as sharp. The KC offense did what they had to do, in all those games except the loss to the Bengals The Bills offense when hitting on all cylinders has forced the Chiefs offense to rise to the challenge in a way that those other teams just haven't, again with the exception of the game the Bengals won, and honestly it just looked to me like the Bengals D played really well, but at the same time they benefitted with Mahomes just NOT playing well. YPP is to a very large extent just a factor of how much a team runs. It's also wildly variant depending on how many or few big plays they get; now over a season that'll even out, but over just one or two or three games if one DB falls down on one play, the YPP can jump up an amount that for YPP is a LOT. YPP just doesn't say much when looking such small samples. There's a real question whether it says much of anything, really, beyond whether a team is running more or throwing more. Again, the Bills D hasn't done well against the Chiefs in the playoffs, although last year they really weren't too bad. I'm not arguing they've been good against KC. But the whole "Bills D sucks in the playoffs" thing just isn't true. Except against KC the Bills D has been quite good. And not a lot of defenses HAVE done well against KC in the playoffs ... that's kind of a lot of the reason they've won so many Super Bowls recently.

It's a fact, but at the same time, it is spin, as in spinning like a dreidel. You used THREE, not one but three separate weasel words there attempting to unreasonably narrow consideration so as to gerrymander out times the Bills have done exactly this: 1) Yeah, if you say "WR draft pick" you can pretend that the Bills didn't trade for Diggs using a pick like that. 2) Yeah, if you say, "WR" you can pretend that the Bills didn't use a 1st rounder on Kincaid, who seems like he's going to be a terrific weapon. 3) Yeah, if you say "for Brandon Beane," you can ignore the #2 that this McDermott brain trust used to bring in Zay Jones Since 2017 we've been very much in line with those other teams the guy I was replying to mentioned. And it's absolute nonsense that they "have failed at trying to surround Josh with elite weapons," nonsense. Diggs was an elite weapon. Kincaid may well be one. And pretending that "Dotson" should be considered an "elite weapon," I mean, dude, please. Yeah, every team has not "stopped trying to acquire weapons." Well, yeah. Neither have we. If Dotson is going to be used as your example of bringing in a weapon, then the Bills have done an absolute ton of that over the years. Samuel, Cook, Shakir, Davis and Knox are all weapons if you're using Dotson as an example.