Thurman#1

Fair enough. But did your brother in law fire his agent by twitter? IMO you're both right. Being concerned about your health is the most reasonable thing in the world, and yet we also hear that if the money is good enough he'd play another year. I think he's going through some kind of weirdness lately, but I have no problem with wanting to retire for his health. I hope he's OK.

Disagree. Groy might turn out to be better than that. He was quite decent at center when he played. And after the first few weeks, Ducasse was pretty solid. Shambles is an overstatement.

I like them a lot so far. They seem smart and well-directed.

Very worthwhile question that to me doesn't have a clear answer. I'm absolutely sure they're aware of this concern. But have they put a good system / foundation in place? Hard to say. Hope so. Concerning Losman, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that he wasn't developed properly. Plenty. It's not totally convincing. Either way. Nor could it ever be. This is a deeply complex process. But the Bills put Losman in before he could win the QB battle with Bledsoe, worked with him, found a system in which he greatly elevated his play and looked promising, and then promptly in the offseason brought in a new offensive coach and system that pretty much eliminated the areas of strength from his game and tried to get him to conform to a system which stressed the areas he'd never been good at. That's freaking awful. And it surely made things much more difficult for him, no question. No way to know if he'd ever have become a franchise guy even if he'd been handled perfectly. Perhaps not. But they handled and developed him very poorly indeed. And yes, there are numerous cases of both sitting a guy and not sitting him succeeding. This is almost certainly because each guy is different, having different needs, and a good development process certainly would involve correctly identifying what your particular guy needs. Some guys will never be good enough, no matter how much development they get, some, like JaMarcus Russell, won't take the coaching they're given. And some are good enough and ready enough that their needs are relatively minimal. But there's a very large middle ground where guys who need development either get it or don't and this greatly impacts their chances for success.

Nope, that argument doesn't work. Nobody argues that getting a franchise QB is a guarantee of a Lombardi. Why would anyone do so? How could having one of the top 10 or 12 guarantee a championship. It ain't one guy who is a franchise QB. It's lots. What having a franchise guy at QB does is give your team a chance to be competitive for a title every year. A chance. Still, if your team botches the personnel game for a decade, even a good QB can be wasted, ala Philip Rivers. BPA will absolutely not have as good a chance to win it all. No way is there any way to even begin to prove that because virtually nobody actually picks BPA (think the guard who's maybe the second-best player in the draft this year after Barkley goes 2nd to the Giants?) and it's impossible to separate out BPA picks. What we know is that there is only one position in football where roughly 90% of all Super Bowl winners have one of the top ten or twelve guys at that position. Quarterback. And no other. Not LT, not LCB, not #1 WR, nothing else. You need a franchise QB. Without one, you'll be one of the 20 - 22 or so teams each year over 10 years or so (roughly 200+ teams) out of which one team wins a Super Bowl. About 10% of Super Bowls are won by a team without a franchise QB. You don't want your team to be one of those 200 teams hoping they're the one, a 0.5% chance. Much much much better to be one of the 10 - 12 teams every year that does have one of the best 10 - 12 QBs. Those teams win about 90% of SBs. So in 10 years, that's 9 teams out of 100 - 120, a roughly 11% chance. That's the group you want to be in. That's the strategy you want to use as your model. Oh, and you're right, none of no-trader-uppers are in any way insistent or unpleasant. It's all on the one side, right through all the threads. Right.

Sorry, my fault. I left out the quotation marks. "Bounty" isn't my word, it's the reporters. And yes, "bounty." This is a good year for QBs. It's pretty good odds we get four QBs in the first seven picks. How often does that happen? But again, thanks. I'll go back and put in quotation marks. Sorry again.

The butt fumble? Really? And from what I saw, only one of the NFL plays there was a direct result of bad OL play. All but one came way outside the pocket with the QB trying to do too much. And to continue, even a below average OL is a lot of protection. Staking a goat is a ridiculous overstatement. Historically, most top QB draft picks have stepped into situations with bad OLs. It doesn't destroy careers as long as the team works hard to improve the OL as soon as they can. Again, wild overstatement unless there are referees in the thicket ready to throw the flag if the tiger goes helmet-to-helmet, or if the goat can throw the ball away to stop the play. But yeah, it will likely make things more difficult for McCarron this year after the tradeup.

Love this bit: "McDermott (and Doug Whaley at the time) didn’t trade down last year to get an extra first round pick this year to draft a guard."Beane didn’t trade Sammy Watkins and Ronald Darby for second and third round picks, respectively, to fill depth spots at wide receiver or defensive tackle."And I don’t believe he traded Cordy Glenn to move up nine spots from No. 21 to 12 to stay there and replace Brown or select the best leftover QB on the board." Exactly. Sal has a nice way of cutting to the heart of things. Follow the process. Don't change horses in mid-stream due to apparent short-term needs.

That's wild overstatement. Yes, they need to build up the o-line. But nobody is going to be left dead here. But yeah, we should do our best to protect McCarron as much as we reasonably can after we make that trade up.

Yup. On the major things, wrong without exception. And the people on these boards already know, they watched you not just say these things but attempt to ram them down our throats, and repeat and repeat and repeat them due to the apparent belief that if you were the last person to talk in a thread it showed you were right. You refused to stop being wrong at volume 11. I've had plenty of plenty of mistakes along the way too, but on Tyrod, I was pretty much right the whole way along. Not because I'm smart or anything but because it was pretty much obvious all the way along what the likely outcome would be. I said there was a pretty decent chance that he wasn't what he'd been in his first year, that he was fairly likely to be what he'd been in the second half of the first year from the Pats game on. Correct. The remaining two years were nearly exactly the same passer rating as he'd had in that last half. That he would have to improve a lot in his second year to be a franchise QB while you were busy telling everyone he was a franchise guy. At one point for a month or so you even tried to sell that he was already near-elite, based on his QBR. I said he threw to the deep and intermediate middle very infrequently and not very well. I said he didn't throw anticipation throws often enough. I said he said he might stay if he took a pay cut but if he didn't he'd be gone. I said after he was benched that he was almost certainly going to be gone while you went on and on and on about how he was probably going to be our starter in 2018. You fought like a rabid weasel against pretty much all of this. The people on here didn't see it for the full time. The people on both boards know. You were wrong again and again on what Tyrod is ... and you were as relentless and consistent about it as the beat at a techno club.

Yeah, and they're all males and have ten fingers too. The important thing they have in common, as I already filled in above, is that they all took at least a year on the bench at the start of their career, a healthy year on the bench. And Brady, Brees and Rodgers are probably the three single best QBs in the league right now, and Rivers and Palmer two of the top six or seven last year. And putting guys on the bench for a year has never been the norm. It's always been too easy to bend to pressure and put him out there. It's only the best teams and situations that generally manage it. Putting them out quickly may well be the new norm, as it's always been the norm. Which would be too bad for many QBs who might have been able to make major improvements in a lower-pressure environment without worrying more about the pressure to score points and move the offense next week rather than to do the things they need to do to become better quarterbacks. When the best three in the league have done something like that, it just might mean something. Not every guy needs it. But many do and nearly anyone coming out of today's college game where most teams have the whole team looks to the sideline to read plays off cards could probably improve an awful lot, where many if most QBs read one side of the field most of the time and where many or most spend no time under center and don't have more than one or two reads could absolutely use the time to great advantage.

Sure, it's possible. Just progressively less likely as you move down. If any of those happen, I would be absolutely thrilled.

No prob, son. Heh heh. In any case, QBs aside, I'd love to see them start trading back and getting higher and better picks in the next year's draft. I'd love to see them start a regular treadmill that way. It's smart strategy, and if they do have any picks left after the likely tradeup (which they should absolutely do even if it costs them a ton, if they think they can get a guy who will be a franchise QB) I'd love to see them start to move that way.

There is absolutely no reason to think so. Generally the cycle goes like this ... every year before the draft next year's QBs are better than this year's because this year's have been looked over with a fine-toothed comb for flaws and next year's haven't. The next year the same guys who looked so great next year have now had their final year and been gone over relentlessly. The crop that looked so good last year now doesn't look as good as next year's group. Rinse and repeat. So when a group goes through the pre-draft process and still looks like a good group - as this year's does - it means something. Equally, when a group that hasn't yet been scrutinized within an inch of their life looks bad, as next year's appears to, again, it probably means something. You're showing signs of a mental habit that will lead you the wrong way, every time. It's called confirmation bias. You suddenly notice that data that supports your opinion all looks brilliant and convincing and data that casts suspicion on your way of thought looks questionable. Go long enough this way, and you begin to ignore the stuff you don't like and believe without reservation the stuff that backs you up. It' a very human flaw in our thinking and something we all have to fight. When you say you wonder if this is a new cottage industry, the thing that disagrees with you this year, you're showing confirmation bias. All of us need to stay as neutral as possible if we want to get closer to truth.

Isn't the same wrongness you've spewed again and again but in different words? It doesn't need a new thread. Next year's draft looks to be a bad one for QBs. So, no for option 3. Your option 1 is reasonable if and only if they can't trade up for some reason. But keeping in games next year is - yet again - not the point. Beane and McDermott have made plain their goal, a team that in the long-term competes consistently for titles. That's what they're working towards, which is why you're veering so far off the point. Option 2 is nonsense. Those guys are wildly rare, which is why you have to go back five years for the last good QB available in FA to Manning and five more beyond that to the severely injured Drew Brees and before that ... I don't know if there ever was another one. There might be guys like McCarron and maybe Foles and Bridgewater, though even those guys are not generally nearly as common as they were this year. The Cousinses, Mannings and Breeses are ... well there are basically three of them and that's it.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2765375-a-way-too-early-look-at-the-potential-2019-nfl-draft-qb-class "This cycle is a weak one for QBs after the bounty in 2018, but Patterson is a potential difference maker if available." https://247sports.com/Article/2019-NFL-Draft-A-way-too-early-big-board-for-2019-prospects-114189631 "2018 NFL Draft: Will Questionable 2019 Quarterback Class Cause Panic?" https://withthefirstpick.com/2018/03/23/2018-nfl-draft-will-questionable-2019-quarterback-class-cause-panic/ Wishing it was a good QB year next year doesn't make it so. That's not the way it looks so far, and that's surprising because nearly every year is reported as being a good crop until the year comes and they start making mistakes in game play. But this year 2019 is reported as weak, maybe in comparison to the strong crop this year. These are the first three reports off google, but it wasn't difficult to find a bunch even though a huge majority of the coverage is of course about the 2018 draft.

If anyone had actually said that because we picked a QB at #1 or #2 it guaranteed success, you'd really have a point. But what people say - absolutely correctly - is that picking a QB at #1 or #2 is the best place to get a franchise QB. Not the perfect place. Just the best place. That that's the way to maximize your chances. Sure, there are other ways to get a QB. None of those other ways have percentages of success anywhere near picking an early guy. And by the way, it's easy to make things look terrible if you only look at the bad QBs. If you'd also included the Andrew Lucks, the Carson Wentzes, the Philip Riverses, the Eli Mannings, the Matt Ryans, the Marcus Mariotas, the Carson Palmers, the Goffs and Jameises and Newtons, then all of a sudden it doesn't look anywhere near as bad.

I'm with Jay, this is really unclear. But all the people saying you can't do many things, you can't build a whole team ... that is utter nonsense. Of course you can. But it takes time, probably three or four years. So you adjust your expectations and you make your first priority the one thing that is both absolutely crucial to team success and only available occasionally and somewhat unpredictably. Which of course is getting a franchise QB. Anytime you have a chance you do it. Even if you have to sacrifice other things. Then after you have your guy, you develop him, maybe from the bench. And you build your team, making protecting him an early priority. And before you know it, 2- 4 years down the road, you've got the best chance possible of having a team that will compete for the Super Bowl.

There are many oranges here. Therefore China is at high altitude.

Didn't happen. Winning the Super Bowl isn't about winning one game, the actual Super Bowl. If it were, the Bills would have had roughly a 50% shot at doing so this year. It's about making the Super Bowl ... and then winning it. With the making it being infinitely harder. But I agree with most of your point. Except that "not flying quite as high" is underestimating the effect they'd have suffered if they didn't have Wentz. They might well not have made the playoffs if Foles had been their QB for the whole regular season.

Very much agree that if Richie actually is gone that OL will be bumped up the list. But not past QB. Yes, it is indeed a great idea ... assuming it is a guy who they believe have a good shot at becoming a franchise QB.

Doubt it.

The rumor is that the Giants want Darnold and if they can't get him will be open to trade back. So that's huge for the Bills if the Browns go Allen. If that happened, QBs would probably go 1-2-3 and after that teams would be desperate. You could easily get Denver picking a QB or trading back to allow another team up. Assuming Allen goes first, Denver would probably see Mayfield or Rosen available to them. They could very very easily take either guy. It could easily mean the difference for Buffalo between trading up to two for their choice of anyone but Darnold, or being shut out of the top four guys unless Cleveland trades down with us from #4, and I think they might want Barkley too much to do that. Nothing's sure, it would be too fluid, but this could have a big effect at OBD. Yup. Good point. Fair enough. That's definitely possible.

Anything's possible. Including the Browns picking Allen. And also including Allen possibly being terrific. Dunno whether either will happen, but both are possible.

Didn't happen. What happened is a team that had a QB who was a serious MVP candidate (after his team traded a king's ransom to get up to #2 and pick him, hint hint) went 11-2, putting them in incredible position to not just make the playoffs but to have home-field through them. Then after that, the backup QB went 2-1 for the rest of the regular season ... beating the 3-13 Giants, the 6-10 Raiders and losing to the 9-7 Cowboys. And still managed to have home-field through the playoffs, which was huge in them winning it. They don't even make the Super Bowl, much less win it, without Carson Wentz on that team.