Thurman#1

I wouldn't make it dependent on the OL, but from what has been said, he's making the plays in practice to make them think he's very much worth keeping. Beyond that, we'll just have to see. Can't see them letting him go this year, at least unless he totally stops progressing or something. It's not against the law to carry three. Happens reasonably often. I think the Vikes did it at some point last year, Denver. Jets, I think. It happens and it could easily happen here. And one of the main reasons it happens is because a team doesn't have a #1 they're happy with and so they want options, which is the situation here right now. My guess is he'll either be on the roster or the PS.

Cousins is worth that and more. You can't judge QB contracts by slotting a guy in at his current level. New contracts make old contracts look sick in this era of the constantly rising salary cap. At any position, but especially at QB, if you want to get the 10th best QB with a new contract, you'd better be willing to pay him somewhere around the 3rd best salary. Look at Carr, he's not 2nd best in the league. Stafford isn't best. Smith isn' t5th. New contracts cost more. Washington should have paid him a year or two ago. I believe that Smith is going to be good but not as good as Cousins and that when the Burgundy and Gold nation looks at this ten years down the road they're going to put it right in there with Snyder's legacy of a river of ego-fuelled screwups. Agreed that they put him in a good situation. But yeah, from what I saw it wasn't just that.

The thing is, Alex Smith wasn't a 10 - 15 range guy this year. He was easily top ten. Hell, his passer rating led the league. He played terrific this year. People seem to want to ignore this so they can be amazed at what he's getting. And you fall into this category, at least in this post. He played terrific this year. 1st in passer rating. 9th in TDs. That's not what you would have expected from Alex Smith. 1st in the league in TD/INT ratio, at least as far down as I checked (I didn't look at guys with fewer than 10 TDs.) 9th in YPG, while 13th in attempts. That's really good. 5th in YPA. Again, he was far far better than a 10 - 15 range guy this year. If he hadn't had this year, he wouldn't have gotten that contract. It's hard to guess how he'll perform next year, the way he has for the past five to six years or where he did last year. If I had to guess, it'd be about halfway between the two. He raised his level of play.

Good for Sully. And he's right that Gronk should at least have addressed it.

Yeah, but you didn't say, "unless the Bills decide to cut or trade him." Did you? Here's what you said: And then when I point out what you said, you stay in character and rather than just admit the mistake and say, "Oh, sorry, I meant ..." you instead try to slime your way out of it and slip in the weasel words about "unless they cut or trade ..." Yeah, but you didn't include that exception. You just said that Tyrod was bound to the Bills, something that would only be true if you thought it impossible that he would ever be cut. So since factually he isn't "bound to the Bills for one more year" much less at a fair price, any thoughtful observer would conclude you meant that you were completely sure he was staying with the Bills. Anyway, glad to see it was just ****ty writing, not that you actually believe that there's no way he won't be here. And if you touched a nerve, it may have been somewhere in your crotch. Oh, and again, I'm sure the 12 year-old girls must just eat up those cutie little emoticons. Do you dig One Direction too? Tell me you do, that would amuse me even more.

" ... is bound ..." Oh, the guy who thinks it's a fact that he's coming back laughs at anyone? A fair price? Man, that's a laugh. If he comes back for one year and then leaves before the 2019, it will cost them $23.6 mill against the cap, $18 mill in 2018 and $5.6 in 2019. Fair from Tyrod's point of view, maybe.

He has always been a good teammate and a pro. Absolutely nobody would have refused to take the field. But plenty would have caused problems in other ways, and Tyrod just clearly isn't that kind of guy. He's an extremely hard worker, serious, smart, classy, not a prima donna ... If only he was a good QB. Always been a good guy and a good teammate, though.

Yup, thanks to the defense and the run game. The pass game sucked. By the way, how did those playoffs go? How many points did our offense score in those playoffs? How was our passing game? How many other teams scored less against the Jags this year? Or got less yards? One each? Only a team with our playoff drought would be proud of this season. Sorry, 9-7 against a very easy schedule with a cumulative win-loss record well below .500 isn't something to be proud of. They've made their goal clear. Build a team that can consistently be competitive for titles. This team was a failure at that. And Tyrod was a major reason for that.

You read it everywhere because it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the idea that McDermott saw Tyrod playing, replaced him, put him back in after seeing how unready Peterman was ... and then saw Tyrod continue to play at the same level and changed his mind. That doesn't make sense.

Yup, I'm still realistic. Hard to understand why anyone would disagree about a coach who replaced the guy with a 5th round rookie. Laugh on, Captain Obsession. And by the way, I love the emoticons. I hear they're huge with the twelve-year old girls.

all of this bs hyperbowl is really part of the problem and why so many fight over TT. Exactly stuff like this

You're right, wildly unimpressive. But much much less acceptable in a 7th year QB than in an 2nd year guy. That's the difference.

I agree with two of your four points. #1 seems likely to be true, as does the first half of #3. Yeah, we have more holes than QB, and we know how putting a rookie out there with a ****ty team turns out. It turns out in many many different possible ways. One of the ways is the way it turned out when they did it with Troy Aikman and Peyton Manning. The way it turns out is sometimes awful, sometimes sensational and everywhere in between. The trade up cost won't be too high. It'll be very high. There's a difference. If one of these guys turns out to be a Goff or a Wentz, it'll be easily worth it. Going up and paying a whole lot for a good QB is the reason they got all those high picks in the first place. Bradford is absolutely an upgrade - without the slightest question - if he stays even reasonably healthy. I don't have enough confidence in that happening to want it to happen. But yeah, he's better than Tyrod. And Bridgewater isn't yet but stands an excellent chance of being better reasonably quickly. Of course, being better than Tyrod isn't good enough. We need more. But Bridgewater could easily turn into a top ten guy. There's no reason to think he's showed anything near his ceiling yet. More, there are other extremely reasonable options, such as picking a bridge QB who would fit the Bills offensive system in ways that Tyrod does not and never has. Again and again we hear from Tyrod's fans that the Bills should have changed the offense to suit his talents. And yet we heard from McDermott and Beane that there is a requirement for playing QB for them that Tyrod shows no sign of ever achieving. You have to be able to be efficient playing from the pocket. So while Tyrod is a better QB than guys like McCown or Moore or Fitz, they fit the system they are trying to implement for the long run and Tyrod does not. And bringing in a guy like them saves money and brings in a QB mentor for our young draftee besides. Letting Tyrod go will cost this team $8.6 against the salary cap. Whereas keeping him and playing him for only one year would cost us $23 mill against the cap, about $18 mill in 2018 and $5.6 mill in 2019 after he's on a different roster. For a guy who doesn't fulfill the requirement they want of a guy who can play from the pocket.

That wasn't his track record. It was the team's. HIs track record is playing QB an awful lot better than Tyrod has for several years now.

McCloughan was VP Player Personnel there at that time, not GM. And changing your mind with new info is smart. I hear what you're saying, but I don't think this is a bad look for McCloughan at all.

Arizona. Even the Jets reasonably soon.

Just don't think you can build a team around a guy Bradford's age with his injury history.

1.0000 Tyrods. This.

Trades can't be made till the NFL year opens on 3/14. And on 3/16, Tyrod's due a $6 million roster bonus if he's still on the roster. If they trade him, it'll almost certainly have to be within that very small window. Ah, I hate it when I make a mistake like that. You're right, it's two-time, not three-time. Good post.

Fair enough, mon. But several people have already come on and vented about how awful the article must be. They seem to be responding to "another wrong turn" and "another embarrassing moment," not understanding that in context those do not mean anything like what you would expect. And there'll be more, Pavlovian anti-media rants. With no concern for context or interest in whether they understand what was actually said.

What specific words? Where are all these phantom insults you refer to? "Insulting people"? I don't see any insult in the article. What do you mean? He is indeed strongly questioning Wood's actions here but that's not an insult. "He is no Jim Kelly," you mention. See, this is a perfect example. Put that way, it sounds bad. What was actually said meant that Wood wasn't as popular and well-known as Thurman and Kelly. "Wood, a good player on several bad teams and a better human being, invited too many people to squeeze into the media room. This is no offense to him, but we're not talking about Jim Kelly or Thurman Thomas or another icon in Bills' history. Rest assured the Bills will think twice before again being placed in such an awkward position." There's nothing wrong with what he said here. He even says, "This is no offense to him." What's wrong with what he said there? You can disagree with the opinion, but it's reasonable. See, this is what you get when you do what Hapless did. Now everyone thinks Wood was being denigrated.

Yeah, it's a "reasonable interpretation of the actual words he used." When looked at out of context, actual words used can often say something the speaker never intended. This is why you look at context. It would be reasonable interpretation of John F. Kennedy's words, "The highest appreciation is not to utter words." to say that he's being ridiculous, that compliments delivered out loud are virtually always welcome, and that we should express ourselves in cases like this. In context, though, you find that his "actual words" are "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." Without context, "actual words" often don't mean what the speaker intended. That's why context is necessary. Again, you're a great poster, but you responded to something totally out of context. And this made you completely misunderstand his words. Which is what generally happens when someone responds without knowing the context. I'm guilty of this myself sometimes, but I do my best not to judge till I understand the complete passage and why the person said what he said.

Why "yes and no"? I wrote nothing about Wood's contract issues or whether some bonus might have to be returned or not. My post was entirely about the cap ramifications. Anyway, my mom and two sisters live in Denver and Fort Collins. If I ever move back to the US, it will be to Colorado. What a great place!

I don't. Not always. But I do tend to attack stuff I find knee-jerk or unthinking. Some attacks on media and stories make sense. Plenty, really. Others - most, I think - are reflex reactions to the word or simple hate for anyone who says anything anti-Bills. And there's a lot of room for intelligent anti-Bills sentiment with how this team has performed for seventeen years, though I do like the direction the new leadership is taking so far. But this thread absolutely falls into that category, an attack on the media without all the facts. When you read the story it becomes very clear that what he's saying is reasonable. But attacking at the mention of the word "media" or "reporter" is the default setting of many or most on here and in the world today. They make a great scapegoat. Hapless is an asset to these boards, in my top twenty posters list. But this was a reflex reaction without the facts.

I don't. Not always. But I do tend to attack stuff I find knee-jerk or unthinking. Some attacks on media and stories make sense. Plenty, really. Others - most, really - are reflex reactions to the word or simple hate for anyone who says anything anti-Bills. And there's a lot of room for intelligent anti-Bills sentiment with how this team has performed for seventeen years, though I do like the direction the new leadership is taking so far. But this thread absolutely falls into that category, an attack on the media without all the facts. When you read the story it becomes very clear that what he's saying is reasonable. But attacking at the mention of the word "media" or "reporter" is the default setting of many or most on here and in the world today. They make a great scapegoat. Hapless is an asset to these boards, in my top twenty posters list. You're on that list, too, by the way, Meanie, even though I haven't actually written a list down, nor am I likely to. But this was a reflex reaction without the facts. OK, Meanie, what's "needlessly negative" about this? You can read the article, so tell me, what part is needlessly negative? I subscribe too. I find the News' coverage first-rate. I certainly don't always agree, but they're generally interesting and thought-provoking even when I disagree.