Thurman#1

The reason being that SF made a bad choice at QB. Smith was absolutely a top ten guy this year. For the rest of his post-Harbaugh career, more like 11th, 12th or 13th on the average. He'd be great to bring in if they don't have to give up too too much, but they should also draft a guy, high.

In Tyrod's dreams.

Agreed that he's not special, but you don't give up their legacy of success through continuity because the guy you have, who has a Super Bowl ring there, isn't special. Keep their machine turning over. Yeah, it's the Tony Dungy situation all over again. Remember the championships Dungy had, like the championship Tomlin has in Pittsburgh? Like a mirror image.

Nonsense. Not an especially good player. But as an on-field QB mentor, from all accounts he's smart, experienced and knowledgeable at this point. Two quick links on that: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/ct-ryan-pace-nfl-meetings-spt-20170328-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/ct-mark-sanchez-bears-quarterbacks-haugh-spt-0905-20170904-column.html He's been used in Chicago precisely as a mentor who's right in Trubisky's ear telling him what's going on. Not that I'm desperate to get the guy or anything. There's a reason I would want him only as a QB resource / backup.

It's looked that way for a while. Nothing much has changed. Not nearly as sure as you are about Bridgewater, though. No thanks on Bradford. Doesn't fit what the Bills need. Alex Smith or McCown seem the most likely. Sanchez, Fitz or Henne maybe, mostly as QB whisperers / bridge guys. Cousins would be better but the brain trust doesn't appear to be the types that pay such a high cost in FA. Bridgewater is an outside chance, he'd be a good pickup but probably won't be here.

Nah, he brought in the draft picks too. Cut Dareus. Who was it who brought in EJ Gaines? Oh, yeah, Beane. I mean, yeah, he wasn't here for the draft, so of course we don't know how things will work out in that facet of his work. But saying "show me the money, I'm waiting" before his first draft doesn't make sense. He hasn't had the slightest chance to do so yet. And Kelvin Benjamin looks like a terrific pickup for the future.

I'm entertaining? Dude, you're the one who's got people accusing you of wearing Taylor PJs and singing the greatest song about stalking and obsession ever written. It ain't me who's looking pitiful and needy or entertaining here. Ty, can't you see? You belong to T? His poor heart aches when you blame race. Every run you make every early pocket break every wackjob fan fruitcake every first read mistake every open throw you flake, every drive you brake the longballs you forsake Bills fans hearts you deflate, still COT's beefcake, not as good as Blake, but Transie's watching you.

The method Pitt used to acquire Big Ben was they lost enough games the year before to get the 11th pick. And while I certainly wouldn't have minded that myself, that ship has sailed. Oh, and they got that 11th pick In arguably the greatest QB draft year in history. Not sure I see it being that good this year, though you never know when it comes to the future. And Pittsburgh didn't win a Super Bowl in Roethlisberger's rookie year, though they certainly did have a terrific first Roethlisyear. Oh, and Keenum simply hasn't been pedestrian this year. He's been very good. And if the Eagles had played Foles all year instead of Wentz they not only wouldn't have gotten a bye and home field through the playoffs, they might well have not even made the playoffs. Wentz is the huge majority of the 2017 story at Eagles QB.

It doesn't feature Foles. Or rather, the reason the Eagles are still playing is 90% Wentz and 10% Foles. Wentz and Brady are both elite. Bortles and Wentz both top three picks. And Keenum is playing like a top ten guy if not elite. I'd argue what you see here is that you need a guy who can play like a top ten guy to have a decent chance. That someone without a top ten guy reasonably often gets to the NFL final four but rarely do you see them carrying the Lombardi. So you need a guy who can play like a top ten guy. And there are no guarantees anywhere, but the higher a guy gets drafted the more likely he is to turn out to be one of those guys. I do agree though that when you draft a guy you shouldn't assume that just because you want him to be an immediate starter and savior that that happens very very rarely. There will be development and that means time.

The post was a load of horse crap, so I called it a load of horse crap. And yours wasn't tongue in cheek. It was "largely tongue in cheek." Your own words. And thing is, tongue in cheek or not, it sounded exactly like your serious posts. Take off the last sentence or two where you tried to back off what you said, and it could've come from nearly any post you've written over the last few years. And yeah, it was worth my time. If it hadn't been I wouldn't have written it.

I can. The obsession? Stop it.

What a load of horse crap. Again and again you hear the same arguments against you. Because they make sense. And yet when it comes time for you to try to paraphrase, you're off in fantasyland making up straw men. Again and again. Virtually nobody said, "You can't win with Tyrod." It was obvious you could. The last three years we've won games. Not a ton but some. A very slight majority of the games he's started. Of course you can win with Tyrod. There were a few trolls who said, "Tyrod is one of the worst QBs in the league.!" Nobody else. Every non-troll here understands that he's one of the top 32 QBs in the league. No non-trolls on here would have the faintest problem finding twenty-five backup QBs that anyone would know Tyrod is a great deal better than. As usual it's better to make up stupid arguments to put in people's mouths, as they're easy to counter than to counter the actual good arguments about Tyrod and franchise QBs. Such as, "Having a franchise QB gives you a chance to be competitive for championships for a decade or more." Such as, "Tyrod can get you to the playoffs, as can nearly any QB with a little luck, but Tyrod doesn't get you a championship unless you have a surrounding team virtually without weaknesses, a defense comparable with defenses like the Ravens defense the year they won with or the Bears the year they won with Dilfer or the Bears the year they won with McMahon, or Tampa Bay's championship. And in any case, Bortles is in the same neighborhood as Taylor. Tyrod may be better by a whisker. But Bortles is in his fourth year and still improving at a pretty good rate. Whereas going on his eighth year, we've known Tyrod's ceiling for a while now. Not so with Bortles. Bortles' fourth year has been significantly better, for instance, than Eli Manning's had played in any of his first four years. Nor has Bortles himself made a Super Bowl yet, much less made his team consistent for championships over a long period of time. Bortles might be at his ceiling now. Or he might get a lot better next year. But we know Tyrod won't.

How deep? Making the conference championships? Nah. Winning one? Much more so. Winning a Super Bowl? Much much more so. A team without a franchise quality QB wins a Super Bowl around 10% of the time, and that's not a model you want to follow. And the Eagles aren't about Foles. They're about 10% Foles and 90% Wentz.

No.

Hunh? Jax isn't an enemy of any sort.

Correct that he had great talent to work with in Jax, and that's a huge part of his success. But in fact, that's a huge part of any successful coach's success. With crap talent you won't succeed. And correct that he probably learned a lot since Buffalo. But does that mean he couldn't have learned the same things sitting in Buffalo? No way to know. The article is aimed at Jets fans, and considers that it was at least reported that Marrone was likely to get the job in NY after he left Buffalo. Nothing really new here for Bills fans, IMHO. Sure, he didn't have the roster in Buffalo that he had in Jax. But except for (hopefully) McDermott, he was the best coach in Buffalo since Wade Phillips and he might have been very successful here if he'd stayed and the roster had become better one way or another.

I don't think so. It's his M.O. He engages if people give him crap, and he does it with great consistency, and in my opinion very well indeed. And engaging consistently isn't a bad strategy on social media, looked at from a corporations POV, like the Buffalo News.

I disagree with that, Bill. It's like the old saying that once you've won some money at the blackjack tables you can take a bunch of risks because you're playing with house money. Which is logically incorrect. Once something is owned by you, it's yours. That's not house money anymore. Your decision process should reflect the fact that it's your money and you can walk away now owning it. Same with those extra picks. They're ours. If we don't use them on a QB they don't disappear, they can be used to fill any position on the team. In fact, we got them by creating holes on this team, particularly at WR, holes that are still there. We have serious needs on this team that could be addressed in the draft but won't be if we use those picks on a QB. As I say, I don't think that's the new regime's method, though, so I expect them to try to get a QB through the draft instead, and to keep their FA spending low.

Being torn's a pretty reasonable response, IMHO. Getting Cousins would be about the only situation other than not believing anyone in this draft will be a franchise guy that would excuse not at least trying to get up to an early position and get one of the surer things. I'd love it, but I don't think he'd sign for that rate or that length of contract, though the rate is maybe pretty reasonable.

I'd love it, personally. I don't think it fits what little we know about the McDermott/Beane axis' way of doing things. They seem to come from the build through the draft and don't bring in very high priced FAs side of the argument. That's a little short-sighted. Heh heh. But it is. Too early to know either way. Some HOFers are obvious by the end of their sixth year. Others aren't. Look at Andrew Luck. It was obvious by the end of his third or fourth year he was a Hall of Famer. Until it wasn't obvious. After six years you wouldn't have known it about Elway, who'd thrown 101 TDs and 96 INTS by then. But Marino looked like an HOFer even earlier.

I'd expect him to be in Minnesota next year. Though I say that without yet having seen the Minny game from this weekend. If I were them, I'd keep him and maybe Bridgewater. If I had to let one go, it would probably be Teddy.

I was around for that, and it wasn't just disagreement that had him leaving. It was rudeness and personal insults. Under the circumstances, it seemed reasonable to me at the time. I'd have left too.

I don't know. Everything he said looks fine to me. Graham is one of the most interesting twitter reads out there, though I say this as a person who spends very little time on twitter. But he's consistently interesting and funny whenever I don end up checking in for some reason.

Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson were his QBs in 2009, Colt McCoy, Jake Delhomee and Seneca Wallace in 2010, Matt Moore was his starter in 2011 with Henne as the backup. And in 2012, Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn again split the games about equally. Not surprised at his lack of success. I'd have to go way further to figure out what kind of plays and offense he was running to come up with a definitive opinion for myself, but those are some bad QBs indeed.

Well, maybe he'll take another, bigger pay cut and be here.