Thurman#1

Good post. But I'd argue that personnel was at least as much of a factor as the coordinator was. The draft picks in 2010 were Spiller, Troup (might have been a terrific choice, but his back injury derailed his career), Carrington, Easley, Wang, Moats, Batten, Levi Brown and Kyle Calloway. Then in 2011, with the #3 pick, Dareus, Aaron Williams, and then nothing, really, Kelvin Sheppard, Da'Norris Searcy, Hairston, Johnny White, Chris White, Justin Rogers and Michael Jasper. I just want them to coldly analyze their problems and not make decisions out of loyalty. I'm not convinced that the problem is Dennison, but if they decide that he's a problem, let him go.

Next year will be Tyrod's eighth year. Not his fourth. He's not what Bill Walsh was talking about. We know who Tyrod is. Yeah, he might incrementally improve. But we know his capabilities at this point. Let's see that Bill Walsh quote. Does it say that guys who sit on the bench and learn for four years will still need four more years of play? Please. Name one guy outside of Rich Gannon who turned from a below average QB to a franchise QB after seven years in the league.

No, dude, it is. Case closed. It is. Wins and losses are a team stat. It makes about as much sense to refer to QB wins and losses as Long snapper wins and losses. As far as Rob Johnson and Doug Flutie, same deal. Wins and losses are a team stat. Simple. Wanna evaluate the QBs? Look at how the QBs performed. And Flutie and Johnson are indeed prime examples. Take 1999. The Bills went 10-5 when Flutie started. That makes Flutie terrific, right? bull ****! The offense scored 14, 17, 26, 23, 24, 14, 16, 13, 34, 23, 7, 17, 17, 31, and 13. They averaged 20 points a game. We didn't win so much that year because of Flutie. We won because of the defense, which allowed 14.3 points per game that year, 2nd in the league, and 252.8 yards per game, 1st in the league. Or take 2000. The Bills went 4-1 when Flutie started. Let's look at those five games. The Bills lost the first one. Flutie must have been terrible, because he started and they lost, according to you. Well, no, they lost 31-27. Flutie was 28/43, 2 TDs and 0 INTs and 8 yards rushing. But, no, according to this dumb idea of giving every win to one player, it was a bad game for Flutie, because they lost. It's not the defense's fault for allowing 31 points. No, it's Flutie's fault. Flutie's next game he went 18 for 35 with 0 TDs and 0 INTs and 15 yards rushing. Great game, Doug, because they won. Flutie's next start the offense scores 16 points and they win. Flutie completes 48% of his passes and has a passer rating of 71.8. Great game, Doug!! They won!! It wasn't the defense allowing only 13 points!! No, no, it was Flutie. Flutie's fourth start, he goes 16 for 26 for 171 yards, 0 TDs and 1 INT, with a passer rating of 64.7 and racks up 6 yards rushing on 6 attempts. Excellent game, Doug!!! They won. It wasn't the defense holding Chicago to three points!!! No, no, it was Flutie's excellent play, theoretically. In his final start, Flutie really did have a terrific game, 20 for 25 for 366 yards, 3 TDs and 0 INTs and the offense scores 42 points. He really did have a large share of that win, which by the way was against 6-10 Seattle. Yeah, Flutie and Johnson had mostly the same guys around them on the Buffalo offense. But the teams Flutie started against ended the season with a cumulative winning record of 36-44, a winning percentage of 45%. Whereas the teams Johnson started against had a cumulative winning record of 96-80, a winning percentage of 55%. Put another way, of the five teams Flutie started against, three had losing records and two had winning records, whereas of the eleven teams Johnson started against, eight had winning records and three had losing records. In fact, of the games Johnson started, six of the eleven teams he played had win totals in double figures. More, there were plenty of games where both guys played. Look at game 15 where Johnson started and threw three passes before Flutie finished up throwing 25. Should Johnson really get the blame for that 10 - 13 loss, a loss where Flutie threw more than eight times as many passes as Johnson did? Or look at week 13 where Johnson was bad in a 33 - 6 loss. Johnson went 6 of 18 for 44 yards, 0 TDs and 2 INTs. Horrible. If only Flutie had been able to play ... oh , wait, he did. Flutie went 2 for 9 for 31 yards, 0 TDs and 1 INT. Couldn't be that Buffalo's whole offense was simply outmanned, could it? No, no, Johnson started so he gets total blame for that loss. None of it belongs to Flutie or the rest of the team. The whole idea of giving all the credit for wins and losses to one guy is fundamentally flawed and dumb. Was it Rob Johnson that lost the Music City Miracle game? The idea's ridiculous. But if you look at pure wins and losses, Rob started the game and they lost, so it must've been his fault. Simply doesn't make sense. It is bone-stupid to try to give one person a win-loss record. It's a team stat. Yeah, some QBs have a huge impact on the game, and pretty much every QB has more impact than any other player. But it's a team game. Unless you believe that Trent Dilfer was sensational the year the Ravens won the title with him running up 7-1 record as their starter was because he was performing at Aaron Rodgers-like levels of proficiency, you have to realize the extremely simple fact that it's a team stat. Hell, the official name of that stat is actually "TEAM record in games started by this QB (regular season)" (my capitalization).

It does, sometimes. Partially anyway. You need a good offensive roster but yeah, having the right QB is huge. However, we're not going to have any QBs but Tyrod and Peterman on the roster when we bring in the next OC, even assuming they don't stick with Dennison. There's no particular reason to think that McVay fixed Goff. Goff went from rookie to 2nd year guy. He probably would have taken a huge step forward under any OC. McVay I'm sure helped Goff, but very likely one of the main reasons McVay picked that team is because he thought Goff had done pretty well for a rookie and had a ton of potential. Goff simply looked calmer in the pocket this year from minute number one. That's not McVay, it's just being a guy who has had the game slow down for him. Not saying McVay did nothing. But many here want to say that McVay is the only reason Goff got better and that simply makes no sense. We're going to have Kelvin Benjamin healthy next year. And you're overlooking the obvious about Brady. He's had mediocre to poor WR groups most of his career. He made them great. Granted, he's Tom Brady and not all QBs will do that for poorish WR groups. But you're the one who brought up Brady. And again, Benjamin will be healthy next year. He's a legit #1. And plenty of WRs make big leaps between their first and second years. Zay Jones might be the next one to do so. Or not, but it's certainly possible. Not to mention that Jordan Matthews has had fine production with people other than Tyrod throwing to him. Yeah, the WRs weren't good this year. There's a pretty decent chance we might be quite a bit better off there next year even without making a single move.

Interesting breakdown but a bit negative, IMHO. Most OC candidates, including the best ones, are going to come expecting to have to spend two or three years at the job. On nearly any team they would pick, but certainly here in Buffalo. So yeah, the WRs problem is likely to hurt the offense next year, as is having a rookie high draft pick playing some or all of the season. But if the offense shows improvement over the next few years, the OC will get a huge share of the credit. IMHO they're underestimating the lure of all those high draft picks we have. An OC would likely have a major voice in what QB would be brought in, including whether we focused on draft or FA QBs, or both. And we'll be able to get any QB but Darnold and Rosen in the draft we want, in a year where there appear to be four or five guys with a shot. We might even have some chance at either Darnold or Rosen, though at a guess that chance would maybe be somewhere around 30%. But this is a year when Cousins is available. Nearly any OC would lick his lips at that chance. And the OC will be able to chime in on that decision. They had some good points in that breakdown. This offensive turnaround is almost certainly going to take time, which makes it unlikely Shady and Incognito will be around by the time things start to look up (assuming Incognito's not gone in the next couple of weeks anyway). But a healthy Kelvin Benjamin is going to look a lot better than he did this year. He's a really good building block. And again, all those picks. If we bring in Cousins, those could be used to shore up the team a lot at various positions.

Nope. I believe this is the 8 millionth time this has had to be said, and yet it still needs to be heard, obviously. Wins and losses is NOT a stat for individual players. It simply isn't. It's a team stat. The fact is that Buffalo Bills have a better win percentage in games started by Tyrod than the Washington Redskins have in games started by Kirk Cousins. Know who is responsible for that? The Buffalo Bills and the Washington team.

No, I would settle for a better QB. Which would mean better results. Smith is a better QB. I would be very happy with that in a bridge QB, which is how I would want us to take Smith, drafting a QB high at the same time.

Yeah, I would. If they bring him back it would mean they thought he wasn't the main part of the problem. And they know better than us. I think a lot of that switch is that nobody else can really run Roman's system. Lynn had an advantage in that he'd worked under Roman and the players already knew the system. Roman had coached everyone through the preseason for the year Lynn took over as OC. Roman's system isn't easy to implement without Roman.

His five-year extension deal signed in August 2016 before the re-negotiation spread his signing bonus out over five years. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/tyrod-taylor-7899/ $5.56 mill in dead cap in 2019.

You're right on the Ngakoue penalty, but it was called a penalty. The tackle that caused the concussion wasn't cheap. Rough. Not cheap. There's a reason the commentary didn't even mention the possibility of a penalty there. No choke there either, The guy's arm was around the side of his neck, not the front. Yeah, he slammed him down but you're allowed to do that on a runner, which is what Tyrod is there.

Agreed Tyrod is better. But not much. And McCown is much cheaper. And can play from the pocket, the one thing that McDermott says is a necessity in his system. And would be a better clipboard coach for the new guy than Tyrod, IMHO. Assuming McCown came here for the same salary he got from the Jets (he'd probably be a bit more expensive, but not much), he'd cost us $12 mill less on the cap than Tyrod. Keeping Tyrod would cost us $10 mill on the cap this year and then $5 mill in dead cap next year.

Tyrod isn't cheap, not even for a bridge. It would cost us $15 mill more to keep him than to let him go, $10 mill more in 2018 and then $5 mill more in dead cap in 2019. He's not cheap. And Smith has consistently put up better YPC and completion percentage numbers than Tyrod has managed except for that brief period in his first year starting when teams didn't know how to handle him. 2017 YPC Alex Smith 8.0 (5th in the NFL) and Tyrod 6.7 (25th) 2016 YPC Alex Smith 7.2 (18th in the NFL) and Tyrod 6.9 (26th) 2017 Comp % Alex Smith 67.5% (3rd in the NFL) and Tyrod 61.7% (18th) 2016 Comp % Alex Smith 67.1% (6th in the NFL) and Tyrod 61.7% (21st) Those are two specific stats and it's more complex than that, but they're the two stats you yourself pointed out. Smith is better, significantly so. We should be drafting someone high. Smith would not be a good choice as the long-term guy, but as a bridge he'd be better than Tyrod and not significantly more expensive, though Tyrod's cap hit is partly a year later. Smith is also a guy who plays better from the pocket than Tyrod, and that's the one thing that McDermott has said is necessary for a QB in his system.

It's a somewhat bizarre system. Why are only 97 points available? Why are guys who play certain positions automatically given more value than guys who play other positions? It's also based on giving good scores to do-it-all guys who can do everything well. So if they were ranking Teddy Washington they'd have graded him down based on his inability to rush the passer. Nothing wrong with that, but it's taking points away from guys who aren't meant to be used as multi-use guys. IMHO our current interior guys with the exception of Kyle are mostly run stoppers, not much on the pass rush. It's safe to say they're not as bad as they're ranking them. Our interior line has been decent this year. Not a terrific group but not bad. Which is why even with our so-so LBs we haven't been awful at stopping the run through most of the season, thought there were some bad games and even runs of games. They also don't rank Coleman, probably as he was brought in so late. An upgrade would help, though, if they can get one.

The league year begins on 3/14. Only two days to make the trade.

Yeah, Fournette in Jax is in a huge market. They favor glory positions. Guys who've been on TV a lot and guys in positions that are more easily captured by stats. And offense.

Didn't see any cheap shots. Just hard hits. Hope he's OK.

A lot of those games came in the first year before people figured out how to stop a Tyrod-led offense. Would Tyrod's stats improve if he had better surroundings? Yeah. But he'd still have the traits he has that lead to teams defending the run first and just trying to make Tyrod be a quarterback.

IF they really do think somebody is franchise material, yeah, go get him. They ought to be absolutely convinced he's the right guy, though. I'd then like to see them trade one of their 2nds for a 1st next year (or a third this year and a 2nd next) and get a nice little conveyor belt of high picks coming in.

The Washington F.O. has already ruled out using the transition tag. So the franchise tag is the only way they get control of his contract for another year, barring kissing up to him in the offseason and somehow getting him to change his mind on a long-term contract. I'm guessing you can get him for Stafford money, maybe a bit less if he feels really wanted.

I don't think that's true at all. Just a quick look at the HogWash boards shows most Washington fans there are losing hope but would love to have Cousins there.

It's reasonable not to want Cousins but he's already a lot better than Cutler. Cutler's problem is INTs, and Cousins doesn't really have a problem there. Myself, I'd love to get Cousins but I'm not sure they can bring him in as far as money is concerned. OC would also be something Cousins will be looking at and I'm not sure Dennison would be a guy he'd want to work with. If they want him, they'll probably have to bring in an OC who he'd be compatible with. I'd love it if we did get him, though.

Not buying this at all. I don't hate Marrone as much as most here seem to. He's a good coach. But he has a better roster and it was a home game. Nobody was outcoached today. The Jags personnel is just better.

McCown as a bridge guy for whoever we draft high. He'd be a good mentor / on-field coach if the rookie eventually develops enough to start. I'd love to see them get Alex Smith or Bridgewater on top of a QB in the first round, but not sure they'll want to spend all that much capital on one position. I was really hoping we'd have a chance at Garoppolo this off-season. That ship has sailed.

Yeah, we'd have won with Smith today, I think. We were close. The Jags aren't that great a team either. But we have a lot of other problems too. With Smith we still wouldn't have won another game after Jacksonville. If possible I'd love to see them get Alex Smith and also draft a guy early.

No, you didn't know he has not shot. What you have there is an opinion. It's a reasonable opinion and may still turn out to be true, but the constant confusion here between facts and opinions gets old. He was bad this year, very bad. But he's a rookie. He'll get better but he has to get an awful lot better. The odds are against it, but it's certainly possible.