Thurman#1

Again, Peterman's season high as a collegian was 193 throws. Tyrod never threw that many. Peterman's second-highest total, 185, was higher than all but one of Tyrod's college seasons. So if it's true that we should mark Peterman down as an impossible chance, clearly Tyrod had the exact same Your desperation to do the impossible - proving that when a guy has thrown less than 30 NFL balls, all of them as a rookie, that you can know his future and what he will become - is palpable and is leading you to make poor observations. Tyrod threw 495 passes in his four years of college. Peterman threw 398. They are extremely comparable. But Tyrod's second-highest number of throws was 136. Peterman college attempts over four seasons: 10, 10, 193, 185 Tyrod college attempts over four seasons: 72, 99, 136, 188

If you can say that Peterman's coach barely let him throw the ball, the same is even more true of Tyrod. Peterman's college high of attempts in a season is higher than any of Tyrod's college years. Peterman's career was about as impressive to the NFL as Tyrod's. That's why Tyrod was chosen in the 6th round and Peterman in the 5th. As for early performance, in Tyrod's first four NFL years, he went 19 for 35 for 199 yards, 0 TDs and 2 INTs. Passer rating of 47.2. Peterman has gone 13 for 28 for 145 yards, 1 TD and 5 INTs and a passer rating of 34.6. Both of those are wretched. Worth noting that Tyrod in his first year threw one NFL pass. He had more time to think and get used to defenses and the NFL game. Also worth remembering that 3 of those 5 Peterman INTs came as a result of a WR serving up a tip on a pretty good pass and twice being hit as he threw. No excuse for the other two, though. Bottom line is that both guys were pretty awful early. Wanna insult Peterman for that? You ought to look at Tyrod's results and insult him as well.

So ... one sentence? All opinion, without bothering with any of that inconvenient evidence, logic or separating Tyrod's situation from the situations of guys like ? Got it. That writer would fit in well here. I like Tanier overall, but assuming that the situation is making Goff and Wentz is ignoring the obvious, that plenty of young QBs suck big-time in their first year and improve a great deal in their second as they begin to understand what goes on around them. Same thing for many young QBs he's talking about here ... the second year is often a time when there is huge improvement, but the third and fourth years often see lights coming on for guys who will make it as franchise guys in the NFL. Of course the surrounding players and systems will affect QB performance. It goes without saying. But the best QBs still show advanced skillsets and abilities even in poorer situations. Their overall numbers can fall and they might not look as good, but they still show advanced abilities. Same with guys who don't have the talents. Put a Trent Dilfer in one of the best situations in NFL history and he still looks like a guy who will never be a franchise QB, which is why the Ravens dumped him in the offseason in the year after the SB, an unheard of move for a QB on a team that won the SB. If the system defines the QB, how come Osweiler's not one of the best in the league? He had a great situation in Texas. Tom Savage must be terrific!!!!! After all, he's in the same situation that DeShaun Watson looked great in. Savage must be excellent because he's in a good situation. Tyrod's situation has been different year to year. Problem is, he's still Tyrod. He is what he is.

Yes, Cousins is a large part of that. He plays QB very very well. That's the part that he plays. And that's a good thing, a very good thing indeed. 66% completions with a freaking 8.1 YPA. That's terrific. 19 TDs and 6 INTs. A QB Rating of 101.1. PPG is simply not a good way to rate QBs. Teams with maybe 70 - 80% a reflection of the offense, yes. QBs, no. Their run game is awful, averaging 3.9 YPC. That's not on Cousins. Their pass game DVOA is 27% better than the average and the rush game is 13% worse. So when the offense comes out only 5% better, it isn't rocket science to know that is not on Cousins. Teams scheme to stop Cousins. They scheme to make Tyrod play quarterback. That's the difference. And again, winning is simply NOT a QB stat. It just isn't. It's a team stat. Until you get that, you're missing the point. Even the name of that stat is actually "TEAM record in games started by this QB (Regular Season)."

Incorrect. His team has a below .500 record when he starts, meaning his team does not win games.

Cousins. Then Bridgewater.

Really? Not the Steelers? 9-2 and one of those losses to Jax and they don' t get credit for consistency? Not the Rams with three losses, one to Minny and one to Seattle? Not the Vikes, with only two losses, one to the Steelers and they're not consistent? Not the Panthers? The Panthers did lose two in a row, but one of those losses was to Philly. Granted not a ton of teams count, but those seven do, IMHO.

Um, no. They're saying yeah, everybody makes mistakes. But saying that since everyone makes one here or there, however many Tyrod makes are OK is ridiculous. Yes, every QB makes mistakes. Tyrod just makes them at a considerably higher rate. I do understand being a bit irritated with the OP's contention that one throw makes his argument. No one throw could. It's the rate they happen at. With Tyrod it's higher and especially when you look at the throws he didn't make but should have. It's a shame he's not better, but he's Tyrod. Pulling him shows what they think of him and undoubtedly pissed Tyrod off plenty as well.

Great? Really? Looked nice to me, but if anything he could've thrown it a step or two earlier and made it a ton easier. Zay looks like he's going to get open, but he was going to be open from the minute he crossed the hashes. He has three steps on his guy and nobody else is headed in the right direction to cover him. He's going to be open and Tyrod sees it early, even skips a step to wait, which IMHO he shouldn't have done. Solid play, right on target, but great is really an exaggeration. Tyrod has some great plays sometimes. This isn't one. Though it certainly is a solid good play.

The Colts didn't tank. They suffered a key injury, an injury of the single guy their entire offense - their entire team, really - was built around. The problem was that when they drafted Luck, they didn't rebuild. That was their huge mistake. They said, "We're going to build and at the same time, we're going to win." And they kept good but aging and expensive guys like Reggie Wayne, Robert Mathis and Freeney. And because of that they were able to be good enough to make the playoffs every year but not to be nearly good enough to win a title, and yet they also had crappy draft spots. They middled it, trying to both win and rebuild. And it didn't work. They won but they didn't rebuild. Should've sucked for a year or two and brought in some young impact players. Fourteen is an exaggeration, but so is two, just exaggerating the other way. The argument we hear is that every QB has plays like that. And that's true. But Tyrod has more than the better ones. It's his particular problem.

This is another person that just doesn't get it. 20-18 and we're supposed to be thrilled about it, according to him? And it's Tyrod that keeps us in the wild-card picture, not the whole team doing it? It's not the slightest bit puzzling. This. I agree Tyrod seems to be a good leader, a hard worker and a good guy. But so was Fitz. Give me a guy who can make quick correct decisions and go through a lot of reads. The problem with Cutler isn't that his teammates don't like him, it's that too often he makes bad throws.

Man, do I agree with you here. I always thought the NFL was being petty but these guys look like idiots with the choreographed and yet incredibly weak celebrations. Awful.

The well-known principle isn't once they start it can take 2 - 4 years. It's pretty much guys who become starters in their first year or so who get given 4 years to come around. I can't think of anyone who sat the bench for four years like Tyrod who was then given four years. After sitting that long, you ought to have a major head start when you do get into the action. As I've said many times before there is one guy - Gannon - who wasn't already a franchise guy after six years who became one. Guys with that kind of a head start don't usually need three or four years to figure. We usually know after a year or two at the most, with Gannon the only exception. As for being better last year? Boy, I didn't see it. Since those excellent first seven games or so of his first year, after which they figured him out, Tyrod's been what he is, a guy who has good games ... and then bad ones. Consistently inconsistent. Look at his stats for the two years. Pretty close. Completion percentage a bit up, acceptable both years, TD % exactly the same, quite low both years, INT % slightly down, terrific both years, Y/A significantly down but low both years, passer rating ever so slightly up, about a point and a half. He's the same guy.

Disagree. Not everything that doesn't work out is stupid. This certainly was a failure but the team didn't have a problem with it, anymore than they had a problem with bringing Tyrod back. They got some extra info on Peterman and his progress and it's not like they weren't able to bring Tyrod back for the second half. Not all failures were stupid. Plenty were worth trying. Depends what they were after. They weren't gonna win that game anyway.

I don't think they were specifically saying that it was an either/or situation. At one point Dunne said, "The Bills want a guy who can work from the pocket ..." So it was more that Dunne was saying that Tyrod is going than specifically that Dennison was staying. He did appear to be saying they were incompatible, but I don't think they made the leap that because Tyrod is going, that shows Dennison is staying. Not primarily Tyrod's fault, no. But is he maybe part of it? Absolutely. Teams are probably less scared of Tyrod than they are of Shady breaking one. They likely have more resources and game-planning time devoted to stopping the run game. Know whose play-calling was unbelievably predictable? Marchibroda. Teams knew what was coming, they just couldn't stop it. An awful lot of the time what is called play-calling problems are really execution problems. That's not just on the Bills, it's in football generally.

The whoopdy doo is that Wilson is also one of the lowest QBs in the league at throwing there and he still throws there nearly twice as often as Tyrod does. And by the way, has Wilson got any completions there? Or is he 0 for 3 like Tyrod is? Through three games, Tyrod had thrown one pass there, incomplete. Never threw another till last week when he threw two, both incomplete. Most of the rest of the league are weil above than and it's very likely that there isn't another starter in the league who's thrown there as low a number of times or as low a percentage of times. Even safer to say that about completions there, what with Tyrod having zero. Pretty funny to compare Wilson to Tyrod in that zone, and funny that you used passer rating to talk about the intermediate zone but not the deep one. Wonder why that is? Oh, possibly it's because while he was throwing there twice as often Wilson came up with a 100.3 passer rating while Tyrod had a 39.6. Wait, is it possible to get a passer rating lower than that? Passer ratings are pretty random on small samples like this? Yeah, exactly my point. Especially if the samples are, you know, smaller than the rest of the league. And thinking that 1.1% is the key number is flat-out dumb. Deep throws are extremely important. They get chunk plays far more often than short, intermediate or behind the line throws. Yeah, the majority of all throws are within ten yards or behind the line. Doesn't mean the longer balls aren't important. They are. They back safeties up which helps with the short pass game and the run game as well. Give a defense a tendency that obvious - that they don't have to worry about a very large segment of the field, and they'll use it. They'll edge guys in the deep middle up to fight the run game and over to help on the sidelines. The important number is how many of his deep balls are to the deep middle. Tyrod probably is the single most predictable QB in this, and that gives the defense an advantage. As for why I still link the deep and intermediate middle third together, I get that you seem to feel this is like rocket science. But it ain't. I link them together because he has a history of not throwing often to either. Again, makes him easier to predict and the Bills easier to defense.

I hope you're wrong. At this point I'm just hoping for a good draft position. No way this team is good enough to do any damage whatsoever even if they sneak into the playoffs in this poor conference. I don't want another 7 or 8 win season thought of by some as a victory because we got more than 4 or 5 wins.

Oh, wait, the paleozoic stubbornness you love so much is exactly one of those contradictions. In one place in the article it claims not changing the offense to maximize Tyrod shows he's not behind Tyrod. And in another it's paleozoic stubbornness. Exactly. Shooting at a million targets and not hitting anything. Thanks for the great example. From the beginning they've said they needed a guy to be successful from the pocket. Tyrod knew this when he re-signed here. And Tyrod's boyband-fanlike fanboys should have known it too. McD gave him a chance to be the guy they want and he hasn't succeeded. As for those other QBs, of course they're building around Wentz. He's the QB this regime brought in. He likely fitted their own coaching ideas. Same with Watson. This regime drafted him. Andy Reid brought in Alex Smith. Of course those coaches had schemes that were friendly for that QB. They're the coaches who brought in that QB. The one exception of your examples is Goff, and McVay was brought in specifically to build around Goff and make him effective. The Pegulas didn't bring McD in saying, "Build around Tyrod." I'm sure you and yours would have loved that but that's not even close to what they said. They just wanted the Carolina boys to build a winner down the line. Expecting them to treat Tyrod the way those three first round guys - one rookie and two second-year guys - and one guy (Smith) with a lot of playoff experience were treated shows a misunderstanding by you and by the article of what McDermott has said from the beginning. Again, he said to play for him a QB had to be successful from the pocket. Expecting him then to scheme around Tyrod misses the point and their direction. He hasn't been the least of them. He has been a major factor. And last year they were the 16th ranked offense. Yeah, the Bills ranked higher than that in scoring but scoring is a team stat. Yeah the offense counts for the highest portion, but scoring is done by defense and STs as well, and field positions is huge in terms of how likely the offense is to score. The defense last year put the offense in really good field position a lot (10th best average offensive drive start). While the defense was put in bad field position by the offense a lot (23rd best defensive). And in spite of that, the run game last year was really terrific, but the pass game was poor, just like this year.

That's a very untypical post by you. Completely and absolutely avoiding any substance whatsoever. Nice Job of saying absolutely nothing. Unusual as you usually bring up some irrelevant statistic and lead the argument off into left field. Didn't even bother with that this time. As for the "intermediate middle portion", nope, I'm ready to talk - as always - about the deep and intermediate middle third. The area he throws less often to. I get that you generally don't want to talk about this exact thing. And I get why. With you it's always part of it or an area near it or whatever. But that's the area where Tyrod has always had issues. It was good to see Tyrod throwing to the deep middle, by the way, last week. Threw there two times, bringing his numbers up to three attempts there in the whole season. And zero completions.

Oh, please. Nobody - absolutely nobody - has been saying that our offensive issues are totally Tyrod's problems. As usual people with weak arguments imagine arguments that nobody has made and then knock down those completely imaginary arguments. Everyone's aware of our issues at RT, concerns at RG, and it goes on. But yeah, Tyrod's problems are a large part of the problem. And this decision by McDermott will be a molehill by the time he leaves here, whether he's been successful or not. Look again, I didn't say "a misreading," I said, "misreadings." And for good reason. That article is packed with them. Not to mention consistently contradicting in one part of the article what he says in another. It was a very bizarre article, shooting at around 12 targets and not really hitting anything because of it.

That's not THE question or even A question. They haven't quit, they've been getting their ass kicked. There's a major difference.

It certainly does NOT solidify that Peterman won't be the long-term answer. One game, his first? Nonsense. It clearly says he's not ready. And likely makes it even more obvious that they're drafting a QB high, which was something they'd probably have done even if he'd looked pretty good. But this is way too little information to make any kind of long-term judgment on. Yeah, only in Buffalo. That's why they didn't offer him a contract in Baltimore. He's likely to be a long-term NFL player but unlikely to ever be much more of a long-term career starter than Fitzy or McCown, though a slightly better player than either. Always the guy they're looking to upgrade from. It really is too bad, he's a great person and a hard worker.

Of course it could get worse. Tyrod's only slightly below average. We could have a guy who was genuinely awful. But actually that would be better, as we'd have fewer wins and a better draft spot. We should've done a total rebuild instead of middling it. When it comes to draft spots, a worse team this year is generally better.

If he's as good as advertised, IMHO the odds are very low that the team would still suck. But assuming it happens, Bills fans won't find it a new experience or any more difficult to deal with than the last 17 years.

I don't care about Ducasse's past. He's playing pretty decently right now. That's a good thing. My guess is that they keep Glenn, but we'll see. Adapting to the players you have on the roster isn't the holy grail people here want to make it out to be. It's something you do if you have a weakness when you're good enough to really compete for a title. But in a team in our situation building a system that works for the long term is the key, not performing well in the first year. When you switch schemes one of the main things you do in the first year is see who fits and who doesn't so you can start to assemble the right guys. You don't turn away from the new system you're building so you can maximize this year's performance while not preparing guys for what will be expected next year and beyond.