Thurman#1

Um, did I argue that a 6th rounder would be in the same ball park as Dareus talent wise? But Dareus' contract - way way out of line for his current value - made him very hard to trade. I didn't say they'd get a great player with that 6th. I said the new guys valued draft picks. And just to remind you, you can sometimes get a terrific 6th rounder occasionally. Tom Brady comes to mind. In any case, if you judge Dareus' talent by what he's done this year, not only has he not lived up to his salary or draft position, I'm not sure he played up to Jerel Worthy's salary. He wasn't playing well under this regime. And there's no way to know if he ever would have. They got rid of him as a salary dump and to clean up the locker room. But it's not like he was playing well. He was playing decent. And feel free to talk about racking up the Ls if they're still doing it in a couple of years. They never looked like they'd be good this year. They got some wins early but it's not as if they played a tough slate to get them. Dareus wasn't the reason for those wins, not even close. He didn't even play that much. Guy played 122 defensive snaps, 22% of total defensive snaps. Anyone who thinks Dareus being missing is the reason the defense is suddenly bad ought to purchase a clue somewhere. It had an effect, but wasn't even close to the whole reason, which probably had quite a bit to do with coming up against an actual great offense and having our offense unable to hold onto the ball and get some rest for the D, and being figured out, as well as just not being as good as they looked.

Yup. And there's a reason Veronica carefully kept it to the last ten years. He had to keep it to ten years (minus the three or four years it takes you to develop an Approximate Career Value. Because before that you have guys like Brady, Like Hasselbeck, like Romo, like Warner .... .... like Starr and Staubach and Moon. It doesn't happen all that often. But it happens. Dude, we aren't turning in our cards. We're changing clubs. You may think the new club is a bad selection. But we aren't turning in our card.

Goff was in trouble you could see it early on. Oh, wait. I disagree that you can tell quickly. Plenty of younger guys look bad but see a light go on at some point. But Tyrod's in his seventh year. It's six years and the 7 or 8 games is on top of that ... including two and a half years of starting.

No, sorry, you're wrong about that. Tyrod had the same system here in Buffalo his first two years. And he didn't improve. His best year, by far, was his first. Again, Alex Smith had a different system every single year up to and including the year Harbaugh got there. And Alex Smith ISN'T elite. He's been good enough to be a franchise guy for a long time, and this year he's probably top 7 or 8. But no, he's not elite. Nor will Tyrod ever be. Ever. There's a reason you haven't had a single person back you up on that "elite" claim. The reason is that it's laughable.

Tyrod Taylor does NOT have a winning record. The Buffalo Bills do. The full name of the stat you are referencing is "TEAM record in games started by this QB (Regular Season)". Stats that are Tyrod's are passer rating, completion percentage, YPA, etc.

Alex Smith got better in his fifth year. And up till then he'd had a different system to learn every single year of his career. Plenty of guys take till their third fourth or even fifth year to figure things out. After that, though, there's really only one guy in NFL history who wasn't a franchise guy by the end of five years and then became one afterwards. Rich Gannon. And nobody else. And a ton of guys have had chances. None of them made it. Generally once you've been in the league that long and had a chance to play a couple of years we know who you are. We know who Tyrod is. He still has the same problems he's shown since we got him ... really since college. He doesn't throw with anticipation, he's not great from the pocket, he doesn't use the deep and intermediate middle third well, he doesn't go through many reads quickly. Could he get a bit better? Sure. In some ways he has. But elite? There just isn't any way. Tyrod accepted the lower contract here knowing that McDermott said that to QB for him a guy had to throw from the pocket. He hasn't.

Tyrod could be "elite"? Puh-leeze! Good grief. With the money and the chances they gave him he has been treated fairly. I totally understand why Tyrod would feel frustrated and angry. It's how nearly any player would feel. But he simply hasn't played well enough. He's handling this like a pro, like the good guy that he is. But if he'd played better, this move never would have happened. I understand why he doesn't have a lot of total yards, but his YPA was 6.6. I mean that's awful, it's 30th in the league. Teams know Tyrod now and how to shut him down. It's not surprising they had to make a change. Will putting in Peterman make the Bills better? Won't teams figure him out too and learn how to shut him down? Maybe. Hard to say, but I totally understand this move. They aren't getting it done. Changes are necessary. We may see more as things move along. As for being screwed ... Fred Jackson, maybe, but I'd say Travis Henry. Remember when he kept playing on a broken leg? The guy was tough and good, and put it all on the line for the team, and they drafted Willis McGahee. Henry turned out to be an idiot, trafficking cocaine and burying himself in child support payments, but the Bills treated him badly and McGahee IMHO wasn't any better. Waste of a draft pick.

It ain't us, it's McDermott. His goal is to build a team that can consistently be good enough to compete for championship. Not this year. Build. Consistently. Those are the key words. Words that aren't in there? "Playoffs." Reaching the playoffs as a fodder team in a terrible conference isn't a terrible thing. But it doesn't mean a whole lot either.

IMHO you answered your own question here. Not now, but at some point it's a decent possibility.

The problem with cutting staff at that time of the year is that not many are hiring. Almost all of the scouting staffs were already filled. Probably at the end of this season some of these guys will be employed. "A lot?" "Key members?" I think that's overstating it. Plenty of guys are still on teams, including the Bills, but are there, say, eight "key guys"?

Didn't see that. I was going off a list I saw last year. Rodgers was worst or second-worst. It was a travesty.

He's still rich in Jax, but if I remember correctly, Marrone let him get away with being late a lot. Marrone let him do what he wanted so he played hard. McDermott didn't, so Dareus didn't buy in. As for the limited snap counts, looked to me like if he'd kicked butt they'd have upped his snaps. He didn't. That's not on McDermott. McDermott's stated goal is to build a team that will consistently compete at a very high level. Not to do whatever is necessary to improve Marcell Dareus' performance so the team does well this year. If he fails to build the team he says he is building towards, McDermott will simply be a failure. If he succeeds and builds that team, the Dareus move - as part of the build - will have been brilliant.

Rodgers had a better number of pure 4QCs and GWDs. But if I remember correctly, he is actually below Tyrod (who's very low on the list) in terms of (4QCs + GWDs / starts ). Which is an indictment of the stat. Every time Rodgers went into the fourth quarter up by 20 and the Pack won, it counted AGAINST Rodgers in this stat. Bizarre.

Cool. I'll look for the message.

Carolina is running the same system, correct? Under a guy who trained for years under McDermott as secondary coach. He was promoted a year or so ago to secondary coach / assistant head coach but he knows the system and isn't changing it. Whereas McDermott is coming into a new team with guys who don't fit the system and don't know the system. This doesn't prove McDermott will be good. But it really is an extremely common outcome for a team switching systems to have trouble for the first year and improve quite a bit the second and third years.

Shaw, they save around $5 mill in cap space in 2018 on Dareus. His salary, $5.735 mill, was guaranteed, but the Jags will be paying, not the Bills. The Jags are also paying the rest of his 2017 salary which will also go off our cap this year and thus probably be rolled over. That's something like $3 mill more. But I agree that the most logical thought is that he was causing problems consistently. Maybe small ones, but the guy had a history of being late, and I agree with you that maybe he was a bad practice player. Either that or his talents didn't fit the system and I just don't think that would have been a problem if he'd bought in and was giving his all. As for why we were playing well before and poorly now, my guess is simply that early on we were facing bad teams. It didn't seem like that at the time, but that's what has been shown by season results. We were performing well against weaker team - and for whatever reason the Carolina offense hadn't come together early in the season when we played them. They're good now but didn't appear to be good then. That's my best guess.

You don't have to deal with the locker room problems he was apparently creating. McDermott does. Agreed that a 6th ain't much, but that exactly shows how badly they wanted to get rid of him. Tucker's article said those players were the exception rather than the rule, that many of those players didn't think their team would go far in the playoffs even if they got in, and that those guys were "And isn't that what makes the NFL playoffs so special in the first place? That it really isn't about the money. It is about the pursuit of a title, the chance for a ring, and the glory and lifelong memories that come as a result of it." "For the vast majority of NFL players, the answer is yes. For a select few, sadly, the answer is no." https://www.si.com/more-sports/2008/12/23/takes The Bills didn't give up. They were dominated. There's a huge difference.

It was a debacle, but I've seen that kind of thing before, especially on teams with the quick-strike capability of the Saints offense..

Far from it. 99 was going to make another $70 or $80 mill from us and was only doing the things that a 345 pound nobody making a million or two can do. Dareus may have been doing so at a higher level, but was performing so far below the level of his contract it was wildly obvious. Trading Dareus may have hurt our run defense but it helped our cap status and it seems it also helped the locker room. The fact that he was playing poorly in Buffalo and maybe well in Jax is no reflection on McDermott. It's a reflection on Dareus. Marcel clearly didn't buy in here. I mean, the new guy wanted him to work his ass off, be on time, all that crap. Why would a guy as rich as Marcel want to put up with that nonsense rather than show up on the field and slough off the rest. And screw the rest of the locker room if it has bad repercussions. Hah!! Liking this post a lot, Meanie. It tells me very little, honestly. It tells me that the new administration thought they could do better without them and that they value draft picks. Probably tells me that the playoff teams had the best offers too. Two to four years down the road we'll start to know how good those trades are. As of now, the grade is an INCOMPLETE. First returns will come in the draft next year.

I haven't written the season off, but I wish I could. The best outcome this season would have been two or three wins and a terrific draft spot, IMHO. With fundamental improvements going on under the surface. And, "no hope"? There's always hope for next year. More so than usual if you like what you see with McDermott, which I do.

More on that stat. Someone said earlier something about how the score at the end of a game was closer than seven points so the QB had a chance at a GWD/4QCB. But that ain't necessarily so. There are many ways to come to scores with a difference of less than seven points. For example, let's say we're looking at Tyrod. Many ways we could come to a score that ends w/ the Bills down by seven. 1) The Bills were down by 15 with 2 minutes left and Tyrod led a terrific drive and got the 2 point conversion with 15 seconds left, but the onside kick failed. Did he have a chance? 2) The Bills were up by 22 in the 4th and Brady and the Pats stormed back, scoring 4 TDs including a 2 point, and the Bills offense was utterly skunked in the 4th quarter. Much much less impressive. 3) The Bills D held the Jets offense late in the 4th, and up by nine the Jets have a 4th and 27 on their own three yard-line with 25 seconds left in the game. The punter takes the snap and runs out of the end zone for a safety, running around enough that now there's only 18 seconds left, and the free kick is a terrific one and the returner is tackled on the Bills 24 with 7 seconds left. It's a seven point margin. Can Tyrod be blamed for not scoring there? This stat is an absolute quagmire. And yet except for Rodgers being far far far too low, the rankings it produces are actually pretty decent.

Why would you bother looking up my history? Honestly, maybe you should think about me a little - maybe a lot - less. Having gotten that out of the way, the honest answer is that some weeks I'm busy and some weeks I'm not so much. It's that simple.

Possibly that is because you are looking at a stat that is designed with a gigantic flaw. For example, if a QB comes out in his first game and lays a 50-burger on the other team, going into the fourth quarter up by 37, guess how that dumb stat looks at it ... He's 0 for 1. Because he didn't get a 4th quarter comeback or a game-winning drive. It's an extremely poor stat even for looking at what it's trying to look at. The very least you would do to begin to fix it is to take all the wins that weren't 4th Quarter Comebacks (4QCs) or Game-Winning Drives (GWDs) out of the denominator. Wins should absolutely NOT be counted against the QB in this. Oh, and right now you know the game where Rodgers was injured in the first half? It's counted against him in this stat, even though the Pack was up by 14, I think when he went out and then lost behind Hundley and Rodgers didn't see a snap in the 4th quarter. Any game the QB starts is counted as a game he might've had a 4QC or GWD. Again, just poorly designed. Right now the way it's calculated is this ((4QC + GWD) / GSQB) where GSQB is Games Started by that QB. The very beginning of a fix would be to switch it to something more like this: (4QC + GWD)) ----------------------------------------------------- ( GSQB - (TWGSQB - (4QB + GWD)) ) - GQBDP4Q where TWGSQB is Team Wins in Games Started by that QB and GQBDP4Q is Games when that QB Didn't Play the 4th Quarter (And yeah, I know the names of the variables are clunky and stupid. Hopefully they get the point across, though.) And that's only a start. How should games where the team lost by 30? Or lost by eight when they had a last drive? Or lost by 14 but had two drives that were stopped at the end without the other team scoring? I could go on and on. It's a dumb stat generally. But at the absolute least you need to get team wins that weren't 4th quarter comeback or Game-Winning Drives out of that denominator, and starts where the QB didn't play in the 4th quarter too.

Hey Scott, sorry this took so long. I'm really busy lately and for whatever reason, my home computer won't work on this site. I get a notification that I'm banned while at my office computer, as you can see, everything is fine. I've emailed them twice about this in the last few weeks and got nothing in return. In a way it's good. Keeps me focused on what's important while at home. Anyway, here are the combined stats for the first two weeks, for the deep middle third, based on your numbers. As you can see, any QB ranking of activity in this area would be sky high, as any completion would be 20 yards minimum and there are 7 TDs and 2 INTs. You asked if I wanted any other info. If you can get yards on the pass plays, I'd love it, but that's an awful lot of work and I'll totally understand if you can't. I don't think I can, due to time restrictions. I'll read ahead to see if you started another thread or anything. Here are the rankings: Attempts to the Deep Middle Rankings Tie-1st) Brady 5 Tie-1st) Wentz 5 3rd) Palmer 4 (1 TD, 1 INT) 4th) Kizer 3 Tie-5th) Cousins 2 Tie-5th) Roethlisberger 2 (1 INT) Tie-7th) Rodgers 1 (1 TD) Tie-7th) Goff 1 (1 TD) Tie-7th) Stafford 1 (1 TD) Tie-7th) Ryan 1 (1 TD) Tie-7th) Smith 1 (1 TD) Tie-7th) Brees 1 Tie-7th) Newton 1 Tie-7th) Wilson 1 Tie-7th) Tolzien 1 Tie-7th) Manning 1 Tie-7th) Cutler 1 (missing week1) Tie-7th) Dalton 1 Tie-27th and last) Wentz 1 Tie-19th and last) Tyrod 0 Tie-19th and last) Rivers 0 Tie-19th and last) Siemian 0 Tie-19th and last) Prescott 0 Tie-19th and last) Hoyer 0 Tie-19th and last) Carr 0 Tie-19th and last) Mariota 0 Tie-19th and last) Bortles 0 Tie-19th and last) Watson 0 Tie-19th and last) Flacco 0 Tie-19th and last) Glennon 0 Tie-19th and last) McCown 0 Tie-19th and last) Winston 0 (missing week 1) Tie-19th and last) Keenum (didn’t play week 1) Completions to the deep middle rankings Tie-1st) Kizer 2 Tie-1st) Palmer 2 Tie-1st) Brady 2 Tie-4th) Brees 1 Tie-4th) Newton 1 Tie-4th) Rodgers 1 Tie-4th) Goff 1 Tie-4th) Tolzien 1 Tie-4th) Stafford 1 Tie-4th) Ryan 1 Tie-4th) Smith 1 Tie-4th) Cutler 1 Tie-4th) Dalton 1 Tie-4th) Manning 1 Tie-4th) Wentz 1 Tie-16th) Tyrod (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Rivers (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Siemian (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Prescott (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Hoyer (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Carr (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Mariota (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Bortles (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Watson (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Flacco (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Glennon (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) McCown (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Keenum (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-16th) Winston (0, but on 0 attempts) Tie-30th and last) Wilson 0 Tie-30th and last) Cousins 0 Tie-30th and last) Roethlisberger 0 Completion to the deep middle third (1st and 2nd week combined) 17/32 NFL TD/INT ratio to the deep middle third (1st and 2nd week combined: 7/2 Tyrod Attempts to the deep middle: After the first week: Tied for 16th and last with 0 After the second week: Tied for 19th and last with 0 Completions to the deep middle: Tied for 12th with 0 after the first week Tied for 16th with 0 after the second week

Thing about the D is that there's no "Transplant Defense Fan" out there yelling about how good they are in spite of what we see. Nobody's disagreeing with you that they weren't just bad they were awful. Unless I missed someone in this thread.