Thurman#1

Terrific starts don't always last. Remember Dennis Shaw? If he does turn out better than Tyrod down the road, would that be a huge surprise? Watson is a first rounder and Tyrod is a guy who looks like he's on the road to have a long career as a Fitz-type guy, good enough to make people dream but not good enough to win titles unless you have the kind of team around him that, say, Trent Dilfer had around him that one year. Too early to say, in any case. Could go either way. Tyrod's first seven games or so as a starter looked terrific.

The Falcons went 2-4 against the Panthers during those three years. And while Ryan wasn't awful those three years, he wasn't as good as he had been or as he is now. Throw out his first two years as he got used to the league and two of his three worst years (out of eight years, those were his 7th, 4th and 8th best years out of eight, going by passer rating). Except for those three years he's never been below 99 in passer rating in the last six years, and those years he went 89.6, 93.9 and 89.0. He really had down years. I agree with you that I expect the Birds to put up big numbers against our defense. I don't see us winning this one, though they certainly have an outside chance.

Not surprising. It will almost always be a division rival, what with having two games a year to run up stats, and the Bucs have been bad for a while, and while the Saints have been decent on and off, they're an offensive team not a defensive one.

It wasn't Kyle Orton who had us on the brink of the playoffs. It was the roster and coaching staff (including Dougie) of the 2014 Buffalo Bills. And you'll have to clue me in on the math that makes 18:10 equal 2:1. I get it, you're being sarcastic here, but in doing so you still fell prey to the belief that wins and losses is a QB stat rather than a team stat.

2013 - 2015 were Ryan's and the Falcons down years. They'd traded for Jones and lost most of their best draft capital for years and it really affected that team. 2011 10-6 2012 13-3 2013 4-12 2014 6-10 2015 8-8 2016 11-5 They aren't the same team they were.

The fake punt wasn't dumb, not at all. But it was really risky, and it didn't pay off. And yeah, the Von Miller penalty was just awful. Tyrod was cracking up. The flag should never have been thrown. And IMHO if that flag is never thrown, Denver wins, though there's obviously no way to know. Yeah, the Bills handled the punt really well. They didn't expect it, but were prepared. You have to give them tremendous credit. But nah, the INTs were just poor performances from Siemian. It's not like the rushes were from the blindside or something. The first should never have been thrown and the second should have been thrown five yards further, out of bounds. We got very lucky with Siemian's bad decisions there. The Bills pressure helped create the plays, but if that had been Tyrod (or Jim Kelly for that matter) we'd correctly have been yelling at him for poor decision-making. Those bad decisions weren't so much forced as simply made. Equally, it's irritating when people try so hard to mis-state what people say. He didn't say good luck never happens to other teams. Didn't imply it in any way, that's you creating poor logic when there's none in the post. Just because good luck happens to all teams doesn't mean it shouldn't be pointed out when it happens. We really did get lucky. Having said that, we could still have lost the game, screwing it up and throwing it away. And we didn't. We played a reasonably mistake-free game. And as many here have said, that's a very good thing. Still got very lucky, though.

If you love narratives to make a point, you must love your own post. SF "held Newton to less pass yards than we did" and that proves them good? Pass yards don't decide the winners of games, as Tyrod's defenders should know. The Panthers only threw 25 passes and still scored two passing TDs and 23 points and ran the ball quite well. They did plenty enough to win and the Niners defense didn't look especially good. And nobody says Watkins is soft. Please. They say he gets injured a lot, And this concussion protocol thing does indeed extend this string.

It isn't anger. It's precision. I said you cherrypicked and spun ... because you cherrypicked and spun in this case. If you do that you'll be called out, and you should expect it. You also post plenty of good stuff, though. I often really appreciate your POV. And now that I think about it, I'm really really tired. Maybe that affected my tone.

Agreed that there's blame to go around.

You did indeed put up this thread about his intermediate passing, not mentioning the short and long passing. And it's pretty clear why you did so. If you're going to cherrypick the one good stat and not mention the bad ones (short is 20th and deep is 23rd intermediate is 12th), expect criticism. It's warranted. You're spinning, not analyzing.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Good point. Thanks for pointing that out.

Royale, if you read that football article you're referencing all the way through it's exactly what's referred to in my article. It's USA football trying to focus on a short one or two year slight increase while ignoring a nearly 25% decrease over the six or seven year period including that slight recent rise. And that even over the one or two years when absolute numbers are going up, as a percentage of the US population the numbers have continued down. I live in Japan personally, have for 24 years, so I can't speak for that period but the stats are clear. Since the CTE stats came out, there's a major downturn at youth levels. Things go up and down. But over the long term plenty of sports pretty much disappear. Boxing and baseball owned America sixty years ago. Now they're way down from their highs. Go longer and you see much more change. They say basketball - worldwide - is the biggest youth sport. Stuff changes.

I'm not referencing it. The article is. Folks here are questioning whether it means anything that he had the worst level of damage for a 27 year old that they'd ever seen. And since the symptoms often manifest over time, they tend to get worse as people age. I think it's you making an unwarranted assumption here. Yeah, the whole sample contains all levels of CTE. But that doesn't mean that the level of damage of 67 year olds is the same as the median level of damage from the whole sample. Not unless it specifically says so somewhere. They're saying that of the entire sample, the median age of death is 66 and the average age of death is 67. Saying that "The level of damage [in Hernandez] was said to be similar to that seen in football players with a median age of 67," is saying a lot, as is saying that he had Level 3, severe damage, at that young age. Heh heh. True that you can sue for anything. Also true that sometimes lawsuits are winners. Plenty aren't, but some are. This is a threat the NFL will take very very seriously.

Royale, what the guy you're replying to said was that boxing gyms are getting less popular right now. Which is unarguable. He didn't say that MMA gyms are getting less popular now. They obviously aren't, but he said that he thinks they will in 15 or 20 years if guys start becoming punch-drunk. Which is a very reasonable guess. And as for football's youth participation numbers ... http://www.vocativ.com/298019/youth-football-participation-is-plummeting/ Sure, 1905 was a different era. They're all different, except in one thing, which is that sports, like exercise trends, writing styles, trends in fighting, meditation and really every single specific human endeavor ... change. Change is eternal, even though at any given moment people are wired to think things will continue as they are. Things get popular, peak and disappear. That's the way the world works. And at the time, in all those different eras, the sport at the peak looks like it will last forever, until it slowly goes away. Football will disappear. It's just a matter of when. It's simply unlikely to last more than, say, a hundred years at the peak. Boxing was probably the number one sport in the early 20th century and now it's not, and it's slowly fading away under many pressures, including the likelihood of becoming punch-drunk if you do it for a long time, though it also includes new sports like MMA. And the rise of football.

The Mayo Clinic doesn't list anything but head trauma as a cause. Nor does the Boston University CTE Center. Where are you getting this information, because I can't find it anywhere but your post. Again, you guys are ignoring what comes next ... "The level of damage [in Hernandez] was said to be similar to that seen in football players with a median age of 67." And there are plenty of those.

I already addressed this argument. Right in the same post you're replying to, actually. I said, "Hernandez's college problems could have had CTE as an important contributing factor. The folks on here conclusively denying that are just as wrong as anyone who's absolutely sure that the murders were completely caused by CTE." "Could have had ... as an important contributing factor." Not "Absolutely is the only cause." Maybe you could argue with what's actually written? Read the story. Then come back and we can have a discussion. It's a terrific story, really well-researched, detailed and interesting. The story of Aaron Hernandez is his somewhat unexplainable near-complete personality change. The story implies that the death of his father was to blame, and hanging around the wrong people. But reading it again after seeing the results of this CTE test casts a totally different light on the whole story. https://www.si.com/longform/2016/aaron-hernandez-brother-dj-hernandez/index.html

They knew this might be the case when they made the trades. Particularly for the Chiefs it looked like the probable result. Still good trade bait. This is no argument against Beane and McDermott getting a long time to prove themselves. If they look awful, they'll get the hook like Rex. But if they look decent, expect them to get a lot of time, Your "proven commodities" argument is a bit of a red herring. Of course they're not proven. But while this isn't a full rebuild, it's about half or three quarters of one. It's going to take time. Expect the Pegulas to know this. As long as we see incremental improvement and no idiocy or losing the locker room, they stand a good chance of being here a while.

I hear your frustration. And being angry at the unsuccessful older regimes makes total sense. But it doesn't make sense to bring that reasonable frustration over onto the current regime. These things take time. The Kelly-Thurman-Andre-Bruce Bills weren't built in a year or two or even three. These things generally take time, like it or not. I like the Warren Buffett quotation. "No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."

If we knew that would be possible, I'd support it. We don't. It might take the Sammy pick to trade up high enough to get the QB we want. Or not. But IMHO the chance that we wouldn't have enough ammunition to get our guy is worth avoiding at all costs, especially since if we do end up having enough ammo, we can use the pick to get someone else young, good and cheap. As for Mahomes, if he turns out to be a good one, you're right, that would have been the right move. I didn't see much pro-Mahomes posting on here pre-draft. Much more "this draft class of QBs sucks" type posts. Hindsight is easy, but also going with Mahomes is premature.

Don't know if I'd say that. I don't think we're any thinner-skinned than any other fan base. But yeah, Watkins was a good teammate. He shouldn't be hated. I personally wish him the best but think it was a good trade for a team that needed to save some money and bring in more and better young talent.

This this this this this. Get the QB first, then get the WRs. Otherwise you generally end up getting those seven or eight wins and never getting a shot at a QB worth drafting in the top ten.

His foot injury and concussion are ... only a few of his many injuries. He might indeed stay healthy from here on in. But there's no question he's been injured a ton. http://sportsinjurypredictor.com/player/sammy-watkins/6937 And that article only lists injuries that caused him to miss games, not injuries that greatly limited his performance even though he played. And there have been many of those in Buffalo. This is a guess, and a very very pessimistic and not especially probable guess. More likely they'll find a guy who's a good prospect if they get a pick early next year. He won't be a sure thing, though. There've really only been two of those in twenty years, Peyton and Luck. But a good prospect is very likely to be available.

Everyone knows that losing Sammy - when he's healthy - makes a difference, a very big one. But if trading him brings in a franchise QB in next year's draft, it will have been worth it even if he's the next Julio Jones. And whether he will stay healthy is indeed a very very big question.

What I hear you saying is that dumb coaches don't bend their tactics to their personnel because they aren't smart enough. And yet you're also saying that Belichick also doesn't bend his system to his guys because he's really smart. And I think that's right. Plenty of dumb coaches don't bend systems to players, and the same with plenty of smart coaches. It's got nothing to do with smart and dumb. Lombardi didn't fit the system to the players. Neither did Bill Walsh or Chuck Noll or ... I'm sure you could go on and on with this list as easily as I can. The key factor seems to be two things ... first, is the system you're converting to truly a good one, and second, can you now still bring in the players of quality necessary to run your system successfully? I just don't know the answer to either of these questions for the current regime, but the fact that he's not changing his system for a bunch of players that went 7-9 does not bother me one iota.

7-9 last year. That's not an unbroken scheme. And it's why we're changing.