Thurman#1

In high school, Aaron was considered an extremely sweet kid. https://www.si.com/longform/2016/aaron-hernandez-brother-dj-hernandez/index.html He freaking got stabbed without retaliating. Among the players sampled in the brain study were four guys who got CTE after playing only high school football. 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.

Yeah, meh. A few broken eggs. A few guys with terrible brain disease. Meh. Nice post. "The level of damage was said to be similar to that seen in football players with a median age of 67." I'd play too but I'd retire after my first serious concussion. More, you're acting as if every NFL player gets a $40 million dollar contract. That's -what - the top 5%? Maybe. The average career is below three years, correct? Those guys don't get $40 million contracts. Most NFL players make good money but don't get even vaguely close to that neighborhood. Right now there are four guys on the Bills roster with a contract that high. Bjorn Nittmo didn't get a $40 million contract but it sure looks like he's going to be found to have been a CTE casualty from pro football, for instance.

It's happened to every sport in history. Pretty much every specific human enterprise in history, actually, but certainly sports are included. Chariot races used to be huge. Long-distance walking and biking events filled Madison Square Garden. Dance marathons were massive. Being big now is likely to guarantee you'll be big in the near future, but not in the distant future. Change happens. Especially so when something like this happens to a sport. This looks a lot like a change agent.

So what he specifically said was - twice - "we have to work on ...." What do you think he would say if you asked him if there were any areas at all that they didn't have to work on in any offensive or defensive area? Exactly. He'd say we have to work on everything. That's what all coaches say, and for good reason. You work on areas of weakness, but you also work on areas of strength. You constantly work on your whole game, from fundamentals to arcane details. I don't see anything much there.

Yup. Every year back to Kelly a few have absolutely refused to look neutrally at the evidence and have become nuts on whatever below-standard guy we had. Same thing now. And that group gets the idea that everyone else "loathes" their guy when it's almost always not loathing but a simple and justified deep doubt that the guy - be he Losman or Captain Checkdown or the aging Flutie or Tyrod - will ever make the major leaps upward necessary.

Newton recovering from a serious injury and an operation with not nearly enough time to work with his receivers ad get his arm in shape ... you'd say he was overrated but he was awful in week one and wasn't really expected to have fully recovered by this time. In his Super Bowl year his QB rating was about 17 points higher than he managed today. Your post, yet another trying desperately to find a way to spin Tyrod as better than he is, was up to normal standards. Awful. Yes, their excellent defence helps. A lot. But a healthy Newton is very dangerous and puts Tyrod to shame. The NFL MVP would for most people kinda show that. Has Tyrod been mentioned as a possible MVP candidate somewhere that I missed?

Yeah, the time zone travel is unpleasant.

Seriously? It's that baffling to you? The slot guy on the right and right are wide open for a quick hitter up the middle. The outside guy on the left also gets open when he cuts in, very open for first down yardage. And there's no safety help because the safety on that side backs up and then drifts towards the middle. And Tyrod goes to none of them. Not that hitting the safety valve was horrible on that play. It was OK but not when you have good options in the routes run by the WRs, especially the left guy on the outside. But it's typical Tyrod having trouble going in rhythm in the play's design. The pocket held up beautifully, there was no pressure, but he didn't go to any of the routes, not even the one on the far left most likely to get ten yards or more. OCs draw up plays so that QBs will have a high likelihood of seeing a guy come open at a pre-arranged place and time, making it easier on the QB. You want your QB to know, see and trust the play design and throw when the situation is right. Tyrod knows it. And it seems very likely that he sees it. But all too often he doesn't trust it, doesn't throw it and hangs on in hopes of making something happen outside the structure of the play. It's too bad, but that's Tyrod.

He shouldn't make anyone sick. He's trying his butt off. But yeah, he is what he has been since his first seven or eight games. Once defences figured him out, they've stopped him from being much of a force. It's what was always the likely outcome with him. Still not a 100% conclusion. Guys improve. But the likelihood at this very late date is miniscule.

No. Seriously, just no. He's 27 years old and elite. You simply don't trade that guy. If they did a total rebuild they would do it around him. That isn't stranger. It just isn't. The Pats got rid of Bledsoe because they had Brady, who had already proved himself as a guy you can win a Super Bowl with. I suppose if Indy won a Super Bowl this year with whoever is Luck's backup then you could argue that getting rid of Bledsoe was stranger. Till then, not even close.

Because a move makes no sense to you does not mean it makes no sense. There is no cronyism here. Not just because they say so but because cronyism is dumb. There's no reason to think that's what this is. Especially when the likely reason is one of the obvious two. First, they have a ton more info on these guys than you. Maybe Miller is having trouble absorbing the system or is a problem at meetings, or maybe he's just doing worse than Ducasse when you throw in all the private practices. Second, when systems switch you often need a different kind of guy to get the job done, bigger, smaller, faster, more powerful ... whatever. That's what's usually happening when somebody the fans like better is let go the year a new scheme is put in. They'll likely keep both and play whoever's doing better.

I don't know if I'd say "at best," but yeah, four to six wins is probably best guess. Hell, Vegas has our over-under around six, and they shade everything towards the middle. They have one team less than five at 4.5, though last year was reasonably average with five teams winning less than five games. The different sites have slight differences but we're generally considered around the fourth-worst team in terms of expectations. And for good reason. People who want to look only at players are avoiding the obvious. We're switching schemes on both sides of the ball. This hurts. It just does. It takes time and experience to internalize a new system. It often helps a bit for a game or two especially on offense because teams don't know what to expect, but once they do, teams know what you're doing and your guys don't, or at least not to the extent that players who have been in the same systems for a while know what they're doing. Guys in new systems have to think. The rushing game in particular seems to have been hurt by the switch to the new system. They still have Shady and maybe three good run OLs, but they've lost the Roman system which appears to have been responsible for a lot of their success at the run game. And opponent fear of the run game helped Tyrod and the pass game a great deal. My guess is that we'll still be a pretty good run team, but not the undisputed #1 juggernaut we were last year. Top seven would be my guess, for what little that's worth. But less fearful than last year's group and the ripples from that will spread.

Tanks simply don't exist in football, a sport where the players and coaches have salaries that aren't guaranteed. GMs sometimes do sell out the present for the future, and this is called a full or complete rebuild. Which this is not. If it had been, Kyle Williams, Tyrod and Shady would be gone, Shady traded for good value. It's a rebuild. Not a complete rebuild but a rebuild. They've made it clear that they're building for the future as their priority while still not giving up this year. As for BS, what BS? Are they saying they're headed for the Super Bowl this year? The playoffs? They aren't BSing. They want to primarily build a team while not entirely giving up on this year. But yeah, the stress is on the future and team building. As it should be.

Yep, who'da thunk it? Except pretty much everyone.

Yup, all very reasonable if you look at everything through a rabid Bills fan's perspective. For most, though, the game's at home, which is generally a three-point advantage, and we're getting around 6.5 points from Vegas. We don't look better then them in all phases to people without a huge fan's desperate needs to see things positively. We look a little bit better, but not that much.

Jets are pretty awful. I'd guess it'll be a reasonably close Buffalo win. As for anyone saying, "We will win," and "The Jets will be picking before us" ... what's that old saying about chickens and counting? Whatever it is, it's apropos

Equally, the threat of those one or two 30+ yard completions per game is hugely important. It backs up the safeties and corners which opens up the short to intermediate passing game and the run game. It really is huge. My guess is that they have guys (Powell, for ex.) who can be a threat for long balls, but nobody who will make teams worry about it consistently. But the Bills don't have one weakness right now, they've got a lot. It's what happens when you trade away picks, switch schemes and bring in a new coach with yet another new scheme. You just have to hope that they can build off this. Your post was reasonable till the last sentence. Cleveland's situation looks pretty good indeed for the future. Plenty of teams and execs know that.

Bobby Chandler, maybe. And Mini-Max Anderson. Does Tasker count? Even when they used him at receiver he was always making plays. Cribbs? Too much of a start?

Haven't seen any indications of special yet, but it's way way early. I'm still positive on the pick. He's looked pretty good for such a young guy. IMHO he looks to be a good #2 down the road if he can find a good connection with a quarterback.

Actually, we were 16th on offense in 2016 and 13th in 2015. And yeah, I'm sure you were talking about scoring, but while yards reflects almost completely offense, scoring is more of a whole-team stat because drive-start field position is absolutely huge in scoring. Not to mention that scoring includes stuff like pick-sixes and blocked kicks recovered in the end zone that the offense has little to do with. Yards is simply a better measure of your offense than scoring. Which is why when people talk about how offenses rank they are talking about yards. And surprisingly, the defense and STs scored significantly more than the average NFL defense and STs do. And they also gave the offense the 11th best average drive start, a major advantage in terms of scoring. And that same offense also left the defense with crap field position, 23rd best, which deeply hurt the defense in terms of scoring given up. We'll see. But we didn't just lose Sammy. We lost Woods and more to the point we lost the Roman blocking schemes and playbook, generally acknowledged to be pretty much the best in the NFL in terms of maximizing the run. We'd better hope that the pass game picks it up because my bet is that the run game will still be pretty good but not the absolute terror it was last year, in terms of both yards per carry and scoring on run plays.

They appear to have let Ragland go because he wasn't very athletic or fast. And that's the problem with Spikes too. The McDermott defense appears to need quick, explosive LBs. Spikes would not seem to qualify.

So, if you look at the worst of your recent history, and only the worst, things will look pretty bad? I wouldn't have realized. But no, two draft classes don't set you back five years, they set you back two years. Whaley's picks don't look good, especially so after yet another scheme switch but they didn't look great even before that. But it isn't reasonable to criticize twice for the same mistake. Yeah, the tradeup for Sammy was always stupid. But when you then go on to point out that our second pick was in the third round ... yeah, we got it, you already criticized the Sammy trade. It's not a tank. Tank is a lovely popular hockey term that has become popular among football fans but it's a poor fit. In a sport without guaranteed contracts, there's no such thing as a tank. But yeah, to use the football terms, we're rebuilding. It's not a total rebuild, but it's a rebuild. But it's not as if we were going to be good even if we'd made every single move with the specific purpose of being as good as possible this year. Yes it was. He was the GM and with brand new owners. If he'd told them he wasn't going to be able to work with Rex, they'd likely have listened.

A CB and what might be a good #2 WR and several more guys ... and a second first rounder next year. He isn't easily pleased. It's not easy to get somebody to give you two firsts for something. It was dumb when we did it for Sammy and it was smart when we got the Chiefs to do it this year, especially in a draft which at least so far looks strong in QBs early. That's nonsense. Time doesn't devalue a draft pick. Yeah, in the trade chart you usually a higher draft pick the next year, but not because a third rounder next year is actually worth less in terms of likelihood of getting a good player than a fourth rounder this year. You have to pay more next year because it's only desperate GMs in a weak bargaining position who make dumb tradeups like that. The smart teams accept those trades and get the higher pick next year. Look at Belichick who has made an absolute field day of stealing that extra value from desperate dumb GMs his whole career. The "have to win this year" guys will accept the fleecing and trade away the higher pick next year. That doesn't mean the next year's pick will be worth less in terms of what can be gotten with the pick.

First, there's no evidence Russ has any power in the football side. Going to meetings isn't power. And having your remarks printed isn't either and that's all we know ... that he went to meetings and had some reactions reported. Second, the quotation isn't bad at all. There's no particular reason to think that he meant that you have no expectations about the positions. He could easily have meant that you don't have any pre-suppositions about the candidates and you let what they say make your decisions about how good their interviews were. And I agree with the guy who said the timing of this post is strange. If Russ does have power on the football side I would totally agree that that would be awful, but I don't see any evidence.

while I totally agree that if you're going to ask for accountability you have to do so believably from the first minute, at this point, I doubt Dareus is ever going to get it. I'd love to see it, but he's had so many chances that I just can't believe he is going to ever really own his problems. Bill Walsh for one came in without a single NFL game and put a ton of rules in place for the Niners and had an awful first season. At least one coach was fired by Walsh for going behind his back to management saying he was putting too much emphasis on piddly-ass rules. Management stuck by Walsh and the coach was gone. There's a reason teachers are told not to smile till Christmas. You don't earn the right to make the rules with good performance over time. It's putting your rules in place that tends to determine what kind of performance you'll have in the long run.