Thurman#1

At a $1.4 mill average salary? For a second year guy? Nah. That's a reasonable price for a backup and he still has room to grow and improve, especially after missing his first year.

Right now they're paying Wood $6.35 mill per year making him the 9th highest paid center. At that new number he'd again be the 9th highest paid. My guess is they pay him. If Groy is as good as we're hoping, they could slip him over to guard and keep him as Richie-getting-old insurance or Miller not being as good as we hope. Center is the linchpin. I think they don't want to start over there. Sammy, I can't even begin to predict. We still don't know what he is in terms of injuries ... or his results if he stays healthy all year and teams start to figure how to game-plan for him. Too many unknowns for Sammy, IMHO.

Yup. He scrambles very well. Like that scramble for eight yards against Seattle on the final drive. 1:15 left in the game, down by six, first down at the Seattle 23. He has a guy absolutely wide open in the deep middle, uncovered in the end zone and simply doesn't see him. But yeah, he got an eight yard run out of it. That scramble wasn't nothing. But it sure wasn't the best option and we ended up losing the ball on downs. But the play looks great if you just look at yards per scramble. I looked at your post and thought, "Gee, those are some bizarre numbers from Benoit. Rodgers as the 6th best player in the league? OK, yeah. Prescott as the 16th best player in the league? What?" The way you expressed some of those was confusing, though maybe it was me, really. He has Rodgers as the 6th best player in the league. Luck as the 30th best player and the 5th best QB, slightly ahead of Brees. That's very reasonable, I think, though it would also be reasonable to have them switched. They're both terrific. He's trying to take the "valuable" out of it so there's no big clump of QBs at the top, to just pick the best players regardless of position. It's impossible to make any list that plenty of people won't disagree with, But I like Eli at 8th best QB. I think he's consistently undervalued. I might have put him at 10th instead but pretty reasonable, IMHO. Prescott 17th? Sounds reasonable to me. I think he's at least partly a result of an incredible group around him that let the Cowboys baby him. I'd agree that Wentz is too high here but maybe not by all that much. I think he's got a really good chance of taking a big leap up next year. Not going to go through the whole thing, but none of the things you pointed out seem to me indefensible at all. To each their own, but without reading much of the article (and yeah, that should be used against me, but I'm not commenting so much on the article and more on just my opinions of the specific placements you questioned) I don't see anything so very far off.

I can agree on all of that. Don't see it ending the discussion, though. People want - reasonably - to put a guesstimate on what the odds of success are. And I would argue many on here are far far too hopeful based on history. I'm sure they'd argue the opposite about me.

Jimmy G is NOT in that situation now where he's even close to his seventh year. He's going into his fourth. He will almost surely have a chance to start somewhere for a year or two or three before his seventh year. As Tyrod did; It's not like Tyrod didn't have a chance. And when Garoppolo does get that chance, again, history shows what it shows for everybody, that it's rarer than volcanic lightning for a guy who becomes a franchise QB to not have already done so by the time he reaches his seventh year. Meaning when Garoppolo gets that chance if he doesn't show franchise-type ability in those first few years, his odds of ever being a franchise guy will drop precipitously. The good ones trapped behind someone use the time to learn and make themselves ready so that when they get that shot they can quickly take advantage. Again, there have been a ton of guys trapped for three or four years who then got their moment. History shows that the ones who can become franchise QBs do it quickly, and we've seen a large enough sample of guys get this chance to know that this is an overwhelming tendency. One guy breaks it out of the many many who had a chance. I would strongly disagree Tyrod is "WAY" better than Fitz. Better? Yeah. But it's more a matter of different strengths. Fitz is more explosive, continually getting a higher TD percentage, but takes considerably worse care of the ball, especially under pressure. The Amish Rifle is quite a good runner, but not in Tyrod's league. The point is that Fitz had teams thinking that they could maybe make him into a franchise guy. Over and over. Tyrod has too. They're not all that far apart, though I'd certainly take Tyrod over Fitzy.

What can you say? It's true, he wasn't. Not everyone does get their ultimate chance, and some are actively mishandled. I'm not sure where Manuel falls on that scale. Not as far towards mishandled as Losman does, IMHO. Yup. And it's easier to say either one of those than to admit that we don't know for sure. We probably have a good idea about the guy, but there's always a chance we could have been wrong. No way to prove a negative in this case. I personally kept thinking there was a chance right up till the end, but when he still couldn't show improvement near the end, it just became really likely that he wouldn't ever be a good one. But yeah, maybe if handled better. No way to know, and at some point you just have to go with the best guess.

I'm not counting the time spent on the bench against them. Not at all. In many ways sitting the bench for a while can be a huge advantage, as it was for Aaron Rodgers. I'm simply pointing out what history shows, that guys who don't show themselves a franchise guy by their sixth year in the league don't do so, with the exception of Loose Gannon. That's true of guys who sat the bench and those who didn't. It's not impossible. And Tyrod's clearly a terrific guy, he's smart and he works himself to the bone. I hope it happens for him. I just think history shows very clearly that that's unlikely.

He really does make a lot of plays that others don't. The large majority of which are run plays. He is indeed polarizing. As for the rest of your claims, Tyrod doesn't have a winning record. The Buffalo Bills do in games when Tyrod starts. The other 50 or so players may have had some little bit of credit coming to them for those wins. Wins is a team stat. And I'm not sure who you're talking about who has 47 TDs, but it can't be Tyrod. He has 37 TDs. In 29 starts, I would indeed call that below average. If you're saying he's about 20th then we're in almost exact agreement, and yeah I call that "slightly below average," my words,and I find it hard to imagine how anyone could have an issue with calling 20th out of 32 slightly below average. We totally disagree about Alex Smith, though, I can see. However, as you point out, I do love the way Tyrod protects the ball. His low INT % is a real plus. The coaches must love that, and I certainly respect it.

Plenty of those guys played at starting QB level. They just didn't play at good starting quarterback level. Same as Tyrod. They played like guys who when you see them enough you want to replace them. Same as Tyrod. Which is why he is likely to be replaced unless he improves a lot. Being one of the top 32 QBs in the world doesn't earn you the right to be a starter for the rest of your career. It's being about top 16 or so. Much at all beyond 16 or so and unless you're a young, developing guy, your team is thinking about drafting a new guy. Further back and teams are looking to replace you. Tyrod is absolutely a top 32 QB. But so is Fitz. Siemian. Hoyer. Unlike most of those fifteen or so guys I named, many of whom are no longer playing, Tyrod could still improve. It's just quite unlikely, as it's never happened outside Gannon and maybe Plunkett that a guy with six years behind him in the league who hadn't yet proved himself as a franchise guy did still later in his career. As you so often do, you're mistaking what you said for what I said. And then asking me to "back up" words that are yours, not mine. Which, clearly I have no interest in doing, nor would anyone, really. For what is now the fourth time, I think, I said what I said above about nobody but Gannon becoming a franchise guy after having finished six years without already having done so. At that point, some people complained that wasn't fair because Tyrod had only started two years and I pointed out that it was plenty fair, and that a ton of guys had been in that situation, not starting for three or four years and then getting a significant chance to start for a year or two. That's the group of guys I was examining. I said there were a lot of them. Having found fifteen of them including Gannon in less than 10 minutes of non-exhaustive researching going back only around 13 years, it appears that there may be quite a bit more than 50. Of those there are a few real successes like Aaron Rodgers, but those successes didn't take till their seventh year. There's basically one exception, one guy who became a franchise guy in his seventh year or later, Gannon. Plunkett is maybe arguable. Maybe. And that's it. Again, you keep talking about them being my rules, but the ones you're looking at are yours. Mine are the ones above. If you'd like to make a different point about different guys, go ahead. But don't pretend you're dealing with something I said.

Yeah, I'd agree with a lot of that, but with the proviso that those guys, the new starters, the ones being asked to "not screw up" ... they're not going into their seventh year in the league.

He's leaving a higher rate of plays on the field than most do. I'd say that puts him at slightly below average, which is the problem.

Wow. Fun to watch. Thanks for posting.

They serving Kool-Aid at training camp? Every team looks like a playoff team in shorts. But hey, if you wanna get excited go for it. Nothing wrong with it, really. Hope you're right.

Already answered this. In this thread. Post #165. To repeat, you said you had asked me for ten guys according to some criteria. Didn't see that before and don't really care what criteria you asked for. I'm only interested in the criteria I've been addressing all along on this issue. I've said all along that Gannon's pretty much it for guys who hadn't shown themselves to be franchise guys by the time they had six years in the league and then did so later. Several times people have complained that that wasn't fair because Tyrod didn't play significant snaps his first four years. And I always pointed out that there are many people who also didn't play much in their first three or four years and then had a shot at starting jobs. And what happened is what you'd expect, that of all those many guys, the ones who succeeded, guys like Danny White for one and Aaron Rodgers, succeeded pretty quickly when given their chance. Unlike Tyrod, they became franchise guys before going into their seventh year. With again, the one exception of Rich Gannon. To quote myself from earlier in this thread: Ten? That's what, fourteen? Took me less than ten minutes to come up with that group. There have been tons of guys in Tyrod's position, guys who didn't have experience for three or four years and then got their chance to start. Problem is that nearly all of them aren't good enough. And the ones who are have shown it pretty much immediately. Again, of all guys who hadn't proven themselves through six years as franchise guys, almost none have later improved enough to become franchise guys. That's the likely result with Tyrod.

Yup, tons of NFL QBs were on the bench throughout almost all of their rookie contracts. But when those QBs got their chances, the ones who became franchise QBs became franchise-level guys in their first opportunity. Can't name a single guy who sat out for a long time at the beginning of his career, got his chance to start, didn't show franchise level QB ability early in his long-delayed chance to start and then did later. There really isn't a guy who's ever done that, with the one single exception of Rich Gannon. As you point out, many many guys were in a situation to possible make that kind of a leap after not playing much at all in their first three or four years. And out of those probably 50 - 100 guys, one has succeeded when he hadn't done so by the end of his sixth year. The odds against Tyrod are indeed very high. History shows it.

There were three main problems last year. Offense, defense and special teams. Yeah, the defense was the worst. But we didn't have one really strong unit. We had a strong part of a unit, the offensive run game. But nobody was intimidated by our offense overall, or any other unit.

Still so much anger? He said *ideally". Why wouldn't you ideally want to run the ball every play. It would mean you'd stopped the other guys and had run so successfully that you'd scored. And then you were ahead and didn't need to run and you kept piling the points up. In real life if you run every play they'll find a way to stop you. But he said "ideally." This is so not a story. In Marrone's first year here we were #2 in running. Year after that #25. Don't think it was the scheme that was the problem. As for turning it around after he left, bringing in McCoy probably didn't hurt, especially when they were replacing guys like Summers, Spiller and the aging Freddy. Getting rid of Pears and Urbik maybe didn't hurt either.

The difference being that it's not so much the offense as it is the quarterback. That's what you need. Four defenses out of the top twelve since 2000. One or maybe two QBs out of the top twelve, IMHO, though that's impossible to say qualitatively because nobody can agree on how to measure a QB. You need a very good passing game. And points is closer to being a team stat than a unit stat because it depends so heavily on field position which comes from the other units than the ones you're measuring, and in fact other units can even score points. I'd argue that points scored is around 80% based on the offense. Whereas yards is almost purely a unit-based stat.

The Seahawks had Russell Wilson. He's been a top ten or twelve guy since about his second year. Eli has been up and down but absolutely a franchise QB with a good passing game overall and specifically in the years when they won, though admittedly the light came on very late in the year of that first Super Bowl win. If you think I said they have great passing games, maybe I mis-stated myself. But very good passing games? Yeah. Nearly all of those teams had very good passing games. Just look at the list of guys. Peyton, Ben, Eli (#4 in 2011), Brees, Rodgers, Brady, Russell Wilson. As you say, Flacco was on fire, though he has looked pedestrian since then. That's a list of very very good QBs, guys in the top ten or twelve. You can make a good argument about Peyton Manning that year, though I bet you'd agree they simply don't win that Super Bowl with Osweiler or Siemian. Manning wasn't anywhere near what he'd been and yet he willed them on in crucial spots and even when he couldn't win games for them because of that arm problem. he made good decisions with real consistency. Me, I figure it's about 10% of Super Bowl winners who didn't have QBs playing top ten or twelve ball. And you don't want to follow a model that wins that kind of percentage. As I said, I agree that game management should be better immediately. I just don't see this as a team with enough talent to do much damage, and especially so the year we input new schemes on both sides of the ball. It'd be great if I'm wrong, and that has been known to happen.

That smell is from the fertilizer I grew my stunningly terrific post on top of. Not only can I separate running from the whole QB thing, but I do Everyone should.. Running in a QB is fine. It's just not what you want a QB for. Having a QB who can run really well is like having a car with a terrific air conditioner. It adds value. It makes it a better car. But it doesn't mean all that much, it's just not what you buy the car for. You buy the car for getting you around. If it does that and has a great AC on top of that, terrific. You acquire a QB for passing. If he can do that and he can run also, that's great, You're right, it factors in, as an AC does. You need a QB who can run a good passing game. And read this again. I didn't just say, "full stop." I said, "not ... full stop." I have no earthly idea what you're talking about. I have been mostly avoiding Tyrod threads. Boring. So I have no idea what you said, nor am I interested in looking back when I don't know what I'm looking for. As a pure guess, were you talking about what I just talked about a couple of posts above? That there have been dozens and dozens of guys who like Tyrod spent three or four years on the bench and then got a chance? And that then outside of Gannon and maybe Plunkett none of them have gotten through six years of their career without becoming a franchise QB and then made it later? If not, I have no idea what you're talking about. If so, it took me about five to ten minutes to quickly come up with around a dozen guys who had the same situation, three or four years on the bench and a chance. Here's the list, quoted from my post just above. Ten? That's what, fourteen? There have been tons of guys in Tyrod's position, guys who didn't have experience for three or four years and then got their chance to start. Problem is that nearly all of them aren't good enough. And the ones who are have shown it pretty much immediately. Again, of all guys who hadn't proven themselves through six years as franchise guys, almost none have later improved enough to become franchise guys. That's the likely result with Tyrod. It'd be much better for the Bills if he makes that major leap upwards. He's a great guy. I'm rooting for him. History shows that his chances are far from good.

Are you really trying to tell me that you think that if we went back say ten years and checked the top four teams or so that it would all come out even? Seriously? Of course there are exceptions. That's why I said, "Not that every year will be like that, of course, but passing is more important than running." But it's by far the most common model of successfully building a Super Bowl winner. Oh, and those Broncos had Peyton Manning at QB for most of the year, though they supplemented with Brock Osweiler. Having Manning helped them. A lot. Their offense that year had four fourth quarter comebacks and four game-winning drives, according to ProFootballReference. He wasn't the old Peyton Manning, not even close. But he was still Peyton Manning. You can indeed win in many ways. As I have said before, I don't really care about winning alone. I care about being competitive for a title. Sneaking into the playoffs as a fodder team would mean little or nothing to me. And yeah, you can win a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer. It's just the odds are much much worse that way. I see we agree about the record likely being around .500. Unfortunately. Not quite on Hauschka, though. I'm not sure he'll be better, just hopeful. I don't know enough about kickers to have much of an intelligent opinion. But as for the would've / could've / should'ves, I've never bought into that. Sure you can find some games that were lost and shouldn't have been. You can also find games that were won with the same kinds of ifs ands and buts. To me, it looks like you're adding four games there, not two. I'm with Parcells, you are what your record says you are. Guess we can agree to disagree on some of this stuff.

The four teams in the conference championship games were all in the top seven, Kirby. And you must have noticed that to start making claims about "teams with a bye." This means something. Are there other ways to end up high on that list? Sure, particularly for teams that are playing catchup a lot or just don't have a running game. But you know the old "some are more equal than others," canard. Same for stats. Being a good running team is less equal than the others. Last year those same four teams in the conference championships were 12th, 16th, 19th and 30th at running. All top seven at passing. Not that every year will be like that, of course, but passing is more important than running. And pass defense is more important than run defense. All four are important, but - and I know this seems tired enough to have to collect social security but it's still true - it's a passing league. Agree with you on game management. I'm not as confident about Hauschka as you but i'm hoping. IMHO scheme will be important as the years pass but won't see us making huge improvements the first year as guys get used to it. And I don't think a game or two makes or breaks a 7-9 team, not for being a competitive team anyway. My guess right now is another 7-9 or even 6-10 but with things looking better in 2018. It's early, though.

Nope. None of those guys, not a single one, was not a franchise QB by their fifth year. In Steve Young's fifth year he completed 69.6% of his passes, had an unbelievable 10.9 yards per attempt and nearly a 3:1 TD:INT ration at a time in the league when that was top two. Yeah, he wasn't a starter, because he was behind Montana but he was absolutely a terrific QB by that time and everyone knew it. In Kurt Warner's SECOND season in the league he was a first-team All-Pro. Not just a Pro Bowler, a first-team All-Pro. In Aaron Rodgers' fourth year in the league - his first as a starter - he was 4th in yards, 4th in TDs, 11th in YPA, 7th in passer rating. And then he didn't regress, he greatly improved his next year. These guys were all playing at an unquestionable franchise level by their fourth year. None of them even begin to qualify. And my question is extremely fair. The reason Tyrod has only been the franchise QB for two years now is because he was drafted by a team that needed a backup and he never forced them to look at him in a different way. There have been probably dozens and dozens of guys who didn't play much for three or four years at the beginning of their careers and then got a chance. Cassel. Schaub. Derek Anderson. Shaun Hill. Seneca Wallace. Damon Huard. Rex Grossman. David Garrard. Jay Fiedler. Hell, our own Kelly Holcomb. Jim Miller. Steve Beuerlein. That's, what, a dozen guys who had only a few little bit of work for three or four years or even more and eventually got their chance to be the starter. None were good enough and none developed and became franchise guys. Jake Delhomme was on the bench for two years before he started. But he quickly became a borderline franchise guy. He was what he was from pretty early on, a gutsy guy who was never going to be a top ten or twelve guy but was Carolina's franchise guy for years. The really good ones - Romo, for example, who sat the bench for two and a half years but looked good very quickly once he got out there - had become ready so that they were able to seize their chance like Rodgers. Of the ones who couldn't, none have even then later turned around and become franchise guys after not proving themselves as such for six years. Basically, Gannon is it. There's an argument to be made for Plunkett, though I disagree. And that's it. Maybe you can find another one somewhere, but I can't and I've asked others before and nobody else could either. It's simply extremely rare. Again, nope. He sat out for his first four years but after that immediately established himself. In his fifth year, his first as a starter, he was 12th in yards, 5th in TDs. Sixth year, 12th and 8th. He was off to the races very quickly.

Tyrod had a really good college career but it was about a lot more than his size that he didn't get drafted till later. 2007 72/134 53.7% 927 yards ... 5 TDs, 3 INTs 2008 99/173 57.2% 1036 yards ... 2 TDs, 7 INTs 2009 136/243 56.0% 2311 yards ... 13 TDs, 5 INTs 2010 188/315 59.7% 2743 yards ... 24 TDs, 5 INTs Those aren't really that impressive for college. They played 14 games in 2010 and that's not a lot of passes or production in the passing game for 14 games. He was already keeping his INTs down but also showing problems in the passing game. He was also already an absolutely excellent runner. But his height wasn't the only reason he was drafted later. Probably not even the main reason.

It may not be what you want to hear but from McDermott's POV the rationale is clear. He wants to do what he can to win this year. I'm not thrilled with it either, I'd rather have let Tyrod go and rebuilt with someone like Yates as the starter, personally. But if you care about this year and you want everyone to know it, you keep Tyrod and Yates, both. Yates did alright in Texas a couple of years ago as an injury replacement.