Thurman#1

Mills isn't a very good player. If it's the play at 0:58 as you said, Bosa simply gets a faster start and beats him. Guys don't not play because they don't like the QB, not guys in Mills' situation. Mills is fighting for a spot on this roster or any other next year and he knows it. Not playing would be a form of throwing away his career. This is just a case of a terrific player completely outplaying a below average player. Happens all the time to great players, which is a large part of what makes them great. And it seems to have been true. He wasn't playing well here even when he played. He just wasn't. Is it that he didn't fit the system or that he just wasn't trying very hard? Hard to say, but he wasn't. And how terrific will he look in Jax if he gets caught with more fake marijuana and misses a season? Marcell is a wildly talented guy but he seems to play hard when he feels like it and is a suspension risk constantly. Sometimes awful trades are awfully awfully necessary. Sometimes they're the best of a bunch of bad options. This appears to me to have been one of those times.

I just don't feel there was much of an opportunity lost. Seemed to me like they had the opportunity to go 8-8 or maybe 9-7 and even if they made the playoffs be ejected efficiently the minute they played a decent team. That's not a huge missed opportunity, IMHO. I saw the four Super Bowls. It's hard for me to get excited over a one-and-done playoff appearance. I want them to be a consistently good team, a team that has a shot at competing for a championship most years. Less than a legitimate chance at a title doesn't mean much to me. I don't think this was a golden opportunity. More like maybe aluminum. If they actually get good in the next two or three years, however they do it and with whatever QB, this won't be talked about for decades. It'll be forgotten quickly.

Smart in terms of avoiding turnovers. Not smart in terms of producing yards. He's got a YPA of 6.6. That's 29th in the league. He appears to be absolutely unwilling to take a risk even when it's called for. Don't remember the exact numbers, but those two checkdowns on third and more than ten yards in this last game, one when we were down 30-3 ... those weren't smart plays.

Top ten in scoring in 2016. But below average in QB play in both years. It was our running game that got us top ten. Wouldn't have been enough to get us to be consistently competing for a Lombardi, which is their stated goal. And more, they've said that what they need in a QB is a guy who can play well from the pocket. Tyrod isn't that guy. And I think he was talking about Tyrod's results, not what the running game did. Oh, and we weren't top ten in scoring in '15. We were 12th. And we were 13th and 16th in yards those two years, which is a far better way to isolate offensive performance from STs and defense.

Speed matters, but worth remembering that other factors affect how little/much time you have to throw. For example, speed of decision-making and speed of release. I'd argue that decision-making speed is the most important of the three. Peterman appears to be very good at that, though it's very early days.

Agreed, Shaw, this is the question with Peterman. Or anyway, the most obvious question that we yet have any information about beyond the obvious ... a lack of experience at NFL level. I think he needs to go to a QB coach during the offseason. Increasing your arm strength is possible. It doesn't seem to be common, but it's been done, generally through coaching on the fundamentals of the throwing motion. Both Aaron Rodgers and Brady have improved their arm strength. But not everybody does. I'm hoping he can and does. But my guess is that we're going to be drafting a QB early next year if we can possibly get early enough to get a guy we like.

Great article. Thanks for posting it. I love this quote: "Consider this: Buffalo currently leads the NFL in turnover differential at +11 through nine games. And, incredibly, they have a point differential in the red (-12). "It cannot be overstated just how atrocious you have to be to pick up an extra possession per game and still get outscored on the season. Over the previous 20 seasons, 41 teams have posted a turnover differential of +1 per game or better over the course of a season. If rabid squirrels gnawed off both your hands, you’d still have enough fingers to count how many of those 41 teams had a negative point differential that season (and you know damn well that not a jury in the world would convict those squirrels)." I am very much a King fan, but that wasn't King, it was Garry Gramling.

IMHO it's impossible to know. The word I would use is "necessary." Not that it was necessary that week. But we have to know what we have with Peterman. We do know what we have with Tyrod and in the long term he simply isn't enough.

This isn't a tank, disguised or not. There's no such thing in football. And the one thing you can say about this administration is that they don't disguise things. They're open. They've openly said is that their main goal is building a team that can consistently compete for a title but at the same time they're trying to win this year. Their actions back this up exactly. It's also quite clear that if there is a conflict and they must choose either long-term or short-term, they choose long-term. Which is a very very good thing. Again, the Bills could go to the playoffs with eight wins this year in this poor playoff field. They could still easily pull that off. Throw out the four division leaders and the next two best teams are the Titans with six wins, the Bills with five, and then everybody else has four wins or less. They could still easily be a playoff team this year. I'm sure we're in agreement that even if they make the playoffs they won't go anywhere, but you can bet McDermott would work his ass off to try to put them in position to win. But they don't have the personnel. He has certainly NOT been underpaid here. His contract makes him the 20th highest paid QB in the league in terms of average money and he was higher last year. And he's generally considered between maybe 20th and 22nd best in the league. And they didn't force him to do squat. He could've left if he'd wanted. Agreed that we don't know yet how this move will turn out, but IMHO it had to be done for a team whose priority is building to be a consistent winner.

It didn't take this long. Teams figured it out around halfway through his first year. It's not that easy to do. Tyrod is quick and evasive. Good defenses can do it, bad teams have trouble. Vic's right that they might have made the playoffs. Still might. The AFC is so bad this year someone might make them with an 8-8 record. And then be ejected the minute they face a good team. I doubt the theory because I don't think the new management would feel compelled to do anything they didn't want to do. Even if they made the playoffs if they wanted to get rid of Tyrod, they would have done it, I think. But it's not an impossible theory. Thought-provoking. Take a look at the standings in the AFC. Only six teams are NOT below .500.

That's crazy, alright. How much good did it do us to get crazy over Rivers the least couple of years.

It's not my thread. I'm not the OP. And I'm absolutely not suggesting that win now is their highest priority. Nor should it be. They've said from instant one that their priority is building a program that can consistently compete for titles. Which is what their priority should be. They've also said that they'll try to win this year. You said "turning in your card." That means quit. Walk off the course. Don't finish. It's a stupid comparison. Are they going to forfeit their remaining games? We don't even know for sure Peterman won't perform better than Tyrod. Again, their main philosophy has these key words, as I said in my first post. "''Build.' 'Consistently.' Those are the key words. Words that aren't in there? 'Playoffs.' Reaching the playoffs as a fodder team in a poor conference isn't a terrible thing. But it doesn't mean a whole lot either." I stand by that. If they reach the playoffs this year it won't mean much of anything to me because they shouldn't be taken seriously as a title contender. They aren't good enough. I suppose if Peterman has a first year like Marino we might be a contender but I don't expect that to happen. That doesn't mean you care absolutely nothing about what happens this year. But it does mean that you prioritize titles and competing for them consistently. And I'm not saying losing now guarantees winning later. Or anything close to it. I'm saying something that shouldn't be news to anybody, that building an excellent, consistent organization from a consistently poor to mediocre one takes time, and that even though it takes time that it's precisely what should be priority number one for this team. Even if they'd kept Sammy and Dareus and all the rest, they weren't winning a title this year. Not even close.

Depends. None if you're Gibran Hamdan. Don't recall him catching on elsewhere and turning into a franchise guy. More than three seasons including 28 starts if you're Drew Brees, who looked bad enough for that period of time that the team paid a lot of draft capital to trade for Philip Rivers. Poor Rivers. The Bills almost certainly don't expect to come to an absolute conclusion in the rest of the season that will completely eliminate all doubt either way about Peterman. They want to get an idea. And as for your examples, it isn't as simple as you're saying. Something happened to Trent Edwards, whether it was a concussion or more likely just being infected with fear. He regressed. Hadn't been such a checkdown artist early. Look at his YPA. 6.1 and then 7.2, which is really pretty decent. than the regression to an awful 6.4, which was the best he ever did for the rest of his career, excepting his final year when he threw two passes. Same with Losman. Looks bad early. Shows major improvement and looks like he might possibly be good. And then they change the offensive system on him to the precision possession game, a system which totally goes away from his strengths, calculated to forcibly expose his weaknesses. He regressed. Again, his stats show a passer rating of 84.9 in 2006 and then a drop to 76.9% which he also never bested again except his last season with 10 attempts. No way to know if either guy would ever have been good enough under better circumstances, but it's possible.

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.