Thurman#1

Agreed. And if fans were willing to stay away, they'd have done it long ago. There's hunger for football. It's why we're all on these boards. We need it. The players could win a strike easily. Depends on the situation, how long they stay out, how united they are .... Just because the owners won the last one doesn't mean they win them all. History shows they don't. No way the players would get everything they want, but they could get a good deal for their side. Yeah, because there are so few unmotivated players now in the NFL with partially guaranteed contracts. And the NBA hasn't exactly been destroyed even though they have plenty of unmotivated guys and guaranteed contracts. Most players are motivated beyond belief. Some aren't. I don't think it's a money issue in most cases, just a personality issue. I doubt we'd see much more laziness with guaranteed contracts. Some, of course, but I doubt it would take a huge leap up. Not that I think we'll see fully guaranteed contracts in football in the near future. But eventually? Maybe. Yeah, guarantees at least in case of injury make some real sense. The whole thing's a Gordian knot. It'll be interesting in three years when the new contract has to be negotiated. Aggravating, though.

Andrew Luck stayed in school another year. It could very easily happen.

Thanks. And that's the concern. Can't reply to BuffAlone's reply as he formatted it strangely, but he's saying that Ragland's pro day was faster. Yeah, so is nearly everyone's. The playing field at pro days isn't all that level. He may be right that Ragland turns out to be a good one. Dunno. But his speed is a concern and I'm not buying that he's got the same speed as a lot of successful LBs these days. I don't think he does. He'll have to make up for his speed with terrific instincts and smarts. Maybe he can. Maybe he'll be on the field a lot. Hope so, but I'm sure not counting on it.

In itself, that isn't generally a good thing. New players take time to become accustomed to the new team new players and new scheme and the rooks wear out a bit early. New schemes often take a while to internalize so that the players play fast. I'm not sure yet that we'll have significantly improved coaching. But assuming we do, it's indeed likely to make a difference, but that difference will likely come in the second and third year. Sometimes there are big leaps up with new coaches implementing new schemes on teams that were around 7-9 the year before. Just not often.

4.72 40 time. Is that really "on a part with many other good lbers" these days? Can you name, say, 12? Agreed he's a tackling machine. The question is likely sideline to sideline speed and pass coverage. I don't know how he'll turn out. It'll be interesting to see. To get back to the 40 time, here are the LBs at the combine who got a time as slow as Ragland or slower: 2017: Keith Kelsey, Kevin Davis, Ellis Brooks, Ryan Anderson, Hardy Nickerson, Ben Gedeon, Connor Harris, Devonte Fields 2016: Cory Littleton, Joe Schobert, Terrance Smith, Beniquez Brown, Steve Longa, Jordan Jenkins, Eric Striker, Kris Frost, Nick Vigil, Ragland himself, Nick Kwiatkoski, Jared Norris, CJ Johnson, Tyler Matakevich, Steven Daniels, Kentrell Brothers, Scooby Wright, Josh Forrest, Gionni Paul 2015: Curtis Grant, Cameron Nwosu, Ramik Wilson, Damien Wilson DJ Lynch, Qushaun Lee, Lamar Dawson, Michael Taylor, Hayes Pullard, Denzel Perryman, AJ Johnson, Max Morgan, Quayshawn Nealy, Karl Mickelsen, Chase Williams, Jeff Luc, David Mayo, John Timu, Amarlo Herrera, Steve Edmond, Jabral Johnson, AJ Tarpley, Cole Farrand, Trey DePriest, Terrance Plummer, Paul Dawson, Taiwan Jones, Henry Coley, Marcus Rush, Dyshawn Davis, Norkeithus, LeBrandon Richardson, Alani Fua, James Vaughters, Xzavier Dickson, Hau'oli Kikaha, Yannik Cudjoe-Virgil, Cameroy Lynch, Braylon Mitchell, Efrem Oliphant, Thurston, Armbrister, Houston Bates, Kyle Emanuel, Stephon Sanders, Michael Odiari, Matt Robinson, Nick Richardson, Geneo Grissom, CJ Olaniyan, Tank Jakes, Kyle Woestmann, Max Valles, Lorenzo Mauldin, David Helton, Chi Chi Ariguzo, Martrell Spaight, Brennen Beyer, Markus Golden, JR Taval, Aaron Davis, Tony Washington 2014: Christian Kirksey, Jonathan Newsome, Anthony Hitchens, Carl Bradford, Jordan Zumwalt, Kasim Edebali, Tyler Starr, Jonathan Brown, Christian Jones, Max Bullough, James Morris, Chris Borland, Preston Brown, Jeremiah George Honestly, I didn't recognize many names there except for a few Bills, but I don't watch too many non-Bills games. Are there a lot of good players there? His speed is a legitimate concern. Again, I don't know how this will turn out, but it's something that will need to be watched. How many snaps will he get? How effective will he be in coverage? I'd be a bit depressed if Ragland was our B Spikes of 2014 In 2014, Spikes played in 46.4% of our defensive snaps. IMHO that would not be good if that's how much Ragland sees the field. And since 2014, two-down LBs snaps have further dropped.

Super Bowl XX with Tony Eason against the Bears.

Did he do something that was against the law? Yeah. So it wasn't overreacting by the cops. It was doing their jobs.

Agreed that the dot plots show that he went to the outside thirds of the field more. But as I extensively documented on the old site, in 2015 his success in the deep and intermediate middle thirds was awful, including a much larger than expected number of his INTs considering he threw very few passes there. I didn't go through every pass this last year in 2016 so I can't say, and would be willing to believe he improved. But as I've pointed out again and again, the PFF stats and the ESPN stats both miss the point. Tyrod throws well not just outside the hashes but also for another two to three yards inside them. And he also goes there a lot. Both PFF and ESPN consider those passes to an area he went to often and well to be "the middle." Which it isn't. Tyrod throws often and well to the outside third of the field and not often and at least in 2015 not so well to the middle third of the field. Of course, dividing the passes that way is a ridiculous amount of work, as I discovered. So after I did it play by play in 2015 I I haven't found anyone else who has done it. So yeah, his stats "to the middle" look good because the area of the outside that he throws to often and well is being considered "the middle" by these folks, so they throw all his good stats in with the far fewer balls he threw to the middle third and the stats from those just-inside-the-hashes passes overwhelm the stats for the balls actually thrown to the area Tyrod has trouble with. Again, Tyrod has trouble with one area, the deep and intermediate middle third. Throw in stats from other areas he's better at, like the area just inside the hashes or the area in the middle but short, in the first ten yards, and yeah, those areas he's strong in cover up the tendencies in the areas he's weak in.

Right, so if you assume that an OC is dumb enough to totally avoid tailoring his offense in any way to his QB ... which would be probably the first time in history that had ever been completely avoided ... then you can indeed baselessly guess that it wasn't tailored for the personnel on the team, including the quarterback. But in fact, that would be wrong. Before 2016, after a year working with Tyrod and the Bills personnel, Roman said that they were "... just opening up, expanding our offense a little bit." Didn't work out. And then when they fired him what did Anthony Lynn say in his opening press conference were going to be the changes he was going to make? Simplifying the offense and specifically, simplifying the reads. Whoops!! Q: "How do you help Tyrod Taylor attack the middle of the field more?" A: " Well, you know, just simplifying pass reads. Coach Lee does a helluva job working with his mechanics as far as throwing the football. He's a smaller guy so sometimes we might have to move the pocket for him and if they want to giv us those throws outside the hash, we'll take 'em. If they want to give 'em down the field, we'll take 'em. I'm not going to focus on just trying to get the football in one area of the field but that does open things up outside if we can get that done, don't get me wrong. " So the idea that they didn't adjust tailor things to Tyrod just simply flies in the face of the facts. Just because the particular article you're quoting doesn't point out the facts that are inconvenient for your argument doesn't mean they weren't happening.

Yeah, I think it's fair to call him better than average if you factor in his run game. But if you look at only his passing game, which simply is the most important thing for a QB, he's slightly below average this last year after people figured out how to defend him. So yeah, always look to upgrade ... until you get a QB who is somewhere in the top ten or twelve in the passing game. At that point you finally can take new QB out of the number one on your priority list. If Tyrod somehow becomes that guy ... terrific. But the number of QBs who have become real franchise QBs after seven years in the league is pretty much Rich Gannon and nobody else. The odds against it are very high. Not impossible, though.

Again, more "If things go really really well, then they'll have gone really really well, so ... championship!!!!!" Keeping their offense on the sidelines and surrendering less big plays on defense would indeed have us more competitive in every game. It's just unlikely that such major improvements will occur so quickly in the new regime's term. If you're talking about the long term, I'm really hopeful that you're right. If you're talking about the short-term, his vision is likely to be "in progress" this year. When schemes switch it generally takes time for major improvements to show. And part of the time it takes is to weed out the guys who don't fit the new vision and system and to bring in guys who do.

Yeah, but the thing is that 40 yards more passing per game is huge. It's the difference between being 24th in the league last year (the Eagles at 224.1 YPG and 5th in the league last year (ahead of the Colts and Steelers tied for 5th with 262.6 YPG. To put that in perspective, instead of looking at passing yards, let's look at points scored. That's like saying "All we have to do is score six more points per game (the difference between 24th in the league and 5th in the league) and we'd be pretty good. Yeah of course you would. But scoring six more points per game is very hard. Same as passing for 40 more yards per game. "All we have to do ... " misrepresents the difficulty here. More like "Here's the major mountain we would have to climb to ..." That's being preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty optimistic about Shaq. If we put him as a guy who might make the Pro Bowl, we'd have to say that it's also true of about half of the guys at the position.

Bless you for your optimism. But this is the same stuff we hear every year. And virtually all of it could be said for every other bad to mediocre team in the league if you just change the names. What it amounts to is essentially "if things go really really well, then things would go really really well, and therefore I think there's a good chance that things will go really really well." Again, bless you, but the odds are very high against it. This year, anyway. Turnarounds when they happen generally - not every single time, but generally - take time.

Top five? Very unlikely. Not impossible. McDermott defenses in the past have taken two to three years to get really good. When you switch schemes that's what you should generally expect.

Used in coverage "quite a bit" is a real exaggeration. I remember seeing a story after the 2015 season when all the DLs complained about it showing that each DL had averaged a bit over a play a game in coverage. This was a change-up, not something they were doing all the time. But I agree that Dareus just hasn't been a force the past couple of years.

32 teams times 52 players equals 1664. 5% of that would be 83 players. Last year they got to 133 invites and were still going on the Tuesday before the Sunday game. http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/197015/2016-nfl-pro-bowl-most-declined-invitation-in-history And that 1664 is greatly puffed up by special teams guys, third-stringers, etc. Being voted in is still a real honor. Being invited as an alternate just isn't a real big deal these days. "Players decline invitations for a variety of reasons, including injuries and whether they are a member of a Super Bowl entrant. But this year has produced an increased number of players who were simply uninterested. "That has forced the league to push far down its list of alternates to fill some positions. Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston, named Monday as a replacement, was the eighth player at his position to be either invited or announced in addition to the six quarterbacks voted in. The Cincinnati Bengals' Adam Jones, named Tuesday, was the seventh alternate at cornerback." "The quarterback position has been especially hard hit. The Seattle Seahawks' Russell Wilson is the only player voted in who remains on the roster. Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton is playing in Super Bowl 50, but the New England Patriots' Tom Brady, the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rodgers, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger and the Arizona Cardinals' Carson Palmer have all backed out." "Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, the first alternate, couldn't play because of a thumb injury that caused him to miss the playoffs. The San Diego Chargers' Philip Rivers declined an alternate invitation and the New Orleans Saints' Drew Brees is presumed to have done the same." "That left this collection of quarterbacks for the game: Wilson, the Oakland Raiders' Derek Carr, the New York Giants' Eli Manning, the Buffalo Bills' Tyrod Taylor, the Minnesota Vikings' Teddy Bridgewater and Winston." Let's review. That's fourteen QBs invited, out of 32 teams. Come on. Let's stop pretending that's a very big deal. Not 5% in any way shape or form.

"Possibly the best defensive lineman in the 2016 NFL draft"? That's really pushing it. Bosa was drafted #3 for a reason. And Buckner was #7 for good reason too. Lawson looks like he could be a very good player if used well, but he was never likely to be drafted in the top six. I don't think that's what Rex was hoping for when he was drafted. But yeah, it's a reasonable expectation. Tough dude, smart, good tackler, not a physical freak but looks like a good football player.

So, if things go well, then things will go well. This is much the same thing we've heard again and again. Every year, in fact. And with the details of the plays taken out it's what every team is hearing ... that we're tailoring our offense/defense to our players strengths and this will allow us to get better. Teams that switch coaches say this. Our schemes are better for our guys, so this will improve us. Thing is, defenses know those schemes and ways to counteract them. Defenses build around taking away offensive players' strengths and forcing them to rely on their weaknesses. I could imagine this might work to some degree, especially in the early weeks. I just don't see it resulting in the major improvements this article and many similar ones hope for. It'd be nice if I was wrong. I can see this defense making major improvements under McDermott. But I doubt it will take full effect for a year or two. We'll see.

We do, lots of them. An absolute certainty, no. But we know what's likely. No, Tyrod wasn't the reason we missed the playoffs. Nor was the defense. The reason - as it always is - was the Buffalo Bills and how good they were. But Tyrod was part of the reason. As was the defense. And the rest of the laundry list of problems.

I don't know much about Lynch, really, but I think you're underestimating Siemian. Siemian went into his first NFL action, in his second year, and came up with an 84.9 passer rating. And it was behind an OL that wasn't doing him any favors. He could be a good one. Still too early to say, but he did well for what a young inexperienced guy he is, a guy who wasn't exactly a first-rounder either. I think they're gonna be pretty good. But I'm no Nostradamus. We'll see.

Exhibit B of why doing a total rebuild makes a great deal of sense in the NFL is the other apparently very good QBs who'll be available. And Exhibit C would be what Cleveland did last year, drafting a sensational defensive difference maker and still having a ton of draft capital and being able to take a very reasonable flier on Kizer because of all the capital they have. Rebuilding isn't a guarantee. But it raises your odds. A lot if your talent is mediocre and you need a QB and difference makers.

Saying pretty much any QB in his second year is hopeless doesn't really make sense. Lynch and Siemian both have a reasonable chance to be good. Having two young guys with some promise is a very very good thing for them. It certainly is a bold prediction. I'd urge you not to bet the rent on it. Or even a bologna sandwich. They still have that defense. 8.5 is the over for them. And 6 for the Bills. Just saying. Respectfully disagree. They're promoting from within and probably will be using most of Phillips' system, and the new guy was supposed to be a serious up-and-comer. If they were switching schemes, I'd agree. It doesn't look like they are.

We'll see. I think you're being very optimistic indeed. They were 9-7 and they didn't get worse. I do like that we get them at home, that's a big advantage against Denver.

Automatic loss, no. Quite likely loss to Denver, yeah, I think so and so do most. Siemian was average, I'd agree, but in his second year in the league. He's likely to be improved and so is Lynch. I agree that Wade was a loss, but IMHO not a huge one. They have the personnel on defense to yet again be very very good. And they promoted from within which means a scheme change will not be necessary.

Pro Bowls - as an alternate - mean very little these days. When they held it in Hawaii guys wanted to go but these days guys discover dangerous cuticle injuries that prevent them from playing. Can't speak for Gugny, but I personally want him to be a top ten to twelve passing QB. Because teams with guys like that behind center are overwhelmingly the teams that win Super Bowls. That's how much better I want him or the next Bills QB to be.