Thurman#1

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.

It's funny how every year it's the OC's fault that the passing game sucks. Then the next year they bring in a new OC and we fail again and it's the new OC's fault. Year after year. Weird coincidence.

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.