Thurman#1

That tied him for 12th out of 15 LBs, a three-way tie for second-slowest. One guy was slower, one one-hundredth of a second slower. Milano and Vallejo tied each other for 8th out of 15. The 40 isn't the be-all and end-all measurement, especially for LBs, but you brought it up.

Kuechly is much more explosive, so it's not in every way. There's a lot of similarity in smarts and the run game, but the athletic measurements show what the differences are. Kuechly's vertical jump was 38, for instance and Ragland's 31 1/2. Same sort of thing with the 10 and 20 yard splits of the 40 times, for instance. Kuechly starts faster, and quite a bit so. I'm not as positive as some on here, but maybe they're right. I hope so. At absolute minimum he should be fun to watch on run downs. It'll be very interesting to see how many snaps they have him out there. Kuechly appeared last year on 61.3% of Carolina's snaps, so maybe that part will be very comparable indeed.

John, Dan Snyder is a self-made billionaire too. Doesn't mean he's ever going to be good at being an NFL owner. Or that he won't be fooled, even for a long time. I don't know what to think about the Pegulas yet, but I haven't liked what I've seen till now. I'm a bit more hopeful with the new group, but here's what I can tell you. Getting rich in business does not mean you'll be a good owner. Nearly every owner in the league at this point was wildly successful in business before picking up their team. And yet there are some bad owner and franchises that don't seem to go anywhere.

It's not all that clear. Here's what else happens all the time. Coaches who have a guy who they're 95% sure isn't the answer, and costs too much. So they tell him that if he wants to be paid at the standards his current contract stipulates, it'll have to be elsewhere. The guy bows to pressure and accepts a lot less money and a lot less of a guarantee. Now the team isn't paying too much for him if he turns out to be a one-year bridge guy which is what they think he probably is. So they take a good long look at the draft but either decide the answer isn't there or discover that maybe the one guy they might possibly have been interested in isn't still there when their draft spot arrives. They've also looked at next year's crop and think it's better, so they trade back thinking that it's smarter to wait till next year and use the current guy as a bridge guy. And then they grab the most pro-ready guy in the draft, a guy who is available in the 5th round because though he can make all the NFL throws, he hasn't got a gun by any means, figuring the more stuff they throw at the wall the more chance one will stick. That sort of thing happens all the time too. My guess is that they think there's very little chance Tyrod becomes the guy, but thought that an aggressive search wasn't going to be productive this year, unless they thought Trubisky was the only guy with a chance but not a high enough chance to go up that high. And that rather than investing in him with any real hope that he ever becomes a franchise guy but that they invest only bridge money in him expecting that's what he'll be. You've argued it's a prove-it deal rather than a bridge deal. That sounds like a real positive way to frame things, and you'd hope Tyrod has self-confidence enough to think that way but it is basically a nice way to spin things. Agreed we'll have to wait and see. We can at least see that the same way.

With our roster of WRs, I don't think that's likely, excepting injury of course. He'll probably start, particularly if they have 3 WRs on the field.

Yup. But their teams might well not have let them go in the middle of draft season. Hard to say.

He's not advocating a retread. He does say he'd have preferred a veteran football guy with experience for GM. But doesn't advocate anybody. And he's making fun of himself here, as he always does in those columns featuring his buddy Rex at the bar. An example: "Typical negativity," Rex snarled. "You'd find something bad to say about 70 degrees and sunny. You ran off Whaley and ripped the Pegulas for dysfunction. So they got Brandon Beane for GM, stole Joe Schoen from Miami to be his assistant, and now they get Gaine on top of it. Do you hit the ground unhappy in the morning?" There's nothing wrong with this. It's kinda funny.

Stop it? No. But lessening the impact lessens the crashing.

Our team in 2010 fit that definition pretty well. We cut our old guys, even the ones with talent. And as for the minimum spending rule on the cap keeping this from happening, it doesn't. It's doable. Hell, Cleveland is doing it. Know how much unspent money they rolled over from last year? $50 million. It's very doable. There's major misunderstanding about the minimum cap floor rules. You don't have to spend 89% of your cap each year. That is a requirement not for one year but over a four year period. That's why Cleveland could leave so much unspent, and why any team wanting to rebuild could do the same. And a smart cap wizard can arrange to bump up the money in the correct years. You give your expensive guys not bonuses but high guaranteed salaries in the first year so that next year you don't have amortized bonuses and your cap drops a lot and you've got room. And if you do underspend over four years, the penalty is really pretty minimal ... you have to give the amount you underspent by to your own players by some distribution that the Players Association will decide. The Bills aren't rebuilding. If they were, they'd have jettisoned Kyle Williams (age 33), LeSean McCoy (29 in July, with a ton of mileage on him), traded Incognito (33), wouldn't have signed Lorenzo Alexander (33) and cut him if you can't, and traded Tyrod. Teams doing a real rebuild get rid of players who won't be around to help them three or four years down the road when they get good. Especially if they're expensive. And if there's dead cap that's no problem, just let it all hit the cap in 2017 and don't carry it over. You free up a ton of space in future years when you will need it. We aren't rebuilding. I thought they should have, but the decisions they made, particularly keeping Tyrod, made it very clear they aren't.

This year? No. They've got some time. How much isn't clear, but a lot more than a year unless in some way they end up not just losing it a lot but also looking stupid and undisciplined ala the Ryan Brothers. I just can't see that happening.

That's what fans should do, maybe but since the draft has become so popular, looking at what we need and how to fill it in the draft is even more common than ever and actually reasonable. But yeah, every draft season the next year's guys are absolutely terrific. Saw a bunch of early articles before last season predicting Kaaya and Watson going one-two in this draft. Next year's guys are always over-rated as they haven't gone through the pre-draft hurricane of attention and evaluation. No doubt whatsoever we will hear the same thing this year, that the 2019 guys put the 2018 guys to shame. Yeah, Luck and Peyton are about it as far as sure-fire. That's what makes it tough on the scouts.

No, they probably don't look at it that way. That $10.5 mill will be down to around $7 mill or so after they sign their draftees, and the Bills always go into the season with around $6 mill available for them to use on injury replacements. The Panthers last year had $13 mill unused which they rolled over into this year, so it's not like they spend right up to the cap either. They could easily cut a guy or two down the line who could clear up some space, but they have very little space available right now. In any case, guard isn't a big area of need right now.

We're still really constricted on the cap next year. Right now we've got only 20 guys earning over $1 mill in base salary next year. That's because we don't have a lot of talent signed yet. Sammy, for instance, isn't signed for next year. They might easily sign Kyle for another contract if he's playing well. And they'll need to re-sign some guys or bring in new ones. At DL for example, next year they only have six guys under contract right now: Dareus and Lawson, and then Ryan Davis, Adolphus Washington, Marquavious Lewis and Nigel Williams. They're really doing a great job getting themselves headed in the right direction with cap management, but the last regime's cap largesse will take another year or so to straighten out. As for Tyrod, if they let him go before the season he would count $8.64 mill against the cap, all dead money. If they kept Tyrod instead, he will count $18.08 mill against the cap, $10 mill in salary, $6 mill in a bonus he will receive in March and $2.08 mill in amortized signing bonus. So if they cut him they would save nearly $10 mill immediately on the cap. They could easily do that. Easily. Particularly if after having worked with him they decide he's close to his ceiling and his ceiling isn't high enough to give them any likelihood of bringing a title here with him at QB. Dunno if they'll decide that, but they could. As for whether we would regress in 2018 without him, there's no way to say that since we don't know who will be on the roster next year or how much improved the guys we have now will be. And yeah people seem obsessed with cap room. It's absolutely crucial. Guys get cut because of a lack of it all the time. The only thing that would not make sense is to pretend cap room is not hugely important. Tyrod could very very easily be cut before the 2018 season. That's how the contract is structured. Doesn't mean he will be cut, but it's structured that way for a reason and the reason is that if they decide they don't want him the cap ramifications won't make it hard to cut him. A different QB. That's pretty much all that needs to be said when you're talking about 2018. Someone else. The one they draft in 2018, maybe or Peterman if he improves. Those would be the best guesses if Tyrod is gone. Which could happen. Or not. But both are very possible.

The real name for this stat, on real sites, is "TEAM wins in games started by this quarterback (regular season)" Note the "Team" part. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/T/TaylTy00.htm Just run your cursor over "QBRec" and you'll see the real name. So he was correct. Wins are a team stat, not a QB stat.

First, agreed that this isn't a rebuild, and that 2010 really was. If it were a rebuild now, we certainly wouldn't have invited Kyle Williams back, for instance, nor McCoy nor Lorenzo Alexander nor Incognito. When you're rebuilding, you jettison the older talent on your roster because you don't really care about this year and those guys won't be around by the time you get good. This isn't a rebuild, there's no question about it. But saying that Stevie Johnson and Kelsay were our best players back then is just not reasonable. Kyle Williams was on the Bills and kicking butt. Jairus Byrd had 9 INTs and was a second-team All-Pro, not just Pro Bowl, but All-Pro. Poz was on that team and playing really well, and Freddy Jackson was earning 1433 yards from scrimmage and averaging 4.5 YPA, while Marshawn Lynch racked up 3.8 YPA behind the same line here. Not that our roster then was as strong as today's group. It wasn't. But you said, "It was generally agreed last season that the Bills had one of the better rosters in the conference, and they still do," and I don't think too many people really thought that outside Bills fandom. I know I thought that roster wasn't going to take us to more than about 8 wins, maybe 9 if things fell well. From what I remember, people thought we had strong areas such as the DL and 4/5 OLs and CB and RB and Sammy if he was healthy and Clay at TE, as well as weak areas such as both safeties and RT and QB and WR and questions at ILB.. Overall, mixed.

Ever see the comments on why Marino took over as QB so early? They said that they expected him to be the #2 that first year. And weren't surprised or overly impressed to see that he was leading the #1 offense to TDs against the #2 defense. But that he was also leading the #2 offense to TDs over the #1 defense. That changed their view. It wasn't that the starter was playing badly. It was just that Marino outplayed him. When a guy plays better that the other guy it's not hard to notice. There'll be a chance. No, I don't think it'll happen. And if they play roughly equal, that would be a win for Tyrod. But when you folks say you know what's going to happen, you're wrong. You know what's likely to happen. Those are very reasonable educated guesses, indeed by far the most probably outcomes. They are not facts. This is it exactly.

I know you don't see it, but your description there of that throw to Clay at 8:15 in the Pats game is very questionable. It's a bang-bang play, it's terrific coverage at the end, McCourty makes slight contact with Clay's lower body as he starts to extend and dive an instant before the catch which makes it a very difficult one. And yeah I guess you could say it hit his hand, but what actually happened is that it grazed his pinky. I just went back and watched it a number of times, both on the standard view and the replay and in the All-22, and that play is at best questionable. And while it wasn't a bad throw, it sure wasn't as good as it could've been. McCourty was coming from the inside, from safety, and Tyrod's throw instead of leading Clay further outside and away, pulled him slightly back towards McCourty allowing McCourty to catch up to Clay and make contact with him. The contact causes his body to slightly revolve and seems to make it impossible for him to get his right hand in, though it's very questionable whether he'd have been able to reach it anyway. Further outside and a bit shorter and it would've had a better chance. Calling it an overthrow is a reasonable interpretation, as with the contact, slight though it was, and the ball's distance it's in an extremely difficult position Clay is in. It would have been an incredible catch if he'd made it. That could reasonably be called several ways. He had to twist his body so awkwardly to make the try that he came down awkwardly and injured himself. As for Peterman not being a legitimate 1st round prospect, neither was Brady. That means nothing. Guys have outperformed their draft status before and will again. And rookies have beaten out vets (particularly unspectacular vets) before and will again. Yeah, it's certainly unlikely in this case, but not impossible. Cunningham beat out Jaworski, for instance and that was totally unexpected. Or Marino taking over for Woodley who had led the Fins to the SB the year before. And drops are very meticulously tracked, though in some cases it's simply an opinion. And that Clay play is an excellent example of that. That this comes down to opinion is the case for Fahey as much as it is for the Washington Post, the standard for that metric. http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/tmleaders.asp?range=NFL&rank=232&type=Receiving Yes, he should stop, though he's absolutely correct on that. I was astonished to see it on the All-22, but I watched nine full games, over and over again on the All-22. And there were very very few plays when Tyrod didn't have a guy significantly open.

You would think not, that he wouldn't be handed it. The odds on him winning it will be very high indeed, though.

Correct. It was the fault of the Buffalo Bills.

The ones who who use the alphabet. And the ones who sometimes say things I disagree with.

Sure it is. Now that they have a GM, they'll begin the process of addressing it. Hopefully they'll do a good job. When we see what they do we should maybe talk about it.

Both. Seriously, that's the answer. But if you had to pick one, the run game was so terrific for the offense and that doesn't need improvement. The defense would take priority. But the pass game would not be far behind. Enough for me of this thread for quite a while. Boring and a crusade.

No but it was part of the reason. Again, 16th in yards, didn't put the D in great field position. They were certainly better than the D but weren't a top ten unit. Sure the defense needs to be improved. Nobody is arguing that. So does the passing game of the offense.

The Pats had the #8 defense. Oh, I see your problem here, dude, defenses and offenses are both ranked by yards, not by points, and for good reason. Points is much more of a team stat than is yards. Yards better isolates defensive units from the offense and STs and also isolates offensive units from defense and STs. Defenses aren't included at all in the offensive yards stat, but they do score points. And they have a huge hand in setting up a lot of points with good field position. When the defense intercepts a pass and runs it back to the one and the offense loses 27 yards on two sacks and a penalty but the kicker converts, the points stat says "Nice, the offense did a great job, add three points to the Bills scoring." Same when a linebacker runs a fumble in for a touchdown or a returner runs back a kick for a TD, the points stat says "Way to go offense, seven points added to your total." Again, yards is how both offenses and defenses are rated. For a reason. Yeah, the Bills did well in scoring points. A lot of that was due to good field position and the run game scoring 29 TDs while the pass game scored 17. A lot of the reason the Bills defense allowed a lot of points was that they were left in the 23rd worst field position on average. The offense and STs did them no favors whatsoever.

I guess if 16th can be considered "one of the top in the NFL" then yeah, we were one of the top offenses. Neither side was all that good. The offense was better. But there were plenty of games where they didn't show up either. And when they did it was mostly the run game.