Thurman#1

Agreed it's not a full rebuild. But you don't have to rebuild for it to take time to get where you're going. When you switch schemes it generally takes time for the players to not just learn it but have it become natural. And the guys from the previous regime will often not fit your plans as well as you had hoped they would. It'll likely take time. Yes, Gilmore to the rookie White is going to be a downgrade. If things go well he will reach the same level when he has a year or two of NFL experience. Corners generally take some time, same as WRs and QBs. I hope you're right about McDermott's results being better than Rex's, but the odds aren't great the first year. Down the road is what's important anyway. Agreed. Created a hole where there had been a player performing his duties extremely well. But that's what happens when your last regime gets you in salary cap trouble. You lose some guys you're really prefer to have kept.

Well, yeah, if he were the young Jim Brown he'd have been signed. But that's beside the point. What he is is LeGarrette Blount, a very good but aging RB who is now less likely to get signed than he would have been if the Pats hadn't done this. And that's utter nonsense that only Bills fans care about comp picks. The teams that consistently lead the league in comp picks is also a list of the best and smartest franchises in football, the Pats, the Packers, the Ravens, the Steelers, etc. And it's not a matter of good teams getting them naturally, as the Steelers were also getting them when they sucked for three years in a row and the Niners are still getting them now. The teams that care about picks and are smart enough to use the rules to their advantage get them. The stupider teams don't. And what they do is simple, they raise your chances of getting a larger number of valuable players out of the draft. That's important. Which is why the smart franchises do this.

He's getting screwed because the date when comp picks are lost when you sign a guy has passed. And that means teams are more likely now to pick up a guy. But when the Pats did this, it means that if a team signs him they lose a comp pick even though the date passed. Which will absolutely hurt the market for him. It also screws him by putting a specific end deadline on when teams can pick him up, July 22nd. So he's screwed either way. Before July 22nd, if another team signs him they lose a comp pick, something that's not true for any other player in the league. After July 22nd, even if another team gets a running back injured, they can't sign him, he's restricted to the Pats, so if another team would pay more money than the $1.1 mill the Pats want to pay him, tough luck, they can't. It's not the same as Gillislee because he was signed during the period when every player in the league could only be signed by teams willing to lose a comp pick if they fit those guidelines. Now that deadline has passed and Blount is the only player in the league who will cost a team a comp pick. He's screwed. Vicious rule, but the NFLPA agreed to it when they signed the collective bargaining agreement. Still, tough break for Blount, who has worked his heart out for the Pats.

I really strongly agree with your last paragraph. If you wanted the guy, you've got to give him time. I hear people on the boards saying that because we got McDermott the defense will be a ton better this year. IMHO that's doubtful. He's putting in a whole new system, and those things usually take time. And yeah yeah yeah he says the transition will be quick and easy, but that's what every single coach in NFL history says when they're asked about changing systems. But generally it's the guys who are only tweaking the old system a bit who actually don't need significant time for the transition. There are exceptions. I'm sure people can point some of them out, but they're relatively few and far between. For every Jim Schwartz there are probably five or ten Rex Ryans. If these are the right guys, we'll start to see very impressive results in two or three or four years as guys have been in the same system for a long time. That's when benefits are generally reaped. When making the right choice and being patient allows you the luxury of continuity. ... Anyway, thanks, OP. Interesting to see what someone who's been paying more attention to these guys than we have things.

That's what it looked like to me too. And yeah, the whole thing is interesting.

Garoppolo is going to be a guy in the top half of QBs, IMHO. He won't be a Steve Bono. But I doubt he's a Steve Young either. I agree they have to make this choice. But if Brady doesn't start a drop soon, he'll make that choice very easy and it'll be Garoppolo who's gone. The Pats have a history of trading guys before they start to lose their skills, not after. But there have been exceptions. Guys like Moss, who had started to lose it. Welker had started his descent, not by a lot, but his last year he'd been targeted one more time than the year before and yet receptions, yardage, yards per reception, TDs, all had gone down. I just don't see them letting Brady go for any reason until we see his performances becoming human. And remember when Brady's dad said that Tom wanted to play till he was 70? I don't see retirement until he stops satisfying himself as to his level of play.

The Bills didn't try to trade with the Steelers. They tried to trade above the Steelers. And at the time what they said was absolutely NOT that no trade was available, it was that the price was too high. Looking back, almost no price should have been considered too high.

Climbers who attempt the most dangerous mountain in the world, K2, not just climbers in general. But yeah, it's a dangerous sport.

If you give a crap about making the playoffs and being fodder for the good teams, yeah, Snyder's had more success than the Bills during that time period. But Snyder has never once put together a team that actually looked like they were seriously Lombardi-competitive. To me, there are the teams that have a real chance and the rest. And the Bills and Redskins have been in "the rest" equally long. Both bad. Snyder finally looks like he has a real GM who has put together a roster that appears like it might be competitive in a fairly short time ... and he fires the guy. I'm not a fan of the Pegulas reign over the Bills and Sabres so far, but I'd take them over Snyder. That's not what happened here. On some teams the GM is above the coach. On other teams it's the other way around. This is clearly a team where the coach is going to be farther up the hierarchy from the GM. Nothing wrong (or right) with that. All depends on whether success follows. The main problem with the Nix regime was that he brought in Whaley.

Fact: "none of them even came back for a 2nd interview" Completely unsupported opinion: "were basically interviewed for the hell of it"

IMHO, by "solid starter," people tend to mean that a guy is easily in the top 32 QBs in the league. Whether or not your whole team can beat a good team has little to do with that. By that definition anyway, Tyrod is absolutely and without question a solid starter. Yeah, he has more to prove, especially after last year's regression. Teams are looking for more than a solid starter. They want a guy in the top 10 or 12 QBs. In any case, wins is not a QB stat, it's a team stat. QBs should be judged by how well they play QB. Alex Smith is a good QB. A team can win a Super Bowl with him. Bradford last year completed 71.6% of his passes, had 20 TDs and 5 INTs and a passer rating of 99.3. He's a good QB too. Smith and Bradford when he's playing well are both sort of in the very good game manager with real upside category. 7-9? Bottom of the middle of the pack.

It is indeed. For a while it was that he wasn't willing to restructure. Which honestly you could understand with a six-year $92 mill contract. But that was the original report. Then the one that he was willing to re-structure but not willing to give up any money. Feb. 9th: "It's pretty much an either or proposition, because, based on everything I've been told, Taylor is unwilling to agree to a restructured contract that would reduce his pay. He and his agent, Adisa Bakari, are firmly convinced they would receive every bit as much as the Bills would have to pay in accordance with the extension -- if not more -- in the open market." http://buffalonews.com/2017/02/09/vic-caruccis-bills-mailbag-taylor-either-proposition/?utm_campaign=puma&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1486679573 Then the new contract where his pay was reduced. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, particularly in the first sentence. But before the renegotiation there was a very real argument that the Bills were not going to pick up that option to pay that $30.75 mill guarantee. And he didn't have to be Brady-esque to get that guarantee. He didn't even have to throw a single pass. All he had to do was be on the roster this last March, the third day of the league year and ... boom ... $30.75 mill guaranteed. Schefter's original report that the Bills were not going to pick up that option didn't say they didn't want Tyrod. It said that they weren't going to pay that much for him.

What he said was that he would consider restructuring but was not willing to do so if he had to give up any money. Whoops.

Agreed that what the Bills did was smart and hedged their bets. Yeah, they shortened his deal. But they also made it infinitely easier for them to cut him after one year. With the old deal (assuming they'd taken the option, of course) if they'd cut him after one year, they'd have had to pay a penalty of around $14 - $15 mill in dead money. And the alternative - keeping him on the roster through March 2018 - would have meant guaranteeing him about $24 mill more ($40 mill total guaranteed from the beginning of the contract if he was only on the roster in March 2018 ... minus his 2017 impact). If they'd kept the old deal and picked up the option, to keep him or let him go would have cost the Bills a ton more than the new deal will. Either way the Bills save a ton and Tyrod makes a lot less. In the new deal, Tyrod makes $14 mill less money if he's here for one year and $10 mill less money if he's here for two. And his guarantee, a number players fight like rabid dogs to increase, will also be a lot less.

Shaw, you're wrong about the effect that money will have on the likelihood of him getting cut. The way it's structured will make it extremely easy to cut him. Very very easy. Here are the two choices: 1) Cut him before March of 2018: He'll cost the team $8.6 mill in dead money against the cap 2) Keep him for 2018: He'll cost the team $18 mill against the cap, in salary, a major March roster bonus and the prorated portion of his signing bonus. Cutting him would save them almost $10 mill on the cap. That's not a penalty for cutting him, it's a windfall. And let's not pretend guys don't get cut for money-related reasons even when they beat out (or would beat out) the other QBs on the rosters in the NFL. It happens a lot. Not to the franchise guys, but to the guys farther down, who the team thinks won't allow them to be competitive for a title. And that's Tyrod. Osweiler's a good example, the best QB on that roster but not good enough to make that team competitive, so he's gone before they have any idea what they might get in the draft. We don't know whether or not it's likely. Too much is up in the air in terms of what QBs will be available in the draft when we pick, how much Peterman and Cardale will develop and whether or not Tyrod does as well as they hope in the new system, as well as whether the team and the offense are competitive next year with Tyrod. Unless things fall well for him, it could easily make great sense to cut him. The money is a reason to cut him, not to keep him. They could easily keep him for two but it would be just as easy to cut him.

That's not naivete, its hopefulness and an understanding that the world isn't as predictable as people generally imagine.. Yeah the odds are seriously against it being anyone but Tyrod but stuff happens. Including injuries.

Yeah, I'm focused on the final draft board, since that's what McDermott would have had to know to know that he would have had to leap up ahead of Carolina to get our guy. McDermott would have had to know more than just that Carolina had roughly a 2nd round grade on Dawkins and that he was for example the third-highest ranked tackle on Carolina's board to know that the Bills would have to leap above Carolina or they'd take him. He'd have had to know that Carolina didn't have guys ahead of Dawkins left on their board. Guys at other positions, for example. And there's no way he could have known that from what he'd learned in Carolina before January 2nd when he was contacted about interviewing with the Bills. Would've had to know the Panthers liked Dawkins more than Moton, as you mentioned, but also whether or not there were other guys they were going to pick above those two. Everyone knows the Panthers had a need there and that Dawkins was ranked generally in that area. But they had several needs and for McDermott to have had inside info he'd have had to know much more than that, and again, on January 2nd other than that they - maybe - liked Dawkins in that very general area he wouldn't have had more specific info. Hell, if you look at the Big Boards published by draftniks before the draft, guys like Gil Brandt, Dawkins was in that general area. This wouldn't have been big news for anyone. But again, what is being ignored in all of this is how involved a coach would have been in scouting during the NFL season. Particularly a serious grinder like McDermott. It's not like a DC doesn't have a ton of other work to do during the season. Yeah, coaches get involved, but no almost certainly not much that early in the process. And yeah I know that scouts go to practice and watch it when they visit schools. That's not a trade secret. As I say, yeah, I'm focusing on the draft board itself. That's what's put together so late, and what McDermott would have had to know to make it some kind of dirty trick to skip ahead of Carolina. Of course they discuss the players a ton before that, but they don't rank 'em that early in the way that would have made McDermott's info in any way proprietary. Agreed that narratives are being made up here. And that most of them don't make much sense. And that unless he was getting info pipelined from Beane late in the process - wildly unlikely for many reasons - integrity wasn't an issue here.

Scouting them for years? Maybe the best few. But if they've got so many guys all scouted how come they have to spend so much time looking again at the guys who come out early? They watch them but don't do intensive work on them till they're likely to come out, seniors or guys who're particularly likely to come out for some reason. "At the SEC spring meetings on Tuesday, Saban said he’s part of a committee working with the NFL on the idea of “Junior Day” combine on campuses in the spring after their second year. The grades that underclassmen can currently get from the NFL are only based on film, and the results can be inaccurate." http://coachingsearch.com/article?a=Nick-Saban-working-with-NFL-on-Junior-Days-to-help-scout-underclassmen-more-accurately And yeah they have scouting meetings and collect info throughout the season but that's to collect and synthesize all the info on each guy. There's too much info coming in and being integrated on each guy to start ordering guys that early, Yolo. As for scouting meetings, the scouts are on the road through the whole season. They don't come home for anything, certainly not for meetings, through the season. They send reports is what they do. After the college season ends they come home in December and certainly there are a lot of scouting meetings at that point. And the bowl games are for more than confirmation, particularly the Senior Bowl and the all-star bowl games, the Shrine game and so on. Those are huge for any player from smaller conferences. You have to see how they play against big school talent. And you get to see how they practice. Even the standard bowl games are important as extra info, watching to see matchups and so on. But I don't know what teams you're referring to about having their board set up that early. The Bills set theirs up just before the combine as pointed out in the article I linked to. The Panthers set theirs up later still. "The Panthers will spend another week or two evaluating prospects and then set their draft board. In the meantime, fans will continue to hear lots of speculation about what player or players will be at the top of the board." (Article written April 3rd) http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/nfl-blog/article142457519.html "General manager Dave Gettleman has said repeatedly what the Carolina Panthers do in free agency will set up the draft." http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/233531/panthers-set-up-to-draft-a-running-back-or-tight-end-in-first-round Again, he could've known some guys they liked or were particularly watching but wouldn't have known where they were ranked on their boards. Teams don't rank guys till the info is in. It wouldn't make sense to do so. Teams "know who they have high," yeah, fair enough, but that doesn't mean they're ranked.

The News, and newspapers generally, care extremely little about clicks. They're on a digital subscription-based profit model. There are plenty of click-based folks still out there, Bleacher Report, for instance. But the News don't allow you to access more than 10 stories per month. That shows how much they care about clicks. They care about getting people to value their services enough to subscribe. Sully is careful about his facts. He has plenty of opinions which people are welcome to disagree with or ignore, but yeah, he's paid to react in interesting ways, not to dig up scoops.

Sully's fine. Disliked by people who don't like seeing bad things written about a losing team, but he's fine.

Claiming it is year seven shows nothing more than a respect for facts. It's year seven. That's not the whole picture, but it's a fact. As is the fact that the amount of people who developed after year six into franchise QBs can pretty much be counted on one finger of Rich Gannon's throwing hand. It's highly unlikely Tyrod will manage that. If he did, it would sure be terrific news for the Bills, though. Worth hoping for, But not only should nobody hold their breath, we probably shouldn't even agree to listen to a song we hate every day till it happens.

Not taking up his fifth year option and "likely a FA in 2018" are two wildly different things. We're not taking Sammy's fifth year option. If it looks like a good decision, we'll work hard at re-signing him during or after the year. I'll believe Bridgewater is available when I see it. The difference being Bridgewater has been in the league for three years and Tyrod for six. Meaning Tyrod has most likely approached his ceiling and Bridgewater could easily take a huge leap. Last time we saw Bridgewater was his second year. During which his YPA and completion percentage were better than Tyrod's in his sixth year. And his passer rating was very comparable. Also, Teddy in his two years of play has more fourth quarter comebacks and game winning drives than Tyrod in his last two years. I take Bridgewater in a heartbeat, though Tyrod was maybe a bit better last time we saw both of them. Doubt Bridgewater will be available, though.

Great. We're also gonna have a consolidated thread for the "uppers", right? For all of their "look at me" threads?

He may have known some guys who they liked, but teams don't generally do their boards in January. Hell, the Senior Bowl was January 27th. Here's a story dated Feb. 5th about how the Bills just flew their scouts into town to assemble their board over the next ten days so they can have a first version together before the combine. That's the calendar most teams use. http://www.buffalobills.com/news/article-2/Bills-draft-board-rounding-into-form/8acc2efa-ef5d-4c2c-b3d8-1eba744ec687 The Panthers last game was Dec. 31st and there was a story in the paper on Jan. 2nd that the Bills were going to interview McDermott. And it just was never a mystery that he was a top coaching candidate. The guy's a demon on prep and he's taking time off to supposedly talk college scouting before they've done their post-season analysis? Sorry, the idea just doesn't make sense. Could he have heard some names of guys they liked? Sure. Could he know where they ranked them? Seriously, no. Belichick first put together a terrific locker room of character guys. After that he took some chances. Not many.

Certainly he's better than Fitz was, and worse than Brady. You look at the stats and it looks like Tannehill is passing better than Tyrod, a much higher completion percentage and a considerably longer YPA (8th vs.26th), significantly more INTs but more late-game success than Tyrod (3 fourth quarter comebacks and 3 game-winning drives vs. Tyrod's one and one). But certainly Tyrod runs better. So overall, well, it's not out of the question. I'd take Tannehill, myself. But to each their own, I guess. Neither guy's that great, but I'd take Tannehill's future. No, that's the record of the teams he played for in games he started. The name of that stat is actually "Team Record in Games Started By This QB (Regular Season)". Grading a QB based on how well the defense plays or whether the kicker makes or misses field goals is utterly ridiculous. And if you go back and check the records of the teams he recorded wins or losses for, you find that without McCown they performed slightly worse. He's been on awful teams. But I'd take Tyrod over McCown, though both are bridge guys, IMHO, I think Tyrod's significantly better.