Thurman#1

Well, first, they're not top seven, they're in a three-way tie for seventh. But that's a quibble. Here's the main point. For the third time now, I understand that they're top 7 in offensive touchdowns. And that's huge if you're looking at the performance of ... wait for it ... the offense, the whole offense. See how that works? Offensive touchdowns are produced by the whole offense. Whereas .. and here's what you missed the first two times ... when you are trying to look at how good the pass game is ... you look at what the pass game produced. Not what the run game produced. See how it's kind of an equivalence? The offense scored a lot of TDs. Because the run game was terrific and scored a bunch of TDs. Whereas the pass game was substandard and did not score a lot of TDs. And now the architect of that terrific run game, Roman, has left and is in Baltimore. This is cause for worry that the run game might not be as good next year. All is said to pee in your Cheerios was thank goodness for the run game that scored all those points. They covered up the poor performance of the pass game. I didn't say anything implying that the whole offense didn't score a lot of TDs. I understand that it did. I merely pointed out that it was the run game's doing, that the run game scored almost 2/3rds of the Bills TDs and that no other team had less than 50% of their TDs scored by the passing game. Don't know why stone cold facts like this would make you angry. Unless of course you're trying to use a measure of the performance of the whole offense to come to unwarranted conclusions about a mere part of the offense. So again, the offense scored a lot. Can't argue with that. But it was overwhelmingly the extremely good run game (scoring 29 of our 46 offensive TDs, 63% when no other team was above 50%. Can't argue with that either.

espn.com Look for the splits. I don't know. They just were. Ask the coaches, maybe. They thought it was their best chance with the personnel they had, maybe? The reasons don't matter to me, personally. What matters is that their percentages for whatever reason were very close to the same across the four quarters.

He did get them to play hard and smart, I think. I didn't like his extreme conservatism on things like punting and game management, but yeah, they played hard. But while you could say they were rebuilding, it's a stretch, as they were in years four and five of that rebuild. And what McDermott is doing isn't rebuilding, it's reloading. If it were a rebuild they'd have gotten rid of McCoy, Kyle Williams, Tyrod, Incognito and any other guys who are too old to be around and contributing three and four years down the road. That doesn't mean it's not a major project they're working on; it is. But it's not a rebuild. I wouldn't be so quick to judge on Bortles, but I agree that what Marrone said here was totally reasonable, particularly for a new coach trying to set a tone.

Yeah, but come on. The reasons that these two teams ended up with high run percentages was widely different. Here are how the two teams looked at run / pass percentages, divided by quarter. Falcs, by quarter 1st Quarter - Runs 94, Passes 131 … 42% runs 2nd Quarter - Runs 102, Passes 161 … 39% runs 3rd Quarter - Runs 109, Passes 139 … 44% runs 4th Quarter - Runs 113, Passes 102 … 53% runs OT - Runs 3, Passes 4 Bills, by quarter 1st Quarter - Runs 101, Passes 97 … 51% runs 2nd Quarter - Runs 129, Passes 146 … 47% runs 3rd Quarter - Runs 107, Passes 106 … 50% runs 4th Quarter - Runs 144, Passes 119 … 54% runs OT - Runs 11, Passes 6 The Bills were roughly the same quarter to quarter. They simply wanted to run more. Whereas the Falcons passed at much higher percentages through the first three quarters and then burnt clock in the fourth quarter because they were way ahead. The Bills didn't have the problem of being way ahead in a lot of games last year. And this is why. Good teams tend to be ahead and run more to run out the clock in the fourth quarter, which lowers their passing percentage from it's natural early-game numbers. That's not how it was for the Bills. And the four teams that made the NFC and AFC championship games were ranked 4th, 13th, 14th and the Falcons were 27th and I showed why. On the other hand, the four teams that made the playoffs with high run percentages (excepting Atlanta) were Miami, Dallas, Kansas City, and Seattle. One playoff win, Seattle over Detroit. It might not fall that evenly most years but without research I'd guess that it would tend to fall that way consistently, though with exceptions. And building a team on a template that tends to on the ceiling have one-and-done as opposed to a template that had all four of the top teams is not a wise move, I would argue.

Yup. Thank goodness for the run game that scored almost 2/3 of those TDs. And again, not a single other team scored less than 50% of their TDs in the pass game. It may indeed reflect on Tyrod. Though the coaches may well have something to do with that. But perhaps that was in understanding of who their QB was. Beside the point, really. It really is very rare for teams ranking so low in the league in run percentage to win titles. It happens, but pretty much absolutely everything else has to fall perfectly. If he'd argued that we had to be in the top three teams in the league in attempts ... but he didn't. When teams rank that high it's generally because they're way behind a lot and trying to catch up. I very much agree with you that you don't have to throw it all the time. So, we're never going to talk again about any statistics of any sort except for Ws and Ls? Is that correct? People tend to make this argument when they'd rather not talk about the stat being discussed.

You mean that the Bills D was bad? You get no argument from me there. But some people want to put all the blame on the defense and none on our below average pass game. Woh, nice pickup. I looked at that page and totally missed that. Holy cow, that's a huge difference.

It shouldn't be considered a negative. But there's a reason that we were only 16th in total yards. And that helps to explain the sad facts that while our offense received the 11th best average drive start position in the NFL, they handed back to the defense the 23rd best average drive start position. Field position matters and our offense didn't deliver. If we can win (a Super Bowl) with this amount of runs, I'd be perfectly happy. But to do so you pretty much need the best defense in the league and a good passing QB. I'm not worried about this year. We're almost certainly going to be fairly bad. I'm worried about developing in the right direction in the long term.

https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/yards-per-game

That's not the way I saw it. He had some really below average QBing while he was here. Manuel / Thad Lewis / Tuel his first year and Manuel / Orton his second and he got more out of Orton than expected. The 2013 offensive starters looked like this: Manuel/Lewis/Tuel, Spiller, Frank Summers, Stevie Johnson, Robert Woods, Lee Smtih, Cordy Glenn, Doug Legursky, Eric Wood, Urbik and Erik Pears. In 2014: Manuel/Orton, Fred Jackson, Watkins, Robert Woods, Lee Smith Cordy Glenn, Urbik, Wood, Pears, Seantrel Henderson. I don't see coaching as being the problem nearly as much as personnel. I don't know if he'll be a really good coach. Wouldn't surprise me either way. I didn't like the way he left, but he appears to have had insoluble problems with Whaley, and isn't the only coach who felt that way when here.

5.7 YPC, no he almost certainly won't. But will he be a valued and successful rotational contributor who will deserve the salary he's getting? Yeah, probably. Yeah. And the end result was that the run game was very very good and the pass game was below average. Yup, it still totals the same way, but the run game simply looked terrific and the pass game just didn't. You tried to use the total offensive stats to prove the pass game didn't need much improvement. What that actually proves is that the run game didn't need any and the offensive totals were solid too, basically because the run game (with a run-game genius coach who is now gone) was superb. Doesn't mean the pass game wasn't sub-standard, though. It was.

Yup. Top ten in offensive touchdowns. And 37% of those TDs came on passes. 17 out of 46. So yeah, we need a better passing game. To a very large extent. By the way, know how many other NFL teams scored less than 50% of their TDs on running plays? Zero. Our passing game was simply below par. Having lost Roman and Gillislee (Roman being the key factor), we're unlikely to do as well this year running. Last year's 29 running TDs wasn't just best in the league it was far and away the best. The second-best team had 24 and the two teams tied for third had 20. We're not likely to get 29 running TDs again. The pass game is going to have to step it up bigtime for this team to be competitive. That's part of the reason why the consensus among the pundits of progressive prognostication is maybe five to six wins this year.

Gillislee got more per play than McCoy. Yeah the play designs helped. But that wasn't why Gillislee was good. Losing him hurts. Gillislee was already on the team and looking excellent when we cut Karlos Williams. In 2015, Gillislee had averaged 5.7 YPG, and that's why there wasn't much of an uproar except maybe sadness about losing Karlos. This year we haven't got someone ready to move in and take over who has already looked very good the way that Gillislee had in 2015.

Dak = Dez Tyrod Taylor = the best running game in the league, including LeSean McCoy, Mike Gillislee and an offensive line that was sensational at run blocking. All that helps a QB an absolute ton. Oh, and Charles Clay who was open constantly. Having said that, not a QB in the league would choose Tyrod's offensive cast over Prescott's, but the Bills run game would have been a huge help to any QB and Tyrod fans want to talk only about WRs and ignore everything else. It will indeed be interesting to see how this all pans out. My guess is that Dak is going to come back to earth a bit as teams start to figure out how best to defend him. As a Cowboys hater I hope I'm right about that, it would be awesome to see.

I don't think looking at this one measure you've created and calculated "clearly settles" anything whatsoever, much less whether or not Flacco is better than Tyrod. It ain't "the analytics" saying "that they are essentially the same player in terms of per game value to their team(with Flacco having a slight edge), but that Flacco is clearly in the "Average" QB category and not the "Elite" or even "Very Good" category." It's your one particular way of looking at this one particular stat. I guess you can look at it as some added data. Plus, I'm not sure where you see that Aaron Brooks is higher at weighted AV than Brees or Rodgers. Looks to me like what they say is that Brooks has a 65 weighted AV, 755th overall since 1960 while Rodgers has a 124, 26th overall and Brees has a 153 7th overall. Weighted AV has them in fairly reasonable places. Could it be your new stat that has them strangely? IMHO it's a bit questionable whether AV, a stat meant to be good at making sweeping generalizations about large amounts of data, a large groups of seasons together for instance, should usefully be divided up in an attempt to pretend that it is like a knife and can make small differentiations. That's not how it was designed. He (Doug from PFR) himself points out that there's a good reason he included the "Approximate" in Approximate Value. In any case, it looks to have been an interesting project. I am impressed by your energy and interest.

While you're certainly right that the odds are high to find a guy that late, anytime you add the phrase "and later" and then look at all that big "there and later" group, you're adjusting the odds to make it look even less likely. I mean, if you say, "Look at guys who were drafted in the first round or later ... the odds are terrible." Well, yeah, but the addition of "and later" does a lot to make the stats look impossible. Here's another way to look at this that doesn't put the guy with a huge group of guys most of whom do indeed look less likely than him to have major success. In the last 20 - 25 years or so, how many franchise QBs or guys who are still possible franchise QBs, or guys who came close were not drafted in the top three or four rounds? From Brady to Siemian (as I say, I'm counting guys who still have a legit chance to get there), throwing in Tyrod, Foles, Cousins, Romo, Hasselbeck, Marc Bulger, Mark Rypien, Warren Moon, Jake Delhomme, Brad Johnson, Kurt Warner, Dave Krieg, Trent Green, Steve Beuerlein, Rich Gannon, Grbac, Flutie, Bobby Hebert ... Fitz looked like he might be one of those guys for a while, though I somehow never bought in to him. Oh, and Dak Prescott. It's not that rare for somebody who has a real shot to turn out not to have been drafted high, and a decent amount have had real success. Looked at as a percentage, sure, it's a really low-percentage deal, but how many of those guys who weren't higher picks and didn't make it have had anything like the reviews Peterman has had in terms of the Gruden quote and so on. He's not an average low pick. Does that mean I give him a high chance to make it? Nah, but it's not infinitesimal as some here are making it seem either. Some guys do it. Maybe he won't be one but maybe he will.

This, and very much so. It's hard to find a good guy anywhere.

Ah, you only got on board in 2001? Well, that makes total sense to me. I've been a fan long enough to have cheered for them to lose the last game of the year so they'd get the first pick and be able to draft O.J. Simpson. I saw the four SBs. Making the playoffs as a fodder team would do nothing to me. But if I were in your shoes, I'd probably feel the way you do. But I'm right with you that they have so often valued the short term with or even over the long term. Which is why I absolutely loved seeing them pick up that 2018 first round pick this draft. Long term thinking. I love it.

With the OL that was "protecting" him at that time, it was never a surprise to see him running. Man were we bad except for the extremely young Jason Peters. In 2005, for instance we sported a line of Mike Gandy, Bennie Anderson, Trey Teague, the fossil relics of Chris Villarrial and Peters. Then in 2006 we upgraded with Melvin Fowler, Duke Preston and Terrance Pennington.

Agreed on overspending. My guess is that they'll bring in several more guys who aren't much over the minimum, maybe one guy around $2 mill or a bit more. More guys for depth in the long term or to fill major holes with journeyman types. They built the Panthers through the draft over several years.

Fair enough that you would settle for that. Everyone's got a different opinion on that. It wouldn't mean anything to me, personally. Or rather it wouldn't mean anything more to me than, say, going over .500 a time or two during the streak meant. But nah, that's really not true about anything can happen once you get in. There are plenty of fodder teams that make the playoffs without any more than a purely theoretical chance at a title. There's never really been a fodder team that won one. (Every time I say that people say the same thing, so just to head off an argument that has never made much sense ...) People say that the Giants were fodder the year they beat the Pats but they just weren't. Dr. Z predicted their title going into the playoffs. There were three fodder teams that year - about the normal number - and the Giants weren't one of them, they were a team whose QB's light had just come on and a team whose very tough defense had finally gotten healthy right at the end of the year. The fodder teams that year were the 9-7 Jeff Garcia-led Bucs, the 9-7 Jason Campbell-led Redskins and the 10-6 Vince Young-led Titans that scored four more points than they allowed.

Yeah, he wanted out as bad as Peters did .... that is that both guys would have been perfectly happy to stay here if they'd gotten an offer here equal or better to what they got elsewhere. After they got better offers elsewhere they did indeed want out. Lynch on the other hand actually seems to have wanted to go to the west coast to be close to Oakland and away from where he'd had his problems. Lynch and McGahee seem to be the only guys in the last ten or fifteen years that actually did want out. But every guy who leaves for big money gets the habitual sour grapes response that he didn't want to be here and he wasn't very good anyway.

His decision was probably based on what nearly all NFL decisions between teams are based on, money, with nearly everything else important but less so than money. QB job safety and efficiency likely play into it, as does the situation in which the QB had that kind of efficiency. Tyrod's been in a much better offensive situation than Flacco has for the last two years, with an excellent run game and a good OL compared to Baltimore's. Baltimore has a better, more proven program. Better coach (from what we know so far), better owner (from what we know so far), better defensive-based system (from what we know so far). The Bills have a way to go, obviously, as they're starting new schemes on both sides of the ball and have a new coach, a new GM, etc. The only stable thing in the Bills recent past is their instability. The Ravens have been a stable good program for a long time. But these decisions generally consider factors like these but are mostly based on money, guarantees, signing bonuses, back-loaded vs. front-loaded, average yearly salary, etc.

Pennington wasn't on his way to being a star. He was already there before those surgeries. "Pennington was inserted into the starting lineup in 2002. The Jets were 1-3. Vinny Testaverde was looking his age. Things looked bleak. All Pennington did was win 8 of his 12 starts that year and lead the Jets to the AFC East title. While doing it, he led the league in completion percentage, quarterback rating, and touchdown rate while posting the second lowest interception rating in the league and the second highest yards per pass attempt rate. "The numbers partially describe how great Pennington was before he got hurt. Before that fateful game in Buffalo, he had completed 65.7% of passes in his career. He had 49 touchdowns against 22 interceptions. He had a 94.7 rating. And his team had won 19 of his 30 starts. He was averaging 7.3 yards per attempt in a span where that put you in the top five in the league. When Pennington got hurt in 2004, he was completing 68.2% of his passes with 8 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, and a 99.1 rating. The Jets were 6-1 at the time. "The numbers do not tell the whole story, however. It wasn't just about them. "Everybody remembers how the Patriots won three of four Super Bowls from 2001 to 2004. Not many remember what happened the one year in that stretch when they did not go all the way. The Jets came to Foxborough Week 16. The Pats, Jets, and Dolphins were in a tight race for the AFC East title. A Patriots win would have eliminated the Jets and left New England in control of its own destiny. A Jets win kept Gang Green alive and put New England in deep trouble. "Pennington lit up Bill Belichick's defense that night to the tune of 22 for 33 for 286 yards, 3 touchdowns, and no interceptions. Tom Brady was 19 for 37 with 133 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception. In the middle of the Patriots dynasty, Pennington went up to Foxborough in a huge spot, outplayed Brady, and carried the Jets to a win." http://www.ganggreennation.com/2013/3/27/4154264/new-york-jets-what-if-wednesday-what-if-chad-pennington-hadnt-gotten People forget how very very good he was.

Funny how people confuse facts with opinions. And assume that people will never make big jumps upwards or regressions downwards.

Loss. Seriously, loss. But we didn't have the money under the cap thanks to Whaley's profligacy. Sour ... grapes. Every time a guy leaves Buffalo this is the cry that goes up, he didn't want to be here. And it's true only in that we didn't give him the best offer and that's why he didn't want to be here. Through the years there really are only a couple of guys who genuinely didn't want to be here, McGahee for instance after the Applebees comment and the comments on Buffalo women. The rest would have been happy to stay with the right offer. Classic sour grapes. They pretty much all go for the jackpot, all the NFL players. Except the guys on their third and fourth contracts who've already banked $50 mill or the guys who marry supermodels who are richer than they are. Oh, and if Gilmore had played with no heart at all the Pats wouldn't have signed him.