Thurman#1

No ... we won't. Different courses of action often produce different results. Manuel was a guy who needed time to develop. He didn't get any because of the rubber mat. Perhaps he could have done what needed doing with him, a lot of which is still just grooving his mechanics a lot better. He still has bad feet, and some of that could easily be that instead of time to groove good footwork and get it down to the level of muscle memory he was instead forced to stop worrying about that and worry more about the things that would better help his immediate game. I doubt he'll ever be a franchise guy. But same as with Tyrod, there's a chance. Manuel's chance is probably smaller than Tyrod's. But a bunch more guys have achieved turnarounds after four full years than after six. As I say, I doubt it, but there's little doubt that he was hurt when he had to replace Kolb. They whiffed. A GM doing something because he's worried the fans might go nuts ... is a bad GM. They probably shouldn't have picked Manuel, but having done so, they should have had someone less brittle than Kolb to back him up, or even brought in a 3rd-stringer they wouldn't have minded seeing the field for a while. And yeah, a lot of GMs get QBs wrong ... which is also called whiffing.

I don't get the wildly simplified takes here. There's very little hate towards Tyrod, a few nuts and crazies and trolls only. What there really is is simply a lack of belief that he's ever going to be good enough to be part of a Super Bowl victory as a starter. Which is almost certainly correct, though there's a mathematical chance for pretty much every QB who sees significant playing time to suddenly show wild improvement and get his team there. As for his highlight, great. I've seen all the games, I don't need to see them again, but I'm sure they're worth watching.

No such thing as a no-risk acquisition. You have to pay these guys and if you don't get anything for your money, you took a risk and it didn't work out. The risk is spending the money on one guys means not spending it on any other, and someone out there would probably do better. IMHO Kaepernick wouldn't work out.

When Trump says something, is it reported, "Today, the United States said, "Yadda yadda yadda." That's not the NFL Network. It's a guy named Adam Schein. Who is employed by the NFL Network but is not the network itself. It's nice, but ...

Maybe not, but if they're teams in the 20s, that would be the price if they are set on someone. I think most people imagine us trading back four or five places, but if we go back ten or more, we would get a bigger premium.

Precisely. I doubt they draft a WR, but not because we have the guys we need. More because defensive head coaches putting in new systems tend to prioritize defense in their first year's draft, as offensive coaches prioritize that side of the ball. I could still see CB, S, LB if they like Foster, or WR or even a surprise QB pick. I'm hoping they trade back, myself, early and often.

A lot of it is gone, but there's still a lot of money left out there. The Niners still have $71 mill left. The Browns $63 mill. There are seven teams with more than $30 mill left.

Wins and losses are a team thing, not a QB thing. I'd go with the Bills, but only by maybe 55:45. The Raiders, QB aside, are just a better team, with a better GM, who are therefore more likely to get better this offseason. Especially as unlike us, they didn't have cap problems.

And 16th in yards, which is a stat which far better isolates the offense. Points has a ton of input from defense and STs. Hell, our defense scored points, and was tied for 9th in doing so. They also, with the STs, gave the offense average field position in the top ten. No, they didn't suck, but they were not good. And most of the reason they were as good as they were was the run game. The run game was #1 in the league, the pass game well below average. And again we were the only team to score less than 50% of our offensive touchdowns in the pass game. And we didn't even get very close, at 40%. Enough with this argument. Points isn't a QB stat in much of any way ... hell it doesn't even isolate the offense well. It pretends that a pick six from your defense shows that your offense was terrific, or that a punt runback to the one that ends up as a 4th down field goal is three points scored by the offense.

Agreed he's good enough to get us a playoff run. But that's nothing but a straw man that people are setting the bar at Brady. Nobody is except in Tyrod fanboy imaginations. Hard to care. The only thing that should matter is being competitive for the Super Bowl, and he simply doesn't look good enough to do that without a defense spectacular enough to get there with someone like Trent Dilfer, and defenses like that are rare. Generally around one team every ten years or so wins an SB without a top ten to twelve QB. That's the bar. And it seems very very unlikely Tyrod will clear it. He's on the roster so it's worth hoping for but QBs getting that good suddenly in their 7th year are spectacularly rare. Sammy was relatively healthy. And teams hadn't figured out how to defend Tyrod. That was a part of it too.

You shouldn't base all of your free agency around it, but yeah, it should be an important thing to keep in mind. One of the most important. The smart teams, the best teams do it. The worst teams don't. That says an awful lot. Picks are the way to keep costs down and your team away from the cap. They give you young energetic guys who are on rookie contracts and can be developed and used to fill gaps and play STs and they can now be traded besides. Draft efficacy studies consistently show that the way to draft well isn't to make great choices, that nobody is that much better than any other GM at making those choices though some are considerably worse than average, that the way to succeed is to acquire picks so you get more chances to make choices. And comp picks are one way to do that. Massey and Thaler are the most famous of those studies but there are a bunch and they all say the same thing. Wanna be a good-drafting team? Pick up picks.

NOT being obsessed over any extra pick is nuts. That's what's up.

I don't feel I'm degrading him. I am sorry you see it that way. And if serviceable starter is roughly what he is now in your view, with maybe some small improvements, yeah, I think that's a reasonable expectation. I just don't see us as a Super Bowl contender with Tyrod unless the defense becomes one of the all-time greats. But while he's had to fight through some receiver problems, he's been set up for success in many ways. They paid through the nose for Clay, one of the best receiving TEs in the league. They got a line that's better than most OLs in the league. Yeah, they should be working on an upgrade at RT, but lines with five good players side-by-side are very rare in these days of free agency. The Bills OL is one of the better ones in the league. And pretty much every other QB in the league except maybe Dallas would kill for the run game that takes so much pressure off Tyrod. He has been set up for success. He's had some obstacles too, but an awful lot of advantages. But yeah, I'd like to see them improve the WRs too.

No, it's not provable. I looked at Tyrod's film and it was quite clear he had open receivers he could have seen and on a consistent basis. But I didn't attempt to put a score on it. You suggest I compare. There's nothing to compare. Would I say Tyrod's receivers were open by a factor of 6.5 while Rivers' receivers were open by a factor of 6.2, so Rivers had a tough time? The idea's ridiculous. I contend it's utterly impossible. What guidelines would you use to compare openness of receivers and compare them across schemes and routes and route trees and so on. If you think I've ever done that for Tyrod, you're wrong. All I said for Tyrod is that guys were open significantly and very consistently. But hey, if you can come up with some kind of reasonable scoring system for openness, go for it. I'll tell you what, I'll do it if you will. You are quick to suggest work for other people and avoid it yourself. As soon as you finish the study you suggest, I'll do my own and we can compare. If I'm lazy, what are you? Waiting to see the results of your study. And since you apparently mean by "narrow minded" a person who doesn't eat, breathe, drink, smoke and dream about Tyrod 24/7, yeah, I guess by those standards I'm narrow-minded. And actually, seriously, you are the first to call me that. The very first. That's context. I've been called arrogant a few times on the internet, with some justification. Sarcastic. Snarky. Those are things I work on, but I could definitely stand to improve. But never narrow-minded.

You're going to do that? For me? Fantastic. And thank you for assuming that I was objective. I was indeed, as much as humanly possible. I approached it as a fact-finding mission, not as an attempt to prove something. We already know that Brady and Rivers spread it across the field and Tyrod doesn't. That and the fact that the pundits already know that he doesn't pass over the middle much and that that holds him back ... that's enough necessary context for me and for pretty much everyone. Not for people who are wild-eyed Tyrod fans on sixpacks of Red Bull, but for pretty much everyone else. But if you're going to do that, I'd be really willing and interested to see what you find.

Don't make assumptions that might not turn out. Might be your side that is shut up by the season. I'd be thrilled to see him make the kind of leap he would have to make to be a franchise guy. It's just very unlikely to happen in his seventh year. Tyrod's no bargain right now. He's a reasonably priced player. Tyrod's the twenty-first best paid QB in the league in average salary. Just about spot-on. Whereas Brady is the 12th-highest paid and probably the single best. And it wasn't pressure from the Pats threatening not to pick up his option that led Brady to accept his $20+ mill per year. Plus, is Tyrod married to a woman worth several hundred million? The two situations are not remotely comparable. Simpleton comparison.

Which is a stat that reflects the whole offense, not the QB. And it has probably around 30% to do with field position, and again the Bills offense got terrific field position on average, around 9th in the league, while the Bills defense got awful field position, around 23rd in the league. Scoring simply isn't a QB stat. You know what is? Passer rating. Cousins is 8th and Tyrod 20th. You know what else is a QB stat? YPA, yards per attempt. Tyrod is 26th, Cousins, 3rd. As for the offense, here's another stat: Bills 354.1 yards per game (16th) Redskins 403.1 yards per game (3rd) Not to mention that the pass game scored 17 TDs this year and 29 with the run game. So that means the pass game scored 40% of our offensive TDs. Know how many other NFL teams scored below 50% passing this year? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzero.

Have to disagree with bottom five. You look at passer rating and YPA and other things and he looks like somewhere around 20 - 23 or so. But that's low enough to be well within the group whose teams are looking to replace them. Unless we see major major improvement. The Bills weren't going to pay him that contract and pick up the option. They gave him a bridge contract for a reason. The huge deal was the big guarantee going away. I'd rather have seen them rebuild, but if they wanted to reload, signing Tyrod was the way to go. I personally expect somewhere around seven or so wins, and without him I would have guessed maybe five. I just hope they get their financial ship righted and work things so they are out of cap trouble next year. And trade back this year, please, if at all possible.

Usually your arguments are understandable even if I disagree. But YAC has nothing to do with this whatsoever. I'm not arguing that Tyrod's numbers are more skewed than any other NFL QB. I'm pointing out that you're trying to bury the stats for the areas where he's bad - beyond ten yards, which ESPN, the place where you get all your stats, calls intermediate and long, in a blizzard of throws to where he's good, within ten yards. Of course he looks good when you use all of his "middle of the field" stats. He threw very few balls to the deep and intermediate third where he's weak. I went over that for every ball he threw in 2015, his good year, on the other site, every ball. It was on the other site, and it's now gone, but that doesn't make it less true. He simply threw very little to the deep and intermediate middle. That's a lot of the problem. It pretty much neutralized Clay's game, for one thing. Now if you bury that area in stats from many more passes thrown to his area of strength it does indeed cover up the problem. But covering up the problem isn't what use of statistics should do. It's not 4 and 5 yards. It's 10 or less being short, 11 - 20 being intermediate and 21 and more being long. And that's not me making those categories, it's ESPN, the place you get all of your stats. Dude. Seriously. He threw more and better to the sides, and that included the three or four yards inside the numbers. I went over every single play of the 2015 season, play by play, and posted the numbers and included every ball to the middle third. On the other website, so it's now gone. I commented on every play to the middle third and posted the time so everyone could check. I also posted the time over every play that was even close, within two or three yards of the middle. Not a single person disagreed with me on any play not being in the middle third. You saw all of this. And the numbers showed that in the deep and intermediate zone, he threw roughly 40% to the left third, roughly 40% to the right third and roughly 20% to the middle third. And was very unsuccessful with the balls thrown to the middle third. So he threw less and more poorly to the deep and intermediate middle third. Which makes him easier to defend because it's such a strong tendency. And the guy who put up the dot chart showing where each of ball thrown by Brady and Rivers was caught had each going about 33-33-33 in the deep and intermediate middle. That made them unpredictable. For those wondering what Transplant is talking about with the 125 passer rating, look here: https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-bills-should-build-around-tyrod-taylor-not-show-him-the-door/ It's another chart that doesn't look at the field in thirds. It counts "the middle" as everything between the numbers, the middle 52.503281455 % of the field. And even if you look at the middle 52% of the field, the stats Transplant introduces show the same thing, fewer throws to the middle. Looking at the intermediate zone of Transplant's charts (10 - 19 yards), he threw 92 passes to the intermediate zone, and only 27 to the middle 52%. Put another way, in the intermediate zone, he threw only 27.2% of his passes to the middle 52% of the field. Unbalanced. Easier to defend. In the deep zone it was much worse. He threw 58 deep passes according to Transplant's chart, and only eight to the middle 52%. That means he threw 15.3% of his deep passes to the middle 52% of the field. Unbalanced. Easier to defend. Whereas the dot charts that guy showed on Brady and Rivers had them dividing their throws nearly evenly to each third of the deep and intermediate areas. Tyrod doesn't throw nearly as much to the deep and intermediate middle, even when you extend the middle out to the numbers and encompass 52% of the field. And it's much more so when you look at the area he actually avoids, the middle third, the deep and intermediate middle third.

It has a lot of meaning. Again, I watched the All-22 of six games without Woods or Sammy, play by play, slowly and repeatedly looking at each play and what happened. Guys were open, significantly open, consistently. And you can kid yourself that any argument that can't be backed up by statistics is wrong. But that is incorrect. "Are they getting as open as consistently as #1 and #2 WRs across the NFL? How often do those other QBs across the NFL simply not throw a pass to those guys?" is what you expect us to prove, correct? It's unprovable. As is the opposite. You bear just as much of the burden of proof here as we do. Neither of us can produce statistics - there are none. Your assumption that this proves you win is laughable. What's observable is that there were open receivers this year. A lot of them. I watched six games on the All-22, analyzing carefully. I found maybe two or three plays a game where Tyrod didn't have a very good option, a guy open in the area of the field where he had a chance to see them. And that's what pretty much everyone who watches the All-22 says. I posted a ton of play-by-play analysis on the other site. That's now gone but the argument remains. He simply wasn't throwing to open guys he had good chances to throw to. It was a consistent problem. It's what Cosell has said, it's what Andy Benoit has said after a ton of serious tape analysis. He left a lot of yards on the field.

I do indeed realize how ridiculous it sounds. To those who are desperate fans of Tyrod and won't hear anything against him, it sounds very ridiculous. To those with open minds, it makes total sense. You're looking at the middle 11.5625% of the field between the hashes because you can find stats about it, and you're looking at that middle 11.5625% from the line of scrimmage fo, and in fact also behind the line. I'm looking at the middle 33.33% of the field and only from ten yards out ... for the obvious reason that that's where he rarely throws and that he has problems when he does throw there. And since there are major differences between those two areas, of course he might throw differently between them. Duh. You include short passes in yours, behind the line and from the LOS to nine yards out. Thing is, nobody's ever accused Tyrod of having trouble there. He clearly throws quite well on balls thrown in the middle if they're less than ten yards. Always has. So again, it's not ridiculous at all to point out differences when you include the shorter and easier throws that he's good at, and which I (and everyone) agree he's good at. Why did I pick the area I picked? Because it's clearly where he has problems. The pundits and experts agree. Why did you pick the area you picked? Because it's easy to find stats about it. And because since Tyrod threw 285 passes of the 436 passes (65.3%) your stat source (ESPN and their Tyrod Splits) shows that he threw this year were ten yards or less. So if you throw in the short passes he's good at with the intermediate and long middle passes he's not, then yeah you can bury the bad stats with the good ones. A great tactic if you're trying to make Tyrod look good at any cost. QBs - players, really - tend to improve until they plateau. And then if they improve it's generally year to year and fairly minimal. We do indeed need consistency, but extremely few QBs who haven't shown themselves by their sixth year to be a franchise guy then improve enough to become one. Gannon, really. That's about it. No, not Steve Young who was already looking very good when he saw action as Montana's backup in his fifth and sixth years. You can maybe argue Plunkett, though I'd disagree. But that's about it, and there have been hundreds of guys who've had the chance to do so. I'm hoping too, but the chances are pretty minimal.

Next year will be Year Seven, not Year Six. Just saying.

I've been here years. And yes, I've still got sense and am still willing to point out the logical flaws in your arguments.

And by the way, Tyrod's "over the middle" problems have always been much more specific than that. His problems have been in the deep and intermediate middle of the field. He's always thrown well to the short middle and that muddies up the stats since for every QB around 70 - 80% of his passes are short (less than 10 yards according to ESPN, the source you always use for your stats). So yeah, when you throw in his good and plentiful short passes to the middle, it does indeed tend to overcome his infrequent and not as good use of the deep and intermediate middle. Oh, and you're again using the words "over the middle" in a way that doesn't describe Tyrod's problem area. HIs problems aren't only between the hashes. Between the hashes is only about 12% of the field. Tyrod's problem area, again, is the deep and intermediate middle third of the field. He throws well outside the numbers but also for about three to four yards inside the numbers as well. The deep and intermediate middle third is the problem area and you can't find stats for that area because there's no visible line there for people to quickly use to define it. So you have to look at every pass. But that's not a problem. Everyone already knows this about Tyrod, the pundits, the coaches, everybody.

"A bit" of a Taylor homer? Puh-leeze!! You were a wild-eyed Taylor homer on six-packs of Red Bull. As was pointed out over there, nineteen of the last twenty-five threads you started were about Taylor, if I remember those numbers correctly. In any case, the reason that he was kept around is that he re-negotiated his contract down to a bridge QB-type deal. Even back when the first story by Schefter, came out saying that the Bills were planning to "move on," he was pointing out that the money was the problem. He said, "Picking up the option would guarantee Taylor $30.75 million over the life of the contract, tying him to Buffalo for the next five seasons, and the Bills don't have any intention of paying it." Not that they had no intention of keeping him, but that they had no intention of paying that outsize contract. He re-negotiated, so he's here. He's excellent at taking care of the ball, a very important skill. And he's a terrific runner. But he's got major drawbacks as well, and the end result is like a bridge QB who is now on a bridge deal. I certainly hope he makes the huge steps up he will have to make to become a franchise QB. It would be by far the best thing for the Bills.