Thurman#1

Of course there is obsession with comp picks. They're picks. In the NFL draft. Did you not see the obsession with the draft and the picks in it recently? And yeah, the odds are lower later on. Which is pretty much entirely beside the point, which is that some picks from later on make an impact, some even a great impact whereas not having any picks is exactly like the Gretzky quote about not making any of the shots you don't take. You're infinitely more likely to get something from comp picks than if you have no comp picks, which would give you no chance. And as for the original question, after so many people blabbing on and on about how we were going to get tons of picks because of all the FAs we were losing ... nope. No comp picks is what it looks like. Now, which team is more likely to get something from their comp picks in 2018, the Pats who according to overthecap.com have will probably have something like one in the 4th and one in the 5th? The Dolphins who will probably have something like one in the 6th and three in the 7th? Or the Bills and Jets who will likely have a sum total of zero? Exactly.

Yeah, it's speculation. So is who we grab for GM. Speculating about the Buffalo Bills' future is about 90% of what we do here. No need to wait as long as we take it with a grain of salt. Which we should do for any guesswork about the future, really. Particularly approaching the deadest part of the offseason, why not look further ahead? The "we aren't keeping 4 QBs" thing is not the fact that some people seem to be saying it is. Either we are or we aren't but the one thing that's for certain is that it's too early to know. Especially since the rule about not dressing five guys if you think someone's a good developmental candidate, there's room to keep him. And another thing to know is that even assuming we only carry three, Peterman isn't any more likely to go than Cardale or even Yates.

My impression is that if Carucci actually meant no starts, he's wrong. Carolina has a few, Cam, Kelvin Benjamin, and one or two guys on defense as well, if I recall. Looked to me more like the article meant they aren't going to base the team's player acquisition strategy mostly around getting stars as they have in the past. Also the difference between 12 attempts and a bunch more. And it doesn't help if a couple of those attempts were trick plays that had Reggie get the ball way behind the LOS and not heading downfield. Not that I was thrilled with Reggie, but he wasn't given much of a chance. And again, the Buffalo News has no interest in clickbait. Nor do most newspapers. If they did, they sure wouldn't stop you from getting more than ten articles per month. They make their online money from digital subscriptions and thus need people to want and like their articles.

Cracks me up. When people talk about defensive or offensive ranking, they mean yards. Period. It's how this is judged. Until Buffalo does well in scoring for a year. Then suddenly Bills fans change how they evaluate everything. And it will change back if we score poorly but make a lot of yards. Offences are ranked by yards for good reason. Yards figures are much less affected by defence and STs than is scoring. Yards better isolates how well the offence itself is doing. Scoring is affected a ton by field position. Not to mention that defences and STs sometimes actually score points (and the Bills were top ten in that department last year). And the offence had the 11th best average drive start in the league. While leaving the defence the 23rd best average drive starts. Which meant the defence helped the offence while the offence left the D in bad situations. In any case, yeah, we've had a very good run game the last two years, during which we've had bad defences. We've whipsawed back and forth between different offensive and defensive schemes during Whaley's term, and it has killed us. And isn't it possible that that's exactly what the article is about? That Whaley didn't have a vision on team building and so he just brought in players and picked coaches who had their own visions, meaning the team had little or no continuity.

Agreed that it is a bit scary. But Rex's hire seemed to be based on his personality, and McDermott's on his insane commitment, work ethic and preparedness. This doesn't prove anything but it does give me more hope than I had early on in the Rex administration.

It's not about what evidence we as fans have. We'll never have enough evidence of that, fans of any team at any time before that regime has started winning regularly. That's a straw man, right there. Of course we don't have evidence of this. Nor will we till he either builds a good team or doesn't. 2013 offense: 19th 2014 offense: 26th 2015 offense: 13th 2016 offense: 16th In any case, thanks for the thought-provoking article, OP.

In 2002, Pennington was "limited" to 68.9% completions, 22 TDs and 6 INTs, 7.8 YPA and a 104.2 passer rating. And it's gotten a lot easier since then for QBs to get much better stats. At that point, though, those numbers put him 1st in passer rating, 1st in completion percentage, 3rd in YPA, 8th in TDs (after missing the first four games of the season and only playing 12). He led the league in TD rate and was second-best in INT rate as well, which is freakish. He never had a great arm, just good enough, but after those two rotator cuff surgeries he wasn't even good enough. Pennington was looking like an elite QB until the injuries. And the same kind of caveat for Fitz. The problem has never been his arm, it's been his decision-making. You're right that he's never had more than a decent arm, but that was enough. It was his gunslinger tendencies and inconsistency that always caused him problems.

Nah. You don't spend $16 mill to "send a signal" to fans. Not on a salary cap-starved team you don't. Sorry, this makes absolutely no sense. And again, you don't spend $16 mill to trade a guy for what you would get for Tyrod. Again, makes absolutely zero sense. Could Peterman start? Well, it's not impossible, but it won't happen unless he legitimately beats out Tyrod. Which is quite unlikely to happen in his rookie season. Tyrod's offensive coach is a head coach now. Roman is also very highly respected. Coaches weren't the problem with Tyrod. You're right, we'll see. The offense was good because the run game was superb. The pass game was bad. Again, 29 running TDs and 17 passing TDs in a league where not a single other team had more run TDs than pass TDs.

Denver certainly wouldn't be interested, but someone else might be. But possibly not at the price. And more, if they hadn't wanted him, they wouldn't have given him the contract. They want him, particularly McDermott. They wouldn't get all that much for him anyway. More, he got a $7 mill signing bonus. That would all be dead money, a complete waste, if they traded him. Just doesn't make sense. He's a significantly below middle of the road starting quarterback. Somewhere around 20 - 22, probably, in the pass game, which is where QBs earn their money. But you're absolutely right that if they wanted to tank they certainly wouldn't have kept him. He'll win a game or two for them that they wouldn't have won without him. Maybe more if the QB they replaced him with was far enough below standard that he started losing significant numbers of games. The idea that keeping Tyrod would make sense if they were tanking is utterly ridiculous. He's by far their best option this year in terms of winning games. I personally wouldn't have minded a bit of a rebuild but it was obvious when they re-negotiated with him that they weren't going that way.

Let's not kid ourselves. We don't know how long he has. Especially if they can't find a QB, but he still produces a competitive team that beats a good team once in a while, he might be here for a while.

His manner reminds me of Belichick, as far as uncommunicativeness. Willing to at least appear to communicate, but that's what I see. Maniacal focus, to the point where he does come across as unfocused on anything else, including the fans. But why would you expect any new coach to be convincing. They're all risks. You just have to wait, same as you would if we'd hired anyone else. Williams might have been a decent coach. But the roster just wasn't good enough, same as it hasn't been for a long long time. Those were the Rob Johnson / Bledsoe after his legs went years.

Nah, he never said anything about the top 53. That was other people inferring incorrectly. Here's all he said. This is all correct.

Totally agree with your last sentence. But most of the great work on the defensive side of the ball putting together that Schwartz defense wasn't Whaley, it was Nix. Schwartz was here in 2014. Whaley was hired as GM AFTER the 2013 draft. I believe Corey, Graham, Preston Brown, and two-down guy Brandon Spikes (46.4% of defensive snaps) were the only starters on the defense that year who'd been brought in after Whaley was made GM, and yeah that includes Hughes who arrived while Nix was still in charge. None of his world championships, that's for sure.

Maybe the reason they DIDN'T pick somebody from down there is something he learned that day. Not picking someone from there does NOT show the time was a waste. It wasn't so much playing with his daughter as it was still being in Arizona instead of on the road. And I agree with the others here saying that it seemed to me Kryk was implying Whaley was there because he knew the writing was on the wall and nothing was going to change that.

Just wanna point out that probably Trent's single best game was the game after the Arizona game. That's one narrative, that the big hit did for him, but it's not necessarily anything more than one way to look at things.

Don't quite remember that, but I might easily have missed it. What Lynn also said when he took over and was asked what he was going to change is that he said he was going to simplify the reads. Not complicate. Simplify.

Probably "reasonable" or "smart." If he was that good, he wouldn't have had to take a major contract cut. Which is the reason he's still in Buffalo. Not so much. Completeness doesn't by any means automatically imply better analysis. It means more data. It doesn't mean what's done with the data makes any sense whatsoever or reflects reality well. A chimp who watches every play won't produce better analysis than an NFL coach who watches a small selection, for instance. You love to pretend that other QBs need to be compared. They don't. You can easily make judgments about Tyrod just by watching his game.

Quick question about this "stole the draft board" nonsense. When do teams generally put together their draft board? Late December? Before the Senior Bowl and the Bowl games? Because the guy was hired on January 11th and was interviewing way before that. They first interviewed him on January 4th. The Bills draft board was "rounding into shape" on February 4th. Which is the way this works. http://www.buffalobills.com/news/article-2/Bills-draft-board-rounding-into-form/8acc2efa-ef5d-4c2c-b3d8-1eba744ec687 Folks, they didn't have a board for McDermott to steal at that time. The Panthers have known for a year or two he was an obvious head coach candidate, this wasn't a surprise. Enough with the obvious crap.

The key man is the bald one. And grades this early mean virtually nothing. They're fun, but carry no weight.

I don't think "not ready" meant that he hadn't learned enough of the playbook. It meant a whole bunch of things needed to be worked on, from mechanics to reading defenses and on and on.

It's not a rule that three is the maximum. Two or three is the most common, but they could easily carry four. And then they could put Woodrum on the practice squad if they wanted. But IMHO they'll let Woodrum go and judge Cardale's progress and if he's improving enough keep four.

I feel like maybe things might be getting better. Hard to say till we see the GM, though. And I've thought things might be looking up a couple of times before in the 16 year slump. I tend to like McDermott but doubt the Pegulas and their ability to pick a good GM. They should have kept LaFontaine and they should have hired a czar for the Bills and bowed out, and they should probably do that now. And I don't think they will.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/cap/ Yeah, unfortunately. It'd be easy to re-work the contracts. And what it would do is move the problem down the road to next year. There's no way to make these problems disappear. Once you've paid a guy money, you have to account for it on the cap. No way around it. And I love it that they're not doing that this year. They're suffering, losing guys they probably would like to keep like Gillislee and Gilmore and Zach and so on. They're suffering and dealing with the problem so that next year things will be significantly better. Love that. But it means this year is not going to be a year when we can spend money. I could be wrong, but I don't think either guy can be had for vet minimum. I'm betting it would take a couple of mill apiece, somewhere in that neighborhood.

The Hughes trade happened on Nix's watch. But he gets the credit for the Shady trade. He said yes. Could've said no.

It's an awful lot harder to make the Pats roster than the Bills roster. And 2013 was not a Whaley draft, it was a Nix draft. As for Bills - Pats, you've noticed the Bills consistently draft around 10th and the Pats around 27th to 32nd, right? Bills 2014: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, two sevenths (4, 44, 73,109, 153, 221, 237) Pats 2014: 1st, 2nd, three 4ths, three 6ths, 7th (29, 62, 105, 130, 140, 179, 198, 206, 244) Bills 2015: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, two 6ths, 7th (50, 81, 155, 188, 194, 234) Pats 2015: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, three 4ths, 5th, two 6ths, two 7ths (32, 64, 97, 101, 111, 131, 166, 178, 202, 247, 253) Bills 2016: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, two 6ths (19, 41, 80, 139, 156, 192, 218) Pats 2016: 2nd, three 3rds, 4th, three 6ths, 7th (60, 78, 91, 96, 112, 208, 214, 221, 225) The Bills averaged far higher picks. It's much harder for the Pats.