Thurman#1

The Pats want a first rounder for Garoppolo. Doesn't mean they'll get it. And more to the point, Tyrod's contract is wildly more difficult to absorb than Garoppolo's would be. Contracts are absolutely a major part of trades. Whatever team gets Garoppolo would have another year to evaluate him and then either cut him or sign him to a contract they themselves found acceptable. A team trading for Tyrod will be acquiring that $30.5 mill guarantee if he's on the roster three days after the league year starts and $40.5 mill if he's on the roster the same day a year later. That will make it harder to trade Tyrod.

Sure there's a reasonable justification. If you don't want to agree with him being out, that's fine, but the decision is reasonable. As Carucci points out, "Before we vote, Hall administrators admonish us to consider only what takes place within the confines of the field. But those white lines, as they acknowledge, can extend to the locker room and the meeting rooms and anywhere else that football-related activity takes place." Simple as that. If the locker room counts, there's an argument against Owens, a reasonable argument. And particularly to his going in this particular time, on the first ballot. Here's Carucci's original article rather than Florio's disagreement to it: https://buffalonews.com/2017/02/10/vic-carucci-thinking-behind-not-voting-for-terrell-owens-into-the-pro-football-hall-of-fame/

Yup, truth is sometimes poison, to those unwilling to see it. If Tyrod stays for five years or close, his price per year would be very reasonable. If he stays for one year, his price per year would be one of the all-time highest in league history, one year for $30.5 mill. If he stays for two years - more likely - it would be two years for $40.5 mill. And that is indeed franchise QB money. And the price doesn't change just because you can put some of the purchase on plastic and pay later. It's still franchise QB money. And an awful lot of that scoring came the superb run game instead of the substandard pass game. So there's not really a contradiction at all. Not that I think the odds are terrific that Cardale would turn us into an offensive powerhouse overnight, but IMHO we know Tyrod's ceiling and we don't know Cardale's. And I'm just not all that worried about next year. I don't see any way, even with Romo if he stayed healthy, that we would be competitive for a Super Bowl. So I'd rather see them worrying more about two or three years down the road. And I don't see those years including Tyrod. I could be wrong, especially if he re-negotiates, but that's the way it looks right now.

Is that all that was actually said? Jeez. Well, that's why people should give the actual quotation and a link. So people don't waste time talking about comments that were never actually made.

Sounded totally reasonable to me. Washington was great? Not buying that, third-rounder or not. He was decent. And we shouldn't have to wake you two years from now. After the first-year draft grades aren't based on third-year performance. We drafted a guy we knew was an injury risk, for a coach who was on the hot seat. If he then misses the season because of that injury, OBD should absolutely be held responsible and graded down. Agreed. He's done pretty well overall in FA, but not especially well in the draft. And if you don't do well in the draft you're probably going to see salary cap problems, which is indeed the way things turned out.

$2.85 mill dead cap if he's cut before they have to pick up the option. But yeah, that's a bit better than $30.5 mill guaranteed.

1,000 yards? And 10 - 12 more touchdowns? Wow, I had no idea. And of course neither did anyone else but the guy who made it up off the top of his head, which would be you. Where'd you get that figure? Oh, yeah, thin air. Some people would call that complete bull ****, and now that I think about it, I'm one of them. He gets credit for the amount he ran, and the TDs he got running. After that you're simply making up figures that you happen to like. I bet that you didn't know that the run game helped the pass game by 2,000 yards. I came up with that figure the same place you came up with yours. The run game helped the pass game a hell of a lot more than the pass game helped the run game. That's how it works when the run game is the most efficient one in the league and the pass game is the 26th most efficient. Teams don't line up with the idea that they're going to try to take away your weaknesses. It's very much the opposite. And Taylor really didn't get the ball in the end zone that much, looking at the pass game. Opposing defenses loved it when Tyrod threw the ball, because the pass game simply wasn't that productive. That's why we kept hearing "Make him be a quarterback."

Good addition. But you're missing something. They didn't have TT and ALynn. They had TT and ALynn and McCoy and Incognito and Cordy Glenn and Clay and Gillislee and I could go on and on. They generally had 11 guys on the field at a time, though there were a few exceptions. People want to pretend that points scored is a QB stat. It very much isn't. If anything it's a stat for the whole offense, and yet also has a 20 - 30% defense and STs component thrown in for field position and number of drives and points scored by the defense and STs and so on. And as I've pointed out before, the Bills scored 29 rushing TDs and 17 by passing ... in a league in which not a single other team scored more rush TDs than pass TDs. The defense was bad this year. The passing game was also not good. Thank goodness our run game was excellent.

It doesn't. New information about the injury could have changed the way they looked at things. New info about something else ... or Whaley could have been describing what would have happened based on the thinking of the guy in control ... maybe he'd heard Lynn say that. Who knows, really. If Whaley made the decision - not Lynn or someone else - that last game on which of the two remaining guys would start. And the article doesn't say who made that decision.

OBD has actually started to mention the words "long term." Which is not the same as rebuilding, but is actually smart and increases the chances of success. In the long term anyway. So none of the above, from what I'm reading. Higher-priced and medium-priced as well. We're up against it with the cap. The Bills are 24th in cap space with $26 mill. The Pats are 5th in cap space with $62.9 mill. Cap matters. Frugality too.

Be damned. I coulda sworn. Thanks, you're right. I'm gonna edit my original post so I don't mislead anyone from my mistake.

What I'm closing my eyes to ... is what the folks drinking Tyrod-flavored Kool-Aid see. Figments. He absolutely regressed. I pointed out above that the justifications would be coming. And yup, you're the second or third one. How come you guys talking about receiver problems never mention what a tremendous help it is to a quarterback to have the best run game in the league? Teams went out of their way to stop the run, partly because the run game worried them and partly because they didn't worry about our pass offense. Which is why the phrase, "Make him be a quarterback," should sound familiar. I watched the All-22 for five of those games in the middle when Sammy was out. He had guys open on almost every single play. Yeah, it would've been better if Sammy and Woods were both healthy, but he had consistent places to go and he missed them on a regular basis. It was severely depressing watching it. I wanted him to make the improvements he needs to make to be a franchise QB. That would've been by far the best outcome for the Bills. Instead, he regressed. It was sad. But it happened.

"He" didn't give the team big leads. The offense did, along with the defense doing better earlier in the game. And the offense was composed of an excellent run game and a substandard pass game. And when the defense gave the leads up, the offense couldn't get it back. Leads are calculated by subtracting points scored against you from points scored for you. They're results of the team. Having said that, yeah, the defense sucked. So did the passing offense. Maybe they sucked a bit less than the defense but not all that much less. Thank goodness for the run offense. Again, we scored 29 rushing TDs and 17 passing. In a league where not one single other team scored fewer pass TDs than rush TDs.

I'd have to do more tape-watching and due diligence, but yeah, if the scouts liked him, a 2nd sounds right to me.

Good article. The Falcons just gave that game away with bad clock management. The article said they only ran 5 more times in that game? Jeez, I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize it was that bad.

The price - again - is $30.5 million if they keep him for only one year. That isn't reasonable, it just isn't. And yeah, the hit will be spread out a bit, but every penny of that $30.5 will hit the cap. The only way that looks reasonable is if you look ONLY at the 2016 cap, and doing that misses about half of the cap impact of keeping him for a year. Same for keeping him for two years. $40.5 mill, all told, all of which comes off the cap sooner or later. It's only when he gets to the fourth and fifth year of his contract that the whole thing begins to look reasonable. Till then, the impact is huge. As for Vick's best season, when people try to compare across history I always point out that it gets easier and easier to play QB as far as running up big numbers. In 2010, Vick was 4th in passer rating, 5th in YPA, 13th in completion percentage, and had 4 fourth quarter comebacks and three game-winning drives. If the rules had been the same as today's he'd likely have done better than his stats that year.

How could anyone think that a QB whose QB rating goes from 99.4 to 89.7 is regressing? Or a guy whose Yards Per Attempt drops from 8.0, to 6.9, which is from 5th in the league to 20th ... how could anyone think he was regressing? Frankly, it's hard to miss. Pretty much everyone except the more wild-eyed of his fans knows he regressed. And yeah, yeah, next come the justifications. But you know what justifications are? They're bad arguments. You can make justifications about absolutely anything He absolutely regressed. As for it being a team game ... yeah, of course. If anyone out there is blaming the entire Bills season on Tyrod, you have a point. But nobody but a few nuts is. We're blaming the regression in his performance as a QB on Tyrod. Not our defensive problems. Not our special teams problems. And not our terrific success at running the ball either. You give credit to Tyrod for what he did, but the problem is he still has the same limitations ... the lack of pocket presence in the frequency of leaving the pocket when there's no pressure, the unwillingness to throw the ball till a reciever is already open, the extreme infrequency of his throws to the deep and intermediate middle third ... the stuff we all see. I was desperately hoping for that stuff to improve this year. And it didn't. He's still evasive and a terrific athlete and he's still keeping INTs to an absolute minimum. And that's important. But he didn't improve his weaknesses either. It's an extremely reasonable opinion, and surely factors into the reason the Bills decision appears to be going the way it appears to be going.

The doubt is there because people are willing to doubt. Doubt being there means nothing. In the past, they cheated. Today, looked to me like the Falcons screwed up a couple of times and their defense wore out. Why didn't they run the ball around the 20 on that drive late in the 4th? Going up by 11 would have killed the Pats and they'd have run time off the clock, and instead they tried to pass.

It's a reasonable opinion. Especially about a guy who regressed significantly in his second year, a guy in his sixth year in the league.

From the beginning he was thought to be a guy who would need two years of development or even more. So you hold onto him, as a #3, and you coach him hard, no matter what else you do at QB. That's not hype. That's hope. That's what happens with Bills backup QBs because we haven't got a real starter yet. Remember the attention Brohm got? And Hamdan? Hell, some people wanted Reich over Kelly at some points. Four years, $2.7 million. You wouldn't save any money. And it's not a low reward situation. If he becomes good the reward could be huge. Granted, the likelihood isn't great, but this team needs to make QB its number one priority, without a close #2. Keeping him is a tiny investment. It's perfectly possible to improve without game reps. There's this thing called practice. And another called mental reps. And another called film study. And you don't need reps to work on your mechanics. Tyrod's a good example. I'm still not convinced he'll ever be a franchise guy, but he certainly improved a ton in Baltimore and in the preseason at Buffalo.

I desperately hope you're right. But when you look at guys like Kelly and Peyton Manning, when they were Brady's age, their running had already been reduced to awkward near-waddles. I just don't see that with Brady. He can still run. He hasn't taken a pounding like most QBs do because of their quick-release offense, a very solid OL over the years and mostly his excellent pocket movement skills. He has never been particularly athletic. He just always moves in the right damn direction. IMHO he could last till 44 or 45, unless he suffers a serious injury. The odds of that go up for older guys, But no sign of it yet. We'll never know for sure. Because Goodell destroyed the video cassettes. They should have a parade for him in Boston. And again, it can't be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but Brady destroyed his cell phone rather than give it to the NFL. He did it.

I'm no fan of Tyrod as a starter on this team. But I disagree. I think there are probably ten teams that have worse QBs, and some will have cap space and be willing to take a flier on him while probably drafting another guy as well. He wants to stay in Buffalo. And he doesn't know what will happen in FA. There's plenty of pressure on him, though he certainly could refuse to re-negotiate, either thinking the Bills are bluffing or being willing to take a cut in FA if that's how things turn out there. Again, I don't want Tyrod on this team as anymore than a bridge QB, and even then not at this salary .... ... but that's ridiculous. He's not a look-at-me type at all. He's a good guy, a hard worker and a good teammate. I just think he isn't going to ever make the major jumps upwards that he would need to be a top ten or twelve QB. Which is what we need.

No reason to delay if they were going to just pick up the option without question. Likely they want to figure out what happens to Romo, and it's also likely that they want to pressure Tyrod because they're at the very least going to try to get him to re-negotiate. This isn't media-driven. It happened. And the media reported it.

I'd really love to see this. A smart, athletic guy.

Terrible news. My heart goes out to you.