Thurman#1

Please, that language you're using isn't clearly asking the correct question. It's spinning and obfuscating. "If we had elite talent, do you think they would be taking them off the field as much as possible?" Um, no. As much as possible, would be no snaps. So, no, you wouldn't keep your elite talent entirely on the bench. But that answer is the result of a poorly phrased question. But if we had elite talent, would we platoon them? Yes. And it's not even a question. They've said they would, again and again. They've showed they would again and again. And Von Miller is elite talent and they platooned him. The rate they'd rest them at changes, depending on age, injury status and how banged up they are, opponent, matchups and lots of other things. And the majority of teams in the league platoon DLs. This isn't something unusual. And McDermott has done it not sometimes or most of the time as the OP said, but all the time. The DL with the highest snap percentage in McDermott's tenure was Kyle Williams in 2017, at 68%, with Hughes at 66% the same year, and nobody else ever that high.

We believe that it was his decision because everyone says so, including the reporters who know the guy and would have good reason to have a juicy opinion about it. It almost certainly was exactly that. And yeah, he had this DC job, but if anybody is aware that being the DC on this team isn't enough to get him a head coach job, it's Frazier. He's done a terrific job. And somewhat fairly, McDermott gets most of the credit. Bienemy wasn't getting anything OCing under Reid and Frazier had the same problem. Even two SB wins didn't get him a head coaching job because the credit went to Reid. And Bieniemy is a lot younger than Frazier. It just would not have hurt Frazier to be fired from this job. McD might very well have hired another DC if it had been early enough in the process that this happened. I get it. It's much more dramatic and a better story this way, and everybody loves a conspiracy theory. But there's no real reason to think this was anything but what they say it was. If they'd fired him they wouldn't have waited till February 28th. That's five weeks after their season ended. What makes sense there is an older guy realizing that he wasn't as charged up as he'd always been before combined with a feeling that another year at the job he was in wasn't going to get him closer to the job that was his long-time dream.

Seriously? Good lord, dude! He spends two days each with three teams, and you're saying it now doesn't count as taking the year off? Again, good lord!!! If he puts down the pina colada before he finishes it, is that also not a year off? Jeez.

He said $11M, but didn't say how many years. If it's true at all, more years would make it more reasonable.

He's old enough that nobody wanted to give him the long-range contract he wanted. And this was an absolutely awful season to be out there as an older DE, with many really good guys in the same situation: Justin Houston, Robert Quinn, Clowney, Melvin Ingram, Trey Flowers, Pierre-Paul ... those guys are out there now and still unsigned. It was easy for teams to feel no pressure to sign any particular one of them. Just give the same cheap offer to each and say, "Whoever takes it first, gets the shot." And the Bills are a team with a legit championship shot, and there aren't that many of those out there, so our offer looked a bit better than most.

That would be true if Oliver was overpaid. But there's no particular reason to think that's so. It'll depend on how he plays. And it's certainly possible that he underperforms. But to think that you know better than the people who saw him in practice every day, in the locker room every day, and had access to his exact medical situation based on the best experts in the business ... well, it's laughable. You could turn out to be right. Being as sure as you show you are when saying this is just ridiculous.

This was a much bigger need than WR. Always looked like one of these FA DEs would be here cheap. Sort of hoped it would be one of the ones I knew better, Ngakoue, Ingram, Houston or Quinn for poor reasons if I get deep enough into my psyche. Whether I knew them better is beside the point. I don't know enough about Floyd to have a sharp opinion. But getting one of these guys is a good, good idea, that always looked like an extreme likelihood.

Hunh? Plenty of #2s get paid. They get paid as #2s, not #1s, but they get paid. Hunter Renfrow. Tim Patrick. Jakobi Meyers. Tyler Boyd. Tyler Lockett. Diontae Johnson. Plenty. This could easily happen. Don't know if it will but it's a good possibility.

I remember a lot of people felt the same way about Sammy Watkins, including Whaley, unfortunately. Giving up the kind of assets we would have to give up to get him just isn't smart, except if you're trading up for a possible franchise QB.

When do they translate to destruction, disruption and impact? That's the question. And they have. Just not as consistently as I'm sure we'd all like. There are a few highlight here for instance, where Oliver rushes got QBs off their spot and set up sacks for Rousseau and others. This has probably been posted here, but worth looking at again. He doesn't look like this enough. But he does it a lot. And he was dealing with an ankle issue for a lot of the year, a tough deal for a guy whose strength is explosion. He took a step back. How much of that was due to the ankle? Seems like the Bills may have thought a lot of it was.

It really doesn't. The idea doesn't make sense. If his instincts were so terrible, Edmunds wouldn't have gotten the contract he got. He just wouldn't have. LBs with terrible instincts aren't good. He was really good last year, probably partly because he just improved and partly because Da'Quan Jones is the kind of DT they needed in front of him and they haven't had that kind of a guy there since the first two years of Lotulelei's stay here. Beane told us why Edmunds is gone. They really wanted him back but couldn't pay him that and maintain a reasonable salary cap situation that will be sustainable long term.

Perhaps to some people this post would be very clear. In any case, the D was worse when Edmunds was out. It was not hard to see.

That's a very questionable argument. Would've been a good one if the wins and losses came down to how well Dodson played. They didn't. Had much more to do with, in the two games Dodson started this year and played a majority of snaps, our offense scoring 38 and 31 and our facing Pittsburgh and Cleveland, two very low to mediocre teams and offenses in the league. The offense and STs are beside the point in a discussion of Edmunds and how he affects a game. When Edmunds was out, the defense was a lot worse. Hopefully, bringing in Poona and a healthy Da'Quan will make the job easier for whoever has it next, and that person will grow and improve.

Heh heh. It does. For me, a mild surprise. Thought it was reasonably likely to happen, but was by no means sure. And the timing is a bit of a surprise.

Maybe. But on the other side, Beane can specifically go out of his way to support a guy like Edmunds, to say that they wanted to keep him but couldn't make it work reasonably, and some of you would (and have over and over) found a way to not believe it and try desperately to make it sound bad. The coach here specifically went out of his way to point to specific but solveable problems, and for you that's apparently "the player sucks." If anyone's running on confirmation bias it's guys trying to pretend a megaphone was used here, and then trying to pretend that when Beane actually did use a megaphone we shouldn't pay attention because he clearly didn't mean it as it doesn't line up with the posters' narratives. My goodness indeeed.

Yeah, I think it's legit to say they're firing a warning shot off Ed's bow, that he's got to keep improving, and that one area where he's got to improve is playing faster. Working on nuances. Beyond that, the News writer made assumptions that appear completely unsupported. There's no mention of problems with preparation. That's only one possible cause of not being fast enough and having problems with nuances and subtleties. There are several things that could cause those kinds of problems. But he went out of his way to point out areas of improvement. They didn't have to take that public. They were trying to send a message for Ed, no doubt about it.

Yeah, open in the wrong place isn't much better than not open. Not to mention that you can't tell from that data how things changed from early to late in the season. Might easily have been open at a higher rate later. Or not getting open in practice earlier in the year so getting fewer opportunities, then doing better in practice later as it began to click with him, so he got more opportunities. Someone said it was a mystery? I guess you can say it's a mystery to us, but likely just that he got better as the year went along, a very typical rookie trajectory. That's not his snap count, it's his snap count against single man coverage. While 70 snaps is a small sample, there's no reason to think it's meaningless, or borderline. Extremely exact as a forecast? No, but it certainly carries some force. He got 275 total snaps. 30% of offensive snaps. Not meaningless.

Always? Just not true. We see all the deals that go through. We don't see any of the deals where teams say, "Nope, can't do it," or "can't do it and stay in the kind of cap shape we want to maintain." The one example we know of is the Saints and Clowney. The Saints tried to grab him and the NFL disallowed the gymnastics they found necessary to accomplish it. Because the Saints went public in trying to do it, we heard about it, whereas when teams can't do it you simply don't hear. Pushing the cap can narrow your options and eventually, if you go far enough, force a rebuild before you otherwise would rather do that. It can be pushed thoughtfully and carefully. This is how Beane seems to like to work. Pretty much every team kicks a few cans. Kick too many, though, and the road ahead of you gets constricted with them.

Indeed. Or they they might not want to use all of those restructures. It's hardly a requirement. They usually seem to want to go into the season with $4 or $5M quickly available in case of injuries and such. But perhaps they just consider keeping a near-automatic re-structure or two in hand instead.

... whined the whiner, whiningly, in his whining OP.

Not me. I also want a chance at many. Surely his being cut makes it more possible, since we don't have to trade anything. But I think anyone who thinks Hopkins is going to give us a one-year cheapish deal is kidding themselves. I'd love to see it happen, but I think that likelihood approaches zero. See ya on the boards.

Well, let's agree to disagree. I promise one thing, though. If we do sign him, there'll be another guy this fanbase just has to have, and they'll say we can just kick the cans down the road. If we sign him, there'll be another. It never stops. ALWAYS another shiny object.

I'm not arguing he's not shiny. Take a look at my recent posts in this very thread. But there's always a shiny object. Always. Hell, if we sign him, three days later it'll be someone else anyway, just one more guy and we can kick the can down the road. It's not impossible, IMO. It'll depend on Hopkins' demands, for one thing. But I'd guess it's very unlikely. We'll see.

And again, that argument works both ways. Neither is it a certainty he (nor Hopkins) stays healthy even if they bring Hopkins in. But him staying overall healthy for the next decade is probably the way to bet. Career-ending injuries happen but the way guys like Brady and Manning and Stafford are exceptions is not in staying healthy up to age 37 (your number). It's in being terrific.

How often is there a shiny object out there? It's really common. The question is how often do you have a team with an elite QB a very very good roster, probably top 3 or 4, in financial shape to be a terrific team for a long time? Does that happen often enough to ruin the situation for a shiny object?