Thurman#1

Nope.

Don't do polls. This is a good example of why.

Not me. Burrow was a #1 pick for a reason. He was a ton more NFL-ready than Josh. Josh was always going to take time. Burrows stood a great chance of being really good really fast.

Of course you won't respond. Why would you? You said it cost the same thing, and you were wrong, and there's no way out of it. If I were trapped into such an awful position as your OP put you in, I personally wouldn't spend ten seconds trying to defend it. Totally understand why you'd stay away, makes total sense. Your plan would cost $7M+ extra in 2022, $8 - $12M extra in 2023, and yet more in 2024. You're in a crappy spot here. It's why you keep moving the goal posts in every post you make on this. Now you're saying it's an O-line at reasonable cost. Even that doesn't make complete sense. For a team with a lot of cap space, yeah, the cost is a bit high, but not outrageous. For a team that as tight against the cap as we are, adding a bunch of costs here is not reasonable at all. On top of taking Von Miller, an absolute difference-maker, out of the mix. You said it was the same cost as Von Miller. You didn't say that you could have an O-line at reasonable cost. You're the one who created that $4M player out of thin air and then added it into the total to make your argument look better. Not me. You. Don't want people to bother you about $4M? Don't create them out of mid-air. $4M matters plenty to the Bills. Again, they were only $1.9M over the cap last year, and your plan here would've added about $9M to that year's cap before we even consider the 2023 cap and your imaginary $4M. Again, $7M+ extra in 2022, $8 - $12M extra in 2023, and yet more in 2024.

Rivers was terrific. Screwed by being on teams that weren't good enough. Allen is quite a bit better. Whoever you spoke with didn't get it. Not to mention that they were suffering with severe recency bias.

Except, no. They wouldn't have gotten rid of Morse for a rookie at center. If we've discovered anything about this group it's that they tend to feed rookies in slowly, and that they greatly value experience particularly at center. Which makes sense. Morse didn't just play center well, he's improved everyone around him and got them working together well. When he was out, even though the fill-ins did his physical job in an OK fashion though less athletically, but there was an immediate regression of line play across the whole group. If McDermott had let Morse go in that situation, I'd have called the police and asked that they check his bedroom for one of those bodysnatcher pods. If they'd have drafted Humphrey, first, I'd have cheered, but second, they'd almost certainly have put him at guard for a year, if not more, but at least a year. That would have saved them the money of one of those expensive FAs he's saying with hindsight that they should have brought in. Not to mention his casual invention of a $4M player in 2023 who doesn't exist to bolster his argument. Someone will have to fill that spot, but it could easily be a 2nd round pick costing a mill or so on the cap. Or Ryan Bates who is already on the roster and would require zero extra spending. I'm all for improving the line. Don't mistake me. But his way was unrealistic, was developed only with hindsight, and would have cost quite a bit extra in all three of the years those FAs were signed for, in years when we're already in bad cap shape. I screwed up originally and didn't account for the Bills guys who would have been cut to make room for his additions. But it still would have cost quite a bit extra on the cap all three years. But Von was the missing piece that made this defense better than the sum of its parts. IMO if we'd had him we'd have won both those playoff games at KC. Maybe even this one too, though the whole team played like crap. Mahomes just stepped around our rush and hung in there. Burrow did much the same. Von was greatly missed.

Please. Very very fudgy numbers there. You were the one who implied it was a one-for-four swap that would have cost the same. It would not have. It was you who compared Von Miller to those five guys. You who said "Would you trade Von for a brand new OL?" Again, those don't line up. Now you're trying to pretend that if they'd drafted Humphrey then they would not have extended or kept Morse, which is nonsense. They would at least have kept him for competing with and mentoring Humphrey for 2022. When does McDermott draft a rookie and not plan to feed him in slowly? Most coaches do it that way, and for good reason. But at center? No way they would have done that on a year that looked so good looking forward. Morse would have been here and he would have cost about $9M against the cap in 2022. That's about what he'd have cost even without signing the extension. And they absolutely would have kept Morse even if they didn't extend him. In 2023, you throw in $4M in savings in your scheme for a completely theoretical person, whoever they'd have replaced Saffold with. Nonsense. You don't know who that would have been or more particularly how much he'd have cost. Could easily have been a draft choice from this year costing much less, or a cheaper FA. Or a more expensive one, for that matter. But you take a pure wild-ass guess of money and throw it in as if it were a fact. Pure crap adding that in. Would have been at the least $7M extra money in 2022, when we were only about $1.9M over the cap. In 2023, somewhere around $8 to $12M in a year when we now $20.511M over the cap. But you spent $7M extra in 2022 so the situation in 2023 would now have been even worse if we'd spent that extra money last year and had to somehow kick cans down the road. And plenty more in 2024, though assuming they hadn't extended Morse. And more to the point, all that extra money would have resulted in Von not being there. We saw what Von being injured did to the pass rush this year. Nearly destroyed it. You do all of this with the extreme benefit of hindsight, picking four OLs who you saw in 2022 before you proposed this. Real moves don't have the benefit of hindsight. Would've loved to have drafted Creed. At the time I was campaigning for OL in the first two or so rounds. The FAs, particularly together, were just too expensive for this team at that time and into the future, particularly when you include not having Von, who was a huge difference-maker in this defense.

Not surprising. Confirmation bias makes great arguments sound - to the people who will not be persuaded - like excuse making. Plenty of weird trends form in small sample sizes which then straighten out as the sample sizes increase. It's a fact. That's how statistics work. In those Chiefs games they simply couldn't pressure Mahomes. Then they bring in Von Miller. And Von gets injured. And they can't pressure Burrow. The game might have been quite different with Von and DaQuan in there. It's not guaranteed but there's a good chance of it. If Miller is healthy next year and Rousseau has continued improving and we can pressure the way we did early in the season, things could look very different.

To pretend that's the only factor is outright disingenuous. How many years did it take Elway to win a Super Bowl. Peyton Manning? You don't need an elite QB to win a Super Bowl. You need a top ten QB and a really good team. Reid had that on the Eagles. Having an elite QB certainly helps. It certainly does NOT guarantee it, especially in any particular set of three years. Hundreds? Great, should be easy to throw out 50 or 60 Kurt Warner-like examples off the top of your head. Come on ...

First, no, there's no particular reason to think they could have put up more. They did want to. Why wouldn't any team want to? They put up 27. Which was their season average, and was bad enough. But they didn't put up 40 and there's no reason to think they could have. And yeah, they were missing 3 OLs. Yet the people who keep saying this over and over keep forgetting that the Bills D was missing a lot more than that, including the two guys on the DL who most stressed OLs. With Von Miller and DaQuan there that probably would have been a totally different battle between those lines.

You're not being mean, you're just not getting the concept. It's clear that you don't get this, and I absolutely can't understand why. It's not rocket science. Number of 100 yard games correlates much better with number of carries given than they do anything else. They're far more about play calling than RB talent.

Nonsense. The lack of production comes from lack of run plays, which is something any team with Josh Allen on it will logically go with. Again, he's done very well per snap behind an OL that's not that great. Saying he's backup level simply says more about you than it does about him. Want to say he's not in the top half of starters? Now you've got at least a reasonable argument. DVOA has him 17th in DVOA and 20th in DYAR, and 13th in Success Rate. They have two stats, Adjusted Line Yards and RB Yards, where they assign blame/credit for the success of runs to either the OL or to the RB. If Adjusted LIne Yards are higher than RB yards, the line gets more credit for their success. If RB yards are higher than ALY, the RBs did well despite unimpressive blocking. The Bills RB yards were a great deal higher (0.45 yards per carry) than the Adjusted Line Yards, meaning the RBs got a lot for what the blocking was. Only five other teams had a better differential there: Dallas, Baltimore, Washington, Seattle and Jax. The backs were pretty solid this year, very much including Singletary.

The defense lost half of their starters, leaning far towards the best players. Yet they still managed to get 4th in defensive DVOA, 2nd in points allowed and 1st in yards allowed against a tough schedule of offenses. They throttled the Chiefs early in the year when still healthy. So, yeah, it's McDermott's structure and Frazier does the detail work, and that means you can't give Frazier most of the credit. But far from being incompetent, both Frazier and McDermott look really good once again when you look at how well that decimated defense did. (Very well.) Can't imagine Frazier will be fired, though anything is possible.

Which team is likely to get better value from their draft class? A team with two 1st rounders and two 2nd rounders, and 10 picks, like the 2022 Chiefs? 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th 7th, 7th, 7th. Five picks in the top 103. Or a team with one 1st rounder and one 2nd rounder, no 4th, and 8 picks, like the Bills? 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 6th, 6th, 7th. Four picks in the top 148. The Chiefs did very well late, with Watson and Pacheco, very well. No arguing that. We on the other hand lost Araiza and Tenuta.

He sees light boxes sometimes but he runs behind a not very good OL. He's not built to carry the load? How many games has he been injured? He's done just fine. And again, we aren't asking him to carry the load. Few teams do these days. This isn't the 1970s anymore. Only eight guys in the league carry the ball more than 3 carries a game more than Singletary. Again, not the '70s anymore. And the fact that hes not getting a ton of carries has nothing to do with his higher per carry. Where do you get the idea that helps? Lots of carries helps with total yards of course, but where's your evidence it helps with YPC. There is none.

$5.5M would make him 13th in the league. He's as good as a bunch of starters, particularly in platoon systems. He's 16th in the league in YPC of backs with 100 or more carries. Behind an OL that wasn't great. Some teams might see him as not a scheme fit. But if he is available, plenty of teams will give him a serious look. It'll depend on price, probably, as there are a lot of decent FAs available and plenty of pretty solid draft prospects as well. My guess is he doesn't get $5.5M this year. This is a tough year to be on the market.

This is an absolutely ridiculous comparison. To say that they were signed for less, you have to spin like a nuclear-powered dreidel. This year, Von Miller's cap hit was $5.15M This year, Creed Humphrey's cap hit was $1.264M, La'el Collns' was $4.666M, James Daniels' was $4.166M and Scherff's was $7.647M So bringing in those four would have totalled $17.743 this last year. That's about $12.5M extra this year compared to Von, in a year when we were $1.9M over the cap. Next year, 2023, on the other hand, it's a bit different. Von Miller's cap hit will be $18.615M. Whereas Scherff's will be $20.941M. See where this is going? Daniels' will be $11.166M, Collins' will be $9.384M and Humphreys' will be $1.51M. That's a grand total of $43.001M, meaning $24.386M more next year than Von. In a year where right now we're right now $20.511M over the cap already. Same thing for 2024, much more for them than for Von. Probably people have already posted this. Sorry if I'm repeating. But what utter and complete nonsense.

Think you're really kidding yourself about 80%. Even QB - GM - Coach isn't 80%. With GM more important than coach.

Um, it's not that that's all he's got. It's that that was all he needed. Your statement was unspecific, weak and obviously wrong, on many points. The most obvious being that a team that allows teams to say in the game or come back wouldn't have won games this year by 21, 34, 35 and 22 points. Most of those did come early in the season before the injuries softened up the D so much, but this is a team that has crushed a lot of teams over the past couple of years. He pointed out one of a bunch of examples where we absolutely put teams away the last few years under McDermott. And destroyed your flaccid little argument. Then you throw a bunch of word salad at him, empty justifications, irrelevant nonsense and the logical equivalent of saying "is not is not is not," and pretend you made your point. You didn't. You just threw a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoped some stuck. They didn't. And the final fizzle is the usual, "it's a lack of coaching" with zero specifics backing that up.

Oh, please. Before the injuries started we were widely considered the best roster in the league, certainly top couple. And up till the Von Miller and Micah Hyde injuries, and many others and finally Poyer and White injuries making them shells of their former selves, and on top of that DaQuan missing our most important game, that D was kicking butt. That D held the Chiefs to 20 this year. And the offense started not running very well and gradually figured out how to get a really nice RB run game going. Zero substance there, zero. When you start to see posts like these, you know the person hasn't got all that much of an argument.

Like it or not, they were indeed out of gas. It wasn't one guy saying that, it was several. That's what it looked like to me at the time. Oh, and our Super Bowl window will last the length of Josh Allen's career.

Yeah, they had to show up. But they did. That was not the problem. I've also had jobs that required all-nighters and showing up the next day. I did it. But like the Bills, I was there, but wasn't at my best. Very much agree with you that there's plenty of blame to go around. This wasn't on the coaches. It was on the coaches and the players. It was on everybody. Elam had a good game but I didn't see many others who did.

This.

Yeah, he "didn't develop" Davis from fourth-rounder to 599 yards to 836 yards. With a leg injury which appeared to seriously limit him for a large part of the year. 6 or 7 TDs every year. That's development, like it or not. As for Stevenson and McKenzie, nobody expects any position coach to make a wild success of everyone assigned to him. Some guys aren't good enough. I'd hoped McKenzie would be, but it appears he isn't. That could be on Hall, or on McKenzie. From what we've heard about Hall, he's been considered a guy with a bright future for quite a while now.

It's closer to half or three-quarters of a second. And I've never seen a game where this was an issue more than maybe 10 or 15 times.