Thurman#1

Yes, absolutely. Guys like Fletcher Cox, Chris Jones, Quinnen Williams, Jeffery Simmons and Dexter Lawrence. It appears likely that two or three DTs are going to get contracts somewhere in the neighborhood of $25M next offseason. And there's a reason for that. They're worth it for the havoc they cause. Hargrave got $21M/ year. He's worth it too. Guys like that give coaches sleepless nights.

They did drop off a bit near there when Von Miller was inured in game 8, the first game after the break. They never looked to have nearly as effective a pass rush after that. But the team overalll played well the last half of the season, especially considering all the injuries on defense. Most of the season was after the bye week. Ten games, during which they went 8-2. They were much much worse in the Bengals game than they'd been all season. Ten points, they scored there for Pete's sake. Ten points and 325. Their next worst scoring total was 17, and beyond that 19 in the 120 degrees on the sidelines in Miami game. And it's not like Cincy was a sensational defense. They ranked 16th for the year. They're good, not great. We just played awful in They went 8-2 and won one playoff game. He's right. The dropoff (beyond the effects of the loss of Miller) didn't happen there. It happened in the Cincinnati game.

Yeah, that's the way it looked to me, even as the game was going on. Sure, the coaches weren't without blame. And yeah, the defensive injuries hurt a ton. But the players just didn't play well enough. Even Allen. As you say, there were a few exceptions. But not many.

Nonsense. We're every bit as good of a roster. And that's not an excuse. It's blaming themselves. That's the opposite of an excuse. Taiwan is simply saying what a number of players said that day, that they had an awful game. That it seemed they just couldn't play their best, that they ran out of gas. None of them said that was OK or acceptable. But a bunch said that's what happened. Taiwan clearly agrees in the Dunne article. After the game, we heard this: --------------- "It was emotionally draining for obvious reasons, you guys all saw that," OL Rodger Saffold said. "I just kind of feel like we were tired. Guys were exhausted during the week and our coaches did the best they could to try to modify the week to get us back to stuff. But it was just uncharacteristic things that were kind of happening. So, I have to kind of put that into a factor, not as an excuse. This team has been fighting for so long and fighting through all this adversity, you run out of gas at some point." ---------------- "Guys just continued to fight and fight and a lot of it motivated us and just at the end we just ran out of gas," Hyde said. ---------------- While not pointing to it as an excuse for the playoff defeat, WR Isaiah McKenzie, TE Dawson Knox and OL Rodger Saffold said the emotional toll of the season caught up with them. When Allen was posed with his assessment on his teammates' point of view, he concurred with them. "I can agree with that statement. I don't know for me personally. But, again, you gotta play your best against really good teams, and we didn't yesterday," Allen said. It clearly said that there is more behind a paywall. In what was there, it looked like Dunne was the one asking for a philosophy change, not Taiwan. So I'm with you that it was a bit frustrating getting less than what was teased. That's the modern world, though.

Holcomb was hired before Frazier came to them and told them about this On the 28th, they said Frazier had come to the team and discussed his feelings on stepping away "last week." Holcomb was hired on Feb. 8th. But yeah, they're dealing with this with the folks who are already on the staff.

Possible, I guess, but I doubt it myself. Most have not really noticed how few passes across the middle we've dealt with for so long, and how important that has been as a key to success. That's very likely to not look as good this year. If we pick a 1st round MLB, maybe things won't be too much worse there, but we have several needs that could be addressed in the first. Several of them aren't going to be addressed. You're talking my language here. Preach on!!

I'm guessing we keep Oliver, myself. But certainly he might go. I think we're also more likely than many think to grab at least one DT in the early to mid-rounds. And yeah, I'm all in on extending Da'Quan.

So, you have a guess, and that makes the pick unacceptable? That's not really how it works. Way way too early to know how that pick will turn out. I didn't like it. But as usual we'll have to wait and see.

You're saying that we won't draft a receiver early and the reason is that Beane thinks that Gabe Davis is a #2. Well, assuming that you're absolutely right that Beane thinks Davis is a #2 (he is, his stats and efficiency show it clearly) that in no way proves that they wouldn't try to strengthen their WR group by drafting another guy early who would be good enough also to be a #2. The evidence you present simply doesn't back up your conclusions there. "Those looking for a receiver early on in the draft will be disappointed," you say, but the only evidence you present that backs that up logically is your own personal belief that Beane sees Davis as a #2 and the fact that we have cap concerns. That's spectacularly weak evidence that we won't draft a receiver early. "Those wanting olinemen in Round 1 or 2 are going to be happy because I believe this is the direction," ... dude, seriously? We will be happy because it's your opinion? Because you have opinions, with no further evidence that supports your opinions with any real strength, you are convinced that you know what's going to happen? Jeez. Maybe. Maybe not. But signing McGovern and Spencer Brown recovering his health easily could.

I'm willing to believe that you would be amazed about it.

"Worrying about comp picks is the new worrying about the salary cap," you say? Fair enough. Both of them matter a lot. Teams that handle each of them better have an advantage over teams that don't. If we get a pick for Tremaine, it'll be a third-rounder. That matters a lot. As for having to replace Harris anyway, no, some FAs do not count against the comp pick formula. People who were cut, for instance, or RFAs, or people signed after a certain date. Harris, a UFA, does matter, but how much is as yet very unclear. My guess is that he's going to be a signing for much less than the $7.1M AAV that has been mentioned, and that the number of FAs lost and gained is where he'll make an impact.

No. Nobody can confirm what's completely unclear at this point. It's way too early to know how many we'll lose or how many we will gain. It may have slightly increased the odds we don't get the pick, but even that is way too early to say for sure.

I'm with him that there's no great need at CB, though I wouldn't be surprised at a mid- to late-round pick. We have a serious need at DL, though. We need pass-rushing DE and DT to replace Jordan Phillips and get ready for the loss of Tim Settle next year (I expect), and if you're one of those that doesn't want Oliver back to replace him as well. We don't need a justification to go defense early. It would make perfect sense.

Four years, four years and one year. But I hear you. Why didn't Chicago try harder to keep him? Same with L.A. It may not be mental, effort or both. But the last two years two teams have easily let him go, and IMO it's probably not a coincidence that he managed 410 yards and 339 yards respectively those two years.

Yeah, if you don't have a clue, I guess you might look at it that way. Even the clueless might be hard-pressed to come up with something that obviously wrong. The guy's last five contracts before his new deal were each one year deals, for $805K, $895K, $1.187M, $1.212M and $3.5M. Anyone thinking he wasn't undervalued isn't worth paying attention to.

Jeez, they're predicting him that high? $7.1? That's crazy, IMO. He's a good back, but not nearly that good. I guess it's somewhere between $2.5 and $4M, hopefully more towards the lower regions of that range. If it's more than $4M, I'd be a bit disappointed.

OBJ is asking for a long-term contract at $20M per year (though he's now backing away from that a bit). He probably won't get it, but unless you want to wait and hope he slowly comes down, you don't get him without paying a lot. Hopkins' base salary this year is $19M Easy to say you want them but wouldn't break the bank for them. How would you work getting them without breaking the bank? Many here would say, "Just rejigger the contract so they don't cost much this year," but that would mean we'd be back in the same situation next year, only worse, again stuck with very little cap space and people screaming for impact FAs. I think we still have a distant shot at OBJ if he simmers in free agency purgatory for a few months without getting any great offers. But IMO if it happens soon, it will be because a team has cracked and given him too much.

Harris is and will be 26 this season, while Fournette and Elliott will be 28 this season. I get that's not much difference, but for RBs that difference is huge. 28 is where you generally start to see regression in RBs. This doesn't seem exciting to me, but solid. For me, this will depend on how much they paid.

Have fun.

I do think PFF ratings are worthwhile. But on the OL they historically grade highly huge road grading types and give lower grades to more athletic types. Are you really arguing there's never been a bottom 10 guy in their rankings who turned out to be a really good player? I'd guess you aren't, and for good reason. We'll see. Again, I like Seumalo better than McGovern. But I think McGovern is still improving and I like what he does in pass blocking.

Don't know where you get 10th and 64th. Someone's estimate or evaluation, probably. But not a simple fact. But you don't know it's similar money, yet. Similar AAV, but the details will matter, guarantees, roster bonuses that guarantee at the beginning of the year ... all that stuff matters. I like Seumalo, and better than McGovern. But you don't know whether we contacted Seumalo or whether we made an offer, or whether he'd always liked Pennsylvania a lot, or what other reasons he had to take the offer. Just purely as an example, it could be that the Bills contacted Seumalo early, were told he'd $11M a year, asked if there was any wiggle room and were told no, said they were willing to give around $9M, were turned down, decided they needed to get their #2 guy sealed down and did it, and then Seumalo didn't get the offers he expected and his asking price went down. Clearly I don't know if that happened. But it's possible. Fact is, we just don't know. What we do know is that they're different types. And that different blocking schemes favor different types. Fans tend to favor the hulking earth movers. Understandably. But that doesn't seem to be what Kromer and the Bills want.

You're bloviating desperately. The reason that I pointed out that you are "worshipping," - your word but not a bad one for how you're acting towards them - the one data point is that that's what you're doing. Again and again you've used the fact that someone disagreed with PFF as evidence they were wrong. Generally the only evidence. It's not that difficult to understand, but you still didn't manage it. That's why I pointed it out to you. If you do it again, I'll be glad to point it out for you again. Don't thank me. Glad to do it. My pleasure to serve.

"We did not need Motor on offense," you say? Nah. Again, you can't say that from the evidence, and in fact it doesn't really make sense. We didn't need him enough to pay the market value for him. Or we needed other skills more than we needed his. That's what this shows. Oh, and Singletary is a very good pass blocker. It's one of the main reasons they've like him so much for these four years. Best of luck to him in all of his future endeavors. He gave it his all.

This is officially the eight billionth case of a person finding that ambiguous evidence supports his already-existing bias. And that's just on this board. Confirmation bias wins again. $3.5M is 21st in the league. It will depend how much of it is incentives and how easy or difficult they are to achieve. But it's much easier to say, "See, I was right," whether or not there's much evidence you are.

They shouldn't. BPA at a position of need.