Thurman#1

That shaded bit is nonsense. Wallace did this interview long after he was a Pittsburgh Steeler. The interviewer even asks if it's OK to ask about this. And again, no. He wasn't too deep. He specifically said he was too far outside. Yes, he should have looked at Poyer's depth, but didn't. No, that does not automatically mean that he was adjusting his own depth. He was defending mostly the outside, as the film shows. Poyer was way too deep to cover the inside on that play, he was covering only against a Hail Mary. "We have to defend outside, and we have to defend that little bang route that he ran." He says that if he'd known Poyer was that deep, he "would have scooted in or I'd have pressed it." And, when you google "Levi Wallace 13 seconds", it's like seven of the first ten links to come up. Google is your friend.

Showing bump and bailing tells the same thing that showing bump and bumping does. Unless you're bailing way before the snap, and if you're doing that, why bother.

Levi said when admitting what happened that it was the right call and if played right would have been stopped for a short gain.

It's another reason they don't do it often at all. QBs can read it. The Bills don't like to give more pre-snap info than they have to.

They're dysfunctional mostly because they haven't got a QB. Saleh is a good coach. Yeah they look awful now, but I think QBs will absolutely look there as a real option for next year. Fair enough, but how did it work out with Seattle? They developed the guy they brought in as a backup but it's still about getting a good veteran QB onto a solid team. If the Titans hadn't gotten rid of AJ Brown, they'd still be looking damn good after making that move.

First round early. OGs / Cs in the first 15 or even 20 are relative rarities. After that they're as common as OTs. Most first-round OTs are gone by the time we draft these days. At pick #20 or afterwards, only five OTs have gone in the past five years. Five OTs and five INT OLs. Late in the round, Cs / Gs are just as common. 3 OGs in the first last year, and a C besides. One INT OL the year before. One the year before that, two in 2019 and three the year before that. I think only Quenton Nelson in the top ten, most (all?) of the rest starting at #14. Yes, certainly most OLs that go in the first should be tackles, and most of those left tackles. But there's a reason a year hasn't gone by without an INT OL being taken in the first. And those OLs tend to be good picks as well. IMO we're not going to be picking top 20 for the next several years. Might as well start thinking the way people drafting where we're going to be drafting should.

I spent the entire offseason trying to psychically influence Beane towards strong consideration of Zion Johnson or Kenyon Green in the first. They were both gone, but there were guys I liked later, like Parham and Lecitus Smith. Finally it was nobody till Tenuta. The more I see of Beane the more it looks to me like maybe he figures OL is the area where he thinks a wildly mobile QB can slow the pass rush enough that he just doesn't want to spend high picks there. With Belichick it tended to be WRs and CBs and OLs, he'd occasionally grab one high, but not nearly as often as I'd expect. He'd tend to use his higher picks on DLs, TEs, LBs, etc. Belichick had Scarnecchia to coach up the OL for him, and this Bills OL seems to play better as a group, particularly late in the season, than you'd maybe expect from looking at the individuals. Is he going to make a further pattern of filling in with mid-level FAs and mid-level picks at the OL? I'm not sure I like that idea, as Allen is our one irreplaceable necessity going forward. I'd like to see them address OL more seriously. But you can't really use your biggest resources everywhere. There aren't enough to go around.

It isn't difficult, now, to have won six games. At the time it was. Now ... it no longer affects the difficulty of what they have to do. Five straight. And they can still win the SB even if they don't win one or both of the next two, though they'd probably get an extra game that way.

Doesn't make sense. Any absolute standard won't. The success of a draft depends on context. Teams drafting later should be judged with that included. It's much easier to find a starter at #35, say, then at #61. Teams that already have good lineups should be judged with the understanding that that this makes it harder to start the guy even if he's just as good as the guy who is starting on another team because last year's starter there was easy to beat in competition. One of the main reasons for the quick development of Milano was that he was in the lineup quickly because we didn't have much in front of him. Players can and do develop from the bench, but when they are ready to start but there's not a spot for them yet, it does slow their development. A guy drafted in 2020 or 2021 on the Bills is less likely to develop quickly than a guy in an earlier Bills draft, partly because in the earlier draft he wouldn't have been the pick 5 or 10 or 15 slots earlier and he is less likely to see the field early than he was in the weaker lineups we had several years ago. That's reality. Oh, and saying that Gabe Davis, the #128 pick, had disappointed, it's just nuts. Spencer Brown the #93 pick, has been inconsistent in his 2nd year after off-season surgery? Um, of course he has. To assume otherwise would show unreasonable expectations. Basham might be a failure. Or a success. Or fulfill expectations. We will have a much better idea a year or more down the road.

No, for me the disappointment is that some people simply refuse to get it. "It" being that evaluating picks too early is a ridiculous mistake.

Schottenheimer should be in the HOF. He made more out of mediocre lineups and QB play than any coach I can think of. Sid Gillman had one HOF QB for one year, Van Brocklin, out of his long and successful career.

Champion is just plain the wrong word. You're not a champion till you win a championship. Thinking yourself a champion when you're not is just trying to fake it till you make it. Doesn't work. But maybe you could say "Alpha Dog" instead of champion and then it would make sense. I'd rather have 'em feel themselves a talented underdog than an alpha dog. Till they've won a championship anyway.

This won't be Belichick's last year unless he quits or forces his way out. You can't say he got lucky with Brady. He drafted and developed him. But yeah, after the first four years or so, it was more Brady than Belichick.

If you don't count Davis' one-handed TD grab against Pittsburgh as great I'd say that's on you and not him. His contested catch 30 seconds before the half in the Vikes game was also really sweet. Shakir's contested 31 yarder against Pittsburgh was really nice. And counting Knox, Singletary, Davis and Cook, he absolutely is surrounded by weapons. Elite weapons? No, but weapons, yes. And that's the way a lot of teams look. Where are Mahomes' elite WRs. Kelce's elite. Otherwise he's got some good guys but nothing deeply special. And that is absolutely not a "bottom-tier offensive line," though they certainly took a step back with Morse out. There's a tendency to get frustrated if there's not someone special at every position. But that's not a reasonable possibility. You're always making compromises, that's the world GMs deal with.

Sure hope so, but it's getting late. Starting to really doubt it.

Way way way too early to say on Watson, and a year or so early on Wilson as well. Me, I hope to see Wilson pull it together with good coaching but Watson fail.

Turns out you're right, or at least for the first few snaps for each of game 1 and game 2 last year. I went and watched just two snaps each from the first drive of each of game 1 and game 2, and Ford was at guard and Williams at tackle. Nice catch. And thanks. My point still stands though, as Brown took over from Williams, also a vet but a much higher-paid one, very early in the year.

Yeah, it does take some doing. But this could be one of those cases. He's replaced higher-paid guys with lower-paid ones before, and vets with younger guys, particularly later in the year when the younger guys are showing signs of getting it. Look at Singletary taking over for Gore late in his rookie year, Milano starting with nothing and pushing into the lineup so quickly, look at Taron Johnson and how quickly he got fully trusted. Look at Cody Ford being ushered away from tackle when they started trusting Brown more in game four of his rookie year. It's not the norm. But it happens when he decides he trusts one guy more than another one. I think they do trust Saffold not to make rookie mental mistakes, but equally they must see that he's not what he used to be physically, and that particularly at pass blocking he's getting beat more than they had expected.

Yeah, and the coaches hired by the local junior high schools too.

First, Singletary is a 3 down back. Same with Cook, really. If you're thinking about a bell cow, there is zero reason to think that we need a bell cow back. How many recent SB champs have had bell cow backs taking most of the carries? Certainly far from a majority. The goals should indeed be to win Super Bowls. No reason to think there's all that much of an advantage in terms of winning Super Bowls in having a bell cow back. Ah, sorry, guess I misunderstood. Have a great week.

"Why is it always team friendly?" you ask. I don't even understand what this means. It isn't. Some deals are team-friendly, some player-friendly and some roughly neutral. But as I noted above (and not with great originality, it's well-known) this is going to be a good year for finding solid decent FA RBs. There are a lot available. It's not a good year for a non-elite RB to be looking for a player-friendly deal. And as happened with the Pats all those years, and maybe even more so, we're seeing that players like to come back to teams with a great chance of winning a title, and even more so for a player-friendly coaching regime like ours as opposed to a Belichick type. Players aren't going to give massive discounts, particularly RBs getting second contracts. But small discounts to re-sign? Yeah, if the situation is near-ideal as it is for Singletary right now. It's not a sure thing, but it seems likely.

Productivity is measured over a season ... per rush. Jacobs is a very good and productive back. So is Singletary. Not as good as Jacobs, but very good. Yeah. This is a good year to be trying to sign an RB to a reasonable contract. Supply is high and demand is pretty much as usual. A lot of good-looking young backs coming out in the draft this year, and a lot of solid guys are available as FAs.

I hate that guy. Always have since he chose the Cowboys. I shouldn't. But I do.

No, you're not seeing the big picture. Point differential doesn't mean anything. The key thing is wins in one-score games!!! Oh, wait, we're doing well at that this year? Then the key stat is wins in one-score games in the last two years. That's what tells you everything you need to know. Oh, and point differential in the last seven games against teams with winning records. I'm telling you, this team is in deep trouble.

Yeah, I still think he's got a real chance. Not a great chance, but still a chance.