Thurman#1

This. Longer balls are thrown higher and he's throwing shorter even more often this year, so it's easier for them to reach it. Defenses seeing that have to teach their DLs that if he throws quick there's only one way to affect the pass since you can't reach him. It's more of the chess match between D and O, I think. In turn, we're seeing Allen do more sidearm and arm-angled throws to make it harder on them.

Yeah, they still have a lot to prove to be considered for #1. May well be a really good team, though.

I agree. Ours is easier.

This makes sense to me.

Yes, they're punting better than ever. No, it's not having a very big effect on scoring. Last year, the highest net punting average is 46.3 yards and average is around 42.. That's terrific, historically. But it's always been in the last twenty or thirty years it's always been very high 30s. So that's around 3 - 5 extra net yards per punt. This year there are two guys above that high figure, one with 49.8 and one with 47.3. The average is probably around 43. Is that partly because of good weather? Maybe. In any case, with teams averaging around 3 - 4 punts a game, we're talking about maybe an extra ten yards of field position. Maybe. That's not going to have much impact on scoring. I'd bet average drive start isn't significantly different this year, though I'm not signed up to Football Outsiders so I can't check.

Thanks, Shaw. That about Taiwan Jones was my main takeaway. Who knew that's the kind of guy he is? Not me, anyway. And while I really see what you're saying about the death in the family, to me this would be different. You don't control most deaths in your family. This would be more like everyone reminding you of something terrible you did. The study quoted in the article about athletes watching videos of losing races having the same brain waves as people suffering from clinical depression brought it into focus for me. This means an awful awful lot to these guys.

I wondered if anyone would mention the connection to the SB Bills. Yeah, that sensational team was haunted by that first SB loss, I think. Two of those last three were simply better teams, but they had a real shot at one. I think it was still in their heads. Yeah, I loved that bit.about Diggs. And it's the first time he's felt that in the NFL, obviously, which is why it meant so much to him to realize that. Didn't notice that in the Allen picture. I'll go take another look right now.

Nonsense. Anyone who can't think of tons of examples of sports examples of teams being haunted and letting past disasters hang over their heads isn't trying hard. Possible because they're hoping it won't happen here. And if it mattered more to the media than the fans, the fans wouldn't read it and the media would instantly move on to other things.

That's not a strong argument. It's cherry-picking and it's leaving out context. Yeah, for people who don't go and look at the actual stats, it seems like the difference between the Bills' 65% and the Giants' 69% is tiny. But it's not. Not when the highest is 75%. The Giants are barely below average. The Bills are horrendous at 65%. Nobody else is at 65%. Or 66%. Only three teams are bad enough to be at 67%, the Commanders, Chargers and Texans. And only one is at 68%, the Patriots. You're twisting what the numbers show, which is that the Bills are much worse than anyone else in the league at run blocking. So far. Nobody's arguing that Barkley isn't damn good. He is right now. But with a near-average line. Not a truly sucky one like the Bills have up to now, though they do seem to be doing well when they use pin-and-pull blocking. Oh, and yes, James Conner is at 3.7, but Eno Benjamin is at 4.5, and Darrel Williams is at 5.9. It's never 100% OL or RB. It's always a combination of both. But when your OL is really bad, that will be the largest factor. This Bills team is awful at yards before contact, because the line sucks. And pretty solid at yards after contact because the RBs, most particularly Singletary, are good. Not great. But solid. Excluding Allen, 4.4 YPC behind a line that isn't just last but last by a lot. The RBs don't get much of the blame here.

You're not illustrating that at all, though you're trying to make the argument. It really is the OL that's in for easily the largest amount of blame. Hopefully that can improve as time passes and the OL gels, as it did last year near the end of the year.

Dime a dozen is an exaggeration. It's a lazy way to say it. But is it reasonable to argue that spending a lot of resources on RBs has in general produced not much more production than waiting and picking a guy a bit later or paying a journeyman? Not unreasonable at all. And as has been said many times before, the problem with our run game is not the RBs. It's the OL. We would not be much better with the other guys you mention. A bit better, especially in aspects that each of those guys is better at (Dillon at power and CMC at evasiveness, speed and gadgetry, for example)? Yeah, probably fair enough. But not a lot better. I wanted Dillon too but he was gone way too early. I love his toughness, but he was over-drafted. The question isn't whether there are some RBs out there who were worth drafting early and spending serious resources on. There are. Guys like Jonathan Taylor, Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry and Mixon are worth it. CMC was worth drafting where they drafted him, but his health makes him questionable now. There just aren't that many of those guys who are worth drafting in the first round or paying a top 7 or 8 RB salary to. Very few. 1st rounders in the last few years, since 2010: CJ Spiller, Ryan Mathews, Jahvid Best, Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Todd Gurley, Melvin Gordon, Ezekiel Elliott (4th overall), Leonard Fournette, McCaffrey, Saquon, Rashaad Penny, Sony Michel, Josh Jacobs, Edwards-Helaire, Najee Harris, and Travis Etienne. How many real difference makers there, out of 19 1st round picks. Several of those guys looked like difference makers but then either wore down, got injured and never were the same or just got dispirited. And the difference in production to the team between the guys below those few difference-makers and everyone else just doesn't make it a good use of resources to spend major resources on an RB.

It really isn't. But not liking this kind of thing? Fair enough. I knew there'd be reactions like this, it's why I included the warning.

He said it's "one of the worst." There may be others just as horrible. But interesting stuff.

First, a warning. There's a lot of sports psychology stuff here on how to recover from disastrous outcomes and keep moving onward and up. If you don't like that sort of thing, I highly recommend reversing out of this thread. So do me a favor, would you? If you're not willing to read it, pass by, horseman, yeah? In the whole first page of comments it looks like two people, maybe three, show they read anything. Which makes for conversation deep as a puddle on a flat piece of glass. So, if you're willing to read it, then feel free to blast it and me. If not, could you please head to one of the other threads available for your viewing pleasure? Great article, IMO. Lots of Bills content. Want to know why Diggs meets with Taiwan Jones before every game? Read the article. Wanna learn why people hang with Von at the lunch table? Read the article. Wanna learn just a bit about the sports psychologist for the Bills and Sabers? I didn't even know we had one till I read the article. https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/10/14/psychology-of-how-bills-got-over-playoff-loss-to-chiefs Subtitle: "Last year’s heartbreaking playoff loss to the Chiefs might have stuck with us, but it didn’t stick with the Bills. The psychology of a team that moved on." This excerpt is maybe 25% of the article: ------------------ "In an effort to understand the mechanics of such motivation, Sports Illustrated reached out to a handful of mental health experts in the athletic space to talk about the most effective way to bury a loss on the magnitude of the “13 seconds” game. While there are different tools in any therapist’s belt, most agreed that a general acceptance of what happened, the open and honest discussion of feelings, an eventual focus on the positives gleaned from the process that brought them there and a constructive discussion on what could be learned from the moment was a formidable recipe. While we might all enjoy the idea of McDermott lying on a bed of spikes for 13 seconds or spending 13 seconds in a pit of live rattlesnakes to atone for various defensive and special-teams missteps at the end of the game, the prevailing idea is that the right processes could avoid the need for a grand gesture. "What if, even when the outside world defines them by 13 seconds, the Bills don’t have to? Or, as Diggs puts it: 'If I hang onto it, it’s something that weighs me down. And I don’t like things weighing me down.' "Dr. Mark Ayoagi, the co-director of sport and performance psychology and a professor in the graduate school of professional psychology at the University of Denver, spent time under three different coaching regimes with the Broncos. "While he is careful not to make any blanket statements about football players or athletes in general, there are some critical points to understand about the competitive brain. "The first is that, 'they have to have some baseline of mental health to have made it to this point [in professional sports],' he says. Years and years of high-pressure competition, winning and losing force them to moderate and not stake so much mental equity on one performance. “They know that if you’re on the losing side it sucks and the winning side it’s great, but that both of them are gone by Monday,” he says. 'They don’t carry this around like a fan might. Or through an entire offseason like a fan might. It’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they have more experiences dealing with it.' "The second point: Ayoagi finds athletes to be in a better general headspace than the average population when sports performances are going well, but a lower general headspace when they are not. The issue, he says, is that many athletes feel they are unable to find a sympathetic ear due to the public knowledge of their high salaries and the perception that they can’t vent their frustrations because they play a game for a living. “'It’s like the question: Is sports more protective or exacerbating of substance use?' Ayoagi says. 'The answer is both. Athletes use less frequently, but when they use, they use more. It’s an analogy that holds true for mental health. There’s a lot of protective factors, but they also have a white-hot spotlight on them. And when they are not in a good space, all of a sudden their social support is gone. They can’t talk to anyone about this. [They think], who wants to hear from the guy with the $4 million contract?' "The plus side to these heightened negative feelings is that even a brief intervention can yield positive results in helping an athlete reframe or reshape a difficult moment. Ayoagi, for example, utilizes the baseline theory behind acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which encourages patients to accept the fact that our brain throws weird, anxious, scary, grotesque or depressing thoughts, images and stories at us all the time, and learning to accept this default feature and pivot toward something personally meaningful is an effective way of combating stressors." --------------- This is maybe 25% of the article. Lots of more specific stuff on what Taiwan Jones, Von Miller, Diggs and McDermott do to work on the mindset of this team. Plus, did you know they have a sports psychologist named Dr. Desaree Festa, working for both the Bills and Sabres? I didn't. Really good stuff, IMO.

Great stuff, thanks for posting it. I learned more about Denver's problems than the Bills, but very interesting.

For Tyrod, it wasn't the whole middle. He hit the short middle just fine. It was the intermediate and long middle. More, I believe Next Gen divides up those three zones at the hashes. Which means there are generally small sample numbers in the intermediate and long areas between the hashes. It looked to me like Tyrod's weak performance in the intermediate and long areas when far further towards the sidelines than the hashes. So I went one year and divided the field in equal thirds and charted it. Tyrod was really very good from the numbers out, and just a couple of yards inside them. But basically in the middle half of the field, a bit more, really, Tyrod was quite weak at intermediate and long distances. I could do the same to Josh, but I won't, because he doesn't look weak anywhere special to me. I like NextGen, but their middle of the field numbers are often very small because the targets there are often so low beyond 20 yards and between the hashes. It's not a large part of the field. Just looking quickly at all five of Josh's games on NextGen, Allen has only thrown two passes there. Not a large sample.

Not quite as amazing when you realize they only played 9 games that year.

There are contending teams, there are bad teams with young QBs, and there are others. Teams rarely make good WRs available either. But sometimes they do. Same with OLs. I'd rather have an OL myself. I can see Beckham here if he's cheap enough, but I wouldn't expect too much out of him coming in late and trying to learn the playbook and playing some share of snaps. For whatever team he plays for.

I hear the chicks totally dig him.

Love, love, love me some Brian Regan! Guy's a genius!

Yup. There is literally always good reason to complain. Putting together a schedule is a task with unlimited complexity, just millions of factors to be considered. There are also always reasons to be happy. They do their best. From what I remember they put in their requirements and then they generate possible schedules and there are millions of them. They throw out the ones with obvious problems, and they can quickly eliminate a huge number but they are left with thousands and thousands of options, each of which comes with many strong advantages and many strong disadvantages. And they just do their best to balance everything and pick their best option with all things considered. But you will absolutely have things to complain about, always. And things to celebrate. For every single team. Here's Peter King on a shortened version of how they put together the 2021 season: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/05/16/nfl-schedule-release-fmia-peter-king/

Nothing out of the slot? McKenzie and Crowder have totalled 213 yards, 3 TDs and 13 1st downs. On 34 targets. Those are solid numbers for slot.

Yeah, I believe they did. https://nfltraderumors.co/bills-make-six-moves-including-placing-wr-jamison-crowder-on-ir/

I really do love Shakir. But McKenzie and Crowder are plenty good also. I want to see him more consistently, but I don't have any particular urge to see him ahead of the other two, especially early in the year. And for people criticizing McKenzie's hands, I just don't see it. The guy had 30 catches on 34 targets in 2020, 20 catches on 26 targets in 2021 and has 15 catches on 21 targets this year, including the one Josh bounced to him at the goal line. Are some of those easy one foot throws on jet sweeps? Yeah. But not all and I don't think most. He doesn't miss a lot. Shakir has 5 catches on 9 targets. Not saying that's bad. He has good hands, but so does McKenzie.

They really did measure 120 and 123 on the field, two sources at different times.