JESSEFEFFER

He must be blaming the Cowboy"s coaches and Steelers QB situations for their underwhelming 2019 performances. It's like he's saying their players had nothing to do with it.

This seems very righteous to me. Think back to that year. White was a low first round rookie, Hyde and Poyer were dumpster diving FA signings off Packers and Browns, I don't remember how EJ Gaines got here and Vontae Davis was a few quarters of football from retirement. I think his low opinion was justified and he acknowledges it was wrong because most every move they made ultimately worked out. I'd give him points for owning it.

I'd have to read more about the purpose of this, i.e. its intended use, but many of these units have little fantasy football implications. If you look at the weightings of each position group I think it has more to do with an actual power ranking of the roster.

I never heard of him either so here is what I found: Mike Clay is a writer and analyst for ESPN who contributes year-round NFL, fantasy football and NASCAR insight across the company’s multimedia platforms. He appears on a variety of shows, including SportsCenter, Fantasy Football Now, The Fantasy Show with Matthew Berry on ESPN+, NFL Live and the Fantasy Focus Football Podcast. Clay’s award-winning player projections help power the ESPN Fantasy Football game. His fantasy content and rankings cover all aspects of the game, including season-long, dynasty, IDP and auction formats. Clay is also the host of Next Level Fantasy Football on Sirius XM. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) and is on the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) Board of Directors (Chairman) and Hall of Fame voting committee. Clay has been instrumental in bringing innovative statistics and data to the forefront of the fantasy industry, including player snap and route data. Now key elements of most fantasy football analysis, this information was all but non-existent prior to the 2010s. Clay also introduced Wide Receiver vs. Cornerback matchups in 2015 – now a mainstream industry concept. Clay has created several advanced football statistics, including average depth of target (aDOT), opportunity-adjusted touchdowns (OTD), opportunity-adjusted fantasy points (OFP) and fantasy points over replacement player (FORP). Clay is also known for his work with personnel packages, game-flow-adjusted play-calling, touchdown regression to the mean, yards after contact, and box defenders. Clay won the 2013 Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) award for most-accurate preseason player rankings. He won the FSWA award for the best online article in 2013 and the 2014 PFWA Dick Conner Writing Award in the Enterprise Features category. Prior to ESPN, Clay was Managing Editor and Director at Pro Football Focus Fantasy, which he launched in 2010. Clay also contributed at NBC’s Rotoworld.com, Athlon Sports and PhiladelphiaEagles.com. He was featured as a Virtual Analyst in EA Sports’ Madden 25 and 2015 video games. Originally from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Clay is a 2007 graduate of Kutztown University where he was Sports Editor of The Keystone newspaper and a sports radio broadcaster for three years. He did a strength of schedule analysis for the 2020 season which is interesting. I would presume it's based off of these team unit ratings.

Ran across this on Twitter. I will link to it assuming that it can't be reprinted here in its entirety. Maybe since it's been Tweeted by the creator it's fair game. https://twitter.com/MikeClayNFL/status/1245069194007318528/photo/1 Lots of interesting discussion points. I think having Mayfield way ahead of Josh and the low o-line grade are two I'd start with. RBs the Bills lowest rated group at present makes sense. I don't think the Cowboys deserve to be so high. They failed against good competition way too often to justify that. I guess if you blame coaching for that, maybe. Patriots are near the bottom so there's that.

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Ok. I think this was a smart take and sort of shows that the opinion comes from someone paying attention. Here are some other reasons why a Londoner should find a rooting interest: 1) Christian Wade. He is a fun story and we Bills fans love our underdog, fun stories. 2) The British lady that fell into a chat group of Bills fans. We are a resilient, dedicated group that is mostly proud of our association. how-a-woman-ended-up-in-wrong-group-chat-and-became-a-buffalo-bills-fan-for-life 3) The British burned Buffalo to the ground in the War of 1812. That sort of connection should imply that a show of good will might be a dose of what the alliance could use in 2020. 4) When insulted we tend to donate to charities. Turning the other cheek is a tough and rare thing to do but we have turned it into a ritual of ultimate revenge. So, so clever we are.

Never happen imo. Reputations are at stake for the players they do draft enough as it is. No one wants to be on the hook for the evaluations of the players that they did not take as well.

A longtime coworker of mine lost her father recently. He was a Bills fan and draft maven of the sort we are talking about here. It was his hobby and the draft was a big event for him to the extent that he threw a big party for it every year and spent weeks preparing for it. I asked her if he had more passion for the draft or the actual games and she could not be sure, which is odd to me given how emotionally invested most of us are in the games. Due to business upheaval, there have been some years where she worked elsewhere for a few years but most years I would ask her to ask her dad for his prediction of the Bills #1 pick. Oliver and Allen recently, Gilmore , Dareus, Spiller were specific predictions I remember seeing. I don't think he ever got one wrong.

Taylor and Singletary would make a great tandem for the next 3 years and avoids the need to have one guy carry the load. Taylor does not get caught from behind. I think a few of Singletary's 20+ yard runs would have been 50+ from Taylor or some of these other RB candidates. Adding another explosive playmaker to the offense is a great idea, imo.

It does seem to help make more sense of the situation. The story is written by former WGR 550 staffer Matt Coller.

Deep shots at New Era in November and December with 20+ mph winds are a real low % play. It's not like their opponents were hitting them either. Some don't even try.

I do not have a clear understanding of why he was not happy with the Vikings. Because the offense became more run focused? Without knowing how well he fits within the team culture, I can't see it as a slam dunk A. He is what the offense needed and is more likely to deliver than any rookie would be. I just wonder why he'd be happier as a Bill than what he appeared to be as a Viking and that could make a big difference in how well the trade actually plays out.

I appreciate the question but running faster is not a main concern for me. Running smarter is. Primarily with when it's a good idea to take chances with regard to ball security and taking on tacklers. He might run over DBs but taking an illegal headshot ruins that thinking. Running tall exposes the ball, making it a focused effort of the defenders. He does slide when it makes sense but his idea of when to take risks needs an adjustment. As for the rest, he is way faster than most all the exhausted pass rushers whom he can easily avoid one on one. About the time the LBs start to track him, he kicks it into another gear and all of a sudden their persuit angle is wrong (Barr, Kiko, etc.) but he needs some distance between him and them to allow it to happen. I hope he never looks like a slow pitch softball first baseman ala Roethlisberger, but it's probably inevitable. Just hope that the rest of his game is topnotch to compensate.

I thought "my girl" meant daughter, also. I immediatley thought of what I would or would not do for my daughter. She's on a travel competitive cheerleading team. Events usually require an overnight stay, last 4 hrs. and cost $15 to attend. Her one event lasts about 3 minutes. She has about 8 more of these left. It's a time/irritation/misery continuum that one must consider. Now, I could just leave after her event but if you are out-of-town the options are not plentiful, would require some research and you'd be limited by needing to return to gather them up. A lame celebrity singing show that we'd watch at home and lasts an hour does not seem so bad.

Tough to blame him in anyway for the ankle injury. I thought there was no way he'd play again this year as the way it was rolled looked almost as bad as could be.

I think it's pretty much a part time, Friday to Sunday gig for 24 weeks or so. Compared to the health risks of playing and the time dedicated to OTA's, minicamp, training camp and then the regular season weekly grind, I'd bet he could sell that to Liza real easy. I think Fitz would slay that job.

OK. That is an insane amount of money to throw at a color commentator. Here's how CBS should respond: Let Romo go and make a play for Fitz to replace Romo. Fitz is smarter, funnier, knows/has worked with more people throughout all levels of NFL franchises and probably has established more good will than most any other player currently in the league. His limitations in talent and "fearless, swimming in the cesspool" style of play should offer him plenty of perspective on NFL matters big and small, whether on the field or off. He probably knows more coaches, has been a teammate to more players and is on a first name basis with more NFL media professionals than anyone else. He has played in 5 of the 8 NFL divisions with 3 stints in the AFC East and 2 in the AFC South.

There were some days at New Era where punt catching was obviously a difficult thing. He made it look easy. i don't know what that chart shows but Andre handled most all the tough balls in bad weather and without much space so easily that it's easy to dismiss his contribution. But someone in that job who can't handle tough circumstances and we would all notice the muffs and/or balls that are not caught and are allowed to bounce and roll for 10 or 15 more yards.

Ravens game had bad drops by Knox, Beasley and Singletary. Generally, offenses struggled in an open air stadium located in the Great Lakes region during November and December weather conditions. Reputations credit the Bills D and blame Josh's accuracy.

Football Zebras had a game blog that celebrated the call made on the EZ non touchback as a common sense ruling and the penalty on Ford as legit as have you. I see Ford with his hands low, almost coming to a stop, the defender actually initiating the contact to Ford's upper arm as he is turned to face him and then Ford pushing with his hands extended. No forcible contact to the head, no blindside hit from the side, no force involved that is a threat to injure. This was no where near a "decleater" and the defender's "54" was facing him. This was a block that amounted to a push with the defender taking two steps back. Where is the common sense applied in this case? Not forcible = no injury threat = no call = no fine. Initiate with the head, shoulder or forearm and forcible are necessary parts to make the call and issue the fine and are standards not not met, imo.

Punting near midfield a relatively high percentage of the time would account for most all those stats. I wonder if it's actually the case. Seven touchbacks may not be bad normalized to those that were successfully downed inside the 10 or 20.

I've seen that penalty called when the receiver made the catch. Tre White on Adam Theilen last year for one.

Forcible = risking injury. Not even close to that threshold. I've seen legal screens in basketball that involved more force. In the video posted that the league prepared every hit was a "decleater." That seems to be their intent for forcible not the bump Cody gave.

I like Duke and what he could add to the offense but this was a drop. Maybe others have said so but I haven't read the entire thread yet. The elbow hook did not occur until after the ball was not secured on the first catch attempt. The hook prevented Duke from making a second attempt to secure it. So, bobble = no catch = drop, in my opinion. The other one on the sideline that some want to call a drop to me was a clear pbu. High ball above his head and in his hands ripped out by db's hand.