BADOLBILZ

I love the pitch clock. It makes the game more like the pace was in the 70's or 80's when pitchers were taught to work fast and manage effort like you gotta' go nine innings. The pitch clock shaved almost a 1/2 hour off of games....and while people stay up later than they used to......nobody wants 7pm games ending after 10 pm on weeknights.

Simple cure for most that ills baseball: Make the strike zone a circle that fits INSIDE the current box. It's called a strike zone because that's the zone where the ball is supposed to be easy to strike with the bat. That's not the case with those corners and to add insult to injury all these "pitchers" gotta' do is hit the tiniest edge of the box for it to be considered "IN" the strike zone. If you think the hitting sucks now wait until they automate the zone next season and pitchers are allowed to just nail that up and inside pitch that is 99% unhittable but still considered a strike. And that's inside the box. The reality is that zone is WAY bigger than the box........it's the box plus a line of baseballs all around it. A good pitcher really never has to throw a hittable pitch. And if you can run 5 relievers out there every game they never get fatigued regardless of how hard they throw. The ball is round, the bat is a cylindrical........make the zone a circle. Watch the mph of pitches drop and the number of ridiculous breaking balls decline and watch batting averages return to where they were and A LOT more action. And I will say "most" that ills baseball and not "all" because one problem baseball will always have is that you can't score on defense. It's the only one of the 4 major sports where you know for a fact you can tune out for 10 minute intervals and not miss your team scoring. I can usually watch a movie during a baseball game by just not watching my team pitch.

The top 2 picks in the round got fully guaranteed contracts. So the rest are holding out. That's pretty much it.

Stevie could just audible mid-route and go wherever he wanted because there was no real consequence to not being where the play call was designed to be. Those teams punted and turned the ball over so much that the standard was extremely low. Defenders are trained to anticipate routes based on where receivers SHOULD be. That's why Revis gave up numbers to Stevie. He was very often not where the play was supposed to take him. Those were bad Bills teams. In 2011 Stevie could rank 19th in yardage but 56th in ypc, 92nd in success rate and 135th in catch % because expectations for the offense were VERY low. Fitz lead the NFL in interceptions over that 3 year stretch. A lot of those were on Stevie. PFR didn't track the WR passer rating and INT stats they now have when receivers were targeted then but he was a highly inefficient WR. If Stevie did that with Josh Allen, especially early in his career, it would have been a disaster. Took a while for Allen to even risk throwing with anticipation and that took time to build up trust that he had guys that would be where they were supposed to be. I mean we thought Gabe Davis was bad at being where he was supposed to be. Stevie was a$$ at that. And obviously, it didn't work when he went elsewhere.

Nice break from the annual Errin' Buffoone summer swoone today with the offense scoring 9 and Clark Schmidt throwing 7 no-hit innings to run his streak to 25+ scoreless innings. Hary Snatchez broke up the combined no-no after a questionable check swing no-call. Final 9-0 one hit for the BozO's. 3 straight starts with 6 scoreless innings for Schmidt ties a Yankee record(with 11 others, most recently Sabathia in 2011). Below is the Yankees postgame pod/show that I think is the best to follow after every game. Don't get the soft company line like the YES postgame. In other news Luis Gil threw off the Yankee stadium mound today. Probably 6 weeks out. And last night was probably the best performance for a Yankee prospect this year with Spencer Jones getting 4 hits and maybe for the first time looking balanced and comfortable with a stance adjustment. He has been toying with new stance's all season and wiffing at a high rate. But he has found his power. 14 HR in 44 games is a lot in the minors. @YankeesFarm is good follow. Carlos works hard to post these Yankee prospect videos and give updates on on international signings etc..

IF that data indicates that he still has the same % chance to hit AFTER his first season than before it..........then that is a positive.........not "irrelevant". There is a reason only about 50% of 1st round picks get their 5th year option picked up.........because all of the rest have essentially given every indication that they will not live up to their draft status by year 5. And some of those that are picked up are exercised because the feeling is that they will "hit" by year 5. So less than 50% may be seen as on pace to be where the team hoped or expected. So in context, Coleman still having the same chance to hit as when he was drafted is not off the pace. And yeah, don't be a JAGoff and make me explain to you that All Pro's, guys who've lead the league in receiving yardage or had six 1,000 yard seasons are not JAG's.

JAGfest? Tyreek has been first team all pro 5 times. Godwin was an All Pro and 4 time 1,000+ yard receiver. Allen Robinson lead the NFL in receiving yards with 1400 one year and had another where he put up 102 rec 1250 yards Brandin Cooks has six 1,000 yard seasons.........for reference......no Buffalo Bill draftee has ever had more than 4. Robert Woods was a WR1 level producer for 3 straight seasons in LA before injuries reduced him at age 28. Pittman is a legit WR1 now with a 109 catch season on his ledger. So 1/4 of that still unnecessarily narrow statistical grouping have been legit NFL stars including All Pro's........and 3 more have put up 1,000 yard seasons. We all want our second round pick to become a HoF'er.......but if just the data suggests that he has a better than 1/3 chance of being a 1,000 yard receiver........and more like 50% if he stays off drugs, doesn't get seriously injured or have serious legal issues.........that's not a bad % for the 8th receiver taken in a draft.

Well I'll give you a fantasy football tip. If the QB sucks don't play any of his secondary receiving options. If they don't see the field well or sense pressure well they will just throw the ball up to WR1 and hope for the best. That's why Josh Gordon could put up one of the great receiving seasons of all time with Brian Hoyer and worse throwing him the ball. Or DeAndre Hopkins can be All Pro with Tom Savage at QB. Coleman has a different skill set than Pierce. More general athleticism, inside receiving ability and YAC skill. So he has an outside shot at being a real WR1. Pierce has a higher floor right now because he can simply run away from a lot of boundary CB's but clearly more of a specialist. I'd love for the Bills to have him. He's Gabe without the bad hands and with real speed. I see PFF had him ranked as the 33rd highest graded WR last year........that tracks. He's good.

Yeah saying that "everyone" was down on Spencer Brown and then clarifying the reason.......that it's because they are just stupid......is the very definition of a shout down. There is no rationale other than de-humanizing the opinions you don't like. The same way slurs are used to totally discount opinions. A literal shout down. Now if I said that the value of your opinion on the temperature of the fan base regarding certain players is not of import because you couldn't make it professionally in WNY and had to move away..........that would also be a shout down. While I may think that reflects poorly on you or your intellect that is not my response to the subject. But you telling ME what Bills fans think when I literally interact with them all day in public 6-12 hours every day and not just on a message board heavily populated by out-of-towners is the literal equivalent of you claiming Bills fans can't have knowledge about the future outlook of players and only those around them can. Anyway I gotta' pull an Alphadawg here and give you a peace-out. This is the most discussion traffic I've ever seen one of your takes get and and I would just hope you can see why. ✌️

That's not a response to what I said about your lack of supporting data for the quote "meaningless" nature of a rookie gaining 500 yards. I repeat: "It's no more common for WR's to put up impressive rookie numbers and never develop than it is to see future stud WR's who don't produce much as a rookie.......as @NewEra detailed while you guys pointed out just one example." The data field you just chose to respond with does not run contrary to what I said or support your point one bit. Just a ridiculously large goal post move that literally supports what I said. But done by you to make it seem like I questioned the trajectory of guys who put up top-32-in-the-NFL type receiving yardage as rookies. I obviously did not. You said getting 500 yards as a rookie was "meaningless". That's an absolute statement. By contrast, "doesn't mean much" is very subjective and basically not saying anything at all when paired with no supporting data for that opinion whatsoever.

While that may be the case I like seeing him playing hoops in addition to his football workouts because I think there is a compelling argument that athletes who just position-specific or one-sport-specific train tend to become more susceptible to injury than those who play multiple sports that emphasize different movement/flexibility/dexterity etc..

It can be misleading but it's certainly not "meaningless". @Einstein is implying that lot's of rookie WR's put up significant stats and then vanish. He didn't even seem to know who Alec Pierce was though. A mid-second round pick with first round athletic testing numbers. Not some random nobody who somehow lead the NFL in ypc which subsequently dismisses the value of Coleman's rookie ypc. It's no more common for WR's to put up impressive rookie numbers and never develop than it is to see future stud WR's who don't produce much as a rookie.......as @NewEra detailed while you guys pointed out just one example. I've compared Coleman's ceiling to that of Davante Adams because they entered the league with similar athletic profiles......and challenges to transitioning to the NFL. Took Adams some time but that basketball type athleticism shown thru while the more track-athlete type profiles that excelled earlier in their careers from the 2014 draft have long since fallen by the wayside. I will agree that the Bills were force-feeding Coleman targets though and that has to be weighed into the equation. They did the same with Kincaid. So you can't simply extrapolate their rookie production in their best games and expect that the following year. But what they did proves that they have a foundation of ability that can produce at the NFL level. It's not meaningless.

Alec Pierce is really good. Took him til year 3 but his QB situation has been among the league's worst and Pittman is a pretty good WR1 demanding more targets. But Pierce is 6'3" runs 4.4 with very good hands. Like an all-around more talented version of Gabe Davis. Put him with Josh Allen and I could see him finishing around 20th in the NFL receiving yardage. He's not some kind of scrub.

Coleman made huge plays with excellent yac so he had an awesome ypc........but wasn't anywhere near the consistent weapon they needed him to develop into by the end of the season. In 2023 Kincaid caught a ton of passes but his yards per catch was just pathetic. No juice. They were rookies being force-fed targets when they clearly didn't really know what they were doing. In his end of season criticism Beane strongly implied that Kincaid bought into the bogus hype that he had this excellent rookie season and thought he had it figured out and subsequently didn't work hard enough to get better in a league that now had tape on him. He thought improvement would come naturally. I think Beane cross referenced that when talking about Keon as well. Like Keon should learn from Kincaid's struggles.

Yep you ridiculously exaggerated the amount of criticism Brown had received in an attempt to shout down this Coleman discussion. Even in the Spencer Brown criticism thread that I quoted there weren't that many people other than the OP that were particularly critical of Spencer Brown. But sure enough, as I suspected........you were there in that thread to offer your contrary opinion. You read the title of one thread......applied unnecessary gravity to it.......disagreed........and ran with it.

I don't think he was ever the worst. RAS isn't the be-all end-all but being #1 over a 25 year period implied the upside was high.

I would like to find out what the Yankees would sell for. Soon, preferably. Time for a change at the top. Overdue, in fact.

There are always going to be some zealots on here who make ridiculously broad claims like @Ed_Formerly_of_Roch did about everyone wanting to run Brown out of town. I saw another guy who posts about 10x per day here recently claim that everyone "had it in" for Kincaid when he was drafted. These are NOT true statements. They are nonsensical hyperbole or, in most cases, just outright lies by people who can't handle criticism. As for @Einstein claim about it being very rare for a RT to make huge improvement............I totally disagree with that. Most RT's don't have LT feet. They gotta' learn to work with what they have. Lot's of them struggle early and become much better.

Just because you agreed and have been saddled with an L now doesn't make him not wrong. Whether Brown was the biggest problem with the Bills offense was ENTIRELY an opinion. One that zealots ran with, in part because of who posted it. It was a premature b!tch about a talented player who had been learning on the job and dealing with injuries without using the trajectory of other young RT's as context. Or the context that RT's that are struggling are pretty easy to compensate for. It's literal fact that you can get to SB's with guys like Max Lane or Mike Remmers. You can lead the league in rushing and big plays with a guy like Jordan Mills. I could list bad RT's on good offense's for days. Lane and Remmers might cost you the game with Reggie White or Von Miller lined up across from them in a SB.........or maybe you win a couple SB's in spite of an Andrew Wylie at RT. But it's a VERY navigable problem when not facing the best of the best. If that's really your biggest problem you ain't got much to complain about. And at that time, the Bills had CLEARLY other issues on offense.

There are a number of people who "do this" or have done this for a living that don't believe in Coleman. Some of them are literally why he was on the board at #33. It's not just the "posters here". Their professional opinions don't mean that much either. Half of first round picks fail to even warrant a 5th year extension. So the pro's aren't exactly nailing it. Your scope is very limited if you don't realize these facts. And perhaps that's why you are so outraged. Just because you don't think you can be as informed as a professional doesn't mean you shouldn't learn how the systems work, at the very least.

I think most people unfairly put way more of the blame on the defense for the 5 losses. Doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the Bills needed Lamar to turn the ball over a bunch to win the only 2 games they've won against the other AFC SB contenders in that 2020-2024 era. The Taron Johnson pick 6 was basically a 14 point swing in a 17-3 win. The Bills offense was awful that day. And Allen had a pathetic passing game this January but Lamar threw a ball up for grabs to Rapp and laid the ball on the turf for Von Miller to return. They didn't need an A game offensively to beat the 2024 Bills in Buffalo in January. The Bills playing that bad offensively at home in the 2 Baltimore games is largely overlooked because they won. Offensively the Bills should be the one's seeking revenge. Obliterated in the regular season and nearly choked out at home. They gotta' figure out how to score on that Ravens defense.

There seems to be a correlation between DP LePew returning to the lineup and the offense going to sh!t every year. He's a real energy vampire. Happened last year too. He came back, they still played well the first few games and all of a sudden the bottom fell out and a few weeks later Luis Injurino is joking about the Yankees only having 2 hitters. The Errin' Buffoone June Swoon has been a thing every year since 2021 but part of that is trying to force sunk-cost losing contracts into the lineup. Aaron Hicks, Josh Donaldson, LePew...... The message putting DP back in the lineup is that pay matters over performance. I don't think the players are disgruntled about it but the realization that the team is willing to sacrifice games to try to salvage some value from a washed up player takes the edge off of them. He's a 36 year old slap hitter with zero defensive range, a hardening glove that can't handle short hops anymore, a propensity for hitting soft ground balls that turn into DP's and now he's added high % of strikeouts. He struck out 3x last night against soft-tosser pitching. They should have cut bait 2 years ago but definitely last fall when they put him on the fake IR to get him off the team. Even if he somehow got back to hitting .280 or so the other deficiencies in his game aren't worth it. I mean they rightly let Gleyber Torres go and he was worlds more impactful than LePew.

Lamar is single-handedly the reason Josh Allen isn't winless in division and championship round games. The giveaways made it possible for the Bills to escape two terrible offensive performances against the Ravens with wins. That opener could be very important for the #1 seed or at least home field advantage again in a potential 3rd division round meeting with the Ravens.

Yeah @Ed_Formerly_of_Roch is very wrong saying that "everyone" wanted to dump Spencer Brown. There was a vocal minority and if you over-value TSW takes just because they were started by moderators then perhaps you might think that way about Brown. The big difference is that RT isn't a premium position. You can always cover your RT up with a TE or slide protections or a quick passing game. Teams reach SB's with terrible RT's. It happens. Much less likely to reach a SB without a couple excellent receiving threats. Coleman entered the NFL raw and inexperienced with great athletic upside much like Brown but the stakes are higher with a 33rd overall pick at a premium position like WR than they are with a late 3rd round RT.

First of all, let's not blow Cook's production level out of context. A couple 1,000 yard seasons and only 533 carries in his career. Not some monster production. And for context, from 2009-2014 Jackson or Spiller produced 900-1000+ yards each year. Then the Bills proceeded to lead the NFL in rushing by a large margin in both 2015 and 2016. You are trying to frame it like the running game had been some issue the prior 20 years so they should cling to this one beacon of hope named James Cook. Second........Why does the quality of the individual RB matter? Philly with Barkley was the first big name RB team to win a SB since the Seahawks lone SB win with Marshawn Lynch. Before that you have to back to the early 2000's to find a comparable situation with a big name RB. And, fwiw, the 2024 Eagles had the highest paid offense in the NFL with 2 stud WR, the league's best OL and a recent MVP candidate at QB. He went from 3.9 ypc with the Giants in 2023 to 5.7 with the loaded Eagles team. The quality of the team around him totally changed his ability to produce. Cook also benefits greatly from his situation with the Bills.