BADOLBILZ

So what is Star's responsibility in the "less than 50%" of snaps where the offense doesn't assign two blockers to him? (mind you, he only played 44% of the defensive snaps to start with which was less than "part timer" Lorenzo Alexander) This is where the rubber meets the road with the defense of Star as "misunderstood". When the 1 tech doesn't draw a double team it is his job is to get off his block and make a play. Which he doesn't do. As I said........Marcel Dareus earned 1st team all pro and put up 10 sacks as a 1 tech. The position is not to be confused with NT. If what Star provided was so important they would have tried to replace him with a reasonable facsimile thereof.........not Justin Zimmer. I guess your argument is that he is just so unique they couldn't hope to find someone to do what he does.........which would explain why he had to take a pay cut and his contract was set up to make it easy to move on from him after the 2020 season(we know how that worked out).

All winter Tompsett was talking about Star possibly not playing and the need to draft his man-crush Tyler Shelvin to fill the 1 tech spot.........so I guess call it an attempt self deprecation. The part about being afraid to tell the Bills he's retiring? If someone said that.....well that narrative never made any sense. All he has to do is show up and not violate the terms of his contract and collect about $10M over the next year and a half........whether he is effective enough to even make the the roster or not.

Thank you, because the presumption here is that he is always or near-always double teamed......which was not the case. The 1 tech alignment lends itself to double team blocking by attacking the gap between the guard and center........while the 3 tech alignment is designed to create a one-on-one matchup by putting the DT on the outside shoulder of the guard.......a position where it is difficult for the center to reach and where it's presumed the tackle is otherwise occupied. What good is a traffic cone DT who can't get in the backfield if he isn't absorbing two blockers on nearly every snap?

None of this counters the point that I was making that you jumped into the thread to argue against. That clinically obese people are generally considered to be at a higher risk to have underlying medical conditions than those that are not. The fact that it's typically the 300# plus guys that are dropping from heatstroke when doing team workouts illustrates the obvious...........they are likely to be in the least quality cardiovascular shape of any players on the team. Doesn't mean they can't ride a bike or dunk a basketball............just that they are at higher risk. And as it pertains to Star Lotulelei.............the point is that MANY obese players could have claimed they had underlying health conditions. Most did not. For most, taking the $350K was to take a big paycut and/or risk losing their career. For Star, his other money was guaranteed. Jon Feliciano pointed this out right after Star opted out. The skepticism from Feliciano about the reasoning for some opting out was pretty obvious by that otherwise unnecessary tweet. There is no factual basis that we are aware of to presume that Star was at a greater health risk than A LOT of other 300# NFL lineman.

Yeah, the idea that Star was constantly drawing double teams and tying up blockers was incorrect. @thebandit27 would often point this out when he was still posting here as well. It's a fact, it's not something that should require backup but there are a lot of folks on this board that felt like Star was very good at forcing doubles......when in fact a good guard had little issue taking him out of the play with no assistance necessary. $10M per is a lot to pay for a player like that. At the time of that Browns game they were in the midst of a rather bad stretch of playing run defense. I remember seeing Wyatt Teller single block pancake Star on one play inside the redzone in particular. The notion that he was a force at the LOS is a misty water-colored memory. But we do tend to see this with injured players........Harrison Phillips was deified when the Bills run defense struggled in 2019 after his injury. Then Star got the nod in 2020 and now Phillips is living in the shade.

You would think so.........but it doesn't really change anything if they don't use all of the cap space in 2021..........they can just roll the unused cap room over anyway.

There are some re-structures that don't require the approval of the player. It's just accounting. This may be one of them.

I thought you were "done", scarecrow? Nope, just more of the false narrative claiming that I am saying obese people can't be athletic or powerful. This guy is NOT an NFL lineman: Here's the latest from AHA about obesity: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000973

300# accountants ride bikes too..........when you live in a place like Miami that is flatter than piss on a platter it's actually less work than walking. Feliciano does motocross

He did have rare arm strength. Also important to note that there weren't "as many" players with high end arm talent entering the league then as we see now. You can see a marked improvement in the talent entering the league at QB in the 6-8 years after the 2010 rules changes.......and subsequent growth in QB contracts. It's become physically and mentally easier to play the position.......the TD/int ratio's are absurd nowadays....... and I think more players and their families are deciding to keep top young athletes at QB when in the past they might have played a less dangerous sport to get their scholarship and/or potential pro career. If a guy like Josh Allen chooses baseball instead of chasing that franchise QB dream he may have never made it past the college or low minors level as a pro.

Meh. I've always been a "take the next best QB in round 1" every year and you will ultimately come out ahead proponent.......but I was quite down on Mallet by that point. When you don't have a franchise QB.........you miss every shot you don't take though. Had the Bills taken an outrageous reach and selected Mallet rather than Dareus or Aaron Williams etc...would they have been much worse off? Nope. Even all of the future HOF'ers taken early in that draft likely wouldn't have moved the needle much without a franchise QB. I think we'd come to accept that as truth after watching Buddy Nix put the cart before the horse on draft day but maybe now that we have a franchise QB we may lose sight of that. Had someone here on TSW the other day point out that Paxton Lynch was the next QB taken after the Bills pick in 2016.........questioning my theory........without noting the fact that that by 2018 the only player left from the Bills entire 2016 draft class was Shaq........and he-gone after 2019. Both teams had bad first round picks.....the Broncos drafted later in each round and came out of that draft with All Pro safety Justin Simmons........the Bills got nothing to show for their draft. Point being.........the tendency is to look back and be like "wow, I can't believe somebody wanted to draft that QB.....WHAT a waste of a pick" and then totally ignore the fact that the actual choice made didn't have much impact on the fortunes of the franchise either.

Agree that everything points to them focusing on pass rush impact over stay-at-home types like Star. The actions ever since Star opted out have spoken loudly. I don't think Phillips was an outstanding pass rusher in college though........I watched him a lot at Stanford and yeah he had a couple 7 sack seasons in a pass-happy conference.......but he was really just a very active run defender at the LOS. I think fans often confuse the 1 tech responsibilities with those of a NT. The NT is literally just trying to tie up blockers by lining directly over the center(who is prone to be off-balance) and forcing the offense to choose which guard to use to double him. His job is to go thru the center not around him. The 1 tech's job is to shoot the gap between the guard and center and EITHER absorb the double OR get into the backfield. Marcel Dareus was an all-pro DT with double digit sacks mostly playing the 1 tech in Schwartz defense. Nobody considered him just a space eater. It's a position where the right player can still make a lot of plays. Phillips is a 1 tech DT. He isn't a true NT........but the Bills don't play an odd front and Star isn't a NT-capable player either. Even when strategically positioned as a 1 tech to FORCE double teams Star was still often single blocked. Neither are truly massive. What was nice about Phillips pre-injury was that he was getting off blocks and making tackles........a trait that Star lacks and many fans just assume that is by design because they think he has the limited responsibilities of a NT.

Be that as it may.........it's irrelevant to this branch of the conversation. Nobody is claiming that every 300# player or person is equally healthy. Being clinically obese....regardless of how you get there........ puts you in a category that is generally accepted as being at higher risk for a number of health concerns. It's not more complicated than that.

I like Josh with a chip. That's worked out well so far. When he gets to the point of mid-career Brady........where he goes years between performances like the one in the AFCCG last year.........then perhaps it won't matter. But for now, there is still room to grow for a player with such an immense ceiling.......and having doubters has seemed to motivate him.

Your argument was done when you tried to claim that 300# NFL players were not clinically obese (as defined by being 20% over their ideal body weight). Everything else was just you pulling straw men out of your ass. Like me pointing out that less than 2% of the US male population weighed 300# or more versus 20-25% of players on an NFL roster.............and you saying I was comparing accountants to athletes..........when my point clearly was that the demographics do not line up AT ALL. A 300# person who doesn't get any exercise of note isn't just likely to have some underlying health concerns........they may be quite dire. An NFL lineman with 40-60# of extra blubber hanging off his otherwise muscled frame is likely to be in much better condition than a non-athlete of the same weight..........but nonetheless he is still obese and putting a good deal of stress on his body and more likely to be at risk for heart disease and other health disorders than a healthy, fit man at or near his ideal weight.

Nobody is denying that lineman do a lot of strength training. Muscle is a big part of the equation in creating the force to play on the line. But muscle mass also burns a lot of calories..........so in order to also maintain a high % of body fat you can't also be doing cardio like players who require great speed, agility and endurance do. Comparing the training of an interior lineman to that of a CB or WR or RB as you are trying to do is to compare apples and oranges. And thus, so is comparing their physical conditioning.

Again........because you are a chronic over-sharer everyone knows you have a phys ed degree from Jokesonville State.......you're Asian so you can use racial stereotypes liberally........and you are only once-divorced so far. You don't need to keep flexing on us "idiots" about it. None of your accolades precludes the rest of us from knowing that obesity can still cause serious health concerns even for pro athletes. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/aug/19/college-football-deaths-offseason-workouts

https://www.livestrong.com/article/478687-the-effects-of-too-many-calories/ Common sense tells me that 320-330# men aren't able to train hard regularly and hold that weight or and not struggle with lower back, hip/knee/foot issues that could keep them off the field. They do enough to maintain the mass that allows them to do their job. Maintaining that mass leaves them with a lot of extra fat, which is stored as triglycerides which increase their risk of heart failure. You ever notice how the majority of serious cardiac issues reported during training for football are 300# players like Korey Stringer or Jordan McNair? You don't see any correlation between their obesity and their deaths? Interesting, doctor. By all means though, argue for the sake of arguing.

The obese can do athletic things too. I don't want to open the floor for you to stereotype asians again but NFL OL are the US sporting equivalent of Sumo's. I don't care who you are.......consuming 8,000 calories a day all-year-round to simply to hold your weight is not a healthy lifestyle. But force= MASS x acceleration......so being fat is simply a requirement. I'd also add that the perception that these big guys are training hard every day of their 6-7 months off is not reality. Show me a guy whose dragging around 70-80 extra pounds of flesh and training hard every day and I will show you a guy with a bad back and joint problems. They gotta go out on the field and push or block another fat guy for 2-3 seconds 60 times per game with long rest periods between every 4-12 snaps over a 3 hour period. They aren't training to run 6-8 miles per game 3x per week like a basketball player........both pro athletes........very different levels of conditioning. Part of staying fat is being relatively sedentary.

INsensitive

And for @Thurman#1 you posted a picture of Star in a loose t-shirt to show how svelte he was at the combine in 2013(where he sported an Eisen-esque 5.41 40 time)........well here is him with his belly bursting out of his spanx at Utah months earlier: Being clinically obese goes with the territory of being an NFL OL or space eating DL.

Yep, famous for always carrying a condom in his shirt pocket.

🙋‍♂️ Can we instead turn it into an extension of the "star's are here but Star is not" thread and @Royale with Cheese could deny that Sweeney Tom could have had an underlying medical condition that made him more likely to contract myocarditis..........because after all.......he's a pro athlete not an accountant.

That was the game where Denver got hit with a blizzard on Saturday and much of the team had to be taken to the airport by snowmobile and got into Buffalo very late. The Bills tied the game with a long field goal as regulation expired and I will never forget it because as the ball went thru the uprights, even in all the noise I could hear the ping of my co-season-ticket-holder's eyeglass lens landing on a hard surface to be lost forever. He then had to watch Henning's stupidity with one eye.

Yep.......the Chiefs ran all over the Bills defense in that October game..........and scored just 26 points........which kept the Bills in the game until the final KC drive. The old-school among us have been slow to admit that running the ball can take your passing offense out of rhythm and even limit your own ability to score in many cases. Instead running the ball is seen as some key to take the team to the "next level" offensively. The last 3 AFC representatives in the SB allowed nearly 5 yards per rush........practically inviting teams to run the ball.....and they won 2 of those 3 SB's and were favored by Vegas in the other. I'm not saying their intention was to be bad run defenses.........but like the Bills in that KC game.........they realized that a much greater emphasis needs to be put on pass defense. If that means sacrificing an extra .5 yards per rush to do that then so be it.