Hplarrm

The thing which I find most bizzare about Carroll is that I first took note of him when he classlessly gave a choke sign when the team he coached made a comeback against the Bills. What a jerk. Add to this yes him having some success at USC, but he cheated so badly to do this this venerable institution had multiple fines which destroyed the program for years. Even worse he skipped town leaving his school to its sad fate while he got big bucks. Unless he also got a personality transplant with his Seahawk deal I feel sorry for this SB winner who wakes up every morning with a jerk. L

I think it is all about figuring out how the Bills can make the best analytical case for offering a p;ayer the lowest salary they can justify

I think the key to understanding how the Bills are making use of analytics is best seen in that the new guy was placed under the supervision of Jim Overdorf. If the Bills were planning to make their major use of analytics be to use this tool to directly improve their on field football performance then he likely been placed under the direction of Merrone. The HC is on the depth chart with gameday authority and strategic decisions about play. Instead, he is being guided by Overdorfer whose job it is to negotiate contracts and keep then as low as possible through negotiation. Analytics appear to be used by this team NOT primarily to improve play or analyze this weeks' opponent but instead as a tool to help the Bills assess and make the case for holding down Bills player salaries.

I also appreciate the work you did. However, I also wonder about the declaration of goals you have chosen. Are the Bills a mere hair away from winning the Super Bowl? Nope. It would take a lot of plane crashes to even get them in the game. However, the goal is merely to be competitive and have a reasonable shot at winning lots of games. Decisiveness as id'ed by you is simply not determined by the final score but how the game flowed. I think a full analysis that really taught us things would look at how many games this team won/lost from start to finish. If this team always was well behind in the first half and then lost by even larger margins then its time to clean house of probably staff and players. However, if the team got in front in the first half and then lost in the end, it says different things about the team and also what needs to be done to get them better. Likewise the Bills teams under Fitzy which started out 4-0 and ended with their usual average mediocre record is way different than the recent Jets team which won one week at home and then lost badly the next week on the road. Good analysis as far as you went but different analysis is needed to support the conclusions you made.

Ball game for Broncs with FG. Happy for Manning and Denver and great to see Belicheat denied!

Belicheat appears to have panicked going for the 1st down or TD on 4th and short rather than making it a 2 TD game. I think he knows his D is unlikely to shut down Manning and took the risk to try to score more points. I think Denver I the better team

Despite all the things you listed about players, scheme, etc being the same, the simple fact is that it isn't the same. At that youthful age even a year of maturation can make a big difference. As far as the elders like the coaches they are different and better than they were last year coaching EJ simply because they came close with EJ at the helm but failed. Its makes a difference having been close to the top but failing and surviving. My guess is one big difference along with how the QB acts in the crunch is how the HC staff lead these young me in crunchtime. I would not be surprised if a big difference from last year to this year is that coaching staff had the experience of coming close but not getting there.

Also agree with second post. The D improved from pretty bad at virtually all aspects of the game to sporadically awful but pretty darn good at some aspects like sacks and TOs. Its OK not too love their play but stupid not to recognize improvement under Whaley/Pettine

One of my favorite ironies here is that Manual even as a rookie looks like the second best QB in the division. Tannehill led a team that had total control of their playoff fate and they simply sucked against the Bills last week and laid another offensive egg at home today.

This whole thing seems to me to offer a common sense approach if one choose to approach this logically rather than based on some doctrine. Does anyone know for sure (me or you) what will happen in the future? Nope. Not for sure. We all have estimates or guesses, but no one knows the future. Are there some actions which it is logical to take based on the fact no one knows for sure. No, No and Yes. 1. Do not do radical things like sit in the dark ending the use of power. 2. Do not do somewhat radical things that might or might not be needed or even useful. 3. Yes do things that make you more efficient in and of themselves that also have the side effect of reducing carbon production. What this means is that we currently do some things (massive subsidies to the oil companies for example when we should not be giving our tax dollars to these massive profitable companies) which there is no need for us to do, or we subsidize or allow pollution which hits hard lower income communities which we end up paying a lot economically to deal with relatively common impacts from air pollution. The only folks one can virtually guarantee are wrong on this are folks who claim we should do everything (end all use or production of energy) or we should do nothing as the free market will handle all these problems. The market is far from free as well capitalized forces simply need a check and balance on their activities. I do not trust guvamint, but I do not trust Exxon or British Petroleum either.

The big picture irony of this is that though the actual weather record is far too short to prove or disprove climate change theory (100+ years vs. 1000s of years which is a true indicator) it is the amazing real world record of weather pattern change which worries most folks that climate change theory does snot bode well for short-term survival of life as we know it. Most normal folk understand that the stakes for inaction are incredibly high. Yet, most folks are not in charge and big money interests with short-term goals are in charge so we fiddle while the climate may literally burn. NFL stats like the weather record may well turn out to be interesting sidelights while we do nothing.

and I suppose your alternate strategy is for the Bills to simply give up on EJ now and to focus on drafting our QB of the future in the 2014 draft. Interestingly this draft pick will be done by the same braintrust that chose EJ (who you dub a failure after a mere single season) so likely we can look forward to the team making a similar new choice which puts us on track to finally win out in the 2016. For those of us here in the real world who know that the Ben RoboQB and Eli Manning level of initial success is actually the exception to the rule which sees a rookie QB even at the level of success of a Peyton Manning finally produce an SB win well over 5 years into his career and recognize the reality that even he only has 1 SB win on his resume and he is the best QB in the NFL. The actual NFL reality is that one really needs three full seasons before a credible judgment can be made as to the career outcome for a player. Even with exceptional results of the Steelers team which won the SB under RoboQB (I think there were at 3 more important players than RoboQB for their first SB win and Eli was actually well down on the list of star Giants in their wins. We are simply not far removed from the days when TB gave up on Favre and Steve Young (only to see them become HoF talents) and not one but two teams declared Brad Johnson incapable of QB wirk (much as you do with EJ) before he led a team to an SB win. If the Bills jettison EJ now it would be the height of panic and we would deserve putting ourselves on a track to finally win a playoff game in 2016 (or later) if we followed your track.

Kornheiser makes the claim that his stat minions have calculated that if Nick F from Philly were to throw 50 straight INTs he would still have a higher QBr than Geno Smith has now. Youch. I am not sure whether this says more about how phenomenal Nick has been, how bad Geno has been or the flaws of QBr as a stat (my opinion is that is not a perfect stat measure but it is the best we got) but it is a great showing how flawed Geno has been.

After less than 2 seasons pf play it still strikes me as too early to tell fer sure, but the very good ones make the players around them play better. I have not seen that from Tannehill. The good news for the Bills is that though it is also too early to tell re Manuel, the best thing so far from him is that last time against NYJ he led a badly depleted receiver corps throwing several difficult passes where they needed to be for different receivers to be productive. NYJ stacked up and played to stop the run and EJ and the Bills made them pay for this. The same Jets team held Tannehill scoreless for about a half. Geno sucks and its fine with me if Tannehill starts 8 years cause if it is so the Bills should beat them.

Who woulda thunk that the Bills would have the second best QB situation in the division. Geno simply sucks and Tannehill does not look like much for the future.

Tomlin's intent and even to a great extent the effect on the play does not matter. This non-player should not have been in the field of play (or even near it since the rule calls for him to not even touch the white line when play is occurring.

Rivers is the best fantasy player going but this is different from being the "best" player in the "reality" of the game NFL football. The reason why Rivers is not categorized as one of the best (or at a level equal to his stats) is that his teams are not big winners. I guess ask Peyton Manning whether he would prefer his stats or two SB wins instead of one, and I would not be surprised if he opted for the SBs.

Woods and EJ seemed to be developing good chemistry where Woods might become his go-to target, However, one thing which does not displease me about the Woods injury is that it might force EJ at this early point in his career to make better use of the vet Stevie Johnson or even better stretch the filed to Goodwin we will see

The interesting thing about the year of the McCargo draft is that as this team had two must-fill starting roles in the draft (a dubious proposition at best since at the time even in a deep draft only a little over 50% of the first round picks were at #1 on the teams depth chart at the start of the next season). They had a hole at SS and on the DL. The picks they made (Whitner was the second S taken in the draft and actually one of 4 Ss taken in the 1st round in that draft) and then trading back into the 1st for McCargo (no other DL player was taken until the 4th round that year) seemed long shots but not an unreasonable effort at the time. The true irony though is actually though McCargo turned out to be a failure in the end, the Bills led by retread Marv Levy (a good guy but in the end one of the few FO guys who would put up with the Mr. Wilson stupidity after Mr. Ralph swung and missed on leadership picks like Butler, Donahoe, Wade Phillips, and whatshisname who walked away from a couple of million bucks by quitting when Ralph refused to fire him after stripping him of HC authority). Marv was really too old to be a GM, but bless him as though he fanned on the high risk move of trading up for McCargo, he did get the Pro Bowl quality DT he needed in drafting Kyle Williams in the 5th. A weird draft as he made the unusual pick of Whitner and McCargp in the 1st, but in the end as the Bills had such clear needs at S and DT, the fact that Whitner was probably the best S taken in that draft (the other 1st rounders were pretty much busts) and that no other DL player was deemed worthy of a 2nd or even 3rd round choice, the approach taken by Marv to deal with the mess he inherited from Mr. Ralph was not unreasonable. In fact, given that he did get a Pro Bowl worthy DT in Williams in the 5th who is still a force in the NFL speaks highly of Marv's efforts to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

I think it was pretty clearly stated in the Brandon generated and heavily quoted PR about Lyons hiring that: 1. He will fit into the Bills flow chart working for and answering to Overdorfer. Thus, my sense is that he is there to buttress Overdorfer's duties as lead contract negotiator for the Bills. I expect Lyons work to fall specifically in this area. 2. If Merrone was going to make heavy use of Lyons analytics, he more likely would have joined the staff as an assistant coach to Merrone working on quality control. How do people feel the Bills will utilize Lyons and why does it make sense in their analysis for Lyons to be put under Overdorfer's guidance?

I do not think that the Bills FO, Bills media, and a vocal loud sliver of the fan base they would incite are mature enough and committed to winning emough to have 2 QBs with a legit call on the #1 job. We saw the results of this in the RJ/DF debacle where the legit call for investment in either QB and the FO in a futile search for the next Jimbo treated both players harshly and failed to produce a winner is an example of this. The QB battle right now is for the #2 and that is fine with me as either Lewis, Tuel or Flynn seem like reasonable choices to do the necessary job of giving the Bills a fighting chance if Manuel goes down for 3 games or less (if he is a poor choice or out for 3+ games we are done (that is what this season is showing).

My GUESS id that the key factoid here is not that he is a local, but that based on what OBD folks are saying he will work primarily for Overdorfer whose primary role seems to be negotiating contracts with players. My sense would be that the football analytics collected and used by the Bills will be data that helps them argue tp [ay an FA like a Byrd less money rather be used in game decision-making. If Merrone had been the push behind his hiring or he had a job like asst coach for quality control I would expect more of a game impact. However, the fact he is a Brandon hire and answers to Overdorfer means to me his analytic powers will used to help them in a Levitre or that situation where Parker won a huge contract in Philly for his LT client rather than game situations.

I believe Captain Kirk had just issued an order which sounded like "set phasers on random and fire at will" The refs were simply following orders in line with the prime directive,

Also, take into account it is generally considered to take roughly 3 full years of play before one is acting prematurely in either writing off a player as a true disappointment OR declaring them God's gift at a position until the league gets a good look at them and they get a good look at the league. Given Gilmore's age AND particularly with the club on his hand it is simply way too early to draw much of a real conclusion. The only real issues worthy of discussion are: 1. Is he better than a 100% Rodgers and 2. Even if he is not 100% is a good investment to see him play. The answers to those questions IMHO were last week no, but Rodgers is so in over his head and given it is quite doubtful we are playing for much this year play him anyway to train him up.

An interesting question for those who correctly see the linkage between offense, defense and ST would be to analyze the relationship between being amongst the league leaders in always putting up 20+ points and us also being a league leader in INTs. My GUESS is that two of the factors in us putting up points each game are the INTs shortening the field or reversing momentum and also the large number of plays run by our hurry up O.