The Frankish Reich

This strikes me as correct. I can't find the stat, but I know it exists and I know that teams use it: Win Probability Added. In other words, add up all the positive and negative return plays from a punt/kick returner and their effects of win probability. A truly awful return man -- think "those Chiefs players who muffed consecutive punts in the playoff game" -- may cost a team dearly in win probability (it was Mahomes and the Chiefs, so no worries as it turns out). A truly great return man will have almost no negative return plays/decisions and a bunch of highly positive ones. Roberts was good mostly because he avoided negative plays and exercised sound judgement on when to return a kick/punt and when to let it roll. He wasn't as exciting as we'd been promised (not much in the way of breakaways), but he was more than solid. But setting aside those "let it come back for a touchback" decisions, it's still only 53 returns total for him, or about 3 per game, so the impact overall is pretty modest.

Tampa makes sense. I don’t think it will work - if anything, Tampa needs the anti-Jameis, someone who protects the ball - but it’s still worth watching. I know I’m in the distinct minority when I say I kind of like Rivers and would love to see a storybook ending to his career. I doubt it, but really, what better option does Tampa have? Arians needs to win now with the formidable offensive weapons he has.

Correct. Enough with the Mahomes thing. I am calling for the next two weeks to be dominated by “We should have traded for Jimmy G” threads. EDIT: or could I sell folks on “we should have tanked in 2018 so Deebo Samuel would have been on the board when we picked Cody Ford? Or maybe “we should have claimed Raheem Mostert off waivers the half dozen times he was available? It seems there’s a lot of content to be generated there ...

That’s right. Some new blood in the Super Bowl, and now I’m actually interested to watch it. Thank God no Patriots.

I hear this a lot. It makes no sense. I am not an NFL GM! The list of NFL execs who care about who I think the Bills should draft is a list with no names on it. It doesn’t matter who I thought the Bills should draft in 2017. I can still critique the performance of the various GMs as an informed outside observer.

That’s the thing. You pass on a Pro Bowl QB (Watson), then you pass on a future HOFer (Mahomes), and nobody really cares that you drafted an excellent CB (White) and a whatever else you got (Zay Jones? Dion Dawkins?). Two huge missed opportunities, and all because we were waiting for the right guy 2 years later ....

So it was kind of simple after all: commit to stopping the run with whatever it takes, make Tannehill beat you.

True. But if I’m the Bills GM and Andy Reid calls wanting to trade up to get Mahomes, I’m immediately thinking “I’ll go with Andy Reid’s pick myself.” He does have a somewhat better record than Doug Whaley.

OK, PFF haters. You have a point -- they don't exactly do a good job of explaining their grading system. But it ain't that hard to find. From the wiki page on PFF: So, after they do that, here's what the total scores add up to (from PFF's own twitter): So PFF is what it is. It's not scientific, or "analytic" in any meaningful sense. It may not be better than a pro scout's impressionistic grades. But I find it useful in the way advanced defensive metrics are in baseball: I watch the games, I have a seat of the pants idea of how good a certain player is, I check PFF and it either confirms that or causes me to take a closer look if it doesn't. What it tells us here is that although a lot of Bills fans were thrilled (me among them) with how we upgraded our receiving corps, it's still just ordinary overall (worse than ordinary if we consider TEs). And while we were positively ecstatic about the improvement in the O line, it really just went from historically awful in 2018 to ordinary crappy in 2019; there's ton of room for improvement there. EDIT: Thanks to the OP for compiling this. I don't subscribe. One comment: Nsekhe was not "great" by PFF's rating. He was a lower-end starting quality RT. But Ford was so, so bad that Nsekhe was a huge upgrade whenever he was on the field.

PFF haters should also note that they had Harrison Phillips rated very highly (the highest rated defensive lineman on the Bills in 2019) in his limited pre-injury action this year. And Kyle Peko rated as, well, kind of sub-replacement level. Those ratings make sense to me. Jordan Phillips had a nice season, but he's still erratic -- he'll impress with the "damn, that big guy's got some moves" moments, then follow by having his 330 pound body bulldozed on runs right up the middle. Jordan is worth keeping at a reasonable price, but I think he'll get a bigger offer from somebody than what his overall body of work warrants. Thanks, PFF, for helping the Bills avoid making a mistake ....

In fairness to Duke: I don’t think anyone makes that catch. The DB was falling into Duke’s arm as the ball arrived. That’s a tremendous amount of force applied at a critical time. It’s the old “sometimes everyone does everything right but the other guy just makes a play” situation.

Thanks. And that’s exactly what it is - a quick rule of thumb. But I think it does give us a sense of where we and our competitors stand right now with respect to true talent level. For us, that’s a good team! Very few teams actually project as 11 wins or better. There’s just too much variability and luck involved.

No. If a team wins 6 this year, the best guess is that they’ll split the difference with .500 and win 7 next year. Again, that’s before rosters are settled, etc. While my prediction now would be that the Pats go 10-6 next year, if Brady leaves and Stidham is the QB, obviously that goes down.

9 or 9.5 wins should be the over/under assuming no huge roster changes. It’s just a much tougher schedule. Folks are focused on the outside of the division opponents, but the Dolphins and Jets won’t be easy next year. My general Quick and Dirty rule (if your formula works better, please share it): take last season’s record and regress it 50% to the 8-8 mean.

Yup. That one is special. I will say that in light of Baltimore’s success, I wouldn’t put it past some team to give Hill a big contract with the expectation of having him start at QB. That team isn’t the Saints. But the Jags? Titans if they don’t re-sign Tanny? Dolphins? Bucs? Even Steelers (they did this once before with Kordell)? It would be fun to watch.