PlayoffsPlease

Could someone point me to an example of an NFL QB who improved under David Lee's tutelage?

The silver lining comment was truly special. Makes one proud be to be a Bills fan.

QBR has a subjective component. I don't discount the value of subjectivity in evaluating QBs, I am just not qualified to add that piece. The purpose of the original post is just point out that a huge part of Seattle's success is attributable to Russell Wilson, not in spite of him. Their seems to be a consistent meme in Bill's world that somehow Seattle's success is a model of how to win with average QB play. But Wilson's productivity lands him among the leagues elite QBs. Seattle is a model of a complete team including an excellent QB.

Although EJ's running (because of his 1 td) gave him a nice bump, it didn't really move his productivity number very high. The main point of the post is that Russell Wilson is a rare bird, and we are not finding another QB like him any easier than we are finding another QB like Andrew Luck. I am not an EJ pimper. I doubt he has a successful career as an NFL QB. The numbers just fell where they fell

His small sample size numbers are distorted by the fact that he had 1 TD in his 16 rushing attempts. I don't hold high hopes for EJ, but the numbers fell where they fell.

Seattle has been to the last two Super Bowls with a QB that I believe is truly under appreciated. I frequently see posts were people say we "just need to get our Russell Wilson" as if that is significantly easier than saying we "just need our Andrew Luck". Notwithstanding their expectations coming into the league, Wilson's performance has been actually quite historic, I think people's lack of appreciation for his rarity is because they don't have a good way of factoring his rushing productivity into his other statistics. Taken plainly his his 849 yards on 118 carries made Wilson the 16th best rusher in the NFL last season. And his 7.2 yards per carry was best in the NFL for anyone with over 100 carries. (as an aside, Buddy Nix probably should have taken him to be a scatback) His 7.2 yards per carry is what caught my eye the most. This is actually better than the yards per attempt for Tom Brady and Matt Stafford. So it is not like his team is suffering if he choose to run rather than pass. To combine the rushing and passing stats, I created a new stat, I am calling QBP for QB Productivity It is simply a modification of the the NFL Passer rating formula, that treats each rushing attempt and as if it were passing attempt, and adds in the yards and TDs the QB records from his rushing attempts, and it treats fumbles lost as interceptions. This created a fairly substantial bump for handful of QBs in 2014, compared to pure passer rating, including EJ Manuel. Name Passer Rating QBP variance Russell Wilson 94.96 102.7 7.74 Jake Locker 70.95 75.87 4.92 EJ Manuel 80.26 84.57 4.3 Blake Bortles 69.51 73.69 4.18 Cam Newton 82.13 86.07 3.93 Teddy Bridgewater 85.2 87.9 2.7 Andy Dalton 83.33 85.78 2.45 Michael Vick 68.34 70.03 1.69 Drew Stanton 78.66 80.29 1.63 Ryan Fitzpatrick 95.34 96.85 1.52 Colin Kaepernick 86.19 87.63 1.44 Geno Smith 77.53 78.79 1.27 Joe Flacco 90.87 92.12 1.26 Mike Glennon 83.3 84.36 1.06 Josh McCown 70.46 71.13 0.67 Ryan Tannehill 92.8 93.44 0.64 Alex Smith 94.26 94.49 0.23 Colt McCoy 96.39 96.5 0.11 Peyton Manning 101.52 101.52 0 The main difference between Wilson and the others is that his pure passer rating is so much higher to start with. But EJ's effectiveness running in his four games was among the league leaders. You can see from the top of this chart to the bottom that Wilson was actually more productive at the QB position than Peyton Manning when factoring in his rushing ability.

Well, if third and 2 is a running down the vast majority of the time, then it sure as hell isn't a run dominated league.

Making decisions because the fan base would riot, is just being a bad GM The Bills have a real history of making one bad decision lead to other lost opportunities. The latest being locking so hard into the Manuel decision that they didn't take Bridgewater or Carr in 2014.

Suh probably just set the market for top interior defensive lineman at $60 million guaranteed (114 mm overall). Dareus probably hopes for that much but also has a full year of performance and injury risk before hitting the free agent market. Would he be willing to take a 20% discount off that contract, 90 million total, 50 million guaranteed to make sure he is set for life, regardless of what happens this year. And would the Bills be wise to make that investment now in order to save the cap space in the future?

Kiko for McCoy gets the Bills an excellent 26 year old running back with a 40 million contract, This seems like a good GM move. but a better GM move would have been drafting Lev'on Bell in the second round instead of Kiko in the first place. This would give the Bills an excellent 23 year old running back with a 4 million contract, and lots more cap space for other players. In truth in the 6 years Whaley has been with the organization the Bills have added four outstanding players. Mario Williams, whom they made the highest paid defensive player in the league. Marcell Dareus with the #3 overall pick in a draft where 9 of the top 15 players (including the first 7 picks) have all been outstanding players. Sammy Watkins, who used 2 #1 picks (and maybe missed on true franchise QBs in Teddy Bridgewater and Derek Carr). Lesean McCoy at a position that only that saw only 1 of the top 8 players at the position make the playoffs last year. (they already had the ninth highest paid in Spiller. It really doesn't take incredible talent to overpay for top assets. The investment in draft picks and money in these four players, if the Bills don't make a deep playoff run in 2015, it should be considered a failure by the Bills front office, led by GM Whaley.

Can NFL teams agree to absorb part of the pay/cap hit of a player they trade? For example, the Eagles now have 50 mm of cap space. could they agree use that space to sign Suh and Dez Bryant for a a combined 25 million per year, then trade those two plus their #1 to the titans for their #1 pick, and agree to assume 15mm per year of salary/cap hit for Suh and Bryant?. This effectively transfers $15 million per year of cost to Mariotta. Not suggesting this is a good idea, just asking if anyone knows if it is allowed?

http://www.rotoworld.com/player/nfl/5566/cj-spiller

this deal is Shady.

The "no one knows, you need another year" crowd is simply wishy washy. You can never be wrong with the "no one knows" position.

Yet, if you believe a large percentage of Bills fans, we are only 1 or 2 players away from winning it all.

Manziel is a young man with a substance abuse problem. He has recgonized the problem and entered a re-hab program. If, and its a big if, he is successful, he is likely to be a completely different person entering the next training camp.

The Bronco's seem to be able to move the ball better against the Chargers than the Bills did. After that game msg board consensus was that the Chargers were the team to beat in the AFC. I am going to go out on a limb and say the broncos are the team to beat.

the QB discussion for all time greatest is between Manning and Joe Montana. To me Manning gets the nod, because he did it with multiple coaches and OC's and on two different teams. But that is the argument. RB is still Jim Brown. Find old video of him. He averaged 5.1 yards per carry in an era where facemasking was legal. That was how people took him down. Kickers are tough. The cowboys kicker just set the record for highest career kick percentage ever at 91%. Not sure what makes someone a better kicker than making more of your kicks than anyone else. Viniteri is a beneficiary of location, location and location. Calvin Johnson puts up numbers to put him in a discussion with Jerry Rice and Don Hutson. There are legitimate arguments for Calvin though. Everyone else in the original OP, might qualify as the best at their position in the game today, or even during the last 5 or 7 years, but none of them really are likely to be considering the best ever at their position when they leave the game. I don't know how anyone can say Watt is better than Bruce Smith or Reggie White, if you actually saw those guys play. if you go back to the Bills golden era, guys like Marino and Elway were in the discussion with Montana. Guys like Smith, White, Lawrence Taylor, Munoz, Kellen Winslow, where amazing talents, and a generation before them Alan Page, Joe Green, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert etc. were in the discussion for best ever (still are). Always lots of good talent in the NFL.

I say sign Rice and AP if he is released. Then instead of pretending we have the leagues best running back duo, we actually would.

Greg Bell for Cornelius Bennett was better for the Bills.

Pretty Simple, If we had brought in Andy Reid and Alex Smith, we are super bowl contenders Instead of bringing in the pinstripe team and drafting a third round project, we had landed Chip Kelly or Andy Reid and brought in a real QB, we would be playing like the chiefs or eagles and contending for the big prize. I am glad we won today, but this team looks like its run by amateurs from top to bottom

Was it worse than having zero players on the roster four years later?

I am not one of them, but Watkins still hasn't done anything to justify being the #4 overall pick, let alone being worth that plus a pick next year. He isn't even clearly the top rookie wide receiver. He is a nice player. He may very well be a hall of famer some day. If we are going by today's performances, we should have signed Golden Tate (10 catches 154 yards, 1 TD) and use the #9 pick on Zack Martin, and had next years #1 in our pocket that maybe we could use to trade up with for a better QB. But hey since we can put up 17 points on the powerful Vikings defense, I guess we are set on offense.

With Spiller gone, there is now not a single player from the 2010 draft on the Bills active roster. Its 2014, this is the year guys from that draft class are supposed to be hitting their prime. Look no further than the Buddy Nix's drafts to wonder why the Bills struggle at home against one of the NFL's worst teams.