Last Guy on the Bench

I think he was saying that it depends on how immediately you need them to play. He said he would be comfortable with a high floor/low ceiling guy if he had good vets at that position and the draftee didn't need to play right away. But he said if it was a real position of need, he might take the high floor lower ceiling guy. He worries that if you plug a high ceiling guy in too soon you are setting him up for failure.

Good tip. I haven't watched ESPN in a few years. Maybe I will try them on Days 2 and 3. Thanks. I much prefer analysis and clips of the later picks to all the rehashing of Round 1 that seems to go on. If ESPN is better at that, then I'm in.

The Bills move up slightly and shock everyone by taking Devin Lloyd.

Ha ha. I really enjoyed that (a sign of draft addiction - another sign is I've watched that terrible movie twice). Telesco is the dude.

Thanks. People who judge mocks by percentage of exact player at exact draft position are missing the whole point. Mocks give you a pretty decent, if imperfect, sense of the shape of the draft and of the ranges and scenarios for various players. In Sharp's tables, the top 20 are startlingly accurate (9 of the top 10 were predicted to be top 10, and 7 of the next 10 were predicted to be in the 11-20 range). Precision naturally decreases as you go down. Mocks that go into the later rounds should be looked at with a much broader lens (e.g., how many guys predicted to be Day 2 were actually Day 2). There is no sense expecting a super close correlation the farther down you go, but I bet you still get a reasonable sense of the shape and of the bulk of the players going in a given (expanding) range. There is a lot of useful information in aggregated mocks, especially for Rounds 1 and 2, unless you are trying to figure out exactly who the number 56 pick will be or something insane like that. Then they are useless. But so is everything else, including detailed notes from the war room of the team actually picking number 56, since even they only have a mock-like idea of who will be there.

"That's what I do. You ever seen the Patriots vs. Isaiah McKenzie?" 😂

Looks like he's put on some weight.

Same for me. I had GamePass live for years living overseas, but since I moved back to the U.S. last year, I've been very happy to pay the $99 and just watch the games on delay, Sunday afternoon or evening. I actually like not spending my fall Sundays stuck in front of the TV. I get the beautiful fall early afternoons, and then I come in to watch the game, in total ignorance of what happened. I also love jetting past the commercials this way.

I hear you about the Internet bragging. But why do you think streaming is unreliable? Can’t remember the last time I had any issue streaming live sports or anything else.

Highest paid? Funny response underneath, with Will Smith screaming, "Keep Josh Allen's name out your f*&#&$ mouth."

Doubt he'll be there when the Bills pick - maybe if they move up. Would be amazing to grab him in the 2nd. I'd actually be comfortable taking him in the first (behind Williams, Wilson, Olave - who are likely all gone by 25).

CB LB TE P WR OL Maroon/Burgundy-ish

Here's a good breakdown of Lloyd, with lots of tape examples. Lloyd Draft Profile Video

Lord, I hope not. My heart couldn't take it. I hope when we win it all this year we're up early and cruise to a 50 point victory. I hope the rest of the country is completely bored by how dominant the Bills are. That Chiefs game almost killed me. I want more playoff wins like the *Pats game. Now that was relaxing.

Troy Andersen LB Montana St. Matt Araiza P San Diego St.

That's exactly what I've started to do, and it's great. I'll have a couple of subscriptions running at one time. When I've gone through most of the current content that interests me with those subscriptions, I'll cancel one or both and add another. You don't pay much that way, and you can watch anything from any service (eventually), as long as you don't absolutely have to watch every show you like the minute it drops a new episode.

Question for the contract/capologists: There's been a lot of talk about the Bears drawing up a contract with a poison pill with a huge up front number. I guess the idea would be a very high first year salary. (Since any other kind of guaranteed money would be prorated across the contract.) But I feel like I remember reading that NFLPA agreement prohibits a drastic salary cut from one year to the next within the same contract. Don't remember what the number was. And I could be wrong, because I think I read that a few years ago. But if my memory is correct, that means you can't pay a guy $10,000,000 one year and $500,000 the next (in salary). If that's true, the Bears really couldn't have artificially jacked the front end of the contract up too much. Does anyone else remember this rule or know about it? Or am I just mistaken? BTW, clearly there is no rule against large increases in yearly salary within the same contract - Watson is supposedly getting only $1,000,000 in salary his first year in Cleveland so any suspension won't hurt him financially (which is pretty effed up in my opinion).

I actually thought the low-key vibe of the video was refreshing. I've enjoyed the Bills' recent social media hype work as much as the next guy. But it's nice to see something down-to-earth like this too. I love catching all of these little glimpses of the facilities and the people behind the scenes. And Von didn't seem that subdued to me - more nervous, reserved, trying to feel his way into the place. Even for a multi-millionaire, HOF vet, it's gonna feel disorienting at first walking through your new home and meeting 100 people at once. I hope they do more videos like this. I can't get enough of the day-to-day life of the team.

These critiques of the Rooney Rule are simple minded. Regardless of race, there are lots of reasons it's good to get in a room with execs, even if they have already decided who they think they are going to hire. And there are also lots of good reasons for the organizations to hold multiple interviews, even when they have a preferred candidate. I've been on lots of hiring committees where we had a pretty good idea of who we would probably hire (often an internal candidate). But we went through our process and interviewed multiple people. Sometimes, we changed our minds because someone unexpected blew us away. More often, we did end up hiring the candidate we thought we would, but when we liked someone else we interviewed, we kept them in mind for other jobs (which they sometimes got), and also were able to talk about them to others who were looking. If you don't get in the room, none of this can happen. The Rooney Rule is a reasonable response to systemic, structural racism (based on who has what networks and relationships historically) and to personal, unconscious racism (who execs are "comfortable with," the "kind of person" they are looking for). It can't singlehandedly change either of these, but it does offer some incursion. Not saying it's perfect or beyond critique. There may be better ways to tackle the problem. But all of these "See, it's a farce!" posts are pretty thin.

Great post. I'll add: Let's assume there is a badass, elite coach out there who is definitely better than McD. (I'm sure there is, somewhere, somehow. No on is arguing that McD is the greatest coach of all time.) Given their history with the Bills and Sabres, what on earth makes people think that the Pegulas are just the owners to find that coach? Or Beane? He's never hired a coach. Even the best football minds (not the Pegulas, though their hearts are in the right place) struggle to find good coaches. It's as hard as finding good QBs. Most teams miss a lot more than they hit. The odds of this leadership group finding a better coach than McD are super low. As many have said, one of his greatest strengths is his willingness to self-assess and to work on his weaknesses. And he seems to be very ego-free in terms of his relationships with his staff and players, so he will continue to try to bring in the people that can help him. Let the man grow. Let him evolve. Let him coach.

I don't know. Kelly beat Marino more often than not, but lots of people rank Marino ahead of him. Then and now. Of course, Mahomes is fantastic. I have no problem with anyone who says he's the best. But if I have to start a new team and pick one player, I'm taking #17.

Good points. It's very fair to criticize decisions and strategy in that game (or in any game). And I totally agree that there is no one solution. That's why I think you have to look at the gestalt of the thing, rather than focusing on one year or one result. There are definitely coaches that are reasonably competent and kind of plateau and don't grow into greatness. Maybe Jauron is a good example? Still, give Jauron Josh Allen and who knows how that goes? Even the Bucs Dungy/Gruden example is questionable to me. Yes they won the SB so it's hard to argue. At the same time, they only made the playoffs twice in the ensuing 17 years and got bounced in the wild card round both times. So was that really the direction to take for the team? Might Dungy have won a SB along the way and kept them more competitive? I don't know. I do know that when he arrived they hadn't made the playoffs in 13 years, and under him they went four times in six years. Pretty good. The alchemy of a good team is mysterious. Maybe it will become apparent over time that McD's weaknesses outweigh his strengths. But for me right now, his considerable strengths dramatically outweigh his weaknesses, even assuming I have a good read on his weaknesses, which I probably don't. And I do think he is a guy that will attack his weaknesses head-on. That's one of his most admirable qualities.

That "choking" reputation is what I'm talking about. It's juvenile. Reid won lots of big games before Mahomes. So did all of those coaches. I don't put so much weight on whether a person wins one particular game - the Super Bowl. There is too much randomness in there and too small a sample size. Coaches that go to multiple Super Bowls or even multiple conference championships win tons of big games along the way. I don't subscribe to the idea that there is only one big game. If you do, you are bound to be disappointed in most coaches most of the time. I believe there are many big games every year. That's not to say that all coaches are equal, or that different coaches don't have different strengths and weaknesses, including game management. That goes without saying. I just don't find it so obvious that someone is a genius or an idiot based on, say, whether a kicker hits a kick or not. If one play goes differently yesterday, McD just beat the big bad Chiefs on the road and likely wins a Super Bowl this year, or at least gets there. Is he a different coach based on any one of those plays? Not to me. That being said, I do think McD and Frazier made mistakes in that 13 seconds. I'm particularly troubled by the way they were guarding the boundary as if out of bounds mattered at all with time only for three plays and with three KC timeouts left. Out of bounds or not wasn't going to make any difference. I also don't understand how you don't put two bodies each on Kelce and Hill, and I agree with people who argue that you didn't really need much pass rush, since Mahomes was going to throw it quickly no matter what. Still, we could be wrong about all of that, and even if we're right, so what? They made a mistake. I don't see it as indicative that they will never win "the big one." It's just something they'll have to learn from. To answer your question, I would never put a specific result on a specific year to decide whether to fire a coach, if it were up to me. I'd look at the overall body of work, I'd look at the way that coaches and players do or don't improve over the years, I'd look at the relationships between coaches, players, front office staff, support staff, etc. All of that matters to me. If the Bills continue to field a competitive football team that is generally in the playoff hunt, and if they continue to cultivate what looks like a very healthy organizational culture and learning mindset, I would keep the coach. The only reason I would fire a coach that had that kind sustained competitive success is if it grew clear that things had gotten stale, that he had stopped growing and progressing, and/or that he was no longer relating to and developing players well. So pretty much nothing next year short of a player revolt would make me in favor of letting McD go. Again, I wasn't originally a big fan of the hire. And I still don't think he's the kind of guy I would really jibe with. Not my kind of personality really. I also suspect he might never be the sharpest tactical tool in the shed. And I do wonder what Reid saw in him that made him fire him. Still, with all of that, I think he is doing an absolutely fantastic job and I hope to see him as the Bills coach for many years to come, unless something major changes in his approach.

Your list of "failed" coaches is hilarious. I hope McD is our version of those coaches. Two of them won Super Bowls. The tother two won bushels of games. Reeves won multiple conference championships and was NFL Coach of the Year twice. I love your definition of failure. I guess it includes 99% of coaches who ever coached, including a number of HOFers. McD will be in good company if he is one of those guys. According to you, the Chiefs never should have hired Reid, I guess.

Hope so. I'll be pulling for them, if I can convince my bruised heart to watch the game.