GoBills808

Hate this FG

Play on

He did ok against A’Shawn Robinson, a former Alabama guy. You guys are way overselling them.

Might be a wash, or he might have a slight experience edge. But that’s one position out of 33 where your example represents the BEST POSSIBLE outcome in favor of Alabama...they would get dominated overall.

Same. Way more compelling than a shootout

Aikman always sounds like he’s been drinking

Yeah, they are. Sorry. They go against All Pros week in and week out. These are the best of the best the professional game has to offer. They aren’t getting outplayed by four guys who’ve never played an NFL snap before.

They held Yannick Ngakoue, Malik Jackson, and Calais Campbell to zero sacks. They would absolutely dominate a college d line.

But there are a ton of schools that offer welding degrees, both associates and bachelors...are these not colleges?

I guess we just have different definitions of college then. There are a lot of technical and trade schools that I consider 'colleges' that offer the kind of training we're talking about. Not to beat it to death, but this debate usually centers around two points that have always bothered me...one, that somehow a traditional university degree in liberal arts/STEM/etc is fundamentally different from an associates/certification/diploma in one of the 'trades' and two, that the argument 'a college degree isn't for everyone' is almost always coming from someone who has one.

You don't consider 'college' to be advanced training and skills development?

There are a lot of posts in this thread saying college degrees aren't worthwhile...if you had said 'a generic degree from a typical liberal arts college isn't for everyone' I would tend to agree with you, but I don't know many people who wouldn't benefit by pursuing advanced training in their field. I just hit on the welding thing because I think there is a perception that somehow the demand for technical trade jobs disprove the value of degrees and secondary education...I mean, yes you can technically try to get AWS certified without going through welding school but I can guarantee you have a better shot of trying to pass the bar without going to law school.

You still need a ton of schooling, training, and apprenticing to become a competent (not to mention insurable) welder/electrician. They are highly educated, albeit in a specialized field. I think it’s a mistake to disregard the value of higher education. It’s not all art history and romance literature degrees.

Well maybe I didn't watch enough Tampa Bay, but I didn't see much out of McCoy when I did come across one of their games. That rookie Vea looked like the interior talent to me, McCoy wasn't anything special...maybe he was carrying an injury or something. I saw them play the Giants I think and he looked ordinary. Not all that quick, still obviously powerful but not really a playmaker. I stand by my Lotulelei comparison, other than McCoy being on the field for more passing downs re: sacks I think they're basically the same player.

They do similar things on the field imo. McCoy will draw doubles at about the same rate Lotulelei does.They're both good against the run. He doesn't get upfield all that well, and I'm not sure how often he's asked to do that. I'd say Lotulelei has a quicker first step but McCoy is stronger...imo Lotulelei is more technically capable and McCoy will tend to rely on overwhelming his guy with his strength. Sure he gets more sacks, but they're definitely not opposites in how they're utilized.

He does the same thing Lotulelei does for more money...

You don't think there's legitimate concern about an AG who has previously argued for a VERY liberal interpretation of the power of the executive branch, especially when the current administration has demonstrated what I'll charitably call an unorthodox decision-making process?

Will be interesting to see how his views on the authority of the executive branch get squared by the 'limit the power of the president' school of thought.

Nobody disputes he needs to improve his completion percentage. What I'm saying is that YPA is a function of completion percentage ESPECIALLY for a QB like Allen who averages high yards/catch, so if his completion% improves his YPA will also. They're directly related and since everyone agrees he needs to improve his comp% I don't see the point of looking at YPA. My reason to bring up his yards/catch was specifically to address the bolded: if his completion percentage remains stagnant it is almost impossible his YPA will improve significantly. For Allen specifically they're tied together due to his high Y/C. I am not sure if everyone understands this point but I think it's important.

Yes, which is why completion percentage and YPA aren't great metrics in this discussion.

No. The example you used proves that you need to hit FEWER aggressive throws to be as productive, as does the YPC stat I mentioned. If you are hitting more aggressive throws at a completion percentage equivalent to a QB making safer (less productive) throws, there's no question as to who is the better QB at that point.

If we're going to discount completion %, one idea would be to look at the yards/completion statistic. It would be instructive in this case because it's less an 'accuracy' metric than a measure (albeit imperfect) of efficiency. If we try to control for the nebulous 'accuracy' by removing completion percentage from the equation and then use YPA, you're still introducing the idea of completions/attempt (basically the idea behind YPA) as the standard...they're very closely related. I will freely admit it's a very selective way of looking at it, but again: if we agree on removing the concept of completion% and looking at Allen from a pure 'what does he do on throws that are completions' viewpoint (which totally, totally removes completions%)...suddenly he's ranked 9th in the league among some notables like Mahomes, Goff, Rivers, and Wilson (also Fitz who was actually tearing it up to begin with, Mayfield, Watson, Winston, and Mullens round out the top 10)- bit of a strange list but interestingly all of them outside Allen were 90+ rating (and 6/10 were 100+ rating), 8/10 were 64% passers (Allen and Mayfield the outliers, and Mayfield was 63.8%). Basically, I think Allen's 2018 wasn't an easy one to analyze statistically. What I saw doesn't match the metrics showing him one of the worst QBs in the league, I have him in the 16-20 range.

He's a good player on a good defensive unit. You have to overpay for those guys in free agency, it's just the nature of the NFL. He draws double teams consistently. He's quick off the snap. He opens gaps for the LBs and he's consistently strong against the rush. Not flashy but definitely a big part of the defensive line. I have no problem with his salary.

Starting in 2015, the Bills ranked 25th in defensive rush YPA. In 2016 they were 28th. In 2017 (McDermott's first year) they were 24th. Last season they improved to 9th. I'm not giving all the credit to Lotulelei. But to say the rush defense hasn't improved with him coming to the Bills is inaccurate.