Shaw66

That's interesting. If they replace Edmunds, the roles of all the pass defenders change. That's a big move. But you may be right. They certainly are intentional. Maybe McDermott will be happy with a less mobile, more traditional MLB, with the idea that Bernard and Milano will have enough speed and quickness in the passing game. Quite possible.

This is a very, very un-Beanelike plan. Who's to say there's a first- or second-round talent in the draft who can play MLB? And who's to say the Bills could work the draft to get him? I can't imagine that Beane and McDermott would go naked into the 2023 off-season like that. That alone suggests to me that the Bills will keep him.

Good example. But why doesn't your league ban that style of play? It deosn't help in skill development.

You may not have read my other post a minute ago, but this is where you are missing, or at least undervaluing, Edmunds value. The Bills play a lot of zone. They're really effective in it. Why? Well, it may be, it actually makes a lot of sense, that the reason they are so good in zone is because they have Edmunds in the middle. Edmunds in the middle shrink the geographic responsibilities of all the other pass defenders. It may shrink those responsibilities to the point where it becomes easier for each of the six to succeed. So, if the Bills give up some completions over the middle, completions that rarely result in touchdowns, they may not care, because what they get in exchange is a suffocating pass defense. If that description is correct, then his pass coverage rating will in fact look bad or mediocre. He's not getting credit for any of the stops his teammates are making. Frazier and McDermott understand exactly how big that impact is on the defense. I don't, and I doubt anyone here does. It's invisible, in that we can't see that the reason Poyer was in position to make a play was that he didn't have to worry about some territory that every other safety in the league does have to worry about. It's not a stat, although the Bills may have found some way to quantify it. But I assure you Frazier and McDermott know. The question about the next contract will be determined by how big that invisible impact is. Beane will be asking McDermott how much it would mean to lose Edmunds. McDermott's answer will tell Beane all he needs to know. Clearly, McDermott answered that question about Josh, "it would mean everything." Clearly, McDermott hasn't said that about Edmunds, or he would have been extended already. So, what will McDermott say about Edmunds? "I'll need to rebuild the back 7? I'll need two linebackers to replace him? I'd love to have him, but he's expendable?" I'm guessing Edmunds is going nowhere.

I think this is really interesting. I hear exactly what you're saying, but I think what you're ignoring is that Edmunds may in fact be a unicorn, a once-every-fifty-year player. I think what makes him so valuable may be that his physical talent is so unusual that he'e most valuable if you use him in a non-traditional way. If I'm right that Edmunds makes six pass defenders all better, the fact that he isn't instinctive just may not be that important an impediment. In terms of his play on the field, I'm saying that what the current Edmunds does for you is give up some yards in the run game and get beaten occasionally in the middle passing game, while he gets for you better play out of your whole defensive backfield. If that's true, then that's a tradeoff McDermott will be all too willing to make. I don't know how much of that is actually true (especially because I agree that you describe pretty well what my eyeballs see), but I suspect there is at least some truth there. If it weren't true, there would have a lot more plays in the last few years when the Bills would have taken Edmunds off the field. Anyway, I think this is the point that is at the crux of the conversation: Just how significant is it to the Bills that Edmunds allows them to reshape the rest of the defense simply by playing the way he does? If they think it's significant, then the Bills will pay him. Some fans will scratch their head and say Beane blew it, but it's really going to depend not on the plays he makes but on the limits he imposes on offenses.

It may in fact be true. That's what Marino is said. He's a unicorn, and his impact on the team does not show up with individual stats. One thing is true: there is no middle linebacker in the league with his combination of size, speed, and quickness. He's unique. And the defense he's playing on is statistically outstanding. The question that you don't answer, and none of us can, is the extent to which his unique talents are the reason for the defensive excellence. My theory continues to be that Bernard will drive the move toward more 4-3 and less nickel. When you've got three linebackers who can run like that, you may be able to afford playing one less defensive back.

That may be true. I don't know. But just because he's done things in certain ways doesn't mean that he will do them that way every time. He said his system is to get talent in the draft and plug holes in free agency. Then he signed Von Miller. I don't think we can know what Beane is thinking until he moves or tells us.

But I think you have to look at the bigger picture, the picture we can't see very well. If it's true that Edmunds' presence in the middle of the defense allows Milano and five defense backs ALL to play their positions better than they could with any other MLB, how much is that worth? If the guy makes NO splash plays but makes six players better, do I really care about splash plays? Absolutely! Ertz to middle linebacker. Go for it.

Well, I've of two minds about this. First, I'd say you're correct. If his impact is as great as Marino suggests, then he IS as valuable as the highest paid linebackers, just in a different way. If he's a unicorn who affects the game as he say, yes, you pay him. However, Beane may have decided to pay him already, but in their overall cap-strategy it may have been better to wait a year to pay him. I don't capology, so I can't really say, but it certainly may be the case. Maybe they were going to extend Edmunds until it became possible to get Miller, and that may have forced the Bills to wait a year on Edmunds. I don't think we can know the answer to that.

Thanks. We'll end up in the other thread sooner or later, but thanks for pointing this out. It's an excellent discussion. I assume it's correct, and it's what I've guessed was true about Edmunds. As someone said, it's about the money. If Edmunds explodes this season, yes, he'll get top money. If he doesn't, then the question is tougher to analyze. If you believe what Marino says about Edmunds, if you're Beane and you understand what Marino says, then Edmunds is the best linebacker in the league, because he changes the game in a way that no other linebacker does. He makes every player around him better - he makes the entire defensive backfield better, and he makes Milano better, because he reduces the amount of open space each of those players has to defend. He probably does that better than any middle linebacker in the league, and that alone may make him the most valuable linebacker in the league. How much is that ability worth? Well, that's really the question. The Bills and Edmunds might see that differently, and none of us knows the answer to that question. If Edmunds really changes the defense in that way, that he IS irreplaceable. When you lose him, six or eight guys on your team have to get better to make up for the loss. If that's true, Beane will find a way to drop a big number on Edmunds. Some people here will howl, but if Beane does that, it will mean that Marino was exactly right about Edmunds' impact.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you missed my point. My point was one of personality. What you're saying is that you and I are different, which is what I was saying in my post. I agree that the objective is continuous improvement, and I'm glad the Bills have a GM and a coach with the fierce competitiveness and drive to keep pursuing it. I'm not like that; although I agree the team always can get better, my brain has little interest in figuring how to get better at backup guard. If there's a serious hole at some starting position, fine, I'll think about it. Backup guard, no. I don't know a lot about cars, so some people may argue with the comparison, but it's sort of like this: If I'm driving a Kia, I want to figure out how to upgrade. So, I get a Honda, and it's clearly better, but pretty soon I'm thinking about a Lexus. So, I get a Lexus. Now, you can tell me that a Mercedes is a better car than a Lexus, but at that point I'm just not all that interested. Yes, maybe the Mercedes has feature or two, a comfort or two that the Lexus doesn't have, maybe it performs a smidgeon better than the Lexus, but differences like that have never been that appealing to me. Would I like a better car? Sure, but with a Lexus, I'm happy enough that I'll worry about other things. So, to bring it back to the Bills. When Manuel was the QB, I was always thinking about what he needed to do better. When it was Taylor, I was always thinking about what he needed to do better. When it was Peterman, I was always thinking about buying him a plane ticket out of town. But now that it's Allen, even though I know he can get better and I want him to get better, I spend pretty much no time thinking about what he needs to do to get better. The Bills are thinking about it, and Allen is thinking about it, but to me it's kind of unknowable and it's a waste of my time to puzzle about it. It's just how I think. So, when the conversation turns to backup offensive linemen, I can agree that like every position, depth is important, but there are no obvious or even semi-obvious choices in free agency who would have been better than what the Bills have and would be affordable. There is no fifth-round draft pick who is obviously good enough to be a better backup as a rookie. Given the talent that's out there, from where I sit, it's impossible for me to know which guys are the right guys to have on the bench. All I can do is hope that Beane's obsessiveness, determination, and wisdom will help him figure that out. I can't, and so I just don't bother spending my limited brain power on it.

Your saying this makes me realize I don't have concerns. When the Bills were a .500 team, I had concerns. Would the QB improve, would someone step up at one position or another. I don't have concerns now. That's not to say there aren't areas of relative strength or weakness, players who need to make the next step, etc. I don't have concerns now because the team is good enough to win the Super Bowl, and I don't have the ability to predict where things will go wrong that will cause them not to win it. Those kind of concerns could happen at any position. I've stopped worrying about that stuff, not by choice or anything. I just find I don't worry about it. I'm just waiting for the games to begin. When the season's over, I'll know what I could have worried about, but for now I'm worry-free. It's a nice feeling.

I think you demonstrate my point. Of course, getting a better corner and making Levi #3 would have been a great solution. That's what half the teams in the league, or more, are saying. That's why the Bills signed Josh Norman and that guy who quit in the first game. Every year they looked for better number 2. With Tre still early in his rookie deal, it didn't make sense to use a first round pick to get another corner, because that would mean that Tre or the other guy would be a one-contract rental, because you can't afford to pay the second contract on two first-round corners. Waiting until now made sense. Taking guys in the fifth or later may work, but they are all shots in the dark. You can keep talking about it, but the simple truth is that there aren't enough starter-quality corners to give every team two good corners. In the same way that there aren't enough starter quality offensive linemen. So, you end up saying the Bills signed enough former starting olinemen that they might have good depth this year, but face it: every year the Bills sign some of those guys. Sometimes they turn out to be Daryl Williams, but usually they don't. They are FORMER starting offensive linemen for a reason. It's evidence of what I said: there just isn't enough offensive line talent to go around, starting or backup. There just isn't. So every season, Beane brings in a collection of guys, vets and rookies and former PS guys, and every year all you can do is hope you don't need them and hope that when you do need them, they don't hurt you too badly. It's just the way it is, and that's why I never get too excited about depth. Beane works as hard as he can to have great depth, and McDermott and the coaches work as hard as they can to have guys ready if they're needed, but whether they'll have the right guys in the right positions at the right time is anybody's guess. It's not a problem that Beane can solve.

Exactly. The remake is in production now, with Duane Johnson in the Middler role. And there you have it. Discourse from another planet. I readily admit, I can't keep up.

I'm not saying depth isn't a concern. I'm saying at some positions, it's unreasonable to complain that you don't like the depth. Take Levi Wallace. In an ideal world, he'd he my number 3 corner. I'd start White and Elam and have Levi to back them up. However, in the real world, Levi Wallace is someone's #2 corner - the Bills', and now the Steelers, or wherever he went. Why is a guy who is a good #3 starting? Because there aren't enough starter-caliber corners. On the other hand, pretty much everybody has someone decent as a backup wideout or running back. Not great, but not a problem. Oline is like corner. There just aren't enough good olinemen, by NFL standards. Over and over we hear that guys coming out of college have very limited offensive line skills. These guys are going to lineman camps in the off-season, not to refine their skills but to learn basic skills. So, you get a talent and you try to hold on to him for three or four years and hope he learns how to play. Every team has a similar experience. Nobody has a dominant offensive line for more than a year or two. Any team that has an offensive line, five guys, who are really good, loses players to injury, free agency, retirement, and they're looking for replacements. In that environment, some inexperienced or under-talented guys wind up starting, guys like Bates and Brown. What I'm saying is that it makes little sense to me to say the lack of oline depth is disappointing. In a candid moment, Beane would tell you he's disappointed, too, but it's not for lack of trying. He'll also tell you that because of that, it's harder to draft solutions. Very, very few guys are ready, so you have to hope you can develop them. You make mistakes, like, apparently, Ford. Your mistakes are more obvious, like Teller. Compare the oline to the revolving door the Bills have been running at receiver. At receiver, you can sign or draft guys, just keep moving and changing the pieces, but most of the guys you get work out at least okay. There's a relative excess of receiver talent in the league, and a relative dearth of oline and corner talent. What I mean is that Beane is doing as well as he can to build oline depth, but there's not a lot he can do about it. I'm sure when he's sitting with his pals in the business, they all say the same thing. So, my attitude about the oline is the same as every year, only the names keep changing. I hope Brown improves. I hope Saffold has gas in the tank. I hope the scheme takes advantage of Morse's strengths and masks his weaknesses. I hope Bates proves he's a starter. I hope Dion starts to put solid games for the entire season. I hope the bench can contribute when called on. I hope Kromer helps. I hope Dorsey schemes properly. I know what Josh can do, and Stephon, and Singletary, and Knox. I never, never know what to expect from the oline, let alone the so-called depth.

This brings into focus a subject that keeps coming up on this forum, which is the irony that the Bills defense was statistically great, but not big-play great. The Bills DID survive very well without White, amazingly so. Yes, as someone has pointed out, their late-season opponents weren't great, and Brady did torch the backfield some, but overall they were quite good. But you're right, the game, the last 13 seconds, and the overtime probably would have been very different with White on the field. You lose me, however, when you harp on depth. No team's depth is good. My cousin used to tell me that it's not just injuries that hurt you. It's when the injuries occur in the season and the positions where they happen. His point was that it's always a problem when you have to go to your bench; sometimes you've got the right guy for the position, sometimes you don't. Sometimes the injury happens at an okay time, sometimes it doesn't. That's just the way it is. Especially the oline, because NO team has good talent across their oline, which means that whatever good depth you have is likely to leave to start someplace else. Bates is the current example of that. He obviously wasn't the Bills' first choice to start; if he had been, he wouldn't have been in play in the first place. It's just the reality of offensive lines in the NFL in this era. Some solid receivers go unsigned much longer than we'd expect these days, because there are receivers all over the place - free agency and the draft. Linemen, pretty much not at all. OL depth is an illusion. Corner back depth is an illusion. Quarterback depth is an illusion. Bills fans, like fans of a lot of teams, are arguing about who's going to be the 6th or 7th receiver and who will get cut. No one argues about what O lineman will cut, because most fans look at the talent on the bench and just pray that NONE of them will be called on to play.

You're right. It was my dump, too. My first memory of it was going there for jalopy races, including a figure-eight demolition derby! I went to a few baseball games there, but I never got into baseball there very much, because the experience couldn't compare with Offerman Stadium. My only real memory of seeing baseball there was the summer when I kept hearing about the Bisons' catcher, so I went alone one night for the sole purpose of seeing Johnny Bench play. Always been glad I did. Anyway, I love the photo.

Augie - do you have a new avatar, or did I never notice it before. War Memorial Stadium set up for baseball? Fabulous!

Pretty much every morning, I do the Sudoku puzzle in the paper. It's on the comics page, and Zippy is right next to it. Every few days I read Zippy, hoping I'll get it. I rarely do. This morning, as I was reading it, I realized that Zippy is a lot like discussions you guys have here from time to time; that is, fascinatingly funny to a certain lunatic fringe and unintelligible to normal people. Still, there's something about those discussions that says you're the sane ones and the rest of us are hopelessly lost, every day thinking reality actually means something. King of Hearts is one of my favorite movies. Insanity for the sane. I almost responded to Battleships being like Scrabble and to Royale being Korean. Then I realized that yours is a league I just can't play in. Bravo!

I am. I can feel it ramping up. By the start of training camp, I'll practically be salivating over the meager little videos that come out. Even the videos of the players walking from their cars to the dorms. And the daily videos of camp action. Man. Then, like every year, I'll say the preseason games are stupid, and then I'll watch them. I'll even think about going to one. It's nuts. My brain tells me how terrible those games are, and something in me says, "GO!" Then the RAMS! On Thursday night! Oh, man. My bags will be packed and ready to go to Buffalo days in advance of the Titans game. So pumped.

Well, you may want to rethink that. Brown was one of the great lacrosse players of all time. You know how they eliminated dunking in college when Lew Alcindor came along? They changed lacrosse rules because of Brown. As a sophomore, he was the second-leading scorer on the Syracuse basketball team. As a junior he finished fifth in the national decathlon championships. When the lacrosse schedule didn't interfere, he ran track. When Franco Harris was late in his career, he had a chance to pass Brown as the all-time rushing leader. Some people were saying that Franco Harris was better than Jim Brown. Brown, whose ego is legendary, was angered by the mere thought of that. He said he could come out of retirement in the upcoming season and be better than Harris. Brown was 45, and he was so great that many fans believed it was true.

Thanks. I needed caps and sweatshirts for the season, and this price is probably as good as I'll get. Those starter jackets ARE nice.

Yes to Brown and Taylor. The question was most dominant. That means who dominated? Who won games on his own, who changed games regularly, who succeeded pretty much no matter what the opponent did. Unlike who was the greatest of all time, dominant means who stood out most among his peers. That was Brown. Someone asked Paul Brown once why Jim Brown got so many more carries than Bobby Mitchell, who was a really special talent. Paul Brown said something like "why fire a pop-gun when I have a shotgun?" I'd guess that Taylor caused more adjustments by offensive coordinators than any defensive player in the history of the game. He was the first linebacker that the defense would turn lose and just let him create. DEs like White and Smith were great, but they lined up in a place where they could be double-teamed and at least slowed down. The Giants schemed to get Taylor free somewhere, and it seemed like it was never the same place twice. He just destroyed games. Graham and Brady were different kinds of players, but what you say about them and their coaches is a great comparison. Teams kept losing to the Browns, year after year, and Graham was the field general and leader, just like Brady. But neither of them single-handedly, dominated games like Brown and Taylor. It's not about stats. It's about which player, in the game that is more of team game than any other game, would dominate almost regardless of the team he was on. And some of it is about the era. EVERY team ran the ball in the 50s and early 60s. Passing was high-risk proposition. Still, NOBODY ran like Brown. I actually think Derrick Henry is the most like Brown of any player I've seen. Unreal power and straight ahead speed, with some shiftiness. But in this era, Henry can't dominate like Brown did. And that's because, as someone said, the overall talent now is much better than in those days.

Norm McDonald is a good example. And Chadwick Boseman. But I'd say there's a difference between not disclosing at all, which I think that is what they did, and disclosing something that sounds ominous and then not following up. And Bruce Willis, whose family finally disclosed, and although he hasn't died, they disclosed enough to say "here's the problem, he's retired, and we aren't saying more." There's some finality to that, no follow-up necessary. Pegulas just left me hanging without a follow-up when I think a follow-up was necessary. I get in these discussions because they're interesting to me. Do I think less of the Pegulas because I didn't hear for a week and a half? Of course not. When Kim is healthy and has been back to work for a couple of years, if I had the opportunity to talk to Terry about this, he might say, "yeah it probably would have been better your way," or he might say "no, we did the way we did and we were happy with that." Either answer would be okay with that. I think it's interesting that their daughter gave more information than the family release. That also suggests to me that they don't have their communication strategy about this under control. I would expect that the kids would have been told not say anything about it publicly. Whatever. It's all incidental. It all sounds like it's generally good news. She's a young woman, in good shape, and no doubt she's getting great medical care. I'm looking forward to seeing her back on the job.

That's an interesting observation. Of the three, I've always thought Hyde was the most valuable. I think Hamlin is Poyer's replacement. Apparently he's a hitter and a coach-on-the-field type player. It's so interesting you say that about White. In some ways he's underutilized in the defense, because he can do more than just cover. Other teams would use him as a true-shut down guy - the Bills think they get more out of him, even if we don't see him, when he plays in the system. I've suggest before that he may become a safety someday, if he can hold up in the run game. Why did they continue to do well without White? It's Frazier and McD, man. Next man, tweak the assignments, dial up the disguises, keep up the pressure from the front four. Trade Elam for Wallace? All day, every day? Miller for Hughes? Love you, Jerry, but seriously? Addison is the only guy who wasn't replaced with an obvious upgrade, but last year's rookie DEs plus Shaq are solid substitutes for Mario, maybe better. It's a great collection of players.