Shaw66

No, Ham. As I suggested, start from the fact that all people should be free and have equal opportunity. Watch the video again. All it does is explain how the overt racism of earlier eras was built into our systems in ways that cause racism to continue today, even though people no longer intend to be racist. That's all the video says. It doesn't propose socialist or communist solutions. In fact, I think seeking political change is a mistake. A lot of my politics are like yours. More government control over how people behave is a solution of last resort, so far as I'm concerned. What we need is for white people to understand that the system operates just as it's described in this video. What we need is for good people like you just to see it, to understand that we have some people in this country who continue to get screwed just because we've developed some bad habits based on the color of their skin.

Ham - You seem like a smart guy, and you're part of the way to seeing what you need to see. You do not condone racism. That's a good and important first step. That means you're a man or woman of good will, and that's half the battle. I was exactly where you are just two months ago. I'd encourage to just look and listen. I'm not blaming you, saying your guilty of anything or anything like that. I'm just saying start for something you agree with - that all people should be treated equally and have equal opportunity. That's what you almost certainly believe, and it's part of what you mean when you say you don't condone racism. Okay, if you keep that frame of mine and look at the history of black people in this country for the past 400, you can see that we never stopped treating black people using the same treatment we used when they were slaves: Southerners beat, imprisoned, and murdered young black men to keep them subdued. We still do that in the U.S. Southerners kept blacks impoverished, with substandard housing, substandard food, and substandard medical care. We still do that in the U.S. Southerners kept blacks uneducated. We still do that in the U.S. Southerners made blacks live in fear. We still do that in the U.S. The point is, it IS systemic. You and I don't even mean to do it to black people, but our culture does. It's a bad habit that we learned over hundreds of years, and we've only barely begun to change our habits. Unless and you and I are actively working to change, you and I are part of the problem. Justice demands that we actually set these people free.

Me too. I've had similar personal experiences, and it's embarrassing to admit that it took me this long to see what we've done. It's time to fix it, not because anyone is guilty or should be blamed. It's time to fix it because we, Americans, actually believe in freedom and equal opportunity. We just have developed a bad habit of denying those things for black people.

There are a thousand important points in debate about racism in the U.S., and this is one of them. This is near the top of the list. This discussion isn't about politics any more than the discussion about wearing masks should be about politics. This discussion is about human beings and freedom. That's something I've always believed was at the core of our country. Human beings and freedom. The people in the United States have not, and still do not, accept black people as human beings and we do not accord them the freedom accorded to white people. We systematically deny black men their freedom by over-aggressive policing and administration of the criminal justice system. We systematically deny black people the opportunity to earn a living like white people by job discrimination and double standards. We systematically keep black people uneducated, including many who are functionally illiterate, by segregating and under-funding their schools. This is about getting white people to realize that the society white people built and continue to operate intentionally forces black people to be a permanent underclass. This isn't about politics. This is about doing for real what many white people thought we did with civil rights laws in the 60s. This is about changing how we all think about and behave toward black people. It's about treating all people like human beings. It's about letting all people be free. It's about the promise of America, a promise we've made to everyone except black people.

Very nicely said.

Thanks. Allen is a player who is improving. When he stops improving I will be more interested in discussions like this article provides. Everyone talks about him as though he's a finished product. He isn't.

here's a better link: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29376046/make-break-year-josh-allen-progress-report-bills-qb-ahead-2020

It's baseball or something. All three that you mention are naturally accurate. Brady seems to be disciplined accuracy. He has learned to do everything right mechanically, so he makes accurate throws when he's in sync. The other three are naturally accurate - they are exceptional athlete's who are always able to get some necessary part of their bodies in position to make the right throw. Hips open, hips closed, off the wrong foot, whatever, they get arm motion and release that makes for an accurate throw. Allen doesn't have that. I think Allen is a better natural thrower than Brady, but not on the same level as the other three. Allen needs to learn to be in sync more often - in sync, meaning understanding where the play is going so he has time to get his body in at least a decent throwing position. He doesn't always do that. Brady doesn't do it only when he doesn't have time. Maybe put another way, it's almost as though Mahomes, Wilson and Rodgers don't need any time to get ready to throw - they're always ready. Brady and Allen need time to get ready, and Brady buys the time by making quick decisions, deciding earlier than Allen allows him time to get ready.

That's an interesting point. There were an unusual number of high-wind games at New Era last year. That's another factor in QB maturation. Every time a young QB throws in that wind, he learns something. Over time, literally over years, he learns how to make throws under different conditions in the stadium. A veteran QB in his wind-challenged home stadium develops a real home-field advantage on windy days. Eli was tougher at home than away, because the wind in the old and the new stadium is tough, but he had learned it.

Another article mired in data analysis that, in my mind, is unwarranted. Using data the author concludes that Allen's deep balls are a key element to making him, perhaps, the top fantasy quarterback in the league. Now, maybe for fantasy purposes you can get there, but even I will admit that based on last season, ANY analysis that suggests the deep ball is one of Allen's strengths is suspect. Still, as the OP says, it's interesting to read an article that is thoughtful AND optimistic about Allen. The author doesn't get caught up in the conventional wisdom about Allen (he's "raw," he's a "project," he isn't accurate, he can't throw the deep ball, he has a long way to go) and instead sees what a lot of Bills fans see - a really talented quarterback who has made a lot of plays in two years and who seems to be improving significantly and continuously. For example, he admits to being surprised when he first saw that someone said Allen was an MVP darkhouse, but when he considered the idea, he realized the idea wasn't as absurd as national fans (and Bills fans who don't believe in Allen) seem to think. Thanks for posting.

This is all right on on the money. Belichick may have a top 10 offense with Newton. He may cut Newton and have a top 10 offense with Hoyer. Or anything in between. The only thing I'm confident of is that with Brady at QB, they were liable to do anything at any time. Newton does offer different options, but the offense will be more limited with him at the helm. He is not and never will be the master quarterback Brady is.

I agree. However, the Patriots have Belichick, and Belichick always finds a way.

The to the AFC East title, to any division title, is always hard. I don't care how good it Cam Newton is physically (and that assumes he's healthy). The combination of Brady's brains, determination, and perfectionism (all traits that Newton doesn't score well in) and the brilliance of his head coach and offensive coordinator put the Patriots offense in the top 10 every season in the last ten years, almost always in the top 5. In most years, that was with receivers (other than Gronk) who succeeded because of their QB and the system, with mediocre running backs. Over the same period, Newton's ability put Carolina in the top 10 twice. New England is a system team. They demand that their players fit the system. Brady fit the system perfectly. Newton never will play like Brady, especially in his first season in New England. Belichick can tweak the system and install some plays for Cam, and that will cause problems for defenses, to be sure. But on 80% of the plays, they're going to expect Cam to come to the line and make the kind of decisions Brady made. I don't see that happening. Brady may be the best pure thinking quarterback in the history of the league. He understood everything. And yet, he had his worst passing days against the McDermott's Bills' pass defense. He admitted that when he comes to the line of scrimmage he can't tell what the Bills are going to do. If McDermott can do that Brady, what do you think he will be able to do with Cam, a guy McDermott knows well. How's Cam going to like throwing to those fearsome Patriots receivers against a defense he can't understand? There's a reason Cam Newton wasn't signed until June 28, and the reason is no one who needed a QB thought he was a good bet to win. The league had to wait until June 28th until Cam and some team were desperate enough to agree to give it a try. It's a story made in heaven for the sports media. They have nothing to talk about, and all of a sudden their favorite team signs a larger-than-life player with a big smile and the Superman reputation. So the press is all over this. The actual story is that a QB that league views as past his prime, a QB who has never been good at running complex NFL offenses, just signed with the team that lost the best QB in history and has no legitimate candidate to replace him. They still don't.

I generally don't spend too much time thinking about who the opponent has. For me, it's all about the Bills, and the Bills are just as good this morning as they were on Friday. So I can't get too excited about Cam going to New England. Having said that, I do have some thoughts about this, mostly that I doubt Cam will have a big impact on the Pats: 1. I've never liked Cam. He doesn't have his emotions under control. The game is all about him and not so much about the team. He's never impressed me as a good decision maker. All of those things are 180 degrees opposite of Tom Brady is. The Pats have a complicated offense that changes from week to week and that relies on a fifteen-year playbook. Newton's has missed the spring and will have a short, weird camp. There's no way he runs the offense like Brady did, and that makes the Pats offense weaker, not stronger. 2. Belichick is a genius and he knows that Newton will never do what Brady did. Beliechick already has who knows how many creative ideas about how to put Newton's legs and arm to work. But to do that, he has to significantly retool the offense. He has to make it look more like Carolina's offense looked. The league knows how to stop the Newton-oriented Carolina offense. Hoyer knows how to run the Brady-oriented offense and can do it pretty well. Retooling the offense to fit Newton makes Hoyer a lot less valuable. 3. Newton has had a passer rating ABOVE 90 twice in his pro career. During the years Newton has been in the league, Brady had a passer rating BELOW 90 twice. Anybody who has watched pro football for the last ten years knows Cam Newton is not Tom Brady. 4. None of that even considers what seems to be true: Newton's body is pretty worn out. Relying on his legs to create a dynamic offense is probably a bad bet. 5. I never count Belichick out.

That's not my recollection of Spikes at all. He rarely was the super-stud in Buffalo that he had been in his first five seasons in Cincinnati. After five straight 100-tackle seasons in Cincy, he had one in Buffalo, got close his second season, then start having injuries. My recollection is that even his best years he wasn't the standout guy he had been - looking back at the stats, I gotta say that that recollection is a little clouded - he was All-Pro in 2004, with five INTs. Eventually he was just ordinary, but clearly the decline started after 2004. Did he tear his achilles in 2005? I had no trouble when management let him go. I see looking back at the stats that he had a couple 100 tackle seasons late in his career. Fletcher, on the other hand, was a big mistake, and I thought so at the time. Thanks for the comment and correction. This coaching comparison shines an interesting light on McDermott. He gets credit for figuring out how to get his team to the playoffs twice in three years, while Mularkey failed in his first season as HC and didn't make it until his fifth season. On the other hand, Mularkey has a playoff win and McDermott is 0-2. Puts in pretty clear perspective what McDermott's next hurdle is.

You're right. I didn't read the stats carefully enough. As Gunner said, he made the playoffs once, in his last season as head coach, went 1-1 in the playoffs and got fired.

I came , to this thread prepared to argue that 2019 was the best and I think I still will, but the OP makes some solid points. In particular, 2004 had an impressive roster, even if some past their prime (like Spikes and Bledsoe). I don't remember plays and games like some of you do, but I can remember how I felt about that team. I felt they were overachievers. I didn't believe they were a good team that deserved to be in the playoffs; I thought they were a flawed team that went on a run and was in position to make the playoffs. I thought 2019 was a good team that wasn't yet complete but nevertheless deserved to be in the playoffs. It isn't the entire explanation, but my feeling in 2004 was that the Bills had a loser at quarterback who sometimes won, and I'm my feeling in 2019 was that they had a winner at quarterback who sometime lost. And I think part of the explanation was coaching. In 2004, Mularkey was a rookie coach, and he didn't get his team to win the game it needed to make the playoffs. He never got to the playoffs in five seasons as a head coach. In 2017, McDermott was a rookie coach, and he did get his team to the playoffs, and he's been to the playoffs in two of his first three seasons. I think 2019 was the best of the era.

Thurm, this is excellent. There's so much hate for the Pats and Belichick around here, and few people give him the credit he deserves. You're absolutely correct that he wouldn't have rehired Lombardi is Lombardi wasn't really good at what Belichick needed him to do. And you're absolutely correct about what he says about his upcoming opponents. It isn't just that he knows that if he starts believing his team is better than the opponent, he'll fall into the trap of preparing less well (although I'm sure he understands that). He has respect for his opponents because he knows that they deserve it. I realized a few years ago that Belichick lives at the very core of football. He spends his time thinking about how 11 men, working together, can push 11 other men across the goal line they are defending, and how his 11 men, working together, can stop the other 11 from doing the same. He is constantly aware of the one-on-one battles and how they can be combined to push the ball the right way. When you view the game from that perspective, it becomes easy to have genuine respect for your opponent. Your opponent is putting 11 of the biggest, best trained, most athletic men in the world on the field. These guys are beasts with Ph.Ds in football, all across the league. If you don't respect all that they can do, they will beat you. Belichick knows that, he lives in it, and that's why in his Wednesday press conferences he always shows respect for his opponent.

I agree. A QB who is regularly in the top 12 is a legitimate starter. May fall out once in a while, but generally in to the top 12 and occasionally in the top 5, that's a legit starter. Might never win a Super Bowl. If Allen is one of those and Mahomes goes to the Hall of Fame, yeah, some people might remember that, but if Allen's been a legit starter, nobody will bet all that excited about it. I'm sure there are some Falcons fans who cherry pick drafts and talk about what the Falcons might have done if they hadn't taken Ryan. Stafford in Detroit. If Allen turns out like that, I'm happy. I'm expecting more, both because I want more and because I think actually is a HOF candidate, but legit starter I'm not going to be complaining about. Whoops. Actually I meant Mahomes and Jackson, but Watson is the third to go on the list. If any of those guys can have ten years like they've started, those are HOF players. All of them make it Allen turns into an average, then the Bills did some bad QB drafting. But pull those guys down a rung and move Allen up a little. Say one makes the HOF and the others are solid guys, I'm not whining that the Bills missed the HOF guy.

I think you are prejudging the situation you create. You seem to be giving Mahomes and Allen HOF status right now, and they both are very far from the HOF right now. Let's see how they progress. All three may have very nice careers, similar stats, win a Super Bowl or even two. If that happens, people might complain that the Bills took the wrong guy, but no one will be listening.

Let's Wait and See really means "I'm not willing to offer an opinion." It's a yes or no question. Do you think he'll make it as legitimate starter in the NFL? Yes or No.

Well, I don't know about all of that, but if Lombardi was responsible for choosing Jamarcus Russell, I'm less inclined to put much stock in his experience.

I've never paid attention to who Lombardi is, but apparently he's worked in player development and player assessment in the NFL for a long time. That doesn't necessarily make him right, but for me it at least makes me stop and listen. If he learned anything in those 30 years, he probably sees and understands plenty of things that I don't. So, maybe he's seen enough in 30 years to know that Allen just isn't going to make it, that Allen's just an athlete playing quarterback and he'll never throw well enough to be a real success in the league. That's certainly possible. That's not what I see. I see a guy who's learning to make decisions in a complicated offense in a complicated league. I don't think any quarterback can count on earning a living in the NFL by being a great runner, and that's part of the reason that I'm not on the Lamar Jackson bandwagon. I think if you're going to have a solid, 15-year career in the NFL, you have to do it by being a good quarterback - being smart, efficient, a good decision maker and a good thrower. I think Jackson is no better thrower than Allen - actually, I think he's worse, so I think his long-term prospects are no better than Allen's. I'm not saying Jackson will be a long-term failure, but I don't see any reason why his chances of being a long-term success are better than Allen's. I think Lombardi is seeing Allen wrong. The image of an athlete playing quarterback is a guy who's not a naturally great thrower, he's just an all-round athlete type of guy who has an ordinary throwing motion. There's nothing ordinary about how Allen throws the ball. And I will continue to say that the "accuracy" argument is overblown. Guys with big arms who have failed in the NFL in the past have failed because they didn't master the mental aspects of the game, not because they had accuracy problems. I think Allen has the same problem Darnold has, the same problem Jackson has, the same problem Mayfield and Murray have: they have to master the mental aspects of the game. Mental mastery is the one thing all the great quarterbacks have in common, not arm strength even accuracy. Heck, look at Kelly, who isn't in the discussion of all time greats but who was definitely a franchise quarterback. He didn't make it with accuracy or arm-strength. He was the classic good athlete playing quarterback. He made it because of how he developed mentally, how he was able to control a game.

Just because it's fun to talk about, I'll keep going. I'll admit, I don't know much of anything about how professional bettors operate, but in my limited experience, professional bettors ber like professional investors invest - they make a portfolio of investments and count on their ability to get a higher than average return on the collection. Win some and lose, but if you can win marginally more than you lose, you'll do okay. The odds, however, change the equation. The odds are established to make the house a profit on the house's portfolio, so the only way you can win is to be smarter about the odds than the house. You can't bet the favorite every time and beat the house - the net return on betting the favorite every time will be negative, just like the net return on betting longshots every time also will be negative. That suggests to me that the smart bettor is looking for the bet where the actual chances of a win is better than the house's odds suggest. Actually, the Bills offer a good example of that. The betting market is a national market, and the perception of the national market (until 2020) was that the Bills were horrible. The national press didn't talk about the Bills, and most fans thought the Bills sucked. That meant the betting market was disinclined to bet on the Bills. That meant for the most of the past two decades the bookies offered longer odds, better odds, on the Bills to try to get some of the market to move toward betting on the Bills. There was a period for several years, particularly with Jauron at the helm, when the Bills were a smart bet, because they regularly got more points than they should have. You didn't win every time taking the Bills and the points, but over the season you usually won more than you lost. Running into last season, there was a thread here that went on for some time about people who betting the over-under on the Bills' win-loss record. I think the bet was 6.5 games. Who knows whether it was true, but people here reported making big bets on the over. It seemed pretty obvious. The Bill had won 6 the season before, people who followed the Bills knew Allen was better than the national press was reporting, they'd added Brown and Beasley, they'retooled the offensive line, and they had Gore and McCoy. If just some of the good things that could flow from all of those changes actually happened, the Bills should be better than 6 wins. In fact, three of four of those things happened (Allen WAS better, Brown and Beasley WERE who we thought they were, and the o-line DID improve), and they caught a break at running back, too. The over looked like a smart bet, and it was. As I understood it, you can bet just not the straight over-under, you can bet the over or the under at any number of wins, with different returns. People were betting the over, as they should have, at 7 and 8 games, because it was pretty clear what was happening in Buffalo. You make money betting by having a portfolio of bets where you think the potential return is better than how the market values the bet. Investors do the same thing. They could buy conservative, blue chip stocks and nothing else, but they know that their return is enhanced by making smart bets on some mid- and small-cap stocks. Those bets are higher risk, but they're also higher return. If you're smarter than the market about buying them, you can make money.

Sorry. I didn't see your post that references smart bettors. But you're wrong. Smart bettors bet when the odds being offered are much better than what the smart bettor knows what the odds should be. So, for example, a smart better will bet what he knows to be a 20 to 1 longshot if the bookie is offering 50 to 1. 20 of those at a dollar each costs 20 dollars and returns 50. That's a good investment.