SoTier

What about the kids whose parents weren't very good athletes but loved a particular sport or recognized that their children had exceptional talent, and made every effort, sometimes at considerable sacrifice, to see their children succeed in that sport? I think two very notable cases of this were Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus. I think that this is a much more common phenomenon than top athletes producing children who are also top athletes in the same sport. I think the relative rarity of the sons of ex-NFL players becoming NFL players themselves is the reason that we comment on this apparent "genetic" advantage. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of NFL players aren't the sons ex-NFL players. Moreover, the phenomenon of brothers becoming NFL players may very well also be a product of nurture moreso than nature as most were raised in the same environment.

This is the stupidest article that I've read in a long time. It's on a par with the tabloid of pieces on celeb X dying of cancer and celeb Y being dumped by his/her spouse/significant other/"fiance" du jour. If you are going to rank something, you have to have some reasonable parameters and honest criteria. That the author included QBs with a single start in his rankings along with QBs who started multiple games over multiple seasons tells you that the author is clueless about his topic. PS - there is absolutely no way that a rookie who has played in only a handful of games can be ranked as "the greatest" anything, success or bust.

It's definitely a change. It used to be that teams only went on fourth down and less than a yard or when they were desperate late in games. That was a long standing tradition. Now, it seems that there's at least one fourth down play in every game where it's longer yardage or the team has the lead and wants to keep it/extend it. How long it lasts and whether it becomes the new normal for the NFL depends upon whether teams that frequently go for first downs on fourth down continue to win games.

Who cares what McDermott says when he doesn't address serious issues on offense with any kind of urgency??? McDermott and Beane knew after the season opener against Baltimore that Peterman wasn't good enough to be the backup QB, but they waited for a month to finally sign someone better -- and they dragged a guy out of retirement who hadn't thrown a pass in the NFL in a couple of years. During that period, I think that the only other QB they brought in for a try out was Paxton Lynch. Contrast with the Redskins who were scrambling to find a veteran backup QB within hours of Alex Smith's season ending injury. Why should "we" -- ie, the fans -- be "patient"? What will we get for our "patience" except the same bull manure that the Bills have foisted on their fans since 2001? Terry Pegula doesn't appear any more interested in winning football games than Ralph Wilson was.

The only teams this year that have beaten the Chiefs and Rams are the Pats and Saints, respectively.

The "book" on the Chargers pre-Lynn was that they never lived up to the talent that they had and always managed to lose close/important games. Rivers had the reputation for never ever being able to win games when he needed to, going back to his early years when the Chargers were loaded with talent (he has only 1 playoff win in numerous playoff appearances). Nobody is saying that about the Chargers under Lynn.

I thought last season that the Bills messed up by not hiring Lynn. The Chargers struggled early on last season, but they strung together a bunch of wins to climb into playoff contention and just missed the playoffs due to the quirks of the tie-breaker system. If you look around the league at the first time HCs who have been successful in their first few seasons seasons, and you see that building on the team's current personnel is a key to their success. Last season it was Pederson winning a SB in his second season and McVay building a powerhouse using lots of guys they inherited. In Chicago, Nagy has the Bears in charge of the NFCN not only with players he inherited but also with a DC he kept from the previous regime. Lynn is another one of this club. The reality is that in the salary cap era, a HC/GM not only have to recognize talent but they also have to be flexible enough to not only accommodate the talent available to them even if some of those talented players don't fit into their narrowly defined parameters of acceptable attitudes but also adapt to changes in the way the game is being played. Maybe teams can be successful on occasion but long term I don't think conservative and inflexible HCs can be successful long term.

That's simply not true. Allen's "floor" is much lower than Trubiskey who has already demonstrated he's at least competent, something that Allen hasn't yet demonstrated. It's simply much too early to really evaluate the rookie QBs.

Exactly this. If a team keeps waiting and hoping that a high first round QB prospect who isn't playing consistently at a high level by his third season will eventually "get it" and play better, they'll end up with a Sanchez,Tannehill, Bortles or Winston. The biggest cost of this isn't just the cap implications of giving these mediocre QBs big extensions, but that the team may very well pass on a much better QB. I agree. Just getting thrown out there and left to "figure it out" on his own is a prescription for insuring a young QB prospect fails, especially a "project", and I'm afraid that's close to the situation with Allen. If he wasn't regressing in his last few games, he certainly wasn't showing much, and he was playing poorly. David Culley has never been a NFL QB and he hasn't been a QB coach even on the collegiate level in the last 30 years until he was hired by McDermott. How can anyone believe Culley can help a QB who needs serious help with his fundamentals, especially his mechanics? Allen needs a real mentor in a QB coach, not a fellow player to give him some pointers.

Allen needs to take a big step forward sometime next year and maintain that improved level or get better. That seems to be the pattern for young QBs who become successful QBs: they improve significantly some time in their second season as starters and maintain that high level of play. You'll see that pattern repeated in the career of almost every current NFL QB who is considered "great". The QBs who don't make that jump in their second season -- and maintain it -- tend to end up as mediocre starters at best. Exactly. Tannehill is probably the poster boy for this kind of QB, especially since he can really throw some pretty passes. There's just something missing from him. I think he just isn't a clutch player IMO. It's better for the team if the QB just out right busts than if he's "just not quite good enough" because the team won't invest in a new potential franchise QB if they might have one already on the roster. That's how LA and Philly ended up with Goff and Wentz while the Bucs have Winston and Titans have Mariota (who may be pretty good but not on the caliber of Goff or Wentz).

Not necessarily. Look at recent first round QBs like Bortles and Winston who have shown just enough to keep their teams "hanging on" to them but they simply aren't that good.

Shaw was the 1970 AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year who had the misfortune to be drafted by the Bills in one of their epic stretches of uncompetitiveness.

I'll believe it when it actually happens, ie, Brady calls it quits.

He also sounds like he has a frog residing in this throat ... BUST!!!

Good teams manage to consistently find good players in the draft (and from among UDFA rookies) despite making the playoffs regularly and usually drafting late in most rounds while bad teams miss almost as regularly.

Even if they're now playing in LA, I think that KC wins. I think that they're better on offense than the Rams (especially with Kupp out), and the Rams defense seems to be surprisingly vulnerable in the last three games, giving up an average of 34.3 points in each. They also seem vulnerable to teams with good running games (like the Saints that put up 45 on them).

McDermott and Beane have obviously run out of street FAs with connections to Carolina. I give my opinion -- and my opinion of McDermott/Beane/Pegulas and how they're running this team is pretty low, and I don't give a rat's scrawny behind whether you like that opinion or not. If you don't like what I have to say, put me on "ignore".

The odds of a breakout are in Allen's favor because the article writer and many Bills fans inhabit an alternative universe where the Bills ALWAYS win.

The bums they're cutting don't have the connections to Carolina that the bums they keep have.

I'm not a Carr fan. He seems to be on the same level as Prescott, Tannehill, Bortles, et al. Why would anyone describe Jameis Winston, a QB who lost his starting job to Fitzmagic, as "a quality FA"? Maybe they didn't like Darnold, Allen or Rosen. Drafting a QB prospect at #2 that you don't really believe in just because you need a QB is beyond stupid. Eli has always been "streaky", perfectly capable of playing crappy for a stretch and then getting "hot" and going on a tear. That's what happened in both of his SB seasons. In one of them, IIRC, he was on a season long hot streak. In the other, he got hot toward the end of the season and into the playoffs.

Actually, Prescott hasn't been all that good. After his outstanding rookie season, he's not played nearly as well since. There have been lots of excuses made for Prescott but generally if QBs don't take a significant step forward after their rookie season (or their first season as a starter if they don't start as rookies), then they probably aren't going to become better. Prescott hasn't gotten significantly better in his second and third year than he was a rookie. He's not worth franchise QB money because he's not a franchise QB. He's more of a Tyrod Taylor, Blake Bortles or Ryan Tannehill level QB -- a starter if a team doesn't have better.

It only doesn't make sense if you still think that Dak Prescott is a good enough QB to warrant being paid $20-$25 million a year. Personally, I don't think he is. Being a fourth round draft pick, I don't think that Prescott is eligible for an extension of his original rookie contract. I think the Cowboys have to give him a new contract or he hits FA.

Most irrelevant response of the year is above. The reality is that stats are meaningless unless they translate into wins. Wins and losses are the only stats that count at the end of the day. Deal with it. The Tampa Bay Bucs had 500+ yards of offense on Sunday and STILL lost 16-3 to the Washington Redskins.

Exactly. The Bills are #1 in total defense but they're 3-7 and stinking for a top 5 draft pick, not being even as competitive as other bottom feeders like Cleveland, San Fran or Arizona. The Panthers are #15 in total defense but they're 6-3 and would be a WC team if the playoffs began next week. Which would you prefer? Wins or stats? FTR, the 9-1 KC Chiefs are #29 in total defense, the 9-1 New Orleans Saints are #23, and the 9-1 Los Angeles Rams are #13.

I think the Bills' three wins as well as their close loss to the Texans are not really evidence of some kind "split personality" but rather simply proof that the Bills are so poor on offense that they can only be competitive with teams that "don't show up" to play or that have equally poor offenses because of injuries to their starting QBs. The Bills rolled into Minnesota after two devastating losses to Baltimore and the Chargers while the Vikes were coming off a win over the Niners and a tie with the Packers in GB. The Vikes were playing the Rams in LA the week after they faced the Bills. This was a classic "trap game" for the Vikings, and they fell into it in spectacularly. In the games against both Tennessee and Houston, the Bills faced two good teams that were significantly hampered on offense by injuries to their QBs. Mariota was still suffering the effects of an elbow injury that left him with lack of feeling in his hand for several weeks. That DeShaun Watson even played the Bills games was a testament to his toughness because he could barely breathe without pain due to a partially collapsed lung suffered the week before. In fact, the next week, Watson traveled by bus to Jacksonville rather than chance flying. Despite having lost three games in a row, the Jests, like the Vikes, came into the Bills game overconfident. They were starting the well-regarded backup QB Josh McCown rather than turn-over machine rookie QB Sam Darnold while the Bills failed to score even 10 points in any of their previous three blowout losses under Nate Peterman and Derek Anderson. Now the Bills were starting a street FA QB Matt Barkley ... and the Jests thought that all they had to do to win was show up. All of the Bills other six losses were by 11 points or more with the Bills being largely uncompetitive throughout the game, primarily because of their poor offense. I don't think that changes going forward even if Josh Allen returns to action. Before his injury, Allen looked depressingly like JP Losman back in early 2005 when he absolutely didn't know what he was doing. Hopefully, sitting and watching for a bit gave Allen some time to grasp some of the nuances of the game that he's sorely in need of.