grb

Given pessimism is required with almost everything else, football is the one chance to be a sunny optimist. Can the Bills win 10 games and a wild-card spot? Without a doubt. Last year they were beset by injuries, had less-than-ideal coaching, and played a schedule everyone thought difficult heading into the season. Also : The defense painfully underperformed. Yet they would have won over 10 games just by beating the Jets and Dolphins alone. They could have had a pretty spectacular season if they'd also pulled out some of the games where they were a definite underdog, but still played close, - such as Seattle or Pittsburg. All this team needs is a bit of luck with injuries, the defense to gel, the offense to add a dash of consistency. Is that too much to ask?

Actually, there's a surprisingly amount of ambivalence in Washington about Cousins - not only in management over a gargantuan price tag, but with the fan base as well. Sure he has numbers, but a lot of fans still think he lacks that magical "it" quarterbacks are supposed to have. Some people have been disappointed with him long stretches of a season, such as the beginning of last year. Some say the talent around him inflated his production. Of course much of this has to do with the first few years of his career when Cousins was atrociously bad - getting benched at one point in favor of Colt McCoy. He's played very well the past two seasons, but Washington still held off - never completely convinced what they have, Of course, logically speaking Washington now must get it done; the odds of replacing Cousins with equal talent are extremely small. But the arm's length attitude of management might have soured the relationship beyond repair.

Of course the other side of the coin is this : Suppose you were financially set for life and didn't enjoy your job anymore? What would you do?

Why did I get into the EJ fracas? Gugny quote : "Not to mention, how EJ looked far better than Tyrod in both practices and preseason games against 1st/2nd string defenses" That level of delusion was hard to un-see & difficult to pass by.............

Gugny : "EJ looked far better than Tyrod in both practices and preseason games against 1st/2nd string defenses" Gugny : "You missed every point I made and somehow interpreted that I said EJ was "robbed" of the starting job" Could you try and be coherent? I'll grant you the right to operate with anti-facts - existing in your head alone - but can't you at least be consistent while fantasizing?

Five points : (1) If you look to deny the accusation your perpetual Taylor Snit is rooted in unresolved emotional trauma re EJ, this mythic take on ancient history just ain't the way to do it (2) There was no conspiracy. Taylor won the staring job. Who supports your ludicrous tale EJ out-performed Taylor in camp? No one. That meme exists only in your head. (3) Though I can think of no more useless a waste of time than try and hunt it up, I know somewhere is a study of points production in the 2015 preseason - per drive, EJ vs TT. The latter won. If you want to waste your life chasing phantasmical dreams, you're welcome to go dig up that data. I'm due back on the planet Earth. (4) What was said during the 2015 preseason was Taylor ran a smoother offense, but didn't have EJ's beautiful deep ball. That one was repeated over & over & over. Kinda funny in retrospect, but there you have it. (5) Unless you are going all tinfoil-hat-crazy to say the job was "stolen" from EJ, why even bring up this wacky revisionism? Taylor has outperformed EJ since in real games. The coaches were right. The reporters were right. The press accounts from training camp were right. The decision on the starter was right.

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If it be now, tis not to come, If it be not to come, it will be now, If it be not now, yet it will come : Playoffs !!!

I never understood the point of trolling, but some people take to it like mother's milk.......

The problem with the Great Tyrod Message Board War is everyone tends to get repetitious. So here we go again : Attempts to reduce Taylor to an incompetent & fatally flawed passer with hopelessly inadequate skills run into one major roadblock : His record when playing with a full offensive cast : 64% completion, 3,362 yards, 8+ yards per attempt, 26 touchdowns, 6 interceptions Now, you can say those numbers aren't elite. You can say Tom Brady doesn't need receivers. You can even say Taylor's problems with his 2016 off-the-street receiving corps were partially his own fault. You'd probably be right. But you can't legitimately sell those numbers as coming from a hopelessly incompetent passer. At least not seriously, you can't.....

I don't blame you for not doing a season's analysis of Taylor's throws to the "deep and intermediate middle third", as that sounds like a ton of work. Besides, as soon as you finished the study you'd need to extend the same exercise to all other quarterbacks for comparison ( more work !! ). What do you think you'd find? If I had to guess, I'd bet the same result as middle throws in general, with "deep and intermediate middle third" throws the least prevalent part of most quarterbacks' game, with Taylor's numbers smaller than average, but the difference between Taylor and everyone else a tiny number - since it's a subset of an already small number. Again : I'm not even denying it's a weaker part of Taylor's game, just suggesting some perspective is in order.....

There have been many detailed studies on Taylor and middle throws, both in this forum and elsewhere. The findings? All quarterbacks throw less across the middle, and Taylor less so than his peers. But per number of attempts, this difference only averages 2-3 attempts per game. And when he does throw over the middle he has decent success doing so. A quote from Chris Trapasso, the quote link, and another link to the pass distribution chart where Trapasso got his data : "While throwing to the middle of the field in 2016, Tyrod completed 103 of 137 (75.1% completion rate) of his passes for 1,027 yards (7.49 yards per attempt) with four TDs and zero INTs. All that equates to a QB Rating of 105.7" Given Taylor had less attempts across the middle than other QBs, it's clearly an area where he must improve. Still, it isn't the crippling handicap people make it out to be. https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2017/1/3/14146508/tyrod-taylor-bills-option-strong-evidence-suggests-buffalo-bills-should-keep-him https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-bills-should-build-around-tyrod-taylor-not-show-him-the-door

It's interesting that the things you picked - 3rd down conversions, red zone efficiency, and turnovers - are all areas where Taylor and the offense improved from 2015 to 2016. They did much better in the red zone and showed a significant improvement on 3rd downs - though the 3rd down stat seems to be one where even small changes moves a team up or down the standings a greater degree than you'd think.

OK : 64-percent of his passes for 3,362 yards, throwing 26 touchdowns and six interceptions isn't "elite" - although the 8+ yards per attempt left out of those stats is also a nice touch. But that illustrates the problem with the Great Tyrod Message Board War. Very few people who are "supporters" have claimed Taylor is elite. Instead they've claimed Taylor's strengths are undervalued while his weaknesses are overvalued. They claim he's still got a lot of upside. They point out he's only a second year starter and many quarterbacks (Kirk Cousins comes to mind) has looked much worse when first put under center. Meanwhile, many of the anti-Taylors say : He can't process game speed He's a running back pretending to be a quarterback He has no accuracy He can't see the field He doesn't understand defenses He easy to scheme against He never throws in the middle He never stays in the pocket Etc. Now, the "pro" viewpoint may be glass-half-full rosy, but it's not the total caricature of the "anti" viewpoint. Because the numbers quoted of Taylor with a full cast may not be "elite", but they're well above what any quarterback would produce if saddled with even half the irredeemable flaws TT's critics claim for him.

Ain't ever a pretty spectacle when someone exults in a lack of class.....

You think everything absurd has already been said. You think there's no more new nonsense to be found. But then a person comes along and surprises you In a recent thread someone was posting about Taylor's "processing" speed. That was the preexisting condition which assured Taylor would never be a "real" NFL quarterback. I'll post here what I did there : TT's statistics in the 15 games with a legitimate No 1&2 receiver - both Watkins and Woods playing : 63.6% comp. 8.25 YPA. 27 TD passes. 6 INTs. It's hard to believe he could accomplish that while not throwing a NFL pass, ya think? Look : Taylor has talent. He can make all the throws. In the areas where he needs to improve - say, middle passing or leading receivers - the delta between him and his peers is much smaller than people want to see. Taylor's problem is consistency - within a game, a season, and a career. He may solve that; he may not. Some qbs never do. Nick Foles looked like a hall-of-famer one year and a mediocre bum the next. But consistency will be what sets Taylor's ceiling, not whether he can "throw a NFL pass"

It wasn't the fourth down play as much as how the Bills ended up in fourth down. Taylor took the team down the field to about the ten yard line. From there the Bills ran two runs, followed by a third down pass where TT was sacked via a turnstile block, before he even set his feet to throw. That resulted in a 4th & 17 requiring a pass into the end zone and there are never good odds on that, regardless of how "clutch" you are.

My memory may be mistaken, but I recall Atlanta's problem as not getting as much pressure on Brady in the second half as they did in the first.

Whenever someone starts going on about Taylor's "processing" speed (as if he's a defective cpu chip), I know it's time to pull out TT's statistics in the 15 games with a legitimate No 1&2 receiver, when both Watkins and Woods played : 63.6% comp. 8.25 YPA. 27 TD passes. 6 INTs. His "processing" speed seem to work in those games, huh?

A sack's causes : (1) The O-line whiffs on blocking, (2) The QB is indecisive - a negative, or (3) The QB scrambles to make a play - frequently a positive. With the Bills all three were regular occurrences. Some pro-Taylor people lay it all on the line; most anti-Taylor people lay it all on the QB; yet no single answer is correct. In fact, the line had long stretches where pass blocking was sub-par and Taylor was under pressure as soon as he set to throw. But he can also be maddeningly indecisive at times, often bolting from the pocket early. And yet he often makes plays while doing so. Conclusion : Both Taylor and the line need to be better - and TT has to find that sweet spot where improvisation becomes a plus rather than a minus.

Taylor's stats in the 15 games where both Watkins and Woods played are a pretty respectable 63.6% comp, 8.25 YPA, 27 TD passes, and 6 INTs It seems to me than Taylor's contract is more affected by Watkin's inability to stay on the field than Watkin's contract by Taylor's inability to throw the ball.

In the second Miami game the offense came back three different times from being down by 14 points - finally taking the lead with 80 seconds left with a TD pass on fourth down. The offense showed real fight in that game. I'm not sure how anyone could say otherwise....

No

It boils down to this : After Lynn replaced Roman as OC, the Taylor-led Bills scored points at the 4th highest rate in the NFL, using the 2016 team scoring numbers as a benchmark. Of course Old School can have dozens of objections and qualifications to that fact, no doubt every single one legit. But the fact remains promising nonetheless - suggesting the team has a strong offensive foundation. If the new regime builds on what worked last year; if a good set of receivers emerge and stay healthy; if Taylor is a bit more consistent - then Buffalo will have a very potent offense. At which point the team's ceiling will be set by the defense - and that has to be significantly better, right?

It doesn't need to be random at all. You could limit it to the two categories in question : (1) Games where the starting quarterback didn't play, or (2) Games prior to a successful coaching change. Apples to apples; oranges to oranges. Of those two, I'm betting the first would be more handy to your goal of taking Taylor down a peg. For instance, did Dallas score less because of Dak? That might bump Buffalo a notch. Oakland's case almost assuredly would. So maybe the Bills would come in around 6th after the formulation was scientifically considered. Of course you could demand we broaden it to every kind of negative factor - a quarterback's receivers out or injured being the most obvious example. Nah; you probably wouldn't wanna go there! That would sure give Cincinnati and Andy Dalton a boost though......