DCOrange

Alright, I said I wasn't going to continue going back and forth, but it seems you misunderstood my point. I'm not trying to be mean here; I'm just attempting to be as clear as I possibly can be because I really haven't shifted my argument at all. Kick and punt returns are worth nearly nothing. Because kick and punt returns are worth nearly nothing, that means that having a player active solely to handle those roughly worthless plays means that that player is bringing roughly no value to the team. It is indeed an overall special teams complaint, specifically in regard to kick and punt returns. Andre Roberts is specifically a kick and punt returner and nothing else; therefore the complaint applies to him. One last time: It's not specifically Andre Roberts that I have a problem with; it's having anybody that is a dedicated kick/punt returner. It's the same argument as hating when we used to have a kickoff specialist. It's not that our kickoff specialists were bad at kickoffs; it was the fact that having a kickoff specialist, no matter how good they were, was poor use of a roster spot. The same is basically true of kick/punt returners in today's NFL.

It doesn't matter who is to blame. Those penalties are coming no matter who the punt returner is and they're coming for every team in the NFL. That's a big reason why punt returns are essentially worthless; you're as likely to lose yards as you are to gain them even if you have an elite returner. We would probably be better off selling out to block every punt so that we can't possibly be called for illegal block in the back and then just fair catch the punt (or let it bounce if we think it'll be a touchback). The EPA on our punt returns relative to the worst team in the league is a difference of 6.5 points in 13 games. The only team with an EPA of more than 1 point per game relative to the worst team in the league is the Saints, who are 6 points better than the #2 team. Anywho, don't really want to argue back and forth on the night that we clinched a playoff spot. Let's just agree to disagree and enjoy the postseason

You literally pointed to two plays that had negative or no value as evidence of Roberts having value.

So you agree those returns didn't count for anything then.

I really do feel like Tyrod might be better at this point in Rivers' career. Probably not worth benching him at this point though since they aren't competing for a playoff spot anyways. Respectful thing is to just let Rivers play it out this year and then draft his replacement in the offseason.

I imagine it's probably never come up in Dak's career before. He probably didn't know there was a difference, but regardless, the ref asked him if he was sure, Dak responded by saying they want to defer to the 2nd half and then the ref decided to just ignore that. It's probably not the ref's responsibility to do the ole "Are you suuuuure you want to do that?" thing, but once the ref asked Dak to clarify, he should have abided by what Dak actually said instead of just doing whatever he wanted to do.

I’m betting whoever chose to kick plays Madden; they’ve apparently screwed this up in every football video game ever made. What I don’t really understand is: how do you get it right weeks 1-14 and then get it wrong in week 15?

Per FootballOutsiders (I know I know), our return game is 10 points better than the worst return team in the league. Less than 1 point per game. I’m not sure any of our reserves are good enough to warrant benching Andre, but I think it could be argued that Andre isn’t really bringing any value anyways so might as well try the WR that gives us a different aspect to the offense. At any rate, we can agree to disagree. Hopefully we can move on after the year is up when we hopefully have a more talented roster.

Basically playing just as well as us the last two games with Duck and I’m sure in their minds he’ll get better, not worse.

I think most would agree he’s a good returner. Where we differ is that being a good returner still isn’t valuable in today’s NFL

The interesting thing about this week’s game is I bet both team’s fans would tell you their team is better both offensively and defensively. Gonna be really interesting to see how it plays out.

Yes, they were pretty much the first group to actually take that into account. That's what their adjusted completion % numbers are for.

That's certainly your opinion but I think the MVP race is over barring something catastrophic happening. I think Vegas had Lamar's MVP chances at roughly 80% before last night's 5 TD game.

It seems like a pretty ***** article overall, but that part isn't really their fault. He was supposed to be back this week up until this morning.

Assuming most people didn't seek out the actual article that Talbot's excerpt was pulled from; it's basically two PFF guys; one guy makes his case for his Vegas pick and the other guy does a counterpoint. In this case, the guy was making his case for the Steelers. I'm not sure if the article was edited after the fact or if Talbot removed the text himself, but the writer mentioned that it's obviously a very small sample size for Hodges so far, but he apparently has the highest grade in the league from a clean pocket the last two weeks. Not mentioned in the article, there's a side-by-side comparison of Allen and Hodges in one of their other articles with the following numbers (Allen on the left, Hodges on the right): Passer rating when clean: 98.8 vs. 111.5 Passer rating under pressure: 54.2 vs. 76.0 Big Time Throw %: 1.98% vs. 4.72% Turnover Worthy Play %: 4.55% vs. 1.89% On the flipside, Talbot didn't include the guy making the case against Pittsburgh, which I honestly think was way worse as he was legitimately just making fun of Bills fans instead of making an argument in favor of them:

Idk if Duke is good enough to sacrifice the kick returner, but it's definitely something I'd be thinking about. Roberts has been good in the return game this year; unfortunately, being good in the return game is effectively worthless. According to Football Outsiders, his return skills (which have been among the best in the league this year) is good for roughly 5 points above the average team (0.36 points per game). Compare this to Baltimore, who literally just let all the punts hit the ground and roll against us; we're getting 5 more points over the course of the season than they are out of the return game. As the OP mentioned, playing a guy purely for their return skills is just a waste of a roster spot at this point; it would be like using a roster spot on a kickoff specialist. Duke might be worthless too, but I think it's absolutely worth thinking about if perhaps Duke's ability to make contested catches could provide more than a fraction of a point per game for us.

Yeah, that's basically how I feel as well. Between Alabama's roster itself and also the other SEC teams, going to multiple Alabama games makes a lot of sense. Same goes for Ohio State at this point, though 4 times (plus in all likelihood 1 or 2 playoff games) is a lot.

Updated my Google Doc with all the games Yolo has posted about (and also the updated version of Matt Miller's positional rankings). Also made a couple formatting tweaks to make my life a whole lot easier lol. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EGcKt-3OhHND7shQmY9LREGwBxtnUcFwQtQDz2U-3tk/edit?usp=sharing The results: QB: 6/10 RB: 5/15 WR: 16/30 TE: 1/10 OT: 7/15 IOL: 7/15 IDL: 7/15 Edge: 10/20 LB: 8/15 CB: 9/20 S: 6/15 Some other notes: Brandon Beane has personally attended games for the following teams: Maryland vs. Penn State, Ohio State vs. Northwestern, and Alabama vs. LSU The Bills scouted 4 Ohio State games this year, which I believe is the most they've ever scouted of a single team over the past few years. No mentions of us scouting Georgia or Clemson, which is kinda shocking (though I would like to think there was some Bills presence at the SEC Championship game and will be at the CFP games, so I would assume we will check those two off soon enough).

Because it's allowing them to have the best offense in the league lol. This would be like criticizing a QB for throwing out of playaction so much when everyone should be using it statistically speaking.

A couple breakthroughs today: Sidibe looked more like his freshman self. Howard Washington got a decent amount of playing time and looked like our best PG today.

There were definitely flashes his freshman year. Unfortunately more flashes as a freshman than we've seen as a sophomore or junior now, not to mention Boeheim has seemingly gone away from utilizing much of it in our offense, instead relying on isolations and dribble hand-offs. I did like Sidibe a lot as a high school prospect and as a freshman though.

Basketball has changed a lot since those days. Fab is the only one that I might take over Lydon today. Onuaku was a worse defender than Lydon and not much better as a rebounder. Jackson was definitely a good rebounder but I'd much rather have Lydon on the offensive end. Christmas is hard to judge because he was a disappointment up until his senior season. Lydon never even got to that point but I think Lydon was probably better back then and would be a better fit today.

We don't need a traditional big. Lydon was a pretty good shot blocker and also had good hands for steals in the middle of the zone. He was vulnerable against bigger big men, but he pretty easily made up for that and more with what he provided at the other end of the floor. Girard is best suited playing off of ball-screens; Lydon's ability to screen and both pop out for 3 pointers or slip to the hoop would be pretty much the ideal big man here. Would much rather have that than a big man asking for the ball in the post all game. Fab would be awesome too, maybe even better given his defensive talents and his ability as a roll man on offense. Onuaku or Rick would be a huge upgrade over what we have right now, but I would much rather have another Lydon or Fab over those guys with the way basketball is played nowadays if I had the choice. Like I said, for the offense to work, we basically just need a big man that will set screens and either finish around the rim when they roll or shoot at least a little bit when they pop. The defense is more of a team-wide issue; one player like Fab might help to cover some of that up, but Onuaku/Rick wouldn't be helping much on that end in all likelihood. Sure they could rebound, but there's only so many rebounds they can get when the other 4 guys on the floor just stand there and don't do anything. They'd basically be competing 1 on 4 for rebounds.

I wouldn't say a low post scorer is a need; we just need a big man that can set screens and catch passes when he rolls or pops. We haven't had a big man that was an actual threat after setting screens since Tyler Lydon. Jesse Edwards and Jon Bol Ajak could theoretically develop into that guy, though I'm pretty skeptical of both of them. Girard should be fine as a PG if we convert to a pick-and-roll based offense; unfortunately Boeheim still has us running a ton of isolations and dribble hand-offs and we just don't have the pieces for that style of play at all. Granted we also don't have the big man for the pick-and-roll offense, but it would probably be much more successful than what we're currently doing. Aside from a big man that can catch passes, we badly need to start getting guys to actually attempt to box out; it seems like Boeheim just doesn't really value rebounding because we've pretty much never had a team that actually boxes people out aside from 1 or 2 players. We should in theory have the shooting we need with this roster, and I think Girard has shown enough to have some faith that he can be the primary creator long-term. But we don't have the big man we need, the offensive system we need, or the effort to try to rebound that we need, and unfortunately, if Edwards/JBA don't develop, we don't seem to have a plan on how to address that (at least at the moment).

I collect Funkos. I'm not one of those collectors that has to have every color of Thanos for example, but I do enjoy having funkos of TV/Movie/Athletes that I like. I'm up to 40 now, ranging from The Matrix, Stranger Things, Westworld, superheroes, and some one-offs like Ferris Buehler, Pennywise the clown, etc. My girlfriend hates having them in the house, so the only ones we have at home are a Harry Potter and Niffler (character from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). The rest are at work as basically a pop culture decoration. I just think they're cool personally. Edit: Should mention that by "house", I mean our one-bedroom apartment. If we end up getting a place with more space/a possible man-cave, then maybe I'll bring some of them home.