Arm of Harm

So . . . you're saying he'll be a success? 😶

The article made me more optimistic about Trevor Lawrence. He has wisdom far beyond his years: wisdom most people never attain. He does not care about things he cannot control. He genuinely seems not to care about others' opinions or his own popularity, and that's huge. He also has made no emotional investment into whether he's going to New York or Jacksonville (another thing he can't control), and I have a ton of respect for that as well. He seems to be moderately emotionally invested in whether his team wins or loses. He has made a strong commitment to being the best at his position he can be. Invested in playing at the highest level of anyone. That's the one thing he can control, and that's where his commitment is, his passion is. I anticipate him having an outstanding career.

Yeah. I'm just not seeing it. That "top unit" played poorly against the Colts in the playoffs, and got absolutely torched by KC. KC played three postseason games. Their game against the Bills was by far their offense's best of the three. During the regular season, the defense didn't have very many good games against good quarterbacks, except for their performance against Justin Herbert. The defense definitely needs improvement, whether that's a change in the way it's coached, or additional players, or Star coming back, or Harrison Phillips getting healthy, or improvement from guys like Oliver, Edmunds, or Epenesa.

The OP's hypothesis is that the Bills' defensive drafting has been worse under Beane than McDermott. With that in mind let's look at the picks. McDermott only (defensive players in rounds 1 - 3): 1. Tre White (27th overall) McDermott + Beane (rounds 1 - 3) 1. Ed Oliver (9th overall) 1. Tremain Edmunds (16th overall) 2. A.J. Epenesa 3. Harrison Phillips During McDermott only the Bills used only one day 1 or 2 pick on a defensive player, but that pick resulted in the best player on the defense. During McDermott + Beane the Bills used two first round picks on defensive players. While neither of the picks is a bust, thus far neither has lived up to his draft position. The Bills also used two third round picks on defensive players. Harrison Phillips has looked good at times, but has been affected by injuries. A.J. Epenesa has shown flashes, and time will tell whether he's worth the 2nd round pick or not. McDermott used two picks on round 4 - 7 on defensive players, one of whom was Matt Milano. McDermott + Beane used six picks in rounds 4 - 7 on defensive players, resulting in several backup or rotational players (Taron Johnson, Darryl Johnson, Dane Jackson). Thus far no starters have emerged from that cohort. Overall the OP has a point: the Bills did a better job of drafting defensive players when it was McDermott only, than when it was McDermott + Beane. But, there isn't enough data for us to know whether this decline was due to random chance or if it was due to a decline in the accuracy of the Bills' evaluations of defensive players.

Jerry Hughes is a "meh" player right now.

My perspective differs from yours. In the Colts game the Bills did not play up to my level of expectations. They were out-coached. In particular, Frank Reich's offense won the battle of X's and O's against Sean McDermott's defense. The Bills' offensive line played poorly. Several Bills WRs were hurt, which hopefully won't be the case in future postseasons. The Bills (very narrowly) won that game in large part because of the Colts' players failure to execute when they needed to. Take away a few errors made by Colts players, and you're looking at a different outcome. I don't know whether the Chiefs are or aren't worried about the closeness of their playoff game with the Browns. They may not be worried by that, but we should be! Why? Because the Browns put up a much better fight against the Chiefs than did the Bills. Going into the Super Bowl, a lot of people wanted the Chiefs to win, so that we could claim the Bills were the second-best team in the NFL. I don't know how someone can claim the Bills to be "second-best" right after the KC offense utterly obliterated the Bills' defense. The Buffalo-KC game was a blowout in Kansas City's favor, a week after the Browns put up a very good fight. The Bills may have been a better regular season team than the Browns, but the Browns were the better postseason team. I enjoy playing military strategy games. One time I used my usual strategy and lost. I could have blamed the loss on luck, except that the luck was neutral. I realized my strategy was flawed, and I needed to do better. I brooded for a while. Then I came back to that game with a new strategy; one which was significantly better than my old one. Had I pretended everything was fine, I would have been more likely to just keep doing what I was doing. Only by fully owning my flaws did I force myself to a higher level of performance. And that's what I'd like to see from the Bills. They need to own the fact that their defense has been disappointing against good passing offenses, both in the regular season and the postseason. How much of that is talent and how much is scheme I don't know. But whatever the problem is, they need to fix it. They also need to do something about the offensive line, because its performance was a major letdown in all three playoff games. I truly think Beane gets that. He said something to the effect that if your last postseason game was a loss, typically that loss tells you where your team needs to improve. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Many of his free agent signings appear to be attempts to address the areas I'd described. I understand his ability to sign free agents is circumscribed by being close to the cap limit, and like you I don't want to see him mortgage the future to max out the present. Depending on how the free agent signings work out and on who we draft, there's a solid chance of the 2021 roster being better than the one we had in 2020. Whether McDermott and Frazier can fix the defense's problems with X's and O's is another matter.

I know exactly which team should sign Houston! 😁

Oops!

Very solid post. The one thing I'll add is this: Hall of Fame WR James Lofton once said something along the lines of, "You don't judge a RB by how many carries he has. It's yards, baby!" Meaning, that you should judge a WR (or in this case a TE) by his receiving yardage. By that standard, according to the numbers in your own post, Hollister was actually more productive than Knox, with 288 receiving yards to Knox's 209.

Failure to sign Jesse James would be criminal! 😶

I don't hate him for that. Vontae Davis said that the reason he quit was because he wants to play to a certain standard, he was no longer able to play to that standard, and felt he was letting himself and the team down. During the second half of that game his replacement played better than he did. Was retiring at halftime the smartest, most logical thing he could have done? No. The smart move would have been to ask the coaches to bench him so that a better player could take his place. Requesting a benching would also have been smart from his own personal standpoint. I'm pretty sure that a player's salary for the year is guaranteed, as long as the player is on the opening day roster. But his retirement voided that guarantee, so he lost what would have been the majority of his salary for the year. Clearly he made an emotional decision. But that doesn't make him a bad guy.

Let's say the QB throws a perfect pass. Kelvin Benjamin the WR bobbles the ball and puts it right into the hands of the defender. Is the resulting INT the QB's fault, or the WR's? Scott Norwood provided a kick which very well might have gone through, had the laces been aligned correctly. Was it his responsibility to somehow adjust his kick to the fact the laces were facing the wrong way? Is that something the coaches had drilled into him during practice? I don't have the answers to those questions. But, I haven't heard of kickers practicing "laces wrong" type kicks. As for the long snapper thing: a few years ago I read Bill Polian's book. In it, he described an (unnamed) long snapper. According to Polian, the long snapper was a perfectly good player except for one thing. When he snapped the ball the laces were always aligned incorrectly. He wrote that he didn't want to have to cut an otherwise good player due to that one thing. So, he had a coach or ex-player (I forget which) work with the long snapper on that issue. The coach figured out that the ball was consistently a quarter turn the wrong way. So he taught the player to rotate the ball by a quarter turn before snapping it. Bingo! Problem solved. The player kept his roster spot. The point I was making with the missed opportunities thing is that the blame for the loss doesn't all come down to the final play. Every player who missed plays they should have made should be held accountable, not just the one missed opportunity at the very end of the game.

I can't agree with you on this. Consider the following: 1) No way, absolutely no way, should the coaches or players have allowed that game to come down to a 47 yard field goal try on grass. Plenty of wasted opportunities which led to that. 2) The long snapper was at fault for snapping the ball incorrectly. With a correct snap the laces should be facing the proper direction. 3) The holder was at fault for failing to turn the laces to the proper direction. 4) Norwood's kick had the distance, but angled the wrong direction--as you'd expect when the laces were facing in. 5) Norwood never forgave himself for that missed field goal. Some would say it ruined the rest of his life.

Perhaps you should be more careful in your choice of words? 🤨

I agree with everything you've written. Very good post. Just to add to the discussion I'll say this: I'm not good enough at baseball to deserve a spot on a high school team, let alone a major league team. So let's say for some reason the Yankees gave me two at bats. I strike out both times. Then they bring Babe Ruth back from the dead and give him two at bats also. He strikes out once and hits one home run. Is the difference between my performance and Babe Ruth's statistically significant? I haven't done the calculations on that, but eyeballing it I'd say no way is that statistically significant. Does that absence of statistical significance mean that Babe Ruth and I are the same level of baseball player? No, it absolutely does not mean that! Babe Ruth is far and away the better player. Just because you don't have the data to prove two things are unequal, does not make them equal. It merely means you don't have the data to know, one way or the other, whether they are equal or not. At least, that's true whenever sample size is small. As sample size grows, a failure to find a statistically significant difference between two data sets would normally indicate that the difference between the two data sets may be small in comparison to standard deviation. In this case, as you've pointed out, the data sample is limited. This means the data cannot be used to conclude any of the following: a) that Allen's deep ball performance was better than the other three QBs, b) that his deep ball performance was worse than the other three QBs, or c) that his deep ball performance was the same as the other three QBs. There simply aren't enough data to support any of these conclusions. At least, I don't believe there are enough data, though I have not tested anything for statistical significance or for power.

I agree with both you and Rico. The Bills had two problems in the KC playoff game: 1) The Chiefs were the more talented team. 2) The Bills went into that game with the wrong mindset. Almost what I'd call a Jauron-like, play-not-to-lose mindset. The Bills need to fix both those problems before they next face the Chiefs.

At first I didn't understand your post. Then the light bulb went on.

You're welcome. Glad to help. Great ticket stub!

29 years old. Time for him to stop thinking about any kind of "football career," and instead focus on Bingo, Social Security, shuffleboard, and the Medicare donut hole.

In Paint you can resize a photo. Near the top left of the screen there will be a button which says "resize." Click that. Then choose "resize as a percentage" which should be the default option chosen. Then pick a percentage, like 50, or 70 or whatever seems best. Make sure you're resizing horizontal and vertical by the same percentage. (this should also be the default behavior). Once you've resized it save it as a .gif .

If your second attempt fails as well, let me know what went wrong. If (for example) the file is still too large, I can help with that.

I think what may have induced Lamp to sign here may not have been the Teller trade, so much as the Williams story. Williams came here looking to revive his career, earned a starting spot, played well, and has now received an extension. I'm guessing Lamp is looking to do that exact same thing at offensive guard.

In this particular case, I think it's because the Bills are weak at offensive guard. Easier to earn a starting spot here than it would be with a lot of other teams.

As I've noted earlier, I don't have a horse in this race. I have a high opinion of both you and Badolbilz as posters, and I don't have a strongly formed opinion about Josh Allen's level of deep ball accuracy. I've bestowed likes upon posts in both sides of this debate. All that being said, the data from your own post give some support to Badolbilz's argument. The completion percentages for Aaron Rodgers from 30 - 40 yards and from 40 yards - 50 yards are noticeably higher than those for Josh Allen. On the other hand, you make a good point that the difference is almost certainly not statistically significant. That doesn't mean that Rodgers and Allen are the same at throwing the deep ball--merely that we lack sufficient data to know if they are the same or different. You implied that Badolbilz deliberately sought out this small sample size, and use the example of Matt Barkley's success on a (very limited) number of deep ball attempts to make that point. However, it is not the fault of Badolbilz that the sample size is limited, and the examples he gave were of starting quarterbacks. He has done nothing to artificially reduce sample size. On the other hand, he lumped several yardage categories together, and I agree with you that it would have been better to keep those yardage categories separate, as you have done in the above-quoted text. Obviously the longer the yardage the lower the percentage the throw, so lumping yardage categories together artificially and wrongly penalizes QBs who gravitate toward longer distance pass attempts. The argument in favor of lumping different yardage pass attempts together is that it addresses the problem of small sample size. I'm not agreeing with his decision there, just pointing out an argument in its favor. I take issue with all comments from either side which would tend to raise the emotional temperature of this debate. The goal of the conversation can either be a) to follow wherever the data lead, or b) to establish dominance. There is no "both" option, because the two objectives are incompatible. I'd add that the completion percentages are affected by factors outside the two quarterbacks' control, such as whether a pass gets dropped, as well as (in the case of an Allen pass attempt) atrocious officiating. These factors add noise and (potentially) bias to the data, making the problem of small sample size even worse. The bottom line for me is that the data hint that Josh Allen might have been worse at deep balls than Rodgers in 2020, but we simply don't have the data to know for sure.