[This is a simple Poll. Will Josh Allen regress?]

In a historical sense, it's a real threat. That said, how can you defend a guy that doesn't know what he will do from play to play? Run the play, take off running, bail on everything and make throws nobody else can. Allen isn't like anybody to come out in god knows how long. That doesn't mean he is the best but his game is the definition of exotic. If teams get ahead of Daboll it could slow Josh down, but I'm confident if that happens the Bills will adjust. I expect Allen to improve despite knowing most would recede.   

[Carl Nassib Announces He is Gay]

6 minutes ago, Southern_Bills said:

 

It has nothing to do with football is all. It shouldn't make him viewed any differently if he is or isn't.

It shouldn't but it does. It also becomes relevant in a similar way it was in the services. If the most macho organizations in our society can accept somebody in the ways you suggest, it would show a lot of progress for society as a whole. The fact that this thread exists shows us we are not at that point yet. 

[Cole Beasley announces he will not be following Covid protocols, willing to retire]

We can talk about this without including our own feelings and strictly looking at it from a business standpoint. We are very deep at WR and yes, losing Cole would certainly hurt. That said if the NFLPA doesn't change it's stance on this topic I don't know how we can proceed forward with him on the roster. If you separate all the BS around this topic it really isn't that different than when companies bring in new management. If you don't want to get on board that's your right, but it's also the companies right to then decide if your presence, regardless of talent, could serve as a distraction or impact the whole in a negative way. I certainly think Cole would have a risk of doing so if we did retain him and he refused to comply to the NFLPA guidelines. 

 

I hope this gets resolved as it Cole seems like a pretty popular guy in the locker room. I respect anybody's stance to take a stance on what they feel is right regardless of how I feel. I think the Bills feel the same, but they don't have the luxury of running a business that way. For the NFLPA to really get serious about amending this they will need some big names to stand up. Quarterbacks, stars, and several of them.   

[Does Gregory Rousseau need "redshirt" year?]

I see many of the same concerns, but at the same time, he seems to close very quickly putting it into a gear he doesn't look like he has. Then once he's near you, with that frame, it's over. Really not all that different than Epenesa in the sense that I don't we see him as ready at the start of the year, but by middle, late, he very well could be contributing. 

[49ers will trade Jimmy G in exchange for a 1st round pick]

I don’t think he’s worth a 1st but he would be an improvement on 50% of the teams. Wasn’t far from a Super Bowl a few years ago, even if It was more of a defensive team. 

[Bills sign Matt Milano to 4 yr, 44 mill deal with 24 mill gtd]

This is great news, I know Milano will spend most of the offseason watching tape on Kelce. ☹️

[Stimulus Checks.]

Pisses me off because I don't qualify, by much....I imagine 90% of the people who don't like it won't get it. 

[Texans releasing JJ Watt]

8 minutes ago, BillsShredder83 said:

My angle is he played 90% of snaps and has been the focal point of preparation by opposing offenses his whole career. Hoping a lower % snaps can keep him healthy happy and rejuvenated. He'll be on a better defense, better coaching and supposedly the best training/ recooperating facilities in the league.

 

3 minutes ago, HOUSE said:

 

Hmm, thank you guys.....This does have some intrigue. I mean, the Texans were pitiful last year and in theory Watts could have just been doubled almost every snap. He recovered with such force after the first injury...

[Texans releasing JJ Watt]

Can somebody sell me on Watt? He averaged .88 sacks per game start prior to 2019 and .38 after. His production in rushing the passer is less than 1/2 the level it used to be on a per start basis.

 

Is the thought he can be rejuvenated by a change in scenery, one more year and he will be even more healthy, playing in a 4-3 will help his production in pass rush, solid run D, play inside sometimes?  Sort of like a better version of Shaq Lawson? Are we getting so excited at his name or what we expect him to bring? I'm certainly interested in this storyline. Just don't know what to make of it yet if he does sign.  

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

5 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

@KzooMike

 

In comparison to Buffalo, this is New England (2017-2019 as I just grabbed it quick). The worst drafting team over the last 4 years. They've made the playoffs as often as Buffalo has, extremely competitive team. They actually have a better record over the last 4 years than we do, they're actually the 4th most winning team over that time span. Belichick has done an absolutely horrible job of finding any sort of value consistently. He pretty much gets 1 contributor each year, but a lot of his early picks are just horrible values. He's done better with guys like Wise (4th), Bentley (5th), Winovich (3rd) than he has with anything in earlier rounds. 

Tee Higgins and Gabe Davis had the same AV in 2020 (6).
 

Higgins had 67, 908, and 6 TD’s with career backups throwing him the ball after Burrow got hurt.

 

Davis had the 2nd best QB in football throwing him the ball according to AV, and went 35, 599, and 7 TD’s. 
 

Devin Singletary is an 8 along with Nick Chubb and his 1000+ yards. 
 

I can do this all day and with way more extreme examples than I used. The point is over a career this stuff balances out. Over this small a sample it just doesn’t. 

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

7 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of value then, he lays it out. Players who start on good teams are much more valuable than players if they start on a bad team. It’s not that difficult. 

Over the course of a career I agree with that statement. In this small a sample it’s really more about did they play for a good team or not.

 

 

I’m hitting the sack MJS, like I said. I applaud the work. I may not fully agree with how strongly you feel about it’s conclusions but I appreciate how you went about it. Look forward to future posts. 

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

1 minute ago, MJS said:

I've done my research. AV is a good metric. They do their best to isolate each player. Obviously that's not always possible. But their grades match closely, in my opinion, to what we see on the field from these players. And I'm not talking only about Bills players. I haven't actually looked at the grades for Bills players much. But I have looked league wide and at grades for historical players.

I agree AV is an excellent tool once the dust settles. But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.
 

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

1 minute ago, KzooMike said:

I agree AV is an excellent tool once the dust settles. But until then I can’t justify a rookie getting a larger pool of win shares to work with because his QB is Aaron Rogers. I can’t justify that the best drafting teams just so happen to all be teams that made the playoffs multiple times the last 3 years according to this list. We had the smallest representation of home grown players of any team in the AFC championship on our roster. The eye test tells me we have only drafted 3-4 players, we really want to keep.
 

I love this type of analysis and it’s probably as close to a sabermetric philosophy as you can get and I love that as well, but it’s not something you can just drop the mic on. It has a ton of flaws. Namely, who the heck are the players that make us so elite? Tre, Josh? Who else? If we draft that well

that shouldn’t be a hard thing to answer. Obviously Milano was very solid for where we landed him. 

 

6 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

I’m defending against your obviously wrong point that says AV wasn’t designed to be used to evaluate draft classes. I don’t even need to continue after that, because you’re off base. 
 

You can look at the individual years as well if you’d like... in 2017 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Chargers, Texans, Vikings, Panthers). 
 

LAC: Playoffs 1/4 times since 2017

HOU: Playoffs 2/4

MIN: 2/4

Panthers 1/4

 

Combined 6/16
 

In 2018 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Falcons, 49ers, Eagles, Lions). 
 

ATL: Playoffs 0/3 years since 2018

49ers: Playoffs 1/3 years since 2018

Eagles: Playoffs 2/3 years 

Lions: Playoffs 0/3

Combined 3/12

 

In 2019 4 of the top 10 teams missed the playoffs this year (Dolphins, 49ers, Raiders, Cardinals). 
 

Dolphins: 0/2

Raiders: 0/2

Cardinals: 0/2

Combined 0/6 

 

In 2020 4/10 teams again didn’t make the playoffs (LAC, CAR, CIN, NYG) 

 

0/4 this year 

You really don’t think I sat down and read all of that BEFORE I put all of this together? That’s how I knew exactly where to find everything that eradicated your statement that “It’s not supposed to be used like this.” 

You went this far. Care running number of wins by team from 2017-2020 against your final

roll up? See how lopsided this gets. Team is good, therefor they draft good. You said it yourself.  It follows the same concept as win shares. I can also run that data for you if you like tomorrow. 

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

9 minutes ago, MJS said:

I remember this from before and really liked your methodology then. I believe we had a conversation about AV used to show the quality of free agent pickups over the same timeframe and I believe you showed that Buffalo shows well with their free agents too, correct? So, great at drafting and great at free agent signings as far as value added is concerned. Beane is clearly a great GM and if he keeps it up he'll be in the hall of fame one day.

 

I think people tend to look at the busts and ignore some of the successes. And they also look at their team in a vacuum, not understanding that EVERY team in the league has draft picks that bust and free agents that don't work out. People assume that the average success rate is much higher than it actually is.

 

Good stuff. I'd like to see this analysis continued for future seasons.

I think you are dead wrong. What metrics are you using to back this up? You are just going by your gut. You are assuming a higher success rate for the NFL than is actual. You are also making huge assumptions with the AV metric that may or may not be true (and are likely false).

Lmao....read the link I posted. All of it. By default, any player on a higher performing unit who starts games gets more AV assigned. So by default any team that performs better has a higher AV assigned to players in that unit. Look at the correlation on his list with win% and do your own research. 

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

21 minutes ago, JGMcD2 said:

He talks about using it in the exact context you’re saying it’s not supposed to be used. 
 

“Essentially, AV is a substitute for --- and a significant improvement upon, in my opinion --- metrics like 'number of seasons as a starter' or 'number of times making the pro bowl' or the like. You should think of it as being essentially like those two metrics, but with interpolation in between. That is, 'number of seasons as a starter' is a reasonable starting point if you're trying to measure, say, how good a particular draft class is, or what kind of player you can expect to get with the #13 pick in the draft. But obviously some starters are better than others. Starters on good teams are, as a group, better than starters on bad teams. Starting WRs who had lots of receiving yards are, as a group, better than starting WRs who did not have many receiving yards. Starters who made the pro bowl are, as a group, better than starters who didn't, and so on. And non-starters aren't worthless, so they get some points too."

Like I said, I applaud your efforts to solve what can’t be solved. But instead of using articles or partial sections I encourage you to discuss how AV is calculated in its entirety if you wish to defend against what I’m saying. Not just use partial sections. I’ve read that entire document and all the sub documents on how AV came to be a long time ago. 

 

Look at the Correlation between win % and your list, it’s very strong, now is that because they drafted well or is based on how AV is calculated? It assigns greater value to higher performing units. High performing units can be a result of one player you didn’t draft and 5 you did who are essentially role players. Those 5 players then get assigned much more value then if they played in moderate performing units.
 

Just look at how

many draft picks we started on defense since 2017 in context with it being a high performing unit. That said, who is the star? Tre is for sure, then you have  Edmonds? Milano? Well, you don’t need much more than that once you throw Allen in. QB gets assigned the most points of all. 
 

This regime has a moderate draft record. It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s certainly not the best. This analysis is causation/correlation. We are good. We have started a lot of draft picks. Most of those draft picks aren’t primary reasons we are good. They are complimentary players with only a couple qualifying as players we have to retain. 

[League Wide Draft Success 2017-2019 - A Follow Up]

On 1/25/2021 at 1:34 PM, JGMcD2 said:

I put this together about 2 months ago, but with the season over and AV now updated, I figured it would be a good time to revisit. I agree with a lot of the posters saying that we're missing pieces. Of course we are, but I'm tired of the assertions that we need to draft better. We've objectively been THE BEST drafting team in the NFL from 2017-2019. I don't feel comfortable using a 1 year sample from 2020 just yet, but truthfully at this point it will drop the Bills 1 MAYBE 2 spots overall (I haven't had the chance to break it all down yet, but I will update when I do). 

 

I know people are going to try and rip this to shreds as stupid, but I have read numerous articles using AV as a way to compare draft classes. Many on The Athletic, like this article where they evaluate the Saints 2017 draft class using AV (my original analysis was done almost 3 weeks prior to this coming out, and yes it reflects the Saints having the best draft class in 2017 by a wide margin).

 

Here is my methodology from the original post...

 

Nobody really had a great way to measure success in the draft outside of their perception of a player... I wanted to make an attempt at examining this objectively. Pro Football Reference has their Weighted Approximate Value which assigns a value to a player based on their performance. It's not an all encompassing stat like WAR is in baseball, it definitely has its flaws, but PFR said it's steady to use to measure draft success. I'm going to dive into the results below on the draft, as well as some analysis I have done of the FA signings. Nothing is really over the top, I'm going to take some feedback and try to refine this. I had to do a lot of it by hand in excel and couldn't just scrape everything because different pieces were all over.

 

I chose 2017 specifically because that is when Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane arrived. Some folks want to argue that Beane shouldn't get credit for that draft and FA, which is perfectly fine. I am in the camp that believes McDermott and Beane are in lockstep, they make up the upper management of the football department, therefore the decisions made since 2017 have been made with certain goals in mind. I don't feel the need to omit 2017 because it was scrambled, it's very clear these two are close and the decisions made were made by McBeane in some way, shape or form starting in 2017. 

 

"Sometimes, for example if you want to assess a trade or determine the top draft classes of all time, you need a metric that is capable of comparing players across positions and eras. In baseball and basketball, lots of stats have been cooked up to do this, and they can do so with a reasonable degree of precision. In football, no such stat exists. In most cases, people use "starter" or "number of years as a starter" or "number of pro bowls" as the metric when they have to compare across positions.

AV is intended to be an improvement over those metrics, and nothing more. It is not Not NOT an ubermetric whose purpose is to decide once and for all who the best players in NFL history were." - Doug from PFR

 

The career AV is computed by summing 
100 percent of the AV of his best season,
95 percent of the AV of his next-best season,
90 percent of the AV of his third-best season,
and so on 

 

What I did was found the average value for a player drafted in each round (1-7) in each year (2017-2019) and the calculated what I am calling the Net Drafted Accumulated Value (NETDrAV) for each pick in each round. I only compared each draft to itself. I then found the Total Net Drafted Accumulated Value (TOT_NETDrAV) for each team in each draft and ranked them against each other. Rather than just looking at how much raw value the Bills brought in as compared to the 31 other teams, this gives an idea of how much extra value they extracted in each round as compared to the 31 other teams in the league. 

 

TOT_NETDrAV is the AV that a team has benefitted from directly on their team as compared to players and teams in their draft class.

 

TOT_NETCarAV is just the pure amount of value that players drafted by a given team have produced as compared to players and teams in their draft class.

 

 

Yes, I agree that they're missing something, but this constant assertion that this regime are "average drafters" or that we "have too many busts" is flat out wrong. You are only good or bad by comparison, and they're better than the rest of the NFL. 

 

They've extracted more value than any other team in the league over their first 3 years in the NFL. This will continue to change as players perform, but right now they have a clearly performed well drafting. It's not even debatable, Buffalo, New Orleans and Baltimore have been far and away the best drafting teams in the NFL from 2017-2019.

 

Do we need more impact players? Yes, every team does and actively seeks them out. But this notion that we don't draft well is garbage, complete and utter garbage. 

I really applaud your efforts to evaluate this, that said AV in a sample size this small, used for this purpose, is subject to a lot of problems. It was created to be a one size fits all stat for value of a player across any time in league history and at any position. If you just read on how AV is calculated for football you would understand immediately it can’t be used nor was it intended to be used for this purpose.
 

As a simple example, just the success of a player like Brees, never drafted by the Saints, would automatically increase the AV of any drafted player that stepped on the field for the Saints on offense.
 

Did you not start to notice a pattern of the highest rated teams also being some of the more successful teams the last 3 years? In sum, with AV, if you have a top unit and some draft picks played on that unit, they will get more credit assigned just based on the way AV works, even if what is making it a top unit isn’t players you drafted. Further, if you draft a QB who plays on a top unit you basically go to the top regardless. That last part probably has some validity. That said, I’m certainly not labeling this regime good at drafting based on AV average or one player.
 

You would have a hard time naming more than 3-4 impact guys since 2017.  That said we have drafted droves of role players that have playing time, which certainly helps juice that AV score. 
 

Read for yourselves and decide how relevant this data is in evaluating draft classes.

 

 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index37a8.html

[Madden on Teams Incorporating Madden in Pregame Prep?]

Madden is such a dumpster fire I haven't purchased it for the last 2 years. Last years Madden bowl winner used a Punter at QB and ran on 100% of his plays. Great job with those exclusive rights EA! 

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

20 minutes ago, Big Turk said:

 

Here is the issue tho.  Why did it not matter in the vast majority of games this year?  We played much much better pass rushing teams than the Chiefs, blocked them up well and shredded them. No excuse to allow a poor pass rushing team against every other team in the NFL to look like the 85 Bears both games against us.

That's where I'm at. We had solid pass pro all year and against much better teams. To me it extends past just the front four. Allen is more hesitant and it creates a delay in his release. That at least appears what it looks like to me.  

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

4 minutes ago, C.Biscuit97 said:

My brother’s theory was that Allen benefited from no fans this year. It didn’t happen much but you can seem he get a little flustered in some games. So given the stage, going against Mahomes, and the “biggest” crowd of the season, I think he got a little shook. But he will be better for it. 

I thought some of that played a role myself. He did have two of his worst games this year against this team though. Again, he also struggles against NE. Worst game of the year in the first one. Despite the most people agreeing I do think it's related to late movement on defense which is what KC is known for, what I saw, NE is known for as well.  

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

1 minute ago, C.Biscuit97 said:

Because KC is really good? They don’t have a good defense but when they get the lead, their pass rushers can tee off. It’s like the Colts with Manning. 
 

also, even though they aren’t head to head, it’s got to be really hard for a qb going against Mahomes. You know you need at least 30 and have no margin of error, so you force more. 

Started from the first play. He threw it directly at KC defender in 2 of 3 of our first drives. Both should have been picked, neither was. This was well prior to us needing to chase. He actually played better when we had to chase. 

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

1 minute ago, Buffalo716 said:

Maybe some of their linebackers were moving around. But 90% of the game, their secondary was lined up in cover one press

 

They weren't that confusing pre-snap. 

 

They pressed and manned up on our receivers the whole game, while dialing in the blitz

 

Watch a couple minutes. I don't feel like doing this for the entire video. On the first 8 plays plays, 4 are disguised packages, one nearly resulting in an INT, the rest resulting in sacks or near sacks. Mostly Cover 2 or Cover One switches, one zone switch, they had the OLB bailing into a cover 2 look all game. I do understand Romo showed a lot of sticky coverage replays which would make you think they just blitzed and pressed all game. Just not the case. 

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

Just now, Buffalo716 said:

They weren't doing anything confusing on defense

 

They were pressing our receivers and mugging them downfield. can't get separation when you're being mugged and the refs are holding the flag 

 

Josh couldn't get rid of the ball because there was no open receivers downfield

 

 

How much were you watching for pre snap movement from the Chiefs? All they did was change looks from what they showed pre snap. It was about the only thing you could predict.  

[Theory on why Allen struggles against KC]

In order to be good you need to know where to throw the ball, then you execute quickly and accurately. We always knew if Josh ever got to a point where he didn't have to see a player come open but rather anticipate it, with his natural talent, the sky is the limit. KC has a good pass defense, that said, we underperformed dramatically against them this year. This made me wonder if two things that stuck with me recently might tell some of the story on why we struggle vs KC.   

 

• In a recent SI article (Genius of Brian Daboll) it discusses how Daboll coaches players to remove options in the route tree based on coverage. So instead of teaching a player who is the guy, you focus on teaching him who isn't. 
• This season, Buffalo increased it's rate of motion from 2019 by 27%, that is nearly 12% more than the next closest team. Daboll had players moving pre snap at one of the highest rates in the NFL. Most the time motion is used to diagnose coverage. 
• KC is one of the best teams in the NFL at hiding coverages

 

KC, along with a great pass rush, which compounds everything, plays the perfect defense to confuse Josh. Don't let him eliminate routes and make him go through the whole progression. If you watch the first half, Josh looked confused. We haven't seen him look like that in some time. He looked like he didn't know where the ball was supposed to go and threw what was likely his easiest INT ball all year. KC just dropped it.

 

It almost makes you wonder why more teams don't play Allen like the Chiefs. Well, let me ask you, how would the Bills play Allen? Cover 2 Zone, we wouldn't change. Teams are stubborn to identity. This is just like asking why don't teams motion more when motion has been statistically proven to have a + EPA?

 

We also struggle against NE. All but the last one. NE seems like a team that could care less about identity and likely employs a lot of hidden coverages. That said, the Chiefs are the best at this. Just a theory, discuss or call names....   

[Decision on Kelce Coverage]

30 minutes ago, sullim4 said:

 

I don't think that's fair - McD and Frazier are not above criticism and they will be the first people to tell you that.

 

The Bills got killed by Kelce and Hill the entire game and Kelce in particular was wide open constantly in the second half.  They accounted for 290 of 325 yards of passing from Mahomes.  After the first half, where Kelce just killed you, it would seem to make sense to adjust to that and take him away.  Sell out and make the Chiefs beat you on the ground or with other receivers.  This is how Belichick typically game plans on defense -- make a team win in a different way -- and it usually works.

The CBS sideline reporter mentioned that McD was keeping the same game plan for the second half.  Anyone watching that game must've thought he was either (1) lying, or (2) out of his mind.  Significant changes needed to be made on defense after giving up 21 points in the second quarter, and they failed to do so.

They didn’t play as much cover 2 shell in the second half and blitzed more. As a result Hill put up just about all of his yards in the second half.
 

I don’t think we have the scheme to match up against a guy like Mahomes or how it used to go with Brady. Our scheme is also very vulnerable to good TE’s. We plah

almost all zone and good TE’s/QB’s exploit the vacated areas. We don’t have a pass rush from the front 4 to prevent that from happening. Our defense can look great against average to below average offenses, but it really hasn’t shown it can hold up to an elite passing offense yet. 

12 minutes ago, Generic_Bills_Fan said:

True but to be fair has anyone been able to hang with the chiefs man to man?

Mixing looks, zone / man, sure. 49ers should have won the Super Bowl last year. Almost 10 straight games this year the Chiefs couldn’t win by more than 7. Our scheme is just too one dimensional. Perhaps all schemes have major issues vs a team as talented as KC but ours is made more for beating the middle of the pack teams that will make enough mistakes to lose. KC will never be that team.

[Played scared on defense]

My biggest concern with this team and it's progression toward the final steps is McD. On offense we seem to be very flexible week to week in our approach. We aren't married to a system. On defense, we do seem married to a system. Against very high end QB's, it is not the optimal system to be in. With McD we will never have the players to play high end man coverage and that seems to be how you beat the best. Along with a great pass rush from your front four. 

[1/24/21 AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAMEDAY Thread Bills @ Chiefs 2nd Half]

The Cheifs just have the right ingredients on defense. Late movement can still confuse Josh and they can pressure with just four. On offense Hill, Kelse, and Mahomes are likely all three the best in the league. Hill has to be one of the most dangerious WR's to ever play the game. His stats don't say it yet, maybe never will, but just watching how he moves. You can just see it.