Billy Claude

I guess I should read the article more carefully. It is not entirely clear that the Bills made an actual offer. It might be that they were just had serious talks with him. The article says he got a "two year deal worth up to 19 million" from the Saints.

The Bills made him an offer to him right before the Diggs trade. https://www.syracuse.com/buffalo-bills/2020/04/buffalo-bills-were-pursuing-emmanuel-sanders-30-minutes-before-stefon-diggs-trade.html

https://www.nfl.com/news/13-teams-above-85-percent-threshold-for-player-vaccinations 13 teams over 85%. Average is 73%. The large difference between teams is surprising. It would be interesting to know how the different teams handled the messaging.

The 2nd string offense is definitely better than the Bills' starters in the 2018 opener: QB: Nathan Peterman RT: Jordan Mills RG: John Miller 😄 Ryan Groy LG: Vlad Ducasse LT: Dion Dawkins WR 1: Kelvin Benjamin WR 2: Zay Jones WR 3: Jeremy Kerley TE: Charles Clay RB: Shady McCoy

They probably just had a good laugh. It is unlikely that there was much overlap on the guest lists.

Absolutely agree that there is merits to both sides of this argument. I would add that the difference between the 2019 and 2020 defenses was not as stark as it may have seem. They were not as good as their ranking (3rd in yards given up) suggested in 2019 and better than their ranking suggested in 2020 (19th). In 2019, the Bills plays 8(!) games against the bottom 7 rank offenses in the league by yards: Jets (32x2), Washington (31), Pittsburgh (30), Denver (28), Miami (27x2) and Cincinnati (26). They only played two games against the top 11 offenses, though the defense played very well in both games: Dallas (1) and Baltimore (2). Furthermore, the Titans were 12th in total yards but the Bill's game was Mariota's last start. It would have been difficult to draw up an easier schedule for the defense. On the other hand, the Bills played 6 out of the top 11 offense during the first 11 weeks of 2020: KC (1), Tenn (3), Arizona (6), Raiders (8), Chargers (9) and Rams (11) and only four games against the bottom 8 (NYJ (32x2) and NE (27x2)). The opposition were also in comeback mode most of the second half for many of those games further piling up yards.

I was expecting a breakout year from Edmunds last year. He really seem like he was ready to step up after a pretty decent year two. Hopefully, the fact that he didn't, was due to injury and missing other players. However, I do not know how Star went from TBD whipping boy to linchpin of the defense simply by not playing for a year. Something that always concerned me is that Edmund's pre-draft scouting reports all mentioned his freak athleticism but many also noted that he did not seem very instinctive and was often caught out of position. You might excuse this since he was extremely young, but there were also stories about how he was unusually well prepared for the NFL because he and his father would break down his play after every game. If he was so well prepared why didn't this show up on the field? Perhaps all that coaching from his father meant that he is thinking too much?

You left out an important part of the standard definition of click-bait -- that click-bait has the defining characteristic of being deceptive, sensationalized or misleading. If the definition is solely "something to generate traffic to their website" than any sports piece on the internet is click-bait since that is the only reason the writers are getting paid. So are you are arguing that because the Bills are a championship level team and that Beane won some awards any second guessing of the Bills and Brandon Beane must solely to be to be "edgy" and therefore dishonest? Sorry, but I don't believe that simply being skeptical of Brandon Beanes's draft picks is sufficient to rise to the level of being deceptive, misleading, or sensationalized.

Sorry I just don't see it. I define click-bait as saying something outrageous that the author does not believe in, solely to generate traffic to their website, for example, anything that Skip Bayless says. I don't see how this particular instance meets this criteria. (1) Almost by definition a high ceiling, low floor, developmental prospect is going to have a higher bust probability. It doesn't mean its a bad pick, just a riskier one. In any case, it is not then surprising that this pick will be on some people's list of likely busts. So if someone was soley trying to generate clicks, I don't think they would have picked Rousseau. (2) I don't think that Beane has reached such an exalted position that any criticism of him will automatically draw attention -- maybe five years from now but now now. I find it difficult to believe that Simms put Rousseau on his list simply because he was picked by Brandon Beane. I am not saying Simms put a great deal of thought into his list, nor whether I feel that Rousseau is or is not a good pick, simply that I don't think it meets my definition of click-bait.

Pre-draft, Rousseau was regarded as a high ceiling, low floor type of prospect so it is hardly surprising that he would be on some people's most likely to bust list. Also putting the next to last first rounder on his most likely to bust list is hardly a good way to get clicks. Much more effective click-bait if Simms picked someone who was drafted in the top ten. i

He played a big role in the Bills' Bickering Bills reputation before the Super Bowl years. There were also a lot of stories about his exploits around town and in Fort Erie. However those stories mostly (but not completely) disappeared during the Super Bowl years and, of course, the birth of Hunter really changed his priorities.

If BruceExclusive got those numbers from PFF, his quote was extremely selective since he left out the 57 missed tackles and 9 touchdowns surrendered and and the fact there were 4 other linebackers in Edmunds' draft year that PFF ranked higher (including three drafted after him). The TFL numbers 5, 10 and 4 are consistent with how he played over all: Year 1 -- meh: the excuse is he was a rookie -- however, there were several rookie LBs that played better than Edmunds Year 2 -- very promising: He looked very good, especially towards the end of the season. I was really looking forward to year 3. Year 3 -- meh but hopefully it was due to his injury (unknown how bad it was -- maybe it was the reason for all the missed tackles) and missing Star (whole season) and Milano (substantial part of season) . He did look better toward the end of the year with Milano back. Year 4 -- hopefully year 3 was just a hiccup in the progression, however, I don't see how there is at least a bit of concern about how he played last year.

I meant it is hard to think that including no gain would make a difference in the rankings.

Its pretty hard to make that consistent with the data on the teamrankings.com website. Pro Football Reference has Edmunds with 19 TFL loss over the last 3 years while TJ Watt has 42 TFL over the same time. It's hard to believe that there is not more than a few LBs between 19 and 42. The only outs I see is that PFF includes tackles for no gain (which I doubt makes much difference) or PFF has a lot narrower definition of who's a linebacker than teamrankings.com website. Edit: This is probably it -- they probably regard a guy like TJ Watt as edge rather than outside linebacker.

According to the website above, Edmunds was only on the top 100 TFL list in 2019 (ties for 12th among linebackers) and was not in the top 37 LBs in 2018 nor the top 38 LBS in 2020. Its hard to believe that adds up to 2nd in TFL or no gain over 3 years unless he had an unrealistic number of tackles for no gain. So did BruceExclusive just make up that stat about Edmunds being 2nd in tackle for losses over 3 years?

The mistakes were signing Tyler Kroft and, especially, Spencer Long who was absolutely horrible for the Jets in 2018. Giving Long a 3 year 12.6M contract (though only one year guaranteed) was not a good decision. The Jets fans were laughing about that signing. They also laughed about the Brian Winters signing. Once those signings were made there was no room for Thomas and Teller. Thomas was 28 years old at the time and choosing Kroft over him was understandable. Teller, on the other hand, had started 7 games for the Bills his rookie year and showed promise which was why the Bills were able to get a 5th and a 6th for him. They took Long because they needed a backup center but I think Long was so bad that by the end of the season someone else (Feliciano?) was taking the center snaps when Morse couldn't play. I am appreciative of the job Beane has done but lets not try to claim he did not make mistakes. His 2018 free agent class was bad (Trent Murphy, Star, Vontae Davis, ..). His 2019 free agent class was better (Morse, Brown, Beasley) but folks were pretty puzzled by the Kroft and Long signings at the time. Luckily he seems to be learning from his mistakes and getting better each year.

The press probably also appreciates that he is a straight shooter and doesn't purposely mislead people. For example, the draft, philosophically he did pretty much what he said he was going to do.

I didn't know that but It must be confusing if one is not sure if when someone says a billion whether they meant a billion or a trillion.

In British English (and Spanish) a billion is a million million, i.e., 1 Billion British = 1 trillion in American. The article is slightly misleading --NFL is the richest league in the world but the revenue from the four richest European soccer leageues adds up to more than 13B (at least before the pandemic).

Watched the beginning and then skipped to the end. Exciting game at the end but the play was awful. The first three (four?) drives ended in turnovers. There were a lot more dropped passes than you would expect now. The linemen looked like normal, albeit, large people instead of sumo wrestlers. There was a whole lot of run it into the line for 3 or 4 yards. 13 turnovers total -- 9 interceptions (5 for Fergy, 2 for Griese, 2 for Strock) and 4 lost (8 total) fumbles. Bob Griese wearing glasses? Commentary was pure gold: The rule changes have made it impossible for the defense. Nobody runs it on 3rd and two anymore. Here comes the shotgun! Why don't more teams use the shotgun? Not everybody has a Staubach or a Ferguson. It's hard to find centers who can make that snap consistently. You're telling teams that they don't have to worry about the run. Amazing how conservative NFL coaches were (are?) -- it appears that even in 1980 only a few teams were running the shotgun even though the Cowboys had been having success with it for at least for half a decade.

I think these type of interviews are more of an indication he has given up on getting an NFL job. Throwing your old boss under the bus in public is not going to look good to a perspective employer. One thing that always seem strange to me was how quickly his relations with Marrone, Rex, and McDermott went sour. We know Marrone was against the Watkins trade but he bented over backwards to draft Rex's guys. The hostility with Marrone and Rex seem more personal then professional. Did they think he was source of the leaks that were occurring regularly during this time?

People seem to be taking a little bit of skepticism about Dawkins comments as being negative on Epenesa. I don't think anybody is giving up on Epenesa, simply that some nice comments during the OTAs are not very meaningful one way or the other. We have heard it all before, though it is better than the alternative, i.e., player A (Robert Foster?) needs to put in a lot of work before training camp.

The drives that are most impressive to me are not the ones where someone makes a great play but the ones that seems like there is no chance that it could be stopped. There were a bunch of drives like that during the 49er game. That was the game where a 49er defense said they knew what plays the Bills were doing but just had no idea how to stop them. To choose one, the 3rd TD drive was 11 plays, only one third down right at the beginning of the drive. Even when they had a 2nd and 18, it felt like it was just a formality until they got the TD.

Nagy and Pace are in a do or die season. Any draft choices they get in a trade will be made by another GM/coach without Mack.

The article also says he purchased a 6.5M condo on the Gold Coast in March. Since this is a Chicago paper I assume they mean Chicago`s Gold Coast and most likely Mack would just rather live in the city than the suburbs.