Billy Claude

My response was that you said that the fact that the Ravens are favorites in the AFC was debatable. They have two more wins than any other team in the AFC. They play in the toughest division in the NFL (all teams are a least 500) and they have a point differential of +210 which is 77 higher than #2 (Bills at +133). They might now make the Super Bowl but there is no realistic debate about who is favorite. On your question of whether the Ravens would prefer the Bills or Steelers -- I doubt that they think that far ahead. The Steelers always play them tough. Pittsburgh was one of the three teams to beat them this year (17-10), was 1-1 against the Ravens last year (14-16 and 16-13) and 2-0 against the Ravens in 2021 (20-19 and 16-13) and frankly, the Steelers have played better than the Bills the last two weeks.

Everything is debatable but it wouldn't be a very long debate.

The most likely scenario for the Saudis to get involved with the football is for them to simply buy a NFL team like they have done with Newcastle United in the Premier League (or how other Arab money own PSG and Manchester City). The Chargers would actually be a good target for purchase. The only issue is that they will have a more difficult time winning due to the NFL salary cap versus the easily skirted UEFA Financial Fair Play rules. The NFL also has rules against owning multiple teams so they would need to do it with front companies/institutions to own more than one team to increase influence. I don't think they would want a team in Saudi Arabia, but they certainly have had no issues getting soccer players to do their retirement tour in Riyadh instead of the US (with Messi being the notable exception).

I think Gruden is using it in the way the pitcher and catcher is called the battery in baseball, so yes "connection".

OK. Thanks.

I thought he didn't have to go through waivers since he is a seven year vet.

So what happened to Ifedi? Surprised that Miami or Cleveland didn't pick him up given all the injuries that they have experienced to their o-line.

I assume the Browns aren't there due to all the injuries on their offensive line. They have lost both starting tackles and their top backup tackle for the season. Their stats haven't been great, tied for 8th most sacks allowed (though one extra game) and 22nd in yards per rush.

You might be right that Zach can be reclaimed but I am not sure about the Tannehill comparison. The Jets certainly have mismanaged Zach Wilson badly but Tannehill actually had at least one pretty good year in Miami while Wilson has looked pretty bad the whole time in NY. The only improvement for Zach this year is that he appears to be the best of the Jets QBs (Boyle and Siemian) versus the worse of the Jets QBs last year (Flacco and White).

At the time teams didn't want the top picks due to the financial risk involved. Basically if you blew the pick, you were setback for years. Another advantage for New England while building their dynasty.

Rob Johnson was at another level bad, however -- 140 sacks on 806 attempts; a sack every 6.7 dropbacks not counting scrambles.

I was just looking at your data for this year. I agree that your 5 year data for the Bills supports that the Bills D has been bad at "save" situations.

The average save attempts per team looks to be about six. If you compare it to won/loss records, that would be similar to randomly taking a six game stretch of each team's season and using it for the final standings. The standings would definitely correlate with the overall season standings but there would also be a lot of differences.

I appreciate the effort but the problem with stats like this is that there is just not enough data points in a season to make it statistically meaningful.

If he wants people staying out of his business why does he bother posting at all? Clearly he wants people talking about him.

For what it's worth, Epenesa is not in PFF's list of top 100 free agents: https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-2024-free-agent-rankings-free-agency Three Bills are on the list, Floyd at 48th (1 yr $6M), Davis at 83th (1 yr $12M), and Jones at 90th (1 yr $6M), though PFF's contract projections seem pretty low.

Well a Rolex goes between 10K and 80K, so if we say 14 oline that would be between 140K and 1.1M. I assume he won't go with the cheapest one so it's not a huge percentage of his total income but at least noticeable. Maybe he will need to do a few more Pepsi commercials.

That would be quite a hit to the wallet, even for Allen. No wonder he said he started off too strong.

Trying to pull a Lovie Smith and sabotage the team on the way out? Of course didn't work out for Lovie.

Just curious. Who gets these? Just the starters? Starters + main subs? Any oline who has played a snap?

You often get an easier game as a 5th seed than as a third seed though you lose home field. Of course 5th seed is unlikely this year.

i repeat myself but people who think that it would kill Allen's game to reduce his turnovers a bit must think Allen is a real idiot who can't learn anything. He has already reduced fumbles from 13 last year to 4 this year. Is it too much to ask a 6 year vet to throw a few less interceptions?

There were riots in Rome but they were fairly rate. Pompeii was forbidden to have gladiatorial fight for 10 years due to riots. Riots were much more common at chariot races in Byzantium. The Nika riots in 532 led to the death of 30,000 people. Human beings have behaved like idiots for a long time,.

The comparison is with opposition kickers playing against the Bills so they kicking in the same playing conditions as Bass They have a 89% success rate against 85% for Bass. No, I am not going to spend time trying to parse it out by distance. There is zero evidence to believe that Bass is a better kicker at long distances than the NFL average kicker.

I don't agree with that. He is a good kicker (at least above average). He's just not anywhere close to the elite kicker that some people seem to believe he is.