Billy Claude

Thanks for the very thoughtful discussion. I see your point on Cook but 13 rush attempts is not much but he did seem to run the same play a lot. In contrast, Allen's pass attempt numbers serve as evidence that Brady did adapt game to game though of course game situation matters: NYJ 32, PHI 51, KC 42, DAL 15, SD 21, NE 30, MIA 38, PIT 30, KC 39 He clearly adapted the game plan for the Dallas defense and then tried the same thing against the Chargers but it didn't work. Defintiely not sold on Brady yet but at least he finished strong with a coherent game plan against the Chiefs.

I did not remove the special team and defensive touchdowns. My feeling is with such a limited data set, removing too much would make it hard to draw any relevant conclusions. Also, I feel that the offense was actually doing fairly well in the Jets game until all the interceptions happen. In any case, if you pick and choose what to remove, you can come to any conclusion one wants. The only reason why I split Dorsey's games into 4/6 is because I felt that those 6 games were what people are comparing to when they say Brady was much better than Dorsey. I agree. The offense was still up and down even with Brady as OC. I was expecting the Bills to roll over the Chargers and Patriots in must win games and that obviously didn't happen. The defense was also inconsistent, they should have ate up the Chargers and Patriots backups QBs. I agree. A lot of the improvement in the offense came about because Allen was running so much more under Brady than Dorsey. I don't know if want to have Allen running so much except in must win games. One thing I liked about Brady is that he did seem to be more willing to adjust game to game than Dorsey was. Another cause for confidence is that the offense was very effective in the playoffs against the Chiefs. The Miami game, the Bills dominated. I have no criticism of how they played against the Dolphins. Sometimes you are just unlucky. Crap happens. Almost every team goes through lulls. The Bills seem to last longer but maybe it only feels that way because we are more personally invested. In any case, I agree that we don't know how Brady is going to do this coming season. I am pretty neutral. When Daboll left, most people expressed a lot of confidence in Dorsey and many thought he was going to be an upgrade. There is some disconnect between Beane and the OC (or perhaps its Allen) about pass catching running backs. Beane has been signing pass catching RBs since he got here, from TJ Yeldon onwards. However, the Bills offense has steadfastly refused to use them. Definitely not happy that the success of the Bills offense might need to have four receivers (Kincaid, Samuel, Shakir and Coleman) exceeding their production in any previous season. In Coleman's case, this might mean exceeding his college production. There was a few posts from last off-season saying that the Bills receiving corp would be the best ever because Sherfleld, and Hardy were going to have career years since they would be working with Allen and Dorsey would have more experience. Seems deja vu.

Obviously this is an very inexact art and different trade charts will give different conclusions. I used the Hill chart because someone had mentioned it as highly respected. My point was that almost no one complained about this trade two years ago and now, seven years after the fact, suddenly they are. That is what I find nonsensical, not the point value according to one chart or another.

Not sure if you were being sarcastic but I was interested in how the trade graded. Based on the 2024 Hill chart and using GunnerBill's valuing of next year's pick as being in the 16th spot of the next round: Kansas City get #10 = 369 points, Buffalo gets #27 (216 pts), #91 (44 pts), and 1st RD following year #48 (121 pts) = 381 points so a +12 in the Bills favor. I was not on the message board but I don't remember any of the talking heads saying if was a bad deal for the Bills at the time. Even two years ago, most Bills fans would do the trade again if given the opportunity. Those criticizing the trade 7 years after the fact are being nonsensical.

I am impressed with the effort you made in your analysis and I am also concerned that about how well Allen's skillset and mindset fits the short game spread the ball around philosophy. To address a slightly different but related question, I think that the reason why people feel that "eye-test" shows that the offense improved with Brady is that they are not comparing Brady with Dorsey's entire 10 games 2023 season but just with Dorsey's last six games. They are also looking the the performance of the whole team, not just the offense. If we just look at a few team metrics: Dorsey (first 4 games only): 391.0 yards per game, 34:18 time of possesion, 34.75 points per game (overtime data removed) Dorsey (last 6 games only): 344.8 YPG, 26:50 TOP, 20.5 PPG Dorsey(all 10 games): 363.3 YPG, 29:49 TOP, 26.2 YPG Brady (7 games): 373.1 YPG 34:30 TOP, 26.6 PPG (overtime data removed) You can see the teams metrics were significantly better under Brady compared to the last six games of Dorsey's tenure. Is this a fair way to make the comparison? Maybe not; Allen was fighting thru an injury during some of Dorsey's last games and there is often an unsustainable bump when a new coach comes in. Also the metrics used here are not completely offense and Dorsey's TOP numbers are strongly affected by the defense having just lost Milano and White. However, they are the stats (besides W-L) that leave the strongest impression with viewers. As often is the case with a small data set, one can support different narratives using reasonable arguments to exclude or include different parts of the data. However, basically the same thing happened in 2022 where the offense looked unstoppable at the beginning of the season and then very out of joint at the end of the season.

Marino and Kelly both took the Wonderlic before anyone took it seriously. It is possible they just went through it as fast as possible. Pat McInally (Harvard and Bengals punter from the late 70s and early 80s) got a perfect grade of 50 on it and was later told that some teams passed on him because they thought he was too smart and would always be questioning the coaches. In any case, I could imagine that people get lower grades on the Wonderlich than before since the last version I saw had a lot of mental math and there's not as much reason for people to do that kind of calculation in their heads these days.

Thanks for that. I never parsed it out that carefully. So he build his reputation by being elite for effectively one season out of four.

Yes, definitely agree. In this case the Bills wanted to move down as much as the Chiefs wanted to move up so the net of zero points made sense.

It looks like the team trading up pays more points than they get about 2/3 of the time. This makes sense since a team will only trade up if there is a particular player that they want and so has more incentive to make the trade than the team trading down. Based on that it is slightly bad but certainly not one of the worse 8n 20 years as claimed by Walder.

Makes a lot of sense. I am surprised that at least state police doesn't already have a way to enforce this.

I couldn't recall the exact numbers but I would say that qualifies as above average especially if you give him a small bump for weather conditions. I'm on your side in this discussion. I have never understood people calling him elite.

I think he was between 10th and 15th rank kicker each year so above average is an accurate classification. I never understood the Bassamatic business.

More accurately, he was performing as an above average kicker until last year.

It seems highly doubtful that the KC/Buff trade was one of the 10 cheapest first round trade ups in 20 years. I went back three years and the KC trade-up was the 7th cheapest (out of 19) so in about the 30th percentile. Here is the data in case anyone wants to dive in. Only trades involving only draft picks were assessed. All points totals are based on the 2024 Rich Hill trade chart and picks in a future year are evaluated at the highest point value for the next round for 2024 year, i.e., a third round pick in 2025 is given the same point value as the first pick of the 4th round of the 2024 draft. The same was done if a third round pick in the 2024 draft was obtained in the 2023 draft (independent of where the pick actually occurred). The +/- is the points gained by the team trading down. Teams trading down and obtaining less value than the trading up team are in boldface. 2024 MIN (gets 10, 203 => 374 pts), NYJ (gets 11, 129, 157 => 387) +13 MIN (17=>296), JAX (23, 167, RD 3, RD 4=>304) +8 DET (24, RD 7 => 238), DAL (29, 73 => 267) + 29 KC (28, 133, 248 => 227), BUF (32. 95. 221 => 227) +0 CAR (32, 200 => 189), BUF (33, 141 => 194) +5 2023 TEX (3, 105 => 546), ARI (12, 33, RD1, RD3 => 741) +195 (the large value indicates that I am most likely overvaluing future year picks) ARI (6, 81 => 501), DET (12. 34. 168 => 531) +30 PHI (9 => 387), CHI (10, RD 4 => 385) -2 PIT (14 => 325), NE (17, 120 => 319) -6 NYG (24 => 237), JAX (25, 160, 240 => 242) +5 BUF (25 => 230), JAX (27, 130 => 234) +4 2022 NO (11 => 368), WAS (16, 98, 120 =>365 ) -3 DET (12, 46 => 475), MIN (32. 34, 66 => 435 ) -40 NO (16, 18, 194 => 589), PHI (18, 101, RD 1, RD 2 => 581) -8 PHI (13 => 336), TEX (15, 124, 162, 166 => 355) +19 KC (21 => 261), NE (29, 94, 121 => 266) +5 BUF (23 => 245), BAL (25, 130 -> 248) +3 NYJ (26, 101 => 257), TEN (35, 69, 163 => 251) -6 JAC (27 => 216), TB (33, 106, 180 => 220) +4 You can see two outliers, the 2022 Lions tradeup with the Vikings in which Minnesota lost 40 points and the Texan tradeup with Arizona where Arizona gained 195 points. The latter may have been because I was valuing future picks too highly. In any case, it appears that the Bills Chief trade is still in the main portion of the distribution.

Sam Martin has been in the league 11 years. If he was horrible at holding he would have been out of the league a long time ago.

Slight exaggeration but possibly since 2019? That is, unless a bunch of best case scenarios occur and addition by subtraction really applies.

If they got one Chris Jones/TJ Watt type game changer out of all that investment it would probably have been enough for the Bills to win a Super Bowl. So at least partially, it was a matter of execution rather than philosophy.

It looks like they only had three in 2023 also (Allen, Allen & Barkley) and 2022 (Allen, Keenum & Barkley) also.

The Jets obviously feel there are enough snaps to go around. They are bringing five QBs to camp: Rodgers, Taylor, and rookies Jordan Travis, Andrew Peasley (Wyoming) and Colby Suits (UL-Monroe).

Not saying there backup qb wasn't horrible, just that a lot of posts seem to imply the backup played most of the season when Travis actually played a cast majority of the games.

Well, then you should have been more specific. After all, there appears to be many posters that regard the Bills as a dysfunctional organization with everyone under the iron micromanaging fist of Sean McDermott.

There are plenty of examples, though they don't tend to last long. For example, Adam Gase was clearly unhappy when Mike Maccagnan was making picks during the first year Gase was with the Jets and Gase got Woody Johnson to fired Maccagnan almost immediately afterwards. The same with Rex Ryan and Mike Idzik before them. Idzik wanted to rebuild and Ryan wanted to pick for need and eventually Idzik was fired.

Coleman also said on one of the videos that he regarded being at Michigan State as a two year sentence and that he was a southern boy at heart. Not sure what he will feel about Buffalo in November, December and January. Folks blaming the backup QB at Miami are talking like Jordan Travis missed half the season. Travis played 10.5 games. He only missed 2.5 games that Coleman played in (Coleman did not play in the Orange Bowl).

I enjoyed the comment from Coleman to Carter that they never saw the way Duke was playing him before and Carter responding with that Duke changed their defense every week. I guess it is easier to do that at Duke. It does seem the Bills put a high weight on intelligence and perhaps that was why they didn't that Leggette if the rumors were true. I regard most of the criticism of McDermott as nonsense but the one that I feel is valid is that he doesn't adapt his defense for the opponent but basically plays the same defense all the time This was the same issue with Dorsey when he was OC.

I appreciate the response. Actually Johnson was remarkably consistent. He was sacked once every 6.5 dropbacks after he left the Bills also. I think the best comp for Rob Johnson is Zach Wilson. All the skill in the world but just didn't know how to play QB. I will have to check this but I seem to remember the Bills signing Flutie before trading for Johnson. I think that was one of the reasons why Flutie was so pissed from the beginning. Definitely agree that the Bills were desperate, also I guess that Johnson also looked very good in preseason games, though so did Nathan Peterman. Definitely also agree that Flutie was not good that season before the Titans playoff game.