Coach Tuesday

Beane generally has drafted high floor players, many at non-premium positions. It skews the overall results in his favor, because many of his draft picks are still in the league. But other than Allen he has yet to hit a grand slam at a premium position in the draft. Rousseau is trending that way. Oliver has been too inconsistent. Epenesa and Basham and Ford are trending toward busts. Elam is an unknown but still feels like a panic pick. He drafted one great offensive linemen and traded him away for peanuts. Other than that, he's drafted a bunch of serviceable players at non-premium positions who remain in the NFL. Straight down the fairway - except last year's draft, which was a disaster at the worst possible time. He needs to start hitting on high-ceiling premium players or the talent gap between the Bills and their rivals is going to widen.

Very nice work. My biggest quibble is what you’ve got going on with Atlanta and Carolina. The Falcons can’t risk the double-whammy of passing on one of the top QBs AND letting their division rival get him instead. That is GM suicide. There’ll likely be a trade up there so it’s probably moot but if not, that scenario seems impossible to me.

It’s one thing to compare the organizations but it’s insane to compare the players. Rivers was a trash-taking immobile anticipation thrower with a mid-range arm. How the hell is that Allen? Again - I loved watching Rivers play but it’s nothing like watching Allen play. Spanos is an aloof cash-poor owner. They had LT in his prime but never built a great offense around Phil. Defensive-minded coaches until Lynn came along. So maybe the organizations compare? This is a waste of a thread.

I like Rivers. Huge fan. Would be fine with it. If Rivers’ arm hadn’t fallen off he might’ve won a championship.

Death, taxes, and Beane throwing his second round pick in the garbage.

Curious why you think this? The only value FAs Beane has brought in have been on the o-line (D. Williams, for a minute) and D. Jones. That's it - every other free agent spend has been at the market high and/or a flop. They've actually done a TERRIBLE job in free agency.

He has been dropping these turds and closing the door going on a decade. Rarely defends the point he’s making, just waits a few days then drops another turd. And here I am, one of the flies.

Make it stop

Tuesday night is Pasta Night at Allen's Elbow.

I love when posters try to support a point they're making by describing how they've made the same point elsewhere. "I was just saying to my brother the other day ..." Hey that's great. I guess if you said it last year it must be etched in stone by now.

Good, Saffold should have no trouble swindling his next team with these accolades. Hopefully it's the Jets.

That was before the full legalization of sports betting.

That call was fine. But the calls were totally one-sided all night.

Both games today featured horribly inept officiating. Not that the league cares. It’s going to take a huge error, in the spotlight, and it will have to be Congress forcing the league to act.

Coaching is a symptom of the owners’ level of expectations.

No offense taken. I wasn’t a fan of the draft at the time. They needed help at premium positions and they got none.

Elam was a healthy scratch for much of the year and they didn't deploy him to his strengths. Cook is a pass-catching back who caught 21 passes all season. Bernard can't play football and doesn't play a premium position anyhow. Healthy scratch. Shakir was barely used. Benford spent a lot of time out of the lineup. Arazia and Tenuta are not on the team anymore. Spector was inactive all year. They did not get a single useful impact from a single pick. They failed meaningfully to address o-line or WR or TE. It was a garbage draft.

Beane basically threw all of their 2022 draft picks in the garbage. It was a horrible draft at the worst possible time - they're gonna need the cheap labor reinforcements with Allen's cap hit going up, but they're not on the roster.

Coincidentally or not his brother is the exact same type of player, with the same issues, for Pittsburgh.

I want

I’m really curious about their pro personnel evaluation process, including their own self-scouting - who is in charge of it, whether the coaches have input (and how much), etc. They have a really tough time getting it right at a variety of key positions (but not others, like cornerback). They need to figure out why and effing fix it.

The thing is - at this point I’d take the occasional late coverage read or getting blown off his cleats at the point of attack if he made up for it with the occasional splash play like a sack, INT or fumble recovery. Just deploy the guy like a weapon more and let his length and athleticism create havoc, would make up a bit for his lack of instincts. This year was probably his “ceiling” as a pure off-ball backer, we’ve now seen it, it’s fine but his athleticism is being wasted with the lack of aggressiveness and creativity in his usage.

Come on. Link or go away.

IF all of that is true, he’ll quickly deteriorate like Big Ben did.

This debate of yours is going to kill us civilians with boredom.