dave mcbride

Great post. Goff is not a bad qb at all — just not perfect. However, McVay’s semi-shameless lobbying for genius status and his tendency to lay the blame at Goff’s feet is what drives the narrative. It’s not what I’d call an accurate one.

Goff is not bad at all. He’s just not great. He’s immediately the second best qb in the division in my opinion.

I am pretty sure he played more snaps than any d-lineman in the league this year. In fact, I’m almost certain. I’m not advocating the move, mind you. Check out the snap counts. They are ridiculously high for a DE. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WattJ.00.htm

Good post, but my sense is that this is a pretty bad draft for edge rushers. I’m down for a good corner, however. You can never have enough of them in today’s NFL.

The first half counts just as much as the second half! In the first half, TB had 226 yards, no three and outs, and 21 points all legitimately fueled by offense.

$8 million for the Bills, $12 million for Philly. The Bills wouldn’t be on the hook for any prorated bonus. $8 million is a lot, but it’s all salary and can easily be restructured. https://overthecap.com/player/zach-ertz/112/ He is grrwt at finding open spaces in zones. Great, great route runner. Knox is very talented physically, but he plays the game like a WR and doesn’t do what the Kelces and Ertzes are so good at doing.

Enh. They got beat by a far better team. Trying to jam Tyreek Hill is the epitome of stupid.

Even if he didn’t score, he would have gotten to the 2 yard line. I basically agree with you, but there is this too: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/202001190sfo.htm. The Niners sliced and diced the GB defense in the previous NFC championship game, and GB had no answers. It might be a case of “I need a coordinator who can do better against elite teams in the biggest games, because we’ll be there next year too given our terrible division.” Just a thought.

The one caveat about Brown is that he basically had a leg injury for most of the season, and it clearly hampered him. Will he fully recover? If so, I'd keep him. I still remember people here griping about Robert Woods in 2016, and then after the season we find out that he played at least half of it with a torn groin. We said "Sayonara," and whaddaya know -- it healed just fine, and he's a borderline elite player. People overreact to injuries; they're part of the deal in the NFL. To be sure, some players are actually injury prone for various reasons. But in his seven seasons, Brown has played at least 15 games in 5 of them (and 9 and 10 in the other 2). In the NFL, that qualifies as "generally healthy and not injury prone." I'd definitely keep him for camp and see how he's doing, but if they're dead set on dumping him, Beane isn't a wait-for-June-1 kind of GM.

Good info on the Moore comp! Moore was always kind of an ideal backup - the guy that gets you to 2-2 when the starting QB has a separated shoulder or a hamstring injury. PS - this is a good read too if you haven't seen it yet: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/how-davis-webb-has-become-the-most-intriguing-qb-prospect-in-the-nfl-draft/

I’m a bigger believer in Webb than Fromm simply because he has more physical talent. He impressed me in the Cal games I watched too. The Bills did talk him up late in the season, and maybe that was for a reason. Edit: Not a bad read: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/how-davis-webb-has-become-the-most-intriguing-qb-prospect-in-the-nfl-draft/

Beane was hired literally ten days after the draft, which means conversations were well underway beforehand and most likely well before the draft. Agreed. He’s going to surprise the dime-a-dozen folks.

I get the numbers; I’m referring to the eyeball test. He regularly breaks tackles and gets positive yardage, is clearly tough, and has good vision. He’s not a speedster, but he’s fast enough. As for his counting stats, he spent most of the season as the number 2, although by late in the season he seemed to be the primary back.

Yes, misinformed. Watson was a booster of Saleh. Actually, the Palmer situation is very similar, and it worked out great for Palmer, who had a late career renaissance after escaping from the tire fire that is the Bengals. My money is on Watson never playing a down for Houston again. People don’t realize how much value guys like watson place on winning.

@MAJBobby in his analyses nailed it I think: Edmunds doesn’t guess because his physical talent is so freakish that he doesn’t think he has to. It had always worked for him before because he was more athletic than anyone else on the field. Hence he plays in a reactive way because he has been hardwired to think he can catch up, but in the nfl that effectively means that he plays tentatively. If he guessed and attacked more, there would be more bigger plays (and more misses, but that’s possibly a price worth paying). He has to learn not to be reactive and trust in his superior physical talent because everyone is good in the nfl. @MAJBobby surmised that AJ Klein’s improvement stems almost entirely from him resorting to guessing, which makes sense to me. Let’s say he has a very good game (3 sacks) as opposed to a ridiculous game. 10.5 sacks is still more than any Bill since Mario Williams.

He was only pedestrian because he tore his groin in the sixth game of the 1996 season. He was never the same again. He was dominating for the first 6 games of 1996. It was injury, not one-dimensionality, that brought him down.

Yup, and the 4th and 3 one is more makeable. On that one, KC has to guard both the sticks and the end zone. That's tougher to do.

He changed position, and turned out to be excellent at that new position. Whether he's versatile or not, he makes plays. I remember when GB let Paup go, and the word out of GB was that he was too "one-dimensional." After he tore up the league in 1995, I remember Ron Jaworski saying, "yeah, he's got one dimension, and that dimension is 'great.'"

To be fair, not so long ago you were arguing that Allen is better than Mahomes. He's not (it's not even debatable, actually, so people shouldn't try), but that's OK. He's still a great player.

It was a package deal. They blamed Peters for being overweight, they blamed him for JP getting sacked vs the Jets, they blamed him for holding out, they blamed him for not liking the fact that the Bills gave him a RT contract and then immediately moving him to LT, etc. etc. I lived through it. Calling @PromoTheRobot...

Fans HATED Peters for years here. I suspect some still do. It was irrational, but it was definitely a thing.

I feel like I can say with some confidence that JJ Watt will not be playing for the Bills in 2021.

I dunno. I think it's probably more a story of a talented player finally learning how to play the game and thus pushing himself to an elite level. Guys do actually improve with experience. Also, it's not as if he's out there chasing one final contract.

Yeah, these numbers are all over the place. ESPN has him at 8. Who really knows? PFR is my go-to site, but I can't say with any certainty that they're better on this stat than others.

I definitely remember that! Re taking sacks, I remember when Rob Johnson started and was the most sacked qb in the league (indeed, he still holds the record for sack percentage), and then Flutie comes in and gets sacked 4 percent of the time (and the Bills start winning). So often it's on the QB, and they don't get enough blame for it. It's not as if the Bills' o-line is super talented. Allen's decision-making and ability to process quickly drastically improved this season.