dave mcbride

The Cardinals absolutely made the correct decision. Murray is clearly a lot better than Rosen. I was pretty unimpressed with Haskins. Sometimes a team just knows what it has, and is wise enough to abandon a sunk cost.

He missed multiple games. You have to separate out his games from the backups to get real accuracy numbers for tua.

I suspect Mariota. Brooklyn or just Manhattan?

Did Ruben quit on the team? I distinctly recall him being deactivated for the finale after he launched himself across the table to get at Gregg-o because he was so pissed off. He gets he-earned-the-right-to-his-aggro-freakout merit points from me for that, not he-quit-on-the-team demerit points!

Yes, always. I get far more satisfaction out of a Bills victory, even when 4-9, than the victory of a fantasy team.

Not true. She used to, but in 2018 made $10 million. This. I have had a fantasy team for years, and I ALWAYS root against players on my team when they play the Bills in real life. I do not have any sympathies for them because they are on my team; I actively root for them to fail. It's quite easy to do because I care far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, more about the Bills than my fantasy team.

@Hapless Bills Fan - you might like this recent book, which is on the long-term divide between scouts and number crunchers (albeit with a focus on baseball): https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691180212/scouting-and-scoring. That's at root what all of this about. More broadly, the rise of FO and PFF is really the knock-on effect of the amazingly successful career of Nate Silver, who has gone from projecting the 2008 TB Rays as a world series team because of his statistical projections to the famous data-based projection guru in the country today.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/02/20/bills-talk-up-the-potential-of-rugby-player-christian-wade/

I've always why a player who is as good as Diggs dropped to the fifth round. This is a decent explainer: https://247sports.com/college/maryland/Article/How-Did-Stefon-Diggs-Fall-to-Fifth-Round-of-NFL-Draft-47607699/. Diggs was one of the nation's rare five-star recruits coming out of high school. Didn't know that. He's a dedicatwed LOTR fan, so he's always gonna be cool in my book. Re: fear and numbers, to repeat, he was one of the best QBs in the league in 2019, and he buried the dagger late in the game against an elite Saints team on the road in the playoffs.

Kirk Cousins was statistically one of the best QBs in the NFL in 2019. His numbers were phenomenal, and the team won.

I just read the scouting reports from the time. They all generally say that he off-the-charts speed, but most expressed concern about his size in that they thought he couldn't put on weight and maintain his speed. Some saw him as a really dynamic #2/third down back. Still valuable, but the reports at the time did question whether he could be a horse. Elliott and Barkley both had reputations as guys who could handle very large loads. Another comp mentioned was Jahvid Best, who went 30th overall. He was also superfast (4.35) and quick as lightning, but his career never got off the ground because of injuries. EDIT: Best was even faster than I thought. He ran in the Olympics in the 100 for St. Lucia (he went out after his first heat which featured Usain Bolt as the winner), and his personal best in the 100 was 10.16.

Agreed, to an extent. Teams bet on talent in the first round, and he had talent to burn - a 4.27 40 time and a rep as a good receiver too. That said, I do think teams today tend to take RBs a little later, so I would say late first round. The best comps I can think of are Reggie Bush and a guy John Butler coveted - Leeland McElroy, who was the 32nd overall pick in 1996. He was a bust, but teams did love him coming out of Texas A & M. As for Bush, he had a pretty good career once you look past where he was drafted.

I am not saying Butler was a whiff at all. He was a great player when healthy.

You are forgetting Jerry Butler.

A 4th the next year, right? Picks with a delay of a year are devalued by a round in the league's draft pick trade calculus, so he was basically traded for a fifth.

Again, the actual number is irrelevant; all that matters is cap percentage that the player takes up. NFL team revenues have gone up a lot in recent years, and there is consistent revenue growth year upon year. Consequently, salary averages go up every year because the CBA mandates that a specified portion of overall revenue goes to player salaries. People get way, way, way too hung up on salary numbers. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ezekiel-elliott-is-not-worth-the-money-he-wants/

He sucks now, CB.

The team is 40-24 when he's the starter and has a lifetime rating of near 100. As for playoff losses that aren't the QB's fault, Prescott has played in 3 postseason games. The Cowboys won once and lost one in which Aaron Rodgers was absolutely out of his mind at the end of the game. The Cowboys' offense certainly played well enough to win that game. Their other loss was to a Rams team that made the SB. The Cowboys defense gave up 273 rushing yards and 459 total yards in that game. Lots of mythology in this thread ... Lots of uninformed fans, it seems ... The salary number is irrelevant - what matters is the percentage of the cap room that the player takes up. Salaries go up ever year in a multi-billion dollar league whose revenue grows every year. Don't get hung up on salary numbers.

Not in 2017, which is what he's referring to (the playoff season).

No.

This.

The Lions lost that game late because their kicker missed a makeable FG. That's always the story with that team - they always have one or more truly gaping flaws, whether it's no credible RB, a terrible secondary, no pass rush, etc. And when I say flaw, I'm talking worst-in-the-league sort of flaw at an important position/set of positions. It's always something, and that's the curse of that franchise. They get a truly elite player like Suh and let him walk. I mean, wtf? He was DOMINANT there, and has been excellent since he left. When he left, their excellent 2014 D (11-5 that season; robbed by Pete Morelli in the playoffs on call as bad as the NRC one) goes immediately into the tank. You think the Bills consistently make bad decisions regarding personnel and overall team building, but imagine being a Lions fan. And let's not forget their first round drafting. They did manage to get Stafford, Suh, and Calvin Johnson with top-2 selections, but when they draft outside the top two they're either taking duds or guards/centers. It's mystifying. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/det/draft.htm

I personally think he's very good but has simply played for a bad franchise. He's truly elevated that team at times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap

Bear in mind that Singletary missed basically 3 and half of the first seven games and that Yeldon fumbled on one of his few touches in the first game that Singletary was fully out (against Cincinnati). I don't think the coaching staff had much trust in Yeldon at all this past season, and he's an experienced receiver. Gore is a non-entity as a receiver, although he will catch the occasional dump-off when everyone else is covered.