dave mcbride

? - i don't understand your post. Which 12 individuals are you referring to?

That's the thing. Gordon is going to have options. I can't imagine the Bills will be high on his list -- i mean, i have to think he's had his fill of Lake Erie-adjacent snowbelt cities.

Are you ready to put that on your tombstone? Because it's sheer madness for them to not trade him. They're going to be getting a pick at around the 97 slot and nothing else for him, and that team is going to lose a minimum of 12 games this year.

How about multiple year-long suspensions and a long excused absence during a stretch run? You've gotta do better than that.

The Bills said they weren't trading Shady. It'd be crazy for the Bengals to NOT trade him. I mean, that's bonkers. I mean, it's football 101 to know you can't trust what teams say about a players trade-ability. Anyway, a starting WR corps of Green, Brown, and Beasley would be a fricking great group - a player for every level. A fast, tall, elite athlete who can high point and catch the 50/50 throws. A burner with good hands, excellent quicks, and good route running. And a slot guy with great short area quickness who gets open.

No mystery! I've said it elsewhere - AJ Green is my guy. I love him and think he's probably healthy. Obviously, I don't know for sure, but he had an ankle issue, and those don't last 4 months.

read the thread about the Tim Graham interview. Beane says they are looking for a culture fit. They kept Zay because they spent a high second on him.

I want to trade before the trade deadline. Not after. Getting someone sooner is better anyway - there's a time dimension to consider that brings in the law of diminishing returns. Getting that player up to speed in our complicated offense takes time, and there's 10 games to play. The Bills need to win most of those.

He may be the nicest guy in the world, but just last season he failed to fulfill his obligations because of personal problems and wasn't there for the SB run when the offense needed him. I have nothing against him; I just think that the Bills as an organization tend to steer clear of these folks. Building a particular type of "culture" necessarily means putting a fence around it to keep certain types out. He was a nobody -- a CFL flier picked up in the summer for whom they had no expectations. Not remotely comparable to competing against other NFL teams in the midst of a playoff run. As for AB, I think that if anything, they're going to be more gun-shy about problem players after that circus. Note that they jettisoned the one guy with some personal issues (Zay). Of course, he's not any good either.

You need to consider the opportunity cost though. I'd rather that they focus on trading a pick or picks for a more sure thing than Gordon. He's not gonna want to come to Buffalo anyway, I suspect. If Buffalo -- a team that's allergic to head cases -- is interested, that basically means that others will be too.

I can't imagine the Bills being in on him. The chance that he ends up being a headache/problem is 50 percent at least.

Gase is just awful. Such a bad leader of men. I will be surprised if he lasts past this season. There are already rumors that he's not a Darnold guy (and actually, he apparently loved Allen coming out), and at the end of the day, Darnold is more important to that team's future than Gase.

The Bengals will get a late 3rd round pick if they simply let him walk -- because he's a FA!! There is no contract to take on because you're only paying for half a season with no bonus--that's it. Sanders has actually had a shockingly good career.

Good post. What I think that the system really doesn't really account for is coaching acumen in close games (and there are always a lot of close games -- just ask Belichick). A really good team can dominate most games and still go 8-8. I don't think that who wins close games in the aggregate comes down to a series of coin flips (in the probabilistic sense). For instance, the 2017 Bills were a bad team talent wise and still went 9-7 because they were situationally good in a lot of close games while getting blown in games in which they were overmatched. I even think that their record last year was a product of coaching because in reality they could have easily been a 3-13 team given the abysmal talent on offense. In contrast, Dan Quinn (for instance) has overseen some excellent teams in terms of talent and never gotten beyond 11-5 (plus he lost to an overmatched Bills team in 2017 by blowing a playcall near the goal line late -- the Bills only had 10 men on the field and he decided to pass it on a fairly easy run play). Atlanta has lost a bunch of close games in the past couple of seasons, and I think any reasonable observer would say that they probably have had more talent than the Bills. That has to be on coaching. Indeed, losing to NE in a game they had in the bag in the SB says it all. Passing from the 20 yard line instead of running and settling for a FG that would have won the game (and with a kicker who was perfect up to that point) was a TERRIBLE decision. Another example: SD handing it off last week to Melvin Gordon on the final play after he fumbled and recovered it the previous play (nullifying a TD). He then fumbles it AGAIN and possibly loses it (TN got the call, but it was murky), but even if he hadn't fumbled it, he hadn't gotten in, and since they were out of timeouts,the game would have ended despite there being about 20-25 seconds on the clock when the play started. You have got to try a couple of passes there and only run for it when that fails. It'll give you three shots instead of one, which increases your odds of actually punching it in. And moreover, handing it off to a guy who was shaky on the previous play probably wasn't wise. SD was the better team in that game, and they lost. With regard to the Bills this season, I do think he's sort of right about the flukiness of the kicking, but then again the Jets' coaching staff made an organizational decision to let a solid kicker go before the season began and settle for a bad one. The TN game was genuinely fluky, though, because Santos had been a decent kicker.

This story is about as Jets-y as it can get. https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/10/23/sam-darnold-jets-patriots-ghost-game-butt-fumble

I really like his upside. The talent is real.

Once again, with real picks. Same as before, but trading, say, the 23rd pick for a couple of seconds or a second and two thirds (or something like that). I'm not hung up on having a first next year if Green can help us win a freaking playoff game. Of course, this probably won't happen. If I'm GB, I'm besting whatever the Bills have to offer. They're that close.

Doh! Yes, of course. Too many years of drafting between 9 and 12 has done that to me!

For those who don't like Schatz, you'll love this quote! http://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2019/week-7-dvoa-ratings Combine all three phases of the game, and the Bills hold steady at No. 21 in the DVOA ratings. That's not where we normally find a 5-1 team. How bad is it? The Bills are officially the worst 5-1 team in DVOA history. I addressed Buffalo's playoff odds a couple weeks ago in the DVOA commentary, but let's talk about how they've managed to go 5-1 despite such a poor DVOA rating. First, the schedule. Only New England has played an easier schedule so far, and only New England plays an easier schedule over the course of the entire season. (Based on current ratings, the Patriots and Bills are projected to play two of the five easiest schedules we've ever tracked.) Second, for some reason opposing kickers seem totally unable to kick against the Bills this year. Bills opponents are 2-of-8 on field goals, with only one of those blocked by the Bills. They've also missed two extra points. Two of their wins, over the Jets and Titans, can be directly tied to missed kicks by the other team. I thought I would go back and look at the previous worst 5-1 teams by DVOA. They're interesting because two of them eventually made it to the Super Bowl. WORST 5-1 TEAMS BY DVOA, 1986-2019 Year Team DVOA Rk Final W-L Final DVOA Final Rk Playoffs 2019 BUF -5.4% 21 -- -- -- -- 1991 DET -2.2% 16 12-4 -1.2% 17 Won division, lost AFC CG 1998 ATL -1.9% 18 14-2 18.8% 7 Won division, lost SB 2015 ATL -1.6% 14 8-8 -16.3% 26 No 2003 CAR 0.1% 18 11-5 0.6% 16 Won division, lost SB 1987 SD 0.2% 16 5-7 (8-7) -19.7% 25 No 1996 IND 0.5% 18 9-7 -12.2% 22 Wild card, lost WC 2014 ARI 0.6% 15 11-5 -6.4% 22 Wild card, lost WC 1987 MIN 4.4% 13 8-4 (8-7) 1.3% 12 Wild card, lost NFC CG 2004 MIN 4.9% 11 8-8 -8.1% 20 Wild card, lost DIV 2011 DET 4.9% 15 10-6 10.1% 11 Wild card, lost WC 1988 NO 5.2% 12 10-6 4.1% 12 No The most interesting team here is the 1998 Atlanta Falcons. That Falcons start was in some ways similar to this Bills start. The first six 1998 Falcons opponents had an average DVOA of -17.4% after Week 7, the easiest schedule in the league that year. There was nobody as bad as this year's Dolphins, but that included the No. 26 Saints, the No. 29 Eagles, and two games against the No. 27 Panthers. The only good team the Falcons played early was San Francisco, which ranked No. 5 after seven weeks. That was also Atlanta's only loss. Those 1998 Falcons aso had a kooky game with the Panthers in Week 5 in which they were outgained on average, 6.1 yards to 4.8 yards, and yet they won 51-23. Both teams threw two interceptions but Carolina also fumbled five times, and lost four of them. Atlanta only fumbled once, and recovered their own fumble. Through six games, the Falcons were gaining 5.4 yards per play and giving up 5.6 yards per play. Then they got slaughtered by the Jets, 28-3 in Week 8. After that, they turned things on. From Week 9 until the end of the season, the Falcons gained 6.2 yards per play and gave up only 4.6 yards per play. Atlanta's total DVOA from Week 9 onwards was 37.9%. So while the Falcons' 5-1 start was similar to the 2019 Bills' 5-1 start, it's unlikely the Bills will suddenly become one of the league's best teams and go 9-1 over their final ten games. Taking advantage of an easy schedule is a general trend here. For example, the 1991 Lions ranked 24th out of 28 teams in schedule strength after six games which is kind of crazy since they started the season with a 45-0 loss to the best team in DVOA history, the 1991 Washington Redskins. But their other early opponents ranked 17, 22, 23, 25, and 28 as of Week 6. The 2015 Falcons were 24th in schedule after Week 6. They also were similar to Buffalo in that opponents had terrible luck on field goals. 2015 Falcons opponents were 6-of-11 on field goals through Week 6, with all those misses coming indoors. The 2003 Panthers were a little different. Unlike these other teams, Carolina didn't take advantage of an easy schedule. At least, they didn't in the early part of the year. Carolina ranked tenth in schedule strength after six games, but dead last in future schedule strength, which helps explain why they kept winning all year despite having a DVOA that hovered near 0.0%. Carolina's 5-1 start included four wins by less than a touchdown including two in overtime. By the end of the season, they ended up finishing 9-3 in one-score games. The 1998 Falcons are obviously a huge outlier, but most of these teams didn't get much better over the course of the season. Yet many of them made the playoffs thanks to their 5-1 starts. And the Bills might too.

I was about to say that the Chargers are still in it given a weak AFC and the fact that they're better than their record, but in their next 9 games, they face GB, Chicago, Minnesota, and KC twice. They get a late third (around pick 100) if they let him walk. If they trade him, they'll get more than that.

Just thinking out loud here: the Bills have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 2 5ths, and 3 6ths next year (9 picks in all). Let's assume for a second that the Bills pick between 9-12 (WC team). I'd consider trading a 2nd, a 5th, and a 6th for him with the expectation that you can move that ~10 overall pick for a late first and a late second. There are always teams that want to move up. That's a plausible outcome, and still leaves the Bills with 7 picks and one in every round except 7.

My hunch is that he's basically fine right now and not playing because the Bengals really are trying to get a haul for him. His contract ends at the end of this season, and he is NOT going to re-sign with Cincy. It's basically move him now for a really good pick or two or hang on to him and get a late third for him in the next draft. I can't think they're that dumb to not move him.

If I were GB, I'd trade a 2nd and 3rd for Green (and possibly a first only). They are really good this season, and in my opinion one elite receiver away from being unstoppable on offense. With Rodgers, it's all about winning a SB NOW. You don't think about next year.

A low third. They can do better than that, though, provided he's healthy. He's an elite player still.

It's a dereliction of duty for the Bengals to not move him, but they're a bad organization, so who knows?