dave mcbride

Agreed about the sorry history of Bills TEs (although my old next door neighbor Ernie Warlick was genuinely good in the 60s). My most vivid memory of listening to games on the radio in the late 70s was Van Miller saying, “Ferguson, back to pass ... he throws to Gant ... and it is dropped.” It seemed to happen every goddamn week. The Bills’ best TE of all time in the NFL era was McKeller (who was genuinely good), but he was just too injured. He never fulfilled the promise he showed because of it. If Norwood makes that kick, McKeller’s shoe-string catch on that drive becomes legend.

I think Bills fans often forget that even good players drop passes at critical moments all of the time across the league. Brady’s third quarter INT against KC in the AFC championship gmae went right through Edelman’s hands, and the near game killer (avoided because of Dee Ford) went right through Gronk’s hands. All receivers make drops, so we should build into our expectations the fact that they *will* occasionally happen for every receiver. That’s why I’m never gonna be hard on a receiver if he doesn’t make genuinely tough catch (and christ, zay jones dropped a markedly easier one at the 7 yard line a couple of plays before, although he was interefered with and it wasn’t called). The problem with Clay is that he had butterfingers on easier throws a little bit too much for my liking. But that game ender vs. Miami? Unh unh. I don’t put that on his ledger.

You know my take on this — that was not a good throw and it was far from an easy catch. It was a great scramble by Allen, but please, let’s not go down that road again of assuming that this a drop of a nice pass. I’m not a fan of Clay, mind you; he was too hampered by injuries to ever be the dynamic sort of player they hoped they’d be getting.

Designed runs includes kneel downs, right?

I forgot where I read it, but the writer pointed to Flacco's strong performance in 2014, when Baltimore ran a Kubiak/Shanahan system. Statistically it was the second best season of his career. He played very well against NE in that playoff game, but of course Baltimore choked ...

One other thing, Alpha: if we're gonna count his lucky breaks, we need to count the supremely unlucky ones too. I give you Lee Evans with a Billy Cundiff chaser. They should have won the SB that year.

I counted 182 pass attempts, not 181, but more importantly, those sacks should count as dropbacks too - he was sacked 7 times in 189 dropbacks, which equals 3.7 percent. It's 3.8 percent via the other method , but either way, that's really good for a Bills QB. You're sorta misleading about Fitz, however. He had a 3.7 rate for a full season in 2011. We're comparing small sample sizes here, so I think a season-only measure is better than a full career. (Fitz had the lowest sack rate in the league in 2015 for the Jets - 3.3 percent). Flutie had a great 3.3 rate in 1998, which just shows how much more field awareness he had than Sackmagnet Johnson.

That comment was from two years ago, not last season. The situation has changed, to say the least, given what transpired last season. He performed poorly, was benched, was outperformed by his successor, and will be 30 in August. Assuming he's not a stupid person - and he's not - he's likely envisioning a future in which gets paid as an NFL backup for another 5-6-7 years. That's good money and a good job to have. He's never been anything but cautious and a team player (going back the Baltimore, where he was universally liked) despite what some of the more unreasonable people on this board seem to believe.

I don't think that's true. What's your evidence for that claim?

My guess is he now knows that that ship has sailed.

Taylor is a better QB than RG III and -- more importantly -- a much better runner at this point given the leg injuries to the latter. He's a better fit for that offense.

Because, as I've said ad infinitum, this board has a lot of NFL fans? Sheesh, man. Stop with this sort of stuff. You're better than that.

The defense is really good (5th overall in defensive DVOA), and it is the case that they have not one but two elite DEs. Moreover, Fangio is a very good defensive coach. So they could surprise next year and get to 10 wins (11 max in my opinion, though--the division is very tough outside of Oakland).

It wasn't that awful, and they did put up 28 points up til then against a good D. Note that he's about to be hit on his throwing arm as he releases it, and that affected the throw. It was desperation time and he made a play in tough circumstances. Was it a perfect throw? No, but consider the context. https://www.baltimoreravens.com/video/can-t-miss-play-jacoby-jones-70-yard-td-catch-9347455-old

Huh?? That tells me nothing. The Ravens had no receivers the year before, and in any event no way no how are Brissett, Prescott, and Tyrod Taylor better deep throwers than, say, Roethlisberger or Matthew Stafford. I mean, come on. So much of these stats are functions of the team around the QBs. I'm focusing on arm strength and the ability to make throws. Keenum struggles; Flacco doesn't. He has a good arm. I really like FO, but this is a garbage chart assuming we're meant to draw conclusions from it. Taylor was a good deep thrower when he was throwing to Sammy Watkins, Hogan, Woods, and and a healthy Percy Harvin; he became a garbage deep thrower when tossing it to Matthews, Benjamin, and Zay Jones. Go figure.

They were whiskers away from being 10-6 last season. They lost a ton of close games that could have flipped them to 10-6 if Flacco had been the QB. He really is a better player than Keenum, who had one outlier season and showed us who he really was this a year: a guy who can't really throw a deep out with any effectiveness. Are they 13-3 good with Flacco? No, but there's no QB out there who'll get them to 13-3. Flacco is a measurable upgrade over Keenum and the team will be better for it. I don't see why anyone would mock this decision. Getting to the playoffs is where you start and always the goal, and Flacco has shown he can perform well in the postseason.

Flacco isn't elite, but he's a better player than Case Keenum. Simply put, he can make throws that Keenum can't. Paired with a good defense, which Denver has, he has proven he can win (Baltimore has a 96-67 record when he's at the helm and went 10-5 in the postseason).

He was injured last season.

Yes, but there aren’t any good ones available in FA. This column is only about FA.

Good call. I can see NE too. Maybe LA? His career ain’t over yet, Bill. I think that’s meaningless,p. Players want to win.

The problem is that Chef Peterman had a debut the previous fall at a different farm-to-table hotspot in the warehouse district, subbing for the overly safe but still (mostly) mistake-free main chef who had been put on leave. But while trying to fill an order for braised halibut with an arugula-pumpkin aioli and a side of roasted beets topped with caramelized fennel, he burned the kitchen down and almost killed everyone in the building.

I think another factor is that Chip Kelly lost his touch. He captured lightning in a bottle at Oregon but wasn't pliable enough to change his ways. I say this as a UCLA fan -- UCLA's incoming class of recruits this year is graded at 46th, and they attracted zero five-star recruits and only 3 four-star recruits. That is awful given the school and its very strong record of attracting good recruits as well as placing players in the NFL. They were 13th in 2015, 12th in 2016, 21st in 2017, and 19th in 2018.

I agree that he's great, and he had a very good season overall. His September numbers alone (when he was completely healthy) were all-pro worthy. I'm just saying that he had a decent stretch this season where he was clearly not 100 percent.

I say this guardedly, but he is a genuine pro as a television personality. He's more entertaining than the rest of them, and has a real flair for the dramatic. I'm not equating that with good; I'm just saying that he's lasted as long as he has on ESPN because he's a pro at being on TV.

Mack started out great this past season, but after his mid-October ankle injury, he was not the same guy the rest of the way (he missed two games too). He was still good and made plays late into the season (and he played well vs Philly in the playoffs despite the stats), but the stand-out physical dynamism wasn't there. He should be fine, of course, but that injury did hamper him a bit down the stretch.