dave mcbride

Related, from my favorite Yankees site: http://riveraveblues.com/2018/05/intangibles-17-1-hot-streak-170706/ How much credit does Boone deserve? It’s impossible to say. Do the Yankees go 17-1 in these 18 games with Joe Girardi? Almost certainly not, and I say that only because I believe if you change one little thing, the results would be different, and the Yankees have been so good lately that any change would make the results worse almost by default. Had Clint Frazier been on the roster instead of David Hale, the Yankees probably wouldn’t go 17-1. Remember though, the Yankees hired Aaron Boone because of his communication skills, and because they wanted to create a better clubhouse atmosphere. I don’t think they had a bad clubhouse under Girardi, not at all, but communication was a concern and the Yankees took steps to improve it. Boone seems relaxed — you know as well as I that Girardi would’ve been on edge in the dugout last night — and I think players feed off that. The current manager projects calm. Ultimately, Boone is the manager and the buck stops with him. When the Yankees got off to a slow start, people were already questioning his hire. Now that they’re kicking butt, he’s getting credit. Boone obviously deserves some credit. How much is up for debate. Talent reigns surprise. You can’t win without talent. But is it possible Boone’s clubhouse skills, the clubhouse skills the Yankees invested in, are taking that talent to another level?

I questioned Boone at first, but not now. He seems perfectly fine. No reason to cast suspicion on a guy who is 26-10! I watch most of the games, and nothing really sticks out as a problem.

Murphy had 10 sacks and freaking 55 pressures in 2016, and I expect him to be fully recoverd this season. Hughes was one of the league leaders in pressures this past season too.

Yet you don't adress the fact that he pointedly addresses the collusion issue. Disagree. SI really DOES have some good younger writers at present. NBC? Not so much.

Bandit is one the most informed and insightful posters on this board, and has been for a long time. I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I recommend stopping.

Agreed 100 percent! PFW used to have a good similar column too. I recall a piece late in maybin's first training camp quoting anonymous sources saying that maybin looked like a bust, and a whole bevy of posters here attacked the piece because it was anonymously sourced.

Um ... Brady is more or less beloved or at the least deeply respected by his teammates, and has been forever. I challenge anyone to present *compelling* evidence suggesting otherwise. You will not find it.

It would seem to me that McDermott may have disliked Brandon's penchant for leaking. That may be at the root of this.

That's my concern. The adage "people don't change" is obviously not always true, but it's a popular one for a reason.

Most fans didn't care nearly as much about the draft back then and had a negligible amount of information to analyze compared to what they have now. Heck, teams themselves were relying on Street & Smith guides to take players.

It's both, and elite physical skills help. I'd rather have them than not. I have my concerns about Allen, but one bit of info that I do like is that his release (not the throw itself) is lightning-quick.

Indeed, in baseball, the new analytics fad is ... wait for it ... a measurable athletic skill: exit velocity ( https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/baseball/baseballs-latest-craze-its-like-rocket-science.html ). The same can be said for the ridiculously high demand for bullpen pitchers throwing 95 or above. Josh Allen has one of the (if not the) strongest arms ever in terms of his passes' "exit velo." Will that translate to excellence? Who knows, but I'd rather have the skill than not have it. In sports, athletic ability actually matters. Call me crazy for saying that.

I get all of that and have read the relevant articles, but my point is that he's not simply a RB when it comes to projections. A bell-cow RB who can also be a 75 catch/10 ypc/6 receiving TDs receiver is a rare talent and should not be compared to Leonard Fournette.

I thought it was a pretty fair piece, but I thought he was wrong about one thing: Barkley. Bear in mind that I think that the Giants should have taken Darnold , but Barkley isn't just a RB. He's by all accounts a terrific receiver, with Marshall Faulk being the comparison. If you're gonna write a piece like this, you better look at a guy like Faulk's receiving numbers in his prime (1998-2001). In 1999-2000, he had nearly 2000 receiving yards and 13 TD receptions.

Speak for yourself. If Mayfield had reacted like that, I would have thought the same about him. I'm not merely regurgitating media points; I'm making up my own mind. Fair enough. I never said he wouldn't be good. I also think that a large percentage of these guys are meatheads and often a-holes (e.g., Cornelius Bennett, Bruce Smith, Jim Kelly), so it's not as if I think Rosen is a particularly bad apple. He seems like a narcissist to me (and as you know, it's not the politics, because I'm further to the left than he is), but even if he is, maybe that'll do him well in the NFL. It's impossible to tell at this point. I have no idea how good any of the top four guys will be, and neither does anyone else here. I just find it kind of odd that people are leaping to the defense of this guy's character given that he comes across as a bit of a putz in the interviews I've read. He can be a the better pick (vis-a-vis Allen) and the less likable person at the same time, after all. At the end of the day, I just want the Bills to win. QB personality matters to an extent relative to that overriding concern, and I don't really know how good Beane and McDermott are on that front. My small-ish concern at present is that they have no tolerance for freethinkers and use ill-suited heuristics (e.g., being from an NFL family) to make an assessment of a player's willingness to be a "process guy." I could be wrong about them too; they haven't been around long enough for me to form a judgment one way or the other.

No, the opposite is not true. He brought it on himself by doing so many interviews and in them issuing forth an endless stream of blather and assuming it’d come across as something like profundity. He may turn out to be good; we shall see. I think Darnold was and will remain better than him.

Ironically, for me, the seemingly endless series of self-defense articles featuring Rosen in which he wanted to show how good of a guy he is led me to think that he's a straight-up narcissist. It honestly seemed pretty clear to me by the end of the process, and then he punctuated it with his ridiculously petulant "rue the day" rant after being selected as a TOP TEN PICK. Really unlikable. You're right, though; there are tons of successful jerks in the NFL, and as I always say, for a large percentage of pro players (many of whom are borderline psychos), if not for the NFL, jail.

LB is generally a position where production comes early. Heck, the best part of Kiko's career was his first 8 games (although to be fair he's been pretty solid for Miami).

What really separates Newton is 4,320 rushing yards and 54 rushing TDs over his career.

If Murphy is healthy and Lulutelei can push that pocket back a bit so that QBs can't step up as easily as they did last year, the sacks for Hughes and Murphy will come. Hughes must have set a record last year for near misses on sack opportunities.

Edmunds is pretty darn fast - 4.54. Milano isn't slow either - 4.67. That's decent for a linebacker. Yeah, what I really meant is that no one looking at the Bills has been discussing the defensive personnel as a unit and noting the pretty major makeover/talent upgrade.

Tommy Maddox actually started the first 2 games of that season. Of course, he also started one other: the final game of the season against ... the Bills.

That's next year's task. Hard to do everything at once!

Agreed. It's what the Steelers did with Roethlisberger, actually. Even though Roethlisberger started in season one, he didn't really throw it that much. In 2004, the Steelers were #1 in defense (both yards and points), 32nd in passing attempts, and first in rushing attempts.

A lot has been made about the team's talent deficiencies going into the offseason, but I think it's now pretty clear that the Bills are a very strong team talent-wise on defense. They did this kind of stealthily, piece by piece. To begin: both starting safeties are really good. Of their two corners, one is terrific (White) and the other -- Davis -- has had some genuinely elite seasons in recent years (he was PFF's #2 CB in 2014) and if healthy, a decidedly better than average corner. They also drafted a guy who can play slot in round 4 and a hybrid safety type who can presumably serve as passable depth. On the front seven, their d-line/edge rotation is actually pretty impressive: Lulutelei, Kyle Williams, Harrison Phillips, Hughes, Murphy, and Shaq Lawson (plus OK depth behind them), and at LB/edge they have Edmunds, Alexander, Milano, and (again) Murphy. Murphy not only had 10 sacks in 2016; he had 55 pressures! That's right: 55. Assuming he's healthy, he's a player. That is a SOLID unit overall. I'd like to see another CB in as competition because I worry about Davis, but I have to presume the Bills did their homework on him. If he's healthy, he's good and not a step down from Gaines. (Still, I'd have liked to have been able to keep Gaines too.) More broadly, it's clear that they're implementing a plan: build the D and get the QB first, and put the offensive pieces in place next. Expect some low scoring battles next season.