dave mcbride

Consider who his hero is, after all!

Did you watch the games Johnson played in? I did - all of them. Johnson sucked, and he dropped a LOT of passes. I can't find the stats, but I really do trust my memory on this one. He was a bad blocker too. He was famous for it, actually. Any number of people here who followed the Bills closely in those years will tell you the same thing. The Bills had high hopes for him but he was a MAJOR disappointment. Also, don't get caught up with catch numbers. As I always say about the NBA, even the worst teams in league history average 80+ points a game, and someone on that team is getting ~20 pts per game. It doesn't mean he's any good. Same goes for tackles in the NFL. *Someone* has to get assigned a tackle on every defensive play. The stat doesn't tell us much about whether a player is good or not, however. The tackle leaders for the Bills in 2012 were, in order, George Wilson, Nick Barnett, and Kelvin Sheppard. None were any good. And yes, Todd Collins sucked. Terrible outcome for that pick. No argument there.

The data says nothing about his drops, bad routes, and terrible blocking. If a TE is getting 40+ catches in a season and only has an AV of 3 (which happened twice!), that tells you something. He was a physically gifted but deeply flawed player who just happened to play in an offense under Kelly that featured the TE. Also, if you're not including performances for other teams, you aren't analyzing properly.

Yeah, saw that; she quoted john mcphee. Regardless, some of the other stuff on the site is clearly fiction, so I don't know what to make of that one tweet. She also called it "free verse" in another tweet. Who knows.

I dunno; maybe she told him she's trying to be a fiction writer and he's completely ok with it. There isn't enough info to judge one way or the other. All we have are her other essays, and fiction is involved in them. I dunno; maybe she told him she's trying to be a fiction writer and he's completely ok with it. There isn't enough info to judge one way or the other. All we have are her other essays, and fiction is involved in them. edit: she calls the piece "a little free verse" -- https://mobile.twitter.com/J9Talley scroll down. Her feed doesn't read like someone in a terrible situation at the moment.

Read the other pieces before assuming it's non-fiction. One of the three is clearly fiction. I don't know enough about her life to judge whether the other one is, but it reads as if it has at least some fictional components.

This is the injury Luck has, as I understand it: http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2004/05/labrum_it_nearly_killed_him.html It ain't good.

Johnson was actually really terrible regardless of how many catches he had.

From the broken record dept.: don't automatically assume this is non-fiction. Check out the other entries. Looks like an aspiring short story writer to me. Of course it could be non-fiction, but it doesn't read as such to me.

Don't automatically assume this is non-fiction. See the other pieces.

Again, people should read the other entries. Do not automatically assume that this is non-fiction.

Are we really sure this is nonfiction? It may be, but to my relatively trained eye, this and her other stories read like someone trying to write a short piece for a literary fiction magazine. To wit: the March 26 entry -- https://www.janine-talley.com/blog/2018/3/26/birthday . People really shouldn't leap to conclusions about this sort of stuff. Read the New Yorker's fiction essays long enough and you'll know what I mean. It may be that she's simply an aspiring writer.

In all seriousness, can we consider temporary suspensions of posters for this sort of stuff? It is seriously out of hand. Sadly, I think that this board is in a state of decline right now regardless of whether people want to admit it or not ...

He's a player who fits every scheme. He's that good.

Weeden had an incredibly strong arm too.

This piece just indicates to me that Cleveland is in all likelihood taking Darnold. They'd be crazy not to - he's the best qb prospect in the draft. I'm pretty sure Cleveland realizes that, and I wish they'd just sign him now so that we can move on to the next phase: the Bills-Giants trade!

I count 5 hits in 1995: Brown, Holocek, Kerner (a very good player when healthy), Ken Irvin (solid starter), and Covington (excellent until he got hurt). I also certainly wouldn't call Brooks a legendary miss. He didn't produce because he had a bad knee injury in his first camp - a camp in which he was lighting it up. The injury destroyed his career (much like Covington's did). He had zero catches because when he finally made a comeback, it was as a DB, not a WR. You gotta account for injuries. Finally, Antowain Smith had 550 rushing yards and 4 TDs in 8 playoff games - which projects to 1100 yards and 8 TDs over 16 games against the toughest competition. He also had two very good Super Bowls: 92 yards rushing against the Rams and 83 yards rushing against Carolina. To me, he was a very good first round pick. Just because he did a lot of his work for another team is meaningless in judging whether he was a good pick or not.

Oh jeez. Prescott was 24-38 for 302 yards, 3 tds, and 1 turnover (pick) for a 103.2 rating. The Cowboys scored 31 points and lost on a miracle play by Rodgers. Prescott did not "lose" the game. People, be better than this. (Also, Yolo: the Cowboys went 13-3, not 12-4.)

The Bills don't have a real qb qnd replaced their average one with a less than average one. That is pretty much all you need to know. They are trying to move up to get a real qb.

Economics isn't a difficult major? What planet are you from? This crusade of yours is so tired. I know your kid went to Alabama, and great. But this is a dumb argument. UCLA is by essentially *every* measure (eg, multiple global ranking systems of universities) a top 15 university in the WORLD, and *as a university* is ranked higer than a number of ivies. For multiple years running it has received the most applications of any university in the US despite not actually being a monster-size university like ohio state et al. Alabama, which is a perfectly fine school, isn't in the same universe, partly because it's a deep south state with a long history of underfunding public education at the k-12 level (recently ranked 50th out of 51 in math scores --http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/08/alabamas_schools_ranked_8th_wo.html ). That's ok and more importantly it has no bearing on how any individual will do in life. Lots of smart people graduate from Alabama. In other words, give it a rest. Also, I can pretty much guarantee you that no one wants to hear how an MA in business (FAR easier than econ) and sports management from Kent State in 1975 somehow makes him a good scholar. He is a great football coach who is especially good at recruiting great athletes, most of whom don't giving a flying f**k about school (with a couple of exceptions). Every player the Bills have drafted recently from Alabama has been a moron, and just look at Reuben Foster. As for Clemson, Sammy Watkins and CJ spiller are all I have to say. Neither appears to be above a fourth grade reading level. I'm not saying UCLA is much better, by the way. But the thing you need to realize ist that just about all of them are bad. Big time college football is about as corrup an institution as there can be. If it disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't shed one tear. Btw, the last Bills coach with an MA was Rex Ryan, who has an MA from Eastern Kentucky (an analog of sorts to Kent State) in phys ed. He is not smart. It means nothing.

I think you did a great job, but I don’t think you factor in enough how terrible the talent pool is for a school like Wyoming — middle of nowhere state that is truly far from every populated state but Colorado, smallest population in the country, and almost no minorities. Wyoming was awful in the two years before Allen became the starter. Then they became pretty good for their conference. He was pretty much the only significant change.

Here's my take - he beat guys around the edge constantly all season, but lost out on a ton of sacks because the center of our line was so bad at pushing the pocket back that QBs were able to step up all year and avoid his mitts (the final Dolphins game was typical). Basically, he destroyed guys via outside moves all season. With a motivated a Dareus and a younger Kyle in there, he'd have had a double digit sack season. LUtuleilei is that guy who can push the pocket and make it hard to step up, so I expect more sacks next season.

Agree 100 percent.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/nfl/players/jerry-hughes/5556 and note #13 here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2751016-nfl1000-ranking-the-top-4-3-defensive-ends-from-2017-season and http://buffalonews.com/2018/01/02/advanced-stats-jerry-hughes-erupts-for-bills-against-backup-left-tackle-vs-dolphins/ Are folks also aware that Hughes' strip sack against Atlanta basically won the game for the Bills - a game they had no business winning?

You do realize that he was rated a top-15 DE this past season and had 45 pressures, right? It was one of his best seasons. Oh come on. He had a very, very good season last year. He actually was if you do the research.