Orton's Arm

My interpretation of Hank's comment was different. You couldn't envision Netanyahu and Hitler playing golf together because of the mutual hostility which would exist. Hank feels that Republicans should take the same general "they are the enemy" mentality which would exist in that situation, and apply it to the Obama administration.

I agree that when Fox punished Beck, it was responding to financial pressure from its advertisers. The question we need to ask ourselves is, why do so many advertisers feel the need to use their financial muscle to suppress non-mainstream viewpoints? Should we as consumers seek to punish advertisers who act this way? Nine times out of ten, a non-mainstream viewpoint will be wrong. This is not because mainstream viewpoints are generally correct. It's because any given question will have far more possible wrong answers than right answers. The same mechanisms which punish people for expressing incorrect non-mainstream views will also be used to punish those who express correct non-mainstream views. This is why the financial pressure toward conformism you've described is so dangerous. Unfortunately, any news outlet which accepts money from advertisers is automatically compromised. If (for example) half of a news outlet's advertising money comes from Car Company X, and if there are serious problems with X's safety or environmental track record, how likely is the news outlet to report on those deficiencies? Advertisers reduce the news outlet's credibility and impartiality both in this manner, and by suppressing political views with which the advertisers disagree.

I like his Monday Night theme song a lot. It gives a zest to the game it otherwise wouldn't have. The decision to punish him for his remarks is part of a larger trend. Those who express non-mainstream viewpoints are often punished. This is pressure towards conformism, pure and simple. The more conformist a society becomes, the less able it will typically be to identify and correct its own errors. Then again, maybe everything is already so virtuous and wonderful already that there aren't any major errors left to be corrected. But, on the off chance that there are major errors to be corrected, then "you aren't allowed to say anything non-maistream" would be a much bigger problem than some random singer drawing an inaccurate comparison between two political figures.

I don't know about anyone else, but I hope that both teams lose. If you called him that to his face, would happen!

Two reasons come to mind as to why the Bills didn't run the ball more: 1) They generally didn't achieve all that much when they did try to run the ball. Turning first and 10 into 3rd and 7 puts too much pressure on the passing game. 2) Chan's philosophical approach to offense does not seek to run the ball as an end objective. Instead, his philosophy is to spread the defense out--preferably with a lot of weapons--and to exploit whatever defensive weaknesses this creates. Running the football is one of several tools at his disposal for exploiting said weaknesses. But only under certain circumstances is it the right tool. Chan wants to run the ball when and only when the defensive formation is weak against the run, or at very least weak against a particular kind of run. (Such as a run to the outside.) For Chan's style of offense to work, the offense has to be able to exploit whatever weaknesses the defense offers up. The Bengals' defense didn't offer up many weaknesses, and Fitz played well below the level of the first three games. That meant the Bills couldn't use their passing game to punish the Bengals for being in good anti-run formations on first and second downs. The Bills' offense doesn't have the talent to run the ball successfully against a defense like the Bengals--at least not when the Bengals are in the right formation to stop the run.

I voted undecided. He's playing at a higher level this season than he had last season. I'll need to see more than three games of this before declaring him franchise.

I spent yesterday afternoon driving back from my cousin's wedding. Instead of seeing this game, I had to listen to it on the radio. At the end, when the radio announcer said the field goal was good, my eyes got a little moist. Nix and Chan have built something special. Like Bill said, this team plays with a lot of heart. That makes it very easy to root for them! This trip gave me the opportunity to listen to a lot of post game radio commentary. One of the things which was said was that Gailey doesn't run a pass-oritented offense or a run-oriented offense. Instead, his offense is designed to spread the defense out, and to exploit whatever defensive weaknesses this might create. Sometimes exploiting the defensive weakness means running the ball with Fred Jackson. Sometimes it means passing the ball to whichever target has the most exploitable matchup. After the radio announcer said these things, it occurred to me that this offense is a perfect match for Fitzpatrick. The knock against Fitzpatrick has always been his accuracy. Even in the first two games (which I was able to see) his accuracy never seemed particularly special. But--at least usually--it was "good enough" accuracy. There is something Fitzpatrick does better than almost any QB in the league. That's his ability to read defenses, both pre- and post-snap, to process information quickly, to make the right decision, and to make that decision quickly. Gailey's offense emphasizes Fitz's strength while masking his weaknesses. Fitz wouldn't look nearly this good in most other offenses. But that doesn't matter as long as he continues to look like this in Gailey's offense! It still remains to be seen if defensive coordinators will figure out an answer to what Gailey and Fitz are doing. But Fitz just finished carving up a defense coached by Bill Belichick, which bodes well for the future. If Fitz is able to do similarly well against the Patriots the second time around, we can be reasonably confident that this kind of offensive success is sustainable. I have to give Nix and Gailey credit for what they've done with the team in the offseason! I'm extremely pleased with this general manager/head coach duo! The Bills have assembled an impressive group of WRs + a TE while using nothing or almost nothing in the draft to do so. Additionally, there were times when the radio announcers said that backup defensive players had been rotated in, in place of the starters. I noticed that the defense generally played well when those (typically younger) backups were in! That's also a credit to Nix's drafting and his ability to build depth in the defensive front-7. My overall impression is that while this team still has some weaknesses to be corrected in next year's draft, the team as a whole is definitely on the right track! Much farther along that right track than I'd realized at the beginning of the season. Finally, I'd like to thank Bill and the others who have posted in this thread. Win or lose, this is always my favorite thread after any Bills game.

I came across the bolded assertion as well. On the surface it seems plausible: both quarterbacks piled up a roughly comparable number of yards during their respective 15 game stretches. (Kelly was injured/did not play for one of the games during that season.) Yards compiled over a season is not a very good measurement of QB effectiveness. A much better indicator of success is yards per attempt. IIRC, Kelly averaged 8.1 yards per attempt during his best season, whereas Fiz has averaged 6.8 yards per attempt during his last 15 games. Trent Edwards has averaged 6.5 yards per attempt over the course of his career; whereas Jim Kelly's career average is 7.4 yards per attempt. Over the last 15 games, Fitz's level of play has been closer to that of Trent Edwards than to Jim Kelly. On the other hand, Fitzpatrick seems to be playing at a higher level this season than he had been last season. If Fitz averages 7.4 yards per attempt for this season, and if that high average isn't just the result of rules changes and a league-wide increase in average passing yards, it will then be appropriate to start saying things like "Fitz had a Kelly-like season."

That was a good article about your rusher rating system. I have a few thoughts on this myself. As you may know, the New York Times performed a football-related linear regression. The model's independent variables were the following: Offense Yards per pass attempt Interceptions per pass play Yards per rush attempt Defense Yards per pass attempt Interceptions per pass play Yards per rush attempt The model's dependent variable was a team's number of wins. Collectively, the six above-mentioned independent variables explained 80% of the variation in the dependent variable. On offense, a one SD improvement in yards per rush attempt would be expected to generate as many additional wins as a one SD improvement in interceptions per pass play. A one SD improvement in yards per pass attempt would be expected to generate three times the improvement in number of wins as a one SD improvement in either yards per rush or interceptions per pass play. The situation on defense was a mirror image of that on offense; with yards per pass attempt being three times as important as either interceptions per pass play or yards per rush attempt. The above statistical analysis indicates that the overall success of an offense is typically dictated primarily by the quality of its passing attack. Your article indicated that OJ Simpson had 12 TDs during his 2000 yard season, whereas Terrell Davis had 21 TDs in his 2000 yard season. Is this a case of Davis having had a much better knack for getting into the end zone than OJ did? Maybe. But one could also point out that Davis had John Elway as his quarterback, and gave the Broncos a much better passing attack than the Bills' passing game of '73. A more effective passing game means a more effective offense, which means more trips to the red zone. I would argue that the primary effect of including TDs per carry as one of the stats measured is to reward RBs who happen to be part of good offenses (like Davis), while punishing RBs who happened to get paired with mediocre QBs (like OJ Simpson and Barry Sanders). I see two ways to fix this problem: 1) The easy way. Eliminate the TD state entirely, and use yards per carry and fumbles per carry. That should work well, especially after you go through the work of normalizing the data by year. (I give you credit for that, btw.) 2) The hard way. Ignore a RB's raw number of TDs. Instead determine the percentage of his team's overall TDs for which a RB was responsible. You may even want to include TD catches in this measure. If the Lions scored two TDs a game, of which two were by Barry Sanders, Sanders' score would be 100%. If the Broncos scored six TDs a game, of which three were by Terrell Davis, Davis's score would be 50%. The argument could be made that a RB on a team with a lot of weapons will tend to do less well on this measure than a RB who's a one man show. I'd agree with that. One of the measurement tools being used is yards per carry. A RB like Emmitt Smith was surrounded by a lot of weapons, which made it difficult for defenses to put eight or nine men in the box. Yards per carry makes a RB like Smith look better than he really was, when comparing him against a RB who wasn't surrounded by all those other weapons. Because yards per carry favors RBs who are surrounded by weapons over those who have to do everything on their own, it arguably makes sense to use another measurement tool which favors the latter category of RBs over the former. If a RB is responsible for, say, 80% of his team's scoring, that probably means that defenses are ganging up on him a lot. Whatever success he achieves (in terms of yards per carry) is more impressive than it would have been, had defenses been forced to worry about a lot of other weapons.

In answer to your first question, I chose yards per attempt as my main measurement after I saw how flawed the quarterback rating system was. John Elway had a QB rating of 79.9, as compared to 79.2 for Kelly Holcomb. Something seemed wrong with this. But Elway's yards per attempt was 7.1, as compared to 6.6 for Holcomb. That's a commanding difference! (And yes, I realize Elway's 7.1 yards per attempt is 0.1 YPA below my cutoff for franchise QBs. But he played in a different era, and his supporting cast was often hit-or-miss at best.) Quarterback rating unfairly rewards QBs like Holcomb who dump the ball off a lot, or who otherwise rely on short, high percentage passes. It unfairly punishes quarterbacks like Elway who put more emphasis on higher risk, higher reward type throws. If you take quarterback rating, and get rid of completion percentage (the source of these problems) what you're left with is yards per attempt, plus TD percentage and INT percentage. All three of these things are useful stats, with yards per attempt being the most useful. It generally works well: I've seen few or no cases where a good or great QB had a lousy yards per attempt, or where a lousy QB had an impressive yards per attempt. Yards per attempt is to quarterbacks what yards per carry is to running backs. Both stats are very hard to inflate! After looking at modern era QBs' stats, I saw that those who were below 7.2 yards per attempt were almost never franchise QBs. QBs in the 7.2 - 7.3 range are often franchise QBs. And QBs with an average of 7.4 or higher are always franchise QBs. I agree that Brady and Peyton Manning are better QBs than Jim Kelly. The 8.1 yards per attempt figure for Kelly is from his best season ever, and does not represent his career average. That career average is 7.4 yards per attempt; which correctly indicates he's worse than Manning, but incorrectly indicates that he's equivalent to Brady. No statistical measure is perfect. During his time with the Bills, Kelly had a very good OL, a Hall of Fame RB in the form of Thurman Thomas, a very good receiving corps, and a good TE. Neither Manning or Brady have typically had an offensive supporting cast as good as that. When you compare any of Kelly's offensive stats with Manning or Brady, Kelly's numbers are going to slightly overstate the quality of his play.

I don't want to rain on your parade. But I did a little math. I started by calculating the average yards per attempt stat for the 15 most recent Fitz games to which you've alluded. It was 6.8. To put that into perspective, Trent Edwards' career average is 6.5. You need to have a career average of 7.2 to (in my book) be considered a marginal franchise QB, and an average of 7.4 to be considered a definite franchise QB. I then calculated Jim Kelly's average yards per attempt stat from the season you mentioned. It was 8.1. That number has "franchise QB" written all over it! The difference between 6.8 and 8.1 is big enough that Fitz's last 15 games are not in the same category as Kelly's best season as a Bill. That said, I'd argue that Fitz has played very well during his last two games. If he continues to look as good as he did against the Raiders and Chiefs, his yards per attempt stat will very likely improve.

Just two games into the season, the Bills are already halfway toward equalling last season's win total. Their draft position in the 2012 draft is likely to be a lot worse than it was in 2011. It's easy to imagine them getting a first round pick in the teens or 20s. Possibilities for their first round pick include the following: 1) CB. McGee and Florence aren't getting any younger. If you're right about McKelvin, then the Bills would need a long-term answer at #1 CB, with Aaron Williams as their #2 and McKelvin as their #3. 2) SS. George Wilson had a bad game against the Raiders. Unless he improves, the Bills will need to replace him. Maybe Searcy is seen as the long-term answer at starting SS. But if not, a SS in the first round is a real possibility. 3) OLB. If Merriman doesn't return to his old form, the Bills may decide they need an upgrade at OLB. At this point it's hard to imagine the first round pick being used on offense. Fitz is playing better this year than he had last year. If there's an obvious franchise QB to be had, then sure, you take him. But the blue chip quarterbacks are likely to be long gone by the time the Bills pick. Nor do I necessarily see the Bills taking a LT. The blue chip LT prospects are also likely to be gone by the time the Bills pick; and you don't want to waste a first round pick on a guy who isn't necessarily going to be a huge upgrade over Bell. It's also hard to imagine them using a first round pick on a RT, both because Pears is playing better than most of us (including me) had expected, and because a very capable Hairston is waiting in the wings. The interior of the Bills' OL consists of Levitre, Wood, and Urbik, so it's hard to imagine Nix deciding a first round pick is necessitated there. The Bills have an infinite number of promising young WRs, so it's hard to imagine them using a first rounder on yet another WR. Chandler looks like a real TE, so there's no need for a first round pick there. I'm not even going to discuss the idea of using a first round pick on a RB! At least after two weeks it looks like the first round pick is going to be used on defense. The defensive line is not the problem. As I see it, the three most likely uses for the Bills' 2012 first round pick are CB, SS, and OLB.

Normally a DB should spike the ball in that situation. In this case, there was a pile of guys right where the ball was. If you're going to spike the ball in that situation, you have to be reasonably sure that some random hand isn't going to reach out and grab the ball on its way to the ground. If Searcy was focused on the location of the ball (which he clearly was) he may have lost track of the exact whereabouts of the WRs around him. With a crowd like that, all it takes is just one WR who's fallen to the ground to turn a batted down ball into a completion.

Very good post! I'll just add a few thoughts of my own. 1) There may be a memo circulating somewhere indicating that Fred Jackson isn't a top-10 RB in the NFL. Apparently Jackson didn't get the memo. He played a much better game than any no-name player has a right to play! 2) I was also pleasantly surprised by how well Spiller played. The Bills using a top-10 pick on Spiller is a lot like a homeless man who owns a luxury car using $100,000 to buy another luxury car! But that's not Spiller's personal fault, and I give him credit for playing well in limited action. 3) I agree with Ramius and Kelly that McKelvin's play wasn't as bad as it may have seemed. What that Oakland receiver did was just ridiculous. How often do you see receivers do that? I'm not saying McKelvin's play was perfect. But it was credible. 4) The Bills' D just surrendered 35 points to Jason Campbell and the Raiders. I'm curious to see how many points they'll surrender to Tom Brady and the Patriots. 5) Whenever a defense surrenders 35 points, it's normally easy to identify the goats. For whatever reason, that task seems harder than usual, at least for me. George Wilson had a bad game. McKelvin's play wasn't terrible, but it could have been better. But these factors alone don't seem like nearly enough to explain why Oakland was able to score 35 points. How can the Bills prevent similar point feasts in the future? Is the problem the play calling? The OLBs? Was it just a case of the Raiders offense having an absolutely incredible game?

You and me both. It wasn't like that Bills roster was bursting with young talent. When, despite its own incompetence, the Bills' front office accidentally stumbled into a player worth keeping, why let him go first contract and out? Fortunately, this Bills front office seems a lot better than the one which made those mistakes!

I fully agree with your assessment of the Whitner pick. My goal was to build a mathematical model which would illustrate the damage done by such picks. I agree that there are factors outside the model which, when taken into account, make the Whitner pick even worse than the model would indicate. One could draw a comparison between the Whitner pick of 2006 and the Mike Williams pick of 2002. The 2006 draft was a better draft than the 2002 draft. That could mean that the 4th overall pick in 2002 was roughly equivalent to the 8th overall pick of 2006. Mike Williams spent four years with the Bills before his release. Whitner spent five years with the Bills before the team decided to go in a different direction at safety. (Note that Nix didn't engage in serious contract talks with Whitner after the 2011 draft, even though Whitner indicated his openness to returning to Buffalo.) Mike Willams was a starter for the Bills for his first three seasons, and lost his starting position in his fourth season with the team. Williams was hampered by injuries during the 2005 season, and Jason Peters played very well. Donte Whitner was a starter for the Bills for his first three seasons, and lost his starting position in his fourth season with the team. George Wilson was a lot less good at SS than Jason Peters was at RT, so Whitner had less competition than Williams. Unlike Williams, Whitner returned for a fifth year with the Bills, and was able to regain his starting spot. Part of the reason for that is that while Wilson is better than Whitner in pass coverage, Whitner is better at stopping the run. The Bills had the worst run defense in the NFL during the 2010 season, so it was felt that more emphasis had to be placed on run-stopping than pass coverage when selecting the starting SS. The picks used on Williams and Whitner were of roughly equal value. Both picks resulted in players who started for a few years. When I think of either player, I think, He's a guy who can get you by over the short-term, but you really want to find an upgrade for him sooner or later. One difference between the two players is that Mike Williams was a joke at OG, and didn't do anything after he left Buffalo. Whitner seems likely to continue to be a starter in the NFL, albeit not a very good one. Whitner is likely to have a better career than Mike Williams, even though the two players' contributions to the Bills are very comparable.

Good point. I recall that one football site has created player performance measurements, with a positive performance number indicating that the player is reasonably competent. Negative numbers indicate players who are below-average and should be replaced. One way of evaluating drafts--and a better way than the one I suggested, by the way--would be to take the player performance numbers from each of a given team's draftees, ignore the negative numbers, and add up the positive numbers. That way a team would get only a small amount of credit (or hopefully no credit) for drafting a Whitner, while getting a lot of credit for taking a Ngata. The worst possible score on this system would be a zero, so any player who gives you no credit would bring you that much closer to a zero score. If you wanted to take things one step further than this, you could use a draft day value chart to determine the total value of each team's draft picks. Then you'd divide the total player performance number described above by the value of their draft picks. Then you'd multiply by, say, 1000, to give you a nice, reasonable number like three or four, instead of something tiny like 0.004. With a system like this, a team that uses an 8th overall pick to get a mediocre player would receive a much lower score than a team which had a pick in the second half of the first round, and which came away with an equally mediocre player.

I realize there's no such thing as a perfect statistical measure, and that most measures are variants of the "good but imperfect" theme. Nevertheless, I feel the urge to improve this particular statistical measure. Suppose Team A had one pick per round in each round of the draft. Whereas Team B has one pick per round in rounds 1 - 3, and two or even three picks per round in rounds 4 - 7. As you know, first and second round picks are much more likely to meaningfully contribute than are sixth or seventh rounders. Assuming Team A and Team B are equally good at drafting, Team B's success rate will look a lot worse because of all those late round picks it had. The solution is something I'll call "adjusted success rate." Here is how it should be calculated: 1. Compute the average success rate by round. For example, let's say you wanted to find the adjusted success rate for the 2007 draft. You would begin by determining the percentage of 2007 first round picks which are still with their original teams, the percentage of second round picks, and so forth. 2. Compare each team's success rate by round against the average rate for the round. For example, if the average success rate for the first round is 75%, and if 100% of team X's first round players from 2007 are successful, that team's first round success rate is +25%. 3. Multiply the above numbers by the number of players in each round. If Team X had one sixth round pick (bust) and four seventh round picks (all successes), its -20% success rate for the sixth round should be multiplied by 1, and its +85% success rate for the seventh round should be multiplied by 4. 4. Add each team's numbers from step 3, and then divide by the number of players that team drafted. This is its adjusted success rate. For example, Team X's adjusted success rate would be: [ +25% (first round pick) -20% (sixth round pick) + ( + 85% * 4) (seventh round picks) ] / 6 picks The above number would indicate whether Team X's picks were more or less successful than expected, given the rounds during which the picks were made.

I think one of the reasons the subject of Evans is so divisive is because there have been times when he's been oversold. TD picked him 13th overall. We were told Evans was to become the Bills' #1 WR. These events created expectations which Evans has not met. If Evans had been picked in the second round, and if the Bills front office had said "We think we got a very good deep burner and number two WR," then fans would have had far more realistic expectations for him. Had the initial expectations been established properly, there would not now be this backlash against him. Instead, there would be a general consensus that Evans makes a very good #2 WR/deep burner, but shouldn't be used as a #1. I'd envision fans showing an appreciation for the value a good deep burner brings to the table; while also acknowledging that you don't take a guy like Evans and try to make him your number one.

It's seems like we're more or less on the same page. But I also agree with Last Guy on the Bench when he wrote that it's not all about YPC. Whenever I see Fred Jackson play, he looks like a top-10 RB is supposed to look. He does all the little things well. On the other hand, his stats put him in the 12 - 13 range. I also realize he had an insanely good game against the Chiefs, and that there's always a temptation to overemphasize any player's most recent game when evaluating his body of work. I think there are other RBs who are more dangerous than Fred Jackson. Whenever the Chiefs ran to the outside, my sense was always that they were on the verge of running wild and breaking free. That showed up in the stat line, with their 6 yards per carry. But Fred Jackson did a lot of little things to make himself look Thurman-like in that game--things the Chiefs' RBs didn't do. If I was picking my starting RB on the basis of that game, I'd much rather have Jackson than any of the RBs on the Chiefs. I agree that the Bills' front office should evaluate Jackson after the end of the season, and make a decision about whether he's a top-10 RB. If he continues to play at the same level he did against the Chiefs, that decision will be a very easy one! If they do decide he's a top-10 RB, it would be nice to see them give him some kind of raise and extension.

Before commenting on your conclusion, I'd like to go back to the reason Evans was drafted in the first place. You'll recall that during the first eight games of 2002, the Bills' offense was good. Ridiculously good. These were Bledsoe's first eight games for the Bills! Then in the second half of 2002 the offense declined, but was still respectable. The Bills had Eric Moulds and Peerless Price as their #1 and #2 WRs. After the 2002 season the Bills traded away Peerless Price for a first round pick. But then in 2003 the offense was very disappointing. It languished! Part of that was because of injuries, and part was because defenses continued to use the anti-Bledsoe techniques first pioneered by Belichick in the Bills' 9th game of 2002. Part of the problem was the offensive line. But part of the problem was also the fact that the Bills no longer had a legitimate deep threat to punish teams which blitzed. To solve the latter problem, TD drafted Evans 13th overall in the 2004 draft. It's worth noting here that Evans was intended as a replacement/upgrade for Peerless Price, not Eric Moulds. As a #1 WR, Evans has been disappointing and inadequate. (Just as the Falcons found Peerless unable to fill the #1 role to an even greater degree than has been the case with the Bills and Evans.) What the Bills had with Evans was a very good #2 WR/deep burner. Not a go-to guy or a #1 WR. Had Evans been paired with a bona fide #1 WR, and had the Bills had a reasonably good OL and a competent QB who could also throw the long ball, the results on offense would have been impressive. I realize that's a lot of ifs. Evans is like a puzzle piece which becomes valuable only when neighboring puzzle pieces have been collected and assembled. It's also worth noting that the value of a deep burner like Evans is highly dependent on the quarterback. Bledsoe was slow at getting rid of the football, making him vulnerable to the blitz. On the other hand, he threw a beautiful long bomb. A deep burner like Peerless or Evans could be very useful to a quarterback like him to punish teams for blitzing. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Holcomb: a quarterback with zero arm strength who was very good at getting rid of the ball quickly. Eric Moulds caught a ton of passes with Holcomb under center, while Evans caught next to nothing. But whenever Holcomb was replaced by JP, the opposite would be true. Both Losman and Evans were one trick ponies, with that one trick being the deep passing game. Obviously you can't base a successful offense on just that. But if you want to build a multidimensional offense, it is good to have the deep passing game as one of those dimensions. Back in the '90s the Cowboys' #1 and #2 WRs were Michael Irvin and Alvin Harper. Harper was their deep threat, and caught a lot fewer passes than Irvin. But then came a year when the 49ers had signed Deion Sanders. In the playoff game between the two teams, the Cowboys had expected the 49ers to put Sanders (one of the best CBs ever) on Irvin (one of the best WRs ever). They didn't. Instead the 49ers put Sanders on Harper and double covered Irvin. Having Sanders on Harper meant the Cowboys' deep game was completely taken away. Aikman threw a pass or two in Harper's direction anyway, leading to at least one interception by Sanders. The 49ers ended up winning that playoff game, and later beat the Chargers in the Super Bowl. The 49ers felt that shutting down the Cowboys' deep threat was important enough to use up a CB as valuable as Sanders, and they were right. Evans is a better football player than Harper. But a deep threat #2 WR needs to be surrounded by the right pieces to maximize his value, which had never really been the case for Evans. Nor is this current Bills offense a good fit for him. Fitz's arm strength is mediocre, and he gets rid of the ball quickly to compensate for a questionable OL. A deep burner isn't necessarily all that important to a quarterback like this, for the same reasons that a deep burner wasn't very important to Holcomb during his time here. Had Losman worked out as planned, Evans would have been a much more valuable component of the Bills' offense.

I looked up the RBs you mentioned. They all had comparable or better career averages than Jackson's 4.5 yards a carry--but with a few exceptions. Matt Forte has averaged 4.0 yards per carry over the course of his career, which has been spent with the Bears. During the 2008, 2009, and 2010 seasons, LaDanian Tomlinson: averaged 3.8, 3.3, and 4.2 yards per carry. Rashard Mendenhall has compiled a 4.2 yards per carry career average while playing for the Steelers. While I don't agree that Forte, Mendenhall, or an aging Tomlinson are the equals of Fred Jackson, it's hard to dispute most of the other players on your list. However, a few other players on the list have compiled averages similar to Fred Jackson's career average of 4.5 yards a carry. For example, Steven Jackson's career average is 4.3 yards per carry, Jonathan Stewart's career average is 4.7 yards per carry, and Michael Turner's average is also 4.7 yards a carry. Turner has spent his career with the Chargers and the Falcons--both of which would seem to offer a better situation for a RB than the Bills. Your list made me realize there's more RB talent in the NFL than I'd previously believed. After having looked more closely at that RB talent, I have concluded that while Fred Jackson isn't necessarily a top-10 RB, he's probably in the neighborhood of 12 - 13.

I remember seeing a statistic that Evans had one of the best ratios of caught passes/drops in the league. Granted that was for last season or the season before, but I was still impressed. I agree with those who say Evans hasn't played like a #1 WR is supposed to play. But he's still a very good deep threat--a point which Simon's thread has reinforced. Did he live up to his draft position? Probably not. Does he help stretch the field and keep defenses from selling out to stop the short stuff? He certainly does. The Atlanta Falcons traded away a first round pick for Peerless Price so that he could do these things for them, and Evans is a better WR than Price ever was. Speaking of which . . . I think the Bills got shortchanged by only getting a fourth round pick for Evans. In my opinion a second round pick would have been about the right price.

As someone who didn't see the Ravens/Steelers game, I appreciate your posting this analysis of Evans' contribution. Thanks.

Against the Chiefs, Jackson played about as good a game as I would have expected from Thurman in his prime. Granted, one game does not a career make. Even J.P. Losman looked good in a few games. However, I dispute your statement that Jackson isn't a top-15 back in this league. Can you name 15 other RBs in the NFL who would have done better than Jackson, had they been the featured back of the Bills' 2010 offense?