Cash

Steve Young, obviously

First two posts nailed it for me: Barry Sanders and Marshall Faulk - in that order.

You do you, but that interpretation trivializes the question for me. TO is arguably a top 5-10 WR of all time. Him in his SF prime is a no-brainer.

Great thread! Honest question: how good do you think other teams’ #4 outside CB is? I can’t name a single one (except ours), so I have no idea myself. My feeling is that Jamarcus Ingram is probably on par or better than others around the league. That’s not to say I’d be happy with him starting a playoff game, but I doubt there’s a #4 outside corner in the league that could make their fans happy starting a playoff game. Full disclosure: I’m still a full-on Elam believer and think that most of his problems last year were from trying to play through injury. I’d be totally fine with a healthy Elam starting a playoff game. For me, I’ll say the O-line. More of a ? than a concern at this point. Plan A is to have a guy play C for the first time in a long time, and promote last year’s jumbo TE to a starter. It might work fine, but it also has 2 potential points of failure. I’m curious what Plans B and C would look like. Also curious how committed they are to Plan A. Sometimes it’s on the level of, “This is what we’re doing unless we simply can’t,” but sometimes it’s more like, “This is where we’re starting but it’s an open competition.” If the latter, I could see Alec Anderson getting the C job if either Edwards or McGovern struggle in the new role. Side note: Who else remembers the drought year where we signed a guy to play either C or LT, then moved him to the other position? White guy, pretty nondescript name I think. I don’t think he was particularly good at either position.

1. IMO “in his prime” can only mean “his prime as a Bill”. The TO we watched was good, but not at HOF level. To a lesser extent, same thing applies to Lofton. 2. I actually think Stevie would be a bad fit for Josh. He and Fitz worked great because it was a timing based offense and Fitz was throwing to a spot. Stevie would put on whatever moves he needed, but ultimately get to that spot at the right time. But Josh prefers to hold on to the ball and try to look for a big play. I’m just not seeing it. 3. Lofton is very intriguing. Best deep out route runner in the NFL when he was with us. Allen’s arm strength makes him one of the best deep out throwers in the league. 4. Andre Reed is at his best in the slot, which isn’t where we need help the most right now. But he was absolutely incredible, and he’d IMO be quite a bit more destructive now with the increased focus on player safety. In his day, slot receiver was a much more high-risk job than it is today. 5. Moulds was the first guy who popped in my head. Big, physical, POWERFUL, and fast enough. Flutie made a living off of hucking it up to Moulds almost every time Moulds was single covered. And it usually worked out. I think Keon Coleman’s best highlight reel reps remind me of Moulds somewhat. 6. Lee Evans is the other guy in my fan lifetime who needs mentioning. I think he would thrive with Allen, but at the end of the day I think I’d prefer the contested catch guy who’s fast enough (Moulds) over the true burner in Evans. Final thought: we’ve talked about playoff performance mattering, and many have pointed out Diggs’ tepid playoff numbers. Look up Moulds’ performance in the Dolphins playoff game in the 1998 season. From memory, I think it was about 240 yards and a couple TDs, and nearly a game-winning catch. (IIRC he was stopped on about the 5, leading to another brutal playoff loss.)

Not quite the same, but I'm also reminded of some clip from Sammy Watkins' first training camp that a bunch of posters were creaming their jeans over. In the clip, Watkins put on a sick move to be sure, but it was against some UDFA CB who was like 14th on the depth chart. I.e., not an NFL player.

I don’t know why James Cameron spends all that money on CGI for the Avatar movies when he could just paint Trevor Lawrence blue.

Yeah, especially given the soft rebuild/cap reset this year. From a managerial perspective, you don’t give a guy less resources (cap space) and then declare it a make or break year.

Player: Rob Johnson. Eternally wincing in pain. Just a bummer to watch, and very frustrating, too. Coach: I’ll go with OL coach Carl Mauck. Was straight out of central casting for “old school fat OL coach who yells a lot”, so many fans and broadcasters highlighted him for a while. But those Olines sucked, and his only response was to scowl and scream at them. I was over it after a few games.

Thanks for posting this! I’d probably add Ray Davis to the mix as well - it’s pretty fair to expect a 4th round RB to be a plus player as a rookie.

Right. I’m not sure why everyone forgets that. I guess because Crowder got hurt so early? Poor planning on Beane’s part not to know about the broken leg in advance. I’m pretty sure the plan for the slot that year was a platoon of McCrowder. McKenzie still doing the gadget stuff that he’d been so effective at in the past, plus playing more traditional slot snaps. Crowder would’ve been in on most 3rd downs, and would’ve played a role much more akin to the Dr. Cole Beasley role. McKenzie was never going to be that elite zone beater who can consistently move the chains, and I don’t think the Bills were planning on that.

Nailed it!

I'll guess: 1 time. What's the answer?

FTFY - see below I've always thought the mainstream idea of "BPA" was ridiculous. The idea appears to be that 1.) all players are ranked in a straight line by draft grade, 2.) all players have different draft grades, and 3.) teams either do or ought to draft the top guy on the list no matter what. Feeding into that, I've seen scouting sites that try to give guys numerical grades with 2 decimals, like a 6.43 vs a 6.42. I'm sorry, but just because you went to the hundreths place doesn't mean you have any idea which of those guys is the better prospect. It makes a lot more sense to me to group players by tier, with more macro grading. The Bills definitely have a "first round grade", and I'm sure they have an internal definition of what that means. (Maybe different definitions by position?) So guys who are in the same vicinity of talent get grouped together. Within that tier you might have some level of ranking - maybe one of the guys looks like a tremendous culture fit, so you'd rather have him, that sort of thing. But to think that the board is a straight ranking from #1 to #255, AND that there's an appreciable difference between #55 and #56? Nutso IMO. Yeah, this guy Seth Walder is dumb. He's a stupid man! Here's an analogy of what happened: Let's say the Bills were holding a James Cook rookie card that's worth $10. The Chiefs call up and offer $10.50 for the card, and the Bills accept. Seth then jumps in and decries, "THE BILLS ONLY GOT AN EXTRA FIFTY CENTS!!! GREAT BARGAIN FOR THE CHIEFS!" Basically he's saying the Chiefs overpayed by an extra 6th round pick over what a fair price would've been, and that's somehow very cheap. Whereas most normal human beings would think paying LESS than a fair price would be cheap. The only way that what Seth Walder is saying would make sense is if 99% of trade-ups were significant overpays on the trade chart. But modern charts like the Rich Hill chart use actual (recent) trades to calibrate pick values, so it would only work on the old Jimmy Johnson chart or something like that. And teams haven't used that chart for years, so it's irrelevant. In truth, I think Walder is stupid enough to somehow equate the price over asking (an extra 6th-round pick equivalent) with the total price. It's also possible that he's a disingenous weasel who knows how misleading the above tweets are, but tweeted them anyway. But I find it's good to take people at face value until they prove otherwise, and I also tend to stick by Hanlon's Razor - "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".

Yeah, obviously TV is better than radio for experiencing a football game, but football (and baseball) has enough down time that a good announcer can paint a picture for you. When I was a kid, my family's friend group would rotate who hosted for the Bills game every week, and we usually ran late. I listened to Van Miller calling a lot of first quarters, and it was great! Murphy (understandably) never got to Van Miller's level, but he did a real solid job. Very good radio voice and cadence, which is probably the #1 thing. Best wishes to Murphy and his family. I've yet to hear any of Chris Brown's play-by-play, but I can't imagine it's any good. As others have pointed out on this thread, he doesn't have the voice for it. My vote goes to an outside hire for this one.

The best reporters I follow all say pretty confidently that Hyde hasn’t decided what to do yet, and that if he decides to play there’s probably a roster spot waiting for him. (They also think Hyde probably makes an announcement at his charity softball game.) If he decides his health isn’t worth the risk of an NFL season, but isn’t quite ready to step away from the game, the PS could be a win-win.

I’ve been thinking about this as well. No idea if Hyde would be up for it, but if I was McBeane, I’d for sure give Hyde the option of a PS spot. Very low injury risk, while still having him there to mentor Bishop and the other guys. I like this option better than hiring him as an assistant coach, because there’s inherently a divide between coaches and players.

Bummer! Was really hoping we’d get him. Especially at that price.

Ah, gotcha. “Take my word for it.” I’ll pass.

Interesting, because I’ve read the opposite: that high-usage guys in college tend to be high-usage guys in the NFL. (Until they eventually break down.) Also, regarding Cook: Totally get the hands complaint, but where are the other two coming from? Especially instincts - any plays stand out where he had bad instincts?

He wasn’t, until he was. But just like Diggs, it’s not crazy to think he’ll be on his best behavior on a one year deal with a new team.

FWIW, I watch a lot of Saints games, and he looked pretty good when the ball went his way last year. That didn’t happen much, obviously. Injuries are a real problem for Thomas. But if we think the Diggs/Bills relationship was bad, it’s got nothing on Saints/Thomas. Imagine he didn’t trade Diggs, and he sat out the next 2 years with a variety of injuries, then came back to play one last year. That’s about where Thomas was last year. I’d be willing to give him a no-risk shot.

Shakir is a super nice guy. He probably *does* compliment Coleman beautifully.

Me too! She showed me an instagram post declaring that her cat would eventually become Madonna. It blew my mind!