San Jose Bills Fan

I seldom read the Buffalo News but made an exception for this story. Here's an excerpt from Sully's column (sorry if someone already excerpted this. It seems to address many of the comments made in this topic): Analytics isn't an easy thing to define. When I asked Chiefs coach Andy Reid on Wednesday's conference call what his analytics people do, he said, “They do analytical things, how's that?” NFL teams are notoriously secretive about their methods, perhaps because they're so good at copying one another. Brandon was reluctant to get into too many specifics. But it's not as if football coaches haven't been analyzing data since the leather helmet days. More and more, though, teams are looking for an advantage. Everything in the NFL is getting more precise: Replays, strategies for fourth downs, the rate of recovery from injury, preparing for the draft. Some teams (the Patriots, not surprisingly) entered the modern age sooner than others. Eventually, Lyons will examine every aspect of the operation, including ticket sales, stadium operations, the works. Brandon wants everyone in the organization to be smarter. Also this: It took 10 months and sifting through 1,000 resumes. The new guy better be off the charts. Brandon raised the fans' hopes when he promised “robust analytics” on New Year's. He knew BillsVet was skeptical, but he felt it was too crucial a hire to rush. “I told people internally, 'We'll make the decision when we're ready to make the decision',” Brandon said. “I knew I was taking a lot of heat. I didn't care about that. I wanted to bring in the best person possible, and I think Mike's the guy.”

Not saying it would be hard or easy to prove, but besides the Hard Knocks video which aired, there is probably lots of video that was edited out that might also be considered evidence.

How about that for a big league throw?

I think of Stafford as more talented than good (kind of like how I feel about Jay Cutler). That said the best controlled experiment we have to go with is the week 6 game that Stafford played at Cleveland without Calvin Johnson. On the road against a decent defense, Stafford went 25-43 for 248 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT.

Thanks Cappy. So connecting the obvious dots, they were hoping to get EJ at #29.

The Patriots entered the draft with the 29th and 59th selections. They then traded the #29 pick to Minnesota for 4 draft picks. I don't recall if they made this trade before or after the Bills selected Manuel.

Even though they're very different stylistically, both Stafford and Dalton are in that second-tier of QBs. I noticed the Bengals feed Bernard via the shovel pass. I don't recall the Bills using that play with Spiller.

Without knowing the exact act, I'm thinking Kiko had more to do with this than Mario.

After an 8-year career, there's no way this guy made less than at least $1.5 million. I hope he was wise with his money.

In spite of the public opinion that the players lost in the last CBA, there were major gains made for the players in numerous areas having to do with player safety, player health, and the reduction of the amount of time that NFL players are required to spend at the team facilities. There were also major improvements in their health care, both during and after their careers end. In addition, the league and players are close to a settlement on the concussion lawsuits. The league has even increased benefits to earlier generations of players. I have long advocated for better working conditions for NFL players: they have the shortest careers of all North American professional athletes, they have the highest risk for playing and post-playing chronic and acute injuries, they have the highest risk for catastrophic injuries, and unlike their counterparts in other sports, their contracts are not fully guaranteed. That said, working conditions for NFL players has never been better than they are right now. Hopefully they continue to improve. To the player in question: 1) No one had a gun to your head forcing you to play in the NFL 2) Yet you played in 47 games during an 8-year career in which you had 88 tackles. While I believe that certain generations of players was exploited and toiled in an unjust system, I don't believe that to be the case with Abdullah and his generation of players.

I would say that the injury to Manuel and the injury to Lewis were both avoidable. Manuel showed poor judgement (and I consider this a coaching failure as well as a bad individual decision) and the playcall on Lewis' injury was terrible IMO because when you're that thin at QB, you have to account for that in your playcalling. Read option? Bad play call. So I think bad luck is a minimal factor as far as our injured QBs are concerned.

:lol: :lol: I love the fact that they've brought in a lot of guys in just 8 weeks. They give them nice, long 2-3 week auditions to evaluate them. I think this is a great approach to finding that "diamond-in-the-rough as opposed to giving a person a 3 hour workout. I really don't feel like you can really judge a player by working them out on a Tuesday for a few hours. You really want to see how they can be coached, how quickly they pick up and retain concepts and techniques, etc. IMO this is best done over the course of a few weeks, not a few hours. In an aside, I'm quite disturbed to hear that Bruce took Dunaway's number and then killed his wife. If these rumors are true then I'd be in favor of giving the new kid Bruce's old number.

Understand about the timing. It's certainly ironic. Like you I'm still waiting for the secondary to play well as a unit but I believe they will very soon. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume 2 things: 1) Gilmore and Byrd are still finding their "sea legs" after being on the shelf for so long. 2) Gilmore and Byrd are still integrating themselves into the overall DB chemistry. Both individually and as teammates it's hard not to believe that this unit will gel nicely especially as it's been moving slowly in that direction.

I think for one thing, the offense could be sued for non-support. Also the Bills lost the turnover battle. This contributed to the Saints having several short fields and generally excellent field position. As mentioned earlier, Robey was beaten on two plays by perfectly executed offensive plays. And back to my point the offense was sputtering and didn't give the defense any appreciable break. How's that? I'm in the group that thought the Bills D played well. edit: Also, how long was that Stills/Jerry Hughes play? Blame whomever you want for that one but that counted for a lot of yards and one TD. Thoughts?

No surprise that Lewis got the day off from practice. It's not often you see a QB take the kind of beating (lots of it self-imposed) that he took last Sunday.

Well, I do try reading through a thread before posting.

Chandler continues to be a horrible blocker both pass and run-wise. As has been pointed out by network announcers, the Bills use Lee Smith like an extra tackle. It would be nice if Chris Gragg got more snaps but he's probably not a great blocker at this point in his career so the Bills don't really have the ability to go 2 TEs as a way of improving their blocking. One thing I noticed about Cordy is usually once, early in the game he'll be beaten or partially beaten. However it seems that after that one play that he's gauged his opponent's strength, speed, etc and that that player never gets close again. To the OP, it's an interesting look at protection and how much a QB is able to make his blockers look good or bad based on his own skills. I think most fans tend to overlook that aspect of pass protection.

I don't know anything about the culture in that organization but I will say that it would be hard for a team to be successful with that offensive line. Although he has all the physical gifts, I'm not sold on Tannehill mentally and putting him behind that O-line is not doing any good for his development. Guys like Manning can transcend bad O-line play to a large degree but a guy in his second year?

This was touched on earlier in this topic.

We can generate some positives from EJs injuries and some of them are valid points. One you didn't mention is that he was said to have spent some time in the booth to get a bigger picture on the offense. However my biggest disappointment of the season is that his injuries have taken valuable reps away from him and that the growing pains that I thought would be significantly behind him by midseason are assuredly still ahead of him. I feel like NFL game experience is the biggest ingredient he needs and the one he isn't getting. Totally agree with your post. I'm hopeful that Nate Hackett is truly a good QB coach because that's what EJ really needs. He possesses everything needed to be a great QB. All he needs is game experience and good coaching IMO.

I'm getting Jimmy Graham flashbacks.

I view it as karma that Jason Pierre-Paul has been plagued by back problems ever since his repeated dunkings of Prince Amukamara in the Giants whirlpool bath. On one hand people have to learn to stand up for themselves but on the other hand, there's no place for bullying.

Also from the outset, the Bills position on analytics is that it would be (paraphrasing) another tool to layer over our operations." Let's try to keep this in perspective, shall we?

I think it's silly to judge a hire based mostly on where a person worked. Lyons might have had very good reasons to work at Xerox. Wouldn't most people want to have a great job in their hometown?

It's sometimes hard to tell what the consensus is on this board but I think of the three top tackles we knew we had a shot at (we knew that Kalil would go 4th overall), that Riley Reiff (23rd overall) was the people's choice. There were a few of us that were in Cordy's (41st overall) corner and probably just as many that liked Martin (42nd overall) better. Interestingly the 3rd tackle taken in 2012 was Mitchell Schwartz (37th overall), taken 4 picks before we took Cordy. The other interesting thing is that most pundits had Reiff, Cordy, and Martin as first rounders and Schwartz as a second rounder. I'm still loving our pick.