Thurman#1

I don't think it's any stretch at all to think Shakir can be a #2 with more targets now that they don't have to force so many to Diggs. Might not happen that way, but it surely could. I'd agree that it's likely that anyone after the first three isn't likely to be a #1 early. Possible, but quite unlikely. But you don't need a #1. You just don't. KC certainly didn't have one last year. Plenty of good teams have good groups rather than a #1 and can still be plenty productive. With James Cook and particularly Kincaid, we show every sign of being able to have plenty of success if they can have a couple of WRs step up to #2 status, and I think it's pretty likely Shakir for one makes that leap.

Says the guy who knew that Tyrod Taylor was going to be a franchise QB. Remember when you said he'd shown that he was "near-elite"? For thousands and thousand and posts, I tried to tell you you were almost certainly wrong. For years. Over thousands and thousands and thousands of posts you told me how wrong I was and how my arguments were pointless. Says the guy who absolutely knew that Josh Allen was going to be a failure before the draft. Remember that too? How you spent months telling us how there was no way he could ever succeed because of your careful study and complete understanding of completion percentages and how they couldn't change? Remember those days? Remember how many "pointless" posts I spent telling you you were wrong? Yeah, I was pointless then and pointless now. Or so it seemed to the guy who knew what he knew about Tyrod and about how it was impossible for Josh to succeed. How pointless were those posts, actually, Transie? What they actually were was right on point. You just didn't see. Your pattern. You're doing some thing stupid, as usual. This time in particular, though. You don't have the ability to tell me what the crux of my argument is. Not without reading my posts. So ***** off about the crux of my argument. We have a bunch of holes on this team. One or possibly two safeties, DT, pass rushing Edge, IOL, CB. Depth elsewhere. And we need the draft to start filling them. And yet again, making a huge trade up is a failing strategy. Massey-Thaler shows it, as do all the studies. It's an idea that has been shown to increase the odds of failure. Again and again. But I'm sure you won't read. 'Course you didn't read the stuff about Tyrod or either. Remember? Remember how hopeless you thought Josh was?

I see what you're saying her, but I think that's a stretch, WR at 2nd most important position. Pass-rushing DE is an important factor on every pass play and many run plays. Receivers are window dressing on most run plays and most pass plays where they don't get looked at or thrown to. I put reciever tied for 3rd, myself. And while the Bills have serviceable EDGEs, we don't have a serviceable pass rushing EDGE across from Groot unless we get lucky with Von Miller. Could happen but it should absolutely not be counted on. If you can't pressure Mahomes better than we have, you aren't going to have much luck against him. And we lost our best sack artist this off-season and haven't brought in another. I'm not worried about us being able to set the edge, but rushing the passer? Yeah, I'm worried.

Seriously? You think that ends the argument? Um, not really so much at all. Just because you can't point to one factor and say it's the only cause of a given result in football doesn't mean the discussion is over. Football is a wildly complicated game and nearly every result is caused by hundreds of factors. But what we do know 100% for certain is that having Julio Jones wasn't enough to get the Falcons over the hump. They were way ahead in that Super Bowl, just needed another score or at least a couple of long good drives even without a score, and having Julio on that team wasn't enough to get them that. They failed to get over the hump, not just for that game but for the ten years Jones was on that team. And again, he was drafted onto a team that was 13-3 the year before, with a good QB, and looked to themselves at least like they were one receiver away. They weren't. Having an elite WR group doesn't win you titles. You need more than that. You need a damn good roster, up and down. Within all too short of a time, they were finding that they needed an overall increase in talent that the picks they'd traded away would have provided, rather than needing just one guy. Picking Mike Evans was a good idea because they didn't trade up to do it, much less make a huge trade up throwing away many of the best picks in two drafts the way the Falcons did to get Julio Jones.

You say you didn't bother to read most of my post. I understand. I pointed out areas where you were wrong. It's tough to read that sometimes. A lot wrong with this post I am now replying to also. If you want to say we only have two glaring holes, I guess it depends on your definition of glaring. We have a number of holes. Neither of our starting safeties has ever consistently started at safety. That's a hole. We have a serious lack of pass rushers. That's a hole, and one that needs to be addressed in some way and pronto. Both of those needs are far more serious than RB. We also have weak and unproven spots at IOL and CB. We had to let a ton of people go because of the cap and that created holes. Kid yourself if you want, but that's the way it is. Certainly WR is one of our biggest holes. Very far from the only one. As for a #1, plenty of teams win Super Bowls without them. Get a guy in the first two rounds. Odunze, Nabers and MHJ are absolutely NOT worth using a strategy which has a success record of zero percent in NFL history in producing titles. The idea is dumb, unless one of them falls far enough to be gotten at a semi-reasonable price, in the late teens, maybe. Problem is the odds of that happening are close to zero. Yes, Mahomes had Kelce. Kelce last year had less than a thousand yards last year and yet they won a title. There's every reason to think Kincaid will be in the thousand yard neighborhood this year. We don't need a #1 anymore than Mahomes does. But picking a WR in the first two rounds makes a ton of sense.

Trading up and getting one of the big three sounds like a lead-in to failure to me. As Alpha said yesterday, "Never in NFL history has a large investment to acquire a WR via trade, FA, or the draft has ever translated into a Super Bowl win. No team has given up multiple premium picks to trade for a proven top end WR and paid them big money and gone on to win a SB (which is what some want us to do to get Auiyuk, Higgins, etc). No team has ever signed a FA WR to top of the league money and then turned that into a SB win. No team has ever made a big trade up in the first round using multiple premium picks and won a SB (which many want to send multiple firsts and multiple 2nds to get up into the top 12). There is no example of a major investment like that in a WR ever leading to a SB trophy." Alpha continued, "There are however countless examples where teams have won the Super Bowl without having a top 5 WR. In the past 20 Super Bowls only 1 team had a WR1 drafted in the top 15 of the draft (Mike Evans)." Precisely. You do NOT win because you have an excellent WR group. You win because you have an excellent team. Yes, Mahomes won one with the best TE in the NFL and one of the best WRs in the NFL. He also won two with an excellent TE and a mediocre to below average WR group. That proves the point. It wasn't the great WR that was the reason for him winning that first one. It was having a consistently good team and a damn good QB. They got that great WR with a massive tradeup that had them giving away the next year's first rounder, right? Oh, no, wait. They did not do that in any way, shape or form. They did indeed trade up giving away the next year's first. But for a quarterback. Not a WR. That's what Massey-Thaler tells you to do. That's what ALL the studies tell you. Never do huge trade-ups giving away premium assets except if you are going after a franchise QB. It's not just the studies making that case. That's what the story of the Chiefs tells you. Reid and Mahomes didn't need a great WR to win, as their last two wins show. But if you get a great WR, don't do it with a massive tradeup. The Chiefs didn't. They're an excellent example of doing things the right way. You claim that all five of the last five SB winners had an elite weapon. Not true. Mike Evans is a terrific WR. But he wasn't elite the year the Bucs won it and he came in with 1006 yards. Same with Kupp the year the Rams won. Top ten surely, but not elite. 1161 yards is damn good, 9th in the league among WRs that year, but not elite. And while Kelce was maybe still elite last year, for the first time in years it's arguable. He was clearly showing his age and his production showed it. In any case, the Bills appear to have two young guys who are closing in on elite status already, and both improving. Cook was the 3rd best RB in the league in yards from scrimmage. And Kincaid had a sensational year for a rookie and was visibly improving. You say you'll "be fine if we stay put or trade down to get one of the other WRs. One of them might pan out and become Elite. I think Josh being their QB will help them with that." We're in agreement there. There are a lot of really good prospects this year after the big three.

There are some conspiracies. A very very small percentage of them are true. Ben Franklin said it. "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." If there's no clear evidence, it's almost certainly not true.

Um, yes. It is indeed "right." You think you're making a point, but it's mine. Yes, Lotulelei's market value was what he got. More, it was a decent value for the Bills for the first two years until he first took the year off to avoid Covid and then caught Covid and saw it destroy his ability to play football. That's how the market works. You get market value. That's how you know what your market value is, it's what you are predicted to get and if that's confirmed by the actual contract, then yeah, dude, that's the guy's market value. And you think Trevor Lawrence is going to give the Jags "inferior QB play?" Um, yeah, OK. Right! And no, no particular reason to think Gabe won't live up to his contract. It could happen. Or not. He could just as easily overperform as underperform. Yes, there are examples of guys underperforming. Thinking that an example of a guy underperforming his contract somehow reflects particularly on Gabe Davis is just purely ridiculous. Yeah, Gabe's had foot problems. Yet he was solidly productive in spite of that. Same with his career catch rate, he's been quite productive regardless, making a ton of impact plays on relatively limited targets. He gets mostly downfield targets and those always have lower completion percentages, they're harder throws. Ridley spurning the Jags could and should mean more targets for Gabe.

What's unproductive about studying EVERY era of football to learn from them? Nothing that I can see, particularly because on this issue, every era tells you the same thing. And what would make you think Nabers would bring us an undefeated season? The idea's ridiculous. If we have an undefeated season, it won't be because we drafted Nabers. It would be because of a ton of different decisions being made at a high level. In any case, this is what recent events tell you: Quick question: What do these players have in common? Kevin White, Corey Davis, Mike Williams (from Clemson to the Chargers), John Ross, Drake London and Sammy Watkins? All WRs chosen in the top ten picks in the last ten years. We tend to think "a top ten guy, he'll be a Ja'Marr Chase." And that ain't necessarily so. There are some very good WRs chosen in the top ten of those same drafts. But more who never justified the pick. For those curious, here are all the rest of the top ten in those ten years: Chase, Waddle, DeVonta Smith, Garrett Wilson, Amari Cooper, Mike Evans. That's five terrific players, one pretty damn good one in Smith and again, Kevin White, Corey Davis, Mike Williams (from Clemson to the Chargers), John Ross, Drake London and Sammy Watkins. That's why you don't make such massive trade-ups unless you're doing it for a franchise QB. GMs tend to get carried away by their surety in their own abilities. And that's fools gold. Very very very few are genuine sure things. That's why Massey and Thaler and all of their inheritors say what they say. The data says tradeups that big are desperate, not to be made except for a franchise QB, as drafting a possible franchise QB is worth the prospect of a possible catastrophic failure, because you pretty much can't win without one.

You're right. There isn't anything subjective about it. It's dead wrong. Again, you're right that Rashee Rice was the #1 WR for that particular team, but for a team whose number two WR managed less than 500 yards, this is not a significant accomplishment. It simply shows they didn't have a true #1 on the team, or anything close. Hell, if being the best WR on your particular team makes you a WR1, then BADOL's WR1 list has to include Marquise Brown in Arizona, because his 574 yards led that team. Drake London is a #1 by that measure, and Jerry Jeudy. Jayden Reed led his WR group, he must be a #1 also. DeMario Douglas beat out all the other Pats receivers with more than 500 yards. By your reasoning here, he must be a #1 also. And Darius Slayton. Strong group of #1s you've got there, Badol. Rice simply wasn't productive enough to be considered a #1. And you can go on kidding yourself about the playoffs if you must, but a total over four games of 65 yards per game, two fumbles they were lucky enough to recover and 1 TD isn't anything faintly like "huge," as, you claim, not even in the same zip code. It is a very solid and decent total, but solid and decent doesn't make you a #1. Could he be headed in that direction? Yeah, sure, it's very possible. He had a really good year for a rookie. Not a #1 yet, though. The idea's ridiculous.

Nah. That just doesn't make sense, it just doesn't. It's his market value. It's what they think he's worth. It's just in the area predicted for him. Like it or not, he's been a productive WR. He has appeared to be a somewhat below average #2, who gives value beyond his production with excellent blocking and leadership and locker room presence. This is what his market value is. It's what he was expected to get and he got it because that's his worth. Could it turn out to be a bad deal? Sure. Or a good one. My guess is he'll continue to be a productive guy, at roughly his current level, making 700 - 900 yards, maybe even up to a thousand in a good year. And that will mean he'll live up to his contract. It won't be a bad contract unless he's only a #3. Which could happen, but there's no particular reason to think it will.

Matt Ryan and Pat Mahomes are BOTH the models. Neither one won a Super Bowl with any top ten WR on his roster. Both teach the same thing, though from opposite directions. Ryan teaches that even having an absolutely sensational WR on the team guarantees nothing and in fact led to far more losing than winning. Mahomes teaches that you can win SBs without blowing huge resources on WRs. Didn't have a top ten pick or even a first round pick at WR on any of those SB rosters. Josh doesn't "deserve 2 elite weapons." He deserves far more than that. He deserves a team around him that can win a Super Bowl. History shows that you do that with a good roster and that you don't need elite weapons. Another thing Josh deserves is for his team NOT to use a strategy that has worked out and produced SB winners an extremely small percentage of the time. If we had a top ten pick, one of the top three WRs would probably be a good move. Trading major resources away to get into the top ten for a receiver, though, is dumb. Particularly in a year with great depth in talented WRs. It would lower our chances of success. Massey-Thaler and all the academic studies will tell you the same thing even if you refuse to look at what history tells you about SB winners and how they've used draft picks on bringing in WRs.

Josh has had the reins for two or three years. Agreed he doesn't need elite weapons. They need a good team without major holes and with Josh Allen and they've got a shot every year.

Correct. It's not wrong. It shows nothing particular, but certainly both statements are correct. The Bills have an excellent TE on the way up and the Chiefs have a HOF TE on the way down. The HOF managed 983 yards TE while Kincaid put up 673 as a rookie. Every chance Kincaid this year equals Kelce's 2023. Andy Reid is an excellent head coach. McDermott is also a very good head coach though he certainly has more to prove than Reid does. Reid won his first Super Bowl championship in his 21st year as a head coach. Impossible to say what will happen to McDermott if he reaches 21 years. He may well last that long even if it's not in Buffalo. McDermott was two years older when he got his start at HC. Ought to be an interesting comparison down the road. Again, true, but shows nothing. Lousy analogy, and doesn't begin to address his contention that there's every reason to think that Allen gets the best out of his receivers as he so far has. We don't know what our WR room will look like, but it's very reasonable to think that it could be a decent to good group. Throw in Cook and Kincaid and we should have a pass catching group every bit as good as the Chiefs last year and perhaps better. And of course Allen will make them look better than they are. He always does. Losing Diggs, Morse, the safeties, Tre and others will hurt. Absolutely. But we still have Allen and our OC is now going into his second year and his first full year where he will write the playbook and adjust the scheme. We're likely to be very competitive again. Hard to say what will happen beyond that, but this roster isn't finished by a long shot.

Nah. Until our waves of defensive injuries our D was just as good. The game itself was extremely close, and for good reason. It came down to 1 or 2 plays despite out ravaged D. It's a totally fair comparison between the two teams.

Yowch! Hadn't ever put it together like you did in your first paragraph there. Good stuff. Couldn't agree more.

"Rashee Rice is actually WR1?" Now? Sorry, that's utter ridiculousness. When you get 938 yards with Pat Mahomes throwing to you, you're not a WR1. Gabe Davis in his third year equalled Rice's TDs and was only 100 yards below him. Was anyone saying Davis was only 100 yards shy of a WR1 at the time? No, and for good reason. The kind of stats Rice put up - again, with Pat Mahomes throwing to him - are NOT WR1 stats. And not particularly close. Rice "was huge for them in the playoffs,"| you say? Um, yeah? 262 yards (65.5 YPG over four games), 2 fumbles and 1 TD, and two runs for five yards, all in four games is "huge"? I think your idea of "huge" is significantly different from most. They were lucky to get both of those fumbles back or the story would have been much different. He was good in the playoffs. Not "huge," and not particularly close to "huge." I guess you could say he was the #1 WR on the Kansas City Chiefs. Not that big a deal, though, when you see that the #2 WR on the Kansas City Chiefs, Justin Watson, put up all of 460 yards. Now, is Rice a possible future #1? Yeah, he absolutely is. Hard to say how that will go, but there's a reasonable chance he reaches that level, possibly even this year, though the car crash case makes everything much less certain. You're right he doesn't have to be 'elite.' He also didn't have to be a #1. He wasn't and they won a Lombardi. Yes, the Chiefs brought in Rice, at pick 55, last year, and Skyy Moore at pick 54 the year before. And yes, they brought in Toney, but let's not pretend he was considered a sure thing. Sure things don't traded that early in their career. He was thought to be a guy who had a decent chance to be good if things went better for him in a new environment. Toney put up 420 yards in his first year with the Giants and played in two games in the first half of his second year before being traded. Then 171 yards in KC in his second season. The Chiefs brought in Rice, a solid guy, quite good for a rookie, at #55. And they won a Lombardi.

One caveat. Torell Troup was not a bad draft pick. Read this article. He was starting to really play well at training camp that year, and lots of Bills players were and are very vocal about that. He injured his back and was advised to use painkillers and keep playing. This article is a harrowing but excellent read: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/torell-troup-the-one-drafted-a-pick-ahead-of-rob-gronkowski/article_5b363410-dbdd-503c-a774-69fedf3d37d7.html "Through the 2011 lockout, Troup trained with a vengeance. He reported to training camp at a chiseled 319 pounds, eager to break out. Practices began at St. John Fisher and the kid who had 23 tackles and no sacks the year prior was dominant for stretches. “'Honestly, I was killing the offensive line,' Troup said. 'Eric Wood, I’m good friends with him, but they couldn’t handle me.' "One day in the lunchroom, head coach Chan Gailey and General Manager Buddy Nix couldn’t contain their excitement. The two asked Troup to sit down with them and told this bull in a china shop they had no clue what he did over the offseason, but, wow, were they ecstatic to see this all transfer to game day. "Their words added more fuel to Troup’s fire. His tear continued. Teammates today still remember Troup’s raw strength. "'Low center of gravity,' guard Kraig Urbik said. 'Super strong. Legs were very thick. Strong dude – he was tough to move for sure.' “'He was a strong dude,' Wood said. “'Big, powerful guy,' added veteran Kyle Williams. 'He’s probably not your pass rusher, but a guy who could stack things up at the line and make plays at the line of scrimmage and do some good things there.' ... but a bit later ... "Then, without warning, his world started to crumble down. "In a one-on-one pass rushing drill against Wood, Troup used a head bob to freeze the center. He smacked Wood with his right arm and Troup’s hand snapped, breaking the bone underneath his right knuckle. Initially, Troup thought he jammed the finger. By the time he reached the trainers he said his hand looked like a baseball glove. "Troup missed one week of practice, wrapped the paw in a club and was prepared to punctuate his knockout summer in the preseason finale against Detroit. To this day, he cannot pinpoint the play, the moment, but during this game he fractured his lower back. “'I played all through the game doped up,' he said, 'so I couldn’t feel it.' "On Wednesday, it felt like he pulled both hamstrings. He received an epidural. Tests later revealed the fracture. A disc in his back was slipping and pushing against nerves, causing burning and numbness down his legs. "Troup sat out the first three weeks of the season and returned. “ 'It’s easy to look back now and say, "I should have sat my ass down," ’  Troup said. 'But I was young. I was stupid. And it cost me my career.' ... and still later ... "When Gronkowski was scoring more touchdowns than any tight end ever in 2011, Troup was, as he said, 'all doped up' on Toradol to survive Sundays. During the week, he chugged pain pills like Tic Tacs. Troup played that season with a fractured back – his disc slipping, jamming into nerves – enduring the most unthinkable pain he doesn’t wish upon his worst enemies. Teammates told him to quit. Coaches, he claims, told him to play. So he played to the literal point of tears and the subsequent L4/L5 spinal fusion ended his career. "He’s more casualty of a ruthless business than bust. More commodity chewed up and spit out by the NFL than outright failure. Each creak of a joint in the a.m. is his aching reminder of his season from hell. “ 'They saw the pain that I was in, man,' Troup said. 'Being who I am, all I wanted to do was do what I was told. I never thought about talking back or saying I don’t want to play. No matter how much pain I was in, if they wanted me to play, I played. It went to where I couldn’t play no more.' ” That was only about 20 - 30% of the Tyler Dunne article. Hell of an article, and if you don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for Troup after reading it, you're tougher than I am.

I think you're right that Allen will have a great year. Your original post was solid, though the headline was deliberately provocative. Your guy Mahomes had a bit of a down year with a poor receiving group, but the kind of a down year that ends in a Lombardi is a type I wouldn't mind Josh having.

Fair enough, but he was really productive for his time here. It's not a mistake that some team is paying him $13M a year. A fourth rounder. Yes, this. Limiting expectations, especially for the first year, often means improving production as there isn't major pressure for immediate production.

I'm good. Probably not perfectly satisfied, but that's not Beane's job. His job is to handle things as well as he can with the limited resources he's got. KC has won titles with some very good WRs, and won another last year with a very motley group indeed. Beane will bring in two to five more WRs, including some camp bodies who have tiny chances of showing themselves good enough to compete for a roster spot. Might it be a question? Sure. Most teams have questions that might or not be answered as they draft, as they bring in FAs and as guys on the roster develop.

Greatly doubt it. He still might develop and become a really good player, but he has an awful lot to prove.

It seemed possible, but hadn't happened yet. It has now. That's the sound of the market moving.

That's about where I'm at. I remember wanting him in the draft, but not in the first where he was being valued. Haven't been thrilled with what I've seen in the NFL.

He doesn't get a pass. But any careful look shows he's a top ten GM and probably a bit higher than that.