Hapless Bills Fan

Traina has a valid point IMO. Schefter was clearly just serving as a mouthpiece for Cook's agent. What he chose to tweet makes it seem like a home invasion, rather than someone that Cook evidently had a prior relationship with and who had stuff in his house and may have in fact been given the garage door opener at one point. Obviously this is a case where it's appropriate to reserve judgement, but being led around by the short and curlies to present a narrative favoring the player in a possible case of domestic violence is just gross. Link to Traina's article in SI: https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2021/11/10/adam-schefter-espn-tweets-dalvin-cook

It's implied by this statement of yours: "The oline was atrocious on Sunday. Need to stop moving people all over the place. Williams should stay at guard and give Tommy a shot at RT if Brown can’t go. Ford is a huge liability and he is going to get someone hurt." You're fundamentally saying the Bills FO and coaches player personnel evaluation is so atrocious that they are leaving a T who is capable of playing sufficiently better than Williams inactive every week (even though they get to see him in practice every week), and failing to see that Williams was playing so solid at guard that they should take that risk at T just to leave him at G. There's a reason that the Bills left Doyle inactive and risked the turmoil of moving multiple OLmen around, and it's not that your suggestion would be an improvement.

Florio's point (and mine) is that if you shoplift 16 times and then pickpocket and steal from a car, it doesn't get rolled into one single charge and penalty. The fine is standard, but treating it as one instance and fining the same amount as for one instance is baloney. You may disagree, that's .........................fine (seewhatIdid?)

Safe travels, we will miss your posts!

$300k is (relatively speaking) chicken-feed.

If our backs are getting 0.22 yards before contact, how would changing to Nick Chubb or Jonathan Taylor hep us? If former top players are going unsigned, it's because they are widely regarded as washed.

Or one of our players - they got smacked the same amount for a single brief instance of improper mask wearing

You and I are apparently not alone in that perception: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/11/09/others-teams-are-outraged-by-leagues-handling-of-packers-aaron-rodgers/

I'm sure the Bills FO and coaches agree with you and would similarly, like an explanation. Williams was solid last season, or they wouldn't have given him the contract they did. Now he's literally "lost in space" out there at times. Sometimes players get paid, and lose their edge. It's not always a big conscious thing, sometimes it's an accumulation of small things. A big night out on Monday -Tues that lingers with them into practice on Weds, vs. getting treatment, lifting and a personal film session then a fun but dry night that puts them in good mental and physical condition for Weds. That kind of thing. They probably feel they're doing enough, but they're actually not doing some of the things that made them successful before. Some of the responses to this are great: "Ssoooo you're saying there's a chance?!" "But the Jets defense will come out and play their best game of the year against us, just like the Jags did." And that there's the point. We get everyone's Best Game from now on. I know that you guys don't believe this, but work with me here......The coaches and FO of a team that's been to the playoffs the last two years are not suddenly atrocious and totally inept at player evaluation. Tommy Doyle has been inactive every game and was not activated to play RT when Brown got hurt *because he's not good enough at this time*. The coaches are not inexplicably leaving better players on the bench or on the practice squad. I think you're correct about how Ford played, but if Brown can't go they will put someone else in at G.

Anyway, for those who want to behave as though players are constant performing units whose play is affected solely by the coaching they receive, as opposed to complex human beings who are impacted by things like whether or not they've just been paid way more money than the coach is earning, what nagging, unreported injuries may be lingering with them all season, their comfort level in the blocking scheme that's asked of them, their level of energy week to week which may get influenced by external factors (like press clippings) or internal factors (like subtle cues the coaches are giving off that the game is a walkover), and what they've done with their time in the off-season or are doing when they're not at the facility.....I got Nothin' for ya. For those who are actually interested in what went down on Sunday, I got this. Erik Turner of Cover1 has been tweeting abut the Bills protections and OL play and the whole series is worth a look. Some of it is way over my head. First, he points out how knowing he needed to help his teammates was affecting Morse's snaps. If we didn't have a QB with very high athleticism, many of these might have been fumbles, but even there, having to handle an "off" snap and focus on putting it where it belongs is an extra fraction of a second taken from making his reads Allen makes this look easy but I don't think it actually is. He then goes into actual pass protection charts - I don't know how standard these are or whether he actually got these from the Bills (licitly or illicitly) Anyway, you don't need a twitter account to see these - I don't have a twitter account - just google "twitter erik turner" He's got a lot of good stuff up there.

I think your definition of "objective conversation" may be a little unusual. It's just not possible to have objective conversations with some folks here. But I've never seen it help to exaggerate your own position as a debating tactic.

This isn't a debate where your object is to score points and win the debate or a debate class where your object is to pass the class This is a Football board where the objective is an honest exchange of our actual viewpoints and opinions.

Beware that Sar Chasm. Don't slip and fall.

I think that's correct. There are a number of places where Beane, McDermott, and the position coaches give input. Daboll at one point explained that they decide which players will be active each week in a meeting with Beane, McDermott, and the 3 coordinators. Each of them makes their case for what players they need to have active, Beane gives any input he has, and they all need to come to an agreement about what players need to be active or inactive to meet the needs of each phase of the game. He offered that in response to a question about why someone - maybe it was Duke Williams, or Tommy Sweeney - wasn't active (2019 season IIRC). Beane at one point explained that he and his staff. and McDermott, the coordinator, and the position coaches independently evaluate each player and then he and McDermott and the coordinators sit down to discuss needs at the beginning and end of the season. In season, if he wants to trade a player I'm pretty sure there would be an update requested. That doesn't mean he's going to completely follow what the position coach thinks because he needs to balance the whole roster, but it doesn't mean he's going to act on his own evaluation without the position coach's input, either. So as the team gets ready for roster cutdowns, the OL coach and assistants and Daboll have evaluated and ranked the players they've been coaching. Beane and his team have evaluated them as well. If there's a gap, they discuss it. It seems very likely to me that Johnson and Beane both had Teller ranked below Boettger and Bates in their evaluation, because they kept the latter and traded the former. That evaluation would seem to have been sorely mistaken. But at the same time, we don't see what happens in an alternative universe where the player doesn't get traded. Maybe the scheme doesn't suit him as well and he never becomes that good. Maybe the simple act of being traded, puts a bug up a guy's butt and they say "trade me, will you? I'LL SHOW YOU!" and work double-hard. You just don't know. So wait. You're saying you don't believe it's binary, but because you interpret the poster you're responding to as believing it is, it forces you into a binary response that doesn't represent how you actually understand it to work? That's rather illogical, if I understood you correctly.

He's just slipped and fallen into a gimondulous Sar Chasm of his own creation

I'm sure you're correct that Johnson gives input to Beane on the guys he coaches Beane has also said that he and his team conduct their own evaluation of every player on the roster So I'm sure decisions are driven by a blend of those evaluations What's the blend? Likely that only Beane knows for sure. Why do you insist it has to be so binary?

Interesting, Thanks. I thought it was fully guaranteed. Yeah, they're gonna want to kick him to the curb then.

No, that was Beasley. Eric Woods diagrams that play on "Chopping Wood" and points out that it's not clear whether Allen's throw is inaccurate, or whether he and Beasley weren't on the same page about what route option Beasley was going to run (miscommunication) https://www.buffalobills.com/video/chopping-wood-good-and-the-bad-from-the-loss-to-the-jags I thought that Beasley should not have been out there this week. He's competitive, he's a gamer, but there comes a point when you have to ask if an obviously hindered Beasley is on the field ahead of McKenzie or Davis, shouldn't the Bills look for a better backup to be on the team?

My thought with the Williams play and with that play, was a communication issue. FWIW, when asked if communication issues were a factor in the game, Morse said "no" - but then maybe that's his way of not pointing the finger at anyone but himself

https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/cowboys-breaking-greg-zuerlein-moves-to-covid-list-dallas-emergency-kicker-tryouts Sounds as though the Cowboys have several prospects lined up

What choice do you think the Panthers have exactly about those big $$? 5th year option was fully guaranteed at signing - $18.6M next season. What are they gonna do, say "everyone could see our OL was trash and the guy broke his shoulder, but we so strongly don't believe in him that we want you to take him and his $18.6M off our hands"? If they want to trade Sam, they're gonna have to eat a good part of his salary I do believe.

I'd like to point out that's the viewpoint of some fans, and may not reflect how the Bills are actually thinking Especially since Bates does take the field as an extra blocker (5% of snaps so far this season) and plays teams (20% of snaps) McKenzie does take snaps at WR (16% this season)

Darnold now reported as having incomplete fracture of shoulder https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32593531/source-carolina-panthers-qb-sam-darnold-incomplete-fracture-shoulder-blade Perhaps he'll get the "your shoulder was actually broken at the time and you were trying to gut through it" pass out of Rhule's AwShit list

It could. But as noted, Teller never played for Bobby Johnson during a regular season, so we don't have a comparison there Spain played very well under Bobby Johnson in 2019, which is why he was offered a good contract He then proceeded to play poorly at the start of 2020, get benched then cut, and play "meh" enough for Cincinnati to be offered a vet minimum "prove it" deal a month into FA. He's now (under the need to "prove it") playing well So it's possible, but less conclusive than one might think. Hmmm right you are. LT too. And now that I look further, I think the snap counts on pro-football-reference are incorrect for the Colts. So that's another guy who looked unserviceable here this summer, and is now playing well enough to allow his team to win