birdog1960

nfl is rigged.

this is what i see as well. most of the same folks defending whaley here also defended the old guard and may still be now despite their pettiness, incompetence and self serving nature recently coming clearly into focus.

it's a question bill polian was clearly asking. do you feel he isn't a serious nil executive? there's a few franchise qb's every 15 years

so he's been purposefully giving less than his best thus far?

what motivation does polian have for lying? he's going into the hof. he's got a cush job at the top sports network in the world. i'm sure he's financially secure. he's had nearly unprecedented success managing multiple teams. and he's obviously still respected as an expert, at least by pegula. now compare that to those that might disparage him. might they have some ulterior motives other than the truth? mmm hmmm…

you don't need to understand it. pegula's opinion is the only one that matters.

i doubt anyone here did either. doesn't stop them from bashing him. anyone threatened by him would likely fight him. these are football guys not diplomats. if this were true, polian would never have been part of this picture, at least not publicly. polian's help was requested. if pegula didn't like some of his answers, the most likely course would be to ignore them, not publicly remove him from consideration for the job. i doubt he would do that out of hand. by asking for a consultant, he's admitted he's not an expert and desires advice. and if he truly removed polian from consideration because of this , it makes him look incompetent and weak, especially to coaching candidates.

agreed. but do you suppose coaching candidates are not reading the news? do you not think the stories point to this conclusion or at least point to it as a strong possibility?

by your pretzel logic, the vast majority of what preceding popes stated re politics was out of bounds and said without qualification any time they didn't speak ex cathedra. remember that whole "estates of the realm" thing from history? i guess your revising that all by yourself. you are the arbiter of absolutely nothing .

here's the thing: polian clearly isn't all that impressed with whaley if this was the plan. pegula sought polian's advice and obviously has high regard for it. it's pretty likely they discussed whaley. pegula likely decided with polian out of the picture, he had no choice but to go with whaley through the draft. it doesn't bode well for him long term, however.

you can read his comments on the stadium wall link. my interpretation won't add to them.

it is really screwed up. polian said as much in carucci's piece. the team went from needing tweaking to a major cluster, umm, headache in a few days. whatever you think of polian, he's seen everything there is to see on the business side. he knows a mess when he sees it.

because this is the history of the buffalo bills for their entire existence and so far, at least, there's no evidence to suggest a paradigm shift under pegula.

does castration hurt less with a bone in your mouth? oh, and i think this is terrble news. so much for a new era. same old, same old. i'm just hoping we don't have to google the new coach because he is so obscure.

one of the most insightful posts i've read here.i would add this conjecture, however: polian may still agree to give some friendly, side bar advice to pegula on some big personnel issues.

don't you think it might help the drummer to know if the songs in 3/4 or 4/4? springsteen does so many waltzes don't you know? anywho, i'm firmly in the good riddance camp.

yup. zonabb's description sounds like springsteen's habit of not informing his band what song he's doing til he starts it (max weinberg said this recently in an npr interview). while springsteen's band is good enough to pull it off, i don't think brandon et al are up to sight reading.

i admit nothing of the sort. what i'm witnessing is a widely respected man in a widely respected position affecting change on issues he feels important. and i couldn't be happier about it.

i think even before he's officially hired, he'll weigh in on the hc (assuming the plan IS to actually hire polian). the next big decisions are at the draft and fa's. he'll be in full gear by then.

i think this is the most likely sequence of events. ultimately, he had the curse of a middle manager. too much responsibility and too little decision making power.

and i would argue it's mostly the injuries that dictate the differences in career length between mlb and nfl. the differences at the top a talent are razor thin in almost every sport. but they're measurable and meaningful. and the true elites in baseball generally have very long careers while it's fairly common for an elite nil player to face early retirement/disability. given the choice again, i'll bet bo jackson avoids the nfl like the plague and plays mlb for many years.

agreed. but lets look at some premises for the watkins trade that might be incorporated into the algorithm: !.nfl players careers avg less than 3 years. 1a. the bills have a poor record of resigning star players after rookie contracts.2. a significant number of 1st round draft picks do not become stars (someone linked to a very subjective analysis of this but it was way below 50% - so lets throw 50 out there as a liberal estimate), injuries are extremely common, including career ending or changing injuries, it has recently been dramatically displayed that some nfl top players have outlier social and psychological profiles that threaten and sometimes end their careers. given all that, statistically it would appear to make sense to draft as many risky but top talented players (with the probable exception of the qb position given its importance and the rarity of exceptional players in this position) as possible to hedge ones bets. the bills did the opposite. the only reasonable conclusion was that this was a "gut" decision based on little more than personal opinion. it was one of the biggest decisions for the bills in recent years. it implies less than stong commitment to analytics in guiding decisions.

we know these things: bill belichik read the berkley study on 4th down. he goes on 4th down more often than the bills. the bills paid a huge price for a receiver that appears to have several similar less costly peers. taking into account injury risks for receivers and general unpredictability it's hard to imagine a statistically based algorithm that favors the watkins trade. many other teams valued manuel significantly less than the bills. reportedly, many use analytics. i think the odds that the bills did the end run and the others followed the statistical analysis is much more likely than the converse. given more time, i can produce more examples. lets see your counter examples that point toward a successful analytical methodology from the bills.

i think the answer to the question gave insight into the sophistication of the analytics dept. the quality of the response is inconsequential.