birdog1960

one thing we know for certain: nothing brandon says can be trusted. 2 or 3 days ago, everything was hunky dory with the gm and coach. disagreements were normal and expected. i hope he come out tomorrow stating he and whaley are safe...

sweep out all remnants of one of the most poorly run nfl organizations in recent history and start again. in the mid and long term it will pay off. you can't build a dream house on a run of the mill foundation.

perhaps he's better versed at the appeal to authority you just pulled.

iwell know what it means as well. i said nothing about the bills owing fans an explanation about how they make decisions. you made a fallacious, ridiculous argument that was purposefully indefensible and then argued against it.

first of the changing of the guard (not including nix - what inner secrets does this guy hold to account for his remaining on the payroll this long?). there's an article on the raiders interest in brandon. then maybe whaley goes. looks like a truly new era. happy new year! more reason to celebrate.

bigger issues to discuss but your comment that "the bills need to tell us about how they make decisions" is a textbook straw man. would make a fine example for an intro logic class:The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.

strawman. if the bills had a depodesta character revolutionizing the management of the game, the other teams would know. there'd be pictures in every nfl c suite in the league. the press would have it too. as it is, no one cares

if you believe analysis is superior to empirical decision making then whaley's consensus approach is undesirable and less likely to be successful.

gotcha, chief…if you read my posts you'd understand that i'm questioning the bills commitment to analytics. the decisions from the fo most often appear empirical including the manuel pick. i'm suggesting the analytics dept in regards to the bills might well represent more a brandon marketing move than a substantive philosophical change in management.

thank you. it is PPP. there was no offense taken

so you agree that the catholic church recognizes climate change as a serious problem requiring urgent attention and has for many years?

have you read this article? it asserts that it has for some time been a belief of the church that climate change is real and should be addressed. the argument presented is that frank's stance is not radical because it's not new to the church. i've never seen the pope's words parsed and reinterpreted more than those of frank by the american catholic press. can you not deduce anything from this phenomenon? perhaps an investigation of the term ex cathedra is warranted here. neither frank or benny produced any teaching considered ex cathedra so far thus no infallible teachings or statements. it's a quite rare event actually. maybe a reading of some of aquinas' works would help...

the 4th down dilemma is one of the obvious places to apply statistics. it so happens that a berkley economist did just that and his conclusions don't fit with conventional nfl practice: http://static.espn.g...eg/1453717.html. an algorithm could likely be developed that accounts for differences in specific teams personnel. it's seems an obvious place to get an edge over the majority of the league with minimal investment or effort. interestingly, some of the most revered names in coaching agree with his basic premise including another economics major from weslyan who happens to coach in the boston area. perhaps, the bills should be looking for an economist for their analytics dept. showing a few failures of analytics is hardly, well, an analytical approach to assessing it's value. as in any field, there are good, bad and indifferent actors involved. the real potential of the approach can only be judged by looking at the best in the field.

i'm wondering what you think the bills envisioned when they started an "analytics dept". i'm betting the idea was parroting money ball whether it directly translates to football or not. i also think the bills have a history of going against conventional wisdom in drafting. that's fine if you're smarter than everyone else or have a system (e.g. analytics) but clearly the bills aren't and didn't with manuel. my other point is that some non football minds (statisticians, behavioral scientists, social scientists etc) might add a great deal to drafting success. perhaps the bills are using such professionals extensively but if they are they aren't widely publicizing it. finally, statistically speaking, it would appear wise to hire at least one high ranking administrator named "bill": as in polian, walsh or belichick

then let's define it. i believe my link does a pretty good job. the A's of Billy Bean and the harvard economist are the prototype. they are what next gen sports organizations aspire to. do you disagree? perhaps they should have had one much earlier it's an opinion like nearly everything else posted here. i don't see nix, whaley or marrone as elite football intellects much less above average overall intellects.

they would likely get it in similar places that depedesto http://grantland.com/features/the-economics-moneyball/ got it for the A's. do we have a depedesto or a roomful of dudes with average to below average iq's evaluating talent on instinct or some combination of the two?

the decision to draft ej described here sounds a lot like a bunch of guys shooting the bull: "I always say it's a Buffalo Bills pick," Bills general manager Doug Whaley said. "You guys can assign blame wherever you want, but when we're in draft meetings it is a consensus recommendation for our whole organization of where this guy's valued and where we should pick him in the draft." so do you need an "analytics dept" to do this or can 3 or 4 guys give their opinion and then majority rules? somehow i see the bills doing it this way rather than an IT guru handing out carefully manicured and harvested probabilities of success in different aspects of performance metrics integral for a desired position players likelihood of mediocrity or domination. anyone with direct insight into how i reasllyt happens beyond whaley's comments here?

francis is lipstick and catholicism a pig? thank God for "ignore".

he follows one surprise with an ever more dramatic one: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/27/pope-francis-edict-climate-change-us-rightwing

actually, 2013 and 12 are relevant in relativity to 2014. how would you rate management performance if the bills were 12-4 and won the afc in 2012 relative to this years performance? when you look at what pete carroll has done in seattle, do you consider the quality of the organization before he took over?

and exactly no one is surprised by this. mrs brandon? is that you?

the team currently has 8 wins and will miss the playoffs again. that's how you evaluate talent collectively. i'd say they're both to blame. you are wrong because you are criticizing the potential (but hopefully not) continued management structure and therefore are perceived as disrespecting other fans hopes.

i've heard reports of panthers in Va from reputable sportsmen. but a confirmed cougar in kentucky is amazing. especially an attractive one...

some history of big trades involving 1st round picks: http://q.usatoday.com/2014/10/21/nfl-trades-first-round-picks-busts/. in how many of these would you retrospectively choose the picks over the player?

i hope you're being silly here. the point is we never needed to shop anything in order to get as top rookie receiver and a decent 2015 1st rd pick. shop him now and you might get one but never the other. this clearly illustrates the error of the trade. now if someone was to trade the 15th pick this year and the 2016 1st rd pick of a perennial loser for watkins… ya think any team would be willing to make that trader now?