BarleyNY

That's all true and I absolutely support an end to marijuana testing in the NFL as well as legalizing medical marijuana. I'm also good with legalizing recreational too. But Henderson's issues with pot pre-date his Crohn's diagnosis. He had violations in college and even tested positive at the Combine. His only chance to remain in the NFL is if they stop testing or grant him an exception.

That'd be very nice.

2 years, $6M including $4.5M guaranteed. Nice money for his limited career production, but SF didn't exactly break the bank in him.

We all know who Goodwin is as a player. At least we all do here. In SF, they will learn soon enough. Supremely fast, often injured and nowhere near a complete WR. He will beat some defenses deep enough to tantalize, but finish with 400-500 yards, a great YPC average and a poor YPT(arget) average.

Kevin Hart is terrible. Even when he tells a funny joke he immediately steps on it by explaining it to the audience. Every single time. Amy Schumer is awful. She rips off funny comedians and ruins their jokes.

The few good looking color rush uniforms were definitely the exception. I remember liking the Lions silver/grey unis. There might have been one or two others. Most were just horrible.

Yup. That's how I see him, too. He's a guy that can be a quality backup for a long time. If he was a bit more physically gifted he could be on his way to being.a franchise guy.

A GM who doesn't have final say regarding contract structure and dollar figures isn't a GM. Ultimately it was Whaley's responsibility or he was only GM in name.

.500 teams at Super Bowl contending team prices. That was a big issue I had with Whaley.

Ah. Makes sense.

Actually his specialty is press zone coverage and he did extremely well in Schwartz's Cover 2 that utilized him that way. Seattle uses a press Cover 3 and obviously a player like him could always press on the C2 side of a Cover 6. Gilmore has got a lot to offer in a lot of defensive schemes, just not so much when he constantly gets put on an island like in Wrex's dumbass scheme. What I don't know is how he'd play in McD's Cover 3 that calls for CBs to typically use the bail technique rather than press. Between that, him (obviously) wanting to move on and the cap situation the Bills are in I can certainly understand why he wasn't re-signed here.

I'm going to go out on the shortest limb ever and say that Belichick knows how to play Gilmore and that he only paid him that large because he knows he's a great fit in his defense. He played under a stupid, lazy, coach running an obsolete scheme the last two seasons. Everyone on defense looked bad under the mostly retired Wrex.

That's not going to happen as long as Dan Snyder is the owner because the front office will always be a reflection of him. And that's who he is as a person.

Yup. That's a killer. Washington let this play out to a point where they really can't trade him.

The Pats do have Brady, but they've also done a whole lot else right and it's been right in line with what analytics is showing to be advantageous. You couldn't be more wrong about the use of information in football versus other sports - it is absolutely as important in football. I'll just leave it there.

You think the Patriots have won by being more emotional? How can you type that with any sincerity? Analytics is not about blindly following charts, it's all about finding value and advantage by removing emotion from decision making and focusing on expected outcomes. You know, like Belichick has done.

It was pretty obvious that McD was in charge of this past draft precisely because it was far more analytics driven than previous ones.

After Monday's deadline a long term deal cannot be negotiated with Cousins until after the season. There is no way to work one out before then - and we'd need Washingtons blessing to even start talks. Since that's not happening trading for him now would get us him for the 2017 season and give us the opportunity to tag him again at $27.6M for 2018. The highest average contract value in the NFL right now is Carr at $25M so odds are extremely high that the bidding war would go on as scheduled.

I get what you're saying too, but 20/20 hindsight isn't a realistic way to look at situations like this. You can't uncouple the SB win and the contract Flacco got. Ozzie challenged him and the message was clear: If you want a blockbuster deal, earn it this season. Flacco stepped up as big as anyone could have and he earned his huge deal. Ozzie had no choice but to give it to him at that point. Can you imagine the backlash if he would have let Flacco walk right after that SB win? What if Flacco had gone somewhere else (Denver, Houston, etc.) and won there while Baltimore foundered and had to start over looking for their next QB? Ozzie would've been run out of town. At the time Flacco got his deal there was a slew of teams that would've jumped at giving him the deal he got because he was playing that well. At the time no one saw this kind of drop off coming. Ozzie made the logical choice at the time. Knowing what he does now about Flacco's fall off, sure I'd bet he wishes he would have let him walk. But who knows how that situation would've played out? And how is that helpful? Making a bad decision and getting lucky with it isn't much of a repeatable strategy. That would also be the deadline for him to sign a long term deal with any team that would trade for him (hypothetically). So that option is off the table at that point too.

It's discouraged, but not against NFL rules. Specifically teams can't franchise a player with the intention of trading him. Washington has certainly passed that test at this point. So he could be traded now. Trading him now wouldn't be the worst strategy, but they'd need to allow his agent to work out a long term deal with his new team. If that team is SF (as has widely been reported/speculated) then what would they give up to get him a year early?

It wasn't just about the deal, it was about how the situation played out. Ozzie told Flacco that if he wanted that blockbuster deal, then he had one season to earn it. Flacco responded by absolutely carrying the Ravens through the playoffs and to a SB win. So he got his huge payoff for it. I'm sure Ozzie would take the SB win even with the subsequent issues. Let's face it, there's no way they move on from Flacco after that season he had. But I'm sure Ozzie loves that he pushed Flacco at the right time.

Cousins to SF will be the least surprising FA signing next offseason. I'll laugh my ass off if Washington manages to free up enough cap room to tag him again though. I'm sure Washington would be happy to way overpay Cousins if he carried them to a SB win like Flacco did with Baltimore.

Agreed. Specifically those are my big concerns too. Taylor has struggled with timing and accuracy on anticipation throws over the middle and quick timing routes. I really like that he's being pushed in this regard because QBs must be able to make those kinds of throws to be successful in this league. He will either step up or the Bills will move on after this season.

If only there was something you could take for that. Highly lucrative drugs having their ads pulled? Methinks some patents must be expiring.

I was going to post almost the exact same thing and I agree with your subsequent points too. Tyrod will either step up in his problem areas and we will have our QB or he'll be out - and a WCO will absolutely showcase those areas. Pushing him to improve is absolutely the right move because this needs to be the season to find out if he can do it or not. Not to anoint Peterman or anything, but he's definitely a fit for the WCO. It's probably the only kind of NFL offense he has a chance to be successful in. It shows you the kind of QB the Bills will likely focus on acquiring if Tyrod isn't successful.