grb

Vic Carucci & Matt Schneidman already have a video report up on Day Ten completely negative about Taylor (and the Bills' quarterbacks in general). I sensed our intrepid reporters had their backs up. If Tyrod's gonna get uppity, he'll quickly see where that gets him. http://buffalonews.com/2017/08/07/video-teams-takeaway-bills-training-camp-day-ten/

Two points : (1) "yes the Bills scored a lot" is manfully conceded. Now if we can just get you to admit a TD rushing & passing both count the same six points, we'd make real progress.......... (2) The Bills scored 29 rushing tds, way out in front of the Cowboys who scored 5 less. Of course Taylor himself scored 6 rushing tds, but I believe you're on record in an earlier thread as saying they don't count..........

If you listed the top twenty football-isms, "take away the run game" would figure high on the list. A zillion coaches, defensive coordinators, sideline commentators, and booth analysts have solemnly pronounced those words - even about skilled passing teams to make them "one dimensional". This would be doubly true about a team so heavily Run First as the Bills. Newsflash : Running the offense scheme Ryan committed to (well before Taylor ever signed with the team) every single opponent was going to say their goal was to make the Bills win through the air. And yet the anti-Taylorites take this piece of stale sports-speak and invest it with mystical significance as the ultimate TT insult. Given they find Taylor so insult-worthy, you'd think they'd do better than something so lame.

This is the zombie talking point I find most hilarious. I'm not saying there isn't a modicum of truth to it, but since it became the go-to Taylor insult there's a lot of people who have "throw with anticipation" on their poor fevered brain. Here's what I advise for a cure : First, watch Taylor play and you'll see plenty of times where he does "throw with anticipation" - just like you'll see some of those middle throws invisible to so many. Second, watch other QBs play and you'll see plenty of throws exactly like Taylor's, anticipation or not. Heck, I recently watched Nathan Peterman's game this year against VT on youtube (he balled out that game), but kept looking for all those "throw with anticipation" passes. Because everyone knows NP "throws with anticipation", right? So, after you tally all the times TT does, and all the times everyone else doesn't, you'll get a relatively small delta where Taylor can be more efficient. However by that point you'll be drained of all your "throw with anticipation" fever. You'll be cured!

The real interesting question is how good Taylor would have to be. If he had another meh year like 2016 there'd be no question. But I'm betting he could be significantly better and a big package deal of draft picks for a QB would still appeal to many. Let's quantify it : Say Taylor's passing rating puts him somewhere between no 15 & 12, which is possible. Or say he has a good year in a ten win season with the wild card. Do the Bills invest their picks elsewhere, spend one first rounder on the QB that falls to them, or try for a major move? You think the Great Tyrod Message Board War is harsh now, imagine that scenario ! I'm betting it would get ugly......

Let's break it down : This is the guys seventh year in the league and does have familiarity with Dennison. Really? He played under Dennison a few years ago, so a whole new playbook isn't a whole new playbook? If the offense is just so complex it's causing him to struggle early on... Really? Most accounts I've read (Rodak aside) say he's had a pretty even camp so far. Also, please remember we're just at Day Seven. Make excuses all you want but the way Buffalo handled his contract this off season proves us fans aren't the only ones who aren't sold. Contract time : Whaley's old Taylor deal was a simultaneous bet TT would be spectacular or hideous. If the former, he was locked in for very moderate money. If the latter, the Bills could cut him outright. It wasn't a great deal for Taylor as he got neither absolute guarantees or freedom, but it did give him one thing : real starter's money for the first time in his career. Now, what Whaley's deal didn't cover was TT as just good (neither spectacular or hideous), which proved the case. So, renegotiation. Again, look for what people wanted and got : The Bills wanted to punt the issue down the road. If Taylor is hideous he can be jettisoned next year with a small penalty. But this time Taylor gets freedom with his starter's money. He's not locked in long-term and will do better overall than his old deal if he plays well. And there's a reasonably good chance Taylor & the Bills will be right back renegotiating after the upcoming season. All of which is fine w/ TT. Because one person who is sold on Taylor is Taylor.

That's on the generous end of the anti-Taylorites. I frequently hear he isn't a quarterback at all, but a running back masquerading as a QB.

In Logan's defense : His one TD looked pretty sweet.

Ah, yes. A new Head Coach. A new Offensive Coordinator. A new playbook. But "Tay Tay" is supposed to have it down one hundred percent because ....... "Baltimore" I knew you were making a serious point !!!

It's interesting to do the circuit of reporters after each day of camp. Overall they generally agree, but sometimes you see the exact opposite take on a player from one account to the next. This is particularly true when the sportswriter isn't operating off a pre-established story-line. I've seen it happen a couple of times with Peterman, where reporters glommed on to two different plays - positive & negative - to give wildly different accounts of his overall day. But if there is an established storyline - say a receiver who drops balls - woe be that guy if he drops a single pass. That just makes it too easy; the story writes itself.

Wow. Really eager to pick nits, aren't you? For the record : I fully concede football to be a team sport. That victory is yours! Crack open a bottle of bubbly...... Go wild! Returning back to substance, Thurman indulged in a practice common to those who loathe the Bill's starting QB. He uses the single play where Taylor lined-up as a receiver in the 2015 Colts game to say that was a Buffalo win with Cassell as opposed to Taylor, who started every other snap as quarterback. Now Thurman knows this is ludicrous, so why does he do it? The answer is pretty damn sad. Deleting that game means the team doesn't have a winning record with TT as quarterback. Apparently this is so important to Thurm as to warrant a little transparent weaseling......

You need to read critically. All camp news involves a reporter building a story around a handful of plays, often to support a preexisting meme. Take today : Peterman had an excellent series in the long drive section of practice, while Taylor's drive faltered. During red-zone drills Taylor had an excellent series of plays, while Peterman faltered. If you read various accounts of Day Seven, you see that written up any number of ways. For instance, the Bill's own pet grouch Rodak wrote this : Rookie report from Bills practice Thursday: QB Nathan Peterman (fifth-round pick) struggled in the early portions of practice, going 0-for-5 in 11-on-11 red zone work. However, Peterman completed 3 of 3 passes in a move-the-ball drill, ending it on a 13-yard completion to TE Wes Saxton. In addition to the vagrancies of sportswriters, please remember it's just the beginning of camp. Don't get too overwrought, willya?

Really? You actually wanna go there? Knocking off a Taylor win over that one play starting the Colts game where he lined up as a receiver? Don't you find it embarrassing to call that game a "Matt Cassel" win?

Two points : First, camp jitters is a pretty thin reed to start a whole new thread in the Great Tyrod Message Board War. Just say'n...... Second, it's kind of funny to read various accounts from camp and see where individual reporters grab a play or two to make the day's Story. You can really see this where a player's ruling meme isn't yet set. Accounts on Nathan Peterman have been all over the map on a single day's performance. The overall word from camp seems to be the D-Line is playing like a beast, the O-Line not so much. Of course that's typical to a degree early on. Another person apparently unaware that Rex very vocally committed to a heavy run-first offense before Taylor even signed with the Bills.

Really? I don't see a huge amount of "blind, adoring love". What I see are people saying Taylor has (1) Played better than many want to give him credit for, and (2) Still has a lot of potential up-side. That hardly qualifies as swooning worship, does it? In fact, the most passion I see from his supporters is in their fighting the extreme views of the haters. There isn't any symmetry between the two sides : One sees the glass half-full while the other denies the existence of water or glass altogether. That said, Taylor does seem a easy guy to root for. From an article on how he organized his own practices with his teammates : "First of all, I didn't know we was going to do all that," Watkins said. "I'm just coming down thinking I'm finna have fun, be a receiver and run some routes. He called me, 'Hey be here at 10, be here at 9.' We would go out to the facility that he's working with. He's got a crazy guy that works out. He's got us out there freaking dying before we even get out there and pass. So I see what he's been doing. I've never seen a quarterback run as much as he does. Being in shape, taking care of his body, eating right, sleeping right. I mean that's the whole day. He's finding something to work on with his body to be prepared." https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2017/8/1/16073984/tyrod-taylor-hosted-buffalo-bills-receivers-for-workout-prior-to-training-camp-offseason

The whole bet thing is pretty tedious, but Transplant should take him up on it just for the bizarreness which would result. I picture Maury in his man-cave with Game-Pass. Tyrod throws a fifty-yard rainbow to Sammie in the back of the end zone and Maury shrieks "NO" - tearing at his hair. But a few minutes later his mood brightens when a pass bounces off Holmes' hands and is intercepted. Later still he's positively giddy when he switches to the Chicago game and sees Mike throw a score. Being a Bills fan can get pretty strange these days, huh?

Being a Bills fan is getting damn complicated. Not only do we have to also root for whoever the Chiefs play, but now apparently need to root for Mike Glennon too. Incidentally, is everyone aware of the history there? Mike's older brother Sean Glennon was quarterback for Virginia Tech until Taylor first took an ever increasing percent of the snaps in a platoon system, then supplanted Glennon altogether. I think that put the kibosh on any hope the Hokies had of recruiting Mike

Damn. Made me look it up just to be sure. Yes : Forty-Seven Touchdowns Why in the world would he think he could wish-away the other 10?

Wow. Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

There's a problem with saying Taylor can't find receivers. The same problem exists if you claim he can't sustain a high level of play, or has massive fundamental flaws in his game. What is it? It's his stats in the 15 games where both Watkins and Woods played : 63.6% comp. 8.25 YPA. 27 TD passes. 6 INTs. Now is that the be-all & end-all? No. There was too much inconsistency in his game even with a healthy receiver crew. And undoubtedly some of the fall-off in production with replacements is on Taylor's shoulders - his frustration and indecision aggravating a bad situation. But even allowing that, we have a (15) game sample size based on no other caveat than TT playing with a legit No.1&2 wide-out. All Taylor needs to take the next step is make incremental improvements to the weaker areas of his game - such as throws to the middle, where even a small improvement would place him squarely in the middle of his peers. Despite last season's frustrations he did made strides in third down conversion & red zone scoring. I also though he looked more clutch at the end of games, even if he never seemed to get over the hump. I suspect there's a lot of QBs who've improved in that gradually. His biggest problem will then be consistency - quarter by quarter & game by game. Some quarterbacks never get that down; consistency will set his ceiling.

Three points : First, people have looked for a drop-off in Taylor's numbers with volume, both in this forum and others. Does he throw worse when asked to throw more? But there just isn't any evidence for that theory. Of course the team has lost more of those games, but Buffalo only increased their passing attempts when (a) Their game plan is toast, and (b) They're struggling to come from behind. It's hard to break out cause and effect. Second, Taylors numbers those games when Watkins, Woods and Clay were all on the field (running open) are 63.6% comp. 8.25 YPA. 27 TD passes. 6 INTs. Here's a deal : I'll grant a quarterback can do better than 63%, if you allow that's still a respectable number - particularly at 8.25 yards per attempt. Apparently the man is finding some of those open receivers, amirite? Third, a receiver says he's always open? Dog bites man. Ryan said he wanted a run-first offense before Taylor even signed as a Bill. Weird people don't remember that......

Looks about right......

By the accounts I read : (1) There are no real villains here. Washington had a right to have his gun. The cops had a right to be concerned. AW just got careless handling the damn thing, causing events to snowball. When they did, Washington acted reasonably well and the cops were professional (they didn't shoot anybody). (2) One might wonder why anyone thinks he needs a gun to go to a gawdforsaken water park, but that's just me...... (3) By the time this fizzles out, I suspect the biggest embarrassment won't be on Washington - though he's not without fault - but all the sportswriters (national & local) who rushed in with their warmed-over pieties. Washington must be cut immediately was a typical sermon. It only took a day or two for the mundane facts to emerge, but they just couldn't wait.

From the linked article : "New England is scheduled to play in five nationally televised games this season as well as take on the Oakland Raiders as part of the NFL's International Series. Whereas the Patriots will play often in front of a national audience, the Bills are only scheduled to have one primetime game when they take on the New York Jets on NFL Network's Thursday Night Football. Buffalo's lack of national visibility comes down to their 17-year playoff drought, the longest in all professional sports". Don't really see why people are looking so hard for an insult.....

OK - Some questions & a point : Questions : Does anyone have any real numbers on this? I hear Taylor has a "problem" throwing to the middle. Worse still, he "refuses" to throw to the middle. The latter is obviously wrong to anyone who watched a game but that doesn't prevent it from being a frequent comment here. Now, by the numbers Taylor throws less to the middle, but so does every quarterback. He uses the middle of the field less than average, but given the smaller numbers - Taylor's attempts & the average QB's middle throws - the difference prorates to only plus-minus 2-3 throws a game. So it's an area where his game can improve but hardly a crippling flaw. Then along comes Thurman#1, who says a subset of these already small numbers is the real issue. I just have a very hard time understanding how that can be true. I wonder whether it's typical of any NFL quarterback to take a long shot down the middle of the field - much less a completed bomb. Will this whole debate devolve to a single attempt per game? If not, how many attempts per game, compared to NFL averages? How many completions? The only solid numbers I'm hearing takes two exceptional QBs - Brady & Rivers - then tallies their deep pass attempts and divides by three. I'm not sure what that number is - or even how relevant it is. Point : Production-wise, there's a big difference between Taylor playing with a legit Number 1&2 receiver rather than otherwise. He had both Watkins and Woods together only about half the games he started with the Bills and everything was significantly better - TDs, completion percent, interception percent - when that was the case. But one of the largest deltas was YPA. With Watkins & Woods he averaged about eight yards per attempt - a rate that would put him in the top five QBs per the 2016 season stats. Without one or both of them (particularly Watkins), that number dropped precipitously. Now, you can sympathize with Taylor for being a second year starter playing with receivers brought in off the street - or you can criticize him for not adapting better - and growing tentative with the ends he had to work with. There's probably truth in both positions. But he is clearly not a captain-checkoff-style quarterback. Whatever his problems, that's not one of his limitations.