Richard Noggin

Skipped ahead from page 2 to wonder aloud if the Bills have taken yet another power-based college edge rusher who projected more naturally as a DE/DT flex guy (and in Epenesa's case, a solid 3-4 5-tech DE)...and asked him to dramatically redesign his body and his game to fit as a svelte DE in our 4-3, 1-gapping defense. Basham's ceiling appears to be Shaq Lawson, which is funny. But also valuable.

I have no basis for confirming or denying this claim. It's relative and we've got no public-facing evidence outside of selective anecdotes (that I'm aware of). I CAN say with confidence that this board is more civil and less toxic than most others I've browsed across the league.

So is arbitrary award voting something fans really care about? Is this possibly tied to a persistent shoulder-chip some Bills fans still carry around about national sports media respect/recognition? (Which happens to conveniently feed into the sports entertainment (and gambling) ecosystem that is increasingly tethered to "Vegas" odds.) At some point the tail is wagging the dog here. I get that it can be fun to debate. And betting odds for such things have now become the foundation of so much weekly content. But it's not a real, tangible thing that actually matters outside of capturing clicks and dollars. Which, of course, matters. It's a vicious cycle.

Is there a SINGLE person who would support the Bills EVER wearing white over blue again? (Reacting to recent uni combo records AND just upholding baseline aesthetic standards.)

I disagree with your proposed handling of this board's trolls. First, we don't know every demerit handed out by this board's moderators; I'd guess they're hard at work behind the scenes. And second, the trolls here are mostly just lame and repetitive, rather than overtly toxic and repugnant, as I've seen on other teams' boards. Better to endure some tiresome trolling than to entirely scrub this forum of all unwelcome pathogens.

Agreed that Mitch appears to tidy up pass protection better than his backups. But it is fair to at least question the line's run blocking efficacy with him on the field versus not. The team HAS run the ball fairly well in Morse's absences. The sample size and prevalence of variables makes it very difficult to draw definitive conclusions from that sort of observation, however. For example, the Bears begged the Bills to run and when we obliged, it mostly worked well. So we can't overvalue last week's rushing success due to context.

I'm a season ticket holder who is ignorant of this "Bills lottery" for the SB...can you share a bit more?

While we can all have our own takes on this issue, we should also take into consideration how many concussions STILL go undiagnosed (or apparently mis-diagnosed, given the ongoing joke/tragedy of Tua being in protocol for only his 2nd concussion* this season) over the long span of an athlete's career. This is not meant to minimize Morse's injury history, but instead to suggest we're in fact simultaneously overlooking a much larger endemic of brain injuries amongst athletes at ALL levels. The concussions we know about are likely only a fraction of the story for so many NFL players. We should likewise guard against sanctimonious takes regarding Mitch Morse's long term health, who has at least had to pass documented protocols for the diagnosed concussions he has suffered. Imagine the disparate experiences of promising youth, amateur, high school, college, and semi-pro football players... *We ALL agree Tua's neck/back injury against the Bills is a complete sham, yes? He was obviously concussed, which makes this most recent injury his 3rd. No one (other than Dolphins leadership) actually disputes this fact, right?

Is this the place where TBD posters reveal their tax brackets?

Unfortunately, yes. There are two possible outcomes. I'm already super annoyed by this line of argument. I respectfully withdraw the angle.

I just deleted a post that delved into certain uglier aspects of this crisis and its coverage, because frankly, eff that kind of focus. People have suffered greatly and even perished because of this natural disaster. And so many have persevered and pitched in to pull others out of peril. We should be focusing on the grit and sacrifice, but also on how the City of Buffalo's leadership needs to dramatically reorganize its priorities to mitigate such hardship in the future. And in the meantime, let's celebrate how the region (and to a less important extent, the Bills organization) continues to rally around each other during unprecedented obstacles.

To be fair, EVERY NFL offense should be able to run the ball against the 6-man boxes the Bills were facing much of last week. It's like an automatic check to the run when the defense lines up that way. I understand, in theory, why a defensive gameplan would include such light boxes pre-snap, but I do NOT agree that actually sticking to that plan both pre- AND post-snap while getting gashed on the ground is wise. No doubt Cinci will execute many 3 and 4-man rushes, often with a spy, while dropping the rest into mixed zone coverage schemes. I doubt they'll be so obvious with it, though. And I'm sure they will be MUCH more stout on the interior against the run, no matter the alignment, thereby making such an approach more effective.

So many of those felt great to re-live. The Gabe Davis 4-TD example still hurt, turns out. I've never re-watched that game. SUCH a traumatic letdown. (And coming from a Bills fan of a certain age, we know the use of the term "traumatic" is not frivolous.)

These criticisms of Wilson's special treatment ring a little truer when we remember some of the noise that came out of Seattle over the years, about defensive players resenting Carrol's coddling of Wilson, the ways he was shielded from criticism in front of the team, etc. I don't have an immediate published example to cite here, but I KNOW I read about this kind of thing a while back. Pretty sure it was some of those Legion of Boom standouts who spoke out, like Chancellor and/or Sherman, perhaps?

I know that recent progress in analytics has dramatically changed the way most fans, and especially gamblers, view probabilities. But the fact remains that a hypothetical look at probabilities of surviving a 3-game AFC playoff tournament as a non-1 seed versus a 2-game tournament as a 1-seed is not something we can preemptively permutate beyond the 50/50 maths. Once we know specific matchups there are myriad ways to handicap and predict outcomes based on data and calculations well beyond my understanding. So I'm not being obtuse here. I'm basing this stance on the post that originated this line of discussion, and the somewhat simple rules governing probabilities and permutations.

I was clearly talking about pure mathematical possibility here, with only two possible results. Any kind of handicapping based on analysis is predictive, and therefore subjective. You're not wrong either, but what you're working with is not just mathematical probabilities. Man, everyone is misinterpreting what I was saying. Of course we can predict that one team is more likely to win a given game, but that doesn't change the mathematical probability because we don't actually know what will transpire on game day other than one of the two teams will win, (in the playoffs, at least).

There are more than the two outcomes you've chosen here. In a playoff football game, it is either win or lose.

Of course, it would be important to compare this maths to the ACTUAL historical playoff results with respect to seeding. I'll bet it deviates from this model considerably. (Doesn't diminish the hypothetical, mathematical advantage of eliminating one more chance to be...eliminated.) Two outcomes. It's a coin flip, mathematically.

The odds are in fact, literally, 50/50. Win or Lose. Two outcomes (come playoff time...no ties). It's tidy logic.

Comparing QB numbers across three decades is tricky, as many can see. Comparing styles of play isn't exactly science, either, but I'd agree that Allen exhibits similar on-field characteristics to Favre: especially the joy, confidence, and creative recklessness.

That's kind of awesome.

They don't practice in Buffalo, and most of them live well south of the city. I'll bet they're doing a lot better in OP than those in the Buffalo metro area.

Can you say more about the "complete scheme mismatch with Wilson"? That's intriguing. Not because I disagree, but because I love to read about schemes and player fits. And also because Payton has helped a number of very different QBs perform at their best over the years.

This is the point for me: Tua seems unable to adequately defend himself when getting taken to the ground. He seems so much smaller than even his posted measurables, but more importantly, seems to go limp when forcefully contacted (the term rag-doll is apt) and therefore his body becomes a whip that accelerates his head into the ground. He's in danger out there.

A 16 game schedule would have the same issue, no?