JGMcD2

Nobody is (likely) signing Watt for more than two years - not sure how what we’re paying him these next two years has anything to do with the caliber of player he is when his contract would be up? Truthfully in free agency in any sport you’re always paying a player what they’re worth based on past production and not future production. That’s just how it works... In what world is it a distraction? The same world that Diggs was going to be a distraction?

Reich would be looking for a new job... or Wentz?

Boy, oh boy. You didn’t read a lick of what I wrote did you? Stop focusing solely on results. It’s quite possibly the worst thing you can do. Sacks are a made up metric too. If you’re going to give me grief for talking about numbers... don’t bring more numbers into the conversation. Lacks candor. Sacks are out of the control of the player at the end of the day. The total is reliant on 10 other guys on the field executing to allow 1 - 2 guys to make that play for a loss on the QB. Beating your man or in Watt’s case more often than not, your men... is not. It’s measuring something a player can control... and if replicated over and over again will likely lead to your desired result... sacks. The horror. Would you prefer your defensive ends not get off blocks? I talked about Watt’s injuries. He just played a full 16 games. Over the last 3 seasons he played 40/48 games and oddly enough the year he missed time (2019) he came back in time for the playoffs and seriously disrupted the game... I forget who that was against? Excuse me if I don’t want to heavily weigh him coming back too quickly from back surgery in 2016 and then fracturing his tibia in 2017. Those aren’t even in the top 5 when it comes to common/reoccurring injuries in the NFL. The torn pec is concerning but he came back in the same season, blew up Josh Allen and then proceeded to play a full 16 games the next season. I made it fairly clear his injuries are part of the reason he’s not (or shouldn’t) get more than $12-13M and age is another. If injuries weren’t a concern he’d be making $17-$20M.

I appreciate your willingness to admit you’re wrong, really do. It would be easy to dig in and fight back. Thank you for that... seriously. I want to unpack you text there though, and think about it just in the context of that post. It says only 4 players who were in the top 10 in double teams ALSO were in the top 10 in pass rush win rate. They are Myles Garrett, Joey Bosa, Chase Young and JJ Watt. This is just one comparison obviously and cannot be seen as the sole measure for how much he has been paid, BUT I think it’s very illuminating. To be double teamed that often AND beat your double teams tells me you’re creating issues for the opposing offense. Due to that, I want to illustrate what those 3 other players are being paid. Joey Bosa has the largest contract for a DE. 5/$135M with an AAV of $27M. Myles Garrett has the 2nd largest contract for a DE. 5/$125M with an AAV of $25M. Chase Young has the 15th largest contract (rookie deal). 4/$34M with an AAV of $8M. That’s a lot of coin... on average $20M. Now you’re in the right to be concerned about Watt being older, he’s 32 and those guys are 25 or younger. You’re right to be worried about injuries with him as compared to those guys. If that’s your concern, I understand. The root of it is, Watt at 32 performed similar to them and we’re talking about $8M in savings associated with that type of production due to various factors such as age and injury history. Healthy and you have an absolute steal, hurt and you have a signing that really can’t be much worse than Trent Murphy. I think it’s really a snap call with where the Bills are right now. They need an elite pass rusher, he still is, and those guys aren’t growing on trees. If that type of guy is available it’s because they have some warts, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

Let me follow the train of thought here... You think people are getting caught up in the name and aren’t thinking analytically. Then numbers (analytics) are brought to your attention to illustrate that he’s still a very impactful player. Then you say that the numbers don’t matter anymore and you’re just going off of gut? Tighten it up.

And then who do the Browns have that are elite? Garrett, Ward and Chubb? You conveniently left out some very good players on the Bills but that’s cool too.

I mean is Dorsey going to say they drafted him and his teammates hate him? What else is he supposed to say... It is a relative of a player... came over from another team with a top tier QB and said Baker doesn’t put in close to the same amount of time as the other QB does and it was frustrating for him to see.

I know you’re not going to believe this, but I know someone who is directly related to a Browns player and said they’ve been told Baker is extremely me first.

Yes, they have elite pieces. I’m still not sold on Baker as anything more than Ryan Tannehill, but that isn’t an insult. I personally just don’t feel like he can flat out win a football game week in and week out on his own if he needs to. Not many QBs can - I still think he can win a Super Bowl in the right scenario. The important thing will be if they can take the next step against (on paper) a more difficult schedule.

I’m just calling it how I saw it. Don’t put words in my mouth, because you don’t know what I would have said had that been Buffalo. I likely would’ve said the same thing I’m saying now - it was more the other team imploding than Buffalo doing anything special. I have no ill will towards the Browns, I like Stefanski, so much so that I talked all my Browns fan friends off a ledge when he was hired. They thought it was awful and wanted someone else. I said if he did a solid enough job he’d be a COTY contender. He’s done a good job building a culture there, but he has a lot of strong personalities that are more “me than we.” It’s an uphill battle, I had some ties inside the locker room at one point it’s exactly that... a lot of strong individual personalities.

Pittsburgh gave Cleveland the ball 4 times on it’s first 5 drives in their own territory and it was still a two score game late in the second half. Cleveland capitalized on the opportunities given to them, but it’s not like they did anything extraordinary. A fumbled snap to start the game has nothing to do with Cleveland and Ben staring down his receivers and forcing throws doesn’t either. I understand it was a huge monkey off the Browns backs to beat Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh but that game was more Pittsburgh imploding than Cleveland dominating.

By what metric is Ertz a better weapon than Beasley? Genuinely asking... like how are you making the determination?

You can’t just create extra targets? The range is somewhere between roughly 950 - 1100 plays on offense. We were at 1034 plays. Let’s say we hit that upper limit and run 1100 plays. With a 59/41 run pass split that’s an extra 39 targets to go around... really not that many spread across an entire offense... but the spread would like look something like the current target share... so guys are picking up around 5-6 extra targets on average. Stats could very well increase, but it means someone else has their numbers declining. If Brown is healthy for 7 more game, Davis’ numbers are not the same.

Huh? Beasley shouldn’t get more than 4 Tgt/G? Explain?

I didn't say it was guaranteed, but a full season worth of opportunities tells me a decent amount about Knox. It will take some time, but I can look into how increase in targets leads to decrease in efficiency overall. My hypothesis is that is doesn't move very much.

No. It's assuming that Knox performs similarly with increased targets... a sample size of 16 games makes you fairly confident that's how the player will perform. Obviously it's not perfect and there are other factors. @Hapless Bills Fan keeps beating the horse that Knox was open a lot and just wasn't targeted.. likely because Josh's first read in his progression more often than not is Diggs, followed by Beasley, followed by Brown, followed by Davis before he even gets to Knox. In Washington it was McLaurin followed by Thomas or McKissic as a check down option. Situations are not all created equal and that's what needs to be recognized. There are a limited amount of plays to go around (the average team over the last 10 years runs 1023 plays per season on offense) and target share isn't created equal. Knox as the 5th option in Buffalo and Thomas as the 2nd option in Washington is drastically different. Looking at their rate stats is a decent albeit not perfect way to compare them had situations flipped. If you have a better way I am all ears.

There is probably room for some extra plays based on this here. I threw it together real quick... just a boxplot of Total Plays each season. Going over 1100 plays is pretty rare and generally an outlier. Quick summary stats for the total dataset from 2011-2020 Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. 878 994 1018 1023 1052 1191 2020 Bills were above both slightly above the median and the mean with 1034 plays. There aren't significantly more plays on the table, at least not typically, you would have to have a season that would be an outlier to have significantly more plays than we did this year. Another real good season with an increase in plays to get to that Q3 and you're at around 1052 plays... so we run 18 more... that's not enough to spread around... even if we're split 50/50 pass and run to support a guy like Logan Thomas who needed high volume to put up the 72/670/6 line he did. I'll concede we're not at the upper bound, but there is not a lot of wiggle room.

It would look similar on paper. I will do some quick math. You give Knox 110 targets. His catch rate is 54.5%. 110 * 0.545 = 59.95 Call that 60 receptions. His Y/R is 12. 60 * 12 = 720 He had 3 TD on 24 receptions. 3/24 = .125 TD/R .125 * 60 = 7.5 Call that 7 TD Knox 60/720/7 Thomas 72/670/6

Yup. That's why I said Stevie in his prime was a good #2 option on a contending team. I never said Logan Thomas was the #1 option for the WFT and I am well aware of Terry McLaurin. My point is Logan Thomas would not get close to the volume in Buffalo that he did in Washington. There just weren't 110 targets available for the guy here. I'm not saying he is overrated, but I am leary of a player on a not very good team, commanding 110 targets, with Y/Tgt and Y/R stats that look more like RB numbers than they do even mid-tier TE numbers being anything more than a volume player. Travis Kelce's Y/Tgt and Y/R numbers look almost identical with Mahomes as they did with Smith. He averaged 9.1 Y/Tgt and 12.7 Y/R with Smith and with Mahomes he has averaged 9.2 Y/Tgt and 13 Y/R. Virtually identical... under Mahomes and Smith for Kelce. Kelce's efficiency never changed... he's always been a very efficient player. Mahomes has just targeted him even more which has increased his total production but his efficiency has not changed. For comparison Thomas was sitting at 6.1 Y/Tgt and 9.3 Y/R, it's not amazing, he was a nice check down option and racked up yards and catches because of it... but those are numbers you see from a RB. Logan Thomas' breakout season is comparable to Scott Chandler's worst season in Buffalo... 7.1 Y/Tgt and 10.6 Y/R. He's just benefitting from being the main option on an offense lacking other weapons outside of McLaurin. Would he be nice to have here? Absolutely. Is he a difference maker in the offense? Probably not. He wouldn't command the volume to put up ~700 with 6 TDs. It would be impossible. Cut his targets to say 70 in Buffalo (which is probably generous) and he puts up numbers closer to Dawson Knox and everyone is likely complaining that he's not a difference maker.

Yup. You nailed exactly what I was talking about with Stevie. He was one of my favorite players and damn good, but wasn’t elite. In his prime he was a great #2 option on a contender IMO. The only thing with the Chargers example after taking a quick look at plays this year - the Chargers were the upper limit in offensive plays. Only team over 1100 plays from just looking quick. The rest of the league ran somewhere between 950 - 1100 plays this year. I’ll do a good look back over the last 10 years but I’m pretty confident that there are a finite amount of targets to go around and it’s going to be in that range. You’re not going to be able to stretch it too much more than where we were this year. This season is likely in Q3... there might be a few more plays out there but I don’t think we can reasonably run too many more consistently to get enough targets to give someone other than Diggs and Beasley that volume.

I know people say that they don’t like to do this... but if you give Logan Thomas the same amount of targets as Dawson Knox his numbers are actually worse.... I’m not saying the same thing happens - Thomas definitely ends up providing more value this year. What I am saying is that there weren’t 110 targets on this offense for Thomas. There are only so many targets to go around. You can give him all of Knox’s targets, but then where do we go from there? How many does he pull from Diggs, Brown, Beasley and Davis? Probably not enough to make a substantial difference and not nearly enough to put up the numbers he did in Washington. Fine player who benefited from being better than the majority of the options in a bad offense. I’ll say it again, even though I’ve been made fun of for this. When you scout in baseball, you look at a player and try to place them where they would fit on a championship caliber team. That’s where you start with you grading. Is Logan Thomas a difference maker on a championship caliber team? He’s a nice role player who’s a good second tier starter, but he’s not putting anyone over the top. Just because John Means is the ace of the Baltimore Orioles doesn’t mean he’s an actual “ace pitcher” by definition. He’s a #5 starter/swing man at best on a championship caliber club and he would be graded by scouts as such. Another common way it’s phrased is “this guy is a first division starter or he’s a second division starter.” Comes from the idea early on in baseball that teams in the top half of the division were the “first division” and teams in the bottom half were in the “second division.” A first division starter would be able to start on almost any team in the league and second division starter would only typically be able to start on less talented teams. Logan Thomas is a second division starter.

Yup. Agreed. Is he just supposed to sit on the cap space in the meantime? I’m not really sure what the argument is on the other side? He had extra money to spend because of the cheap QB, so he spent it on some of the better players in FA to be competitive. You’re always going to have to overpay in FA, hard to find a great deal. Although he’s found a few. Then the argument becomes “Well then when Josh is getting paid a lot, he can’t draft so poorly.” But according to everyone here we don’t really have any difference makers via FA and then in the draft Beane can only find solid starters - which is what you want when your QB is making a lot of money. Honestly based on the messages on this board, I have no clue how we were in the AFCCG by drafting so poorly and doing so poorly in FA with a bunch of bad coaches and coordinators. 6 years for Knox and 4 years for Thomas? Thomas also isn’t getting 100+ targets in Buffalo like he did in Washington... that’s Kelce/Waller level of targets... does anyone really think he’s that type of player? He was a check down option. His Y/R was sub 10.

I personally would’ve cut him. I was underwhelmed by him for 2 years, but I don’t think it was this egregious error. It’s pretty simple, they felt having him on the roster at $7.5M was better than saving $7.5M and the next guy up after him. Was he a difference maker for us? No. But for all the whining about our bad defensive line play, you’d think people would be ok with keeping a decent defensive lineman who had shown flashes the previous year to see if he can make a difference or not in a season where going into it you’re making a run at the division and potentially the conference. The move isn’t setting the franchise back decades.

Wasn’t Trent Murphy fairly instrumental when it came to containing Lamar Jackson against Baltimore in the playoffs, which got us to the AFC Championship game? So not having Murphy could’ve have also cost us a chance at the Super Bowl?

How do their bad decisions stack up with the decisions across the NFL? Do other organizations make mistakes like this? Seattle passed on Metcalf twice to take LJ Collier and Marquise Blair. The Eric Wood extension, he was supposed to see the future and know he was going to have a career ending injury? 2/16 where they got 1 year out of it before they found out about the severe neck injury isn’t a gross error. Cool. Logan Thomas had a lot of receptions and yards based on sheer volume on a 7-9 team sorely lacking receiving options in an offense with QBs who made Trent Edwards look like Elway when it came to pushing the ball down field. It’s like saying Scott Chandler or David Nelson were great because they were top options on bad teams. Not absolving them of their mistakes... but those are some interesting choices as well. I’ll sandwich my post with my initial question... how do their bad decisions stack up against the bad decisions of other teams?