Wraith

So why do you continue to support a party that panders to them...?

This is an incredibly amateurish piece of writing, even for Easterbrook. Talk about an over simplification. He completely misses the double move by Evans (gives Evans no credit...) and the fact that Harris was supposed to have safety help over the top (calls Harris lazy of all things). I didn't know he could see Harris and Losman's eyes from the video feed. So the fact that he thinks Losman stared down Evans means absolutely nothing to me.

Wells said. That's why you have to trust the coaches opinion more than some other posters, even more than your own, and a hell of a lot more than the media. They know what was supposed to happen and they know what did happen. Not just the result, but all the intermediate steps. They know the context. Everyone else, no matter how much they think they saw on a play, is just guessing. Some guesses are more educated than others, but are still guesses.

25 and a Losman supporter. I will take a game like Sunday all the time if he can mix in a few games like the Vikings every now and then.

Gotcha.

Please tell me this is sarcasm. EDIT: Guess it wasn't, as the post was deleted...

I liken the author of this topic to the people who were attributing the Bills problems in the late 90s to Wade Phillips not wearing a head set. At various times I saw Losman standing with Holcomb, Nall, Evans, and the WR Coach Studesville. I also saw him in an animated conversation with Mike Gandy and Terrence Pennington (although it seemed more like they were joking and smiling). So what?

Gee, just this very morning Lee Evans was quoted praising Losman for not giving in and hitting that TD, while saying the coaches have made the right decision keeping Losman in.

You didn't leave anyone out but you certainly left out some of the context. It is "lying" through omission. Harrington completed the same % of his passes for almost the exact same yards per attempt. Lienart completed a much lower percentage of his passes with a much lower yards per attempt. Both had turnovers. Both were sacked four times. The rest of the QBs are some of the best performers in the league this year. I didn't mean it as a personal attack (that is why I put lying in quotation marks) but you cherry picked some stats that certainly do not paint the whole picture about Green Bay's pass defense.

First of all, you're not answering the question. Second of all, what check down? The Bills almost exclusively used two wide receivers while keeping the TE and back in to block. It was the most conservative play calling to date.

You have four of the hottest QBs in the NFL this season on that list (Grossman, Brees, McNabb, and Bulger) and a guy who passed 63 times to get 414 yards (Harrington). 63 TIMES!! Hell, McNabb (#1), Bulger (#2), Brees (#4), and Kitna (#5) are 4/5ths of the top five leaders in passing yardage. Lienart completed 14 of 35 passes (40%) against this defense. That's about 4 yards an attempt. He was also sacked four times. The passing game yesterday was bad, but these stats are totally skewed.

One more time: What about his play yesterday, STELLAR or not, has anything to do with the topic of this thread? Work on your reading comprehension. Work on your spelling. Work on your math.

Show me where the thread starter says Losman played well? Show me where the author said he played adequately? All he did was mention ONE POSITIVE. You walk in and mangle the spelling in one sarcastic off-topic comment just like you have in three other topics in the last 15 minutes. I repeat: Learn to read, learn to spell, and try thinking once in a while.

Learn to read. Learn to spell. Might as well learn to think while you're at it.

In last night's game, the Colts ability to hit quick slants and adjust to hot routes was what was working so well against the pressure. The problem the Bills had yesterday was they usually only had two receivers going out for a pass, so quick passes and hot routes were non-existant.

Great thread topic. I would say our perception is almost certainly skewed, but how does one quantify it? It would be amazing if the league actually tracked time to sack, instead of the woefully useless "sacks." It would take a pretty good effort by an amateur to do the same thing....

I don't understand your logic. If you have max protection and two receivers, by default you have to wait longer for them to get open and should feel more comfortable doing so, seeing as how you have max protection. In addition, two of the sacks on Losman occurred after his own man was thrown into his legs. My only complaint with Losman today was what seemed to be a large amount of tipped passes in the second half. Not sure what the deal there was.

Did any of you actually watch the game? I was at the game and had a great view of the field. The Bills were INCREDIBLY conservative on offense, going max protect about 2/3rds of the time. There were only two receivers going out for passes during that time. The Packers had no trouble defending those two wide receivers because they were generating plenty of pass rush with their front four. Most of the time there wasn't even a RB as a safety valve because they were pass blocking. I saw three times where they triple teamed Kampan (LT, TE, RB). Losman only threw 15 passes, and only twice were the receivers actually open (Evans both time, one was underthrown, one was the TD). He had no turnovers and hit the game winning TD from 43 yards out while getting CRUSHED by a defender. In addition, twice he put the offense in a 3rd and <1 position and the running game failed. Be reasonable. The Bills gameplan on both sides of the ball was incredibly conservative, not making any mistakes, not giving the Packers good field position, making them go the length of the field and waiting for Favre to make a mistake. It seemed to work pretty well....

I'm making the drive from Rochester to Buffalo on the Thruway tomorrow evening also. The forecast doesn't seem too ominous. Mix of rain and light snow. It will probably be spotty, like you said. The good news is it was 70 degrees here on Tuesday so the roads are still pretty warm. We had a short burst of snow here this evening, got about a half inch on the ground, but the roads remained clear.

On the radio, Murph said Evans lost a fumble on the last play of the first half. It does not show up on NFL.com's stats however. Very weird.

Your third paragraph is true and interesting. I'll think about it. Did you get my response to your question in PM? My messaging doesn't seem to be working right and I'm not sure if the response went through.

Two improvements immediately jump to mind: 1) Make the threshold a fixed percentage of drive length instead of a fixed number. Something like 12.5% (1/8th - 10 yards of an 80 yard drive or 5 yards of a 40 yard drive). Thus, a very short but very crucial yardage on a short drive could be included. 2) Normalize your results by number of drives or possession time. I would use drives. This would eliminate the possibility of the quarterback being punished because the defense cannot get off the field.

I can't believe I'm defending Holcomb's Arm here, but he has not committed the egregious "sins" that some have pinned on him. In fact, some of the claims are outright false (the claim above that the t-distribution was incorrectly applied, for example). Using statistical judgement to place a threshold is incredibly common in the real world and is usually necessary. The fact that tweaking the threshold in this test gives different results merely shows that the test is not sensitive enough to pick up a shift in Losman's production, or that there is no meaningful shift in Losman's production. It certainly does not mean that HA is deliberatly misleading with his statistics. Just as HA alluded to above, judgement calls are a part of statistics, so much so that there have been many tools devised to aid in that judgement (the whole topic of confidence intervals, for example, which is what HA was referring to with Alpha Level). An interesting way of examining HA's measurement system would be to apply the same standard to another QB, either one who's output is unquestionably higher than Losman's (Brady or P.Manning) or one who's output has meaningfully shifted year to year (D.Brees or E.Manning, perhaps. If HA's measurement system were truly capable, it would be able to detect the difference between Losman and Tom Brady or between Drew Brees "good" years and "bad" years. It is important to verify the location of the threshold is adequate by moving the thresold within reason and seeing whether the conclusions still hold. That's truly how you measure the adequacy of a measurement system. If can detect the difference between samples known to be different. This is coming from someone who does this sort of thing for a living.

Amherst borders the City of Buffalo on the north side....

I'm almost certain this study was done on a crimes per capita scale already. The term rate means a ratio of two things. That is almost certainly how Greece ranked so high. It is Rochester's largest population center.