Billy Claude

The number of staff wouldn't make any difference. As long as the head coarch believe spending the extra time (whether a correct assumption or not) will give them an advantage they will do so.

The full PFF article notes that although Allen has one of the lowest check down rates during the last two years (4.6%) -- the rate is twice as high as it was during his first two years (2.3%) when he had lowest check down rate in the league. Their analysis was based on two years of data so Allen's check down rate last year might be higher than 4.6%. So he is adjusting.

The only recent hires I can think of who were never OC or DC are three who just got fired, Joe Judge, David Culley, and Brian Flores. Judge was special teams coordinator for the Pats, Culley was assistant head coach for the Ravens, and Flores called defensive plays for the Pats but never had the DC title. It is more accurate to say there has been a lot of recent hires with very limited OC or DC experience. For example, Zac Taylor was only interim OC for 5 games for the Dolphins before he was hired as head coach for the Bengals although he was OC for a year at the University of Cincinnati. There's a lot of recent hires who only had one year experience as coordinator.

A team golf format (sort of like Ryder cup but with 6 holes instead of 18 and trash talking encouraged) for those who golf and some other sport (cornhole, bowling, Madden, softball?) for those who don't. A few weeks after the Super Bowl -- will definitely get good ratings.

The more optimistic Jets fans are basing their hope on Wilson's against the Bucs and the fact he had no interceptions in his last five games. They disregard the Bills game because all their receivers were injured and the Bills had the number one defense.

Yeah, Joe Douglas appears to be trying to copy the Beane playbook with the big advantage that they didn't need to give up any additional assets to get a QB.

You couldn't design a better way to mess up a player's development than the way the Dolphins have treated Tua. 1. Coming off major injury. 2. New OC every year. 3. You couldn't design a more effective way to kill a young QBs confidence than the way Flores handled Tua his rookie year. 4. A coach that obviously has zero confidence in you. 5. Constant rumors that the team is trying to replace you. I'm not saying he's would have been great with better development but the way Flores treated him certainly didn't help.

His main issues last year were skipping swing passes, holding the ball for too long, and turning 5 yards losses into 15 yard sacks. Not sure how getting more muscular helps those things.

The games are already too long. No need to lengthen them even more.

It is a legitimate question though difficult to demonstrate with a small sample size and based on the pats playoff game, perhaps he figured it out. You should have realized that you will get flamed even if you even hint at an area where Josh Allen is not absolutely the greatest. Luckily, Allen does not feel the same way. Every off season, Allen identifies areas where he can improve and works on it. As an example, most of the people on the board blame the Bills bad yards-after-catch on Daboll's play-calling and receivers not having enough speed or breaking tackles. Allen however, takes some of the blame himself and says ball placement is one of the things he will work on this summer. Allen's ability to be willing to be self-critical in a constructive manner is one of the main things that I find remarkable about him.

So according to Lewan, nobody in the know pays any attention to the the PFF ratings, yet some players are willing to kick in 50K to get higher ratings. Is there a contradiction there?

For some weird reason the screenshot shows the middle of the list, not the top of the list. If you go to the actual tweet you will see that Dallas and New England are 12 and 13th respectively. The highest were Seattle 29,446 and then Denver at 27,398 both of which are going to Europe. In general, all the teams above Dallas are either playing internationally or on the west coast, i.e., LA Chargers.

I would add the Giants also.

I did not notice the 2nd response. As I noted in the previous message, my main issue was with the statement that " I laugh inwardly every time I read a post about how Beane will keep draft picks who shouldn’t be on the team only because he doesn’t want to admit he was wrong." Cody Ford has been given three years. A 5th round draft choice that starts 7 games his rookie year is not a bust. A 2nd round draft choice that starts 7 games his first 3 years is a bust. (I know he has started more than 7 games -- I am just referring to your statement.) You are obsessed with this ego thing. Its Beane's job to get the most value out of all our assets. Whether its using a draft asset to pick a player or trading a player for draft picks or other players. What on earth does that have to do with his ego? I am only referring to ego because of the statement "I laugh inwardly every time I read a post about how Beane will keep draft picks who shouldn’t be on the team only because he doesn’t want to admit he was wrong." Obviously anyone in Beane's position has to have massive egos. Otherwise he would be unable to do his job. Ok, this here is just a narrative you have created, not at all what the coaching staff felt. Teller wasn't better than all 3 of them by the end of the season. You just saying that doesn't make it true. You seem to have this notion that Teller was playing great, but Beane decided to trade him because it boosted his ego to get more than he invested in Teller back in trade. Beane is here to win SB's, not make ego moves. Not a chance he trades Teller if he was playing better than our other guys. Sorry, but his is just a narrative you created to support your opinion, but its completely contradictory to the front offices decisions and opinions. Maybe the coaching staff did not feel that way, however, the Cleveland Browns certainly did -- they gave up more than the Bills used to draft him. Also many people on the board felt that he was doing a very promising job. First off, he volunteered the info, he wasn't grilled on it. He literally owned the mistake (instead of trying to blanket some excuses to make it look like it wasn't really a bad call at the time) and identified the key factor in what he did wrong and how he will correct that moving forward. His number 1 mistake was not giving him enough time, and said he wouldn't make that mistake again. And Cody Ford was not even mentioned. But you look at that logic with Ford, and it makes sense why some fans are still up in arms about Ford and puzzled why he is still here. First off, he wasn't a total bust, there were some times especially early where he looked like he had some promise. He has also struggled a lot too, but he has also switched positions from college to the Pros which a lot of people over look. The only reason I mention Cody Ford was the the aforementioned statement about the inward laughing (at least I believe) was clearly in reference to either Cody Ford or Edmunds. I just don't feel that trading a 5th rounder has anything to do with either case. I am not making a statement Beane is keeping these guys because of ego -- I am just saying that the Teller trade says nothing about this. This over exaggerated response of yours above that I bolded is just silly. Literally no one has even remotely suggested that, nor has anything Beane said or done remotely suggested that. Its just another over the top statement thats unnecessary here. In fact, what I and just about everyone I have seen discuss Ford have said that this is probably his last chance and his most important camp of his career. Its reasonable that they are interested to see if Kromer (widely considered one of the best OL coaches in the game, if not the best) and a different blocking scheme can help Ford get back on track. But make no mistake, his job security is long gone, and he is going to have to earn his roster spot if he wants to stick around. This I agree with. There is no GM in history that is a GM god. No one bats .1000 in the draft of personnel decisions. Widely considered one of the best all time, and often the best GM all time, Bill Walsh traded up to get JJ Stokes in the first and called him the next Jerry Rice. He also said Jim Drunkenmiller had Joe Montana potential. Beane is already considered amongst the league bests right now, and many (myself included) see him as the top GM in the NFL right now. And that will only get more widespread and cemented when we hoist the Lombardi Trophy for the first time. That was my point was that he is not "GM god" but many people on this board seem to behave like he is. After every draft everyone is able to convince themselves that every pick is a good pick. Do I know, of course not. I think Beane is a very good GM. Is he the best? in my opinion, not yet, but that is just my opinion, I certainly hope that he becomes so.

My primary response was to the statement "I laugh inwardly every time I read a post about how Beane will keep draft picks who shouldn’t be on the team only because he doesn’t want to admit he was wrong." I just don't see how trading a 5th round draft pick who was trending upwards has anything to do with Beane possibly being too loyal to his high round draft choices. The only connection between Wyatt Teller and Cody Ford are that they are offensive linemen. On Beane admitting when he makes mistakes; I was probably over-zealous in my comment -- I agree that Beane tends to admit his mistakes more than most GMs will. It is just for the specific case of Wyatt Teller, the mistake is so obvious that admitting it really doesn't amount to mucj. On your last point regarding Beane vs. Polian. I think Beane has done a very good job, the statement that he is the best Bills' GM since Polian was meant to be a compliment, though perhaps now that I think of it, a fairly low bar. Beane might get there eventually but I will have to disagree that his record at the present exceeds that of Bill Polian who is in the Hall of Fame. As for it being a simpler time, I don't see how that is relevant -- Polian had to be better than a vast majority of the other GMs unless you want to make a big deal out it being 31 other GMs now instead of 27 then. I hope that eventually, I can agree with you that Beane is better than Polian, but as of right now, we will just have to disagree.

I have to disagree. I don't feel that the Wyatt Teller situation has any relevance to the Cody Ford situation. First, there's a huge difference in the hit to Beane's ego in having a 2nd rounder you traded up for bust versus a 5th rounder. No one is going to say much about a 5th round bust. Second, Wyatt Teller was not a bust in Buffalo. He was a 5th round pick who started 7 games as a rookie, albeit due to injuries. Furthermore, he was looking more and more competent as the season when on. It was a very successful pick by any measure. Cody Ford, on the other hand, has shown nothing in three years. Third, Beane was widely praise for getting more draft capital back from the Teller trade than he used to pick him, so the trade was a boost to Beane's ego not a hit. The mistake that Beane made was that assuming the mostly JAG oline guys that he signed, Winters, Feliciano, and Spain, were better than Teller. By the end of that season Teller was better than all three of them (I know Winters was signed mostly as backup center, but I believe he also played some guard). Finally, what was Beane supposed to say about the Teller trade? That it was a good decision? That would sound moronic. His answer sounds like a trite response to the standard interview question: Name one mistake you made and what you learned from it. If what he learned was that you need to keep Cody Ford around no matter what, just in case he develops, then Beane probably learned the wrong thing. I am not arguing that they need to cut Ford now, but if he doesn't show anything in training camp/preseason they should definitely be very actively looking. Beane is the best Bills' GM since Bill Polian. However, he is not GM god, at least not yet.

OK. Didn't know that he refused to cooperate. In that case, Jackson only has himself to blame.

Hue Jackson claimed he was given bonuses for things like most snaps by rookies or having the youngest roster in the league. So the "independent" investigation can find that there were no specific decisions to incentivize losses without Jackson lying about the specific bonuses that he did receive.

I did not do Kiper and Shay's scores since they are behind a paywall so I don't have access. The CBS and PFF were chosen just because they had all their mocks easily accessible from a single webpage and the other 3 were national sites that came up early on Google. Certainly there are other metrics that one could use and might be better but I don't want to make up my own. I chose Jimmy Johnson's draft points since it is well known and from the GM's point of view drafting a total bust with #2 pick is much more likely to get you fired than a total bust at #32. That should hold for mock drafters also -- but again there can certainly be better metrics.

I didn't know there was a website that already did something like this. I agree that a slight change in the metric would change the order. Moving one pick in the top five mocks would put them first. So I don't doubt the order at the top would have changed if the Bill's secret point value system was used instead.

I specifically chose this method to penalize misses at the beginning of the round more than ones later in the round. A miss by 3 slots in the top 5 is not very good, but a miss by 3 slots in 28 to 32 range is doing a pretty good job.

I thought it would be interesting to see how @GunnerBill ’s mock objectively compared to others. To do this, I used the Jimmy Johnson draft pick value chart and assign penalty points based on how far the mock pick was from the actual pick. For example, if a mock had Derek Stingley picked 5th (1700 draft points) whereas he was actually picked 3rd (2200 draft points), the mock draft was assigned 500 penalty points. This was done for 14 mock drafts. Long story short, it appers that GunnerBill knows what he is talking about as his draft finished first. 1. GunnerBill 6950 penalty points (lower is better) 2. Michael Renner (PFF) 7046 3. Trevor Sikkema (PFF) 7090 4. Chris Traapsso (CBS) 7136 5. Ari Meirov (PFF) 7290 6. Ryan Wilson (CBS) 7586 7. Charles Davis (NFL.com) 7690 8. Josh Edwards (CBS) 8045 9. Chris Collinsworth (PFF) 8546 10. Pete Prisco (CBS) 9080 11. Doug Kyed (PFF) 9577 12. Kyle Stackpole (CBS) 10175 13. Christian D’Andrea (USA Today) 12291 14. Vinnie Iyer (Sporting News) 13445 So GunerBill’s mock was the best match by a narrow margin. One can argue the top five drafts were similar in quality. For example, Michael Renner would have won easily based on the top 31 picks but he had Sam Howell who was picked in the 5th round as his pick #32. Some other points of interest: 19 players appears in all 14 mock drafts. One, Malik Willis, was not selected in the first round. 23 players appears in 12 or more mock drafts. Two, Willis and Andrew Booth were not selected in the first round. Only one player selected in the first round did not appear in any mock draft (Cole Strange) Kaiir Elam appears in 6 out of the 14 mock drafts with the earliest at #25 (to the Bills).

This is a good point. The draft graders to not have access to the interviews or medicals, both of which tend to lower the players draft position. I would argue that a consensus bad draft grade from the pundits tend to be pretty accurate while a good draft grade is meaningless. Over the last few years, the Raiders, Giants, and Seahawks have been generally ripped for their drafts, and deservedly so, as two of the GMs are no longer with their teams.

It is true that they don't have all the information, however, if there is a general consensus that a pick is a huge reach, it usually turns out the draft graders are correct.

It is surprising to me that the biggest reach in absolute draft position during the 4 years is Pittsburgh picking Terrell Edmunds 106 positions higher than predicted in 2018. You don't really think of the Steelers as a front office that reaches a lot. He hasn't been a bust but probably a bit of a disappointment. He was a RFA this year who got no interest from other teams and re-signed with the Steelers for 1 yr at 2.5M.