Billy Claude

Definitely best mic'ed up session so far, however, I found it funny that after the game, Allen was telling people who lost 40 - 0 "keep doing what you're doing".

Good article. The importance of interpersonal relations is obvious but often low zero priority. The Bills are lucky in that both McDermott and Beane are excellent communicators who have reputations for being honest and forthcoming with the players, staff, and even the press. The contrast with Doug Marrone (players seem to hate him), Rex Ryan (fire your offensive coordinator after your defense gives up 35 points), and Doug Whaley (seem to never take responsibility for any mistake) could not be more apparent.

I applaud him for taking Milano minimalist philosophy and not going crazy with the car (though perhaps not the best choice). So good for him as long as he didn't buy himself a Lamborghini.

At the end of the season press conference that year, Beane said they would make a strong effort to bring Shaq back but that Jordan Phillips had earned the opportunity to determine his value in the free agent market. It was clear they wanted Shaq back and from all indications they made what they felt was a reasonable offer to Shaq (though obviously not matching the Dolphins offer) but did not want Phillips,

The Giannis Josh Allen comp is dead on but I don't see the Tom Brady Lebron comp. Lebron was, and to a certain extent, still is an athletic freak, who was one of the mostly highly heralded prospects ever. The only things Brady and Lebron have in common are they are both older and have high ball IQ. A much better comp for Tom Brady is Steph Curry. Both were not as super highly regarded coming out of college but have accomplished much more in their careers than expected from their more limited physical attributes.

Keeping Sweeney over Hollister might also have to do with the salary cap. Hollister would have cost 300K or 400K more than Sweeney. It's not much, but with the Bills seemingly very close to the cap, the difference may have been enough. I am sure they would have loved to get rid of Christian Wade's 660K but with him on IR they will just have to eat it.

I expect Hollister is going on the Jag's 53. He probably told the Bills he would not accept going on the practice squad so I doubt very much it had anything to do with keeping both Fromm and Webb.

Conclusion: playoff teams usually do very well against rookie qbs.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/cristiano-ronaldos-juventus-salary-revealed-13189267 It looks like Ronaldo's 31M Euros salary is after-tax. I believe soccer salaries on the continent are usually quoted after-tax while in the UK (and the US) it is usually quoted pretax. I assume Italian taxes in that bracket are likely around 50% so the larger number $71M number reported elsewhere is likely pretax.

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sport/football/highest-paid-football-players-2021/ Not sure if this is a reliable website but it agrees with Forbes and a bunch of others -- the claim is Ronaldo got 51M pounds from Juventus and 34M pounds from endorsements -- unless somehow the Juventus contract is not all for "playing". Of course, you know more about this than me. I found the gap interesting and also that Paris St. Germain will have 3 of the 4 top paid players in the world next year.

Three players last year had higher salaries than the average salary in Allen's new contract -- Messi $93M, Ronaldo $78M, and Neymar $71M (not including endorsements). Only two this year since Messi took the pay cut in the move to PSG. Shocking the separation between the very very top players and everybody else. The next highest is Mbappe at under $30M.

I guess I should read the article more carefully. It is not entirely clear that the Bills made an actual offer. It might be that they were just had serious talks with him. The article says he got a "two year deal worth up to 19 million" from the Saints.

The Bills made him an offer to him right before the Diggs trade. https://www.syracuse.com/buffalo-bills/2020/04/buffalo-bills-were-pursuing-emmanuel-sanders-30-minutes-before-stefon-diggs-trade.html

https://www.nfl.com/news/13-teams-above-85-percent-threshold-for-player-vaccinations 13 teams over 85%. Average is 73%. The large difference between teams is surprising. It would be interesting to know how the different teams handled the messaging.

The 2nd string offense is definitely better than the Bills' starters in the 2018 opener: QB: Nathan Peterman RT: Jordan Mills RG: John Miller 😄 Ryan Groy LG: Vlad Ducasse LT: Dion Dawkins WR 1: Kelvin Benjamin WR 2: Zay Jones WR 3: Jeremy Kerley TE: Charles Clay RB: Shady McCoy

They probably just had a good laugh. It is unlikely that there was much overlap on the guest lists.

Absolutely agree that there is merits to both sides of this argument. I would add that the difference between the 2019 and 2020 defenses was not as stark as it may have seem. They were not as good as their ranking (3rd in yards given up) suggested in 2019 and better than their ranking suggested in 2020 (19th). In 2019, the Bills plays 8(!) games against the bottom 7 rank offenses in the league by yards: Jets (32x2), Washington (31), Pittsburgh (30), Denver (28), Miami (27x2) and Cincinnati (26). They only played two games against the top 11 offenses, though the defense played very well in both games: Dallas (1) and Baltimore (2). Furthermore, the Titans were 12th in total yards but the Bill's game was Mariota's last start. It would have been difficult to draw up an easier schedule for the defense. On the other hand, the Bills played 6 out of the top 11 offense during the first 11 weeks of 2020: KC (1), Tenn (3), Arizona (6), Raiders (8), Chargers (9) and Rams (11) and only four games against the bottom 8 (NYJ (32x2) and NE (27x2)). The opposition were also in comeback mode most of the second half for many of those games further piling up yards.

I was expecting a breakout year from Edmunds last year. He really seem like he was ready to step up after a pretty decent year two. Hopefully, the fact that he didn't, was due to injury and missing other players. However, I do not know how Star went from TBD whipping boy to linchpin of the defense simply by not playing for a year. Something that always concerned me is that Edmund's pre-draft scouting reports all mentioned his freak athleticism but many also noted that he did not seem very instinctive and was often caught out of position. You might excuse this since he was extremely young, but there were also stories about how he was unusually well prepared for the NFL because he and his father would break down his play after every game. If he was so well prepared why didn't this show up on the field? Perhaps all that coaching from his father meant that he is thinking too much?

You left out an important part of the standard definition of click-bait -- that click-bait has the defining characteristic of being deceptive, sensationalized or misleading. If the definition is solely "something to generate traffic to their website" than any sports piece on the internet is click-bait since that is the only reason the writers are getting paid. So are you are arguing that because the Bills are a championship level team and that Beane won some awards any second guessing of the Bills and Brandon Beane must solely to be to be "edgy" and therefore dishonest? Sorry, but I don't believe that simply being skeptical of Brandon Beanes's draft picks is sufficient to rise to the level of being deceptive, misleading, or sensationalized.

Sorry I just don't see it. I define click-bait as saying something outrageous that the author does not believe in, solely to generate traffic to their website, for example, anything that Skip Bayless says. I don't see how this particular instance meets this criteria. (1) Almost by definition a high ceiling, low floor, developmental prospect is going to have a higher bust probability. It doesn't mean its a bad pick, just a riskier one. In any case, it is not then surprising that this pick will be on some people's list of likely busts. So if someone was soley trying to generate clicks, I don't think they would have picked Rousseau. (2) I don't think that Beane has reached such an exalted position that any criticism of him will automatically draw attention -- maybe five years from now but now now. I find it difficult to believe that Simms put Rousseau on his list simply because he was picked by Brandon Beane. I am not saying Simms put a great deal of thought into his list, nor whether I feel that Rousseau is or is not a good pick, simply that I don't think it meets my definition of click-bait.

Pre-draft, Rousseau was regarded as a high ceiling, low floor type of prospect so it is hardly surprising that he would be on some people's most likely to bust list. Also putting the next to last first rounder on his most likely to bust list is hardly a good way to get clicks. Much more effective click-bait if Simms picked someone who was drafted in the top ten. i

He played a big role in the Bills' Bickering Bills reputation before the Super Bowl years. There were also a lot of stories about his exploits around town and in Fort Erie. However those stories mostly (but not completely) disappeared during the Super Bowl years and, of course, the birth of Hunter really changed his priorities.

If BruceExclusive got those numbers from PFF, his quote was extremely selective since he left out the 57 missed tackles and 9 touchdowns surrendered and and the fact there were 4 other linebackers in Edmunds' draft year that PFF ranked higher (including three drafted after him). The TFL numbers 5, 10 and 4 are consistent with how he played over all: Year 1 -- meh: the excuse is he was a rookie -- however, there were several rookie LBs that played better than Edmunds Year 2 -- very promising: He looked very good, especially towards the end of the season. I was really looking forward to year 3. Year 3 -- meh but hopefully it was due to his injury (unknown how bad it was -- maybe it was the reason for all the missed tackles) and missing Star (whole season) and Milano (substantial part of season) . He did look better toward the end of the year with Milano back. Year 4 -- hopefully year 3 was just a hiccup in the progression, however, I don't see how there is at least a bit of concern about how he played last year.

I meant it is hard to think that including no gain would make a difference in the rankings.

Its pretty hard to make that consistent with the data on the teamrankings.com website. Pro Football Reference has Edmunds with 19 TFL loss over the last 3 years while TJ Watt has 42 TFL over the same time. It's hard to believe that there is not more than a few LBs between 19 and 42. The only outs I see is that PFF includes tackles for no gain (which I doubt makes much difference) or PFF has a lot narrower definition of who's a linebacker than teamrankings.com website. Edit: This is probably it -- they probably regard a guy like TJ Watt as edge rather than outside linebacker.