dave mcbride

This is so true.

Awesome piece. I'm loving this whole story.

The horse is the pale horse of death from the Book of Revelation. "I looked, and behold, an pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth." My hunch is that Arya's character arc is taking her from to a lust for revenge to a commitment to avenge. ("To avenge is to punish a wrongdoing with the intent of seeing justice done. Revenge is more personal, less concerned with justice and more about retaliation by inflicting harm.") She has always been the vehicle through which we see the world from the perspective of the poor and powerless. I thought this last episode was among the best they've ever done. I thought it was entirely true to Martin's vision and all the foreshadowing in the show that occurred. Stannis's trajectory clearly foreshadows Dany's - someone who believes he's a conquering savior but who ends up putting innocents to the fire. When Varys is burned, it's at the same spot in Dragonstone where Stannis and Melisandre had their barbeques. Martin has no love for messiah types or the messiah narrative. I also thought that the Jamie/Cersei ending was perfect. Like the scorpion said to the frog, returning to Cersei was in his nature. Deep down he's a hateful person, as he said himself.

What injury did he have?

‘Allen only put the ball in the perfect spot 8.6 percent of the time, per PFF. That is 6.5 percentage points less than the league average.’ https://buffalonews.com/2019/05/03/buffalo-bills-josh-allen-quarterback-jim-kubiak-year-two/

I don’t agree with this particular take, but I regard Benoit as one of the 2 or 3 best football writers in the country. They all have to do these stupid grades to genereate views. Don’t judge him on that. All draft grades one week after the draft are by definition moronic, but people eat it up. That’s why they’re published. No, he’s actually really, really good. Read some of his analytical pieces.

I was happy they didn't take Metcalf. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but we're talking about who guy who can probably run as fast as Robocop, but changes direction about as slowly as Robocop. I just don't see guys like him as the answer these days.

Hear, hear!!

Which 1A FA receiver was out there this year who was comparable to Woods? It's arguable that the Bills got the best of the bunch in John Brown, who was on pace for a terrific season until Flacco was benched. https://www.hogshaven.com/2019/3/9/18203492/more-2019-free-agents-wide-receivers

?? Clowney has finished in the top 10 in tackles for loss three years in a row, and was second in the NFL in 2017 with 21. He's a dominant player. GB - look up his TFL numbers. They are consistently impressive. He's an incredible run defender and line wrecker.

I get this, but if they're seeing a couple of Julios and a couple of Sammys (I'm still a believer!) in next year's draft, then investing your money in THAT player (and you get a fifth year if he's a first, and none really were this year) rather than the 1B guys on offer this year is the smarter play.

I think this season is a training year for him. Shady's contract is up after this season. I think he's a pretty good prospect -- he does look terrific in the field (and doesn't fumble!) -- and I liked the pick (partly because I trust Kirby J!). Great post. There are a lot of articles out there spelling out how next year's WR draft is 1996- and 2014-level with regard to the talent. I'm not a fan of Walter Football, but check out the pick and the rationale re: 2019. https://walterfootball.com/draft2020.php

I don't disagree about the yardage stat being a little skewed. The other thing that skews the yardage stat was the fact the Bills offense was so pathetic that teams really didn't need to press after building up a 20-3 lead or whatever early in the second half. I'm not sure if you're arguing with me about Star, because I don't disagree with you that he needed to be better (as I stated above). The strength of the Bills D is not him, but a very, very well coached and well-gameplanned pass defense (from secondary guys to LBs to d-line) that has given a lot of good QBs fits. Not every game, mind you; Rivers sliced and diced us a couple of times over two seasons, and Luck shredded us too. But Brady struggled in both games last season, as did many other decent-to-good QBs. Re Star's future, it is the case that he dropped off in years 2 and 3 after a great rookie season, but he was really good in year 4. So who knows? Guys get dinged up all the time and we don't hear about it. Maybe he'll raise his game to the next level in 2019. He's too young for age-related decline to have set in; run-stuffing DTs tend to play for a long time.

? I was actually responding to the dialogue about numbers between you and Hapless. However, believe what you want.

?? - Don’t make stuff up. I never said that about Star or anything close to it. I was making a general comment about the defense after a few people threw out dumb raw yardage stats without context. It had nothing to do with Star, who — if you actually read my multiple posts above (seriously) — I said wasn’t good enough last season. You’re better than that, or at least should be.

#2 in defensive DVOA, which is a lot more important than the counting stats (to me, at least). The key driver in that was the fact that opposing QBs had a collective passer rating of 82.6, which is REALLY low in this day and age (3rd in the league behind Baltimore and Chicago: http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?seasonType=REG&offensiveStatisticCategory=null&d-447263-n=1&d-447263-o=1&d-447263-p=1&d-447263-s=PASSING_PASSER_RATING&tabSeq=2&season=2018&role=OPP&Submit=Go&archive=false&conference=null&defensiveStatisticCategory=TEAM_PASSING&qualified=false). Team passer rating differential is the king of all stats, but the issue for the Bills is that their own team passer rating was a hilariously low 62.6. It's hard to be that bad. Even Arizona's historically awful offense had a team rating of 69.0. The Bills' D was 3rd in net yards per passing attempt and 10th in yards given up per rush. Pretty good across the board relative to the rest of the league ...

I quickly adjusted my response after I posted that. See above.

I want to be clear - I am not justifying Star's play. It needs to be better. I'm just saying that $10 million per is not really a bad deal for a guy who was two years removed from a very productive season and who was at the center of an intermittently excellent defense in a division packed with explosive offenses (he had a GREAT rookie season, but I realize that that's ancient history). I have no idea about years 4 and 5; let's see how he does this year. His whole career has been one where good seasons alternated with non-descript ones. Re Dareus, he did play alright (not great though!) in 2017, but he was hurt a lot with the sort of injuries that come with being out of shape. He was a beast on his first contract, but I also think it's become clear that he's the sort of person you need to be very wary about giving a big second contract to. Frankly, he was a headache and extremely immature his last couple/few seasons in Buffalo. Woods is seriously underpaid (5 years/$34 million) given his productivity and he's one we should never have let get away. No argument on that one.

Do you really think $10 million per given a $177 million cap is "absurd"? I don't mean to criticize because I usually agree with you, but the cap went up $57 million since just 2012. It sounds like a lot of money to us ordinary Joes, but today it's a garden variety salary for a vet. Re: Whaley, I said it was a combo of the two, and I should have been clearre. Whaley would have had the Bills up against it regardless, although it would have been manageable; but add in the new GM who wanted a fresh start, and you get a one-year manufactured cap crisis. That said, Beane couldn't have manufactured that "crisis" if he didn't have $16 mil per contracts like the one Dareus had. In retrospect, Dareus was a massive overpay whose performance was roughly equal in quality to Star's last season. In any event, the money is such a small matter given the Bills' cap situation that I'm shocked people are harping on it. And again, $10 million ain't what it used to be. For a vet at a relatively premium position, it's good-middle-reliever money (in baseball terms). At the risk of sounding like the most broken record of all time, people REALLY need to look at the massive increase in the size of the cap in the past half dozen years and ignore the raw number, however gaudy it may look. Add in the NFL's streaming deals that will be coming down the pike in the next year or two, and $13-14 million per will seem like relative chump change.

The problem with selecting Fitz is that you're basically guaranteeing that your starter is going to get seriously injured.

I don't have a strong opinion either way, but they Bills are going to have a ton of cap space next season. I could be wrong, but I doubt they extend Hughes. Paying older players for past production is never a good idea, and he'll be 32 by the start of the 2020 season.

As I said above, people really need to look at $10 million in context. It is not that much in today's NFL. It's not 2012 anymore. Re Hughes, he's a UFA next year. He gets to choose where he wants to go. Maybe he wants to stay with the Bills; maybe not. He will be 32 by the start of the 2020 season, though, and I'm not crazy about handing out big, years-long contracts for past production.

What??? When did I ever say that poor cap management is acceptable? And when is $10 million per a sky-high contract #? It's truly middle-of-the road -- i.e., completely normal -- for mid-career (still in their 20s) d-line vets who have performed well in the past. To be clear, I am not passing judgment on his performance last season. The Bills gave Dareus $16 mil per and Mario Williams $16.5 mill per in a period when the cap was literally $57 million less in 2012 and $34 million less in 2015 than than it was last season. People really should look at sportrac and bone up on cap history. It goes up a lot every year because the league makes even more boatloads of money ever year! The Bills most expensive player NEXT season will be Mitch Morse (not Star!) at $11 million per, which is PEANUTS for a best-paid player.

I just think it was a lousy WR draft. Next year's is supposed to be akin to 1996 and 2014.