dave mcbride

They're in it to win it this year, and who can blame them? Clark is a major upgrade at the DE position. Ford was overrated. Yeah, he had 13 sacks, but opponents had to pass all the time because they were always behind very early in the game because of the Chiefs' offense. Clark is the real thing.

Clark was without questions one of the best DEs in the league last year. He is ferocious and an upgrade over Ford.

Clark is a lot better than Ford.

I'm of the firm belief that the NFL laid down the law with the Cardinals and told them to send mixed signals in order to increase drama and therefore ratings.

Kellen Winslow Jr may go down as the creepiest human to ever play in the NFL. And it's not as if he doesn't face stiff competition!!

I'd say no. He's somewhere between average and above average. Only a Bills fan could think that Riemersma ever exceeded "average"!

Or it may just be a bunch of Carolina Wolf Spiders moving to Carolina North.

Either that or they've done all they're gonna do and anything more at this point is overkill and a waste of time.

It appears to be a black Carolina Wolf Spider. They can be brown, black, or gray. An explainer: https://bugguide.net/node/view/797006/bgimage It appears to be this type of spider to a tee. PS - yet another Panthers import, it seems!

I think you're failing to factor in the possibility that teams often see having a very good TE as the best way to increase the possibility that the QB that the franchise revolves around will not flame out and will instead develop into a true franchise QB. Greg Olsen (a late first rounder) definitely made Newton a better and more consistent QB. Do you think Carolina regrets that pick? Like Olsen, Hockenson is 6'5". An elite TE is the best safety net a young QB could ever have, and let's face it: the Bills' fortunes for the next decade are going to rise and fall with Allen, not some DT who will likely be gone in five years. Also, how is TE not a major position? We're fans of a team that has never had a good one. Ernie Warlick is the best they've had.

Gronk would have been if not for the back issue. He was regarded as a generational talent at the position. He dropped because of the back, but still went near the top of the second round. Hockenson is no Gronk.

I never said he was. As I said above, he's not a good enough receiver in terms of beating guys and getting open. But there's much more to the game than that, and NE's approach to offensive scheming and utilizing complementary parts is so much more sophisticated than what we're used to. Perhaps most importantly, though, he's going to be 31 when the season starts, and he's not going to get any better. My guess is that he plays until he's 32-33, which ain't bad for a UDFA.

I'm not talking about special teams play, though, so I think the analogy is off. I'm talking about his performance as a complementary player in a very complex offense. He consistently played an outsized number of snaps in his three years there.

I think you're oversimplifying here, Kirby. See what I wrote above about him. As a pass catching receiver he's a JAG, but pass catching is only part of what's expected of NE receivers. Also, comparing him to Chandler and Gillislee is off the mark. Those two players failed in NE and were unceremoniously dumped to the curb in short order.

Despite the good things that he does, I honestly don't think he's good enough as a receiver in terms of getting open, and the Pats have a 20-year habit of preferring to dump people early rather than late. It's how they roll. They probably figured that he's the type of player who has a solid 4-5 year window, and that window is now closing - as it does for most players. They got their money's worth from him, and now they're done. It's not like he's going to get any faster or more elusive going forward. What's more likely to happen is that all of the nagging injuries he's accumulated plus age-related decline are going to slow him down. He'll be 31 when the season starts. From his perspective, he got to play in three Super Bowls for a legendary team, and he performed pretty heroically in a couple of those Super Bowls. 10 years down the line, many people will know who Chris Hogan is, but they won't know who Charles Clay is. The point is, he got his share of glory out of the deal.

I do think that Beasley is a little quicker than Hogan and can play a more Edelman-like role. To be fair, that wasn't the position Hogan played for the Pats - he was more of a flanker than a slot receiver. But Beasley's short area quickness is better than Hogan's.

You should be impressed because he's genuinely good at that other stuff. If you watched that SD playoff game - where he played 92 percent of the snaps - he was always blocking capably downfield on runs that got to the second level (which happened a lot).

See above. NE runs a very complex offense and he does a lot of the other stuff extremely well. He is a JAG as a receiver (admittedly, his primary duty), but the other stuff matters more than most think.

He had 34 receptions for 542 yards and 4 TDs in 9 postseason games, which is very solid. He's also a very good blocker. He played more offensive snaps than any other Patriots player aside from Brady and the o-line in the SB against the Falcons -- a massive 97 snaps, which is like two games for most players -- and his block on the game-tying 2 pt conversion to get Amendola into the end zone was textbook and play-deciding. He also played more snaps than any other players besides Brady, Gronk, and the o-line in the next SB (93 percent) - a game that the Pats shattered the record for offensive yardage. He's basically a JAG as a receiver, but the reason he played so many snaps is that he does all the other things well in what is a very complex and multi-faceted offense.

This isn't actually true.

Oh jeez. This is the vehicular equivalent of jaywalking.

LOL! That was a great comment by Booger McFarland.

I agree that Luck was huge, but I'm also of a mind that an elite guard can make a huge difference. Just look at the Dallas situation. Zack Martin (plus other good o-line players, to be sure) helped a mediocre back - DeMarco Murray - produce one of the best RB seasons in NFL history, and that running game made a good passing attack elite (Romo had a rating of 113.2 that season). I'm not saying Williams is that player, mind you. I just am skeptical of much of the conventional wisdom about "elite positions" outside of QB (and yes, I know Luck makes all the difference). Everyone talks about the importance of great edge players, but the most dominating d-linemen these days are guys like Fletcher Cox and Aaron Donald, not Justin Houston. Who is gonna block them?

I disagree pretty strongly with this because prior to last season, Luck was a sack magnet and the team couldn’t run the ball well consistently. Last season he was the least sacked qb in the league and the team ran the ball well. The upshot: Indy had its best ranking in team offensive DVOA in Luck’s entire career there.

He and Josh Allen were both on the 2015 Wyoming team.