dave mcbride

Yards per play and value over replacement player are what I care about. Just like in the NBA, where someone has to score the points, someone has to accumulate yards. I'll take the guy who gets 8-10 yards per attempt over the guy who gets 4.5. It's an efficiency thing. LBs generally lead teams in tackles yet they are the lowest paid defenders, and for good reason: they're the most easily replaced and aren't as valuable in the passing game as D-lineman and secondary players, and passing dominates the NFL. Raw numbers are meaningless.

I honestly don't care what they think -- like, at all. The simple fact of the matter is that RBs are complementary pieces in today's offenses and don't add much to a sophisticated passing game. There is one player that does -- McCaffrey, who runs a pretty complex route tree for a RB -- and he's paid accordingly. Good running backs don't make offenses good; good qbs, o-lines, and receivers do. Would I rather have a better one than a worse one? Sure, but just look at KC now. The scrub is at least as good as the first round pick right now. When Tannehill went down, TN cratered (combined with the stupid trade of Brown, which got the GM fired). When Henry goes down for any reason, the guy behind him -- Dontrell Hilliard -- does fine. He averaged far more yards per carry than Henry in both 2021 and 2022, and D'onta Foreman had the same ypc as Henry in 2021. Hilliard had 495 yards on 78 carries in 2021 and 2022 -- 6.34 ypc. The key concept here is value over replacement player.

He'd gain the fewest yards per touch of any player on the team that's not a RB. He would also have a highly limited route tree, which if you prioritize players like that really hurts your passing game. AJ Brown was far more valuable than him, and I think that's pretty clear.

The goofy mediocrity has to be public facing and actually deal with customers. Regardless of quality, the restaurant thinks that this person is more viable than you in terms of placement in a forward-facing position. Would the fry cook be happy? I guess not, but maybe he should learn how to be a cashier. Point is, there is no more replaceable position in the NFL than RB. Guys come in off the street all the time and look fine.

Knox is a better blocker and averaged 8 yards per target. Singletary averaged 4.8 yards per touch and target combined. 8 yards per play > 4.8 yards per play.

Good post. What do you think of this comment by Mahomes in the Netflix show? I trust Mahomes’ opinion about talent more than anyone on this board (no offense!): ‘After the Chiefs divisional round win against the Jaguars, Mahomes and company were awaiting the winner of the Bills vs. the Cincinnati Bengals divisional round clash. “I think the Bengals are better, but I think with all those injuries on the o-line that the Bills have a chance,” he said. Mahomes was asked who he would rather play between teams in the AFC Championship game. “I mean, I think we match up better versus the Bills, but I want to play the Bengals. I mean, I just want to play them, we haven’t beaten them, and I’m tired of their talking.”’ I am curious about “match up” here. Is he referring to the Bills’ defensive scheme vs Cincy’s? Or simply Ll the injuries on D that the Bills had by that point? https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo-bills/2023/07/patrick-mahomes-explains-who-he-wouldve-rather-faced-in-the-2023-nfl-playoffs-bills-or-bengals.html

Same here, but it is the case that they currently have the best coverage of the Bills (at least in my opinion). I hate giving it up, but we're not paying that much for a newspaper that is peripheral to my life outside of Bills coverage. I'm up to my eyeballs in newspaper/magazine subscriptions anyway.

In the interest of shifting the subject away from truly bizarre and cringe-y boasting about intelligence and back to the main subject of the thread (newspapers), I found this interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/business/media/the-new-york-times-sports-department.html. The Athletic will be the NYT's actual sports section going forward now that the ages-old NYT sports section has been eliminated.

Agreed — without HGH, the injury lists would be completely out of control.

23-20. See above.

Not true. He is listed as 7-6 on his player page for 2015, and if you scroll down on the second link, you'll see that while the Bills went 8-8, he is listed as having won 7 games and Cassell 1 game. All of the Bills 8 victories were ones in which Taylor was the starter. Hence he was 23-20, as I said. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/T/TaylTy00.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/2015.htm

Taylor was 23-20. For some asinine reason, the stats people at the NFL gave Matt Cassell the win in the 2015 opener because they started him at qb with tyrod split wide on a trick play for the first play of the game. It was a handoff and Cassell didn’t play another play for the rest of the game, yet he got credit for the win. Anyone with a half a brain would have clearly assigned the win to Taylor.

I think the larger issue is that some of the old legacy media, including magazines like SI,are really up against it and are turning into clickbait machines simply to pay the bills. SI's fall is starting to remind me of Newsweek, which used to be (along with Time) the highest-circulation serious mainstream magazine in the country. Those days are long gone. As for the NY Post and NY Daily News, they've always broken real stories but have also always thrived on sensationalist tabloid style coverage (ESPECIALLY the Post). And unlike, say, the NYT, have zero qualms about going full clickbait if it can capture a few bucks for them. The Times, WaPo, WSJ, and a couple of others don't need to do this, so they don't.

Joe B did too. See the previous page.

Well, Fitz is a pretty smart guy. I hear he went to Harvard ...

In all seriousness, don't forget the crazy awesome 2-point conversion he caught to put the Bills up 32-29 against KC. It's not on the stat sheet, but it was a money play with an extremely high level of difficulty.

3, really. The Bills only played 16 games and Diggs was going to end up with a lot of targets in that cancelled Bengals game.

IIRC, @HappyDays said something very similar shortly after the Bengals loss based on a contact he has on the team. (At least I think it was HappyDays, who is quite reliable.) He reported that the player told him that the beef between Allen and Diggs was real and that Allen was fed up with the tantrums. He had held his tongue for a long time, but he was sick of it by that point. (Correct me if I'm wrong, @HappyDays.)

Two things: big plays like 81 yard td runs are great and you always want a back who can occasionally do that. That definitely factors into my assessment of the RB. But if a back has a 95 yard gain and another 14 carries for 17 yards, I have a hard time saying that he “averaged “ 7.5 ypc. Yes, it’s true in the technical sense, but it’s akin to calculating the average wealth of customers at a bar when Jeff Bezos is sitting on one of the barstools. It’s just my quick way of trying to convey how a RB really played on an ypc average basis. Again, though, outside of that I am in no way advocating the discounting of gamebreaking runs. That’s a skill in and of itself even though they are pretty rare. You want guys with that potential in your backfield.

Disagree. You have to account for the fact that for every RB, there are going to be lots of plays where not much is gained, but big plays should absolutely count too. And I am seriously handicapping his biggest gain.

My way of dealing with that is to treat the really long runs as, say, 25 yard runs because 81 just skews everything so much. If you treat it as a 25 yard run -- which is really good but also a pretty common result in an NFL game -- he's 14 carries for 63 yards. That's 4.5 yards per carry -- which was pretty much his season average! I was there! Ugh.

Yep, the BN has it too: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/bills-defensive-tackle-ed-oliver-intends-to-outplay-value-of-new-contract-just-sit-back/article_263576d2-04a3-11ee-8588-b742461685b5.html “This year: Salary cap hit of $4.978 million (down from $10.753 million) and base salary of $2,028,000. 2024: Cap hit of $9.175 million and base salary of $14.75 million. Immediately guaranteed is $7.75 million of the base salary; the remaining $7 million will become guaranteed a day after the February 2024 Super Bowl. 2024: Cap hit of $9.175 million and base salary of $14.75 million. Immediately guaranteed is $7.75 million of the base salary; the remaining $7 million will become guaranteed a day after the February 2024 Super Bowl. From 2024-27, Oliver’s cap charge will include an annual $6.075 million signing bonus and $500,000 roster bonus. From 2024-26, Oliver can earn $7.225 million annually via roster bonuses ($425,000 per game).“

To echo @HappyDays, Davis is wide open on that play.

Epenesa? add in Floyd and that’s 10 deep. They won’t all make it.