Luxy312

He's good as a pass rushing specialist, but that's it. Can't cover. 37 years old. He's been a situational pass rusher for the last 3 years running. Rex likes to mix up his packages in terms of who's chasing after the QB and putting Freeney out there would tell any team that he's one guy you have to block. Just a thought.

That, and getting beat by a team that had nothing on the line in the last game of the season. Pretty pathetic, really.

I wasn't aware they tried him on the OL. That's interesting. I'm honestly still quite baffled with why the team is keeping Dareus in the middle. He's shown that he can get to quarterbacks. Paying $100m contract to a 3-technique NT seems rather pointless to me. But what do I know?

I'm not sure where the options were limited to either signing him to a huge contract or cutting him. I don't think anyone has said that Taylor didn't have a good year last year. Most would simply recognize that he was at times, inconsistent. There is nothing to be saved by giving him a new deal now. The deal he signed last year was loaded with incentives that gave him a chance to be a starter, and voided the last year if that became true. Well that's true as we sit here today and I would bet money that his agent isn't going to tell him to take a discount for signing a deal early, when he expects to be "the guy" going forward. In terms of the whole "being good versus great" thing, I don't think there's an argument to be made that Taylor has to be great. Joe Flacco hasn't been a top ten QB in any of the years he's played and that team regularly goes to the playoffs. He even has a ring. Cousins was good last year, but not great, and he's playing for his contract as well. Osweiler won a jackpot with his limited starts for Denver, but he's the exception rather than the rule. Players, of course, contribute to the win/loss record of their teams, but games are won and lost by teams. Would we say Phillip Rivers is horrible because his Chargers went 4-12 last year? Of course not. So Taylor going 8-6 is somewhat irrelevant. If we see any growth from Taylor over last year, he'll earn his contract or get tagged next year. Until then, it's premature.

Don't go to sleep yet on T.J. Barnes. He's a bit raw and somewhat of a project, but he comes in at 6-7 and 364. He absolutely occupies the space in the middle. I don't think he can be a starter right now, but I do think it gives them situational flexibility to move Dareus to the outside. Can't wait to see him in training camp.

I tend to agree with Sammy here. When I look at the current franchises that have had success, I see teams that have had their HC's for awhile. Seattle didn't punt on Carroll after his first two 7-9 seasons. Cincy didn't fire Lewis after even his first 6 seasons where he had only one year above 0.500. That was in year 3. In the 16 years without sniffing the playoffs, the Bills have had 8 HC's. That's Just too many IMO. While I am expecting the playoffs this year, I wouldn't be so quick to fire Rex if they didn't make it. Regardless of record, if we see more consistency on offense and defense, then I'll be satisfied they're heading in the right direction.

Good quarterbacks eat the prevent defense for breakfast and crap in the form of scoring. That said, the current form of the prevent defense has as place still in the game, particularly when opposing teams are trying to manage situations with limited time left on the clock, and big chunks of yards to get into scoring position. I think the basic concept of the prevent is to give opposing teams short gains on the early downs to force third and long where you're making them take a riskier shot down the field. With the contact rules being what they are now though, I don't like it at all.

They're not going to have to do a ton to find his money. With reclamation of dead money and contracts expiring, they're going to go into the offseason right now some $32.5m under the projected cap. They have to sign Gilmore no doubt and next year will be the last year of the Watkins deal, but I would presume that they will be less in salary cap hell next year than they were this.

Very interesting find Yolo. There's guys that they apparently have as "round 2 value" that they pass on in round 3 when they pick Maliek Collins. Why pass on Kendall Fuller and Connor Cook? Then they have Driscoll above Prescott, but take Prescott anyway? I know there's a lot more that goes on when the draft is actually happening, but paint me skeptical.

There is no reason to redo his contract today, unless the front office were convinced that he's a franchise guy AND they could get him at a discount. Looking at the top paid guys, there are some big numbers out there. Brees counts $30.0m against the cap this year. $20.0m of that is cash this year. Eli Manning $24.2m. Rivers, $21.0m. Newton $19.5m. Middle of the road Jay Cutler is getting $17.0. The pros of doing a deal now is that you don't have to guarantee the $30.0-$40.0 million that he'll get if he performs at a high level. The biggest con here is that you're basically still guaranteeing a bunch of money that you don't have to, for a guy that was somewhat inconsistent last year when games were really on the line. What does that do other than potentially handcuff the team next year or beyond with dead money if he doesn't perform or shows the same level of inconsistency? They're not paying him tag money this year, so there's really no reason to gamble. If he performs like Russell Wilson this year, then we pay him like Russell Wilson next year. Easiest decision this team would ever have to make.

Of course it should matter. The NFL and the NFLPA agreed on a conduct policy that every player has to follow. The design of the conduct policy is to protect a $9+ billion brand. When a player signs their contract, they're agreeing to those terms and conditions explicitly. When I signed my letter of intent with my employer, I explicitly agreed to my own company's conduct policy, which addresses everything from nondisclosure and noncompete, to drug and alcohol abuse and improper use of social media. It's nice to say that players should otherwise be above reproach, but that's just ignorance.

My thoughts on this subject are pretty straight forward. Their lawsuit was all about wanting to get paid for practice time and other things they were doing off the field. I get what they're asking for. They want to be paid for what they perceive as work. Fair enough. The settlement retroactively pays them something for time served, even though they weren't even employed by the Buffalo Bills organization. So, should they be employed, what would they be providing going forward? Are they going to put more fans in the seats on Sundays? Are they going to provide something so great from an entertainment perspective, that it measurably adds to the experience of an NFL game? When the answer is clearly "no" for both questions, it's obvious that they're irrelevant. You could make an argument that flight attendants on airplanes are much more relevant to their profession, and they only get paid for the time they're in the air as well. Nothing for standby nor travel just the same. At the end of the day, being a "professional" cheerleader is at-will employment. For the Bills, their lawsuit just "willed" them out of a job and I honestly don't care if they work another day.

One other random thought, but why not work with net turnovers and net points. If the offense is sloppy and giving up the ball, but the defense turns around and gets it back, isn't that a net zero from a turnover perspective? I would be serious money that if you did net turnovers and net points that you might even get close to a meaningful R Square. After all, aren't you basically trying to segregate the effects of turnovers on scoring overall and scoring allowed.

I live in Chicago and was wearing a Bills hat, and some guy I didn't know walked right up to me and said "there's just nothing comparable to being a Bills fan. Only we can truly understand it". It resonated, because I know exactly what it means. I'm a White Sox fan and a Sabres fan and it's just not the same. I was a Bulls fan when Jordan still played and it's just not the same. As the OP said in many more words, being a Bills fan is different and there are no barriers to entry.

Did you try log or square root data transformation for the bivariate fit? It might get rid of some of the noise of the outlying data points. Just a thought.

If you want a wager, I suggest you join DraftKings and not live in NY. Seriously, this is supposed to be a discussion board. Massage your ego elsewhere. There's a million things that can and will happen between now and the first game of the season. Only a complete fool would think anything is set in stone.

Why don't you listen to a Rex Ryan and/or Doug Whaley press conference this offseason. Adolphus Washington AND Kyle Williams are the penciled in starters at DE with Dareus in the middle. That's a fact. Ragland can cover about as well as Brandon Spikes could which is OK, but not great. Again, they didn't move up in the draft to get a COVERAGE linebacker. It's stupid if you think they did. In terms of Lawson, he was a known issue to FANS. You suggesting that somehow, the front office didn't know about something that fans did is also pretty stupid. For the rest of the draft picks, I really don't care. They're TBD. None the less, the sky isn't falling like you think it is. You've created it in your warped mind where only you can see it.

This is a little disconnected from reality though. Lawson was a known issue coming out of the draft. The Bills front office have said point blank that he could have played and started the season, but they wanted to take care of the issue for the long-term. Honestly, I like that approach. It's not short sighted. Ragland is going to start. He has some challenges with pass coverage, but so what? They didn't draft him for his pass coverage. Adolphus Washington is going to start. He's already listed as a starter on the depth charts and we've heard the same thing from the front office. That covers the top-3, where even Whaley said if they can land 2-3 decent contributors in the draft that it's a good draft. Cardale is a project so I'll shelve him. JW has been a surprise contributor in OTA's, but it's not like they expected him to leapfrog Karlos or Gillislee. Hearing some pretty good things about the 218th pick in the draft where you would expect to get nothing can't be a bad thing. At this point, I read you as a bit of a Debby Downer/Negative Nancy. You want to tell people that the sky is falling and the end is near, but it's just not couched in reality.

It is beyond simple in my perspective. We need to see much greater use of intermediate passing routes, which I didn't see very much of at all last season.

This is the question of the day. I look at 4 games last year where the Bills were within one score from tying or taking the lead, where they ended up losing the game. New England in Buffalo - Down a score with 1:15 left in Q4, Taylor throws an interception. @ New England - Down a score with 1:51 left in Q4, Taylor moves the team down the field but runs out of time. @ Kansas City - Down a score with 3:25 left in Q4, and on the last play Taylor fumbles and recovers but turns it over on downs. @ Philadelphia - Down a score with 1:49 left in Q4, Taylor throws an interception. He did engineer a 4th quarter comeback and game winning drive @ Tennessee as well as in a game at home versus Houston, but I would like to see more of the latter than the former.

I think you're partially correct here, but are missing a big component of what has become a lot more prevalent today, and that's the running aspect of a quarterback's game. If you factor in rushing TD's and fumbles lost, I think that complete picture is what counts the most. If you do that, he's still in rare company with the likes of Wilson and Newton. Although all 3 are not at 4:1 like Brady is. Still, 3.2-3.4 is pretty damned good.

That I don't know. I really only follow the Big Ten and then the teams in major bowl games. My general perception is that there's more bad seeds in the SEC than other conferences, but that's about it.

Stevie spent more time figuring out what his next end zone celebration was going to be than he did working on making his hands and routes better. Happy to see him go, and don't perceive him to be a major loss at all. There's just too many memories of him and cases of the "drops" when the team needed him to make a catch. Reminds me a lot of another receiver named Peerless Price. A few good seasons with the Bills and then a complete flame out with his next team.

Jonathan Williams was arrested this morning in Arkansas for DUI. Let's not hold our breath.

Yes, he's bought businesses and invested in others. He's buying into the infrastructure of the city. Buying the team (at least the price point) is a sunk cost. That said, you have to operate the team such that it immediately becomes an operating business. So the "sunk cost" argument really becomes a moot point. He's spending, that's the point.