Cash

I tend to agree with this. First, Kumerow starts at gunner. And it’s unlikely a Day 2 WR will be played at gunner. More likely, a good Day 2 WR pick would push Crowder off the roster. That’s fine if he’s better than Crowder, but I think there’s weaker spots on the roster. I’ll probably be banging the drum for a WR in rounds 1-3 next year, but I see it as only a nice-to-have for this year.

I’d like to see us end Day 2 with 1 each of: -Interior OL, preferably someone with G/C flexibility -Offensive skill position - RB, WR, or TE Odds are, these are the last 2 picks that are likely to contribute on O or D in 2022. So I’d like to come away with depth on the O-line, because we’re very thin there currently. And I don’t think we have a strong need at starter for any of the skill positions, but we could use depth at all of them.

Right, but it still leads to his headline: “Packers trade up for QB”. Optics matter. Maybe they shouldn’t matter, but they do. Side note: I don’t think it helped that Love wasn’t seen as a consensus first rounder; more of a borderline guy. When the Packers drafted Rodgers, he was in the mix for 1st overall and slid allllllll the way down. I don’t recall seeing any mocks that had Love earlier than the 20s, and I don’t think he was always in the first.

I would’ve defended the Love pick if it was along the lines of the Rodgers pick back in the day, for the exact reasons you state. But my issue with it was that they traded up. That changes the optics significantly, and sends a message to your fans and players - most notably Rodgers himself. Sending that message did a LOT to damage their relationship with Rodgers. So far, it’s not even close to being worth it. If you want to take a big swing like that, you have to connect. Otherwise you look like a fool. Whereas if you draft a QB in your own spot, you have the plausible deniability of saying, “we don’t need a QB right now, but this guy was by far the highest rated player on our board.”

I don’t recommend playing naked at any position, but especially not at WR.

Hopefully these go on sale beyond just the game-worns. I would buy one.

I am completely heartbroken, and I am deeply proud of this team. Two things can be true. I feel like the D let us down, but 1.) that’s where Tre might’ve made the difference, and 2.) what were they supposed to do, really? That’s one of the best games I’ve seen Mahomes play, and Andy Reid is arguably the best offensive mind in NFL history. There’s no shame in getting beat by them. Doesn’t make it hurt any less, but we can still hold our heads high.

Gotcha. Yeah I don’t disagree. Mostly I just think the “nerds” are way overconfident in both their models and their brains. EDIT: Also I like the characterization of right & wrong largely being outcome-based. When I play blackjack, I play by the book basically every hand no matter what. But I also love the mental exercise of seeing how things would’ve played out if I’d done the opposite action instead. It’s very common that “playing scared” (staying on 16 vs a 10) would lead to the dealer busting instead of me busting. I have no way of predicting when those come around, so I just stay with the book. But in something like football, there’s too many variables to have as simple a book as blackjack. One of the analytics-based tools I’ve seen phrases things a little differently than most: it basically says what the minimum probability of a conversion is, in order to make going for it a +EV decision. That, to me, is much more useful to a coach. I.e., if the model thinks you only need a 10% chance of picking up 4th and 3 to make it worthwhile, then it’s an easy decision. If it’s more like 60%, the decision’s much harder, but it’s still doable to think about how your offense is playing, what’s been working this game, and even how confident you are in a specific play call.

Can you clarify what you mean? I didn’t say anything about right or wrong in the portion you quoted. I specifically used the same language you did in the post I replied to. I doubt that you’re disagreeing with yourself, so I think I’m just not following you here. And inversely, it might make a lot of sense for bad teams to try high variance strategies more. Who cares if you lose by 30 or lose by 17? (Note: this doesn’t apply if you can keep it close. NFL football has extremely tight margins, and even the worst team in the league can beat the best team without needing very much luck.) Jauron-ball can take even a pretty bad team to 7-9, but as a fan, that doesn’t do much for me. Especially since it’s boring to watch. Side note: some good discussion above around sample sizes. That’s the real crux for me. I can’t pretend I know what the true answer is, but I suspect that NFL games/seasons will never have enough decision points to justify blindly following a model for all decisions, even if that model was perfect. (And I can’t stress this enough: ALL MODELS ARE IMPERFECT.) I understand GoBills808’s point that going for it more increases your sample, and thus increases the chance that your +EV actually benefits you, but I’m skeptical that it’s enough of an effect to ultimately matter. Especially since many of the decisions we see are only very narrowly +EV according to the imperfect models we have. Many of those are probably actually -EV, and either the model is imperfect, or they’re just within the margin of error.

That’s technically true. But if your decisions keep leading to bad outcomes, how can you be sure they were good/sound decisions in the first place? Not trying to accuse you of anything, but a lot of the analytics folks I’ve seen are deeply arrogant in a way that makes me question all of their conclusions. Their attitude seems to roughly be, “I’ve completely figured it out, therefore anyone who disagrees with my model is an idiot.” And every time they’re wrong, they come back with logic similar to the quote above. I have 2 main problems with these folks, plus a bonus third problem: 1.) How do they know their model is accurate? As GB & others pointed out above, the models are based on historical data. But as teams change their behavior, there’s no reason to expect that the models will continue to hold, or be predictive at a useful level. 2.) Many of these folks seem to have no understanding of the concept of error. It’s maddening. I saw an article a few weeks ago, blasting a coach for a 4th down decision. Per the model quotes, the coach’s actual decision resulted in about 46.2% win probability, but the “correct” decision resulted in about 46.5% win probability. But there was no mention of the model’s margin of error. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall any NFL analytics people ever providing a margin of error. This is nuts. 3.) Bonus: Arrogance. As I mentioned above, there’s a lot of “Everyone is dumber than me” energy coming from the current crop of analysts. This rankles me on a personal level, so I’ll admit some bias here. But I also think this is a legitimate issue. It ties in to both of the issues above: if you think you’re the smartest guy in the room, it’s often hard to self-evaluate. Much easier to make fun of “stupid” coaching decisions and tell your detractors that only process matters; never results. Plus, these guys are so high on their own farts that they can’t always interpret what their own models are saying. YardsPerPass pointed out an example on Twitter a while back. If you look at the Football Outsiders predraft QB write up in 2018, they lambaste Josh Allen and glow over Sam Darnold. (Nailed it.) But their own model only gave Allen about a 5% greater chance of busting than Darnold, and I think a pretty similar disparity in likelihood to break out. Based on the writeups, I would’ve expected Allen’s bust chance to be like 80-90%, compared to like 20% for Darnold.

Big yes to the bolded, especially in the playoffs. I have competing priorities in my life besides just football. I love football! But I love other things too. And I also have to make time for things I don’t love, but ought to do. (Like my job and other responsibilities.) So yeah, Saturday and Sunday are great for playoff football. Give me 3 games each day and I’m very happy! But don’t try to take a third night out of my week. As a side note, the MNF production is so obnoxiously bad that it actively hurts my enjoyment of the games. That’s been true for a while now, but doesn’t HAVE to be true going forward, so it’s a lesser complaint in this context.

Every one score game (except ties) has exactly 1 winner and 1 loser. So the league average is inherently .500 every year. So yeah, we’ve underperformed. The good news is that historically, there’s not much stability in whether a team overperforms or underperforms on this*. So there’s no reason to think the Bills will keep underperforming in one score games. Not in future seasons, and not necessarily the rest of this year either. *I’ve heard Aaron Schatz say that both Brady’s and Manning’s teams consistently overperformed, but haven’t seen him back that up with real evidence. I’m theoretically an analytics guy, but I’m also a skeptic so I don’t accept anything based only on word of mouth.

Still don’t like it. Would’ve preferred to give every team 2 bye weeks - that’s an extra week of TV revenue, but no extra wear & tear on players. Plus I hate the inelegance of a 17-week schedule. Can’t have an equal number of home & road games. Final records will all be unpleasant to look at (10-7? Ugh.) And who makes their schedule a prime number? It’s weird and off putting.

Or that Allen doesn’t have the same trust/rapport with them, and thus only looks their way when it’s a really good opportunity? I’m very on board with Knox and especially Davis getting more looks in the paaaing game, but stats like that don’t really mean much to me as a fan. If I was an offensive assistant, it would be something I’d try to unpack and see if there’s anything to it, or is it just coincidence? But without behind the scenes info, I don’t think we can draw any legit conclusions.

I’ll trust the FO on this one. From my amateur viewpoint, it seems like Beasley isn’t getting any younger. He’s never won with size, but has won with quickness (not speed) and knowing how to find the holes in the zone. He’s about at the age where the quickness is fading or about to fade. The savvyness to find open spots in zones should only get better with experience, but will it be enough to offset the fading physical abilities? I think probably not. Especially if other teams play man to man instead of zone. I think Beasley is probably Good at best against man coverage right now, but likely to only get worse. If he’s an asset against zone but a liability against man, that still could be a liability overall. If the Bills move on, I’m not sure that the replacement is currently on the roster. But I don’t think they’d move on unless either: A. Beasley is cooked and they know it, even if no one else does yet (ex: John Brown) B. They have a plan in place to replace him. Note that the plan still might fail, but I’m confident that there would at least BE a plan.)

I’m glad to know you’re ready to move on. What did Beane say when you broke the news?

That was really good! Definitely worth the 5 minutes or so.

Right. I’m sure Joe B was thinking about Beane’s post-draft comments about Addison as well. The gist was basically, “We love him and think he’ll be more effective with fewer snaps.” In my amateur opinion, that appears to be right - I’ve noticed Addison mostly for positive plays this year, as opposed to mostly negative plays last year. (Most notably the Cardinals game.) Given that the young DEs have all been showing flashes, count me in on the “less (of Hughes) is more” bandwagon. I also loved the blurb about Edmunds. Those are the types of plays that us fans don’t see during the broadcast, but still have a huge impact on the outcome of the game.

None. We will lose some of these games for sure. But none of them scare or worry me. Even the Titans, who seem to always have our number, don’t scare me right now. The Bills who played last night will beat any team in the league. The Bills who lost in week 1 would still beat a good number of teams on an average day. This team is good, even on their bad days. And on our good days, I think we’re the best team in the league.

Goffense. You’re welcome.

Is he back practicing already? I thought about him, but discounted him b/c I didn't think he was practicing yet. Not sure what the temp rules are this year - does that mean we have to activate him in the next couple weeks? I know IR return used to have like a 3-week window to practice before either activating or shutting down for the year.

Eh. Maybe, maybe not. I'm not gonna pretend to know the ins and outs of QB coaching, but it's plausible to me that doing a couple of drills to focus on footwork while specifically under pressure or on the move might be exactly what Allen needed. I don't think Joe B knows the ins and outs of QB coaching either, and I think he would admit that. So for me, I think it's fair for him to ID footwork as a direct cause of the problem and say that Allen needs to work on that. From the outside looking in, it's hard to get more specific in terms of how to fix that problem, but it's still fair to say that it needs to be fixed. I didn't get the vibe from Joe B's article that he was getting into the specifics of how to fix - just identifying what needed to be fixed. Whatever it was that Allen needed, it looks like that's exactly what he did, so I'm happy. I think the most important aspect of a winning organization is that everyone on the team (including coaches) learns from their mistakes/failures and uses those lessons learned to get better.

Did I miss it, or did the post not say who was #1 to Sanders' #2? That's very upsetting to bring that up without telling us who won. My guess is either McKenzie or Micah Hyde.

From what I’ve read, a good amount of performance in the 40 is due to training for the 40 - specifically around getting off the blocks. One of the reasons people think the “2nd year jump” is real is that pre-rookies spend their pre-draft offseason training for the combine instead of training for football. So I don’t think there’s a lot to be gained from retesting, because it would just incentivize guys to waste training time on the 40. Singletary is definitely not a home-run hitter compared to someone like Raheem Mostert. But he looks faster this year, and that’s probably the difference between a 28 yard run that puts us in FG range, vs a 46 yard TD run that would’ve maxed out around 50 yards. In other words, Singletary is still a guy who can be caught from behind. But it looks like it’ll take an extra 15 yards or so to catch him. That’s good!

Same. He and Joe B have a good dynamic on the podcast. I wonder what’s to be done about that? Possible ideas: 1. Tim Graham becomes the new co-host. I would give it a shot but be very skeptical. Graham has guested on the podcast before and it was tolerable. 2. Fairburn temporarily sticks around as a guest. How would this work? He’s going to be on-site covering that other team and won’t be able to watch the Bills. This isn’t feasible. 3. Joe B goes solo. Hopefully no one is dumb enough to try this. One-man sports radio is unlistenable IMO. 4. Some other Athletic reporter moves into Bills coverage and becomes the new co-host. Hope it works out.