Cash

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.

That’s who goes out for coin tosses - opening and OT. I’m not aware of any other official stipulations around being a captain.

I’m with @GunnerBill on this one. My guess is that they like Doyle’s potential at OT but don’t think he’s ready yet. I think they’re happy enough with their top 3 at OT, but if any of those top 3 had to miss a game, they’d want to call up a veteran OT to be the swing tackle.

Totally agreed on that for his rookie year, but I thought he looked quicker and smoother this preseason. Granted, it was an ultra-small sample size, but it still beats looking the same or worse. I was pretty high on him his rookie year, but maybe just because he looked like an old-school Metzelaars style TE. I’m hoping that the Hollister cut means that Sweeney has developed and will be able to help the team for real this year. If he’s somehow improved his athleticism, that would be amazing. But even if not, maybe his blocking is now good enough to fill the Lee Smith role - and he was always a better athlete than Smith.

Gronk played like a star down the stretch of the regular season, and combined with his history of star play, I think it’s a fair call. And I agree with the rest of your post. A star TE definitely isn’t necessary or required to win it all. And star TEs seem to have shorter shelf lives on average than star WRs, so there’s at least some advantage to putting resources into WRs. So when the Bills seemingly neglected TE from 2020 to 2021, I’m not necessarily happy about it, but I get it. If Ertz had gotten cut, I would’ve loved to see the Bills sign him to a 1 year deal. But I didn’t think it was worth both draft capital and $8mil to bring him in. Likewise, I liked that we tried to sign Greg Olsen before the 2020 season. Would’ve been a great mentor to Knox, and could’ve contributed in 2-TE sets. But when he said no, the Bills didn’t think anyone else on the market was worth the $$, and I respect that. Ultimately I’m sure the Bills would love to have the personnel to run an effective 2-TE set at least some of the time in every game. But I trust this FO’s evaluations of players. If they don’t think Hollister will help the team more than Speedy or whoever, then I’m fine with that.

Well one of us misunderstands, because it sounded like you were saying TEs don’t matter to NFL success. And that’s demonstrably false. It’s not pure coincidence that 10 of the last 14 Super Bowl participants have had “star” TEs. And there’s been a lot of analysis over the years of the tactical advantage of a 2-TE set where both TEs are receiving threats. Plus, TEs are important in short yardage situations, and no matter how WR focused your offense is, you’ll find yourself in those situations on a regular basis. But I agree with you that our top 2 TEs being Knox/Hollister vs Knox/Sweeney is probably not going to move the needle. Maybe you just meant that these particular TEs on the 2021 Bills are the 20%, in which case I misunderstood you, and you can pretty much ignore everything above.

I was also very surprised by this. But ultimately this FO has earned my trust. This is essentially saying that Hollister would’ve been 3rd string behind Sweeney, and the dropoff from Hollister to the PS guys is minimal. That doesn’t really align with what I saw, but 1.) I didn't look at TE blocking at all during preseason, and 2.) The Bills have access to a lot more info than I do. Me reading practice reports is not the same as actually seeing the guys practice. So I’m surprised but not upset. The problem with that logic is that “the 20%” might be what separates a Good team from a Championship team. There are strong benefits of having a real pass-catching threat at TE (who also blocks effectively in the run game). Having said that, I think Hollister has very little to do with this conversation. He looked good catching the ball to me, but still didn’t look like he’d be a difference maker. If anything, I’m glad that this FO is willing to adapt their positional requirements to match their personnel. I remember multiple coaching staffs keeping 3-4 TEs on the roster who were really just practice squad level players. And a lot of talk about TE-centric offenses despite our best TE being someone like MarQueis Gray. Logan Thomas was with us for 2 years and Detroit for another year and did nothing. Great for him that he earned a huge role with WFT last year at age 29, but I don’t think that would’ve happened on a halfway decent team. (And yes, I’m aware they won their division. I stand by what I wrote.) And unless he really improved himself in the last 2 years, I still don’t think he’s a difference maker - just a guy making the most of his opportunity. The guy we had in 2017-2018 definitely wasn’t a difference maker from what I saw.

I hear ya, but the problem with putting him IR is that he can't practice at any point all year. Hard for him to improve much without being able to practice. He can still work on the mental aspects of the game, but I don't know how much that'll help him improve just on its own.