Cash

Seems like he's an interior pass rusher? Why that rather than a nose tackle type?

Carson Wentz : Eagles Jared Goff : Rams Ezekiel Elliot : Cowboys Laquon Treadwell : Titans Paxton Lynch : Browns Bills Pick (bonus) : Darron Lee

Right. Even a hypothetical perfect LT would only be able to stop 1 defender per play. Until a player comes along who can single-handedly neutralize the entire pass rush, a player who can reliably create sacks is more valuable than a player who can reliably prevent sacks. My takeaway is that preventing sacks comes down to coaching/scheme, QB awareness, cohesion/teamwork, and talent level of the weakest link. A singular bad O-lineman can kill your whole offense, but a singular great O-lineman doesn't lift it that high.

It looked to me like the first guy pulled up to avoid a penalty -- even without a fair catch, you still have to give the opposing team a chance to catch the punt. He wasn't fully able to stop and made incidental contact, but he was clearly trying to avoid hitting/tackling the returner. I think the second guy saw his teammate pulling up like that and figured that he'd missed the fair catch signal, and so pulled up as well. Yikes.

That's good, but I still haven't quite forgiven Wade for hiring his weed dealer to replace DeHaven.

Did this guy really need to respond to this thread to let us know how he felt about the OP?

No, not technically, though it is a common misconception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey Even the places on the Bourbon Trail explain the definition: "The Federal Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits (27 C.F.R. 5) state that bourbon made for U.S. consumption must be: Produced in the United States Made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn Aged in new, charred oak barrels Distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume) Entered into the barrel for aging at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume) Bottled (like other whiskeys) at 80 proof or more (40% alcohol by volume)" Anyway, I think Mularkey is a severely underwhelming choice for Tennessee, which is good for the Bills but bad for football fans in general. I think Mariota is legit and they have a pretty solid D. Improve the O-line a bit, add a couple of skill position weapons, and assuming Mariota progresses, they could be a very solid team for years to come. Out of all of our candidates last year, I wanted Rex first, and Hue Jackson second. He's done a very nice job with Cincy's offense, and going 8-8 in one year as the Raiders' head coach is practically a Super Bowl appearance. He's certainly a much more appealing candidate than Meathead on paper.

Not a bad post. I tend to agree for the most part. I'm a lot less enthused now than I was when Rex was first hired (I was also hoping we'd hire him), but I do see reasons for optimism. The D showed flashes of success last year, and was great-not-elite in Pettine's similar system 2 years ago. They're definitely going to lose some talent -- possibly up to 3 Williamses -- but it's plausible that the D could still be significantly better next year. A combo of the players better understanding/buying into the scheme and the coaches better understanding the players and adapting the scheme or playcalling accordingly could mean a big improvement. On offense, the hope is that Taylor improves in his 2nd year as a starter, and 1st year taking all the 1st-team reps in camp and preseason. Add in some better health at the skill positions, and this could be a low-end top 10 offense. Of course, things could get worse on both sides of the ball, but I'm not melancholy heading into the offseason like I have been in a lot of recent years.

I got the same take as dave did - I saw that our defense is 6th overall in seconds/play against, and 2nd(!) in "situation neutral" seconds/play against. I don't know how much of a league-wide trend there is, but Brown's comments about teams hurrying up against us seem to have some merit. I also notice that Dallas is currently dead last in offensive seconds/play. It'll be interesting to see if they try to hurry it up against us as well. I'd go a step beyond and say that the D has frequently seemed not-ready against regular offense, not just hurry-up. It's been very frustrating to watch all season. We've had similar problems getting play calls in on offense, but I feel like it's been significantly worse on defense. Probably due to the substitution factor. I don't have a problem with matching up personnel, but Mario had a very legitimate beef talking about how we've frequently been running guys in & out while the other team is breaking their huddle. That's unacceptable to me, and I can't believe that it's the fault of the players. I don't know if it stems from slow decision-making by Rex and/or Thurman, poor communication relaying the decision to the players, or both. To me, the nadir was that Ryan Griffin TD we gave up in the Houston game. Yes, Houston did technically snap it before they were set for a full second, so it should've been illegal procedure. But that doesn't excuse any of the following: 1.) Houston had plenty of time to snap the ball legally and still score a TD to either side of the formation. 2.) Even if Houston had waited the full second, there would've been 1 Bill covering 2 eligible receivers to the offensive left and 0 Bills covering 2 eligible receivers to the offensive right. 3.) 0 of the 11 Bills on the field seemed like they had any clue what the defensive play call was supposed to be. I strongly doubt that Brown had gotten the play call yet. 10 guys were basically in the defensive huddle when the ball was snapped, and none of them was in the process of moving anywhere else.

But is it a Blue Ribbon Committee?

Good for Matt Cassel to at least get some extra money after we jerked him around like we did. Note that I don't miss him and don't particularly think the Bills should've done anything different, but as a human being, I felt bad for him & his pregnant wife.

See, I think this (somewhat) reinforces hashtag's point, but not his/her name-calling. Byrd, Levitre, & Poz all certainly panned out as well or better than could be expected. And all left for too much money. In each case, the Bills were right to let them walk rather than match or beat the offer in question. But at the end of the day, the Bills hit big on 3 second-round picks, but all of them were just 4-year rentals. I think hash's point is that a team shouldn't draft guys in the 1st/2nd round unless they're willing to sign those guys to big 2nd contracts if they pan out. All 3 of those did pan out, but none of them was worth a big 2nd contract. I think things are a little more nuanced than just "only draft big-ticket positions high", but positional value is definitely something that should be taken into account at the top of the draft. And this thread has really highlighted why the Bills have been mediocre or worse for so long: they've had a bizarre run of draft failure, where almost all of their big-ticket picks have been busts, and almost all of their "good" picks have been players at small-ticket positions, many of whom never re-signed with the Bills. Short of just picking all busts, that's really the worst-case scenario for an extended draft run.

My hope is that we already took care of the second part by losing to Jacksonville. Hope, not expectation.

I think hashtag's point is that the players themselves were pretty good - hence pointing out that all of them are still active NFL players. The Bills also have a few good examples of correctly prioritizing positions, but poorly identifying players: Aaron Maybin, Mike Williams, JP Losman, and Erik Flowers come to mind as 1st-round picks at big ticket positions who didn't make it. All were out of the league very quickly after leaving the Bills. (I'm one of the last 3-4 EJ semi-believers, but even I'll admit that he's probably going to be on this list in a year or two.) If you want to include DT as a big ticket position (debatable), then you could add Torrell Troup and John McCargo in as well. And since hashtag included WR in the list as well, let's also include James Hardy. Great positional priority for all of these, and all (ostensibly) filled a need to boot, they just weren't good enough players.

1. Given how much of a turnover machine Cassel has been this year and the last 4 years or so, I don't think it's very safe to assume he would've taken care of the ball against Jax. 2. EJ played us out of that game, then played us back into it - which, sadly, is just who he is. Cassel is capable of that first part, but not the second part. I'll take the guy who is sometimes terrible and sometimes good over the guy who is sometimes terrible and sometimes just slightly below average. 3. Anyone bemoaning this trade has not been watching the Cowboys since then. It's no coincidence that the Buffalo News writers shut up about Cassel real quick. If he'd done anything worthwhile at all, Gleason and Carucci would be writing "Cassel>>>>>>>>>>>>>EJ" articles every week.

He's fine. A good player, but nothing special. Not particularly big or fast, an okay but not great athlete for the position, hands are fine, and allegedly he's a good route runner. (I can't pretend to know anywhere near enough about route running to evaluate anyone on that front.) Good blocker in the run game, which is nice to have, but not typically how WRs make their money. Also a bit of a hothead, which I'm not a big fan of. I think you could do a lot better as a #2 WR, but you could also do worse, and he's competent enough for a starter who's not one of the focal points of the offense.. Unless he's willing to sign dirt cheap (which would surprise me), I'd be fine with letting him walk after next year. But I wouldn't want the Bills to do anything stupid like cut or bench him.

Seriously. I didn't think he was hurt, and didn't see any reports of him signing elsewhere. I liked him a lot and am kind of surprised he hasn't been signed back yet.

Very sorry to hear that! Best wishes for a full recovery!

Bingo. I have no idea what Tyler Dunne or several of the posters were seeing on that play, but the throw was fine. Back to Sammy, at this point, I think he's injury-prone until he proves otherwise. All offseason, we heard that he played hurt all last season, and that now that his ribs were healed, he'd be way better. This year, he's missed 2 games (about to be 3) and gotten hurt in 2 more. So he's had 2 healthy games and 4 (going on 5) injured games. Not a great ratio. And FWIW, he missed basically the whole preseason due to injury, and missed time in training camp while recovering from offseason surgery. I'll believe in the legend of Sammy once I see it. In the meantime, we can all take solace in those training camp Vines of Sammy schooling 6th-string DBs during drills.

Yeah, as far as some quick googling told me, as of yesterday Davis wasn't on any active roster or practice squad. Very surprising to me.

Handoff to McCoy (left) for 3 yards. Total Bills first downs: 15.

1.) I've always liked Joe Webb, although that playoff game where he utterly bleeped the bed knocked him down quite a bit in my eyes. I was definitely one of the guys who wanted to take a chance on him. Low cost, high upside - kind of like Tyrod! 2.) Regarding EJ... PTR sums it up well. I've been trying to be hopeful about EJ since he was drafted, and that was a LOT tougher job last preseason than this one. He looked really bad. This year, he looked really good, with only a couple of bad plays. I'm not promising he'd still look that good in the regular season (obviously his numbers would be worse no matter what), but I think it's a real sign that he's gotten significantly better since last year. And that's good! It also stands to reason that if he's gotten better since last year, he might keep getting better this year, and maybe that improvement will be faster with playing time. If Tyrod wasn't around, I would definitely be pulling for EJ to start over Cassel. Cassel is already at his ceiling, and that ceiling isn't very high. Tyrod & EJ are both well below their ceilings, and both ceilings are much higher than Cassel's. Will either one ever get there? I don't know, but I'm glad we're at least rolling with a guy who *could* wind up a top 10 QB.

Agree to disagree on how good Wood looked. Didn't look bad to me, but I didn't see anything special. And "nothing special" RBs are a dime a dozen. I'm much less concerned about developing a possible 3rd-string RB for next year than I am about developing either a backup for this year or a potential starter or 2nd stringer down the road. RB is a very heavy injury-risk position, and maybe they want to build in a lot of rest days for the 4 coming off injuries, so I guess I get it. But I'd still rather see Andre Davis, who really impressed me in the preseason, get that spot. I don't expect Harvin to be around next year, Hogan will be an RFA, and Goodwin is far from a sure thing at this point.

True, but a team is going to prioritize its own rookie draft picks over UDFAs like 99% of the time. See Dez Lewis getting a practice squad spot over Andre Davis, for example. But given the lack of pass-rush and D-line depth, I'm surprised it was Reed who was let go, rather than Noel or Cierre Wood. Especially Wood, come to think of it. We already have 4 halfbacks on the active roster - why do we need another for the practice squad?

I could be wrong and/or out of date, but my understanding is that incentives are either classified as likely or unlikely to be achieved. "Likely" incentives count toward the cap right away, and if they're not hit, you get a cap credit the following year. "Unlikely" incentives don't count unless they're hit, and come off the following year's cap when they do, so they can't immediately put you over. If I recall correctly, there have been a few instances in the past where the NFL gave a team some pushback because the team was trying to classify incentives as unlikely that really weren't. I would assume that if it's close to 50/50, the incentive is supposed to be classified as likely.