Startling Star statistic

[IgotBILLStopay]

46 minutes ago, c-troop said:

and yo, the bills were one of the worst teams defending the run last year, so I don't really care what LoAx says about him. 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2018/opp.htm

We allowed 17 rushing TD's and allowed a mediocre 1839 rush yards.

We also allowed 111 rushing first downs (lack of urgency) and apparently, teams loved running against us. (9th most rushed on team last year.)

The hyperlinks in my previous post are not able to be clicked anymore. Dunno why.

Absence of Kyle Williams is one thing, yet when you look at Stars production you can't say his lack of contributions arent partly why.

I think we should blame the LBs a bit more for the poor run defense. I dont have the link, but a while ago I posted how most of the big run gains happened away from Star. And Kyle, bless his heart, was never the best run defender around. 

 

That said, let us see how the run defense does with Oliver in there. Hopefully Star will do enough to satisfy us all (in terms of Wins).

Edited April 29, 2019 by IgotBILLStopay

[aristocrat]

1 minute ago, TOboy said:

 

Pretty sure that had something to do with the gameplan being focused around stopping Brady (which we actually did in one of those games). 

 

we did. Also, take a look at the rb's we play this year. Good lord it's gotta be the most talent I've seen on one schedule. If we come out with a top five run defense this year this team will win the division. 

[IgotBILLStopay]

Ah here is the link:

 

https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2018/12/27/18155883/all-22-analysis-where-was-star-lotulelei-run-stuffing-defensive-tackle-vs-new-england-patriots

 

Notice how few of the runs are to the inside. 

Quote

He is however, playing at a high enough level where the New England Patriots appear to have focused a great deal of attention in avoiding him and accounting for him when that wasn’t possible—and he still made some plays.

 

If anything a case can be made that Star needed to be in on more than 47% of the snaps - so maybe OP is correct in an unintended way:)

Edited April 29, 2019 by IgotBILLStopay

[c-troop]

7 minutes ago, IgotBILLStopay said:

I think we should blame the LBs a bit more for the poor run defense. I dont have the link, but a while ago I posted how most of the big run gains happened away from Star. And Kyle, bless his heart, was never the best run defender around. 

 

That said, let us see how the run defense does with Oliver in there. Hopefully Star will do enough to satisfy us all (in terms of Wins).

That's probably also why we saw Beane and McDermott draft, sign, and invite so much youth in the LB department. Looks like Star is off the hook for now.  

Edit : Great article bruh, very interesting stuff!!

Edited April 29, 2019 by c-troop

[mjt328]

I prefer to go by Yards Per Attempt (YPA), as opposed to total yardage.

Otherwise, stats are going to skew against teams who are on the field a long time (like us).

 

Passing Defense - We allowed 6.3 YPA, which was tied with Chicago and Baltimore for #1 in the NFL.

Rushing Defense - We allowed 4.2 YPA, which was tied with Pittsburgh for #9 in the NFL.

In addition, we were tied at #8 for takeaways (27) and #14 in sacks (41).

 

Obviously, these were fantastic numbers for our Defense.  Which makes the points/game number (23.4, #18 in the NFL) come across as pretty bizarre.

In my opinion, the narrative that our poor offense HURT the defense is very legit.  And the stats do seem to back it up.  The numbers show that teams were not moving the ball on us, yet they were scoring a lot.  This tells me that opponents were putting up points on short fields, and off turnovers.  If our offense improves in 2019, this should be good news for our defense as well.

 

I'm also encouraged that our worst defensive performances came in the first half of the season (most notably Weeks 1-2), where Tremaine Edmunds was struggling to gain his footing and the Vontae Davis CB position was a disaster.  The team still had some bad games, but things were significantly better in the last 7 games.

 

[Matt_In_NH]

Well in general Stars make more than non stars, no?

[BuffaloBill]

1 hour ago, c-troop said:

and yo, the bills were one of the worst teams defending the run last year, so I don't really care what LoAx says about him. 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2018/opp.htm

We allowed 17 rushing TD's and allowed a mediocre 1839 rush yards.

We also allowed 111 rushing first downs (lack of urgency) and apparently, teams loved running against us. (9th most rushed on team last year.)

The hyperlinks in my previous post are not able to be clicked anymore. Dunno why.

Absence of Kyle Williams is one thing, yet when you look at Stars production you can't say his lack of contributions arent partly why.

 

 

Maybe teams rushed on the Bills because they were shut down in the air.  Keep in mind this was the #2 ranked defense in the NFL last year.

 

http://www.espn.com/nfl/statistics/team/_/stat/total/position/defense

 

They also accomplished this without much help from ST’s nor the offense.  Imagine the stats if the Bills were ahead in games and teams had to pass more frequently in the attempt to catch up.  

 

 

 

[c-troop]

1 hour ago, BuffaloBill said:

 

 

Maybe teams rushed on the Bills because they were shut down in the air.  Keep in mind this was the #2 ranked defense in the NFL last year.

 

http://www.espn.com/nfl/statistics/team/_/stat/total/position/defense

 

They also accomplished this without much help from ST’s nor the offense.  Imagine the stats if the Bills were ahead in games and teams had to pass more frequently in the attempt to catch up.  

 

 

 

This has been established if you read above.

With that being said, just another reason to get hype for the 2019/2020 season + our new acquisitions!!

Let's go Bills!!!

Edited April 29, 2019 by c-troop

[BADOLBILZ]

On 1/15/2019 at 12:54 PM, Happy Gilmore said:

 

Yeah, Stars play is largely invisible, so I can see the angst people have toward him.  I saw this article and wanted to put it out there to shed some light on his role.

 

 

Star ceased making plays last year.

 

When he was signed he was a guy who made at least 8-13 combined backfield plays(TFL+QB hits) every season of his career playing in effectively the same defense.

 

And even then his deal was almost universally panned by NFL observers/scouts.

 

Then last year he totaled  1 TFL and 0 QB hits.........for the whole season.

 

He fell off a cliff.

 

I mean even if he had maintained his so-so level from Carolina it might have helped keep QB's from stepping away from the outside rush........but nope.    

 

Now it's hard to create LESS than one backfield play as a DL playing 40% of snaps or more..........but add on another year of age and unless he finds some of what Lorax is drinking his overall play isn't likely to improve or even sustain. 

 

 

[GoBills808]

On 1/15/2019 at 6:29 AM, C.Biscuit97 said:

This is why I didn’t like the signing and feel it’s outdated thinking (though I love Samoans).  He is a one dimensional player that can be schemed off. I’d rather have a couple of DTs, run stuffer and pass rusher, than one Star.  He certainly helped with the run defense but he rarely made impact plays.

 

he is good at his role.  However, his role just isn’t important anymore.  He probably won’t get on the field if we played the Chiefs.

 

He's Tongan.

[ColoradoBills]

5 hours ago, c-troop said:

No, quite the opposite. I just don't think he is worth the money, and his play will likely continue to decline while we throw millions at him.

I think playstyle and personality wise, Lotulelei and Oliver will not mesh well. He's essentially the opposite of Kyle Williams.

Also, I think keeping him around sends a bad message to our new rookie 1st round draft pick that you can play mediocre, yet as long as you're a 1st round player organizations will pay you top dollar.

 

That's a lot of speculation.  Star and whether he is worth the money has been disgusted to death.

Star has the highest cap money this year because the Bills do not have any premiere signing.

It's also his high water mark on cap hit and will go down some the following years while the overall cap goes up.

 

You're new and I'll try to recap what I see as the 3 main results of peoples opinions on Star from all the threads.

1.  Star isn't worth the money and is no good at what he does.

2.  Star's stats don't reflect what he is paid to do and he is doing his job.

3.  Star is getting paid a little more (debated as to how much more) than he is producing.

 

I'm in the 3rd group.  That being said I'm hoping his play improves with a more established defense and improved

play by Edmunds.  I think and it's only speculation on my part that Star was asked to protect the young MLB by

"staying home" in the middle more than he has in the past. 

[Dr.Sack]

No problem with paying him his market value.  He’s a run stuffer who is useful against run heavy fronts clogging the middle and taking up 2 blockers. We are better with him on the roster.

[Happy]

2 hours ago, BADOLBILZ said:

 

 

Star ceased making plays last year.

 

When he was signed he was a guy who made at least 8-13 combined backfield plays(TFL+QB hits) every season of his career playing in effectively the same defense.

 

And even then his deal was almost universally panned by NFL observers/scouts.

 

Then last year he totaled  1 TFL and 0 QB hits.........for the whole season.

 

He fell off a cliff.

 

I mean even if he had maintained his so-so level from Carolina it might have helped keep QB's from stepping away from the outside rush........but nope.    

 

Now it's hard to create LESS than one backfield play as a DL playing 40% of snaps or more..........but add on another year of age and unless he finds some of what Lorax is drinking his overall play isn't likely to improve or even sustain. 

 

 

 

I hear what you're saying, and it is no different than what any other fanalyst is saying; Star didn't make any plays, only ate up space and took on blockers.  Then I read what players on the team say, such as Lorax and have to put a lot of weight on that. 

 

Hughes and Lorax both had pretty good years, with Shaq Lawson seeming to start trending up (though this needs to continue).  Is that a result of Star's role?  Not sure, but Lorax seems to indicate so.  Another thing to consider is Kyle was a fraction of what he used to be, Harrison Phillips seems like a rotational DT, and Jordan Phillips showed signs of life but I would think the coaches want to see more from him.  Trent Murphy shouldn't be on the team, he does nothing.

 

So it is possible that more fell on Star's shoulders last season.  That should lessen with the arrival of Ed Oliver.  Let's assume Star continues in the same role this season, everyone else (along with the defense as a whole) should get a lot better if Star is truly effective in his role.  If not, then I'll start to believe that the Star acquisition was a bad one.  Leslie Frazier also needs to step up with his scheme to get more pressure on the QB; blockers occupied by Star and Oliver should allow for other rushers (LB, S, or CB) to quickly get to the backfield.  I'm not sold on Frazier as a DC at this point.  We'll see how all of this shakes out this coming season.

[BarleyNY]

5 minutes ago, Dr.Sack said:

No problem with paying him his market value.  He’s a run stuffer who is useful against run heavy fronts clogging the middle and taking up 2 blockers. We are better with him on the roster.

 

I would not have had any problem with paying him market value either. But what we paid him is far above what we are getting in value. I broke this down in another thread, but two down run stuffers like him are much cheaper than his contract.  I could only find one other that was even remotely close to him and that was the guy Carolina replaced him with. I’ll see if I can find it........

[ColoradoBills]

6 minutes ago, BarleyNY said:

 

I would not have had any problem with paying him market value either. But what we paid him is far above what we are getting in value. I broke this down in another thread, but two down run stuffers like him are much cheaper than his contract.  I could only find one other that was even remotely close to him and that was the guy Carolina replaced him with. I’ll see if I can find it........

 

Dontari Poe.  He signed for an average of 9.3 million.  Star signed for a 10 million average.

[BarleyNY]

11 minutes ago, ColoradoBills said:

 

Dontari Poe.  He signed for an average of 9.3 million.  Star signed for a 10 million average.

 

Here is the thread with my previous posts and the pertinent text.  I stand by it being a very bad deal, but Star’s contract isn’t the end of the world.  You just can’t make that kind of mistake/choice very often and still be okay:

 

Quote 1:

The Star signing was terrible.  He’s useless on passing downs so you’re looking at run defender who eats up double teams. Yip. If you think that’s a $10M per year job, then you’re pretty out of touch with the value of players yourself.  And we haven’t even gotten into how front loaded the deal is.  We’d be on the hook for $26M if we cut him after 2 seasons and $33.5M if we cut him after 3. We have to keep him for all 5 seasons to get the $10M per season rate. How is that a defensible contract?

 

Quote 2:

Let’s start with what block eating DTs who are only valuable against the run are getting paid.  Poe, who replaced Star in Carolina.  3/$28M and not nearly as front loaded as Star’s contract.  So what other similar players  in that ballpark?

 

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/contracts/defensive-tackle/

 

The above link is to the contracts of all DTs.  I see Star with the 9th biggest DT contract.  I see Poe on there.  Other than that it seems like the well paid DTs are more complete players.  I wouldn’t mind it if the Bills had paid more for such a player.  But to burn that kind of cap space for that long on any player with those limitations is foolish. 

 

Thread link:

 

 

Edited April 29, 2019 by BarleyNY

[ColoradoBills]

1 minute ago, BarleyNY said:

 

Here is the thread with my previous posts and the pertinent text.  I stand by it, but his contract isn’t the end of the world.  You just can’t make that mistake/choice very often and still be okay:

 

Quote 1:

The Star signing was terrible.  He’s useless on passing downs so you’re looking at run defender who eats up double teams. Yip. If you think that’s a $10M per year job, then you’re pretty out of touch with the value of players yourself.  And we haven’t even gotten into how front loaded the deal is.  We’d be on the hook for $26M if we cut him after 2 seasons and $33.5M if we cut him after 3. We have to keep him for all 5 seasons to get the $10M per season rate. How is that a defensible contract?

 

Quote 2:

Let’s start with what block eating DTs who are only valuable against the run are getting paid.  Poe, who replaced Star in Carolina.  3/$28M and not nearly as front loaded as Star’s contract.  So what other similar players  in that ballpark?

 

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/contracts/defensive-tackle/

 

The above link is to the contracts of all DTs.  I see Star with the 9th biggest DT contract.  I see Poe on there.  Other than that it seems like the well paid DTs are more complete players.  I wouldn’t mind it if the Bills had paid more for such a player.  But to burn that kind of cap space for that long on any player with those limitations is foolish. 

 

 

 

I remember the conversations and remember (you I guess) did a good job bringing in the facts.

I remember saying multiple time in Star threads that I thought Star's worth was more in the 8 million per year range.

People can even argue that 8 is too much but he knows what McDermott want to do in his D and I'm sure he helps

in that way somewhat.

 

The bolded to me means the most.  A team can only "overpay" on a limited amount of contracts and right now it's no big deal.

One thing is when they NEED money to pay their big name rookies (White/Allen) Star will be gone.

For the time being Star is fine and when they get to the point that his position needs to be upgraded with a rookie they will.

 

 

[Dr.Sack]

42 minutes ago, BarleyNY said:

 

I would not have had any problem with paying him market value either. But what we paid him is far above what we are getting in value. I broke this down in another thread, but two down run stuffers like him are much cheaper than his contract.  I could only find one other that was even remotely close to him and that was the guy Carolina replaced him with. I’ll see if I can find it........

It’s a good thing our salary cap situation is under control. 

[c-troop]

58 minutes ago, ColoradoBills said:

 

That's a lot of speculation.  Star and whether he is worth the money has been disgusted to death.

Star has the highest cap money this year because the Bills do not have any premiere signing.

It's also his high water mark on cap hit and will go down some the following years while the overall cap goes up.

 

You're new and I'll try to recap what I see as the 3 main results of peoples opinions on Star from all the threads.

1.  Star isn't worth the money and is no good at what he does.

2.  Star's stats don't reflect what he is paid to do and he is doing his job.

3.  Star is getting paid a little more (debated as to how much more) than he is producing.

 

I'm in the 3rd group.  That being said I'm hoping his play improves with a more established defense and improved

play by Edmunds.  I think and it's only speculation on my part that Star was asked to protect the young MLB by

"staying home" in the middle more than he has in the past. 

Totally agree with you man.

I was in group 1 earlier while looking at his stats and after discussing the bills run defence I concluded that I overlooked the fact that Edmunds could have still been making some rookie mistakes impacting the Run-D despite having a stellar rookie campaign.
(shedding second level blockers, calling for adjustments)

I would say I'm in your "group 3" as of now, yet we will continue to monitor this topic.

It still concerns me that most major NFL publications are harsh towards him,
and even though his stats don't reflect what he is asked to do (eat blocks) you would expect at least a sack or 2 from the big man and a few more TFL's. 

As far as the speculation, it doesn't take a mathematician to take a peek at Star's stat sheet and see the numbers get smaller each season. 

Yet after watching some film and acknowledging some other possibilities,
I will reserve further judgements until we see this group in action. 
 

[BADOLBILZ]

48 minutes ago, Happy Gilmore said:

 

I hear what you're saying, and it is no different than what any other fanalyst is saying; Star didn't make any plays, only ate up space and took on blockers.  Then I read what players on the team say, such as Lorax and have to put a lot of weight on that. 

 

Hughes and Lorax both had pretty good years, with Shaq Lawson seeming to start trending up (though this needs to continue).  Is that a result of Star's role?  Not sure, but Lorax seems to indicate so.  Another thing to consider is Kyle was a fraction of what he used to be, Harrison Phillips seems like a rotational DT, and Jordan Phillips showed signs of life but I would think the coaches want to see more from him.  Trent Murphy shouldn't be on the team, he does nothing.

 

So it is possible that more fell on Star's shoulders last season.  That should lessen with the arrival of Ed Oliver.  Let's assume Star continues in the same role this season, everyone else (along with the defense as a whole) should get a lot better if Star is truly effective in his role.  If not, then I'll start to believe that the Star acquisition was a bad one.  Leslie Frazier also needs to step up with his scheme to get more pressure on the QB; blockers occupied by Star and Oliver should allow for other rushers (LB, S, or CB) to quickly get to the backfield.  I'm not sold on Frazier as a DC at this point.  We'll see how all of this shakes out this coming season.

 

 

1) No........I am giving you specific statistical evidence of his drop-off.  The eyeball test was that he's a fraction of the physical presence he was at Carolina and it shows up with a HUGE drop-off in the stat sheet.   This isn't a 3-4 with a NT that isn't allowed to make plays.   In this defense both DT's gotta' be able to do some damage.   HE......not Kyle........ was a fraction of his former self. 

 

2) To that point......Kyle was the same guy or better than he had been in 2017..........no drop-off.........he just played about 3%-4% fewer snaps because of better depth at 3T.

 

3) Question.......if you "tie up 2 blockers on every play"........but you play less than 50% of snaps.........aren't you mathematically single blocked?  

 

I'm the first to give credit for dirty work........I defended the much maligned Ted Washington on here and this boards predecessor for years.

 

But as stated above.......the eyeball test was that he wasn't taxing offensive lineman the way he did in Carolina.   He was like a slow motion version of his old self........which is not surprising for a guy his age playing a plugger role for all of those years(and one who knows he just got his last fat chunk of guaranteed $).

 

Star will be 30 this year so for a man who is not of naturally gigantic NT build it might be unreasonable to expect him to get any better.   Ed Oliver or not.