The Quality of Our Opinions

[MJS]

I think you have to be open to all opinions and information to form a good opinion. In doing that, though, it is pretty easy to recognize which opinions and sources of information to discard and which to assign a higher weight to.

 

I value the opinions of those who actually watch the tape and make their own conclusions, versus those who make claims without really showing their work. That right there allows you to discount 95% of opinions (if not more). Maybe not completely ignore them, but at least discount them.

 

I've found Joe Marino to be quite good because he watches tons of tape, know what he is looking at, knows how to evaluate players, and has reasoned takes that tend to align with many of my own reasoning. And when I disagree with him, I can at least see his process and how he came to his conclusions. He is admittedly heavily biased toward the Bills, because he is a Bills fan. But I am too.

 

The Cover 1 guys are also decent. I find them to be less reliable and reasoned than Joe Marino, but they at least try to back up their claims with data and a process of thought.

 

There are other national people who do a decent job, but it is literally impossible to be in the know with any level of depth on the entire league, so I discount their opinions just base on that. Chris Simms does a decent job, but I think he is sometimes too adamant on some of his opinions.

 

One of the problems in sports media is they hire a lot of ex players and coaches just for name recognition. Most of them just suck. A few of them actually take their jobs seriously and put in the work, but most of them are lazy and just want to collect paychecks.

Edited July 16 by MJS

[dpberr]

Journalism is so lazy today.   90% of it is just shotgunned freelance content for content's sake or journalists who'd rather be columnists so all their energy goes into their opinion pieces.

 

• That unnamed executive could be working for the Dolphins or could be out of the league for 20 years.

 

• That NFL executive also could be the assistant HR director.

 

• Or simply fiction.  

[hondo in seattle]

45 minutes ago, FireChans said:

You may know more about Josh Allen than a random NFL exec, but do you know more about the NFL QB’s at large? 

 

Probably not.

 

I don’t care about the rankings really because they are meaningless. But if you are gonna have any objective opinion on QB rankings across the league, watching every throw of Josh Allen, then watching highlights or redzone of the rest of the NFL is going to completely ruin that.

 

It’s fine to have Bills blinders on to consume your entertainment. But you gotta recognize that.

Daboll pulling up PFR rankings on his phone was legendary television for me.

 

This is true.  I watch games for entertainment, not to evaluate.  Sometimes when I watch videos by guys like Kurt Warner, I'm surprised at the stuff he's pointing out that I hadn't noticed when I watched the game live.   And it's not just the All-22 better angles.  He just sees differently because of his expertise.  

 

Coaches and personnel guys are often as smart as Kurt - or smarter - and hang out with guys as smart as Kurt every day.

[Mr. WEO]

lol Purdy not in top 10?  These execs or whoever are blinded by bias ("Stafford is a kingmaker", lol)

 

Burrow ahead of Josh?  stop.

 

Rodgers at 10?    The guy is old and coming off a devastating injury and he's a head case. 

 

why would anyone take Jackson over Goff or even Stroud at this point?  

[Special K]

As the saying goes:

 

Opinions are like A**holes......everyone has one, and most of them stink.🙂

Edited July 16 by Special K

[hondo in seattle]

54 minutes ago, Einstein said:

 

This tells me that you have not been in the company of professional coaches and executives.

 

It is a common misconception and one that extends to the c-suite.

 

People often assume: “X person made it to Y level, they must be brilliant”.

 

That is often NOT the case. Much of it is luck, mixed with opportunity, mixed with timing, mixed with attitude, mixed with who you know, mixed with several other factors as well.

 

Einstein, you are correct in saying that I don't know any coaches or execs.

 

But I do not think they're brilliant.  I've listened to, and read, lots of interviews.  I'm not sure how some of them finished college with their poor grammar, flawed logic, misusued vocab, and so on.  I saw some of Dave Wannstedt's notes once and wondered how this guy could ever be entrusted with a defense.   And then there's the example of Matt Millen.  

But I also know this.  When I hear intelligent non-restaurant folks opine about the restaurant industry which I know well, their opinions are usually amatuerish.  I feel the the same way when non-military people talk about the military.  So I'm guessing that football insiders think fans are amatuerish in our opinions.  Well, it's not just a guess because I've heard NFL insiders say so.  

 

Could some of us be good scouts or coaches?  Sure.  If we spent 20 years immersed in the profession, going to seminars, learning from the folks around us, and dedicating ourselves to the craft.  We couldn't step into the role of GM or HC off the street and be good at it.  It would be hubris to think otherwise. 

 

Edited July 16 by hondo in seattle

[MJS]

1 hour ago, FireChans said:

Daboll pulling up PFR rankings on his phone was legendary television for me.

I must access PFR at least a dozen times a week. Pretty funny to see NFL-level execs and coaches doing the same thing.

[Billy Claude]

1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

Having said that, I'll also say this.  I read somewhere that if you take a big glass jar, a jar that holds maybe two gallons or five gallons, fill it with gumballs, and then ask a thousand people to guess how many gumballs are in the jar, you'll get a guess or two or three that are very accurate, and you'll get some guesses that ridiculously off, and you'll get a lot of guesses in between the accurate ones and the hopelessly wrong ones.   However, it turns that if you take the average of all of the guesses, that average comes out close to the right number pretty consistently.  It means that the collective knowledge of human beings is quite good, even though the knowledge of any one individual is spotty.  Therefore, I'd guess that the collective knowledge of all of us posting here is pretty much on the money.

 

 

I think you are referring to the "Wisdom of the Crowd" idea. However, it only works when guesses are independent, for example, people don't know the guesses of many other participants  nor are swayed by other forms of groupthink.  If the Wisdom of the Crowd always worked we would never have had the dot-com nor the housing market bubbles.

 

I am not sure the theory applies to a message board. It seems to me message boards tend to result in pushing opinions to extremes.  

 

In any case, I think the board's opinion on Bills players tend to be generally correct once you allow it to settle (definitely not at the beginning of the season) and if you tone the opinion down a bit, that is players are not as good nor as bad as the board thinks they are. With the exception of a few posters, I don't trust the board's opinion of players on other teams,  for example. the board was still talking how much Tua sucked long after it was pretty clear that he is a decent, though not elite QB when not injured.

 

Edited July 16 by Billy Claude

[US Egg]

FF rankings matter.

[BigAl2526]

Because evaluating football talent is so very subjective, there is always going to be variation in the opinions of players.  Josh Allen is supremely talented.  I think everybody knows that.  The variation is in the way people might look at his tendency to commit turnovers by playing hero ball when the team is facing a tough challenge.  I don't think Allen is ever going to change that aspect of his game.  What the Bills will try to do instead is reduce the number of times that Allen will be in situations where the temptation is present to play hero ball.  

 

[34-78-83]

2 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Let's say some court voids all NFL player contracts tomorrow. Everyone is an unrestricted free agent. My guess, biggest contract to lowest (this of course takes age into account):

 

1. Mahomes (clear first)

2. Allen (fairly close second)

[big gap]

3 - 6: some relatively close ordering of Burrow, Herbert, Stroud, Jackson

[another big gap]

7-8: Goff/Prescott or Prescott/Goff

This is kinda how I've always looked at it as well. In listening to a lot of the "plugged-in and current" talking head exec types talk about players around the league, I would bet that if the NFL had a full re-draft, that Josh would be the 2nd player chosen at worst. And I think they would be smart in doing so.

[Mr. WEO]

2 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Let's say some court voids all NFL player contracts tomorrow. Everyone is an unrestricted free agent. My guess, biggest contract to lowest (this of course takes age into account):

 

1. Mahomes (clear first)

2. Allen (fairly close second)

[big gap]

3 - 6: some relatively close ordering of Burrow, Herbert, Stroud, Jackson

[another big gap]

7-8: Goff/Prescott or Prescott/Goff

 

in the top 2, the 2nd guy signed is always going to get more...

[Rubes]

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Posters here?   In my professional experience, I came to realize that there are some people who are just really smart, and if they put their minds to it, they can form really good opinions about subjects where they aren't experts.  There aren't many people like that, but there are a few.  And there are some people here like that, people who even though they haven't worked in the NFL for 20 years, or coached D-I for 20 years, still somehow are right about things most of the time.

 

Thanks man, I really appreciate that.

 

[Jauronimo]

3 hours ago, Einstein said:

 

This tells me that you have not been in the company of professional coaches and executives.

 

It is a common misconception and one that extends to the c-suite.

 

People often assume: “X person made it to Y level, they must be brilliant”.

 

That is often NOT the case. Much of it is luck, mixed with opportunity, mixed with timing, mixed with attitude, mixed with who you know, mixed with several other factors as well.

Awkwardly phrased but he said "smart about football".  You don't have to be a genius to be more knowledgeable about the NFL and football in general as an NFL coach/scout/exec than the typical TBD poster.  The access to inside information alone essentially ensures any scout/exec/coach knows more about the game and league than even the most diligent fan.  Even the sharpest fans are still making assessments without the benefit of key information like the play call, knowing players personally, etc.

[Rubes]

I mean, I generally agree with the sentiment here, but I still find it amazing that, on a regular basis, you hear about teams/GMs who are elbows deep in this ***** 24/7/365 who go out and draft a player, trade for a player, and/or hand out a contract to a player that just makes you go, "WTF were they thinking????"

 

[GoBills808]

4 minutes ago, Jauronimo said:

Awkwardly phrased but he said "smart about football".  You don't have to be a genius to be more knowledgeable about the NFL and football in general as an NFL coach/scout/exec than the typical TBD poster.  The access to inside information alone essentially ensures any scout/exec/coach knows more about the game and league than even the most diligent fan.  Even the sharpest fans are still making assessments without the benefit of key information like the play call, knowing players personally, etc.

Agree on information

 

However I submit intelligence is not prerequisite for working in nor following closely enough to have informed opinions of the league at large

 

In fact I'm more of the opinion that  the cumulative IQ of the NFL and its fan base probably falls below average compared to other pro sports leagues

[Comebackkid]

3 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Well, I look at and listen to some rankings.   I find I'm most interested in those confidential polls of GMs, because I think collectively the GMs know the subject better than anyone else.  I also listen to the anecdotal evidence from other players.   I think PFF is a joke, but I still feel good when they rank a Bills player high!

 

Posters here?   In my professional experience, I came to realize that there are some people who are just really smart, and if they put their minds to it, they can form really good opinions about subjects where they aren't experts.  There aren't many people like that, but there are a few.  And there are some people here like that, people who even though they haven't worked in the NFL for 20 years, or coached D-I for 20 years, still somehow are right about things most of the time.  The rest of us?  We just have opinions that seem correct to us, but in reality, we aren't right often enough to be experts. 

 

Having said that, I'll also say this.  I read somewhere that if you take a big glass jar, a jar that holds maybe two gallons or five gallons, fill it with gumballs, and then ask a thousand people to guess how many gumballs are in the jar, you'll get a guess or two or three that are very accurate, and you'll get some guesses that ridiculously off, and you'll get a lot of guesses in between the accurate ones and the hopelessly wrong ones.   However, it turns that if you take the average of all of the guesses, that average comes out close to the right number pretty consistently.  It means that the collective knowledge of human beings is quite good, even though the knowledge of any one individual is spotty.  Therefore, I'd guess that the collective knowledge of all of us posting here is pretty much on the money.

 

Therefore, there are some things we can be sure of:

 

The Dolphins suck.

Keon is slow. 

Diggs used to be great, but now he's a jerk.

It's always worth taking a peak at Rachel Bush images.

Ralph was cheap. 

It was a forward pass.

The Dolphins suck.  

bravo!

[TBBills Fan]

3 hours ago, Special K said:

As the saying goes:

 

Opinions are like A**holes......everyone has one, and most of them stink.🙂

My brown eye smells fine

[Sweats]

I only care what Fins fans have to say cause they are definitely wrong about everything........whatever they say, im leaning in the opposite direction.

[eball]

4 hours ago, boyst said:

i 100% disagree that none of us are as smart as those in professional football.

 

This times 1000.

 

When I was a kid I thought all of these guys must be so smart.  Now I know differently.  There are a lot of morons making important decisions in all walks of life -- professional sports included.