HardyBoy

Sounds like he was dealing with bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and likely CTE...so let me make sure I understand some of your guys' take...a man with severe mental illness, acts like a man with severe mental illness, and you call him a pos...stay classy Bills fans! Also, a lot of people here need to learn about and understand synaptic pruning before they start going off on personal responsibility is situations like this...you sound ignorant. When a person is a baby, they have all these potential connections. Your brain has all this potential, but is inefficient because the paths for the neurons to flow through are not yet defined. As you grow as an infant and toddler, certain pathways are used, some are not. Eventually around I believe 3 you get synaptic pruning, which is the brain removing the unused pathways...they literally go away forever. Humans literally have the capacity to be feral beasts (I'm talking about during the ice age), or extremely civilized (not sure we've attained this yet)...it's because of synaptic pruning of unused neural pathways. Children who have tough upbringings, specifically lack of stability and the ability to have control over getting the world to give them what they need (ex. baby cries and gets fed quickly) have different pathways that get reinforced compared to someone who has all their needs met. Are people from tough upbringings lost? Of course not, it could be a strength in many ways, but you can't go through that early childhood and then get that sort of reinforcement as a teenager; it will lead to this situation lot more than average. As a society we must help children from ages 0-3. This is both a moral responsibility issue and a fiscal responsibility issue...costs a heck of a lot less to provide effective interventions to babies than it is to fund the consequences (people not entering the labor force, criminal justice, etc.) By the way, has anyone heard about Diaper Poverty befoe? I just did a few months ago, it's wild, look it up.

Would you have done it after last year?

McDummy...really??

Interesting, but I'd say fear of optics pre-McBeane put them in this situation. Seems to me they have identified a set of traits that in combination, they believe, will work well together. Not just culture, but they have certain tangible physical skill sets they are looking for, and search for those players within tiers of value. Guessing that is how they hit on Milano, and Johnson and others.

They took a qb with the 7th overall pick this year?! Continually using high draft picks on qbs?! When was the last high pick they used on a qb? Was that Sammy Watkins, CJ Spiller, Donte Whitner?

That's true, but they missed on AJ and instead of taking a mentoring role, he pushed for a trade (can't blame him). I think with the plan they have, the AJ signing made sense, seemed like it should work, and so did the decision to trade. It's the not bringing someone in earlier to hedge against this situation that is the issue.

Are the two situations even remotely the same?! The Chargers historically have under achieved with good rosters and a well managed cap, the Bills have historically exceed expexlctations to reach 7-9 with a bunch of short term fixes and that lead to a busted cap situation.

Am I wrong to think a lot of people on here are reactionary day traders, with thin stomachs, a severe lack of vision, and an oversized amount of sky is falling group think that goes in the face of all the data showing the desired milestones are being hit? I don't remember it being like that here before, at least not on this scale, and I've been here since 2007ish. Really interesting and at the same time concerning, because I think it talks more about our overall lack of patience as a society, than specifically this fanbase.

Yeah, really hope him playing the rest of the half doesn't lead to long term impact. Those additional hits once you have a concussion, even small ones can be really, really bad long term. I'd be good with him waiting until after the bye to come back, if not longer, regardless of if he clears protocol. You put a few of those critical mistakes together at the wrong time, and you get a blowout. Of course that by no means excuses the historically poor offensive performance, you xan still get blowm out regularily and look like a somewhat competent offense. That said, those mistakes are not random, the other team is game planning to put people into situations to make the mistake...the question is, is the same mistake happening consistently or are they learning?

I'm not worried about Edmunds either, just saying the blowout might not be a defensive scheme thing, and more savy qbs being able to manipulate LBs. Mariota and Watson got outschemed because they couldn't win post snap yet by tricking LBs to leave their spots with their eyes and pocket movement.

Or they have inexperienced LBs that got eaten up by experienced qbs that know how to take advantage of raw LBs...

Better comp, I think, would be Eagles, Rams and Bears. Also, as far as why would free agents want to come here? Money and culture. I think people are way underestimating the number of players who don't care about winning, because they stopped having fun playing football a long time ago. Imagine if you had to do the same thing for 20 years, and the only real reason you are able to do it is you were randomly born gifted enough. Sure, hard work counts for something, but you can't develop nfl talent if you don't have the skill set, it's too competitive. It's not like college, you have to be born with it. And it hurts, a lot, and it's not ever going to stop hurting even after you finish playing. And fans are total jerks in aggregate, and don't appreciate you or your worth as a human, or your future life. Do you really think you would have a driving passion to do something that 12 year olds love more than anything for 20 years of your life? I wouldn't. I want to grow, learn, become a better person and improve myself, my whole self, not just a sliver that people don't appreciate outside of a select few teammates. I would want coaches that care about my full self, and teammates as well. Winning is at best secondary for a huge number of players, if not the vast majority. I'd love to say I'd care the most about winning, but it has to get old, and they have families, and dreams outside of football. So the roster situation and lack of winning, I don't think that keeps them away, it's about the money, and I'm cool with that. That said, these contacts aren't guaranteed, so it's going to take a lot of upfront money because losing teams cut players. Also, you're probably targeting older free agents that aren't worried about a second big free agency contract, because losing can hurt your perceived worth.

Tommy John surgery would be a year plus for a qb? I know it is for pitchers, but in baseball, field players have a much shorter rehab, like half a year iirc. It's a different motion in football compared to baseball also.

Crazy thing...the d gets that fumble, game over he's a hero. I think going down and scoring tells a lot more than the picks, since he's a low round second year qb. That said he needs to be a third qb right now.

Haha, nevermind!

Just going to bump this.

Being able to roll cap makes this strategy less likely, but there is a cap floor right?

To be fair, I wasn't arguing my original point there, I was arguing the point that you said it wouldn't work because 5th round picks are more valuable than I think they are. All I'm saying is if the players aren't there in FA to fill the full cap space, I think the better strategy is at the very least not overpay and commit to overvalued players long term. Either save the cap space, or an interesting and potentially innovative approach is to fill it with high quality players on one year deals that you get for low round draft picks because they would be cut anyway. It's basically giving up very little to franchise tag another team's high quality player for a year when you have the cap space to do it.

Absolutely, but how many Bills 5th round picks can you say that about since KW got drafted? How many players out of all the 5th round picks since say 2000 league wide can you say that about? Let's use this as the imperfect criteria...how many 5th round picks have ever played or made a pro bowl?

I mean it's all about value right...a fifth round pick, typically provides replacement level value I would have to imagine, at I would think a salary not that much lower than the veteran minimum. A top level player on the last year of their deal is well above replacement level, and their contribution in that one season alone will surpass a random fifth round pick's contribution combined over four seasons.

This is kind of my response to the who are the bills going to sign with all the cap space question. True there might not be enough players out there worth the contacts it would take to fill the cap space next year; signing those players to long term deals is bad value, and would be sort of what like happened to a lot of teams in the NBA when the cap jumped a few years ago. The potential solution, trading for highly productive players that teams were going to cut anyway for money reasons only (few players play their final year since it is highly backloaded to where the bonus is done being paid so no dead cap), and you can get a high caliber player at significant value. On top of that, once the player leaves in FA, would the Bills get comp picks, or that doesn't count if done in a trade?

Will be willing and able to take on high priced one year deals of players in last year of contract.

Bill Belichick has had the best offense in the league how many times? Hot takes everywhere...do you have any data to back up that offensive coaches have better offenses, or are you just spewing hot takes? Every team you named stocked cap space and draft picks the year of the qbs rookie year and took advantage of their qbs rookie contact and stocked up big time. By the way, every single last one of those qbs was underwhelming to say the least their rookie year, or did not play. Sorry, it's just not a logical point, but well written and interesting to think about.

You understand this roster is like this on purpose this year, right? They escalated all the dead cap into this year, I know you know this. They should be praised, this will make the team light years better in the coming years. The eagles, bears and rams all went through this same thing in the last few years.

You'd rather be 7-9 with no hope of a Super Bowl? Clearly yes...so you're better with mediocrity than with escalating all the dead cap into a single season. Before you say this is about the comment, you would not be responding this way if they were on their way to a 7-9 season, and by the way this schedule is brutal for the first stretch. They aren't this bad, but with a bad culture they will give up before the schedule gets easier and the matchups are better and it won't matter. Not you personally, but this board sucks right now. So much reactionary non-big picture views with hot take after hot take. Wasn't like this back in 08, was much more measured then and the negativity was clever and witty, now it's just tiresome.