Thurman#1

I see that nobody has mentioned this before, with the exception of me, very quickly. They've done academic studies on this, whether it's better to make big trades up, giving away lots of high picks. It isn't. Massey & Thaler The Loser's Curse That's the most well-known, but there are plenty more. And every single one comes to the same conclusion. To increase your chances of success, do NOT trade up so much that you have to give up premium assets. Ideally, trade back. More picks tends to have better results. You can succeed occasionally. But the odds are very far against you.

Atlanta absolutely did have a terrific team. They went 13-3 the year before the offseason they made the Julio Jones trade. They bought into the whole "we're one player away" thing. Thought all they needed was one WR. There's a reason Brandon Beane keeps saying "You're never one player away." The reason being it's true. It's never one guy. It's a whole bunch of guys working together.

2023 and 2024 were years when we had swathes of defensive injuries (2023) and many defensive injuries in the defensive backfield that left us a shell back there. 2021 and 2022 were notable for very few injuries. And for having both Poyer and Hyde out there and not yet regressing. But yeah, you're right about the changes in coaches. I wonder how much of that is Babich having a voice and wanting guys he knew.

First, hunh??? I guess you're using a phone but it's genuinely not quite clear. As for wanting to talk about whether getting an elite talent is better than, um, not getting an elite talent ... this doesn't seem like a new or particularly interesting thought to me. I've certainly thought it. I think that everything equal we'd all agree. But things are almost never equal. It doesn't seem to me worth starting a thread over. Anyway, Massey and Thaler is the most famous study pointing this out but every study on the subject has shown the same thing. Which is that if they want to improve your chances of better outcomes, your favorite teams should NOT use valuable high-level picks to move up in the draft. In fact, trading back generally increases the value of your output. Oh, and remind me, how many Lombardi trophies did teams with Julio Jones on them win? We'll never know how many they would have won if they had used those picks rather than trading them. But it's certainly possijble it might have been more than zero.

Because Rasul Douglas. Because Connor McGovern. Because Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde. Again, there's more. Because Mack Hollins who was a big part of our success this year even though he's gone. Because Curtis Samuel scored a playoff TD against the Chiefs. Jordan Phillips had a huge play late in the Chiefs game that kept them out of the end zone. Even though they're not thrilling, every team needs depth and backups and if they're weak at one position they can use a journeyman as a starter if he's better than the best guy they have. And because of that annoying "nobody is perfect" thing, while you get guys like Mack Hollins and Rasul Douglas and Connor McGovern and David Edwards, you will also get some who don't work out. There isn't a roster in the league that has more than about 20% - 30% excellent players. And yet the other players can and do make plays at crucial moments that can put win a game or put you in the playoffs. Yes. And what SoTier said as well.

Poona had an excellent year in Seattle. Leonard Floyd. Mitch Morse. There are others. Most of any roster is composed of backups, depth and JAGs and practice squad guys. Why should free agency be different? In fact, it shouldn't.

This is a new thought.

Interesting choices in the poll. One flat mediocre, two bad and one good. And other. Hmm.

Yeah, CB or DE in the first is my best guess also, with DT in the 2nd. But everything can and will change as the board develops. But that's what they'd consider the best scenario, I believe. I do like Grant, though. But he's one of the guys who'll be buffeted by the winds of the pick order.

Buffalo did pay that dead money for Diggs. Know how much the cap hits for the other WRs was last year? $9,595,137. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/position/_/year/2024/position/wr/status/active-reserve Bills WR cap money $40.6M Chase and Higgins AAV total $80M The Bills are not a good argument for saying that Cincy will be OK spending $80M on two receivers. And yeah, I get that the cap situation in Cincy is more complex than just those adding the AAVs of Chase and Higgins. Still the Bills don't support the idea that what Cincy did can work. It certainly is possible it might work, though I doubt it, but the Bills situation last year was greatly different.

Frazier quit. Those who disagree have nothing but their own perceptions to back that up. There's never been a single fact from inside that supports it. But yes, the Bengals had a playoff schedule that was an absolute gift for the first two games. And Mahomes had a terrible game in the AFC Championship. Was the Bengals D part of that? Yeah, but Mahomes was missing passes he usually makes, a bunch of them.

Greatly disagree with what you say would happen if we switched QBs. IMO you put Burrow in here and we maybe lose 1 or 2 more games than we did. I don't think Burrow has been the problem in Cincy, except of course the year he was injured. He's on a relatively poor roster. He's damn good. Not as good as Josh, but damn good. And if you put Josh in that Cincy lineup they win 1 or 2 more games. Their offense is not their problem, 6th in the league in scoring and 9th in yards last year, while we were 2nd in scoring and 10th in yards. I do agree, though, that signing both these two WRs is not a good move. IMO they should have re-signed Chase and let Higgins go, and take the comp pick. And worked on the OL and the defense.

Yeah, and since football is only a three-person game, the Bengals will doubtless win every Super Bowl out there. Oh, wait, you mean there are more than three on the field? Josh isn't taking Shakir and Palmer. He's taking the whole roster. Which is superior to the Bengals. The Bengals had Chase and Higgins last year. How many playoff games did they win?

You're acting as if the numbers you have gathered are objective proof of how good the roster is. They are not. All of them are subjective, All Pro, Pro Bowl and Top 100. They're all votes, all of them. As such, they're subjective, a compilation of opinions. And there are some obvious problems with the results. Just one example is that according to the Top 100 list, 15 of the top 100 players in the league are QBs. That's absurd. Especially as according to the last top 100 list, Aaron Rodgers is a top 100 player. This came before the 2024 season, but he hasn't been a top 100 guy in several years. But he's a QB and he's famous. 20 of the top 100 list are WRs. Again, absurd. In contrast, 2 of the top 100 are guards, 7 are OTs and 0 are centers. In other words, 9 OLs are among the top 100 best players, while 15 QBs make it, including Aaron Rodgers, Tua Tagovailoa, Kirk Cousins, Brock Purdy and Dak Prescott. Not only that, but only 4 CBs made it. It's about fame and about positional value rather than about being great players. So if you've got a damn good OL, as we do, you're not likely to come out of it seeing results in the top 100, particularly if people can say that your QB's few sacks come from running away well. And Pro Bowls and All Pro at least try to include all positions, but there are still major flaws. Very rarely do slot corners get named at CB, for example. Taron Johnson's never made a Pro Bowl, for instance. Ridiculous, but true. All of those stats are swayed by fame and recognition. Super Bowl winning teams will always be over-represented the next year. More, teams that have great units, particularly great OLs will often not get rewarded commensurately. Games are won in the trenches, but glory, fame and individual honors not so much. And teams with an "everybody eats" strategy will be hurt by that in all of these measures even if they are one of the absolute best and most productive offenses in the league. No stars equals no mentions on your measurements here. Bottom line, it's Josh Allen. And Sean McDermott. And Brandon Beane. All doing their jobs very well. McDermott gets them to play well as a team despite a relative lack of glory for many. And Beane brings in guys who will thrive in that kind of environment despite having to deal with extremely low draft picks year after year and the QB's second contract taking up a very high percentage of the team's cap. Despite Josh's willingness to take less than he is actually worth, he's still really expensive.

A holdout? In his FOURTH year? That's not going to happen. In his fifth, if they tag him? Yeah, maybe. And the Bills have him if you look at it differently. They could extend him this offseason or during the year. If they don't and he gets a serious injury, he'd lose out on a lot of money. There's no big rush. IMO it'll happen reasonably soon, without friction. He easily could. As Gunner pointed out, he's good in man too. He's just good. The question is the concussions.