Thurman#1

Yeah, the Raiders weren't happy with how he approached his rehab, so much so that they tried to reclaim some money. I'm no expert but I'd lean towards that being not good.

Disagree on Vrabel, unfortunately. I think he's going to make them good pretty quickly. Whether they will become better than that will largely depend on Maye, I think, and how good he actually is.

We haven't busted for eight years, although certainly there have been some busts. Not all, though. Assuming you mean DT, Oliver isn't a bust. Assuming you mean 1-tech, DaQuan wasn't a bust, though he's now apparently aging. And there's a very solid chance that one or more of the young guys, probably Deone Walker and possibly a guy like Zion Logue could become that guy. For that matter, Lotulelei was a very solid space eater for his first two years here before COVID ruined his career, in two separate ways. Nothing wrong with trading, though, that's fair enough. But no reason to think the Pack were interested in giving Clark away before Parsons became available.

Why "other than a heavy defensive draft"? Why leave that out, and the same with "no eye popping free agents"? If Joey Bosa isn't an eye-popping free agent, your definition is arguably too narrow. Bosa - if healthy, a legitimate concern - shows every sign of making a serious difference. Same with Hoecht although I hadn't expected him to be as good as he has seemed to be in camp. And our two rookie DTs are making plays, Sanders here and there and Walker fairly often. They'll show a lot of inexperience, particularly early in the year but around halfway though they're reasonably likely to start making a visible difference, IMO. There's also the chances of real second-year improvement from guys like Cole Bishop, Coleman, Van Pran-Granger and Ray Davis. I'm a bit less hopeful about Solomon, but if we're lucky. There's reasons for concern as well. The injuries in the d-backfield sure haven't helped. But I think there's very reasonable likelihood for last year's terrific offense to play in the same neighborhood and for the defense to take some real steps forward, particularly in terms of the pass rush. On a team that came very close to the Super Bowl last year, that's a hopeful outlook. The rubber's got to meet the road. Still a lot to prove, but the same is true for every team every year, really.

Way. Not saying it'll happen. But it's absoutely one of the options. I'd like to see them keep Shavers. But there are five or six very reasonable options, depending on available trades. I'd like to see them keep Ciarlo too, for that matter. My guess is the odds are against that, unfortunately.

Can we stop with the "Of course Beane is going to say that," crap. Because that's what it is, it's crap. Beane is a guy who says what he means. Ask anyone in the media, they know this by now. And yeah, sometime he's put in a position where many GMs would just tell a polite lie. But Beane is media-savvy, he just says he can't answer that right now or passes some Crash Davis pabulum. "Which did we want more, A or B? Well, you know, A will run through a wall for the team, and B always gives 110%. We love both guys, really. Next question." As a rule of thumb, if you think that Beane lied because you can't believe he'd really disagree with you that much ... you're wrong. He did feel that way. If he didn't feel that way, he wouldn't have said it. Beane does disagree with people on this board sometimes, believe it or not. If he said it, he meant it. And it's totally possible that he thought that Cooper was a better solution to the problem than Adams. 100% possible, even if he thought that Adams was a better player than Cooper, which he likely did think. Beane's job isn't to acquire the best player regardless of other considerations. It's to acquire the best solution to making the team better, which means he is forced to include other factors such as whether he is willing to give away more draft capital than another team is, and how much each guy will count against the cap. Oh, and you're right that Adams was wildly productive w/ the Jets. Couldn't a lot of that have been that he was with a guy who had thrown to him for close to a decade and knew him inside-out? Not to mention that Rodgers was absolutely forcing the ball to Adams, just the situation that we were trying to get away from, having to force the ball to a diva. Game 13 (Miami): 11 targets, 9 catches, 109 yards, 1 TD Game 14 (Jax): 12 targets, 9 catches, 198 yards, 2 TDs Game 15 (LARams): 13 targets, 7 catches, 68 yards, 1 TD Game 13 (Buf): 8 targets, 5 catches, 47 yards, 0 TDs Game 13 (Miami): 12 targets, 6 catches, 88 yards, 1 TD That's 510 yards in five games, spectacular. But it's also a massive force-feed of targets, and two great statistical games against two fairly weak pass defenses and then teams figuring out that Rodgers was going to him a ton and adjusting and the last three games being pretty good but unspectacular especially given the number of targets. 56 targets in those five games. Over 17 games, that would have been 190 targets, far more than anyone else in the league actually received. JaMarr Chase got 175, Nabers 170 and Drake London 158 went numbers one, two and three. He wasn't going to get that kind of a volume of targets here. Still a good player in 2024, though, I won't argue that at all.

Gotta say, I'm not on your wavelength here at all. They've had a few flat games over McDermott's term. But very few. I feel that's a strength of this team, they don't always play well, but I think they play hard with very few exceptions. Generally there's one game or so a year, but that's so with pretty much all teams. Agree that he seems to leave it to the players to find motivation but NFL players don't generally make it as a career if they can't provide their own motivation. Not the bully? I mean, I guess I can see that. It's not what stands out, what stands out is Josh and the high-flying game, and very few of that type of team are though of as bullies. But if you can play with the bullies and not get run over, and I agree with you that this team generally does that. I think you're doing what needs to be done.

Fair enough to stand by that opinion. Just know there are plenty who disagree. Including me. I often love his after-game speeches and plenty of others we see here and there. And I'm with the others who say have said here that emotional speeches and fire and brimstone are overrated. To repeat what has already been said, plenty of the best coaches in league history were not fire and brimstone types, nor were they close. Just finished this week reading my kid "My Side of the Mountain," and she really responded to Frightful, the peregrine in that great book.

Nah, AAV matters here. Yeah, the guaranteed amount is also very important. But if he plays out the contact (reasonably likely), he'll receive precisely the $46M over four years. And since his last year he receives $10.4 (plus $1M escalator each of the last two years if he plays 45% of snaps and we make the playoffs), even if he leaves a year early he'll have made nearly exactly the AAV times three years instead of four.

Ah, Bill, you're right, or right in your main idea there anyway. Dang it, I wonder if the details were there at the bottom all along for me to see, as they are now? Dang me. Anyway, it's not in the form of an option bonus, but yeah, various portions of his 2026 salary slowly get guaranteed near the beginning of the league year for each of the next two years till you reach the whole guarantee, which is $28.82M, not $30M, by the way. All $28.82M is guaranteed against injury right at signing. Only $15.28M is FULLY guaranteed at signing but about $10M more of his 2026 and 2027 salary FULLY guarantees by the fifth league day of 2026. That includes $6.22M of his 2027 salary. Which would mean he's unlikely to be cut for performance before the 2027 season unless he has plummeted like a rock. Which hopefully does not happen and is quite unlikely that early after his season at age 27. $2.91M more will guarantee in February of 2027, but again, unless he's has massively regressed, they won't worry about that.

They didn't pay the man $15M. And there's a reason for that. The reason is he isn't (quite) worth it. Was that a terrific play? Yup. Please. What he did wasn't "in negotiations". He made a public announcement. This wasn't him talking to Beane, it was him announcing it to the world. Say it to Beane and after the deal's made the earlier offers are gone. Say it to the world and it's there forever. That's the amount he wanted. He didn't get it. Still did very very well for himself, though.

He does play well in the playoffs. But the winner of this award was always likely to be a guy still playing, in other words a guy who has not yet used up all his chances to get to a Super Bowl. Also worth pointing out that as well as Josh played in those games, Mahomes outplayed him in most of them. Greeny points out that Allen only has one INT against KC in the playoff losses. Mahomes has zero in the same games. In any case, Peyton made the SB his first time in his 9th year. Fouts never played in the SB. Tarkenton didn't make the Super Bowl, or I believe the playoffs, till like his 12th or 13th year. Allen's got plenty of time and is on a team that has given him chances nearly every year. He'll make it more than once, says I, and win a minimum of one, probably more. You're right, they don't have a competent coach. McDermott is far far better than that. But yeah, overreacting and dumb hot takes are fun, so go do your thing.

This is it. We had no QB then, and we do now And Buddy knew it. But they had to get a QB in a year where there just wasn't a good QB option in the draft. The best QB in 2013 was clearly Geno Smith, but he wasn't any good until - what? - eight years later? Ideally they should have done what McDermott did in his first year, traded way back to get good draft capital for trade-ups the next year. But even the next year who was the best QB in the draft? Either Derek Carr or Teddy Bridgewater. If handled better, would either of these guys have had better careers than they have? Maybe. That two-year stretch is one of the worst periods to draft a QB in NFL history.

Marshawn has made it clear that he blames a group of police here for targeting him. That had to do with that cop's wife saying that Marshawn had stolen a $20 from her. He wanted out, badly, and not because of the team situation.

Interesting point. Don't know if this has been noticed yet, but if it has I haven't seen it. Both Spotrac and OvertheCap have the contract total at $46M, not $48M Also, OvertheCap has the FULLY GUARANTEED money at $15.28M. (Ah, Spotrac agrees.) I'm sure the rest is guaranteed against injury, but this looks like the contract numbers originally released had been plumped up a bit, probably by the agents. Surprise, surprise!! This legitimately is a risk they're taking here. IMO if Cook stays healthy it'll look like a good risk. If he gets injured, particularly in the next three years, it will be a contract that bites the Bills. Cook is young, he'll turn 26 late in September, so this contract goes through his age 30 season. They're likely to keep limiting his snaps, or so I believe anyway. There's a decent chance he stays healthy through his age 26, 27 and 28 seasons. Only a part of that next season four years from now, will be guaranteed, and we don't yet know how much. But he could probably be cut (if it's for performance or financial reasons, not for injury) without any cap problems, before the the third year of the extension, 2028, if he starts regressing or has problems with injuries cropping up.

It's all one window, a window that is open from 2020 till Josh gets too old. You say, "NFL windows are short," and that's nonsense. Some NFL windows last a year. Some are short. Some are a bit longer and some are damn long. The Pats window lasted like 16 or 17 years. The Chiefs six years so far. Ours has a long way to go.

Yeah, weird that people would assume that a line with 5 new guys out of probably 10 guys who will see a lot of time would be a bit diff ... oh, wait, it's not silly at all. I've been watching for 50+ years as well. One thing that I learned is that some years things don't change much from the year before, and some years things look totally different. And with so many new guys this year is likely to be the latter. So many inflection points! I mean, if Bosa stays healthy, my guess is this group looks an awful lot better. It's not a sure thing, but it's likely. But he could easily be injured, his history shows that. Will he, with them giving him much fewer snaps? No way to know, and the difference, either way, will probably be stark. They might be much the same. Or not. No way to know beyond watching the games as they happen. Plenty of guesswork is possible, either way, but at this point it's pure blue-sky stuff.

Not clear at all, not after one preseason game. Not clear at all how guys like Bosa, Hoecht, Sanders, Jackson and Walker will play in this D, nor how others will look playing next to those guys. It didn't look like that's what you were implying, but if it is, then fair enough. But it's just way way way too early to make any more than uneducated guesses as to whether we'll get much pressure and if we do, how. We'll probably have to wait till after week 8 when we get our first look at how the line looks with Hoecht in the mix before we start to get a good idea, though hopefully by that time the rookies will start to have found their feet and started making some kind of impact. So many inflection points! I mean, if Bosa stays healthy, my guess is this group looks an awful lot better. It's not a sure thing, but it's likely. But he could easily be injured, his history shows that. Will he, with them giving him much fewer snaps? No way to know, and the difference, either way, will probably be stark.

And so, from a camera's eye view, you are an insider on this? You know how serious this was? Please. You have no idea. Nor do I, but that's the point. None of us have any idea. Not even the Bills, the doctors and Benford know with much detail, but your layman's observations of long-distance camera footage, not knowing what he was thinking or whether he was trying to move means pretty much nothing. Worth $12M AAV, with those contract terms, yes. Don't know what you're laughing about. Most on here opposing re-signing him weren't doing it because they didn't want him, they were against it at the $15M Cook was demanding, and which the Bills did not pay. Heh heh. I like this.

I don't know. I think your narrative here is just as overblown. Nobody argues with the fact that he's more explosive than Davis and Johnson. And yeah, people act like he was just a cog in a rotation. That's what he was. The most important cog, but just a cog. Davis got 50% of Cook's yards from scrimmage on 54% of Cook's snaps. And how many more hits on Josh did Ray and Ty prevent than did Cook? I'm also glad they're limiting his snaps. I agree with you there 100%, that it really raises the chances that his productivity lasts longer and that he avoids injury. We haven't so far seen that he's improved his pass blocking in camp this year, that I've heard anyway. So we use him for situations, the way they did last year, 1st and 2nd downs, and we bench him for others, 3rd downs and short-yardage must-have smash-mouth situations. But we will be more productive with him on the field in those Cook situations. We're a better team with him. The question is (always, for every player) whether the extra money we spend is worth the value of the next-best alternative on how to spend that money, the opportunity cost. My guess is that at $12M AAV the answer is yes, and that at $15M the answer would have been no. But I'd love it if he out-produces my expectations.

Yes, Coleman is better than Kristian Wilkerson and Tyrell Shavers. And yes, when healthy Kincaid has a chance to be a playmaker. Still has a lot to prove, of course. But to put it in perspective, Kincaid was 10th in receiving yards and 7th in receptions among TEs in 2023. As a rookie. That's better than Cook ranks in running yards or yards from scrimmage among RBs as a third-year man. Kincaid is a weapon when healthy and when on the same page as Josh. Something weird happened to their chemistry last year. Was it that he wasn't quite as fast or that he couldn't cut as sharply so Josh missed him because of that? I don't think there's a clear answer, but that could easily be a part of the problem. If they get back in sync, he's likely to be someone both Josh and opposing teams look for on big downs. And is it possible to win Super Bowls without a lot of playmakers? Ask the 2023 Chiefs. Yeah, it is. You pretty much have to have a terrific QB to do it. But we do. Heh heh.

Guess we'll see, but I think he's going to be TE1, assuming he's healthy. Last year he was far from healthy.

That was certainly a legitimate opinion at the time. Hell, it was my guess at the time that he wouldn't do well there. But it could easily have gone the other way.

Yes, with hindsight we know that. It wasn't a sure thing either way at the time. Price was a starting WR as well. Just not one who lived up to his contract. Cook is a starting RB on probably 24 teams around the league. That doesn't mean he'll be a success everywhere. For instance, one possible outcome would be that he signs with a team that plays him on 75% of snaps and his body can't hold up and he breaks down. You can't tell what'll happen. IMO the Bills are handling him right by limiting his snaps. Could be he could stand up to 75%. But there's no way to know. Could be he has one and a half more years of good production and then regresses. Just no way to know for sure.