Thurman#1

First, we don't have only one other star player on offense. Only one other top five at his position? OK, fair enough. But Knox is top ten, as is Dawkins. As was Beasley before he regressed, shown by his All-Pro year. And the evidence doesn't show that the offense is secondary to the defense in the draft. It could just as easily be that they're going BPA. Out of 18 players picked by this FO in the first three rounds, nine were on offense. And those numbers only look that even if you leave out the 1st rounder we traded for Diggs. Include it as you should, and this FO has used picks from the first three rounds to select 10 players on offense and 9 on defense. And yes, they traded for Diggs. They traded a draft pick. Not a player. Like it or not they acquired Diggs with a pick, not a player-for-player deal. And while there certainly are some afterthoughts on the OL, Dawkins and Morse are both quality player, and while Ford certainly hasn't been good, he wasn't an afterthought, he was a 2nd round pick. Nor is Saffold an afterthought. You're spinning like a dervish. Davis "couldn't even make the starting lineup last year," you say. More spin. He started several games, including the last three. They're far from the be-all and end-all, but PFF had Davis as one of their top 101 players last year. Not receivers, players. Specifically #93. They said, "Davis began the season buried on the Bills depth chart and was barely a factor for most of the year. But the more the team used him, the bigger an impact he made. His season culminated with an absolute destruction of the Kansas City secondary, where he caught eight of the 10 passes thrown his way for 201 yards and four touchdowns. He caught 11 touchdowns from only 74 targets, with passes thrown his way generating an absurd passer rating of 131.3." That is probably too high, but they're right that he's a good player, likely a good solid #2.

Disagree. Knox is probably a top ten TE right now. And Davis near the end of the year was starting to look like a good #2. Top five? Nah, you're clearly right if that's what you meant by "top level."

Oh, please. Where was the Stefon Diggs on that New England team? Even their TEs were crap. There is no comparison between the 2019 NE groups of receivers and pass catchers and this year's Bills group. Our skill position guys outside QB aren't top three. But they're well above middling.

I think he really underestimated them. Took him till near the end to even mention Knox. I think he underestimates Knox and Davis. Yeah, Josh does make them look better. So do the other top ten QBs do the same to their offensive weapons. IMO we're going to see a major dip in production for the cheetah this year for example.

The bumps up come mostly at the high end of the market. Market resets have less effect the farther down from the top few you go. It will certainly affect what Poyer's agents are asking. No question. Will it mean much of a jump for the aging Poyer? IMO it's not that clear. And if Poyer insists on a major jump, I'd guess that will really lower the likelihood he spends 2023 in Buffalo.

Doubt it. I wouldn't put them higher than probably 4th. But who knows. Could be, I guess.

Really? Oh, man! Horrible! I just don't follow MLB much over here and I'd totally missed this. Awful to watch.

It absolutely was a mess, Bill, it just was. They were paying a .500 football team like it was in a championship window. That's a mess. Were they in cap jail? No. Were they absolutely forced to drop all those guys? No. Were they in bad cap shape for that roster? Yeah. You're dead right that they didn't see that squad as their guys, of course. And that they were not forced to take on all that dead cap. It was a tactical choice. Get rid of those guys and get an absolute ton of cap flexibility in 2020, or keep those cap hits spread out and have very limited cap flexibility for the next couple of years due to the poor contracts Whaley had signed for guys like Dareus, Charles Clay, Tyrod and McCoy. Not to mention guys who are out of the league like Cordy Glenn, Incognito (a damn good player when his head was on straight, but it wasn't). Eric Wood was a good player with damn bad luck, they had to take the pain there, but didn't have to make him a pre-June 1 designation. They wanted to take all the EWood pain early, to get the cap in much better shape by 2019.

Yup. I'll be there talking sense. No, I won't be saying anything about "quiet." Quiet isn't a money term. Beane has never been quiet and I don't expect him to start. He does a lot. He just does it in a way that's smart. You can borrow a bit on your card. You just can't borrow without paying it back. Every penny of cash paid out will hit the cap now or down the road. That's fact. Borrow too much and it will cause you pain in the future. The Rams are spending over 30% in cash more than the cap this year. A lot of the reason they can do that is because they have not spent much over the cap the past three years. When you're conservative for a while you can spend a wad of cash. Particularly when you're expecting a significant raise the next year. A really good franchise QB like Stafford is generally a damn smart thing to borrow some money for.

So is accounting accounting. And if you do it wrong, they arrest you and throw you in jail. "Accounting" does not mean "magic." It's a method of keeping track of money. There's still stuff you can do, and stuff you can't do. You keep two sets of books, you get arrested. The IRA fines you. You can spend time in jail. Now the salary cap won't put you in jail, but yes it will cause you problems and tighter situations down the line. Gunner, you are saying two things here and acting as if they are one. Yes, good and smart teams won't be stopped from singing players. But no, even good and smart teams will absolutely, factually and without question, not be able to sign everyone they want. All you have to do is ask Beane if there are some guys he'd like to sign if there were no cap. Or any other GM. I factually could buy a Lamborghini now and put it on the credit card. It would cause havoc for me a year or two down the line. Same in any form of accounting, including the cap. Yes, it's flexible. But it's this simple, you spend more this year, you're borrowing from future years. Yeah, that's accounting. But actions have consequences. And what Brandt is saying is nothing new or interesting. He's saying you can borrow from future years by using signing bonuses, which allow you to pay cash now and have that hit the cap later. Yeah. Exactly the same as you can buy something on your credit card now and put off paying it till later. We all know this. But you DO HAVE TO PAY IT LATER!!! And the money will hit the cap later.

It's only to Patriots loons like that guy that it seems that we're always punching down at the Patriots. We talk about them, yeah. But any Bills fan knows it's the Chiefs we talk much more about. So, nah. Only in a Pats-centric universe does it make sense to answer one article about the Pats and pretend that it means as he thinks that the Bills are focusing on the Pats.

Wacky.

Yup. Agents are supposed to say their clients got more than they expected. Makes the client think the agent is doing his job. And year 6 of Miller's deal has a salary of $30M. That's wildly unlikely to be paid to a 39 year old Von. So it's basically as 5 year $90M deal, with a healthier guarantee than Jones got but otherwise much the same for the first three years

Well, first, you're mis-stating it. He reached out to his friend DeMarcus Ware, not to the Cowboys. And no, the fact that he did that absolutely does not mean what you say there, that a championship was his first criteria. There is a whole range of seriousness in terms of how you reach out and whether you are kicking tires, trying to get your name out there and create a buzz or showing serious interest. The fact that he grew up in the area has absolutely zero probitive value. Zero. Whether he'd have gone somewhere for the same money isn't "the" question, it's one of many someone might ask if he was curious. And what we know here gives not the slightest clue about how interested Miller was, with the exception that if he really was interested he probably would have called Jerry Jones rather than DeMarcus Ware. This is a horrible headline because there's nothing to back it up. It's like looking at the sky, seeing it's grey, and with no further evidence writing a headline that we're having a blizzard. This was most likely the football equivalent of Robert Shaw throwing chum off the back of the boat.

Nah. What happens to Daboll from the instant he left Buffalo is irrelevant to what happens to Dorsey. Every tree produces hits and misses. That's simply how it works.

No.

Please. As Gunner says, nothing wrong with gauging interest. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond that.

Ah, I see it. "I'm more comfortable with the offensive line depth than most people. I like David Quessenberry as a swing tackle, I like Tommy Doyle. I like Craig Mancz, I like Cody Ford in this environment. Ike Boettger as well. I'm pretty satisfied with this group. And I think the Bills have good depth at every position, including the center spot." Very early in the video, yeah? He's indeed comfortable. I'm not, personally. Hope he's right.

Hunh. Where does he say that, about their depth? Just listened to the whole thing and I must've missed it. Which could happen. But I didn't hear that at all. Was it in the first part, where he goes through the top ten RAS scores for the Bills? The part after that where he goes through the bottom ten? Gotta admit, the last part where he just read through the whole list kinda put me to sleep. Did I miss it there? This is the podcast you're talking about, right?

Hunh? There are five questions asked about ranking teams analytics. And one of them was asking about the worst, so you didn't want to be mentioned. Of the four questions asking about positives, the Bills got ranked third in one and fourth in another and not mentioned in the other two questions (only three teams were mentioned in one and only six in the other. Everyone ranked Cleveland and Baltimore first and second. Both good teams, though it's hard to figure the Browns QB situation at this point. After that nobody was an obvious third, but the Bills probably come in 3rd or 4th overall. I get you're half-joking here, but that's not the takeaway. The takeaway is that analytics isn't everything, but like other facets, if you do it well, it helps, including the performances of other facets of that team's game. The top four teams in that survey were definitely Cleveland, Baltimore and probably Buffalo and Indy. All good teams.

No, of course not. Great guy, though.

I like our line quite a bit. But tied for 4th in the league with only four teams left to be evaluated? IMO that's a bit high for the Bills OL. I do agree with them that, strongly, that continuity has helped here and should continue to be a positive factor. The last three or four games of the year, basically after Bates came in and Dawkins started playing at his capacity, this line looked like a top ten group. Throw in the rest of the year and it would be fair to put them as below average. But since the starters look likely (not surely, but likely) to be closer to the end of the year group than any other combo, it's fair to be really hopeful. But 4th? Not based on what we've seen, I think.

Any given three-yard play will have about a 50% chance of success. There's a huge amount of luck involved, as there is in soccer shootouts. Whereas typical football scoring requires a period of consistent good performance. That's why the rate of scoring TDs isn't nearly 50% of drives. Scoring a TD or an FG is around 41%, but in the current system, scoring an FG allows the other team to get the ball. Luck is involved in any play, but requiring a successful drive greatly increases the amount of luck involved. Yeah, this is how I feel too No system is perfect, or even very good, but this or something very close would be the best, IMO.

To each their own. Too much luck involved, IMO.

?? Defense tries to stop the other guy's conversions. I don't like the idea, but it makes some sense.