Thurman#1

Cox is really good, even though he's a bit older and no longer quite at his peak. But he would still be too expensive at this point. Maybe before they brought in Von Miller. But at this point the Bills couldn't afford him. And as GolfandBills pointed out, he seems like he's going back to Philly anyway. Always liked Cox a lot. He's a violent tough player.

I don't think there's any way they can realize what they have with Epenesa. It's been two years. That's not enough. And the second he'd been asked to lose weight but apparently had trouble holding the lower weight they'd asked him to maintain. Does he need to eat differently? Be five pounds heavier than he was last year? Just learn an extra pass rush move or two? It's too early to know. Not too early for fans to have strong suspicions, but it really is too early to know.

Nah. My credit limit is real whether it goes up or down or stays the same. Same with the cap. The cap is a bit easier to deal with when it goes up, certainly. But the minute the cap goes up, inflation hits salaries and the players cost more.

Absolutely there's a chance. They won't want to give him more than about $3M. But it's very arguable that he's worth it. Could very easily happen. He's still playing pretty well, though not at his peak level.

I don't know what to say to you, man. Yes, Bruce, Thurman and Andre absolutely were cut because of the cap. And yes McDermott and Beane did indeed cut guys creating massive amounts of dead cap. The reason they did that is because they inherited a team in awful cap shape, with a ton of over-large contracts with Clay and the now-underperforming Dareus being probably the two worst, but there were more. Getting rid of those contracts did indeed mean a ton of dead cap. But the dead cap was a symptom. Not the cause of the trouble.

No. For a ton of reasons. When a house goes up in value 10% every year, it doubles value every 7.2 years. The salary cap most recently took 16 years to double. It's not at all like a home equity line. A home equity line is for one asset. This is about 50+ assets being juggled around wildly. A credit card is a much more reasonable comparison. If you go all in this year, it doesn't mean other teams will have more money to spend than you. Every team, every year has the same cap. Your cap situation doesn't affect other teams. It affects your teams. And sooner or later enough kicked cans means you will have to cut assets that would be much better to keep if you are trying to win a title that year. It means you end up losing Von Miller even when you just won a championship with him. Or Thurman and Bruce and Andre. Or whoever. It ends championship windows. It makes your future less bright. And right now our potential championship window is probably somewhere around 14 or 15 years. Um, no, it's the cap. Certainly splitting the media rights helps a great deal, but even so the Cowboys make a squatload more than the Bills or Steelers or Packers do. The cap is huge in maintaining parity.

The Saints had one of the top three QBs in football and probably the top five coaches in the game also. That team massively under-performed their opportunity. One of the major reasons is that they were always going into every season desperately close to the cap. They could kick more cans, but they still couldn't bring in everyone they wanted. And then the next year they were again in a horrible situation right from the get-go. As for your second question, no of course nobody has to cut every player on the roster. But plenty of teams have to undergo a Black Thursday like the 2000 Bills, a genuinely good team that lost in the Music City Miscarriage of Justice and had to throw away a lot of their best players to get under the cap. The Whaley Bills were another good example. They were paying a decent roster like they were nearing the final year of a short window. It forced McDermott and Beane to suffer the first two years as they got the cap in line.

Come on, man, it's extremely like it. No, it's not a perfect parallel. But yes, it's very much like it. And the cap does not grow every year. Covid shows it doesn't. Football has continued making more money for a while now. There's no guarantee that will continue. It's like saying that my salary has gone up every year for 15 years, so it will obviously go up forever. That's one possibility. But it's not guaranteed. That's simply an assumption. And plenty of careless teams have kicked cans down the road that have gone far far beyond the increases. And the cap doesn't go up nearly as fast as you're saying. Next year's cap is $208. In 2006 it was $102M. That's 16 years to double. Teams get in cap trouble way way before 16 years have passed. Kicking cans further down the road is almost precisely like revolving your credit card debt. The debt disappears from the current year's total. But you haven't gotten rid of the debt. You just delayed paying it. The more debts you keep delaying, the more your future debt sheets will be clogged, and there will come a reckoning. This is very fair. It ain't about just throwing money away. It's about eventually reaching a point where a massive blood-letting is necessary, like when we were forced to cut Bruce, Thurman and Andre, in one day.

Nor can you choose to not pay some money you owe on the cap. Once you have paid the actual cash to the player, generally in a signing bonus, there is no way you can not apply it to the cap. You can push the payment date further down the road in various ways, but it must be paid. No way around it.

It CAN be manipulated. Just as you CAN always pay off one card with another. "CAN" isn't the important point. "SHOULD" is the important point. Should you?

Is your credit card real? Same deal. You can keep your debt revolving, you can take debt from one card and pay it with another so its not due this month but next month instead. But none of the debt goes away. The more you revolve it, the more it grows. As you continue, you'll be able to take advantage of some opportunities. But not others. The further in debt you get the more opportunities you'll miss on. Eventually, the reckoning will come. It's not very difficult to understand.

People keep saying that, that Etienne was believed to have been their choice, but that's over-stating it. Etienne was one of many rumors, none of which were ever confirmed. McShay was the source of that rumor, if I remember, but it was never confirmed.

We won't know till we see the details of Miller's contract and the others as well. Beane's M.O. is to address all positions of need in F.A. so he's not roped into one or two positions that he must address in the first round or two. I expect him to spend somewhere in the mid-range AAV on a CB before the draft.

Get a clue. You haven't even seen the contract. This has nothing to do with them not trusting the process. The process does not involve not disappointing you.

Doubt they trade Epenesa. I don't see Basham at DE as much as DT. IMO it'll be Hughes/Epenesa as the platoon DEs. We'll see, though. It'll really depend on how they play at OTAs and in camp.

Yeah, WR, CB, IOL, DL. It can be a value position occasionally, but it's not good value in the first, and especially not for a team likely to throw most of the time and have their QB take up a bunch of the running plays. I'd love to see us pick up an RB in the mid rounds, though. It's why you shouldn't fall in love with individual picks and then let that warp your draft expectations.

We might easily go CB anywhere in the draft. But I'm betting that we bring in a mid-level guy in FA, before the draft.

Yes, the cap is fake. Also credit cards. You don't really have to pay them back at all.

Yeah, Tyrod as your #2 is good news.

I'm hoping. He'll have an awful lot to prove, but I suppose it could happen. I'm not expecting anything, though.

4.4 YPC. He's absolutely good. On a team that had major OL problems his rookie year. There's an argument he's not great, certainly. But he's good. Thing is, they're a passing team. They didn't need a great back and must be kicking themselves for not bringing in an OL, a pass rusher opposite Clark that year or a safety. All areas they concentrated on in 2021's offseason, any of which could have been addressed with a really solid guy in place of Edwards-Helaire. Not claiming he's elite. But average? Nah, don't think so. He's good.

Puh-leeze. You said, "look how the Steelers benefitted by taking a good back in the first round." That's what YOU said, not me. And the Steelers "benefitted" by going from the 25th best offense to 23rd. They "benefitted" by going all the way from 12-4 in 2020 to 9-7-1 in 2021. That is a microscopic benefit. Which makes the point. Don't pick an RB in the first when you have a lot of holes and are in a passing league. You also seem to have some idea somewhere that I said that somebody (McKissic? Singletary? Somebody else?) is better than the Steelers guy. If you could real quick point out where i said that, I know I'd be thrilled. I don't think I did say that or anything like it. I did try to point out that picking an RB in the first when you have Allen on your team, are going to pass much more than you run, and already have a solid back from the 3rd round in Singletary ... is bad strategy. As would bringing in an expensive FA RB. There are better places to spend the money, places that give you more benefit. And as for what your whole last paragraph, means or refers to, I have zero clue. I promise to read a bit more if you promise to write something with a clear apparent meaning. What stats are you talking about? You're saying I'm not the only one who can interpret yardage and stats and then not interpreting a single one. Completely unclear, the whole paragraph.

Um, yeah, that's actually my point. The guy I replied to made as if to say look at what great things happened when the Steelers drafted a runner. And nothing great happened to them. Their offense still sucked. Agreed he's a very fine runner. But when you have a 1st round pick and a lot of holes, don't go for the RB in the 1st, even if he's really good. Same with the Chiefs. Edwards-Helaire is a good back, but he just didn't make a lot of difference there.

Yeah, I agree. All three get huge money, and good on them for it. But the Mahomes/Rodgers ones have them playing desperately needy prima donnas. Whereas the Mayfield ones crack me up.

Beane has gotten most of it right. Certainly had a few mis-steps, as will anyone, but overall he's done very well. Which is a large reason we're one of the best rosters in the league. Agreed that they did a great job choosing Allen, but also in supporting him with an excellent group. As for the O.P. I take Mayfield at his word when he says, "No hidden meanings." IMO he's just thanking people amid a ton of uncertainty. Not a big Mayfield fan, but this seems OK to me.