Thurman#1

Doubt away. It will depress demand. It will have negative repercussions for the team. Some will be willing to deal with that. But there will absolutely be problems. Will everyone stay away? No, of course not. Will some? Without question. Will the core fans of the team? Probably very few. But teams don't want to appeal only to those who are already core fans. Will this cause publicity problems for the team that picks him up? Possibly for many years? Yeah, absolutely. Will signing Watson also have positive effects? Sure, in the on-the-field product. It'll go both ways, but there will absolutely be negative effects. He'll have a chance to reform his image gradually over the years. I hope he does so. But this will affect him forever. And it will also affect the image of the team that brings him in. It won't destroy it or anything close, but it will affect the relationship with the community for years.

Yeah, he'd be nuts not to settle. And yet if he'd been operating in his own best interest, he'd have done so long since. He can't want these women to testify in open court. Some of them will be very believable. If he's smart, he'll settle and do it soon. But again, he hasn't been operating in his own best interests so far.

Are you kidding? The public are the ones who buy or don't buy tickets. That is huge to the owners. Huge. He'll play, but this will affect who will be willing to take him, how much he'll get paid .... It'll be part of his public image for the rest of his life.

We have a shot at the championship without any of these. Wouldn't mind one or two of them but thinking they are necessary is flat-out ridiculous.

Trading for a guy - if you really want him - has at least two major advantages over waiting for him to be cut. First, sometimes teams you think are going to cut a guy don't. They could re-negotiate a cheaper deal, for instance. Second, when you trade for a guy you make sure all 31 other teams can't slip in front of you. If you wait for him to be cut, you're one of 32 teams competing for him (it happens that teams cut a guy and then get him back cheaper, happens pretty often, actually). And as Tuco pointed out above, giving Beasley permission to talk to these teams means his agent could work out a salary that might be better than the Bills want to give him. And he's not getting $7m in cash from the Bills this year. His cap hit is $7.6, but he would receive $5.9M from us in cash, or from his new team if he were traded under his current contract. And if nobody wants to give that, his agent will undoubtedly find out which team interested in trading for him would be willing to give Beasley the most cash.

No. The Ravens have the 8th highest odds in the league right now. They are absolutely contenders. Not among the few favorites, but absolutely contenders.

Nonsense. Every team in the league is looking at key positions. Every single one. This is an excellent roster. But even excellent rosters work at improving, and churn through guys as they get older, more expensive or the team can upgrade.

You are a desperate little fella on this issue, aren't you? First post into a Chandler Jones thread and you immediately go into thread-nap mode to share yet again more Edwards hate. Kinda sad.

Beane (this week): I love Tremaine. People don't understand what he does for us. Yes, he is "definitely" a "core building block moving forward."

Yup, you did indeed have it fly right over your head. That may have been the saddest attempt at a comparison I've ever seen.

Still a rookie at age 28, hunh? Yeah, um, that's a pretty bad observation, in every way. And another real swift take when you say that the DLs in front of him weren't good enough. I mean, all he had in front of him was a much younger Ndamakong Suh that year when he played great. Yeah, I'll bet the Rams were crying in their beer all the time saying, "Boy, if we could only get a good 1-tech ahead of Littleton. I mean we only had Suh. If only we could've traded for Lotulelei. Yeah, great comparison. Swift as a glued-down turtle. You can see why the Rams let him go. Their defense was 20th and 17th with him. I mean, it isn't like he made two Pro Bowls. Why wouldn't they look to upgrade the defense. It ain't as if he was the captain of one of the best defenses in football three years in a row.

Wouldn't be surprised to see two in the draft, an end and a slot guy.

Nice post. We should also try for more sunny days. And no pineapple on pizza. All excellent points. Man, do I remember him as a ferociously destructive force in his young days. That's not him anymore, though.

So, to translate, "Wah, wah, wah." Is that what you're saying? OK, got it.

The value of your draft pick on your future contracts pretty much disappears when you report to training camp. After that, you're judged on your NFL film, performance and value to the team. I agree Phillips will be paid quite a bit higher. I disagree on the reason. And I think the Bills do too. Zimmer's never played more than 43% of the snaps in the games he was healthy. Phillips 55%. That's significant. They like him more.

The Saints continuous botching of their cap resulted in them having a year after year top three QB and a top five coach and only managing one title out of it. A couple of years back, pre-Covid, they wanted to bring in Clowney, but the cap stopped them. It's an interesting story. If they'd been in better cap shape it wouldn't have been a problem. Yes, you CAN always work the salary cap. But it absolutely tends to mean you kick more and more cans down the road and you end up bringing in some guys but at the cost of being forced to make some moves and not being able to make others that you otherwise could have managed. Yeah, I could absolutely get myself a new Ferrari, if I put it on the credit cards. I could. Doesn't mean it would be a smart move. And if he were good, the Bills would place a high tender on him because he'd be worth it. If they undervalued him, a team would swoop in with an offer sheet. Then next year he'd be making the big bucks. Think that'll happen? Harry is likely to earn an awful lot more than Zimmer, and not just for this year. And I like Zimmer, don't get me wrong. He's a pretty solid guy but he's been getting paid pretty much his market value.

The Saints continuous botching of their cap resulted in them having a year after year top three QB and a top five coach and only managing one title out of it. Yes, you CAN always work the salary cap. But it absolutely tends to mean you kick more and more cans down the road and you end up bringing in some guys but at the cost of being forced to make some moves and not being able to make others that you otherwise could have managed. Yeah, I could absolutely get myself a new Ferrari, if I put it on the credit cards. I could. Doesn't mean it would be a smart move.

The Saints continuous botching of their cap resulted in them having a year after year top three QB and a top five coach and only managing one title out of it. Yes, you CAN always work the salary cap. But it absolutely tends to mean you kick more and more cans down the road and you end up bringing in some guys but at the cost of being forced to make some moves and not being able to make others that you otherwise could have managed. Yeah, I could absolutely get myself a new Ferrari, if I put it on the credit cards. I could. Doesn't mean it would be a smart move.

Putting together a top five roster two years in a row already says an awful lot about Beane's acumen in player acquisitions, I think. Nobody's perfect, but he's damn good.

I'd love to get him back. Saw an estimate recently he will get a contract for somewhere near $24M for three years. That's pretty close to the threshold for me. The price they have to pay might have a lot to do with whether we get him back. I would guess they want him pretty bad, but there will be some limit in Beane's mind. Zimmer played well, but not as well as Harry did for half a year before his injury and after he finally got over the injury around halfway through last season. Both are FAs. Pretty sure the contracts each gets will show that the league agrees with me on that.

That's an excellent proof that STs matter. They win and lose games, sometimes important ones. They didn't lose that because they paid the STs guys too much. They lost because (it sure looks like) the STs coach made a mistake. And he's gone now.

Tyler Matakevich? You mean the STs guy who made the game-turning play against the Pats on STs, recovering that surprise onside kick? That guy? Yeah, well, OK, I guess.

Being conservative economically is the smartest way to get a title. All you have to do is look at how many financially conservative teams won Lombardis compared to the number of teams that kicked a ton of cans down the road and won Lombardis. Far more conservative teams do it. And when you have a young top three QB, kicking cans down the road makes even less sense. We have a very long window of being really competitive ahead of us. You're right, "shoe-horning their system around inferior players] isn't what Beane does. There are very few inferior players on this roster. Beane certainly is no fool. Expect him to kick a few cans down the road. He's always done that. But not many. He's never done that, nor should he.

Yeah, it was all the defense and coaching. Losing to the Jags this year because the offense could only score 6 points against that powerhouse Jags D, and therefore setting the KC playoff game at Arrowhead ... that didn't have anything to do with it.

Thought it was worth repeating what was said on the the Bears - Steelers broadcast with 13:34 on the clock in the 3rd quarter. Announcer: "[Najee] Harris has taken a lot of punishment this season. Doesn't seem to mind the contact. He actually told us he likes to get hit." Color Man: "And he's taken some big hits, Jamal Adams for the Seahawks got him, Edmunds for the Bills got him one time, he said that was the hardest one he took." That doesn't mean slobberknocking is a big part of his game. It's not. But he's done it when he gets the opportunity.