Thurman#1

I absolutely can see him staying with what he has. Having said that, I am usually a fan of trading down, and Freiermuth looks like a good prospect. I wouldn't mind, if they like him enough.

Yup. STs are never important ... until they are.

Matakevich played 343 special teams snaps, according to Pro Football Reference, and that was 76% of our special teams snaps. Doing the math shows gets us 451.315 special teams snaps, either 451 or 452. The defense had either 1070 or 1071 snaps, and the offense 1086 or 1087. So the STs had about 42% of the number of snaps that the offense had. And took up about 5% of the cap. This isn't a problem. The Matakevich play where they hit an onside kick during the middle of the game, and Matakevich was our only player not caught flat-footed, and he made the play was a beautiful example of why you need guys like this. It didn't show up in the stats, one kick return for zero yards, but it was crucial in that Pats game.

For all we know, Darnold will be the MVP this year. In Houston. We don't even know where the guy will be playing. Nor do we know how much playing time Trubisky will get, or how well he will perform. Far far too early to have much of a sensible opinion on this.

This late in the round, so much more of it is who will still be available. It's much harder to know. Barmore seems likely to be gone. I'm not a huge fan of your other two so far.

Tre and Dawkins both still have some slack in their contracts to play with if necessary. But those option bonuses won't have any effect at all. They're already accounted for in Spotrac and OTC's figures. (If you want to check that, look at the Spotrac tables for Dawkins and Tre and check for a column called "Option Bonuses." They're already accounted for across the life of the contracts.) I could see him re-structuring one more guy if/when they need space. I doubt we'll see much more than that, myself. As for the original question, he'll still be looking, but they'll be smaller moves, I think. He'll want to do as he usually does and try to fill every outright hole (McKenzie or a replacement, for instance) with someone so he's not forced to pick by position to fill a void.

Rugby guys spend an awful lot of time practicing kicking and catching. The kicking is punt-style and the balls are pretty close to football-shaped. I doubt this took him more than about ten reps to say, "OK, pretty much the same." Oh, and the rugby guys also have guys running at them full-speed and hitting them after they catch it. EDIT: I see this has already been addressed, but to add on ... KRs don't have terribly technical jobs, not that much thinking to do. It's mostly instinctual avoidance of running bodies and dealing with big hits where the mistakes can be made, and those instincts he has in spades. RBs have more thinking to do, as far as hitting the right hole, but it's not the kind of thinking a QB has to do or anything. Once you know the right hole you just have to decide whether or not the hole's there. Again, a lot of it is the instinct of running for daylight. Rugby players react differently to being tackled but two years should be plenty to develop those instincts. IMO 25% is a solid guess.

25% sounds like the right area to me. I think it's not as impossible as many people believe after two years. But it will be tough.

Just went back and looked at Emmanuel Sanders highlights from last year. He didn't play slot "most of the time." He played there sometimes. They moved him around and he played everywhere. He played outside, slot, bunch formations, in motion, the only guy on his side playing close to the line, only guy on his side playing farther out .... They ran him from everywhere.

Well, yeah it's GM talk, but that doesn't make it less real. It's completely real. He doesn't like to kick the can down the road. He didn't say he wasn't able to do that. He said he didn't like to do it, and he said he's not going to do it, and for good reason. Overdoing it is financially unsound in the long run even if it provides instant gratification. Sure, even if you're close to the limit on your first credit card, you can use your second one to pay it off so you can borrow more money. It works great short-term but it's bad practice. I love that we have a GM that gets this.

CB. Big nickel. Pass rushing DE.

That's what I was thinking. Don't know Darden, I'll have to check him out. Rondale Moore, maybe.

I see no reason they wouldn't give up Mack for a free agent.

I think you're right they'll be looking at another 3-tech, but they played Butler at both 1-tech and 3-tech. I thought he looked pretty solid at 3-tech sometimes.

Yup. Generally the Super Bowl winner cares about special teams. The Gosselin rankings consistently reflect that. It's not common when a Super Bowl winner isn't top ten in Gosselin. Smart teams recognize that they can get an advantage in special teams and they do it. It does cost a bit extra, but the extra we pay for special teamers is miniscule in terms of it's percentage of the salary cap. The Pats are a great example, but while the Chiefs didn't make the top ten this year, they did in 2019 and 2018. Reid cares about STs. I can't find the STs rankings for 2018, there's some kind of tech problem at the Dallas news, but the Eagles had been #1 in STs the year before they won the SB. They care.

The minute I claim to be right, even though I said it only happens occasionally, I get proven about half-wrong. Thank you. I was totally misled by the original tweet which seemed to say it was all falling onto the later years. I was wrong. You were right. Thanks, the CBS story helped a lot, as did your explanation. I was wrong. Appreciate your help.

Yup. A good guy who helped the team while here. Good luck to him.

You have an opinion. Wow.

Yup. Pro Bowl starter in 2019 and reserve in 2020. He's excellent.

The RB thing is nonsense, obvious nonsense, and an absolute straw man besides. We're talking DEs. You wanna talk RBs, start another thread. Chiefs. Smart team. Paid a ton for a DE. Made the Super Bowl. Twice. It happened. More, you're doing what guys losing arguments generally do, you're moving the goal posts. You didn't say that paying a lot of money to a DE won't necessarily get you great stats from that DE every year. If you'd said that, not as many people would have argued. Here's what you said: That's what you said, and it doesn't make sense. They went from: 2018 without Clark: 24th in points allowed and 31st in yards allowed, to ... 2019 with Clark: 7th in points allowed and 17th in yards allowed. That was absolutely huge. And no, Clark was not responsible for all of that change but he absolutely made them harder to play. Clark has never been a sacks-only guy. He's got a really good all-around game. He gets sacks but not a ton. He gets pressures, he's good against the run and holding the edge, he's a tough son of a gun. He absolutely made major contributions and their defense absolutely got a lot better. The smarter teams do this, as you can see from looking at Super Bowls. You have to get the right guy, no question. Not every shiny object will be a good get. And nobody would say that an expensive DE is all you need, once you have that you're OK. Nobody. It's not true about any position, even QB. But if you get the right DE, paying him a ton of money can be an excellent investment. Moving the target again. You didn't say that you need to get great value in terms of value per sack. If you had, you'd have gotten different answers. And frankly, that argument is so poor you'd have gotten even more negative replies. You said that "paying huge money to DEs is the wrong move. " And the improvement that defense experienced with Frank Clark and the difference that made to the whole team says you're dead wrong.

No, it can't, that's just nonsense. Did the Bills want to get rid of Bruce Smith and Thurman Thomas? No. They had to. You see this constantly. Yes, it can be manipulated. You can move things around. You can wiggle. Yes, you'll always be able to field 52 guys. But no, you can't always get who you want. Yes, the less money you have the less choices you'll be able to make the way you would like. The bottom line is that the wiggling is limited. The more you do this year, the worse off you will be next year. And that next year you can also do some wiggling, but not as much. People say, "Oh, New Orleans was always in cap trouble, and they always fielded a team." Yeah, you can field a team. But many of those years they would have liked to shore themselves up at various positions and they couldn't. Yeah, they'd get a guy or two. But that would mean they couldn't get the other guys they wanted. Part of the reason Brees only had one championship was because of their cap problems every year. One year they wanted to bring in a DE, Clowney, but couldn't. They have done pretty well with the draft, but they've often had to cut guys they'd much rather have kept and have wanted guys they haven't been able to afford. That's what the cap does, it limits your choices. It's like a credit card. You can keep borrowing things. Keep driving your balance up. Sooner or later, though, you're trying to pay for car repairs and card doesn't work. You've got to go to the bank and move things around, and now your available money is even lower, and guess what, it's lower next month too.

You claim to have made your point about this. You haven't. KC won the Super Bowl only after they went out and got very expensive DE Frank Clark. Clark is still the 5th highest paid DE by average salary. And KC is the most successful team recently, by far. The best team last year was the Bucs, and they also are paying megabucks to an edge guy. The year before, the Super Bowl was Chief - Niners. The Niners have paid. That's just the opposite of your point. The smartest best teams are doing it. That doesn't mean that we should go out necessarily and grab the highest-paid DE in FA. But should we pay our own guy a ton if we draft a guy and he turns out well, or if we trade for somebody and he does well? Yeah. Paying your own DE FAs when it's time, even if they're really expensive, is smart. Not that I would have any problem with drafting one if the right guy is there. If we have a shot at a guy we believe in at DE in the draft, we should take it.

The question should be who are the best that we have a chance of getting and would fit our D? That list would be much shorter.

Plenty of teams have spent a lot of money like this. I bet the Bills did, or came close anyway, in 2018 and maybe 2019. I'm with you in liking our chances.

I believe it means they disagree with you about their relative worth. They think Feliciano is significantly better. So do I, for what it's worth, though I'm not touting him for the Pro Bowl. And while one of Boettger's strengths is that he can play every position on the OL, they played Feliciano in games a fair amount at center last year and didn't see much dropoff. That's big.