Thurman#1

What a gigantic load of crap. Are you his best friend? His father? You don't know ***** about why he opted out. You're just making unpleasant and frankly stupid and completely unwarranted assumptions. More, your argument doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. Plenty of Bills had guaranteed salaries in 2020, including Tre White, Mario Addison, Dion Dawkins, Jordan Poyer, Vernon Butler and probably more, those are just the first five I checked and my point is made. Plenty of his teammates had guarantees in 2020. None we are aware of had an underlying heart condition except Star. More, opting out didn't change his situation one bit. Before he opted out he was looking at a fully guaranteed year followed by two more years. In the fourth contract year, cutting him would save only $1.25M after dead money is subtracted. And in the fifth contract year, cutting him would save about $3.7M. He could easily have been here for all five years of his contract. Now, after opting out, he faces exactly the same situation but he's a year older and his NFL future is thus a year shorter. So, you're both wrong on the details and completely uninformed by any first-hand knowledge. As for "the writing being on the wall" that they weren't bringing him back in 2021, that's only in your own fevered little mind. That will depend on performance as it does with pretty much everyone. Saving $1.25M isn't something the Bills would feel even slightly compelled to do. It will depend on performance. You should be ashamed of yourself, assuming your worst assumptions are fact with absolutely zero evidence.

It is good for him, and again, he has a heart condition that makes him higher risk for big problems if he gets COVID. Nobody should be criticized for this, particularly people with kids or old people at home (Star) or underlying conditions (Star).

No, that's not the hardest part. That's the entire process. The process of getting to and winning a Super Bowl started four years ago when we hired McDermott.

Great news. That's terrific. Maybe we can now get away from the completely baseless speculation that's been so prominent about this.

He is underappreciated. Pretty sure they won't have traded for him without either making sure he's not retiring or arranging the trade conditionally. Or both. Not a huge deal by any means, but a nice move to save money.

I like Levi. He's worked hard and beaten out all the competition they've thrown at him. But they have to save money somewhere. IMO if he goes they're far more likely to address CB early in the draft.

Who are you to say what the hardest part is? Getting from consistently mediocre team to excellent team with a real possibility of being good for ten or fifteen years is just as hard. And your first sentence is nonsense. This defense is good. Not great this last year, but once they got over the injuries and got used to working together as well as possible without Star, they were good. You don't become a good defense with a "very ineffective DL." You just don't. That's nonsense. Are they a great DL? No. Overpaid for their results? Yup. Not as good as they needed to be at getting to the passer? Agreed. Still pretty solid for a team that lost their space eater too late in the game to replace him well? Yeah, they were. I guess I'm curious, did you reply to the wrong person or something? How does your post address anything I said? I talked about the fact that Beane is fiscally responsible, that he kicks a few cans down the road but not a lot. And that it appears unlikely that he will run around grabbing the glittering expensive FA prizes, as he says he doesn't do than and he's shown consistently that's not just lip service by not going after the most expensive guys even when he had the most FA $ in the league. None of what you talked about addresses that. Some fans love bright shiny objects. Beane doesn't go that way.

You have to go for it. But not at the expense of the next years. They have made clear their goal is sustained, consistent competitiveness. We're already down to $33M on next year's assumed cap. It was only a short time ago we were in the $50s. And not all the moves have hit Spotrac yet. That number will go down as they learn what the contract details will be on some of these moves. They're likely to make a few more moves. But don't expect them to kick every can they can find down the road. Beane hasn't showed an interest in being that kind of GM. And thank goodness for that.

No reason to think it's a meltdown. We'll see that as we watch things play out. And no reason to think it's the Bills creating it. More likely it's simply how bad the Pats have been. This is a knee-jerk reaction and there's nothing specific that proves any of it. There's every reason to think that the reason they are jumping in early is first that they don't have the talent they used to, second that they have far more money than they usually do. They were expected to do a lot more than they usually do. They appear to be looking at their problems very realistically. Their drafting has been bad for the last four years or so. They're further away than they've been in a long time. They have a lot of needs and a lot of money.

A lack of realism.

Not going to happen. $$

Well, that's you. In 2019 he was close to the league lead in YPA. If you don't find that as evidence he's at the very least decent, that says more about you than it does about Motor.

The o-line did a poor job last year on run-blocking. But this team is going to be built mostly around passing. And they did a great job last year at that. In the same press conference you're referring to he said, "The blocking has to be better." You're taking that to mean that the guys weren't good enough ... but it could easily mean that they need another year under their new line coach, or that they have to further prioritize run blocking this year, even with the same guys. More, Cody Ford missed most of the year. Just getting him back is likely to be a good improvement in run blocking. Ford is a people-mover. And no, you're right, he wouldn't keep things status quo because he drafted two 3rds. But he's made it clear he's reasonably happy with those 3rds, and that's a different kettle of fish. Not that he's thrilled with them, I would guess. But reasonably happy. And I don't think there are many saying he's going to stand pat at RB. Many or most - me too - think it's fairly likely he goes RB on day three sometime or maybe bring in a cheaper FA, or at least strongly consider these options.

Oh, assuming you're not trolling, you're clueless. Fair enough. Not worth answering, though.

This is simply a poor take. Milano is a very good pass rusher when asked to do it. He's good against the run too, extremely instinctual. Milano has a very strong all around game. The comparison doesn't make any sense, as they play different positions and have entirely different responsibilities. For what they each do, Milano's better. But what Lawson was signed to do ... rush the passer on every pass play ... is better paid. Lawson appears to be a good young player on the upswing, who gets to the QB but hasn't gotten a lot of sacks. These two moves have nothing to do with each other and there's no reason to compare them beyond an interest in irritating people. Another dissimilarity is that Lawson (not the 9th best DE in the league) got paid the 9th highest salary. He's overpaid (common for 1st tier FAs, but still overpaid) whereas Milano gave a very signficant hometown discount.

Thank you, friend. It's much appreciated. Picking him up is an interesting move, IMO. The default mode here (me too) is to throw shade on any Pats move. I try to resist the impulse and think carefully. Seems like Bourne is a hard worker and a good locker room guy. For his production they overpaid but his catch % is high and he seems to be getting better. I assume that like most contracts this year, they'll backload it so he doesn't cost too much this year, and also allowing him to be cut before the end if he doesn't work out. Seems like a decent get to me, not terrific or anything. They've improved the team, I think. An awful lot will depend on their QB, whoever that may be.

Would have loved him, but it seemed unlikely with our first few signings. And the question was always how much he would cost. At that #, I don't think we'd have touched him even if we easily had the money. Haaa! Nice one. Yes!!!

Guys, not games, right? I don't think we want to. To get $30 mill it would have to be more than a few. And Beane doesn't seem to work that way. While we did those re-structures we've already done, I've been watching the cap for next year go down. Spotrac guesses our adjusted cap for next year to be $216M, and our cap space to be about $33.8M. If you create more space this year, you take it away from next year. I can see one or two more. Possibly even three. I doubt more, though. It's not how Beane likes to operate. We'll see.

It was illegal play. We will see flags thrown. And the fact that Brown was injured and couldn't separate the way he normally can and Beasley was playing on a broken leg had a large part in the offense's problems. And a competent receiving TE may well be on the roster. Knox is developing. It's not a necessity to bring one in. I'd like it, myself. But there are other priorities. I hope we manage it, but I don't see them spending a lot of cash on it. Belichick knew about TEs before Kelce was out of high school.

You're supposed to be clear with your titles. Light-hearted is fine. Clear is required. This is very unclear, and ought to be changed.

The word "horrid," is nowhere in the article. That's entirely yours, and really isn't supported in the article. The only adjective used about the bonus in the article is, "additional," as in, "incurring an additional cap hit." "The Bills would incur an additional cap charge of $4.7 million in 2021 if Lotulelei were to retire, which could inhibit some of their offseason moves or lead to another player release," is what Joe said, and is a very reasonable way of putting it. It certainly does happen that teams go after signing bonus money from retirement. But it's not very common, particularly if the team likes the guy and thinks that he intended when he signed it to fulfill the contract. It also sends a message to players that they don't like to hear. Right now people talk about the great culture and the happiness in the locker room. Moves like that affect that. Now, going after a guy like Vontae Davis (though Vontae very quickly voluntarily returned his bonus) is understood by the players if they go after that money. Star gave them two years of his absolute best. There's no indication that he had any fraudulent intent when he signed the contract. It sends a message that can be read as anti-player. They still could do it but they don't have a history of it at all. No particular reason to think Star will retire, though as Joe says, he certainly could.

Is this a reading problem, Scott? He didn't mention just Star. He mentioned Epenesa, that he might easily improve a lot. And he left out Oliver, who when not injured has improved consistently and who they are clearly hoping, reasonably, will also take a major step forward this year. It's not all that doubtful at all. Against the run, Lotulelei's impact was huge, and his absence caused a chain reaction, affecting others. Without Star, we were a small DL, easily overpowered. With an extremely large space-eating dude at 1-tech, they look different in total. Epenesa got a lot better late in the year and there's every chance he also can play better yet next year. He also left out the fact that ... hold for it ... it's March. Chances are they will make a few changes before the season. Depending on how things go they might even have a more normal offseason and a chance to work together and unite better than they were able to do till halfway through the season last year. This defense was right on the edge of elite, maybe even there, in 2019 with Star there. They clearly took a major step back. Star was a large part of the reason why. But there is a good chance there will be improvements elsewhere as well on that DL.

Yeah, as your team wins more games and your draft position drops, you tend to get less instant impact.

Yeah, great point. It's so easy to replace a QB who completed 70.5% of his passes, threw 24 TDs and 6 INTs, had 8.1 yards per attempt and a passer rating of 106.4. Not for his career. Those were his stats last year. He wasn't what he had been but he was still very very good.

Yeah, I think many aren't thinking about how continued development of some of our youngest guys could really have a bigger impact on this year's results than whoever we draft. That is a possibility on every team but it gets more likely when most of your core guys are younger and when you have scheme continuity as we do.