Thurman#1

Joe is assuming that keeping Bojorquez will cost around $2.5M or more. At that price, he doesn't want him back. If you're right and it only requires what you say it will, I think they would absolutely keep him. I am with you in wanting them to value the position. If he's right about how expensive it will be, I think that this year they may have to see him as a luxury, where in any other year they'd pay the man and be done with it. That's ridiculous. Joe absolutely DID see Milano as a possible re-sign, as he's said time and time again. And he has contacts in the Bills FO, but not contacts who tell him in advance what the Bills are going to do so he can publish it and tell the world. And thank goodness for that. He finally had to make a prediction, and he did that. Next time you see someone predict the whole roster perfectly this early in the season, let us know. I'll follow him around in hopes of catching him walking on water.

Both predictions I've seen of Feliciano have him worth around $7M a year. Spotrac around $8M: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/salary-cap-series-middle-class-free-agents-facing-salary-squeeze/article_61d8151a-7dd6-11eb-a132-f7bb752936f9.html Buffalo Rumblings $7.5M: https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2021/3/8/22319256/contract-projections-for-all-of-the-buffalo-bills-free-agents Joe puts them right in the exact same area. The contract could be structured to cut this year's cap impact lower, to maybe around $3M or $4M, probably. Feliciano seems likely to give us a significant hometown discount, but don't expect 50% off. Very few are willing to give away that much. And IMO as I said in the other thread, I doubt there's any way they go into this season, when they have to be thinking about Super Bowl contention, with their backup being Fromm, a guy who hasn't taken a single NFL snap or had a whole offseason or even a real in-season, as he wasn't able to be near enough the other players as to have the slightest possibility of catching COVID, as he was the COVID backup. If you don't like Barkley, that's fair, but if not him, they'll almost certainly bring in someone who costs as much or more. You don't want Fromm or Webb to have the possibility of being your first backup if Allen is injured. Not in a year where you think you might make the Super Bowl.

He does. He's talked about it He just thinks Bojo will get more money than he's willing to spend on the position. I think you might've slightly misspoken there. You can't change a guy's signed contract without his permission. Ever. But what you maybe meant is that Klein might not mind or have a problem with switching the money from salary to signing bonus. That's a reasonable proposal, though again, if Klein wanted to say no, he could.

Hapless, of course you're right that nobody can legally require vaccinations. But that doesn't mean that if a player decides not to get the vaccination the NFL should still be required to give them the ability to opt out. That's a very questionable thought. I don't know what will happen with optouts. Duh. But if the vaccine is widely available well before the season, that will likely take a great deal of pressure off the NFL in terms of providing the option to opt out.

Speaking of reading comprehension problems, dude ... No, it has NOT been confirmed. What was confirmed here was that Lee Smith's home was on the market. Go back and check it out. So, if there are reading comprehension problems here, they are yours.

I can see it as a possibility. Not a likelihood, though, far from it. Go ahead and stick with Fromm if you like, but I think you're wrong there. The guy was the COVID backup. He missed out on large parts of what a rookie usually gets. In a Super Bowl-possible year, you don't want a guy like Fromm who's never thrown a single pass, and never even had a real off-season to be your QB if Allen gets injured. Expect Barkley or a replacement to be on the roster. At the edge of possibility I could imagine that replacement being Davis Webb. At least he's a guy who you know what you have. I agree with you that they can get Feliciano for $3 - $4M cap hit this year if they do a little contract ju-jitsu. And I also agree that he would be worth that even in this difficult year. But if you offer most of the others vet min, even the ones who would like to stay are likely to be gone. The difference between vet min and $1.5 or $2M isn't all that big for a team, but it's huge for these guys. You look at a guy like McKenzie. You speculate Roberts will be gone, which I think is a real possibility. If so, McKenzie's value immediately rises. Again, he had five TDs last year and a kick return TD besides. If we don't give him $2 or $3M, someone will. And he'll take that offer if we're offering vet min, and then we'll be stuck offering someone else a contract and discovering that for vet min you get a guy you hope not to see in the lineup except as a short-term injury replacement. Same for guys like Marlowe. He'll never be a $4M guy, but he has real value as a backup who won't drop the level at which your defense will play. He'll very likely get more than vet min. A bit less than he might another year? Yeah, probably. But that's exactly why teams that have money this year are even luckier than teams that have money in a normal year. They can offer a guy like Marlowe or McKenzie a 20% or 30% cut and get a bargain in that teams that are having cap problems won't be able to match. Guys like Marlowe, Barkley, Boettger, Levi Wallace. They don't come back for vet min. In Joe B's season projection, he suggested tendering them as UFAs and understanding you might lose a few of them. Yeah, much more reasonable. And I'd love to see them re-sign Williams. I'm with you there, but IMO that's where the tight cap hits and hurts. Not in forcing us to miss out on a guy like Marlowe or McKenzie or Barkley or Yeldon, if they want to keep him, or Bojorquez or Feliciano, who you can bring back without spending too too much extra. It's the guy with the big possibilities like Daryl Williams. So far in his career, Williams earned $2.8M in his first four years and last year's $6M. He's not going to be looking to give us a break here. The general consensus has long been that we could sign Milano or Williams. I think that's right, though I'd love to get them both. So they probably can't bring Williams back but they will have to replace him, and not with a vet min guy either. Even if they think it's likely they will go OT in the 1st round, Beane loves to fill his obvious holes in FA with mid-level guys so he isn't forced to reach in the draft if things don't fall the way he likes. So IMO they can't bring back Williams but will bring in a replacement for somewhere between, say $2.5 - $4M, maybe a bit less this year if they are willing to finagle the contract a bit to backload it.

Totally reasonable assumption. I know that there's never been a case where a guy didn't like his house and moved to another one in the same city. That's just never happened. So yeah, by far more likely that he's leaving his job. Nor has it ever happened that a football player decided that he and his family would live elsewhere in the offseason and he'd come back alone during the season and rent bachelor digs. Nor would that ever happen after a warm-weather guy and his family spend a Buffalo winter and decide to move the family at the end of that. So if Star's house is actually on the market and it's not just Lee Smith's house ... Clearly there's only one reasonable explanation for this.

Yup. Happily stuck.

Yes, if he were average, it'd be awful. As he's excellent, it's a good contract. They were visibly worse when he wasn't on the field. This is really good news.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!

Doubt many of the rest can be had for vet min. That would be a significant cut for a bunch of them. And for guys at that kind of level they'd probably want to look around if offered vet min. Yeldon, for ex, is about $1.6 per year, Marlowe $1.5M, McKenzie will be looking for quite a bit more than vet min this year, and will deserve it. When given targets, he produced, he had five TDs, plus a punt RB for a TD. ESPN recently predicted 3 years and $10M, with the Bills. That might be a bit high this year, but if they offer vet min he's probably gone. And if they do let Roberts go, McKenzie becomes even more valuable to the FO. You left out Feliciano, who I think they re-sign for somewhere in the $3 - $4M range. Spotrac and SB Nation both predicted around $7M per year in FA. He wants to give them a deal, but you're likely dreaming if you think he takes a vet min kind of deal. Also doubt they go with Fromm in place of Barkley. Barkley ($2M a year) is a tremendous help to Josh, with a ton of veteran know-how and is also a lot more likely to handle himself better if there's an injury. Josh already knows a ton more than Fromm, who wasn't even in QB meetings last year, couldn't really throw the ball in anger last year as the COVID relief QB. If Barkley goes, they'll bring someone else in to replace him. And yeah, someone like Daryl Williams could easily go but if so, they'll almost surely bring in someone to replace him, and not a vet min guy either. Nonsense. Refusal to accept completely unsupported on-the-internet sources doesn't mean a reading comp problem. Speaks well to general comprehension of the world, IMO. I understand what you're saying about not wanting to out your source. It's not unreasonable. But that's also what people who have no source say.

Smith hasn't retired yet. He may. They say he's leaning that way. But until he does, of course they won't take that into account. It's still on the cap. As I said, with Butler's reduction, we don't know how much it is, so yes. (EDIT: Ah, I see I hadn't completed the post when you posted, my bad. Ah, but I see you're right on Mitch Morse. Thanks for correcting me there. However, having said, that, if you're counting future stuff like Lee Smith, we'll have to sign our draft class, Corey Bojorquez or a replacement, Matt Barkley or a replacement, Andre Roberts or a replacement, TJ Yeldon or a replacement, Levi Wallace And E.J. Gaines or replacement CBs, Dean Marlowe or a replacement, Feliciano or a replacement, Boettger or a replacement, McKenzie or a replacement, Taiwan Jones or a replacement and Isaiah McKenzie or a replacement. None of these guys count now against the cap, and a bunch of them will be on the team. Not to mention Matt Milano or a replacement and Daryl Williams or a replacement. Lots of dominoes still to fall. It'll be interesting.

Yeah, exactly, it'll depend on his play. Cutting him before the 2022 season would only save them $1.5M. Before the 2023 season about $3.7M.

It's impossible to give money back from bonus. They already borrowed it from future years. It's part of the cap. You can give back future money of course, but not past money.

No reason to think this. He could very easily be here for another year or two.

Spotrac says $15M in cap space.. OvertheCaps says $19M. OvertheCap has left a bunch of players, including Jefferson, off their dead cap reckoning. So it's somewhere around $15 to $17M. Both have accounted for all the moves made in the past couple of days with the exception of Butler's pay cut, because they haven't announced how much it is yet.

Makes absolutely zero sense, finanacially or otherwise. Now, if he comes back out of shape or injured or something, hey, anyone can go. But unless that happens, they'll be thrilled to get him back. This year showed clearly how badly they need a big guy in the middle eating blocks. Not that it wasn't obvious before. It was. But this made it even more clear. The contract's fine. The fuss over the contract is kind silly.

OTC has left a lot out of our dead cap. Compare their dead money numbers to Spotrac's. OTC has not accounted for Quinton Jefferson's $1.5M, Tyler Kroft's $800K, and a bunch more smaller ones. It totals around $2.3M. Nobody has taken Lee Smith off, because as of yet he's still contemplating. When he makes his mind up, the Bills will decide what they want to do with him and everyone will go from there. EDIT: DOH! Looks like Spotrac hasn't taken off Morse's cut yet either. Perhaps that's why they are diverging a bit.

Yeah, sounds good. And LB if we lose Milano. Maybe a TE. RB in the later rounds.

That's ridiculous. Singletary was fifth in the NFL last year at YPA. To say that he's a backup is showing far more about how little you get it than it is about our RBs. You've heard Beane say that they weren't the problem. He's infinitely more likely to be right than you are. Now, are they top 5 or 10 RBs? No, they sure haven't shown that. But most of the problem was the line and the fact that they didn't work on running enough this year. As for Ford, there's no such thing as "a bust to this point." A guy is a bust or he's not. If he hasn't done well yet but turns into a good player, he was never a bust, the dolts who said he was were not clever enough to know they were popping off far too early. It's indeed too early to know on Ford, though he doesn't look good enough at tackle. But in his first year at guard, having no real offseason to work on it, and then being switched side-to-side, which is an extremely tough switch, and having five games to work on all of that, he didn't have any real chance to show what he had. He still has a very good chance to be a player there. And yeah, you have said enough on Edmunds. You disagree with the Bills there too, and of the two of you, it ain't likely them that doesn't get it.

We have about $15M. Not $25M. They haven't included the Butler pay cut, though, as nobody knows yet how much it will be. So we'll have a bit more. He'll likely cut another guy or two Having said, that, we'll have to sign our draft class, Corey Bojorquez or a replacement, Matt Barkley or a replacement, Andre Roberts or a replacement, TJ Yeldon or a replacement, Levi Wallace And E.J. Gaines or replacement CBs, Dean Marlowe or a replacement, Feliciano or a replacement, Boettger or a replacement, McKenzie or a replacement, Taiwan Jones or a replacement and Isaiah McKenzie or a replacement. None of these guys count now against the cap, and a bunch of them will be on the team. Not to mention Matt Milano or a replacement and Daryl Williams or a replacement.

Not all rich fathers support their kids. And that's for good reason. There's a lot of evidence showing that supported kids of rich fathers are spoiled and unsuccessful shockingly often. Check Kevin O'Leary and his relationships with his kids if you want an example. And he is very very far from being alone. You can't assume that a guy doesn't want money because of his family, you just can't.

That is "the only factual information you have to go off"? Let me throw in some more: 2015 Age 27 16 games played 2016 Age 28 8 games played 2017 Age 29 10 games played 2018 Age 30 8 games played 2019 Age 31 4 games played 2020 Age 32 0 games played In the last five years, he's been healthy for 37.5% of his games. Throw out last year when he took the year off and in the four years when he was last trying to play, he was able to play in 46.8% of his games. And he's older now. Doctors can tell you what kind of shape a guy is in. They can't tell you with much accuracy whether he will get injured again next year even if he's healthy right now. You can bet the doctors told the Bears each of those years that there was a good solid chance he'd be healthy the whole season. I'd need a lot more than a discount to bring him in. I'd need a really carefully constructed contract that let us almost completely off the hook in case of injury. Presumably that would mean small salary and a bunch of incentives. Not sure how thrilled Long would be about that.

What a surprise that there is an NFL rule or situation that good organizations handle better than bad ones. You say it's the comp pick system that stacks the system against the bad teams. That's nonsense. It's how the bad teams react to it. To it and to every other thing that comes up. They react badly, because they're bad teams. That's not the fault of any rule.

David is probably better, though it's easier to play LB when your DL gets as much pressure in the pass game as Tampa Bay's does. But Milano is a premium off-ball linebacker, one of the better ones in the league. But David could also have gotten more if he'd gone to the open market. He gave his team a home-town discount. I think $13 to $14M could easily be seen as very reasonable for Milano. But not for Buffalo. We're tight on cap and need to consider other factors than how much Milano is really worth. The values you give are IMO a reasonable summary of what Buffalo's POV might reasonably be on what Milano is worth to us. But to the market, a guy with his skills could easily be worth more and turn out to be considered a very good signing. On the other hand, this is a bad year to be a free agent. Especially at a position where you're not directly affecting the QB the way a tackle, an Edge, a WR or a CB do. Maybe he doesn't this year get what he would have gotten last year or would get next year. If so, the Bills might have a good shot at getting him back.