Thurman#1

And if you were Beane, we'd worry about your concerns about that. Edmunds played very well the last half of the year, after he got over his injury. And he did so without a genuine space eater in front of him clearing things up. And a space eater is a regular feature of a McDermott defense, something he needs for the LBs to function the way he likes. Some people here don't like the guy. That's clear. The Bills do, though, and that's clear too. You do want a guy as young as Edmunds to keep developing. Did you know he's only 22 years old, by the way? A guy his age is generally getting stronger and smarter with experience, and that's what we've seen so far. Now, he could maybe regress and be gone. That could happen. But there's no particular reason to think it will. He's a young guy, he's developing, and next year he's likely to have Lotulelei playing the space eater role in front of him. Maybe someone to spell Star as well.

I guess you could say he was rated between 5 and 15. But I don't think nearly anybody had him in the bottom part of your range there. He was generally considered between 7 and 12. And higher if you used him as an athletic center rather than in a power system. Which we aren't. He's well above average if you use him in a zone scheme. But yes, the concussion issues were real, we took a risk there. But yes, cutting him would indeed create another big hole. This made sense.

I'd disagree with your definitions of "plenty" and "a lot." Only 11 teams have more than $30M, and that's before teams sign back their own UFAs and RFAs, with the rookie draft class costing $6 - $7M per team. The Titans only have 21 guys on the roster who are getting more than $50K on their signing bonus amortized this year (a quick and very dirty way to look at guys who they have invested much in. To see how well this works, I compared the Bills, who have 30 guys in this category. (Some guys in this category are more obviously guys who are legit players with a chance. I threw in Lee Smith and Stefon Diggs on the Bills, though I doubt Lee will be here, personally, as I threw in Adoree Jackson on the Titans.) The guys not included, left out, are: Bryan Cox Jr, Jake Kumerow, Justin Zimmer, Jaquan Johnson, Darryl Johnson, Tommy Sweeney, Jordan Devey, Davis Webb, Ryan Bates, Duke Williams, Tyler Bass, Isaiah Hodgins, Dane Jackson, Reggie Gilliam, Tyrel Dodson, Trey Adams, Brandin Bryant, Tanner Gentry, Cam Lewis, Mike Love, Nate Becker, Josh Thomas, Christian Wade, Antonio Williams and Andre Smith. Looking at that list, there are maybe four or five guys who look likely to play significant roles on this team, though mostly as backups. Tyler Bass and Zimmer without much doubt, plus Jaquan Johnson and Dane Jackson, probably. Tommy Sweeney, maybe? And a few more could work their way up with a good offseason. But that group looks - to me at least - like a group mostly unlikely to play big parts in the plans of this team. It clearly does not work perfectly, but as a quick and dirty measure it's not awful, so I'll use it on other teams. Titans: 21 guys have signing bonus amortizations of over $50K, and I threw in Adoree Jackson even though he doesn't. The Steelers have 27, with me throwing in three obvious guy that are important even though they don't fit financially, Minkah Fitzpatrick, David DeCastro and TJ Watt. The Lions: 28 Cards: 28 Panthers: 24 Seahawks: 29 Ravens: 32 Browns: 31 ( I had to throw in five guys w/out bonuses who seem clearly in their plans, including Teller. If you are acquired by trade, you have no amortized bonus listed on your current team unless they re-worked your deal and gave you a signing bonus) Niners: 24 I picked these teams using the Spotrac list of cap available that H2o linked to above. I started just above the Bills and worked my way upward and stopped after #12, leaving the top 11 teams, the teams with more than $30M remaining, unexamined. So why did I bother doing this? Because it shows teams still have a lot of work to do before they even start thinking about bringing in impact FAs from outside. You have to pump up the number of all teams by 7 or so, as few teams cut more than one of their drafts for the current year. But there's a lot of guys to bring in yet for everyone. Those cap numbers are clearly higher than they will be fairly soon as teams bring back the FAs, and higher still than they'll be after signing their draftees. This time of year those numbers usually average somewhere in the 30s. This year $17. Now, some things will adjust numbers up also. The Bills just came to an agreement with Morse that raised the cap by $2M. Other teams will do the same. There will also be cuts. But overall there aren't, by my definition at least, "plenty" of teams with what I would call "a lot" of money.

They appear not to want to tag him. So not awful, but not good. Depends on his market. Poz couldn't defend the pass at anything close to Milano's level. I liked him a lot but Milano is better.

So someone on social media expressed criticism? Holy cow! Call the newspapers! Oh, wait, someone already did? This is huge.

Every time someone with a source or inside knowledge has talked they've been saying $180 - $185 and more specifically $181 - $182 roughly. This is where it's always been heading. Could be a little bit more or a little bit less, but it sure seems like this is the area.

The guaranteed money is spread out over three years, according to Spotrac. $1.135,836, his 2021 salary, $1,661,672 his 2022 salary, and $1.09 of his 2023 salary. That won't be too onerous for the Fins. Even though it's Miami, it sounds like this guy is having issues. Depression, maybe, or some mental issues. And if so, they're taking a flier on him working his way thought that. I think the coach picked his words carefully when he said the guy who we got in Nashville was a different guy than the one we interviewed. So, was he lying at his interviews, and he's just a lazy duplicitious person? If so, Miami doesn't lose too much. Or does he have something that could maybe be helped with professional intervention and maybe some medication or therapy or whatever? No way to know, but IMO worth a shot for Miami.

In actuality, we don't yet know the terms of Dak's contract yet. So we don't yet know how they're dealing with this year's cap hit, front-loading, back-loading and so on. Most of these contracts are in the details. No way to discuss it very intelligently till we know. About all we know is what is true for every contract, some of it can be signing bonus and the part that is will be amortized But as for this year's cap drop being laughable, that's nonsense. Of course teams are going to "use it to get rid of guys and sign others for less," as you say. They do that every year. It's basic cap management, so of course they'll do it this year too. Duh. It's going to cause a lot of teams to cut guys they'd rather not cut. We're a great example in terms of handling Milano and Daryl Williams. They'd love to keep both. They're among the best players on the team. If this year didn't have the one-year drop they would very likely keep both. This year doing that would be on the edge of impossible in terms of doing the other things they need to do this year. As for your guess at next year's cap, well, that's ... certainly one guess. People do forget, though, that the NFL didn't make $182M (assuming that's what the cap is next year) per team last year. The difference between what they actually made and the cap will be taken from future years of cap. Somehow. Perhaps if it's a $30M shortfall they'll make it up by subtracting $10M per year from the cap over the next three years. But they will make it up by subtracting from future cap. The owners aren't going to forget about that money.

So, the world should be more like you want it to be. We get it. But that's not how the players want it. And they have a union. More, the owners do too, if they're serious about winning. If they didn't think QBs were worth it, they wouldn't sign the contracts. You don't like this? I'm guessing you don't like it when it rains on your day off either. But there's nothing that can be done. The free market working through the CBA comes out like this.

He's accomplished being a damn good quarterback. He's a top ten guy. They get paid. Yeah, I betting he slots in a bit under Mahomes but above everyone else.

Oh, I really like Simms as well. He's bright, interesting, knowledgeable and a good listen. And you're right that he often mentions and talks about groupthink and that most people make up their minds based on it. Which seems to me to be correct. But he also makes it very clear very often that he makes mistakes, that he knows what he has are opinions and not facts. He often says that sometimes he's wrong, that he's not saying he knows he's right, that this is his opinion but what he can say about it is that it's backed up with a lot of hard work watching these guys and a lot of knowledge about what it takes to be a great QB in the NFL. Though he also often says he's very aware that he was not a really talented QB. But his obsession with studying QB play has made him a well-informed evaluator.

Well, yeah, opinion can never be fact. I got that. But what a given person thinks is a fact and an opinion is not even close to that clear, Bill. I mean, come on. When something is stated as a fact, you really do have to be kind of a mind reader to be sure you understand when the guy is only giving his opinion. Maybe you're terrific at that. Maybe you never misunderstand. If so, more power to you, but I apparently have problems. I thought you were stating the opinion above as a fact. And I can promise you there are plenty more like me out there. Again, that's pretty clearly why Simms, a guy giving draft opinions as you are, does so much of this. He's found that there are an awful lot of people like me out there. Again, it's your communication, so do what you want. But I will also do what I want in my communication. Including pointing out that something you said that was stated as a fact is actually an opinion. That won't be separating you out, either. It's something I'm concerned with and do pretty often here, and really I do it generally. I find this to be a cause of a ton of modern problems. You can't turn on a TV talk show without somebody shouting an opinion as if it's a fact. It's what modern public discourse is becoming and I believe it has a lot of awful consequences.

If teams only drafted sure things in the first round they'd probably have drafted three or four guys there over the last twenty years. Manning, Luck, one or two others. A sure thing is NOT the benchmark you look for at any position in the first round, much less QB, a position where you often have to just swallow and take the best chance you have. This year and last year it has been possible to get guys in FA or trades with a real chance to be really good. Historically that has really been true only very rarely. The teams that get shut out there will maximize their chances to get a franchise QB by grabbing one of the top four or five or six guys in this draft. Those guys will go in the first because without a franchise guy your team will be scrabbling for table scraps in the wins column for years.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/rankings/average/center/ Yes, I agree that he likely either takes a pay cut or gets released. More, I said that I disagreed with two things in your post. First you said he would bring a 3rd or 4th in a trade. That seems very unlikely to me. You seemed to me to be saying that he would be easy to trade, partly because of his salary. Again, I just don't think this is so. If you are actually saying that he'd be easy for the Bills to keep (???), I think the problem is that for them $5 mill is a lot to pay this year if they can find a way to pay less, and that Morse doesn't seem to fit the profile of the new line they seem to be building. When we did a lot of pulling, Morse fit that strategy really well. But last year they pulled much less and went towards a power scheme. Morse doesn't fit that profile well. And as for whether I negated your point ... go back and look at that post again. What exactly was your main point? I don't think that you had any clear main point there, myself, so I addressed the specifics of what you said. EDIT: There are now two people who seem to have responded mostly to your trade thoughts.

Beane hasn't showed that he's one of those GMs who wants to re-structure a lot of guys and kick a lot of cans down the road. He wants to be in decent cap shape every year. I suspect he'll write a deal or two or three this year but won't max out everything he could do with re-structures, as some armchair GMs here would like him to. He wants to be solid next year on the cap too. I love that, personally. They said their goal is to be consistently competitive, and if that's your goal, this is smart.

That's one way to spin it. You can just as easily say that they structured a deal to keep him around the final three years of his contract fairly cheap now that the signing bonus is paid, with the ability to cut him easily if he regresses. Plenty of guys on this roster are in the same situation, easy to cut if they regress. Jerry Hughes, for example. Cole Beasley. Matakevich. John Brown. Poyer. There are a bunch more. Several of them will get cut. Several won't. It's how you want to try to structure guys who are getting older, ideally. If their play drops off, or if things fall right, you let 'em go. Doesn't mean that's what they want, though. If he hadn't opted out, they could have cut him this year, but it wouldn't have helped their cap much. They'd only have saved around $1.4M. After the opt-out that's what they'll save if they cut him before the 2022 season.

That rumor has not been substantiated. That I've seen anyways. If it has, I'd love to update my knowledge of the situation, so if you can link to a reliable source, please do. And we're not screwed on that. We've got Star to play at the very least for this year, which is what they wanted when they signed the contract. And last year showed we needed him. If he (or any player) shows up not ready to play then it's worth worrying about. Till then a guy we wanted to come back is coming back.

Centers at $7M really do grow on trees. Only 12 centers are on contracts for more than $11M average per year, and one of those 12 is Mitch Morse, who averages $11, though. And it's hard to get much for a guy most other teams think you're likely to cut anyway. Especially this year. IMO you're over-estimating his value. Of course if they decide to cut him they'll look to trade him instead. I think we'll see they won't get what you believe.

It's really not that clear. The Pats had been defending him really well as the 2nd half went on. Belichick brought in their heavy package for that play, and in that package they'd been able to handle Marshawn well.

My first reaction was ... no way. But the more I think about it the more I wonder. If and only if he's willing to come quite cheap to protect against another mental breakdown, I can see it. He's the kind of guy they're looking for in terms of playing style, a power guy. From what little I heard he's still playing well. If I'm wrong about that, let me know. But I can imagine it. I'd guess the odds are against it, but who knows. Ah! Well, fair enough then.

Win - loss record is not absolute as far as telling how successful a football team is? I guess I stand corrected. I'm with you in nuance being all around us. I'd argue there are some absolutes too. Absolute zero, for instance. Pi. Granted, these can be disproven with one experiment according to scientific method principles, but they are effectively absolutes. There are more. And while it's not an absolute scientific fact that, for example, Tom Brady is better than JP Losman, it'd be difficult to find anyone who thinks otherwise.

It is indeed absolute. But wins are absolutely NOT a QB stat. They are a team stat. They tell you how well the team played. QB effectiveness can simply not be judged based on whether the field goal kicker misses a 30 yard kick or whether an LB on his team makes a brilliant INT and runs it back for a pick six. That's the kind of thing that has huge impact on wins and losses. And says absolutely nothing about how good your QB is. And as for Marino's playoff losses to the Bills, which one had stats that would make you think he played pretty well? The loss in 1990? 23 for 49, 46.94% completions, 323 yards, 3 TDs, 2 INTs, passer rating of 72.1 The loss in 1992? 22 for 45, 48.89% completions, 268 yards, 1 TD, 2 INTs, passer rating of 56.5 Those were the only two times during the Bills Super Bowl years that they played Miami in the playoffs. Yeah, QB stats were quite a bit lower in those days, but even by those standards, neither of those Marino games looks any better in the stats than he actually played. Marino played the Bills in the playoffs two more times. And had one solidly decent statistical game out of all four. The loss in 1995? 33 for 64, 51.56% completions, 422 yards, 2 TDs, 3 INTs, passer rating of 63.4 The win in 1998? 23 for 34, 67.65% completions, 235 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, passer rating of 84.8

I don't think the conventional wisdom was that they "The Bills would probably be a better squad than the '19-'20 Bills, but still finish with a worse record than the 10-6 record the '19-'20 team had." To find the conventional wisdom at that time, you have to switch your "would" for the far more common - at the time - "could". The general idea was that the schedule was much tougher. Most people predicted 9-7 or 10-6. It wasn't by any means the consensus that they wouldn't win 10. 11-6: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nfl/article/afc-east-2020-nfl-preview-year-bills-overtake-patriots/ 9/11 Vegas over/under is 9, he predicts 10-7 (I know, WTH? Maybe a typo.): https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-nfl-ny-state-wire-buffalo-bills-football-572431fcd07f8e04535f34b72e5a5de6 9-7: https://www.si.com/nfl/bills/news/buffalo-bills-season-preview-2020 9-7: https://www.si.com/nfl/bills/news/buffalo-bills-season-preview-2020 Skurski 10-6: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/2020-season-outlook-how-will-bills-fare-as-hunted-vs-hunter/article_9b6a90ac-f148-11ea-bd3d-b31d540e8e05.html Gaughan 10-6, Jason Wolf 11-5, Rachel Lenzi 10-6, Milt Northrop 9-7: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/news-sports-writers-project-the-buffalo-bills-record/article_f0d61204-ee24-11ea-a88d-636d6541ace5.html John Murphy 11 or 12 wins, "maybe that's more hope than prediction": https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/john-murphy-views-highly-anticipated-bills-season-as-a-challenge-due-to-covid-19-impact/article_46ceadf0-f03d-11ea-9559-43bcd343b145.html (A Maddy Glab article compiling many predictions) USA Today 10-6, Bleacher Report 10-6, Howard Simon 12-4, Sporting News Vinnie Iyer 11-5, CBS 9-7, Pro Football Network 10-6, Marcel Louis-Jacques 12-4, Touchdown Wire 11-5, Fox Sports' Nick Wright 8-8: https://www.buffalobills.com/news/what-they-re-saying-8-record-predictions-for-buffalo-s-2020-regular-season I got that from cruising the TBD archive and finding every article I could find with a prediction in the last couple of days before the season, then doing a google search as well and putting the first three I could find, and stopping with the Maddy Glab compilation article. We did hear that sentence you used a lot in the offseason, but people weren't saying they would get 9 wins, just that with the much tougher schedule it was possible for the Bills to significantly improve and yet only manage nine wins despite that improvement. If you average these all out they're predicting fractionally above 10 wins.

Seeing you mention Bob Quinn sent me off on a quick fact-finding trip. Wasn't he director of Pro Personnel his last four years there? That's what I can find with only a very quick look, though. I see Caserio was director of Player Personnel from 2008 to 2020, he wouldn't seem to be responsible for things changing abruptly four or five years ago. But yeah, some guys are better assistants than leaders. And some guys need certain kinds of work environments to be at their best, and perhaps that type of environment was not to be found in Detroit - which seems possible with what a tire fire they've been for so long. Or perhaps the scouts in New England were better than the Detroit scouts. A GM without good scouts is not going to look good. Oh, well, it's beyond me. And interesting that in the years they didn't have 1 round picks they didn't do very well with their 2nds. I have always thought Wilson was under-rated, right from his first year there. He indeed covers up lots of problems, always has, to me. If they're even half-smart they'd better find a way to make him happy and keep him.

Yup. She comes from a teaching background and came up with this stuff in experiments on kids. But it was a case of a universal phenomena showing up in one group, kids. I use this on my kid all the time. Dweck advises you to never say stuff like, "You're so smart." Or "you're really good at that." Because then you're complimenting their talent and when they reach a situation where they fail they think, "Oh, I'm doomed, I'm not talented enough. Whereas if you compliment them by saying, "Oh, you worked so hard," or, "Oh, you tried a new way there, didn't you? That's great, you're really trying to think in new ways. That's really good," then if they fail they think, "Well, if I keep working and trying new ways, I'll eventually get it. I constantly remind myself to be doing this with my 5 year-old. Dweck has a good TED talk where she tells about this far better than I can. And all in under 10 minutes.