Thurman#1

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.

I think the reason nobody wants to hear that Newton outplayed Allen in the first game is that it's questionable and probably nonsense. Generally, people do not want to hear nonsense. Allen's 1st game: 33/46 for 312 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, QB ranking of 104.6, 57 yards rushing and a rushing TD Newton's 1st game: 15/19 for a whopping 155 yards, 0 TDs, 0 INTs, a QB ranking of 100.7, 75 yards rushing and 2 rushing TDs So Allen had 3 TDs and Newton 2. And Allen doubled Newton's passing yards. Sorry, that's a pretty sad opinion, extremely questionable at absolute best. I do think it's possible, not clear and obvious but very possible that NE will be a far tougher match this year. And they might well bring in a better QB as well.

Yeah. Hoping we bring in a big nickel, perhaps Nasirildeen.

Yes, I get that it creates no cap space in 2021. I've said that again and again in my last several posts. But no, I don't believe Spotrac had it in their numbers already. And for good reason. It was an option. Spotrac did not know whether the Bills would choose to have it count in 2021 or whether they'd choose it to count in 2024 for Dion and 2025 for Tre. They're not going to put it in both places, as that would screw up the numbers. They don't know which place to put it. And they're not in the business of guessing. So (I believe) they didn't count it in either place. They waited for the Bills to choose. Within the next few days the Bills will choose. They won't choose 2021, of course. If you look at Spotrac, they list a 2021 option bonus for Dion. But it's not calculated into his cap hit, dead cap or yearly cash. It's only listed in the bullet points below the chart. It's easy to see that that's true. They list the $7.5M bonus in the bullet points, but they don't calculate it into the chart. Neither is it calculated into the bonuses in 2024. Yet. I believe it will be within the next five days. That's a $15M story, but in the future, so not a very big story.

Ah, I was actually right. Nice when that happens every once in a while. Yeah, they can kick more cans down the road. But doing so continues to eat away at the cap space that will be needed over the next couple of years to sign Josh, give more money to Diggs, etc. We're already down to $33M in 2022, and there are still a number of signings that haven't been accounted for yet in that figure. So far, Beane hasn't showed himself the kind of guy who loves to do that. Which I like. Wouldn't be surprised to see one or two more of those. But I doubt they'll kick every can people are hoping for. It has NOT been accounted for anywhere. It's not a non-story, it's a small story about the cap in 2024 and 2025. It hadn't been accounted for anywhere. It's listed now in neither 2021 nor the later years. When they do exercise the options, as they will, the money will appear on Tre's contract in 2025, on Dion's contract in 2024, and on the Bills cap in those two years.

If I'm right (again, I'm not sure at all), and they have not exercised these yet, and they chose to NOT exercise them, at the end of the option period we would lose $15M on this year's cap and Tre and Dion would each cost $7.5M more on this year's cap than they are listed at now. And since we'd then go under the cap, I don't think we could do this unless we find a way to otherwise gain cap space in the meantime. Wouldn't call it a non-story. It'll increase cap costs in 2024. But yeah - again, only if I'm right about this - this year's cap should stay the same as it is listed at now, and has been listed at.

Because the cap space was listed as $9M for the last couple of days, going back to before free agency and the day when we could have started to exercise the option. And also because if the options had been exercised, we'd see the money on their 2024 figures, and in neither case do we. I'm not sure about this at all, but it's my best guess.