Thurman#1

Yes, very confusing. I am not sure about any of this, but my guess is that it's guaranteed either year, 2021 or 2024, and they have to exercise the option if they want to move it to 2024 (and slightly increase the amount at the same time). If they don't exercise the option, each guy will then have to be paid a $7.5M roster bonus this year that is not yet accounted for in the Bills cap.

Sorry to reply to myself, but I want to refer to the earlier post. If what I'm thinking now is so, that would not be great news. It would mean that the $15M is essentially a potential cap hit on Spotrac and OvertheCap right now. That would mean that we'd pretty much be forced to use the option, otherwise our available cap would drop by $15M this year. In other words, if we exercise this option, we wouldn't add $15M to the $9M we have under the cap now. Instead, by exercising this option we'd be avoiding taking $15M off the cap rather than actually adding $15M on. I hope I'm wrong about that, but that's how it looks to me.

Yeah, I also didn't think their hits were that high. I think the Bills haven't exercised the option.

The Bills cap figure yesterday and the day before was slightly different on each site, but in the area of $9M. That's what it still shows. Jeez, this is confusing. Wait, the Sanders contract hadn't been added in to that $9M. But the Sanders contract figures aren't known, so they generally don't add them in till they know the specifics. So the $15M doesn't appear to have been added in. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe Joel Corry, the guy who tweeted this, made a mistake in calling the 2021 money base salary? Maybe it's as yet shown as an unexercised roster bonus, which then would not yet be added to the contract figures? And the Bills haven't made the move yet? That's the only way I can even begin to figure this.

But again, if they took that cap money away from those two guys, they'd surely have put the money saved, $15M, on Buffalo's cap. They have not. Not getting this at all. I'm not trying to argue. I hope you or someone can explain it to me, but this doesn't seem to go along with the contract data.

When I saw your post, that seemed a possible explanation, that they'd already done it. But if so, surely they'd have also put the $15M on Buffalo's cap, and they have not done that. I'm still not getting this at all. It's tough because Corry is doing this on twitter, rather than writing an article. He's not being very clear.

I'm not getting this. Not at all. It says, or rather it seems to me to say, that if we exercise an option for 2024, we get to take money off the 2021 cap - money that doesn't appear to actually be there. About Dawkins it says they can "drop his fully guaranteed $14.8M 2021 base salary to a fully guaranteed $7.3M." Hunh? Neither Overthecap nor Spotrac have Dawkins's 2021 salary at $14.8M right now. Both already have his 2021 salary at $7.3M already. Did they exercise this option in the last hour and the two sites are already on top of it? That seems unlikely. So, what $14.8M 2021 salary for Dawkins are they talking about? Same confusion with White. It says his salary for 2021 is a fully guaranteed $17.95M. Again, Spotrac and Overthecap disagree, putting his salary already at $10.485. They seem to be talking about cutting money that isn't there to cut. The 2024 bonus they are talking about for Dawkins and the 2025 bonus for Tre aren't on Spotrac or Overthecap but that seems more understandable, as it would be a new provision. Anybody understand the specifics here?

While I see that logic, Logic, it sure looked to me like Smoke was having trouble working underneath largely due to his injuries. In 2019 he worked underneath very effectively often. This year his cuts didn't seem as dangerous or sudden, particularly later in the year. Sanders may well be more effective at underneath stuff, I haven't seen much more than a few highlights in quite a while. In 2019 he didn't get much press at all because when he did, he ate it up. But unless Sanders has enough speed, I think the counter this year won't be as much two-deep, as they'll only be worried about Diggs deep, rather than have a burner on each side. We'll see.

The $8 million they saved was after the dead money was taken out. $7.9 to be precise. And the Sanders deal is $6 mill, not $6.5. Yes, there is 500K in incentives, but he might or might not ever get them, and if he does they hit the 2022 cap, not 2021. So that's about $2 mill. Not the $3 I had thought, but about $2 mill. I didn't argue that Brown was playing hardball, or that they wanted him back. It's clear they didn't, if they didn't make him any offer. I argued that the reasons they didn't want him back was to save money and because he spent half the year injured and it wasn't just one injury. He had multiple leg injuries, and at his age, that's frightening for teams. In the playoffs he was back but had lost his explosiveness. They effectively doubled Diggs and Beasley, and the countermeasure should have been Brown. A healthy Brown would probably have had a great day. He couldn't take advantage.

Nah. No reason to think so. They cut him mostly for money reasons. Nearly nine million of them. Probably mixed in with concerns about injuries, as his injuries late in the year hurt us. "Multiple leg injuries." That didn't bode well. His salary was large enough that they were able to replace him with the healthier Sanders and still have a bunch left over.

Is it really like that? Still? Thanks for letting me know. I'll avoid flying for a few more months till I get my vaccine. You can only get the first two seasons here in Japan, but the wife and I loved Blue Bloods. Got a lot of respect and envy for Tom Brady from watching that show. His ex is gorgeous.

Yes, they were good articles, and his situation is really sad. A good guy fighting through serious serious issues.

The leap isn't big at all. You want to take the little money we have and improve at positions where we're already good enough, positions where we already have Pro Bowlers. Clearly that means we need to upgrade at all the positions where those less smart than you - Beane and McDermott, for instance - think we're fine. You came right out and said that the way to get better is to spend a lot of money upgrading a position where we have a Pro Bowler who McDermott and Beane are happy with. Of course, when I put it that way, it sounds ridiculous, right? Yeah, that's because it is ridiculous, what you said. The problem that you clearly do have isn't that you thought they missed. No, you have determined that they should "swallow their pride." That they need to "admit" you're right. So, yeah, you do clearly think you're smarter.

Yeah, you're right. None of the reason we improved so much last year had anything to do with guys who were already on the roster improving. Josh Allen's improvement last year really had nothing to do with us winning more games. It was all just those FAs we got, and Epenesa and our draftees.

Yes, pick #30 will be more expensive than a $2M tender. Which is completely irrelevant. We will pay the same for that #30 pick regardless of what position we pick there. To remind you of what I said, "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." I wouldn't mind if they keep Levi. They still may. But if he goes, it still makes total sense that that would make it far more likely they go CB early in the draft.

A few looked bad even at the time. Man, that Bell deal was awful.

Infinitely!! Wow, so he's essentially Thanos? If I assume he's better, we've now decided that we're going to upgrade every position, apparently? Gotcha. Who are we going after at QB? Aaron Rodgers? Or should we work on trading up for Trevor Lawrence? And after we get our new QB, who will we get for our #1 CB and #1 WR? Oh, another one of those guys who's smarter than McDermott and Beane. I didn't realize.

Not sure we'd pay that much for a backup, though. About a 99% chance we aren't one of those teams. We've got our starters, and while a few on here seem determined to whine, moan and speculate ridiculously, the FO likes them a lot. The last thing you'd do in a year where you're fighting cap tightness is throw out a starter you're very happy with and pay more for someone else. Mosley is a really really good player, even coming off an injury and an optout, he'd clearly cost a lot more than any sensible person would pay a backup. We've got our starters. Just doesn't make sense.

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.