Thurman#1

My guess is two, but I could see three if they have a good opportunity. They have Smoke, and he's likely somewhere around 22nd best in the league give or take three or four. Certainly not elite, but he's clearly a #1. If they can get someone even better, that'd be great, but what they really need is someone who's genuinely good, a strongish #2 to take reps away from our guys like McKenzie and Foster. A second guy who's an upgrade from last year's third and fourth guys would serve as depth and allow them to use four WRs in various situations. If they got three, a reasonable guess on how they'd do that would be a mid-priced FA somewhere in the Beasley-Brown pay level, a guy from the first two days of the draft and a guy from somewhere around round 5. And that guy isn't likely to immediately be significantly better than McKenzie et al. As has been said many times, it's be nice if they could get at least one of the top two guys to have a skillset we don't have so much of on this team, a contested catch specialist, a strong guy for over the middle work or a second speed guy to work opposite Brown.

Pretty poor paraphrase there. The best way to put together the best team is to use your draft picks sensibly and for value and to not fall in love with one guy and trade far too much to get him. But in this particular draft, yeah, getting a third-round game-breaking WR could very very easily be possible. It's that kind of year. And as Beane has correctly said, we are NOT one player away. And it's not just opinion that that's not the way to run the draft. The studies back him up. https://www.vox.com/2014/5/7/5683448/how-nfl-teams-ignore-basic-economics-and-draft-players-irrationally https://www.nber.org/papers/w11270 https://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/dont-trade-up-in-the-nfl-draft/

The minute you say, "do whatever it takes," whatever you're arguing for takes a hit. Be great to get a vintage Corvette. But if it took killing a guy and paying four times the normal price, it's not worth it. If he's available at #22 and they like him, that would be great. If they want to skip up a spot or three and it doesn't cost too much, again great. But there are too many really good receivers in this draft to do something silly like give up a lot of value. Hmm? He said the other trades were 2nd round or below. That includes the Edmunds trade. Baltimore gave up 16th and 54th and Buffalo gave up 22nd and 65 (a 3rd rounder). He's correct. And his point stands. The Allen trade is the one where they really gave up serious value. The Edmunds trade, done with the leftovers of the prep they did to bring in draft capital for the Allen trade, was second and below that there's another fairly significant drop. Beane seems willing to give up picks, but he's pretty stingy with picks from the first couple of days.

One guy in the league managed more than 20 carries per game, Derrick Henry at 20.2. Below him, four guys got between 18.8 and 18.5, Elliott, Chubb, Jacobs and Carson, and #6 is at 17.9. Sixteen guys had more than 15 carries per game, The Titans averaged 27.8 carries per game as a team, the Cowboys 28.1, the Browns 24.6, which meant Chubb got more than 75% of their carries, the highest of the ones I quickly checked. And you generally don't want to use the Browns as your model. If you go back to, say, 1985, six guys had over 20 carries, Gerald Riggs (24.8), Marcus Allen (23.8), James Wilder (22.8), Freeman McNeil (21.0), Eric Dickerson (20.9) and Walter Payton (20.2). So things have changed, but the trends go up and down over the years.

Come on, Singletary's fast. But you're right that he's not a 4.4 kind of guy, not a guy nobody can catch. Speed isn't his most outstanding trait, that would be shiftiness. We need another back and he has to be effective. That's really what we actually need. As for what would be the frosting on the cake, I personally would like to see a power back, to show teams a contrast of styles. But in terms of actual needs, we need another effective back to spell Singletary.

Damn, man, you're right, I'm wrong. Sorry. Must have been too tired when I wrote that. Because it was just a stupid mistake. When I make them, I like to own up, and that was a genuinely stupid mistake on my part. Thanks for the correction. Having said that, you're right about the leverage in '83, but any QB as good as Burrows is has leverage ... if he wants to use it. Burrows may or may not.

You could tell him that he's absolutely correct, or that more specifically he's an above-average space-eater. You could tell him there's a reason that the brain trust paid him that money and doubled down on keeping him longer, and that the reason is that he consistently does what the coaches want and need him to do. You could also tell him that there seem to be a group of fans who don't like him but that they don't seem to get that what they feel is beside the point, that it's the coaches and the front office and what they feel that matters, not some group of fans with a weird grudge. Snacks is also an above-average 1-tech. At his peak he was among the very best space-eaters in the game. He no longer seems to be at his peak, unfortunately. I've always loved how he plays.

Throwing off balance is precisely a footwork problem, in many cases. Not if you're knocked off-balance obviously, but a lot of times the reason you're off balance is that you didn't use your feet correctly. Footwork is important in crowded pockets, and there's a specific type of footwork that's best for throwing on the run. It's an issue. It doesn't solve everything by any means, but it helps. On the other hand, some guys can't change things, their bad or good habits are too deeply ingrained. It's worth looking at, though. For what it's worth, AVP is a smart cookie and if Mayfield will listen, he's likely to learn something. Sigh. Back to grading student papers. Shouldn't even have written this.

I know!! Next thing people will start saying you should look both ways before you cross the street! Or that you have to look at all the consequences of major actions!! It's crazy the things people will say. As far as Diggs specifically, I'd consider it. I'd have to know a lot more. If he's angry with them for only getting him 1190 yards last year he might not be a good fit here.

There was no Philip Rivers the year Elway came out either. The next QB picked was Ken O'Brien at #24. And yeah, Elway had the theoretical chance of going to baseball instead but he was never likely to do that. These guys can take a year off and try again. It's not total control by any means, but it's leverage. EDIT: Sorry, I must have been out-of-my-mind exhausted when I wrote this. Genuinely dumb mistake on my part. There absolutely were options between Elway and O'Brien, and much better options. Having said that, despite my stupid mistake here, Burrows absolutely does have leverage here if he wants to use it. He may or may not.

Fair enough. When you get your own team that preference should come into play at some point. Including the thought that those would be the only two options.

Hunh. What a surprise that you only argue the one I said I'm not interested in arguing. Again, if you want want to argue whether they have to do anything, go argue with someone who gives a *****. And how funny that your whole big dumb argument about how there was no way they would ever re-sign Edmunds, the part I argued, has now disappeared. Replaced by a line or two about the fact that Edmunds isn't yet on Kuechly's level, which I wouldn't argue. He's not, yet. But Edmunds is a very very good player, particularly for his second year, and he is absolutely crucial to their plans for this defense, just as Kuechly was then. They could very easily decide to extend him after his third year. Typical, though, of someone losing an argument. Abandon the losing part, never mention it again, and change the grounds of what you're arguing on and distract distract distract.

You know, you say you know what he said. But it's actually clear that you don't. He said "We probably won’t be spending at the deep end of the pool like we did last year (in free agency)," and you immediately assume that what he said implied that he in fact was going to be spending at the deep end of the pool in free agency. You hear what he said but because it differs from what you want you're not willing to believe it. Well, fine, you're clearly a smart guy but if you're not willing to u You quote Beane saying, "he also said it’s up to them to find upgrades which means spending their available cap room on some very good FA’s." And you feel that him saying he needs to upgrade must mean spending on premium FAs only. Despite the numerous ways he's upgraded this team without ever bringing in a premium FA, and despite the fact that he had just said he wasn't going to do that? Not much I can say to that. A guy so utterly bound by confirmation bias isn't going to listen to sense.

No, I really don't make excuses for the stupid decisions they've made. Which makes it easy on me because they simply haven't made very many. Some, though, and those are worth pointing out and criticizing. But most of what you're calling mistakes are simply you not getting it. A perfect example is when you say that the 2018 cap problem was mostly McDermott/Beane's fault, and again you completely miss the point. They were in very bad cap shape as far back as 2016. Whaley had been close to the cap and had put in place commitments that would've kept us there for several years down the line. Our 2016 cap looked like a cap for a team in the last year or two of a Super Bowl winner, and all for a team that only won seven games. Yes, Beane and McDermott's solution to that involved cutting a bunch of guys and accumulating a massive amount of dead cap. But what that dead cap was doing is moving money from future cap years and spending it all on 2018, exactly the moves necessary to create the huge cap surpluses we've seen the past two years. I'm not guessing that they didn't want to start Allen that early, Beane said so in the post-season PC. And no they shouldn't have kept Tyrod, he was part of the cap problem left by Whaley, far too expensive for his production (has he managed to get a similar contract since then?) and on a rebuilding team that wasn't going to win that year anyway. Yeah, the McCarron signing didn't work. Fair enough. But it's not as if they spent a lot of money on him. A mistake. Not one with major implications. As for the Corey Coleman deal, oh yeah, huge mistake. Did you know that when they let him go on September 1st, before the season started, they had spent thousands of dollars on him? Thousands!!!!!!! I mean, they cut him before he collected a single game check, so his salary cap hit actually went up over the hundreds of dollars somewhere up into the thousands!!!! Holy Cow, ... he probably cost them less than one game's worth of a guy on a minimum rookie contract. Huge salary cap problem there. A perfect example of you identifying as a problem something that simply wasn't. The Coleman move cost them virtually nothing, they took a flier on him and when he wasn't producing they cut him with almost no effects.

This. He's a 3-tech. That's where they want Oliver to develop. Switching one of them to a position he's not going to fit as well wouldn't make any sense either.

Holy cow, Bill. You are a crazy man. An awful lot of work on display here. Great stuff.

I understand your post and you make some good points here. But I disagree with a lot of it. FAs aren't precisely known quantities. FAs are known quantities for what they can do playing within the system they were playing in and surrounded by the guys they were surrounded by and making the salaries (sometimes much smaller) that they were making. When those and other factors change, plenty of FAs aren't the known quantities that they were thought to be. I didn't say that sudden quitting was the only factor. It sometimes happens, but there are plenty of other reasons FA moves don't work out, from scheme fits to hating the new city to sudden painkiller addictions to not being as effective as they get older ... it goes on and on. I'd agree with you this much, you probably have a better shot for success with a low- to mid-priced FA than you do with a 6th or 7th rounder. Much better. But a 2nd rounder? I disagree. "What higher 'priorities' can there be than adding a WR when your team didn't have a single NFL starter caliber WR on the roster?" you ask? What higher priority could there be? I think the best answer for that is a simple one ... whatever builds the team best. OL could be higher if your OL are a danger to your QB. Runner could be higher if your run game sucks so badly that teams can count on stopping them with seven guys and can concentrate their defensive resources totally on stopping the pass game. Defense could be higher if your offense is decent but your defense so bad that you're always behind. If you're talking about 2018 player acquisition, they have specifically said that they didn't want to put Josh in as early as they did. So bringing in WR support for McCarron, Peterman and Barkley was very legitimately not thought of as a huge priority at that time. They wanted to build the team defense-first, and that made a lot of sense at the time, especially with a genuinely screwed-up salary cap situation from the Whaley days.

I see. Yeah, this totally makes sense. So McDermott was the DC and Beane the AGM for a team that gave a third year contract ... to a defensive player ... who happens to play the exact same position as Edmunds? In a McDermott defense, on a team GM'd by Beane? And because it didn't happen to a guy drafted between 2014 and 2016, a set of years you picked specifically to try to minimize the number of hits ... you STILL want to pretend it's not a very decent possibility? How funny that you didn't mention that part of my post. You got one thing right, though. Pathetic indeed.

Weirdly, you didn't answer my objection. All you have to do to prove me wrong is answer these three questions: 1) Did I represent your opinion about the equation wrongly above? I'll repeat it here for ease. Cap Cost minus Dead Cap = Total Cap Impact $22.5M Cap Cost ($2.5M unamortized signing bonus + $9.5M base salary + $10M roster bonus + $500K workout bonus ) minus $2.5M Dead Cap ____________________________________________________ equals $20M Total Cap Impact This is how you calculate it, right? It's not the way I calculate it, that's for sure, but it's yours, correct? If not, show me the equation you are using to calculate the total cap impact of cutting him. 2) The two figures are red represent the same one piece of money, correct? If not, tell me the difference between them. 3) So why are you accounting for the same one figure, the unamortized portion of the signing bonus, twice in your equation? That's all you have to do. Answer those three questions sensibly. The problem of course is that nobody can. Because that equation is framed wrong. But if you can sensibly answer those three questions, you'll have proved me utterly wrong. Howling that many other people disagree with me does nothing for your position, because none of them can answer those questions either. Oh, and Spotrac and OTC don't support your position. Their numbers are quite correct, I have no problem with any of their numbers. But at no point do they attempt to calculate total cap impact of cutting guys. The fact is this ... NOBODY has been able to answer my simple question. Why are you listing the same figure twice in your equation. You can't explain it. You didn't even try, and sensibly so, because there is no answer to it. But hey, prove me wrong. You or anyone. Address these three specific questions. I'm waiting.

Ah, I thought you were making a different argument. But no, same wrong argument that others have tried. That money isn't guaranteed. It was already paid, and therefore can NOT be saved by the Bills when they cut him. It will enter into the equation (ONCE) as dead money. Here's how it looks: Money Saved minus Dead Cap = Total Cap Impact $20M Money Saved ($9.5M base salary + $10M roster bonus + $500K workout bonus) --- $2.5M Dead Cap --------------------------------- $17.5M Total Cap Impact The red-colored figure is the unamortized signing bonus. Notice there is red only on one side of the equation. Now, here's how you and others want to calculate this: Cap Cost minus Dead Cap = Total Cap Impact $22.5M Cap Cost ($2.5M unamortized signing bonus + $9.5M base salary + $10M roster bonus + $500K workout bonus ) --- $2.5M Dead Cap ----------------------------------- $20M Total Cap Impact The problem is immediately visible, in red. You've got the same $2.5M there twice. It's simply wrong. When a guy is still on the team that $2.5M counts against his cap cost. NOT his dead cap, as there is no dead cap cost if the guy is still on the team. The instant he's cut, that money is taken out of cap cost and put into dead cap. Now the $2.5M counts against his dead money but not his cap cost. Cap Cost is the amount of money he will cost IF HE IS ON THE TEAM. It's an either/or. He's either on the team or he's off. If he's off the team, the $2.5M goes in dead money. It's certainly not saved by cutting him. If he's on the team the $2.5M goes in Cap Cost and not in dead money. The money has to be in one place or the other. It can't appear on both sides of the subtraction. When a guy is cut now, the team saves all the unguaranteed money he was going to be paid that year. They do NOT SAVE his full cap cost if he had stayed with the team. His signing bonus money is gone and MUST fall against the cap as dead money if there's money still unamortized when he's cut.

Is that right? Nobody from 2014 to 2016 re-signed after their first three years? Wow, you ought to call Derek Carr and tell him he doesn't exist. Oh, wait, you wanted to try to gerrymander him out of the discussion. Gotcha. But he's one of several cases when guys have been extended after three years. Better make the same call to Carson Wentz, though. Drafted in 2016, massive extension in the offseason of his third year. And Goff, same deal. Wow, three guys. Oh, gerrymandering again. It happened to three guys but you don't want to talk about them so you set up some conditions to exclude them. Tyron Smith, drafted 2011 signed a massive eight-year extension in 2014. In July. Travis Frederick, drafted in 2013, signed a massive six-year extension in 2016, in August. Patrick Peterson, JJ Watt too. Oh, they're defense. How did you twist things to try to exclude them? Oh, yeah, only guys from 2014 to 2016 count. Hilarious! Russell Wilson. K Jake Elliott. LS Rick Lovato. Darrelle Revis. It's a real possibility it might happen to Mahomes this year, as this tweet shows: " Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt on Patrick Mahomes' contract: 'I don't want to say necessarily it has to be this offseason.' " I could look and find more but the point is made. It's happened to defensive guys, guys in the first round and later, and weirdly even guys not drafted between 2014 and 2016. Oh, wait, I had to check one more, and I was right!!!, It even happened to one middle linebacker. And you'll never ever guess who was the defensive coordinator for that guy, or who was the assistant General Manager. That's right, the year Luke Kuechly got his extension after three years, Sean McDermott was his DC and Brandon Beane was his Assistant GM!!! Golly! And it couldn't happen here? Nonsense!! It happens, and saying it won't is willful ignorance. It could. It's not common because only in a very limited set of circumstances would it make sense. The guy has to have proved himself very young as an outstanding player they want to keep around, there has to be a front office focused on re-signing their own talent early, it's more likely if the team has a lot of salary cap space and more likely when it's a team that doesn't want to sign premium FAs from other teams as a consistent policy. The coaching staff must be very secure, as a new regime might find the guy doesn’t fit what they want to do. The Bills fit all those criteria. The FO has said re-signing their guys and maintaining continuity is a major priority for them. Doesn't mean it will happen, but it absolutely could.

If your argument is whether or not we can sign Golladay ... go talk to someone who cares enough to disagree. That's a wildly unimportant argument, one I'm not interested in. The argument introduced in this thread is whether we will or should. Here's the title: Would you give our 2020 1st rd pick to the Lions for Kenny Golliday? Not "can we". Certainly, obviously, that was NOT the original argument as you claim. But if you feel the need to argue that, go find someone interested. But don't bother replying to me. That argument's irrelevant, uninteresting and an attempt to derail the original argument.

Having gone back to listen to post season PC from last month, I noticed this gem: "We probably won’t be spending at the deep end of the pool like we did last year (in free agency), It’s still up to us to find either pieces to compete with what we have or pieces that can upgrade. You can get guys that are minimum contract guys, guys that are low-tier, sort of middle of the road, those sometimes are as important or more important than those big-ticket items." - Brandon Beane Try to understand who this guy Beane is.

To the extent that the draft is a crapshoot, free agency is too. Plenty of FAs who'd been good on their last team don't do as well in a new system with new coaches and surroundings. Some do. But it's not as if FAs are a sure thing either. You don't have to go back to Haynesworth, Osweiler, or David Boston's Chargers contract to find FAs who didn't live up to their pay. Jacoby Brissett, Sam Bradford to the Cards, Vontae Davis, for Pete's sake, or look at Nate Solder. Case Keenum Malcolm Butler, Sammy Watkins, who's been decent but nowhere near lived up to his contract ... it goes on and on.

What guaranteed $2.5M bonus? The money he was guaranteed at the signing of the new Jax deal was equal to his signing bonus plus his 2019 salary, so that's all paid out in 2019. The only $2.5M bonus mentioned on either Spotrac or OvertheCap is a guarantee based on 55% playing time (Spotrac) and checking Football Outsiders, he only played 210 of Jax's defensive snaps all year, 19.6% of snaps, though he also played on 193 STs snaps, 43.9% of those. He only appeared in six games, according to ProFootballReference. So I don't see him earning that bonus. If I've missed a guaranteed bonus somewhere, that would totally explain the confusion and I would loudly admit I was wrong wrong wrong. But if you're talking about the $2.5M called "Prorated Bonus" on OTC and "Signing" on Spotrac, then that bonus was paid a year and a half ago. You said that "the only guaranteed money left is the $2.5M bonus." If you're referring to that unamortized signing bonus money, that is not "left" by any definition, it's paid. But you're making a different argument here than all the folks trying to just subtract it out and have the result be $20M. If I've missed a bonus, that's my screw-up. What guaranteed bonus?