Thurman#1

Dude, whether an argument is "formal" or not is irrelevant. What is a formal argument anyway, is there some commission you have to run it past? Bad logic is bad logic no matter how it's used. You say, "I don’t like King for too many reasons to go into here. Only thing I shared was that opinion," and that's simply not true. You said, "For all those other outlets’ preseason rankings mean nothing, King’s mean less than nothing." You can't get more ad hominem than that, King said it so it's even less true than the rest. Albert: Peter King says this. Bruce: Peter King sucks. Bruce is using an ad hominem argument there. As you did. The whole point of ad hominems is to avoid having to address the substance of an argument by shifting the ground using an attack the messenger strategy. If you start a new thread about how you think Peter King sucks, that's not ad hominem. Joining a thread like this one and saying the same thing absolutely is. It's absolutely relentless here. A reporter says something seen as bad about the Bills and dozens of posters here talk about how he's past his peak, he's bald, he's a geek, he's ugly, he's got a squeaky voice, he's never played the game, he dresses like a high school chess club member, he's from a stupid state, he once covered a rival team so he must be bad, he once had a bad take on something ... it goes on and on and on. Same reporter says something seen as good about the Bills and suddenly there's no mention of the reporter himself, only his point and how correct it is. Finally in your last paragraph a reasonable argument. But it's nonsense that the college guys don't have "prior relevant performance indicators." College ball is relevant as hell, it's a good indicator. It's not a mistake that more first rounders are successful than second rounders, more second rounders than third rounders and so on. That happens because college ball is a pretty decent indicator of how well a guy will play in the NFL and more so the earlier a guy is drafted. Far from perfect. But especially when you're talking about trading away a first rounder, the first 20 or 30 guys picked have played at a high enough level and showed enough that it absolutely is relevant. Pro experience may be a better indicator but there are a ton of cases where FAs who did well one place do much more poorly elsewhere and vice versa. Look at Jerry Hughes. Look at how this regime has done with their first rounders so far: Tre'Davious White, Josh Allen, Tremaine Edmunds, Ed Oliver. We don't know with Epenesa, and it's too early to know for sure with two or three, and that brush with the law didn't look good for Oliver, but so far you'd have to say that they've been choosing pretty well with what returns are in. That's largely because college ball really is a relevant performance indicator. And yeah I'm "keenly focused on those attitude issues." You wanna ignore 'em because they don't fit your narrative, OK, but me, I'm keenly focused on all of his history, good and bad, incredible productivity and problems with not being thrown to enough by an offense that throws more than we do. All of it. Good, bad and mediocre. IMO that's the way we should all look at anything we're thinking seriously about, not throw out the things we don't find convenient, but looking at absolutely all of it. Well, I've said enough. See you on the boards. I like a lot of your stuff.

The attack the messenger fallacy is the name of a logical fallacy. Also called the ad hominem fallacy. It has nothing to do with whether the guy is making the argument or passing it along. Your argument here is entirely beside the point. It's not beside the point because you're the one making it. It's irrelevant because it's entirely beside the point. Arguments are true or false, reasonable or unreasonable entirely based on their own merits ... and the mention of who said something has no bearing whatsoever on how reasonable the substance of the argument is. Who said something is completely and entirely irrelevant to whether what was said is right or wrong. If Norman Borlaug says something, the fact that he saved millions of lives has nothing to do with whether what he said is right or wrong. Absolutely zero. And if someone absolutely and purely evil - say Joseph Stalin - says something, like maybe "Hey, it's May 5th," the fact that he's Joseph Stalin has nothing to do with whether he's right or wrong in this particular case. Sorry to unburden on you. The ad hominem nonsense is absolutely constant on these boards, almost always used against members of the media. And it's a horrible argument. I accused you of a fallacy because your argument is based on one. Doesn't prove your opinion is wrong, but yeah, insulting King does nothing to support your argument, no more than complimenting King would support the argument that he is right. What I personally think about Peter King means exactly the same here as what you think of him, zero, in terms of whether this argument makes sense. I don't use ad hominem arguments, whether I hate or love or don't have an opinion on the person making the case, and for the obvious reason Oh, and it's also unreasonable to say that you're arguing only on info we have at the time and opponents aren't. You're making a guess at the future, same as anyone trying to evaluate a trade. You're not ignoring the future here. Diggs has acted the diva in the past. Remember when Diggs was asked about rumors he wanted to be traded and said, "I feel like there's truth to all rumors no matter how you dress it up." Or when he purged all Vikes mentions and photos from his Instagram in February? Or when he stirred speculation that he wanted more money by tweeting "Tired of the cap ... lol." Or when he complained he wasn't getting enough passes in an offense that passes much more than Buffalo's and has a QB who passes better than we do (at least so far, though we all hope Allen will keep improving, and do better on deep throws). It wouldn't require a serious injury for this trade to not work out. Diggs has showed in the past plenty of behavior to support either argument, and there's an argument the Bills gave up too many picks as well, though that argument surely isn't popular among Bills fans. You're giving your opinion on what you think the most likely outcome wil be. It's certainly possible you'll be right. I'd argue it's just as possible you'll be wrong. I hope you're right.

And yet again the attack the messenger fallacy. So popular here and generally on the net despite the fact it has absolutely zero logical validity. Attack the argument, not the messenger. And no, there's no guarantee that any of those guys will be better than Diggs. There's also no guarantee Diggs doesn't turn into a locker room problem or diva and end up somewhere else a year or two from now. I wouldn't have done this trade myself. I do get that Beane is doing a terrific job. He's smarter than me at this. But it's very legitimate to have the opinion that we paid too much, that Diggs had a problem with not being thrown to enough or well enough by a team that throws more than we seem to want to and by a QB that's very accurate compared to how ours has thrown so far. Could that portend a problem? Yeah, maybe. Dunno, nobody does, really. Plus the salaries Diggs is receiving the next four years are terrific from a team point of view, but will he start to fuss about this? Nobody really knows. IMO there are very legit arguments on both sides of this issue. Might be a great trade. Might not. Short term it's certainly better for the Bills but the long-term effects are still unpredictable.

And as pointed out here, it's generally the 1-tech who uses it. In your OP you have him running between the center and the guard and that would again put him in the 1-technique. IMO the last thing they want is to put him in the 1-tech and have him drawing double-teams in the middle. The McDermott defense does have a guy at 1-tech and drawing double-teams, but it's usually an absolute horse of a guy, Lotulelei for example, and I believe they had Ron Edwards before they drafted Lotulelei in Carolina. If you wanted to put him in the tilted 3-tech position I'm not sure how well that would work out. But I think McDermott has his defense worked out and is happy with it. He seems to be willing to use variations but I don't think he wants to make major changes at this point. And Oliver played the 1-tech in college despite pretty much everyone thinking that he'd be better off as a 3-tech, including the Bills. I see you addressed this later and and you did mean they should try him as a tilted 1-tech. That's not going to happen, I don't think. I did like the article. Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it. Yes.

Fair enough. I think there's still a bit of a question but if you think it's completely clear, fair enough. Kittle's better. He's more productive with QBs (1377 yards in 2018 with Nick Mullens and CJ Beathard throwing to him for all but two and a half games) who are a ton less effective, he blocks better, he's a lot farther from the end of his career. Take a look at Kelce's stats before Mahomes. And Nick Mullens and CJ Beathard are no Alex Smiths. And I'm a Kelce fan. Great player.

When you hold the ball a bit too long in a VR situation, who smashes the everlovin' crap out of you? It will never have that sense of reality to it. You don't have to deal with the massive infusions of adrenaline and that's half if not three-quarters of the battle Much more likely to be used in training than evaluation, IMO.

Yup. I'm not as convinced on Josh as you are, but still very hopeful. Dallas wouldn't make that trade. But yes, right now Dak is absolutely better, it's not even a question.

Agreed that looking at cap space as a one year deal is seeing it wrong. But that's the thing ... after a first year when they spent very little new money, they still were in bad shape the next year. When McDermott got here, he started the league year with the 26th worst cap situation. But on that same day, the start of the 2017 league year, the next year's cap situation, the 2018 cap, was, if I remember, the 28th worst. Whaley had put them in an awful situation not just for a year but for the fairly long term. He had a lot of long-term big contracts on the books. Whaley was simply poor at handling the cap. If he'd had that situation with a team that went 13-3, then hey, you'd be much more forgiving. But they were a mediocre team with no real QB, an awful right side of the OL, Dareus having just received a huge new contract and then regressed, and a defense that was really well-coached that had some very good players and then a bunch of JAG starters like Zach Brown, Adolphus Washington, Corey Graham, Aaron Williams breaking down from injury, and Preston Brown, etc. And if the new group had signed second contracts with guys like Sammy, Robert Woods and Cordy Glenn, their poor cap situation would have continued right along being poor. You (EDIT: and Kirby) were right and I'm wrong about Woods being out before Beane got here. It must have been McDermott who was the one I remember lamenting how much he wanted to keep Woods but that it simply wasn't possible with the cap situation they were in. My bad. Another GM coming into the situation might have seen it completely differently? Well, since there really isn't a situation where that's not at least theoretically true, yeah, fair enough. There are bad administrators and bad decision makers in every field. Could they have found one? Yeah, maybe. In fact, if the Pegulas had told everyone they interviewed that they believed that this team could win a Super Bowl with Tyrod Taylor and what they had, that the owners believed they were only a few players away from a title, there isn't a doubt in the world that they could have found somebody to say "Hey, I'm your guy, I'm just the genius who can win a Lombardi with this group." But that's just it. The Pegulas didn't say that. They weren't that dumb. They hired the guy who said that they needed a franchise QB, that to get one they needed a rebuild and to win a title they needed that rebuild and at the same time they needed to get their bad cap situation back under control. You yourself admit this, saying he believed and was committed to this. Exactly, Bill. You seem to be arguing that a rebuild wasn't necessary. That's a wacky position but it's also not what this argument has been about. This argument has been about whether they were in bad cap problems. And for a group committed to a rebuild, as you admit they were, it isn't much of a question. It is something they committed to getting under control, despite the pain, from as early as their interview. So saying that it was about wanting to turn over players doesn't make sense. Sure, they wanted to rebuild and they absolutely must have known that some or many of the guys on the previous roster were gone. But what they've also made clear is that when they got here an awful lot of their time was spent on figuring out which guys would fit the new group and which wouldn't. They spent a ton of film study on it and they also gave a number of guys a year to show whether they could be a part of this team. They seem to have wanted Dareus to be here till he made it clear he wasn't going to let little rules get in the way of his lifestyle. Though maybe they were just trying to have someone fill the Lotulelei role and at the same time lower that massive cap hit by waiting a year or two, till he started missing meetings. Doesn't make sense to say they knew before they came in what they wanted the turnover to look like. Yeah, rebuilds mean a bunch of turnover. But sometimes guys who fit can stay. It's not a mistake that Kyle Williams stayed, or Lorax. They fit the locker room and were good players. McDermott and Beane were likely hoping there'd be a few more like that.

Not saying Stevie was bad. But yes, I am saying that he wasn't our MVP of the decade in any way, shape, form, method, scheme, means or manner. Or process. He wasn't even the MVP of any of those Bills seasons. Fitzy for one was far more valuable. Probably Kyle Williams too. Freddy, maybe. Hell, Dareus was in his first three years and looked like he was going to be a pillar of that team for a decade, it wasn't till his 5th year that Dareus lost the pass rush part of his game.

A "prove it" deal for Clowney is still likely to be somewhere around $15 M, probably. Doesn't fit our circumstances.

Stevie Johnson? Good grief. Most valuable, as opposed to best yeah? So, it makes sense it's QBs, the way that the NFL MVP is pretty much always a QB. But Stevie Johnson? Yeah, not seeing that.

Varies from QB to QB and from WR to WR. More, it's a complex system with a million variables. The correct answer, really, is that they affect each other. But overall, the QB makes the WR more than vice versa. The QB doesn't have to throw to a WR. You look at how great a receiver Will Fuller is and how little he got thrown to because of Deandre Hopkins being on that team. Look at Robert Woods' career. Anyone think Deshawn Watson is going to suck now that he's lost the best WR in football?

Kirby, you also are a terrific poster. But Beane didn't need to lie to sell people on this. People were dying to buy into any plan. And they certainly did have a cap issue. On the last day of the 2016 league year, in March 2017, they had the 26th worst cap situation, with around $18 million in cap space. That's really bad. Again, it wasn't cap hell. But yes, it was a serious cap issue. They had to start wiggling and cutting right off the bat, and they did. Beane went on record not long after, about specifically about how much he wanted to have kept Robert Woods but not being able to because of a money issue. The Rams didn't pay Woods all that much. They didn't want to "turn over' Woods. They had money problems. They wanted to clean up those problems and have cap space by 2019 and the way to do that (and at the same time accumulate draft capital for bringing in a QB) was to cut money and trade away guys who'd bring back some picks. I'm not going to argue here whether or not they needed to rebuild. Not here. It's hijacking the thread, it's a separate issue, and it's been discussed elsewhere. But from extremely early on in the process they had decided to rebuild. And rebuilding is harder when you're in a bad cap situation. There were plenty of other ways to urge people to be patient, particularly by the time he talked of "cap jail" in September of 2018. It was very obvious by then that we had a long way to go and were going to have to be patient like it or not. And those who weren't patient weren't going to be swayed by talking about the fact that a year and a half ago we'd been in cap jail.

Dude, you are spinning like a dreidel. Three or four times now I've said that it may not have been cap hell but it was bad. And you keep coming back with, "they weren't in cap hell." Yeah, I've agreed with that again and again and again. If your idea of cap hell is as awful as you're making it clear that it is ... then I agree it wasn't cap hell. Just very bad cap shape. And now Beane says the exact same thing. He doesn't use the term "cap hell." Instead, "cap jail or whatever you want to call it." When your take requires you to say that Beane is lying ("Just not the truth," you said), what you've got is an awful take. Where's the advantage to them in saying this? When your take forces you to say that and the only reason you can come up with for them needing to help themselves by saying this is that it "is a helpful narrative," that's good evidence that you're simply headed in the wrong direction. Your opinion is that they could have built from this. OK, I totally disagree, but that's beside the point. The point is that from instant one, Beane was not considering that. He's said again and again that even in his job interview he made it clear to the Pegulas and McDermott that the cap was in awful shape and that they needed to get it in shape. And that McDermott and the Pegulas were on the same page. So what you think about whether they could have built or not is for another argument. That's what Beane thought In his fricking job interview. "Just not the truth." This is what people do when they are on the wrong side in arguments and can't change their mind. They become willing to take a direct quote from the person concerned and explain (generally poorly) why the arguer knows way better than the guy (Beane, in this case) himself. :You're a terrific poster, but you're way off in the weeds here.

Q: Virtually all the free agent contracts were constructed with the future cap in mind. Was that the idea? BB: "Yeah, I mean, I want to try and be fiscally responsible. Terry and Kim give us, they let us use what we need to use, but we just got out of cap jail, or whatever you want to call it.” https://expo.newyorkupstate.com/sports/g66l-2019/07/518d9fee2e9c4/9-things-buffalo-bills-gm-said-on-state-of-rebuild-entering-year-3.html BN: At more than $50 million, you have twice as much dead-cap money compared to any other team in the NFL. From your standpoint, what does that mean? How is that managed? BB: That was all in this plan, back when I interviewed for the job. Again, you've got an idea of how it's going to work, but you never know when you're going to make certain moves and certain players you don't know (about) yet. Maybe it's a guy that we ended up moving that I hoped we didn't need to move, but we did. Once we started making these moves and things started falling in place, (you say), "I wanted to go ahead and take this hit this year, in 2018, to clean the slate." And I found that we're almost there, which is really going to open it up for 2019 and beyond. https://buffalonews.com/2018/09/07/buffalo-bills-gm-brandon-beane-sean-mcdermott/ If your idea of cap hell or cap strife, or whatever, is so bad that only two teams of the last ten years come to mind, then fair enough, the Bills weren't there. But they absolutely were in bad cap shape. They were aware of it. Beane knew even before his interview that it needed cleaning up and that it was going to be a priority. Fine, they weren't in "cap strife." But hey were in poor shape under the cap, particularly for a team with so few results in terms of wins and losses. Beane called it "cap jail or whatever you want to call it."

From what I can see, you're in fundamental disagreement with yourself. You say they can keep anyone they really want to keep. But then you say they'll have to make sacrifices to make it work with the cap. Those two statements are in opposition. I agree with the second. Yeah, they'll have to make sacrifices. Sacrifices mean you don't keep everyone you really want to keep. Pretty sure the 9ers would've loved to keep Buckner and the Texans Hopkins. But they had to make sacrifices. I disagree totally about the Saints there. EDIT: I see you noticed it wasn't a great example, but still worth looking at what happened when they got in cap problems ... Yeah, people said they can't sign Byrd without the cap catching up to them. And they were right. New Orleans was coming off five very competitive years and then suddenly ... Pre-Byrd and salary cap prob. 2009: 13-3 and title 2010: 11-5 and lost wild card game 2011: 13-3 and won wild card and lost division championship to Harbaugh's 9ers 2012: 7-9 no playoffs 2013: 11-5 and won wild card and lost division game to champion Seahawks then they picked up Byrd and got in a cap jam and suddenly ... 2014: 7-9 2015: 7-9 2016 7-9 ... with Drew Brees at QB, healthy all three of those years. I am enjoying the ride. Part of the ride that I am enjoying is that Beane knows that he has to keep the cap under control. He's smart. He's doing a great job. He is concerned with draft picks including comp picks. He gets it. Why wouldn't I enjoy the ride with a GM who knows how to play the system. "So, the plan is to always be in cap strength and in draft picks strength, like this presents itself. I mean there are certain teams that I would like to have traded for, Stefon Diggs or some of these other players have been traded for but didn’t have the cap space. Or didn’t have the capital to do it so will we have that every year Josh? I don’t know, but this is all been a plan to have our caps strong and have the draft picks to be able to send them to acquire a veteran player or to move up and down the draft how we want." - Brandon Beane https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2020/4/3/21206671/transcript-buffalo-bills-general-manager-brandon-beane-2020-free-agency-stefon-diggs-coronavirus

IMO it's just a case of people having different opinions. Happens all the time, very reasonably. Nobody knows for sure what will happen. More so with Tua. He might not even play. Or he might play and be really good.

Beane does indeed get it. He says it's not time yet but he absolutely will begin to game the system for comp picks. He understands their importance and has even built his own little system of bringing in low-dollar FAs who can either be traded for picks or can replace guys who can be traded, such as McCarron, Wyatt Teller and so on. He's not at the point in the team's life cycle where he can easily get comp picks, so he has to find a cheap way to manufacture his own. He's beyond getting it. He's smart as hell. And again, yes, you need to have good football players. Spending time and effort on comp picks and keeping the team in excellent cap shape ... are excellent ways to bring in the maximum number of good football players. It doesn't work against that. Just the opposite. If you want to bring in good football players, get more draft picks and keep your cap in good shape. That will allow you to bring in the FAs to fill your holes, like the ones I mention in the 4th paragraph. So I agree with your last sentence, but I think you yourself maybe missed what you said. "Your cap space and draft picks are currency to acquire talent, and, critically, to retain it." Yes, exactly. Dead on target. And that's why bringing in every pick you can and keeping the cap in good enough shape that you have a lot flexibility is an absolute key to bringing in and maintaining a good roster. Which is why the best teams in the league so consistently worry about comp picks and cap space. What do you mean he couldn't say that he wanted to get the guys out who don't fit our culture. Not only "could" he say that ... he DID say it. Again and again and again. Of course he could say that. Tell me, was Robert Woods a culture problem? No, of course not. Charles Clay? No. He wasn't living up to his contract. Great guy, insane Whaley contract. Ronald Darby a bad locker room guy? Nope. He would've been expensive in the near future and they needed draft picks. Preston Brown a dirtbag? Cordy Glenn? Tyrod? McCoy was overpaid, and I always thought he was a bit of a dirtball but all reviews in the locker room said he was a great locker room guy. Certainly much more talented than the aging Frank Gore. But he was too expensive. Gilmore has managed to avoid being a culture problem for Belichick. Culture simply wasn' t the issue, nor, obviously was talent with him. He would've cost too much and they were fighting to get the cap in terrific shape in a very short time. For good reason. Yeah, there were a couple of dirtballs, Dareus being the prime example, though it had also become obvious that year that he was not only lazy but overpaid. Sammy appears to have been the other main problem. But most of those moves that cut cap were done for two reasons, draft capital and cutting the cap. Again, Beane has reported in at least two places that he said in his interview that clearing up the cap mess was going to be a major priority and that he promised to do it by the beginning of the 2019 season, which he did. He didn't know who were culture problems, though he may have had some ideas on obvious guys. He wanted to clear up the cap because it's a great idea. They weren't in cap hell if you want to use the extreme definition. But yeah, Bill, they absolutely were in something like it. Cap hell, no. Cap problems, yeah. The cap situation of a team trying to get into a window? Yeah. Despite the fact that the roster was nowhere near being good enough to compete for a championship? Yeah. No, they weren't about to have to do the kind of purge where we lost Bruce Smith, Thurman, etc. But yes, if we'd kept that crappy cap situation and hadn't cleared the decks (and yes, some of that clearing also came to acquire draft capital to bring in Josh, but most of it was to clear up the cap), then they couldn't have brought in guys like Morse, Murphy, Lotulelei, Hyde, Poyer, Spain, John Brown, Beasley, Feliciano, Jordan Phillips, Lorax, Feliciano, Kevin Johnson, Tyler Kroft, Spencer Long, Nsekhe, Corey Liuget, McKenzie, Lee Smith, Andre Roberts, Kurt Coleman, Diggs, Addison, Vernon Butler, Quinton Jefferson, Josh Norman, Klein, Matakevich, Daryl Williams, Marlowe, Boehm, and Hauschka and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Sure they could have brought in some of these guys. Half, maybe? Particularly if they took the cheaper ones instead of the more expensive? Yeah, sure. That FA group is the skeleton of this team, and together they cost an awful lot, way more than they could have paid for without a monster salary cap improvement project. EDIT: Just to return to the headline, of course if Josh becomes a top 10 guy they should pay him, even if he becomes the highest-paid. It's a cost of doing business intelligently.

I disagree on Edmunds. He was very very likely to be excellent. His floor wasn't low. Allen ... yeah, fair enough, probably. You have to take risks with a QB. They don't come around as often as you'd like, and when they do, you have to grab one. Besides, how many QBs DON'T have low floors. Very very few. It's such a huge jump from college to pros that nearly anyone who's not named Luck or P. Manning can fail if they don't pick up skills they've never demonstrated at the college level and speed up their mental processing skills by huge amounts. How long will it be a team-friendly deal? If we don't win a Super Bowl and Diggs gets angry with a lack of production and threatens a holdout, what will happen? We don't know how team-friendly this deal will be. It's friendly as hell now, it's mega-amicable, super-affable, ultra-cordial, hell, it's downright team-intimate and team-matey. But for how long? How much of a diva will Diggs end up being? This wasn't a no-brainer at all. I'm sure they thought pretty hard about it. It could still go either way, IMO.

Yes, they can. Of course they can. But they won't. Because doing so would mean they would lose flexibility, be unable to fill the holes that appear regularly. Sure, they could sign 14 or 15 guys at $10+ mill average salary contracts. And then fill in around them with guys on contracts around $1 mill or less. Sure, it's possible. But it won't happen. If it was as easy as "We'll just keep everyone we desire to keep," then there'd never be a hard choice, would there? And yet every team faces them, and the better their roster the more often they face them. Yeah, they can. The 49ers certainly could have kept Buckner. But they didn't. It wasn't smart, largely for cap reasons. What they'll do is very carefully try to figure out who they can keep while still retaining enough flexibility to make the many other things they need to do work. Generally, teams can afford to keep roughly 9 - 11 core guys. How many depends on how much those guys end up costing. Probably closer to 9 if your QB costs $40 mill. A bunch of them will be at positions that are more important, if you get a guy there who fits what the coaches want. For us, those guys at crucial positions would appear to be Allen, Edmunds, Dawkins, White, Oliver if you're looking that far down the road, Diggs, Morse That's seven, if you count Oliver this early, which you might not. After that it becomes less clear. Do you count Addison at $10.15M a year as a core guy for the next three years? Maybe. If so, that'd be eight core guys. Who'll be the pass rusher they prioritize? Hughes would seem to be too old for them to extend him if he's expensive next time. Often there are a few guys at positions that aren't generally highly valued that are either terrific players or perfectly fit what the team wants. The Colts will probably make Quenton Nelson a core guy, though guards aren't usually seen that way. Our guys here might be Milano, Ford, maybe Jefferson if he's as good as we hope. Knox, if he's as good as we hope? Other than those 9 - 11 guys, people will come in and leave. They'll be drafted and stay on rookie contracts. They'll sign cheap to medium-priced FA contracts (depending on what's available with the cap). They'll re-sign cheaply. They'll sign short contracts for just a year or two to quickly open up space down the road when they leave. They'll fit in ... with intelligent cap management and the tough decisions that that entails.

Yup. Exactly. Another reason why you want to maximize how high your picks are to give them more freedom of who they can pick, and also maximize the number of picks. If you have a lot of picks, you can trade up or you can give the guy who's less often wrong even more chances.

Nope, that's not Josh who had a 100% "beat the hell out of Dak's team" percentage. That was the Buffalo Bills. Wins and losses are team stats. Did Josh outplay Dak in that game? Yeah. Does that mean he's a better QB, because he outplayed a guy in one game? No. And it's worth remembering that the defense Dak's offense was playing against that game was significantly better than the Cowboys defense Josh's offense was facing.

A crapshoot is something that has an unpredictable outcome, according to Merriam-Webster. The draft as a whole is anything but unpredictable. Every single year in history more first-rounders stick and become good than fourth rounders. It isn't unpredictable by any means. The higher up you go, the better your odds. Is it difficult? Yeah, you bet. But out of the six cited players: 1.1 Myles Garrett DE Browns 1.2 Mitch Trubisky QB Bears 1.3 Solomon Thomas DE 49ers 1.4 Leonard Fournette RB Jaguars 1.5 Corey Davis WR Titans 1.6 Jamal Adams S Jets ... you've got four excellent players, Those are good odds. Yeah, some fifth-year options haven't been exercised, but that's not a draft issue. It's a multi-factorial decision, involving cap space, injuries, motivation of the player, who else you've got at the position, how valuable the position is and a ton more. I wouldn't have made the Diggs trade, myself. I'm clear that Beane is way better at this than I am, but IMO he paid a bit too much in picks, Diggs may (or may not) be a bit of a diva, and while I absolutely love his pay schedule the next few years, my bet is that he either gets paid more and quite a bit more sometime before the 2022 season ... or that he proves unhappy. My guess is there'll be a re-negotiation in the next two years, which will make that trade look worse. Of course, if the Bills win a Super Bowl sometime soon, that result would validate the decisions made to get there. Hope this is what happens. I wouldn't have made that trade, myself, though.

Again, I politely but very strongly disagree with calling those issues peripheral. Well, not media slights, that's entirely peripheral. But cap space and comp picks are the opposite of peripheral. It's not a mistake that Beane in his interview with the Pegulas promised that he would completely clear up the cap problem within two years. The reason he was talking about that at that important moment is exactly the obvious. Because it's not peripheral. Anything but. Are these in the top five issues a GM should be concerned about, once he's past the rebuild? No. But it's not a mistake that the teams obsessed with those "peripheral" issues, the ones who play those systems the best, are among the best in the league, the Pats, the Ravens, the Pack, the Steelers. You look at their history and you find that whether they're having bad or good years they're always maximizing comp picks. Teams that have rebuilt don't generally get them, but look at the Pats and after that first four years of the Belichick era, suddenly they're always getting them.Now that they've lost Brady and their window, watch the Pats go back to the penny-pinching, comp-pick-pinching ways that they've hammered away at through nearly all of the Belichick era. Yes what wins is talent. No question. And the way to maximize your talent is to do the things that allow you to bring in more, better, younger and cheaper players, and two of those things are absolutely cap space and comp picks. When you have to overpay for a QB, comp picks allow you to bring in a few more guys on cheap rookie contracts and cap space allows you to fill holes with low- to mid-priced guys who aren't weaknesses, and that's something you can't do when you are up against the cap.

I've never thought Dak a top 12 guy. Till last year when he was a top ten guy. If you've got a top ten guy you have to re-sign him and unless he's willing to give you a discount, or unless the NFL is going through hard financial times, you have to make him the highest-paid guy. Yeah, assuming he's a top ten QB at that young age, I'd do it. I'd grumble. But I'd pay him.