Thurman#1

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?

You didn't use the words "spend like sailors," but then you talk about adding both Green and Yannick, which for them in one year is likely well within their definition of spending like sailors. You're like the guy who says, "I'm not drinking right now. This beer? Beer's not drinking." Yes it is, and while you don't want the words to be associated with you, the moves you're talking about are exactly what they've always said they're not going to do. And while the year-to-year strategies will absolutely differ, you're desperately hoping that something that they obvious consider not a year-to-year strategy but a foundational principle will change. And it won't. They've said the same thing about not spending a ton on FAs every single time they've been asked, not just this year but with absolute consistency since their very first press conference. Here's the most recent, from the end of season PC about three weeks ago: https://billswire.usatoday.com/2020/01/07/buffalo-bills-brandon-beane-press-conference-8-takeaways/ "Since taking over as Buffalo’s general manager in the 2017 offseason, Beane’s roster additions have been consistent and concentrated, often making under-the-radar moves that prove to be more impactful than initially thought. With roughly $90 million in cap space to play with in the offseason, Beane again plans to make careful and well thought out moves that may not steal headlines, but will improve the team’s roster. “I don’t think we’re one player away,” Beane said. “I never think you are, and I definitely don’t think we’re one player away. You lose the first round of the playoffs, that doesn’t say to me [that] the Bills are one player away from being exactly where they want to be. “We’re a lot of positions away that we’ve got to clean up or answer.” Hunh. Seems almost as if he in fact would disagree that they are only a few players away. Beane is who he is. You can either deal with it or not. Your choice. And as for "add a couple somewhat splashy signings/trades," again, yeah, very solid guess. They could re-sign Tre' White, for instance, or Dawkins, and they had some nice somewhat splashy signings last year in Morse, Cole Beasley and John Brown. It totally would make sense for them to do the same kind of thing again this year. Look, first that's only a small part of the argument. And second, if you want to force the word "soon" to mean something it doesn't, fine, go ahead, whatever. Your business. But for most people, next year is soon. I won't bother continuing that argument, it's not worth another keystroke to me. But pretending that they might not sign Edmunds as soon as March 2021 is kidding yourself. They might not. Equally, they might not, but it's absolutely something they'll consider. Same with Tre' and Dawkins and the others who they can consider as early as next month. Just because a guy is under contract for longer doesn't mean it won't be economically sensible to extend him now. They've said it's their first priority to re-sign guys and maintain continuity, and to build their core through the draft. The argument isn't "whether they have the ability to hypothetically give Golladay a new contract ..." It's whether they will, or maybe whether they would if he were available. It's whether that's the kind of move they intend to make. Look at their models and you see those teams making a move that big very infrequently, once every five years or so, roughly. Could this be the year? Maybe. I seriously doubt it with Golladay myself, even if he were available, not for the money he's likely to demand and the draft pick the Lions would likely demand.

Yeah, I'm not dying for it, but it would make a lot of sense, depending on the price.

Would I take him for a 5th or 6th? Yeah. Would I give him up for a 5th or 6th if I was Cleveland. A guy who had 639 yards in his 2nd year? Absolutely not.

Yeah, huge contract for Oliver. $4.9 M per year average. Def one "of the highest paid DT's in the league." How can they ever afford any other players?

I'd take Cousins in a micro-second. His playoff losses absolutely have not been mostly his fault. He's not a top five guy and looks like he never will be, but he's better than Dak. I'm so happy that the Bills don't have to deal with the Prescott situation. He clearly isn't a $35M guy, but at the same time, Dallas can't let him go, and he looks like he's not coming for less. I think they end up paying him too much. Couldn't happen to a nicer team and owner.

Did I ever say everyone is coming back? IMO they will try hard to get two of the three to come back, but you could easily be right about them ending up with one of the three. But you seem also to be forgetting about Dawkins, Tre', Milano, Poyer, etc., all or several of whom could easily be extended this year. And yeah, expecting a "somewhat noisy FA signing/trade" ... what you're doing there is guessing, but it's a reasonable guess. I guess that myself. A Jordan Howard, maybe, a Vic Beasley, a Hunter Henry, guys along those lines who don't get re-signed. The teams Beane and McDermott model - teams built for consistent success over a long period - generally operate with the same principles Beane is talking about, building the core through the draft, re-signing their own as a priority, filling in with low- to mid-priced FAs. And many of the teams bring in a premium FA once in a blue moon, maybe once every five years or so. This could be the year Beane does something like that. Even if they don't, though, it would be reasonable to expect this year's Cole Beasley, John Brown and Mitch Morse. And there weren't only those three last year when they had nearly as much money as they do now. Those guys improved the team significantly and did it without breaking the bank. Throw in development of the group already here, a new draft class and hopefully some improvement by Josh Allen and they'll have a chance to be pretty damn good. Expecting them to wade into FA like Pacman Jones at a strip club, though, will almost surely lead to disappointment.

Oh, so you're making completely unwarranted assumptions and proceeding as if they're facts? Got it, but why would you appear so satisfied with making such an obvious logical error, not to mention the error of leaving out all the other people I mentioned that they could easily be signing this year, not to mention after that. You can argue that they don't "need" an "overly" conservative mindset if you want. But it's beside the point. They don't give a ***** what you think about their mindset, which by the way isn't "overly" anything, though it certainly is conservative. But they've made clear what their beliefs are and how they operate. I'm pretty sure you're not going to change their mind. Do you think that perhaps if you just argue enough the light will suddenly go on for them and they'll start spending like sailors on leave? You are the one cheerleading wild spending. They, the ones at whom the buck stops, have said again and again that they don't work that way. You seem to be more of a fan of wild spending than of the Bills. If you're so in love with that kind of approach, why don't you take the offseason and switch allegiances to the Redskins or the Cowboys. There are a few others who will doubtless do things that way. Follow them for at least the offseason and make yourself happy. Come back after Beane has done what he has again and again said he will do. Oh, and having now gone back and reading it, SoFla was still mischaracterizing. He mentioned only Allen and Edmunds when Elijah mentioned a bunch of guys and used the word "etc." besides.

Beane didn't draft Zay. Beane was still hard at work in Carolina. So, he's drafted Austin Proehl and Ray-Ray McCloud. And if drafting a 6th and a 7th and ending up with a practice squad guy two years later is bad drafting there isn't a front office in the league that isn't bad. How could you conclude anything other than that he's bad? Well, you could use sense. If you do that, it's impossible to make any other conclusion. Drafting an OL says absolutely nothing about how good you are at drafting WRs, and particularly not when that OL still has a very good chance of turning out to be a very nice pick. Again, if you start grading FOs by who they DIDN'T draft, there won't be a single one in the league who looks good, not one. You judge GMs by who they drafted. Um, you're the one who just said he should be judged on drafting Jones among others. See above in red. That is a horrible analogy, and not just in one way. First, it's nothing like a firefighter who doesn't respond to fires. Beane responded, he just didn't respond to the ones you'd have preferred. A better analogy would be trying to argue that a guy is terrible at asking out blondes because so far he's only asked out and dated women with brown, black and red hair, and with great results. That's the first way your analogy utterly fails, but the second is more obvious and worse. Saying, "your argument is "he CAN'T be bad at drafting WRs ... because he doesn't draft any!" is perhaps the worst paraphrase of a position I've ever encountered. He never said anything like, "He CAN'T be bad ..." It's you trying to make a (dumb) conclusion from no evidence, not him. He's trying to say "You can't prove that he's bad at drafting WRs because he's never drafted any," and you saying, "He must be bad at it because he's never done it." An utter fail. You don't know how good someone is at drafting a high-round WR till he drafts one at the very least.

First, whatever post you are talking about is not what I replied to. Second, "soon" has plenty of leeway. It's absolutely not a total exaggeration that they could be getting paid soon. Allen and Edmund could get paid as soon as next off-season. I very much doubt that Allen in particular will, but "soon" is a very reasonable word under the circumstances. Yeah, the Bills control Tre for another two years. That does not in any sense rule out giving him a new contract as soon as before or during this season. Depending on the details of the contract it could easily make total sense for both parties. And extending guys who are key contributors in a year when you have a lot of money makes total sense. As for going to get a final big piece or two ... well, that's fine if that's the way you would spend money. I myself am very happy that McDermott and Beane have made it very clear that it's not how they do things. They build their core through the draft and fill in with low- and medium-priced FAs and they prioritize bringing back their own guys, and they've said it so many times now I wonder how people still fight to ignore their words.

Nice.

Always liked Tyrod as a person. I wish him the best. And I agree with your statement if taken exactly literally. He did the best HE could with the pieces we had at the time. A better QB could have done better. But it wasn't Tyrod who did enough to get to the playoffs. It was the Buffalo Bills.

Please, nobody's mentioning cap hell right now, though we really were in horrible cap shape when McDermott arrived from the Whaley administration. You don't have to be worrying about an immediate cap hell to advocate spending judiciously. And that's nonsense that the guy he was referring to was specifically pointing towards having to protect guys like Edmunds and Allen. Yeah they enter the equation but they are very very far from being the only guys that we are going to be concerned with re-signing. Where did Elijah, the guy Scott was replying to, saying anything about Edmunds and Allen, specifically. He's talking about the whole situation, and yes a big contract that will last for years will affect our ability to sign guys now and for years. We're not going to have $90M every year, or at least not unless we spend very judiciously indeed. Here's his post: And I greatly disagree with your effort to minimize guys we might be looking to re-sign or extend this year. It ain't just Milano and Dawkins (and no, those two wouldn't break the bank, but they also won't be cheap, particularly Dawkins). It's also guys like Tre' White, like Poyer, like Spain, Levi Wallace, Shaq Lawson, Jordan Phillips.