Thurman#1

Everybody's wrong. I don't get the chance to watch him much these days, not at all live. But from what I do see on after-the-fact videos, he's mellowed if anything. He's really entertaining, I think.

Yeah, I'd guess they're very open indeed. Might well be a 2018 Denver situation where they're willing to trade down but only if their guy doesn't fall to them. Oliver, maybe? Picks in the 2nd and 3rd are valuable this year even more than usual.

One of the worst things about being here in Japan is not getting ESPN. Watching Mel is fun. I'd much rather do that, but I don't have a choice.

10 draft picks. Could trade up. Or back to next year. Or not at all.

Fair enough that you don't buy the coach speak. But they mean it. And surely even you feel that what Beane and McDermott want is more important than what you want, or what I want or what anyone on here wants. And there's no such thing, really, as BPA at the biggest need. That's just called drafting for need. BPA and drafting for need are opposites. On the other hand, nobody drafts strict BPA with zero considerations for need. We wouldn't draft a QB if he were BPA in the first. And need factors into the grades. Beane has said that we wouldn't rate some guys as high as a team with a 3-4 defense would. Exactly. It ain't 100% pure BPA. If the need-free BPA were a 3-4 DE, he wouldn't be our BPA. Nobody drafts 100% for need. But Beane and McDermott feel, absolutely correctly, that drafting 100% for need pretty much guarantees that you won't draft very well. They seem to be an awful lot closer to BPA than to drafting for need. And yeah, Metcalf does seem to be the highest rated WR in this draft, for most. Brandt has him #1: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001026448/article/hot-150-gil-brandts-topranked-prospects-for-2019-nfl-draft Here's a couple of others, but there are a lot: https://thedraftnetwork.com/prospect-rankings https://www.drafttek.com/Top-100-NFL-Draft-Prospects-2019.asp Jeremiah disagrees, though. But who's the best WR is beside Beane's point. Who's the best player who would fit the system with maybe a few positions thrown out for lack of need, such as center and QB ... that would seem to be more of how Beane works. I wouldn't mind if they pick him, though my guess is they won't. But if they do, it'll be because they thought he was BPA where they picked him.

Agreed. Ssssssssssssso .... there'd be a salary cap. That would be much the same as it is now, only the defacto cap total would be higher.

That is one, count it - one, reason for the existence of thebtag. Not the only one

That would immediately create two tiers of teams, the rich ones who can always buy a franchise QB, and the others. Dallas makes a ton more revenue than Buffalo, for instance. Let them have a QB outside the system and when their QB got old, another poorer team's QB would be absolutely thrilled to move there and be paid five times more. No way does that make sense beyond the five or six teams with the highest revenue.

Nah, Kyle was good right from the beginning. As good as he would become? No, but very good. 54 tackles as a rookie DT and generally looked like he'd be a good player and a terrific bargain. Good post. Thanks.

I disagree. He started out that way, but by the end of the season he was understanding what he saw much better. But you're right, we do need that to keep going.

Absolutely not. The 26 year old Julio? Yeah. Now? Doesn't have a long future.

Ronnie Stanley.

I don't. But what's sure is that if you look at last year, Beane's only year in harness, they didn't do anything to make anyone think so. They had a ton of picks to start. And even after the trades, they left themselves with at least one pick in every round except the 2nd, but they had two in the first. If they do something this year where they move up while leaving themselves nothing in an early round, it'll be the first time.

BPA.

Certainly possible. But last year was absolutely not an ordinary year. Their main draft goal for 2017 and 2018 both together was to accumulate enough draft capital to trade up for a QB. But after they'd already picked Allen, they traded up again, people say. Yeah, but they'd gathered so much capital that after Allen they still had yet another 1st, as well as two thirds. So after they traded up for Edmunds, they had taken two guys in the first. So by the end of the third they had made three picks, namely two firsts and a third. After two rounds they had two guys, after three rounds, three, and so it went till the fifth, after which they had six guys. This year they have two fourths and two fifths. (By the way, I wouldn't call what we have a "multitude," myself.) I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see them trading one or both of those extras. I don't think they'll be so thrilled about trading away any picks earlier than that.

Me, I think any trade where we have to give away a third or more isn't in a sweet spot. More sour unless you traded back from nine and picked up an extra three or something like that.

Fine, that's what you say. There's a good chance you're very wrong. And the reason Bills fans think Rosen's a punk is very simple. He didn't get drafted by Buffalo. Most Bills fans didn't want anything to do with Josh Allen. Mysteriously, that has turned around now that he's wearing our jersey, as it would have for Rosen if it had been him taking snaps from Morse next year.

Rosen's OL was even worse, and Fitzgerald is very very old. Kirk is decent, especially for a rookie, but you have to resort to Johnson? He's no LeSean McCoy, though maybe he was last year. Rosen's situation was worse than Allen's. Right now, he's more accurate than Allen. That could change if Allen changes his mechanics successfully. Both guys could yet succeed or fail. Yeah, agreed.

"Not actively chasing" him? Not that they wouldn't do so sometime in the future? That's not a big story for them. The timing will be crucial. Before or after the draft is a tactical question that the Cards and suitors might want different answers to, and it might affect value too. If he goes anywhere. I'm certainly not convinced, though it's absolutely a strong possibility. That opinion might change over time.

Don't bet that an Andre Roberts return means the difference between a win and a loss. Not unless you get 10 or 20 to one. He's likely to have several biggish returns if he has a big year. The odds that any will be the difference are high. It'll be enough if he affects field position consistently and directly contributes to a couple of scores. That would be success. If we want to, we could easily find ten guys who make the roster or the practice squad. Might not. But it wouldn't be some incredible feat whatsoever.

Bashing the Bills for letting him go is hardly "you would have thought we let a first ballot wr walk," as said above, or the snideness of "prior to Canton" in the headline. And that's the kind of stuff that always gets said, never by folks who like Hogan. Always by people making fun of the folks who criticized the Hogan cut. If anything it proves the original point. The actual criticism was extremely reasonable. That's why the folks who didn't like it even to this day have to wildly exaggerate what was actually said. Whaley cut Hogan largely because he'd been such a spendthrift that we were in cap trouble despite being a team that was at best mediocre. We were in such crap shape that they could give Hogan only a minimum salary one year tender. Whaley tried to keep him, and couldn't. And the cheap-ass Pats gave him $4 mill a year over three years, and structured the contract to stop Buffalo from matching. "The Patriots signed Hogan to a three-year, $12 million offer sheet that will have a high amount of guaranteed money. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported that the three-year offer sheet will feature a $5.5 million salary cap hit for the 2016 season. With a $5.5 million cap hit for the upcoming season, the Bills would have been left with under $1 million in current cap space -- making their ability to match the offer sheet highly unlikely. The Bills chose to use the lowest possible tender on Hogan, which gave them a cap hit of $1.671 million, and in doing so they only assured themselves the right of first refusal for the wide receiver. The Bills did not match the offer sheet, and because it's the lowest tender, they will receive no draft pick compensation from New England." https://www.wkbw.com/sports/bills/bills-decline-offer-hogan-headed-to-patriots Incompetence, poor cap handling, tendering him for less than half of what he eventually got per year and being outsmarted and outmaneuvered by Belichick. Of course we were pissed. Rightly so. You didn't have to think Hogan was Megatron to think the Bills *****ed that up. Hell, you didn't have to think Hogan was an above average #3 receiver. He'd been the 3rd most productive WR on the Bills. During his first year with the Patriots, we brought in Percy Harvin for $6 mill and got nothing. Woods was our most productive WR with 613 yards, Watkins and Goodwin were #2 and #3 with 430 and 431 yards. But yeah, we had all the receivers we needed. Justin Hunter was our #4 with 189. And Hogan got 680 on 58 targets and 38 catches in NE, and that would have made him the most productive on our team. People were pissed because how it happened was utterly stupid, because they could have had him for a lot less than Belichick - a fairly smart cookie, they say -ended up paying him, and because he was a decent player replaced by guys who weren't as good. It was a move that sucked.

Thanks, Pete. Good stuff.

"You just gotta have a vertical tight end in this league to be a top tier offense that’s just all there is to it," you say? So, the Rams, who have Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett, are then obviously not a top tier offense? That's all there is to it? About the Saints, were they not a top tier offense? Or if they were, which one of Josh Hill, Dan Arnold or Garrett Griffin was the vertical tight end last year? I wouldn't mind one of the top TEs, but it's just not true that there are no good offenses without a vertical TE.

BPA. My guess at that would be Jamaal Taylor or Jonah Williams.

I'm sure there's a point to this. But it's not clear and I realize I don't care.