Thurman#1

The "cap impact" of having a guy is how much he costs. Period. What you're talking about doesn't have a one-word name. It's the cap impact of keeping him over letting him go. "Cap difference," maybe, something like that. Tyrod's cap impact, if they keep him for 2018, will be $23 mill. And the cap impact of keeping Tyrod over letting him go, the number you're referring to is still far far too high. Asked for what a QB needed to do to be his QB, McD said one thing. Not a list of many. One. You've got to be able to throw from the pocket. They gave Tyrod a chance and he proved he couldn't. So yeah, the cap impact of keeping him is too high for a guy who doesn't meet the one requirement they have. One requirement. Oh, and you're assuming - completely wrongly - that because that's what Siemian is now he can't get a lot better. He can. He might. Plenty of guys do around their fourth year. I agree he'd be a downgrade from Taylor but sometimes downgrades are OK. A down grade from sub-mediocre to even further sub-mediocre isn't going to make a big difference. What really is going to make a big difference is the probably $10 mill difference in their salaries. Oh, and first, if you don't think there's a pretty decent chance that "we'll pay the bonus" thing is to try to get teams to trade before the deadline, we'll have to disagree. I agree I didn't think of the possibility that they'd try to "buy" a draft pick by paying the $6 mill in hopes that someone would trade after. No question paying that bonus makes him a far more desirable trade target. IMHO the chances of Tyrod being on our roster this year have gone up, a very small amount. It could easily be to create demand, but who knows. If he's actually gets the bonus the Bills will have the upper hand in trade talks. HIs value might go up a bit as well. It was an interesting move.

Let me say this more clearly the second time around. Did I say that I am dying to get Siemian? Or that he's the best option? Or anything like that? You responded as if I said something I simply never did. Again, reading's your friend.

Reading is your friend.

Know who's "a momentary placeholder at best"? Tyrod. Siemian on the other hand is young enough that he might actually improve. We know what Tyrod is. Agreed Siemian isn't exceptional at all, but he's a third-year guy, Siemian might get better. Here's the other thing. Tyrod's cap impact for one year of play in 2018: $23 million in 2018 and 2019. Ridiculously overpriced. Siemian's cap impact for one year of play in 2018: much much much less. We could probably get him for his real value, unlike Tyrod. I'm no big Siemian fan. But he's someone a team will bring in with a very reasonable hope of making him into a decent backup or hoping to get lucky and see great improvement. I wouldn't mind us doing that, though I doubt we would.

Pass on the keep Tyrod part. Bring in an FA QB who fits the system so everyone can work in the system they want to run, not to mention because $23 mill in cap for one year of Tyrod (yup, there'll be dead money after he leaves next year if he is on the roster in 2018) is insane. But other than that, yeah, you have to suffer some pain to get a highly ranked guy. I think you're confusing suffering and future suffering, at least in the sense he was referring to. Sure trading away picks is suffering. It means you can't pick some guys you'd absolutely love to get. In the same way that spending a lot of money when you have a very limited supply is suffering, so is trading away a bunch of picks. The pain of sacrifice. But yeah, of course you're right that sometimes trading away those picks makes you happy in the long run, same as spending a lot of money might buy you something you end up really happy with. This thread appears to have gotten a little wacky but his OP is correct. Yeah, you gotta suffer one way or the other if you want to get a highly ranked QB. And getting one of those guys is the best way to maximize your chances of getting a very good QB. It's not the only way, but it's certainly the best chance.

I get why people wouldn't want him. But there's a very legit argument either way. He's had three years in the league. The light could still turn on. Not saying it will, but it's still well within the time when that happens with young QB with fair regularity.

Is there any chance it's a fake account? Or is this an account that's been around for a long time and is dependable? I kinda hope it's a fake. Nutty, otherwise.

We've got a reasonable shot up to #4 or #5. Any of the QBs could be in play. The likelihood is that two will be gone but it could be one. No way to be sure which one. Which cerebral pocket passer have we got a real shot to get? All of them. Some more likely than others, but Mayfield and maybe Cousins would likely be available. Throw in next year's number one and we might even trade up to #2. Pretty much anything could happen. Yeah, it's likely Darold or Rosen will be gone, but Kiper has Allen as #1 and Mayock has him as the #2 QB. You just don't know. If we're willing to make a really strong move up, we could get nearly any of them. The question is whether we're willing to make that strong move or pay that salary for Cousins. If you've got the money, a trip to Belize and a pony aren't all that crazy a dream. The Bills have the money, or the capital anyway.

"If you follow the NFL closely, and you were born before yesterday, you probably know that teams and agents alike treat the rules governing free agency like glorified yellow lights. What you might not know is to what degree everyone has their foot on the gas in advance of being able to legally contact the proverbial belles of the ball." Nice. Shows the whole "he couldn't know if anyone was interested, or how much" thing is nonsense. An interesting look behind the scenes.

Oh, man, Tasker's about to cough his lungs up. Get that guy some Mucinex and Dr. Halls.

Doubt he, or anybody, really, monitors us. Do you get much when you monitor the Jets or Fins or Pats boards? I've tried it a few times and didn't get much. In any case, I like Barnwell a lot generally, a very smart guy, but yeah, not a lot new here. The Preston Brown thing is interesting, maybe. The thoughts here have been that we need more speed and that that means that Preston should go. That's not a bad take, but the opposite is just as reasonable. I think his mentioning of Henne and Moore is kind of interesting as well. But yeah, fair enough, no hot takes here at all. Not news. Should it have been? He's doing a series and one on every team. Should he be expected to have news on each one? No, they could bring in one and keep Peterman. They may like him more than you do. My guess is that they're gonna keep three, either on the roster or using the practice squad. Just a guess, obviously, but certainly possible.

Foles didn't beat Brady in the Super Bowl. What happened was the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots. The problem with Foles has always been that if he has time and space he can be very very good but if he's rushed and throwing "off-platform" as the new buzzword goes, he's not good. In the Super Bowl the excellent Eagles line and the poor Pats pass rush had him standing back there with all the time in the world. He was really good, but that could have been another story if the Pats had had a pass rush.

He hasn't got a problem with lack of leadership. Find a place where his high school or college coaches or teammates have complained. Yeah, he's outspoken. And some teams might not want that. But that doesn't equal a lack of leadership.

Interesting. PR is a curse on society.

But the reason people are saying that, I think, is because they have some trust in OBD to correctly identify a guy who would fit the system and be good enough to thrive in it. Not that they believe necessarily that all four are going to be franchise guys.

That's the thing, Hapless. That 2004 draft is the one this is being compared to. It's better than the past four or five, a lot better. And all of those guys had flags. Manning, Rivers and Roethlisberger. All of them had red flags. Everyone does, every year. You're quite right that Losman had more. But there was a ton of ink spent on how Roethlisberger had played at a very low level school at Miami of Ohio and you didn't know what he would do against real competition. Rivers couldn't run, had footwork issues, had a long slow delivery, his deep balls have problems with sailing and overthrows ... it just goes on and on. Everyone has issues. Everyone. And by the way, it's a very reasonable possibility that Losman in the right circumstances might have become good. The Bills handled him very poorly. It was bad luck that he broke his leg but the year after that they should have had him compete with Bledsoe and keep developing if he lost that competition. They didn't. They gave him the starter job before the season, ready or not, and pissed off a lot of the vets. And then when he finally had a pretty good year in 2006 and looked ready to maybe break out ... they got rid of his OC and brought in a guy who decided to change the offense to a system that played not to his strengths but to his weaknesses, Steve Fairchild. He was never the same after that. Would he ever have been good? Dunno. But the Bills did a terrific job of minimizing the chances by handling him very poorly. Now, there's no way to know for sure if this class will be up there with 2004. There never is. Maybe you're right. Maybe there are two. But maybe three. Or four. Or zero. No way to be sure. They've got to do what teams that need a QB should always do. Scout the hell out of them and find the guys with the talent and the character and the ability to fit the system they want to use. Maybe there'll be two guys. Maybe three. Probably not all of them. But then you do all you can to get the best one for you and if that doesn't work out you try for the next. Stay away from the ones who wouldn't fit. Get one you believe in. By the way, I think your headline brought in a lot of opponents and arguments here. "Why we don't want to draft one of the top 4 QBs" sure sounds like you don't want to draft any of them, though from reading the rest of what you've written you don't actually feel that way. But that's how it read.

I strongly disagree. The Giants need to make their decision, Eli for another two or three years or draft a QB. If they do go with Eli, they need to spend every bit of draft and FA capital they have going for a championship in the time Eli is here. That would be my guess, personally, but I could easily see them going the other way and drafting a QB high instead and building for the future. They have got to either completely go for it in the short window Eli provides (and think of the disaster it was for them last year benching Eli), or build for the long-term with a new pick.

When did Nix do anything like that? He didn't. Pretty much what he did was build a terrific defense, but not ever get a good QB or successor at GM. Anyway, while getting an RB early can be sensible in a few situations, we aren't in any of those kinds of spots. And trading up to do so ... insane in any situation at this point. I think this guy was doing a pretty solid job of trolling. Lots of takers, including me, really.

Nope. People don't believe everything they read. They believe the stuff that they already thought when it's confirmed. The people who don't like the idea shout "smokescreen," which translated means, "I don't like him."

IMHO, they "like" him isn't linking us. The main problem with Leaf was an unwillingness to work. Leaf missed his interview with the Colts. He was wildly arrogant and had substance abuse problems, serious ones. These two are not twins from different mothers. Not even close. I'm not a big Allen fan at all, but Ryan Leaf? Nah.

Maybe. And probably the Colts GM, Polian, said the same thing too as he picked Peyton Manning. This is a rich QB draft. You're right that they might make a mistake. They've got to try to figure out who the best guy/guys are and get a genuinely good one. You get a guy at a position that is rich in that draft when you have the ability to trade up. Which is now. But I might feel differently if I had Eli Manning on this team and felt I could get another two or three years and a shot or two at a Lombardi out of him.

Generally, the more trades down they do, the better. The exception is right now. They've got to get a QB. And it sure looks to me like they're going to have to trade up to do it. But generally, yeah, trade down, get more picks. This. Except ... Watson? Do you mean Watkins? Or am I missing something? But yeah, there'll be good QBs in the future. And we'll have an even smaller chance of being able to move up and get them. The best QBs, the ones who are obviously good, in those future drafts will be going very high, and unless you think we're going to be drafting first, the odds are good that the team that is drafting first will want him and if they don't we won't have enough ammo to move up to get him.

I haven't looked at the QBs next year but I bet next year won't be another this year, that the class will be less impressive. Solid, maybe. As good as this year, doubtful. First, because that's how it generally works when you have an outlier. There's not generally another outlier the next year. And second because if it was another great year we'd have heard it by now. The pundits would be all over it. We were hearing about this year's class 13 and 14 months ago and how good they were going to be. And we're not this year. Doesn't mean you can't be right Maybe you are. But that's not the way to bet. And Da"Ron Payne is very good, but he's not an outlier. There'll be a very good run stuffer next year. Not that I'm against Da'Ron Payne. Seems like a good player to me. Will the Bills do what the Rams did? The Rams were in position to do what they did because they'd already put together a terrific defense. So, no, I doubt the Bills will do what the Rams did. But they don't have to. A slow build is pretty common for teams on the build. Whoever we pick will need to develop. There are many ways to do that. And sure that means building a talented core around him, but I'm sure McDermott and Beane are aware of this.

Fair enough to agree to disagree. And of course it's right that you can only play who they put on your schedule. But that doesn't mean that the schedule doesn't make your record more impressive if it's difficult or less impressive if it's easy. And this was easy. And while Arrowhead is a tough place to play, sometimes it's tougher than others. We caught the Chiefs in the middle of a four-game skid. The week before, the Giants beat them. The Giants!!! And the week after, the Jets beat them. The freaking Jets! The Chiefs won five in a row to start, lost six of seven and then finished with four wins. We caught them right in the middle of a part of their season when they were playing very poorly indeed. Yes, they did what they needed to do. Luckily for them, this year they didn't need to do much. Every good team they played was in a funk. Again, if you have to keep boasting about beating the Colts, you've obviously got a very difficult argument to make. They were 4-12. And again, Atlanta was in the doldrums and had their best player go down in the game along with a bunch of others who either went out or were out before the game. And again, I like McDermott and think he did a good job. But he also got very lucky with how things fell this year. Our opponents cumulative record was well below .500 and we caught the good teams at their lowest ebb. Fine, agree to disagree. Agreed. The Patriots, for instance, shouldn't have been worrying about comp picks in Belichick's first year, when they got Brady as a comp pick. And the year after, the year when Belichick's maneuverings resulted in the 2001 comp picks, how did they do? They had three comp picks, a 5th, a 6th and a 7th. He worried about it. So should we. You worry about comp picks every year. Every single year. Occasionally something may trump them. But generally they're important for the most obvious of reasons, because extra draft picks increase your chances of being able to pick more people, improve your chances of bringing in guys who will help at a tremendous price.

Nobody saw much "move up" talent last year either. Back then it was "This group sucks. Wait till next year." Then it turned out there were some guys there who despite having flaws look like they might be good. And it was the same the year before. The Eagles and Rams were idiots for trading up to get guys with so many flaws. You're right that we have some problems around the QB this year. That will make things harder for whoever is in the games this year. But you don't draft a QB only if you think he'll be in a good position in his first year. Peyton Manning was in a horrible situation his first year. So was Troy Aikman. You draft a QB to have a good career. If he's good his first year, terrific, but if not it's not a big problem. This is the richest QB draft in a decade or more, according to everyone, most recently Mayock. If you don't see anyone this year to trade up for it's likely because you are unwilling to ever see that kind of talent. Whether we can get up there at all, or how much we would have to pay, those are separate issues that might indeed prevent us from going up. But there's a better group of talent there this year, likely to go in the top five or six spots than we'll probably see for a long long time. You know which QBs have significant flaws? All of them. Every single one, every single year. And part of the reason none of them stands out far above the others is that the top two especially and maybe even top three, are very very good.