Thurman#1

You keep using cap numbers for specific years to attempt to get us to look away from the obvious disaster this move would be. So let me focus you, and anyone bothering to read, on the dumb move you're suggesting. Answer this simple question. If Stefon Digg is still on the roster after 3/17, his salary will guarantee. Once his salary guarantees, if they cut him at the time you're suggesting, will that guaranteed money hit the Bills salary cap as dead cap or not? I'm not asking about the year. I'm asking if he's cut, will it or will it not hit our dead cap total? Because unless you want to argue that it will disappear and never hit the Bills cap, you are saying you think it is a move the Bills should consider to add $18.5M to the cap for two things, first the right to watch Stef NOT play for the Bills and second the ability to move some cap money from the 2023 cap to later cap years. And the thing is, they can move money from 2023 to later cap years in other ways - restructures and other such vastly more sensible options - without adding $18.5M to their cap without even seeing a guy play for us in exchange for accepting the dead cap hit. Oh, and I fully understand the word brazen. One really good example of brazen behavior would be a guy arguing that his guess about something - what Spotrac precisely means by "Potential Out," for instance - must be a fact even though he hasn't checked it because it fits his narrative and he's spent a bunch of time on a website ... though, he has again NOT checked his facts. That's shameless behavior, and thus brazen. Of course, brazen people often don't recognize that they're being shameless. In fact, that's a symptom. The brazen guy would next never back down. He's keep right on arguing that he must be right even without proof, because he thinks it's so. But again, if Diggs' contract is guaranteed and he's then cut, post 6/1 or not, will that guaranteed salary hit the Bills dead cap? And again, don't try the whole "well, this year is this and this year is that" nonsense. Will it have to be accounted for on the cap or not if he's cut?

I didn't need 2 pages of directions. I need one line, which you refused to provide for two pages. Probably because what was revealed there in the context of the whole page is such weak sauce. And you needed two pages also to see that they do not list him as a potential out in 2024. We heard nothing about that from you till now despite me pointing it out again and again and again. Took you two pages to notice, apparently. And I love this from you, "'As far as I know, Spotrac doesn't use post 6/1 moves as potential outs because they are pretty rare in general." "As far as you know," meaning you are completely guessing. Pretty brazen, dude, just flat-out guessing like that. What's infinitely more likely is the wildly obvious reason why Spotrac - and everyone else in the world but you, apparently - thinks it would be an even worse Idea to cut Diggs post 6/1. Because it would cost the Bills much more money. If they cut Diggs now, they'd have to deal with $31M of dead cap. If they cut him anytime after his 2024 salary guarantees on 3/17, the dead cap hit for cutting him jumps up from $31M to $50M. His guaranteed salary for the year, $18.5M, would be added to the dead cap money, as well as his roster bonus and most likely his work out bonus as well, a total of $19M more dead money. Yeah, only $8M of it would be due this year, but that would leave $42M of dead money for one guy in 2025 ... a guy who at that point would not played with us since the 2023 season two years before. He'd probably have been paid most of his workout bonus as well by the time he was cut That's what would happen if we had made him a post 6/1 cut. Instead of paying $31M over one year to NOT have him play for us, that dumb move would have us pay $49.5M over two years to NOT have him play for us. Even stupider than cutting him now. His potential out is in 2025 for very good and obvious reasons. The only thing dumber than paying $31M dead cap money for the privilege of NOT having an excellent player play for us ... is paying $50M dead cap money instead for the privilege of NOT having an excellent player play for us. If the If the Bills want to borrow money from the 2025 cap to clear a bit of 2024 space, there are many ways to do it that would be INFINITELY smarter, ways that would NOT require them to pay $19M EXTRA for a player to NOT play for us.

Thanks for finally helping me find that. I appreciate it. It did help me completely understand your argument finally. And it did point out the numbers I'd misunderstood before. But if I'm arguing with the website, so are you. For the - fourth time? fifth time? - I have to point out that you are misrepresenting what Spotrac says, and what they think. You said this: And they did not say that. Nor anything close. That is what you apparently think about their numbers. It is NOT what they think. It is your interpretation of their numbers. They make it extremely clear when they think. They put it in words. To wit: I've pointed this out four or five times now. Each time you have responded with deafening silence on this point. They do NOT think 2024 is a potential out. ONLY YOU DO!! They apparently think it would be just as dumb as I and nearly everyone does to have Diggs cost $31M on the cap and NOT play for the Bills. A guy who put up 1183 yards last year and you want to increase the distance we are under the cap by $3M (I WAS WRONG ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!) and declare $31M a complete waste by making it completely impossible for that money to produce anything with him off the team. Throw the guy with the seventh most catches and the 13th most yards off the team and pay $31M for the right to do so. That is completely and utterly bonkers. They do not list it as a potential out. And for very good reason. You said "they say the numbers are absolutely clear that we can move off from Diggs this year and make financial sense doing so." Point out where they said this or anything like this. You can't. Because they didn't. They don't even think there's any realistic potential of it happening ... till 2025.

Henry. A lot more. Which is why we won't be signing him.

I did go to the page, the page I linked to, anyway, the standard Diggs page. There is simply nothing like that on it. Again, send me a link or directions or something. The standard Diggs page I linked to does not have anything like that. Just because it's on Spotrac does not mean it's the same page I am looking at. Spotrac has hundreds of thousands of pages. Send me a link to the one you are looking at. Perhaps you are clicking on something after you get to the standard page? If so, you are looking at a different page, with a different link. And no, nineteen million in cap savings doesn't make sense. Not when the saved $19M (his $18.5M base salary and a $250K workout bonus and a $255K roster bonus) is offset by at the same time losing $31.096K in dead money. Total those out and it means we're losing $12M on the cap in order NOT to have him play here. And again, to save that $19M, he MUST be cut before the league year starts in March. Which means all of the dead cap would hit the cap this year. Sorry, man. Again, there's a reason they say right in the middle of the table with all of his contract numbers broken down that his potential out year is 2025. Right here, on the same page I linked to before. See where it says "Potential out: 2025" at the bottom of the screenshot?

Mahomes played against mostly our second and third stringers. Allen played against mostly their firsts. Allen played a very good game. Mahomes was even better. Yup. You can say Jones was moved from DT to DE. Or you can say that Schnowman stopped him and that with one step to his right, Allen creates a wide-open pocket, never gets touched and probably completes that pass. Both are true. Allen is generally fantastic at the crucial skill of pocket movement but he wasn't on that play.

Um, yeah, nobody's arguing that the dead money in 2025 for a post 6/1 cut is different from cutting him later. I think everyone knows this. I know I do. But it's irrelevant to what we're talking about, unless we're talking past each other in some way. You said "I find that spotrac is the most accurate website IRT cap intricacies and they say the numbers are absolutely clear that we can move off from Diggs this year and make financial sense doing so." And they do NOT say that. Again, they say that 2025 is his year as a potential out. But again, if he gets cut today, the dead money is already $31M. But in a couple of weeks, this year's salary will guarantee. Cutting him at that point would give us a dead cap hit of around $49M. If you want me to understand and take seriously your little chart there, I need to see the whole page, not a small little excerpt of a page. Send a link. What I'm talking about is on the main Stef Diggs page on Spotrac. Which is where they say that his potential out is 2025, NOT 2024. I'm sure you already know how to get there, but here's a link to make it quicker for you. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/stefon-diggs-16872/

Spotrac does NOT say it makes sense for us to cut Diggs this year. That's why they list him as a potential out in 2025. Not 2024. And there is no earthly way for us to save $19M in 2024 by cutting him as you claim. No earthly way. The dead cap money for cutting Diggs is $31.096M. That's if we cut him today. That money has already been paid to him, and there's no way to reduce it. You can put off some of the cap hit to next year, but the total will be the same. But to do that, to put off some of the cap hit to next year, you would have to wait until after 6/1. And if you do that, three months previous you will have guaranteed this year's salary. Very much NOT a good idea if you're going to cut him. On Spotrac, look at his bonuses. Three years of unamortized signing bonus of $4.3M, four years of unamortized option bonuses of $3.2M per year and four years of unamortized restructure bonuses of $1.349M. All already paid to him. If we cut him before this year's salary is guaranteed, we still would have to pay $31.096M dead cap this year. Spotrac does NOT say it makes sense for us to cut Diggs this year. That's why they list him as a potential out in 2025.

The Diggs trade was great. For both sides. Slightly better for Minny, especially in terms of the cap? Yeah, very arguable. But the Bills needed a vet who would be doing it all that year. Jefferson finally turned out to be great even as a rookie, but nobody expected him to be that good that fast. Nobody. If we had not made the trade, we might easily have drafted Jefferson. Or someone else. For the pick they had to give up, Diggs was a sensational value for the Bills. The fact that the Vikes made the one single absolute best pick in that position doesn't affect how valuable Diggs has been to this team. What if we give up that pick and Jefferson gets picked two spots before us? Because the Vikes want him bad or because everyone knows the Bills want a great WR? Could easily have happened.

He'd be great to acquire but he won't be available. And even if he were, he'd be too expensive for us. You say he will have a cap hit of $7M to his new team? Spotrac has him at $15.15M purely in base salary. If we had him, would our fans want him to be traded? Even if we had to pay him $29M NOT to play for us? Hell, no! We do indeed talk a lot about guys like DHop and Evans. But there's a reason they aren't on the team. They were too expensive last year even when we had more money than we do now. That DHop / Evans talk existed, but it was wasted breath.

If thinking Mahomes is a bit better than Josh means you know as much about QBs as Jon Snow, pretty much the whole world, including players and coaches, knows about as much about QBs as Jon Snow.

He dragged Cassel to 11-5 with one of the easiest schedules in history. Even the Fins went 11-5 in the AFC East that year with the easy slate the division faced, when they were 1-15 the year before and 7-9 the year after. In that 11-5 year, the Pats beat three teams with winning records, and two of those were in the division facing the same easy schedule, the Fins, the 9-7 Jets, and the 9-7 Cards. And Kosar was no dumpster fire. He was a pretty solid QB. Garoppolo too. Neither has been really really good but both good. MacCorkle too, really. If he's a dumpster fire, Belichick gets a great deal of the blame. As a rookie, MacCorkle looked really promising. After that, Belichick gave him an OC with a defensive background.

This may go a long way towards documenting the fact that fans are far more subject to panic and bad, emotionally-based decision-making than they should be.

While I agree with nearly all of what you're saying here, it wasn't a "turnover narrative." It was the actual occurences of turnovers and particularly interceptions. He actually had more INTs than anyone but Sam Howell. That's not a narrative, it's a stat. Agreed on what you're saying about 3rd downs. I wonder if it's not a result of longer yardages. Teams this year started to treat our second downs like third downs, taking more risks like blitzing and hidden coverages. Did that result in longer 3rd down yardages? Not sure. If I had more time I'd try to research it.

It ain't like three quarters of the league has two top receivers. Pretty much everyone has one top receiver. There are exceptions, like the Bengals for one, but they are few and far between. The Chiefs certainly only have one top receiver to go with their Lombardi trophy. Yes, Josh is terrific. It can't be reasonably argued that he isn't. But you don't judge how good a QB is from how he does at the end of the game. It's about the whole game, it really is. A QB who does well throughout the game eliminating clutch situations entirely is doing better than a guy who does well in the clutch, allowing another QB who does well in the clutch that day from going back and forth with you and having whoever had the ball last to win. Much better to be better in the clutch than worse. Far far better still to be better over the course of all parts of your game. And when you're looking at a total of 30 or 40 minutes over the course of one season, statistical significance is quite questionable. I do think he's clutch, I think we all feel that. But how much so being determined by this look at five minutes from a few games in one season is very questionable. And so is how well other QBs did during the same type of very limited looks.

The Houston game was on the offense every bit as much as the defense. Allen was tight as a drum and gave in to his heroball tendencies. Had some genuinely good moments. And a few horrible as well. In 2021 nobody had figured out how to stop high-flying offenses like the two in those games. KC's D couldn't do anything either. If we'd won that coin flip we'd have won the game. Defenses simply hadn't figured out how to do anything much against those new-look groups. Defenses have caught up over the past couple of years and are making it a lot more difficult. 2022 wasn't on the defense, especially. The whole team played like someone slipped Ambien in their Count Chocula. The offense too. This year the D played pretty decent for the guys they were forced to play. The offense played better, but certainly not great. Took what KC gave them but couldn't really break through and make any big plays.

Nah. The DL was indeed a problem. Von simply wasn't himself after the injury. Same with DaQuan. Floyd, who's been great, was either injured or had dead legs the last few games. He wasn't himself either. Rousseau's been a damn good pick. Epenesa was solid too. Not Basham so far, that's for sure. But they've had good and bad picks. You're unlikely to get elite pass rushers when you're picking in the late 20s. It happens, but not all that often. And if your DL is under-manned, you'd better be healthy and have your LBs all ready to ... oops. Both starters couldn't go a single snap because of injuries. And it's not that Reid knows how to attack him. If he did, they'd have killed the Bills in the first half. That's not what happened. They adapted, figured out where the weak injury replacements were and still didn't run away with it. And they haven't made bad picks in the secondary. One that looks bad so far, though it's too early to say so far. Several excellent. Dane Jackson in the 7th was really good, Benford in the 6th was a terrific bargain (his injury hurt a ton). This was a defense that was gutted with injuries.

An awful lot here that doesn't make much sense. For one, you say, "No chance [Tre]'s at his best. That's both obviously purely distilled guesswork and near-irrelevant. He doesn't need to be at his best. If he's damn good he'll be worth every penny of his very reasonable salary this year. We'd save virtually nothing by cutting him. It'll be about what it's always about. Lots of things falling on the scales, including financial, physical, what we get in FA and the draft, The fact you want him gone says far more about you than it does about the situation. Second, they absolutely were a terrific defense. Before the injuries. Injuries which are unpredictable and in fact random. You're certainly right that after those injuries they weren't a championship defense. Before, they were really really good. And even with that they allowed two more points and 130 yards less to the Chiefs than the Niners did in the SB. And the Niners are a terrific defense.

Those are all factors, especially all the defensive injuries this year, but the #1 factor is this: Mahomes and the Chiefs. The only other team to knock us out caught us when absolutely emotionally deadened by the Hamlin thing, Knox's brother's death, the supermarket shooting, and on and on. Mahomes and the Chiefs were fractionally better all three times, just barely eking past us.

Barring injury or regression, hell yeah!! He was still having a few problems early, but he got better and better and better. Against DeMarcus Lawrence, you just about didn't see Lawrence all game. I really noticed that.

Nonsense. Nonsense that they "traded up for mediocre defensive players". Guys in the last four years we've traded picks for on defense are: Elam, Benford in the 6th, Baylon Spector in the 7th. Those are two very good late picks. Elam sure isn't looking good so far, but that could easily turn around, and they traded a 4th rounder to get that pick. A 4th isn't nothing, but it's not like they gave up a pick on the first two days or something. When (relatively) healthy at the beginning of the year this defense was excellent. Nonsense that they neglected to give Josh Allen adequate weapons when they got him Stef Diggs, they used their 1st round pick on a weapon who shows every sign of being a terrific player, and they used a 2nd on Cook last year who was 6th in the league in yards from scrimmage, and not a distant 6th. He was 19 yards away from 4th place overall.These three aren't adequate weapons. They are far better than that. Could they have used more? Sure. But they had better weapons than the Chiefs.

It didn't matter because the injuries on that defense absolutely decimated them. Losing a couple of guys is par for the course. But having five or six of the original eleven starters out including probably four of the five or six best players on that defense was devastating. There isn't a unit in the league that wouldn't have been greatly affected by those kinds of losses.

This team was built extremely well. Without all the defensive injuries, IMO they beat the Chiefs. The injuries just killed them.

This is dumb. Guts isn't an issue. And the fact that you think you know what his ceiling is now only shows you don't know the difference between opinions and facts. This will be about making educated guesses at the future, with infinitely more knowledge of Tre's medical situation than you and I have and trying to fit a situation with dozens of moving parts and information that can never be complete into the teams's situation, which has millions of moving parts and can never be even anywhere close to complete. Is it possible they ask him to take a bit of a cut? Yeah. Does it have anything to do with guts? Nope.

So, someone needs to get better at what they do? Wow. This is really deep. And at the same time unbelievably simplistic. You should contact Stuart Smalley. You're good enough. You're smart enough. And doggone it, people like you.