Thurman#1

The post June 1st designation doesn't save $5 million in cap room. It saves $5 million in cap room this year while then spending the same $5 million in cap room next year.

Your numbers are way off. McCoy was guaranteed $18.25 mill, $13.125 mill of which was his signing bonus.He then received two $250K workout bonuses (I'm assuming) and salaries of $2.625 M and $4.8 M. So that's $21.05 mill he's received in two years, and his guarantee is finished. Too much? Maybe. But it's no $15 mill per season. Was it a bad re-negotiated deal by the Bills? It always seemed so to me, but again, it's no $15 mill per year. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/lesean-mccoy-5916/ Not that I have any idea what's happening right now, but it wouldn't surprise me either way.

We're way above average at TE. Maybe ten teams have as good a TE as our first stringer. Maybe. And there just aren't that many good 2nd string TEs around the league. But yeah, we've got some real holes. LB sticks out also. We had the guys for the old system, but especially if Zach leaves, it's hard to argue we have what we need for the new regime. John, making educated guesses is mostly what people come here to do. Yeah to be absolutely sure what will happen, you have to wait. Doesn't mean you can't make educated guesses, notice red flags and comment on their likely meanings. Now if you express those opinions as facts, yeah, you're not making sense. But expressed as opinions, that's what most of us are here for. Yeah, you have to wait to be sure. But sharing opinions before the day comes is about as reasonable as it gets. You're absolutely right that coaching appears to have been a major part of our poor performance on defence the last couple of years. But good coaching doesn't just turn all sow's ears into silk purses. Ragland, for instance, is a guy I have real doubts about. The reason he fell in the draft seems to be that he represents a linebacker template that is less and less commonly used in the new passing NFL. LBs are tending smaller and faster and here's a guy of the old bash-and-smash school. I have real doubts that without Rex's scheme needs he's ever going to do a lot for us. I could be wrong. But I'd argue that's the way it looks. He certainly has smarts and instincts, and that's what gives me a bit of hope, but not much. My guess is he ends up a two-down guy. And our head coach certainly has a terrific record of turning defences around, but it took him a while to do it at his last stop, and I'd expect much the same here.

I can imagine us sneaking into the lower reaches of the playoffs and losing our first game. I just don't care. That would be like setting a goal to earn $10,000 a year. Even if you get there, so what. Your journey's still only beginning. I think they've got a reasonable talent base, but not at QB and no real difference makers at the defensive impact positions either. And they also are having cap problems, so just keeping this team together without upgrading at all is going to be almost impossible. Blame Whaley for our salary cap problems.

It's about three years early to say there are no franchise QBs in this draft. Three at least. If that's the way it looks to you, fair enough, but that's an opinion, not a fact. Could very easily be a correct opinion too. I personally am not 100% convinced, though.

I don't think anyone expects us to beat Brady next year. As a rookie, yeah, a QB won't likely do it anymore than any other rookie. But players don't stay rookies forever.

From what I can see, it'd be $4.5, not $6.175. We can push a bit of that dead money back a bit, but it doesn't disappear. And cutting Kyle Williams saves $5.3 mill, for a total of $9.8 mill saved. And both Carpenter and Graham are going to need to be replaced by guys not now on the roster. Kyle maybe replaced by Adolphus Washington and maybe Douzable or Bryant as a platoon guy in terms of position, but not production. Still, we wouldn't have to replace Kyle by bringing any new salaries in. But Graham and Carpenter are going to have to be replaced and it will cost money. Not enough money for Gilmore or Taylor. We're in a serious situation with the cap. Particularly if we pick up Taylor's option without getting significant real money savings, we're going to have to make some very painful cuts. I'd guess that Gilmore would be the first.

$9 mill is overstating it for Graham and Carpenter. You calculate the money you save by taking the money you'd give him this year in salary and roster bonuses, workout bonuses etc and then subtracting the dead cap money that will hit the cap if you cut the guy. For Carpenter that's $2.4 mill (minus what you have to give the new place kicker) and then for Graham it's $3.775 mill minus $1.6 mill, around $2.1 mill from what I can tell on Spotrac. They might draft a safety so replacing him might not be expensive but the roster spot will have to be filled. They could delay a bit of the dead cap costs to next year but even ignoring that the savings won't be anywhere near $9 mill. We don't have plenty of space. And yeah, we can kick the problem down the road a bit by re-structuring a few deals. But that is emphatically NOT what a team that won seven games last year and not expecting to truly hit their stride for two or three years should do. You don't shovel the driveway by moving the snow near the garage a few feet towards the street, but dumping it in the driveway, and that's what re-structuring in large numbers does. It just means you have to deal with the same problem again very soon. Re-structuring has it's place. But if it's the main part of a team's strategy, especially when they're already in such cap trouble, that team is headed for bigger trouble down the road.

You can indeed lower his hit. This year. But you then raise it down the road. Extensions with very low cap hits in the first year aren't generally a great idea for 34 year old players. Cap aside, no way you cut Kyle Williams. It would cause major problems. But we're in cap trouble, most particularly if we keep Tyrod. I absolutely hate this idea, and I'd give it a pretty high chance of happening if we do say yes to Taylor.

That may be true for some people. But for plenty of others it's not what we're focused on. I'm one of those who goes on endlessly that wins and losses is a team stat and that you judge a QB by how well he plays QB, not by whether his field goal kicker misses or makes one or because the MLB on his team drops an easy pick-six. And I simply think Alex Smith has a higher ceiling than Tyrod does. And that teams have figured Tyrod out. I'd take Alex Smith in a heartbeat, though I'm not thrilled about the age, and there are plenty of other guys I'd take over either. And after I had Smith (and certainly Tyrod too), I'd draft the next QB who reached me that I thought had a good chance to be made into a franchise QB. And probably the next after that as well. Nicely put. Anybody who doesn't think the defense was bad isn't worth talking to. They were bad. And in the passing game, Tyrod was below average, and not just in total yards or yards per attempt or passer rating. He just wasn't getting it done. As for the Seattle game you mention above, I just went back to watch that last drive again on the All-22 and saw again that play where Tyrod broke loose from a clear pocket and ran for an eight yard gain ... with a Bills receiver in the end zone with nobody within ten yards of him. The first-and-ten on the Seattle 23 with 1:17 left in the 4th quarter. The pain hit me all over again.

Have to agree. The Bills would say yes in a second to a straight-up trade (assuming they knew they could sign Cousins long-term).

Agreed. If I thought he was available, I'd have picked him.

Not on the poll. A cheap bridge guy. Maybe Hoyer or Josh McCown. A guy who could then transition to a backup / mentor. Well, at least right now he's the Bills starter. That gets you a lot of love around here.

I so desperately hope that the goal for next season is not to win as many games as possible and end the playoff drought. The should be to move us as far as possible in the direction of being capable of competing for a championship in the next three or four years. Next year's wins should barely enter into it. The coaches and players won't think that way of course, but the GM and the Bills management should. If you really want to maximize next year's wins, don't worry about overpaying in FA. Spend right up to the cap and then just re-negotiate to bring down the numbers and pass the problems on down the line. Since we don't care about the future, and next year's wins are all that are important to us in this case, we should bring in guys who're near the end of their careers but have a year left, and give them contracts with huge signing bonuses so we can again pass the problems on down the line into the future. I'm sure we could meet our goals for making the playoffs. Getting rid of Tyrod wouldn't be scrapping our top ten scoring offense. It would pretty much be scrapping the passing portion of that offense, which didn't play well, and keeping the running portion of that offense, which was terrific. We were the 16th ranked offense in the league, that's a fact. And the 19th ranked defense. There's a reason that offenses and defenses are ranked on how many yards they get. And the reason is that scoring isn't purely an offensive stat. It includes an awful lot of credit or blame which should be given to the STs and the defense. If the defense scores on a pick six, somehow the offense was superb there if you go by scoring. If the STs down a punt on the 3 and the defense recovers a fumble on the one and the offense takes four plays to get in, they've done as sensational job ... and the defense and STs had nothing to do with it ... if you look at scoring to rank offenses. Field position is huge when you look at scoring, and a very large amount of that comes down to the STs and the defense. Now, probably 70 - 80% is still offense, but if you look at our offense, what you see is a terrific run game and a below average pass game.

We've read them saying that a re-negotiation is possible, but that it can't pay Tyrod less, that Tyrod is willing to make adjustments to make the cap numbers easier for the Bills. The problem with this is that the cap numbers aren't the problem. The guarantee is the problem, and the front-loaded nature of the contract. And making the cap numbers easier to bear right now would only be making the contract even more front-loaded. If they do re-negotiate in this way, it seems to me it will have been a way to make OBD look tough without actually taking any stand whatsoever. They could say they weren't going to bring him in without a re-negotiation, but then the new contract will be as tough or tougher for the Bills than the old one.

I can see how people might be "tired of the 'get rid of TT for $ and start some other middling QB'" argument. Doesn't mean it's not an excellent argument, though. Saving money in a year when you don't think we've got a chance in hell of competing for a championship makes a ton of sense. Yeah, Tyrod Taylor and Nick Foles aren't taking us to an SB most likely. They'd be bridges. And with bridges, money is important. Gotta disagree about Alex Smith, though. Smith has shown the ability to occasionally lift himself above his usual level of play as a game manager. Remember that playoff game against Indy in 2014? As for bringing in the youth movement, I'd be all for it. But some kinds of youth movement might also require a bridge QB. You must've loved being a Bills fan the last 16 or so years. Except for the year they shipped Bledsoe out to give Losman his shot. All the rest of those years they played the QB who gave 'em the best chance of winning now. The problem with it is that unless you hit the right QB you're headed for a lot of 7-9 type of seasons, and that doesn't give you a shot at the best QBs in the draft the next year. But we sure did work hard on building a culture of winning by winning as many as we possibly could each year.

No. It's not illogical at all. "Bridge players are worthless, they are just good enough to get you 5-7 wins and keep you out of a top 5 pick," you say. Fair enough, except for the worthless part. But yeah, that's the value of a bridge guy is spanning the time between now and when the guy you really want to be your QB is available. Sometimes putting a QB in the lineup will hurt his long-term chances, and that appears to be the case with Cardale. He needs another year before it would be a smart idea to put him in (if he is ever ready, a legit argument). Same with several of the guys in this year's draft ... they appear to need time. So if you want your offense to have a legitimate chance to practice their pass plays from the new system and have a useful season in their development, a bridge guy is needed. IMHO that doesn't mean there's an absolute necessity to bring in an expensive bridge guy. A Hoyer or a Sanchez would be much cheaper and still meet the terms of being a bridge guy. You don't want one? Fair enough.

Well, we'll see what'll happen in the future with Tyrod. I doubt it, but you could certainly be right. But you're talking about Kaepernick's second and third years, not his first and second. I'll agree with you that he got a bit worse in his third year. And you can refuse to say it's Tyrod's sixth year if you want, but that doesn't make it less true. It really is his sixth year. And yeah, he wasn't starting. But if he'd consistently outplayed Flacco for those four years, sooner or later he would've started. And that's not what happened. During those four years he should've been soaking up info on how to succeed as an NFL QB. How to attack and understand defenses, how to watch film, how to think about route complexes, and on and on. Which I absolutely assume he was doing. Tyrod has always been a hard worker and a bright guy. It just isn't fair to compare him going into his fifth year to rookies, even if it was his first year as a starter.

The Julio Jones deal did indeed seem to kill the Falcons for two or three years. They had a ton of holes they couldn't fill with draft picks. It hurt them a lot. Might they have made the Super Bowl with Torrey Smith or Randall Cobb - both available later in Julio's draft, and all those draft picks? It's not clear but it's certainly possible. Certainly if the Falcons win a title, it will put the argument to rest. Winning a title validates everything. It's arguable this year showed the trade was a success, though I'm not 100% convinced. At least the Julio Jones draft wasn't considered even before the draft as one of the strongest draft for WRs in history.

Coaches and schemes brought in under his watch. And at least so far I'd agree with you on the overall good job he's done with FAs but I would say his drafting has been below average, though trading away a first round pick surely hurt him, but it was he himself who made that trade. Last year, of the last two years' first and second round picks, Ryan was playing with one 2nd rounder and no firsts. That helps to understand why things didn't go all that well.

I think he's come down on every side of it. Which may be fair. Maybe the Bills are changing their minds. Or maybe he's hearing new things from Tyrod's agent about willingness to re-negotiate. Hard to know. Unless he said Hunh? Right now he's guaranteed $30.5 mill in the first one year and $40.5 mill in the first two years. And you're saying that the numbers you have there are moving money into the 1st two years of the deal? That's moving money out of the first two years, isn't it? If I understand you correctly, anyway.

. It has indeed been pointed out that Tyrod's contract numbers are not that high. Wrongly. $40.5 mill - guaranteed - for two years on the roster .... is extremely high for Tyrod. Which is probably a lot of the reason he seems to be a bad bet to return. Disagree? Feel free to talk about it in some thread you won't be hijacking. And yes, our cap space is terrible. Not getting that is missing the point. 25th in the league. For a 7-9 team. If we'd been competitive, this would have been somewhat understandable. As it is, it's rotten planning. And we've got only $26 mill available with only 45 players signed, about 13 of whom are purely camp bodies like Logan Thomas, Cedric O'Neal, Charles Gaines, Joe powell, Max Valles, Josh Woodrum, Gerald Christian and Colt Anderson who will need to be replaced by more expensive guys who can play at an NFL level. We're in awful shape in terms of cap room and that's even if we don't sign guys like Gilmore, Corbin Bryant, Jordan Mills, Zach Brown, Robert Woods, Ihedigbo, Lorenzo Alexander, Douzable, Blanton, Cory White, Spikes, Gragg, Marquise Goodwin, Justin Hunter and Brandon Tate. And of course we will give offers to some of those guys, and down will go the available cap number. Oh, and as for no RTs in the first two rounds, that's nonsense. Ryan Ramczyk says hello and he could easily end up an RT. And I didn't say the first two rounds, I said "somewhat high." And character is what keeps you from getting a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when your team is behind by two and driving at your opponent's 30 yard line when somebody punches you and the official doesn't see him do it. It's also what keeps you from getting long suspensions for marijuana on your blood tests, keeps you out of jail and in the lineup and gets you to meetings on time. If you want unaccountable slimeballs on your squad, fine. I don't. Nor did Bill Walsh and plenty of other great coaches. And while I'm answering you, I'm only doing it because you answered me. This thread asks for your prescription. Go ahead and give yours, and feel free to leave mine out.

Russell Wilson didn't regress in his second year. From 64.1 to 63.1% in completions percentage, an improvement in Y/A. From 26 TDs and 10 INTs to 26 TDs and 9 INTs. A miniscule improvement in passer rating. A slight improvement in yards per run ... Wilson had another very good year. And again, this wasn't Tyrod's 2nd year he was regressing in. It was his sixth year. Kaepernick didn't regress in his second year. Randall Cunningham got better, Yes, every QB misses throws. And if you hear anyone saying bad things about Tyrod because he isn't perfect, you'll have a point there. But being imperfect isn't the problem. It's being inaccurate too much of the time. I'd still take him as a bridge QB if his salary allowed that. But my guess is he's gone because of that, and that he'll be backup two or three years from now. Did you see Andy Dalton's play in 2015 when they had a functional OL? He's no game manager. The guy had a QB rating of 106. When they fix the OL there, he's going to show people and probably win a title or two during his career. That's like saying what's the downside of taking arsenic other than health risks? Not that Tyrod is arsenic at all - he's not - but the financial commitment they would be forced to make for him is huge for a QB of his ability, and we're a team with serious cap problems.

It isn't Trubisky's record. It is his team's record. Because at two years for $40.5 mill guaranteed, Tyrod would be the most expensive bridge QB in the history of the NFL and by a huge margin. If you keep Tyrod, it should be because you believe in him as a potential franchise QB. If he stays here for five years and becomes a franchise QB, he will be a great bargain at $18 mill per year. I don't see that happening, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. But if he is only a bridge QB for two years, $20 mill per year is outrageous and you'll be hurting the chances of the future team's overall success by spending that money. If you want a bridge QB, bring in a cheap one. Doesn't matter if he isn't as good, as a few extra losses the next couple of years would only help us draft better anyway. And it should ideally be a guy who could then act as a mentor / 2nd QB coach for the young draftee, a guy in his thirties who's done bridge jobs before.

Smith 426 for 653, for 4881, 30 TDs, 10 INTs, 68 sacks, 6 4th Quarter Comebacks, 6 Game-Winning Drives, 311 rush yards on 73 rushes, - - Qualitatively: 65.2% Completions, 7.47 YPA, 4.59% TDs, 1.53% INTs, 96.53 QB rating Tyrod 511 for 816 for 6058, 37 TDs, 12 INTs, 78 sacks, 2 4th-Quarter Comebacks, 3 Game-Winning Drives, 1148 rush yards on 199 rushes. - - Qualitatively: 62.6% Completions, 7.42 YPA, 4.53% TDs, 1.47% INTs, 94.19 QB rating So overall, Smith was a better passer and improved in his second year, while Tyrod was a much better runner but regressed in passing in his second year. And you're comparing stats from 2011 and 2012 to stats from 2015 and 2016, and it's become easier to pass, so passing stats got higher during that period.