Thurman#1

Most of that dead money is dead because it's guaranteed, not because it's the unamortized remains of his signing bonus. If they traded him or waived him and someone picked up the contract, it wouldn't cost us nearly that much in dead money. But whether we would be able to do that is questionable. Maybe, maybe not. And yeah, he has established a pattern and patterns are hard to break. Hope he manages it. Yup. Let me close my eyes and imagine it. Unh hunh. Unfortunately, what's coming up is multiple Pro Bowls and a Hall of Fame career. Beckham's a jackass, but a good teammate.

You're right. Fans can bash him. But not the media. Because after all, they're the media. And giving their opinion in columns isn't their job. Oh, wait ... They pointed out that he didn't denigrate the organization. But having now listened, I'm in total agreement that the interview was a showcase of the exact qualities that caused him to fail as a GM. Now, only now after his years of tough experience he figured out he should have a plan to get a QB? Good grief. He always seemed like a good guy. But GMs will get criticized, particularly GMs who don't bring their teams toward quality. They cover a team that has sucked for how many years. At OBD, yeah, the sky is always falling. At least pretty much since Jim Kelly retired it is.

Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't referring to the spot about six words earlier where the guy said, "Dang your old." Sad about Cortez. He was a heck of a player.

It wasn't clear, but I think he meant keep the rosters at 53, but let everybody dress, not cut the roster to 48.

As a proud father I can tell you I pointed out my wife's baby bump more than once. Nothing wrong with it, though it indeed means very little. I mean, yeah, hiring an all-star team of midwives doesn't guarantee a talented baby. Doesn't hurt, either, though. And let's face it, there's a major hunger for NFL news, even when very very little is happening, as a five-page thread about the scouting staff shows.

The whole thing about "we lost x games by less than x points" is a red herring. It's just the bell curve in action. Most NFL games are won or lost by seven or less points. It's not a point of honor to lose by relatively little. It just means you lost. That's all. You can go to nearly every team in the league nearly every year and they can say the same thing.

Indeed.

Come on, John, that is really reaching. If they cared they'd have someone write a report for them. If they cared, they'd have left the team boards alone.

I couldn't get through it. Sorry. Looked like the plays were nice, but videos like this drive me insane. Just show me the play. Don't cut every tenth of a second. If you must give me music, OK, though it's not necessary but just show me the whole play. In any case, they had a terrific run together, but it was short, and it was in Tyrod's first year, when teams hadn't fully figured out how to defense him yet. Last year they seemed to figure that out. Sammy and Tyrod will have to show it again, nobody should assume that because it happened for around nine games two seasons ago under different management with different schemes, it's a sure thing again. You'd absolutely expect that things should improve if they get Sammy healthy. But how much? In any case, I hope Sammy can stay healthy and show what he can do for the whole year.

Nah. That's your opinion of what they know. What they almost certainly do know is that someone unseating Taylor this year is very unlikely, but not impossible. Stuff happens. Guys regress. Other guys take huge steps up. What they'll do, they'll watch. Barring injuries, what they're likely to see is Tyrod performing better than the others, in which case he'll get the job this year. But you never know. He really isn't going to be handed the job. I mean, you're right that it's a cliche. But it's a cliche for a reason.

t "Rewrote." You mean like Tyrod came to the Bills and said, "Listen, I know you're thrilled to pay the $30.5 mill guarantee if I'm on the roster in March 2017 and the $40 mill guarantee if I'm on the roster in March 2018, I know you guys are champing at the bit to pay that, but I've re-written my contract as I just feel you'd be paying me too much." Like that? He didn't re-write his contract, he re-negotiated with the Bills. The Bills went to him, nobody says differently. And a ton of people re-negotiate their salary down in that kind of situation, especially if there isn't an obvious better option. Who took a pay cut? Off the top of my head, Kyle Williams. This year. He agreed to take money that was already on his contract and turn it into incentives for snaps. He didn’t do that because it was his most ardent desire. He did it because the Bills wanted it and likely insisted. https://www.profootballrumors.com/2016/03/bills-kyle-williams-takes-pay-cut As I just cruise through google, I find Shane Vereen taking a pay cut and getting incentives instead. Brent Celek. Brian Robison, Justin Bethel. Lessee, Peyton Manning took a pay cut in 2015, was reported to be “irked” but accepted it, apparently negotiating for some or all of that to be able to be made up in incentives. Amendola’s accepting a cut from around $6 mill in 2017 to around $1.6 mill. And that’s after the huge pay cut he took last year. Connor Barwin said he’d be willing to take a pay cut to stay in Philly. Ended up being cut instead, apparently because he and the Eagles disagreed on how large the cut should be. I could go on. That's not different. That's what happened. Now, Tyrod's guys may have negotiated for a few things in exchange for taking that big pay cut and the big cut in guarantee, and the way the Bills now have an extremely easy way to cut him after the 2017 season where it would have been massively difficult to do so in the original deal. That happens all the time that the team gives a little something back, incentives or whatever. May well have happened here. And Tyrod's side may have asked for a shorter term. Most likely the Bills would rather have kept him on the hook for the later non-guaranteed part of the contract to maintain control and more flexibility, but giving the later years of the contract up probably wasn't a major problem for the Bills at all. Sure, sign the guy - if he agrees to reasonable payment terms - and keep looking. Agreed. A bridge QB, in other words. And sure, with every bridge QB, you hope he improves, even if you know it's very unlikely. Hell, you hope every guy on your team becomes All-Pro but you don't expect it. But no, you certainly do decide your starter this year has to go if he won't accept reasonable compensation. Most likely it happened in SF with Kaepernick. He's probably the best QB they've had on that team since Alex Smith, but his contract was insane for the performance he gives. Adrian Peterson would be the best RB on the Vikings this year but he's not there because of the money. Mangold's the best center the Jets have but he wasn't worth $9 mill so he's gone. The Bills clearly thought Jairus Byrd was their best option at safety, as they offered him around $8 mill per year to stay. But they didn't think he was worth what he wanted so even though he was the best guy they had he was gone. Like guys taking pay cuts when their other option is being cut, this happens all the time, that teams cut guys who are their starter when they aren't worth the money they're going to get. Unless that guy accepts a salary cut, of course.

Getting praised around the NFL means little or nothing. It really doesn't. Everybody who gets this kind of opportunity is good at their current level. Very good. If they weren't, they wouldn't even be on the lists. Everybody's really good at their current level. So you get lots of compliments and cheers on nearly every hire. But plenty have major problems on the next level. And what does pay have to do with it? Nothing. It looks better ... if that's the way you want to look at it. If you remember, when Whaley was brought in there were huge plaudits thrown towards the Bills for getting one of the rising young football minds in the league. Me too. That's the only way to get more surety. I'm not against these guys at all. But they get no benefit of the doubt. Nobody knows how they'll do.

Yeah, the Skins appear to have been more successful on the field. And Snyder and his brain trust just fired the guy who appears to have been responsible for that success. Nah, Snyder appears to be as off-target as ever. But I agree with everything else you said here. Having made mistakes in the past doesn't mean what you're doing now is wrong. Disagree. Those guys he fired, Rex was a Pegula hire and Whaley was three months ago the guy who'd be in control. And you can argue those guys they hired are upgrades, but that's pure guesswork right now. It's not flattering. Highly acclaimed doesn't mean squat. Winning, that's what means something. Every regime start, coach or GM, has inspired mostly hope among fans. That's because they're fans. This is yet another beginning in the Pegula era, the third in many ways, right? They don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore, IMHO. It's pure "show me the money" for me. I'll wait. But I'm not confident. They haven't showed an ability to choose the right guys up till now. They should've hired a czar way back when they took over the team. I understand why they maybe don't want one now, but they should've hired one back at the beginning.

Lee Roy Selmon, maybe. Nine years and 44 wins, though one year was a strike year with only nine games played. Still ... 44/137 is a 32% winning percentage. Put another way, a win-loss of 44 wins and 95 losses ... just an astonishingly bad record over a long period of time. And Selmon was an extremely good player.

Byrd was underpaid on the franchise tag. He got offered more the next year by the Bills and signed for more still with the Saints. And whatever happened to him in New Orleans, not one person involved with the Bills has ever questioned the guy's attitude, in his last year here or any other time, not one. Plenty did on the boards, but that's just what happens when you take more money elsewhere. Fans don't like that. As for the thing about Sammy, I guess it's good. I think he's always had a good attitude and am not sure how any of this will affect his ability to stay healthy, which has been his problem. Certainly not a bad thing but his success will come down to his health rather than his attitude. His snap to release is also because he won't / can't make anticipatory throws, and that he has a tendency to leave even clean pockets and spend a couple of seconds running towards the sidelines. Agreed that this year will tell us a lot.

This shows that he was one of the five or six guys who submitted a list, correct? And then nothing after that? I've got no real problem with that.

That tied him for 12th out of 15 LBs, a three-way tie for second-slowest. One guy was slower, one one-hundredth of a second slower. Milano and Vallejo tied each other for 8th out of 15. The 40 isn't the be-all and end-all measurement, especially for LBs, but you brought it up.

Kuechly is much more explosive, so it's not in every way. There's a lot of similarity in smarts and the run game, but the athletic measurements show what the differences are. Kuechly's vertical jump was 38, for instance and Ragland's 31 1/2. Same sort of thing with the 10 and 20 yard splits of the 40 times, for instance. Kuechly starts faster, and quite a bit so. I'm not as positive as some on here, but maybe they're right. I hope so. At absolute minimum he should be fun to watch on run downs. It'll be very interesting to see how many snaps they have him out there. Kuechly appeared last year on 61.3% of Carolina's snaps, so maybe that part will be very comparable indeed.

John, Dan Snyder is a self-made billionaire too. Doesn't mean he's ever going to be good at being an NFL owner. Or that he won't be fooled, even for a long time. I don't know what to think about the Pegulas yet, but I haven't liked what I've seen till now. I'm a bit more hopeful with the new group, but here's what I can tell you. Getting rich in business does not mean you'll be a good owner. Nearly every owner in the league at this point was wildly successful in business before picking up their team. And yet there are some bad owner and franchises that don't seem to go anywhere.

It's not all that clear. Here's what else happens all the time. Coaches who have a guy who they're 95% sure isn't the answer, and costs too much. So they tell him that if he wants to be paid at the standards his current contract stipulates, it'll have to be elsewhere. The guy bows to pressure and accepts a lot less money and a lot less of a guarantee. Now the team isn't paying too much for him if he turns out to be a one-year bridge guy which is what they think he probably is. So they take a good long look at the draft but either decide the answer isn't there or discover that maybe the one guy they might possibly have been interested in isn't still there when their draft spot arrives. They've also looked at next year's crop and think it's better, so they trade back thinking that it's smarter to wait till next year and use the current guy as a bridge guy. And then they grab the most pro-ready guy in the draft, a guy who is available in the 5th round because though he can make all the NFL throws, he hasn't got a gun by any means, figuring the more stuff they throw at the wall the more chance one will stick. That sort of thing happens all the time too. My guess is that they think there's very little chance Tyrod becomes the guy, but thought that an aggressive search wasn't going to be productive this year, unless they thought Trubisky was the only guy with a chance but not a high enough chance to go up that high. And that rather than investing in him with any real hope that he ever becomes a franchise guy but that they invest only bridge money in him expecting that's what he'll be. You've argued it's a prove-it deal rather than a bridge deal. That sounds like a real positive way to frame things, and you'd hope Tyrod has self-confidence enough to think that way but it is basically a nice way to spin things. Agreed we'll have to wait and see. We can at least see that the same way.

With our roster of WRs, I don't think that's likely, excepting injury of course. He'll probably start, particularly if they have 3 WRs on the field.

Yup. But their teams might well not have let them go in the middle of draft season. Hard to say.

He's not advocating a retread. He does say he'd have preferred a veteran football guy with experience for GM. But doesn't advocate anybody. And he's making fun of himself here, as he always does in those columns featuring his buddy Rex at the bar. An example: "Typical negativity," Rex snarled. "You'd find something bad to say about 70 degrees and sunny. You ran off Whaley and ripped the Pegulas for dysfunction. So they got Brandon Beane for GM, stole Joe Schoen from Miami to be his assistant, and now they get Gaine on top of it. Do you hit the ground unhappy in the morning?" There's nothing wrong with this. It's kinda funny.

Stop it? No. But lessening the impact lessens the crashing.

Our team in 2010 fit that definition pretty well. We cut our old guys, even the ones with talent. And as for the minimum spending rule on the cap keeping this from happening, it doesn't. It's doable. Hell, Cleveland is doing it. Know how much unspent money they rolled over from last year? $50 million. It's very doable. There's major misunderstanding about the minimum cap floor rules. You don't have to spend 89% of your cap each year. That is a requirement not for one year but over a four year period. That's why Cleveland could leave so much unspent, and why any team wanting to rebuild could do the same. And a smart cap wizard can arrange to bump up the money in the correct years. You give your expensive guys not bonuses but high guaranteed salaries in the first year so that next year you don't have amortized bonuses and your cap drops a lot and you've got room. And if you do underspend over four years, the penalty is really pretty minimal ... you have to give the amount you underspent by to your own players by some distribution that the Players Association will decide. The Bills aren't rebuilding. If they were, they'd have jettisoned Kyle Williams (age 33), LeSean McCoy (29 in July, with a ton of mileage on him), traded Incognito (33), wouldn't have signed Lorenzo Alexander (33) and cut him if you can't, and traded Tyrod. Teams doing a real rebuild get rid of players who won't be around to help them three or four years down the road when they get good. Especially if they're expensive. And if there's dead cap that's no problem, just let it all hit the cap in 2017 and don't carry it over. You free up a ton of space in future years when you will need it. We aren't rebuilding. I thought they should have, but the decisions they made, particularly keeping Tyrod, made it very clear they aren't.