Thurman#1

Yeah, good luck with that Von stuff. That previous ACL came in his mid-twenties. And that's a whole different world from mid-thirties in terms of healing speed and ability. High level most of the year is very much not the way to bet. Unfortunately. If he does play that way, I'll be thrilled and will acclaim you a seer. Not expecting that, though.

Disagree. In order: ILB RT DE (would be #2 if I didn't expect them to pick up one of Ngakoue, Quinn, Ingram, Clowney, Dunlap, Pierre-Paul, etc. on the cheap.) Every team has problems, but those are ours, and depth at a couple of positions could also be added in, including possibly CB if Tre doesn't come back at his previous level. Which equates to a damn good line-up. But yeah, there's stuff to worry about. Always.

The ones whose contracts end this year. Others, Spencer Brown for instance, not so much. If they're unhappy with guys like that, they'll try to replace them and see how things go, particularly on a nice cheap contract like Brown's.

They have money. But beyond a pretty smallish bit, it's money they don't want to use unless some freakishly great opportunity somehow flashed into view. The smallish bit is probably something up to $2 or $2.5M they could make available. Anyone available at this time of the year could very possible be gotten for that. Particularly with so many good DEs out there unsigned right now. IMO we'll see them sign someone fairly cheap out of the group of 9 or 10 good vet DEs. It might come late in the process to allow the players to skip minicamps and such that many older vets don't really want to attend anyway. They don't need to sign one. It would be great to sign one, but it would be dumb to throw away the budget and sign one no matter what it would cost. The way people always phrase this as "they can afford it," or "they can create enough," is ridiculous. Of course they can, but it would put them in a bad position next year or two or three. And next year people will say the same thing, and soon you end up having to cut guys you don't want to cut or can't sign guys you really do feel that you need. I could borrow enough money from credit sources and ravaging retirement accounts and saving to buy myself to buy myself a Lambo. Not the Aston Martin Valkyrie I'd really like, but one of the cheapest Lambos is something I could do. But it would be a dumb idea, as it would ruin my budget in future years and eventually cost my family to lose something else I don't want to give up, and perhaps many things. The way to say this is that they can or can't create enough space in a sensible manner that it won't come back to bite them. They seem to think they can't. That makes sense to me.

IMO the defense was what wasn't nearly as good down the stretch. After Von went down, the whole team just didn't look nearly as good. Hyde also made a huge difference, as did the others, and Da'Quan missing the Bengals game was huge. The D was a huge part of our being offseason darlings and SB faves. So was the offense, don't get me wrong. But you can't leave out the D, or the D with Von healthy anyway. And yeah, "partly" due to Ken Dorsey is fair enough. But it looked to me like Allen was never right after the injury, and that that was a major part of the offense's problem late. But the offense late and the offense in the Bengals game were two entirely different things. Sure looked to me like not a single player out there had a good game on offense. And few on D, though that Milano play in the end zone stripping the ball out gave me hope for a minute or five. The coaches deserve their share of the blame as well, but the players did not play well. We were told that it was precisely short passes that caused Allen pain from the injury. He said it was much easier on the injured arm to throw long, and that he wasn't as accurate short So I agree that we did seem to avoid the short game, and it hurt us. But I don't think we can put that all on Dorsey.

He seemed a little slow in game film too. I don't think he is slow, but the way he runs looks that way. And compared to the smaller WRs, the burners, he is slow. It'll be different with LBs. I agree he looks smooth. Again, looked that way in game film too, IMO. Parrino said he was surprised that O'Cyrus didn't look as big as he'd thought he would. In that film, I'd agree. He didn't look much bigger than the coach. Was that Kromer? OP, fun to see them at camp. Thanks for posting.

Your facts don't show I'm wrong. Not even close. Your assumption that they would, or for that matter could give Tremaine a Von Miller contract just because they gave one to Von Miller is just dumb. Yeah, the Bills signed Von to a very expensive contract, backloaded. And that is a very large part of the reason why they can't continue to do so. Backloading Von's contract means they had to kick a huge can down the road. It means they're going to have to deal with larger and larger cap hits and dead cap numbers for him as the years pass and he gets older. In 2024, when he is 35, his cap hit will be $23M and his dead cap will be $32M. Beane has made it very clear that he doesn't want to do that regularly. It's inconsistent with his goal of being consistently competitive. He'll give an occasional contract like that every few years for a guy they think could be the one to take us over the top. A Von Miller. But he doesn't make a habit of that, and especially not when they're in an even worse salary cap situation than they were when they gave that contract to Von. Sorry, you're still spouting nonsense. You're an all-in down-the-road can kicker, and Beane isn't. He has to worry about the future, having committed himself to his goal of being consistently competitive. Who's right about what Beane thinks? You? Or Beane? This isn't even a slightly difficult decision to parse. The fact that you continue to fight it says more about you than about the situation. Beane's said it a million times already. You don't want to believe it. It doesn't fit your narrative. But the thing is, your narrative and how well reality fits it simply doesn't have any logical force as far as understanding what Beane is doing and why. You want to understand why Beane does something? That's what you look at. Beane will tell you. He's perfectly comfortable avoiding addressing issues he doesn't want to talk about. Or throwing out cliches, or changing the subject. But he isn't Jerry Jones. If it doesn't hurt him, he'll tell you what he thinks. And it wouldn't have hurt him to say they've got other priorities or they wanted to go in a different direction. He's said this a million times. They wanted him. They couldn't afford him with their cap situation. Again and again, and yet again a few days ago, "Unfortunately the business gets in the way, Tremaine goes and signs an $18M a year deal in Chicago. Happy for him. Sad for us." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxSPrtM0cwo

I think this sounds like what they're saying. That they think they have a guy who can handle things at an acceptable level, and maybe even develop beyond that. They might turn out to be very wrong about that. If so, it'll be glaringly obvious before the year is up. But equally, they might turn out to have the right guy on the roster. I'm not convinced yet. But hoping I will be convinced as time passes.

More nonsense. And by the way, why would it hurt me to see that you're wrong again? Doesn't hurt at all. You're pretending that they only have two options, trashing guys or saying what he said. Pure bunk. This is the go-to argument for anyone who disagrees with Beane, pretend that Beane didn't have a choice except insulting a player or lying. The minute you see this argument you know you're seeing someone backed into a corner. Beane can find a million options between those two. Could've said, "we love him but for our scheme we can't pay an MLB that kind of money." Could've said, "We're changing the scheme a bit and we felt can't value the position as highly." Could've said just, "We wanted to give him a chance tos ee what he could get on the open market." Could've said a million things. Unfortunately for anyone desperately trying to push your narrative, what he said was really really clear. They wanted him back. But they knew his value simply wasn't something they could afford in their current cap situation. Beane is willing to say things that aren't all that complimentary. No, he won't insult or trash people. But he's said things like saying about the tight end room that defenses didn't come into games worrying about how to game-plan our TEs. There are a million ways to professionally say that we could've kept the guy but didn't feel it was the right move for us at this time, and Beane is a terrific communicator and has done this kind of thing again and again.

Well, I'll have to seriously study this. Because if anybody knows wrong, it's you. You're an extreme expert on it. And your post here certainly continues the trend. I do indeed use "Nonsense" in some of my posts. A fairly small percentage, but when I do, the reason is really simple, it's because the post I'm responding to is nonsense. It really may be true that an awful lot of those posts are replies to you. That's more about the quality of your posts than anything else. If it irritates you, stop posting nonsense. Like for example this nonsense. Yeah, they clearly could have backloaded the deal. But as usual, you follow that with more nonsense. It's idiocy to think that backloading deals doesn't cause problems. It does. Backloaded or not, you still have to pay down the line. Our cap problems aren't only for this year. If you think so you're missing the point. Which would fit your usual pattern. The Bills have $3M left in cap this year. The idea that they could just put off the problem is pure dumbage. In next year's cap, 2024, the Bills are already $26M OVER the cap. The Bears also backloaded the contract, giving him only $2.4M in salary this year. Yet he still has a cap hit this year of $14M. So that would put us $11M under the cap this year and force us to cut several guys or kick a bunch more cans down the road, putting yet more strain on future cap years. Tremaine's 2nd year, due to the backloading, will have a cap hit of $22M in 2024. That would have put us a total of $48M total under the cap in 2024, except that it would have been even worse. We'd have been over the cap about $12M this year, and that would have caused us to cut corners in personnel elsewhere this year or made us pump next year's overage yet higher, forcing re-negotiations and other forms of can-kicking. Sorry, man, as usual, just a stupid idea. So, yeah, nonsense. It ain't rocket science, though it does seem to look that way to some. Beane has said straight out that they wanted him but couldn't afford him. They couldn't afford Tremaine.

True. MLBs don't win big games. Nor do OLBs. Or DTs. Or DEs. Or Gs, Ts, RBs, etc. I guess you could maybe say QBs do. But basically, it's not one guy. It's the team. True that MLBs don't win games. Nor does any one player, really. What MLBs do is contribute to the team, same as they all do.

Yup, agree on both points. $2.5M gained and he came across as thoughtful, responsible, honest and very much worthy of approbation. Seemed like a hell of a man.

That's absolute nonsense. Wallace didn't have two options. He had thousands. Here's one: "No comment." Here's another: "That's not for me to say." Here's another: "Well, everyone on that field gave 110% in that game and I still consider them all my brothers and yadda yadda yadda." Instead he went far into depth explaining exactly and precisely why the fault for that play was not on the coaches but on the communication between he and Poyer. And you may "know how Leadership and Accountability work," but you're the one who said it's 100% on the coaches. That would seem to indicate that assuming you do know how it works, you weren't using what you know when you said that. Yeah, they should take responsibility. But no, nobody who wants to figure out what really happened should just say it was 100% on the coaches. It wasn't. They deserve their share, but there was plenty to go around. It isn't all on Wallace either? Yeah, very correct. That's why I didn't say it was all on him. I said the problem on that play was the communication between he and Poyer as he said, but that there was plenty of blame to go around including ... well, I already wrote it once, no need to do so again. I really respect Levi, wish him the best, and wouldn't mind if he ended up back here at some point if the money works out.

You're misstating the numbers a bit there. The $1.5M is dead cap, not cap hit. And dead cap doesn't matter to us, as it's the Steelers who gave him that signing bonus. And he's not owed $5.5, that's cap hit. His salary will be $4M. That's what the Bills would have to pay. In their current financial state, I don't see them paying him that to be a backup.

There's not really a thing about who is supposed to be the guy. Whoever plays best, that's who's supposed to be the guy. It is indeed a bit of a dead horse. But he was more than a symptom. He himself has said that they called the coaches called the right play, and that the communication between Poyer and Wallace didn't work in the moment.

Levi made it very plain that the coaching was not to blame, that the communication between himself and Poyer was to blame for that play. And nobody has come out and said it, but it sure looks like Farwell being let go tells us who it was who broke the chain in getting the word to the kicker on that kickoff that wasn't a squib. That and Cheetah, Kelce and Mahomes being the best in football at that time and playing at the top of their abilities. Nobody blames the KC defense for not being able to stop Allen on those last three or four drives, even when there was virtually no time. Nor should they. The coaches sure get their share of the responsibility, but the players on both sides also should be blamed. Not to mention that coin. If it falls tails, Buffalo wins that game, there's zero doubt in my mind. Again, they get their share of the blame, but putting it on them 100% says more about you than it does about what actually happened.

IMO you're speeding up Kincaid's timetable. Wouldn't be surprised to see things look like this in 2024, but this year? Yeah, I doubt it. Hopefully we see things trend in that direction, especially near the end of the year, but I think he's going to take a bit of time. There are exceptions, but most TEs do, especially on teams that need to win in their rookie years.

You don't know what his best is. He very likely hasn't reached it yet. He's already an average #2. The numbers make that very clear even in a year when he was injured. He might easily get better. He also might not. We'll have to see. The reason it's "so hard for people to understand" is that outside yourself you won't find so many people willing to assume that your guesses and assumptions are facts. And for good reason. Not that they should assume that about my guesses either. We're fans, we're on the outside. We don't know nearly as much as we think we do. About the only thing we can be sure of is that without evidence, we can't be sure of all that much. Sheesh. Hadn't seen that. Good stuff.

Nonsense, as usual. We get it, it's very clear that you didn't think he was worth the price. Thing is, your assumption that because you think something that Beane also thinks it is just plain dumb. First, Beane isn't dumb. And you're accusing him of that here. He's worth his price. That's why he got it. That's why the Bills fully believed he would get more than they could pay in their current salary cap situation. Second, Beane's said it straight out. That they'd love to get him back but they always thought he'd probably get too much. Here's one of many quotations about this: "That’s why he knew well before the former first-round draft pick hit the open market this week that there was probably no way the Bills were going to be able to re-sign the five-year starter. Sure enough, Edmunds landed in Chicago on a massive four-year deal worth $72 million with a staggering $50 million guaranteed. “ 'We stayed in touch with his representatives,' Beane said. 'We thought he was the top linebacker in free agency and all it takes is one team. I don’t know how many were bidding for him; I’m not privy to that. But it’s not a surprise that he got up there. We love him, didn’t want to lose him, but it’s a puzzle piece and unfortunately you just can’t keep them all.'” https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/sports/football/nfl/bills/2023/03/17/buffalo-bills-news-brandon-beane-expected-to-lose-tremaine-edmunds/70016451007/ "We’re always wanting to draft, develop, sign our own. Sometimes there’s big-ticket items and you can only pay so many guys. So when you’re talking about a guy that just hit an $18 million (average per year), that’s hard. That meant if you’re going to pay that, then you may say ‘We’re going to lose this other guy or we’re going to move on from him.’ You make decisions. You do the best you can. You don’t want to lose a guy like Tremaine.” https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/observations-brandon-beane-says-bills-loved-didnt-want-to-lose-tremaine-edmunds/article_d5d33518-c455-11ed-b3f1-ff25b721dfde.html That's what they think, that he was worth it but they couldn't pay it. They expected him to get a huge contract, because he's worth it. They couldn't keep all of the players they wanted because of their salary cap situation. "No way they were going to be able to ..." Not that they didn't think it was worth it. You're right, not thinking he is worth it is quite different. That is indeed exactly and precisely the mistake you made. Because it fits your narrative, you assumed Beane must think the same thing. It was a classic case of badly misreading reality. That's how confirmation bias works.

Yeah, they addressed that in the article. "Ertz said one person – on the Eagles’ side of the talks – nixed the deal with the Bills. He would not say who. The most likely candidate probably would be Eagles general manager Howie Roseman." Yeah, nope.

Thanks for posting it. Always wondered what happened there.

Yeah, um, no. Tremaine is now the fourth-highest paid off-ball LB in the league, behind only Roquan, Shaquille Leonard and Fred Warner. Whether you guys refuse to admit it or just genuinely missed it, Tremaine was a very good LB here and then became an excellent one in his last year. The reason he's not here is because we couldn't afford him.

For 2024, you're saying? I think by then they'll be able to target much better. They'll have a lot more info about what works and what doesn't with the changes they're making with the scheme. At that point if they need an expensive FA, why not pick one who's been primarily an MLB or at least an ILB?

It'll depend on the doctor, which we will never hear about, and the salary, which if the doctor's report is good will likely be fairly high in a year when we have to keep expenses down.

Well, first, here are three that do put Allen ahead of Burrow. Took me a 5 minute google search. https://www.profootballnetwork.com/nfl-qb-power-rankings/ https://sportsnaut.com/nfl-qb-rankings/ https://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/rankings/qb-cheatsheets.php I respect your post, Dingus, thoughtful and reasonable, though I disagree. I follow a lot of non-Bills stuff, but I'm choosy, and offseason nonsense like who's the best at whatever position doesn't have a lot of interest for me. I'm much more interested in how teams are looking like they will perform next year. So I do miss a lot of the stuff you're talking about. As for the people who do put Burrow ahead of Allen, IMO an awful lot of them are talking about right now. Kind of the same way you have to put the SB winning team first in your power rankings in Week 1 the next year. Allen's throwing arm was injured for most of the last half of the year. He wasn't himself, and I think a lot of the rankings reflect that. They're looking at right now, not expected future performance. Among people concerned with future performance, I believe Allen at least holds his own. Probably the biggest group of people specifically looking at future performance is the fantasy folks. And lots of them are putting Allen over Burrow, I learned with another very quick search. Some of that has to do with running probably, though I am very much not a fantasy guy. But probably a lot also is simply that they think he had a bad end of the season and will be better. It seems likely. https://www.fantasypros.com/nfl/rankings/qb-cheatsheets.php https://www.draftsharks.com/dynasty-rankings/qb/all-players/one-ppr https://www.rotostreetjournal.com/2023-fantasy-football-rankings-and-big-board/ https://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/story/_/id/36312955/nfl-fantasy-football-rankings-2023-qb-quarterback https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/news/dynasty-fantasy-football-quarterback-rankings-uncertainty-grows-around-lamar-jackson-and-trey-lance/ The part of the post I originally replied to with such derision was where the guy said Allen was "borderline top five," and "out of the elite tier". That's utter nonsense.