thurst44

Ed Oliver is also 13th among all eligible defensive linemen (over 200 of them) for pass rush efficiency. He's off to a torrid start.

If we're counting Anderson, don't we have to also count Boldin? He did play in one pre-season game.

White has been targeted just 3 times and the TD he gave up, he played it about as well as anyone could have (Wilson made an amazing play). I suspect he's playing better than you think.

They were also well ahead of the Dolphins and Jets at the end of the season, both of whom finished on long losing streaks except for the game they played each other. Also, let's look at the "upgrades": Jets added a legendary QB who barely seems to want to be there (yet the press is stuck on the Diggs repeating record) and a productive RB who might pair well with Hall or they might have diminishing returns. After that it's players like Mecole Hardman, who could never reach his full potential with Mahomes throwing to him, Quinton Jefferson, a solid contributor who is a bit better than when we practically ran him out of town, and a bunch of meh receivers. The Dolphins have added Jalen Ramsey, who was mortal last year and who Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs have practically owned. Beyond that, it's Mike White, Braxton Berrios, Malik Reed (solid role player), Eli Apple {?!}

I love the Kirksey signing, and it assuages the last worry I have. It means we at least have someone experienced in the mix for MLB. I'm guessing Bernard will still play there week 1 and if Bernard proves most of us (including me) wrong, all the better. If not, we have an option of a player with experience to hold down the center and with all the all-pros around him, that may be all we need. He's also a leader (like Edmunds) and perhaps could both be a bridge to Dorian Williams taking over the position and someone who helps him learn the ins and outs, if that's the path. There's instantly more options. However, Dave McBride upthread says it well. When you actually look beyond tackles (and even there, it's pretty close if you consider Edmunds missed 4 games with injury). Edmunds has become one of the best coverage LBs in the league and had an astonishing 1(?!) missed tackle last year. That said, they decided not to extend him for a reason. In any case, both the DB and DL rooms got considerably deeper, and playing next to an all-pro LB, a competent, experienced MLB with leadership qualities may be all they need to have one of the top 5 defenses in the NFL again, if not the best.

How so? It's been one year and a year full of injuries and trauma like arguably no team has ever seen. Maybe they were outplayed and lost at the end. Or maybe they ran out of gas after so many sleepless nights, some figuring out how they were going to get to the next city, others not knowing if their friend would survive, let alone make a full recovery. I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt. They still went 13-3 and none of those losses were by more than a field goal. How is their current roster worse than 2021? A couple players are a bit older (but not showing decline yet) but others (Rousseau for example) are coming into their prime. Even with Kirksey, they will be a little worse at that position, but in every other position group, I'd argue they are better than two years ago. The o-line is a question mark, but it's been bad the last two years and they still had one of the top offenses in the league. Also, maybe you worded it poorly, but "moving further away from being a contender"... they are currently a contender.

Actually 2024 is not remotely that year, but keep fanning flames. There's still a lot of re-working that can be done there as just three re-structures put them well under enough to extend Jones and Hyde into their void years or sign Rapp to a reasonable contract, extend other D-linemen. They won't be players in the FA market, but they will still have elite players at the key positions and plenty of role players. 2025 is the year that could be tricky. They can pretty safely get about 20m under cap with a roster starting with... QB - Allen RB - Cook, Hines WR - Diggs, Shakir, Harty (ok, not worldbeating, but there's two drafts and Davis extension likely not impossible) TE - Knox, Kincaid OL - Dawkins, Torrance, Morse, McGovern, Brown DL - Oliver, Jones DE - Miller, Rousseau LB - Milano, D. Williams S - Hyde, Poyer CB - White, Elam, T. Johnson Sure Miller, Hyde, Poyer are getting up there, but none have shown decline (neither injury was decline) Plus they are set up for a lot of those cutdown time trades Beane loves and could have anywhere from 10-13 draft picks in their second year. 2025 might have to be a bit of a reset year, but not a rebuild. They'll still likely have Allen, Diggs, Dawkins, White, Milano, Rousseau. If Miller can still play and Oliver takes a step forward, that's good, but if not, they save a lot of money by walking away. And there's about 30 players who we don't know about yet. The article is actually a bit dumb as they make a deal about the 30m difference which in this context is piddling and much of it will be eaten up by Chris Jones. The Bengals have done a good job so far, but likely will have the same issues when Burrow is signed to a second contract that is going to be massively bigger than that of Allen or Mahomes. Also, it is being ridiculous acting as if there is no hope for a 2022 draft after one year where Elam had a game where he held great receivers to a 0.0 qbr and two very key INTs, Bedford showed promise to be good enough to even beat him out (people act like it was the other way around), Cook showed promise with a 5.7ypc rookie season, Shakir showed promise, etc. Yes, the Chiefs had a hell of rookie seasons, but a lot of that was by necessity. Further, the writer says Beane has to "draft better" after a 2023 draft in which the first two picks look positively brilliant (the second rounder was often mocked to them in the first and the first round pick was expected to go about 10-15 picks higher and has the potential to be a gamechanger for the offense. Also, you fail to mention that two of the teams that are worse off are the Jets and Dolphins. The former signed a 40-year-old QB who there's still a decent chance might not have it and likely is just a two-year rental and they're back at square one as their young roster hits second contracts, and Miami is still on Tua's first contract and while he looked good last year, he started to look like he had been figured out a bit before he was hurt and he sadly may be a concussion away from retirement. Could things go South, sure, but there's a lot of reasons to believe this team is set up to succeed for years and as long as they have Allen, they are in the mix and he's still years away from 30. This window thing is and always has been nonsense. Signing Hopkins to the contract he likes, however, would probably not be the greatest idea though.

Ha, I relatively recently (prob around 2019) found a cache of a long exchange of Bills-related emails from around 2009 with one of the most negative fans I know (and a bunch of others mostly neutral to positive) and he's advocating for how the Bills should have Chad Henne as he's going to be one of the true greats. I was going to laugh condescendingly and re-send until I noticed that another friend and I were vigorously defending Trent Edwards as still a possible starter in the NFL. Henne at least lasted in the league. What a great post! It's not that you recognized they were on an upswing, but you pretty accurately and thoroughly identified the reasons--so many of which were very in doubt at the time. FWIW, McDermott was the first coach that I remembered truly being happy about when he was hired. I'm always positive about the Bills except for the coaching for some reason. Levy, I was in NYC and was 13 and didn't really even notice he was hired or who he was. Phillips: meh, just too much hype and it felt like fans were itching a bit too hard to push Marv out. Greggo: there was someone else I wanted (maybe Marvin Lewis) and the whole blowing them away with charts seemed the weakest of tea. Mularkey: just did not strike me as anything special. Jauron: what a phone-in of a pick. Gailey: two phone-ins in a row. hard to really hate him and wanted to see him succeed, but nothing exciting about the hire. Marrone: so-so coaching record at Syracuse and seemed a jerk from the start. Really hated this hire. Ryan: Well, I didn't think he would be good (lived in NYC throughout his Jets tenure), but knew he would at least be entertaining and this was so far into the drought that I didn't hate it even if I could not rationalize that it would help them win. McDermott seemed like a genuine head coaching prospect with great mentors.

Three of the worst people in the world in one article... and I'm not even counting Goodell. I honestly have zero opinion about him.

Wouldn't it be funny if a Tremaine Edmunds thread turned into a thread about everything else!

This is not meant as a defense of Maybin by any means (I voted for Mike Williams b/c of higher pick but thought about choosing Maybin for a second); however, I'm not a fan of revisionist history for exaggeration. It's possible what you say is true, and of course reporters' mocks and front office opinions aren't always the same, but Maybin was a 1st round pick in pretty much every mock draft at that point. He had boom-or-bust potential, but had he dropped to the 3rd that would have been huge news.

You might very well eat those words as I doubt he's as easily replaceable as you think given how the defense plays when he's out. We'll see. More importantly though, why does a joyous moment for the team have to turn into half the posts beating up on Edmunds.

This does not have any impact on whether they sign Edmunds or not. We knew this was coming, and it's a very reasonable deal and with six years petty much has to have some malleability, and by the time its larger sums kick in (if Beane's past is prologue), the salary cap will be around 300m. I'm not going to vigorously defend Edmunds except to say he's been the MLB and captain/leader of a defense that's been top 3 3/4 of the time he's been here, and the defense looks significantly worse when he's out or playing hurt. There's a good chance he's much better than most people here think. We'll see what Beane and McDermott think as they're the ones who truly know his value to this system. If they don't extend and draft an LB later this month, that would be a sign he's on the way out. However, I would not be a bit surprised if they extend him and if it's a long contract but in the 10-12m range. I also would not be entirely stunned if they don't. As for Poyer, I don't buy that he could be odd man out b/c despite getting deserved All Pro status this year, he's still past 30 and at a position that does not get as many premium contracts. It might be up to him--at times he's been an ambassador for the team and at other times he's been quite chippy with fans on social media. However, it's likely they could still extend Poyer in a fashion that wouldn't kill the future cap, and it wouldn't be likely to be that long of an extension.

Well, then, if Tre says he's now switching his jersey to 6, I'll really think Gilmore is coming back to Buffalo. Ok, not really, but I'd be fine with signing him (as long as we also draft a CB in the first 3 rounds.

Personally, I love this. Was kind of ambivalent about it before watching a bunch of games from last year and Jones was just up at the return man so so fast and with such fury. I love running it back with the same ST and I've said it before here, having watched the 2000 Bills and their atrocious ST (last in all four cats) and hearing about what happened to the 2010 Chargers, I'm more than fine with them spending the money to make sure ST is tight.

To throw to... Taiwan Jones. I did not even realize it was him in that game (by that point was pretty drunk and in shock) until about six months later when another fan friend said "did you realize that it was...?"

In some ways it got easier to get the #1 seed as much of the action was in the West who will have to play 6 games against each other, while arguably the Bills improved in comparison to the rest of the East. The Jets had a good offseason, but they are way off and Z. Wilson is a shrug.

Having lived through the Ronnie Jones 2000 debacle special teams unit, I'm fine with putting some of the cap on Special Teams. Also Neal does get on the field, maybe not that often, but he did hold down one of the best pass catchers in the NFL last year. Also, 10 years later, the San Diego Chargers had the number one offense and number one defense and missed the playoffs... with the worst ST in football. This Jon Bois video is an interesting watch.

They already released Klein, so that gets it to 1.5m over. Beasley is 6.1m right there. So, that's 4.6 under. Feliciano is 3.3m, that's 7.9m under, Haack is 1.2, that's 9.1m, Star post-June is 4.1m, so that's 13.2m, Cody Ford 1.5m (honestly, I'd keep him and see if he has a good pre-season and maybe get something in trade), so that's 14.7m, Andre Smith is 1.1m, so that's 15.8... and those are all cuts that other than arguably Beasley, don't really hurt the core team. There's still a lot of restructures and extensions and salary payouts possible, many of them clearing 10m each. Based on OTC, I was pretty easily able to get down to over 70+ under. DWill gets you under 20m if he doesn't agree to restructure. Now, as many have mentioned, you don't want to do all of those b/c they will hamper you for any 2023 or 2024 moves. Also, some of them would require the player agreeing. And OTC doesn't know everything so it's not much better than Madden to a degree. Also, Beane has his own plans and may want to be prudent. This is a team that's a Super Bowl contender if not favorite to make it there even if we do nothing but just draft at our current spots, and have a lot of players who could make huge improvements next year. As for comp picks, as much as I'd like some players back, there's a scenario I'd love where they make a couple big signings, but let the rest walk and Trubisky and Wallace could conceivably bring back pretty decent comps.

You make a lot of good points, and there is a limit of what you can do, but your numbers MIGHT be off (and that's not to mention the fact that we don't know what the cap will be next year and it's expected to rise by quite a bit), and while this year's signings, rookies, and restructures will move it up, you omit the fact some of the cuts THIS year will also bring it down. Star, Feliciano would be over 10m less against cap as I understand it and if we cut DWil, that's another 7m potential. OTC had 2022 at 6.6m over before Beane confirmed that as his numbers today. They have next year at 53m under and given the almost definite cuts, that's 64m. Yes, that will be eaten up by new contracts and restructures will also add to it. They're not going to be a ridiculous player, but they could make a few moves, even a "splash" move (whatever that means), and likely still be in shape to restructure and have enough to hold on to most if not all of the players you mention. Extending Oliver, since we just picked up his 2023 season, would in fact likely significantly LOWER our cap.

Indeed... although other than the way he started it off, a lot of it is not that crazy... maybe the Metcalf parts. And I guess the trade up in draft, but as much I know many people would scoff at moving way up in the draft for a non-QB, if Davis is as advertised he could really be the key to unlock the elite defense in this team, even benefitting the play of Edmunds, Oliver, and maybe Milano.

I'd usually be inclined to say this Ted Knight meme would be correct, but just a weird (could be wrong) feeling that this year Beane's plan is a bit different. Usually Beane has made a point to say don't expect any big signings. Has he done that this year? I did make a note of him not dismissing the Rams way of business (although I know he won't and hope he doesn't go full-Rams, even if it worked out for them).

Ok, well that was a pipe dream anyway, and in my final overblown and ridiculous off-season plan, I was going with Christian Kirk who played half his snaps in the slot, seems to be good friends with Allen, is still young and hasn't been great, but has been OK. He'd be a solid replacement for Beasley.

I agree that Adams' contract might be off the charts. As for the cap, between the Schoen comment and that guy who did the analysis of caps based on their mutability and had the Bills actually in slightly above average shape (wish i could remember what he called the metric so i could find it), I suspect our cap hit is not quite as bad as it looks. On OTC, I looked into what was the most I could do without leaving a major hole save for CB2. I was able to get over 70m. Now, you obviously don't want to do all of that, but cut/trade all the usual suspects, restructure Morse, DWil, extend Diggs and Edmunds (presuming Beane/McD like him better than most here and unless he demands too much), and you can be at 30-40m fairly easily w/o kicking too much into the future. Then you have payouts of Dawkins and Tre's this year schedule if you see a FA worth it. I'd actually like to see about keeping Hyde and Poyer through 2024 as they show no signs of slowing, could easily last to their mid-30s at their positions, and we have no one in the wings to replace. Yes, I get that kicking the can could be dangerous with Allen's cap hit going from 16m-40m, but the cap is expected to spike that year with the TV contract. Personally, as much as I think this team is a SB contender, maybe even favorite, even if they make zero moves (including signing no FAs of their own) as their only real hole would be CB2 (and if you believe in next gen stats, Dane Jackson should be given at least a shot) and I guess you would have a hole at edge rush as the older guys were responsible for a lot of pressures, and they have a lot of young players going into their prime, I'd love to see a balance of a few big signings. I'm usually not a fan of going for comp picks, but I suspect that might have been a part of the Trubisky plan, so I'd be fine with a few huge FAs, trade up in draft if possible (flame me, i deserve it on this one, but i would weirdly love it if we could move up as far as possible in 1st and 2nd round, and hold on to one day 3 pick to save for that generational kick holder) and then reverse course in 2023 with a ton of picks to fill in. This would all be contingent on planning to have money to extend Oliver and for Rousseau if he hits (or whoever of the three that hits), so if they can't make that work. Moving on from Edmunds would change a lot of this math. I really do hope they do not as as much as so many hate on him, the defense has been appreciably worse as a whole when he's been hurt or playing hurt. As for actually answering the question, Jones is growing on me--and would be a nice hometown (area at least) story. I'm surprised how much I don't hate Gronk as an idea. And I do love the idea of Godwin (especially after how he gutted us this year), he's probably too expensive even given my rosy/optimistic cap space outlook. I'd love a trade for Mack or Hunter. The former is more of a sugar high want--it might not be the best move at this point. Realistic if my 30-50m is possible: I'm gonna go Jones (15m hit--try to move big cap hit to 2024), CB Donte Jackson (8m hit), Christian Kirk (10m?), Gronk (5m), then stick to released or post June 1st guys and maybe load up on 2023 draft picks (and i feel slightly queasy for caring about that).

It would be, but oddly, Chris Godwin might move the needle more with his slot receiving prowess and could be slightly cheaper.