billsfan89

Former third round pick very athletic, you could do worse.

The thing is next years 1st could also be a complete bust of a player in this hypothetical scenario. Dawkins showed a lot his rookie year and is a player at a premium position on an uber affordable deal. I would rather go with a guy that you know can play as opposed to holding onto a future pick. If you are going to start a rookie QB you kind of have to consider the protection you are offering him. If Glenn gets hurt and Dawkins isn't on the team you could have a disastrous O-line esp if InCogs play declines more. This o-line is already pretty fragile crippling it to preserve a 1st next year isn't a good idea in my mind.

I was more scoffing at the idea that 21, 22, and a good 2nd year player was enough to swing the number 2 pick. I think that if the choice is between including Dawkins or next years first into a package I include next years 1st. I would much rather give up a pick even a 1st rounder to keep Dawkins who is coming off of a strong rookie year at a premium position. Glenn is injury prone the last couple of seasons and if Dawkins really can't play RT they can always switch Glenn over to RT and figure it out (Glenn would be a mauler at RT and I don't think he would mind the switch in position as long as he was getting paid on his current deal.) So yes if Dawkins is a must get in a package to trade up for a QB I think you can't let that be the holdup but if you have other options like giving up more picks I think it is obvious what you do then.

Go after the players you think will help your team. I would much rather go after Poe or Star and have a run stuffing anchor for 2018 than leave a hole on the roster (or go after lesser players who got released) in order to obtain comp picks.

If the choice is picks 21, 22, 53, and next years 1st for pick 2 or picks 21, 22, 53, and Dawkins I think I would rather give up next years 1st. Glenn is a stud and should remain on the team but Dawkins anchors the other side and is a nice insurance policy incase Glenn can't come back from injury. Next years 1st is valuable but I would rather have a young cheap player who has proven himself locked into 3 more seasons at a low rate than a 1st next season.

I look at Sammy as a similar player to DeSean Jackson. Jackson is a big play player whose presence on the field pops the defense a bit which opens up a lot of other aspects of the offense. But he isn't a dominant game changer on a consistent enough basis. Jackson got 11 milllion avv, I suspect Sammy who is younger but has a longer injury history will want that much plus a little more coming off of a healthy season. I think 5 years 55 million is what Sammy gets with a 20ish million guarantee. Not sure if that is too much for the Rams or not but some team will give him something in that range.

Denver could make things interesting, Denver getting involved might push the Bills to have to include an extra 2nd and more future picks.

I think any trade up for #2 is going to look like 21, 22, 53, Glenn or 158, and next years 1st. Glenn and McCoy have very little value to the Giants. Glenn is a bit injury prone lately and is on a huge contract, if the Giants want him fine but he isn't pushing this deal over the top. McCoy is a 30 year old RB making 8 million a year, the Giants capped strapped somewhat aren't taking him on. Not only are they going to want a good haul of picks this year (21, 22, 53) but they are also going to want to set the table for next years draft and the Bills are going to have to include next years 1st in that package because some other team will.

You are correct that a team would have to have a QB and drafting at a point where a top QB wasn't highly coveted in a trade down. That's why the Cowboys drafted Zeke so high. They had Romo, Zeke was a rare talent, and they had the O-line to maximize him. I was shocked the Jags drafted a RB so high last year given their needs elsewhere. But I would also rather take a chance on a highly coveted pass rusher if one is a high-end talent than even a generational RB. Maybe even a LT or a CB is more appealing. It's all a cost-benefit analysis and I think the cost of a premium pick at RB is one that would almost never lineup for me personally.

That's a good point, but the replaceability of the position (So many RB's have good 3-5 year stretches being drafted in the 3rd round of later) makes spending a top pick on it such a risky proposition when you are talking about a top 10 pick or even a 1st round pick in general. I would rather try to get a top QB or pass rusher with a top 5 pick rather than a RB. I would much rather have a Von Miller than an Adrian Peterson if I am choosing either type of player with a top 5 pick. I think it is a lot easier to find a solid pair of RB's who can be productive than it would be to find a good pass rusher.

I think the NFL has a long way to go before it reaches the player movement of the NBA. I like the idea of teams with new coaches and systems trading away players who don't fit to teams that run systems better suited for those players, one team gets a good player the other gets a higher return than if they tried to jam a square peg in a round hole. Trades in the NFL can come with stiff cap penalties (Look at Dareus) so I think that prevents things from getting too crazy.

I think that RB's have a long enough life to play well into a 2nd contract. By the end of their rookie deals they are 25-26, they command big money because they have 3-5 prime years left. RB's typically don't get a big contract after their 2nd deal, a player like Shady is an exception. If I am drafting a player 1st overall I don't want that pick to be not on my team 6 years from now because they got hurt of flamed out. I think the fact that you can find RB's at so many different points in the draft and via free agency makes them a very risky proposition to spend a premium pick on.

Just to clarify my point on the 9%. The 9% number isn't the rate to which corporations are paying taxes on. The rate that corporations paid taxes on was set at 35% up until these tax cuts (although the effective rate to which corps were paying taxes after loopholes and deductions was estimated to be 14%.) The 9% number is the percentage of total taxes that corporations paid into. So let's say that the US government collected 100 billion in taxes (I know that's not the case just using a round number and let's ignore inflation for simplicity) corporations in 1952 were paying 32 billion of the 100 billion collected in taxes in 2013 they were responsible for 9 billion in taxes collected. Corporations share of the economic activity in the US has increased since 1952 even adjusted for inflation so the context is that we are collecting way less money from corporations despite corporate profits being at all-time highs. The point is that these gigantic companies are doing fantastic, the stalling of the US economy isn't going to be fixed by giving even more to corporations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/04/24/trumps-corporate-tax-slash-ignores-how-litte-companies-already-pay/#3dd177ab58aa Now we could argue all day about this stuff but I do want to point out that I do not think that the corporations are at fault here. Corporations are doing what they should be doing trying to make as much money as possible in a highly competitive marketplace. They take advantage of what they should be taking advantage of. The problem isn't the corporations the problem is our government is corrupted by the influence of money in politics. These companies funnel money into our political system and they get influence. The influence has resulted in crony capitalism at its worst. Our government should be policing these companies so that they don't use regulator capture and curry special deductions and favors that give an unfair advantage in the market. Even libertarians are against the crony capitalism that is on display from our government. I have no issue with lowering the high statutory rate down from 35% to some rate around 25% to be more in line with other developed nations but then they should have gutting a lot of the subsidies and tax credits to even out the drop and essentially reward the companies that were playing by the rules and punish those companies that were bribing to get special deals from our Congress. That's where this is going, the middle class gets a modest tax cut but they get their social security and Medicare cut big on the back end so that we can fund big tax cuts for the top earners and corporations. The GOP will sell it as making the programs solvent and that we can't afford such luxuries because of huge deficits completely ignoring the massive unfunded tax cuts that are driving these deficits further up and the endless wars that borrowed trillions from these earned benefit programs when they were producing a massive surplus.

It is even a bit sweeter since this flurry of activity was started by the Bills during the pre-season and continues up and through this off-season. I hope trades become a bigger part of NFL activity. So many teams weren't willing to trade as often for various reasons. Now it seems like the trade market has opened up.

Keenum is more what Tyrod's best season would look like (Although Tyrod would have better rushing numbers.) I think it is safe to say that the Vikings view Keenum as a one hit wonder who had a great team around him. Although Cousins isn't a top 5 QB and his slightly above average QB play on a stacked team (on both sides of the ball) might be enough to vault the Vikings into contention the next season or two before that massive cap number starts to hurt other aspects of their roster and they turn into a team similar to the Ravens after Flacco got his massive deal.

How is the straight out fact that corporations use to pay 33% of federal taxes and now pay 9% a Democratic talking point? Most economists say that the biggest issue with the US economy is the lack of consumer demand and a general shrinking of the consumer base. The GOP has come out and said that they would be willing to cut Social Security and Medicare for future generations as a result of massive deficits. Massive deficits that were further widened by this insane tax policy whose primary beneficiaries are the people in the economy doing the best for the past 35 years. I agree that the middle class saw a tax cut, but the modest tax cut that the middle class will be getting will not be enough. 48% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency. We have serious issues with the economy and the solution to those issues aren't give away the farm even further to the 1% of income earners and corporations. In 1980 the top 1% of income brackets earned 8.5% of the income in America. Now the top 1% earns 20% of the income and the numbers about percentage of wealth owned are staggering. So most economists and people in business will outright tell you that consumer demand and the health of the middle class is a crisis burdening the economy. And the GOP's solution is to help out the top 1% and corporations in the name of growing the economy. But if corporate profits and the share of wealth and capital available to the 1% were keys to growing the economy why hasn't the economy been doing gangbusters since 2001? Common sense has to tell you that if we are going to try and fix the issues with the US economy this is not the way to go. How much higher do corporate earnings have to go for there to be growth?

The middle class in blue states thanks to the SALT cap will be lucky to get anything from these bad tax policies. If you look at the percentage of taxes paid by corporations, top income earners, and the middle income earners we have shifted down the burden on corporations from 33% to 9% from 1952 to 2013 and that's only going lower. Top 1% Earners have seen their share of the tax burden significantly lowered thanks to tax cuts and massive cuts to the capital gains rate. While middle-income brackets have seen very little relief in terms of percentage of federal taxes paid. You honestly have to be a sucker to think that because a modest cut was given to middle-income earners. That makes it OK for us to give bigger cuts to corporations and the top brackets who are doing better than ever and whose success has never meaningfully impacted the middle class. The middle class in all states are going to get !@#$ed in the ass by the GOP when they go to cut I mean save Social Security by lowering it for future generations. They will move to cut Medicaid too. There is only so much you can charge to the company credit card before you have to cut the programs that the vast majority of Americans benefit from. We are basically financing corporate earnings and top income rate cuts with future cuts to social security and Medicare. It is going to be the middle and working class the takes it in the ass on that one.

I was more so talking in a general sense about corporations tax burden shifting from 33% in 1952 to 9% in 2013 and that share is going down thanks to these tax cuts. It's undeniable that since the early 80's, in particular, the USA has consistently been giving away more and more to corporations and the top 1% of earners and the economy hasn't really been all that great for the middle and working class. There is only so much we can put on the debt to prop up the economy before the shrinking middle class and lack of consumer demand becomes a problem that consumes the economy. So far Trump and the GOP's solutions are to just do more supply side stuff but there is no metric or past success that shows that these policies will work given the current conditions.

I didn't phrase it the best but the point remains that if you have a higher tax rate you make investing more in longer-term growth more attractive since you have a large write off for the money you invest in. Whereas if your rates are extremely low or non-existent you don't have as much incentive to invest as much.

That sounds a lot like sophistry. For one that implies that all businesses act in uniform two that ignores the fact that a high business tax rate actually encourages economic investment. Why give 20-40% of your profits to the man when you can invest your profits into growing your business and write that money off? Lower the tax rate and keeping the insane subsidies basically places the already low effective rate even lower. The USA is no longer incentivizing businesses to invest in long-term growth, instead, they have lowered the rates and given out subsidies to the point of a lot of big highly profitable corporations aren't paying much in taxes on profits. So when profits are high and taxes are very very low CEO's are going to do massive stock buybacks and bonuses that mostly go to very small groups of people and foreign investors. When Warren Buffett says we coddle the rich and corporations in this country you know something is wrong.

You have to look at macro statistics to see that corporations have bought our government and are !@#$ing the middle and working class over big time. A company could be paying millions in taxes but if it is profiting tens of billions then those millions are the equivalent of you paying $100 in taxes. Don't get fooled by sophistry. In 1952 corporations paid 33% of all taxes to the federal government, in 2013 that percentage was 9%. This isn't one company or one anecdotal evidence, either way, we are talking about holistic numbers that show that we have been giving away the biggest tax breaks to corporations for decades while our middle-class struggles. There has been a gigantic shift of the tax burden from corporations to the middle class. In 1980 the Top 1% of income earners earned 8.5% of the income in the nation and paid 19% of federal taxes. Now the top 1% earns about 20% of the income in the nation and pays 40% of federal taxes. Their burden has decreased slightly (And will decrease even more thanks to these stupid tax cuts) but for sake of this argument, it has stayed fairly the same. So who is picking up this slack that corporations have dropped? It's the middle class and the debt. We have gone into deep debt in this country and we don't really have nearly as much as we should. We waste money on these stupid wars instead of providing healthcare and debt relief for its citizens who are struggling. We have added trillions to the deficit to give corporations big tax breaks instead of investing in infrastructure (which would help make the movement of goods and services easier thus actually helping the economy while helping put working class people to work) and making our earned benifit systems fiscally solvent. What more evidence do you need to know that giving more and more to these companies and the top 1% of earners just isn't working.

A lot of coaches and scouts say that if you are a good athlete with decent size for a tight end that to be a decent blocker is mostly a matter of will power. Most NFL caliber coaching staff can coach up these players on the techniques and fundamentals of blocking. But the player has to be focused on it and willing to improve their blocking. The NBA has a similar issue with uber-athletic players with high levels of offensive skill not being good defenders because they just aren't as locked into the defensive end.

Right now I just hope that the Bills sign a run stuffing DT and make a run at Gaines or another decent nickel CB. Too many good DT's on the market that could plug that hole for them to burn 1-2 draft picks on. Both DT and Nickel are two holes that the team could plug without breaking the bank. RG would be another position I would go after but the market there is just not a buyers market so I understand the team not going deep into that market. Star from Carolina would be my target on the DT front definitely a buyers market on DT's this off-season esp players who are primarily run stuffers (which is what we need.)

It also seems to me that running back is a position where 1 major injury can lead you to fall off a cliff much quicker than any other position. I also feel like really good backs are found in later rounds more often than other positions. As good as Barkley can be (I think he has AP levels of potential) I think you are better off trying to get a QB if you are the Browns and then hope he falls to pick 4 where it is a lower (although still high) level of risk. In general the earliest I would draft a RB is the mid to late 1st. It seems like Pass rushers, QB's, CB's, and OT's are all a lot harder to come by.

Blount was always part of a committee in New England where a big bruising back could be successful. He started in 2015 his first year back on a minimum contract and crafted out a good role. Philly paid Blount the same money we gave Ivory because they had no good option as a starter at RB and took a bargain contract for a guy who just lead the league in Touchdowns. Ivory may a year younger than Blount was last season but he is coming off of 2 bad seasons and has a serious injury history. He isn't the type of players I would project to have success. There are plenty of veteran RB's out on the market that are younger and have less of an injury history. The Pats find a lot of good role players from players 3-4 years in the league getting waived by other teams. If "The Process" is as good as they say it is they should be able to find good role players at a position where there are a lot of good role players tend to be signed at minimum or less deals. I bet if you look at all the running backs that were signed off the street this off-season there are going to be 5-10 players that you would rather have than Ivory a 30 year old back coming off of 2 bad seasons and a considerable injury history including being a bit banged up the past 2 seasons is not a player I would sign for anything higher than the minimum.