billsfan89

A lackluster but not disastrous opening drive. They managed to shift field position a bit, which in a game that could be a defensive struggle is not a bad way to start.

I would say Watkins is going to command 8-9 million a year. That would put him in line with the 21st highest salary at his position. Watkins stayed healthy which is a big plus but he also didn't put up insane production which is going to hurt his value. He will get a nice contract but he isn't going to command that monster top 5-10 at his position salary that he was expecting.

Falcons and Titans won, looks good for the Bills as far as the other games go. Bills will have pick number 21 and 22 if they lose or pick number 22 and then a pick beyond 25 if they win. They also get the Rams 2nd round pick which is now locked in around the 23rd pick of the second round.

Andy Reid is an offensive genius, put Tyrod in that system with that talent and I think you see similar results. Alex Smith is a limited QB just as Tyrod is. It seems like at best a slight upgrade or a lateral move in my opinion.

Why pick up Smith when we have Tyrod who can manage a game about as effectively? Alex Smith isn't much of an upgrade from Tyrod at all.

The Bills need to resign Gaines unless he is commanding crazy money. I think the Bills could go as high as a 6 million dollar per year average, that would rank him 27th at his position in terms of annual average. I think anything more than that isn't smart since he has trouble staying on the field.

Shady is healthy enough to try and give it a go. But how effective will he be? If I was a coach I would make the backfield an even split between him and Murphy. Shady getting his normal heavy workload is going to result in him getting hurt more than likely, but maybe if you use him less you lessen the chance for him to be ineffective or get hurt.

Pass rush wise and pass defense wise they are extremely scary. They have 2 double digit sack players and 2 other players with 8 sacks each, safe to say they get after the QB. Their secondary is one of if not the best in the league. Ramsey and Bouye are all pros and the surrounding players are pretty good too. Their rush defense was bad but since Dareus has joined them their rush defense has been one of the best in the league. The Jags might have the best defense in the league. Their big issue is their offense which hangs their defense out to dry at times. Fournette is a good running back but he hasn't been dynamic only getting 3.9 yards a carry, Bortles has had a decent year but without Allen Robinson, their offense just doesn't have any consistent threats on the outside and Bortles at best is mediocre. To me it is obvious that the defense is going to have to be lock down, if the Jags score 14 points it is likely to be enough know the matchup on the other side of the ball.

I don't know what the Bills can do against this defense. They are a tremendous secondary, a very good pass rush, and since Dareus got there they are stout against the run. The Bills might need to do a lot of trick plays and exotic looks to try and get their offense going. They can't play too conservative because at home I think their offense will put up some points here or there. So the offense can't hang the defense out to dry.

"A city so nice they named it Jacksonville." Ash Williams.

I hope for the Raiders sake there is some sort of out in that contract in the last few years, I like Gruden as a coach, the Raiders have talent esp in two places where it is hard to get talent (QB and Pass rush.) But dam that's a lot of money for a coach who hasn't coached for nearly 10 years.

The drought ending might have just been some fluke luck but it gets the monkey off this teams back and gets rid of some stigma. Now if they actually manage to win a playoff game then that could be huge, only the Bengals and Browns I believe have longer streaks of not winning a playoff game.

I trust the Jags defense to shut down our offense (Esp an offense with Shady injured) more than I trust our defense to shut down the Jags offense. That being said I think this is a close game, simply because I think that Bortles will make some turnovers and the Jags won't be able to consistently move the ball like a team like New England would be able to. I think the Jags win 20-10 in a low scoring affair that is a one-possession game until deep into the 4th. If Shady was fairly healthy I would be more optimistic but even if he plays I can't see him being as dynamic as he usually is.

Good dude just not a good football player. Not his fault that the Bills over drafted him.

Unless you get a really good offer (2nd rounder plus something else) for Tyrod I am keeping him for one more year. Even if you make that all in move for a rookie QB what kind of team is that QB going to be on? The Bills have modest cap space but at best they can maybe retain talent and plug a hole or two, and if they gut their draft picks to trade up for a QB then they aren't going to have much ability to upgrade the roster via the draft. The Bills are an older team and without those draft picks they won't be an improved team in 2018. Having Tyrod is a luxury that this team has that they shouldn't toss away for nothing. If you get your QB of the future it is best to not force him into a bad situation.

At that point, I would rather have the younger game manager who is a little bit cheaper and already on the roster in Tyrod. Either the team makes a big trade for a top 3 QB in the draft or they build around Tyrod. Cousins and any other trade/free agent option isn't that significant of an upgrade over Tyrod in my opinion.

If the cost is both 1st rounder this year, the Bills 2nd, and the Bills 1st next year plus some additional mid-round picks, then I would highly consider it for one of the top 3 QB's in this years draft. Yes that would be gutting the teams draft this year and hurting their draft badly next year. But the Bills would still have a late 2nd and late 3rd round pick in 2018 and only lose 1 pick in 2019. That's not the worst cost to pay for a top QB prospect. However if the cost goes much steeper than that I would have to consider passing and just building the team around Tyrod and drafting a QB later.

I understand that the middle-class tax cuts being temporary are an accounting measure due to parliamentary rules for lack of a better term. But the choice that the Republicans made to make the Corporate and upper-income rates the permanent rates OVER the middle-class rates shows their priorities and how can you not be pissed off about that? Why not have the corporate and upper-income rates be the ones that expire? It shows you the priorities of the party and who they are more concerned about when they crafted this legislation. I know there are a lot of corporate Dems who also back big business and such, but the Republicans are the worse of two evils in this respect. Lower taxes sent Kansas into a massive amount of debt that they didn't have before and their economy didn't grow any differently than the states that surrounded it. I am not a dogmatic person who thinks you should always be raising revenues. I don't even have an issue with big deficits as long as they are proportional to GDP in some respect. But IF we are going to go into big amounts of debt then we honestly have to ask why and for what reason are we going to go into those big deficits? Right now we could take that money that we are giving to the top 5% and corporations and spend it in ways that pay for things the country really needs like infrastructure and middle-class tax cuts. But instead, we needed more money for those who are already doing the best. It is nice that some mid-sized firms who were paying the higher marginal rate will be getting a cut but the exemptions that big industry still enjoys are still in the tax code. Why not gut a lot of the exemptions crafted for big business and then lower the marginal rate? That would be smart and more revenue neutral or less deficit inducing. But the Republicans didn't want to piss off their corporate sponsors so they just said !@#$ it we will pay for it with more debt. Corporate reserves are at all-time high, the amount of money proportional to the overall economy held by the 1% is the highest it's been since the 1920's. This isn't because they are taxed so highly. The amount of taxes collected on both groups under Obama was lower than most other times since WWII. These factors are driven by a lack of demand from the middle class which is hurting right now. Our big deficits shouldn't be because we redistributed wealth to the upper class and corporations. Our big deficits should be because we are paying for things that will help out the middle class which is the engine of demand in our economy. If you look at the top 10 states with growing economies 4 are Blue States (California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado) while 2 are swing states (Florida and Nevada) and the other 4 are red states (Utah, Montana, Texas, and North Carolina.) It's a mix of economic approaches. Clearly, there are a lot of factors that go into an economy other than tax rates and budgets. We only talk about taxes and budgets and other government policy because that's what we are in control of the most. But it's only one factor. I cited higher earners and businesses paying more in federal taxes in Blue States than they would in Red States (But less overall in either state) would lead to more business leaving Blue States. It could also lead to declining property values in Blue States which could hurt their economies as well. This was a weaponized tax code and you can clearly tell in the way that they crafted it. The National debt was not doubled under Obama although that isn't exactly as great an exaggeration as some defenders of his would argue. He increased the debt by 70% relative to GDP. While it was a lot by dollar amount the percentage to which he increased the debt was not as bad as GWB and Reagan who had 101% and 186% increases to the debts themselves. Once again debts and deficits aren't evil inherently but you have to ask why are you going into them? With Obama we got a lot of money poured into the economy when the recession was happening which did help alleviate the recession but then he began to pare that spending down and reallocate money to areas of less imidate need. He should have kept up spending on things like infrastructure and jobs training. But in the end he mismanaged the situation a bit. A critique of this idiotic tax plan is not a defense of Obama nor is a critique of Obama a defense of this idiotic policy. https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296

I see what you were getting at but it depends on what part of PA you live in too and it will hurt how attractive PA is for business in general since it increases the costs of doing business in general.. Honestly I am not worried about the micro impact on myself. My state income taxes aren't exceeding 10k when I write them off against each other (I live in one state and work in another, so I write off the taxes from one against the other) and I rent at this moment so I don't pay property tax. Although my parents will be effected in 2019 and beyond. They prepaid a portion of their 2018 property tax bill to get under that 10k cap but their property tax is almost 10k and their state income taxes put them well over that. I more so worry about the impact the lack of a significant write off will have on the macro economics of blue states which were clearly targeted. The Republicans wanted to make the Blue states suffer and be less attractive for businesses. This pretty much does that. It makes owning valuable property in the most economically active and driving parts of the country (The North East and the West Coast) much more expensive to do. Now I don't care as much for the rich guy who owns three houses or a really expensive house. But for businesses that own expensive properties in those states their tax bill is likely going to go up or they aren't going to receive nearly as much of a cut. For a lot of people the property values are going to go down. It's bad policy decision for the Republicans to not have the cap be higher for married couples and maybe significantly raise the cap for businesses. Then again the whole tax bill is a gigantic turn sandwich to begin with in my opinion.

Oh !@#$ off with this sophistry. Blue States send more money to the federal government than they receive back, now that gap is going to be even wider. The Blue States were already subsidizing the Red States most of whom got back more money from the feds than they pay in. Now that gap is going to be bigger and for what? To build infrastructure that is desperately needed? To lower the national deficits which would stabilize the future? Maybe it is to help out people dealing with medical bankruptcy or crippling student debt, we bailed out the banks, why not bail out the consumer? No, we are taking on all this debt to give a tax cut that mostly benefits corporations and the rich who are doing by far better than they have been in nearly all of modern history. Corporate Reserves and cash on hand are at record highs, they aren't investing money they are mostly taking their record profits and giving it back to investors a large chunk of whom are foreigners. This is a massive extraction of wealth outside of he country. The fact that the corporate and top earner rates are the permanent rates and the middle-class tax cuts expire shows you were the real priorities of the party that cut this plan are. You can't write your local taxes beyond 10k, it's a federal tax code. The only thing a state can do is allow you to write off your property tax against your state tax, but that's not going to make up the difference at all. I know it's a deduction, you don't get it subtracted from your federal taxes. I mainly said that it alleviated the costs as if you were a high earner in NY state you could at least deduct a large amount of taxes you paid to the state against your federal bill. It obviously wouldn't give you the full amount back but getting a portion back is better than the nothing they will get now.

I think a lot of these players can afford good accounting schemes to get away with a lot of taxes too.

I think you grossly overestimate state taxes. I think California has the highest state tax and it's in the range of 10% at the highest income bracket. No state takes 20% of your money via income tax. No matter what you still have to pay federal taxes. And up until Trump !@#$ed over everybody you use to be able to write off your state and local taxes fully against your federal taxes, which for high gross income earners deeply helped alleviate that cost. Also I think that as another poster mentioned that you get taxed by which state you play your games in. I would also add in the fact that a lot of teams in higher taxed states have no issues recruiting players.

Kupp plays with established receivers Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods, veteran tight end Jared Cook has also been healthy. Jones has had decent players Jordan Matthews and Charles Clay around him but both have been banged up. Even Kelvin Benjamin hasn't been able to stay healthy. I also think Goff is a better QB than Tyrod. So it isn't surprising that Kupp has been able to perform and produce more in the circumstances he finds himself in. So I doubt that Kupp on the Bills would be putting up anywhere close to the numbers he has with the Rams, although I think he probably would be better than Jones at least so far.

I don't think Rex signed IK just because he broke Geno's jaw. IK was a 6th round pick by Rex's Jets the last year he coached there. So Rex clearly had to like him on some level. I think he likely would have signed him had the Jets released him. The Bills did have a need for a bigger Linebacker at the time too so I think it just lined up that Rex could get a player he drafted a year ago at a position where he needed some depth. Granted knowing Rex the jaw breaking was a plus in his mind.

Even if Zay is a bust (which I think is up in the air) as long as White, Dawkins, and Milano play up to their potential and stay relatively healthy this past draft is a huge success. Even factoring out the fact that they got a extra 1st round pick simply finding 3 good starters at key positions is a sweeping success.