BADOLBILZ

How was cutting Incognito's pay going to help resolve his addiction problem? You don't cut an addiction-addled employee's pay to get them to seek help...........you make them go into counseling or you outright release them..........that whole line of reasoning for cutting Incognito's pay never made any sense whatsoever. And Star had no financial incentive to take any risk with covid..........Beane guaranteed his salary.........so yes there is obviously literal evidence by definition. And since: 1) Very few players actually opted out 2) Similar players his age struggle to get work at all 3) His paycut indicated that the team was preparing to move on without him after 2020 Well let's just say that the preponderance of evidence would suggest that yes, he likely did opt out because his salary was guaranteed and he didn't have much to gain for taking the risk that other players did. Star re-defined the term "stay-at-home DT" in 2020.

The guy who needs to stop agreeing to pay cuts is Beane. Incognito and Star should have taught him enough lessons about how players respond to pay cuts. You are better off cutting them outright, letting them explore the market and then gratefully accepting a greatly reduced salary with you later if they can't find a job. In the cases of the aforementioned AND Addison and Butler the only one who might have gotten the same kind of money on the open market was the non-ex-Panther Incognito.

You thought Addison and Butler actually WANTED to take pay cuts? They were coming off years where they were most likely going to get much less than their reduced salary in an open market............they didn't do it to help the team. This "don't be aggressive in personnel decisions because players will collectively hold it against you" nonsense has been around since the beginning of the drought. Players look out for #1 when it comes to contracts. Less money for that guy that didn't produce is potentially more money for them.

The 2015 and 2016 Bills teams had A LOT of talent. They didn't have a franchise QB.........but that's about all they didn't have on either side of the ball..........they were massive underachievers and McCoy did his share to make that so........especially in 2015 when his head wasn't into being a Buffalo Bill. Who could forget him falling flat on his face against his nemesis Chip Kelly in a game the Bills should absolutely have won. There was no excuse for that team missing the playoffs either season. The 2017 offense was diminished by trading Watkins and not retaining Woods.........but McCoy wasn't raising the level of the offense.........their offense went from one of the better ones in the league to one of the very worst. They won in spite of the offense.

Yes, 2010-2013 Shady was tremendous.......but it's not even a partially RB driven league.........teams that win SB's now do it with inexpensive RB-by-committee approaches. No matter how good your RB is he is not going to average near 8 yards per attempt that you can expect from a QB like Josh Allen. When Shady's decline started in 2014 the Eagles fed him the ball like crazy on the ground and in the air.........and he ended up leading the NFL in LEAST yards per touch(6.3). The diminished Buffalo version of McCoy struggled in outside zone.........which is what Daboll wants to run...........it re-awoke Shady's bad habit of 2014/2015 of trying outrun the defense to the edge in a league where LB's were getting smaller and faster. It absolutely, positively is a passing league and a strong focus on RB play isn't the way to get it done.

Some of the angles people take......."I didn't know this was a political board" when they are rapid to get political...........or my new personal favorite is the ginned up "half of my family is in medicine".

@GunnerBill approves the first half of this message

Oh hell.......you can find similar runs from Mike Gillislee and Karlos Williams in that offense. That offense was VERY RB friendly........like the current Baltimore offense. People remember some of Karlos big runs but also MG had runs of 44, 50 and 60 in 2015 and 2016. McCoy left hundred of yards on the field in his first season in Buffalo by refusing to follow the dance steps of Roman's inside zone rushing attack..........he admitted as much and bought into the gameplan in 2016.....and even though he was physically diminished from the 300 carry guy he had been in Philly by that point he had a GREAT season..........but so did whoever filled in for him. McCoy was mostly a celebrity in Buffalo. They got some nice performances out of him and once he got his act together he was a solid teammate but Roman's offense was going to produce big time anyway and once McDermott got there McCoy was washed up. That was ultimately an astonishing amount of money to waste on a RB to get one excellent season out of 4.

Quick, give this guy a $40M deal

And the funny part about that is that it's not anything I haven't been preaching for two decades on TSW. Years of pointing out the astonishing running tally on drafts that the Bills had neither used their first #1 pick to draft a QB or trade up from it to do so.........McBeane ended that and how is that working out? Years of pointing out that you couldn't do worse than the Bills were doing if you just used your first round pick on a QB every year............and then they prove that by finally making the playoffs with only the ineffective Shaq and the most recent #1 Tre White on the roster after 17 years of high picks. Perhaps you should have been agreeing earlier.

The literal ***** problem is that there wasn't going to be a normal in 2021......and maybe much longer......without people getting vaccinated. There are worse things than Beasley retiring and the Bills getting their money back. This year is probably it for him in Buffalo anyway.

Actually, the Bills bought into getting Shady to buy into Buffalo. Tearing up his existing Philadelphia deal and adding like $25M in guaranteed money. And then...........in a move I've never seen before or since..........McBeane gave him a $2M bonus in the summer of 2017 to buy his loyalty. In return Buffalo got a disappointing first season...........an excellent season in an offense that inflated rushing stats...........and then a well below league average ypc performance in 2017. Not even going to go into 2018. So they paid an average of well over $10M per year for one exceptional season. One can't criticize Whaley and his handling of the salary cap and say that McCoy was a good acquisition without being utterly hypocritical.

Both entirely true statements in the context of the NFL regular season.........and the thread was specifically about qualifying for the NFLDPOY..........to which only the NFL regular season applies. Again.........Tremaine Edmunds hasn't forced a fumble in his last 42 REGULAR SEASON games and has never recovered a fumble in the REGULAR SEASON..............if you don't make big plays you aren't going to win the NFLDPOY. Facts.........no carbon credits needed.

Josh Allen graced the field.......in the obligatory Blue Jays jersey but in front of a house full of Bills fans who are Yankees fans.......... and the Yanks played maybe their best game of the season in sweeping the Jays. Another Yankee MLB record.........1st major league team to turn 2 triple plays in a season. Judge robbed a HR.........Gio with a great play at 3B........Torres nice work at SS..........great defensive game. Would have liked to see Allen take batting practice.

CB Buckner might have called that pitch a strike.

Nah, you could buy Andro powder(with yohimbe bark!) at the Summit Park Mall GNC back in the late 80's. Anybody that walked in looking for a post-lifting protein powder was getting recommended this andro product and being told it was not a steroid. So athletes from HS on up were already using it. But I get your point......the rationale is pretty random.

It's a low profile 3 wheel motorcycle. That's how they get around all the safety requirements of a car. Last I knew you needed a motorcycle license to drive one in NYS. Where Diggs lives I think a regular class D works.

Before or during last season at any point. Obviously. Seasons matter.........you don't just not even try to fill a position in the NFL in a season where you are competing for a SB berth just because some player might come back next season. They didn't even have a 1 tech option on the practice squad last season. It's not been a priority..........and Star's contract was adjusted in the winter of 2020 to facilitate his release after the 2020 season. Instead they get the version of Star that is a year older(will turn 32 this season) and won't have played in a game in 20 months if and when he suits up again next.

The question is why you think they would when they have continually showed no interest in filling Star's position with another stay-at-home type DT?

@Thurman#1's "HEEEEEEEEEEAT Maps" moment is likely to happen this summer.........he has piled up so much BS this offseason that TSW might need to buy some carbon credits to avoid an emissions fine.

The drought did damage, that's for sure. And much of it was the kinda' damage only having a superstar QB could fix. I mean, if the team had picked up a journeyman QB and made a surprising one-and-done run to a SB victory like Philly a few years ago it wouldn't have generated the kind of interest that having a star young QB on what looks like a regular playoff contender does. As much as we focus on the end goal of winning the SB........the journey with a great young QB in tow is actually a lot more compelling to the fanbase.

I mean........some fans like @eball didn't stay the path and dropped their season tickets etc............but for most of us, did we really have much of a choice? I get that you are trying to give props to the fanbase.........and we definitely deserve it.........but patience is absolutely not a virtue when it comes to getting a QB and not all of us were lucky enough to survive the drought and see the team FINALLY get back to contender status again.

Star's return allowed them to focus on DE in the draft? That's an instant classic.

Thanks for the post and Allen deserves that.......it's fun having a great young QB. But getting a star young QB had nothing to do with patience. Patience did cause them to miss on SB champions and future HOF'ers like Russell Wilson and Patrick Mahomes, though. So let's not create any false narrative that it had anything to do with patience. When the Bills finally made a playoff appearance in 2017........despite the better part of two decades drafting in the top half of each round..........the only one of their first round picks they had on the field that day was the most recent one.......Tre White. The lesson to be learned from those 17 seasons was probably that the most overrated asset in the NFL is a first round pick NOT used on a QB when you don't have a franchise QB.

@Thurman#1 is a doozy.😆 He definitely would have been THAT guy adamantly defending Dick Jauron by comparing his record in his first 3 seasons in Buffalo to Bill Belichick's record in Cleveland.