BADOLBILZ

4 seats together is a lot anywhere other than the corners of the upper deck........even when the team was lousy.

Meh. One guy is worth 5 years of a teams draft picks and has 10-15 years left...........the other is nearing the end and wasn't worth much in trade with a nearly $18M cap figure next season.

In baseball terminology do people with abandonment issues get hit by a pitch and think they hit a single? It's a long way from the coal mine and abandoned on a street corner to $7 billion for the Pegula clan........wouldn't call that a simple 4 bagger.

http://www.tankathon.com/nhl

I didn't say that. My comments were specifically on the NFL and NBA. But: https://novacapsfans.com/2020/09/30/ratings-for-2020-stanley-cup-clincher-lowest-in-three-decades/

It was a significant overhaul of one of the league's worst defenses. The Bills defense was actually pretty good. They had a very poor game against KC.........people want to point to the talent like they need to add 3-4 high quality upgrades to the defense to be able to compete........but the jimmies and joes on both sides of the ball should have done better than they did. It was a meltdown by coaches and players alike. Chiefs now own the real estate in the Bills heads that the Patriots did prior to 2020. That's the bigger obstacle.

Disagree about what, exactly?

SJ13 is a good example of the "concept" you are talking about........he wouldn't have been option #1 on many teams........ but he was also in steep decline by the time the Bills got rid of him so I wouldn't use his production after Buffalo as an example. Logan Thomas is not the #1 option for the WFT like SJ13 was for the Bills, though. That guy is Terry McLaurin.......a stud WR. Thomas was given a chance to convert to TE because he was the top TE recruit in the nation in HS (and later considered the possible NFL #1 overall pick at QB in college). He's a really exceptional athlete for the position. I don't expect him to become a true superstar TE like Kelce/Gronk while pushing 30 now............but while you may think that he just got over-targeted, and therefore overrated, the same argument was made about Kelce early in his career with KC. He averaged over 100 targets per season from 2014-2016 when the Chiefs had no outside passing game(literally 0 WR TD's in 2014). His game didn't decline switching from a pro bowl level QB in Alex Smith to a great one in Mahomes with great WR targets.........his production actually increased by about 30%.

I don't think the Bears are a likely destination.

The reviews on Teller were mixed as a rookie. Thomas was new to the position but his physical talent was known. He was a top recruit and stud athlete. I think the odds that Teller would become a second team All Pro when he played just 11 games.....not just "good"........and the chance that Thomas would emerge as a good receiving TE.....were not as different as you'd like to make it seem. It will be fun to watch Thomas next year he was really beasting at the end of the season.

The way to anticipate the possibility would be to take into account a guy transitioning from QB to TE and having to do it while learning 6 different playbooks between November 28 of 2016 and the summer of 2020. The Bills offenses of 2017 and 2018 were very different and both made it very hard to evaluate the talent on the team. After 2018 they gave up on Logan Thomas and Wyatt Teller. Two guys that would get a lot of scratch on the free agent market now.

Not 4 years. Thomas only played two years for the Bills. He was on the PS the last month of the season with the Bills in 2016 when he first decided to convert from QB to TE. He didn't do much with the Bills but those two offenses were nightmarishly bad. Especially first half 2018, historically inept offense. He showed something in year 3 as a TE......in Detroit.......in limited reps showed that he could move the chains............that's why he got the two year deal with Washington.

You and @GunnerBill and @NewEra can claim he's just a scrub on a bad team.........but you guys are wrong.........he's become a very good receiving TE. Watch the games guys.

And you were adamant that Josh Allen wasn't worth selecting and that it was the wrong decision at the time to select him. A classic case of something that only looks good to you(and many others with similarly self-assured opinions) in hindsight. Not comparing Allen to Thomas directly but it's just one of those deals, like Teller and a pile of bad free agent signings, that did not work out and are part of Beane's resume regardless of opinions of those moves at the time. Ultimately, if you get credited for things that work out........you also get credited for those that don't work out.

Of course the team switch might have delayed his emergence but even so Thomas was better with Detroit than Tyler Kroft was with Buffalo. Obviously the Bills offense in 2017/2018 was an abortion so not a great place to develop young talent but he looked notably better in Detroit in limited opportunity in 2019. But he wasn't likely to get the time that a Murphy got because he was inherited from Rex/Whaley. TE is a tough position to evaluate and project.......but it's a tough game for tough people right? Bottom line results........team would pay thru the nose for him now.

We are in agreement that Beane has been very inefficient with cap space.........that's why they are up against it with a QB still on his rookie deal. But you are discounting that they still thought that Murphy was perhaps going to return to his peak pass rusher level. That's why they signed him and he had a huge game with 3 sacks in the playoffs against Houston 9 months earlier so they might have thought he was finally getting back to being productive. Murphy as that near double-digit sacks guy that they paid him to be was NOT replaced. That's why we are having this Watt discussion.

Passing on Metcalf and AJ Brown to draft Cody Ford? Trading Wyatt Teller? Giving Star Lotulelei a $50M contract and then guaranteeing his salary last offseason to try to get back a little over $1M of his salary(which allowed him to take the year off with no financial loss and makes him an $11M immovable object on the payroll). The Eric Wood extension? Dumping Logan Thomas and then watching him become a top receiving TE(3rd in receptions 7th in yards)? There have been PLENTY. Fortunately you have to be constantly making bad decisions to not at least be competitive in the NFL. I like Beane and the growth mindset the organization has gives me hope that they will continue to improve in evaluating players but the list of bad decisions is not so small that a $7M cap hit for a part time player is the worst.

My enthusiasm for Knox is tempered from watching his awkward play but I agree that he could certainly improve and there is recent Bills precedent. In 2018 Logan Thomas was a Bill and a joke on this board. In 2020 the NFL's reception leading TE's : 1. Darren Waller 2. Travis Kelce 3. Logan Thomas Thomas is up there with Wyatt Teller in the "one's that got away" from Beane category.

Not even close to his worst error..........because of the way they cleaned house of key young talent and traded up so much in drafts Beane had to invest a lot in free agency and trades to make up for the personnel they lopped off. There were tons of bad decisions. Trading for Corey Coleman and then cutting him 10 days later and eating $3.5M cap hit was worse than keeping Murphy as insurance and most don't even remember it.

Watt wasn't a free agent but they had little choice but to either trade or let him go........and at 32 with a $17M base salary coming off a 5 sack season he wasn't a particularly valuable trade commodity...........they are in huge cap trouble and he was the most obvious start to the solution. The Bills though, could have franchised Gilmore and traded him for great value...........whether he was a malcontent or not is irrelevant because he wouldn't have signed the tender until any hope of a long term deal elsewhere was exhausted. It was a short-sighted decision at a time when they were making a lot of them. They hadn't even been to the playoffs once in 16 years. They were a laughingstock. That's not even subject to debate.

JJ Watt's 2021 base salary was actually higher than it would have cost to franchise tag Gilmore........not much difference at all.........and then they could have traded him. His worth was certainly a late first rounder and guys like Tre White and TJ Watt went late in that first round. We're welcome to laugh at Houston but in the offseason after the Rex firing the Bills were just as big of a laughingstock as Houston is.........the key difference is that the Bills weren't in the news for their dumpster fire because they didn't even have an elite QB or 3 time DPOY to lose. So many parallels........including the two dope HC's that got fired in O'Brien and Rex.

Which literally included not retaining or trading away any 1st or 2nd round pick still on the Bills roster from prior to their arrival (except Shaq, who they refused the 5th year option on). Again.........Houston was already going to be bad because of O'Brien's GM work. Letting Watt walk for nothing was exactly what McDermott did in not franchising Gilmore.........except Gilmore was in his prime and had 1st round trade value. Even though Gilmore became the NFL's defensive player of the year for our most bitter division enemy........and Woods has had several great seasons..........letting go of your elite franchise QB is another level of stupid.

Yeah he did come to a "good" team but it was one that was only a WC round type team even with a very good QB in Alex Smith. If it were just about windows then Mahomes should have been arriving at the end of theirs. Earlier under Reid they had been a defense-centric playoff team that one season had zero touchdown passes thrown to wide receivers. Then they aged out on defense and transitioned to an offensive team for a couple playoff trips and gradually became very one-sided on that side of the ball. The 2018 Chiefs that Mahomes took to the #1 seed had a very bad defense. They've gotten better as a team in the two seasons since. If that's just a window then it's a very big window. The window where Mahomes is involved is probably when his salary cap figure jumps up dramatically in 2022.

I remember last year in the lead up to the SB I saw a Barrett interview and they asked him if he'd be happy on the franchise tag and he said something to the tune of living in Tampa beat being in Buffalo. I've since assumed he wasn't an option. I also saw him on tv today and he said both sides were very optimistic that a deal would get done to keep him in Tampa.

@GunnerBill is being serious. Watson's 2021 salary is guaranteed. Same with 2022. Why are you here still?