BADOLBILZ

I like to use Charlie Ward as an example of this. If Charlie Ward wasn't a better QB prospect than Russell Wilson I will eat my hat...........but in that NFL he wasn't going to get a system tailored to him like Russ. And the earning potential even as a fringe NBA player was better than being a good NFL QB. Charlie Ward made $34M in 12 seasons as a serviceable player in the NBA........Jim Kelly made $28M in 11 seasons as a HOF QB. Their careers didn't directly overlay but the fact that Ward would have finished anywhere near a HOF QB in career earnings says it all.

1) Murray was a high 1st round pick and given a $5M bonus by the Oakland A's. He wasn't likely to play in MLB as a rookie but probably in year 2. Years ago going to MLB would have been the easy choice for him. Less violent......longer career........guranteed contracts and very good baseball players got paid more than great QB's. Those aren't the economics of baseball anymore. Careers are shorter with PED's legislated better.......teams work to delay free agency and are loathe to pay players past their age 32 year any longer(which is still middle of the prime of a modern QB)..........and the supply greatly exceeds the demand everywhere except pitcher and catcher........neither of which Murray played. 2) Carson Wentz is in your "top paid QB" list is he not?..........he's not a top QB.........but he is paid $30M.........it works both ways.........all leagues have dudes who flame out or get overpaid for one reason or another. All those NBA players you mentioned were All Stars. That represents the league's finest. 3) Yes, built like LB's. I don't think Jim Kelly was less than 220 pounds at any point after HS. Penn State wanted him as a LB. That's a list of big, strong dudes. Jim Kelly was physically beaten after age 35 season. Marino was finished after 37 and diminished before that. Nowadays they both play another 5 years at a high level and pocket an extra $150M in the process.

1) Your insinuation is that without the Bills getting a 5th round pick for Gillislee they couldn't have had as much success in the draft.......my point is that they totally wasted two much earlier picks on Zay Jones. A LOTTA things have to happen by the 5th round. I mean, are you one of those revisionist "what were we thinking drafting Leif Larson with Tom Brady on the board!?" people? 2) Yes you were wrong. And you got mad and insulted me when you read my opinion. The proper response to that isn't "guess what.......I was wrong".......it's "I apologize......I was wrong". Honestly I laugh this stuff off and there really is no better response to false narratives/straw men/misremembered takes than laughing at it. But if TSW had to donate a dollar to Oishei Children's Hospital for every time a person first made contact with me here to insult me personally for a football take in the past 22 years...........SDS would have a unit named after him.

The low pay was and still is a major deterrent to anyone interested in getting into NFL scouting.

I didn't advocate a long term contract or a even starting job for Mike Gillislee. It's laughable that folks like you try to cherry pick the tiny fact that I was in favor of placing an earlier round, cheap, ONE YEAR tender on a very productive RB. We can't unwatch the 2017-2018 Bills offenses.........putrid............for stretches some of the worst offense in the history of the franchise. Fortunately 4 seasons later we are finally producing on that side of the ball again..........and now a lot of the pro-tankers like you who loved the late game drama of offensively anemic Jauron Ball........are suddenly appreciative of good offensive football. 😆

Didn't the Nix Bills get to 5-1 once with a QB/WR combo of Fitz, SJ13, Nelson and Jones all of whom were 6th rounders or undrafted? The year before the Bills opening day OL was the least experienced offensive line to start an NFL game since 1950(Wood, Levitre, DeMattress Malone etc..). Totally useless trivia but at the time some people here thought that it meant the bills were playing 3D chess.

I think he was helped off the field after the high ankle sprain and never returned..........was put on IR a week later. But he was nagged by a bunch of injuries all season and favoring them might very well have caused the high ankle sprain. I agree he is very important to what they do.......I really hope they do not release him. Would love to see he and Diggs healthy together for a full season because I really think his deep speed opens things up for Diggs. When he's not in there Diggs gets turned into a dink and dunk option. When Brown is on the field suddenly Diggs' routes are ran out past the sticks instead of in front of them.

And you were one of the people rooting for the Bills to tank in the summer of 2017 too. They had one of the oldest rosters in the NFL in 2017............if they had tanked it would have undermined "the process". Tanking is for teams with a coaching staff on the way OUT...........

Gillislee didn't pan out with NE but the difference between he and Tolbert's pay was only around $1M. Tolbert and the Bills offense were a mess. Gillislee didn't regain his form in NE........but he did drop the dagger TD into the Bills in the 2017 game in NE where the Bills had jumped out to an early lead. I know.......too emotionally disturbing for most of you to remember. As for the draft pick........Milano is an excellent player so kudos to Whaley I guess but I'm not sweating not being able to project that Milano would be there and a good off-ball LB 140 picks into the draft.😆 Trading pick #91 in that draft to move up for Zay Jones was foolish though. I was high on Trey Hendrickson as a developmental DE with that pick in round 3 and sure enough he came off the board shortly after that and the Bills weren't in position to get him. I am sure you don't know who Hendrickson is but he is one of the leagues very best pass rushers. Would have killed it in the Bills system. But hey they did also get "Nate Favre" out of that trade as well.

Having $30M in cap space isn't much.........so getting $10M-$15M wiggle room isn't much, Doc. And yes, it's a big issue in 2022.........but in 2021 they will no longer have the options they had in the past two offseasons with $80M in cap space..........things like letting two $10M players go at a position and replacing them with three $8M players...........they are actually going to have to start bringing up depth players to replace proven guys like Milano and Williams and finding some diamonds. Their OL has basically 5 veteran free agent level paid players........their 3 man WR corp are all big dollars........and their starting secondary are all $6M plus players. That kind of excess is not sustainable. They aren't even paying the QB yet and they are up against it so as @Coach Tuesday said........they are going to have to get more efficient.

I know you remain a Whaley/Rex defender but as I said at the time.......unnecessarily extending McCoy into 2018 and 2019 was dumb. His Eagles contract ran thru 2017.......and that's where ANY of his usefulness as regular NFL RB ended. He was SHOT by 2018. I know at the time you said he was the "Tom Brady of running backs" who could play great into his late 30's.......that take was hilarious.😆 And no I never declared that McDermott was going to be Jauron 2.0. In the summer of 2017 when you and others were vehemently insisting that McBeane were trying to tank and get a very high draft pick.....I said no way.........their intention was to Jauron-ball the team into contention. There was no way they were going thru all that culture building to totally undermine their message by tanking. And Jauron-ball was exactly what they played. Protect the ball, play a defensive style to prevent big plays and shorten games and hope that your opponent made more mistakes than you. It worked out.......particularly in road games at Carolina, Atlanta and KC where QB's made late mistakes to secure Bills upset victories. Dick Jauron went 13-3 with that style once. It can work sometimes but it also puts you in position to GET BEAT as often as anything so that's why DJ was always around .500. I did say that I thought they should have tendered Gillislee a $2.3M one year contract. He lead the NFL in ypc and short yardage conversions in 2016. That was the extent of it. You thought the Bills rush offense would still be just as effective with Mike Tolbert and Dennison as they were in 2016..........you couldn't have been much more wrong. They were terrible. Dennison could have tried to keep the same system in place or just run more inside zone at least............he did not.........he got fired immediately after a playoff season with years left on his contract.

Major injuries happen in every season to NBA players or MLB players too. Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Kyrie Irving, DeMarcus Cousins.....all "max" contract players......all missed seasons recently and/or currently. Then think of all of the pitchers who end up getting Tommy John surgery. Nearly 20% of all pitchers end up getting TJ. Injuries happen in every sport. QB career expectancy has exploded. Instead of guys built like LB's in Kelly and Marino enduring the punishment and flaming out at 36-37..............now we have much more slightly built soft tossers like Brady and Brees playing at a very high level into their 40's. The NBA is the only real good comparison to QB pay-potential........guys like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen or DeShaun Watson now have the potential to earn $30M-$40M type money for 15-17 years.........great NBA players who enter the league at 19 have the potential to make that kind of money. In MLB you basically play 6 years(plus any years of minor league service) to reach unrestricted free agency between the ages of 27-30. And 30 teams have 10 positions each that a player could earn $30M playing if they are great enough. So 14 out of 300 MLB starters/aces make top dollar. In the NFL 10 of 32 starting QB's make top dollar. Profiling as a starting QB made it much easier for top baseball prospects like Mahomes and Kyler Murray to choose football. I will say this though..........in MLB a glut of talent caused by massive amounts of foreign players and youth baseball enrollment in the US skyrocketing has created a minor league system with a bunch of formerly-MLB-worthy talent in limbo and that surplus has really turned the pay scale of the league into much more of a have and have-not situation. In football.........there are more capable QB's than ever. The talent level is night and day from 15 years ago. For example......last years leading yardage passer is a backup QB in New Orleans this year. If the trend continues........2-3 stud QB's entering the league every year + top QB's playing for 20 years = that will alter the pay scale.

You don't save cap room letting contracts expire, TFP. The prospective cap figure for the following year does not include expired contracts from the previous season.

See the response above

The Bills are already up tight against the cap in 2021 even before Allen hits the $25M-$30M salary cap figure in 2022 though. Williams, Feliciano and Milano are UFA's this winter..........Diggs is going to want a new deal very soon.........Beasley and Brown are entering walk years.........Edmunds option for 2022 will be over $10M if they don't extend him before that. Beane has his work cut out for him.

Stefon Diggs was the #2 overall WR recruit in the nation in HS. He wasn't under anyone's radar. Injuries, a talented WR class and questions about his personality pushed him way down the board.

Two things that happened: 1) Top QB's started getting paid better than any US athletes short of the very finest in the NBA. 2) The game got a lot less violent for QB's around 2010. That made playing QB a lot more interesting to some really great young athletes(and their parents). Football is still a game of attrition at most positions but QB's now can play longer and at a higher level than just about any position in sports.

So basically you think Beane let's Allen play out his full 5 year rookie deal...............when Mahomes(and Tre White for that matter) got extended after season 3?

Yep.......he's started out some games hot but I think it's very important to get him in a groove early in case he's not. Wasn't happy at all with the game plans against Tennessee and KC where Daboll seemed too interested in running the ball early when he had a QB averaging over 9 ypa and runners getting less than 4 ypa. It's a lot different when you have a QB averaging in the low 6 ypa range and backs getting 5.5 like the 2016 Bills.

1) Exactly. 2) LOL

"It's like a miracle! Keep it in perspective though. How dare people bring up mistakes? But realize that nothing has yet been accomplished. In closing how can you not enjoy this journey? Do it because it could all be an illusion then you would be sorry." Have I driven you home from a game before?

I hope they win the SB this year with a QB on his rookie deal.......as I said I think that this season was their best chance to maximize their roster talent/depth.........and that would be like how it worked out for the Seattle and Philadelphia SB winning teams. Doesn't mean they CAN'T get better.........but as those other teams can attest, after the cap room dries up it gets more difficult to keep the roster stocked. That's where we will be able to see how McBeane stack up against organizations like New England, Pittsburgh, Seattle and New Orleans who managed to remain contenders for long periods of time with serious salary cap constraints. The flip side of that........as I've mentioned.......is that when you win and have a franchise QB you should be able to have chances to get a few good, winning-motivated veterans on favorable contracts that weren't an option in the past. Also......winning has a way of extending careers of important veterans you do have. The Bills of the 90's benefitted from that kind of synergy. In the 2000's the Pats have been huge beneficiaries of this. Players will endure a lot more punishment for a longer time if they feel certain they can win. In Buffalo we have become accustomed to players like Aaron Schobel calling it quits or quickly opting out of lost seasons for surgery etc...

You see humility would be a good approach for the Bills fanbase as we hopefully enter an era of playoff success. That's obviously NOT gonna' happen. Hurt people hurt people. It's part of the reason we have such backlash against me basically saying "I approve of Beane being extended but he needs to do better in some regards". This is not a harsh take in anything less than a battered fan environment. But hurt people ALSO make good TV..........so Bills fans will at least be fun for the nation to watch climb the SB mountain again.

Sure but very rarely on TSW. The amount of hotly contested takes of import that I've been spot on about on this site over the past 22 years even surprises me. I'm the GOAT in that regard here and it's not even close. As I've told @GunnerBill though.......the key to being right is not trying to have some kind of take on everything.......it's having your strong public takes on things that you have warranted confidence in. When you try to have a take on everything your winning % falls precipitously and you run the risk of being actual-NFL-GM-level-right..........which is basically a flip of the coin for the most part.

I'm quick to counter extreme positions. I'm very much in the middle being as objective as possible...........and that really inflames unabashed homers who fluctuate from one extreme to another over the past 20 years. So happens that right now many homers are counting their chickens before the regime has even hatched a single command performance in any of 9 games played against their chief division rival or in the playoffs............so the content I am responding to is extremely out of balance with the reality. The journey is the reward.......being in a hurry to crown them runs contrary to that, IMO. It's been said the McBeane are self critical and driven to improve...........if they are that way why should the fanbase "just be happy" with modest success?