Mango

Imagine writing a post about "early playoff exits" in order to prove a point that a team that has missed the playoffs two years in a row. I guess you're right. If you miss the playoffs more than you make the playoffs I guess you can't have very many early exits. But to your point, since the Bengals have decided to go this route of 5th year options and tags they've made the playoffs zero times. I don't think anybody disagrees that the Bills need to do more to address weapons around Josh. That includes the draft and money. They absolutely do But if you asked me right now to trade the other 52 players on the Bengals not named Burrow for the other 52 players not named Allen I would laugh you out the door. I'll beat this drum over and over again, great QB's who want the payday have to do more with less skill talent around them. The $50-60M deal has to cover the deficit in spend elsewhere

The Bengals have not made the playoffs since 2022. They've missed 3 of 5 years since they drafted Burrow. Trying to conflate the overall functionality and success of the Bengals FO because of one SB appearance is silly. They've haven't just largely underperformed expectations for the majority of Burrows career, they're getting him destroyed out there by giving him trash at the OL.

At the same time the NFL is basically the last remaining major sport without a fully guaranteed contract. So NFL owners want them to play the most violent sport in America, with the least amount of GTD(%) and then give ownership the ability to nope out of the rest. Make the defaulting clause league wide and move all contracts to guaranteed.

Put some respect on that would ya. That is the father of future 2025 Illinois Highschool Player of the Year, Tremaine Edmunds, to you!

To be fair, Barkleys contract is a little wonky to describe. He got a two year extension with 2 years left, and had 4 dead years on top of that. Tough to wrap your head around how much he is paid when he has just as many void years as he does playable years in his deal. Does he cost the Eagles $18M per over those 4 years? No. But he does over 8 if you normalize the void years. Normally I don't blink at void years, but it seems strange to have a guy listed on spotrac for 8 years and then not play for half of that. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/player/_/id/25097/saquon-barkley

The Jalens contract hasn't hit the cap yet. He carried $13m last year. My totally uneducated opinion is that unless Hurts becomes a much better passer I don't think he carries the eagles once the bill comes due. The Bengals paying Burrow, Higgins, and Chase nearly $100M in 2025 cap space is really bad business. They're lucky Burrow hasn't had a career ender with all the hits he's taken. That's the kind of spending a team should do with a guy on a rookie deal/early into his extension.

Lolz. Burrows contract isn't really the issue here. He isnt Dak or Lawrence. He's a top tier QB being paid the market rate. It's a franchise that has put waaay too much priority on pass catcher and not enough on pass protection.

Joe Burrow has to have maybe the worst QB skill: OL protection ratio of all time. Absolutely criminal. It is insane to me that the same franchise that invested in Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins is also responsible for ruining their QB.

I think my rep told me that that area is actually public and can enter on GameDay. There are two security checkpoints. One to get into that parkway area which is public and then the ticket gate. Early security could be a disaster.

We have no idea what the seat count is. Reports swing wildly. My ST rep told me I couldn't get any closer than back 5 rows if I wanted to stay between the 30's. That there were zero seats closer. So IDK, maybe she was BS'ing me as not to spend an hour clicking around the stadium. But that is what I was told.

From a political and sentimental perspective I would have been thrilled with the Ralph and the cheapest option. From a fan/football perspective the Bills deserve a much louder stadium than they have and they'll never get it with its current bones. Its just to sloping with open ends. As somebody who used to have tickets in 134 and sat 4 rows from the field in KC, there's no contest as to what stadium is louder. Its really not even close. They're at 120 decibels on 2nd at 7. They have ear plugs listed on pricing at concessions. And it's not the fans fault, it's the stadiums. With a new stadium the Bills should blow that away. It takes A LOT more work to hit 140 decibels with open end zones and gradual slopes. Do you like it there? You feel like you're more "in the game" but I feel like I spend sooolo much time watching the scoreboard.

This is a relatively A-List wedding. Those things are generally huge. I would be shocked if there weren't at least 30 Bills currently on the roster in attendance. Then you have the ones that left that he's close with. It would be kind of crazy for a $300M QB not to invite most of his OL and WR room that's still on the roster from last year. Who gets invited to wedding for the mega wealthy is a totally different world.

Is it too late for the Bills to decline?

It's wildly inconsistent. There is no recipe for it. It's whatever is just laying around thrown together and died pink. For the life of me I can't figure out why celebrities, with all the money in the world to buy designer drugs to make them feel whatever they want, are using pink cocaine, other than the fact that it's pink. If any of you saw "Get Him To The Greek" it's basically a Jeffery. But the snorted version that could be any ol' mix of coke, fentanyl, molly, ketamine etc. in any ratio. Sometimes all of those things sometimes just two of them.

So did I but I had just had surgery so I wasn't sure.

Hijacking the thread a bit here, and then I will back out of the topic, but I actually think that the Bills have emboldened Terry on the hockey side because McBeane manage him so well that he thinks he is the reason for the Bills success. I think that McBeane convincing Pegula to draft Allen was the turning point for managing the organization and Pegula. They without a doubt put on a masterclass. Everybody is sort of wowed by McBeane sitting down and spending 17 hours (with Pegula in the room) to watch literally every snap Allen took. But it's insane. There are so many moving parts to prepare for the draft. Preparation that begins and is on going for a year before you get to that point. "Because we want ownership behind this" and "just to go through ownership" was the most telling quotes from Beane in that story. I don't believe for one second that in stable organizations like the Baltimore Ravens that Eric Decosta has to sit down with Steve Bisciotti to for 17 hours, and watch every single snap from a QB prospect right before the drat in order to "get ownership behind" the GM and HC's pick for the QB position. What I do believe is the mountain of evidence of Pegula's flat management style that he has amassed from 2011 - today with the Sabres and 2014-2018 with the Bills. Where anybody can bring Terry an idea, and if he likes it he pulls power from his senior executives (ie. HC and/or GM) and pulls the trigger. And I believe that the reason for that 17 hour meeting with Pegula is mostly because it was required of McBeane to change Pegula's mind rather than that meeting being a super normal occurrence for teams with their owners just before the draft.

FTFY

No. This won't be true for anybody outside of the club seats and premium lower bowl seats. The rest is just plain wrong. Nobody sees face value in the outside market unless you're a season ticket holder. I don't think you understand the current STH discount. I've never once sold any of my ticket in the last 5 years for even close to what my ST cost breaks down to. They always sell for atleast 1.5x. And I would be 3x-ish on games like Baltimore or KC. (I've checked( I missed two games last year, Jacksonville and San Fran. I sold both of those for over $250 and my ST cost breaks down to just under $100 per ticket. If the team tanks post Allen, maybe things will be different. But barring catastrophy I would lose like spend almost my whole PSL for my seats in year 1. My rep told me that the new stadium won't have any seats owned by vivid, StubHub, game time, etc. that they would be PSL only and any tickets in the secondary market would be resale from PSL holders. It came up because I specifically asked about other events. If we hold Taylor Swift, or Monster Jam, or whatever I wanted to know if I had the option to buy my tickets like you can in Dallas. She told me that I didnt own the seat but PSL holders would get first dibs before public release. To which I kicked back about stub hub etc. and she said they weren't allowed to purchase.

Was there no remote option?

That's what Sabres Space has been until the last 10 years. Now it's mostly taring and feather Pegula. (Which he 100% deserves) I don't think Ralph or the Bills ever saw the mass contempt that Sabres fans have for Pegula and the team at the moment.

I actually have Baker at 6. Josh Mahomes Lamar Burrow Shedeur Baker

But for me they told me I couldn't get closer than the back couple rows inbewteen the 35's in the upper deck. It is super strange. The cost increase wasn't prohibitive for me.

She deserves the Sabres.

In my town one of my council people's father is serving nearly 5 years in prison for defrauding millions of dollars from people in a ponzi scheme. She grew up mega wealthy, is totally inept at basically everything. She is also a theif facing charges for literal theft from a store here. The literal reason she gave was that she had somewhere to be, didn't want to wait in line so just left with a cart full of stuff. She wasn't stopped by an employee. Rather County Sheriff's we're outside waiting, put her in cuffs and booked her. A friend of mine at the stores corporate HQ said that that is protocol if it's somebody they've caught on camera before but couldn't stop. So likely a repeat they identified when she walked in the door and they called the police to wait outside. But my least favorite thing about her is that she lets her daughter scooters around town in Allen, Rodgers, Wilson, and Mahomes jerseys. (If she was on a bike I'd put a stick in her wheel). Like way to keep your generational trash going by just raising your family to be a bunch of bandwagoners. They've now claimed the Bills and go to the occasional game. I see it all over social media comments and photos. And now I have to share my favorite team with this super insufferable human. So yeah, thanks a lot Josh.

Isn't it crazy how different this place is when we're winning. If this was mid draught the OTA thread would already be like 14 pages long as we all scower to try and cling on to some minute detail about a player being our sole source of hopium. Now it's just like "meh, we're good, I'll see you in September"