Bleeding Bills Blue

And the defense got them there when the WRs and QB were all on rookie contracts.

Really working out well for them...

It wouldn't be though. For both contracts they'd be eating cap in 2026 not 2025. Both teams would save just the small base salaries against the cap in 2025, and have dead money hits in 2026. For Wilson: The 20M option bonus for 2026 get picked up by the acquiring team as its triggered by being on a roster on the 5th league day of 2026. Thats 4M per year over 5 years. In 2027 the 10M option bonus triggers which is 2M annually over 5 years through 2031. The Jets would lessen the 2025 hit to 5.78M, and then eat 11M in 2026. Acquiring team would have a 1.25M cap hit for 2025, and 7.074M cap hit for 2026 (3M base salary, 4M of the prorated option bonus) - with 4 additional years at 4M annually as an option bonus thats basically a guaranteed mid-contract signing bonus. For Waddle: They'd eat the signing bonus and option bonus that are already slated for this year at around 6.75M, then it looks like around 20M in 2026. This is kinda up in the air as i don't know if they already lowered the 2026 salary into a bonus. The overthecap tool says they did, but it might not be. If they did, it only hits their dead cap if the money was paid to waddle, so my assumption would be... 5 years @ 3M that was spread from the 2025 salary.

Nothing would destroy the acquiring teams cap hit this year. They both have very low base salaries for 2025.

They also didn't down a ball on a kickoff and they were somehow given the ball back afterwards. The "intended to down it" is still one of the dumbest calls i've ever seen - Adonai Mitchell didn't intend to drop the ball before he ran into the end zone, why not just give him the TD?

They said this when they beat buffalo with mac jones. They said it when buffalo was 5-5 and 3 games behind miami. Seasons are long, and the hyperbole in sports media is just... broken. They have to talk about football 7 days a week, so its just constant hot takes. That bleeds into twitter, and has trickled down into the message board world. The ONLY way the bills can win is if they make 11 trades and somehow trade for 8 all-pros. Drake Maye's a future HOFer - i've never seen a player make this throw kinda crap. It's asinine. The NFL is week-to-week, things change, the team that you play in week 3 is not the same in week 6, let alone come playoff time. Hell they were 1-2 without Christian Gonzalez, and the losses were vegas and pittsburgh. He's still getting sacked on almost 10% of drop-backs, he's never brought his team back from behind in the 4th quarter, and he has won 1 game when he threw 30 passes (buffalo, exactly 30 passes). His 8 career "wins" aren't even a very accurate stat considering 2 of them he didn't finish the game. I'm sure he'll be a fine player, but the difference between Mac Jones/Tua and Justin Herbert is closer than people think. Circumstances matter, injuries matter, schedules matter, refs matter.

I mean - none of these things matter that much at the end of the day. We've had a good statistical defense by every metric, and that defense bombed in the playoffs. I'm not saying the opposite is GOING to happen, but there's a number of potential reasons for improvement - health, chemistry, rookie improvements. They haven't played that well yet, but the issues aren't necessarily unfixable. The example i always come back to is Indy and Peyton Manning. He carried his team to the playoffs every year, and his teams defense was never very good. The first super bowl they won, manning played pretty poorly. Their 20-something ranked defense had 13 takeaways, and kept 3 of 4 opponents under 300 yards. The team and its challenges can be somewhat attributed to the roster construction of beane, and coaching staff assembled by McDermott. The players also aren't playing that well.

Mis-quoted

But it is kinda like 4 free wins.. and considering you need like 10-11 to make the playoffs thats a nice leg up. Also if these players were so good, the team wouldn't suck so hard.

They've been very trait focused in the draft at times, and other times they seem to almost completely ignore traits because they like the film. I get the idea behind it because you're looking for potential growth in a faster/stronger player, but sometimes the player just isn't up to the task. I also think people are quick to judge a player both positively and negatively week-to-week. Players have bad games, it happens to all of them, even HOFers. I'm not going to come out and say Coleman sucks when the plan after palmer gets injured is to just line him up outside 1x1 with AJ Terrell in a game where the Falcons were getting most of the calls. If he's struggled all game in press man, you need to find ways to get a player involved differently just to get the juice flowing again. A successful play can often lead to additional positive plays. Somehow the team lost their way in the Falcons game and there's a number of factors - the falcons defense being better than people expect is a big one, but the failures were about on the game and not all of them can be traced back to the teams inability to shed man coverage.

John Elway won a Super bowl at like 40. Mannings best teams and statistics rarely resulted in any playoff success. I think both of his SB wins were in some of his weaker seasons in Indy and Denver. Punch a ticket, anything can and probably will happen. I still think they're well on their way to that.

It's why most good teams draft and extend. They did this with a couple of players, but they also probably did it with some of the wrong players. They also spent tons of picks to get Chubb, Hill, and Ramsey and truly none of it worked out. Wilkins (i guess they dodged a bullet here), Hunt, Holland, Van Ginkel - physical glue type players that they all let walk. Just a soft team with a bad coach.

You're challenging the ruling on the field that the player was short of the line to gain. If they are still short of the line to gain, you lose a timeout - if they gained the first down it is a successful challenge.

Because you challenged that it was a first down, which it wasn't - so you lost the challenge.

You can't just challenge the spot, you challenge that the runner missed the line to gain. Regardless of where the ball gets placed after that, you lost the challenge if it wasn't a first down. It would be the same if you challenged that the runner got a touchdown, you move the ball where it probably should have been, but if its not a TD thats a lost challenge. Correct - you cannot challenge spots unless you are saying he got a TD or a first down.

Missed tackles are missed tackles - and he leads the team. Angles are harder to measure, same with block shedding - and he's been bad at both. I'd agree on poyer unless something else uncovers via a trade. Neither are the best athletes but poyer has more of the mental make-up to make fewer mistakes. Rapp can be that 3rd safety in center field dime looks, but he's a major reason that the rush defense has been so poor. Even that henry TD where he trucked bishop, that was rapp missing his run fit and getting blocked so bishop was again sprinting over to try and save a TD.

There was room up the sidelines is what i mean. Don't throw that to have him go out of bounds but to go up field.

Palmer played 6 snaps before his injury, Kincaid was out, and we still only managed to keep shakir on the field for 34 out of 57 snaps.

The dead cap hits aren't as bad as they sound. The current dead hit is like 0, but we're pushing close to the cap so it'll be hard to extend all the voided guys. There's enough meat on the bones on some of these contracts to create space in 2026, and then continuing to borrow against future caps. It's sort of what every team with a highly paid QB has to do, or you end up gutting the roster.

The biggest sack of the game, he just didn't see coming i guess because the hot receiver is WIDE OPEN in shakir. He threw shakir out of bounds on a 3rd down earlier in the game. There was another similar to that where he threw it out of bounds. Missed the throw to a wide open TJ on 4th down.

Next year you probably lose Knox - 7.4M Dead cap to cut. Bosa - 7.2M Dead cap in void money. This can be spread out if you extend him. Jones - 3.7M Dead cap in void money. Milano - 11M Dead cap in void money Ogunjobi - 2.5M Dead cap in void money Epenesa - 2.8M Dead cap in void money McGovern - 4.8M Dead cap in void money Total is 39.4M in dead money from voided contract years Then the likely releases Rapp - 666k in dead cap so he should be gone Knox - 7.4M in dead cap for 10M in savings. No brainer. Samuel - 3.5M in dead cap for 6M in savings. Also a no brainer. Then the free agents (of note) Edwards - Starter whos paid alright and might finally chase a big contract. Trubiskey - I can take him or leave him, but the team will need a new backup QB. White - Meh Moore - Meh Lewis - Meh Thompson - Surprisingly not meh. He should not be an every day option, but he's been solid as a depth contributor and seems to play well under McDermott. So all-in about 50M in dead cap. Not good, but not as bad is it looks either. IMO the biggest holes will be - LG - Edwards is a UFA, and will get paid by someone who's probably not buffalo. C - McGovern could see an extension, especially if they want to use anderson at LG. WR - Not saying use a first, but its a challenge to pay market rates annually. Team really needs some speed on the boundary. WLB - Milano's injury history, and some less than stellar drafting has made this a problem. 1T - Jones is 35. I know this position can play into their 30s but its probably time for a change S - Rapp stinks, get another young player in here and a real vet. DE - Likely where they'll spend money again. Jackson HAS to be able to at least replace epenesa.

The only spot i'd add in the secondary is at safety - where the incumbent starter is a gaping hole in the roster. If 2 of 4 boundary corners are injured, neither for the season, its not as big of a stretch to say you have some contributors and reinforcements coming in. But there's nothing behind rapp to take his job, and he's been really really bad. Disaster in run fits, and always seems to be too far from players to disrupt much of anything in the pass game. At this point i'm good to just roll with poyer, he's slow too but at least there's some instincts there. He was once an all-pro, while rapp really should be relegated to a 3rd safety dime center fielder.

I mean his angle on bijan was bad, but i think that was kind of on ingram not pushing him back inside at all. Like He just full sprinted to try and save a TD, i'm not sure he was in the wrong place on the play. He seems like the type to keep battling, which i can appreciate. Davis played 2 snaps in this one... its hard to say we need someone when we just don't use the ones we have.

I'd say my up would be in line with others UP Walker - I know he doesn't pop in every rep, but it felt like he was in on every run stop Thompson - i'd like to see him catch that pick on the last drive and put pressure on atlanta though Davis - He got the ball and made a big play. He also played 2 snaps so its sad that he's in this section. Down Bernard - Seemed to struggle with play depth and a lot of that had to do with stacking the LOS Safeties - Rapp stinks, like 0 redeeming qualities. Bishop seemed to also struggle with angles and depth because we needed to stop the run bleeding Allen - He played pretty poorly in this one. He wasn't seeing the field well pre or post-snap, and missed a number of throws that were chain movers.

I'm still... how Offside does one have to be for you to call it on the first play of the game? They miss lining up in the neutral zone CONSTANTLY - but they needed to toss that flag?