BarleyNY

Sirens was just recommended to my wife by a friend. It’s on our list to start watching next.

I don’t actually think Cook is as valuable as most here. His workload and usage doesn’t warrant a premium contract IMO. Over the last two seasons the Bills found the right usage. He broke down in 2023 and the Bills reduced his usage in 2024, which worked well. I have broken this down a couple times already but it equated to about 50% of snaps in competitive situations in 2024. By contrast, Barkley plays nearly 100% of snaps while games are competitive. His usage is probably even more important. Cook is a 1st and 2nd down player. He’s not on the field for obvious passing downs or for obvious running downs. No 3rd/4th and short. No goal to go from short either. He wasn’t on the field for 3rd downs or obvious passing downs because he’s only an okay receiver and he’s poor at pass protection. He’s also not on the field at the end of close games when we are running the ball to close it out. So what does Cook do well? 1st & 10 or 2nd and 5, he’s been really good. He's kept the load off of Allen and that certainly has value. But I dare say that there are a lot of RBs that could be effective in those situations with Allen at QB keeping defenses honest. And of all the high leverage situations on offense, Cook isn’t on the field for any of them. So I just don’t think a premium contract anywhere close to $15M AAV can be justified. In short, even if Cook does give us an extra 10% on plays (and that’s debatable) it’s got less value on the plays he’s in for than it would on the higher leverage ones that he’s on the bench for.

I am not going to dig into all of those. But teams usually overpay in free agency - especially at the very start. I do remember being shocked that OBJ got $15M from the Ravens for one season. His one year $3M from Miami is much more in line with what he’s worth now. I am going to lump the Bills’ signings of Palmer, Samuel and Harty together. I’m on record saying they were all overpays - though with Samuel it was more injury risk than ability. OTOH I think the Elijah Moore contract is a very good deal. The timing of those deals should be noted. The first three were done at the very beginning of free agency. Moore’s was after the market had settled. I think the Bills have been willing to overpay to make sure they fill the roles they want for their offense. They really don’t want to take any chances on taking a step back. They are one of the highest cash spending teams so that mitigates the issues overspending would typically bring. But they aren’t maximizing the use of their spending though.

I think his contract would have been about the same. Now, would he be a player for teams to look at and think “Hey, maybe we can get a deal here since his numbers don’t match his actual performance.” But there were obviously enough teams that actually did their homework on him to get his market to where it should have been.

Well said. And while we all can argue whether the Bills SHOULD be building the team that way, there shouldn’t be any debate about the fact that they ARE building it that way.

I see that you are still bringing up previous seasons’ yardage as your only argument wrt to these WR contracts. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. As for Davis, I said it was a terrible contract at the time. That was based on watching him play every NFL game he had played to that point - not his yardage. So, yes, the Jags made a big mistake. The brass there probably felt pressured to make a move at WR because they were all on the chopping block. That’s a prime place for market inefficiencies to show up. But it isn’t indicative of the broader market. It’s an outlier.

Then why do you keep brining up their previous yardage as support for your argument that teams overpaid them? One of us realizes that teams properly evaluated those players and paid them accordingly. Obviously their performances with their new teams supports that.

Wow. This is pretty rudimentary stuff. I’m surprised to see you have so much trouble with it. You have a terrible misunderstanding of how NFL scouting works if you think pro personnel scouts simply look a WR’s previous yardage totals to determine their value. They look at film to determine how well that player is doing their job, independent of how those around them perform. They saw that Mooney, for example, was performing well even though his QB wasn’t and the offense he was in was a joke. So they paid him like a 1k WR - and lo and behold - that what he turned out to be for them in their offense.

You don’t think player performance projections for the coming season(s) is the biggest driver of their value? I sure do.

Ridley had over 1k yards in three of the last four seasons and was injured and out for most of the other one. Mooney sandwiched a couple 1k seasons - including in the one right after he got the contract - tho, right? Oh, and he was in an inept Chicago offense for those two seasons you pointed to. They do not compare at all to Gabe Davis. Try again.

I think pretty much everyone thought the Jags way overpaid for Davis last year. I literally laughed out loud about it when I saw the numbers. It would help the discussion if you looked at the actual market and not just a single outlier.

You can’t ignore the market. That doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of inefficiencies though. I’m certainly not saying that. I think we agree that we overpaid for Palmer. The fact that we signed him day 1 of free agency should tell us that was likely the case. I agree that we should avoid moves like that. Elijah Moore OTOH is a move I like a lot. Not because I think he’ll be an elite WR, but because we got him cheap and he has a chance to be far more productive than his contract would indicate. A major part of why we got that deal is because of Allen. Moore is willing to take less money to play with Allen so he has a better shot at a big payday next offseason. That’s the leverage we have and we should be taking better advantage of it. Look at the trade deals the Patriots got on players when Brady was there. We should be going harder after quality players at discount rates when available too. We haven’t taken advantage of that either. As for the RB market, there are only a few players worth a big premium and we don’t have one of those. There’s no reason to overpay at that position unless we can get a Barkley or Henry type talent.

The first issue is that you are ignoring supply and demand. Teams generally field 3 WRs and one RB per play. There are not 96 (32x3) quality starting WRs for teams to field, thus the price for them goes up as teams bid to acquire even enough starting caliber WRs to fill out their lineups. OTOH the supply of RBs that are starting caliber or who can be effective in a platoon is in excess of their demand. The Cook specific discussion should be had in one of the existing threads.

The Steelers have always been good at managing problem players like him. Plus the Burfict hit seems to have made his mental issues much worse.

I’ve heard rumors that some people - generally men - will offer drugs to others - generally women - so as to entice them to perform certain favors. Again, just a rumor.

The Eagles out-coached KC in the SB. And it was not close. While Fangio is every bit as good as Spags at DC, I don’t think that many of us thought Moore would out-coach Reid. But Reid’s game plan was trash while Moore’s was quite good. Reid stupidly ran plays that were easily covered by the scheme with which the Eagles had dominated all season. To make matters worse he didn’t change it up until the second half. By then it was too late.

Bengals are gonna Bengal

Patrick Wilson of Weezer wrote the song “In the Mall” about going to the local mall in his childhood. The mall he wrote it about was the Eastern Hills Mall in Williamsville/Clarence.

No really. He had 134 defensive snaps last season. 59 of them came in week 17 against NE. The remaining were mostly clumped in three other games, two of which were blowouts. So not a lot of meaningful defensive snaps. He did play a fair bit on Specials tho with 241 snaps. He seems to be a regular presence there. LINK

Yep. And the writer doesn’t understand the salary cap. Only $3.56M in pay and cap would go to a team that traded for Teller.

Yep. They’re on pace because they’re adjusting the PSL pricing to do so. Many people mistakenly think that factors such as construction overruns are impacting the cost of PSLs. That was never going onto be the case. The pricing was always going to be based on what the market would bear. The Pegulas were not going to leave money on the table.

Also if you’re looking for Joshua Palmer, he’s in the middle cluster just to the left of and slightly below Mack Hollins. At least we paid Palmer over twice what Hollins got tho.

Different times and a different CBA. Players pretty much gave up their ability to hold out in the last one. I could see him do a “hold in” however.

Yep. Unless a team wants to take a chance on him and extend his contract.

New Orleans would be a good fit for Pickett. Then need QB help and he has history with the new coaching staff there.