BarleyNY

$5.5M dead cap, savings of $4.9M. Morse is definitely a candidate to be cut (or traded). The contract we signed him to was comfortably over market value at the time, but that happens in FA and I get why we did it. He has been good overall, but probably not up to that contract (which was expected). He hasn’t exactly had world beating OGs next to him and that makes it difficult on a C. His concussion issues - which were a known risk at signing - have continued and that very well might be what tips the scales against him. I think the Bills move on from him this offseason or next. They can fill his spot with a slightly lesser player with less injury/concussion concerns for substantially less.

You can’t really restructure the last year of a contract. You can extend it and lower the first year cap hit or you can ask a player to take a cut, but that’s about it except for cutting/trading the player. The only possibility - and I’ve never seen this done on a one year deal or know if the league would approve it - would be to add voidable years to the current one year deal and pay out most of the salary as a signing bonus. That would just kick some of the cap hit to next season while paying him the same. I’d think him playing out his deal or an extension would be more likely.

Troof. Someone needs to step up their bread game. I don’t care for the heels on a sandwich, but they are the best with butter, cheese, etc. - if it is good bread.

This is absolutely correct. It is a spoiled fan base with a lot of entitlement. That said Steelers fans have generally been very nice to me, my wife excepted.

Thanks. Those are the two teams I’ll be watching closely too. Typically the road to getting under the cap is pretty straightforward even if it’s painful - and the situation usually makes sense. New Orleans is in worse shape than Philly, but they’ve got a 41 year old HOF QB. It makes sense for them to make a last run and then deal with Armageddon. But Philly? I have no idea what they were thinking. If they thought Wentz was their guy, then why necessitate a tear down? If they thought they made a mistake with him, then why go all in on 2020 with the rest of the roster? I get that teams got caught a bit with the revenue/cap decrease, but the NO and Philly situations were going to be very bad anyway. Those two teams are going to have to use every method at their disposal to get under the cap. And don’t expect them to get a break from the league. 30 other teams will benefit from their situations so they won’t be having it.

No kidding. They were really going to an extreme in what I have to assume was an attempt at another Super Bowl run.

The Iggles cap situation is so bad going into 2021 that they won’t be able to rectify it in just that one season. It’ll take 2-3 seasons to clear the books. $260M in cap hits for 41 players going into 2021. They’ll likely have something around $175M plus $22M in carryover to work with. Some of their high cap hit players aren’t cut or trade candidates due to huge dead cap hits so they’ll have to keep them and convert salary into a signing bonus to kick some of the hit down the road. Others will be traded or cut. Replacements will be cheap. It is ugly now and it’s going to be ugly for awhile for them.

A less superstitious man might make some glowing comments about how our team - and specifically our QB - has grown and improved. Stuff about how far they’ve come, how difficult and impressive that is, etc., etc. Ahem.

Indeed it would. I’d be getting up early on Saturday mornings

I look forward to having this conversation in earnest the week leading up to the Phins game. Keep winning and see where we stand.

Had same thought. Did the player refuse to sign his hat and then put his cigarette out on his neck?

I do not know much about him.

No thanks. We’ve got Beasley. We don’t need a poor man’s version of him on the roster. Now if a speed WR becomes available then that’s another story.

Ed Werder has the high bid on the autographed Joe Montana jersey.

Very nice to see Klein making a positive impact. Congratulations to him!

That’s fair about us putting resources into the TE position and just not getting value out of them. A third round pick for Knox was a very reasonable use of capital even if it hasn’t planned out quite as well as we’d have liked. The Kroft contract was just throwing money and cap space away though. I’ve hated that since the day we signed him. I’m just happy they cut their losses by reworking his deal to get out of it after this season. I’m not really sure what benefit there is to having Lee Smith on the team either. He does almost nothing but block and with the new rule this season requiring teams to have 8 active OL I don't see value in him taking up a roster space and $3M/year. I’m sure Nseke, Dawkins or Williams could block better and manage to catch 2 or 3 passes every year. Gilliam is our H-back. He’s cheap, doesn’t get a lot of snaps and I honestly don’t have a read on him. We obviously need a FB or H-back to fill that role though.

So if we had a tight end that was a legitimate receiving threat we still wouldn’t bother getting them involved? I honestly do not buy that. This TE position lacks a quality receiving talent. Maybe the plan was to prioritize other positions. If so, then that’s fine. But the fact is that the talent just isn’t there for whatever reason. If it were and we still weren’t using them effectively then that would be on Daboll and Allen. But it’s not. I think we can all easily see what a TE who could threaten the middle of the field could do for this offense. Add back in a deep threat like Brown and defenses would be incredibly stressed in coverage. Right now the only offense like that is KC. Looking a little closer at what we have, here are the TE stats: Kroft 12 catches on 16 targets for 119 yards, 3 TDs, 0 Fumbles Knox 9-17-111-1-0 Gilliam 2-2-16-1-1 Smith 2-2-4-1-0 Total that’s 25 catches for 250 yards through 11 games, which isn’t much. But they also have 6 of our 24 total receiving TDs. WRs have 15, RBs have 2 and Allen has 1. So to me it looks like our TEs have a role and it’s to be big targets in the red zone. They are suited to that. I haven’t looked more closely but I’d bet they’re getting targets on short yardage plays too. This team needs a deep threat WR for sure, but I’d love to see the offense with a real receiving threat at TE too.

I guess that depends. Are we not getting much production from our TE corps because we have poor TEs or do we have poor TEs because we aren’t putting a lot of resources into a position we wouldn’t use much anyway? Daboll comes from NE where Belichick has always stressed the TE position. But Allen is a different kind of QB. I really don’t know the answer, but I have to think that one quality in line TE that could be effective both blocking and receiving would help this offense. But whether that’s in the cards from a resource allocation standpoint is another question. The Browns snagged Harrison Bryant in the fourth round last draft. I’d love for the Bills to find that quality of TE in that part of the draft next time around.

Yup. While I wouldn’t have wanted any Bill to suffer a season ending injury, if forced to pick which starting OL to have it happen to.......

Agreed. The coaches were just being extra cautious about his most recent concussion.

Kosar’s last season in Cleveland was 1993. He was well out of the league by 2002.

It’d be nice to play the Dolphins here two week in a row, especially if week 17 is effectively a bye for us and we play scrubs. The Raiders are my other choice. Both are high win probability games and neither is so imposing that we should get beat up in the process. We can then head into playoff game 2 healthy and reasonably rested.

Yup. It’s not a quality of opponent issue, it’s a matchup issue. Also those are physical teams. The Iggles seemed to be scraping a player off the field every other play last Sunday. Even a win could be costly. The Steelers and Ravens defenses are physical too obviously. The AFC crown is going to be a physically demanding journey.

Faneca deserves it IMO. Many more years and games at such a high level.

It really wasn’t luck with Burrow. The Bengals put him behind a putrid OL. Some of us saw this coming. The Bungles are probably going to waste a tremendous QB prospect in the same way Luck was wasted by Indy.