BarleyNY

Agree with this except a ranking of 31st is not reasonable. A proper ranking might not be where we would like it to be (yet), but it’s better than that. Pump the brakes on the week 17 game. The Dolphins were 7-8, playing away in the snow and their coach was goes away from being fired. Any NFL team that is trying should be able to beat up like that on a team that isn’t. Agree on Allen. Time for him to step up and show us what he has. The offensive players around him are certainly good enough for him to succeed. Let’s see some development.

Smoky Bones is a chain that was started by Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc.) and then sold to a private equity firm. I’ve never eaten at one, nor would I except in extreme circumstances. The best BBQ in Buffalo was probably Kentucky Gregs, but the owners are semi-retired and only do catering now. I liked Fat Bobs the one time I ate there years ago and know a lot of people love it. One Eyed Jacks is good, but not great in my opinion. Smoke On The Water in North Tonawanda is well liked. I only ate there once and thought it was good, but not special at all. I’ll go back again in the summer when I can sit outside and get a bigger selection before I make my final decision about it. I’d defer to others on it. I do like Brick Yard BBQ quite a bit, but it's way up in Lewiston. Avoid Sticky Face, also in NT, at all costs. The food was horrible. I have not eaten at Dinosaur so I can’t speak to that. I do love great BBQ and I make it at home regularly - especially in the non-winter months. Looking forward to firing up my smoker soon.

Cowherd is a loud mouthed naysayer. He throws cold water on teams that have real hope of improving. He pumps up the obvious and big market teams. I’m sure it’s a schtick. He might be perfectly nice or a total tool in real life. No idea. Either way, view everything he says through that lens. Him dogging the Bills just means we are looking like we could really improve.

I guess they would rather test free agency and try to find a better fit elsewhere if they don’t get the option or extension. I can understand that.

Brown noser

That’s an odd thing to speculate. Rosen has handled an incredibly difficult and, quite frankly, embarrassing situation with a ton of class. I haven’t seen otherwise from him so far.

Yeah, I was surprised too. It’s also surprising to see how many aren’t even with the teams that drafted them when their options come up.

I don’t think Zay is going anywhere now. I don’t see him having any trade value to speak of, he’s still cheap and he will be one of the top 5 WRs on team. That means he gets at least this season to show more improvement. We will go from there. I’d be great to see him blossom, obviously. One less hole to fill on the team.

That is a fair statement. There were only 2 or 3 players of the 12 drafted in the remainder of the 2016 first round that were worthy of that status. A big problem with Shaq is that he was a much better fit for Rex’s outdated scheme than he has been for McD’s. He has been passable as a stopgap, but they aren’t going to pay him to keep him around once he’s off of his rookie deal.

I really disagree with this. If Lawson was a 3rd round pick he’d have a nice spot in a DE rotation as a DE3. That’d be very reasonable for someone picked there.

I researched this. Since 5th year options we instituted only one player who did not have his option picked up or have his contract extended by the option expiration date, only Mark Ingram remained with the team that drafted him. Technically he could be re-signed here, but realistically he’s gone after this season.

Totally agree that those are the two biggest issues: Regime/scheme change and generally poor drafting. The former is totally on Pegula. He needs to have an overarching philosophy for the team that the coaching staffs have to adhere to in order to even be considered. Let’s hope he’s learned that because I like where we are in that in general. As for drafting, I do like Beane and he certainly knows what fits McDermott’s needs so I think we will be okay there. I’m a lot less enamored by his moves in FA, but what I’ve seen to date might just be a short term tactic and not a general strategy. I’ll wait and see on that.

Thanks to the OP for a ton of work there. Yikes! Those are not great results to say the least.

That depends. The Bills will probably be looking for quality over quantity for the most part next offseason. Lawson will cancel out one of the better FA pick ups. But if more qualifying FAs are signed away from us than we sign then we will get something the following year. I’ve posted this before. It’s a great tool to see what our roster will look like moving forward. Just scroll down to “Roster Cap Figures”: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/yearly/cap/

Agreed. Dinging the Bills for not filling their need at edge pass rusher over their need for a DT who can get pressure up the middle is dumb in light of the fact that Oliver was generally rated as a better prospect than any of the DEs still on the board at 9. Not recognizing that both were big needs is not excusable.

Correct. I checked into that in a previous offseason.* I could only find one example of a player who did not have his 5th year option picked up - or wasn’t extended prior to the deadline - by his drafting team who was still with that team . Mark Ingram and the Saints. A couple other players were well into contract negotiations at the deadline and had their deals done within days, but that was it. Shaq is gone unless he absolutely blows up this season and gets tagged. Anyone see that happening? I sure don’t. He was never going to be a pass rush stud like a lot of people hoped. Since he was drafted the offseason that we parted with Mario some assumed that he’d be the replacement. He’s excellent at setting the edge and can work for some pressure, but he’s really not what you want as a starting Edge player for today’s NFL. He’d make a great DE3 on a team and will probably get picked up by a team looking to draft a stud there. He’d be a really good player to hold down a DE spot while a rookie learns, then slide into that DE3 spot. No shame in that. He was just drafted too high. * Checked the 2018 draftees and it held true then too.

Man, I’d trade for either. Clowney has more value because of their ages so I’d give up more for him, but I’d take both if I could.

No. I said that he will get paid more than the $9M-$11M estimate, but less than the $20M estimate. That would put him right in that pack of players.

Regarding cap management, how about in these two posts? For someone who spouts off about knowing cap management you don’t seem to understand a whole lot about it. Two contract examples: You can refer to my previous posts on Star’s deal. It’s a huge overpayment for a two down run stuffer. Poe’s is the next highest for that and it isn’t nearly the contract Star got. Again, I’ve explained that in a previous post. To compare his value to that of complete DTs who are 3 down players is pretty ridiculous. Let’s also cover Morse. He’s a solid center, but he is no better than slightly above average. Yet he has the highest average annual salary of any center in the game. You miss the point is cap management entirely if you don’t understand the issue there - and you sure don’t judging by your comments on it. You also miss the point concerning the cap situation going forward. You look and see a relatively low number and think everything is fine. But you’re missing a lot of important things- like who isn’t on that list of players and how much those players will make. An easy example is DE. We will need to add 2-3 players there and two should be impact players. That’s just one position. Also look at teams with rookie FQBs that competed last season or are ready to compete this season. LA Rams, Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. The Rams are already up against the cap and even though the Bears and Browns show room both have active spending above the current league cap. They can do that because they both had plenty of carryover. Every dollar counts toward making a championship push with that FQB on his rookie deal - just as much as it does when you’re paying that FQB later. The former is trying to go from a bad team with a top pick and get on top. The latter is trying to stay on top. That should all be obvious to anyone who can understand how the cap works.

Your argument that poor cap management is acceptable if you aren’t paying a franchise QB a veteran contract is ridiculous. Sure, you can get away with it to some degree because of that, but you’re not maximizing talent on the field and you’re setting yourself up for major problems down the road.

I disagree. Wasted cap space is wasted cap space. Moving forward it impacts carryover so wasted cap space is money that won’t be available to add pieces/retain players when the Bills make a run. Again, this isn’t the end of the world, but it’s poor practice and will catch up to a team that keeps doing it. Sure, it doesn’t impact the team today, but it certainly could down the road. To expand on this, I see the Bills approach as this: They cut a lot of cap and players recently to give themselves room to rebuild the roster. This offseason they spent a lot of money in free agency to shore up some real problem areas. I think we were all happy to see things like the OL and WR corps greatly improve. But they overpaid, sometimes by a lot, for the majority of those players. Now we can argue that the plan was reasonable. We took some pain last year and, with the money saved, overpaid some players to reshape the team. Fine. Furthermore we can say that Star was one of those players - he was just brought in a year earlier. Also fine. But we’ve spent that wad of cash we saved up and moving forward the team has to be more prudent in terms of spending. If a player isn’t a big difference maker, then we have to build through the draft and find decent FA deals. If we don’t, things will get out of hand quickly - and that will hinder our ability to make a push for a contender.

Exactly correct. It’s what makes me think picking up his option is a possibility. Just to cover our butt since Hughes is due to be a FA and to make sure the DE cupboard isn’t totally bare. It can be rescinded anytime before the next league year starts as long as he’s healthy. I’ve advocated for that recently, but the more I think about it the more I lean toward passing. The reason is what many here have said: he’s easily replaceable.

Here is a list of Edge FAs this season. $20M is high, but $9M-$11M is low for Hughes. Plus prices will go up again next year if we wait. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/all/edge/

Here is the thread with my previous posts and the pertinent text. I stand by it being a very bad deal, but Star’s contract isn’t the end of the world. You just can’t make that kind of mistake/choice very often and still be okay: Quote 1: The Star signing was terrible. He’s useless on passing downs so you’re looking at run defender who eats up double teams. Yip. If you think that’s a $10M per year job, then you’re pretty out of touch with the value of players yourself. And we haven’t even gotten into how front loaded the deal is. We’d be on the hook for $26M if we cut him after 2 seasons and $33.5M if we cut him after 3. We have to keep him for all 5 seasons to get the $10M per season rate. How is that a defensible contract? Quote 2: Let’s start with what block eating DTs who are only valuable against the run are getting paid. Poe, who replaced Star in Carolina. 3/$28M and not nearly as front loaded as Star’s contract. So what other similar players in that ballpark? https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/contracts/defensive-tackle/ The above link is to the contracts of all DTs. I see Star with the 9th biggest DT contract. I see Poe on there. Other than that it seems like the well paid DTs are more complete players. I wouldn’t mind it if the Bills had paid more for such a player. But to burn that kind of cap space for that long on any player with those limitations is foolish.  Thread link:

I would not have had any problem with paying him market value either. But what we paid him is far above what we are getting in value. I broke this down in another thread, but two down run stuffers like him are much cheaper than his contract. I could only find one other that was even remotely close to him and that was the guy Carolina replaced him with. I’ll see if I can find it........