BarleyNY

Watkins' value takes a big hit due to him being in the last year of his contract. I'm not sure how Young valued him, but I'd bet it was a weighted average of his 3 seasons or at least the last two. Maybe even a linear regression that projects some improvement. I get fans' excitement over Watkins' potential - and that's okay for fans to do - but it's not how a GM should calculate a player's value. The best way is to assign probabilities to various realistic outcomes and take the weighted average. That factors in the risks of a certain player. There's going to be a difficult decision teams are going to have to make on Watkins next offseason because of his mix of potential and risk. One GM is going to talk himself into paying Watkins based on the best case scenario. It'll probably be a GM or coach that is under pressure to win immediately and they'll take the risk because it'll either work out and help save their job or they won't be around when the mess needs to be cleaned up anyway.

Yup and yup. He's probably not a good fit for this defense. Some 3-4 team with need of a thumper at ILB will deal for him. This sort of thing is why I hate the coaching carousel here. 4-3 in 2014 to 3-4 in 2015 and 2016 and now back to 4-3. Rex's insistence on completely retooling a top 5 defense is still haunting us.

A big concern with Ragland is that he's a 3-4 ILB, not a 4-3 LB. He could legitimately have mid round pick value to a 3-4 team in need of a downhill, thumping ILB.

This might help with your optimism: https://mobile.twitter.com/NFLDrafter/status/896100220341174272 I can't figure out how to post a pic of the chart, but it shows Ethan Young's MAVEM calculation for the trade. It's an "analytics" style tool he developed to value trades involving draft picks. In short, the Bills cleaned up on these trades, adding $17.85M in value. It's further proof that Beane and McD are using analytic tools to build this roster.

A) The article is spot on, as is the OP. B) Not FAIR to those players. That's ridiculous. I'm not even convinced this team changed its win total for the worse this season with these trades. Even if for the sake of argument I assume that it does, I'm at a loss to find any sense in that comment. Playing football is those players' jobs. If Kyle Williams is so depressed about the moves that he wants to forego his $6.3M salary and retire early, so be it. And would you have felt the same way if, instead of being traded, Watkins had gotten injured again?

#1 CB hasn't changed, it was always going to be White.

It's difficult to win a blockbuster trade up early in a draft. The Julio Jones scenarios are rare, but they do exist. There's a good reason for that - it's because teams moving up are usually a lot more desperate than the ones moving back. Often the regime doesn't have much to lose because they are under a lot of pressure to improve immediately. The GM and/or HC doesn't much care about next year's picks because they won't be around for that draft anyway if they don't improve. Stable regimes take advantage of those teams in those situations. The moral of the story isn't "Never trade up!" it is ""Don't trade up out of desperation." Trust your process and player evaluations so you don't talk yourselves into chasing a mirage.

The 49ers are likely to have one of the top picks. If they go the Cousins route they'll want to deal. If not, then Cousins will be available. The Rams still have a terrible team and might have a top pick even if Goff makes strides. They could deal. In addition to Cousins, Garappolo will hit the market and a QB needy team will take a shot with him. That could be a top drafting team. The other interesting situation is the Ravens. They're going to be bad this season. I'd bet that they'd draft Flacco's replacement if they could, but they look like a rebuild is in order. You never know, they might favor a haul of picks to replacing him. Besides, they run a vertical offense and might be looking for a different kind of QB than we are. I know Tyrod is good at the vertical game too, but McD seems to favor a quicker, shorter passing game. I see him looking for a better version of Peterman. Speaking of whom, wouldn't it be nice to hit the lottery there and have our FQB plus all of those picks?

It's fair to say he's been more productive.

I don't see how Sammy would've stayed a Bill much longer. The team declining his option was the writing on the wall. I'd have picked it up unless the doctors were telling me some bad things. That'd have bought another season to see if he could get and stay healthy. I thought it was worth the risk, but McD obviously didn't. After this season the options were: - Letting him walk for a possible comp pick if we qualified. - Signing him to a new contract. We'd have to outbid the league and I don't see that happening. If he had injury issues and couldn't demand a large deal, then he'd likely go to a team with an elite QB on a short term deal. - Franchise tag him. That's the only real possibility. He'd have to stay healthy and have a stellar season. A long term deal would mean a top 5 WR contract and that's tough to sell me on due to his injury history Or we'd have him for that year under the tag. Or possibly trade him at that point. If his foot breaks again this season or he's on IR for any other reason everyone will be singing the praises of Beane and McD.

Agree with the OP. Been saying much the same things.

Yes. The Watkins deal was particularly good. The team was moving on from him after this season and he didn't want to stay here. We got what will almost certainly be a very high 2nd round pick and a CB who showed real potential in 2014 prior to injury in return. That's stealing.

They're earning my trust gradually. Today was a big step in the right direction.

Not a tank. Smart moves and building draft capital for long term.

Thanks for the link. It's just one preseason game against 2s and 3s, but my opinion is the same. His lack of accuracy is going to prevent him from succeeding. He should've been a third round pick. If he could get that straight, then he could have a real chance at being very, very good, but odds of that are not good.

https://overthecap.com/compensatory-draft-picks-cancellation-chart/ Here's a good link to OverTheCap's comp pick projections. They're always very close or spot on. Bills don't seem in the running for a 2018 comp pick.

That's true if he's IRed before week 1 because they've got to spend eight weeks on IR. If a player was put on after week 3, then he couldn't return until after week 11 however.

Agreed. He'd have been a particularly huge nightmare here in Buffalo.

I, too, laughed at Denver when they moved up to get him. Ooohhhh! Don't let him slip away! Hahahaha! Wow. That's a lot of stupid packed into four words.

That happens more than people think.

History shows that he does not. Favorite caption from twitter: When you're at the in-laws and the edibles kick in.......

Zero shock.

It'd have been much better if the OP had simply stated what he saw and left it at that. He made inferences that he didn't need to. But I was responding to your complaint that Watkins didn't even hurt his oft injured foot again. My point was that was a silly complaint because there was no way someone watching camp could tell the difference between a right ankle and right foot injury to him and that it wasn't a big stretch to think it was his right foot . As for the reports regarding health of his foot, we've been told it was 100% before and it wasn't and we've been told it was fully healed only to see him hurt it again. It's early. I'm hoping for the best this time, but I'm far from comfortable with the situation. As time goes on and he stays healthy my expectations will improve. I just need some proof.

Dude. He rolled his right ankle. He's had six injuries to his right foot. It is not a stretch to think it's his right foot when someone sees that he is limping and favoring his right side from a right ankle injury.

I love this post. Yeah, but you won't believe what these two guys - Lucas and Spielberg- did to him. It was horrific.