Shaw66

Yes. And there's something I keep thinking about that I think people don't see. Beane professes to be, and I believe he is, strictly BPA in the first round. He will take the BPA on his board, every time, in the first round. However, that doesn't mean that he isn't thinking need. Need is what causes him to trade picks. If the BPA at his first-round pick is seriously someone he doesn't need, he won't take the BPA, and he won't take someone else. He'll trade out of that pick. So, what I said about corner applies equally to WR. I think what we'll see is Beane trade up in the first round to a place where the BPA also happens to be a position of need. That is, he'll trade up for a corner or a receiver. Maybe 25 to 20. Trade a third or a fourth with the first to move up. If he does that, we're all going to bed happy on the first night of the draft, because there's going to be a stud receiver or corner joining the team. One of the reasons he'll do this is that there aren't going to be many rookies making this team, so trading a pick or two is a smart move - why save a pick that will be used on a guy who's going to get cut instead of trading that pick to make it possible to move up for a player you want? Also, of course, if you trade up, you help you cap situation, because it also means your likely to have fewer rookies eating cap.

Thanks. I really don't follow cap stuff, but I'm sure that if you could have a frank conversation with Beane, he could tell you already where he sees the cap flexibility for next year. They study it and need to know now so that they can gauge the impact of each move they consider this year. They even already know some of the cuts that they may need to make, based on current evaluation of players. It's a continuous, fluid, multi-year planning process that never stops. What is knowable, as you say, is how bad the future year looks based on known contracts. I doubt the Bills are planning to put themselves into cap hell, but time will tell. I believe Belichick did it to himself from time to time and managed it okay.

And it doesn't even have to be before the draft. There always seem to be CBs with experience around. But they still need a corner in the draft. They always take a late-round guy, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the Bills package their first and another pick or two to move up a bit in round one and take a corner.

But although need doesn't affect the BPA judgment, position does. BPA is, at least by one definition, who will make the biggest long-term impact on the team. By reason of their positions, long snappers, punters, placekickers, tight ends and, yes, guards are rarely the BPA available, because their value above replacement rarely is very great. In other words, you always can find someone who can fill those rolls for you.

Thurm - First, thanks for starting this. I've been wondering about it. As I've thought more about it, I think the answer is no, you don't draft a guard in the first round. Someone said something in a post that made me want to see a more thorough discussion. He said you don't do it because of the option year on a first round pick. You have to write a big check for that year, and it isn't likely the guy is going to be worth it. So, you don't exercise the option, and then it's likely the guy walks after four years. If you think about it, you'd much rather be one of the teams bidding for the guy when he comes off his rookie contract. That's where you can get good value. In a sense, drafting a guard in the first round is like, but a little more reasonable, drafting a punter or a long snapper in the first round. Closer call, but the same concept. You can fill all three positions adequately in free agency. At guard, Bills have been doing it for years, and although they haven't had read studs, they've gotten by. Now they got a serious upgrade in Saffold, and Boettger is back on board, so the Bills are at least okay. The philosophy is get your long-term guys in the draft, but that doesn't mean the first round. A second-round guard is just as good a gamble as a late first-round guard, but doesn't come with the same fifth-year price-tag. Compare it to a late-first round corner back like, say, Tre White. You're willing to exercise a fifth round option on that guy, if he works out, because the position is important enough. Same with a linebacker, an offensive tackle, and probably any d-lineman. I think for the same reason, you're reluctant to take a first-round running back.

Seems to me you're either a good team, a bad team, or a mediocre team that may be heading up or down. You're either in cap hell, your cap is somewhat tight, or you have comfortable cap room. The Bills are a good team with a somewhat tight cap. The only thing better than that would be a good team with plentiful cap room, which is generally unlikely and not going to last. So, I'm happy about where the Bills are. The Saints are a bad team with (or without) cap room. I don't care how much cap room my team has if my team is nowhere on the field, and that's where I think the Saints are.

All of this. It will be a more pleasant place to visit, and it will be more profitable. The era of the big stadiums is pretty much done, except for the occasional palaces that some owners insist on. Ralph Wilson insisted that the original Orchard Park stadium be 80,000 seats, because he wanted to maximize his ticket revenue. Gradually, the stadium was downsized, because the extra cost of a larger stadium wasn't justified by the occasional additional revenue of a sellout. The place will no doubt be a nice place to visit than the current stadium.

That's an interesting point, but as I think about it, it doesn't trouble me too much, for a few reasons. First, overall, the Bills are about average when it comes to total dead cap space. Yes, it would be nice to lead the league with the least dead cap, but it's really hard to do. In the ordinary course of doing business in the NFL, you're going to have some dead cap money. Second, I guess I don't really care if the dead cap came from signing players from Carolina. Other teams probably have similar statistical anomalies, where most of their dead cap came from one team. Third, although we can argue about how badly the Bills overpaid or overcommitted for these guys, there's a pretty good rationale for them. Star was, in fact, a good player, but a combination of injuries and COVID made him less productive than the Bills had hoped, and also meant that he provided less leadership than they had hoped, too. Still, I'm sure McBeane would tell you that he was a positive, even if the price was too high. They'd certainly say the same thing about Williams. He was a solid contributor, passable at right tackle and a real life-saver at guard. He was critical to the success of the Bills when they didn't have anyone else who was holding up at those two positions. I'd guess Beane was happy to pay him. The only reason he's dead cap now is because Spencer Brown showed he could do it and Rodger Saffold signed. And I'm certainly not complaining about Addison. He's been excellent for the Bills, and eating some dead cap on him is simply part of the price to pay to replace him with Von Miller. We like to laugh about the Carolina connection, but those three guys from Carolina were good players. And, in retrospect, were part of the building process to get to the team the Bills had in 2021, and the team they're going to have in 2022. It's hard to complain about what Beane and McDermott have done.

Thurm! Sorry to hear about your problem For a man who loves his keyboard, that's really tough. I hope it's going okay. I'll tell you that I didn't look at Jordan Philips' stats, and I haven't seen him play, except when he happened to be matched up with the Bills. But I have relatively high hopes for him (even knowing that he could get cut coming out of preseason). Here's why: It's all about the process. When he left, the Bills wanted him back and he wanted to be back, but they couldn't make the money work. That tells me he bought into the process, both from his point of view and the Bills. So, I think those 9.5 sacks were less likely to be aberrational than you might think. I think Philips chased the payday, something which neither McDermott nor I begrudge him. But now he's been paid something in the neighborhood of $20 million playing pro football, and if he's been smart about it, he has $5-$10 million in the bank. He's set for life. I'm guessing he actually believes that Buffalo is the place where he can play the best football of his life (that's actually been true, so far in his career), and I think it's likely that he's decided that's what he wants and needs now. He seems not to have been holding out for top dollar. And he seems so committed to the Bills that he recruited Shaq, too. Now, maybe his best seasons are behind, and maybe that one season was aberrational, but I think not. I think it's much more likely that Beane and McDermott, knowing first hand what he can do, looked at the film of his last few seasons and concluded that teams weren't putting Phillips in positions to get the best out of him, and they know they can. I think it's likely that in 2022 he's going to be like what he was in 2019 - a guy who gives the Bills serious production and who will present a problem for the Bills when the time comes around to re-signing him. Chances are by then, given a second chance to consider staying or going, Phillips will understand that staying at a lower salary than he might get elsewhere is the better choice.

But you just don't remember. First, McBeane talked about his will and spirit from the day they drafted him. And I'll post my quote again, from May 2019, after his rookie year and some OTAs, but before we saw any football in 2019. I'm not a genius, but I saw it. And I know others saw it too.

I think you're too lost in the statistical measures of his performance. I get what you're saying, and it's true, insofar as we're talking about how far he had to come. In a purely statistical sense, yes, Josh succeeding was something like a miracle. But there's more to human performance than counting the outcomes. First a few people saw something in Josh, people who were willing to work with him and coach him. What they saw was supreme athletic talent, and soon after that they saw his competitiveness and his intense work ethic. Then some other people saw it. Then McDermott and Beane saw it. Once McDermott put him on the field in the NFL, others started seeing it. It really was no different from Lamar Jackson. No one saw him coming, either. DIfference is that although Jackson is special, he's not Josh Allen. And very few people saw Mahomes coming, either. The point is, one by one, people began to see it. You shouldn't be so surprised that some people saw it before you. There are always some people who see something special in players before some other people. I didn't understand about Kupp until the playoffs this year. So, I saw it later than a lot of other people. So, yeah, the chances of a guy like the rookie Allen becoming the 2022 Allen were statistically slim. But he was putting on film a body of work that people were examining, and some people saw greatness in the early body of work. They understood that the odds were not nearly so insurmountable as his story would suggest.

Certainly more tempting. But it also is contrary to a core part of their approach, which is to build for the long term. The challenge for them is to find a way to do what you say AND keep them prepared for the future. Ultimately, you're talking about making a decision like the Rams made last year - we'll eat cap and trade good picks to get Von Miller for half of a season. Would Beane have pulled the trigger on that one? He says he's going to do whatever he has to do to make the team better. It will be interesting to see it play out.

Great. Thanks. Interesting numbers, but I'm not sure they really prove what we may think. Frankly, I think that whatever the numbers, Hill and Diggs can hurt you all over the field. Adams too. They're great assets to have, but only if you have a QB. Rather have Stafford and Kupp than Hill and Tua. Reid will make it work without Hill, and the Bills will be fine if they have to move on from Diggs. I'm not saying they WILL move on, just that the success of the team doesn't depend on the receiver.

Great questions, but I don't think their plans change. They're about discipline, and their discipline is based on the belief that building the team the right way for the long term is the best way to win Super Bowls. Be the Steelers, be the Patriots. Be the team that seems to be in the conversation every season. I don't think they mortgage the future to get that extra guy for 2023. They trust the process. Although it all seemed like magic as it was happening, so far as I understand it getting Miller and the other help on the Dline did not leave the Bills in an unmanageable cap situation in a year or two. Maybe tight, but not unmanageable. They found their backup QBs, they got a potentially significant contributor in Crowder, a professional who plays the slot, a professional's position. Their absence from the corner back market could suggest that they think more of Jackson and Neal and their young safeties than we know. Point is, what we may like to think are positions of need may not look so dire to McDermott. I think the Bills plan to win the Super Bowl this season literally by doing the best they can by filling the rest of the roster at rock-bottom prices and by getting a guy or two in the draft. It's not unreasonable to expect two rookies helping pretty much right away, like Rousseau and Spencer Brown. Whatever happens in 2022, that discipline will make the Bills better in 2023, and better year after year is the plan.

Thanks. This says it well. McDermott's view of the game is this: It's all just football. It's guys blocking and tackling. The question is what's the best way to deploy 11 defenders to stop whatever it is the 11 opponents are trying to do. How can we best cover all the territory that needs to be covered and still attack the guy with the ball, especially the QB? From week to week, McDermott tries to teach his team how to adjust their base defense to stop the style and tendencies of the next team, and how to adjust their offense to attack the opponent's defense. McDermott is very aware of trends, and aware of the particularly difficult aspects of beating the Chiefs, but he isn't building the team to stop them. When he's building his base defense I'm sure he's thinking about how that defense can adapt to playing the Chiefs, but he's also thinking that about a half dozen other teams. And with Hill in Miami, he's thinking about the Dolphins.

First, I gotta say, this is fabulous. This description of the early Josh experience captures the story. Great stuff. To add a couple of thoughts: As to your 1), that's a great point. I mean, he'd played and been coached, and he'd had a fair amount of success, so it's not like he was 'Liza Doolittle. Still, he had never been pushed to his potential, and that's unlike most everyone else coming out. Baker Mayfield is the perfect example of some guys coming out of the big colleges. As to 2), absolutely! The REASON he finally made it to junior college, and the REASON he made it to Division I, was that the kid did amazing things and his teams won more than their share. He was so unpolished, people thought he was a hopeless hick from the sticks, but there were just enough coaches who saw the amazing things and thought, "I can do something with that." It amazes me now to think at the draft, the Browns, the Giants, the Jets, and Broncs all failed to see it. Who knows what the future will bring - all kinds of things could happen as Josh's story unfolds. But from where we sit today, Josh is looking like he's going to be an all-time great, in the top 5 or top 10 discussions. I like Mahomes, of course, but the only guy I see being that kind of transcendent talent is Deshaun Watson. Again, great post.

These comments are great. Thanks. I don't even know what ADOT is, but that's okay. We all know that QB is the only position that regularly affects the outcome of games for teams in the NFL. Edge rushers and wide outs will have an impact occasionally, but not so much as to be transformative for a team, or anything close. Once every generation or so you'll get a Jerry Rice or a Megatron, a guy who really impacts the game, but most the best receivers in any era are good but not transformative. Your post points out another thing, which is that the characteristics of all these guys are different from one another. The Diggs-Hill comparison is a good example. They're both great, but the differences in their games affect their importance to the offenses. I think Hill has very good hands, but you're right, he doesn't catch like Diggs. Hill's speed makes him special; Diggs's speed makes him a threat. Hill is effective on short routes because the Chiefs set him up with pre-snap shifts and motion to get him a slight edge coming off the line, then he uses his speed to cross the field and no one can stay with him. Diggs is a true separation guy - you can count on him getting off the line and creating a throwing window. In fact, that's one of the big reasons he and Allen are so deadly together - Allen knows Diggs will get open, and Diggs uses his great catching ability to catch these rockets that are launched before Diggs even has completed his cut. Hill can't do that. I don't think I'd trade Diggs for Hill even up, but it's at least a discussion. But still, neither one of those guys is the devastating generational guy like Rice. Watching the Hill saga has made me realize that Diggs could actually be gone in a couple of years. Faced with the same problem, Beane might do what the Chiefs did. Trust the process.

No, it isn't, and wasn't ridiculous. I was pretty much sold after his rookie year, and I wasn't alone. This is what I wrote and published on Memorial Day weekend, 2019 (after his rookie season). And this: Some people said I was jumping the gun, and a few even said that was ridiculous. But a lot of people agreed with me.

Beane said the other day that each of several people on his staff is assigned four or five other teams in the league, and they are supposed to be shadow GMs for those teams, figuring out what personnel they have, what they're availability might be, how the players are used, trends. Hearing that makes me think that the Bills must also have (maybe it's the same person) people monitoring other teams for the trends you describe. And, of course, there's intensive film review going on of all teams on the Bills schedule. I doubt there's very much happening in the league that the Bills don't know about.

Thanks. That's interesting and not surprising.

How do you know that list on page 1 was not their draft board? I mean, it wasn't their board, but it's a listing of quarterbacks by rank. How do you know they didn't go into the draft with the QBs ranked that way? I don't know; I never saw any proof. But reading between the lines of things that McDermott and Beane said after the draft, it sounded to me like Allen was at the top of their QB rankings. Obviously, they never said that, but there was something about their excitement that Allen had fallen to a spot they could trade up to said to me that he was the guy they wanted. I don't know anything about overstriding and technical throwing mechanics, but I never got the impression that his throwing mechanics in college were so bad as to make him a serious question mark in that regard. Mostly, when I watched film of him in college, I saw a supremely gifted athlete who happened to be 6'5", 240. I didn't know if he would mature into a great NFL QB, because he was pretty inconsistent in college, but I never thought he was the project others did. Still, going into the draft, I had them Mayfield, Darnold, wrong-Josh, right-Josh, just because I formed my opinions from all the crap in the media. So, when the Bills traded up, I was hoping for wrong-Josh until, literally seconds before the announcement, I thought "no, take the guy with the big arm." Then, the board exploded in disappointment, but I was thinking "we're good." When I heard Beane and McDermott talk about him, I thought, "yup, we're good." One thing I like around this board is how everyone uses important technical terms, like "edge," and "one-tech," and "schlub." Good one. However, I think it's a little unfair to call Tyrod Taylor and Ryan FItzpatrick "schlubs."

I've said it before. I thought the Bills had something when Allen hit Ray Ray for a TD against the Panthers as a rookie in preseason. It's here at around 8:40. Obviously, he had a lot to learn, but when I saw that throw, I knew the Bills had something. Four years later, we've seen dozens of throws like that. We still shake our heads and ask how he did that.

This is correct. Through year two there were a lot of doubters. People didn't believe he could do the good things consistently, and people went on and on about "accuracy." I was sold after the second half of year one.

Yes, and if you listen to Beane's public comments, he made it very clear that although the Bills got the kind of pressure they wanted last season, they didn't have "finishers," meaning guys who would get the sacks. Clearly, Miller is a finisher, and we know Phillips is. Phillips was better when he was with the Bills than any 3T the Bills had last season. And, as you say, Phillips obviously wasn't their first choice. They clearly think they got better, much better. And he repeatedly said that one reason they wanted Miller was that he likes teaching the young players, and they think he will make the three young DEs better. I think the Dline has been upgraded significantly. Interestingly, however, at least in Miami, it would seem that the NFL is shifting toward the quick-release game. If that's a true trend, then the Bills looking for finishers puts them behind the curve, because no one finishes when the QB throws it in 2.2 seconds. Personally, I think the quick passing game has limitations. I like McDermott's approach, which is to attack as much of the field as possible. That means you need a guy with a big arm, and that's not Tua.

You can see why McBeane want to build through the draft. You simply can't afford a premier QB, a premier edge, AND a premier wideout. Dolphins can deal with the money, especially because their starting QB is on his rookie deal, but giving up those picks is a big price to pay. Andy Reid now faces a challenge on offense. We'll see if he's up to it. Least happy man in America today? Patrick Mahomes.