Shaw66

You remember when Tyrod got a five-year $90 million deal from the Bills. I don't remember exactly how it all went down, but the Bills had some way out and got Tyrod to agree after year one to take a two-year for less. He gave up about $40 million, I think, but he had little choice. Well, it took him a couple of years longer, but he's now earned everything he gave up, plus probably a few million more. I'm happy for him.

Well, I don't disagree with that view. That's what I think, too. But that is not how McDermott sets his defense. He wants consistent from four rushers. He wants guys who can win at the point of attack, and he wants to create schemes that create free rushers. I've said before that I think that his defense is designed to produce great outcomes over the long run, like fewest points per game and fewest yards per game. But playoff games aren't won over the long run. They're won in sixty minute intervals. McDermott's long-run defense last season was great, but it's not a defense that has a high probability of making a stop on one play.

Where did I say he doesn't want sacks. I've looked, but I can't find it. Maybe you can help me. What McDermott has said many times is that he wants pressures. He says the sacks will take care of themselves.

Don't know. McDermott wants pressures. Sacks are nice, but in his world pressures are what make the defense work. So, if you keep wanting more of things that McDermott doesn't care about, you're going to be continually disappointed.

Bills pass rush win rate was 6th in the league. That's the percentage the defensive lineman apply pressure in 2.5 seconds. I'd say that's getting it done. Much too sensible.

Well, I think the plan for the pass rush is about what you say, and it's pretty obvious. McDermott wants pressure, pressure, and more pressure. He wants it off the edge and up the middle. And he wants it with four guys. He like mobile guys on the end, guys who have some strength, some quickness, some speed. He wants them to be relentless, and he wants them to hold the edge against the run. He wants the tackles to be strong enough to hold the point of attack, but skilled enough to get upfield so that the QB feels the pressure up the middle and kept step up to avoid the rush from the edge. Not that that's all that original; it's basic football. But it's what McDermott strives for. He has Oliver in the middle, but he really hasn't had a second guy to get pressure inside. Harry gave him some of that late in the season, and Star on occasion, but he wanted and needed someone more consistent. I think in his heart of hearts, he doesn't want a star edge rusher or an Aaron Donald. He doesn't think the model is to have a guy who must be double-teamed constantly. He wants four guys, each of whom is going to win his one-on-ones sometimes, so that the defense really doesn't know who to double. With guys who pretty strong and pretty quick (look at all the Bills edge rushers, and even the tackles), he can play games with them, move them around, find ways to create advantages. I think he has the DEs he wants to work with (for this season; he'll need help there soon), and I think he has guys now who can give him what he wants in the middle. I think it's amazing how they've been on five-year of continuous upgrades to the roster.

That's good. I have some confidence in Dorsey, but I'm not sure for what reason. I have more in Shula - he was raised on offense, and I think he's seen it all. I also think it's interesting that Buffalo is becoming a place to resurrect your career. Frazier, certainly, maybe Daboll, Trubisky, now Shula. And a guy like Kromer, who's probably never going any higher in coaching ranks, probably wasn't coming back for just any job.

I think there's a difference. There's good creativity and bad creativity. My sense of Daboll is that he would try out a few things, but always fall back on what he knew. He'd come up with a gadget play or two, but not clever wrinkles that fit into and expanded the offense. Reid has his gadgets, too, but every week he has some different way to attack you out of his standard offense. I don't think we saw that kind of creativity from Daboll. Put it another way. I think the really good offensive minds, the McVays and the Paytons and the Reids, can look at what defenses are doing and can see the right ways to adjust their offense from week, ways that fit the offense and allow the offense to flow into a somewhat different style of play that counters what defenses are doing. I think Daboll is a guy who went to school, learned the formula, and followed the formula. He looks at film and draws up an isolated play that attacks something defenses are doing. He calls the play a couple of times next week, but the style of play doesn't change, doesn't adapt to the style of the defense. That's all hopelessly vague, I know, but I've felt that way for a couple of years. Let's say it this way - I think Daboll is a technician, not an artist or inventor.

I don't know if it' luck or what, but the Bills training staff has done a great job keeping guys on the field.

Yeah, I guess so. I'm dumb. I just pissed that the Bills didn't get a takeaway in the final 13 seconds. I like it, too. I thought Daboll was lacking on the creativity side. This group will have plenty of ideas.

I like this. 1. Look at how he catches the ball. He's a serious receiver. That's small but important. 2. Because he's a serious receiver, and assuming he can pass block, he opens up possibilities as the third-down back. The Bills often set up last season with Singletary split out, but he almost always motioned back into the backfield. This guy split out is a serious receiving threat. 3. Shifty. 4. Not great power, but he is not afraid to hit people. I agree with others, that he looks like he can give the Bills what they hoped they would get from Breida. If so, he'll be an additional threat on the field, forcing teams to account for him and therefore to pay a little less attention to all the other weapons. Nice get. Chuck McMurtry, baby!

It's the opportunistic D that's missing here.

Oh, sorry. As I said, some guys are still all about the money, for a variety of reasons. My point only was that there are veterans out there to who it means very little to leave an extra million bucks on the table. An extra million bucks doesn't change their lifestyle at all doesn't materially impact how much money his kids will inherit.

I was certainly talking about players taking less money. This perception that the players are all about money is just not correct. djp14150's post, which I don't completely agree with, is generally correct about this point. For a lot of players in the NFL, veterans, the money becomes less important. From a simple economic point of view, if you have $10 million in the bank, you're set for life. That will provide you with $300,000-$500,000 per year of income for the rest of your life and put you in maybe the top 3% of all the people in the US, in terms of income. Many players recognize this - they have families, homes, and a comfortable lifestyle that they intend to keep for the rest of their lives. For some of them, when they reach that point, the money they earn on the next contract becomes secondary to other goals. Their wives aren't stupid - they can count, and they can see that there's a lot of money in the bank and that their family has everything it could want, so they're telling their husbands to do what makes them happy. It's almost an absurd example, but look at Brady's wife - she's a wife and mother, and she's certainly telling him to do what makes him happy. As djp said, the players in free agency fall into different categories. You have guys drafted in the first three rounds, coming off their rookie deals. If they were drafted in the first round, they may have saved a lot of money, but even those guys don't feel like they're set for life. So guys coming off their first deals are still looking for a payday. A guy like Phillips was in that position, and he's going after as big a deal as he can find, provided the team making the offer isn't totally dysfunctional. Now he has the deal and the guaranteed money and all that, and at the end of that contract, he and his family will be free from monetary concerns. He might make a different decision if and when he gets to his third deal. The undrafted free agents, and the journeyman vets on one-year deals, they certainly are looking at the dollars as of critical importance. If you've played on a bunch of one- and two-year deals, getting paid $1 million to $3 million, and you've been in the league for five years, you haven't collected many big checks, and you don't have many years left, so the dollars are important. But my post was about guys like Saffold. He's in a different position. He was cut after receiving $33 million on his last contract, and his previous contracts before that totaled over $79 million. That's $112,000,000 before he set foot in One Bills Drive. After tax that's over $50 million, so even super conservatively, he's worth $40 million today, and probably $60 or $70 million. He knows that he doesn't need another nickel. Now, some guys in Saffold's position still want every last dollar. For them, it's like a report card - I want an A, and grades are measured in dollars. Some guys are greedy. Some actually have blown millions of dollars and actually need the money. But for plenty of guys who love playing and love competing, they're looking for something else. They're looking for a ring, or they're looking to play the best football in their lives, or something. Like Gronk - he was sitting at home, done with his career, and opportunity to play with Brady brought him back. Gronk didn't tell Tampa Bay that they had to match Denver's offer or he wasn't coming. Those guys didn't sign with Buffalo ten years ago. They didn't because all Buffalo could do was offer the most money, and that wasn't what they were looking for. Now, it's different. Some of those guys, like Beasley and Sanders, WANT to be in Buffalo, because the Bills are offering what they want. For receivers, what they want is #17. But for guys playing other positions, #17 is part of it, and McDermott and the process and the facilities and the commitment of the owner and the clear success they're having is all part of it. Conversely, that's why the only guys you see the Bills sign coming off their rookie deals are guys who way underperformed their draft expectations. A guy like Settle has no played like the stud people expected when he was drafted, so he can't command top dollar in market. The Bills look at him and see a guy with a lot of talent who in the right circumstances could emerge as a big contributor. They're willing to take that chance on him because, well, they can afford too. They have a good team already, and if he doesn't work out, they'll still have a good team. They don't have a lot of money to spend because, well, they spend it on players who make them a good team, like Allen and Diggs. But Settle isn't commanding top dollar, so the Bills can be players in that auction. But good players who have made a splash playing under their rookie deals but who for some reason aren't getting a big contract from their first team, those guys get premium dollars, and the Bills aren't in a position to sign them. For example, I think the Bills had the dollars to compete for and sign Hyde and Poyer when they came out, but similar level talent coming off their first year deals now are too pricey for Buffalo. Hyde and Poyer liked McDermott, but they needed serious dollars when they came, and they got it. The Bills haven't signed similar talent in recent years. The Bills model is very clear - they expect to get their talent out of the draft, and they don't intend to pay big dollars for that one guy we might think they need to get over the top. They won't overpay for short-term talent. So, for example, they won't overpay for Kahlil Mack, or for Amari Cooper. They're patient. They'll trust their scouting and draft guys who they expect will be long-term contributors, they'll save their money to pay it to the guys they drafted (Allen, Milano, Dawkins, and we'll see about Edmunds and Oliver) when they really like a guy. They'll use free agency to get guys who meet short-term needs, like Saffold, who has the ability to make a big difference on the line for a year, or two, or three, but who eventually will be replaced by someone the Bills draft. The Bills philosophy will leave us disappointed at this time of year, because we watch all the big-name talent go elsewhere. We have to remind ourselves that the big-name talent is, by and large, going to teams who are trying to get over the hump, the hump the Bills are now over. There are exceptions, of course, like when the Chiefs go out and sign a Frank Clark, or the Patriots acquire Randy Moss, the kind of one-off deals that, up until now, the Bills haven't chased. But mostly, the Bills aren't going after the big names. Instead, what the Bills are asking their fans to do is to recognize that they're building in a different way. We need to stop and think about what's going on here. I mean, Saffold is a huge addition (unless it turns out that he's really out of gas). This is seriously good interior offensive lineman, and pairing him with Morse gives the Bills something they really haven't had in the middle - it's been a revolving door looking for guys who can deliver at guard. Dawkins seemed to have regained his old form by late last season, and Brown certainly seemed to have earned his spot on the right side, so we're now looking at the possibility of having a seriously good offensive line. The addition of one guy could very well give Allen more time in the pocket and give Singletary (and whoever is #2) some running room they saw only occasionally up until now. And on defense, the Bills may have added two interior linemen who are better than anyone they had playing in that position, other than Oliver. If Settle and Jones are both 1-tech guys, they're almost certainly an upgrade from Star and Harry. They afford the Bills the luxury of continuing to experiment with Basham on the inside, if that's where he fits best. Those three guys look like serious upgrades at positions of importance. Not exactly household names (although Saffold has been fairly high profile), but serious football players who should make the team better. Is building this way, instead of chasing high-priced free agents, the best strategy? I don't know; I'm just a guy sitting in front of a keyboard. But it certainly makes sense, and it's hard to argue with the results so far. (And if you're one of those who DOES argue with the results so far, no Lombardi, no AFC championship, ask yourself this: Which free agent a year ago would have changed the outcome in those 13 seconds? Sure, you can argue that if the Bills had gotten Julio Jones, maybe they wouldn't have needed to do anything in the last 13 seconds, but Julio Jones just wasn't realistic. You can't acquire so much talent that you're just better than everybody else.)

I agree with you and Yolo - both good takes. He's a super guy, and an over-achiever. McDermott loves those guys, because he sees himself in them. But McDermott knows that his job requires him to be hard-nosed in the evaluation of his players. And I would bet that there's enormous mutual respect between McDermott and Phillips for those reasons, so this is probably truly a no-hard-feelings-we're-happy-for-him situation. Well, you're right, certainly, that he wasn't a good pick because he didn't turn out to be as good as the Bills needed him to be. But I get your point, that this was a talent-evaluation failure, to invest a third in a guy whose physical profile and talent level was limited enough that all you really were going on was his personal determination. At some point, it doesn't matter how much want-it a guy has, the guy just can't get there. I think you're right, that they should have seen that he was a low-probability pick.

Draft and retain doesn't mean just draft them and keep them. It means be good at drafting so that the players you draft are good enough to force you to retain them. Allen, of course is the obvious example. You want to draft guys who turn out to be so good that you say, "heck, yeah, we're keeping that guy!" Obviously, Phillips wasn't the kind of player who made McBeane say "heck, yeah!" And that's why we saw the two signings today. McB already had decided they could get more in the market than Phillips was likely to give them, and Phillips knew it. And from Phillips' point of view, it makes perfectly good sense. He thinks McBeane are wrong about him, and he thinks he'll prove that, but he also knows he needs a payday. If he gets a nice offer in a place that makes sense for him, he's going to take it. This is the contract that can make him able to take care of his family for life. Pretty important to grab it when it's there.

They didn't draft by position in those cases. They drafted BPA. If I recall correctly, Beane said his group was excited when Rousseau was falling through round one, so much so that they considered moving up for him. Then when Boogie was there in round two, he said he asked McDermott if he was ready for this (two DTs in the first two rounds, based on BPA), McD said yes. I think they said something similar about AJ, too. The thing is that when you're drafting late in round one and all through round two, there aren't any real instant impact players left, except guys who are surprises to everyone.

I don't think the Bills do "depth signings," not at this time of year. They do that to fill out the roster in June and July. Instead, they sign guys who the Bills think can play the best football of their lives. Essentially, what Beane and McDermott want is for their coaches to take raw material and shape into something to realize potential they see in the player. So, although I don't know anything about this guy, and although his stats are underwhelming, I'd say the Bills signed him because they think that they can find a way to make him a serious contributor to the defense.

You just have to recognize that if that's what you want, Beane will disappoint you year after year. If Beane wants an impact guy, he trades draft picks for him. Beane and McDermott are not operating out of a "this is our year" model. They aren't looking to add a special talent who will take them over the top for a year or two. I don't think they even thought of Antonio Brown that way, even though it turned out that he only had a year left. Plugging holes is different from making an impact. In Beaneland, free agency is for plugging holes. Beane wants Diggs and Rousseau and Josh and Davis and Basham and Edmunds to make an impact. Like it or not, that's the model. Now, when Josh has won a couple of Super Bowls, will Beane change his mind a bit and go after the equivalent of Randy Moss? Maybe, but not yet. Not this year. I think you'll need to write a more persuasive post if you want Beane to change his philosophy.

Right. That's the whole point. Those guys weren't signing with Buffalo ten years ago, because they were going to the contenders for a little less money. Now, that's Buffalo.

Yes

Ten years ago, Saffold wouldn't have come to Buffalo. John Brown didn't come to Buffalo - went to Baltimore instead - when the Bills didn't have a QB and came to Buffalo a, s soon as Allen got good. Emmanuel Sanders came to Buffalo. Addison did. These are all good, solid players who help build the team that the Bills can get now, guys they couldn't get before. As I said to Gunner, Beane's not going after the biggest names in free agency. That isn't his model. In free agency, he wants guys who can start now and last a year or two or three. He doesn't want to go into the draft with holes to fill. Between fixing Morse's contract and signing Saffold, he no longer has holes in his offensive line. A 34-year-old offensive linemen isn't old. Offensive linemen have some of the longest careers of any position in the league. Yes, but by definition, if you have a Josh Allen, you don't have a ton of money to spend.

I don't know the draft, but I wouldn't be surprised if Beane trades up in the draft to grab a really attractive young player. Could be a receiver or offensive lineman, but it could be the kind of defensive guy you're talking about - a stud edge rusher to replace Hughes or Addison, a stud one-tech guy, or a stud defensive back.

Beane is not a big-name free agent guy. He's said it enough that I believe - free agency is to fill holes, the draft is where you build talent. He isn't about to sign any of the best two or three players in free agency - they aren't hole fillers. Diggs is the only really big name he has acquired, and he did that through the draft, too. About four or five years ago, Beane signed about four journeyman offensive linemen, including Feliciano. I don't remember all the names. Williams was one, too, I think. Why did he do that? Because he needed help on the offensive line, but he couldn't afford the best offensive linemen on the market. Instead, he loaded the training camp roster with decent guys with experience and hoped he'd find a couple who stuck. A guy like Saffold - a high draft pick with a really solid career who still can play - wasn't interested. Now it's different. Beane wanted a lineman. Actually, I think he wanted a guard. He wasn't bottom fishing for a guy who might be able to fill the spot. He went after, and could sign, a guy who can play at a high level, who will find himself between an experienced center and a good young tackle, whichever side he plays. My point is that the best players in free agency at a position of need for the Bills are now available to the Bills, and that is something that was much less true when the team didn't have Allen and wasn't winning consistently.

All those years we sat here moaning about how the Bills never could sign anyone good in free agency. Unless the Bills put on a full-court press and spent more money than any other team wanted to spend, the Bills got no one. All those guys we talked about and hoped for, and Mario Williams was the only one who ever came. And why did Williams come? Because the money was the only thing that was important to him. But when you have an All-star QB and you're going to the playoffs every season, it's different. A guy like Rodger Saffold, a guy who is facing probably his last opportunity to pick a team while he still has NFL-level ability, looks at Buffalo and says yes, easily. Why? Josh Allen. Mitch Morse. Aaron Kromer. Sean McDermott. It all adds up to a place where he can have success, both personally and possibly in the playoffs. Could he have gotten more money elsewhere? Without even seeing the numbers, almost certainly yes. Some teams are looking to get over the hump and need offensive line help, and some of those have more cap room (probably because they aren't paying their QB over $40 million). Those teams are like the Bills were ten years ago, and they lose the competition for a lot of guys like Saffold. Good players late in their careers look at the beating they take playing this game, look at their bank accounts (most of the guys like Saffold are sitting on $10 million or more), and decide that if they're going to continue to take the beating, they'll pass up an extra million dollars to play for a winner. Landry may very well make a similar decision, wherever he goes.