Shaw66
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Posts posted by Shaw66
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1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:
I agree that is the earliest it will happen. And yes, I'd love to be wrong. But it is wish rather than hope that I'd be young haha.
Seems like you were right about Miller. I need to stop doubting you!
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I really like this. I wonder if Trubisky has reached the conclusion that his future now is journeyman backup. If so, this is great. He might have a three-four-five-year run in Buffalo. He has the size, arm, running style, and brains to be a JA backup. A good fit in the QB room and a decent guy to put on the field if the need arises. I assume he and Josh get along, or else the Bills wouldn't have done this.
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34 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:
Poyer's issue was lack of opportunity (and then when he did get it his last year in Cleveland injury struck). Hyde's issue in Green Bay was his versatility hurt him. Wherever a guy went down they'd move Hyde there so he never got to shine in a single spot - but he was always an excellent player and I said so the day he was signed here.
I just think it is so obviously a schematic thing with Elam that he isn't in the same conversation as those other guys. And even more than that it is transitions. The mechanical awkwardness moving from vertical to lateral and moving from backpedal to close and vice versa. It makes being a good zone defender really hard. If that was an easy fix I think it would have happened by now.
That's interesting. You know way more about the technical stuff than I. If the Bills are going to move on from him, I'd think the earliest that would happen would be late camp/preseason, when they know they have their CB depth covered with some other young player(s).
I'm still hoping you're young, as you are, too.
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2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:
I hope you are right and a light just suddenly comes on. I don't see it though.
But he might never have the potential to start for five years for this team in this defense. I think he is more like Jerry Hughes than Wyatt Teller. Hughes could have stayed in Indianapolis for 5 years longer and not broken out the way he did for the Bills because his skillset wasn't fitting what he was being asked to do.
Yes, that all may be true, but he also could be Jordan Poyer, who had 10 starts in four seasons in Cleveland, or Micah Hyde, who was only a part-time starter in Green Bay. Not saying he's a safety - just saying that top talent doesn't always develop into top players in the their first three or four years. Yes, change of scenery helps some, scheme is a factor. But at least with scheme, they thought he could be a scheme fit when they drafted him, and he knows that scheme fit is critical to making it in Buffalo.
Maybe you're right, and the Bills already have given up on him and are just waiting for the right opportunity to unload him. I think he's cheap and talented. Aren't likely to get a better backup at that price.
Bills will get a rookie corner or two in the draft and and free agency, and if one of them can take the backup job from Elam, so be it. Otherwise, I think the Bills will be happy to have him. At least, that would be my take.
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1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:
My gut says traded.
I just wrote something about this generally, and gave Elam as an example. I think it's important to keep young talent a year too long, rather than cut young talent a year too early. Young often talent needs time to grow into the league, and it's worth it to give young talent extra time to see what that growth looks like. Everyone uses Wyatt Teller as the example.
Elam was injured last year, which hampered his growth. He also, clearly, has had trouble being effective and consistent in McDermott's scheme. He's young - turns 23 this year. I'd much rather invest another year in him than see him starting for five years (which he has the potential to do) for some other team.
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23 minutes ago, Sweats said:
Yeah, you could actually witness some players slowing down as the season went on.
I'm of the mindset that once players start getting a little long in the tooth and can't perform to the highest level, you have to start letting these guys go......it's nothing personal, it's a business and a franchise that keeps personnel due to the fact that it becomes personal, isn't running their business effectively.
Yeah, I agree. Belichick was the master at that.
Over the years, I've developed two general rules about player retention. The rules are (1) let old talent go before they're done (only exception is a true franchise player who you drafted and who deserves to finish his career with your team), and (2) keep young talent until you're sure they've busted.
It looks like Beane should have started on the old players a year ago, and done it a bit more gradually. Had to keep Morse, because the middle of the line was so unsettled. Had to keep White, because he could have come back and been a stud for several years. McGovern, Torrence, and Douglas made them expendable this year. Had to be Poyer last year, and Rapp could have taken on a bigger role more quickly.
The best talent in free agency is first and second picks coming off their rookie deals, guys who have underperformed in some way, so their original team lets them walk. Work ethic and team orientation are great, gotta have it, but there's no substitute for size, strength, speed, talent - the stuff you find in the first two rounds. Elam is the current example of sticking with the underperforming young talent. The Bills need to keep working with him and see how he develops. Edmunds was the last example - Bills were sure about him by the time he left.
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1 hour ago, SoonerBillsFan said:
While I appreciate the effort and time of the players that got cut yesterday, the moves were needed. IMHO the moves were done a year late.
Yes. They got a little old last season. They probably should have bit the bullet on Poyer last season.
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26 minutes ago, Thurman#1 said:
One of the definitions of "plan" is "a systematic arrangement of elements or important points; a configuration or outline." According to American Heritage, anyway. Also "a proposed or intended course of action," and "an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective."
All of these are precisely what Beane does. There's nothing in there implying that because there's an objective, and because parts of things won't go as planned, that you can't call it a plan.
Of course a plan involving human beings isn't going to be as clear and precise at the type of plan you're talking about with a plan for a building. Buildings involve materials, cut to exact specifications. Involve humans and you can't be as exact.
But it's still a plan. Even if it's much much more complicated than what Beane deals with. Talk to the CEO of the biggest company in the world and he will tell you he has a plan. And he will.
You absolutely can have a plan for a chess game. No, of course no plan will work out move-by-move, but that doesn't mean you don't have a plan. It just means that you will work towards a certain kind of ending of the game but will have secondary and tertiary directions ready to work towards if your opponent makes your first goal impossible. Ask Magnus Carlsen if he has a plan. He does. It will be a fluid plan, but picking an opening is deciding which plan you are going to work towards.
A chess game might be more difficult to plan specifically for. Beane doesn't have an opponent whose primary goal is to stop Beane from reaching his goal. The other GMs certainly don't mind screwing up rivals plans, but give any GM a choice between screwing his primary opponent and making his own team better and they'll choose making their own team better every time. In chess, there's no dilemma there. Screwing your opponent and making your own situation better are one and the same. You've got a more direct antagonist.
Playing out scenarios in your head is very much one of the things people do when forming a plan. Pretty much any plan.
I very much agree that the process involves making choices with insufficient information. But same with planning in any complex human situation. The more complex things are, the more secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ... hell it goes all the way out to vigenary (had to look that one up - and beyond, though probably not in Beane's case) choices you're looking at. Just because you have to accept more uncertainty doesn't mean it's not a plan.
Anyway, regardless of this, we certainly agree that he's got a tough, tough, complex job, and that today he must have gone home feeling like crap despite the fact that he believes he did the right thing.
That's great! Thanks!
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1 hour ago, HomeTeam said:
I hope he's learned from the past, I really did not like the Von signing when we made it.
He's has an opportunity to do a soft reset here and have another crack at it. I'm curious how he's going to pivot his approach since their mantra is constantly growing.
I agree. It will be interesting.
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1 hour ago, HurlyBurly51 said:
Wasn't sure where to put this. Here's what I got so far this offseason (mostly today😀😞
Tre White post June 1 cut
Mitch Morse released
Jordan Poyer released
Deonte Harty released
Siran Neal released
Nyheim Hines released
Rasul Douglas restructured
Von Miller restructured
Mitch Trubisky signed
David Edwards re-signed
Taylor Rapp re-signed
Matt Haack signed
Ryan Bates traded for a 2024 5th round draft pick
Coaches:
Washington, Shula, Butler - out
Ronald Curry, Jahmile Addae, Christian Taylor - in
Looking at that list, what does it say about where McDermott expects leadership to come from. He knows, the players know, who has to step up.
Where does it come from: Milano and Taron Johnson, maybe Rousseau. Who's the leader in the backfield? Putting a lot on Rapp.
On offense, it for sure falls on McGovern, who's moving to center and needs to be able to win at the position, learn to work with a new guy on both sides. And Allen, but Allen's good as a leader and just will get better.
There'll be some veteran free agents, too, and they'll be brought in intentionally to be leaders.
Still, it's going to be a different team.
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1 hour ago, Logic said:
Thank you. Exactly this.
It's almost as if the cold responders didn't actually read my post, wherein I said several times that the moves were necessary, expected, and even that I'm excited about them from a pure football standpoint.
Where I was coming from -- and maybe I failed to get my point across clearly enough -- is that these guys are human beings. Yes, we all root for "the laundry", but we also get to know these guys to some degree as people. They become members of the Buffalo community. They have personalities, and we follow the arcs of their careers, and they lay it all on the line to bring Buffalo its first Lombardi, a thing that a guy like Jordan Poyer wanted just as badly as the fans here want it.
So my post wasn't about whether or not these moves needed to happen (they did), and it wasn't stating that I would have kept any of them (I wouldn't). It's recognizing that these men were great HUMAN BEINGS, great leaders, and great Buffalo Bills. That they represented this team and this community with pride, with excellence, and with grit and tenacity and exemplary leadership.
There are plenty of threads talking about the strategy of these moves. The nuts and bolts. The salary cap. My post was not that. My post was a "thank you", a recognition of a job very well done, a "farewell", and an acknowledgement that a football TEAM is made of PEOPLE, and sometimes it's a little hard to see those people walk out the door.Wow. You are on a roll. This, too, is simply excellent.
And not only are these players good human beings and feel somehow like family. They also were part of one of the most memorable periods in Bills history. They were core players at a time when Bills fans were being rewarded for the two decades of disappointment. These were the guys who were there, who were anchors, when Bills football became genuinely exciting, exciting like we hadn't seen in those two decades. Yes, sure, it was Allen, of course, it was Allen, but these guys were the supporting players the team depended on to lead the others.
They are part of an exciting era.
And I'll add this: I think the first rock McDermott built this team on was Kyle Williams, and I've always thought that when the Bills win the Lombardi under McDermott, Williams will know, and McDermott will acknowledge, that it started with Williams. And we all will know that it went through Poyer and Hyde, and Morse, too. They'll be gone, but they'll be part of the success that's coming.
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Thanks, Logic. That was great, just great.
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5 minutes ago, klos63 said:
He'll bring in a big ticket player, I'm betting on 2 of them.
I agree. Beane doesn't play the game from the sideline. He's always in the fight, so there will be some big deals, for sure. There might be a trade up in the first round. It could be anything.
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12 minutes ago, NoSaint said:
what bet? He wasn’t getting more on the market so he will try to play under his already guaranteed salary instead of getting cut and collecting the same elsewhere -subsidized by the bills- and with the humbling nature of being signed to a cheaper and shorter dealThanks. I think you're right.
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34 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:
If that is as reported it is a proper pay cut.
What I mean by that is it isn't a restructure and it isn't swapping non-guaranteed money for a smaller amount of guaranteed money.
Von's $17.5m salary this year was FULLY guaranteed. He is taking a near $9m pay cut (who knows what the incentives are). That is significant.
Weren't you and I talking a few days ago about whether it's reasonable to expect much from Miller, that it looked like he just wasn't going to get back to his old self. Doesn't this say that at least Miller is confident that he will be back? That's a big bet on himself.
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What a player!
All I can say is thank you, and good luck!
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11 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:
Yeah, extremely difficult, and there is an absolute ton of uncertainty built into the system.
I'd argue you've overstated this in a couple of specifics.
It's not impossible at all to come up with a plan. I'm absolutely sure that every single GM does it. It's anything but impossible. But yeah, no plan will be precisely on target. All NFL plans have to have back-up plans, back-ups to the back-ups and back-ups to those tertiaries as well. Every plan will have to be incrementally adjusted again and again and again.
The other minor gripe I have there is that I think that after asking McDermott, Brady and Babich were asked about guys they needed or did not need, they might indeed say, " "It depends on who you bring in to help fill the spots that will become vacant." But they would then continue with, "But having said that," and reams and reams of ideas, requests and suggestions. (Which while helpful might also make the puzzle even more complex.)
Oh, and yeah, that Von Miller move was a huge risk, looking to be either a brilliant move that could bring championships, yet make our cap situation a lot worse. If he'd stayed healthy, IMO we'd have at least one Lombardi by now. But he didn't, and the cap consequences bit deep just the same as if he'd been healthy. No way to predict the injury, though I'm 100% sure they knew it was a realistic risk, but worth taking. Sigh.
And I think you might be underselling the difficulty and uncertainty involved in the draft process. Even if your scouting is perfect, there's no way to rule out the guys you want and need from being picked ahead of you, particularly if someone trades ahead of you.
Overall I think you're dead right. Immensely complex job, requiring tons of work, brains, extreme flexibility and adaptability and an understanding that even the best in your job make and have to accept responsibility for mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, and that few other jobs have so many people hanging on your smallest decisions ready to criticize within minutes, fairly and unfairly.
Great stuff.
Interesting comments. Yes, to all.
I don't know, but I wouldn't say they have plans and backups and backups to the backups. I doubt they're really plans in the ordinary sense of the word.
A plan is something that takes you to a defined ending. An engineer puts together a plan for the construction of the building. In that case, the end product is known, and the plan is how to get from where you are today to the final building. When the building is done, in all major respects the building comes out just like the original suggested it would.
When Beane does is different. There isn't a defined end, with player A at this position and player B at that position. It's open-ended - assemble players that collectively can achieve what we want.
When you say plans and subplans, I think what actually happens is like what Beane has described for the draft. He's not planning so much as he's playing out scenarios in his head. Who's likely to be available where I'm picking? Who would I take? What might I do if I trade up? Trade down? What if the guy I want isn't there? He described it well after his first draft. He had spent a day role playing a lot of different scenarios. He admitted that despite all of his preparation, no scenario involved getting Allen and then being able to get Edmunds, too.
It's sort of like it's impossible to have a "plan" for a chess game. If you're playing white, you might be able to predict each of the six or eight moves, but sooner or later the available choices of moves are such that there are too many possibilities to plan for. You can think about the scenarios and what you might do, but at some point you're not planning.
And I agree the draft is mind-boggling that way. The bad thing about the draft is that, unlike free agency, you have no idea how these guys are going fit in the NFL. It isn't easy to predict. In free agency, you've at least seen a guy up against Dion Dawkins, as an example, and that gives you some kind of gauge as what he might do. (For example, when Colin Cowherd asked Dion Dawkins who was the best pass rusher he'd ever faced, before Cowherd finished the question, Dawkins said, "Von Miller." That information is much more valuable than any information they can get about any edge coming out of college.) When the Bills traded for Diggs, they said to themselves, "We got our receiver." When they drafted Kincaid, all they could say was, "We hope we got a receiver."
The whole process is one in which you have to make choices with insufficient information, and the information that you did have that was relevant to yesterday's choice has changed when you have to make today's choice, because other teams and players have made moves, too.
And, yes, I'm sure there are times when Beane doesn't want to hear any more from McDermott, because it just adds to the uncertainty of the whole process. That's why it's so important to have a GM and coach who are real teammates in the process, guys with continuity together, so that the GM can develop a feel, an intuition for the kind of guy the HC needs.
Obviously, Beane has lots of help developing all the information they have about the players who are available, either in free agency or the draft. Eventually, however, he has to make the calls. It takes a certain kind of personality to work well in that environment.
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1 hour ago, John from Riverside said:
I need an emotional support animal that will fit inside my apartment. Any ideas?
Blonde or brunette?
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15 minutes ago, mjt328 said:
You forgot to mention the ridiculous expectations by the fanbase.
They never forget about the missed picks (Boogie Basham, Zack Moss) or the prospects they should have taken (Creed Humphrey). But somehow nobody EVER remembers the college guys they were pounding the table for... who ultimately became absolute busts. For example, I came across the name Ifeatu Melifonwu the other day. It brought back all the memories of people freaking out when we passed him up.
I'm old enough to remember when a large number of Bills fans were crying how Beane was always too conservative in Free Agency, and needed to make a splash to get past Kansas City. He ended up making the move for Von Miller. It looked like a great decision for 10 weeks. Then Miller tears his ACL, and the narrative totally flips to how stupid it was to sign him.
Good points.
And what's funny about that is that, if he could speak frankly about it, he'd say fan expectations are a tremendous distraction. Here he is working on trying to put a team together, and he hears a constant drumbeat, sometimes virtual screaming in his ear, none of which is of any value to him. And yet all the time he's trying to do the job he's hearing this stuff. He has to just shut it out, because he has to make the decisions based on the quality information the scouts have developed, not the whims of the Mafia.
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1 hour ago, Bob Chandler's Hands said:
It's the literal reason "he gets paid the big bucks" (as opposed to the sarcastic or ironic way that term is often used)
Wow! That's exactly right. The thing about it is that 32 GMs are getting paid the big bucks, are probably only about half of them are really good at their jobs. I'm not saying they're slouches; they do it seriously, but the roster they end up with to start the season isn't as well constructed as the best GMs. The best GMs have their teams in the hunt every season. And there's luck, too, but the guys who get it, like John Lynch and that guy who was so great in Baltimore. I think Beane is growing into that kind of success, but time will tell.
But you're so right. The size of the job, the importance of the decision making, and to just work your way through, year after year, always hunting around half blind trying to find your way from here to a roster. Good for those guys.
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1 minute ago, SoCal Deek said:
The job itself isn’t all that difficult. The challenge is that your performance will be judged based on a bunch of variables that really aren’t under your direct control.
Well, sure, the job isn't difficult. Just show up and make decisions. It is literally true that anyone can do that.
Being good at the job, however, is something else, for exactly the reason you give: To do your job well, you have to manage a lot of things that are outside of your control.
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23 minutes ago, stuvian said:
I'm curious as to the extent to which AI has become a part of play calling and decision making. There is still no software or test that measures heart.
AI is an interesting subject. Getting from here to September 1 is like a big chess game, and it isn't possible for a human brain to evaluate all the possible combinations of players who are or might be available (including possible trades). AI certainly could help do that, spitting out potential rosters that could be created, given cap space, presumed contract values, etc. And AI doesn't work in a vacuum. The staff certainly could add its own biases about the heart and cultural compatibility of a player.
If the Bills have AI like that, it certainly would be useful. McBeane could sit down this afternoon and look at potential rosters, decide which they like and don't like, then develop plans about how they could deal to achieve those rosters. They'd still stumble along the way, because they can't control losing a guy to another team, they can control injuries, and they can't control the draft.
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5 minutes ago, Bob Chandler's Hands said:
There are plenty of jobs out there that are this complex.
And yes, it's complex.
I agree. I think we often tend to under-appreciate the difficulty of other people's jobs.
What's interesting to me is not simply the complexity. As some have said, he has a staff that's evaluating the draft talent, evaluating the free-agent talent, running the cap numbers, evaluating the consequences of one move or another. What's interesting is that he has to make big decisions with such incomplete information. He knows, for example, that if he signs a big-ticket receiver it will affect what's he's able to do at several other positions. If he decides he can't afford it, well, a big-ticket D-tackle is waiting to be signed, too. Can he afford the impact in the receiving room if he splurges? Exactly how much linebacker help does he need? How much cornerback help? No matter how much information his staff may generate, he still has to make consequential decisions without all the information he'd like to have.
2 minutes ago, Sweats said:I'm telling you, i could have been the GM of this franchise in the garbage early 2000's teams and i wouldn't have done any worse, i can tell you that. In fact, a 3 toothed hobo could have done a better job.
First, I think the chances are that you would have done worse, and I would have, too. It simply isn't simple. Having said that, however, I know (because I thought it at the time), that when I traded up in the third round, I would have taken Russell Wilson instead of TJ Graham. That probably would have made a difference.
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I've been thinking about how hard a GM's job is. The job is almost hopelessly complex, and it requires constant, complex thinking and decision making in an environment where you don't know the answers to many questions.
Think about Beane:
Your team has about 70 players during the regular season, when you include guys who are injured or on the practice squad. Fifteen or twenty or thirty of the players you had at the end of last season are going to leave your team in the next four months. Your job is to fill the openings with players who, together with the guys who carry over, give your head coach the best opportunity to assemble a great team.
Although 20 or 30 might leave, you don't know today which 20 or 30 that is. That will depend on decisions they make in free agency, or you make about them. You don't know which players are going to be available from other teams as the same thing is playing out in their offices. You have essentially no idea who you'll be able to draft, and you have very little idea of which guys in the draft can help the team in 2024.
You talk to McDermott and Brady, and ask which guys are essential and which are expendable. Their answer is, "It depends on who you bring in to help fill the spots that will become vacant.
What you do know is if you sign this guy you won't have enough cap room to sign that guy. And the importance of the positions in your consideration changes as you keep or lose guys.
One guy may be your priority, but you have limits on how much you can spend and how that spending can be structured, and the player may not like the financial package, so you don't even know if you can get your priority guy. Occasionally, a guy who becomes your priority changes the whole picture for you, sometimes for multiple years. Giving up picks for Diggs solved a problem but affected the shape of the roster because a first-round pick disappeared. Signing Von Miller changed the whole picture, because he brought significant cap consequences to the equation going forward.
In that environment, an environment where you're not sure who you're going to lose or who you're going to get, and all of it is limited by how much you have to spend, you have to make decisions. You have to let some guys walk, extend some guys, rework some deals, all in preparation for when free agency hits. When free agency starts, you have to start making decisions about players. Every decision you make, every deal you work, changes what you need and how much you can spend. Thirty-one other teams are making deals, too, so the players who remain available keep changing, and what they're worth keeps changing as the deals affect the market.
When the draft comes along, you take a break from the free agency puzzle and run a mini-version of the whole problem in your head over three days to acquire 8 or 10 guys, each of whom may or may not perform the way you think they will (after all, you've never seen them against NFL competition). Then you go back to working deals with other free agents, based on a revised picture of the roster as the result of the draft.
The bottom line is that it's impossible today for Beane or any other GM to have a plan for what the roster will look like on September 1. It's a huge puzzle the GM has to put together over the next five months, a puzzle where the actual picture of the completed puzzle keeps changing, and the pieces available to complete the puzzle keep changing too.
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Morse Released
in The Stadium Wall
Posted
I agree.
Turnover is part of the program in any well-run franchise.
Morse generally wasn't physical enough from my point of view. As others have said, he'd get pushed around in pass pro sometimes, and he wasn't a great power blocker. What he was was a solid leader in the middle of the line, in charge, standup guy. That will be missed. Also as others have said, this move isn't leaving a vacuum. They have a plan for the position, and no doubt a backup plan, too. And a center probably will be added to the equation someplace along the way, starter or backup. I'm not concerned.
I often repeat what I heard Colin say one day. He asked a Las Vegas odds maker how much it would affect the point spread if JJ Watt (at the time he was the reigning defensive player of the year) was out of the lineup. The odds maker said, "maybe a half point." So, if JJ Watt is a half point in the point spread, what is a solid but not spectacular center? The league is full of talented athletes, well trained, committed. Some are better than others, of course, but the difference between the starter and a quality replacement often is pretty small.