Shaw66

Well, I don't pay a lot of attention about other teams' moves, but if Bryant can play, he's perfect for Jackson.

I agree. He's one of those guys who, although he can't play edge or safety, has characteristics of both. He's the kind of athlete McDermott likes to put on the field - a hitter with speed and quickness to cover a lot of space and to close on ball carriers. I thought we were going to see a lot of him as last season progressed, but then he got hurt. He's been through a camp, and if he did his homework during the season, I think he will be a contributor this season.

Backup anything can never be a "glaring hole." My cousin used to tell me that it isn't just injuries that matter, but injuries at which position at which point in the season. Whether you will need to call on your backup and in what games is critical, and most starters survive the season without major injuries. So I'm not calling backup a glaring weakness. Beyond that, the Bills run on systems; they don't count on stars. In particular, if you read one of any of fifty threads about Allen here, people aren't counting on him being a star. They're counting on him being an above average guy who wins games by getting the ball to the best overall collection of skill players the Bills have had in a couple decades, behind a veteran, experienced line playing its second season together. In other words, if Allen gets hurt, no one is expecting that the Bills will be losing an 800-yard rusher or a 5,000-yard passer. Even 4,000 yards. Point being that if the Bills' offense is what McDermott and Daboll want it to be, a good, smart game manager should be able to fill in for a few weeks without a huge drop off in production. Matt Barkley hasn't lit the world on fire, but he knows the system inside and out, he has maturity, and he has the respect of the team. Fromm is smart and the quintessential game manager - he played and won a lot of big games in college, executing a high-powered offense. Even Webb has promise. I haven't paid much attention to him, but the guy was a big-time recruit, split time with Baker Mayfield at Texas Tech, started at Texas Tech but lost the job to Mahomes, and had an excellent senior season at California. The guy can play, and if you recall, he led the big off-season workout when Allen and all the receivers got together. If you're talking proven backup, sure, the Bills don't have one. Few teams do. But given that the Bills aren't looking for Allen to be All-Pro this season (they'd love it, of course, but the Bills need that much from him to win), and given the history and nature of the potential backups, I'm not losing any sleep.

I think it's going to be no news, no news, no news, final cuts. No news, pregame press conference. Lift off.

That's interesting. I hadn't heard that. Not every high motor guy is likable.

Fair enough. We'll know in the next few months. If the Bills extend his contract, we will know when we see the contract. If they exercise the fifth-year option, it will probably mean White wants top dollar and the Bills were reluctant to give it to him.

Oh, yeah, I agree with that, too. Oh they'll cut someone else. On a talent-rich roster, you can afford the luxury of a Hogan. On a talent-poor roster, he can make it because he's as good as anyone else they have. But they're too talent-starved to keep him over better talent.

Yes, he does do that. It is consistent. He builds his defensive philosophy on a the shut-down corner, because that gives him ultimate flexibility with the other 10 players. I don't think McDermott has the same philosophy. His philosophy is up-the-field strength. His first year, his philosophy was signaled by trading Gilmore for Hyde and Poyer. His philosophy is signaled by Keuchly and Edmunds. I agree the defensive philosophies are different. What we'll see as they deal with contracts for White, Edmunds, and Allen, is whether Beane subscribes to the six-big-contracts theory or Belichick's two-or-three-stars-and-spread-the-rest-of-the-money-around theory.

I was interested in Roberts comments. What he said about Roberts is what I saw last season, and it's what makes think they won't cut him because McKenzie is more versatile. Roberts has excellent hands, but what makes him special is how he sees the field and sets up his returns. He really does look like he can can go all the way on every return. You can see that he feels it somehow.

6-7 big contracts was Whaley's philosophy. He said so when they extended Cordy Glenn. Three on offense, three on defense. And yes, many teams do that, but not all. It is definitely not Belichick's philosophy. He never has six big contracts. I also think it is not Beane's philosophy, but we will see.

I am not "absolutely convinced," of my view, particularly when I hear your view. My guess is that he will stay with the Bills but he will not reset the market in the way that mean. That is, I think White will take a deal that is some measure team-friendly and will not become the unquestionable highest or second highest paid corner.

I agree that he isn't a star who commands attention, but on a team that doesn't seem to have any stars with the kind of work ethic that leads, anyone who does it the right way helps. If the Jets win 11 games this season, no one is going to say Hogan turned the team around, but he is going to be at least one guy who every day will show his teammates what it means to be a professional. One is better than none, two is better one. McDermott obviously values DiMarco, Lee Smith and Star for exactly this reason.

You may be right. My opinion is that if you asked McBeane, they would not agree with you, because Beane's cap management strategy can't afford three max contracts at what are three of the four highest paid positions (edge being the fourth). I think Beane has to stretch his system too much to write three of those contracts. I suspect that if you could have a completely frank conversation with Belichick and Brady, they would tell you that they talked about the fact that Revis got a max contract and Brady didn't. I believe Brady accepted that fact because he knew he was going to get very good money for a very long time, and it was worth it to him to let Revis get great money for a short time in order to have the defense that would help Brady win. Beane doesn't have that luxury with White, because Beane doesn't know yet whether Josh is the guy he needs for the long-term, and he doesn't know if Josh will give the Bills the kind of discount that will allow Beane the luxury of spending big on a corner. If I'm right about a lot of things, in a few years Josh will be a star and he will work for millions less than he could get in the open market. That's when Beane will be able to afford to pay top dollar for the best corner back. As I said before, I think if White insists on the best money, Beane will let him walk just like McDermott let Gilmore work. When the future is set, when the right QB and the right MLB are in place with their contracts, that's when Beane will know if he can write really big checks for another position. I expect Beane will have the discipline to insist on a team-friendly deal with White.

I'm a Hogan fan. A great addition for the Jets, because he will bring some stability and leadership to a situation that seems almost like chaos. He will be more important in the locker room than on the field. He isn't a guy who can help carry the team with big-time plays - he's only a role player in an offensive scheme, but he will teach the team something about commitment and excellence.

I've been up front about it for more than a year: I think we are watching the construction of the next great team in NFL history, the team to beat for ten years or more. I think that's what we're seeing for one primary reason: McDermott is selling something that works to build teams, and he's good at getting players to buy it. There are, in my opinion, three important contracts to get done: Allen, Edmunds, and Beane. Lock in those three, and big things are coming. Edit: And as an aside, I live in Connecticut and have been a long-time UConn basketball fan. Dan Hurley seems like he studied at the same leadership school with McDermott. His message is the same, guys are buying it the same. In the past two weeks he signed two big-time recruits for 2021, high school kids who talked about work ethic, about team, and about winning together. It's nice to have coaches of my two teams succeeding like that.

I've really lost interest in analyzing deals and contracts, so I don't have anything to add about the details that Tre might expect. I will, however, say this: I may be wrong, but it seems pretty clear to me that the Bills' approach to cap management is like Belichick's approach: except for QB (and maybe MLB), they don't think it's worth it to pay the top of the pay scale to any player. I think you see it in all the re-signings the Bills do, most particularly and most recently Dawkins. What did so many posters here say about it? A "team friendly" deal. Of course, we haven't seen the big-ticket guys come up yet - Tre, Josh and Tremaine, but over and over what we've seen is "team friendly" deals. I think the Bills are saying this to their players: "You know how we work and how we are building. We are all about team, and no player is bigger than the team. We are willing to pay you very well, but we are not willing to pay you so much that it affects our ability to make the team as good as it possibly can be. That means that we will not pay you as much as you probably can get someplace else. (In the case of Tre, than he certainly can get someplace else.) We hope you will accept less than you can get someplace else because what you want more than anything else is to be part of a top-notch winning organization, and part of being part of a winning organization is sharing the money with the team." I'm quite confident that's what the Bills are saying and will be saying to players. I think that's what the Pats said to Brady all those years that he took less than he could get in the open market. It started way back, with Lawyer Milloy, and it was obvious when they let Vinatieri go - they had a price they were willing to pay and would not move off it, even though everyone knew he was the best kicker in the game. Shut-down corner is the only position they seem to make an exception for, and I'm sure there were years they would have made the exception for Brady if he had demanded it. For Beane and McDermott, if I had to guess, I'd say that QB and MLB are the only positions where they will be willing to pay top dollar to keep someone. I have been prepared for a year or more to lose White unless he's willing to give the Bills a discount. As painful as it would be to see him go, McBeane view it differently. Their view is that White's replacement, although clearly not as good as White, will be offset by the better talent the Bills will have at other positions by virtue of having the cap room to sign that talent. Plus, their view is that all the players have to see that part of what is expected from them is that the best players share the money with everyone else. All the players have to see that no player is more important than the team. By consistently sending that message to the players, and by making that message clear around the league, increasingly the Bills will be able to sign guys who are completely dedicated to the team concept that McDermott is selling. Guys will know that McBeane are so committed to the whole team that they're willing to let a guy as talented as White (and Gilmore before him) walk. And you know what? I think we're going to see both Allen and Edmunds give the discount. I think one of the primary reasons McBeane wanted both those guys because of their commitment to winning as a team, because their ultimate objective wasn't to be the best individually or the highest paid, but to win. I wouldn't be surprised if Allen and Edmunds haven't talked about it already - they may already have committed to each other that they will take team friendly deals so that they can be part of what's happening in Buffalo. I think when McBeane took those two guys they had a high level of confidence that they would have the right answer to the ultimate question: "Where would you rather be than right here, right now?" I have no idea whether White will stay or go, but if he stays, I think he will have decided to leave money on the table.

Logic - I have a good friend who is a big Jets fan. Well, he's more than a fan - he worked for years for the owner, and he was as much on the inside as it's possible to be. Now he has a different job and no connection to the Jets (except for great season tickets four rows behind the Bills bench!!!). I copied your post and sent it to him. He wrote back saying that it's exactly right, and that he's been feeling sorry for Darnold, too. He says he looks back over the years and sees the continuing dysfunction, even with the success they had getting to the playoffs some, and now he sees there's only on conclusion: the team needs new ownership. He says as much as he loves them, they just have not been good - actually, they've been bad - at getting the team building in the right direction and in the right ways. I responded by telling him how hard it was for me to say the same things about Mr. Wilson. I loved the guy, I was loyal to him to the end, but years before the end it was obvious to me that he didn't know how to hire the right people and then let them run the place. That experience, and looking at the Jets, makes me appreciate how fortunate we are to have the owners we have.

Well, so much for Whaley not knowing what he was doing. Or was it some linebacker named Watson? Anyway, I'm not into blaming people. Those years were horrible, whoever was responsible.

You think that play doesn't eat at him? I hate watching that replay. Nobody's perfect.

This relates to something I've been thinking about for a while. It seems clear to me that Beane has a system that helps him figure out how much he will spend on each player - he knows that if he spends too much here, it means he doesn't have enough to spend there, and he wants to stay in balance. And in the back of his head he's already figuring how he will adjust the system if he writes that big contract for Allen. He also has a system for managing talent. He seems to understand well that the team is a collection of players that keeps changing, that there's a flow of players through the organization, ever-changing. His job is to maintain a level of talent high enough to play well, and McDermott's job is keep adjusting to the flow. With respect to the offensive line, Beane's job is to be sure there's good talent on the oline, to be sure there's good experience on the oline, and to be sure that every season a majority of the guys on the line played together in Buffalo the season before. That is, sort of as you say, his job is that he always wants to have at least three veteran starters returning. As you say, he now has two (well, he already had two, because Dawkins and Morse were returning even without the Dawkins deal). And he has Spain. So he's got his three, and this is actually the first season where he's had three. Ford is still a question mark, but he's likely to be four. The point is, though, that it's very hard to have the same three for the long term, because between contracts and injuries, the personnel keeps changing. The days of keeping your line in tact for five years or more are long gone. So the point is to have some kind of rotation where you always have at least three good veterans coming back, ideally a fourth and a fifth coming back (like rookies and unproven veterans). Plus, I think we've seen over the past two years that Beane's model for adding players to this rotation is to add veterans from other team, like Winters, Boehm and Williams, plus the guys he added last year) and to sprinkle in an occasional high pick (Ford) and promising but unproven youngsters (Bates). I think that Beane's offensive line recipe looks something like that. As I said, this is the first season he's giving McDermott all of the ingredients. As I think about it, I think that's one of the reasons that they didn't feel a need to bolster the offensive line in the draft or to make a big splash in free agency at those positions. They now have their rotation in place, and all that's necessary is annual maintenance to replace guys as they get old, get injured, or don't develop. And if that's the right way to look at it, then I think it's a good deal for both sides. Dawkins could legitimately have held out 8th money, and the Bills would have liked getting away with paying 16th money, and both decided it was in their interests not to squeeze the other.

Responding to both Gunner and Thurm here. Gunner, I think you actually prove Thurm's point a bit. There is no established methodology for ranking players by compensation. You can compare new deals, which is what Gunner is doing, or you can compare average comp going forward from here, which is what Thurm is doing, and you get different numbers. Exact placement on some theoretical list isn't important, it isn't precise. What I think almost everyone seems to agree on is that Dawkins isn't a top three tackle and he didn't get top three money. My big fear in free agency is that a really good position player squeezes top three or top one money out of management, because the player almost never turns out to be worth it., and that contract hurts the team's ability to get other talent. My fear on the other side is really good player leaves because someone else gives him top three money, and the Bills have a hold. What we know about Dawkins is that he's good and could be better and the Bills didn't drop top three money on him, so I'm happy. As for Morse, I had the same sense of his 2019 as Gunner. By the end of the year I saw him as a great technician, in the sense that he seemed to execute really well - he was in position, balanced, aware. He didn't seem to dominate physically the way a top offensive lineman does. I think, however, that that kind of technical execution excellence makes a center really valuable. The line operates very much as a unit, and the center leads the unit. What the rest of the unit sees in Morse is a guy who is going to get there for the double team every time he's supposed to get there, he's going to be seven yards downfield every time he's supposed to be there, he's going to make the right line calls every time. That is, I think Morse's consistency makes him very valuable, and may make him top 5 in a different sense. Not top 5 as a one on one physical presence, but he may bery well be top five in a unit leadership sense.

Apparently 5th or 6th, depending on how you slice it. I don't think the guy is 5th or 6th best offensive tackle in the league, but as time goes by and other guys sign, he'll probably slip to 8th or 10th, unless COVID screws up the cap too badly. Paying him as the 8th or 10th best tackle seems to me to be right on the money. And if the guy continues to improve, he'll get about three years and the Bills will renegotiate to move him up. Seems to me like this contract is right about where it ought to be. It's becoming a habit for Beane to be on target and proactive. It all seems too sane, compared to decades of craziness.

Now I'm going off track, but I was struck by this, because I've had the same sense. It seems like every time I see the Colts mentioned somewhere, it comes with more praise than I think makes sense. I do have one possible explanation for this phenomenon. If the Colts actually deserve this optimism about them, I think it may be deserved for one reason: Frank Reich. From what I've seen and heard, which isn't a lot, Reich seems to be a positive, detailed oriented process guy much like McDermott. The bottom line for the "process" is that the whole package is greater than the sum of its parts. If the Colts turn out to be really good this season, it won't be because they have great talent. It will be because they have good talent, everyone knows their job, and they play their hearts out. Like the Bills.

Man, if they all cancel, or all but the SEC, the 2021 draft is going to be a mess. The pros won't have any film to review, so they'll have to go with film from the prior year. Of course, all the players will still have their eligibility, so rising juniors still won't be able to come out (unless some one year exception is made), and rising seniors who chose this year not to come out will now have to consider coming out again. Essentially it will mean that 2021 draft choices will be worth less than usual, because the pool of players is going to be smaller, and therefore have less talent. What a mess.

Separation. Is one of my pet peeves. Practically no #2 gets separation on his own. They get separation on scheme and route running. If Rober Woods could get separation consistently he would be a number 1. He is a route runner with hands. So I agree with your two most important traits.