Shaw66

I don't study the draft, so I had no idea who Sternberger was until I saw this thread. Having read the thread and the comments about how he sort blew up his career coming out of college, I think the Bills are thinking there's something else going on here. I think the Bills asked him, "Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?" (apologies to Arlo). In fact, I think the Bills are already sure that he's a good bet. I say all the time that one thing you can tell about players in the draft is the quality of their physical skills. Guys taken in the first have outstanding talent, in the second, high-quality starter talent, in the third, starter talent. After that, guys are projects. Third round, Sternberger presumptively has starter talent. (He played some quarterback in high school, he was a star tight-end on an undefeated state championship team, and he was a power forward on the basketball team.) If the Bills were interested in him in the draft, then he passed the Bills' character screens - hard worker, team orientation, wants to learn, etc. In his college career, he bounced around. In his pro career, he got injured, had a substance abuse suspension (related to his recovery?), caught a playoff TD from Rodgers, got released by the Pack and bounced around, only to resurface as a standout in the USFL. Sounds very much like a guy who needed a reset. The Bills signing him suggests that they think he now is bringing to the game the kind of attitude that they value. Training camp and preseason will give him six weeks to demonstrate that he's now bringing the right focus to the game. He's still a project, but an interesting gamble. If he makes the roster, great. If he goes to the practice squad, he probably won't stay there, because other teams will recognize that the only reason he isn't on the roster is the Bills' depth at the position. If he gets cut, then we'll know he's just the latest in a long line of receivers who I, along with a lot of others, fell in love with who never went anywhere.

This is a creative look at Sternberger. Big Al said this: Sternberger went ahead of Knox in the draft, and Big Al's description actually sounds a lot like Knox. OK speed, OK route runner, undersized for a blocker, but that's undersized for a traditional tight end. Take another Knox and put him on the field just as DC said, in the red zone, and you've got something. Diggs is a guy who separates like Beasley, and he's valuable, but teams were taking him away in the red zone, the Bills didn't other have good options. I like Davis, but he hasn't been effective in the red zone. Knox has. Kincaid should be. If there's a Knox clone on the field, that's four legitimate short-route targets, and it should be a simple thing for Allen to find the mismatch and go there. Knox. Sternberger, and Kincaid all running tight curls, some small back will be boxed out by a big body.

This may be the training camp depth chart, but I've thought all along that Murray is a better back than Harris, and I'm expecting that late in the season he will be RB1b. He's a more versatile runner than Harris.

I'm with you. McKenzie always was a problem back there. Give me Hyde fair catching every ball and put the offense on the field. Actually, I don't want to risk him back there. For my money, right now, it's Shakir with very strict instructions.

Exactly what you don't want in a punt returner. 150 kick and punt returns, 9 muffs and fumbles.

Yes, ahead of Knox. Maybe he is the guy Beane wanted. Connor McGovern, too.

Diggs, Davis, Kincaid and pick one based on play call, recent performances, etc.

Excellent. That's a great ranking of the QBs in the league.

It's interesting to me how people's statements about Hurts track the early conventional wisdom about him. "Hurts surprised me" in the Super Bowl, and things like that. I feel that way about him to. It's as though based on whatever preliminary view of him was, he can't be as good as he looked last season. For me, I thought he was primarily a runner and an inaccurate guy who probably couldn't get it done in the pocket. All last season I didn't want to give up that view. For me at least, and maybe others, I've got start believing what we all saw last season. Yes, he may have nice talent around him, but - dang! - the guy makes plays, over and over. He makes the runs, he creates, and he delivers the football. I am not a believer in ratings like these, but having seen the Bills offensive line last sign, it's not hard to believe that the Eagles was better. I'll give you that. But line or not, Hurts consistently played high quality winning football. Can he do it again? We'll see.

Got it. The running backs do have a point. But the fact remains, within the NFL they aren't worth as much as they think. Running backs don't win Super Bowls.

Not always. Their value is artificially controlled by the CBA; first round running back gets less than he could if the market were free. When he finally gets to be a free agent, he is past his prime. So he misses the opportunity to get paid his actual value.

George Saimes. Amazing open field tackler (and punt returner).

Well, there has to be a solution somewhere. Somehow, to be fair to them, the running backs need to be able to hit free agency earlier; otherwise, sooner or later they will sue and probably win by arguing that the current CBA is an unlawful restraint on trade. I don't know what the legal rationale is for the league and the current players to restrict the bargaining power of players coming into the league, because ordinarily employers can't do something like that. (This goes back to Curt Flood.) The justification for rookie deals under the CBA is that even though they don't get to negotiate their contracts, they get decent pay, and they get multi-year contracts that assure that they have a guaranteed payday. The rationale for allowing teams to tie up first rounders for five years is (1) pay is good, if not true value for some of the first rounders, and (2) their payday comes with the second contract. It's becoming clear, however, that for many running backs there is no second-contract payday. It's a problem unique to running backs, because their value tends to decline faster than players at any other position. Maybe part of the solution is to allow rookie running backs drafted in the first round to elect a contract without a fifth-year option. Look at Singletary. Better-than-average starting running back on a playoff team, and all he got was a one-year $2.5 million deal. A similarly skilled player at almost any other position gets a multi-year deal. On the other hand, if you look at Latavius Murray's contract history, it's hard to say there isn't a path to good career comp for running backs. Prior to coming to Buffalo, he earned something like $19 million in ten years. He has been a valuable back but not a true star. He was better than Singletary early on, so he got a better second contract. I think the problem really is the occasional first-rounder who can get squeezed out his second-contract payday because of the fifth year option. If he had been a free agent a year ago, he would have gotten a nice deal somewhere, and the Giants would have been forced to pony up or let him go. Or he'd be on his second season of being tagged by the Giants, which would be a fair payday for Barkley. If Barkley gets knocked out with injury this year, his value will be way down next spring.

How many receptions did Kincaid have today?

Or cost of living. But Texas, where he lives, would have saved him a lot. Whatever. I'm glad he came, and as you or someone else said, for most guys, it's the money not the winning.

I didn't say it was just about winning. I said he chose winning over other factors, because from the things he said, of the teams that were after him, the Bills played in the last city he wanted to be in. He said he preferred Texas, LA and Denver. And after tax, the money was better in all those places. He gave up things to pursue winning. That's all I meant to say. As for Judon, I agree, but I think that's only in a vacuum. The Bills consider their longer term plan, and I think the tentative plan is to make Rousseau a star and pay him. (Remember, their mantra is to draft and retain talent.) Von's contract will be largely done, and will not renewed, when Rousseau comes due. Now, you may think that Judon is the better talent (I think he probably is), but also there's no guarantee the Bills would get him. We don't know what the Bills' thought about Rousseau 15 months ago when they got Miller, but I'd bet their thinking was something along these lines.

Oh, for sure, but that's what free markets are about. Someone always overpays in a free market, and someone underpays. That's how market prices are determined. Schoen obviously has learned his lessons. He knows how important Barkley is to the future of his team (less important than Barkley thinks he is), and he has the discipline not to overpay. The only thing going on in all these tweets from running backs is they are demonstrating, as a group, that they misunderstand their own values. Punters don't misunderstand; they negotiate a little here and there, and the very best may even change teams, but they understand that there is a limit to how much their team will pay them.

I have very little sympathy for these guys. They have the wrong perceptions of themselves. Unless and until the news comes out that the owners have a big, secret agreement to set the compensation for all players, I'm going to continue to believe that (except for the draft), it's a free market for teams and players. The players get paid what it's worth to the teams to acquire them. Now, you might argue that the teams value the players incorrectly, but I think that's just not true. The teams have a capped amount of money to spend, and the whole game, from the GM's point of view, is to acquire the collection of talent that is most likely to win within the limits of the cap. Why aren't the punters tweeting madly about how unfair their compensation is? How about the offensive guards? Why do the quarterbacks get those mega-deals? It's all about value over replacement. If you want to be regular contender for the title, you have to have a quarterback, so when you get one, you pay him whatever it takes to keep him. You don't meet your punter's outrageous demands, because whether you have this punter or that punter doesn't really change you chances of making the playoffs all that much. Same for offensive guards. If you have a HOF offensive guard, yeah, you pay him. The rest of them? Well, you always want the best, but it doesn't matter so much which one you have. Great running backs don't correlate with consistent winning the way quarterbacks did. They did once. In the 60s, it was more important to have Jim Brown or Jim Taylor, and you could get away with Milt Plum, Frank Ryan, and Bart Starr (Starr was great, no doubt, but he was a great game manager - he didn't win games like Mahomes and Allen do). No more. Derrick Henry is a truly great running back, but he hasn't made his team a consistent top-five team. Barkley hasn't, either. As great as McCaffrey is, and I'd love to have him, he hasn't done it either. Neither has Ekeler. The era of teams being led consistently to the Super Bowl by running backs ended with Thurman and Emmitt, not because they were greater than the current crop of running backs, but because the game kept changing. And on top of just their pure contribution to winning, you have the injury factor. The league has been offering more and more protection to quarterbacks for a couple of decades. The running backs, who take MORE pounding than QBs ever did, have very little protection. So, a big investment in a running back simple doesn't make a lot of sense, because the chances are you will not have him for very long. When the Bills paid all that money to Allen, it wasn't just because he was worth it for the next few years - it was because by paying him that money, the Bills know they'll have the opportunity to pay him a lot more money a few years from now and keep him through the prime of his career. Barkley's in his prime; Allen isn't. By the time Allen is playing like Brady and Rodgers, Barkley will be retired. Running backs get headlines because the mystique of running backs from 50 years ago continues, even though the game has changed. They also get headlines because the media can't get enough headlines out of QBs and receivers, so they need someone else to write about, and the running backs are the next most visible players on the field. Because they get headlines, the running backs think they're important. They believe their headlines. The GMs know better.

I k now about Von's deal, but when he came it was clear he could have done better in areas where he preferred to live. He got great dough, yes, but he came or the rings. You're the second to tell me I'm wrong about Hill. I'm convinced without more. Thanks.

less than 20% is right.

Just for discussion's sake, I don't think this is true. All offenses are good at some things, not so good at others. The fact that they were #2 in points per drive and not so good in the red zone means that they were very good offensively outside the red zone. It's quite possible for a team just to be better when they're playing in the open field, where they can take advantage of the defense being spread out, but worse when the defense is compact. Zones are compacted in the red zone, and more difficult to attack. The right players to attack a zone from midfield may not be the right players to attack a tight zone in the red zone. Josh's improvisational runs work much better when the defensive backfield gets stretched. A guy like Beasley is an asset in the red zone, but less valuable in the open field. In the red zone, defensive linemen know they probably aren't getting a sack (because the passing game is quick-release in that area), so they can play the run tougher. If you have a mediocre offensive line in the run game, it therefore gets worse in the red zone, because the defense is keying on the run. It just doesn't follow that if the offense is good at midfield, it must be good in the red zone.

Fair enough. I didn't recall that his playoff history was that good. And you're right, at least publicly, he's never seemed to be a true prima donna. Part of my view about him is from his on-field body language - he has an ego that might very well have clashed with Diggs. And I have to think that there's some reason two teams have decided they don't need him. On the other hand, he's an exceptional talent. Outshined Sammy Watkins from the get go, and has one of the best collections of highlight-reel catches of all time. The guy has been phenomenal.

Yeah, I don't disagree. Not everyone chases a ring, and even if they are looking for a ring, the dollars still are important. But some guys are different. Von Miller came to Buffalo, and he could have done better elsewhere. He could have been closer to home, in a friendlier tax environment (which in his case could have been worth a million alone), in a warmer climate, and still on a contender. Chris Paul's contract may not have changed, but he wouldn't agree to go to just any team to be a backup point guard. He's happy to be in Golden State for one reason: a shot at a ring. Brady played for less for several seasons in New England.

You're right. He's going to a team that has a shot. Not a top contender, but if things fall right, he could be happy in January. I can't say there are many great receivers I really like, as people or personalities or teammates. Not OBJ, not DHop, even Diggs rankles me. I admire their great skill, but I always wonder if they make their teams better. DHop had Watson and Murray as QBs, and they didn't win. Lots of reasons, maybe, but he was the answer for neither team. I wish him well, but I'll be surprised if he makes one of those QBs an all-star. OBJ, too. The one success OBJ had was as a role player with the Rams. I like Tyreek Hill. He just goes out and does his job. He knows he's a special talent, but he never seems to make it about Tyreek.

Yeah, I don't blame him. If he's looking at $30 million from one team and $10 million from another, that's a lot of money to leave on the table because he wants to win. Just saying that if he managed his previous earnings wisely, he COULD have done it if he wanted to. McBeane want guys with a certain mindset, and that mindset is not "where's the money?" I'd guess that the more DHop showed in negotiations he was about the money, the less the Bills were interested. It probably was a short negotiation.