SCBills

If your cap numbers are correct, then my numbers of who to cut are off .. but I’m wondering if the cap numbers you used aren’t factoring in projected cap increase? Because I’ve read $29M over … and $40M+ would be a reckoning that not even another JA restructure can fix. Regardless.. we can enter next season with something like this offense: Allen Dawkins / Brown McGovern / Morse / Torrence Cook / Johnson Kincaid / Knox Diggs / Shakir / RD1 WR Epenesa 4 year deal (backloaded) Floyd 2 year deal (w void years) Jones 2 year deal (w void years) RD2 DT RD3 S RD4 Slot Corner RD5-7 DT, S, OL That’s once again pushing $$$ down the road on the DL, but to years where we’re out of the Von & White deals with an ever-increasing salary cap. Defense will have to start some rookies in the Secondary, but that Offense … on paper, is elite … and the Bills DL and LB’s would be top tier. And maybe it comes down to Von vs Floyd, depending how this plays out. If we can get out of some of Von’s deal, we can keep Floyd … if not, and this fades away, we have to hope Von still has some juice in the tank.

Why are we the only team that can’t start rookies on defense? Dallas had their LB drafted one spot ahead of Dorian Williams set to start before he tore his ACL in preseason. The Chiefs started a bunch of rookies on defense and won the Super Bowl later that year. If we don’t release Morse, we bring back 8 OL, WR1, Slot, TE1, TE2 and RB1. We should absolutely draft a WR early, maybe two of them given how good this class is. Outside of that, what do we need for next year on Offense? Focus our FA efforts on retaining our DL guys. Draft a couple Safeties, a DT or two and a slot corner. ****** figure it out. If McDermott can’t do that, well… all the more reason to let him go.

Weird vibes you have towards someone making logical judgments. The poster is stating what is obvious… Seems to be that there’s a very big difference in her needing to go to the hospital vs needing minor treatment on site. One lends credence to the idea that he snapped and beat her up. The other is far more ambiguous as to what actually happened.

I read somewhere we were projected to be $29M over, no? Either way, we will likely restructure Douglas. There’s CB1. Benford is CB2. Elam can be penciled in as CB3. Why are we signing all these players at market rates? Draft a nickel corner. Draft a Safety. Get younger. Invest in the DL by backloading contracts for Jones, Epenesa and/or Floyd for when the cap clears up and we’re out of this mess … as that’s the best protection we can provide to a youth infused secondary. If we keep Morse, that’s bringing back one of the top OL’s in the league. Upgrade at WR via the Draft and this will be one of the best Offenses on paper in the NFL.. by far. Elite OL. Elite QB. Elite weapons. We get Milano back to pair with Bernard. Williams is in Year 2. We have our starting outside corners under contract. Get. Younger. On. Defense. There will be a weakness on Defense - likely at Safety and in depth. It is what it is. If McDermott is still here .. he needs to figure it out. Or we can keep playing cap games so we have a no-holes roster full of aging vets on defense. Rip the band-aid off and outscore people.

I think we’re all in agreement that if he beat his pregnant gf, we need to cut him. However, if charges are dropped, and we cut him. That’s two players, in two years, we’ve cut based off allegations. Would you want to play for a team with that track record? Based on how this likely plays out.. the Bills are in a really tough situation. Probably the worst non-JA player for this to surround given his play on the field, future contract implications and sway in the NFL/Locker Room. A Diggs-like figure, with a Diggs-like contract, without the Diggs-like production.

The cap situation isn’t great, but alot of it is due to bad decisions/bad breaks on the defensive side of the ball. The Offense, for next year, actually looks phenomenal … especially if we upgrade WR2 via the Draft. We can fix the cap situation by cutting Morse, Harty, Poyer, White and Johnson. Bates can take over for Morse. Harty, Poyer and White don’t really affect much of anything. Johnson is a loss, and he’s still very good .. but he’s been exposed a bit this year as well. Will we do all that, maybe/probably not, but it’s an option. By doing that, we can still try to priority re-sign Floyd, Jones & Epenesa to backloaded/void year deals beyond ‘25 when our cap outlook looks drastically different. Miami and New York are both in cap hell also. The Bengals aren’t there yet, but have an injury prone QB they’ve built around and an owner without the liquidity to really even buy them time to ever get into cap jail. This off-season probably won’t be fun for them either. KC is really the outlier, but even for them the Chris Jones decision is looming and Travis Kelce has already begun casually dropping the “R” word. That team has been a 3 man squad for a while now … and 2 of them don’t seem like they are in the long term plans.

It kind of is.. considering he’s the reason we have a team/organization with Championship aspirations. Whatever happens, this organization needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide whether they’re going to go all in around their elite QB or keep acquiring and/or holding onto defensive assets the HC clearly advocates for. Hyde & Poyer will always be Bills legends. But we held onto them for a year too long. Same will go for Tre this off-season.. it sucks, but a hard convo needs to be had about his future here. We can’t keep holding onto our previous Championship window if we ever want to get to the next Championship window. The Offense is in a good spot for next year. We can realistically bring back the entire OL (which is a top 5 unit) plus Diggs, Shakir, Kincaid, Cook and Knox. Do we go all in and get Allen a top WR or two in this Draft, maybe our future Center early? Or do we try keep bandaging a defense that simply needs to have a machete taken to it, infuse a ton of cheap youth into it and take some early season lumps on that side of the ball like KC did last year on the way to a Super Bowl.

Yea.. I can’t get on Beane for the contract in a vacuum. Von played like a Top 10 EDGE until he tore his ACL. The restructure makes this worse and also the fact we needed to make the Von move due to Beane missing on Basham and drafting a project in Rousseau and a guy who also took some time in Epenesa.

I’m so absolutely sick of these people.

They’ll likely cut him this off-season. It is what it is. Id expect Beane to prep us for a lot of changes this off-season, regardless of how this season plays out. No better time for the defense to get younger and less financially prohibitive than coming off a year where they’ve been mediocre at best, completely unclutch, but getting back two players (Von, Milano) who should be big additions - I know Vons back, but next year might be when we finally see Von be Von again.

Bengals CB1 was lost for the season last year and then they kicked the **** out of us with 3 backup OL. Beane got McDermott Joseph & Douglas to replace Jones & White. Replacing Milano has been tricky, but most everyone deals with injuries. We apparently have a defensive minded head coach who needs a loaded defense that doesn’t sustain injuries in order for us to compete at a high level. Bills have a Top 2 QB who they ask to do far more than the other Top 2 QB but sure…. I guess we can pretend McDermott is the reason for our resurgence.

Do you mean to tell me that the McDermott strategy of protecting a one score lead by letting the opposing team move the ball past mid-field with ease against off coverage, only to then zero blitz them when they get in FG range, isn't sound play-calling?

They are absolutely good enough. Can they be disciplined enough? I don't know. Can we overcome a HC who routinely puts us at a disadvantage? I don't know.

Depends on how much Syracuse is willing to invest in NIL. Dan Mullen is a great X's and O's coach. Not a big recruiter, but if you throw around enough money now, that doesn't matter a ton. Conversely, Fran Brown is an elite recruiter, but if you don't have money to back it up, it's hard to compete for recruits in semi-pro football. Given we went with Fran Brown, and Fran Brown agreed to coach Syracuse - to me - means we are willing to spend on NIL, because otherwise this is pointless.

Not sure why this bothers so many people. Pretty cool to see him even just back on a practice field this early.

You mention McDermott and the assets invested on the Defense. This is why I can't get on Beane too much, because his job is to work with the Head Coach and get him players to fit the scheme he has in place. McDermott has had a ton of talent on his defense, year in/year out.. at the expense of the offense around Allen. We signed Floyd & Poyer over what could have been a Hopkins signing this off-season. We then sustain injuries and Beane gets McDermott Linval Joseph and Rasul Douglas. The only way a defensive minded HC makes any sense in the modern NFL is if you can load up the offense because the HC can take middle of the road investment and coach them up into a good defense. We do the opposite.. We invest heavily on defense, at the expense of our offense, and if we have injuries, the defense falls apart. In big moments, the defense falls apart. What exactly is the point of having a defensive minded HC at the expense of offensive stability for our star QB? Especially when he actively hurts us with his decision making against upper tier coaches? Can anyone make a valid argument for keeping him, sans a 5-0 finish and playoff run, aside from "Pegula coaching search makes me scared?"

Fwiw.. That is a big game for us. I just went through the playoff simulator and filled it where we win out and things don't exactly go our way.. We still get in under a pretty rough six week stretch where the teams we're rooting to lose, generally keep winning IF the Rams beat the Browns this weekend.

I can see how this is the counter argument.. and maybe some fans would have done that.. but the fact that the announcers, not even us fans, Romo and Nantz were just casually discussing what Allen will look to do in those 20 seconds before kneeling it lends credence to the fact the common reaction was confusion and jaw-drops when we saw him line up for the kneel. Furthermore, if anyone is like me, the entire house was screaming at McDermott for using that timeout to ice the kicker. I have to disagree with you. I think we all were ready to live or die with our franchise QB who was dismantling the Eagles Defense all day over a Head Coach making decisions given his track record.

The Defense did not hold them to a miracle FG. The Defense allowed them to get within a 49 yard FG and then the Eagles gifted us 10 yards on mistakes. What exactly about Josh Allen and the Offense that night made you worried about giving him 3-4 plays to try and get Bass into FG range? Heaven help us if we lost the coin toss and Hurts marched down and scored on our Defense like we all knew would happen the minute we decided to kick a FG in OT.

The fact he thinks his defense did it's job to force a tough kick is wild.. They should've kicked a 49 yarder. McDermott and his Defense didn't force two false starts. Is that your defensive mastermind of a plan?... to allow them to get inside a 50 yard FG to send the game to OT? The icing the veteran kicker decision is just out-dated, meathead thinking. If he had any faith in Josh Allen, he'd hold onto the timeout, let the chips fall where they may and then tell JA to give us a shot to win it with 20 seconds and 2 timeouts. It's Wednesday and I'm somehow getting angrier about this as the week goes on....

Looking back on what we believe to be his biggest wins.. It dawns on me that McDermott is kinda who he is, and has always been.. We have some great regular season wins, like Chiefs x2, but then it hasn't translated in the Playoffs. We've had some really fantastic defensive performances against high powered gimmicky offenses (Ravens, Dolphins) but struggle against more traditional elite passing games. I will say that the defensive performance against Lamar in that playoff game was special. We have playoff wins over teams we were flat out better than.. but even in the Colts game, it took Allen being Allen to win when our defense fell flat on it's face in the second half. Nothing's really changed over the years. We have the same type of wins and the same type of losses. And each year we come up short in the margins because the teams we are competing with have the coaching advantage. Same as '20, same as '21, same as '22... If I had to pick my biggest McD wins... it's two gimmick offenses he shut down (Ravens playoffs and Dolphins this year) along with two regular season wins at Arrowhead. He is who he is. And who he is, is who he's always been. Why do we expect this to change?

Punt Oakland into the sun

I think you give McDermott the season, but at the same time.. if we come out of the bye and lose to KC with our Offense looking like it has under Joe Brady but more Defense/Coaching blunders hold us back... man.... I'm getting real close to Joe Brady Interim HC territory to see what he can do leading a team before we open a full blown search for a new HC.

The plan should be cutting him in the offseason to save 4M. Signing didn't work. Move on. Draft some real WR's for Josh Allen ... no more niche gadget speed guys or big body blocking deep threats.

Cut Morse, Harty, Tre, Poyer & Johnson and we could probably figure out how to keep this DL together. I'm not opposed to it, tbh. Philly is patching it together in the Back 7, being driven by an elite DL. We could do the same, plus we'll have Bernard & Milano at LB.