ngbills

Well last year we played: NE, PHI, BAL, DAL; So one less prior year playoff team. Add in PIT who barely missed 9-6-1 vs 10-6 Indy and that would have been 5. Add in prior year CLE team that was supposed to be so great. Solid TEN that was 9-7, Improved NYJ team with Bell, DEN again... Same can be said every year. How good are you really if you need an "easy" schedule" schedule to just make the playoffs. No team is going 16-0. The Chiefs, 49ers, NE, Sea, etc all have to lose. There will be injuries that impact teams. Bottom line if you cant win 10 vs any schedule you are not good enough period.

Short term w player option deal for AJ Green ($10M per) Draft a WR Get any of Yannick ($15-20M per), Dupree, Barrett, Armstead, Quinn on cheaper deals Draft an edge guy Pay for Hooper or Henry ($10M per) Get the best cheap RB you can find ($2-3M per) OL help There are a number of guys out there. See what deal can get done. ($5-10M per) Draft OL Draft CB Draft LB Draft DT

We have $90M this year. Cap is likely increasing next year and year after etc. Older guys will be rolling off contracts and you can cut guys in the NFL. We do not have an issue with being able to keep our guys. There is also a thing called free agency. Both teams in the Super Bowl used it to supplement good draft picks. Players get better - yes. But this team does not have those players yet. Our WR room is too weak to rely on getting better. Our OL is not built around young guys that will be getting better. We dont have an edge rusher that will get better. So yes - build through the draft and watch those key players get better. Use free agency to fill the holes or hold the fort down until the player does get better. Three to four guys at $7-10M is what we did last year basically. We would be much better off sign 2 guys at $15-20M. White is not a free agent until 2022. You can extend him next offseason if you want or even wait until the next. How do you know this FO values resigning guys? What examples do you have? So far they have signed more free agents than they have resigned guys.Every team in the NFL has guys they have to resign down the road. That does not stop you from improving the roster now via free agency. People are making this out like the Bills are the only team that has its own players to resign someday. Milano is debatable if he is worth a big contract. He is a good player but not sure the type of guy you pay $10-15M per. I could see McD feeling the same way. White is has a few more years. He is an elite CB and would be worth signing. Dawkins is going to be a judgement call. I think he is more critical than Milano given finding a replacement would be tougher. But this FO will have to decide if they want to pay him the big $. Not a sure thing. Poyer I do not think they invest money in that position. If he comes back on similar terms they bring him back but no way shell out a hefty raise to him. Spain, Kurt Coleman, Kevin Johnson, Levi Wallace - These guys should not have significant impacts on your roster building. Shaq - Who knows what they do. I think if he takes a discount they may bring him back. I would not call this FO fiscally conservative. They are paying a C over $10M. They signed Star to $10M. Brown, Beasley, Murphy, Kroft all got big raisers coming here. So not sure where the these guys are not willing to spend comes from. In the NFL you are supposed to spend it all. If you dont you are only limiting your team. That is why there is a salary cap. That does not mean you are not smart about it. If there is a free agent that would help your team and is an upgrade over one of your own - then you do bring them in and maybe that mean you do lose a player. But if the team is overall better who cares. Thanks for advice on rooting for another team. I was born a Bills fan and have been for 40 years. My dogs name like your screen name is Thurman. So you are confused about who you are talking to son. Sounds like you root for mediocre players that you have crushes on over building a super bowl contender.

This is growing on me. AJ Espinoza in 1st, Pittman in 2nd https://www.syracuse.com/buffalo-bills/2020/01/buffalo-bills-4-round-mock-draft-hawkeyes-edge-too-good-to-pass-up-in-round-1.html

If that is the reality then frankly it would suck. This team is not nearly good enough to think they are the point of just extending and signing our own. I am sure they can find a way to spend the entire $225M on the current roster but that would be horrible mismanagement. They have very few large contracts to hand out this off-season to keep our own free agents or for extensions. Most key players are locked up at least a couple more years. If this year with $90M in cap and the flexibility they is not the year to improve the roster then there never will be one.

Cap is $220M+ total. The Bills are below by the $90M. The cap is not like in the past when it barely increased. It now increases $10-20M per year. There is zero way to spin a team that has $90M in cap space does not the ability to spend.

Agreed. But no matter how you look at it if you have $90M in cap space you better have room to sign some guys with significant contracts. Look at the key guys all locked in for the next 2 and some even 3+ years: OFF: Allen, Singletary, Brown, Beasley, Knox, Morse, Ford DEF: Star, Oliver, Hughes, H Phillips, Edmunds, Hyde, White, T Johnson, S Neal We have the ability to spend a ton of money and still be fine in a few years when decisions need to be made on guys. Perfect time to sign some higher priced players and draft future replacements. No more needing to sign mid tier depth guys. We have a ton of that already.

If Milano was on another team I doubt many on this board even talk about him. If he was a free agent anbd we signed him to $12-14M contract people would be like WTF are we doing. There are a lot of guys that can do what he does in this league and he is not some physical freak. If he left we could replace him and not miss a beat. That does not mean he sucks just that he is a decent player in a good system with good players around him. Easy plug and play type of spot.

And the fact the defense does have to defend the pass. Teams are still game planning to stop the passing game with Kittle and the other attributes of the 49er passing attack including WR motions and runs, etc. Much more to it than they just beat you up with the run straight ahead.

For those saying we either dont want to or wont be able to sign big name talent. Do you think this roster as constructed is already good enough? Just need the guys we have to get better? Is that the approach. Allen gets better and only needs Knox/Kroft, Brown, Beasley and whatever other WR we keep. The OL as constructed is good enough? On Defense, we can lose Phillips, Shaq, Lorax and just plug in some cheap names and maintain the level of play. Oliver gets better and healthy H Phil help the DL. For me its hard to see that team ever being more than a occasional playoff team. 7-9 one year and 10-6 another. Then Allen gets his new contract and we start have to cut back the talent level even more. Sounds like a losing proposition. I prefer you have your centerpieces and bring in big level talent as needed. Rotate out some of the peripheral pieces as needed to make it work. You dont need a roster distribution that has very few at the top a ton in the middle and some at the bottom. Cut out out the middle and pad the top and bottom. Bottom either rises to top and is gone. They dont graduate to the middle.

Why do so many people say we will not sign anyone but 2-3rd tier free agents? What is the point of all this cap space if we use it on just our own plus some lower level free agents. This roster has a ton of good 2-3rd level guys. If we have $90M in cap and our QB is on his rookie contract we better sign a couple top level guys. That is what this team needs to get over the hump.

I will take those two signings along with Hooper :). Then this draft I just did on their site 22 Laviska Shenault Jr., WR Colorado 54 Joshua Uche, EDGE Michigan 86 Tyler Biadasz, IOL Wisconsin 118 Raequan Williams, IDL Michigan State 137 Chase Lucas , CB Arizona State 149 Michael Onwenu, IOL Michigan 168 Lamical Perine, RB Florida 181 Scott Frantz , OT Kansas State 187 Akeem Davis-Gaither, LB Appalachian State

Notable is how many of those teams have mobile or running QB's - BALT, SEA, DAL, BUF, HOU, AZ, IND. You just need to be able to produce - whether it be passing, QB run, traditional run, etc. The more balanced you can be the the less one dimensional and harder to gameplan. Look at the 49ers - they could beat you running or throwing the ball. They dominated some teams or had teams not be able to stop the run so why even try to stop. But if needed they also had 4 300+ yard passing games. BALT on the other hand is not in that same bucket. They beat you with the run and QB run. You stop that and I dont think they can win with a pure passing game. Its about keeping you off balance and LJ making plays as an athlete.

Basically what I wrote in another thread. Draft a WR; Sign AJ Green or Amari Cooper Sign Hooper or Henry at TE Sign Yannick Sign Conklin Plenty of draft picks to get more OL and other needs. Pretty easy....

Too bad the NFL is more than a competition standing around throwing the ball at targets or how far you can throw it. Love how if someone posted Allen completion % folks would be all over how there is more to it than that, etc. Yet Jackson the league MVP does bad in target practice and its he sucks, next year will be different etc. Guy still completed 66% of his passes so obviously he can hit targets in a real game setting.

Or maybe they had Well the purpose was not really the timing of the cuts. Just who the potential cuts could be. So the cut Kroft is the same regardless...if you have someone better then you upgrade and cut Kroft. But I do think they may cut him regardless so they can allocate his money elsewhere if they are happy with Knox, Sweeney, Smith, Croom. They are not keeping all 5 and Kroft is the most expensive. Bills failures is not as simple as they failed to keep their own. There are many reasons - mostly lack of a QB, bad hiring decisions and repeated churning of coaches, bad luck playing in AFC east vs Brady, and on and on. Not sure if simply keeping our own would have changed much of that. Making the right coach hire and him developing a roster over a number of years is what would have. I agree on your WR need. However, after that this team does not lack depth.They lack star power. If anything depth is the strength of this team. They have a ton of avg to above avg talent across the board. They need a few elite players. They need a star WR and young OL and edge rusher. They have $90M lets use some of that on those areas. Not padding our depth.If Allen can be more consistent then this team is a 2-3 really good players away from being a playoff and super bowl contender. Better Allen with AJ Green/Amari Cooper, Yannick or other edge guy and just upgrade one OL spot and this team is really good. $90M can get you those. I would add Hooper at TE there and it is still doable. Maybe a pipe dream with everything falling into place but still a ton of young talent that can be good for the next 5+ years.

I am not liking the the focus on the resigning or extending our own. I know its just talk but all the we have so many guys coming up on contracts comes across as a cop out on using the $90M in cap space they have. What is the point of creating all that cap space if its only used to resign our own guys? Yes you hvae some players you need to lock up but that statement only applies if your team is good enough. We have a ton of upgrading that is still needed. Keeping our own does not solve that problem.

If your going after Hooper or Henry then you are moving on from Kroft. You dont allocate your salary with over $20M to TE's. If you believe in Know then what is left for Kroft? Know makes Kroft expendable. My view is you need to upgrade from Know and Kroft with a Hooper or Henry. Knox can still have a significant role along with a more legit weapon at TE. Money paid to a player impacts what other players can be brought in. I dont care about the actual money the Pegulas spend or make. Its about the construction of the roster of the Bills. I am lobbying to save to spend more. Not save so the Pegulas can buy another jet or whatever. Not sure where anything I am saying leads one to believe I want bottom level talent. I would say keeping Kroft and Smith over going after Hooper is more along the bottom feeder mentality.

At his price that is too high to be just useful in multi TE sets. There just seems to be better options - if you can get Hooper or Hunter great. If not then you can find someone to go along with Knox, Sweeney, and Smith or Croom. What upgrade is Kroft really providing to that group? His best year he caught 40 balls for 400 yds. Every other year - 11, 10, 4, and 6 rec's. You dont need to spend $6M on a guy that will catch 10 balls all season.

I will add: If the Saints had a better defense If Rodgers had more, well any weapons If Brady was well Brady Then you have Mahomes v Brady and Rodgers vs Brees and we are still saying you need a QB to win...

But look at the final 4 teams RB's. I would argue maybe they are a dime a dozen. Outside of Henry you could have had any of these guys on your roster if you wanted them. SF - Mostert barely made it in the league KC - Damien Williams another marginal league player GB - Aaron Jones, 5th round pick, no superstar TEN - Henry, 2nd round pick, did not reach star status until this year

Jordan Matthews...

Kroft is making over $6M per. He has only had one productive year in his career. I think they signed him last year more out of not having anything at the position but is he worth the money? If for $10M you can add Hooper and drop Kroft you have to do that in a heartbeat. Hooper can put up Kroft numbers with his eyes closed. He is a guy you line up outside and its like having another WR out there. I dont know if we could get him, but if you can that is a swap you better make.

Purpose would be to upgrade and use these cuts to help make room for it whether it be a roster spot or the cash. The Bills have only 12 free agents this year. They will bring some of them back possibly and then you have 10 draft picks. So between our own free agents, draft picks and guys we sign there will be some guys let go.

Believe me I expect to be disappointed. If they sign just one - Hooper. Then I am excited. I know folks like Knox. He is fun to watch but quite the level of a guy like Hooper.