Florida Bills Fanatic

It will all depend on the language in the collective bargaining agreement, which I have not taken the time to read. I seriously doubt that the players and their individual contracts are totally insulated from a drop in revenue by the league. The cap is based on a percentage of the total league revenue. Not all owners have the financial ability to "wear" it for a year. I also doubt that owners would ever agree to a labor contract in which they assume all of the risk associated with changes in revenue. The players negotiated for a labor contract which would give them a percentage of the total revenue and probably never considered a scenario like this. If they had settled for a flat total dollar amount for the cap as proposed by the owners, they would be in a stronger position. Players and the league will sort it out because they will have no choice. What we as fans should be concerned about are the inevitable increase in ticket prices, parking, beer, etc..

That might be true, if he had a team to actually show up for.....just sayin

They should have also reminded everyone that Allen held the ball for an incredibly long time because no receiver could get open.

Actually, OSHA has very little to do with this. Workers are covered by state worker's compensation laws. In his case he was clearly injured at work and would be entitled to receive a payment under the applicable provisions of the law. In this situation, the collective bargaining agreement provides financial protection which far exceeds the relatively meager compensation given to workers covered by those state laws. If the NFL management bargaining committee was semi- competent, they will have an offset provision whereby any workers compensation payment received by the player would be subtracted from any payments made by the team/league to the player. In addition to all of this, many players carry personal insurance to pay them in the event that they suffer career ending injuries and some players negotiate the payment of these premiums into their contracts so that they are paid by the team. You are exactly correct about the injury settlements. They are covered by the collective bargaining agreement. The bottom line here is that there are multiple avenues for players to follow to protect their financial future. Alex Smith is a smart guy and I bet he has his bases covered. The cap hit is the team's problem.

I believe that McD has a really good handle on who he wants to keep before the preseason even happens. He has seen the best and the worst of most of the players and extensive video on the rookies. When I think about the positions that are really up for grabs, we're talking mainly about depth or rotational players. For the people who really do their research before they sign or draft a player, they probably have a fairly high confidence level about each players assessment. The teams that do a pathetic job of player evaluation will be the ones that do all the whining if the preseason is cut short.

If that's entirely true, what's the story of Warren Moon and Kurt Warner. They were less than mediocre, didn't get drafted, had to play in the CFL and the arena league respectively. The facts are that they did develop and became franchise QB's. Those are just two obvious guys that came to mind. I'm not sure what is significant about the last twenty years but here are a couple examples. As far as merely competent QB's go, the 49er's just paid big bucks for Jimmy G. and I consider him to be barely competent. Tannehill and Bridgewater also fall into that description IMHO.

Sometimes it's just bad coaching, bad scheme fit, or just a bad team. There are some that don't fit the generalization. I think about Jerry Hughes as an example.

I agree with most of what you are saying. But the facts remain that all four of the teams identified in the original post have struggled to win consistently and have had more than their share of problems with high round draft picks. Those two problems are directly related.

This says a lot about the struggles of the four teams associated with these four players. They've all had issues with high draft choices in recent years and as we all know, that will set back a franchise for a couple of seasons.

Jerry may not care anymore or at least that is the bargaining position that he is establishing. At a minimum, he is protecting the team in the event of a holdout. I would sure like to hear the conversations that Dak will certainly be having with his agent. The stakes just got raised and it is fun to watch. He's in the running to be the new beer vendor is section 104. Steven Ross just traded the old beer vendor to the Texans for a 2021 7th round draft pick.

Another poor draft selection by the fins....there's been too much of missing on high picks for their team to be consistently competitive. Doesn't break my heart...lol.

Billy Shaw......what he did to linebackers was almost cruel.

This is being done for the optics of it. This won't effect enough people for enough money to make much of a ripple on their balance sheet but it is good PR. When many people in your customer base are hurting, you don't want the fat cats in your company earning big bucks and not being effected also. Several large companies in the US have made similar moves. Nobody should be surprised by this and it probably has little connection to the real decisions to be made regarding the season.

Does anyone seriously believe that there will be any meaningful discipline handed out? I don't. Once the draft was here and gone with no disciplinary action taken, the probability in my mind dropped significantly.

It is partially the product of overpaying guys that were on a SB winning team. Does anyone really believe that Alshon Jeffrey is worth a cap hit of $18M under any circumstance? The structure of the agreements for the players that will likely be released leaves a significant amount of dead money. Contracts structured like this doesn't point to a great deal of competence on the part of the GM. It isn't a problem at the moment but will be as they start releasing guys next year and can't sign enough good free agents to fill the holes.

Exactly correct! This is why I gag when all the media types gush every time old Howie's name surfaces. He is not one of the top GM's in the league and this cap problem is just more evidence of that. Like every other GM, he has hit on some moves but when you look at the whole picture, he's nothing special. He got them to a SB win and should receive credit for that.

I don't believe he is done but the career clock in GB has been started to run down. In some quarters, it is believed that he is a hard guy to get along with. If that is true, maybe the front office has decided that enough is enough. His contract makes a trade virtually impossible; so he is not going anywhere. Their plan appears to move the focus of the offense away from Rodgers. IMHO the unfettered, throw the ball all over the field days in GB are probably gone. I also think that the GB front office wasted a bunch of good years for both Rodgers and Favre by not putting great talent around them. For many years they refused to improve their roster with free agents. In spite of this, they had some great seasons but they missed out on quite a few others. Rodgers isn't done yet but it is not likely that we will get to see the "old" Rodgers that we enjoyed watching in the past.

The dog did okay for his first draft. He may have a future in a front office somewhere in the league.

I agree with you. Shame on the Chargers for offering to pay him $10M a year. If he's mad at anyone, it should be his agent. He didn't dissuade him from refusing a good offer and losing more money through a hold out. Then subsequently he signed for $8M with Denver. Looks like a brilliant bargaining strategy to me.....lol. I don't disagree with players negotiating to maximize their earnings but I can't feel sorry for a guy that drives the car off a cliff when he had a decent option.

Good question. Whaley was a dead man walking after the end of the season. The scouting/personnel department did provide all of the input but McD was the main decision maker based on the information that was made available to him. If you remember, the scouting/personnel department was basically cleaned out after the draft. To answer your question, the scouting/personnel department was blamed for the bad moves and most of them lost their jobs. McD was bullet proof being the new guy that just walked into the mess that was the Bills. A friend of mine works in the NFL and knew a lot about what was going on at that time. He also thought it was unusual to hire the head coach before getting a new GM. I guess some of this disorganization falls clearly on ownership. It's good that the Bills are past all of this and seem to be functioning very well.

Whaley wasn't even in charge of picking up the donuts for the draft war room. To give him any credit or blame for anything that happened in that draft is insanely wrong and misplaced.

A friend of mine that is a Pitt grad and follows their football program told me similar things about Jackson today. He's a tough kid with excellent coverage skills and is not a head case. It all sounds like what we are beginning to expect from Beane's selections. I guess we'll see how it plays out in camp.

Excellent analysis. The biggest surprise for me was the selection of Fromm. After thinking about this, it makes sense to me given Barkley's inconsistency. I have also wondered if this was a preemptive move by Beane to deny him to the Cheatriots. NE didn't draft a QB but moved quickly to sign an UDFA . Belicheat also stated that not drafting a QB was not part of their plan. Did Beane beat him to the pick? We'll probably never know.

You're welcome to your opinion but I believe the starting five are already a lock and the new additions are there to improve the depth. We'll see when the games count.

Williams is going to compete for a roster depth position.