Beck Water

Am I the only one here who doesn’t look at trading draft picks, then finding $19.45M to pay a 31 1/2 yr old WR who has played 19 out of 34 games in the last 2 years as an unmitigated Great Idea? In the 2020 offseason, when Nuk was traded, I was bereft that he wasn’t traded to us. I viewed Diggs as a talented player and Hopkins as All World But That was Then, This is Now

I don’t think they’ll be counting on Doyle to go into the season due to his ACL. So they’ll add one more. But it might be Bobby Hart 🤪 (I think that will qualify as an unpopular opinion)

That’s a really good question. If I were guessing, I would guess “no”, but that the team knew Frazier was working some things out. Some relevant factors: 1) As the coaches and FO evaluated the team, I think it became clear that they were more likely than not to lose Edmunds. They also knew they could lose Poyer. 2) Frazier has indicated a desire to get a HC gig and frustration at not getting looks this year 3) Based on the “last game highlights where you most need to improve” seems pretty clear OL, WR, and run game have to be top priorities and maybe the defense needs to take a back seat I expect this was all being worked out up to the week before the combine. If the defense takes a step back without Edmunds, Frazier might feel that will hurt his case for a HC gig Being fired wouldn’t help his case, but “I need to take a step away for a year” is nicely vague and can have many causes. it could protect him from responsibility for any drop in defensive performance with Edmunds moving on and maybe lower talent on DL if Miller isn’t ready early in the season or if he and Tre White aren’t back up to par. So in this scenario, the team would know that Frazier wasn’t a happy camper for the reasons above, but wouldn’t know what he was gonna do about it.

I don't think the Cardinals are gonna eat anything on his salary. If I'm doing the math correctly, they're going to eat $22.6M of amortized bonuses of various sorts accelerating onto this year's cap with a trade. They do have $21.4M cap space, but that would gobble down almost all of it.

D Hop last 2 years - 10 games and 9 games. Last year he averaged 79.7 ypg, which is just a bit better than his career average of 77.9 or his Zona average of 77 (but down a bit from 78.2 in HOU) The question comes down to the injury history etc. In 2021, he was bothered by a series of nagging injuries - ribs, hamstring, and then finally an MCL tear. Last season, he missed the first 6 games because he was suspended for PED use, then was injured again and did not play in the last 2 games due to a "grade 1 knee sprain" (grade 1 means no tearing) - whether he could have gone if the games meant something, we won't know. But, he'll also be 32, an age when the length of the football season takes its toll and injuries start to mount. If anyone is interested, Draft Sharks gives his injury history, and calculates his chance of an injury at 58% for next season, with the projection he'll miss 3 games. https://www.draftsharks.com/fantasy/injury-history/deandre-hopkins/6679 The new guy a lot of folks are enthusiastic about has recurring hammy problems, btw

He's not recalculating. He's just using a base system other than 10

Judging by what I read around here, that doesn't qualify as an "unpopular opinion"

Apologies if this was posted upthread, but Jason LaCanfora just SCORCHED the ideo of Aaron Rodgers trade to the Jets with Sal Capaccio: You're kinda young, aintcha?

That definitely sounds like a draft that would have me vomit my Tacos I feel that points of agreement between TBD folks should be celebrated.

I don't think so, no. There was an 18 yd completion to Davis, the strip sack/injury recovered by Ryan Bates, an incompletion to Diggs that fell short, then the throw to Davis. Not just 4th and 21, but 4th and 21 from our own 14 yd line with 33 seconds left in the game, and no timeouts left for the Bills. Completing a nice 21 yd pass to get us to our own 35 yd line would not have gotten us too much.

Sorry, what I meant was "What Dawinstein and Davefan 66 said. No, running out to by an Apple won't solve your problems" Didn't mean to suggest that you were one of the "go buy a mac" advice givers, just to suggest that I thought your advice was good.

Don't we already have an older experienced vet on the roster, to mentor the younger pass rushers?

Surely the Jets will sign him to play with the #2 QB in the league, after Rodgers and the Jets and GB stop talking and get to the written word. How'd that go with another experienced veteran, Tommy in Tampa, when you strolled up on the sidelines to give him the benefit of your views? If Cole wants to play in the league next season, Drive-Bys on Twitter are probably not his best strategy

I think they just don't talk about it at all.

My Ignore file is lonely without you! It can no longer resist you. In you go, INto the sack.

Harris’ contract numbers up. As reported, $1.77M - quite a change from his $7.7M reported "market value" on Spotrac. He got base salary just over vet minimum - $1.12M, with reportedly $400k of that guaranteed; signing bonus of $600k so total guarantee $1M of that $1.77M No publicized milestones or incentives. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/damien-harris-29123/

That's 80% where I am - Fix the Oline! Please fix the Oline! And, draft an offensive skill player, a WR or TE, before the 4th or 5th round please! We really can't afford to bring in another highly-paid vet WR on the cap, so we need to succeed with draft-and-develop. I do agree with the TBN writer who said that keeping Dorsey as OC is the biggest risk the Bills are taking. He's got to 1) take a step with his play designs and play calling 2) he and Joe Brady have got to get into Josh Allen's psyche and keep him from succumbing to the lure of the Aggressive Deep Shot. We need an effective short game and a run game to keep teams honest.

Contract details for McKenzie out. Took a significant price cut over the $2.2M he would have made with the Bills Basically, getting a vet minimum salary for a 6 season veteran, but he's getting a signing bonus and some additional guaranteed money. Funny how contract details like that involving a drop in pay take a while to be released Colts can move on from him pretty much any time without sneezing given their $21M cap, but McKenzie takes home more than a practice squad player earns, and more than the ~$330k would have received from the Bills if they brought him into training camp and then cut him.

Agree about 50/50 with the Bengals vs. being waffle-stomped. I think there might be a point that the Bengals really pumped themselves up for the Bills game and gave it everything they got, then they struggled to get back to the same place and didn't have as much to give vs. the Chiefs, same as happened to the Chiefs last season. You're likely right that the Chiefs had the "PR pump up" card with all the trash talk about "Burrowhead" and the "0-3 vs. Burrow" talk. But when I saw Burrow on the sideline in the Bengals game, he didn't look like the same "stone cold killer in the face" we saw vs. the Bills. He had that thousand-yard glazed stare. They did put up a better fight than the Bills did, for sure. I think I disagree that the Bills were "mentally beaten" or "running on fumes" the entire second half of the season. "Mentally beaten" teams don't win 8 games in a row. I do feel they were struggling offensively. Things that they were doing earlier in the season were omitted from their game plan; things that came easily, didn't. I think that has to do with Josh's UCL injury being worse and hampering him more than was generally reported; he acknowledged at the end of the season that he couldn't throw with his preferred rotational throwing motion and had to revert to a lateral motion that he used prior to 2020 (and was less accurate with). And then they lost Von Miller and had Poyer's injuries piling up, so the defense wasn't able to pick up the slack.

I think the coaches have a role to play, and I think the game plan has a role to play, but I think the way the Bills played vs. the Bengals wasn't a function of the game plan. One can say if the team is flat, the coaches haven't done their job correctly to motivate and inspire the players. But ultimately, great players on great teams have to be interiorly motivated, too; it's not like they're robots where the coaches can wind them up and find the right buttons or give the perfect motivational speech. Sometimes there's a "right" motivational speech that helps and sometimes I think there isn't.

To your first point, Right On. The Bills may not be as good a team as the Bengals, especially without two key players on D (Miller and Hyde) and with others playing hurt (Poyer, Phillips) or out (DaQuan Jones). On the other hand, the Bengals may not be as good a team as the Bengals, especially with 3 backup OL (my point being, both teams were missing important players, no excuse there) But the question really isn't whether the Bengals roster and coaches, in some abstract sense, are better than the Bills roster and coaches, in some abstract sense. They may be, they may not be; you can think they're not, I wouldn't fight you over it. I think the point people are trying to make, is that the loss, and the way the Bills lost, doesn't necessarily reflect some abstract humongulous talent differential between the teams (more in a minute), but rather a difference in the intensity level with which the teams approached the games. The Bengals came out hot and gave us everything they had; the Bills looked flat, as though they'd already given everything they had and were writing post-dated checks. It was a horrible, terrible, no good very bad game. Then the following week, the Bengals (IMHO) looked flat against the Chiefs, as though the Bengals had already given everything they had and were writing post-dated checks themselves. Not as flat as the Bills had looked the week before, but still, plenty flat. I can't tell you why. I can tell you, that when a team is flat, there's apparently not some magic reset button the coaches can push. As far as talent level: The Bengals are a talented team. They lost to the Steelers, the Ravens, and split with the Chiefs (regular season W, playoff L) and ended the season 12-4. The Bills are a talented team. They beat the Steelers, the Ravens, and the Chiefs in the regular season 13-3 with wins over a number of the same teams. I don't know if the Bills are better in terms of roster and coaching than the Bengals, or the Bengals are better than the Bills. I can say that, playing in the same conference against many of the same opponents, winning against some teams they lost to, It's not likely that as of last season, there was some gaping talent chasm - which some people here seem to think there is. Whether that will be true next season, Can't Tell Yet.

Again, very well written and well thought out post. To the point about roster and lineup: The Jaguars beat the Bills last season. In fact, the Jags kind of embarrassed them. I don't think anyone would look at last year's Jaguars roster, and say "they were a better roster" and certainly not "they were better coached". But the Bills came out flat, like "yeah, nothing to worry about here" (or maybe they were all out partying, who knows) and the Jaguars got psyched up "look at them over there, they aren't acting like they want it, they don't deserve to win, let's prove we deserve to win" and that was that story. The Jags were the better team - that day. The point is, in the modern NFL, the talent difference is not so large over an entire team that other factors can't come into play. I had the chance to chat with a former OLman, a name you would recognize. One of the questions I asked was, why sometimes a team that's not so good defeats a favored team; or, a less-talented player wins against a dominant player. As you might imagine, he kinda waffled and said a lot goes into it blah blah. Sometimes the opponent's coach finds weaknesses and has a better plan. Sometimes the opposing player does a great job of watching film and identifies some tendencies they can exploit. But he said (and this is interesting) it's much more mental and emotional than I might think. He said the most successful players aren't necessarily the most athletic talents, but the guys most driven mentally and most able to turn themselves up emotionally week after week. That if a team plays a really tough game and pulls out all the stops to win one week, it can be hard to physically recover, put the same level of mental focus into preparation, and get back to the same level of emotional intensity the following week. He said sometimes one team just comes in fired up and knocks the "better" team off kilter. And that can change during the game. We were talking about Ryan Fitzpatrick coming in as a rookie, setting a record (I don't remember for what - comeback by a rookie?) and defeating the Houston Texans (the Rams were behind 3-24 at the half, and won 33-27) - everyone liked Fitz, and he threw everything he had into the game so the team turned it on and went harder while the Texans were "wait, what just changed?" But also that sometimes you can't tell the reason why the team is flat, and the reasons the team is fired up might seem petty or silly to outsiders. My kid now works in Lafeyette, IN, home of Purdue. I don't think anyone would argue that Fairleigh Dickinson had more talent than Purdue, but they were the better team - that day.

All I can say to this is: Thank You. It's so well put that there's really nothing else to say.

Incredible, isn't it? "Oh yeah, these guys were great players for years but they stopped playing or didn't play as well after major injuries therefore they must suck" At the risk of sounding like an Andy Reid apologist, let's take it further. The Chiefs won the Superbowl in 2019 a year after their 1st-year starter won league MVP. You can't do that without a good OL, you simply can't. Then they lost the Superbowl, tore down their OL completely, went right back to the conference championship the following year with a rebuilt OL that sustained a bit better run game, and won last season with that OL. (Still very much an OL built to support the passing game tho) So they won 2 Superbowls in 4 years with two completely different OLs, and this guy wants to tag Reid as being a poor OL talent evaluator and having bad OLs. Now let's go back a decade or more to 2009 when Reid rebuilt the Eagles offense around a running miracle on cleats named LeSean McCoy and had a top-10 offense for 3 years with QB named McNabb and Vick. Completely different style of offense designed around McCoy's skillset in the run game, but amazingly enough, one of the players he brought in (a C named Jason Kelce) is still playing in the league and has won 2 Superbowls himself since then. No doubt, because Reid is a poor evaluator of OL talent. It boggles the mind. I con only pray that the Bills FO might become subpar at evaluating OL talent to that degree. All I can think of is that the chosen screen name "Einstein" must be intended as ironic.

How to tell us you didn't read the OP without telling us you didn't read the OP: "Each of the 10 units are ranked 1-32 based on current rosters (assuming Rodgers on NYJ for now) and weighted based on positional importance"