dave mcbride

These are good points, but I have a bad feeling NE's defense is going to be elite this season. They are getting some excellent players back (Hightower, Chung), and Gilmore will be healthy. And Belichick is the greatest defensive mind in the history of the game. Don't sleep on them.

It's an $8 million deal with a ton of incentives. He has to be the starter to reach them.

In all seriousness, he's a .500 qb who is a great backup option. Backup QB is a very important position! He's better than what the Bills have.

He is a bad option as a starter, but he’s a phenomenal backup option.

Good points, but there is also the issue of him becoming even more instinctive over time because he understands the bills D, which is relatively complex. I think we tend to overlook how guys like poyer and hyde hardly ever seem to make mental mistakes. That comes with time and innate football smarts, and i think milano has that attribute. This is all to say he may get even better.

Fisher was going into the last year of his contract and is going to miss the season! This story is being overinterpreted. As i said earlier, this combined with a big guy with a bad back = easy decision.

My take on that: Culley said something dumb to the reporter, meaning he was way too forthcoming about the fact that Watson is a goner. Now he's walking it back because he doesn't want to depress the value of his trade asset. It's bad press management, but we all know that can happen given Doug Whaley's performance in the last year he was in Buffalo. I mean, Culley said he had no idea that Watson wanted out, which is Baghdad Bob-level laughable. I just don't see how Watson will come back to Houston.

yeah, the Jets definitely have more to offer. The one thing that Carolina brings to the table is a borderline elite edge rusher (Burns) only two years into his first contract.

Bridgewater isn't any good and is the sort of player who is regularly on the trash heap come free agency. Maybe McCaffrey, Burns, the #8 pick, and next year's 2 and 3? This is a franchise QB, after all.

Seems like too small of a haul, although Burns, who is still 22, is a good get.

And here we go--Watson will be traded, it seems. @BADOLBILZ, I told you this would happen: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/03/11/david-culley-suggests-texans-may-be-willing-to-trade-deshaun-watson/. I'm not saying it's smart, but this outcome was fairly predictable.

Ertz seems to have entered the injury phase of his career, and he doesn't increase team speed.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The Bills clearly have a preference for FA/vet WRs (Brown, Diggs, Beasley), and in this scenario they're not adding any experienced pieces to the unit that actually wins them games (the offense). In fact, they're subtracting. I'm increasingly interested in adding someone like Curtis Samuel, who strikes me as a perfect fit for this offense.

He is an appealing player regardless. He's an extremely good fit for Daboll's scheme, and he is lightning fast (4.31 40). He'll turn 25 in August too.

It would be a shock if they didn't cut Fisher. He has one year left on his contract and he's highly unlikely to play in 2021 given that he suffered his Achilles tear in late January. If he does play at all, he won't be available until Thanksgiving at the earliest, I would think. Schwartz has a serious back issue. Big men and bad backs aren't a good combination. I'm guessing KC knows more about his back problems than has been reported.

Brady was a comp pick himself! (As were Brian Dawkins, Hines Ward, Marques Colston, and La'Roi Glover, fwiw).

Yeah, Ross looks to be a complete bust. The way he's produced, I won't be surprised if he's out of the league soon.

I don't dislike him! But bear in mind that 107 of those yards and 2 of those TDs came late in an utter blowout against a completely dispirited opponent that was on its way to giving up 56 points. That alone boosted ypc average from 14.9 to 17.1. 14.9 is still very good. But the stat line is a little deceiving.

I remember reading (can't recall where) that Daboll's system is predicated on guys who get separation. Diggs and Beasley separate with ease, and Brown is good at it too because of his speed. As I understood it, there's a movement among OCs more generally away from big-catch-radius/jump ball guys who might struggle to separate. N'Keal Harry was regarded as a catch radius freak when he came out, but he can't separate and isn't any good as a consequence. I think Davis isn't all that great at separating because a) he's not particularly fast and b) he doesn't have a ton of stop/start quickness or hip wiggle. He still looks like a solid contributor, but I'm wary about him as a number two. Bear in mind that slightly over 1/6 of his yardage production this season came on two Barkley rainbow passes versus the Dolphins in a blowout during garbage time.

I think he's more than a game manager, and I think he's better than Smith (also, he played a lot better than Smith did in his first three seasons). I don't know what his payday will look like, but it's Cleveland. They haven't had a good QB in forever. Letting him go because some other team will pay him more and hoping you'll get lucky in the draft flies in the face of reason given past history. If I'm them, I hope he gives Bernie Kosar-in-his-prime production (good not great) and that the next iteration of Ernest Byner doesn't fumble away a chance at a SB in the AFC championship game.

Agreed, but he essentially played a different position in his first three seasons (OLB). He was almost entirely an edge player this past season.

Since Cleveland reopened for business in 1999, they have drafted five QBs in the first round. The four before Mayfield were Tim Couch, Brandon Weedon, Brady Quinn, and Johnny Manziel. Every one of those QBs was absolutely terrible. Mayfield is vastly better than any of them. I'm merely echoing your point about how hard it is to find even a "good" (much less great) QB. If you have a good one who you think will be a durable, respectable, winning qb for a long time, you keep him.

I thought Mayfield played pretty well this year, actually, and I just have a feeling that he's going to last a long time in the league and always be at least pretty good. Given Cleveland's decades-long QB purgatory, "pretty good" is something they should grab and hold onto for dear life and never let it go.

Agreed.

Are we sure of that re: Smith? Spotrac now has us in the middle of the pack re cap space. Nice place to be for a 13-3 team. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/. They are updating at lightning speed.