Dibs

I get the impression that the coaches think the same thing. Rex's praise of EJ the other day describing the balls coming out faster "pop, pop, pop" highlighted this I think. (Unless I'm remembering it wrong. I'm sure someone will correct me if so.)

I thought this thread was going to be about some of the old farts on the board.

Though I agree that this news is mainly irrelevant, on rare occasions your starter gets injured by a piece of floor covering followed by your #2 and #3 getting injured....which leads to your scrub playing and even becoming an NFL starter.

That's pretty much what I got from it too. That and Pears should have been benched before week 4.

Probably should have its own thread with all 4 linked. Bound to generate a lot of opinions.

I think that is a very good way of putting it. Nicely done.

Gannon wasn't Gannon till he was 34 years old. Prior to that he was a journeyman with a worse showing than Cassel has to this point. Note: I am in no way suggesting that I believe Cassel will magically improve(as Gannon did).

The general narative at the time was really baffling. Apparently it was a good move for Miami to tag Clay, and he was worth the $7.07M fully guaranteed tag deal.....but a bad deal for the Bills to steal him away and sign him to a long term deal, overpaying him to the tune of $7.6M/year. I guess that extra half a million makes all the difference to the talking heads.

Clay's $13.5M cap hit in 2016 will undoubtedly be reduced. The $10M bonus payment will be reworked as an amortized payment lowering his cap hit by at least $7.5M. I could never understand the angst surrounding his deal. His guaranteed monies are a bit higher than the standard, but his actual average/year is reasonable. There are 3 TEs on $9M+/year....then there are 8 TEs who earn between $7M and $7.6M (Clay being $7.6M). As Clay was the most recent signing on that list, it makes sense that he is on the slightly higher side of the tier two group. I think the problem stems from people thinking that he is not of 2nd tier calibre(which he is). In the larger scale of things, even when one might overpay a TE, the money differences are much lower than overpaying at many other positions.....and who knows? Maybe his top 100 player selection last year was warranted and we find that we got him for a bargain price.

The child abuse issue aside, there is obviously more to this than just money. For the next 3 seasons AP is due $13M, $15M and $17M which is incredibly high for a RB in today's NFL. Very little is guaranteed from this point in his contract, but that is the standard for NFL contracts(with the guaranteed monies usually coming in the first 3 years). To me this really does smell of sour grapes towards his team for how he perceives their treatment of him.....with perhaps a big dose of the grass is greener in Dallas thrown in.

Not that I disagree that the cap will be going up in large enough chunks over the next 2 years to help us easily re-sign our talent, but....40% has to be incorrect. That would be a $57M increase in 2 years...or two increases of $28.5M. That isn't going to happen.

I think the point the OP was making is that Cassel has shown that he can be very effective when in the right situation. His ceiling has been top 10 QB and pro bowl. Could he reproduce his good 2 years with this Bills team? Who knows? I think that with the weapons available, good coaching/play calling, and a heavy ground and pound approach where he hopefully wouldn't be expected to in any way carry the team, that he would have the best chance possible to hit that top 10 stat/pro bowl type ceiling. That being said, I really hope that either EJ or Tyrod step up to a level higher than that.

Is there any history to this post? It seems a bit out of chatacter.

If we manage to find a top shelf QB(and with an emense amount of luck we already have one on the roster), we can restructure the team by shedding some players when we need to pay said QB. The chances a top QB becomes a FA are slim....and then far slimmer that the Bills can land him over the 20 other interested teams. Therefore we will very most likely find said QB at a cheap price initially(via draft or cheap unproven FA), which will give amply time to adjust the roster. Again, no need to panic.

There is no need at all for this sort of panic. Though it is difficult to determine the current top 51 for 2016 at this point, I'll stick with your $1.5M of cap space next year. The cap will be going up by around $10M...bringing cap space to $11.5M. We will carry over the $7M from this year....... $18.5M. The Harvin contract has already been triggered so yrs 2&3 are void...adding $8M from your figures....... $26.5M The $10M lump payment for Clay will undoubtedly be reworked to a new SB adding $7.5M($8M?)....... $34M. On top of that we can save many millions by extending Mario(he has already stated that he will rework his contract if needed). The Bills have everything under control.

I went up to Sydney in 1999 with some mates to see the Chargers/Broncos pre-season game. Decent crowd turnout. Not great, but decent. Tickets were way overpriced which led to a vast majority of spectators being corporate non-fans. Seemed like my group were the only actual football fans there. Some games each year in Melbourne would be awesome!

Okay, lets start with the extremes and work back. If we traded EJ for Rodgers and 10 1st round picks would we not be able to say that we got the better of the trade? How about EJ straight up for Rodgers? How about Woods for Rodgers? Obviously one can. Things may happen to alter the assessment of the trade(like player injury etc) but one can clearly assess many trades prior to the players taking the field. A Shepherd for Hughes trade looks even initially. We can see that by determining that they were two guys who had not performed in the NFL to that point and looked like busts. Once they took the field after the trade, it became apparent that Hughes was the far better player and that the Bills actually won the trade. Unlike the Shepherd for Hughes trade, the Kko for McCoy trade does not seem even. McCoy is a multi all-pro in his prime, while Kiko is a potential talent coming off injury. That is not an even trade. Once they take the field we might get a different situation and adjust things. Kiko might be a HOFer while Shady might get injured etc and the Eagles could end up winning the trade. That concept does not mean that we cannot intellectually assess the initial trade and determine whether both teams gave roughly equal value in the trade.

The difference is that the argument is people saying that the McCoy trade is bad for us because we could have gotten Murray for nothing and kept Kiko. Even being extraordinarily generous and saying we had a 50/50 chance to land Murray, that still leaves a 50% chance that we don't land Murray. Regardless of just how better or worse Murray is compared to McCoy, this was a bird in the hand situation. Why risk not getting a first class RB when there is one on the table available for a relatively cheap trade? That 50% was being extraordinarily generous as I said. Likely the true percentage was closer to 15%. I am finding it difficult to understand how people are making a thing out of this.

The Eagles got a good RB in the trade in the same way that we got a good TE in Clay, a good FB in Felton and a good WR in Harvin. It didn't happen! It wasn't part of the trade. People forget that when the trade happened everybody was stunned. Couldn't believe Kelly made the trade. The only arguments brought forward were that the Eagles wanted to free up cap space(McCoy was going to be a $12M cap hit for them) and that maybe McCoy didn't "buy into" Kelly's system. They then went after and got Gore, who promptly pulled out of the deal.....so they signed Mathews(3 yrs, $11M... $5M guaranteed)....and only then(somewhat changing their minds on high cap hits for RB) signed Murray(5 yrs, $40M... $21M guaranteed). Their final cap expenditure went from $12M under keeping Shady to $11.2M($3.4M dead hit for Shady, $5M for Murray, $2M for Mathews, $0.8M for Kiko) after trading and replacing Shady. The Eagles traded one of the best players in the league for a young upcoming player coming off of injury, and all because the Coach wanted to put his stamp on the team. Nobody thought it was a good move for the Eagles at the time. That doesn't change just because the Eagles changed their minds on the RB cap situation and were lucky to get an angry Murray looking for payback on his old team.

We just re-signed Easley to a 4 year deal. I think you underestimate how important he is perceived for ST. We have a bigger cap hit if we cut him than keep him.

Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills. - Chris Berman

Yep. Bills were up for just under $8.5M/year for 3 years. Eagles had to eat $3.4M of dead cap.

It was a 1 yr, $1.05M deal with no SB or guarantees. The Bears lose nothing by cutting him.

If we do it undoubtedly means the inability to sign at least one of our other expected future signings.

As the conversation has understandably moved to Goodwin/Hogan speculation....and considering the thread topic....I think the fact that Harvin will most likely only see one season with the Bills could perhaps influence how we look at how both Goodwin and Hogan might fit with the team in future seasons, not just this season playing behind Harvin.