Cash

I don’t know why James Cameron spends all that money on CGI for the Avatar movies when he could just paint Trevor Lawrence blue.

Yeah, especially given the soft rebuild/cap reset this year. From a managerial perspective, you don’t give a guy less resources (cap space) and then declare it a make or break year.

Player: Rob Johnson. Eternally wincing in pain. Just a bummer to watch, and very frustrating, too. Coach: I’ll go with OL coach Carl Mauck. Was straight out of central casting for “old school fat OL coach who yells a lot”, so many fans and broadcasters highlighted him for a while. But those Olines sucked, and his only response was to scowl and scream at them. I was over it after a few games.

Thanks for posting this! I’d probably add Ray Davis to the mix as well - it’s pretty fair to expect a 4th round RB to be a plus player as a rookie.

Right. I’m not sure why everyone forgets that. I guess because Crowder got hurt so early? Poor planning on Beane’s part not to know about the broken leg in advance. I’m pretty sure the plan for the slot that year was a platoon of McCrowder. McKenzie still doing the gadget stuff that he’d been so effective at in the past, plus playing more traditional slot snaps. Crowder would’ve been in on most 3rd downs, and would’ve played a role much more akin to the Dr. Cole Beasley role. McKenzie was never going to be that elite zone beater who can consistently move the chains, and I don’t think the Bills were planning on that.

Nailed it!

I'll guess: 1 time. What's the answer?

FTFY - see below I've always thought the mainstream idea of "BPA" was ridiculous. The idea appears to be that 1.) all players are ranked in a straight line by draft grade, 2.) all players have different draft grades, and 3.) teams either do or ought to draft the top guy on the list no matter what. Feeding into that, I've seen scouting sites that try to give guys numerical grades with 2 decimals, like a 6.43 vs a 6.42. I'm sorry, but just because you went to the hundreths place doesn't mean you have any idea which of those guys is the better prospect. It makes a lot more sense to me to group players by tier, with more macro grading. The Bills definitely have a "first round grade", and I'm sure they have an internal definition of what that means. (Maybe different definitions by position?) So guys who are in the same vicinity of talent get grouped together. Within that tier you might have some level of ranking - maybe one of the guys looks like a tremendous culture fit, so you'd rather have him, that sort of thing. But to think that the board is a straight ranking from #1 to #255, AND that there's an appreciable difference between #55 and #56? Nutso IMO. Yeah, this guy Seth Walder is dumb. He's a stupid man! Here's an analogy of what happened: Let's say the Bills were holding a James Cook rookie card that's worth $10. The Chiefs call up and offer $10.50 for the card, and the Bills accept. Seth then jumps in and decries, "THE BILLS ONLY GOT AN EXTRA FIFTY CENTS!!! GREAT BARGAIN FOR THE CHIEFS!" Basically he's saying the Chiefs overpayed by an extra 6th round pick over what a fair price would've been, and that's somehow very cheap. Whereas most normal human beings would think paying LESS than a fair price would be cheap. The only way that what Seth Walder is saying would make sense is if 99% of trade-ups were significant overpays on the trade chart. But modern charts like the Rich Hill chart use actual (recent) trades to calibrate pick values, so it would only work on the old Jimmy Johnson chart or something like that. And teams haven't used that chart for years, so it's irrelevant. In truth, I think Walder is stupid enough to somehow equate the price over asking (an extra 6th-round pick equivalent) with the total price. It's also possible that he's a disingenous weasel who knows how misleading the above tweets are, but tweeted them anyway. But I find it's good to take people at face value until they prove otherwise, and I also tend to stick by Hanlon's Razor - "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".

Yeah, obviously TV is better than radio for experiencing a football game, but football (and baseball) has enough down time that a good announcer can paint a picture for you. When I was a kid, my family's friend group would rotate who hosted for the Bills game every week, and we usually ran late. I listened to Van Miller calling a lot of first quarters, and it was great! Murphy (understandably) never got to Van Miller's level, but he did a real solid job. Very good radio voice and cadence, which is probably the #1 thing. Best wishes to Murphy and his family. I've yet to hear any of Chris Brown's play-by-play, but I can't imagine it's any good. As others have pointed out on this thread, he doesn't have the voice for it. My vote goes to an outside hire for this one.

The best reporters I follow all say pretty confidently that Hyde hasn’t decided what to do yet, and that if he decides to play there’s probably a roster spot waiting for him. (They also think Hyde probably makes an announcement at his charity softball game.) If he decides his health isn’t worth the risk of an NFL season, but isn’t quite ready to step away from the game, the PS could be a win-win.

I’ve been thinking about this as well. No idea if Hyde would be up for it, but if I was McBeane, I’d for sure give Hyde the option of a PS spot. Very low injury risk, while still having him there to mentor Bishop and the other guys. I like this option better than hiring him as an assistant coach, because there’s inherently a divide between coaches and players.

Bummer! Was really hoping we’d get him. Especially at that price.

Ah, gotcha. “Take my word for it.” I’ll pass.

Interesting, because I’ve read the opposite: that high-usage guys in college tend to be high-usage guys in the NFL. (Until they eventually break down.) Also, regarding Cook: Totally get the hands complaint, but where are the other two coming from? Especially instincts - any plays stand out where he had bad instincts?

He wasn’t, until he was. But just like Diggs, it’s not crazy to think he’ll be on his best behavior on a one year deal with a new team.

FWIW, I watch a lot of Saints games, and he looked pretty good when the ball went his way last year. That didn’t happen much, obviously. Injuries are a real problem for Thomas. But if we think the Diggs/Bills relationship was bad, it’s got nothing on Saints/Thomas. Imagine he didn’t trade Diggs, and he sat out the next 2 years with a variety of injuries, then came back to play one last year. That’s about where Thomas was last year. I’d be willing to give him a no-risk shot.

Shakir is a super nice guy. He probably *does* compliment Coleman beautifully.

Me too! She showed me an instagram post declaring that her cat would eventually become Madonna. It blew my mind!

That's more or less what I meant by "chunk", yeah. The idea being that we have some money left over after accounting for rookies, all 53 on the roster, and practice squad. The Bills could elect to save all of that money for in-season signings or trades, or they could spend some or most of it. (Can't spend all of it, because you do have to leave some in case an AJ Klein situation happens.) I'd be suprised if they don't spend at least a significant portion of what they have available to spend. And notably, they could lay out more actual money than they have cap space, if they're willing to do a deal with void years. That's the only way they'd be able to sign OBJ, because I can't see him taking $5mil or less.

I'm not thrilled about it either, but in my experience every analytical metric touted as a be all, end all for anything usually winds up not holding up to scrutiny. Either because of an arbitrary cutoff (The Curse of 370), lack of sufficient sample size, or poor and/or biased interpretation by the analyst. So I see no reason to sweat it.

In order of my preference: Odell Beckham Jr - His last 2 stops have been highly successful (except for the injuries) as a mercenary receiver. Dude will be an injury risk for the rest of his career I think, but he can still play. And it's hard to go wrong with a guy who likely would've won a Super Bowl MVP if he didn't get hurt. I would have no problem with him mentoring Coleman, also. This is the only guy worth spending the Tre White money on, IMO. DJ Chark - I liked him a lot coming into the draft, and he did have some early production in Jacksonville. Size/speed guy who hasn't fully put it together, but also hasn't played with a QB nearly as good as Allen. Michael Thomas - His injury history makes Beckham look like Cal Ripken Jr. I don't think he'll ever play a full season again. But he's a guy who has been ELITE, and he showed some real flashes of his old self at times last season. He also disappeared a lot last season, but I'm not sure how much of that was because his relationship with the Saints was completely broken a couple years ago. On a 1 year deal, could he be both healthy and fully bought in? Gallup was the only other guy that interested me, and according to this thread he's off the market. 1 year, $3 million is about what I'd offer Chark or Thomas. Beckham will ask for (and get) significantly more than that. No matter what, I'll be super interested to see how the Bills spend the June 1st money. I'll be shocked if they don't sign someone with a decent chunk of it. But they could split it on maybe 2 Gallup-level signings, or put it all towards a bigger Beckham or Leonard Floyd-style signing, maybe with the help of void years. I think who they DON'T sign will be just as telling as who they do.

Yeah the big guys who also run fast and also can run routes usually don't go later than 5. Fitz and Megatron are the two that come to mind. Randy Moss would've been a top 5 pick if not for attitude concerns, and even with them should've gone top 10 for sure. But there's a very solid history of big guys who don't run fast, but can run routes going in the 2nd or later and turning out pretty good! Jerry Rice is obviously the Platinum Standard, and Anquan Boldin also jumps out on that front.

Pegula is "buying the dip." We spent a ton of cash to go mostly all-in the last couple years. Didn't work, and now we're taking the cap medicine for 1 year. Pretty sure the expectation in 2025 will be very high.

a) Not really? Just in the sense that you also need to pay him, and I don't think he's a good enough fit for the Bills to justify paying him what he's worth. b) Not much, because again, you also have to pay him. I like trading Day 3 picks for vets, and I like spending high picks on impact players, and I don't mind paying big free agency bucks to impact players. But I don't like trading valuable picks for the right to back up the Brinks truck. Sometimes it's worth it, like with the Diggs trade, but most of the time it's not.

Good call bringing up MLB. I was among the many who were shocked all offseason that they weren't adding more... then it turned out Bernard was really good, and I think the Bills knew it was a matter of when, not if for Bernard. Any chance we've got one of those in the WR room already? Mack Hollins - No way. He might be a nice addition in terms of attitude, etc, and maybe he can show the young guys the right way to work, but if he was gonna be a thing, it would've happened before he got here. Andy Isabella - Let's be real, people. Isabella is very fast, and he's the same size/skin color as a lot of our fans, and it's always fun to root for someone who looks like you. But he can't change direction at an NFL level - he can't run routes, can't return kicks, can't make anyone miss. He's had plenty of chances and there is no breakout coming. Justin Shorter - I'll believe it when I see it, and not a second sooner. When the #1 selling point of an NFL player is his recruiting rank out of high school, I tune out. (This is also why I was never sold on Trevor Lawrence as a "generational" QB prospect - I never once saw an argument for him as generational that didn't prominently feature his recruiting rank from 3 years prior. Who cares???) The track record for "top HS recruit who doesn't do much in college" is pretty weak IMO. Robert Foster had a few nice games when we were beyond desperate, but ultimately was not an NFL receiver. Tyrell Shavers - On their last podcast, Matt Parrino and Ryan Talbot noted that Beane mentioned Shavers before Shorter when talking about how they like the guys in the room. And IIRC, Beane also made a point of saying Shavers has been in the building almost every day in the offseason. This is a longshot, but it's not completely crazy. Like with Shorter, I'll believe it when I see it, but there is some precedent for super hard-working undrafted WR to develop into a legit player. And depending on what Shavers is doing in the building every day, it's possible the coaching staff knows that they've got something there. KJ Hamler - Beane talked him up a bit in his last presser as well. I think it's about 95% chance that he's just a bust a la Andy Isabella. But given Hamler's injuries, there's a chance he could still turn it around. Again, I'll believe it when I see it. Quintez Cephus - including him even though he wasn't "in the room" yet during Beane's press conference, but he's the guy Beane said they were about to sign. Even before the gambling suspension, he wasn't anything special. I wouldn't be shocked if he makes the team as backup X receiver or something, but I would be extremely shocked if he broke out. Of these guys, I'd say Shavers and Hamler are the only ones with a realistic chance of a Bernard-like season in 2024, with maybe an outside outside shot for Shorter. Of course, we don't have the info we need to make a real guess, but hopefully the coaching staff has a better idea based on seeing guys work in the offseason.