Draft Capital, Cap Space, Restructure Capital - Bills have challenges.

[Chaos]

 

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-ranking-all-32-nfl-teams-by-offseason-assets

[gonzo1105]

What? The worst teams have the most money say it ain’t so. I know it’s a broad stroke of the brush but the Bills can make the necessary moves to be competitive in Free Agency and a trade down or 2 during the draft gives us the capital we need 

[Chaos]

4 minutes ago, gonzo1105 said:

What? The worst teams have the most money say it ain’t so. I know it’s a broad stroke of the brush but the Bills can make the necessary moves to be competitive in Free Agency and a trade down or 2 during the draft gives us the capital we need 

Different ways to look at it.  One perfectly reasonable way is to say, the Bllls are positioned to improve more than 7 teams.  24 Teams are positioned to improve more than the Bills. 

But the big issue (not new news) is the Chiefs and Bengals are better positioned to improve than the Bills.  And their GM's have been almost as wizardy as Beane the last couple of seasons. 

[Rigotz]

How do the Dolphins have such similar draft capital to us when they have no first round pick and five total picks?

[MJS]

16 minutes ago, Rigotz said:

How do the Dolphins have such similar draft capital to us when they have no first round pick and five total picks?

It shows them as having significantly worse draft capital (the green line). 

[JaCrispy]

5 minutes ago, MJS said:

It shows them as having significantly worse draft capital (the green line). 

Damn public school education! 😉

[Wizard]

The Bills will be just fine. They just need to prioritize their approach a little more with Allen's contract.

 

There are a lot of restructuring opportunities if the Bills want to be a little bit more aggressive in Free Agency.

 

Personally, I would like to see the Bills go all-in over the next two years. They may have multiple windows with Allen, but the last few years the window has never been this open in the last 25-30 years.

 

Let Edmunds and Poyer go. Only resign Sam Martin and Dane Jackson to modest short-term deals.Restructure players. Players that only play special teams besides Bass, Ferguson, and Martin can be replaced.

 

Personally, I want a solid guard or RT in free agency. Trade for Mike Evans.  Use the draft picks and any money on restructured deals to fill in the backup QB, linebacker, and safety spots. First three rounds on OL/WR/Safety.

 

No long-term contracts the next two seasons for anyone.

 

 

[somnus00]

I'm surprised at how many of the bottom teams (financially) don't even have a real franchise QB. Terrible cap management/team building.

 

I think the dolphins blew their wad, last off-season, and expected a big year. They're in a tough spot moving forward.

[MPL]

Can March 16th just hurry up and get here? I need resolution! Also, my son is due to be born on March 16th... so, there's that, too. 

[0017]

12 minutes ago, somnus00 said:

I'm surprised at how many of the bottom teams (financially) don't even have a real franchise QB. Terrible cap management/team building.

 

I think the dolphins blew their wad, last off-season, and expected a big year. They're in a tough spot moving forward.

[78thealltimegreat]

They’ll be ok. They won’t go swinging for a Von Miller but I expect them to add a few solid guys and head into the draft with most of their needs taken care of. 
I’m sure Beane has deals with a few guys already for restructures and he knows how much money he can play with. 

[John from Riverside]

I sat through a podcast a couple of weeks ago, where they easily cleared up 51 million in Space to spend and that was without restructuring every contract
 

I don’t expect Brandon Beane to make all of those moves but he’s gonna make some of them and we’re not going to be players on the first day of free agency probably but he’ll find the players he always does

[jahnyc]

It will be interesting to see the moves made prior to and on March 15th to get under the salary cap.  I would expect we will be hearing soon about salary restructures, salary reductions, cuts, restricted free agent tenders and possibly extensions.  

 

I think three of the potential restructures raise potential issues.  Will DIggs be willing to restructure (assuming it makes it harder to trade him)?  Do you restructure Miller and White (both coming off of ACL injuries)?  The only easy restructure is Allen.

 

Hard to guess which current players, if any, will be asked to take pay cuts.  I expect the Bills to cut McKenzie, but I am not sure of any others.  Guessing maybe Hines, Settle and Neal, unless those contracts are restructured.

 

I hope we tender Jackson.  A second round tender would be $4.3 million.

[JohnBonhamRocks]

I wonder how many of those assets from the top listed teams goes to acquiring QBs. 

[John from Riverside]

18 minutes ago, jahnyc said:

It will be interesting to see the moves made prior to and on March 15th to get under the salary cap.  I would expect we will be hearing soon about salary restructures, salary reductions, cuts, restricted free agent tenders and possibly extensions.  

 

I think three of the potential restructures raise potential issues.  Will DIggs be willing to restructure (assuming it makes it harder to trade him)?  Do you restructure Miller and White (both coming off of ACL injuries)?  The only easy restructure is Allen.

 

Hard to guess which current players, if any, will be asked to take pay cuts.  I expect the Bills to cut McKenzie, but I am not sure of any others.  Guessing maybe Hines, Settle and Neal, unless those contracts are restructured.

 

I hope we tender Jackson.  A second round tender would be $4.3 million.

We only need to make one move to get underneath the salary cap and that’s restructuring Josh Allen
 

Having a free agency and draft will cost more

1 hour ago, 0017 said:

And no first round pick

[Chaos]

23 minutes ago, JohnBonhamRocks said:

I wonder how many of those assets from the top listed teams goes to acquiring QBs. 

Among the top 10, the Lions are the only ones that have a QB solution in place.  

[BuffaloRebound]

McBeane really has their work cut out for them.  Other than Josh, Diggs, and Milano, there’s a lot of underperforming assets on the books. Gotta get more production out of the Oliver, Groot, Basham, and Epenesa quartet.  Brown’s gotta make a leap at Right Tackle.  Tre’s gotta regain his Pro Bowl form.  Will be great to get Hyde back.  Knox and Gabe need to be more consistent.  I think Cook is ready for a more featured role.  

Need starters at LB, Safety, and Guard.  Need some more juice on the D-Line until Miller is back.  And need some more juice in the passing game.  There’s a lot of safeties and LB’s in the free agency market.  Should be able to find adequate replacements for Poyer and Edmunds at reduced prices.  I’d love to add Smith Njigba in the 1st.  Think he’d be an immediate 80+ catch guy in this offense.  Then find an IOL in the 2nd round who’s starter-ready.  Go blocking Tight End in 3rd round.  Then finish it off with Damien Harris (cut Hynes if we need to make that happen), and a veteran pass rusher like Frank Clark, Brandon Graham, or Clowney.  

[John from Riverside]

Today’s locked on bills podcast pretty much covered everything
 

Sounded like a good plan to me

[GunnerBill]

8 hours ago, Chaos said:

Among the top 10, the Lions are the only ones that have a QB solution in place.  

 

And while I like Goff more than most that isn't a long term solution is it? He is a good enough for now solution. A solid starter. The other one in the top 10 is Arizona. I wonder how they really feel about Murray? He just came off his worst year as a pro in year 4, there was all the not studying stuff last offseason.... they are kinda tied in the next two years... it becomes more possible to move on after that. 

[Chandler#81]

Aah, the good ole’ daze..

 

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

 

44 minutes ago, Chandler#81 said:

Aah, the good ole’ daze..

 

Several thousand style points for replacing 'days' with 'daze'. 😁

*
Not too loud, or our many armchair GMs will be bemoaning the fact that AB never did come here.

[Thurman#1]

12 hours ago, MPL said:

Can March 16th just hurry up and get here? I need resolution! Also, my son is due to be born on March 16th... so, there's that, too. 

 

 

Congrats!!! That's great news. Best wishes for health and happiness for all.

12 hours ago, John from Riverside said:

I sat through a podcast a couple of weeks ago, where they easily cleared up 51 million in Space to spend and that was without restructuring every contract
 

I don’t expect Brandon Beane to make all of those moves but he’s gonna make some of them and we’re not going to be players on the first day of free agency probably but he’ll find the players he always does

 

 

They did clear up that space. Listening since then, they don't actually think the Bills will clear up that much.

 

Agreed, he'll make some of them, and he'll be right in there trying to find bargains among mid- to low-priced FAs. He's been good at it, not perfect, of course, but definitely good.

[MPL]

1 hour ago, Thurman#1 said:

Can March 16th just hurry up and get here? I need resolution! Also, my son is due to be born on March 16th... so, there's that, too. 

 

1 hour ago, Thurman#1 said:

Congrats!!! That's great news. Best wishes for health and happiness for all.

Thanks! Just to be clear... we're talking about the health and happiness of the Bills, right? 

[Alphadawg7]

17 hours ago, Chaos said:

Different ways to look at it.  One perfectly reasonable way is to say, the Bllls are positioned to improve more than 7 teams.  24 Teams are positioned to improve more than the Bills. 

But the big issue (not new news) is the Chiefs and Bengals are better positioned to improve than the Bills.  And their GM's have been almost as wizardy as Beane the last couple of seasons. 

 

Chiefs are not so much the worry, they have some tough cap decisions looming themselves and we have fared well mostly the last 2 years against them.  But Bengals are more of a concern IMHO.  One, we have played KC much more competitively the past 3 games against them, winning 2 and narrowly losing 1.  When we first faced the Bengals, they were causing problems for our defense the whole game until the unfortunate incident with Hamlin.  Then they came into Buffalo and controlled the whole game on both sides of the ball.  

 

Cincy has the cap space to improve their weakest spot, OL, and also add another pass rusher.  Bills are no slouch, and honestly with Frazier gone, I have more optimism our defense could show up better when we play Cincy this year.  But, it really is going to be an important offseason for Beane because we are going to need to make the right FA decisions (given we don't have a lot of money to spend, and likely creating 2 more holes at safety and LB) and then get some good contributions out of our draft class to adequately shore up our major holes.  

 

If Jets get Rodgers, our division is going to get much harder too, and then there is that rumor Brady could come back and to Miami.  If one or both of those things happen, the road to the top seed for us will increase in difficulty (and even our own division title) and it will likely make beating both KC and Cincy this year in the regular season critical for any shot at high or top seed.  

 

Sky isn't falling, we still have a legit team.  But there are teams ahead of us and right behind us in a year we are tight on the cap, set to lose multiple starters, and have 2 key players on D coming off ACL issues.  So Beane has his work cut out for him this year, and its going to be probably his most important one yet since he drafted the right Allen.  

 

 

[jwhit34]

Wait until all the contract restructure stuff happens. Lots of things will change:

• If they pull the contract levers for Allen and Miller, either cut or restructure Hines and then restructure 1 or 2 big contracts (Dawkins and/or Milano) they will be around $30 million under the cap. Do a couple other things (release McKenzie, extend Daquan Jones) and maybe it's more like $35 million.
• Like the Miller contract from a year ago, they can sign a couple guys to pretty big money and still only count around $7-8 million on the cap.
• The bottom 10 players on the cap now average about $850k so a signing at a cap hit of $7 million is really adding a little more than $6 million to the cap.

I think they will re-sign Edmunds but his '23 cap will be around $7-8 million. They could opt for a couple more with cap hits in the $7-9 million range and then fill with $1-3 million/year players.

 

Bottom line: the cap situation isn't that bad, it is just something that every GM has to deal with each year. 

[ColoradoBills]

13 minutes ago, jwhit34 said:

Wait until all the contract restructure stuff happens. Lots of things will change:

• If they pull the contract levers for Allen and Miller, either cut or restructure Hines and then restructure 1 or 2 big contracts (Dawkins and/or Milano) they will be around $30 million under the cap. Do a couple other things (release McKenzie, extend Daquan Jones) and maybe it's more like $35 million.
• Like the Miller contract from a year ago, they can sign a couple guys to pretty big money and still only count around $7-8 million on the cap.
• The bottom 10 players on the cap now average about $850k so a signing at a cap hit of $7 million is really adding a little more than $6 million to the cap.

I think they will re-sign Edmunds but his '23 cap will be around $7-8 million. They could opt for a couple more with cap hits in the $7-9 million range and then fill with $1-3 million/year players.

 

Bottom line: the cap situation isn't that bad, it is just something that every GM has to deal with each year. 

 

All of what you said can be done.  I just don't think it will happen.  An Edmunds signing would shock me.

 

The biggest question I have is about fully restructuring Von.  Beane already took the small hit on his 1st year (like you mentioned).

Pushing a bunch of guaranteed cap into the future on Miller will add another "realistic" year to his contract.  It's a gamble with his age and ACL.

Beane might go for a few million in restructure, but I would be shocked if he took all of it out.

 

I'm often wrong, but I just don't see a big FA signing year.