Thurman#1

They're going to have to pay Rousseau better than that. And they should. If you want to sign the 10th best DE to a second contract, you have to pay him maybe 3rd - 6th best money. Then a few years down the road it seems like a bargain. That's the way it works. And he's our best pass rusher, and we need to bring him back if it's at all possible, which it should be. IMO if they wait and offer him 12 - 20, we're almost certain to lose him. 12 - 20 is $11 - $14.4M AAV, roughly. That's not going to get it done. They've picked up Rousseau's 5th year option but if they sign him early that's pretty much the only way to get a hometown discount.

Yeah, this is the way it looks to me. At the end of last year it was much less rosy, but he looked quite good in TC this year.

Yup. Not to mention Beasley. Amazing stat, 28 targets in a row. Geez!

Well, first, no. Mahomes' YPA goes down in the playoffs. It's 7.64 in the playoffs and 7.9 in the regular season. More specifically and recently ... 2021 season YPA 7.4 2021 playoffs YPA 8.7 2022 season YPA 8.1 2022 playoffs YPA 7.0 2023 season YPA 7.0 2023 playoffs YPA 7.0 See a trend as the two deep shells came in and things started to change?

But not Super Bowl titles. And when offensive production drops but Super Bowl titles don't, you're doing something right, not wrong.

YAC too, probably an even bigger effect.

"It could also explain why safeties were so devalued in free agency last winter. Safeties lost more than $100 million in shed salary during the offseason, according to Over The Cap. Great ball skills from the safety position aren’t as valuable as they once were. " Great point.

Success percentage is absolutely not enough to reasonably rank kickers. How many were in windy conditions versus other kickers kicking in domes? How many were longer or shorter than most? How many had problems on the snap? Way too many variations to pretend that percentage alone can be used to make a sharp ranking. IMO, he's not bottom five, and clearly the Bills don't think so. Fair to say that in the last half of the year and this year he's not top half anymore, though. The question is whether or not he'll recover. No way to know, but the Bills have a better sense of that than we do. I'm with you that replacement will be an important choice if they do get rid of him. My best guess is that they won't, but we'll see.

Yeah, I think this is what the Bills got by signing him so early

Two years is the reasonable minimum potential out, yes, but with those numbers it could very easily last all four years if he's playing well. By '27 and '28 those numbers are likely to seem pretty good for the Bills, again assuming that Brown is playing well. So far he's playing well.

Pretty close to what most had thought. Great move, IMO.

That's really interesting. Thanks for posting it. It isn't clearly stated that there is a rate at which insurance is deducted from the cap. Does anybody know if there is one? Is it 100%? For example, if you insure your QB for $10M, and he gets injured, do you get $10M in cap relief? 50% of $10M? The articles says, "a club doesn't have to take it as a total loss, but can recover space for the following year." That would seem to mean that the loss is partial, but does that only mean that if you miss half the season you only get credit for half the cap space? Wish it was more clear. It's a bit of a competitive advantage for richer teams. If the particular insurance costs $1 - $4M as it says the Jets would have had to spend, and those payments don't cost against the cap, then teams get an advantage on the cap by spending extra money outside the cap.

Nice!! Yeah, mine were pretty heralded but I read through the whole thread and felt that unheralded had been stretched far enough that I didn't have to worry about it. Yours are very nice indeed.

Heh heh heh. Nice.

Hunh. Well, that's less encouraging.

Nah, they work out players at all positions at all times, including positions they are presently just fine at, to keep an updated list of guys available who they want to have already looked at and have an opinion on. This might mean something. Or not. No way to tell.

No, terrible analogy. 300 yards is a number picked for no particular reason. You haven't succeeded if you throw for 300 yards and failed if you throw for 299. 300 is a randomly chosen number. Of course it's not particularly important. Never was. Whereas getting open (or not) on a play is hugely important. Doing it at a high rate shows you have the ability to be successful as a reciever in the NFL. There's more to the job, blocking and such, but that's the heart of the job, to make yourself available for your QB in case he needs you. Ridiculous analogy. Now, this is a fair caveat. This stat, like pretty much every other one, means less with a smaller sample size. But we've only got two games to look at, doing so makes total sense, understanding that the number may go up and down as the season plays out. There are other possible caveats as well, such as methodology, but I haven't seen anyone here bring that up yet. It's still interesting, though.

No, that idea is just silly. Shows misunderstanding. If you're open and the QB doesn't throw to you, you have done your job and showed that you can get loose. Not your problem the QB didn't see you or the play was structured to go elsewhere. Still your duty to get loose and make yourself an option. If you do so, you've done your job and that's a hopeful and encouraging thing. A guy who's open and isn't thrown to, he's done his job well on the play. A guy who's not open and isn't thrown to has not been successful on the play. Of course we want to know how well our guy is succeeding on more plays even when success or failure isn't obvious to the naked eye in the heat of the moment. Oh, please. No need to be so touchy about it. It's not the only thing to track. But when you otherwise have no idea how often your guy is open as the camera isn't following him and the QB isn't throwing to him, it's very much worth looking at and reacting to.

Antonio Brown. I kid. Steve Largent. Fred Biletnikoff. Is Ahmad Rashad fair? He was only a Bill for one year. I like Austin Ekeler a ton also. Guys who do their business.

Wouldn't say the Bills are ahead, but we were a bit ahead the last year or two. At this point, the trend has caught up to the few who got out ahead. This is the swing of the pendulum. Many started to go on about how offenses have taken over the game, and that nobody should hire a defensive coach. But the pendulum was still swinging and Ds figured out how to attack the high-flying stuff with two-deep variations. Offenses got ahead a few years ago, defenses figured out it out. Your numbers are very interesting. Hadn't realized it had gone so far as your stats show it has. Good find. Thanks! We're all at the lowest since '92 and highest since '87!! Hunh!!!

Check this out from a recent Athletic article. IMO it also gets at a really really deep and unappreciated reason for their success: "We shouldn’t make blanket statements based off two outcomes that easily could have gone the other way for Kansas City, which won 26-25. But as the Chiefs outlasted another AFC challenger, I recalled a note from colleague Dianna Russini’s column Saturday pointing out how Mahomes and Kelce did not miss a practice all summer. "I thought of the Bengals practicing without key players during their training camp, including Ja’Marr Chase, who was pushing for a new contract. I thought about the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson skipping four of Baltimore’s first five voluntary OTAs, forfeiting $750,000 in incentives. "Are these little things indicators of anything relevant when the Chiefs’ most established stars are their most consistently reliable ones?" https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5768278/2024/09/16/vikings-sam-darnold-nfl-field-goals-pick-six/ I mean, dang that's a great point.

Yeah, this for those old Pats and these Chiefs. Having a Brady, a Mahomes, or for that matter an Allen means you're always in one-score games and even two-score games. IMO one other thing those teams did is they had plenty of average role players but rarely a genuine hole. The Chiefs don't. The Pats didn't. And except last year on the defense after all those injuries, we don't either.

There's a third category, guys who very well could have been successful players but were picked into crap situations, where they didn't fit the system or where the surroundings undermined their chances. IMO one of your category one guys, David Carr, is actually a Category 3 guy. Geno Smith may be another, although perhaps he needed a ton of time as well as a better situation. There are plenty of others. IMO it's still very early on Bryce Young. He could still be in any of the three.

That's why I didn't say anything about wins. I said "impressive starts" only mean anything at the start. Wins are good whether impressive or not.

0-2 Baltimore and 0-2 Cincinnati? Last year they were tougher. This year, who knows?