Thurman#1

With observational skills like those, you won't be missed. This team has been one of the absolute best in the league for years and they're still top 7 or 8 and competitive for a possible title in a year when they had to get rid of some core players for cap reasons. If that's not enough for ya, fine. Don't feel you have to hurry back. Yeah, this.

Looking forward to 2025? At 3-1? Seriously? That's some weird *****, IMO. I'll look forward to 2025, but not any time soon. If / when we get knocked out of the playoffs, that'll be the time for that.

It's both. Guys like Losman, Fitz and Tyrod would have been better with this group than they were with theirs. But not as good as Allen has been. Playoff contenders, but not beyond that, IMO.

This is it. You either include the Super Bowl or you don't. If you do, the Chiefs have to be first. If you only include this year, the Bills have been more impressive. Hard to get upset either way, IMO.

Top 15 - 20 CB salaries are between $10.25 and $13M /yr, according to Spotrac. That's not happening, not even close. They will need to spend quite a bit more. And they should, though not anything he asks.

Tish, you spoke French.

Yeah, agreed. Even between this year and last year placement and ball speed as well has really gotten better on the short balls, IMO. And he just seems more willing to take those shorter throws rather than hoping something will open up later. Orlovsky was on One Bills Drive last night Chris Brown and Chris said this, "I don't know what it is, but there was a play last night, he thought for a half a second about throwing a 40 yard rope to the end zone on a low percentage play and he checks it down instead to Cook and it goes for 15 yards and my eyes opened up really big and I said, 'Oh, my Gosh, that was a Mahomes-like decision right there that he just made on the check-down to Cook.' It's a small sample but I'm wondering if we're seeing a maturation of Josh with that decision-making that makes him even more consistent." Orlovsky said, "Yeah, I absolutely think you are, it sounds like you are as well when you sit there and you talk with him and you hear him kind of share how he's feeling in the offense. ... I'll go back two or three years ago, sitting with Brandon Beane talking about where Josh at least in that moment they were hoping that Josh was going to get kind of where he sits right now. And Brandon said, 'it's my job that I have to put enough people around him that he feels okay with making some of those decisions, that if you do check the ball down that there's a person there worthy of checking the ball down to and that you can go get 12 or 15 yards.' When you rattle off the names, the sum is greater than the individual parts. It reminds me of 2017 when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, there wasn't this thousand yard receiver or this superstar." This hit the nail on the head for me. The Beane quote there isn't that we have to get him a Diggs, it was that they have to get him "enough people around him that he feels okay with making some of those decisions." They didn't want to get rid of Diggs, but they did want to bring in a lot of guys that made Josh feel comfortable. I think Josh has improved and the situation he's in isn't as bad with guys to catch the ball as many had feared.

Nah. Not so. It'll be well before February. Having said that, you're right that with three games, the sample size is still too small by quite a bit. That's a reasonable point.

Yup. This is consistent refrain here. History shows guys do get those opportunities, but not as early as Bills fans think they will. Daboll, according to these boards, was a sure thing to be gone after 2020. And look how well things have turned out - so far - for him in NYC.

Check Joe Marino's podcast yesterday. He had Dr. Kyle Trimble on and he had some interesting things to say, overall positive.

In fairness, that was a legal pick for Keon. But other teams do it all the time, why shouldn't the Bills?

He was a lot of fun to watch. Great player. RIP.

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.