Thurman#1

Yeah. Don't like the guy, but he was handled immensely poorly. ... is on this issue quite reasonable and correct.

Yup. Morse would be 32 and a half on opening day with a history of concussions, Dion 30 and a half and has been really healthy.

That's my guess.

It would be great. Not going to happen, for obvious reasons.

Watson's not that good now. Now being the key word. He was damn good for a couple of years, probably top seven or so. Going forward, who knows. I loved the guy but I find him hard to root for now. Don't have the money for D-Hop to be a smart pickup. And Sanders and Brown were good here, though both aged near the end. Brown very good for a couple of years, though the injury really curtailed that second season.

Yeah, this. And yup, this too. If they want a basher, I'd like to see Dillon from the Packers here, if his salary asks aren't too high.

Not in the know, but they're absolutely changing things. The staff is studying the journals from their fields of specialization, they're attending conferences, they're doing professional development, and they will doubtless mix what they learn in with the current program. Beyond that, there are probably not huge changes going on. If they are shown to be necessary, they would be made, but I don't think anyone feels that the program has any problems. What is generally found about injuries is simply that they go up and down year to year, even in the best strength, conditioning and injury prevention problems. It's the way of things. And injuries happen more as teams get older. Last year there were a ton of injuries, the year before not so many but the ones we had were to important players. The year before that we were spectacularly healthy, and the year before that not quite as spectacularly so, but quite healthy. With the same staff. This is well within normal variability. They haven't changed any staff, at least that I've seen. There isn't a need. You're right that they made a mistake with the timing of the flight on the overseas trip. Hopefully they will learn from that. The injuries really did rip the heart out of this season. It was a huge factor, particularly in late season performance. Hopefully our youth movement should help. Older people do tend to have more injuries and take longer to heal. Have a great offseason.

It's anything but magic. It's just borrowing from future years. Doesn't require a hat like Dumbledores. Figuring it out ain't tough, you're right. Paying the price down the road, that's the hard part. Seeing guys like Mitch Morse get cut because you're feeling the pressure, that's the hard part. Yup. This. Beane's damn good at this. He didn't like how this year started and is making sure things won't get that bad again and that we can still be competitive every year, their oft-stated goal.

So, nobody then? We gonna put a hot dog vendor at DT? IMO the OP has a pretty decent guess. Seems likely we can't pay Epenesa or Floyd. We'll be working hard to bring Jones back and IMO we've got a decent chance there, for more than $3M a year. One or two of the others also seems fairly likely.

There are indeed plenty of things Beane can do to create cap space by restructures / extensions, etc, and you're also right that he can back load FA contracts and add voice years. If he wanted to just create cap space for right now, he'd doubtless do those things. What he's said he wants to do, though, is, "'How much can we create without totally piling up a huge mess in ’25 or ’26, whatever year it is?'” He's never wanted to be one of those guys that consistently push more and more things down the road. He didn't like being in the situation he found himself in this year. He absolutely is going to accept next year as a bit of a reset year, and we saw yet more proof of that today with all the cuts. Nothing is absolutely impossible. If he has a shot at an incredible bargain that will cost a lot, he could take it. But the smart money says he won't, that he's going to add low-priced and maybe one or two medium-priced FAs this year, most likely spend a bit less on FAs than he did last year. He will have to do at the least one re-structure, Josh's, but don't expect too much after that.

That's the difference between likely to be earned and not likely to be earned. It's not what they are "typically based on." There are PLENTY of not likely to be earned bonuses set a lot higher than what the player did last year. So a likely to be earned incentive on tackles for Von would have to be at 3 tackles or less. But a not likely to be earned incentive could be set at four. Or at 50. There's a famous story about Brady keeping Gronk in the last game of the year to earn his incentives. Those incentives were set at 55 receptions and 750 yards. But the year before he'd put up 45 catches and 623 yards. You can set not-likelies as high as you want. Yup. Good point. Doesn't make his replacements better, unfortunately. They seem to have more confidence in Conor McDermott at center than I do, though we may see differently in FA or the draft.

Yes, you do need a crystal ball. I mean, the way you worded it, it's obvious. If it's an overpay, don't do it. If it's an underpay, do do it. If it's just on target, do it. But that's not the way the world works. Plenty of 30+ DEs have been signed for a ton of money and been worth every penny. And plenty of others have not. Knowing which will be which would indeed require a crystal ball, or more specifically, it's impossible. Not everyone is as successful as an older front seven / pass rushing guy as Willie McGinest or Kevin Greene or Calais Campbell or Terrell Suggs or Reggie White or James Harrison or Jason Taylor or Chris Doleman or Michael Strahan or Julius Peppers or Bruce Smith or Jim Jeffcoat or Neil Smith or Trace Armstrong or Sean Jones or Too Tall Jones or Clyde Simmons or Robert Mathis or Rickey Jackson or Leslie O'Neal or John Abraham or John Randle or Justin Smith or Brandon Graham or Clay Matthews or Ron McDole or ... I could go on but the more obvious ones are gone. Hell, Jerry Hughes had a really good season at 34. London Fletcher. Point is, some guys don't. Others .... you know ... do. So yeah, you do need a crystal ball. Could've worked out, especially with the plans to platoon him. So far it hasn't, but it could have. I'm feeling bad emotionally, and I'm worried about the center of the o-line. They were, at long last, genuinely good all along the line this year. Now we don't know how next year will look.

Hunh. I can believe that, it would make sense. They can't really believably threaten to cut him this offseason, not with a dead cap hit of $20M. But if he cuts his salary to make it more palatable for the Bills to keep him long-term, they could in turn guarantee some of his salary over the next couple of years.

Yeah, just what I was thinking, a pay cut. Part of it might be not yet reported. But I think Von might see a pay cut as fair with how the injuries made him unable to play for most of the past two years. He's already very rich. A cut like that is Von giving either being nice or recognizing that his value isn't the same. Or a combination of both, probably. Nice for the Bills, though.

Heh. Well, that's not ALL. But yeah, you better be able to use an axe. I was that boring, hunh? OK, fair enough.

To spend $13M on Jeudy this year unless you re-sign him to a contract that would be more expensive in terms of AAV? Jeudy's decent, but not much of an upgrade over Gabe Davis. I don't see this at all. To me these moves today don't make you think about Denver unless you were already fixed on the idea of trying to go there.

One of the definitions of "plan" is "a systematic arrangement of elements or important points; a configuration or outline." According to American Heritage, anyway. Also "a proposed or intended course of action," and "an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective." All of these are precisely what Beane does. There's nothing in there implying that because there's an objective, and because parts of things won't go as planned, that you can't call it a plan. Of course a plan involving human beings isn't going to be as clear and precise at the type of plan you're talking about with a plan for a building. Buildings involve materials, cut to exact specifications. Involve humans and you can't be as exact. But it's still a plan. Even if it's much much more complicated than what Beane deals with. Talk to the CEO of the biggest company in the world and he will tell you he has a plan. And he will. You absolutely can have a plan for a chess game. No, of course no plan will work out move-by-move, but that doesn't mean you don't have a plan. It just means that you will work towards a certain kind of ending of the game but will have secondary and tertiary directions ready to work towards if your opponent makes your first goal impossible. Ask Magnus Carlsen if he has a plan. He does. It will be a fluid plan, but picking an opening is deciding which plan you are going to work towards. A chess game might be more difficult to plan specifically for. Beane doesn't have an opponent whose primary goal is to stop Beane from reaching his goal. The other GMs certainly don't mind screwing up rivals plans, but give any GM a choice between screwing his primary opponent and making his own team better and they'll choose making their own team better every time. In chess, there's no dilemma there. Screwing your opponent and making your own situation better are one and the same. You've got a more direct antagonist. Playing out scenarios in your head is very much one of the things people do when forming a plan. Pretty much any plan. I very much agree that the process involves making choices with insufficient information. But same with planning in any complex human situation. The more complex things are, the more secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ... hell it goes all the way out to vigenary (had to look that one up - and beyond, though probably not in Beane's case) choices you're looking at. Just because you have to accept more uncertainty doesn't mean it's not a plan. Anyway, regardless of this, we certainly agree that he's got a tough, tough, complex job, and that today he must have gone home feeling like crap despite the fact that he believes he did the right thing.

I wonder when that day will be. The day it all starts to hit home. Hmmm. What a tough one!! Yeah, probably after Allen retires.

"... with big salaries"? Exactly right. We'll see cheap to mid-priced guys. But yup, the expensive guys are pipe dreams this year.

Man, you picked the right time to post this. Beane had some tough, painful decisions to make today.

Because the salary cap is not real, that's the ... oh, wait. Turns out it is very very real indeed. That's why. Simple. Painful. The timing for this isn't a mistake. They could have waited weeks, months. They are doing this as they try to get under the cap. They are doing it before the bonuses are due, and before they are able to see who will be available to replace these guys. Not knowing is a disadvantage, but a disadvantage that is partially offset by the ability to not pay bonuses, even small ones, and to be able to keep or bring in other, cheaper guys. Makes 'em worse right now. But they have to get younger. It can work in the long run. Having Josh on the team makes it more likely that it will. But they have to be replaced on the team with cheap FAs, draft picks and UFAs. The selections have to be right in a large percentage of the time. And if the team looks worse, especially early in the year, that's just what happens. You can't get around it.

Does he really? Wow. The hosts must love it, as occasional nuts and fruitcakes make great radio.

Right. Because Dan Marino, for instance. The guy who drafted him lasted the length of Marino's career, didn' ... oh, sorry. Kinda proved myself wrong there. Take Archie Manning. Oh, no, wait. Jim Kelly. Oh, no. Philip Rivers? Fran Tarkenton? Warren Moon? Dan Fouts? Matt Ryan? No. Because that idea is simply wrong. Finding the right QB is a huge step in the right direction. Thinking the rest is a foregone conclusion is flat-out nuts. (If I'm taking you way way too seriously here, apologies. Some here really seem to believe this, though. Which may well be your point if you were poking fun.)

Yeah, extremely difficult, and there is an absolute ton of uncertainty built into the system. I'd argue you've overstated this in a couple of specifics. It's not impossible at all to come up with a plan. I'm absolutely sure that every single GM does it. It's anything but impossible. But yeah, no plan will be precisely on target. All NFL plans have to have back-up plans, back-ups to the back-ups and back-ups to those tertiaries as well. Every plan will have to be incrementally adjusted again and again and again. The other minor gripe I have there is that I think that after asking McDermott, Brady and Babich were asked about guys they needed or did not need, they might indeed say, " "It depends on who you bring in to help fill the spots that will become vacant." But they would then continue with, "But having said that," and reams and reams of ideas, requests and suggestions. (Which while helpful might also make the puzzle even more complex.) Oh, and yeah, that Von Miller move was a huge risk, looking to be either a brilliant move that could bring championships, yet make our cap situation a lot worse. If he'd stayed healthy, IMO we'd have at least one Lombardi by now. But he didn't, and the cap consequences bit deep just the same as if he'd been healthy. No way to predict the injury, though I'm 100% sure they knew it was a realistic risk, but worth taking. Sigh. And I think you might be underselling the difficulty and uncertainty involved in the draft process. Even if your scouting is perfect, there's no way to rule out the guys you want and need from being picked ahead of you, particularly if someone trades ahead of you. Overall I think you're dead right. Immensely complex job, requiring tons of work, brains, extreme flexibility and adaptability and an understanding that even the best in your job make and have to accept responsibility for mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, and that few other jobs have so many people hanging on your smallest decisions ready to criticize within minutes, fairly and unfairly. Great stuff.

Trade? Geez, no. Extend? Definitely could be if it makes financial sense. Really. Going on social media - essentially to say "nyah nyah" - after the game has zero correlation to playing better because you're more motivated. I didn't like it either. But it is not important to the Chiefs performance.