billsfan89

No they shouldn't trust Bass, they should have an at least decent kicker plan B option in camp.

Lots of interesting storylines the battles in camp are gonna be fun. 1- WR - Whose gonna emerge here? Shakir and Samuel should occupy 2 of the top 3 spots but that other WR “Top 3” spot is wide open as is the WR4 spot. Coleman, MVS, Hollins, and Claypool/Hamler will all be in the mix for those key spots. 2- Center - McGovern is holding it down but will Van Pran get a hold of it and if so will they consider kicking McGovern back out to guard and Edwards to the bench/jumbo OT role again? Or does Van Pran need a year of seasoning? Will Alec Anderson or Clapp be in the mix as well? Lots to play out in that battle. 3- Ray Davis vs. Ty Johnson at RB2 is also very interesting to me. Davis is a good mid round pick but Ty produced well in a role last year. Good to have this be a battle for Cooks backup. 4- How much are they gonna use Knox and how will they use him. Two TE sets are gonna be aplenty in the offense but just how high are the gonna go percentage wise with two TE’s? Also will they use Knox as a full back and in other creative ways for some snaps here or there? 5- Rapp/Bishop is another quality battle. Rapp has a lot of starting experience including being on a Super Bowl winner with the Rams he also has a year in the Bills system. He has flaws as a player but is still a capable starter. Bishop is a high draft pick whose tools fit what the Bills like but he’s gonna have an adjustment period most likely. How quickly do they throw Bishop in the fire? Do they ease him into a role situationally or does he showcase enough to warrant heavy starter snaps out the gate? Lots of other battles on the roster D-Line is a crowded field as well as is back up LB. Outside of a unproven WR core this team has a very good overall roster just have to hope they can piece together a good enough WR core and get the TE combo to be highly productive

I will say just over at 11-12. I think the Bills always want to avoid Josh having to run a lot as a means to preserve him long term. But given the Bills ball possession style offense I think they are aiming for I think they will be in short yardage situations where they will have a lot of QB sneaks and other running situations for Josh to be called upon.

The Bills do not functionally have 10 million or so in cap space. The Bills need to account for in season emergencies (Which they like to have about 3-4 million for) and the practice squad (which yes does count and usually requires a 4 million reserve). So the Bills have after the PS about 6 million in space which will cover in season contingencies and a possible trade deadline acquisition (which you can get more for less in season in terms of absorbing cap space.) TLDR: Bills are gonna use that space for the Practice Squad, in season emergency space, and flexibility to make a move at the trade deadline.

Gotta corner the market on Connor McGovern's... On a more serious note I wouldn't hate the Bills actually signing him on a minimum deal. McGovern was a pretty solid center in Denver and for a few years with the Jets. He had a bad season with the Jets in 2023 but he's only 31 and has a ton of experience. The Bills could do worse than "kicking" the tires on him to compete for a 9th/10th offensive line spot.

I would say over if mostly healthy. I think Groot gets about 7-10 sacks, AJE gets 6-8, and Von gets 6-8. That’s 19-26 sacks so I think they would need to all hit the bottom of the range to get to 19.

They got off Diggs contract because they didn't want to be saddled with a veteran who was making a lot of money and underperforming. Bosa has two years left on his reworked deal with a hefty cap number for 2025. He's also not been very healthy the past two seasons and while not super old for his position he is about to be 29 which isn't "young" either. The Bills are going to probably approach 2025 with making a trade for a player whose 25-27 and will be locked into their prime for the next 4+ years or continue to build cheap young players through the draft and "spread out" their cap space to plug whatever holes are needed with mid-level to upper mid-level free agents. Personally I am interested to see how this years rookie class plays out. If Bishop and SVPG plug into starting roles effectively and Coleman and Carter have nice impacts as "rotational starters" and the mid to lower round guys plug into niche roles well (Hardy as a returner, Ulo as a ST ace, Davis as a backup RB, and Solomon as a rotational back end DE) then I don't see why the Bills wouldn't continue to plug in draft choices and save most of their space to retain players down the line. But we will have to see what the holes on the roster are short and long term after this season.

Worst case scenario Ariza is an All-Pro punter and the Bills have a decent to below average punter. The top punters in the league usually have a net punting average of 44-45 yards while your average punter has 42-43. That 2-3 yards per net punt is not insignificant but also not likely to be the difference in how each teams season turns out either. I think what fans fear is Ariza having those highlight reel 60+ yard punts and the Bills just having a competent regular punter. But as others have pointed out on the flip side Ariza wasn't even the top punter selected in his draft. His net punting average in college was lower than the guy who came after him and is the current Bills punter. The scouting report on him was that despite having an insanely strong leg he doesn't do a great job of pinning teams in deep which cuts down on his effectiveness as pretty much if you are punting from your own 30ish yardline and beyond (which is where about half of all punts take place) then having a player whose very likely to kick touchback of have too low a punt is going to cut down on net yards.

I can’t hate on players who try hard but just aren’t talented or got hurt. The one thing you can control is effort so I only truly dislike “lazy” players. Some players in no particular order come to mind. 1- Marcel Dareus- Tremendous physical athlete who came in as a good starter his first two seasons then he balled out completely in 2013 and especially in 2014. Once he got paid after 2014 he declined a lot and that was by all accounts very unmotivated and lazy. 2- Mike Williams - Kind of similar to Dareus but he never got that motivation to get a big contract. A very high draft pick that was just burnt on a player who didn’t play hard. 3- JP Losman - Lots of potential but there was a lot of issues with him seemingly lacking motivation and work ethic at times.

This does beg the question of what is the value of "the best punter in the league" or even the best punter of all time. We all know there's very good value in having a quality punter. Badly handled snaps or even shanked kicks are equivalent to turnovers. These numbers come from chat GPT but seem reasonably accurate. In 2021 The net average NFL punt had a net of about 41.4 yards The highest net average for any punter for a single season was 46 yards set in 2016 by Johnny Hekker If you had a punter who averaged a net of 48 yards a punt that would be by far the greatest of all time eclipsing the highest net ever by 2 yards. Only .3% of punts are ever returned for TD's. About 8% of punts are returned for more than 20 yards. That means the greatest punter of all time would give you an average of 6.6 yards per punt over the average punter and about 3ish yards over the top punters in the league in terms of net yards. Assuming with this hypothetical punter you never get the following. A botched snap. A big return of more than 20 yards or a TD return A shanked punt (all punts gain at least a 35 yard net) What is the true value of that extra net and lack of disastrous plays? What type of cap dollars would that player command? Justin Tucker is the top paid kicker at about 6 million a season while the top paid punter is currently getting about 3.6 million. I would say this type of imaginary player would probably get 4.5-5 million a season.

Serious question, If Dallas signs Dak to an extension does that 40 million in dead cap still count?

Thanks for the breakdown, I wasn't sure why they couldn't have gotten him on the exempt list but this explanation makes sense. I also think the Bills may have not even wanted to carry him on the exempt list as players on the exempt list still count against the cap and having two punters (even both on modest to small contracts) on your cap isn't always an efficient use of cap. But I do think had they had the option they could have considered it.

There's a reason despite having one of the strongest legs coming out of college as we have ever seen that he wasn't the top punter selected. Now don't get me wrong the Bills going into the 2022 draft needed a punter and the Bills took Ariza fairly low at the top end of round 6, so I loved the selection. But he had flaws as a prospect. As much value as a powerful punting leg has especially when well inside your own 30 has, about half or more punts come in situations where you are looking to pin a player inside the 20. A punter who has trouble doing that is going to cost you a lot of yards in touchbacks. I still would have loved to have seen Ariza on the team in 2022 and beyond but they cut him so he could focus on his legal issues. Glad things worked out for him on KC.

I would be shocked if KC doesn't bring in another punter into camp, they probably just really didn't like what they saw from Rehkow in OTA's so they are going to bring in someone else to compete with Ariza. I would still say Ariza is the front runner but that's no guarantee. The NFL doesn't have administrative leave. There is the Commissioners Exempt List but that's something the league and not the team determines. It is possible the league was asked to place Ariza on the list but the league is very subjective when it comes to that list. I think in the end the Bills stated they released Ariza so he can focus on his defense. I would have preferred the Bills placed Ariza on the exempt list but that's maybe not something they were offered also I think players on the exempt list still count against the cap so maybe they didn't want to go with two punters on the cap?

Bills simply need a few things to bounce their way in order to beat KC. Health - The Bills in 2020, 2022, and 2023 were not healthy during the playoffs. In 2020 and 2023 they were vastly depleted as the playoffs went on. In 2020 against KC the Bills went into the game with John Brown, Gabe Davis, and Cole Beasley all banged up at WR, then early in the game Diggs got hurt on a dirty play leaving on I-Mac as the only healthy WR. 2022 the Bills defensive line was completely banged up as were most of their team. 2023 the Bills went into the playoffs fairly healthy but lost basically their complete LB core to injury during the Steelers game (definitely need to upgrade the field to be heated as I think icy conditions caused at least 2-3 of those injuries). Luck - Tim Duncan said it best it takes a lot of luck to win a championship. 2021 the Bills gave KC their best game and they choked in 13 seconds. They also didn't have Tre White due to a Thanksgiving injury which led to a slow CB core that gave up big plays to Hill. The Bills need to be lucky with injuries and key matchups in order to get past KC in the post season. There's a lot of other factors like Roster Construction, defense showing up, and coaching that are in the Bills control. The Bills have to keep investing heavily top picks into the offense and make due with less cap dollars and less high draft choices on defense. Which I think generally speaking they are doing a better job of doing. Back to back years the top pick was spent on a pass catcher for example. Hopefully the Bills get the timing right and win the big one with Josh.

It's possible Josh punts another year to retouch his deal as the cap going up and up is only going to benefit his contract demands. However, it is usually not the players that make these demands, for a big big big contract like Josh's it is going to be his agent who presses the issue and I think Josh likely would let his agent handle it. This is all speculation but I think that given how agents don't like to have a top tier client occupy a "team friendly" deal for too long I think the agent is going to push the issue to at least get more cash short term and push the larger scale deal off a year.

I don't think Josh is going to want to go into the 2025 season as the 12-14th highest paid QB (Tua and possibly another 1-2 QB's will get redone). They will at least do some sort of adjustment to his current deal and then maybe do a full on rescale in 2026 but the contract will be addressed in 2025 to at least some moderate degree in my opinion.

There was also a fairly small amount of players on those bloated rookie deals whose money wasn't going to be touched anyway. The vast majority of the league was drafted in rounds 2-7 or undrafted. Which meant the amount of players seeking big free agency dollars in a second contract far out numbered the high picks eating away high salaries. There just wasn't any significant contingent in the players union that was going to fight for it. I think the players union first ask was that rookie first round contracts be exempt from the cap and revenue splits but the owners laughed that out of the door and the players conceded to a slotting system. I always hated the old system in the 2000's because there would literally be trackers for which first round picks had been signed or not. And the system was so top heavy because until the first overall pick was signed the market wasn't set so if one or two teams in the top 5ish selections got stuck in negotiations it put a pause on the next 15-20 selections because they are waiting on the market above them to be set. It was just a very stupid system that only benefitted a small amount of players and did have some negative impact on the market for vet free agents as teams who were bad the past two seasons and had top 5 picks back to back years who should have had a ton of money to spend in free agency had less due to having to pay two top 5 picks top 10 salaries at their positions. Not having to worry about holdouts and burdensome rookie deals is better for almost every single party involved.

Josh is going to get his deal redone in 2025, I think very easily the Bills are going to want to lock Josh up for an even longer period of time and Josh is deserving to be a top paid QB which suddenly he is only the 11th highest QB. I think given the tight cap going into this season and the Bills cap situation massively improving next season the time to do adjust Josh's deal and tack on a couple of seasons to it is now. In addition to the Bills trimming the vet fat this off-season and the better cap situation the Bills also have tremendous draft capital which should help them address more needs cheaper short and long term. The Bills have 8 selections with a whopping 6 selections in rounds 1-4 (all of their own plus Minnesota's second and Chicago's 4th) and they are currently slotted to get two compensatory picks which should help them replenish their 5-7 round selections of which they currently only have two sixths (they are projected to get a comp 6th which should act as a high 7th round selection while also being in line to get a comp 4th which should act as a high 5th round pick both of which will give the Bills a full complement of late round selections to go along with their higher draft selections.) So hopefully this teams plan of action works long and short term and they can keep Josh happy on a new deal.

2010 was a two front battle, it was the usual Millionaires vs. Billionaires up top but then internally there was a large battle between the players who got large rookie contracts and the players who felt that those deals were hurting the lower draft picks free agency contracts. Which I think the veteran players had a point on this one. In an uncapped league whatever let the players get what they can as rookies there's plenty of owners willing to overspend. But in a capped league if you have big rookie contracts eating up cap space for players who are getting paid dam near top dollar for what they did in college and it's eating up free agency dollars for players who have proven themselves at the NFL level for years. So a slotting system that still guaranteed first round picks a good mid-level or better salary but not super top dollar like they were receiving made sense. It also worked better for the product avoiding the issues with long lockouts that plagued the old system. But I think the issue wasn't one that was very contentious between the owners and players because the players share of revenue wasn't changing as it was more so a distribution issue vs. an overall amount issue.

If they want to they can convert the rest of Josh's contract and do the same with Ed Oliver and free up about 9 million. BUT I do not think they will do that unless they really need to make a move or something "too good to be true" happens.

Kickers lose confidence so quickly. It’s so frequent that once a kicker has a bad stretch that’s it they are done. Maybe they can regain confidence on a new team but it’s almost impossible one has as bad a stretch as Bass had in the end of the regular season and Playoffs and bounces back on the same team.

Bills should have another kicker in camp. Maybe bring in a UFL player or something they can’t go in with just Bass it’s far too risky

Palmer may also be more of a "jack of all trades" type QB coach not a hyper focused technique specific coach. If Josh identified his weakness as being his throwing motion and some other smaller technical aspects it might require a coach whose specialty is based in what Josh needs. For all we know Palmer maybe knowing he's not that type of QB coach probably recommended him to someone else.

McD is in my opinion the best secondary coach in the league and if he is keeping a corner around for a few seasons he is probably a player that can play at least solidly within the system