Bleeding Bills Blue

It's a spending and cashflow issue for Cincy. The Eagles stagger a lot of deals but then you come to these crossroads with each player - 2025, solid "not terrible" outlook for this year with dead money Huff - Even trading his very affordable salary cap accelerates all the bonus money to the next 2 years. They can create 1.1M in space if they want to eat 22M next year, or they can eat 28M in dead cap next season. Becton 3.48 in dead cap - Injury issues makes it tough to want to trust a 26 year old but the talent was always there. He's going to get 10m AAV Sweat is 16.4M in dead cap - After the super bowl they probably need to extend him, which will lower his cap burden. He's 28 and in his prime coming off a great game so I'd assume 20M AAV. Graham 4.56M in dead cap - He's 37 so i'd assume they eat this charge. Baun 1.9M in dead cap - They'd love to have him back but his cap charge would be going up regardless. I think he chases a bag elsewhere. Milton williams - Off the rookie deal he should get paid well. 2026 Tricky year because of barkley's age Barkley in his last year (age 29) - can cut him for 16.6M dead cap, or keep him for 9.6M. If they keep him they probably need to keep him through 2028 because the expiring deal for 2027 leaves a 20M dead number. Goedert's last year is 2025 (assuming they pick up his option), so 2026 (age 31) is where his void year comes due. Right now that is about 24M. Slay's last year is 2025 (age 34!) - If they cut him in 2025 which they will - his cap hit goes up to 22.7, and they'll likely defer 13.3M to 2026. They have an interesting model of option years within contracts that essentially function as extensions. They have to decide on the first league day though whether they cut or exercise the option. Exercising the option is basically adding a 1-year deal spread. They draft really well so when they have to eat dead money - you just plug a rookie in and its basically like... dejean is making 15M in 2026 because it's his rookie deal + slay's dead cap.

Well when you look at the eagles and the way they leverage future cap with void years - everyone does it they do it to a saints level of excess. You'll see that the bengals... don't. Draft is important for everyone to get contributors on rookie deals so you can extend your window, but for a team like cincy it becomes even more complicated since the cap hits for players they pay are so high. They have almost 50M in cap space but they're losing - BJ hill, Tee Higgins, and Mike HIlton. Gesicki was also a major contributor for them who's a free agent. Hendrickson, Hubbard, and Rankins all expire in 2026. Chase is "under contract" but wants to be the highest paid WR in football, and is going to holdout if he doesn't get it. It would lower his cap hit for 2025 but the bengals contract structure is going to make cap hits well into the 30-40M range in 2026 and beyond.

Worthy seems like he'll be a fine player for them, but as I'm sure its been mentioned before - he will struggle with press coverage, he will struggle securing the edge in the run game, and he will make big plays because his speed is great and he seems to have some solid ball tracking ability. Will this turn into tyreek hill like success? I'm going to venture a guess as no, but it'll probably be greater than that of hardman. With rashee rice returning, i think his upside is still in the slot, where a lot of worthy's best looks come from. I'm sure they will continue to rotate, but the RPOs and extra targets likely move towards Rice. Can worthy continue to be as effective an option out on the boundary or on the LOS, we shall see. He had a good rookie season, and with brown a free agent, they might look to add some more beef at WR rather than another speed option. Hopkins looked washed in his role this year, and they looked utterly inept in the passing game on the biggest stage of the year so i think it will be a position they prioritize in free agency while they likely use draft capital to improve their offensive line.

Blocked punts and FGs were far too often, and i felt like fakes always worked on us and our own fakes were... largely terrible. Needed a change here. It's also an area of frequent rule changes and rule tweaking - and we always seemed somewhat behind the 8-ball in innovation.

I'm not sure he's an upgrade over the curtis and shakir so i'm probably not interested.

He sacked himself at least a couple of times trying to run, it looked like stepping up but he didn't have any intension of passing. Both int's were on him too, lost track of dejean on the first and the 2nd he had space to maneuver but rushed the throw. Right read, but a truly bad throw.

I still don't think he made that catch, but hamlin on worthy was... rough for that TD. The other thing they did to take advantage of man looks was to run mahomie. They did some quirky stuff in the pistol too to create conflicts on the edge and make it look too easy.

More than worthy coming on - they had a gameplan to run a lot of pick plays - and they did a great job of leveling the crossers in the 3x1 to make it really hard for the defense to navigate. We run them too but... watching their execution on some of these was just really tough to stop. I don't think Kelce had more than a couple catches, but I never realized how good he was at setting picks. Always seemed to be creating space for his guys without touching anyone. They also had some really great RPO looks to start the game that i don't think our LBs were expecting. Just walked down the field. When we did blitz, they put a bullseye on elam and hamlin. Elam was struggling with his footing for a lot of the game and you could tell his confidence is just gone. There's bail coverage and there's... covering literally no one. His trended towards the latter. I was opposed to getting rid of him as a depth corner in the offseason just because of the cap space it would have cost to do so, but when pressed into action his effort looked poor and his ability somehow looked worse. He appears fully broken, so I'd just cut your losses and see if a team is interested in a late round pick swap or something just to save his base salary.

They definitely already heard it too. This is really just the team telling the media/fans that they heard it.

There's no market for elam after that game. Contracts fully guaranteed so... You bring him back to compete for a spot, but you bring in guys to push him off the roster via draft and free agency.

What you want to shut them out? They don't punt a lot, especially at home.

They punted twice...?

It's a rookie... and his average target depth is 15.2 yards. Cook's is 0.9 yards. Knox is 8.8. Shakir is 5.5. Samuel is 4.6. Ty was 8.2. And its much of the same... gabe complaints that pretty much came down to the same explanations of him being a downfield target, and diggs and others getting the underneath stuff.

Ya know he does block occasionally for the least sacked QB in like the history of the league and a top 10 rushing attack.

Right - I also absolutely hate all the hindsight takes. Well the chiefs took humphrey!! Where was Center on the bills priority list that year? Does he start over morse? does he sit for a year? We should have traded up for McDuffie and Thomas!! With who? What would you have offered to do so? Why didn't we sit pat for laporta instead of kincaid?! Because of draft grades and projections.

How many big time free agents have the chiefs brought in? Maybe 2? Thuney and Taylor?

People complain about cooper usage - "Cooper probably needed surgery" - INJURY EXCUSE! People complain about Coleman - "He's young" - HEARD THAT WITH EDMUNDS A team... that was expected by many pundits to finish 3rd in the division... went to the AFC championship and almost knocked off a dynasty (7 AFC championships in 7 seasons is ridiculous)... and people want to fire the coach that got them there, and the GM who put the team together.

Free agents aren't a roster building strategy.

Could've been 4 points off the board too though.

It wasn't 50/50 though... when bishop hits the ground he's got 2 hands on the ball, and elam has one - isn't that more like 33% possession? Also the ball hitting the ground can't help you catch it is my understanding. And if that ball doesn't hit the ground, worthy doesn't catch it.

1st and 10 at the 21 or 1st and goal from the 3. We had trouble stopping them all game, but more plays to get there is more chances for a mistake or for someone to make a play. Felt like a pretty solid win there. Also that was a trash holding call. As was the facemask on elam.

Arent you down by contact when the ball hits the ground though? And at that point, he had one hand on it. Did i mention it hit the ground? The wording of the challenge that buffalo was challenging that their guy caught it, may have been the undoing. I think it likely should have been challenged that it was incomplete.

Unless that gadget is some kind of button that allows you to get catches when you didn't catch the ball.

3 of the first 64 picks is kinda nice when you look at the gaping holes. I don't think you're getting WR1 at pick 30, so either you're moving up or making a trade. Trade-wise I'd look at someone like Metcalf in the last year of a deal where you can work out a shorter term extension, or potentially Chris Olave with the saints both short on cap space and he has a looming 5th year option in 2026. With several extensions of our own coming up - Groot, Cook, Shakir, Benford, Bernard - you will need some contributors on rookie deals. Defensive line is somewhere this team has spent a lot of cap on with middling results. Both interior and edge need a boost of young talent. The amount of draft picks (10) is probably still too many to make the roster - 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6 - and 2 projected 5th round comp picks so there's definitely some ability to move some of those picks for players. CB, IDL, DE, S, WR all need some help Bishop and Rapp likely start - but both missed time this year, and its a position with room for an upgrade Benford is really the only boundary corner of any quality so that position needs both a starter and depth so i could see 2 of the first 4-5 picks being corners. IDL - need a 1T pretty badly, but the 3T need behind oliver is still there. Carter flashed at times but its a 5 man rotation so there's definitely a gap at 1T as well. DE - Rousseau and AJE are back as starters, miller will be gone, solomon will get a chance to earn some snaps. Probably a vet and someone with one of those 2nd round picks.

I just look at the roster and other than josh.. our best players are Offense: Dawkins and Brown. Great to have 2 good tackles because they keep the best player on the team standing up, and make pretty much everything in the offense more effective. Cook. He's got a lot of the patience of his brother and a really nice 2nd gear to accelerate to the 2nd level. Shakir. Ideal slot WR, plus hands, faster than he looks, and the low center of gravity to break tackles pretty consistently. Defense: TJ - Still a great slot defender even if this season wasn't up to his standard Benford - Emerging player who really took a big step this year Groot - He had a bad game at KC, and a lot of it was misdirection targeted at him. I am not going to write off a player from one bad game when there's a ton of film of the guy being our most disruptive player on defense. Bernard - While i don't think he played nearly as well as last year, and continues to pick up injuries, his leadership is a driver that turned this unit into a better defense than the sum of the parts. Investments at TE and WR the last 2 years haven't fully paid off yet, but i don't think you can write off players in their first 2 seasons either. The team is going to need a lot more from these players next year: Coleman - the everybody eats philosophy is fine, but he needs to develop a better route tree so he can be more dynamic Kincaid - the drop heard round the world. He regressed this year and apparently was injured. Come back humble and hungry and remind everyone who you are. Bishop - Athleticism popped, needs to stay healthy and work on communication but i assume he's starting next year Carter - Played much better before the injury. Bringing in jefferson and phillips to me seemed to indicate that he wasn't going to be healthy the rest of the way. I'm not opposed to a WR in the first.. just not sure where the best players are going to lie in this draft and think its important to prioritize adding building blocks and potential pro bowlers.