Bleeding Bills Blue

Medicals on your own players are also not really even that cut and dry.

I think its likely the offense will be improved upon. You replace gabe/harty/sherfield offensive snaps with hopefully a vet and a rookie. You have Brady creating his own offensive identity. Cook another year in the NFL. Shakir prepared for a bigger role. Two TE's. Etc. The defense... We are losing a number of players. But we do get milano back - which is absolutely huge. Bernard can improve on a promising first year starting. Secondary wise they have options at CB - and other potential reinforcements in the form of Tre. Will be interested to see how the team ends up looking after FA and draft, but its easy to forget that by the end of the season they were so banged up that a lot of the players that could potentially be downgrades, weren't even playing.

i mean hines knows writing is on the wall... he might not get any guarantees on the open market while buffalo might accomodate for a very low base salary. Considering he's a depth RB and a returner it hits 2 spots.

Considering Barkley, Pollard, and Jacobs are all UFA's now i don't see how thats in the cards for him. Or literally any of the backs, theres too many available plus the entire draft.

Void years are just signing bonus money. You add multiple years to be able to pull more off the cap in the first year, and there are rules around how much you can restructure. So when they sign anywhere... that cash is already theirs. The cap hit of void/bonus stays on the books regardless of where the player signs. Usually these will all trigger in one offseason (3 void years at 1m each would hit the cap the first year the player is gone for 3M), but i think if they sign here then the void years can continue to be spread out but don't quote me on that.

I'll throw Odell beckham in there. I'd want any incoming rookie to have to earn snaps over the course of the year, and i expect speed to be a priority with our incoming rookie WR. Odell isn't the fastest, but he's crafty, a good route runner, and he has good hands. A lot of gabe davis snaps to replace, not to mention Harty/Sherfield. I think there are better options, but for a budget option i think he can do well here in a rotational role.

I assume Hines reworks his deal. He has very little in the way of guarantees, and hes coming off a lost season, and is 28. He hits the open market he's looking at like 1-1.5M and maybe a couple hundred K in guarantees. He's also likely without a home for a while sitting on his hands hoping the phone rings. 2yr deal, guarantee some of it, get the cap hit low and that gives you a return man and a speed back/gadget option. You can cut both but then you're back to trying to find a punt returner, which is obnoxious when you already had 2. You could potentially use shakir there, but thats not really a primary option in my head as his role should be on offense.

That isn't really his job though. Why are you criticizing the coach for decisions made by the GM?

Well that depends on the roster bonus. Just says on spotrac "due at training camp". Cap hit is the same with him on or off the roster. That would mean that any compensation would likely tie super late 2025 picks, and you would have to wait with him on the books for months. They will cut him, unless there's a way the jets can just agree to eat the bonus on their cap. Not worth the effort to get like a 2025 7th round pick.

Eh - if they pick up the roster bonus its a million dollars.

And if you do you very likely have a trash defense. Or a trash offensive line, thus negating a lot of that talent.

Easiest way to look at this is bonuses are already paid. So you can spread them out over multiple seasons (im sure theres a billion parameters on how to do this). So you can't just throw out certain aspects of contract because it was originally paid out as a bonus in 2022 and spread across 5 years to lessen cap charges in year 1. The same goes for restructure charges. You are essentially converting game check base salary into a bonus, so that bonus can then be spread across multiple seasons. So essentially all of that money is already "paid" and must remain on the cap. Von's probably a tough example, 10M of his 2024 salary is guaranteed, and the rest guarantees on March 18th. We already restructured him once, and any further would likely result in having to keep him for another season. He has no further guarantee's beyond this season, so the only way id see it is if he signed like a new 2 year deal or something to drastically reduce base salary over the next 2 years. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/von-miller-7717/ So signing bonus is spread over 5 years, and then they restructured in 2023 and spread that 13M across another 5 years. When you trade or release a player that all loads up into the dead cap number. 3yrs at 3.705+4yrs at 2.669 = 21.79M. His base salary guarantee is 10.71M (until 3/18). Add that up for ur dead cap number (if you had guaranteed salaries anywhere else those also get added in the cap charge). While you might have offset language that reduces the actual outgoing cash to a player (new team pays their salary and it is offset by language in the contract so we pay the difference), the cap charge is unaffected.

End of the day - you beat good QBs with guys like bernard making a play here and there. Edmunds closing throwing lanes is valuable, but its less valuable when you're playing a good QB who can either still find the window, or buy enough time to create one.

They definitely need some starters on rookie deals. Right now they have - Offense: Shakir, Torrence, Brown, Kincaid, and Cook Defense: Rousseau, Bernard, Benford So they definitely need to add some players on the defensive side of the ball - especially on the defensive line. Offensively I think they need to add a younger pass catcher, and i think it'd be nice to add a mid-round lineman.

Yep - then they snagged carr to try and extend the window with this team. I don't think he's really good enough to do it, but the winston saints were not going anywhere. 1-5 against playoff teams last year on a pretty soft schedule (5-0 against Carolina, NE, NYG, Chicago) tells you all you need to know though.

We're probably a year away from medicine. Von, and Knox are fairly obvious candidates for next year. You could also potentially make several moves this year, but then it probably shifts your draft strategy. If you trade douglas, and cut white - you save a bunch, but now depth is absolutely barren - so you likely have to sign one and draft another 1 or 2. We need at least 1 safety for sure, cutting poyer just opens up another spot for a safety. Same for Morse, you may feel comfortable plugging in bates, but you're actively downgrading at that point. To me its more of being very careful and methodical on extensions, term of extensions, age of players, etc. Avoid tacking on tons of void years this year to any free agent contracts, and realistically look for players you want on the roster for multiple seasons. And this is a draft that needs to have some day 1 contributors at potentially WR, S, and DT/DE.

And they have a ton of space already tied up in considerably large restructures. Buffalo has 20M in restructure bonuses, while NO has 63M. Their 5th highest cap hit is taysom hill. NO only have 2.8M in dead cap, but it doesn't include Peat who has 13.6M in a structured void hit. Buffalo has 8.8M in dead cap including void years for Floyd, Jones, and Settle with another 3.8 to Hyde. They're also in a tough spot as the only way to get out of some of this is extensions - and they don't really have anyone you'd want to add years to. Lattimore is 28 and has missed a full seasons worth of games over the last 2. Kamara is 29 and misses time every year. Jordan and Davis are both 35. Thomas has a long injury history and isn't worth the contract he's on at this point. They have just been kicking some of these contract cans down the road for like 9 years now and you hit a point where you have a very old team (who isn't even particularly good), and you're kind of forced to take your medicine. Buffalo is not in a similar scenario yet, nor do I expect them to be. The key is to find contributors on rookie deals - and they have added quite a few in the last couple drafts. The next key is to not necessarily overpay players on their 2nd deals (some will walk), identify the players you want to make long-term commitments to, and to continue to re-stock and replace as you go.

And like Moss, a lot of times its just fit.

Higgins is more of a contested catch guy than a separation guy though. Seems to make sense to me.

Chase young was supposed to be. Kinlaw hargrave and armstead are all solid disruptors too. Honestly the greenlaw injury was brutal. Everything was going underneath and after that injury they were able to attack with kelce more. Held them under 20 in regulation fwiw.

Happy to see him all over my TV though... i don't think he's going to demand to be the highest paid QB with all of that ad money coming in.

I'd say 1st round is your best chance, but sometimes football players don't test particularly well and we need to find them!

He's a solid cleanup guy too with the length. More of a Phil Hansen type. Honestly, the home runs for a team like Buffalo probably don't come from the 1st round. I do like Kincaid a lot. But they usually end up from someone later. A benford, bernard, or shakir perhaps.

White cannot play under the contract he has right now - so he's either cut or taking a pretty substantial paycut and loosening guarantees. I wouldn't cut douglas as he was one of our best players down the stretch, and the base salary number is reasonable. He'd also have a pretty solid trade value still. Morse, if we drafted someone at C in the last couple of years maybe. I know bates is prepared to step in, but I'm not sure how i feel on depth. Poyer's cap hit is 7.7 and you get 5.7 in savings. Seems like a lot, but then you have to replace him and its basically the same. Depends how FA pans out here, but it probably eases the transition to keep one of Poyer/Hyde. Most especially since the defensive line is in such a massive state of flux. Correct - they kept a flawed core together to try and win as much with brees. But for whatever reason they've continued doing all of that without the winning formula. Most of the players who have them are solid players. But they have guys with high cap hits who are either old or injured or both, and they have no way of getting any cap savings by releasing them. Rams did it and went to one and won another. So its not necessarily a bad strategy, just have to be careful who you extend or you'll end up having to dump good players when you cant afford to extend them.

Void years. you can lessen the cap blow by basically spreading base salary as void years into the future. They all trigger the next season though. Yep - they had a tremendous draft that year - but they had been stashing a lot of talent over the last few drafts. Even whiffing on CEH in 2020 - they still nailed gay, snead, danna. Assume Chenal replaces gay. They also drafted an end at 31 in 2023 who can potentially replace danna. This would allow them to pay sneed and Jones.