Bleeding Bills Blue

Gotta be Houston - they love to use week 1 as a like "previously on the NFL" type situation where they can showcase rivalries or rematches.

I agree. I thought the writing was on the wall when burrow signed. The astronomical cap hits to me indicated they were going to try and make this work in a small window and so far it's been a failure. You have to let higgins walk, simply as a roster construction move. Tagging him is just going to eat cap space in the opening of free agency and limits who you can sign, even if you plan to trade higgins. Ideally you already lock up chase long-term but you can't pay everyone, and you REALLY shouldn't pay 2 guys who play the same position. The offensive line is not good for protection, and they can't run the ball. Running the ball is important to winning - Short yardage conversions, 4 minute offense, play action, RPO windows. The defense is bad, and you fired the coordinator despite him having shown on numerous occasions to be able to elevate the unit in the playoffs. I'm not sure higgins fixes the issues they have with the offense, and limits what you can do to fix the defense.

It filters down to everything. Scouting, Coaching, extensions, free agency, training staff, facilities. I don't think you can move them right away, nor do i think they want to move. But if the NFL wants you to improve your stadium, you have to figure out how to milk the public for some of those renovation costs. Yes - he is a billionaire. The team itself is valued at more than a billion dollars - but to access that money you need to sell equity in the team, or borrow money using it as collateral. They seem to operate similarly to buffalo in the past where they need the money coming in to be greater than the money going out - which doesn't leverage the always increasing value of your investment. It also makes it challenging to sign players to these big extensions because you need to pay them a ton of money annually beyond what the cap hit is. The cap "isn't real" in that it doesn't represent the actual cash moving - a 1 year deal with 3 void years involves all of that money being paid in year 1.

Had a pretty terrible year - and i remember his fumble against buffalo being pretty bad... They were playing well and winning in buffalo. He had less than 100 yards rushing from that game on. I probably don't hold the 3.3 YPC average against him since he had so few carries but, he's likely a PS call-up from this point on in his career.

His injury was strange too, fell funny and dislocated his collarbone. The team that beat KC was a running team like buffalo - but they also have stud playmakers to counter the chiefs blitzing. Coleman isn't that dude - not yet anyway. Sounds like Beane challenged him to BE that dude. Go out and win the 1x1's. Browns speed on the outside would be something that the other team would have to think about.

I doubt the jets trade him to us so its probably not going to get far. His guarantees are dried up though, and his base salary is enormous so he could be cut, which might make it more workable.

I can't see pete carroll and tom brady letting him come in and upstage them as they try to fix a pretty broken organization. I think they'd rather just trade for cousins, its the same bad sale to your fans but at least you aren't bringing in locker room drama.

Yeah - I don't know how desperate you have to be, to have any interest in bringing him in. Maybe the Giants? It's just such a hard sell to your fanbase.

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.