Kirby Jackson

Yeah, it’s certainly a little optimistic. The cards would be betting a little on regression from the Bills and Vikings. I am a big Pelicans fan and they control the Lakers unprotected 1st in either 2024 or 2025. It is likely to be around 15 this year. That’s not a great pick in a not so great draft. Maybe AD gets hurt next year and age catches LeBron and it’s a top 5 pick. However, if the Lakers go add a 3rd star this summer it may be 29 next year. You are anticipating how they’ll be. The scenario above is predicated on the Cards thinking that there’s too much turnover on the Bills and they become a .500ish team AND the Vikings stink with Sam Darnold and that’s pick 35. now all of a sudden they have a ton of ammo in 2025 (and may need to get a QB).

I think that’s what he’s saying. You can either go get the star (a la Julio Jones) or you can accumulate guys in hopes of filling out the room (Watson, Doubs, Reed, Wicks)

This is the other best way to do it IMO. I’d love a Legette/McConkey combination. I feel like their games mesh well.

Lol, it’s a different world than it was in 2014. The salary cap in 2014 was $133M. The top 10 highest cap hits for a wr in 2014 averaged $12m or 9% of the salary cap. So basically, the teams with the highest paid guys paid them 9% of the cap. In 2024, they average over $26M and 10.3% of the cap. That is BEFORE Jefferson and Chase sign their extensions. That number will be roughly 12% when they do. We need to STOP comparing situations to different generations. For perspective 3% of the current cap is almost $8m of cap space. What happened at WR in 2014 is not comparable to 2024. Good questions GB. You’re probably right on the value being too low. My thought was more them fading the Bills a little and Vikings a lot. I’m on board with all 3 but have Harrison at 1. That’s in large part because of the floor as you mentioned. I think his floor is Amari Cooper’s career. His ceiling is Calvin Johnson. Apparently the Bills really like Nabers. I personally like Odunze even a little more (although that was partially a fit next to Diggs). If it gets to 8 or 9 it’s an easy decision for me. The Bears lack picks so I could see them being in play.

Okay, that’s a fair opinion. I’m not looking for “a good guy.” I’m looking for a top of the depth chart, low risk, stud. The goal of this wasn’t to say what we wouldn’t do. There’s plenty of that going on here already. This was, “who would be your 6 or 7 WRs on the roster this year and how did you get them?” Obviously we don’t know who will be on the board at 28 but we can use reasonable assumptions. Harrison won’t be, Pearsall will be, Mitchell might be. Be reasonable but lay out what your group would look like

Now that the dust has settled, how would you construct the WR room moving forward? Lay out the 6 or 7 WRs that you believe will comprise the WR room. For anyone not currently on the roster, lay out how they were acquired. There is a lot of talk in other threads about draft taargets, trade targets, guys left in FA. This is meant to talk about ALL of the WRs. Please do not use this as a place to say that we think Kincaid will see the ball more. That’s common sense. Let’s keep this strictly to WRs. How would you build out this room if you were Brandon Beane? WR room: - MHJ (Bills trade: pick 28, pick 133, 2025 1st, Minnesota 2025 2nd, Bills 2025 4th) (Arizona trades pick 4) - Khalil Shakir - Curtis Samuel - Michael Thomas (1 year $8M deal post June 1) - Jermaine Burton (pick 128) - Mack Hollins PS (2 or 3 of): - Shorter - Isabella - Shavers - UDFA We are pushing the chips in on a generational talent in MHJ. The Bills get an alpha, that has complete skills, HOF pedigree, on a rookie deal. It was hard to find the appropriate value for Arizona but if they think the Bills take a small step back & Minnesota a step back, the value is there. Those picks could be like picks 20 & 38 in 2025. Along with the mid round assets, it gets done. The Bills pay a hefty price but WRs aren’t cheap anymore. Shakir and Samuel are sort of interchangeable in my mind. They can play inside, outside and run after the catch. Samuel will be used more for gadgets and running plays but they’re both dangerous with the ball in their hands. The Bills get Thomas on a prove it deal. He’s battled injuries for a while but was once great. The “slant god” gives Allen a reliable, big body target, that can help on possession downs and in the red zone. If it works out, and he stays healthy, the Bills could consider bringing him back. If not, they move on in 2025. Burton goes to the Bills in the mid rounds. I haven’t been a huge fan of his through the draft process. There are some character concerns. He isn’t a guy that I’ve taken often while doing mocks, but just feels like the right fit to take the top off the defense here. His long speed fits well with this group. He’s been a really good deep ball guy and the Bills need that. Hollins is a ST guy and has been okay when targeted. He’s a rich man’s Kumerow. 2025 FA class is absolutely loaded at WR (at least at this point). The Bills can decide to chase a big fish (ie Jefferson, Higgins, etc..) if they so choose. The above group should be enough to be competitive in 2024. To conclude: The Bills give up a lot of assets to get Harrison but immediately fill the top of their depth chart on a rookie deal. They add Thomas and Burton to add a couple of different skill sets to the roster. Overall the group has some balance and a true difference maker. How would you build the room out?

That’s not a bad strategy. I think that they’re set on trying to get one of the top 3. They want a surefire number 1 on a rookie deal. They can use next year’s 1 and one of those 2’s (if need be) with whatever mid round picks to secure one. Something like: 28, pick 133, ‘25 1st & ‘25 2nd to get to 4,5, or 6. You can maybe pull out the 2nd next year if you wait until 9. Would the Cardinals take 28, a 2025 1st & 2nd and a 4th this year for 4? The Bills could still grab another WR in the 4th. The draft could start something like: - MHJ - d lineman - Javon Baker or McMillian or Polk

Yes I thought that they might before this deal but they absolutely should. Getting a stud, number 1, on a rookie deal is imperative. You’ll need another guy in the mid rounds as well. Something like Odunze and Baker or something like that would be nice.

The Vikings 2nd is important too. They might be the worst team in football this year if Darnold is their guy.

I went Legette but he felt like the Diggs counterpart. Now, I expect the Bills to trade up and grab one of the big 3. They’ll take another on the mid rounds.

Your options are “have an NFL team” and “do business as NFL teams do” or “not have an NFL team.” Those are the options. Cursing the system isn’t going to solve this issue. The demand, ratings and revenue that the NFL is getting now makes it more expensive to play. That’s what it IS. No one wants to pay an additional $40k to buy 2 seats that they have now. To some people it is worth it to continue attending Bills games. It’s not up to anyone else to tell someone what to do with their money. This is the system. You either get on board or your team ends up in LA or Vegas. They will.

I really don’t understand how the finances of this actually worked.

Welp, I’m shocked

Yep, that’s fair. Anyone paying attention could see this coming a decade ago. The reason that the Bills needed a new stadium instead of a refurb is that they couldn’t have the best locations paying a fraction of what others around the league pay for those same locations. I think that they went with the $15k PSLs there to not force everyone out. It will force a lot of them out but not the same way that $50k would have in that area. They split the baby a little there.

The club areas, all that we know right now, will be more corporate than it is now. Between the 40’s in the lower level will be a totally different demographic than is currently there. The rest of the stadium will be more regular fans.

Another factor that we really haven’t gone too deep on is the total club seat universe in the new stadium. @Rochesterfan correctly mentioned it. By my estimation, the current stadium has roughly 10,000 club seats. There are 19 sections of sideline clubs. I think that all sections are 15 rows and most have 30 seats. That’s roughly 8500. There is probably another 1500ish with indoor clubs (this number I’m less confident in but think it’s directionally accurate). If the clubs shrink at the same rate as the rest of the stadium, you’ll have a total of 1400ish less club seats. We have NO IDEA if this is the case or not. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds, more data points that the team, and Legends are using to gauge success beyond that 75% of 1.6% of the stadium. 😂😂 If it makes people sleep at night to say, “in a vacuum it’s predictable,” go for it. That’s not what the analytics folks at Legends and the Bills are doing. They’re analyzing all of the trends and data available to understand how it’s going and adjustments that need to be made (both up and down). As an example, seniority is the leading indicator of “likelihood to renew” in sports. It is a more important factor than team record. This stadium will almost certainly go against that. That’s not going to be surprising for the Bills. It was a goal of the Bills!! The pricing model was designed to “gentrify” the top locations. At what cost? We have no idea. We don’t have the information nor do we have a sense of what they want that number to be. No matter how many times one person comes here, pounding his fist on the table, saying definitively, that it isn’t going well, that doesn’t make it true. We won’t know for months / maybe even a year+ how this is going. The Bills and Legends have a WAY better idea than the general public because they can look at all of those other trends and factors that are a part of their model. The sample size though is far too small to have any concretes projections. They certainly don’t expect all pricing levels to sell at the same rate. Because the other levels haven’t been released, they won’t know if they were on or off the mark. Right now, they probably have a sense for the success/failure of the club seat rollout. We do not know that answer though. We MAY know more as they get through the other 85%-90% of club seat holders that still need to go. That’ll be up to the Bills and Legends as to how much information they’ll share and the manner in which they share it. Will they use fearmongering to sell more? That’s what we did when rumors of a move was out there. It felt dirty. It worked. Will they say that it exceeded their expectations to inflate a sense of scarcity? This might drive some people on the fence to commit to avoid missing out. So, so, so, so many factors at play here.

They don’t want to lose 25% of their season ticket base. Of course they don’t!! Who said that they do? What was said is that 75% of 1.6% of the stadium, in the most expensive areas, is not predictive of anything. The Bills may want those 500 seats (or whatever we are calling it) to leverage for way more. I think that the Senecas get 1,000 tickets per game and 100 to every Super Bowl (or something like that). The Bills can get all kinds of extra money creating other assets to attach to those. They’ll create their own scarcity. Those sponsorship deals will ALL be redone in the new stadium. You’re correct in saying that they exist now. You’re incorrect if you believe that the Bills are just going to roll forward their tickets without getting new assets sold.

Just to be clear, they don’t want to sell 100% of their available inventory to the public. There is a percentage (that we don’t know) of the premium tickets that the Bills will use as leverage to sell soft assets in the new stadium (ie signage, commercials, naming rights of clubs, etc).

Again, I don’t have anything to prove here. I feel an obligation to educate and stop misinformation. If I didn’t receive PMs and texts asking me to comment on the subject, I would’ve bowed out a long time ago and just let the hand-wringing continue. There’s a long track record on here of things that I said would happen, happening. Sometimes we get people that think that they know and understand WAY more than they actually do. They come in these threads spreading 1/2 truths without any real idea of the scope of the objectives. They take minimal information and form conclusions that aren’t accurate or without base. They then double down and triple down instead of quietly walking away. It’s okay to not understand. It’s not okay to parlay that lack of understanding into fearmongering. It’ll all play out in due time. At that point, you can come back here and tell everyone that “you were wrong” and that “you’ll do better next time.”

Because we have no idea what the Bills want out of that part (for starters). They may have wanted less than that. They also, almost certainly know, how many of those seats that they could sell new if they had the inventory. The % of the stadium is way too small to tell anything. Again, I’m not trying to be that guy but I’ve done this at that level. I have a master’s degree in sports management. I’m not trying to be condescending. I’m trying to tell you the reality of the situation and why sports business is different than other business. I work in insurance now. People aren’t emotionally attached to their insurance policies. Sports numbers do not trend like other businesses for that reason. They also have different objectives than to sell every seat as soon as you can. There’s strategy and leverage at play that is being disregarded (or ignorance).

The numbers that we have on the new stadium, at this point, don’t tell us anything. The numbers that we have at the current stadium, on the road, and on the secondary market say that the demand is off the charts. People can keep digging in to not be wrong but that’s reality. The Bills have ZERO concerns at this point. They almost certainly have a target that they want to hold back. We don’t know that number.

The average account holder is like 2.3 seats (at least it was). The point remains.

That’s the info that we have. We have massive demand currently. You are anticipating that changing based on gut feeling. The data that we have says massive demand for the Bills.

1.6% of 62,000 is 1,000 seats (992 to be exact). Again, with all due respect, you’re trying to educate the wrong guy on how this works. 75% of 992 is 744. That’s what they are saying here. It may be time to bow out of this conversation. A change in screen name is probably in order as well. Lol, this has been going on WAY longer than that. This isn’t new 😂😂

So less than 1,000 seats at this point. People are creating narratives over 250 seats that haven’t been accounted for (yet). Lol, the chicken little aren’t going to like that. The Bills can move those in 3 phone calls. With all due respect, it’s not rare. I’ve done it. Price out the people and roll it into sponsorship packages. That’s VERY common. They shook free 250 seats in the most expensive areas. The Senecas sponsorship deal will be significantly higher when those get offered to them. I’ll elaborate in hopes of this making sense to people. Say the Bills have 100 $50K PSLs that they need to sell. They can sell those and collect $5M. They can leverage those seats to raise the pricing on advertising and other intangible assets. Let’s say that the Senecas spend $2M in advertising. The Bills can say, we will throw in 100 prime PSLs and the whole package will be $10M. The Bills now made an extra $3M by leveraging their demand.