BarleyNY

Dorsey would be required to bring me an offensive plan for the season that I could get on board with or he’d be replaced with one that could. Teams need difference makers to win it all. In today’s NFL offense is king and the Bills have focused too much on getting defensive difference makers. Job 1 is getting one more to join Allen and Diggs on their side of the ball. Preferably that would be a speedy WR who could play inside or out. This would allow him to play inside on sets with 3 or more WRs and outside in 2 WR sets, taking Davis off the field. If I could not get that quality of WR, I’d still seek an upgrade there and look to add difference making RB. Solidifying the OL is next. How to do so would depend on how the above shakes out (run vs pass blocking focus). Positions needing immediate improvement would be LG and RT. I’d also acquire a C of the future. McD needs to determine how we can get quality production from the defense with less resources moving forward. He also need to tell me if Frazier stays or is replaced. The defense takes a back seat to offensive talent improvement. Improvements will have to come from getting White back to form and getting Von Miller back at some point. Edmunds walks in FA and is replaced by a much cheaper LB. A reasonably priced vet is added to stand in for Miller until he’s back. A part time DE who can get to the QB is what’s important. Oliver plays out his fifth year option. Specials gets a better punter.

Yup. I hate the QB-on-a-rookie-contract cop out. Consistently drafting well and spending wisely is the answer to that. And guess what? We’ve got a top QB on a veteran deal. If you can’t make that work, then there’s nothing you can do for us.

Thank goodness that you can depend on draft picks always working out well or that revamped OL might be in real trouble.

That’s a reasonable thought as they certainly could use an upgrade at DT. But they’re likely more interested in longer term and cheaper solutions to their many needs. Or more proven players if they’re that expensive. You might be able to find a GM who will take a chance on such a highly drafted player, but it’ll be tough sledding with his contract.

Wow, that’s a very good return. But if you value him as highly as a Day 2 pick, why would you want trade him away? If I were a GM in need of a 3T I’d go to the FA market first. If that dried up or if I lost my 3T to injury during the season but before the trade deadline I’d look at trading for a player like Oliver. But he’s a pretty expensive one year rental so I’d need to be in dire straits to cough up a Day 2 pick. I’d be more inclined to trade a comparable player with a similar contract if it was prior to the season starting.

If you were an NFL GM, what would you trade for Ed Oliver and his one year, fully guaranteed $10.75M contract?

All true. But the combination of losing both White and Miller along with the timing of the injuries really, really hurt the team. This is not to say that the coaching staff or many other players performed at an acceptable level. Or even that Beane has drafted well enough. Those are separate issues.

Totally. The whole team, coaches, trainers and other staff are in on it pretending he visited the locker room and talked to them twice on Sunday.

And Tre White.

The numbers are the easy part of a GM’s job. Teams get good cap projections based on league revenue projections. Even the teams that get into cap hell planned to be there. Usually they were chasing a ring and had a QB at the end of his career. The complications that are the most worrying are expensive players with a lot of guaranteed money that don’t live up to their contracts for whatever reason. Unfortunately the Bills have two of them, both due to injury and no fault of the player or team. White and Miller are huge cap expenditures and the Bills are in the middle of it with them. They lost White for the latter part of last season, last season’s playoffs and got him back at much less than 100% for the end of this season and the playoffs. Miller’s best case scenario looks very similar. That’s a ton of cap space that the Bills lost due to some very bad luck.

I think you gotta give White a chance to come back to full health. Besides, no team would trade for him with his current contract unless they saw the old Tre White first. If we get that, then we want him here. Also Elam has a lot to prove before he starts. Oliver has been a good DT, but not a great one, and that is very disappointing for a top 10 pick. He’s set to make $10.75M on his fifth year option in 2023 - that is all fully guaranteed. So the question is what, if anything, other teams would trade for him. I don’t think we’d get a lot of interest mainly because teams would look for either a cheaper player at his level or they’d pay a better one.

Yup. The real risk is if you do it with a player that decides to phone it in or becomes a problem. They already got almost all of their money for the season so the team doesn’t have any leverage. They can’t cut them right away and a suspension doesn’t cost the player much money because they are only getting the vet minimum salary. This brings up an interesting point because it pertains to the recent Stefan Diggs drama. If the Bills restructure Diggs I think it’s a good sign that things got worked out. If they don’t, then the team might be taking things a little more cautiously.

Restructuring the maximum possible amounts for Allen, Diggs, Miller, White, Milano and Dawkins would take us up to $49.2M in cap space (assuming a league base cap of $225M). We’d have 39 players under contract and lots of work to be done.

That’s correct, but it will be necessary. There is also the advantage of a discount for pushing cap hits to future years. That’s because the cap (almost) always increases and the cap hit moving forward stays at the same nominal value. It does make a big difference cumulatively and when done over multiple years. If anyone wants to see how restructuring the contracts of Allen and other players would impact this year’s cap space and cap space into the future you can use OTC’s calculator. If you select the “restructure” option next to a player it populates the fields with the maximum amounts that can be restructured and spreads that out over the length of the existing contract. https://overthecap.com/calculator/buffalo-bills

I agree with your overall point. The lack of resources allocated to WR is a very big problem and we’ve seen the results. I don’t think that Davis would be good in the slot though. He is more of a straight line guy who has some issues with separation. A stud slot WR would be the path of we keep Davis as a starter. It would work very well if the new addition could play inside or out so that we could take Davis off the field in two WR sets. One minor note - Mahomes has Kelce, but little else in the way of quality receiving options. His WRs are not special at all. Previously he had one of the best with Hill, but he hasn’t missed a beat this season without him. Burrow’s WR corps is stacked, obviously. Anything remotely close to that would be amazing to have here.

I don’t see any critical thinking in this or most other conspiracy theories. For instance, in this case a little bit of critical thinking debunks it. Hamlin went to the locker room and spoke to the team at least twice. The odds of everyone in and around that locker room (players, trainers, coaches, media, etc) being in on a conspiracy to pretend Hamlin was there and managing to keep quiet about it is effectively zero. There’s also the point that there is really nothing for anyone to gain by having someone impersonate him. Critical thinking involves the application of logic, not the thought that “anything could’ve happened so I’m just going to believe what I want!”

Not necessarily on the ribs. I read that they used the AED machine. Not sure how long they did manual chest compressions. Also they were done by a professional, not someone off the street who took a first aid class six years ago.

I see BOB in the same mold as coaches like Doug Marrone and Butch Davis. Very competent coaches that are constantly chasing the last dollar and more power so they can get more dollars. Chasing dollars definitely takes precedent over character or morality for that group. Really a very good coach but a mercenary and a watch-your-back guy to have in the organization. That’s my 2¢.

The Bills defense sure looks an awful lot like Carolina’s did when McDermott was DC. And fair point on the edit.

I like Daboll and think a lot of posters here were crazy to rip him. I think it’s telling that he elevated the chicken**** that was Daniel Jones into a semi-edible QB sandwich. Meanwhile the Bills offense still had a lot of success, but they sure seemed to regress later in this season and in the playoffs. I think they were rolling and then got figured out a bit and could not adjust.

I’d say Daboll was the biggest factor in Allen’s development. Dorsey and even Palmer certainly helped - and obviously Allen put in the work. But Daboll was the mentor and guide that mattered most.

Burrow didn’t pass Allen yesterday, he passed him before that. It’s up to the Bills and Allen to move back up that list past him and Mahomes, but right now that’s how it is.

I’m pretty sure a standard folding table costs more than that TV.

I’ll be shocked if he’s back week 1 and even more surprised if he’s back to form. In any event, the Bills would be foolish to count on it happening this March and April when they’re adding players to the roster.