BarleyNY

Not sure I understand this. The Chefs didn’t seem to have a huge issue with it last season and the Bills didn’t add any firepower of note. Sanders for Brown, a late round rookie WR and a back up TE Someone might develop or they might be healthier, but neither is guaranteed.

Notably Beasley already got a $500k roster bonus in March.

That’s not remotely true. PFF has Josh Allen’s overall 2020 grade at 90.3 and Lamar Jackson’s at 79.3. https://www.pff.com/nfl/grades/position/qb

Good point. The ratings would make sense if they’re factoring in things like consistency, longevity, etc.

This frame of reference is key to how EO is viewed. The Bills drafted him so I don’t know how him being the 9th overall selection isn’t factored in. I was hoping he’d fall to us in that draft and I was elated that he did and that we selected him. He had a pretty average rookie year at 3T and a below average 2020 at 1T. Average play in his rookie year is understandable and I get that he was playing out of position a lot due to need last season so he can get a bit of a pass. But in year three and playing his natural position he’s got to start playing at an above average (or better) level. Let’s see how he does.

Quotes like this are some of my favorite parts of the internet. I’m totally serious. An elite NFL player on a team that played in the last two Super Bowls gets busted for illegally possessing an Uzi. The fifth response is someone (probably very validly) trashing him for his garbage selection of firearms. Truly fantastic. Thank you.

Flexibility is a good thing and there’s nothing wrong with that approach, but all of it comes due eventually. Every penny paid will hit the cap sooner or later.

Yup. Pretty much every player who signs a large contract structures it in a team friendly way. Large signing bonuses that prorate over the course of the deals are typical - and those are not exactly hardships on the players. It’s a nice PR move, but in reality he wouldn't be giving anything up. Let us see where it lands and then make our judgements. I would not begrudge him getting paid his worth. It’s a business for him. I do find a lot of the “Josh is such a great guy he’ll take a big discount” crowd very funny though.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/06/18/who-signs-first-lamar-jackson-baker-mayfield-or-josh-allen/ The article’s gist is that with Jackson, Mayfield and Allen all in line for extensions that they might all be waiting for the others to set the market. Also Jackson is acting as his own agent so Mayfield and Allen might be especially interested in him going first since it would be easy to discount his contract if he screws it up.

I do think the Phins f-ed this up too. They gave a better contract to Byron Jones, who is not nearly as good as Xavien Howard. I get why Howard would be upset. Still, he has very little leverage with so much of his contract still to go.

I mostly showed the play to A) illustrate how weak Rivers’ arm was at the time and B) remind people how close Indy hung in that game.

Shhh! Don’t jinx the jinx

Rivers is probably a HOF QB, but he was playing his last NFL game because he was was shot. He had no arm strength or ability to throw deep. And we won by 3. I literally joked in the 2nd quarter “Oh my god, we’re going to lose this game on a 35 yard Rivers Hail Mary.” Needless to say I heard about that for the whole second half. (I’m not supposed to speak during games now as that was not an isolated incident.) But I said 35 yards because of how weak Rivers’ arm had gotten. On the final play he let go a Hail Mary, but the LOS was on about the 47 and he couldn’t make it to the end zone. That game might’ve been very different if Indy had fielded a decent, fully functional QB that day. They deserve to be in the conversation this season - with an asterisk on QB. The issue with Wentz is that he is trash under pressure - and that he often brings it on himself by holding the ball too long. idk if Reich can fix that or not. Indy is an otherwise quality team.

The player and agent wouldn’t offer it, but the team might insist on it.

The clients of his that he was hurting with that tactic should’ve fired him immediately. Did any actually do that?

Silver lining alert. With the numbers at DE now and with Hughes, Addison and Obada being free agents after the season, it might be in everyone’s best interest if Cox went on IR for the season.

Ah. I see the advance noted In this article. I did not see anything with it linked and was going by Spotrac’s info - which doesn’t mention the advance at all. It just shows the consequences of it. So NE gave him the $4.5M advance last season to keep him from holding out. Both sides still knew he wouldn’t play for another $7M this season, but NE got a little additional leverage by doing it that way rather than voiding this year. A side note on something that is often misunderstood: Advancing money from a future season as in this case (almost) never gives a team any cap advantage. That’s because carryover eliminates any advantage of using additional space in a current year versus rolling it over. The team just loses flexibility in the short term. The other issue with it is that moving cap hits to future seasons provides an accounting discount since the cap almost always increases. Even negative consequences from a single season (like this one) with a decreased cap can be circumvented. The cap would have to decrease for multiple seasons in a row to make it advantageous to move future cap hits to a current season.

Totally agree on Phins disarray. This is a considerably different situation than Gilmore’s too. Howard is a top CB, but he’s being paid like one and just got a big 5 year contract extension that started a year ago. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

That’s not at all correct. Gilmore has previously restructured by converting salary to signing bonuses, but he never moved salary to a different year. In fact moving his 2021 salary to previous seasons would have been counterproductive for NE. All that happened was that NE moved some of his cap hits to future years. $7M for him is ludicrously under market. NE has known for years that he would not play for that and that they’d have to give him a new contract or trade to a team that would. I’ve got no problem with him holding out - or with a team cutting a player underperforming their contract.

Two in addition to the Steelers twice - Indy and Tennessee.

My bad, then the buck stops with him.

I’m sure the coaches had input but doesn’t Beane have final say over the roster?

I want to chime in on the scheme argument. I used to think that it was a valid reason to excuse Beane, but got set straight here by a long time member (whose name escapes me at the moment). He made the very valid point that every NFL team utilizes both power/gap and I/O zone schemes. Also Teller has done just as well when running plays in both as he is as strong as he is agile. Here is a breakdown of him playing against one of the best DTs in the league - Matthew Ioannidis:

I agree that both sides of the coin are important to look at. Some people here really get worked up over any perceived criticism even when presented in a fuller context. The Bills have been on the wrong side of stuff like this at times - and that can be frustrating - but they’ve been in the right side a lot too.

Good thinking. That would be a goldmine.