BarleyNY

That makes a lot of sense. Star took a cut in pay for the guarantee of being here - and paid - an additional season. Each side had to get something in the deal.

Ken Zampese was the Browns QB coach in 2018. You are correct in your assessment. Mayfield respected him and they worked well together. In 2019 Kitchens did not retain Zampese and moved Ryan Lindley from RB coach to QB coach. Lindley had been a QB, but he and Mayfield pretty much hated each other. Mayfield didn’t respect him or listen to him - and it showed. I am not assigning blame on that. On one hand Mayfield worked well with his previous coach. On the other he sure didn’t put in the time he should’ve in the off-season leading up to the 2019 season. We will now see who Mayfield is. He has seen what coasting results in and he now has Stefanski as HC/de facto OC. He has gotten a lot out of his QBs in the past. He’s also got Van Pelt as OC/de facto QB coach. His main job is to get Mayfield in order and he is a guy known for hard coaching. The pieces are in place so if Mayfield fails, it’s on him.

Players who are at an artificial ceiling would save ownership the difference between that and their market value. But that saved money does not have to flow to other players. It could easily just go into an owner’s pocket. Any mechanism that artificially lowers compensation for some players will lower overall compensation for players unless there is another mechanism in place to raise it for others. The league could cap some players’ salaries if they raised the cap floor to counter thaw impact, for example.

I don’t hate this idea. Not at all. In fact I think acquiring Lamb is worth a lot in terms of draft capital. If you’re going to suggest something this big it’s a good idea to make a case for why this player stands above so many others. You didn’t really do that in your OP. But I’ve looked at Lamb a bit. He really is the kind of prospect that’s worth making a big move for. If he gets to 10ish he probably could be had for 22, 86 and our 2021 first. We might even get a late round pick kicked back to us. That’s not a bad deal. We have enough day 3 picks to move back up to get another day 2 pick. If the Bills think he’s an elite talent and that he stands well above who they could get at 22 or later, then I’d be happy to see them do it. Wow. A 4.55 40 would knock his value down a bit.

The $28k fine was ridiculous. The league did right by reducing it to $4k. I think the initial fine was probably the boiler plate fine for that specific infraction.

Yeah, this isn’t the part of the rebuild where we could be expected to shed FAs. We purged the roster and built up cap space reserves. We’re spending on FAs for 2 or 3 seasons while this regime’s draft picks are under their rookie deals. In another couple years we (hopefully) will be in a situation where we are shedding FAs that are being replaced by younger/better players. We will earn our Comp picks then.

Yeah. That makes sense. I was thinking about that sort of thing. Once I got past thinking about how the Ford call boned the Bills I could l see why the rule is in place. The upside of reduced injuries is worth the downside of taking away blocks like Ford’s. It sucks when something like that works against us, but the reason for that rule is sound.

I can’t remember who did this, but someone in sports media talked to a bunch of offensive linemen about that kind of block. They all pretty much said that no way are they letting their QB get hit. They’re laying the block on the defensive player. So Ford isn’t alone here. If the rule isn’t getting changed then the blockers either have to use their hands to make contact or find a way to change their footwork so it’s legal. The footwork thing has to be tricky though. If the defender is running, then a blocker stopping is going to get plowed. Ditto if they change direction and stay between the ball carrier and the defender. OTOH defenders have to deal with a lot of rules that work against them. Maybe we just let them have this one. Splitting out a FB, TE or big WR in order to have them lay a blindside block on a defender can be devastating. That’s what the league is trying to avoid. The problem is that plays like Ford’s get caught up with all of that.

Thanks for posting the rules video. Every single one of those plays looked like football to me. It’s a terrible rule that was properly enforced with Ford. So now they have to teach players that they can only punch or push with their hands in those situations. Super.

Yup. I don’t blame him for not wanting to play for the Bungles. He can do his best to avoid that, but he has virtually no real leverage. He might have to suck it up and force his way out later. Play out his four plus fifth year option, then make them franchise him every year until they finally have to trade him or let him walk.

That’s a fair take. My issues with Lewis going in the first are the injury history and the lack of production this season when he was finally healthy all year. Who knows though, maybe he wasn’t all the way back from the ACL. He’s an intriguing prospect though.

I used to travel a lot for work. I never minded the person in front of me reclining. I reclined sometimes myself - especially if they did. I always thought that it is dumb to have the ability to recline if it was going to be seen as a problem. I recently flew on Spirit and those seats did not recline. Oh the other hand, I hope there’s a special place in hell for competent adults who push against the backs of other seats with their legs, bang on the seats in front of them, repeatedly drop their tray open and/or stick their shoeless feet through the spaces between or over the seats. F those MFers.

Yup. I really don’t think they’re worth much at this point except for getting an idea of what part of the draft players are likely to go and team needs. Things will clear up a lot after FA gets going. Then they’ll be worth debating. With that all said, Terrell Lewis at 22 is ridiculous. That’s like two rounds early. I’d expect some major explanation to go with that pick. It really wasn’t given. DE at 22, sure. Lewis at 22, uhhh, no.

I was listening to a podcast awhile back so this is from memory. A former GM was talking about the first open tryout they ever did - in Dallas I believe. They had a lot of people show up, many more than they were expecting. They divided them into two groups - WRs and everyone else. And the WR group was much larger than the other. The upshot of that is that there are a lot of people (relative to other positions) who have the minimum physical abilities needed to play WR in the NFL. That makes a lot of sense when you consider the different types of WRs there are and the different roles they fill. But success in the NFL requires a lot more than physical gifts. Some develop those and some don't, but the pool of people who might is so deep that those aren’t necessarily 1st round players. Sure, WRs who are big, fast and agile will be a bigger priority than those that lack one of those characteristics, but many of that latter group will surpass the former group even if they don’t have the same ceiling.

Two CBAs ago the owners were in disarray and took it in the shorts a bit, but managed to put a clause in to get out of that deal out early. Then they got their crap together, opted out early and hammered the players on the last deal. So I’d expect the players to get back a little bit here. But they are inherently at a disadvantage since they are so short term dependent while the owners can play the long game. I get the feeling that this might be the issue. That the players are looking at the last deal and thinking they should’ve done better and need to this time while the owners think they have the advantage and can get an even better deal. They’re both probably right and that’s going to be the issue. The easy way out is to find some more money by having an extra regular season game or more playoff teams. I have no idea where this lands, but it’s a situation ripe for an impasse. They’ve been negotiating. The league has been pushing a 17 game season and/or more playoff teams, but the players union has rebuffed them to this point.

Totally agree. The 8-8 Steelers and the 8-8 Cowboys or Bears would’ve made the playoffs last season. Yuck. It’s such diminishing returns for the NFL. They add Thursday night games and viewership of other games - especially Monday night - drop off. Now they want to add another playoff team which will make a lot of people just a little less interested in the regular season. Lots of bad things happen long term when people go after the last nickel.

Both are due roster bonuses on March 22nd. $750k for Kroft, $500k for Smith. $2M of Kroft’s salary guarantees in that date as well. No sense paying them that if they aren’t in our plans. I’d certainly expect Kroft to be cut before then. His contract was always ridiculous. Smith is making less and he has $1M of his salary guaranteed. We are going to pay him $3.25M to play for us or $1M not to. Don’t know what’ll happen there, but he’s certainly replaceable if we move on.

Seriously. Y’all gotta take care of ya chicken. That’s just common sense. I mean, everyone knows that.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thevikingage.com/2020/02/18/report-minnesota-vikings-looking-move-diggs/amp/

I’m not sure how much of the rift between Diggs and the Vikings is his fault. So there’s some locker room risk, but for a second I pull the trigger. He is worth more that so I’ll take the discount to our second due to that risk.

Any competent GM would’ve cut them. They are among the players that those around the team expected to be cut, traded or asked to take a pay cut. Hubbard, Richardson, Burnett, Mitchell and Kirksey would be the others.

In general, I’d only consider such a deal if we were getting some significant value beyond the draft pick equivalent of the cap hit - especially considering the pick would be a year away. In this case, it’d depend on the compensation. We’d be paying Johnson $11.15M to play for us in 2020 or $10.2M not to. I’d expect the latter. Cleveland took a second to eat $16M. That’s a big discount so it is not my ballpark. I pass unless I get their 2021 first, which won’t happen even with us giving a 2020 third or something like that. What’s likely to happen is that Arizona eats part of his salary and trades him.

There were two special circumstances that led to the Osweiler trade: 1) Houston needed cap space immediately. Arizona doesn’t. They’re unlikely to be able to use all of their space almost no matter what they do. Even if they go totally nuts this offseason they can easily push out first year cap hits on their deals. 2) Cleveland needed to work around a big issue. They could not get free agents to come there without massively overpaying. So it made sense to use some of their ample cap space to buy a draft pick - a pick in the following season due to league rules by the way. Buffalo isn’t a premier destination, but things aren’t remotely in that ballpark here. Think about it this way: The Bills would want to be fairly compensated for eating X dollars of cap space. Each draft pick has a dollar value equivalent. Simply put that'd be the market value of an equivalent FA player minus the contract of the rookie (total over 4 seasons). The Bills would want that to be compensated with whatever pick equated to X dollars - or better. Why would either team make that trade without some additional incentive? Neither team here really has that.

Please control yourself. You’re making a spectacle.

Not with these cuts. All had way underperformed their contracts and were expected cuts before the regime change.