BarleyNY

Trouble usually stems from focusing too closely on short term financial gains at the expense of long term ones. TNF is a great example. Extra revenue from an additional prime time game during the week. But the TNF product is relatively poor and it can cannibalize the viewership of other games. The lower quality of product can also have other negative impacts such as hurting the overall brand. It was a good short term play, but I think the jury is out on whether it is a good longer-term one.

Simile: noun definition: a word or phrase that compares something to something else, using the words like or as.

Greed seems to get every good thing eventually. 18 games. Thursday Night Football. Increasing difficulty in properly refereeing games due to ever increasing judgement calls. Homogenization of offenses and defenses. Invitation of private equity funds into ownership. Partnership with legalized gambling. Sanitation and homogenization of announcers. Prioritization of spectacle over substance. And the crusade for every last nickel from fans, networks and the government subsidies. The product is getting worse and worse overall, but is still buoyed by the stars on the field. I love the game, but it’s getting more and more difficult to watch and enjoy. Side note: The trickle down impact to college football is even more stark. The money got too great and it is now shared with the players (as it should be IMO). But there used to be a great variety of offenses run and I always enjoyed that. I’d try to make a point to watch GA Tech once a year just because they ran the triple option. Now they just run a crappier version of the same offense 95% of college runs. Now it’s about talent acquisition and execution. But the lack of variety has killed my desire to watch a lot of games. It’s simply watching the same thing over and over with varying degrees of quality. I liken it to walking down the cereal aisle and seeing that all of the boxes are now some variant of Frosted Wheats. A great cereal to be sure, but no other option. No Frosted Flakes. No Cinnamon Toast Crunch. No Fruit Loops. No granola. Just FMWs of varying quality and flavors. At some point I’m going to eat a lot less cereal than I used to.

He was the DPOY again last season. It’s not close to what he’s worth. So the Browns would laugh and hang up.

That’s not close to enough to get Garrett. And Elam is worth nothing in trade.

If the sauce is delicious, the the defense must be malicious. But please no. Not everything needs a nickname. And this one seems forced.

There will be plenty of cap space next season once the team makes some obvious moves - restructures, cuts and a reworked deal or two. The real wildcard will be what happens with Allen’s contract. I think Benford stays. Douglas walks. He’s still productive for us, but he’s nearing the end.

Part of the trade value for Cooper was his contract.

Never is a long time. We are talking huge sums of money here. Once the owners get a taste, they’ll be looking for more. Then the ownership rules will be relaxed.

Exactly. No degree of difficulty consideration. Which makes Allen’s 2023 grade that much more impressive.

They did have him graded as the #1 QB last season and in their “Elite” category pre-season. PFF’s scores are often problematic though. They rate players on a scale against what they’re asked to do. Players like Allen always get graded more severely than ones that are asked to do less (Cousins, Geno Smith, Dak, etc.).

Very different experience here. Went once and was very, very disappointed in the food and whole experience. Honestly, Wegman’s or Dash’s is a step up IMO - and I rarely eat their sushi. At Wind they use delivery robots, which doesn’t work well. We watched two other tables take food of ours (and other tables) off of it. That didn’t help. Very limited raw menu with very small fish portions compared to the rice. And that’s a big problem because their rule is that all of the rice must be eaten or you get charged an additional fee. The whole experience seemed very “low rent” to me. You will never get the kind of sushi quality and experience in WNY that you can find on the West Coast, but some places are better than others. My go to is Fuji Grill on Maple and N Forest. NOT the one on Transit. As good of fish quality as you’ll get in this part of the country and some great appetizers and rolls. I recommend the yellowtail poppers, torched scallops and tuna tapas for apps. That along with a sashimi deluxe and couple rolls (Fireball, Fish Finder, French Cake, Fuji, etc.) is a great meal to have with friends.

It just boils down to what the Bills brass think of the chances of Milano being a productive and healthy player moving forward and - their appraisal of Williams. As of now WLB needs a better player than Williams and one they can count on being healthy more than Milano has been. If they think that Williams will continue to improve, then it’s reasonable to go with him. If Milano reworks his contract and they want to roll with him, then that’s reasonable too. But it also makes a lot of sense to acquire a difference making player that’s young and healthy to do the job.

I agree that the likely course is Milano taking a paycut (with incentives added to compensate him fully if he stays healthy). But people here should know that if Diggs can get cut with $31M in dead cap, then cutting Milano is also a realistic possibility.

This is true. I look at it this way: - Cash: Looking at future cash payouts to players is the appropriate way to compare two players. The 2024 hit would be negligible and then Wu has cash payouts of $5.25M* in 2025 and then $12.5M each in 2026 and 2027 at while Milano has ‘25 & ‘26 at $10M each. So we’d have Wu for 3 years at almost the exact the same AAV as Milano. - Cap: The accounting of cash paid and due is something that has to work too. In this case Wu’s contract is structured to kick cap hits down the road as far as possible. By my calculations he’d only have a $2.68M cap hit in 2025. If the Bills cut Milano they’d lose about $1.13M in cap space due to $17.25 M in dead cap. They could push some of that out with a post 6/1 designation. But the thing to remember about dead cap like this - it’s a sunk cost. The cap would be okay in this case though. - Trade: You gotta give up something of value to get something of value. So I’m not opposed to giving up a decent pick. I just haven’t settled on how much I’d give up. * I misread his contract details prior to my last post. I thought all three years were at $12.5M, but 2025 is $5.25M. The Browns contracts are tough to decipher but cash payouts are at the bottom of OTC’s player pages and that helps.

I honestly don’t think the Browns will trade JOK. It wouldn’t be smart. But the numbers are not bad. Vet min plus some per game active roster bonuses this year, then $12.5M in each of the next 3 years. Not much more than what Milano is due. And, yeah, he’d be great on the Bills.

I think the Bills only do something like this if they’ve decided to move on from Milano. He’ll be 31 before next season starts, only played in 5 games in 2023 and may not play in any this season. He's been one of my favorite Bills, but it’s tough to justify paying him $10M next season. Maybe he reworks his deal to stay, but I think the correct (albeit difficult) decision is to find his replacement.

I understand if you don’t want to dump a ton of money in the LB corps, but there’s no comparison between Wu and Williams. Wu is special. Williams is limited. Also I’d note that Wu would be dirt cheap this season due to the Browns restructuring his salary.

Heard that the Bills and Rams have called Cleveland about Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (aka Wu, JOK). He’d be the perfect long term Milano replacement IMO. No word on what was offered or Cleveland’s level of interest in trading him though.

That is a blow to one of my FF teams.

That is incorrect. The Browns have been eeking out every cent they can on the salary cap. That means yearly restructures of salary into signing bonuses. As such, Garrett’s salary for the season is $1.2M. If traded, only the prorated portion of that amount would come with him. https://overthecap.com/player/myles-garrett/5585

Jerry Jones didn’t want to pay him $20M a season so he got shipped to the Browns for almost nothing. Then $20M became a deal for WRs of his caliber. He only got traded this season because the Browns knew he was gone as a FA in the offseason and their current season is shot.

I thought he should’ve been their hire too. I expect Vrable to be HC of the Eagles, Browns (where he’s currently a consultant) or Patriots by next season. Mayo must’ve really screwed up royally to lose a locker room so quickly. Any insight as to why he’s so hated now? I never heard that type of thing while he was DC.

I previously mentioned Za’Darius Smith as an option at DE. All I can add to what I said before is that there are now multiple teams talking to Cleveland about trading for him. The interwebs say that Detroit is in on him. He also seems to want to go there so he can play against his former team, the Vikings.

They tried to trade up for a QB in this past draft and had no problem with that being broadcast on Hard Knocks. I think that was their plan: one season to see if he could develop and a second as a bridge. They just couldn’t complete a trade up to get a QB they wanted in the draft.