BarleyNY

I haven’t watched enough of the WRs that are legit targets to have an opinion. But that list tells me to look at the tape for these guys. Elite traits are always desirable, but the tape has to justify the pick.

Something to think about for those who do put a lot stock in Combine 40 times:

He seems like a guy you only want to bring in if you have nothing vested in him. Who knows how he’s recovered from his accident? You can’t have guaranteed money or real cap space allocated to a player in that situation.

I am very interested in the roster decisions the Bills have in front of them. Obvious, simple restructures are going to happen for some players like Allen. No suspense there. But they’ve got a lot of decisions to be made on players. That’s the interesting stuff.

I think this mock shows why the Bills are going to want to trade up or back. 28 is just not a good place to sit.

I linked an article on it in another post, but I can’t find anything about how it was ever resolved. This happened under Gase. The Jets fined him for missing practices with the injury and then cut him after he elected to have surgery they did not approve. They claim that the wrong MRI they sent to their doctors was a mistake. His agent said that they were going to file grievances to have the fines refunded and his salary paid. I don’t see anything about how it got resolved though.

Honestly, Cousins or Fields plus Evans and MHJ would be a pretty damn good start to turning things around there. Gotta bring back some players like Brown and Onwenu too.

I just must be missing that. And the other question?

They do? I’ve certainly heard it before but do t remember hearing it from HCs much. Certainly not as much as I’m hearing it from McDermott this off-season. Do those HCs also accept “bad luck” as an excuse from their players or assistants when they fail?

You can’t be serious. Every other team’s HC says the same thing - and I don’t see any of them laying the fault of their failures to improve toward that end at the feet of bad luck. Again, is that an excuse he’d ever accept from a player or coordinator? Let’s be clear on the point. McDermott has not improved. His playoff record against 5-7 seeds is 5-0 but against 1-4 seeds it’s 0-6. All but one of those games (a loss against Jax) was with Josh Allen at QB. Allen wasn’t a top 3 QB his second season, but he has been since. Yet the Bills haven’t beat a single team capable of winning a championship in the playoffs. That’s not bad luck and I cringe at people when the parrot that load of BS and give McDermott yet another pass.

It’s sad that you think that’s the alternative. Blaming “bad luck” is a loser’s mentality. How many of his players get to use bad luck as an excuse for their failures? If the answer isn’t zero, then that’s a problem. Using it himself is ridiculous. A good leader has to focus his team on what they can control. In general Id expect someone in his position to give a general indication of where he and the team need to improve and what he was going to do to make that happen.

Agreed. Also more teams are now owned by billionaires who made their money elsewhere and want to win. They have plenty of cash to throw around so now we have more teams looking to maximize their competitive position through maximizing their spending.

An example: A team wants to sign a player to a 1 year, $7M contract, but wants to lower the cap hit in the current season. They could pay him $2M in salary plus a $5M signing bonus and add four void years to the one year deal. (5 is the maximum number of years that a signing bonus can be spread over.) His cap hit would show as this: Y1 - $3M ($2M salary + $1M signing bonus) Y2 thru Y5 void years - $1M each (signing bonus) It’s important to point out that once the contract voids all remaining cap hits would accelerate into the current season. So the cap hits for the player would be $3M in Y1 and then $4M in Y2. However if the team were to extend the player before his contract voids, then the $1M cap hits would stay in place. They would only accelerate once the player was no longer under contract.

Thanks for the info. It does seem like Beane been shopping with McDermott’s list. That fits with it being his show.

That would be more like a typical draft. The way I understood it, the NFL as a whole would usually have about 250 or so prospects with a 7th round or better grade on them. This year it’s more like 150.

This is a huge issue. The new team would be taking on $5.5M in guaranteed salary and roster bonus (due at training camp) for Wilson. No one will do that unless they get more in picks back than they give (i.e. Osweiler trade). The Jest are going to have to eat most of that to get some team to take him off their hands for a swap of 7th round picks.

Thanks for the link and thread. I heard that NIL (and to a lesser extent the last of the Covid impact) has diluted this draft class immensely and that there are only about 150 players in this class that would be drafted in a typical year. That means that everyone beyond that is a UDFA level player. The Bills have picks 28, 60, 99, 129, 159, 162, 192, 198, 206 & 246. So as it stands they have 4 valuable picks, 2 picks with borderline draftable player value and 4 picks for priority FAs. Obviously utilizing picks beyond 150 in trade ups, player trades and future year picks would be wise, although there might be less opportunity for that than usual. It's worth keeping in mind the diminished value of those picks when trades happen.

Who has the final say in those decisions is still an open question. I think it’s McDermott, but the Bills won’t divulge the information. My reasoning is that McDermott was not only hired first, but waited until after Beane’s contract ran out with Carolina (post draft) rather than hire him immediately. At the time a promotion to a position with final control over the roster would have kept Carolina from blocking Beane from interviewing. (Rules have since changed.)

No, the funniest part is that some people are arguing that Mel Kuiper’s draft has any value at all. It should be free because it’s worthless. And, yes, I’ve seen it. I have ESPN+ included with another service I pay for. I would never actually pay for ESPN+.

I think that’s his floor in this draft. He could legit go in the top 15.

I was also surprised by this.

No. He’s out of other people to blame. He’d already fired all of his coordinators prior, so now all he has left is to blame it on bad luck. The alternative would be to actually take real accountability himself.

Osemele story That’s exactly what Hardman wanted - and what the Jets did.

Multiple reasons that they have multiple rings. More often than not they make their own luck.

The Jets are a garbage organization - and that’s a reflection of their owner. I don’t blame a player for sticking up for themselves if they are getting lied to and treated like crap. Good for him. I’ll remind everyone that the Jets used an old MRI to convince a player that he was healthy enough to play and would not further injure himself if he did. The more recent MRI showed that he was far more injured and that playing would put him at risk of further injury. Seriously, F the Jets.