BarleyNY

Agreed. I'd throw in the asinine deal we gave Clay and the $6M we pissed away on Harvin as well. Tagging Glenn and trying to work out a long term deal might be the best strategy.

Thanks for the info.

Agreed. It's difficult to skip the pissing matches and still catch the relevant posts. Also I'm going to have to respectfully demand a larger pic of your avatar.

Zero chance. He's due a $2.5M roster bonus well before the draft. I don't see a date for it, but it's usually in March right after the start of the league year. Plus he's got a $500k workout bonus that might or might not be in play pre-draft. Then you have the issue of not having the cap space his release would free up until draft day - which means basically all of the free agents it could be spent on are gone. Also the odds that any potential trade partner would actually have enough cap space to acquire him on draft day is pretty slim. He will be off the team no later than the day his roster bonus is due. Incidentally, if the Bills don't pay that roster bonus he becomes a free agent immediately upon them missing the payment date. That only applies to any future guaranteed money (and even in those cases there are sometimes offsets). Mario has nothing guaranteed so the dead money and cap hit is exactly the same whether he's traded or released.

I won't repeat who others have said, but you don't pay a guy who is Kyle's age $6.5M on the off chance that he can convert from DT to DE.

Up front money, particularly the signing bonus, is usually the only guaranteed money a player gets and is a huge factor in negotiations. The upper echelon players have been getting more guarantees of late and Clay's contract is an extreme example of that. He got guaranteed money totaling $24.5M in the first two seasons and only $13.5M in non-guaranteed money in years 3-5. It was structured that way to make sure Miami wouldn't match, but it is not a smart contract structure and seems far in excess of what Miami would have matched. http://overthecap.com/player/charles-clay/675/ The other reason for large signing bonuses is that teams can entice a player to sign by offering a large initial payout, but can defer the cap hit by prorating it over a number of years (up to 5). Most contract structures do have rising salaries as years go on. Usually a contract is structured with a relatively large signing bonus, but small base salaries in the first year or two. Then larger salaries that increase over the duration of the deal. Sometimes there is even a huge salary in the last season to either artificially inflate the overall size of the contract (agents like that) or to force a new contract (sort of a pre-negotiated tag without using a tag). Lastly, if a player is on his last deal sometimes the salaries will drop off at the end. That is rare, but it happens. It is a nice structure if a player wants to end his career with a team, but sees a drop off in play on the horizon.

It seems like you don't understand how the cap works - or you're already thinking about parting ways with Clay. The Clay contract was stupid, but eating the whole $10M roster bonus this offseason is point.ess unless you're looking at cutting him in the very near future. The Bills can take the full $10M hit this season or take $2.5M this season and defer $7.5M to future years when the hits would be a smaller percentage of the total cap. They can also roll that $7.5M in space they saved forward, which is exactly the same as if they don't defer it.

Since cap space can be carried forward this makes no sense. A restructure give the Bills more cap flexibility.

I totally agree. My worry is that Mario is only the first domino to fall and that we will see a big turnover in the front seven. There is a lot of talent in that group as well as a lot of money invested in them. It'd be a shame to see them wasted and dismantled because the coaches only know how to run a passive, 2 gap defense.

I'd like to clarify something here. I would rarely (almost never) want to see big free agent spending spree. I prefer to build through the draft and reasonably priced free agents to fill in the holes. What I'd refer to as salary cap hell is when a team's salary cap situation causes a huge purge of (decrease in) talent. That's why I've been referring to their situation as "salary cap heck". It won't be a huge purge of talent like New Orleans, but I see a decrease in overall talent even with a draft. The people they signed last year got them to an 8-8 record. I don't exactly see a big improvement in that record if they can't improve the talent on the team. The only other avenue for improvement is improved utilization of talent or improved health. I don't see a huge help from either and I'm not one to sit and hope they'll just get lucky.

Yes, it will add $7.5M in space for 2016. It's simply changing Clay's guaranteed $10M roster bonus to a signing bonus. Instead of taking the entire hit in 2016, it'll get spread out as $2.5M hits over four years (including 2016).

Thanks for posting. That was definitely worth reading.

Exactly.

Mario had 14.5 sacks in 2014 and 13 in 2013. He had 5 last season. Hughes dropped from 10 to 5 for reference. The production from Mario's spot might not see much of a drop, but the potential for production from his position sure will. Added production last season? Not really much, if any overall. It sure didn't show up in the Bills' record.

That's a lot of expectations for a lot of improvement. Maybe it happens, but I'm not putting money on all of that. Besides, that doesn't account for any players whose play falls off. Freed up money doesn't directly equate to talent acquired. In fact, the likeliest destinations for Mario's salary cap savings are retention of current players. That is a net loss.

New Orleans is in cap hell, the Bills are in cap heck. It's manageable, but the current situation will make it difficult to stay even or improve in terms of overall talent.

On the Mario or Rex issue, they certainly don't coexist well. I understand Mario has to go - for a variety of reasons. But if he had still been in a defense where rushing the passer was his primary responsibility we'd probably be talking about the possibility of a contract extension for him to lower his cap hit, not the inevitability of his exit. I hate seeing coaches waste talent like with Mario. It points to inflexibility on their part. The best coaches make the most of what they have to work with. The problem I have on the personnel side is that Glenn and Incognito or Mario wasn't the only choice here. It might be now, but there were other places money for Mario (especially if his deal was reworked) could have come from. It doesn't make sense to do that based on his responsibilities in the current scheme, but if he was still primarily rushing the passer it sure might have been. The Bills have spent poorly/questionably recently: a tremendous overpayment for Clay, Shady's huge deal and $6M thrown away on Harvin last season leap to mind. Then there are the Dareus and Hughes deals that looked very reasonable when they were signed, but now I find somewhat questionable due to scheme. Paying big money to players that excelled in an attacking one-gap scheme, then making them change to a more passive two-gap scheme has trouble written all over it. I just do not see how the defense improves much next season. It's not about the players becoming familiar with the scheme, it's that most of the front seven talent doesn't fit the scheme.

Yup. Tailor the offense to fit your franchise QB if you have the good fortune to find one.

Why is Peyton Manning's affiliation with a Republican presidential candidate surprising to anyone? He's originally from a very red state and he's incredibly tight with Papa John's founder, John Schnatter, who has been an enormous GOP supporter over the years. That came to light when he made some incredibly idiotic comments sometime around the last presidential election.

Yes, at the very end of the 2015 season after rumors of the team planning to cut him in the offseason surfaced Mario did seem to give up - and he was criticized by one anonymous teammate for quitting. Did that ever happen before in his career? I have a difficult time believing that suddenly, at the end of his 10th season he became a malcontent. The Bills didn't get a lot out of Mario this past season and what they did get is replaceable at a fraction of his cost. Plus he's getting toward the end of his career and it was never reasonable to think he'd see the end of his deal. I agree with you on all of that. But the coaching staff utilized him specifically - and the other defensive players generally - very poorly. Many of them were frustrated about the scheme and the results. Fans were too. Cutting Mario is not going to help any of those underlying problems. I'm not as upset about losing Mario as I am with the general direction of the team. I don't like seeing people cheer this move because the underlying reasons are troubling. The way the Bills have spent and their consequent cap situation is going to mean that they'll likely have less talent on the team in 2016 than they did in 2015. Furrmore, the coaches have not allowed their defensive talent to perform through a scheme I'll-suited to most of them. So what will happen next offseason? I fear more purging of talented players that don't fit Rex's scheme. Players that have been effective for the Bills in the past and still could be if the scheme was better suited to them. I was a supporter of hiring Rex, but what happened this past season with the defense has made me reconsider. I will need to see a much better defense next year to bring me back over to his side.

So if Mario can't tell his coaches he's being used incorrectly, then how do you feel about Wakins running to his agent and the media telling them he's not being thrown to enough? The "he quit" narrative doesn't have much backing it up. Mario sure seemed frustrated at times, but saying he quit is just hyperbole. You know who quit? Harvin. That's quitting. And you're ignoring my point about the team losing a good bit of talent when Mario is released. He had good years up until this past one and I suspect he'll have another good one in 2016 somewhere else. How does that help the Bills?

I hate the "his production doesn't match his pay" line of "reasoning" in this case. Mario performed at a very high level when utilized properly. It could be argued (and I have) that he was a little overcompensated, but his lack of production this past year was utilization related. The best coaches mold their schemes to fit talent/personnel and we sure didn't see that with Mario or the defense in general last season. His release (when it inevitably happens) is going to be spun as an indictment of Mario, but it really should be seen as a coaching failure. The front office made their choices last offseason. They signed Clay, Shady and Hughes to huge deals and there's only so much money to go around. In fact, it's certainly possible that the coaches didn't tailor their scheme to fit Mario because they'd already decided he was gone after 2015. Regardless of his (mis)utilization last season, the Bills will be losing a lot of talent when he exits.

Thanks for posting. Gotta love Alton Brown!

So you think you'll be closer in an NFL venue?

Just days ago I was thinking how sad it was that the Manziel thread was the longest on the front page. I retract that.