BarleyNY

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.

I scrolled past this a couple nights ago and the wife blurted out "Oh my god! 4 Falls of Buffalo!" We have not watched it. Seems like something to punish my kids with if they get out of hand.

Not quite, it depends on the contract structure. For a contract that large there would be a signing bonus. So let’s look at a 4 year, $40M contract with the following structure: $10M signing bonus and salaries of $4M, $6m, $9.5M and $10.5 M. The cap hit associated with the signing bonus would be split among all 4 years. Here are the cap hits and cash payments: Y1: $6.5M (salary + 1/4 of signing bonus) [$14M cash] Y2: $8.5M [$6M cash, $20M total] Y3: $12.0M [$9.5M cash, $29.5M total] Y4: $13.0M [$10.5M cash, $40M total] Now, let’s say the player gets cut in March of Y3. The caps hits would be thus: Y1: $6.5M (salary + 1/4 of signing bonus) [$14M cash] Y2: $8.5M [$6M cash, $20M total] Y3: $5M (remainder of signing bonus) [$0 cash] So it is easy to see why teams use signing and restructure bonuses to kick out cap hits. And why players like that.

Cincy hitting Higgins with the tag so quickly tells us that they won’t be signing him long term. He either gets traded or plays on it this season and walks next. Either is a win for the Bengals, though a trade is the more favorable. To the end they made sure to tag him before the combine, where potential deals can be discussed. Smart move on their part.

He is one of the obvious restructures. Nice to see it moving along.

It would depend a lot on how we got there.

Just heard McDermott reiterate that “Only one team gets to lift the Lombardi trophy.” and that “31 teams go home disappointed every season.” In addition to McDermott having said this multiple times already I’ve heard Beane say something similar this offseason. My unpopular opinion is that I hate hearing the leaders of the team say crap like this. It gives everyone an excuse for failure every season. Oh well, there’s 31 of us. <shrug> No big deal. I wonder how he’d have responded to Bass if, after missing the game tying kick, he said something like that?

Or if he hand not played a significant portion of the season with a broken wrist.

This. If a team has an owner who has cash and is willing to spend it, then it is a sustainable model. But you have to spend on good players and then get out of their contracts by the time they aren’t anymore.

A couple weeks ago I noticed that Tasker on 550 and some other media close to the Bills started pushing the narrative that the team “had to get younger”. I took that to mean that the team was going to move on from some of the bigger names. This was the team’s way of preparing the fan base for it so there’s be less of a backlash or uproar. This would fit.

Okay, but it’s not like KC’s wasn't and they lost to Cincy. I’m not sure how unpopular it is either. I’ve read more posts like that than I can count. Every season it’s the same thing: “If x, y and/or z hadn’t happened, then we’d have won it all that year.” I’m not convinced. Pressure mounts throughout the playoffs and the Bills are yet to handle that well. I’ll give you this though, I think that it was their best opportunity for a championship.

The first thing to understand is that every dollar teams pay a player must be accounted for on the salary cap.* So if the Bills were to rework Von’s contract they would still be on the hook for cap hits for what they’ve paid him but hasn’t been account for. Think about it this way: There’s a running total of how much a team pays a player. Eventually the cap hits must equal that total. There is no way around that. *There are a few exceptions to this: 1) The Veteran Signing Benefit allows teams to give a small number of veteran players on vet minimum deals a small signing bonus that doesn’t hit the cap. 2) Cash that teams recoup from a player. 3) Salary forfeited by players who are suspended.