BarleyNY

If you were an NFL GM, what would you trade for Ed Oliver and his one year, fully guaranteed $10.75M contract?

All true. But the combination of losing both White and Miller along with the timing of the injuries really, really hurt the team. This is not to say that the coaching staff or many other players performed at an acceptable level. Or even that Beane has drafted well enough. Those are separate issues.

Totally. The whole team, coaches, trainers and other staff are in on it pretending he visited the locker room and talked to them twice on Sunday.

And Tre White.

The numbers are the easy part of a GM’s job. Teams get good cap projections based on league revenue projections. Even the teams that get into cap hell planned to be there. Usually they were chasing a ring and had a QB at the end of his career. The complications that are the most worrying are expensive players with a lot of guaranteed money that don’t live up to their contracts for whatever reason. Unfortunately the Bills have two of them, both due to injury and no fault of the player or team. White and Miller are huge cap expenditures and the Bills are in the middle of it with them. They lost White for the latter part of last season, last season’s playoffs and got him back at much less than 100% for the end of this season and the playoffs. Miller’s best case scenario looks very similar. That’s a ton of cap space that the Bills lost due to some very bad luck.

I think you gotta give White a chance to come back to full health. Besides, no team would trade for him with his current contract unless they saw the old Tre White first. If we get that, then we want him here. Also Elam has a lot to prove before he starts. Oliver has been a good DT, but not a great one, and that is very disappointing for a top 10 pick. He’s set to make $10.75M on his fifth year option in 2023 - that is all fully guaranteed. So the question is what, if anything, other teams would trade for him. I don’t think we’d get a lot of interest mainly because teams would look for either a cheaper player at his level or they’d pay a better one.

Yup. The real risk is if you do it with a player that decides to phone it in or becomes a problem. They already got almost all of their money for the season so the team doesn’t have any leverage. They can’t cut them right away and a suspension doesn’t cost the player much money because they are only getting the vet minimum salary. This brings up an interesting point because it pertains to the recent Stefan Diggs drama. If the Bills restructure Diggs I think it’s a good sign that things got worked out. If they don’t, then the team might be taking things a little more cautiously.

Restructuring the maximum possible amounts for Allen, Diggs, Miller, White, Milano and Dawkins would take us up to $49.2M in cap space (assuming a league base cap of $225M). We’d have 39 players under contract and lots of work to be done.

That’s correct, but it will be necessary. There is also the advantage of a discount for pushing cap hits to future years. That’s because the cap (almost) always increases and the cap hit moving forward stays at the same nominal value. It does make a big difference cumulatively and when done over multiple years. If anyone wants to see how restructuring the contracts of Allen and other players would impact this year’s cap space and cap space into the future you can use OTC’s calculator. If you select the “restructure” option next to a player it populates the fields with the maximum amounts that can be restructured and spreads that out over the length of the existing contract. https://overthecap.com/calculator/buffalo-bills

I agree with your overall point. The lack of resources allocated to WR is a very big problem and we’ve seen the results. I don’t think that Davis would be good in the slot though. He is more of a straight line guy who has some issues with separation. A stud slot WR would be the path of we keep Davis as a starter. It would work very well if the new addition could play inside or out so that we could take Davis off the field in two WR sets. One minor note - Mahomes has Kelce, but little else in the way of quality receiving options. His WRs are not special at all. Previously he had one of the best with Hill, but he hasn’t missed a beat this season without him. Burrow’s WR corps is stacked, obviously. Anything remotely close to that would be amazing to have here.

I don’t see any critical thinking in this or most other conspiracy theories. For instance, in this case a little bit of critical thinking debunks it. Hamlin went to the locker room and spoke to the team at least twice. The odds of everyone in and around that locker room (players, trainers, coaches, media, etc) being in on a conspiracy to pretend Hamlin was there and managing to keep quiet about it is effectively zero. There’s also the point that there is really nothing for anyone to gain by having someone impersonate him. Critical thinking involves the application of logic, not the thought that “anything could’ve happened so I’m just going to believe what I want!”

Not necessarily on the ribs. I read that they used the AED machine. Not sure how long they did manual chest compressions. Also they were done by a professional, not someone off the street who took a first aid class six years ago.

I see BOB in the same mold as coaches like Doug Marrone and Butch Davis. Very competent coaches that are constantly chasing the last dollar and more power so they can get more dollars. Chasing dollars definitely takes precedent over character or morality for that group. Really a very good coach but a mercenary and a watch-your-back guy to have in the organization. That’s my 2¢.

The Bills defense sure looks an awful lot like Carolina’s did when McDermott was DC. And fair point on the edit.

I like Daboll and think a lot of posters here were crazy to rip him. I think it’s telling that he elevated the chicken**** that was Daniel Jones into a semi-edible QB sandwich. Meanwhile the Bills offense still had a lot of success, but they sure seemed to regress later in this season and in the playoffs. I think they were rolling and then got figured out a bit and could not adjust.

I’d say Daboll was the biggest factor in Allen’s development. Dorsey and even Palmer certainly helped - and obviously Allen put in the work. But Daboll was the mentor and guide that mattered most.

Burrow didn’t pass Allen yesterday, he passed him before that. It’s up to the Bills and Allen to move back up that list past him and Mahomes, but right now that’s how it is.

I’m pretty sure a standard folding table costs more than that TV.

I’ll be shocked if he’s back week 1 and even more surprised if he’s back to form. In any event, the Bills would be foolish to count on it happening this March and April when they’re adding players to the roster.

I actually loved the signing. He was exactly the player the Bills defense needed. The team went all in and it didn’t work out. It happens. But I’m with you on hating that we had to go out and find an aging FA to give that contract to because we couldn’t draft well enough. So many resources poured into the DL with so little to show for it.

The Bills are completely screwed with Von Miller’s injury. Even healthy he would be painful to trade ($14.8M dead cap) and impossible to cut ($40.2M dead cap). Cap consequences aside we can’t cut an injured player without an agreed upon settlement - and that’s not happening. No team would even consider trading for a player with Von Miller’s injury and massive contract until that player shows he’s back to form. He will likely get back on the field at some point next season (see White, Tre), but he won’t be back to form until some time after that - if ever. And at his age the “if ever” is a very real possibility. He’ll be 34 this off-season. The Bills are going to take this one hard, right in the shorts. There’s your elephant in the room. Edited to add: Contract details here, see for yourself.

I think firing Dorsey and Frazier is a possibility this off-season, but this feels like it is heading toward a house cleaning. It won’t happen this off-season, but seats are going to start to get very warm.

Very important to remember that a post 6/1 cut or trade only spreads the dead cap out over two seasons. The total dead cap is the same. In Diggs’ case a pre 6/1 trade would incur a dead cap of $37.6M in 2023. A post 6/1 trade would incur dead cap hits of $11.9M in 2023 plus $25.7M in 2024.

I think the players on both sides of the ball got the Bengals best shot out of the gate and they knew they weren’t going to compete with that. Not with the game plans in place at least. That’s a demoralizing situation to be in.