GunnerBill

Yea Mooney is interesting to me. Spotrac reckons $10m AAV. I think he might get more than that but if that is indeed the price I'd 100% do it.

QBs will routinely play later than they did a generation ago but I don't think we are going to see lots and lots of guys going into their mid 40s. Manning played until 39, was pretty good still at 38 and had arguably his best year age 37. Ben Roethlisberger was still decent at 38 and had one of his best years at 36. Drew Brees had a great year at 39. Rodgers won MVP at 37.... So I think really good into the very twilight of their 30s is the new norm. Really good into their 40s is just Brady.

If you answer them that way you cut him as soon as the league year begins.

Well not right necessarily but consistent with normal practice that it is the QB of the #1 seed.

In fairness 2015 was Tyrod's best year. Once teams had film he was less effective. But yea, nobody was calling him an MVP..... except @transplantbillsfan actually. He loved himself some Tyrodball. There is no doubt statistically Lamar is the weakest MVP in a long time.

Totally agree.

I'm not sure he will. He has been pretty bad the last two years. He stinks.

I didn't say that. I said to I think Tre can get back to his best - yes. If he does is he our best CB - yes, easily. That is a separate point from he doesn't need to get back to his absolute best to start over Douglas on this team for me. At 85% of his best I'd take Tre. I know you disagree with that point, that's fine. But I wasn't asking you to read that into my answers to the two key questions. That is a separate question which is how close to his best does Tre need to get to be a starter on this team?

Okay overall here is my Salary Cap plan for 2024. Starting with an assumption of $242m cap and the Bills being currently circa $51m over the cap. Restructures: Basic restructures (turning salary into amortised bonus): Josh Allen - saving $18m Dawson Knox - saving $2.8m Connor McGovern - saving $2.4m Matt Milano - saving $2.1m Ed Oliver - saving $1.2m Ryan Bates - saving $1.1m Restructure with VOID years: Jordan Poyer - saving $2m Total Saving: $29.6m Estimated cap space: -$27m Pay Cuts: Tre White - saving $6m Nyheim Hines - saving $2.5m Total Saving: $8.5m Estimated cap space: -$18.5m Extensions: Dion Dawkins - saving $6.5m (on the basis of a 2 year extension worth $37m - $18.5m AAV - added to the $10.3m base salary + roster bonuses he was due for this year so a total of $47.3m to spread over 3 years allowing you to lower the cap hit in year 1 - comparator contract Jake Matthews) Rasul Douglas - saving $5m (on the basis of a 2 year extension worth $22m - $11m AAV - added to the $9m base salary + roster bonuses he was due for this year so a total of $31m to spread over 3 years allowing you to lower the cap hit in year 1 - comparator contract Darious Williams) Taron Johnson - saving $6m (on the basis of a 4 year extension worth $50m - $12.5m AAV - added to the $7.6m base salary + roster bonuses he was due for this year so a total of $57.6m to spread over 5 years allowing you to lower the cap hit in year 1 - comparator contract Cam Sutton) Total Saving: $17.5m Estimated cap space: -$1.5m Cuts: Mitch Morse - saving of $8.5m Von Miller - saving of $6.7m (not realised until June 1st) Deonte Harty - saving of $4.2m Siran Neal - saving of $3m Total Saving: $22.4m Estimated cap space: $20.9m (made up of $14.2m + an additional $6.7m from June 1) And you would have 49 players under contract of whom about 38 are realistic players for the 53. They have 10 draft picks and need circa $10.6m to sign their draftees. Conclusion: it's tight. And When you consider they probably need a vet or two at DL and Safety..... it gets very tight. The other "easy" button to press is the restructure on Stef's contract. That saves you another $13m.... but it means the cost of moving on from him after 2024 (which is very much the play I think) costs you $35m in dead cap rather than the $22m in dead cap it is currently slated to cost. The other big saving option is just cut Rasul straight up. That is a $9m saving, no dead money, but having spent a 3rd round pick on him and with the Tre health question that would be brave and I don't expect them to go there. In terms of the decisions I've made above that would be most controversial given opinions here: Cutting Von - impact of keeping him is you have 50 players under contract but only $14.2m total in cap space. Keeping and restructuring Jordan Poyer - impact of cutting him outright is you save an additional $3.4m but the only safety on your roster is Damar Hamlin. Keeping and cutting the pay of Tre - impact of cutting him is neutral on 2024 cap compared to the pay cut. Both save $6m. You could do him as a post June 1 cut and then it opens up $10m in 2024 space but you lose $6m on your pre-June cap space (so you wouldn't even have enough to sign all your draftees before 1 June). Now there will be some other things they can do with VOID years like I am suggesting with Jordan to just eek another million or so out here and there on some of the extensions and get that saving up closer to $25m rather than $17.5m but every time you do that you are kicking the future can that bit harder. Losing the ability to potentially press the Stef reset button makes everything else harder. It does make me lean towards try and get DaQuan Jones back on a one year deal but with a couple of void years to spread the hit out and then probably let every other FA you have walk. Maybe one or two come back on vet minimum $1.2m type deals later, but there is not a lot of scope. They are going to have to accept being younger and thinner on the backend of the roster in 2024 and just hope their luck turns in terms of injuries and their starters can stay relatively healthy. I don't think Elam will be on the roster in 2024. I think they'll try and trade him.

I didn't quite say that. I said his best form would make him easily the Bills best corner and I really do mean easily. I did not say I think he can easily get back to his best form. But I think even at 80-85% of the old Tre he is a starter on this team. As for the difference between 2022 season Tre and 2023 season Von that makes me significantly more confident on one than the other..... Tre was not at his best he was giving up more big plays than we are used to but overall he still only gave up 54% completion, 1 touchdown and a 75 passer rating when targeted in 6 games. He wasn't a liability out there. He was just kinda average. Von didn't even sniff average last year. He could barely move. It was night and day if you ask me.

Rasul Douglas isn't close to prime Tre. Rasul Douglas is not an all pro player. We differ on how likely Tre is to get back, that's fair. I say his best two games were easily his last two when he looked like his old self again. Sure the whole D was firing at that point but Tre was outstanding. That Miami game is one if his best 4 or 5 games as a Bill. There is no way to keep Tre without paying him more money because if we release him now we don't owe him another cent. So any money we spend on him is money we wouldn't have to with a cut. But if what you are worried about is cap rather than cash then there is a way to do it that gets you the space you would save this year from cutting him and still leaves less dead money if we cut him next year than we would have now by cutting him this year. It comes down to two questions: 1) do you think Tre can get back to his best form? 2) do you believe his best form would still be the Bills best corner? My answers are yes and yes - easily! But if you answer either of those "no" then the right answer is to cut him. My entire point on Tre is there IS a way to keep him cap wise and the Bills have all the leverage in a re-negotiation. Your assertion than anything other than an outright cut is just fans in their feels is wrong IMO.

He wouldn't start the competition ahead of Bates. But the fact that at no point in 2023 were the Bills willing to open Alec Anderson a UDFA up to waivers and protected him with a spot on the 53 the entire year tells you something IMO. I think he was inactive every week (if he wasn't it was close) and at no point did they cut him even when they needed to make moves at other spots. I think they see him as a potential starter down the road. He was a college tackle, that's right. So was Mitch Morse.

I set out a possible structure the other week. At the moment cutting him NOW is $10m in dead cap for saving $6m in cap space. Letting him play this year on his current deal (a non-starter but stay with me for a second) and then cutting him next year is $4m dead cap hit in 2025. There is a pretty easy extension that you can do with Tre that gets you the same cap saving in 2024 as cutting him ($6m) but it would involve adding somewhere in the region of $3-4m to the dead cap hit in 2025 (taking the total dead cap after next year to $7-8m) if you cut him after this year. Of course if he returned to form in 2024 and we got the Tre from last year's Washington and Miami games back you'd have your best corner locked in two more years for modest cap hits of about $10m per season. The reason a deal is easily doable with Tre is because he isn't guaranteed a single extra penny from the Bills at this point. They are on the cap hook for $10.4m but that is money that in cash terms was paid a long time ago. He isn't guaranteed a bean. So the offer from Buffalo would be "here is a small amount of new money" (say about $8m) in the form of a signing bonus that we could account for over multiple years with 2 years left plus a dummy year or two "but in exchange we are slashing your base salary to basically the vet minimum to buy us cap relief." The question then becomes does Tre take that $8m in hand and figure his best chance to return to form is in the defense where he was an all pro and with an organisation that had supported him through one tricky rehab already or does he say "no, cut me and I'll take my chances of getting more than $8m in guaranteed new money on the market"? I take your other point - why bring him back if he won't start? That is fair. I just don't see a world where if we get the real Tre White back as we did for 2 games this year he isn't the best corner on the Bills. Rasul Douglas did a nice job when he came in. But he isn't close to what prime Tre is. Some maybe feel the way about the chances of seeing prime Tre again that I do about the chances of seeing a rebound from Von. Again - if you are in that boat you just cut him. But the Bills don't HAVE to cut him. There IS a re-negotiation that makes sense for both parties. But it only makes sense if you still believe Tre White can be this team's best corner. I am in that camp that does.

It is going to be in that range - $240 $245m or thereabouts.

Don't buy the premise that Lamar is guaranteed HoF. We have done the chat about why he was MVP and the rights and wrongs of that to death.

He is way too low on Legette. Otherwise he and I are relatively broadly aligned (at least on position ranking).

Nah Miller was signed day 1 of FA. It just didn't break as news during the two day legal tampering period. The news broke on actual day 1 of FA.

There are way better options than him IMO. If it came to it, sure, but I'd much prefer most of the other guys. The stories I have heard he is likely walking. Winfield won't hit the market. He is the best FA safety out there. The second best is Kamren Curl IMO. I'd love him. I'm hoping his reputation not being that big will keep him affordable but I don't know.

McDermott is the more powerful he is ultimately accountable for the successor failure of the Buffalo Bills football team. But I don't think he is directly accountable for individual draft decisions - that is Brandon Beane.

Rest assured I am not judging him against those other guys in terms of success in the elite Allen era - so 2020 onwards. I think 2017-2019 the comparison for the Bills was against what had gone before but since Allen's 3rd year when he blossomed into a top tier guy that is not the bar. The bar is much higher. I just don't think - with the one notable exception in 2021 that Sean McDermott is the reason the Bills haven't reached that bar.

I have clarified this for you before - Brandon Beane runs the draft. He is in charge of personnel. I have had that confirmed by people who are in the building too. What I do think though is that Sean McDermott is of the two the more powerful personality in the building. It is ultimately his show. If he wanted Beane fired he'd get it. If he wanted to veto a particular draft pick I think he'd have the power to do that. But the reality is that isn't how they operate. He has total faith in Beane to run the personnel side and that is how it works. They collaborate pretty closely and I know McDermott sits in on the meetings where they set their final board prior to the draft. But in terms of running the draft and making the picks it is Brandon's call. If they are close between two players he will ask Sean, he will ask Brian Gaine and Terrence Gray but he ultimately makes the decision. I was told the guy who actually had the most influence on the draft beyond Beane was actually Joe Schoen while he was here not Sean McDermott. And I think the fact that the Bills drafting patterns so closely reflect the Panthers drafting patterns during the 10 years Beane was in senior front office roles there rather reinforce the view that the draft strategy the Bills execute is Brandon Beane's strategy. I don't think the Bills have spent enough draft capital on receiver. But Beane grew up in a Panthers organisation that was famous for undervaluing wide receiver in his time there. Four day 1 or 2 picks on the position in 10 drafts in Carolina. Zero in 6 drafts here. This is not a coincidence.

I would rank NFC guys first too. But of the AFC guys I still think it is Josh Allen.

I certainly haven't gone deep into any of the late round guys but Carter Bradley and Joe Milton are the two toolsy guys later on I'm interested in. That's the kind of guy I'm interested in the Bills taking a shot rather than a kind of physically limited college game manager. No more Jake Fromm types.

In which case I take it back.... we do have that spectrum the same way around. I'm not sure I quite agree with top 10 but Baker has more ability than Brock IMO. The thing that has held Baker back is Baker. If he has truly humbled himself and keeps his head down in Tampa rather than letting his relative success this year re-inflate his ego he can be a long term 5-10 year starter for the Buccs.

Yea, but we are not drafting any of the guys @NeverOutNick has listed here. They are gone by the 3rd absolute latest.