HappyDays

I'm on record that failing to trade for Metcalf was a big mistake and we will regret it. Other than that the FA class on the whole was weak so I don't have strong feelings either way on the rest of our signings. Ogunjobi I'm lower on, Bosa I'm higher on, the rest I'm fine with overall. I'm disappointed Benford wasn't extended, to me he was the #1 priority re-sign but obviously the team didn't agree. To be fair no other contenders seriously improved their roster this offseason either. That's not really what FA is about these days. Drafting well has become more important than ever with teams not letting their stars get away, although again that's why I wish we had taken the rare opportunity to trade for a star in Metcalf. I'm confident we can find a CB2 in the draft. I'm less confident we can find an impactful WR which remains a big need.

But the injuries don't explain what I believe was the bigger problem which was his cerebral game. He does not have natural instincts for reading a defense and making himself available to his QB IMO. He runs past zone windows, he doesn't properly adjust routes, he drifts away from where his leverage should take him. That is the part of his game I am more concerned with. Sure he can get stronger and separate a little better in man coverage, but he isn't going to become our version of Kelce unless he can read the defense as well as Kelce does. I think that's why we were using him on nothing but basic route concepts in shallow areas by the end of the season, because they didn't trust him to be where he was supposed to be downfield. Knox is by no means an elite player but when Allen looked at him he was where Allen expected and the higher efficency on those targets speaks to this.

Zach Ertz?

Milano was supposed to make $9.375M base salary in 2026 plus whatever bonuses he was scheduled to make. Almost no chance he is making that on the open market next year. He is also willingly giving up $3.6M in salary this year and is not likely to earn all of it back, as his agent would have made very clear to him. No player who takes a pay cut is "betting on themselves." Agents would never advise that. They're just accepting the reality that if they get released they're likely to take an even larger pay cut from their next team. The positive spin about Von taking a pay cut out of the goodness of his heart was a total fabrication. The team knew he was going to be suspended and came to him with a compromise that favored them, and he smartly took it because the alternative was to get cut and make even less money on the open market. I would think that aphorism doesn't ring true for a 30+ year old player with a vast injury history. Make no mistake - Milano didn't want this, but it was the lesser of two evils.

That's the usual positive spin given by the player side, just like with Von last year. The truth though is that Beane approaches the player and their agent and says something to the effect of "we don't want to cut you, but we will have to under your current numbers" and then they try to find a compromise that works for both sides. The player knows if they get cut they're likely to make even less than the compromise number. The team knows it will be hard to find a replacement player while also paying the dead cap. So it's a give and take from both sides. If you want to phrase it harshly, the team basically tells the player "if you don't rip up your current deal and willingly take less money than we signed you for, you're on your own." By the way when fans get on James Cook or other players for using hardball tactics or not "playing on the contract they signed," I hope they realize teams do this kind of thing all the time. I don't begrudge either side for it. The initial contract signed is a framework, not a lifetime guarantee. It's a brutal business with players trying to maximize a short career and teams trying to maximize a short championship window.

Before anyone asks - this doesn't signal any upcoming FA additions. OTC is reporting Milano signed the revised contract on March 5 so this was done basically in secret to let the Bills make the additions they've already made.

Did any serious contender meaningfully improve this offseason? The Bills didn't - we spent the offseason re-signing our own and signing decent but unspectacular free agents, and still have a couple positions with glaring holes on the roster. Teams like the Pats and Panthers went on a spending spree because they could. The contenders are all going to have to "draft and pray" because that's the part of their window that they're in. Legitimately good to great starters at premium positions aren't making it to free agency. Like what was Cincy supposed to use Higgins' money on? Should they have given Dan Moore $21M AAV? Milton Williams $26M AAV? It's a fair point that they have serious concerns across their roster, but that doesn't mean they should start spending bad money just to say they tried to improve weak positions. Their only mistake in this saga is that they waited too long and cost themselves a few extra million a season.

FWIW they met with Troy Frankin a ton last year and then passed on him three times. It might be a similar case of trying to nail down a difficult evaluation more than a sign that they love the player.

I don't disagree but the question is does paying Chase and Higgins stop them from adding OL talent? Starting caliber OTs don't just hit the FA market. So if the question was pay Higgins or pay a similarly talented LT, the LT makes more sense. But the question is pay Higgins or save the money for some hypothetical OT in the future... I think you have to just pay the talented player that is right there in front of you. To improve their OL they need to draft better.

I haven't actually seen that in his game though. I loved him coming out of Utah for that reason more than any other. He seemed to have a knack for making himself available to his QB. That ability is what makes Kelce an all-time talent. But somehow in the transition from college to the NFL he seems to have lost that ability IMO. Too many times I see him over-run an open window in zone or fail to adjust his route properly. I've come to believe the NFL is just too fast for him and he doesn't have the natural instincts that a player like him needs to be successful. He's never going to physically dominate so he needs to cerebrally dominate.

Yeah that's the other part of it, he wasn't drafted as a raw young player that was expected to need a few years to develop. Despite starting football relatively late in life, his skill set was supposed to project pretty much immediately. But it hasn't. So I just don't see the upside there.

Just to explain myself on this - I am not usually one for trading players early, especially for a team like us where talent is more valuable than draft picks because our championship window is now. The difference for me with Kincaid is I see nothing to build on, physically or mentally. By the end of the season the team clearly had lost trust in him. They reverted back to his rookie year usage with quick passes/low air yards, instead preferring to use Knox on anything downfield. And yes I'll admit part of my feelings come because of that final play in the AFCCG. So he doesn't physically dominate, he frequently isn't on the same page with his QB, his understanding of NFL leverage and reading the defense is below average, and he choked in a critical moment. So what exactly are we building on? What is the upside? Any optimism about Kincaid is 100% projection with no proof of concept at the NFL level. He can still turn out to be a solid player but to me that's his ceiling and I'd easily take a 3rd rounder for a solid player at a non-premium position.

Definitely not an excuse. Maybe if he traded for Von Miller in 2021 we would have won the Super Bowl that year. If he had traded for Jerry Jeudy last year we'd all feel great about our WR room. He could have traded for Metcalf. The game changing talent has been there, but he hasn't been willing to go all in to add it. It feels like fans, and Beane, get so worked up over minor details. People are shocked by Metcalf's $33M AAV, but the difference between that and a more palatable $25M AAV is literally just Ogunjobi's contract. You have to be willing to overpay to acquire elite talent and that means sacrificing 1-2 solid rotational players.

His value isn't necessarily at his lowest. If he replicates last year his value will go lower still. I'd take a 3rd for him if it was available. I unfortunately just don't see enough NFL traits there to develop.

A bust QB got to a 14-3 record, I'd say that's pretty damn good. Seattle is about to find out how true that MVP bid was. There's 3 god tier WRs in the game right now and all of them are worth $40M AAV.

Sam Darnold was just in the MVP conversation because of a $40M WR. The position is THAT critical. I don't blame Cincy for this at all. They're doing what it takes to keep their elite talent around. They have to start drafting better for sure but it's not like free agency is usually brimming with top tier OL and defensive talent. I mean the Chiefs just paid a backup LT $15M AAV to come start for them... Cincy isn't missing out on anything by just paying their own players.

My take is that Beane is more responsible for us failing to ever get the #1 seed, and McDermott is more responsible for us failing to go further in the playoffs. On Beane - Every year there are several regular season games where we need just one player to step up and make a game changing play, and it never happens. That falls directly on Beane's inability to add game changing talent, draft and FA included. Those games are why we're perennially the #2 or lower seed. And the whole "we don't draft high enough" argument falls flat when you consider that he's chosen not to add available game changers in recent years. Von Miller was traded to LA and changed their season culminating in a Super Bowl win. Jerry Jeudy was traded to Cleveland and put up a 1,200 yard season with maybe the worst QB situation in the league. Metcalf was just traded. So he has had opportunities and passed them up. On McDermott - Despite the lack of elite talent, the regular season results prove the defensive talent is good enough to perform much much better than it does in the playoffs. Every playoff loss of the last few years we look like a historically bad defense and that just doesn't match up with what we see earlier in the season. Andy Reid very clearly has McDermott's number in January and that's pretty much the nail in the coffin on our Super Bowl chances unless our offense has a no-punt game.

He's just a different type of personality. Not the usual alpha you get from the #1 caliber X WR. He battled through a wrist injury instead of getting recommended surgery. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't care about his career. All that being said I'm not interested in bringing him back. This team is cursed with 30+ year old players, it simply never works out in our favor. Last year they had to make a mid-season trade for an outside WR to give themselves any kind of fighting chance, so I don't begrudge Beane for the trade even though it didn't work out quite as well as I hoped. But he really needs to start investing high draft picks into the position on an annual basis so he's not stuck making those desperation moves. This draft is known to be weak at WR but I hope the value matches up with one of our first 3 picks. There is a realistic scenario where that isn't the case, so if that happens maybe Cooper is still sitting around unsigned after the draft. We're already past the primary phase of FA, so a player of his age and coming off a down year might be better served waiting to sign until May when at least a couple teams will be desperate to fill out their room. In that scenario I'd be fine with it.

I mean he ran step for step with Hollywood Brown in the AFCCG and broke up the pass. Anyways the Bills scheme doesn't ask its CBs to keep up with elite speed WRs. Tre White had the same knock against him, and did it ever really matter?

Blame the Bills medical staff and the NFL at large for that 2nd concussion. It's been long enough that we can admit Benford should not have been out there. Zero doubt in my mind he only cleared concussion protocol so quickly because it was an important playoff game.

Jordan Phillips made our best defensive play in the AFCCG! Crazy, but true. Not that I'm singing his praises, but as a 6 game stopgap whatever it's not a huge deal. They'll draft a couple DL too so there will be a chance for rookies to make an impact as rotational depth. If we lose the 1 seed it won't be because two rotational DL missed 1/3 of the season. There are several much more fundamental issues with the roster that I'm very concerned about. Beane needs to step up his game in April and McDermott/Babich need to step up their game in September.

For sure, CB2 and WR are still by far my biggest concerns, followed closely by safety. Beane has to find a couple quality starters at those positions in the draft. It can't be like last year where our rookies barely contributed since the roster as it stands right now doesn't have the talent to man all of those positions at an NFL level.

Here's what Beane said on Benford yesterday: Reading between the lines sounds to me like the two sides aren't close. I think Beane's MO is to offer his drafted players a hometown discount contract a year early, knowing that a lot of times they'll take it to mitigate injury risk in that final year. I would bet he offered one to Benford but Benford would rather bet on himself and maximize his value for next offseason. It sucks not having CB1 solved for the long term while simultaneously not having any young CB talent in the pipeline, so I hope they can figure it out at some point. This will be the second offseason in 4 years that we're entering totally desperate at CB and last time it turned out poorly. Hopefully Beane learned his lesson and won't force anything, but there are 3 CBs that I think would be great picks in the 1st round.

I feel pretty much the same after sitting on it for a day. The reason there's so much fan outrage around it is because the two suspensions hitting at once is magnitudes worse than just one. But in reality Hoecht is the only part of the story that Beane can be criticized for. I do think we overpaid him especially given the known suspension but it's not some crazy overpay amount that capsized our ability to make moves in FA. With Ogunjobi I blame the NFL for not getting these results out a few days earlier. I mean really, players sign on Wednesday and you're sending results out on Thursday or Friday? That's amateur stuff. That's not on Beane at all. And I accept his explanation that by the time they found out about the suspension the DT market had dried up so their best bet was to accept the cap savings and continue with the signing. Although FWIW I was not a fan of that signing to begin with, felt like an overpay for a 30+ year old DL coming off a down year. As to how this affects our season - I don't think it does. Bring in Quinton Jefferson and Jordan Phillips to hold down the fort in those 6 games. Is that really so bad? If we're losing several games in the early part of the season we have much bigger problems than our rotational DL players.

Hilarious timing.