BullBuchanan

I know as much about what Beane did as the folks who claim that "Beane played it perfectly". Most of my statements are in response to that. If Beane offered a similar contract, but Bates still decided to sign with Chicago - a team in rebuild mode, what does that say about the nature of the relationship between Bates and the Bills? If the money was the same, why would Bates want to play for Chicago over Buffalo? When I say "he literally could not have paid more" - of course I mean this year. every year you wait on a young player, the price goes up. This statement has nothing to do with Bates. It has everything to do with countering the argument of others that "Beane let the other teams do his negotiating for them" by pointing out that he let Bates get the highest possible offer from every suitor in the league, and then he just matched it. There was no opportunity by Beane to get a less than top market deal under this approach.

Generally, players show they want long-term security more than they want to hit free agency. It's why so many players are upset to play under the franchise tag (despite it being more money), 5th year options, and push for deals with the highest possible guaranteed money. Of course Bates wont just accept any offer we throw at him, but when you have exclusive rights to negotiate, you can leverage your sales and negotiation skills to make him feel like this is the right place to be and you can do it without any competition or outside interference. It takes less than zero skill to let him go get the best offer he can get and just agree to match it. The only time there should really be an exception to this is if Bates really didn't want to be here and the only way you could keep him was matching his contract. It is a little funny they went through with the formal offer sheet process, when his agent just could have let Beane know what it was going to take once they saw what was out there in the market.

It's not a loophole per se, it's just an unlicensed IPTV service pre-loaded on the box - not too different than the "cable boxes" you'd get from that friend of a friend years ago that gave you all the movie channels. You can buy the services standalone and access them from any device you want, but when they move to another location or the owners go to jail, you're SOL. That's why you only ever want to buy it cheap and by the month. They're going to get caught eventually and you'll be left with a cheap android box. Buying an nvidia shield and buying a standalone IPTV service is a far superior option.

Let me know when you run out of ad hominems and decide to try to justify your weak arguments. People tend to rally to dumb ideas because they're easy to wrap your head around and write slogans for. It doesn't make them good ideas. If you think it takes a "secret genius" to posit an off the wall position that it's sub-optimal to allow as many suitors as possible to outbid you before closing, then I would be happy to be your realtor or middle man in any financial transaction where I get a cut of the total cost you pay.

That's not a good thing. That's why it's being underplayed.

Oh, it was "explained", but not in any way that is actually rational. People are deriving the process that best suits their agenda based on the result that already occurred. The problem is that the core principle of the argument doesn't hold up under even mild scrutiny. Just because a bunch of folks like the way it sounds to them doesn't make it logical. Everyone's trying so hard to prove how right they are and how wrong I am, that you don't even see it anymore. Beane could have just as easily offered Bates the same deal at any point prior to today while preventing other teams from being able to offer him a contract without compensation. Why didn't he? Did he think his value was less? Does Bates want out and this was the only way we could trap him into a long term contract? Did he not know what it would take to close the deal? (I believe this could actually be possible based on his contract history). How does it result in the best possible outcome by letting the entire market "do your negotiating for you"? In my experience, that's never true. Is Beane that bad of a negotiator that the only price he could get someone to agree to was tying the absolute top of the market? He literally could not have paid more for Bates than he did and yet somehow he played it "perfectly" according to you guys.

This place is goofy when it comes to Beane. He can do no wrong apparently. It's not enough that he's very good - he has to be the craftiest and smartest football mind anyone has ever seen - despite a not insignificant number of missteps. I really like Ryan bates and I have since i first watched him play his rookie year. That aside, the way he's been handled has been bizarre his entire time here. If Beane valued Bates so highly and wanted him as part of his long term plan, he could have signed him to an extension at any point over the last year to lock him up without him testing free agency and they would have been able to control the terms. If he wasn't sure about it up until the tender period, he probably should have put more than the minimum tender on him, because the opportunity cost of losing him would be too great. If he didn't value him that highly, then committing to him for 4 years doesn't seem like a wise move either. Did he make a move out of short term desperation because he didn't wnat to walk into the season with his hands tied to draft a guard early to compete with Ford? To give Beane credit that he wanted Bates all along, but he chose to expose him to the open market knowing that all 31 other NFL GMs that watch all the same tape as he does would drive down Bates' value, because they don't see what he sees and then he could swoop in and snap him up at a discount - is completely asinine. We're talking about the same guy that traded Wyatt teller away for a bag of footballs. He's not omnipotent. At any point during the previous or upcoming season. He hadn't talked with any other teams until we opened that door for him.

Why does Bates automatically (or even probably) walk next year? is he going to take personal offense at being given a tender? As far as the misplay is concerned, I think you provided my answer: "no one is making him an offer if it costs a 2nd rounder". So, now instead of us being able to make an offer on our terms, we had to compete with the highest bidder.

my bad, I read through the first 5 or so pages and the last couple. That said, I don't at all agree it was correct.

I like the player, and I'm glad he's playing for us, but how are we not talking about what a massive misplay this was? Beane went cheap and instead of protecting Bates for another $1.4m now he has to pony up even more. It's not the end of the world, but neither was using a 2nd round tender.

There's no argument about what he's become or why - just what folks were saying and thinking 3-4 years ago. Was Allen's indomitable will to be great a major theme among coaches, analysts or a meaningful number of folks around here in 2018? If it was, I sure don't remember it that way. I t would have been pretty interesting to hear, because he hadn't ever been great. He wasn't great in high school, he wasn't great in college and he wasn't great in 2018 or 2019 in the NFL. What he did to get to this point is unprecedented and I think acting like you saw it coming the whole time diminishes the significance of the achievement.

What separates the guys that make it from the guys that don't aren't the exciting plays though, it's the routine plays. JP Losman has a hell of a highlight reel, so does Fitzpatrick. Even EJ Manuel put together some great plays. Every bills fan was excited by the big plays, and everyone wanted Josh to be great because we bet the future of the franchise on him. That biased lens makes it really easy to look back when he was throwing terrible picks and missing routine plays and say that you knew it would all come together. You didn't. You hoped it would, because you had to. I hoped Trent Edwards was going to turn into Joe Montana.

No, you weren't alone. You had Alpha and MJS and a few other guys around here. Allen's rookie year was objectively bad in every measurable way. In order to be sold on Allen after his rookie year, you had to predict the single greatest year 3 improvement in NFL history. That's not hyperbole - it's what happened, and it's the reason he's a great player now. If we ended up with the rookie version of Allen that never had that greatest improvement in history, he'd be on a practice squad somewhere by now. If your judgment hinges on needing something to happen that's never happened before, you're going to be very wrong a lot more than you're going to be right.

There is some real "hindsight is 20-20" here. Allen was pretty terrible throwing the football his rookie year. He missed passes by miles and had terrible judgment. His legs kept him alive. His second year was a modest improvement but was still filled with entirely too many erratic and frustrating plays. Had Allen never taken his year three jump, it's a lot more likely that we would have been in the Watson sweepstakes, than looking forward to having one of the brightest stars in the game for the foreseeable future. I'm as ecstatic as anyone that he turned into the player that he did, but it took the greatest growth trend in the history of NFL QB play to get him here. To act like this was a forgone conclusion based off his rookie year is ridiculous.

Diggs was the same. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I guess he could always throw the ball to himself.

This move is the best thing to happen to Buffalo all offseason. Playing the chiefs got a hell of a lot easier and the phins still aren't good enough to contend.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/falcons-paying-marcus-mariota-241875m-over-2-years-per-report/ar-AAVlaZk Well then.

Dude's a bum. No thanks.

Good player, good contract. Crowder has spent most of his career playing with bums and he still makes plays and has big games. He could have a career year here.

I'm grateful for all that Jerry has given to the team, but at this point Epenesa and Basham need those reps. We have a lot invested in our young guys and we need to give them enough opportunities to develop and see what we have.

He doesn't have a high enough ceiling for a team with championship aspirations. He's probably best suited to a bridge QB role for a team that isn't trying to compete right away. Only the Commanders seemed to fit that bill, but they chose Wentz. Seattle is lying to themselves that they can still compete with whatever vet option they bring in and Pittsburgh think maybe the jury is still out on Trubisky. There aren't that many jobs this year that make sense for a QB that couldn't outplay Ryan Tannehill or Derek Carr. If Atlanta moves Ryan, he could make sense there. otherwise, look for him to sign another one year deal and go to a team hitting a rebuild next season. I think he fills the same role as Tyrod Taylor for a team.

Nope. That couldn't be further from what i said. None of that happened. Like literally none of it.

Depending on who you ask, he may never have had an opportunity given the influence Buddy Nix and Rex Ryan had in the organization.

That's also not really true. If you look at his draft results, he hit on a ton of guys that had NFL careers. Not all of them got resigned here and most didn't turn into superstars, but they didn't bust out of the league either. What hindered his legacy is the QB position, as is the death knell for most GMs. I'd be very interested to know who said what in the decision to pass on Mahomes and Watson and whose call it was ultimately. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/draft.htm