MrEpsYtown

Agreed. I also like taking former corners and making them safeties. Hyde and Poyer were both corners drafted in the 5th and 7th respectively. Both guys slow corners with great instincts and football intelligence.

I like Cross a lot, he seems like a McDermott type of guy. And while they have two awesome safeties, they will have to consider upgrades ready to go at some point. Jaquan Johnson becomes a free agent after this year so it makes sense to refill the depth.

Ideas about this are all over the place, but the strong side player will typically lineup against the three technique and will therefore be in a 1 on 1 pass wise. Typically offenses will slide to the left to protect the blindside of the QB, which in turn leaves the RG and RT in one on ones. So you would want those guys to be athletic. Conventionally, the right side is the power side and the left is the athletic side, but with spread offenses becoming more the norm, it doesn’t really matter. The new norm is that everyone on the line needs to be athletic, and that’s why we are seeing RAS numbers being a thing. Its not the be all end all, and as @Hapless Bills Fan has pointed out, there have been athletic linemen who are terrible. See Andre Dillard. Specifically to Bates, he should be more comfortable on the left side since he played a ton of left tackle in college. But he has been a swing back up for most of his career which means he would have developed skills on both sides.

I hear you. But I would have cut Feliciano before the season started. He has done nothing here besides cost us young players with upside. I would have started the season Dawkins-Boettger-Morse-Bates-Williams. Brown obviously took Williams job. But that was the combination I liked goin in. Probably flip Bates and Boettger. I would have kept Anderson, Doyle, Brown as the backups. I also would have kept Forrest Lamp for his upside, he was hurt all training camp. I really liked the three athletic young guys in Brown, Anderson, Doyle. My analysis of Feliciano is that he should have been gone two years ago.

I would have kept Anderson over Feliciano when he was plucked from the practice squad. He had a nice upside and high RAS. He wound up starting a couple of games for Philly. But again I think this regime was loyal to a fault when we saw how long they stuck with players who weren’t getting it done. Trent Murphy, Feliciano etc etc.

I have talked about it a bit on here, but I see no reason why he can’t.

The only other alternative is, I believe, they can work out some sort of trade with the Bears to not match. But yeah they have to match the offer once he signs it.

Disclaimer, we are talking about a guy who legally changed his name to OCHOCINCO. So, y'know, grain of salt.

Typically this leads to a release. When teams are willing to eat money to move a guy for a pick they are announcing to the world that he ain't coming back.

I agree. If the offer sheet was ridiculous the Bills would have leaked it to show that the Bears overpaid and justify them not matching.

Price played a bunch of guard, as has Hopkins, but they were both pretty bad. I like Turner as the vet and Hernandez as the young reclamation project. We already had an Erik Flowers and he blew.

It is just a bad situation. He had played a ton at left guard and was growing into it. He was extremely durable and then essentially lost his job because he got COVID. He hits the bench, then flipped over the right side. He went through a number of OL coaches and played 4 years with 4 different centers and four different left tackles. Hernandez got blamed for Andrew Thomas' poor play as well. I think he was a little raw coming out, they threw him out there and didn't really do a great job of developing him. Then they threw him into this weird rotation where he was getting a few plays here and there on both sides. But the lack of continuity in the coaching there is what totally screwed up his career imo. Similar in some ways to Ford in that they did not stick with him at RT and got better players and he hit the bench. The Bills beleived that Ford was an impact RT and they didn't really let him prove it. Again, raw guy coming out, but the team didn't really commit to his development.

We would still need Siran Neal and Matt Milano to miss tackles.

Bates has connections in Chicago: "It isn’t a huge surprise Ryan Bates chose Chicago. They have plenty of cap space to meet his price, but they also offer connections. The lineman played under Joe Moorhead in college at Penn State. Moorhead is the mentor of new Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy. If that weren’t enough, Ian Cunningham is their assistant GM. Cunningham was part of the Philadelphia Eagles front office that signed Bates as an undrafted free agent back in 2019. Such familiarity was no doubt appealing for the young guard. The question now is what the Bills plan to do. They have five days to decide whether they match the Bears’ offer. Doing so will allow them to retain Bates. Current estimates say the team has somewhere between $2.5-4 million in cap space. So if the Bears wanted to dissuade them from matching, they’d likely offer a deal at $4 million per year or more." https://www.sportsmockery.com/chicago-bears/ryan-bates-takes-step-closer-to-joining-chicago-bears/

Hernandez is the guy I like. Totally mismanaged in NY.

I don't disagree. What I am saying is that Crowder signed for a little under two million. They second round tender ties up funds throughout free agency and could have kept them from making a move like Crowder. I agree that it's peanuts, but that was likely the thinking.

I love it! the crazy part is the punter is gonna go way earlier than that too.

They looked super baggy on Keith Ellison

Boettger is a lot better than people think. I like his game. Despite the injury, maybe he is their fall back. If I were the Bills line coach I would have done: Dawkins-Bates-Morse-Boettger-Brown all year last year.

I do agree that they should have tendered him at the second round level, but that ties up funds that may have kept us from being able to sign a guy like Jamison Crowder. So it is fair that Beane took the risk to see how Bates is valued around the league. It's a risk, but not a massive one. There is always a way.

This is what I figured all along. They have like 25 mil in cap space, their new GM is a line guy, and they have a QB on a rookie contract so they can overspend.

During the 2017 draft I was watching with some of my buddies and I said to them that Josh Allen was the guy I wanted, but I'd did not think we would be bad enough to draft high enough to get him as he would likely be the number 1 pick. But I said to them that Allen is the guy. Huge arm, big, big hands, seems like a solid dude. He was what everyone wanted EJ Manuel to be, but with EJ the DNA just was not there. Fast forward a bit and we are on our way to the playoffs, and I gave up on the Josh Allen dream. I started studying Lamar Jackson, Darnold etc. I always hated Baker Mayfield, because tiny quarterbacks who can't run are a recipe for disaster, the only outlier being Drew Brees. I never liked Mayfield. But again, I still felt Allen was out of reach. During this time I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that Josh Rosen was the answer. If we could not get Josh Allen, then maybe Rosen could be our Brady? Smart guy with arm strength who seemed like a major douche. And I did not mind a douche at QB, ie Tom Brady. I saw the athletic upside of Darnold, and I was okay with Lamar Jackson. I hated Mason Rudolph, with a passion. I thought he was going to be a scrub. Then Allen stands out at the Senior Bowl and I start to get excited again. So fast forward to draft day, and I start wondering if there is something wrong with Allen. Why are the Browns passing on him? The more I watched of Darnold, the more I disliked and I was down to Josh or Josh or Lamar. I leaned Rosen, because I was worried if the small school guy could really be "the guy." I am so happy to be more than wrong. My buddies texted me and they were like "you should have trusted your gut." A year previous I would have been jumping for joy at the thought of Allen and I am so happy he is our guy. My wife watched my internal conflict as the commissioner announced "The Buffalo Bills select Josh....Allen." In that moment it all came rushing back. I remembered how much I wanted him. How many Wyoming games I watched in anticipation. I felt that we had made the right move and I said to my wife "This is the right move. I understand why they are doing this and I think it is going to work out." She replied "whatever," and went into another room to play candy crush on her phone. It was a great day.

I am not 100%. But I believe that he can, up until he signs an offer sheet.

I believe it is like the franchise tag. Like after signing the tender you can still negotiate with your original team. However, if Bates signs an offer sheet, I don’t think he can negotiate with the Bills anymore. It’s either match the deal, let him leave, or try to negotiate a trade with the other team in exchange for not matching.

I agree. I don’t think they are a threat. But that tweet by Astro calling them out I thought was a little unfair. They plugged a bunch of holes and added Hill. It’s not like they did nothing. But yeah I still don’t think they are close to use. They still have that defense that we tore apart for a few years now.