No_Matter_What

I said this many times before and I'll say it again - you have absolutely no clue if trading up was possible. First of all it was no "small" trade up. There was no way to do it without our 2nd round pick and we had no 3rd. But even if Beane was willing to give up 2nd (I would be for Thomas), you have no idea if there was a trade partner. Let's say 2nd round gets us to 18, which is not even certain. Bengals almost never trade. Rams took Verse, they wanted DL and he was falling. Steelers needed OT and we don't know if they would go as low as 28. Dolphins trading with us is highly unlikely and I assume Eagles were ecstatic to get Mitchell. So how exactly was this "small" trade up possible? If you thought at the time of draft that either Worthy or McConkey should've been the pick, then fine. But Thomas (not to mention top 3, which were absolutely out of reach) was most likely than not just impossible to pull off.

It is a nice chart https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/overview/_/year/2026/sort/cap_total Have a look. Just look at orange players + Milano. Or you know what, I'll do it for you Milano - § 11,071,000 Bosa - § 7,200,000 McGovern - 4,805,000 D. Jones - 3,724,000 Epenesa - 2,861,000 Ogunjobi - 2,570,052 Playing Time Incentives (non-cumulative) 55%: $300,000 65%: $630,000 Sack Incentives (non-cumulative) 2: $150,000 4: $300,000 6: $600,000 8: $1.2M Like you said, suspension prevents him from hitting most sack incentives for sure. Playing time is interesting. If it is counted from all games, he is already doomed lol.

Contract details in: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/player/_/id/21807/larry-ogunjobi So in fact this is §6.7M contract with additional §0.6M playing time incentives and up to §1.2M sack incentives. §4.1M cap hit this year and §2.6M dead money next year. And my understanding is that his salary guarantee is voided by PED suspension (sportrac says so) and also that his 2025 cap hit will be lowered due to suspension. I like that there are sack incentives in the contract. It should be used more often in NFL contracts imo.

I know, but I don't think it is very likely. I don't see him as a Bill in 2026. Anyway, after seeing this I guess that I was wrong, and we are actually under the cap even after all remaining missing contracts without any restructures. So unless we sign some other relevant FAs we only need to free about $10M later for 52/53, PS, rookies and inseason moves. So basically Dawkins' restructure might be enough, which is great.

Well this is some serious can down the road kicking. I don't think Beane did this in such extent before. We already have almost $30M in dead money in 2026.

Can you name these players that were available and we didn't sign them?

We don't know what he wants. He might be unreasonable.

Well you might be correct. But even if you are correct, that doesn't mean much. So we know that one GM is better than Beane. He can still be the second best GM in the league. To me, conversation about (replacing) Beane starts when you are sure that there are at least 6-7 GMs better. And I don't think that that is the case.

Agreed. I have to say I am really surprised by Allen's cap hit. I thought we will save some $20M and it is just a little over $3M. So like you said, right now we are about $10M under the cap (you said over, but isn't the correct word under?), but my estimate is once Bosa, Ogunjobi, Palmer, Dane and Damar are accounted for we get $10M over. Since you need $10M more to get season going (52/53rd player, PS, rookies, in season moves), we need to save $20M more without adding another FA. We can get half of that from Dawkins, which is fine. I know we can easily get rest from Knox, Milano, Samuel and some others but I'd bet a lot that Beane wants to avoid that, esp. with Milano. Every restructure makes future cut worse and makes our future cap situation worse.

Nice summary but at least 5 guys you mentioned are not locks, and can be/will be replaced if draft pick performs better. Guys like Hamlin, Jones, Ulofoshio, Andreessen or Jackson can be easily cut.

Contract details finally out: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/player/_/id/76965/terrel-bernard

Now this is interesting I guess this is another low risk signing with possible upside. Let's just hope that this doesn't prevent us from drafting WR early if an opportunity occurs. Edit: Lol it doesn't. He has 96y last two seasons combined. Crazy it has already been 5 years since he was drafted.

Seems that overthecap has contract details: https://overthecap.com/player/josh-allen/6892 I find OTC much less understandable than Sportrac esp on my phone, but if they are correct data his cap hit this year is $41M. That is shockingly high since it was $44M or so before. I need to see it on Sportrac to believe it and fully comprehend it

Your post proves that you don't have to "pick better", you need to be lucky af. Players like those you mentioned are very few. To each Crosby or Jones there are 20 DL who are busts, below average, average or just good. And also, even teams who drafted them passed on them couple times. So it wasn't like they were picking future HOFers, they just happened to be lucky.

Ogunjobi was also released, so doesn't count.