Beck Water

Question: who are "all the other teams that were trying to sign" Hardy? I agree that not every great player was drafted in the first round. Math can show this - only about 30% of players drafted in the 1st round become solid NFL players, let alone stars. And, the observation is that while players who are drafted in the 1st 3 rounds typically show something in their 1st or 2nd year, sometimes guys who are drafted later take longer to succeed, if they're going to. On the other hand, what are the odds that a guy who played 4 years on his first team, was only available to play for 60% of those games, and has accumulated 793 yds total in 4 yrs becomes a "great player" in his 5th year on his 2nd team? There's a lot of space between "not every great player was drafted in the 1st round or became stars on their first team" and a guy who's played 4 years as a WR and has yet to break 1000 yds or 80 receptions. Are there even any examples of a guy in those circs blossoming into a star at WR? Don't get me wrong, he's a Bill now so I hope like hell this works out. And it entirely fits Beane's MO of being willing to take a flyer on a high ceiling/low floor guy almost every year, to the tune of $3.5M or so. But I don't think people can be blamed for some healthy skepticism and concern.

They do already own a house (nice house, on some body of water) in S. Florida IIRC and live there off-season.

Who TF is Julie Poyer and how is she related (if she is) to Poyer or his wife Rachel Bush?

Kansas City, not Detroit. KC much further from Orchard Park - ~980 vs ~270 miles. The players pay state taxes where the game is played for their salary, and where the team is based for their bonuses. Primary residence doesn't matter, it's where the money is earned.

Of course he is not. He's a troll. Tuck him in your ignore file and enjoy the improvement to the board.

The Missus will not be happy to have to keep her bikinis packed Sept thru January, but I've always thought in the final run Poyer does not let her keep his balls in her purse where professional decisions are involved.

It seems to me there's been a lot of talk on this board since the playoff exit, criticizing Beane's drafting and player personnel decisions. Somehow the Bills have managed to have a #2 or #1 defense 3 of the last 4 years with horrible personnel management and currently, no players on defense who would fetch a 2nd round pick. Go Figgur. I didn't understand the euphoria about Hines myself. Some people on the board were reacting as though he was our Budget Christian McCaffrey. I looked at his record with Indy and thought he was a signing for ST and as an injury reserve for Cook and for McKenzie, given that Shakir seemed to be struggling a bit to master the slot and get open and was not "all that and a bag of chips" as a KR/PR. Hines filled that role. Allen misses short options because his brain edits them out when he scans the field like the new Smartphone photo software, and Dorsey/Brady seem less able than Daboll/Dorsey at smacking some sense into him.

Well, he played with Drew Brees 9 games in 2019 and 8 games in 2020, if you want to count that. Last 2 years with the Saints of course were an unholy brew of Siemian, Winston, Dalton, and Hill. Harty's best year to date was 2021, 5 games with Winston, 6 games with Sieman, 1 game with Hill

I think it's quite possible McKenzie doesn't make the 53 man roster, but the Bills bring him into camp to compete with this guy and others. JMO. If this guy wins out, McKenzie will pocket $350,000 in new money (roster and workout bonus), the Bills will use his $1.87M salary and per-game roster bonuses to cover the expansion from 51 to 53 + PS McKenzie may then retire and plan his wedding and run his restaurant, and this board will look for a new whipping boy. OTOH, if Hardy gets injured in camp or doesn't work out as they wish, the Bills will take their lumps like they did with OJ Howard and keep McKenzie, like they kept Morris and Sweeney. That scenario sees it as a $2M-$5M gamble. Viewed that way, it's entirely consistent with Beane's MO: Corey Coleman for $3.5M in 2018 when we needed better OLmen desperately, OJ Howard for $3.5M in 2022, now this.

That sounds impressive until you realize he only had 6, and 2, respectively

I'm really struggling with this. Hodgins is a very very different type of WR. Also, I'm kind of missing the slowly part here?

"Big upgrade to McKenzie" OK - What does McKenzie look like for the same time period by the same metrics, did Cover1 say? Maybe this guy is a big upgrade. In his 4 full years with the Bills, McKenzie saw 451, 270, 257, and 555 snaps, during which he proved himself able to stay on the field. In his 4 years with the Saints, Hardy saw 66, 169, 298, and 24 snaps, during which he didn't prove himself able to stay on the field. So Hardy only has one season of comparable #s of snaps. The rest is a small data set. Cover1 tried to adjust only looking 3 years back, so that takes out the smallest data set. OK. In the last 3 years, from available numbers I can crunch, McKenzie has more yards, more receptions, more TD and more 1D and it's not close, because he's been on the field consistently. What about per route? I don't know, but the bottom line, Hardy has 1 year of better production when he saw comparable snaps (298), which is great - but it's 1 year. In addition to sharing your injury history concerns .... it's great that this guy has all these YAC. But we all know the biggest factor in enabling YAC is a QB who can and will hit the underneath guy quickly and accurately, in-stride. You and I have discussed this before, I believe - a big factor in our WR and RB not having good YAC has been Josh Allen hanging onto the ball waiting for something downfield to open up, then dumping off when it's clear to both him AND the defense there's no alternative so they close quickly. There's some other things, like McKenzie has much higher 1D/tgt - but that likely again reflects the QB, Josh doesn't like to make a throw that doesn't have a chance to convert a 1D. McKenzie's cap hit is $2.5M. If this guy's cap hit is $3.7M, that's a 50% increase. In theory, if he lives up to his best year 2021 and stays healthy AND Josh uses him appropriately, he could produce more. But as said elsewhere, "hope is not a good plan" and neither is theory.

I'm with you on this. It's reported as $3.7M

Concur. It's not just last season, it's that he's ended 2 of his 4 seasons on IR and has missed 2, 7, 4, and 13 games. If this move is because the Bills want to hand off the KR/PR responsibilities to this guy and keep Hines focused on the offense, I'm not sure they picked the right guy. I feel like half the board is hailing every signing of a small fast guy because they want to get rid of Isaiah McKenzie, their right, but this doesn't seem like it fills any of our significant needs on the team. We have a good KR/PR in Hines. We have a fast smurf who has far more playing experience running routes in McKenzie. We need a big-bodied guy who can't be taken out of the play by physical DBs, who can bring in jump or off target b alls, and who is available, not spending a lot of time on IR or injury report, IMO.

https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/news/bills-deonte-harty-heading-to-buffalo/ Missed 13 games on IR with a toe injury last season. I hope it's at least contingent on him passing a physical. McKenzie is a Smurf at 5'8" 178 lb Hardy is a SuperSmurf at 5'6" 170 lb "The Best Ability is Availability" Hardy has played in 14, 9, 13, and 4 games Same stretch McKenzie has played in 15, 16, 15, and 15 games. If the Bills intended to cut McKenzie this spring, it's surprising to me that they haven't already done it so he could be on the market during the first burst of FA. That would be the usual courtesy to a guy who has gone hard for them: give him the maximum chance to get out there, but perhaps "things have changed" Hardy has been most active as a KR/PR

Um, this is the "legal tampering period". Technically, Poyer is still under contract to the Bills (last year's contract) until the new league year starts Weds. So no, he's not a UFA - yet - and he can't sign with any team other than the Bills until the new league year starts later this week (he can agree in principle to a contract, but not sign one)

Post-June 1 only applies to a player who is cut (I learnt yesterday it can't be applied to the accelerated dead cap resulting from a trade. In any event, it most certainly doesn't apply to signing a player; the rule is, you got to have the cap available before the deal goes through.

It's not totally impossible that McKenzie knows something we don't - but I doubt it, unless it happens to be someone he's friends/former teammates with and in communication (and yes, Gabe Davis would fall into that category and no, we are not trading Gabe Davis for Nuk Hopkins) My best guess is that he's looking at what we're looking at - the fact that the Bills restructured both Allen and Von Miller, and after re-signing a few of our own "glue" guys, still basically have all of that cap space available (spotrac still doesn't show the impact of Milano's extension, so a lot of small re-signings are covered by that). It doesn't make sense that Beane would restructure Von Miller unless he's trying to swing a trade or sign another FA. Unlike restructuring Josh, it's not a good or even neutral move for the Bills. It's a move to clear cap quickly. So I think McKenzie's intent is cheering Beane on, like when he tweeted about Trevor Lawrence "Trevor Lawrence Prove them Wrong Then" during the Jags @ Chargers game. "Beane After Dark", hopefully it works (Lawrence won, 31-30 after all) JMO

Good point - Cover1 follows 7.5k accounts, but has 29.1k followers This guy follows 1.4k, has 1.9k followers.

So this is kinda like the Dolphins version of Cover1 Network? Eh, sometimes those guys know something

Doubtful. They were very thin on punt returners with Crowder and Hyde on IR, and Shakir wasn't 'all that'

Tre' White coined it

Source on Twitter? 'cuz I was just searching Rapaport and Schefter and etc and none of them have it. With a "big cheese" like Rosenhaus as his agent you think they'd know