BillsFanForever19

It feels like the league is looking at the AFC East and is like "yeah, we gotta help close that gap a little bit".

The Defense is maddening. It feels like everyone goes into Zone coverage on pass catchers, including TE's. and the line cues in on the QB. But when it comes to RB's it's like "hopefully someone's around somewhere doing something else and is close enough to get a stop". Screens always work on us.

He has and hopefully that continues. It's just frustrating that it seems to be a trend for this season. Hopefully he gets that out of him in his Rookie year.

It feels like Keon has to have one drop before he gets going every game. Of course this time it has to be at the Goal Line with a DB to grab it.

Big market v. Small market Top of the Round Picks v. Bottom of the Round Picks - players like Wilson and Gardner were Top 10 Picks and Top Prospects at their position. Hall was the top RB Prospect in the Draft.

Congraulations on your 3rd win of the season!

The thing is, even if we had an injury - he wouldn't be the first man up. He wasn't when Taylor Rapp went down. He only had a couple snaps even then. Cole Bishop is the 3rd Safety. And with the other Safeties we have on the Roster and Practice Squad - I'd be surprised if they see a drop off between him and Cam Lewis or Kareem Jackson. If anyone was willing to offer anything for him, I'd take it.

Worthy has much better separation - but what the tape shows is if the man in front of him puts his hands on him at the line, he's done for. I'll take the guy that can't separate as well but can out physical his man, is 4 inches taller, and 50 lbs heavier.

He knew cameras were across the street before he went to the hospital? 🙄 I'm not saying there's no reason to have resentment for how things went after the 2022 Playoff game until his departure. But let's not twist how he responded to the Hamlin situation into "it was just for the cameras" bc of it.

I mean, the Panthers gave the Steelers a CB coming off an Achilles injury and a 6th Round Pick for him. He was essentially given away to the Panthers to begin with bc he fell off with the Steelers. Then he underperformed with the Panthers. The fact that there is so many WR needy teams and that's all they traded for him says to me that is what his perceived worth is around the league. Which is not much at all. Especially when you consider on top of that, as opposed to paying 800k like we did for Cooper, the Ravens have to pay 4 million for Johnson.

I don't know, I kind of feel like when a hated rival retires or switches divisions or conferences, I let that go. Especially if it's a player who's talent I respect. It's like "cool, I don't have to hate you anymore". I remember being borderline a fan of him for switching out of the AFC East and into the NFC. Now that he's gone, I think it's pretty cool the relationship he has with Josh and am all here for him pumping up BillsMafia. I think he has sort of the same thing going where he's like "i'm not in the same division with them anymore and now I can appreciate BillsMafia".

With our luck with Draft Picks, this is where we find out that there was an unknown stipulation in the trade that said if he doesn't play X amount of games, the pick falls from a 2nd to a 3rd.

It's funny that you should say that because one of the first thoughts when I saw the injury was "we dodged a bullet". It's possible that it was situational - random cut on a random piece of turf on a random Houston play. But my thought was being non-contact, it was probably a result of his knee just being ready to give at any given time and that it would have happened with us.

Even if we don't take his contract into the equation - the Chargers are 4-3. They're in 7th place in the AFC. Firmly in the Wild Card race right now, in a generally weak AFC (when you consider our division). Why would they make themselves weaker and make it harder for them to get a Wild Card spot? The Chargers aren't sellers. Also, we are getting some End help this week. Von Miller has spent his 4 week suspension and will be returning to the team. And if he returns to the form he was playing at, that wil be big help.

Teams like Tennessee and New England aren't competing. They don't care who is offering. It's not like they're worried about KC beating them in the Playoffs.

Yeah, he's been insanely impressive and a large part of why our Offense has been successful. On one hand, prevailing wisdom is you don't pay for a Running Back. On the other, you don't find that kind of vision, patience, and elusiveness just anywhere. We spent years toiling away with Draft Picks like Devin Singletary and Zack Moss and trying to trade for guys like Nyheim Hines that brought anywhere from nothing to average play. If he stays healthy and keeps playing the way he has the past year and a half, it's going to be difficult to let him walk after next season.

I don't know that anyone has ever been traded twice midseason. I can't find any info on it. That sounds pretty unrealistic. The Jets were pretty much dead in the water when they made the move for him. I don't think them now being completely dead is going to make them go "well, let's move the guy we just traded for two weeks ago". I think they envision keeping him beyond this year given they re-worked his deal after they got him.

Insane. They should be up 14-7 rn. Just wild.

I'd be surprised as well. On the other hand, Muki Hawkins posted we were still in it on Saturday. I don't think he's Adam Schefter or anything. But he is media credentialed with the Bills and at the facility for every Press Conference.

What comments are you speaking of? I haven't gotten that impression. If you're referring to his talk with McAfee - him pointing out that someone called him and told him he had 3 players available if they were interested was just him describing how teams communicate all year long and how trades come together. I don't imagine he thinks he's playing with house money either. As I've said multiple times in this thread, we have an unusually large portion of our core team coming up after this season and the following season, of which he needs to get a head start on this offseason. He knows this and values Draft Picks to replenish. Sometimes too much so as it seemed like his main focus on Day 1 of this year was getting that 3rd Round Pick back that he used on Rasul Douglas and was robbed of by the NFL Compensatory Committee. I think he felt with the Cooper trade he was playing with house money a bit. As he specifically said "we have those two seconds so now we still have 3 picks in the first two days, it's just a 1st and two 2nd's instead of 1, 2, and 3". But anything that involves a pick on Day 1 or Day 2 - we don't have house money anymore. Where we do have a couple picks to spare is on Day 3. With the comp pick formula (which hopefully stands as formulated) and trades we should have Three 4th's, One 5th, and Three 6's - for a total of 10 picks overall. If we can make a deal that helped the team that involved 4th's and 6th's and didn't effect his 2025 cap - I think he'd be all over that. But I'd be surprised to see him move a 2nd and/or dedicate a large amount of 2025 cap to someone.

He seems like Denver's version of Tyrell Shavers. An Undrafted Free Agent that looked good and impressed them enough to keep him around on the Practice Squad for multiple years. They tried to get him back on the Practice Squad, but we must have saw something we liked in Scouting him.

Interesting. On one hand, Muki is a reporter who's always at the stadium. So it would be odd for him to put out BS. On the other, I'd be surprised if LA would still be selling after how they looked on Thursday. They looked night and day with Kupp and Nacua back in the lineup defeating a 5 win team and clearly looking like the better team on the field. At 3-4 and with them both back in the lineup, their season isn't as dead as once thought. You're not wrong there. The only way it would make some sense to me is it Curtis Samuel was part of the deal. Even then, it would remove Shakir and Kincaid from the field quite a bit. And then there's the money aspect. Although it's said they're willing to trade salary in exchange for a 2nd, the question becomes how much and would they want to take Samuel's as well? They would definitely have to take on this year's as we don't have near enough to cover it. But how much of the following year would they take? He's up for 20m. I assume the 5m guaranteed means that's what we'd owe him if we cut him - which we wouldn't want to be doing if we're paying a 2nd. If it's something that we could do where they'd cover all of this year and most of next year for a 2nd, it's worth considering. But it would all be very surprising.

A Post 6/1 cut won't help us with Amari Cooper or Rasul Douglas. As we saw this year with Tre, the money doesn't come in until the market is bare. It could help us with extensions for the 2025 season though. Amari Cooper will be one of the top WR's available and will be paid early and handsomely. As for your cap increase point, first, it's not a given it will be that high. Last year, it went up more than expected. The year before that, it went up less than expected. Over The Cap has it going up 4.6m, from 255.4 to 260. Spotrac has it going up to anywhere from 260 to 273. More importantly, the cap increase goes up for everyone. And when that happens, the prices of players goes up - as we've seen with the ridiculous numbers players got on the open market last year. Especially when it came to WR contracts, of which we have to do one. So the cap increase doesn't mean much. Even with the increase, we're still 27th in the league when it comes to cap spending next season. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/_/year/2025/sort/cap_maximum_space

We have 10.6m total in cap space right now for 2025. On top of Amari Cooper and Rasul Douglas (and all the core members I listed that we have to get a jump on before they're all FA's the following year), we have 13 other Free Agents from our 53 that will need to be brought back or replaced. Giving 10m to Garrett is going to keep us from bringing back core members of our team next year and/or the following year. It would make it very hard to bring Amari Cooper back. I'm not interested in that and I don't think Beane would be either. Make moves like the Cooper deal that improve us now and don't make it harder on us to retain guys like Cooper, Douglas, Benford, Shakir, Rousseau, Cook, and Bernard.

For the guys who are UFA's after this year, it's clearly Cooper over Douglas. Benford is CB1, Taron is a top Nickel, and Ingram has played well. I think we could go with a cheaper vet that McDermott thinks would fit his system well and/or a Draft Pick there and make it work. However, without Cooper (or a similar level #1), we're back to where we were without him. He needs to come back or we need to find a Cooper level replacement. And as we saw this year, we don't want to go to the Draft for that. You can't rely on a Rookie (especially where we're picking) to be a stud from day 1 at WR. I somewhat agree on Cook. I think when it comes down to the list of core guys we need to retain off their Rookie deal, he's probably the biggest candidate when it comes to letting someone walk. And you don't want to be tying up large amounts of cap on a Running Back. However, over the past two seasons, he has really been an invaluable weapon for us. It's also hard to find that level of shiftiness just anywhere. We spent years with Singletary, Moss, and other RB's trying to find someone like him. If Davis continues to grow and ball, perhaps he can be the main guy. But we'd still need to hit on another Draft Pick that compliments him well in Cook's style. Rousseau, Shakir, and Benford MUST be extended, IMO. Not even a question to me and the sooner the better. And with so many coming up in 2025, we're going to want to do at least a couple this coming offseason to spread them out and so we don't have to worry about all of them at once. Shakir is great, but I don't think it's a matter of Shakir or Cooper. You need them both (or, again, a #1 similar to Cooper). Bernard.... I don't know. I really like him when he's playing. But he's been going down a LOT. If it's just bad luck and he stays relatively healthy for the rest of this season and the next, then yes, i'd want him back. But i'd definitely wait until next year before I worried about him. But the point remains the same. We've got to do too much this coming offseason and the next to be tying up any money in 2025 or 2026 on a trade.