dave mcbride

Brady was a comp pick himself! (As were Brian Dawkins, Hines Ward, Marques Colston, and La'Roi Glover, fwiw).

Yeah, Ross looks to be a complete bust. The way he's produced, I won't be surprised if he's out of the league soon.

I don't dislike him! But bear in mind that 107 of those yards and 2 of those TDs came late in an utter blowout against a completely dispirited opponent that was on its way to giving up 56 points. That alone boosted ypc average from 14.9 to 17.1. 14.9 is still very good. But the stat line is a little deceiving.

I remember reading (can't recall where) that Daboll's system is predicated on guys who get separation. Diggs and Beasley separate with ease, and Brown is good at it too because of his speed. As I understood it, there's a movement among OCs more generally away from big-catch-radius/jump ball guys who might struggle to separate. N'Keal Harry was regarded as a catch radius freak when he came out, but he can't separate and isn't any good as a consequence. I think Davis isn't all that great at separating because a) he's not particularly fast and b) he doesn't have a ton of stop/start quickness or hip wiggle. He still looks like a solid contributor, but I'm wary about him as a number two. Bear in mind that slightly over 1/6 of his yardage production this season came on two Barkley rainbow passes versus the Dolphins in a blowout during garbage time.

I think he's more than a game manager, and I think he's better than Smith (also, he played a lot better than Smith did in his first three seasons). I don't know what his payday will look like, but it's Cleveland. They haven't had a good QB in forever. Letting him go because some other team will pay him more and hoping you'll get lucky in the draft flies in the face of reason given past history. If I'm them, I hope he gives Bernie Kosar-in-his-prime production (good not great) and that the next iteration of Ernest Byner doesn't fumble away a chance at a SB in the AFC championship game.

Agreed, but he essentially played a different position in his first three seasons (OLB). He was almost entirely an edge player this past season.

Since Cleveland reopened for business in 1999, they have drafted five QBs in the first round. The four before Mayfield were Tim Couch, Brandon Weedon, Brady Quinn, and Johnny Manziel. Every one of those QBs was absolutely terrible. Mayfield is vastly better than any of them. I'm merely echoing your point about how hard it is to find even a "good" (much less great) QB. If you have a good one who you think will be a durable, respectable, winning qb for a long time, you keep him.

I thought Mayfield played pretty well this year, actually, and I just have a feeling that he's going to last a long time in the league and always be at least pretty good. Given Cleveland's decades-long QB purgatory, "pretty good" is something they should grab and hold onto for dear life and never let it go.

Agreed.

Are we sure of that re: Smith? Spotrac now has us in the middle of the pack re cap space. Nice place to be for a 13-3 team. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/. They are updating at lightning speed.

Jefferson actually does have a dead cap hit of 1.5 million according to Spotrac. But the savings still amount to 6.5 million given that he had an $8 million cap number.

So with these cuts and assuming a $182.5 million cap, what's the current cap situation?

Yeah, I get that, but I certainly don't think it's physical decline given how young he is. Point is, he's capable of playing at a high level in pass coverage and has proved it. He just needs to fix his game.

Kelce is 31!

The thing about Edmunds is that he was a playmaker in one category before 2020 - passes defensed. He had 12 in his rookie season, which was second in the league among non-secondary players. He was pretty good the next season too with 9, but this year he only had 3. I'm not saying he's in decline, and this is a stat that's pretty spiky anyway. But the fact of the matter is that until this season he has been a better-than-average pass defender for a linebacker. In a passing league, that's important. And there's really no difference between a pass defensed and either a stuff on a running play or a sack at the LOS.

The way to adjust is to reduce the extreme number to a garden-variety very good game number -- 2/2.5. That leaves him with 9.5-10 sacks, which is very good. He also had 15 tackles for loss, 6 forced fumbles, and 4 passes defensed. That's a very good season, Plus you can't coach speed, and he's a 4.52 guy. Sign me up for more fast guys. This is all academic because some other team is going to pay him more than the Bills will. Good pass rushers are simply too hard to find.

They beat an elite Saints team last year (and Cousins delivered big time late in the game) but then ran into a juggernaut in the 2019 Niners. In most any other year, that Vikings team had a chance to get to the SB. Remember that SF disemboweled GB the next week too. Sucking sucks. @GunnerBill is totally right about that. And Sabres fans should know it too.

Cousins is good enough to take you pretty far with an elite defense. He's not great, but he's *so* much better than what Washington rolled out there after he left.

Translated: the Bills should absolutely pay Allen now, and it shouldn't be a debate.

I can't disagree with this. I think they have some serious coaching issues, however, and that makes the problems worse. And the owner is always going to be a problem. I mean, they are paying a ton of money to what is now a league-average running back. He has a $14 million cap hit and a $24 million dead cap hit this upcoming season. A lot of guys who we think of as JAGs could equal his production too (4.0 ypc and under 7 yards per reception).

It may be a stat, but so is win-loss record for pitchers. Not many who know much about baseball pay much attention to it anymore. The Cowboys lost most of those games because their defense was a sieve. The opposing QBs' ratings in those three games were 126.3, 130.7, and 115.3. In the game against Cleveland, they actually gave up over 300 rushing yards. None of that has to do with Prescott.

The W-L stat is kinda meaningless vis-a-vis Prescott given that in games 2, 3, and 4 the Cowboys' offense put up a mind-boggling 570, 522, and 566 yards and averaged over 36 points per game.

For the record, they were 2-3. He played most of game 5 and left the game with the Cowboys in the lead (and about to score to take a bigger lead, which they did). https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/dal/2020.htm

This is a good piece: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/bills-offseason-questions-bills-must-hope-jerry-hughes-follows-edge-rush-age-trend/article_e21262cc-7c4f-11eb-8e10-27a0a7da2776.html. It's also not news. I remember about 10-12 years ago reading an analysis somewhere that demonstrated that older pass rushers aged well, racking up strong production into their 30s. Indeed, Bruce Smith had his best season at the age of 33, and he was awesome at age 34 too (and he remained very good for another three years beyond that). Here's the key passage in this new piece: "Age 33 has not been a production barrier for defensive ends in the way it has been at running back and cornerback. There have been 24 edge rushers who have recorded six or more sacks at age 33 or older in the past 10 seasons. They’ve done it 36 times. So almost four players a year age 33 or older have been substantial contributors to their team’s sack total. Those players include Dwight Freeney, Robert Mathis, Cameron Wake, Terrell Suggs, John Abraham, Julius Peppers and Calais Campbell. Abraham, Peppers, Freeney, Suggs and Wake had eight or more sacks at age 35 or older. And then there’s Lorenzo Alexander, the retired Bill who had 12.5 sacks as mostly an edge rusher at age 33 in 2016. Alexander added 6.5 sacks while rushing more inside than outside at age 35 in 2018."

This is a good board because there are so many knowledgeable NFL fans here. Relegating the broader context the Bills operate in -- i.e., the NFL -- to a separate board doesn't make sense to me.