Dibs

That specious logic is often bandied around. If one is generous and allows for a 50% chance for any given good draft prospect to become a good NFL player, the odds for the player one drafts to become a good player does not go up simply because there are a surplus of them to chose from. It likely means that the draftee could be had for a lesser draft pick......but that doesn't help a team if they are wanting to immediately shore up a position.

Apparently nobody has told Walter that one shouldn't confuse effort with results.

C2C is rarely if ever restrictive....is only used as a general guideline....and is used by a majority of NFL teams(with the Bills possibly still using it). According to this(and I am unsure just how up to date it is.....wouldn't include Clay...maybe not Harvin).....the Bills have spent only $130M in cash this season: http://overthecap.com/cash-spending Considering that the cap is $143M, the Bills will be at worst even with regards to C2C this season.

I thought this was highlighted in the Raiders game. After we were down by a chunk, the metaphoric shackles seemed to come off and Orton had a string of plays where he ran around, avoided sacks and made plays. I remember thinking....where was this the last 8 games?

I don't know about that. NE just won the SB with a whiney 'hole at QB.

It is difficult to image that after re-signing Hughes and extending Kyle, that the FO's plan isn't to also re-sign Dareus and keep the strength of this team, the front four, together for the foreseeable future. We can easily afford it, though keeping Glenn, Gilmore, Bradham and Harvin as well might be stretching things somewhat.

The overpaying concept is IMO out of context. Apart from kickers/punters, the TE position has the smallest negative effect if one overpays. The same week that Miami had to suck up $6.6M in dead money after paying $20.5M over the last 2 seasons for a useless Mike Wallace, people are knocking the Bills for overpaying Clay by $0.55M. Rediculous.

As a casual fan of other team's players and not confident about my own scouting abilities, I can understand why there are many people who look at Clay's stats and wonder why there is so much interest in him. I remember doing the same thing when the Pats signed Welker and again when the Seahawks aquired Harvin. Both players had been less than impressive statistically, but were being uniformly spoken about as if they had upper echelon talent. Clay seems to be another one of these statistically hidden stars. A player who was considered to be in the top 100 players in the league by his peers and who is resoundingly rated as a top talent......but doesn't have the stats to back it up. Time will of course tell, but for now I am more than happy to go along with the experts' opinion of Clay.

Can't find one.....apart from wiki. Perhaps you could find a link that shows it not being correct. Yes, I did see his name.....but there is nothing in the article that implies he can/can't be transition tagged. He is in the "not tagged" section, and since he can be franchise tagged, he would be on the list regardless to whether he can be transitioned or not.

I think you might want to consider the possibility that the reporter in that Cameron article was not fully aware of the transition tag rules when they were speculating as to why the Browns didn't tag Cameron(with either tag). Also, the NFL link was tracking the Franchise Tags, not the Transition tags. As far as I am aware, apart from only being able to use one tag or the other in any given year, the tags are seperate from each other. A team may be restricted in their use of a particular tag for a number of years due to the afore mentioned contract length, but are still able to use the other tag throughout that period.

I'm not even going to contemplate this until the OP puts at least three exclamation marks into his thread title.

Done!

+2 (or get them when they are cut).

You are likely right on this assumption......but we can be fairly certain that 2 years ago the Dolphins had no inkling that they would be wanting to use the tag this year. Losing the tag for 4-6 years is a risky proposition for the Dolphins if they have already determined that they won't be keeping Clay.

If the Dolphins release him from the tag they can use the transition tag next year(and following years) on any player.If an offer is made while a player is tagged, the tagging team cannot use the tag for the duration of the contract. This means that if the Bills offer a 6 year deal, the Dolphins lose the ability to use the tag for the next 6 years. Edit: Clay would need to sign said offered deal for this to come into effect.

There is one aspect to this that I am pretty sure has not been mentioned.....and that is.... If a player signs a contract after receiving the transition tag, his original team cannot use the tag again on any player until the contract has expired. If the Dolphins rescind the tag, or if Clay signs the 1 year tag deal, they can use the transition tag again(on any player) next season. It seems to me that if the Dolphins have given up on Clay as some media has reported, it would be in their best interest to rescind the tag thus enabling its use in future years if needed. Conversely, if the Bills make an offer before the Dolphins rescind the tag they would not only remove the transition ability away from the Dolphins for the length of the contract(regardless if he plays for Bills or if Dolphins match offer)......but it would also ensure that no 3rd party teams could move in on the Clay action.

Just IN Blalock? Never heard of him.

Because I'm bored I thought I'd point out all of the errors you made(sorry). Dareus has a cap hit this year of $8.06M not $8.60M. Your totals add up to $123M not $121M. The SB portion of any NFL contract can only be amortized to a maximum of 5 years.....so your cap hit for $25M SB would be $5M/year for the first 5 years, and zero for the last 2. This(along with the $8.06M error) means your contract only provides us with a measly $1.06M in cap relief this season. Your $30M 2016 guaranteed bonus cannot be amortized at all, and as it stands would all count towards the 2016 cap. Apart from all that, all good.

A tight situation indeed.

Jump straight to the last post and read the thread backwards. You quickly get an idea of where things are by doing it that way.

This seems most likely that the Dolphins are trying to screw with us and force us to offer the cap unfriendly deal instead of the cap friendly UFA deal. If I were Whaley I would call this bluff and wait for Dolphins to remove the tag.

F5, F5, F5

.....of sanity.

Probably? Why be so coy? We definitely could get a better play than Clay. It's not very likely though.

Your crystal ball is firmly tuned into Murray's contract then?