Cash

Do we know the source of the leak on this contract? I'm wondering if the agent leaked it, and conveniently counted all incentives as part of the contract. It seems like a big overpay for Rudolph, but if $6M of the $16M are unlikely incentives, it becomes a lot more reasonable.

True. Although I wouldn't be suprised if we don't draft an RB, and instead sign a cheap veteran post-draft. I think they'll only draft an RB if they think he's a difference maker. Otherwise it doesn't make a lot of sense to have 3 RBs on rookie deals, who are all roughly equally good. A vet min RB would bring experience to the RB room, which McDermott always wants, and financially would be about the same cost as a 3rd-rounder or later.

I don't think this is true. I wasn't sure about it, so I attempted to look it up. This is what I found: https://nflcommunications.com/Documents/2018 Policies/7-2018 Anti-Tampering Policy-Clean Version.pdf Not 100% sure I'm reading this right, but if I am, the permission to seek a trade only gives the Bills the right to talk to the player & his agent. (I wouldn't be shocked if the Eagles basically told his agent what their asking price was and turned him loose to see if he could get it.) I don't think the Public/Private Statements section (4) would be exempted just because Ertz has permission to seek a trade. It's pretty easy for me to imagine a prospective suitor using public statements to try to poison pill the trade and get the Eagles to just cut Ertz outright.

Yeah I'm pretty confused as to what prompted this thread. We signed a FA punter for less than what our incumbent punter would've cost. Maybe OP thinks we should've gone with an undrafted rookie, but still this is pretty tame. We re-signed Taiwan Jones, probably at roughly the minimum. Every team has a few "core" ST players that mostly don't play their official position, so again, not sure why this would provoke outrage. We let Andre Roberts walk for financial reasons. This is the opposite of what OP is upset about. All in all, it looks like we're focusing LESS on special teams in 2021 than we did in 2020.

I tend to agree. This FO has definitely earned the benefit of the doubt from me, and the offseason is far from over. So far though, it's hard to argue that this team is better now than they were when they lost to the Chiefs. Will be very interesting to see what moves are left. If it is only small stuff, I hope that the media asks them point-blank how they expect the team to get better. Both Beane & McDermott have been very up front all offseason that you need to always get better, so it's totally a fair question.

Ertz is under contract with the Eagles, so there's not much the team can say. The reporters know this, so they don't want to waste their limited time asking questions that won't be answered.

Oh yeah, definitely not taking anything as gospel. But both of these guys are pretty good at messaging, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There's more than one "coachspeak" answer for any situation, and the one that BBB/McD actually use does send a message. They could've focused more on "we're not done improving our team", but instead focused on "we can run with who we have". Now, maybe they're just trying to make sure no one trades in front of them and takes Travis Etienne. Or maybe they're planning on running it back unless something unexpected happens. (Like Etienne being available in the 2nd round, or an elite O-line prospect dropping to 30 or something.) If it's the latter, then I'm really curious what their plan is to be able to run enough to keep defenses honest. EDIT: At least against certain defenses. The run game was great some of the time, most notably to close out the Steelers game. But the Chiefs and a couple other teams basically dared us to run, and shut it down with just their front 4.

McDermott looks deeply unhappy to be having this press conference right now. This is why I usually keep my camera off during zoom meetings at work!

Interesting that both Beane & McDermott are saying pretty emphatically that "we can run with the guys we have". I missed the initial question, but I wish there was a follow-up. In multiple games the opposing D put like 5-6 defenders in the box, and we still couldn't run against those defenses. Would love to know what the FO's plan is to address that if it's not personnel.

I mean, two wrongs don’t make a right. Maybe the Packers fans were harassing other Cardinals players like crazy and I didn’t hear about it - that’s totally plausible. But if so, that’s a bad look for their fans, too. I don’t know if our fan base is the worst or the best or where in between, but I know that we collectively have room for improvement. Side note: Wide range of outcomes for the Cardinals for sure. But if Kyler takes a big step in his third year, they’ll be a contender next year for sure. We just saw a similar situation with our team last year!

I agree with all of this. Will also add that it's a bad look for our fanbase if that many people are getting mad on twitter that Phillips feels compelled to react to it.

I hate any OT proposal that removes special teams and the field position battle from the game. There should be a difference between going 3-and-out versus moving the ball a decent ways down the field and still having to punt. Likewise, there should be a difference between the QB fumbling when he gets sacked vs. throwing a pick on a 40-yard bomb (arm punt). Turning football into a binary succeed/fail option (or tri-nary if it's TD/FG/fail) is much less interesting to me than traditional football, where every yard matters.

LOL. He didn’t play R2 though - that was Kenny Baker. But Davis did play Flitwick and Griphook in the Harry Potter movies. Re: Edmunds - I’ll support whatever the coaches decide. But keep in mind that he’s still younger than a bunch of this year’s draft prospects. He hasn’t come close to reaching his peak. Re: anyone else - Reggie Gilliam still looks more like a FB or H-back than a TE to me. I know it wouldn’t impact how the team uses him, but I want his number back in the 40s! Just doesn’t look right in 86.

Thanks, Virgil - great read as always! Regarding the scoring rules: yes, players who score touchdowns get 6 points for each. But remember that scoring a TD means possessing the ball in the end zone. So passing TDs are irrelevant to the scoring leaders, and kickers usually lead the league unless an RB (or very rarely WR) has a historical season like scoring 25 or so TDs.

And 6 of our games were against teams in the top 11!

Exactly. That was definitely not called in the huddle, but also was something the Bills were ready for. I would guess that in practice/meetings this week (every week?), they went over the block last year, and what to do if NE tries that again. I’m assuming that if we were on our own 5, or it was 4th and 20, we would have just gone max protect. But otherwise, the plan was to recognize the situation and pick up the first! P.S. We ran a similar fake a couple years ago with Logan Thomas throwing. Way better than the old school method of snapping 15 yards to the punter and having him try a pretty long throw for just a few net yards. If I was a special teams coach, I would always try to find an upman who’s played QB at a high level, like Logan Thomas, or Taysom Hill for the Saints. Tebow also played that spot on punts when he was on the Jets.

Great write up as always! Only thing I disagree on: I think McD and Beane ABSOLUTELY care, and probably the players do, too. McD has never beaten Belichick before this year. His and Beane’s off season comments always brought it back to beating the Patriots. It’s definitely much lower on their list than playoff seeding, but I’m sure it means quite a bit more to them than it would against some other 6-8 team.

I was also wrong! I’m over it, haha. I was actually pretty on board about midway through last year. After his rookie year I was hopeful but not sold.

Thurman’s speed was average. Burst/acceleration was great, but there was no breakaway speed there. Just saying.

How many do you think we should expect? (Honestly curious what you think.) FYI, there were 28 total 100-yd TE games last year, by 14 total players: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/pgl_finder.cgi?request=1&match=game&year_min=2019&year_max=2019&season_start=1&season_end=-1&pos[]=TE&is_starter=E&game_type=R&career_game_num_min=1&career_game_num_max=400&qb_start_num_min=1&qb_start_num_max=400&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&week_num_min=0&week_num_max=99&c1stat=rec_yds&c1comp=gt&c1val=100&c5val=1.0&order_by=player And I might've misread it, but I don't believe any team had 2 different TEs have a 100 yard game. Less than half of the league had a TE get to 100 yards last year, and only 8 total TEs had multiple 100 yard games. I'll give you 9 since Zach Ertz is clearly capable of it, but that's not exactly something fair to expect or demand from the team. Especially since this was by all accounts a really bad TE draft. IMO, drafting bad TEs won't solve the problem of lack of TE production. I'm not 100% sold on Knox, but I feel much better about him than any Bills TE since Riemersma, and I also like Sweeney to a decent degree. Kroft is fine but probably won't ever be a guy who moves the needle, and Lee Smith blocks and gets flagged. Even if Knox pans out, I'd love to have 2 real threats at TE with Sweeney also on the depth chart. But I just don't think that was available to add this year. I liked that they tried to sign Greg Olsen, but he didn't come here. Failing that, any other FA would've both cost too much and potentially stunted Knox's development. And I just don't think any TE in the draft would've helped more than the guys they actually took. Especially because they already have 2 young TEs, and IMO it's hard to develop a lot of young players at the same position simultaneously. So anyway, I agree that the team should be trying to upgrade the TE position, I just think it's harder than you make it seem. And I also think that our best short-term path to upgrading that position is to focus development resources on Knox & Sweeney.

Fair enough, but I don’t think 3rd year (Allen) or 2nd year (Singletary) fits that bill. And Kroft is going into his 6th year I think, but has basically only played like 2 years because of injuries. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s the kind of vet presence they want.

Looks like you even kept the Love writeup for the Saints?

I think Smith is a near lock because of McD’s stated desire to have a vet in every positional room. I don’t think he sees Kroft as that vet. I’d be really surprised if we don’t carry the same 4 TEs as last year, although maybe I’m too confident in Sweeney. For the same reason, I think we sign a vet RB post draft, whether we draft one or not. Depending on how the draft goes, that could be a bargain bin guy like Lamar Miller or Carlos Hyde, or someone more expensive like Devonta Freeman or maybe even Fournette. If we need someone to take a lot of carries it’ll be the latter, but if we get a guy in the 3rd round or whatever it’ll just be a no-ego guy to provide leadership and be an injury failsafe.

-Alton Robinson will wind up being a very good player -The Bills won't trade up from 54 -The Bills will trade up from 86 -If they don't use 128 in the trade up from 86, they'll trade up from 128 as well Basically I think the Bills will either wind up with 2 second rounders and a couple picks at the end of the draft, or a second and 2 thirds and maybe a pick or two at the end of the draft.

Agreed with the bolded. Plus, "BPA" is somewhat misleading IMO. I think it's pretty rare that when a team comes to pick, there's 1 player on their board who is truly "better" than all other players, at least with any confidence. If a team is grading players out of 10, the top players available might be three guys at 8.3, then another two at 8.2, then four more at 8.1. Even if the team is hyper-confident in their ratings, the top 3 all have the same grade, so who's the BPA? Sometimes there might be 1 guy who's the last first-round grade or whatever, and in that case, yeah, it's BPA. But I think mostly it's about roughly putting players into tiers. Last year, Beane talked about the trade-up for Dawson Knox and basically said that he was the last TE they had in a given tier, so that's why they made the move for him. Then of course they take positional value and roster construction into account - a team desperate at WR might take 2 or 3 in the same draft, but no one's ever taken 5. Even though statistically, you'd think sooner or later the "BPA" would've been a WR at every pick at some point. Working this around to the question in the OP, I think that when the Bills are on the clock at #54, there's going to be a "Best Tier Available" player available that fills one of these positions: Nickel DE, WR, OT, OG, "Big Nickel", or CB, or maaaaybe RB. So any other position would be a big surprise to me - QB, FB, TE, interior DL, K or P basically. (Most Cs can play G, and either a 3rd-down DE or a Big Nickel could easily be listed as a LB, and the Big Nickel would more likely be listed as an S.)