What if it takes highest paid player in the NFL to resign Allen?

[machine gun kelly]

I’ll have concern in three years when we probably give him a 5th year option, and if they really aren’t absolutely sure, they can tag him for another 1-2 years.  You just don’t know what he’ll be capable of doing then.  He may have a breakout year, this year, or not.  I hope he is a SB caliber guy, and then we pay him.  My only other point is I look at a QB compensation in terms of %to the cap, not $ as the cap has steadily increased every year.  The larger concern now is the cap retraction that will most likely take place this next year.

[Thurman#1]

4 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The reason Beane talked about "cleaning up the cap" was to buy time. What he and McDermott really meant was "get the guys out who don't fit out culture" but they couldn't say that because they still needed some of those guys to go out there and perform for them. The Bills were not in cap hell or anything like it. In fact in the last 10 years I can only think of two genuine "cap hell" situations in the NFL. The Saints in 2014 and the Falcons this year. 

 

The cap is so flexible that it should never become an issue. Yes you need a plan and a strategy but what you really need is great players. As for comp picks.... they are not irrelevant. But they are peripheral. Brandon Beane is yet to have a single comp pick as the GM of the Bills. He has had plenty of picks though. There are numerous ways to skin the cat. 

 

People who obsess about cap space and comp picks are getting it totally the wrong way around and luckily from everything he says... Beane gets it. What he wants is good football players. That should be the goal and being dogmatic about the way you achieve that helps nobody. The priority is talent. Your cap space and your draft picks are currency to acquire talent and, critically, to retain it. 

 

 

Beane does indeed get it. He says it's not time yet but he absolutely will begin to game the system for comp picks. He understands their importance and has even built his own little system of bringing in low-dollar FAs who can either be traded for picks or can replace guys who can be traded, such as McCarron, Wyatt Teller and so on. He's not at the point in the team's life cycle where he can easily get comp picks, so he has to find a cheap way to manufacture his own. He's beyond getting it. He's smart as hell.

 

And again, yes, you need to have good football players. Spending time and effort on comp picks and keeping the team in excellent cap shape ... are excellent ways to bring in the maximum number of good football players. It doesn't work against that. Just the opposite. If you want to bring in good football players, get more draft picks and keep your cap in good shape. That will allow you to bring in the FAs to fill your holes, like the ones I mention in the 4th paragraph.

 

So I agree with your last sentence, but I think you yourself maybe missed what you said. "Your cap space and draft picks are currency to acquire talent, and, critically, to retain it." Yes, exactly. Dead on target. And that's why bringing in every pick you can and keeping the cap in good enough shape that you have a lot flexibility is an absolute key to bringing in and maintaining a good roster. Which is why the best teams in the league so consistently worry about comp picks and cap space.

 

What do you mean he couldn't say that he wanted to get the guys out who don't fit our culture. Not only "could" he say that ... he DID say it. Again and again and again. Of course he could say that. Tell me, was Robert Woods a culture problem? No, of course not. Charles Clay? No. He wasn't living up to his contract. Great guy, insane Whaley contract. Ronald Darby a bad locker room guy? Nope. He would've been expensive in the near future and they needed draft picks. Preston Brown a dirtbag? Cordy Glenn? Tyrod? McCoy was overpaid, and I always thought he was a bit of a dirtball but all reviews in the locker room said he was a great locker room guy. Certainly much more talented than the aging Frank Gore. But he was too expensive. Gilmore has managed to avoid being a culture problem for Belichick. Culture simply wasn' t the issue, nor, obviously was talent with him. He would've cost too much and they were fighting to get the cap in terrific shape in a very short time. For good reason.

 

Yeah, there were a couple of dirtballs, Dareus being the prime example, though it had also become obvious that year that he was not only lazy but overpaid. Sammy appears to have been the other main problem. But most of those moves that cut cap were done for two reasons, draft capital and cutting the cap. Again, Beane has reported in at least two places that he said in his interview that clearing up the cap mess was going to be a major priority and that he promised to do it by the beginning of the 2019 season, which he did. He didn't know who were culture problems, though he may have had some ideas on obvious guys. He wanted to clear up the cap because it's a great idea.

 

They weren't in cap hell if you want to use the extreme definition. But yeah, Bill, they absolutely were in something like it. Cap hell, no. Cap problems, yeah. The cap situation of a team trying to get into a window? Yeah. Despite the fact that the roster was nowhere near being good enough to compete for a championship? Yeah. No, they weren't about to have to do the kind of purge where we lost Bruce Smith, Thurman, etc. But yes, if we'd kept that crappy cap situation and hadn't cleared the decks (and yes, some of that clearing also came to acquire draft capital to bring in Josh, but most of it was to clear up the cap), then they couldn't have brought in guys like Morse, Murphy, Lotulelei, Hyde, Poyer, Spain, John Brown, Beasley, Feliciano, Jordan Phillips, Lorax, Feliciano, Kevin Johnson, Tyler Kroft, Spencer Long, Nsekhe, Corey Liuget, McKenzie, Lee Smith, Andre Roberts, Kurt Coleman, Diggs, Addison, Vernon Butler, Quinton Jefferson, Josh Norman, Klein, Matakevich, Daryl Williams, Marlowe, Boehm, and Hauschka and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Sure they could have brought in some of these guys. Half, maybe? Particularly if they took the cheaper ones instead of the more expensive? Yeah, sure.

 

That FA group is the skeleton of this team, and together they cost an awful lot, way more than they could have paid for without a monster salary cap improvement project.

 

 

EDIT: Just to return to the headline, of course if Josh becomes a top 10 guy they should pay him, even if he becomes the highest-paid. It's a cost of doing business intelligently.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Thurman#1

[eball]

Thank Allah that Brandon Beane doesn’t run a professional football franchise based upon the opinions of fans on message boards.

 

This would be a wonderful “problem” to have in two years.  The bigger concern right now is extending both Beane and McD.

[GunnerBill]

9 minutes ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Beane does indeed get it. He says it's not time yet but he absolutely will begin to game the system for comp picks. He understands their importance and has even built his own little system of bringing in low-dollar FAs who can either be traded for picks or can replace guys who can be traded, such as McCarron, Wyatt Teller and so on. He's not at the point in the team's life cycle where he can easily get comp picks, so he has to find a cheap way to manufacture his own. He's beyond getting it. He's smart as hell.

 

And again, yes, you need to have good football players. Spending time and effort on comp picks and keeping the team in excellent cap shape ... are excellent ways to bring in the maximum number of good football players. It doesn't work against that. Just the opposite. If you want to bring in good football players, get more draft picks and keep your cap in good shape. That will allow you to bring in the FAs to fill your holes, like the ones I mention in the 4th paragraph.

 

So I agree with your last sentence, but I think you yourself maybe missed what you said. "Your cap space and draft picks are currency to acquire talent, and, critically, to retain it." Yes, exactly. Dead on target. And that's why bringing in every pick you can and keeping the cap in good enough shape that you have a lot flexibility is an absolute key to bringing in and maintaining a good roster. Which is why the best teams in the league so consistently worry about comp picks and cap space.

 

What do you mean he couldn't say that he wanted to get the guys out who don't fit our culture. Not only "could" he say that ... he DID say it. Again and again and again. Of course he could say that. Tell me, was Robert Woods a culture problem? No, of course not. Charles Clay? No. He wasn't living up to his contract. Great guy, insane Whaley contract. Ronald Darby a bad locker room guy? Nope. He would've been expensive in the near future and they needed draft picks. Preston Brown a dirtbag? Cordy Glenn? Tyrod? McCoy was overpaid, and I always thought he was a bit of a dirtball but all reviews in the locker room said he was a great locker room guy. Certainly much more talented than the aging Frank Gore. But he was too expensive. Gilmore has managed to avoid being a culture problem for Belichick. Culture simply wasn' t the issue, nor, obviously was talent with him. He would've cost too much and they were fighting to get the cap in terrific shape in a very short time. For good reason.

 

Yeah, there were a couple of dirtballs, Dareus being the prime example, though it had also become obvious that year that he was not only lazy but overpaid. Sammy appears to have been the other main problem. But most of those moves that cut cap were done for two reasons, draft capital and cutting the cap. Again, Beane has reported in at least two places that he said in his interview that clearing up the cap mess was going to be a major priority and that he promised to do it by the beginning of the 2019 season, which he did. He didn't know who were culture problems, though he may have had some ideas on obvious guys. He wanted to clear up the cap because it's a great idea.

 

They weren't in cap hell if you want to use the extreme definition. But yeah, Bill, they absolutely were in something like it. Cap hell, no. Cap problems, yeah. The cap situation of a team trying to get into a window? Yeah. Despite the fact that the roster was nowhere near being good enough to compete for a championship? Yeah. No, they weren't about to have to do the kind of purge where we lost Bruce Smith, Thurman, etc. But yes, if we'd kept that crappy cap situation and hadn't cleared the decks (and yes, some of that clearing also came to acquire draft capital to bring in Josh, but most of it was to clear up the cap), then they couldn't have brought in guys like Morse, Murphy, Lotulelei, Hyde, Poyer, Spain, John Brown, Beasley, Feliciano, Jordan Phillips, Lorax, Feliciano, Kevin Johnson, Tyler Kroft, Spencer Long, Nsekhe, Corey Liuget, McKenzie, Lee Smith, Andre Roberts, Kurt Coleman, Diggs, Addison, Vernon Butler, Quinton Jefferson, Josh Norman, Klein, Matakevich, Daryl Williams, Marlowe, Boehm, and Hauschka and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Sure they could have brought in some of these guys. Half, maybe? Particularly if they took the cheaper ones instead of the more expensive? Yeah, sure.

 

That FA group is the skeleton of this team, and together they cost an awful lot, way more than they could have paid for without a monster salary cap improvement project.

 

 

EDIT: Just to return to the headline, of course if Josh becomes a top 10 guy they should pay him, even if he becomes the highest-paid. It's a cost of doing business intelligently.

 

 

 

I disagree with your assessment of the situation Beane inherited and what their plan was. It was to rid the team of guys who didn't fit their culture. That doesn't mean they thought all of those people were problems. Some of them were about scheme as much as personality. Ronald Darby wasn't a scheme fit for example. There was another route open to them and despite the fact that I agreed with the route Beane took they didn't have to tear the roster down. That was a choice. The Bills had plenty of means of flexing the cap to make a run work building on the .500 roster that they inherited. That wasn't what they wanted to do (I believe rightly) so they created this cap hell narrative. The Bills were nowhere near cap hell. Not even close.

 

As for cap room and draft picks being currency. Yes, that is exactly what they are. a means to an end. When you have the end you no longer need to worry about the means. That is the point. Do I think the Bills might end up being a team that farms the comp pick system? Likely, yes, because comp picks are a result of having a good roster and a number of bigger contracts. You don't build a good roster through comp picks. You accumulate comp picks through having a good roster. Bills fans have obsessed about cap space and comp picks because they have been the beacons of hope "hey the team sucks but we have $40m cap space and 9 draft picks so we could get good." They need to start thinking differently. We are not going to have cap space because hopefully Allen, White, Edmunds, Oliver, Dawkins, Diggs is the start of a backbone of a team that can make Championship runs. And if they are then they will need paying. Letting those guys walk to replace them with cheap guys when they are still in their prime is the opposite of the way this team should be thinking. Will more of the mid tier roster guys have to come from the draft rather than from vet FAs once we have paid those guys? More than likely, yes. That is the way it works. The Bills will have to keep drafting well to stay competitive when they are paying big contracts. But worrying about whether to keep any of those guys because of the cap is complete nonsense.

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

9 hours ago, Steve Billieve said:

I'd let him walk.  Both Dak and where Allen is at now.  It's not even a question. Grab a first or second round prospect after Allen's 4th and sign his option.  In today's NFL you might even be able to trade him. QB on a rookie deal is a beautiful thing, even a mediocre one.

 

Shirley you jest. 

What If.

 

Keep taking steps to improve and doing so should be rewarded.  

[JMF2006]

50m per year

[mannc]

9 hours ago, Freddie's Dead said:

Why would a player resign Allen?

Or re-sign him, for that matter...

[bigK14094]

It would mean he has earned it.  I could live with that......

[JaCrispy]

10 hours ago, RiotAct said:

ask me in a couple years.

Exactly...because at his current level of play no way

4 minutes ago, bigK14094 said:

It would mean he has earned it.  I could live with that......

Not necessarily...many players get top money that haven’t earned it

Edited May 27, 2020 by JaCrispy

[HOUSE]

That's why it is important to win now....THERE IS NO TOMORROW

 

 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

If he turns out like Blake Bortles, no. Russell Wilson , yes.

[Fingon]

You let him walk. The highest paid QB has missed the playoffs 8 out of the last 10 years, and no QB has ever won a SB making more than 13.1% of the cap. The last 8 Super Bowl winners have been QBs on rookie deals or ones with deals significantly below market value (Brady, Foles, Peyton).

 

If Beane is serious about winning a Super Bowl he won't even come close to making Josh the highest paid player in the league.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Fingon

[T master]

I would rather him be worth that than pay him that amount $35 + million a year is ridiculous IMHO ...

[Just Joshin']

No QB should make more than Mahomes once he gets his new deal.

[Don Otreply]

That would mean the Bills will have won the super bowl at some point during Allen’s third, fourth or fifth season, and that Allen maintains a high level of play throughout this period of time. I think everyone would be okay with that, but maybe that’s just me... ?

 

Go Bills!!!

[BigBuff423]

Two things: 1. this franchise has been searching for their true QB of the present and future since Kelly left and didn't get it done, so if Allen makes the leap in year three and therefore produces over the next three years at a high to elite level, the unequivocal answer is Yes! You sign him, set the market and don't look back. You NEVER go back to not having an extremely effective QB when you have one in hand. We all know the QB is the single most important position in all of sports and there is no isolated position more influential on the outcome of games than a QB - if he's good to elite, you pay him - back up the truck, dump the cash on his lawn and move on. 2. The Cap is going to be insane by that point, as in just out of this world per the new CBA, which is largely done because everyone knows the salaries coming to the QBs of the future will be astronomical. So, don't think of it in terms of paying Josh Allen $50 / AAV today under the current Cap, think of paying him that amount in three years when another $60 million has been added to the Cap. 

 

Josh Allen proves his worth - you pay him and never look back.

The market is going to change with a significant higher spending floor and ceiling to give much more flexibility at which time Allen comes into his new, deserved contract.

 

Lastly, great GMs know how to manage all of the emerging talent with their contracts, how to structure them, how to find / unearth great talent in the Draft to complement their team and how to attract FAs without simply superfluously washing cash over their bank account with no way out. I don't know if Beane will prove long-term he's a great GM, but IMHO, the early indications are he's done an amazing job with how he's handled all of the aforementioned challenges. 

[FireChans]

4 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

Beane does indeed get it. He says it's not time yet but he absolutely will begin to game the system for comp picks. He understands their importance and has even built his own little system of bringing in low-dollar FAs who can either be traded for picks or can replace guys who can be traded, such as McCarron, Wyatt Teller and so on. He's not at the point in the team's life cycle where he can easily get comp picks, so he has to find a cheap way to manufacture his own. He's beyond getting it. He's smart as hell.

 

And again, yes, you need to have good football players. Spending time and effort on comp picks and keeping the team in excellent cap shape ... are excellent ways to bring in the maximum number of good football players. It doesn't work against that. Just the opposite. If you want to bring in good football players, get more draft picks and keep your cap in good shape. That will allow you to bring in the FAs to fill your holes, like the ones I mention in the 4th paragraph.

 

So I agree with your last sentence, but I think you yourself maybe missed what you said. "Your cap space and draft picks are currency to acquire talent, and, critically, to retain it." Yes, exactly. Dead on target. And that's why bringing in every pick you can and keeping the cap in good enough shape that you have a lot flexibility is an absolute key to bringing in and maintaining a good roster. Which is why the best teams in the league so consistently worry about comp picks and cap space.

 

What do you mean he couldn't say that he wanted to get the guys out who don't fit our culture. Not only "could" he say that ... he DID say it. Again and again and again. Of course he could say that. Tell me, was Robert Woods a culture problem? No, of course not. Charles Clay? No. He wasn't living up to his contract. Great guy, insane Whaley contract. Ronald Darby a bad locker room guy? Nope. He would've been expensive in the near future and they needed draft picks. Preston Brown a dirtbag? Cordy Glenn? Tyrod? McCoy was overpaid, and I always thought he was a bit of a dirtball but all reviews in the locker room said he was a great locker room guy. Certainly much more talented than the aging Frank Gore. But he was too expensive. Gilmore has managed to avoid being a culture problem for Belichick. Culture simply wasn' t the issue, nor, obviously was talent with him. He would've cost too much and they were fighting to get the cap in terrific shape in a very short time. For good reason.

 

Yeah, there were a couple of dirtballs, Dareus being the prime example, though it had also become obvious that year that he was not only lazy but overpaid. Sammy appears to have been the other main problem. But most of those moves that cut cap were done for two reasons, draft capital and cutting the cap. Again, Beane has reported in at least two places that he said in his interview that clearing up the cap mess was going to be a major priority and that he promised to do it by the beginning of the 2019 season, which he did. He didn't know who were culture problems, though he may have had some ideas on obvious guys. He wanted to clear up the cap because it's a great idea.

 

They weren't in cap hell if you want to use the extreme definition. But yeah, Bill, they absolutely were in something like it. Cap hell, no. Cap problems, yeah. The cap situation of a team trying to get into a window? Yeah. Despite the fact that the roster was nowhere near being good enough to compete for a championship? Yeah. No, they weren't about to have to do the kind of purge where we lost Bruce Smith, Thurman, etc. But yes, if we'd kept that crappy cap situation and hadn't cleared the decks (and yes, some of that clearing also came to acquire draft capital to bring in Josh, but most of it was to clear up the cap), then they couldn't have brought in guys like Morse, Murphy, Lotulelei, Hyde, Poyer, Spain, John Brown, Beasley, Feliciano, Jordan Phillips, Lorax, Feliciano, Kevin Johnson, Tyler Kroft, Spencer Long, Nsekhe, Corey Liuget, McKenzie, Lee Smith, Andre Roberts, Kurt Coleman, Diggs, Addison, Vernon Butler, Quinton Jefferson, Josh Norman, Klein, Matakevich, Daryl Williams, Marlowe, Boehm, and Hauschka and I'm sure I'm missing a few. Sure they could have brought in some of these guys. Half, maybe? Particularly if they took the cheaper ones instead of the more expensive? Yeah, sure.

 

That FA group is the skeleton of this team, and together they cost an awful lot, way more than they could have paid for without a monster salary cap improvement project.

 

 

EDIT: Just to return to the headline, of course if Josh becomes a top 10 guy they should pay him, even if he becomes the highest-paid. It's a cost of doing business intelligently.

 

 

That list of FA’s is kinda funny when you think about how many of them are back up and rotational guys. Nice to have, but only a handful are difference makers at the NFL level.

 

The key point you are missing is by tearing down the entire roster to fix the cap hell that didn’t really exist, the new regime created enough holes that allowed the roster to fill out with all of those guys. You don’t need to sign a bunch of DL players if you have DL players on the roster. If you trade or cut all your DT’s or LB’s, then yeah you gotta sign them.

 

Either way, a ton of the players on your list are luxuries. Good teams don’t win with great depth at every position. They win with star talent. Klein and Matalevich may be better than all the back up LB’s on the Chiefs but that won’t be why we win a Super Bowl.

[Clutchwarfare]

12 hours ago, Paulus said:

The only reasonable answer...

Yeah I agree. However its May 27th during a pandemic so let the cold takes fly!

8 hours ago, Buffalo Barbarian said:

You dont let Superbowl winning QBs walk.

 

 

Foles; Flacco Looking like justifiable decisions. 

Also, never forget the Mitch Trubisky contract.

But I have faith in Josh.

Either way, Josh is not a household name, yet. So allllllll the talking heads will bash a big money signing until he earns his stripes in  Prime Time.    

[Billl]

8 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

The reason Beane talked about "cleaning up the cap" was to buy time. What he and McDermott really meant was "get the guys out who don't fit out culture" but they couldn't say that because they still needed some of those guys to go out there and perform for them. The Bills were not in cap hell or anything like it. In fact in the last 10 years I can only think of two genuine "cap hell" situations in the NFL. The Saints in 2014 and the Falcons this year. 

 

The cap is so flexible that it should never become an issue. Yes you need a plan and a strategy but what you really need is great players. As for comp picks.... they are not irrelevant. But they are peripheral. Brandon Beane is yet to have a single comp pick as the GM of the Bills. He has had plenty of picks though. There are numerous ways to skin the cat. 

 

People who obsess about cap space and comp picks are getting it totally the wrong way around and luckily from everything he says... Beane gets it. What he wants is good football players. That should be the goal and being dogmatic about the way you achieve that helps nobody. The priority is talent. Your cap space and your draft picks are currency to acquire talent and, critically, to retain it. 

You nailed it.  Comp picks should be the natural result of having a deep roster.  It shouldn’t be the goal.  The teams who consistently get the most comp picks get them because they have a core of elite players around whom they build interchangeable, affordable pieces.  When you’ve got your QB and your other cornerstone positions locked down, you become flexible enough to grab value in the draft rather than chase need.  (Everyone preaches BPA, but very few are able to stick to it because they have holes to fill.) 

 

When you have religiously drafted BPA, your roster tends not to have holes in it.  Fewer holes means fewer expensive FA acquisitions, and that leaves money to keep signing your elite talent.  It also gives you the ability to let them walk when they get too expensive.  Eventually, you wind up letting good players go because you have better and/or cheaper players ready to fill their spots.  That leads to comp picks, and the cycle repeats itself.

 

You want to get comp picks because you don’t have room for all of your talented players.  You don’t want to cut players because you would prefer to grab a couple of later round picks.

[Jauronimo]

If hes in line for highest paid QB in the league, which essentially means richest contract in NFL history to date when his contract is up it means he likely has a super bowl appearance or a ring.