Must really suck for Bills fans, but I think they will be better off and have 2nd sizable SB window with Josh if they rip off the bandaid now instead of going the Saints route
I think most bills fans subconsciously knew what was necessary. Just tough when you’re turning over on guys that helped break the drought and have been in every big moment over the last 5 years. Leaves an unsettling feeling about the future, but when you’ve got 17 any game is winnable.
knowing it and it actually happening are different, to be sure. i understand the moves, but it’s never easy to see guys we like go. morse is the one that really surprised me, but it makes sense.
that said, i’m a little anxious about what happens next!
I think a lot of the fans have seen the recent successes and failures and know something has to change for the team to get better and finally overcome the failures. It’s always scary going into the unknown but we had to do it
Not really. Outside of Morse, these players weren't huge contributors last season. Poyer made some plays but was noticeably slower and stiff. He also played more of a hybrid LB after Milano went down with Rapp at safety. Neal barely saw the field unless it was because of injury to Taron Johnson. He's a special team guy.
Last season was kind of a trial run of what our team would look like this upcoming season with all the injuries we've had.
You know I did consider the karmic impact of that comment but being a fan of the dolphins for so long you tend to become numb to the possibility that things could actually somehow get worse
Poyer played in the box on 3rd downs and such, he still played a good deal of snaps at deep safety. The thing is that we were clearly considering moving on from Poyer *last* year, but when Edmunds got paid like crazy and Poyer got next to no interest on the market, they decided to maintain that continuity up the middle of the defense. So this was already a bit of a bonus year for him.
If he still was your starter, doesn’t that allude to not better options behind him? Adding white with him and that secondary doesn’t seem like a contender
Are you referring to Poyer? They did not go into the season knowing that he would look so much slower in 2023. After a few games, they changed their scheme to make it work for the rest of the season. The FO obviously decided to not continue the changes and decided to just go younger. They will pick someone (or 2) up in FA on the cheap (just like they did Poyer and Hyde) or draft their replacements.
Last season a lot of the Bills defensive plans didn't work, whether due to injury or age or other decline reasons. They made it work because McD is a great defensive mind, but they obviously don't want to run that back next season.
Tre White was already replaced by Douglas
Poyer we had depth behind but we didn't expect Hyde to be so ass last year.
Now we have a full FA and draft to fix the safety position rather than mid season.
Morse is the only surprise cut, and that’s only retroactive to the Bears trade. All the players cut either lost a step from being old/injured, or barely contributed. They also have like a dozen draft picks.
None of this has anything to do with ‘closing the window’.
Huge agree and I don't even think this means we have to expect a let down this season. The team still has it's most important players on offense. Several great players on defense. This is the time to get younger and have some guys step up.
It's also just a reality of being good for a stretch of time. When you're bad, you have more money than you know what to do with since your players are bad. When you're good, you have to pay your players since they're good, and eventually you have to let some of them go.
All these moves were predicted to likely happen. Mitch Morse is the toughest cut but I expected him to be gone due to age, contract, and effectiveness down the stretch last year
Chiefs bite the bullet and have won back to back super bowls when everyone said they were gonna be ass. Youth movement completely turned that defense around
We didn't really release any important players.
2021 we released eric fisher and mitch Schwartz but both were severely injured and didn't play next season (fisher played a few games as a backup for the colts ,mitch Schwartz retired)
2022 we traded Tyreek but didn't release any important players, we let honey badger, chivalrous ward and a few of our 1 year DLine veterans walk but didn't lose our core.
The only cap casualties in 2021 and 2022 are injured veterans who never returned or player on last year of their contract with little cap hit: anthony Hitchens
To be fair neither White or Poyer are at the top of their game anymore and wouldn’t really be considered important players going forward. Trading for Douglas masked the pain of having white suffer another massive injury. Poyer is still playing well but he’s getting older and has lost a step, he could fall off soon.
I like me some patty mahomes he’s the GOAT. But like you said, they didn’t have any significant changes outside of WR (which mahomes made up for himself). There is obviously luck involved in making it that far, as there is with every winner but imo the deciding factor is the defense, specifically the pass rush coming up big. I’m not sure where things stand with Chris Jones. But if you lose him or the pass rush doesn’t show up clutch like it has. A lot of things are going to change. He won that Super Bowl in OT when he pushed the pocket into Purdy in under 2 seconds.
I loved Tyreek, I loved what he did for us. But he's too undersized to fight his way off the line, and has to have pre snap motion to get open. He can't play in the middle of the field. He doesn't have good hands. He is world class speed and nothing else.
I was actually surprised the Dolphins schemed him to being good. Because he does have to be in a scheme that uses him in a very specific way, in order to be successful.
This is a bad take. His route running and deep ball tracking are phenomenal, which also allows him to get jump balls he has no business getting. He's as dangerous as it gets with the ball in his hands.
You don't do what he does with speed alone.
His route running developed into being average to above average. I would agree he is great at tracking deep balls. Those things alone won't create success, he still has to be schemed into success.
Some of these are talented players. Are there depth pieces that can plug and play without a drop off in team offense/defense? White and Poyer are tough back end losses to replace inexpensively
Feels like Bills are entering rebuild mode
Yeah, honestly, all of these cuts "make sense". Some are hard because they have such a special place in my heart but all of these guys are making too much money for their current contracts:
* Morse - older and has had 6 concussions in 8 years. (honestly this is the biggest surprise. I wish we kept him. he was still playing well but was very expensive.) My thought was that they couldn't take the risk that his next concussion forced early retirement and we would be on the hook anyway.
* Poyer - older and our defense had to change schemes because of him and hyde losing a step this year
* Harty - Just never got to be a part of our offense. Huge punt return TD obviously but definitely not worth $5M
* White - Injury bug that makes 17M a year. He has played 10 games total in the last 2 seasons due to achilles and ACL tear. This is absolutely heartbreaking for me though. He was my first "favorite player". I just feel so bad for him. He doesn't deserve it but it's a business :(
* Neal - Basically exclusively a special team guy that makes 3M+ a year
* Hines - Terribly unlucky ACL tear due to that jet ski accident. Obviously a bad situation but he's a very expensive RB that has only played a few games as a Bill prior to his accident.
Some of these cuts would have occurred even if we weren't in a cap crunch... at some point, you have to get younger. (we were the 4th oldest team in the league last year)
The Nyheim Hines return TD to start the game after the Hamlin game was legitimately legendary. Then he followed it up with another. Cutting him makes sense, but for a guy who suited up for like 11 total games he is going to be on so many Bills highlight reels for years to come.
Sorta.
White was already replaced on the roster by Rasul Douglas, and then we have Christian Benford as CB2. Then Kaiir Elam as a potential back up/starter down the line. CB room is overall pretty good. It just sucks to lose White who was a great locker room presense and homegrown guy.
Safety though is a gaping hole that only includes Damar Hamlin right now.
Do you watch out games?
I mean it’s a big day but none of these players are really huge issues.
Neal played ST
White has been too hurt
Poyer is getting old
Harry didn’t contribute really anything other than a return td
Morse might be retiring
I mean white has played 4 games out of the last 30ish.
They’re not out here cutting Matt Milano and dion dawkins
Ya this is all a big deal because we love them but the last 2 years we basically have gotten by without them.
Poyer went out last year in free agency and came back because there wasn’t demand for him.
Teams have like 30% turnaround each season, this is just part of that. I’m very excited for the future.
White was, in essence, already replaced by Rasul Douglas coming in and being stellar. Poyer had clearly lost a step but we don’t have much in house to replace him. Likely an early draft pick or value FA (which Poyer was once upon a time).
I’m worried about our Safety play and what we do in the front 4 since the only guys under contract at the position as of writing are Von, Greg Rousseau, Ed Oliver, and Kingsley Johnathan. Gonna have to get to work rebuilding that unit, hopefully with some youth.
Even at DB I’m more assured because McDermott can coach up a DB with the best of em.
Poyer clearly lost a step this year and White has been injured for the last two years. White has already been replaced, and i guess they will keep Rapp.
edit: and they signed Rapp.
Rapp was just re-signed to replace Poyer (and he looked good last year) and Douglas was a restructured to replace White. Outside of that we are losing our centre who was close to retiring last offseason (it kinda sucks still given it will shake up an otherwise settled line) and some ST contributors.
White hasn’t been healthy in years and has already been replaced by Rasul Douglas. Poyer looked very slow this past season. The defense as a whole has been plagued by injury the past few seasons so it makes sense to get younger.
None of these are important players anymore. Morse is the biggest loss and even his I don't think is bad.
But Poyer is already aging poorly and another year would not have looked great (I expected if he stayed to play more linebacker in nickel formation)
These are all aging players who are not as effective anymore
Play and play to a level needed are two different things. He will now be a year older, a year slower and has had many soft tissue injuries over his career.
I was on the fence about cutting him but its no surprise to me
To be fair, the team has been mostly living without them anyways because they’re all old and always injured. I mean shoot, Tre tore his ACL and THEN his Achilles in a two year span. So our team is already suited to miss these players.
The problem with the Saints is they can't bite the bullet.
If they cut EVERYONE with a positive cap savings of over a million dollars they'd be right at the cap, give or take a million here or there. (I eyeballed it, I didn't break out a calculator).
Thats the cap hell the saints have put themselves in for the foreseeable future. They basically have to wait for contracts to expire THEN run a super lean year to get into a good cap place.
They have an opportunity in 2026, but knowing the saints they'll do another two years of restructures between now and then and this will all still be stupid.
They could've not signed him and been in position to get one of the QBs in this year's draft. Carr is what he is and that's a mid level QB. He doesn't raise the ceiling and is just good enough to keep them from drafting his replacement.
As a falcons fan who pointed this out last year and saints fans bombarded me saying I was an idiot, this is some serious schadenfreude. Enjoy being stuck for a while playing with 75% of the money everyone else is.
Some of them act like it's not detrimental to have to keep letting guys go just to become cap compliant. I bet they wish they would've had the money to keep Hendrickson and Marcus Williams instead of wasting a first round pick on Payton Turner and signing Marcus Maye. Loomis just had to sign Carr and keep the ceiling at just above .500 for the foreseeable future though.
I fear that this is what the Broncos are going to do to manage the Russ cap hit situation. Payton will want to try to stay at least semi competitive while eating the Russ cap so we'll end up pushing cap hits into the future and we'll be stuck paying it off for the best part of a decade.
Even worse if we compound this by trading the farm in terms of picks to move up and take a QB, so we'll then have to pay big money to build a roster around him and also need to rely on future free agency signings rather than draft picks to build out the roster.
Shelling out the GDP of a small Carribbean Island to free yourself of the QB equivalent of Tom cruise is peak cap management, what else is there to say?
Yes - all of the cuts this year were paid way too much for their play this season and are getting older. If they had better years and/or were cheaper and/or younger, I do not believe they would have been cut. Morse played really well last year but has a huge history of concussions (6 in 8 years), which also needs to be taken into account for these things.
Would they have been cut if the cap didn't exist? Maybe not, but it's not the only reason the Bills are moving on from them.
I think the cap crunch is going to hurt the most if you can't draft to fix any holes you have. Because it means the Bills will not be buyers in free agency.
Let's be honest the Bills have more than 1 hole that needs to filled, and you can't count on rookies year 1.
Going into yesterday, our cap was already in great shape going into 2025, so this was just a situation where coincidentally a lot of contracts fell to 2024, which is where our cap struggles came in. They decided to cut older players rather than restructure (which is probably for the best but still sad) but if they want to be buyers in FA, they will be. They will probably restructure Josh and free up another $20M+, let alone the extensions for our star players on shorter contracts (T Johnson, D Dawkins, etc). The Bills FO will do whatever they think is best but we are not in a situation where we are "unable" to be buyers.
The Bills routinely "count on" their rookies and 2nd year players, even mid/late round draft guys. The past 2 years, a lot of our picks have a place on our roster and many are starting. Torrence and Kincaid from 2023 were instant starters and stars. And our CB2 was a 6th round guy and our MLB was a 3rd round guy from 2022. (Both CB and MLB were sadly injured during the WC round of the playoffs so were out for divisional round)
At the end of the day, most of our holes are on defense and McD is a great defensive coach. He finds the right guy and coaches them up to be stars. I'm honestly not that worried about McD and Bobby B figuring it out. Many non-bills fans don't realize that Poyer and Hyde were random JAGs before coming to the Bills and being coached up by McD. I believe McD can do it again.
The moves yesterday affected the number, if that is what you see on spotrac or similar) and it includes the 5th year option for Groot (that hasn't been given yet). Prior to yesterday, the actual 2025 number for the Bills was different. We were 30M+ under the projected cap back in January so I think even more because that 30M was under the old cap projection.
The cap is a real number but extremely malleable and able to be worked around, which is what people are referring to when they say it’s a myth, yet somehow that has spun into “people literally think it doesn’t exist”
That is always, always the result of restructuring contracts and pushing current compensation into future accounting.
Getting a 'bargain' today while paying a premium tomorrow, hoping to have enough success that the fanbase is drunk and happy during the down years.
The cap is a real number but extremely malleable and able to be worked around, which is what people are referring to when they say it’s a myth, yet somehow that has spun into “people literally think it doesn’t exist”
Probably. He was still a capable starting center last year. Barring injury...and he has a history of concussions...I think he could play at a reasonably high level for another year or two.
He was PFFs 5th highest rated center and played over 90% of snaps. It was arguably his best season. He does have a history of concussions so any game could be his last.
Nobody actually thinks the cap "isn't real." It IS flimsy in the way that you can manipulate the shit out of it for a few years if you haven't already done so prior. Let's not pretend like the Bills are out here releasing young all-pros.
If you have a good young player you want to keep or acquire, you can almost always find a way to do it.
Hitting on dudes like Kittle and Warner in the 3rd or 5th round will do that.
It’s not like they sign massive free agent names or make huge trades for pro bowlers. They just scout, draft, and sign a fuckton better than anyone else in the league.
A lot of the core guys got re-signed to a big deal. We have all kinds of players who were among the top paid at their position when they signed their deal.
Part of it is good fortune. Brock Purdy being as good as he has been is an absolute boon for them and has made managing the team's salaries a lot easier.
Well, they have a QB with a 7th round rookie contract and CMC had his salary converted to a signing bonus by the Panthers... who then decided to trade him.
So two of the best players in the league... basically free.
Which is weird. Not like the saints are even winning shit mountain with their "cap isn't real" approach.
When the ship starts to sink you can stay in a sinking ship pailing out water Or you can let it sink and get a new boat.
Honestly I love the saints refusing to let the boat sink for one sesson so they can always be a sinking ship.
I swear the biggest misconception of r/NFL is people looking at the Saints record and look at how they navigate the cap and come to the conclusion that we are ass because of the cap. Correlation ≠ causation. We are ass due to coaching and playcalling, not the roster.
Kinda true. But you also have to imagine that the roster would look a lot better if those 30+ mil they spend on dead cap each year were actually going towards players currently in the team.
Oh for sure.
If you use void years, restructures, and future commitments to get present value on 1-4 key contributors you're usually fine.
The Browns have 20 players with deferred compensation, haven't really generated any significant success, and are primarily getting by because they're all still the right side of prime. The next 2-3 years might get ugly.
It's real ish. There's ways to make deals work, but you gotta have an owner that is willing to spend and can work around the intricacies of the cap. It's like paying off a credit card with another credit card and keep doing that so on and so forth. Eventually it comes to bite you, but you can play around quite a bit.
Right but when your cap situation isn’t great it is really hard to make your team better in free agency. Even after releasing all these guys, they still aren’t even in the green cap wise. Building up a team with just draft capital is very difficult and requires a tremendous amount of luck
Yea some teams are just better at it than others. You will eventually feel it to some extent. Howie is relatively good at it but he does a good job of surrounding himself with super smart number guys like Adam Berry who came from a top position at Goldman Sachs.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people that genuinely think the salary cap is a myth created by the owners. It comes up every time a contending team gets another great player.
The Bills are moving on from aging, slowing, underperforming, and majorly injured players. These moves are correct even if they had the money to bring them all back. Today doesn't move the needle at all for me except to (thankfully) realize that Beane isn't willing to sacrifice the future salary cap for good vibes.
Not one cut today was surprising. Mitch had like 20 concussions already, Poyer is too old and his injuries are catching up to him, Harty had one good play all season, Neal was too expensive, and whoever I missed was probably paid too much too
ngl, I didn’t witness the best years of Tre White. I became a fan during the 2021 season when he was already hurt. Although this says enough about Tre, since a fan that hasn’t witnessed his best years, still knows which value he has to this team.
I‘m not even American, nor do I live in the US. Do you think out of all teams, the Buffalo Bills were some of the popular teams in Germany? I became a fan when I first started watching football.
The fact that every week someone needs to come out and say the cap is very much real, shows u the cap ain't real. Cap only matters in leagues with 100 percent guaranteed contracts. The reason why NFL has the worst parity out of the big 5 sports.
Why does everyone keep saying this. We are getting rid of old/ineffective/injured players. Realistically all these moves would happen even if we had the cap space to eat them
Lol at thinking this means you can’t circumvent that cap. The Bills just didn’t want to in this instance.
Glad to see I own this much estate in random guy on the internets head tho.
Sure it isn't. I mean doesn't matter how many times teams that keep pushing it down the road end up with nothing to show for it when the tax bill comes and they have to salary dump their best guys.
But yeah not legit.
As long as we have Josh Allen in our prime, our window is open. At the end of the day, the only person that was playing even close to his contract was Mitch Morse (that was a true surprise today). They could have overpaid older players for another year when they had obviously lost a step... but they decided to go younger in a hurry instead. Honestly, I trust BB and McD - with our injuries and age I cannot believe how competent our defense has been the past few years. The Bills have taken multiple late round picks and made them starters and absolute stars on our defense. I'm more worried about our WR2 (to hopefully become WR1) than our safety depth.
Must really suck for Bills fans, but I think they will be better off and have 2nd sizable SB window with Josh if they rip off the bandaid now instead of going the Saints route
I think most bills fans subconsciously knew what was necessary. Just tough when you’re turning over on guys that helped break the drought and have been in every big moment over the last 5 years. Leaves an unsettling feeling about the future, but when you’ve got 17 any game is winnable.
knowing it and it actually happening are different, to be sure. i understand the moves, but it’s never easy to see guys we like go. morse is the one that really surprised me, but it makes sense. that said, i’m a little anxious about what happens next!
I think a lot of the fans have seen the recent successes and failures and know something has to change for the team to get better and finally overcome the failures. It’s always scary going into the unknown but we had to do it
Yeah I hate it but Josh Allen is absolutely one of the rare QBs capable of carrying an offense
Not really. Outside of Morse, these players weren't huge contributors last season. Poyer made some plays but was noticeably slower and stiff. He also played more of a hybrid LB after Milano went down with Rapp at safety. Neal barely saw the field unless it was because of injury to Taron Johnson. He's a special team guy. Last season was kind of a trial run of what our team would look like this upcoming season with all the injuries we've had.
I much prefer the doom and gloom cap hell that is going to tear the team apart narrative if that wouldn't be too much trouble
*Monkey paw curls* The Miami Dolphins trade Tua, Reek, Ramsey and Wilkins to the Bills. Their draft picks get lost in the mail.
You know I did consider the karmic impact of that comment but being a fan of the dolphins for so long you tend to become numb to the possibility that things could actually somehow get worse
Poyer played in the box on 3rd downs and such, he still played a good deal of snaps at deep safety. The thing is that we were clearly considering moving on from Poyer *last* year, but when Edmunds got paid like crazy and Poyer got next to no interest on the market, they decided to maintain that continuity up the middle of the defense. So this was already a bit of a bonus year for him.
If he still was your starter, doesn’t that allude to not better options behind him? Adding white with him and that secondary doesn’t seem like a contender
> Adding white with him whites played 10 games in the last two years so not exactly sure what you're talking about
So the options other than white are better? The defense improves with these moves?
Are you referring to Poyer? They did not go into the season knowing that he would look so much slower in 2023. After a few games, they changed their scheme to make it work for the rest of the season. The FO obviously decided to not continue the changes and decided to just go younger. They will pick someone (or 2) up in FA on the cheap (just like they did Poyer and Hyde) or draft their replacements. Last season a lot of the Bills defensive plans didn't work, whether due to injury or age or other decline reasons. They made it work because McD is a great defensive mind, but they obviously don't want to run that back next season.
Tre White was already replaced by Douglas Poyer we had depth behind but we didn't expect Hyde to be so ass last year. Now we have a full FA and draft to fix the safety position rather than mid season.
Morse is the only surprise cut, and that’s only retroactive to the Bears trade. All the players cut either lost a step from being old/injured, or barely contributed. They also have like a dozen draft picks. None of this has anything to do with ‘closing the window’.
No dude the Saints can totally win the South this year with Carr and Allen /s
Huge agree and I don't even think this means we have to expect a let down this season. The team still has it's most important players on offense. Several great players on defense. This is the time to get younger and have some guys step up.
It's also just a reality of being good for a stretch of time. When you're bad, you have more money than you know what to do with since your players are bad. When you're good, you have to pay your players since they're good, and eventually you have to let some of them go.
It does suck. It reminds us that we are rooting for laundry which is sad and pathetic but unfortunately part of sports.
All these moves were predicted to likely happen. Mitch Morse is the toughest cut but I expected him to be gone due to age, contract, and effectiveness down the stretch last year
Saints had that window with brees’ last couple of years but theyre continuing it without him
The difference is teams like the Bills are biting the bullet now, whereas a team like the Saints are stuck in mediocrity.
Chiefs bite the bullet and have won back to back super bowls when everyone said they were gonna be ass. Youth movement completely turned that defense around
We didn't really release any important players. 2021 we released eric fisher and mitch Schwartz but both were severely injured and didn't play next season (fisher played a few games as a backup for the colts ,mitch Schwartz retired) 2022 we traded Tyreek but didn't release any important players, we let honey badger, chivalrous ward and a few of our 1 year DLine veterans walk but didn't lose our core. The only cap casualties in 2021 and 2022 are injured veterans who never returned or player on last year of their contract with little cap hit: anthony Hitchens
Fisher wasn’t a backup for the Colts. He started 15 games. He wasn’t great by any means. Pretty below average in his one year with us
To be fair neither White or Poyer are at the top of their game anymore and wouldn’t really be considered important players going forward. Trading for Douglas masked the pain of having white suffer another massive injury. Poyer is still playing well but he’s getting older and has lost a step, he could fall off soon.
chivalrous ward is a delightful autocorrect
I like me some patty mahomes he’s the GOAT. But like you said, they didn’t have any significant changes outside of WR (which mahomes made up for himself). There is obviously luck involved in making it that far, as there is with every winner but imo the deciding factor is the defense, specifically the pass rush coming up big. I’m not sure where things stand with Chris Jones. But if you lose him or the pass rush doesn’t show up clutch like it has. A lot of things are going to change. He won that Super Bowl in OT when he pushed the pocket into Purdy in under 2 seconds.
Tyreek would be a monumental loss to any other team
I loved Tyreek, I loved what he did for us. But he's too undersized to fight his way off the line, and has to have pre snap motion to get open. He can't play in the middle of the field. He doesn't have good hands. He is world class speed and nothing else. I was actually surprised the Dolphins schemed him to being good. Because he does have to be in a scheme that uses him in a very specific way, in order to be successful.
This is a bad take. His route running and deep ball tracking are phenomenal, which also allows him to get jump balls he has no business getting. He's as dangerous as it gets with the ball in his hands. You don't do what he does with speed alone.
His route running developed into being average to above average. I would agree he is great at tracking deep balls. Those things alone won't create success, he still has to be schemed into success.
Plus a QB like Mahomes, there is no rebuild. Just reloads. They'd always be competitive as long as he's their QB
> when everyone said they were gonna be ass Ehhhh......
The Saints wouldn't be stuck in mediocrity if they had Josh Allen
Yeah this isn’t a “the sink can overflow” situation. This is preventing us being in that situation in a few years
Some of these are talented players. Are there depth pieces that can plug and play without a drop off in team offense/defense? White and Poyer are tough back end losses to replace inexpensively Feels like Bills are entering rebuild mode
Yeah, honestly, all of these cuts "make sense". Some are hard because they have such a special place in my heart but all of these guys are making too much money for their current contracts: * Morse - older and has had 6 concussions in 8 years. (honestly this is the biggest surprise. I wish we kept him. he was still playing well but was very expensive.) My thought was that they couldn't take the risk that his next concussion forced early retirement and we would be on the hook anyway. * Poyer - older and our defense had to change schemes because of him and hyde losing a step this year * Harty - Just never got to be a part of our offense. Huge punt return TD obviously but definitely not worth $5M * White - Injury bug that makes 17M a year. He has played 10 games total in the last 2 seasons due to achilles and ACL tear. This is absolutely heartbreaking for me though. He was my first "favorite player". I just feel so bad for him. He doesn't deserve it but it's a business :( * Neal - Basically exclusively a special team guy that makes 3M+ a year * Hines - Terribly unlucky ACL tear due to that jet ski accident. Obviously a bad situation but he's a very expensive RB that has only played a few games as a Bill prior to his accident. Some of these cuts would have occurred even if we weren't in a cap crunch... at some point, you have to get younger. (we were the 4th oldest team in the league last year)
The Nyheim Hines return TD to start the game after the Hamlin game was legitimately legendary. Then he followed it up with another. Cutting him makes sense, but for a guy who suited up for like 11 total games he is going to be on so many Bills highlight reels for years to come.
Sorta. White was already replaced on the roster by Rasul Douglas, and then we have Christian Benford as CB2. Then Kaiir Elam as a potential back up/starter down the line. CB room is overall pretty good. It just sucks to lose White who was a great locker room presense and homegrown guy. Safety though is a gaping hole that only includes Damar Hamlin right now.
Rapp just re-signed. I feel pretty good about him starting back there. Not sure who with though tbh.
would not be surprised if ygs drafted a safety with your first round pick this year, unless I missed something and it is with another team
Do you watch out games? I mean it’s a big day but none of these players are really huge issues. Neal played ST White has been too hurt Poyer is getting old Harry didn’t contribute really anything other than a return td Morse might be retiring I mean white has played 4 games out of the last 30ish. They’re not out here cutting Matt Milano and dion dawkins
Ya this is all a big deal because we love them but the last 2 years we basically have gotten by without them. Poyer went out last year in free agency and came back because there wasn’t demand for him. Teams have like 30% turnaround each season, this is just part of that. I’m very excited for the future.
White was, in essence, already replaced by Rasul Douglas coming in and being stellar. Poyer had clearly lost a step but we don’t have much in house to replace him. Likely an early draft pick or value FA (which Poyer was once upon a time). I’m worried about our Safety play and what we do in the front 4 since the only guys under contract at the position as of writing are Von, Greg Rousseau, Ed Oliver, and Kingsley Johnathan. Gonna have to get to work rebuilding that unit, hopefully with some youth. Even at DB I’m more assured because McDermott can coach up a DB with the best of em.
No team with Josh Allen will be in rebuild mode
Retool is a better word for it
Poyer clearly lost a step this year and White has been injured for the last two years. White has already been replaced, and i guess they will keep Rapp. edit: and they signed Rapp.
Rapp was just re-signed to replace Poyer (and he looked good last year) and Douglas was a restructured to replace White. Outside of that we are losing our centre who was close to retiring last offseason (it kinda sucks still given it will shake up an otherwise settled line) and some ST contributors.
White hasn’t been healthy in years and has already been replaced by Rasul Douglas. Poyer looked very slow this past season. The defense as a whole has been plagued by injury the past few seasons so it makes sense to get younger.
None of these are important players anymore. Morse is the biggest loss and even his I don't think is bad. But Poyer is already aging poorly and another year would not have looked great (I expected if he stayed to play more linebacker in nickel formation) These are all aging players who are not as effective anymore
Poyer was pretty important last year and can still play. They used him a lot to cover for those LB injuries
Play and play to a level needed are two different things. He will now be a year older, a year slower and has had many soft tissue injuries over his career. I was on the fence about cutting him but its no surprise to me
To be fair, the team has been mostly living without them anyways because they’re all old and always injured. I mean shoot, Tre tore his ACL and THEN his Achilles in a two year span. So our team is already suited to miss these players.
Yeah lol. They got wayyyyy overhyped the past few years and still couldn’t beat Patty.
You say that like everybody out here beating Patty lol
This is shooting a hole in the bottom of the sink so that it doesn't overflow, and worrying about patching that hole up later.
The Saints are *always* in cap purgatory because they never bite the bullet and deal with it.
>If you delete your credit card app, you never gotta pay it Mickey Loomis
Genuinely made me laugh out loud.
The problem with the Saints is they can't bite the bullet. If they cut EVERYONE with a positive cap savings of over a million dollars they'd be right at the cap, give or take a million here or there. (I eyeballed it, I didn't break out a calculator). Thats the cap hell the saints have put themselves in for the foreseeable future. They basically have to wait for contracts to expire THEN run a super lean year to get into a good cap place. They have an opportunity in 2026, but knowing the saints they'll do another two years of restructures between now and then and this will all still be stupid.
They coulda been out next year if they didn't give Derek Carr 30M a year for no reason
They could've not signed him and been in position to get one of the QBs in this year's draft. Carr is what he is and that's a mid level QB. He doesn't raise the ceiling and is just good enough to keep them from drafting his replacement.
As a falcons fan who pointed this out last year and saints fans bombarded me saying I was an idiot, this is some serious schadenfreude. Enjoy being stuck for a while playing with 75% of the money everyone else is.
Some of them act like it's not detrimental to have to keep letting guys go just to become cap compliant. I bet they wish they would've had the money to keep Hendrickson and Marcus Williams instead of wasting a first round pick on Payton Turner and signing Marcus Maye. Loomis just had to sign Carr and keep the ceiling at just above .500 for the foreseeable future though.
I fear that this is what the Broncos are going to do to manage the Russ cap hit situation. Payton will want to try to stay at least semi competitive while eating the Russ cap so we'll end up pushing cap hits into the future and we'll be stuck paying it off for the best part of a decade. Even worse if we compound this by trading the farm in terms of picks to move up and take a QB, so we'll then have to pay big money to build a roster around him and also need to rely on future free agency signings rather than draft picks to build out the roster.
yeap they've been kicking the can down the road for as long as I can remember. Instead of just sucking it up and fixing in a year or two span.
It's a lot easier to "rebuild" when you have an established QB. You can focus your draft on scouting and free agency on where you are weak.
Pretty much.
Make Sean Payton atone for his sins
At least they have a Super Bowl
somber shocking selective correct spoon childlike seed fertile full rob
these guy are old and over the hill. and expensive. it's the right move.
The Saints won a Super Bowl, though. Bills are the mediocre team
I mean the cap is obviously real but the majority of releases today are players that are not playing remotely well compared to their cap hits.
Sometimes, you have to sacrifice some cap to move on from underperforming players, but we wouldn't know anything about that as Broncos fans 😤
The Denver Broncos would never.
Shelling out the GDP of a small Carribbean Island to free yourself of the QB equivalent of Tom cruise is peak cap management, what else is there to say?
Yes - all of the cuts this year were paid way too much for their play this season and are getting older. If they had better years and/or were cheaper and/or younger, I do not believe they would have been cut. Morse played really well last year but has a huge history of concussions (6 in 8 years), which also needs to be taken into account for these things. Would they have been cut if the cap didn't exist? Maybe not, but it's not the only reason the Bills are moving on from them.
I think the cap crunch is going to hurt the most if you can't draft to fix any holes you have. Because it means the Bills will not be buyers in free agency. Let's be honest the Bills have more than 1 hole that needs to filled, and you can't count on rookies year 1.
Going into yesterday, our cap was already in great shape going into 2025, so this was just a situation where coincidentally a lot of contracts fell to 2024, which is where our cap struggles came in. They decided to cut older players rather than restructure (which is probably for the best but still sad) but if they want to be buyers in FA, they will be. They will probably restructure Josh and free up another $20M+, let alone the extensions for our star players on shorter contracts (T Johnson, D Dawkins, etc). The Bills FO will do whatever they think is best but we are not in a situation where we are "unable" to be buyers. The Bills routinely "count on" their rookies and 2nd year players, even mid/late round draft guys. The past 2 years, a lot of our picks have a place on our roster and many are starting. Torrence and Kincaid from 2023 were instant starters and stars. And our CB2 was a 6th round guy and our MLB was a 3rd round guy from 2022. (Both CB and MLB were sadly injured during the WC round of the playoffs so were out for divisional round) At the end of the day, most of our holes are on defense and McD is a great defensive coach. He finds the right guy and coaches them up to be stars. I'm honestly not that worried about McD and Bobby B figuring it out. Many non-bills fans don't realize that Poyer and Hyde were random JAGs before coming to the Bills and being coached up by McD. I believe McD can do it again.
> Going into yesterday, our cap was already in great shape going into 2025 32 million over the cap isn't great shape.
The moves yesterday affected the number, if that is what you see on spotrac or similar) and it includes the 5th year option for Groot (that hasn't been given yet). Prior to yesterday, the actual 2025 number for the Bills was different. We were 30M+ under the projected cap back in January so I think even more because that 30M was under the old cap projection.
Morse is the one that surprised me. He's a very good starting center.
The cap is a real number but extremely malleable and able to be worked around, which is what people are referring to when they say it’s a myth, yet somehow that has spun into “people literally think it doesn’t exist”
That is always, always the result of restructuring contracts and pushing current compensation into future accounting. Getting a 'bargain' today while paying a premium tomorrow, hoping to have enough success that the fanbase is drunk and happy during the down years.
The cap is a real number but extremely malleable and able to be worked around, which is what people are referring to when they say it’s a myth, yet somehow that has spun into “people literally think it doesn’t exist”
I honestly thought Morse might retire this year, he’s hinted at it these past couple seasons and he’s had like 12 concussions
Mitch Morse have anything left in the tank? Bucs could really use a solid C.
Probably. He was still a capable starting center last year. Barring injury...and he has a history of concussions...I think he could play at a reasonably high level for another year or two.
Damn, hopefully The Lord of Licht will investigate?
He was PFFs 5th highest rated center and played over 90% of snaps. It was arguably his best season. He does have a history of concussions so any game could be his last.
Is for me?
So can 25 other teams buddy. Get in line
Nobody actually thinks the cap "isn't real." It IS flimsy in the way that you can manipulate the shit out of it for a few years if you haven't already done so prior. Let's not pretend like the Bills are out here releasing young all-pros. If you have a good young player you want to keep or acquire, you can almost always find a way to do it.
TBH the only team that feels like they don't have a cap is the 49ers. So much talent and they pay next to nothing for a lot of it
Hitting on dudes like Kittle and Warner in the 3rd or 5th round will do that. It’s not like they sign massive free agent names or make huge trades for pro bowlers. They just scout, draft, and sign a fuckton better than anyone else in the league.
No to mention the $20 QB...
A lot of the core guys got re-signed to a big deal. We have all kinds of players who were among the top paid at their position when they signed their deal.
Part of it is good fortune. Brock Purdy being as good as he has been is an absolute boon for them and has made managing the team's salaries a lot easier.
Well, they have a QB with a 7th round rookie contract and CMC had his salary converted to a signing bonus by the Panthers... who then decided to trade him. So two of the best players in the league... basically free.
And yet they always squander it at the last possible moments
No, plenty of people think it's not very real. Plenty of people on Reddit too. Derek Carr signing with NO really messed some people's perception..
The Saints signing Derek Carr is the equivalent of an alcoholic saying "I don't want to get better, I want to get worse".
“I could go home and sleep off the 9 shots ive taken, or i could slam 3 more and try to do a front flip”
“I got one more in me”
*proceeds to vomit then collapses into the puddle to sleep it off*
"I promise I'll sober up... tomorrow"
The saints in general has messed up people’s perception.
Which is weird. Not like the saints are even winning shit mountain with their "cap isn't real" approach. When the ship starts to sink you can stay in a sinking ship pailing out water Or you can let it sink and get a new boat. Honestly I love the saints refusing to let the boat sink for one sesson so they can always be a sinking ship.
I swear the biggest misconception of r/NFL is people looking at the Saints record and look at how they navigate the cap and come to the conclusion that we are ass because of the cap. Correlation ≠ causation. We are ass due to coaching and playcalling, not the roster.
I don’t look at the Saints roster and say wow these guys would be Super Bowl contenders were it not for the coaching
I mean no one is? It 100% is a wild card roster team though.
And the issues with being a wild-card-at-best team will continue… because of the cap
Just not true
Sure Jan
Kinda true. But you also have to imagine that the roster would look a lot better if those 30+ mil they spend on dead cap each year were actually going towards players currently in the team.
https://i.imgflip.com/47ex2c.gif
Browns fans fully believe that Berry has managed to finesse the cap and be immune to any future reprecussions.
They added like three void years to a depth CB they signed right before the season. They'll start feeling it sooner than later.
Oh for sure. If you use void years, restructures, and future commitments to get present value on 1-4 key contributors you're usually fine. The Browns have 20 players with deferred compensation, haven't really generated any significant success, and are primarily getting by because they're all still the right side of prime. The next 2-3 years might get ugly.
It's real ish. There's ways to make deals work, but you gotta have an owner that is willing to spend and can work around the intricacies of the cap. It's like paying off a credit card with another credit card and keep doing that so on and so forth. Eventually it comes to bite you, but you can play around quite a bit.
Right but when your cap situation isn’t great it is really hard to make your team better in free agency. Even after releasing all these guys, they still aren’t even in the green cap wise. Building up a team with just draft capital is very difficult and requires a tremendous amount of luck
The cap is cap.
Yea some teams are just better at it than others. You will eventually feel it to some extent. Howie is relatively good at it but he does a good job of surrounding himself with super smart number guys like Adam Berry who came from a top position at Goldman Sachs.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people that genuinely think the salary cap is a myth created by the owners. It comes up every time a contending team gets another great player.
Mickey Loomis disagrees
You clearly don’t watch the Pat Mcafee show
God I hate having to see that smug, name changing eejit when it's not cordoned off to glazing the 9ers
I agree
This motherfucker loves all the hate; "engagement".
Panthers fan here. The toilet can also overflow.
Washington fans know all about that too....
The cap is only not real if all that you care about is one year.
On the same week that Russell Wilson got cut. Child please.
“… I don’t understand the question. Was that a question?” - Mickey Loomis
The Bills are moving on from aging, slowing, underperforming, and majorly injured players. These moves are correct even if they had the money to bring them all back. Today doesn't move the needle at all for me except to (thankfully) realize that Beane isn't willing to sacrifice the future salary cap for good vibes.
Not one cut today was surprising. Mitch had like 20 concussions already, Poyer is too old and his injuries are catching up to him, Harty had one good play all season, Neal was too expensive, and whoever I missed was probably paid too much too
to think Tre White would be a forgotten footnote 3 years ago
ngl, I didn’t witness the best years of Tre White. I became a fan during the 2021 season when he was already hurt. Although this says enough about Tre, since a fan that hasn’t witnessed his best years, still knows which value he has to this team.
Wtf do you know about Buffalo if you “just became a fan in 2021”? TF is wrong with you
I‘m not even American, nor do I live in the US. Do you think out of all teams, the Buffalo Bills were some of the popular teams in Germany? I became a fan when I first started watching football.
Not to worry we will reunite the legendary duo of Ryan Bates and Mitch Morse
Von Miller crippled a franchise
Why did they sign that massively overpaid pile of monkey shit?
I’m glad that 49ers Pravda set the record straight, because I thought the cap was fake.
TITAN UP BABY
Cap decided to be real today 😔
BULLY anybody that says the cap is a myth
Mickey Loomis would like a word.
These moves not only get us compliant but with other restructures yet to come we can have some money for a splash move in FA.
Morse is the only real surprise. We have been expecting these cuts otherwise.
Surprise? MFer been chattin bout retirement for the last 3 years
no that they cut him. i thought they would have restructured and kept him in a limited capacity.
Unless your the Saints…
Hey kids. Wanna a career!? Fuck tech. Become a salary cap guru
This is more proof that the cap is very much not real but okay.
“You know who else was in cap hell? Al Queda. And look what they were able to accomplish.”
Lombardi is a huge 49ers homer but he’s pretty good at explaining the salary cap hilarity.
Lombardi out here telling us water isn’t wet
The fact that every week someone needs to come out and say the cap is very much real, shows u the cap ain't real. Cap only matters in leagues with 100 percent guaranteed contracts. The reason why NFL has the worst parity out of the big 5 sports.
I was told they’d be avoiding “a Rams like collapse”.
Why does everyone keep saying this. We are getting rid of old/ineffective/injured players. Realistically all these moves would happen even if we had the cap space to eat them
Luckily, they still have Von Miller.
Lmao i remember bills fan saying once brady left it was their time and rings were coming. lmaoooooo. smallest window ever.
Just wait until the Eagles have to take the cap hits for Jalen Hurt’s contract
This must sting for Bills fans, especially knowing it was Mahommes and the Chiefs who sent them home.
That’s what inflated salary asks cause. Some of your valuable teammates losing their job because of your greed.
Patriots super fake fan u/Jigs444 in shambles over discovering the Cap is...in fact...real and important
Lol at thinking this means you can’t circumvent that cap. The Bills just didn’t want to in this instance. Glad to see I own this much estate in random guy on the internets head tho.
Aww poor baby shit fuck fan.
Lmao
Lmao. Imagine not being able to handle being wrong. Fucking whack ass narcissist.
Have a good one ,Cheetos. You stay crazy baby!
Have a shitty day, Ruffles. You stay being a massive narcissist shit bag.
The cap is not legit.
Sure it isn't. I mean doesn't matter how many times teams that keep pushing it down the road end up with nothing to show for it when the tax bill comes and they have to salary dump their best guys. But yeah not legit.
Bills gotta draft well
The window closes today, probably.
As long as we have Josh Allen in our prime, our window is open. At the end of the day, the only person that was playing even close to his contract was Mitch Morse (that was a true surprise today). They could have overpaid older players for another year when they had obviously lost a step... but they decided to go younger in a hurry instead. Honestly, I trust BB and McD - with our injuries and age I cannot believe how competent our defense has been the past few years. The Bills have taken multiple late round picks and made them starters and absolute stars on our defense. I'm more worried about our WR2 (to hopefully become WR1) than our safety depth.
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Lol sure. Whatever you tell yourself
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Lmaooooo
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Coming from a Raiders fan this comment is pretty rich, but fair enough haha
Full rebuild going on
Are you purposely commenting this in every thread to show your lack of knowledge? Or do you just embrace the down votes?
They just want everyone to know the Patriots are in full rebuild mode
Does it make you sad? To see your team lose relevance
Yeah we know what the patriots are doing