To be fair, he played great in the preseason...completed over 85% of his passes. But yeah, I don’t see how you choose Peterman over Allen in the first place.

So Josh Allen is starting on Sunday!

I mean, it has to work out better than the last time the Bills started a rookie QB vs. the Chargers, right?

Must be exciting times for Bills fans. Even 1-15 will exceed expectations. There's nowhere to go but up!

I don't think cap space matters nearly as much as most fans think it does. It's constantly growing and some contract creativity can fit players in quite easily under it.

And I think I made this point in the offseason thread, but the Raiders' personnel moves this offseason suggest to me that there's not much reason to be optimistic for how they use their cap space.

And there's also this:

"But Raiders won't use cap space / picks correctly" - I don't think this is relevant. Can apply the same statement around their chances of building a winner around Mack.

It's interesting cuz Mack is ~the best, most expensive non-QB traded in recent memory. Basically the most awesome player you can hope to acquire in a trade. The price was very high though. 2 1st round picks that have top of the draft potential. A contract that surpasses Aaron Donalds record breaking deal. There's a lot going on but almost none of the discussion is anything but "lol Raiders."

If you aren't in position to compete and your 27.5 year old star player is due a record breaking deal - it's not that insane to be a seller. The more puzzling part is the Bears being the highest bidder. Trading for a star to raise your floor & start your championship window before you know you have a QB seems questionable.

we just had two nights of football of entirely lol raiders

And what will probably be a weekly tweet of giants offensive line

or this one

luckily giants will get a reprieve in the schedule Ereck Flowers only has to face in the next 3 weeks
Demarcus Lawrence, JJ Watt, Cameron Jordan

I'm wondering if this same logic should apply to QBs as well? Find that teams are more than happy to pay average QBs a lot of money when they should potentially just reset and try to bink in the draft. ie Dalton, Rivers, Manning, Russell Wilson, Flacco, Stafford, Carr (ie QBs in the 8-15 range who have no realistic shot of getting to a championship unless they bink a lot of really good supporting players in the draft.)

If they trade their QB and get a lot of draft capital, they can potentially try to bink in the draft and try to restart a championship window. Eagles, Rams now and Seahawks/ Broncos/other teams that I'm not remembering seem to have used this same formula to fuel their championship runs. If you don't have a HOF coach + QB who is willing to take a below market deal, seems very hard to compete with a model of paying your middle of the pack QB top money.

Seems the ideal model should be to try to bink as many good players in the draft as possible (have a lot of draft picks to maximize this) + buy smart in Free Agency and try to have a 3-5 year championship window and reset if it doesn't work out that way by trading your good players away for top draft picks for future years.

You named seven QB's and they have four Super Bowl titles between them. Rivers is old but was on several teams with real title equity except for variance and lol coaching. Flacco and Eli won their titles on teams that weren't exactly loaded or dominant during the regular season. If you've got a QB in the 8-15 range you don't dump him. He's good enough to give you a chance.

The issue is owners are extremely short term thinkers. No coach or GM is going to sacrifice a QB in the 10-20 range for a chance at a top 5 QB in the draft--with a 10-20 range you can win a SB although it's tougher and you can probably make the playoffs around 50% of the time. It's just too risky of a plan and most of the time they're going to fail even if it's the best plan to maximize SB titles. Just like it's probably best to draft a ton of QBs in each draft till you hit a HOFer but again you're fighting with short term thinking of owners.

There are business factors that these calculations ignore as well which is where the owners really come in.

Would the Eagles trade Mailata for Flowers straight up? I'm guessing no.

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the last three nfc super bowl qbs have been foles, ryan, and newton. "you need an elite qb to have equity" is way over played around here

if you arent willing to extend russell wilson for market qb value then odds are you're going to be looking for a long time

yes sorry I should have added that this is a hypothetical scenario on the best way to maximize # of SB titles over a long period.

Financially it makes no sense to take a team that will win the division/make the playoffs but has no realistic chance of winning the SB (ie Chiefs/Texans off top of my head from last couple of years) and make them bottom dwellers in an effort to bink SBs 5-15 years down the road.

Ryan and newton weren’t elite the years they went to the sb? Didn’t they both win mvp and both had great years. Maybe not the level of prime Brady or manning but pretty damn good.

In this era you have what Rodgers, Brady, manning and Brees owning the top 5 qbs with a few guys getting close for a year or two at a time like Ryan, rivers, scam, luck, russ, wentz, etc.

This is a really bad take.The best run team in the league is constantly letting players go bc they don't have the cap space to keep everyone. It's not bc they aren't creative, it's because there is a salary cap that greatly restricts what they can do.

I don't think this is right...the Pats let players go because they don't want to pay them the big contracts.

and they don't want to pay them big contracts because the salary cap exists...

I don't think you can apply the statement the same way, because that money is already spent on Mack, who is confirmed to be excellent. You can spend it on a guy you know is elite or hope that you get 3-4 above-average guys with it. I think I'd rather plug cheap average guys around a star than spend a bunch of money on trying to get slightly above-average guys.

Yeah, the NFL pays pass rushers almost like QBs, because they're the second-most important position. Same with the trade compensation. (Again, it's not two firsts; the Bears got a second-rounder back.) That's why it's lol Raiders; they had a cornerstone QB and pass rusher to build around, and they traded one away without even making much effort to negotiate a deal. It reminds me more than anything of Josh McDaniels and Jay Cutler.

The second part of this paragraph gives the lie to the first part-- if a team that's paying its 27-year-old quarterback $25 million this year and has him under contract for four more seasons (though admittedly with realistic outs) isn't in a position to compete, when do they get in a position to compete? A franchise QB is the single most important element to being competitive. (Or possibly an amazing head coach, but those are even rarer.)

I mean, is that why they do that? We just had a discussion about Chandler Jones where they just used the cap space they would've used on him on Stephon Gilmore instead. And someone like Malcolm Butler seems to have simply fallen out of favor with the team.

And the Pats still have four players with eight-figure cap hits and a bunch of middle-range veterans. Look at the guys between Marcus Cannon and Cordarrelle Patterson. 3-4 of them-- three if you go with the top three-- take up the same amount of cap room as Jones. I mean, I'd sacrifice Dwayne Allen, Duron Harmon, and Kyle Van Noy to line up Chandler Jones instead of Adrian Clayborn.

I don't know who that is, but I'm also guessing no.

Maliata is the aussie rugby guy who got some preseason hype. He actually got drafted despite zero football prior--he's a big guy who can move for a tackle, obviously some of his film is rough as hell but he has the physical traits you want including pro bowl power in his hands.

Mailata is the rugby player from Australia the eagles drafted. He was great in preseason especially for a guy who’s never played the game. I met him and the LT who replaced peters at a sushi restaurant a few weeks ago. My friends gf bought the kid a plate and he came over and greeted us.

thats kinda my point, any of those QBs in the above average range can have a top 5 year. holding out hope to find a consistently elite one which we havent seen enter the league in a decade is a mistake

Eagles laugh and immediately hang up the phone. Even as dire as OL is on several teams right now--I'm not sure anyone actually would as Flowers still has a top 10 pick contract.

Maliata is also only 21.

I just got reminded of that german the vikings drafted to my surprise he's on the bengals PS atm.