Sean McDermott - Bills

You list them.

I keep giving facts here and you and another guy are trying to say something else. You make your points and you look everything up and get back to me with facts and stats.

 

I thought about Saturday and that started out well and ended in a disaster. Rivers though played the QB position for 2 decades and probably knows how to get the best out of the offense as well as anyone.

 

Saturday was 1-7 as head coach...Win the first game,competitive in the next 2 but after it was disaster after disaster game after game....He could not make a gametime adjustement to save his life.I mean the colts lose a game even if they were up 33-0 in Minnesota

 

I remember watching that 33-0 lead that he blew. You could see the lead slipping away and Saturday was like a deer in the headlights unable to do anything to change it. As an analyst on ESPN he is just as inept at that as he was a coach.

 

I mean Russell Wilson, Dan Moore, and Justin Fields sucked this season but played decent football with the Steelers, Gainwell and Rodgers played better ball with the Steelers than they did with their previous teams.

 

Veterans signed just from the 2025 season. Just THIS year:

Jalen Ramsey: 2025 cap hit $19,500,000
2026 cap hit $19,500,000
2027 cap hit $21,700,000
2028 cap hit $24,000,000

The team signed geriatric CB Darius Slay. They paid him a 1-year contract of $10,000,000 with a $8,745,000 signing bonus guaranteed. Literally got nothing out of him. He is no longer with the team.

Signed Kyle Duggar: $11,000,000 salary, $9,750,000 guaranteed.

They signed Thornhill, picking up the final year of his 3-year $21 million contract. They cut him, got next to nothing out of him and it cost them $3 million toward the cap.

Just a taste of the defensive free agents. Roughly $43,000,000 for these four players and two of them barely played. Ramsey doesn't seem to be able to play the position they signed him to play anymore.

These four players for over 61% of the total cost of the Rams' ENTIRE defensive roster. Let that sink in.

 

Russell Wilson sucked here and was one of the primary reasons for the late season collapse. The Steelers will get a sixth-round compensatory pick for Wilson.

Dan Moore is basically the same player he was here. He's just on a crappier team. The Steelers are getting a third-round compensatory pick for Moore.

Justin Fields started 6 games with the Steelers. He started 9 games with the Jets. So what? The Steelers will get a fourth-round compensatory pick for Fields.

Rodgers played for the dumpster fire Jets and was coming off of an Achilles injury from the previous season. Not exactly hard to play better for anyone. Very good signing and played a strong leadership role with the Steelers.

Gainwell was the #3 RB and played behind Saquon Barkley when he had maybe the best rushing season in the history of the NFL. He was used much more here and was a very good player on a cheap contract. Great signing and usage by the coaching staff.

 

Ok. Clearly it is distressing to you. Why?

Slay was a ONE year cap hit. Duggar goes off the books this off-season if they want with zero dead cap. Thornhill $$$ are off the cap for 2026. Ramsey was a flawed bet. And now they will have to do something about his contract. But it cost the Steelers nothing but cap room they didn't have anyone to spend it on anyways. Part of that is bad drafting and part of it is where the team is at in their restocking of the roster.

So if you are going to surround Rodgers with the best "win now" roster....then it is expensive veterans who you hope have one last ride in them. Look at the 2025 CB FA list: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/signed/_/year/2025/position/cb. Not exactly murder's row. If I was running the team, I would've pushed for WARD over Slay. But, we do not know if Ward wanted to play in Pittsburgh or if the Steelers wanted to build this thing past 2025. They may have only wanted a one year commitment.

You can do the same with the safety FA's: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/signed/_/year/2025/position/s. Again...I would have pushed for Reid over Thornhill. But, again, they may have been looking for only a one year deal. Perhaps they always figured they would have to find Ramsey a home next to Elliot? I do not know.

To me this looks like the "best" vet players they could lay their hands on that did not have the leverage to sign multi-year deals. Doping that in FA is always going to be an expensive proposition. And it isn't like there was a WR to spend that cash on: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/signed/_/year/2025/position/wr.

I think it stinks that it didn't work out like some hoped. But I fail to see what else the team was supposed to do if you want to maximize your chances of winning in the 2025 season. This is why "competing" every season is a flawed organizational philosophy. It burns through cap space, makes your roster older on average, and is scramble each year to piece it together. But it cost them nothing but cap space. There was little opportunity cost, especially once Trice got hurt again. These old, slow, and flawed players did not block anyone with any talent behind them on the roster.

 

I'm sure Dugger reworked his contract with the Patriots before getting traded to the Steelers.

 

Translation: I was right

 

What does it matter if they are 1-year hits to the cap? The whole point of the post is to point out how the team keeps doing these expensive short-term contracts and how much they are costing againt the salary cap.

Slay robbed the team. They got nothing for him.

They got nothing from Thornhill.

We are talking about how much salary is being paid to veteran players as patchwork and why. This is why.

The other hidden cost in many cases is who they had to pay to replace the useless older players they had to cut.

You don't have to convince me that their approach sucks. I have stated in other posts that it is time to roll with younger players and let them develop. If they take their lumps with the younger guys, they will have a much smaller cap hit and will allow for key free agent signings, hopefully for players that are in the prime of their careers with plenty of great years left. Not the overpaid players getting big money on reputation rather than performance.

 

Maybe you should look that up and share it with the class.

 

Dugger's contract was restructured into a one year rental contract with the Patriots paying most of his $5.4 million base salary, the final two years of his original deal were removed.

 

I am not arguing that the approach is a good one.

I am arguing that the approach we all, as fans, would prefer, doesn't exist. Who are these prime FAs they are passing up on signing? Should they have drafted a safety rather than Harmon? What was it a season ago that they signed Queen as supposedly one of the crown jewels of the FA market. The NFL pundit class was full of praise. Was Queen, a prime of his career guy, worth it? In the sense that they had no one else capable of playing ILB, yes. Is he earning his contract? Not really.

The point of them being one year, is that the FUTURE Steelers are not really impacted by the CURRENT Steelers in terms of roster construction. They are not giving away draft picks, future cap space that precludes them from retaining or acquiring talent, and at almost all of the positions they have signed guys at there was ZERO current roster talent available. The cupboard was bare.

For me, I would just blow the whole thing up. And I would have done that in about 2021 or so. This most recent stretch of Steelers roster construction has been an exercise in futility. I would have traded everything that wasn't nailed down and started from scratch. Team would have been bad, but so be it.

But that is not the point of view the Steelers have ever taken. So they split the difference. Sign old guys, but not to long term deals. Keep adding youth each off-season. Stack the bricks one by one. I don't think it will work, but not my call.

 

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/player/_/id/47632/kyle-dugger

He's off the books.

 

I was talking about how much they spent this year on him.

Here is the link with the free agent numbers I was looking at.

https://overthecap.com/free-agency/pittsburgh-steelers

 

I listed a few players that were on the roster, were sent away, and became terrific players with other teams.

Which players came to the Steelers and became stars that weren't any good with their original team? That was the point you were refuting.

Gainwell did very well, but it was more about just getting a chance to play. Eagles fans knew Gainwell is a good player because he played well whenever he got on the field. He was just stuck behind Barkley. I knew he was a good player and was happy when they signed him, especially for the money they paid for him.

 

Ok. But what is the point? Who else was going to play safety? Sterling Castro was on the Bucs PS at that point. Chuck Clark was either hurt or terrible. Peppers never seemed to seize the role.

The Steelers swung a trade for an emergency injury replacement at safety and rejiggered the cash so he clears the books after this season. How is that not smart/effective front officing?

 

I'm not going to go back and look at every draft pick they have made the last 19 years and see who I would have taken.

I hear what you are saying about the approach and doing this whole go for it with a bunch of short-term free agents. It sucks and it is not the way to build a roster long-term.

We are both agreeing that what they have been doing isn't working. It requires them to take a different approach with youth and living with the results. Who knows if that will change or not. I guess we will find out starting next season. As long as they only have these vets on deals where they aren't getting hit with future dead cap space that limits what they can do, they will be able to fill more positions with youth easily.

I guess we will all see together.

 

Bull.
He has had 6 ints, and 15 fumbles, and has had fumbles every year in the playoffs.

 

What you say about Castro is exactly the problem.

Castro was on the Bucs. And why was that? Because they chose to play the expensive vet and tried to hide Castro on the practice squad and he was taken. He should have been developed and played here to see what he had.

That's the point. They seem to almost never let the young dudes that show promise play. They left him vulnerable on the practice squad and he was poached by another team. I would have rather found out what he had right here and now.

 

Agreed. The only contract that really seems to have some issues for them for an external guy is Ramsey. But I think they have a great case to get him to agree to redo the deal. Who knows how he will see it. They also have more than enough cap room to just eat the cash and either roster him or cut him while still being able to do whatever they feel like.

Even the Watt contract is not that bad for the same reasons. Assuming they nail the next 3 drafts, by the time they have to pay emerging stars big money deals - Watt's cash is off the books. Heck, even if they hit on every draft pick in the next few drafts and Bro Jo and the rest of the young offensive and defensive lineman all need extensions, plus Porter Jr....the math mostly works that they can keep everyone.

The biggest thing the failed strategy of signing vets and going "all in" every year does is waste time. That's it. It was a waste of time because you are still staring down the barrel of needing young talent.

At least they did rebuild the OL and DL while doing it. That is a nice foundation to have in your back pocket.

 

It's not true anyways. Allen has had 6 ints, and 15 fumbles in the playoffs, and has had a fumble every year he has played in the playoffs.

 

Well based on the Bucs dealings with Castro....he didn't have much. They left him exposed as well.

Honestly, I totally disagree with going all in behind washed up QBs. I think it is a fools errand. But, to their credit, the Steelers threaded the needle about as well as fans can hope for. There are few, if any, albatross contracts. They moved off vet players when others emerged (Pierre for Slay as an example), and they seem to have made significant progress on rebuilding the OL and DL.

Missing on the QB just sets a franchise so far back. And, honestly, until they get a QB worth a tinker's dam, none of the rest of this really matters. They aren't going anywhere. There is no magic coach and scheme that is going to ride in and make Will Howard or Ty Simpson a conference championship round caliber player. But that is a rant for another thread...