ACT NOW? Should the Buffalo Bills PRIORITIZE O'Cyrus Torrence Contract Extension?

0:00With Osiris Torrance entering the last year of his rookie contract, should he get an extension now? We're going to discuss that for you right now on Lockdown Bills. You are Lockdown Bills, your daily Buffalo Bills podcast. Part of the Lockdown podcast network, your team, every day. What's up, Bills Mafia? It's Joe Marino, host of Lockdown Bills. That's Jerry Astroski, a hundred and two game starter for the Buffalo Bills. And we'd like to welcome you in and thank you for tuning in to this episode of Lockdown Bills. Lockdown Bills is a proud part of the Lockdown podcast network. Now the number one sports podcast network. Well, folks, welcome in. We want to talk about Osiris Torrance on this episode of Lockdown Bills. And for a number of reasons, first of all, Brandon Bean at the NFL Scouting Combine, talked about extending players as a means to create cap space.

1:02And that's an opportunity that exists right now with Osiris Torrance. And he has a bit of a history of extending guys after their third seasons. And so I want to discuss with Jerry the merits of extending Osiris Torrance right now, especially as the probable outcome is that the Bills lose at least one of David Edwards and Conor McGovern is this kind of your, oh, yeah, we lost those players. But at least we have Osiris Torrance, the guy we drafted, right? Edwards and McGovern free agent signings. At least we have him locked up long term. So Jerry, that's what we're talking about today. Welcome in. Hey, thanks. I appreciate it, Joe. And I, you know, I agree with that. When I look at this situation and one thing about Osiris Torrance is he was drafted by the franchise, but he's also a young player. This is going to be his fourth season in the league. While I'd love to have, you know, McGovern back and I'd love to have David Edwards back. There are older players. There guys that have been in the league, been on a couple other teams before they came to Buffalo.

2:05And that doesn't really change wanting them back or not. But if you look at, where am I going to economically spend my money? I would go with the guy that we picked and the guy that's younger. And that might be what we're looking at. I mean, maybe this is a situation where they let McGovern and they let Edwards go because we want to make sure we keep Osiris. We want to keep Sibo as they call him on the team and on the roster. And I'm all for this. I think that's something that hopefully gets done. And we know that if they get him extended this year as opposed to waiting, they'll get him probably for less money. That is unless Osiris decides if he wants to wait and see what he can get in the open market. So it'll be interesting because it's going to be both sides. But I think I agree. If you're going to go ahead and do this, it needs to be done this year, not next year. All right. Well, I think there's a lot of layers to the conversation. I think I'm mostly disagree with you. But I'm curious to see where we land after we kind of sort through this.

3:05Of course, Osiris Torrin say 2023 second round pick. He turned 26 in January. So he is young. He's entering the fourth year of his rookie contract. And there's this thing now in the NFL called the proven performance escalator, where for non-first round picks based on probals and percentage of snaps played, you can get a bump in your fourth season, which is exactly the case for Osiris Torrin. So he gets a bump. So his cap hit in 2026 is $4.34 million. And that's due enlarged to him pretty much taking every snap at right guard since the bills drafted him. Of course, he has not missed any time this past season. He only had one penalty, which is pretty cool, right? We love that guys that don't get penalized. That's usually a good sign that they understand their technique and their assignments and their hands and feet are where they're supposed to be. And so he's been a good starter for the bills at right guard. And so we've kind of outlined his path to this point.

4:08What's your favorite part about Osiris Torrin? So you watch him play, you know, you study the tape. What's your favorite part about what Osiris Torrin brings to this football team? Going back to what you said a little bit ago before I get into that, you were correct. There's a lot of layers of this. There's a lot of layers of this. That's why if this gets done, I need to get it done this year, not next year. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. My favorite part about Osiris Torrin is two things. One is what you've already talked about is availability. The guy is adorable. He shows up, he plays. You don't got to worry about missing time. This is a guy that shows up every week. He's on the field, he's out there, you know, making plays. The other thing about Osiris Torrin, I really love about him is his power aspect. He is a power player. He's a true power player. Maybe lacks a little bit in some of the the fighter movement things, especially one on one. I think Osiris Torrin's actually is a guy, you know, we talked about David Edwards last time where I felt that fire beware. I thought that Edwards was really good in this bill scheme. So he better go to a scheme that's like the bills. I wonder sometimes if Osiris Torrin's would be better in another scheme, not what the

5:13bills do with so much single blocking. I mean, we know Kromers talked about it. Now, we'll see if Pat Meyer changes it, they don't force a lot of double teams in Buffalo. And I think that Osiris is that power player that would really do well in a true blue downhill duo type of running scheme. I think right away about Baltimore, right? Nobody like that. So I wouldn't wonder if he wouldn't play better elsewhere, but I like his door ability. I love his power aspect to it. And honestly, I don't know if he can trap or not, because we don't ask our guys to pull on the right side really. So I'm not really sure as far as that goes, but those are my two biggest things. He's a power player, he's physical, and then it's a valid building. He creates a lot of displacement in the run game. He can move bodies out of the way, which is, I think the clear strength of his game, Aaron Cromer on Eric Wood's podcast last week said that this is the strongest player he's ever coached. And I think going back to that first year of Cromer, the bills ran that dark play where

6:14they pull those tackles, you know, they pulled Deon, you know, pretty much off tackle from the left side to the right side, and a big part of that working is a right card who can sustain that block and not allow that penetration, right? So his role there is pretty obvious, and obviously in past protection, nobody's going through it, right? You maybe get to his edges a little bit, which we'll talk about, but that ability to set the depth of the pocket by making sure you're not getting walked back ever is where I think he really provides a lot to this team, not to mention the youth, not to mention, of course, that this is a player you drafted, and that is meaningful. You want to take care of your own, add words in a govern, good players, and I'm sort of hopeful that my covering at least comes back. But I am too. The whole component of a player that you drafted and then resigned, I think, is a really good story to tell to your locker room as you have, of course, draft classes that would like to fall in line and get those extensions as well. And so I think we've acknowledged the strengths, durability, power, technique is on point.

7:14He doesn't commit penalties. He's young. All of that's very, very good. The other side of this are the growth areas, Jerry, when you watch Osiris Torrance, what are some of the areas that you look at and say you'd like to see some improvement? My biggest thing with Osiris Torrance is what I call, and you've heard me say it before a situation of awareness, understanding the play, understanding the defense in front of them, and then making adjustments accordingly. And when I talk about that, a simple aspect would be this, a simple explanation would be, we're going to run outside zone to the left. And I'm an uncovered guard, and I have a linebacker directly over top of me at right guard. Well, where am I going to go to? I'm going to go to a point to the left on an angle that intersects where that linebacker is going, not directly at the linebacker, because I go directly at him. He's going to read the play and beat me across my face. And I'm not saying that's what all the MacLeod happens with. I'm just giving you an example. That's situational awareness. I think he gets beat too often because he doesn't understand maybe sometimes where the

8:17soft spot is or where he doesn't have help and those types of things. Now I will say this, he also is our linemen are put on islands quite a bit by they were by Chroma. And that's where some of the other stuff is exposed a little bit, maybe some foot speed, maybe a little bit of foot technique and those types of things. And that kind of ties in with awareness as well. So that's where I think when I made the comment earlier about what Osiris actually do better in another team's offense, well, if that offense, you know, they slide protect a lot. They don't rely on five on five. They run a lot of double teams. I believe so. And then that power even comes out more and it's it's shown even more. So that's what you got to look at with him. The type of power players he is a lot of times his strength maybe wasn't being utilized because we put our offensive linemen on islands quite a bit in Buffalo, at least we did with Aaron Chroma. Yeah, that's, that's the thing that stands out to me when I watch Osiris Torrance.

9:19If there is a repetitive issue, it is he's one on one in pass, bro. And he has a three technique aligned on his outside shoulder. And they know if I can cross face, he doesn't have the foot speed to kind of cut me off if I attack that a gap and you see these very good interior twitchy explosive pass rushers. They give him that jab step, they get Osiris to open and they cross face and he has a hard time being able to redirect his feet to be square and not allow that penetration through the a gap. And so maybe that's a little bit of a consequence of the scheme. It's also Osiris. He's a big physical, powerful dude. He's, you know, he's there's a piece of the athleticism is just not there, right? He's not a super fleet of foot guy. And so I think he's a little bit susceptible there. But to your point, it could be more scheme related and just a deficiency that he's going to have. And I'll give you an example of scheme. I mean, we know the chromer likes to like the bull rush. That's what he likes his offensive lineman to do. You watch it and how Dion sets, you watch it and how Spencer Brown sets, force the bull

10:23to where they have to go through you, then it turns into a hand fight, right? If you watched, if you watched the podcast he was on with with wood with air wood, he even talked about that about hands, right? He was taught early, like he changed his mindset on hand fighting and hand usage. So if you have a guy like Torrance that maybe is a little bit slow of foot and you're teaching him to jump outside to force the double, or I mean to force the bull rush, now the sudden you've opened the inside, right? So that's where, you know, coaching and maybe teaching as far as taking the inside half away, those types of things, changing stuff up. That's where I was talking about situational awareness as well. So yeah, I think most of his issues, Joe, like you just stated so well, are usually one on one type stuff. All right, so we've talked about his path. We talked about the strengths, the weaknesses coming up next. Well, what does an extension look like? And does it make sense for the bills? We'll flesh that out here next folks, be sure to stick with us.

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14:33We had some huge deals lately. Tyler Smith with the Cowboys 24 million a season, Tray Smith with the Chiefs 23 and a half million a season. You have Robert Hunt, Quentin Nelson, Chris Lindstrom, Landon Dickerson are all over 20 million and then there was this surge last year in free agency where Aaron Banks, who guess what? OSIRIS Torrance is a better player than Aaron Banks got 19 and a quarter million from Green Bay of all places. You saw Will Fry's. I'd rather have OSIRIS Torrance all day long over Will Fry's. He got 17 and a half from the Vikings. Jonah Jackson, I'll take OSIRIS Torrance all day long. He got 17 and a half from the Bears. And so this market is booming. OSIRIS Torrance is a good young starter. That's durable. All the things we talked about. Oh, by the way, one talking point we didn't really get to is how perfect he is for this full embracing of a Sean Payton offense, right? With Pete Carmichael now in the mix, Joe Brady, self declared Sean Payton disciple.

15:34Their guards are big physical mallers, Ben Grubbs, Carl Nick's, Jerry Evans, Cesar Ruiz. Like, it's a clear prototype. It's OSIRIS Torrance. It makes a lot of sense. The money is going to be huge. And so that's the piece of this conversation that makes it complicated. Of course, you'd want to continue with OSIRIS Torrance. But do you think he's a $20 million a year guard? Because I think that's where he's trending. If you want him, he probably is. I mean, like you said, you're looking at 20 to 23 and a half million dollars A, A, V for a top notch guard in this lead. I think he's every bit the player or close to the player the Tyler Smith is. I've watched Tyler Smith in college, you're very similar. They make very similar mistakes. They play very similarly. I mean, these guys can get it done and they're both very durable players, although I will say this, OSIRIS Torrance, I was more durable than Tyler Smith is. He's missed quite a bit of time this past season. So I think if you're going to do it, Joe, this is when you have to do it. This is the year. You're not going to get them next year. If you let them get through this off season, the money's even going to go higher.

16:37And I think like you said, and I said this early in this in this pod, and this is what I'm glad you brought this up about the whole show and painting thing. I feel OSIRIS would even be better in somebody else's offense, right? I think we're getting ready to see that. There's going to be a little bit of a tweak. There's going to be some different things that are done, especially with Pat Meyer and the likes. So does he just excel and blow up even more in a more OSIRIS Torrance friendly offense? So I think if you're going to get it done, it's got to be now. And that's what good players get paid and you got to look at that Eagles, you know, build and what Howie Roseman does as far as paying them now, maybe a little bit more than it deserves, but it's a lot cheaper in the long run. And you know, see if you can make it work. I mentioned earlier in their conversation that this would create some cap space. It would create $2.2 million. And that doesn't really matter what the extension is. It's you would reduce it a little and then kick out some money. So $2.2 million would be your 2026 cap benefit to extending OSIRIS Torrance.

17:43To me, it feels really good if you do this, especially if Edwards and McGovern are not going to be back. I think you'd have a hard time. I think you'd have a hard time paying two of those three. And that's, that's a, that's to be a lot tied up into your into your offensive line, which then puts the Jonas back on brand and mean to probably invest some draft capital into the position and find some economic answers along the way. And maybe, maybe that is what you have Berlin and Cedric Van Prenger and Alan Anderson. But OSIRIS Torrance would be a tough, a tough loss based on the development and how quickly he became an answer for you. But we can't deny this is a lot of money. This is a lot of money for a guard. And I mean, is that your big hesitation because like we talked about before this, you know, you had some differing ideas on this, is your hesitation just the money? Yeah, it is because I feel like the bills and then this will change, of course, in the next

18:43month, the bills have so many needs. It's like, where can I sink, where can I sink my biggest investments? And I have a lot of respect for guards. But is this where you want to dump your resources like when you have pressing needs elsewhere on this roster? And so that's where I struggle. I don't want OSIRIS Torrance to get away. Trust me on that. I wish that this was a little bit more of an economical answer. Like is he a, is he an a-list starting guard? I don't, I don't know if that's who he is. I think he's an above average starting, he's a quality starting guard. Is he a great guard? Is he a completely different making guard for this type of money? I don't know that I emphatically say yes, but I also tell you, I don't really want him to go. I don't want to have to find another starter for the offensive line. I love that he's been drafted and developed. You'd hate to do all that for him to go play his best football for someone else. So I think it is a little bit complicated, but I think I'm mostly okay with this and

19:44if he's, if he's, I wish that I would have seen at some point over the last three years for him to like really take a step. I think he's, and maybe that's just a product he came in. He started a million games in college. You know, of course, he leveled up his last year at Florida and played really well. You know, he kind of came in. Did he come in at a ceiling? I guess that's what I've been looking for us for a big step. And I feel like I'm continuing to get the same player. I think you'd look at this and you got to, and I'm going to tell you this, I'm going to give you fair warning. If you neglect this position, you'll regret it in the long term. I know we have other needs, but this group has been really, really good and you're going to lose probably, you're losing one for sure, maybe two, just because you can't afford them. And then to let the other one walk and now the sudden you're sitting there with three guys off of an offensive line that many had rated in the top five of the league that produced a league leading rusher. You're sitting there with a right tackle who's had chronic back issues in a left tackle

20:45who is going into what year 34, 34, 35, okay? How, you know, entering age 32, he's not that old, you know what I'm saying? I mean, it happens real quick in this league. And so that's where I really get nerfed up. I mean, it's, I know you got other needs, but you better be able to block somebody and you'd better be able to control the line of scrimmage on defense. And if you can't do those two things, you're going to have a hard time win a football games in national football league. I think this might be the most compelling point in favor of doing it right now is that it will simply never be less expensive. So if he's your guy, if he's your guy, and you know that and the bills have benefited from this, like they identified Spencer Brown is our guy at right tackle. Right. And Spencer Brown might be one of the best value contracts in the entire NFL at $18 million a season. Spencer Brown made a mistake.

21:46He should have, he should have played out that year and gone into the final year of his contract. And Jerry, he might have got $78 million more per season. He's not even a top 20 highest paid tackle in the league in terms of A.P. Y. Spencer Brown. It'll come back to him. Oh, it'll come back to him, but I don't, I don't think you can look at the maximization of his contract, his second contract and feel like he did it at 18 million per when you're seeing what, I mean, Titus Howard just got an extension for 21 million a season. I understand. You got to understand about Spencer Brown and where he's from and what he's about. Because these guys enough is enough, you know, need to have all of it, you know, and I look at Osiris Torz and you're 100% correct. That's what I said earlier, this, it's never going to be cheaper than it is right now. Yeah. And if you'd let this thing roll, and like I said, I'm telling you, he could, we could see a different philosophy and run blocking and stuff up front that could make turn him into something completely even better than we've seen.

22:47All right. Brandon Means got a lot to sort out. Hopefully he listened to this and he's got great insight now on what he should do with Mr. Osiris Torz. Guess what? We're going to do the same conversation tomorrow for you on Dorian Williams. So come on back for that. As always, we kindly ask that you share, subscribe, rate and review. Have a great rest of your day and go bills. Much love, folks, go bills.