DazedandConfused

I think that actually if plays out this way it greatly enhances the Bills chances to trade down since likely several teams who judge themselves in need of a QB of the future who pick after the Bills such as the Broncos having seen both Stafford and Sanchez go in this scenario would be hot to trot to get Freeman. Even though the Broncos would only move up one slot with a trade, they would have to be deathly afraid that someone else would make us an offer and after a trade with us they pluck Freeman and leave the Broncos with their current limited QB duo and a second rounder at best. I think the trade options with this scenario are far more attractive than drafting any particular player left in this draft. Outside of Crabtree whom it would surprise me if he was still there at #11 the players left in this draft are not so head and shoulders above their peers that we would make out like bandits getting an extra pick or so to move down and pick a second option for us between 12 and 20.

The thing I think is funny is that for some reason some posters seem to think trading Peters is the same as screwing Peters. Actually to trade him would in essence be caving in to him as it would give him financially exactly what he wants. Read this slowly... Peters wants a new contract even though he is under contract. No team is going to trade for Peters and give up additional value just to Peters perform the same holdout he is doing with the Bills. Trading Peters does not screw him it almost certainly gives him the new contract he is looking for as his new owners would have even less leverage than the Bills to get him to play. Trading him not only does not screw Peters but it almost certainly screws us as we end up with a rookie playing LT and like any rookie learning on the job. The scary thing for us is that his job will be protecting Edwards' blindside, making the passing game work for the one year we are guaranteed to have T.O. and most important trying to at least make the playoffs before Ralph dies. Maybe lightening strikes and our rookie is the new Ryan Clady, but actually he is just as if not a lot more easily a bust like OL draftee Mike Williams or has a lost rookie season like OL player McKinnie. Peters clearly is not screwed by a trade and quite likely the Bills are screwed by one which gives us a journeyman or a rookie to play LT. Peters is far from the perfect player, but in this case using the devil you know is a far more likely strategy than using the devil you don't know.

Agreed. Folks who are pissed at Peters for not being a teamer and are concerned about what kind of message it sends to other players if the "give" in to his demands, also need to understand that they are also caving if they trade him. It is doubtful that any team is going to trade for him without re-signing him to a long term deal that shows him the $ the Bills and Peters have not been able to reach agreement on. Why would any team give up draft picks and other items of value merely to simply take over the same holdout woes Peters is bringing to the Bills? If they were to trade him, then every Bill who thinks he deserves a new deal can simply follow the Peters/Parker method of threatening a holdout and throwing a hissy fit to get a new contract when the Bills trade him. Trading Peters sends a clear message to folks like Jackson and others the key is to annoy some fans and this will get you out of town to a team that will show you the money.

It sounds like Parker may be angling to get the Bills to give Peters what he wants by forcing a trade. The amusing thing here is that some fans here want the Bills to trade Parker in part to retaliate against them, while it may be in fact a Brer Rabbit strategy on Peters/Parker part begging not to be thrown in the briar patch only to have it turn out that this cave would likely give Peters just what he wanted.

However the league has declared him a success twp years in a row by voting him onto the Pro Bowl. You an I might disagree with this selection, but the fact of the matter simply is that by a vote of 1/3 from the coaches, 1/3 from his peers, and 1/3 from the fans he has succeeded 2 years in a row at the tender age of 26, You and do not make the trades or set the market, the coaches, his peers, and the fans (you and I may disagree but the customer is always right in this entertainment business), And for this the Bills develop a rep with their players and their agents that the working strategy if you think you can get more money is to throw a hissy fit and the Bills will give you just what you want financially by trading you, I do not see it.

This does not strike me as near to what we are giving up, If this is the deal then we are not only caving in to Peters (he wants a big contract in 09 and I do not see a team trading for him unless they are willing to sign him long term0 I mean why give up value to simply take on the the same threatened holdout and a pain in the butt), For rewarding Peters and setting a precedent for Jackson and other contract issues that all you need to do is be a pain in the butt and the Bills will trade you to someone who will sign you, the Bills create a hole at LT that they most likely fill with a rookie or a journey man FA. They basically are committing to guarding Edwards blindside with a rookie learning to be a vet or a substandard player, committing to go with this almost certainly lesser performing player in the one year we are guaranteed tp have TO in the passing game, and also with future picks being the prime value received in this trade we are putting ourselves on a timeline which may be beyond Ralph being around. What would be our rationale for caving to Peters and giving him what he wants by trading him?

I agree with what you say. It would almost certainly be a worse rip off of the Bills than you state because even if the #1 pick turns out to have a great career when we look back at things, even a future Pro Bowler can get off to a marginal or bad start like Eric Moulds did for us before he broke out in his third year, If the Bills trade the devil they know (Peters with his known limitations) for the devil they don't know (a #1 pick who unfortunately reality tells us he is roughly 50/50 not to disappoint) or even a great player who gets off to the not atypical rookie start, the Bills have mortgaged 09 for the future. This 09 with even the top rated rookie replacing Peters: 1. Has a rookie protecting Edwards blindside 2. Gives us learning pass pro for the 1 year we are guaranteed to have TO 3. Ralph is simply not getting younger so why build for a future if you are him when there may not be one. Trading Peters for even the #1 or certainly to replace him with a mere 1st round choice likely is simply surrendering the 09 season. It may work it just probably will not. Even worse trading Peters almost certainly gives him exactly what he wants which is to sign a new deal (I doubt the Lions or anyone trades for him without the intent to sign him to a new deal rather than simply adopt the Bills holdout headache). If the Bills trade Peters it sends a message to other Bills and their agents simply throw a hissy fit if you can get away with it and the Bills will trade you to a new team where you can get the new contract you want.

I don't think that a lot of folks on this board want so badly to be done with Peters and want to screw this non-team guy miscreant that they want to trade him that they do not realize that trading him rewards Peters big time. Few or no teams are gonna trade for him merely to inherit the same holdouts the Bills are dealing with and a new team almost certainly means the new contract Peters is looking for. Just as you argue that the players and agents are watching to see if the Bills back down, and they will react appropriately, so to they will calculate that if the Bills trade Peters that the method to take with this team should be one of getting in their face like Peters did last year, being seen by the NFL as playing well (which whether you feel his Pro Bowl slot was deserved or not the league gave him a Pro Bowl slot and all players think they are great or will be great) and then force a trade and make out like a bandit. Peters and his agent have the same calculators the Bills do and he has made the calculation that the Bills must either backdown by caving into his demands or backdown by trading him. The ONLY way to confront him is to hold him and make him play to his contract. The obvious choice for Peters if he only wants the money is to escalate this dispute by missing the voluntary practices, sitting out the pre-season again, and if he wants even sitting out a couple of games. The Bills only win here is if Peters play. Peters can win eventually by not playing and laughing all the way to the bank on the millions he has collected so far for his play which has won him two Pro berths. Folks need to realize that unless he is a Travis Henry type fool Peters is in a strong position here to get the Bills to give him what he wants either by signing him or by trading him.

If they trade Peters to stockpile picks the sad thing is that this will be an admission that the future is not now but that the future is the future. Such a surrender would likely mean: 1. The Bills are gonna go with a rookie or a journeyman at LT and one of his main jobs will be to protect our investment in Edwards by protecting this already once concussed (and a loser of PT to a couple of other injuries during his brief time as a pro) blindside. Even a talented player like Oher deny it or not is gonna be a rookie next year and will have to spend some time learning how to be a vet. Lets hope if they trade away Peters for a rook or a journeyman LT that this player does not get taught his lessons that he must learn by watching Edwards get carted off the field. If Peters gets traded maybe we get lucky and get Clady, but the real world occurrences are that a team gets an overall bust like a Mike Williams or a rookie season bust like McKinnie. Going with the devil you do not know rather than the devil you know seems like a fools move IMHO. 2. We burn the one year we are guaranteed to have TO. We have great potential to have an incredibly potent passing game with Evans and TO both really demanding a dt. If one throws in Parrish going one on one in a 3 WR set, or the Bills learning how to reap good college receiving play from Lynch into his pro game we can be quite formidable. The problem is that if Edwards spends all of his time running for his life or on his butt due to OL failure we waste the year. If we trade Peters maybe the rookie/journeyman works out but probably not based on past experience. 3. Ralph better not die this year. The future really is now and committing to the draft as the method for building the team simply likely condemns us to another year or two in the non-playoff wilderness.

I think DraftTek is clearly one of the best web based tools for collecting information and understanding how to do well in the draft! However, one of the things I think it clearly demonstrates is that doing well in the NFL and doing well in the draft though obviously and intricately related, they really are two different things. The draft is about choosing the best player. Achieving the goal of even making it to or if you are really lucky (in addition to the basis of being really good) winning the SB is about building a team (which actually is a TEAM) if you do it right. One major way this distinction hits and make a difference is that an overfocus on the individual means a team ends up bouncing from savior to savior instead of emphasizing acquiring and finding a balance among lots of players to build a winning TEAM. The Bills OL problems are not about a failure to get high priced (Mike Williams was high-priced) or even high quality talent (my sense is that Jason Peters is one of the most talented players ever play OL for the Bills and he was even a mere UDFA). The problems have been: 1. Lack of strong OL leadership- I have become more convinced over time that if you forced me to name one player who was most valuable to the SB success it would not be the glitz players like HOFer's Kelly and Thurman or soon to be HOFer Brice Smith it would be Kent Hull. My sense is that his refuse to lose attitude provided an example which encouraged and forced each OL player to dig a little deeper on each play. My guess of why Derrick Dockery is a goner is that as the highest paid player he was a natural choice to provide the internal leadership this team needed to become a TEAM. While Peters is a business where he should be judged on his own results and cannot escape either praise or fault for them, his failure to put the team first to me is really an indictment of a lack of internal leadership and discipline which I would plop on Dockery's doorstep. 2. A lack of solid plan Bs- the SB years actually saw an incredible amount of good luck on the Bills part as for most cases the OL was able to remain intact and play. This team has not had such good fortune and we have seen numerous players go down for numerous games. You gotta have good plan Bs in terms of depth and flexibility if this happens and the Bills have fallen short in this area. 3. A solid over-arching framework- A good QB, a go- to WR and an RB with a diverse skillset are all essential to winning this game, but there are lots of essentials and the three above items are are secondary or tertiary to a game which ultimately is won or lost in the trenches. However, even a solid OL though a primary need for a working offense is harder to create and keep together when there is not there there. What Fairchild, Clements, Kragthorpe and now so far Schonert have failed to create is a solid demonstrable framework within which a solid OL can do the nasty work, I hope TO is a charm (my own little bit of savioritis) because my the future is now sense comes a lot from knowing that we are only guaranteed 1 year of this asset. In the end he can actually be replaced with the next flavor of the month next year and it would be better if he does well enough and the Bills do well enough that he finds a home here to finish off his career with a ring or two. However, no one except for TO got rich betting on TO so I doubt this will happen and the Bills are likely committed to a strategy of the future being now. We'll see.

Nope. The future is now and even if one knows that Peters is a flawed player, as its 50/50 that even a first round choice will work out overall there is simply too much risk that we would putting our TE investment in if we have a rookie guarding his blindside, that the one year we are guaranteed TO will be not be put to maximum usage while this rookie LT becomes a vet, and most important that Ralph is not guaranteed out years beyond this year: We want to make the playoffs this year. It is true that a 1st pick would allow us to get the best LT and there is a strong bias to truly elite players (which I define as those who demand a top 10 pick) being good. However, there are enough unanswered questions on this team that the concept of trading the way much of our draft as Ditka did for Rickey Williams does not seem like a good strategy. So my answer is no. The draft is a great asset, but I have not drunk the Mel Kiper Kool-Aid so that I do not recognize that even the best rookies are not vets yet.

Part of his lack of production is that the Rams O approach made virtually zero use of the TE as a receiver. Historically the Rams TE was really a 6th blocker in what was the greatest offensive use of the TE who really only caught one of two passes a year for the Rams. McMichael improved this TE output but not by much as one guy no matter how talented did (or should) dictate an entire offensive approach.

This still makes 09 (if not the immediate future of the Bills as this rookie will be responsible for guarding the once concussed Edwards blindside). What do you think the chances are that a rookie LT is gonna play like a vet and: 1. protect TE adequately 2. Maximize our getting the one guaranteed year out of TO 3. Maximizes the chances of winning before Ralph gets his ultimate reward. Yep, it is certainly possible we can catch the once in a long period of time Ryan Clady lightening in a bottle. However, there is an an equal if not better chance you ended up slaving through a rookie year like McKinnie's as even a now adequate LT learns the game or you pick a bust OL player as we did when we chose Williams. For an O for this millineum for making the playoffs like the Bills 09 is just way to important for us to risk it all on a rookie LT. If this team had made some acquistions to have a plan B you want to count on for more than a few games (it is hard for me to see flipping Walker and going with Chambers as anything serious beyond being a reasonable stop gap for a few games), then I;d fine the trade Peters for a rookie option to be more realistic. However, despite his flaws the devil we know strikes me as a far more likely option than the devil we do not know which any rookie would be.

The problem is that if we ONLY are getting draft picks in exchange for our starting LT, in essence it condemns us to rolling the dice on finding a starting LT in the draft. This might happen, (see Clady last year who had a great season at LT after being taken at #12) but though this might happen, unfortunately the norm is that its a 50/50 shot at a first round draft picked turning out to be a starter even after a full season. The facts simply are that one is almost just as likely to find a career bust like Mike Williams or a first year failure like McKinnie even from a top ten choice, The Bills might choose to roll the dice on a later first rounder being their starter at LT but as Peters is under contract likely going with the devil you know rather than banking on the devil you don't know sound much more sensible (and frankly much more Bills like in the Dick Jauron comfortable shoes way when tend to approach things. Maybe the TO trade is some type of sign that the "new" Bills are risktakers. I doubt it sense the probable condemnation of the Bills OL to a learning year in 09 is so likely even if the draftee turns out to be a good choice for his career, what we are talking about: 1. Making guarding TEs blindside and an experiment we are willing to take despite the huge investment we are making for him as the leader of the O. 2. Making our offense less effective in the passing attack when we just signed TO with only a one year guarantee of having him. 3. Planning on delivering an SB to Ralph sometime in the future seems a pretty risky proposition. All of this adds up to me of the Bills in now way committing to the draft as the way we are going to build an OL. I'm sure those who have drunk the Mel Kiper and fantasy league Kool-Aid which leads to the unfactual thought that the draft is going to be an immediate solution to all problems (it is the best long-term solution by far, but the hyoe on TE, the contract of TO and Ralph's age all point to the import of the Bills producing the goods in the short term. Like it or not the future is now and the fact the Bills only even have a credible Plan B for a few games if Peters were to go down (I doubt the Walker to LT and Chambers to RT attempt can be something you want to use for 3 games max) means I think it is far more likely they show him the money and sign him long term. He definitely has flaws but I think we will chose the devil we know rather than roll the dice on the devil they don't know.

If true, this is one of the stupidest football positions for any GM to take. All trades need to hinge on who you replace the player with. To not factor this into the equation is simply throwing your fate to the winds. Particularly given the investment we have in Edwards and the guarantee of only having TO for a year it would simply be stupid not to have not only a good plan A for replacing your starting LT but actually a reasonable plan B (injuries imply happen with great frequency in the NFL). Right now, our plan B if Peters goes down is to flip Walker to LT and move Chambers to RT. This is actually a pretty good plan B as both players have been adequate in these roles before. However, Chambers is developing but not quite good enough to start yet, and Walker has done well but is a question mark if we were to rely on him on his lonesome for an extended period at LT. We have a reasonable plan B (though we likely are in trouble with it if we have to use it for more than 3 games or so) but no plan A. A GM or a Bills fan would be a fool if they were railroaded by Parker and Peters into giving them what they want (a new contract for Peters would likely come with any trade) and they have no clue what the replacement plan is. The bad news is that if the plan is to simply replace Peters with a rookie (at #11 where a Clady did work out last year but neither a #4 Williams or a #7 McKinnie proved to be worthwhile LTs their first year so any first round pick is a crapshoot at best) this really is no answer at LT. In this case, Peters ain't perfect (and in fact is far from it) but the devil you know is a pretty good case versus the devil you don't know. In this case Graham is saying that the trade decision does not hinge upon whether you even are gonna have a devil to pray for his redemption.

Anything worth saying is worth saying again and again and again..... and again at incredibly long length.

The problem is here that folks seem to want to view this as purely a situation where the team is negotiating with an employee in order to maximize their profit, when actually it simply ain't that simple. We have gotten schooled as a country within the global economic structure during the fiscal meltdown going on right now that the key is actually when it says on the back of a dollar bill In God We Trust. When we are talking about dollar bills or goods and services in the modern economic system in the end it really is all about trust. Our founding fathers did an amazing job because they somehow found the sweetspot where with a union based on the concept of one from many (or e pluribus unum for you Latin scholar) we built a system where an individual can work to better their individual situation by trying hard within a prescribed set of rule governing our interdependence. The system does not work unless there is some degree of trust in the system. If there is no trust then for the Bills purposes your team never becomes a TEAM and simply will not do well when the difficult time comes as it always does for every NFL team. Just as in the broader economy trust has now been shaken because the money lenders in charge exploited the system so that they and the AIGs other world could make out like bandits and now no one can trust anyone to pay back a loan the economy is grinding to a halt. Like it or not, if the Bills want to be a successful TEAM they have to find a way to be adult about all this and even in the fact of Peters being a petulant brat, they need to find a way to maintain the trust of these little boy or they better let Peters go elsewhere because even if he does players are going to be looking over their shoulders rather than olaying for this team. Sure the Bills have every right to just say no to Peters, pay him far less than he would get in the free market because there is no free market for his talents right now. The Bills could pay him less than many other players are getting to play LT in the NFL or less than some of the other OL players on this team. However, if they assert their rights and actually could even tag Peters if the choose and hang onto him for 4 years or even two under his current contract that he signed the Bills would be at best penny wise and pound foolish. The goal is not to maximize return on profit for the Peters, the goal is build a TEAM where right now with the contracts there is just a team. Einstein once said the sign of true intelligence is the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in one's head at the same time. This is the difficult task the Bills have to do is to reward Peters as though the NFL were a free market but nor set a precedent for other players and contracts. If they cannot pull off this difficult trick then they are not good enough or bright enough to win in this game.

Marv was not great at all (the team he built in his interim role has not even made the playoffs much less compete seriously for the SB which was the goal). However, there is a pretty good argument at least that: Marv was better than TD who ultimately could not get past being run out of town by the guy he hired in Pittsburgh and his GMery of the Bills was very good on the business side (the move to St. Johns, moving a lot of the internal business into the 20th century s they went fully computerized from the days not to long ago when will call tickets were sorted in shoe boxes, and a extremly good knack for reading the market such as the deal he pulled off taking ATL to the cleaners over PP). Yet despite being a good businessman, TD hired the wrong guy in GW to be the HC cause he knew he could beat him and ended created a toxic relationship with Ralph and MM over this failed team. Marv arguably was better than John Butler who had great talents as a scout manager, but probably cruised to the SB berths under his watch in great part due to great team building work of the previous GM and decisions he made like hiring the great facilitator Marv to be HC. Butler's GM reign was marked by bad mistakes as they continually stood the team on its head in search of a new Jim Kelly (a good GM would have reigned Ralph in from his dumb assessment that Jimbo had a few years left in his play and making the handshake deal which caused the Bills to actually violate the salary cap in paying off Jimbo off the books. Add to that the GMs who oversaw the Bills in the time period between the AFL championships and the signing of Bruce Smith where the problem was the owner was not willing to spend the cash necessary to win. Marv's job when he was hired was not simply to win but to right the ship of state which was listing badly after Butler ran out on Ralph and Ralph relexively tried to fire and then cost recover for firing him from Wade (he lost this crusade even though every one told him he would). Ralph hired TD out of desperation and then hired Marv out of double desperation when his decision to go with TD foundered badly. Marv did a good job simply patching up the sinking ship. Besides that he oversaw 2 drafts which filled some primary needs we had with gutsy picks (for example Whitner proved to be the best safety in this draft when folks felt he reached- and he did reach for McCargo but found a credible player in round 5 to fill this slot. His next draft was also quite productive in getting players that filled gaps for this team. Rather than the worse GM ever he is quite arguably the best of the past 3.

In the classic good old American way free market you would start with the NFL and NFLPA engaging in good old competition and negotiation rather than these two parties agreeing to restrain trade with approaches such as the draft and the restriction on humans of the age of conset (16 years old) and even adults (you cannot enter the NFL until the age group you would have entered college with has graduated except under extraordinary circumstances which are determined by the NFLPA/NFL conspiracy. In the NFLPA threatened to decertify themselves after the owners kicked their butts in the mid-80s lockout. The owners ran rather than walked to sign a CBA which ratified this anti-free market conspiracy. They did this because if they had to participate in a true free market where individual owners negotiated personal services contracts with each individual player they would have made far less money than they did in the more socially oriented co-operative system embodied in the CBA. The hallmarks of this agreement were: 1. The NFL and NFLPA agreed to restrain trade for the indiviudual as it produced a more stable product and thus higher profits than would have been produced or the team owners than if they engaged in free market competition with each other. 2. This initial CBA gave the players only a designated portion of the gross which owners quickly exploited (with huge government subsidies in cases like the Ralph) by lowering stadium size as base tickets sales were part of the gross designated to be shared with players to build premium seats which they did not have to share. This was a minor matter to the NFLPA as they commanded as much as over 70% of the designated gross and the stability of labor peace opened up the NFL to sign a deal with the networks for real money (all of which was part of the designated gross) so that the players made more money than they ever imagined even giving away a chunk of the gross to the owners. 3. The initial CBA demanded renegotiation prior to last season and Upshaw announced that the new deal would be for the entire gross and that the players needed to be guaranteed a share which started with a 6. The final deal awarded the players 60.5% of the total gross and quite arguably made them not only partners but actually the majority partners of this deal. Folks like Ralph and the Cincy crew found it hard to give up even a credible argument that this was like the good free market run by the golden rule (he who has the gold rules). However, Tagliabue and the smart lawyers who run this system with the college educated players (the smart one like Upshaw and Troy Vincent understand it and now join Goodell in squeezing the idiots like Pac-Man and Vick out of the NFL) were able to convince the vast majority of the owners that 40.5% of more money than they imagined (and they can imagine a lot) was better than 75 or even 100% of an NFL that followed the free market as the way the business was run. Believe me, the modern NFL's connection o the free market is that it ain't a free market as it is based on the restriction of the rights of the individual to sign a contract with the highest bidder and to do so like in other professional sports from the age of 16 or so. Do you see that difference?

I thnik Magox is right IF the team's goal is merely to run a solid business. However, if the Bills goal is to instead put a significant effort into winning now rather than simply to build a solid business as long as we can, then there is likely a far higher premium on getting Peters into camp quickly to maximize the Bills chances of winning now. I agree completely that the "smart" business goal dictates using the leverage of having Peters under contract for a couple of more years at relative bargain basement rates for a two time Pro bowl achieving LT. We not only have the leverage of the signed contract, but if we choose under the current CBA we can franchise Peters a couple of times and only then pay him near the top rate for an LT and hold him for a couple of more years under the rules. However, if instead the goal is to win now, Peters has a lot more leverage under these scenarios as within the rules as they exist (he can skip voluntary workouts and even the mandatory OTAs and pre-season if he is willing to pay the substantial but relatively small in the big picture $600K fine. If Peters is willing to holdout, he has shown it will effect his play (and thus the team and his teammates success at winning) substanitially if he is willing to hold out. Eventually this will piss off his teammates (though apparently not now as his teammates are pretty sympathetic to a fellow player who is playing for far less money than he would command if the NFL ran on a truly free market basis with Peters being able to command his market value on a more regular basis). However, the NFL governed by the CBA is pretty far from a classic free market as the NFL and NFLPA have by agreement approved by our law and courts joined together to restrict salaries in a non-free market manner in order to yield much higher profits for these two parties as they have a far more stable and arguably better product than a free market would be able to produce. Big wildcards are that with the Bills O for this millennium in terms of even making the playoffs and there being no guarantee actuarily of Ralph living to see a long term strategy even work that the goal of this team is to win and win now. The Bills leverage is lessened greatly by its major OL investment Dockery simply not working out (his cut makes is way more difficult to fill a Peters gap we would choose to create while at the same time we fill a LG gap while dealing with the uncertainties at C, Butler's consistent injured status and the possibility of us relying on our next TE starter being a big part of the blocking scheme. Add to this that the LT is going to play a significant role in protecting our significant investment in Edwards, and also play a significant role in making the best use of the guaranteed one year of TO and overall I think that Peters has tremendous leverage in this situation. This is true IMHO unless the Bills are used by Ralph as merely a good business and not as a TEAM committed to winning on timeline that really makes the future now. If the Bills instead are more interested in making the playoffs in 2011 or later then by all means they should cut Peters lose for being a jerk and instead roll the dice big time in the hopes that their #11 (or even worse if the cost for trading Peters is we get multiple draft picks which have us selecting our new LT from the later third of the first day ifwe got for example 2 picks from Philly for Peters. The strategy to reach the goal of making the playoffs while Ralph is alive, TO is around and TE is alive is that despite Peters flaws is clearly to show him the money and get him to camp as quickly as possible.

The fact is that when the Upshaw led union made the threat to the owners that they would decertify the NFLPA after the owners kicked the butt of the Ed Garvey led NFLPA with the lockout, the players got a hold of the key to the car in the CBA which the NFLPA forced on the owners. Rather than operate in a classic free market where there was no union and the owners would have to negotiate individual personal service contracts with each player (there would be no salary cap or restrictions in this economic state of nature. The owners ran kicking and screaming to a more socialistically oriented structure which allowed the NFL and the NFLPA to collude together to restrict the free market with items like the player draft, the CBA, and restricting draft eligibility to the year a player would have graduated from college. In many ways, the NFL/NFLPA experience presaged what happened to the global economy when the Robert Rubin driven Clinton Administration and the simply bizarre Bush Administration empowered the Wall St. stock traders and then Bush/Phil Gramm put things into overdrive by failing repealing the the Steagal Act and completely failing to regulate insurers who became banks but got to choose their own regulators. Who woulda thunk it but the NFL is now one of the great working models of wealth acquisition and the key was the heave capital gun slingers who were NFL owners being forced to build a partnership with the their workers. With the new CBA which Upshaw announced prior to the negotiations that the new CBA was going to dispense with the transitional notion of a "designated gross receipts" and that now all receipts would be subject to division under the salary cap. Further, Upshaw announced that in this division the share given to the players (the workers) would need to start with a 6. Holding out to the last minute because final approval of the CBA did not follow the American tradition of majority rules but in fact a small minority of owners could scotch the deal. It took Tagliabue and some of the new guard owners locking themselves up in a room with the few remaining gunslinger owners from the good ol days to get them to agree to a deal which met the Upshaw standard by awarding the NFLPA 60.5% of the total gross. With this agreement, the players not only were partners but in fact were the majority partners in this collaborative. This change is reflected in entities like the NFLPA not reflexively opposing any crackdown on players (such as drug testing) but instead leading the way in calling for putting the hammer down on idiots like Pac-Man Jones and Chris Henry because the Troy Vincent led players know that this juveniles are threatening to kill the goose which has delivered them multi-million $ contracts for playing a boys game. The kids not only have the car keys but in fact are choosing which foreign car to buy. My sense is that the difference between the NFL and other major sports like MLB, NHL and the NBA is that the owners got greedy and were pleased to foster a world in which others (often the taxpayers paying for football mills like Nebraska and the Big Ten) paid for developing their players. If you are MLB or the NHL you have developed a system where you have to pay for developing players by signing them as minors, but they are yours as they go through the system of separating the athletic wheat from the athletic chaff. The NFL however, has the advantage of schools bearing this cost, but the price is that by the time the NFL gets ahold of them they are adults (the NBA is a hybrid of this educational process where most players go to a school for training and development, but they can escape college as minors and even in LeBron/Garret like cases are so gifted they get signed to the NBA as minors. A side effect of the NFL system is that owners got to escape millions in development costs, but in doing this they had an older educated work force that tried and failed miserably to win on their own, but this prepared them to understand and say yes to a way being offered to them to make more money than they even imagined through embracing a system which ain't the classic free market. Even better the economic advantage of ditching a free market system was so elegant and saleable that the vase majority of NFL owners simply bent over and asked for another when they were offered a deal which gave them a clear minority cut of the total gross. I think when one thinks this through its impossible not to be impressed with what a non-free market system can produce in terms of profits.

I'm not sure we disagree in that I certainly agree with you that it is clearly possible to find a starting LT in the draft. However, where I would hope you would match my agreement with you by you also agreeing with me that: 1. While it is possible to find a starting LT with a #12 pick like Clady, it also is quite possible to find a #4 pick like Williams, a #7 or so like McKinnie who needed some time to deal with his immaturity before he became adequate and so on and so on. The simple occurrence of reality is that despite the conventional wisdom that a first year player should be a starter or even perform like Clady that this expectation or assumption that this is how it will be just is not likely. Its not likely cause even if a hair over 50% of 1st round choices do end up being first of their team's depth chart in their second year, even these successes tend to be weighted heavily toward the top 10 picks. Not only do the Bills pick just outside this realm at #11 but what many are advocating is that the Bills fill their LT need by using one of Philly's later first round picks. Might this work out? Sure. Is this a risk? Yes, I'm glad you acknowledge this rather than simply claiming that a trade of Peters for a draft pick is a no brainer. Is this a risk that is likely to work out? At #11 maybe. In the 20s probably not. 2. You do also see (do you not) that the Bills have numerous holes to fill (OLB for sure, some say DL, some say TE). Folks suggest specific alternatives for this can likely be had from the draft and quite frankly any intelligent argument about this needs to start with specific names (and the plan B names if the player is already is taken). Merely making the argument that the Bills should go UDFA to fill an LT hole because it worked out that the Bills once found a starting LT from a UDFA us about as sensible approach as saying the Colts found an LT in the second round. Yeah it can happen but to plan on this without a real plan is simply silly. Adding another must fill to the Bills needs at this point seems like poor strategy. 3. The Bills timeline for winning is NOW! I say this not only out of frustration with going over for this millennium so far in making the playoffs, but also because if Ralph wants his team to make the playoffs while he is alive (I think all of us fans make this assumption or we have really been had) long range planning is not an option. In this what have you done for me now NFL aiming for two or three years down the line is simply not the norm the way it used to be. It is more so for Ralph (assuming he cares and wants to win as much as make a nickel). Even more pressing is that I do not think anyone is betting that TO will be a solid Bill (or a Bill at all) for more than a season. As far as taking risks go, this Bills team is almost certainly more interested in taking risks to win now rather than taking a risk to build for the future. Slow and steady building through the draft may be a better strategy for building a sustainable winner, but like it or not the goal is almost certainly to win now because the future is now. Also adding to the stakes of not spending this year on an OL player who like it or not is going to have to learn not to be a rookie is that if the result of this rookie LT learning by pulling a whoopsie on the QBs blindside is that our investment in Edwards may get concussed (again) it is simply hard to see the Bills going with the devil they do not know over the devil they know. 4. Did Peters regress last year? Yep. Did he make the Pro Bowl anyway? Yep. What does this contradiction tell us? My sense is that it does tell us that there are limitations to anyone assuming (and I do not think most folks make this assumption actually) the Pro Bowl is absolute measure of quality play. However, I think a rational person (which many of us fans are not) would also have to say that while not an absolute measure it is actually an indicator of some quality. Peters is far from a perfect player, but his performance over the course of the season did improve. Maybe he stupidly allowed himself to get out of game shape. Maybe the chemistry was not there with the layoff. Maybe he was in a silly funk because the Bills did not cave. Actually it can be any and all of these three things and if our good friends in the FO would actually just cave then likely all these issues go away. Perhaps some want to maintain Peters is just a jerk and if we sign him he simply takes a holiday while pretending to play. Maybe. However, the fact is this little boy has been lucky enough to play the game and compete at a high level throughout his life. The actual fact is that he worked hard enough and had the talent to pull off being a UDFA who got a look as a TE and in an incredibly short period of time turned that into being an LT who deserved his Pro Bowl berth in 07. The risk that a rookie is going to play like a vet is far higher that if one showed Peters the money he plays like the player that he is paid to be. All NFL players are subject to risk whether they are a rook or Peters. However, the risks of going with a rookie LT are so high for the 09 production we want that if there is a no-brainer her it is show the turd the money.

The problem is that the Bills lose out on a deal even if they get two firsts from Philly for Peters. The two first round picks would be lower first round picks which virtually assures that any LT they draft is going to spend most of next year learning to become a vet and LT will be a troubled spot on a team which desperately needs to make the playoffs next year. The really bad thing is that the above scenario only happens if we are lucky since despite the conventional wisdom that a 1st round choice should be a starter, the reality is its about 50/50 that a 1st round pick even is going to first on the depth chart at their position in their second year. I think the best sign that the Bills are not going to trade Peters is that just as if they mortgaged the present for an uncertain future by drafting Peters replacement or getting some journeyman in late FA, the team has no real plan B for going without Peters starting. Moving Walker over works in a pinch for a game or two, but is not a solution the Bills will want to go with. Given the playoff drought and being guaranteed only a year of TO I think the Bills will want to go for it this season and resigning Peters is a likely important part of that strategy.

I think the missing element in your line of thinking is that it is wholly different from how the rest of the NFL thinks in regard to Peters relative worth. Relative is the key word because though you may want to claim that there is some absolute level of play which Peters has achieved (an absolute value you define as mediocre) all contracts are set by a relative market determination. The market has made the finding that Peters is a Pro Bowl quality LT. You can argue this is undeserved, but like it or not this is the most recent statement by the market that we have in the real world of Peters relative worth. Since the NFL sets the actual market value and you and I do not, the simple fact is what they say matters and what you and I say does not. Peters big problem is that he is under contract because he signed a deal that paid him more than he had ever gotten before and was expected to get as a UDFA TE. I think you would be ignoring reality not to concede at least that he made an amazing showing by doing the work to get himself made a starting RT in an incredibly short period of time after his UDFA start. Again the simple fact is that he even exceeded that amazing start by proving to be not just a starting LT but one who was judged Pro Bowl worthy by the market last year. To simply boil down his career into one good season and one bad one actually defines ludicrous as an assessment. To simply ignore his his outstanding (if not totally unprecedented) first three years as a pro is just ludicrous. To totally discount a year where he qualified for the Pro Bowl as a bad year is simply ludicrous. I also think he likely did not deserve the Pro Bowl honor last year, but to somehow claim that his season was bad and the coaches/peers/fans who voted him in were simply all just smoking something is ludicrous. Puuhlleeeze

The Peace Bridge expansion has not happened simply because it is a dumb idea that would bring large financial benefit to a few and provide little economic benefit to the area as a whole (and what little economic benefit it would provide the area may be offset or even overwhelmed by the negative impacts on human health of additional truck traffic. This was seen in the PBA authority trying to ram through it expansion proposal a few years back and: 1. The proposal was subjected to fair consideration by a cross section of community stakeholders led by the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo. Even though this connection to a concentration of Buffalo's old money seemingly would be biased in favor of development, the PBA proposal was voted down by something like 32-1. The one was the local Chamber of Commerce the Greater Buffalo Partnership. This resounding vote reflected the case that the PBA proposal ultimately benefitted a small group of moneyed folks and ran against the economic and social benefits of the broader community. 2. The proposal was resoundingly defeated in the courts where Judge Gene Fahey ruled that not only did the PBA proposal ignore the needs of WNY as a whole but the manner in which they attempted to force this down the community's throat did not provide a fair hearing or even good well-documented information. The current PBA proposals still do not reflect any sense of trying to build support for their bridge proposal by actually reaching out to various stakeholders and cutting a deal which meets even some of the concerns of others and relies upon a model for economic development and transport of goods which is outmoded and inefficient. Its not simply blind opposition which has stalled Peace Bridge expansion but mostly because it is a bad idea which is not configured in a method that maximizing gains for stakeholders but a small few.