Let me preface this by giving some perspective on my opinion of our Bills. I love ‘em, but they are poorly run at nearly every level, and I have adopted a “wait and see” attitude over the new brain trust.
Bear with me on this post, I’m on a vendor conference call and have some time!
Now, there has been a lot of anger and frustration over the beginning of the new free agency period and the Bills lack of meaningful activity. I wanted to post a note about building a team from a non- emotion, Madden Football (video game) or strato-matic type perspective. I am older and don’t play anymore, but there are some lessons to be learned.
Building a franchise thru Madden takes the emotion (read: ours) out of the equation and uses some (albeit abstract) math to rate players, teams etc.
Consider- the Bills are a terrible franchise- out of the 32, we have got to be a bottom three destination.
This really rules out most, if not all, big ticket free agents. Peppers, etc. are not coming here. Take the emotion out of it- there are 29 or 30 better options for them.
Now, and this is where the math comes in, we still have to look at our roster. Madden players are rated on a scale of 1-100. As a benchmark, an elite LT (Joe Thomas) is probably about a 90. Let’s estimate our current tackles rankings, shall we?
RT
K. Chambers 60
J. Meredith 56
LT
J. Scott 59
A. Ramsey 50
Awful. In fact hard to get worse (Again I’m estimating the rankings) So the Bills have to look at free agency and then the draft.
No big names are coming here right now, so we look at the next group. Cornell Green is probably rated about a 71- not good, in fact marginal at best, and better suited for a backup.
HOWEVER HE BECOMES AN INSTANT UPGRADE FOR US.
Granted we overpaid for him. He’s probably worth only a bit more than the NFL minimum. But we have to get him, remember if he leaves and gets say a 2 year, 2 million dollar deal from say Houston, he’s gone.
By grabbing these stop gap players the team has more flexibility to draft players. Consider that is the draft was today we would essentially have to draft an OT and a NT in the first three rounds. Signing these journeymen just gives us a little breathing room
In other words, take the emotion out. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We have to overpay a bit for mediocre talent to sign with us.