[We Need to Give Buddy Some Credit]

Nix's first year (2010) was a complete disaster. But everything after that was pretty good.

 

This team's turnaround started in 2011 with the selection of Marcel Dareus. There has been a steady flow of incoming talent ever since.

[Do the moves by the Bills in free agency make sense so far?]

I think the Bills had a solid gameplan for Free Agency. But things haven't quite worked out the way they wanted (Bulaga resigning, Miami making room for Clay). And now they aren't sure how to make the "halftime adjustments."

 

Anyone that knows anything about Greg Roman's offense knows this... You need a very strong offensive line. You need some very good tight ends.

We have neither. And as the days pass, people are going to start realizing how bad we screwed this up.

 

Doug Whaley apparently made efforts to address both spots. But his initial targets failed to pan out. Our Free Agent options are now dwindling into nothingness, along with our cap space. And anyone that thinks we can just "fill these holes" with the draft obviously isn't paying attention. This draft is extremely weak on both Tight Ends and Offensive Line.

 

So throwing the highest $$ at the best available T doesn't count? Going after their top target G doesn't count? Please point to the can't miss QB who was to be had in FA that this team missed out on?

 

The Bills have been one of the top 5 most active teams in FA. They are closing the gap on NE. But it's also idiotic to think that they can get over the hump in a one week period in March.

 

As our former coach used to say... "Don't confuse effort with results."

 

Even if Whaley made a huge effort to address these spots -- it's appearing like he failed miserably.

 

We aren't going to catch New England (and we may have been passed up by Miami and New York), without strong blocking. We've spent $25 million in Free Agency and our O-Line is still a mess.

[Potential Upside of OBD Strategy For Success]

By far, the best way to construct a winning franchise is to build around a Top 10 quarterback.

There is absolutely no doubt.

 

Unfortunately... When you look at things realistically - that just isn't going to happen any time soon for the Bills.

Good QBs don't hit free agency. They aren't available for trade. You generally need a Top 3 pick to get a top prospect.

 

 

So what is the next best option?

Build the best defense in the NFL, then support it with a great running game, strong O-Line and smart game-managing QB.

It's definitely not the most common way to win a Super Bowl. But it has happened a few times, most recently with the Seattle Seahawks.

[Remaining 20 on NFL Top 100]

Julio Jones was hurt almost the entire season. The list is based on 2014 performances, so no way he's on it.

 

Matt Ryan and RGIII didn't play well. Byrd and Foster were hampered by injuries. None of them will be on the list either.

Josh Gordon will definitely be in the Top 20.

[What We Could Learn From History]

I agree that it's completely "possible" that Jeff Tuel becomes a good NFL backup eventually. There is a small chance that he becomes an NFL starter.

He's young and has plenty of room to develop/improve.

 

The problem is...

The same people who are big Tuel supporters, are often the same people who are ready to throw in the towel on EJ Manuel.

 

Now if you can wait for a raw UDFA talent with average measurables to develop -- WHY IN THE WORLD can we not be patient with a physical talent like Manuel? It makes absolutely zero sense.

[Brady vs The Clock]

It's hard to predict what age it will come apart. But it always does. Usually without warning.

 

Brett Favre played at an MVP level at age 40, with his team on the verge of a Super Bowl.

At 41, he was completely shot.

 

It would be silly to discount Brady, just because he's 37. It's possible he could go another few years before his play drops.

It would be equally silly to assume he can play at a high level forever, just because he feels good or because several other players were successful past 37.

[Bills Top 9 War Room Picks for 1st Rd.]

If they pick a RT at 9 they should all be fired. Least important player on either side of the ball and no team wins games due to a dominant RT. LT, ok...RT never.

 

Top 10 picks should be impact players and difference makers, which no RT ever in NFL history has been.

 

They can get a starter at RT in the 3rd or 4th round and be completely fine---day 1 starter.

 

Let's stop the insanity with an RT at pick 9. They would get laughed out of the draft by other GMs and personnel people and deservedly so.

 

This is ridiculous thinking.

 

Last year, four tackles went in the Top 15. Eric Fisher, Luke Joekel, Lane Johnson and DJ Fluker. All played on the right side as rookies. Johnson and Fluker are expected to stay there long term. Three of those four teams made the playoffs.

 

And one of the best teams in football - San Francisco - has a stud right tackle they drafted Top 10.

 

Left side is marginally more important, but not as much as some make it out to be.

[DE or SS? Which position needs to be addressed and how?]

Not sure what Schwartz has planned for scheme, but I don't think DE is a huge need.

 

Last year, Alan Branch did a good job starting as a DE on early downs. Jerry Hughes replaced him in passing situations. From what I understand, Manny Lawson will become a hybrid DE/OLB.

 

That's three capable starting players, with a wide range of skill sets. If Schwartz can't make it work with those guys, he needs to tweak his scheme instead of asking us to invest another draft pick in the front 7.

 

Safety is a need though, simply because we don't know if Da'Norris Searcy, Duke Williams or Johnathan Meeks can handle the spot. We don't want another LG situation on our hands.

[Trade Stevie Johnson to Carolina, they have no WRs]

Better idea.

 

How about we keep him. Then if we happen to land a good receiver, we can get rid of Kevin Elliott, Chris Hogan, TJ Graham or someone that is worthless.

 

No matter how much you dislke Stevie, he's definitely better than those guys.

[A Detailed Account of the NFL Scouting Process]

"The hardest thing we do is try to figure out what's in a man's heart," John Schneider says. "In the realm of scouting, the easiest things to do are the evaluations of the guys -- how he plays, what you think his future holds, how high his ceiling is, what his basement is. You can do all the work in the world, you can do every psychological test you possibly can, but at the end of the day, you don't truly know what's in a man's heart or how he's gonna react in a certain situation. You hope you have a really good feel for that. And hopefully, nine times out of 10, your psychological assessment is correct in how they're gonna handle certain situations. But you don't know."

 

This was the part that stood out to me.

 

People love to talk about "busts" and "steals" - and many fans like to pretend drafting is just a roll of the dice. The truth is, evaluating a player's overall talent isn't that tough. It's trying to predict which guys will be hardest workers at the next level, and which guys will try coasting.

 

Tom Brady is probably the biggest steal in the history of the NFL. But looking back at his college career, game film, stats, physical traits, combine numbers - there was absolutely nothing at the time that hinted that Brady could be anything special. Nobody (the Patriots included) saw the guy as anything higher than a mid-late round pick.

There was something inside Brady that could not be seen or measured by scouts.

[FA WR Eric Decker]

Eric Decker was an average #2 receiver before Peyton Manning came around. I don't think he's an exceptional talent, and the contract he demands won't be worth what he brings to the passing game.

 

 

Personally, I would rather take the chances on hitting a home run with someone like Hakeem Nicks, Jeremy Maclin or Kenny Britt.

[Andre Reed Elected into the Pro Football HOF]

Best news I've heard in awhile. Go Andre!!!!!!

[Is MLB our biggest need now?]

CJ Mosley is overrated because he plays on Alabama.

 

I think Shayne Skov and Yawin Smallwood are better prospects, and they may be available in the 2nd-3rd round.

[Detroit Defense: New Bills defense]

Most coaches have big egos, and prefer bringing along the scheme that worked best for them.

 

If Schwartz is smart, he will copy Pettine's defense exactly - with a couple tweaks to improve gap control against the run. However, highly doubt this will happen.

[Salary Cap - Is Whaley Allowed to Spend It All?]

You make some good points, so I just want to hit on this last one.

 

It's funny you mention these teams, since each of them let their most important free agent(s) walk out the door this past offseason.

 

New England let Welker go, Pittsburgh didn't re-sign Wallace, Baltimore traded Boldin for a 6th rd pick and didn't re-sign Cary Williams, New Orleans let their LT defect to Chicago, and Green Bay lost Greg Jennings to a division rival.

 

All had plenty of cap space...

 

Now, I'm not saying this proves anything, just that I think it speaks to the idea of correctly determining value over simply re-signing guys because you have the money and cap space to do so.

 

Most of those teams actually were in pretty bad salary cap trouble.

 

Pittsburgh had to decide between Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown. They chose wisely.

 

Baltimore's biggest free agent was Joe Flacco. Combining his massive contract and Ray Rice (from the year before), left them in a position where they simply couldn't afford an aging possession receiver.

 

New Orleans brought back Marques Colston, and of course had the looming contract of Jimmy Graham coming up this year.

 

With Jordy Nelson, James Jones and Randall Cobb, Green Bay didn't need Jennings and they knew it. They played most of 2012 without him anyway.

 

New England is (as usual), the exception to the rule. I think they knew Welker was easily replaceable. They decided to go with a younger Danny Amendola. He got hurt, but Julian Edelman filled in nice this year. The big losses to New England's offense were Gronk and Hernandez.

[[closed]3-4 Hybrid to a 4-3....and keeping Danny Crossman.]

It's been stated several times in this thread, but it bears repeating so that everyone on the board gets it.

 

 

We DID NOT run a 3-4 defense last year!!!

 

We DID NOT run a hybrid either!!!

 

 

My estimation is that we ran a 4-3 base about 30-40 percent of the time. The rest of the time, we were in nickel.

 

[Roger Goodell: NFL will explore eliminating the extra point]

Goodall has to be the WORST commissioner in NFL history. Constantly messing around with rules that don't need to be changed. It needs to stop right now.

 

He's already pretty much eliminated kickoff returns from the game. He's made it completely impossible to tell what a catch is. Illegal hit penalties are inconsistent and turning the sport into two hand touch. And now we may be looking at a snow storm moving the freaking Super Bowl to another day.

 

That's not even counting all of his proposed ideas like expanding the regular season or adding more playoff spots. Ugh.

 

[Salary Cap - Is Whaley Allowed to Spend It All?]

This is great information (I don't have the patience to analyze and digest it all) so, let me offer another hypothesis on whether there is a correlation or not -- take Seattle, this year, most analysts have said that they have a short window, because several of their key players are over-performing their contracts (Wilson, Sherman the most obvious) and once they have to pay those guys, they will have cap issues. Take a look at Dallas, spent a lot and made poor football decisions now they are $25M+ over the cap and will have casualties. A lot of times teams win and then have to spend to keep the core group together, perhaps that clouds the data. I will also say that teams that win consistently spend efficiently. That is critical. I would never suggest the Bills do another Dockery/Walker/Kelsay/Schobel type of off-season. The Patriots seem the best at efficient spending and knowing when not to extend a guy or trade someone right before the downside hits. What I am suggesting for the Bills (this is a clarified position) is for them to OPTIMIZE their spending. Spend smart, on the right people at the right time. I don't want this team to give Fred a 5-year extension or throw big money at a backup QB. I would also hope (and I know Bandit insists it was the case) that the Bills spare no expense to hire the best football people to make those critical decisions.

 

 

I agree with this completely, and this is why I think some people may have a problem seeing a direct correlation between spending and winning.

 

A team like Seattle is winning, but not breaking the salary cap. But this has more to do with player age than anything else. Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Bobby Wagner, etc. are still on their cheap rookie contracts. When these guys start hitting free agency, the Seahawks will have to decide whether to pay their guys or not. If they start letting those guys walk, I'm certain the winning will stop.

 

Same thing with Carolina and a young talent base that includes Cam Newton and Luke Kuechley. Even a team like Denver is fairly young, with the exception of Peyton Manning being under center. They signed their big free agent this season (Ryan Clady) to an extension over the summer.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the St. Louis Rams who are still stuck by the pre-rookie salary cap rules - and stuck pending tons of money on the rookie contracts of Sam Bradford and Chris Long.

 

I also think it's misleading to look at rankings when most of the teams are within the $2-6 million range. The difference between the team ranked #10 and ranked #25 is almost nothing.

 

The best way to judge the effect of spending is to simply watch how yearly winners (New England, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New Orleans, Green Bay) handle their free agents when they have room to operate under the salary cap. I have a very hard time seeing any of those teams letting Jairus Byrd walk with over $18 million to work with under the cap.

[Salary Cap - Is Whaley Allowed to Spend It All?]

Maybe there isn't a direct correlation, but consistently sitting at $10-20 million under the cap (while letting our talent walk) definitely says something about Buffalo's commitment to winning.

 

Teams like Washington are big spenders, but they make poor decisions about who to spend it on. That's why they aren't winning.

 

Teams like Carolina (and to a lesser extent Seattle and San Fran) are winning and have lots of cap space, but that's mostly because the big stars on their teams are still young and playing on their first contracts.

 

Long-time winners - New Orleans, New York Giants, Baltimore, Pittsburgh - these are the teams that have lots of veteran Pro Bowl players on their second contracts. These are the teams with a legitimate excuse to let free agent talent walk, because otherwise they would go over the cap.

 

 

If the Bills really believe that signing Byrd would hurt their chances at bringing back Dareus next year - then I completely understand the reluctance to offer a massive contract.

Unfortunately, I'm more inclined to believe (based on watching this team for 25 years), that our contract negotiations have more to do about the front office's "perceived value" of players. If they don't think a guy is worth the money he's asking (whether it be Byrd, Levitre or Peters), they simply won't give it to him - regardless of whether they can afford it under the salary cap or not.

[Salary Cap - Is Whaley Allowed to Spend It All?]

We all know what the Bills organization says.

 

Is it the truth?

[Salary Cap - Is Whaley Allowed to Spend It All?]

I did some research on the Bills salary cap figures over the past few seasons.

 

> In 2012, we started the league year (March) with about $23 million in cap space. After free agency and draft signings were completed, we started the season (September) with about $13-14 million in cap space.

 

> In 2013, we started the league year with about $17-18 million in cap space. We started the season with about $9 million.

 

> We currently (January 2014), sit at about $18 million in cap space.

 

 

I've heard the excuse over and over. We couldn't sign "X" player to a new contract, because we need to save the money for "Y" player next year. This excuse is already being thrown around on why we can't muster up another $1-2 million to bring back Jairus Byrd (because we need the money for Marcel Dareus, CJ Spiller or Jerry Hughes next year).

 

It's a total bullcrap excuse. This team is never in salary cap trouble. Even after making Mario Williams the highest paid defensive player in football, we still went into the 2012 season with a comfortable cushion of more than $10 million!!!

 

So my question is... Does Doug Whaley have the permission from his superiors (Russ Brandon, Jim Overdorf, Ralph Wilson, etc.) to spend up to the maximum of the salary cap? Because if he DOES, then why are we squabbling about re-signing a 3x Pro Bowler?

 

The Saints currently sit at about $640 THOUSAND over the salary cap, but you better believe they will find a way to keep Jimmy Graham on that roster. Why can't things work like that around here?

[Richard Sherman post game -- 'nuff said!]

Tom Brady cusses and screams at the refs when he doesn't get the call his way. He is constantly seen throwing fits and pouting on the sideline. But he's just "passionate about winning."

 

I would just love for Sherman's critics to show some consistency.

[Who are the top five QBs of all time?]

It's stupid how championships (team accomplishment) weigh so heavily in peoples minds when comparing individual players.

 

These guys play 200-300 games over the course of their career, and they are judged by a small handful of wins and losses.

 

Brady built his reputation on clutch play and his team coming out with 3 Super Bowl wins. That is a total of THREE GAMES that defined his legacy. Now the guy just can't get over the hump. Is Brady so much worse? Or where there other factors that come into play?

 

Elway was a big game choke artist. Just like Jim Kelly. That was his legacy. Until the Broncos drafted Terrell Davis, and suddenly he was a winner. Two games completely changed everything.

 

20 years ago, people inexplicably considered Joe Montana better than Dan Marino. Why? Super Bowl wins. Never mind that Joe Montana was surrounded by several Hall of Famers and the greatest receiver of all time. Marino had the Marks Brothers and had to play in the same division as us every year.

[Trade Byrd and a 3rd for another 1st?]

Interesting thing I just realized.

 

Aaron Williams and Da'Norris Searcy are both free agents in 2015.

 

So at some point, the Bills have to start paying their safeties. Otherwise we are in big trouble at that position.

[Redskins - ownership nightmare]

 

Owners should not be involved. They don't really understand the actual business. They just think they do.

 

Owners should own and hire the right people to run and the franchise.

 

Agreed.

 

I can't think of any Bills fans crying for ownership to get more involved. Everyone wanted Ralph to get out of the way.

 

Al Davis, Jerry Jones, Dan Snyder -- all these guys ran their teams into the ground. Bob Kraft hires the top personnel to run his team, then gets out of the way.

 

And there lies a conundrum. If the owner has no real understanding of the business, how is he to know who the right people are that he should hire to run the franchise?

 

At the very least, he should be able to read a resume and pick someone with a credible background to be GM.