BarleyNY

That was..........beautiful.

Getting proven coordinators to come to Buffalo is definitely reasonable and attainable. I wouldn't count on anyone getting EJ going anywhere, but out of town.

This explains the issue. You want a proven top HC? Then you'd better have a franchise QB already in place because that is a must-have for such coaches. They can be incredibly selective so - if they are still interested in championships and not just a payday - why would they bother with a team that is still looking for their QB? They wouldn't.

Marrone was never a contender to become Cleveland's HC, but he certainly may have used them as leverage. As for Haslam, the investigation concerning PFJ stealing from their customers is ongoing. The deal that was cut was only to protect the company, not individuals. As of now the Feds have worked their way up the company ladder to Haslam's direct report, President Mark Hazelwood, who recieved a target letter a few months ago. The opt out clause when ownership changes is standard practice, I believe, so that's just part of the game. No hard feelings about its existence here. Marrone reminds me of a slew of other opportunistic coaches out there, though. Rich Rodriguez, Butch Davis, etc. Huge egos and zero loyalty to anything except the almighty dollar. They tell people What they want to hear and say a lot of the right things, but they lie and are happy to bounce around to the biggest check they can find. Then they bail the minute there is another dollar to be had. F Marrone, but the Bills should be better off without him.

I've seen many others post similar thoughts on the contract, but I've seen the same clause executed before (Browns). In fact, I think the Browns GM and President got the remainder of their contracts paid out, not just one year. It would make sense that it is standard practice and I can understand legitimate reasons coaches and GMs would want it. New owners often want their own people running the show and coaches don't to wind up in limbo or working for someone they'd otherwise not want to work for. From the owner's perspective, why would they really care if such a clause existed? They won't be around if it is ever executed anyway. That's the reason for the existence of the clause, not an excuse for Marrone executing it. F him for that.

I I understand Orton's voidable contract clause - he is guaranteed $5.4M next season if he does not void his contract. That would be guaranteed whether or not he's waived. Please correct me if that's wrong. So that means he's on the team next season at that rate. There's no way the Bills pay him that and not have him on the team. Starter, backup, whatever. He's on the team. He's also the best QB on the team. Sorry. It sucks, but he is. EJ shouldn't even be on the roster next season. He is that terrible. The Bills need to be looking for better in the offseason, but barring a better QB being obtained in FA or a trade Orton is starting next season. No one the Bills could get in the draft could be expected to start early in the season. So exactly what's the point of not starting Orton next weekend? I'd expect something less than maximum effort from the team anyway. While I am not implying that the team will phone it in there is no way we are going to see an optimal performance after this letdown. So why bench the guy that's going to be starting for you next year?

I told you where it was. Try Google. I bet you can even do it yourself!

Incorrect. Players making league minimum do not factor into the equation. I tried to post a link to an article, but no Bleacher Report articles are allowed to be linked here. Also I doubt that the Bills are in real danger of signing more non-minimum FA players than they lose.

It's a super secret formula and all, but if the Bills lose Hughes they almost certainly will be getting a comp pick. He's going to get big dollars and a bunch of low-level contracts are not going to impact that. Barring a big signing the Bills would wind up with a 3rd or 4th round pick. Personally I would franchise the man before I let him leave. If it got nasty with him, then I'd trade him as a last resort (and get more than his comp pick value without having to worry about any offsets). And yes I know that the league frowns on franchising a player only to trade them, but that would not be my intent when I did it. I'd be looking to lock him up long-term.

I'd expect some of turnover of end-of-the-bench players as well. Certainly manageable.

Nice choice of a "highlight" in preseason. An actual NFL safety picks that horribly underthrown pass off. The UPS driver in coverage on the clip, not so much.

Ah, that explains it. Thanks for the clarification. Sorry for the assertion you made a mistake. Let's go from this. That leaves 40 on the active roster before re-signings, free agency and the draft. The Bills have six picks of which one or two might be PS players, plus an UDFA or two might make the team. Let's say they get 6 to the active roster from both for a total of 46. That leaves 6 re-signings and free agents, which is reasonable. But other than re-signing Hughes I doubt that there will be many places to throw around big money. As I noted in an earlier post, such a huge increase in cap room will allow teams to keep their players. There will be some serious overspending on even mid-tier talent in free agency.

I honestly don't have time to educate you on logic or looking at things with an unbiased eye, so I am going to make this brief. Right now we don't have much of the disparity in how we view Watkins' play as it stands now. You have him as top 20 and I have him as a top 25 WR. The disparity seems to be strictly and how we view him developing. I think he'll improve and you think he will improve dramatically. The problem is you've done nothing but make excuses for him not having performed better while cutting down other WRs. That shows your bias. Every wide receiver we could talk about has excuses. And on the off chance that you watch as much football as you say, then it's too bad you don't know what you're seeing. Everything seems to be telling you what you already thought you knew - Sammy Watkins is going to be super awesome! Writing stupid things like "Sammy is shattering every meaningful rookie WR record!" but failed to mention that he's not even first on the list of rookie WRs this year in most of those stats. That really doesn't help your credibility. And I like Sammy. I think he's going to be very good. Saying that the guys going to be a top 20 wide receiver is generally thought it was a pretty good complement. You also misrepresented one of my comments about preferring other wide receivers to Sammy. My comment was that I would have rather had one of the other receivers plus our first and fourth round picks rather than Sammy. Are you honestly telling me that you'd rather have Sammy Watkins than one of the other top receivers in this class plus our picks? Now, that really shows bias.

I suspect the $60M in cap space double counts the carryover, which is a little under $19M. I'm seeing spending of a little less than $123M. So, using round numbers, a cap of $140M results in an adjusted cap of $159M. Take away spending of $123M and they'd have $36M to spend before any cuts or contract adjustments.

The issue with a rapidly rising salary cap is that it going to benefit most the teams that are already built for contention. Those teams are going to be able to afford to re-sign all of the players that they want to re-sign. Teams that are looking to improve are going to be sitting with a bunch of cap room and stuck with a relatively poor free-agent class. If the salary cap really does jump to around $140 million next season I don't necessarily think it's a good thing for the Bills overall, although it would allow them to retain Hughes, which would be great for the defense.

Mike Polk and Jerrod Cherry on the situation (D-bags United for Johnny):

Must be a lot like hitting a couple beautiful drives and knocking down a 35 foot putt on your way to a round of 117.

Reading IS fundamental. I'm still waiting on your rationale for why you have Watkins so highly rated. My eyes tell me he's in that 20-25 range right now (with some room to grow) and, low and behold, that's where his production is. You think he's much, much better than that so I'd love to hear why. If you really did watch all of the Tampa games you might have noticed that Evans has outperformed Sammy as well as his teammate Vincent Jackson (who incidentally also has better numbers than Watkins) despite having a terrible running game and the likes of Josh McCown and Mike Glennon playing QB. Please quit making things up.

Wow. You think Sammy Watkins is the 7th best WR in the league. Just WOW. You should get out more. Maybe watch some other teams (even if they aren't playing the Bills). Or at least take the Dark Navy glasses off to watch. For instance, while Kyle Orton isn't better than average at QB (and is probably a tad below) he's still better than a lot of other QBs out there. Lots of WRs play with injuries (some more than others), crappy QBs, one dimensional offenses, etc. Don't make excuses just for your boy, Sammy. Watkins is not even the best WR in his class - Evans looks to be that. Exactly how has he distanced himself from others in that class like Beckham Jr. or Benjamin? He hasn't. Do tell me why he's so great - besides wearing the right uniform.

We can start with a very imperfect list of receiving yards and work from there: http://espn.go.com/nfl/statistics/player/_/stat/receiving/sort/receivingYards After removing the two TEs above him Watkins would sit at 23rd, about where I think he should be. Now I admit that some of the players above him on the list I might not rate as better than him. But for every one of those I can find one below him that I'd rate as better. Now the ball is in your court. Use that list and tell me who with more receiving yards you would rate below Sammy. Then I'll give you a list of everybody I would move above him.

He's a 7 who could top out at 8. I see him as a potential top 20 WR in the league, but probably never a top 10. Right now he's comfortably in the top 32, probably in the 20-25 range. His injury concerns are something he will have to overcome. He is just a rookie and this is the first time he's been through an NFL season so maybe training and physical maturity can help there. While I can see how the Bills were so enamored with him I still say they gave up too much - especially for a team that was (and is) unsettled at quarterback. The Bills could have had Odell Beckham Jr. or Kelvin Benjamin at 9 and kept their picks. They also could have had Evans, who is looking better than Watkins at 4 or in a lesser trade up. But I expect Watkins to be a very good player in this league for a long time. A team can do a lot worse than that when they move up in the draft.

We will have to agree to disagree about this. It's a good system, but it isn't one that is complicated for a QB to run. Difficult, yes. Complicated, not really.

Just to add on to what has been said, Baylor's offensive system is pretty basic even compared to typical college systems. It's a big transition even for a QB coming out of a system with pro elements, but RG3 had a much bigger jump to make. Luck, in contrast, played for Stanford which is about a close to a pro system as you're going to get in college and he had a lot of learning to do as evidenced by his early struggles. I think RG3's main issue as a pocket passer has to do with reading the field properly and quickly. This is where many QBs fail. Kapernick can't do it and it's sidelining his career. Teams are making him stay in the pocket and beat them that way and that's what teams are making RG3 do. His injuries are making it easier because he can't run like he once did. Lastly, determining what will happen once players like him get into the NFL limelight and are handed the kind of money he's seen is always a projection. Sometimes they don't put in the time they need to and sometimes they work, but can't do it. Rumor has it that the reason Manziel isn't starting for Cleveland is because he hasn't put in enough time and he doesn't understand the offense well enough. RG3 came from a military family and looked like he would be the kind of guy who had a tremendous work ethic, but rumors in Washington are that he sees himself above the others on his team and it has really cause locker room problems.

Crap. That's right. The team concept that no one player is more important than another. Good catch.

View PostFireChan, on 17 November 2014 - 12:24 PM, said: Mike Shanahan actually ruined this kids career. There is truth to both opinions here. I'd add in Snyder for the trifecta. Running a heavily Baylor influenced offense was bound to put RG3 on the fast track to the broken down QB heap. He was incredibly fast, but not elusive (like Vick). That should have led to a transition to becoming a pocket QB from the beginning, but that never happened as he is still poor as a pocket QB. The only question is: How much blame should be assigned to each party for that: - Did Snyder insist on immediate success and force Shanny to go with a plan that optimized short term success? His track record and considering the bounty paid for him both indicate this is very likely. - How much effort did Shanny spend trying to transition RG3 into a pocket QB? One would have to assume that some degree of this was necessary simply due to transitioning to the NFL, but if the coaches put forth the effort it sure didn't take. Or maybe his injuries sidetracked the development plan. It would be interesting to know what the plan was. - Lastly, how much effort did RG3 put forth to learn the passing game? And if he did put forth the effort, is he capable? He's a smart guy by all accounts, but he also seems a little too wrapped up in the spotlight so I wonder. Ultimately it is on him to develop his pocket passing game or he won't have much of a spotlight to enjoy anymore.