silvermike

There's a $28M bonus due before Peyton can be traded. So either Indy eats that, and then makes a trade, or he's cut outright. If Irsay's interested in throwing money around, then that post-bonus trade is interesting. It considerably lowers Manning's cost to the new team, so comparatively, it raises his trade value. If you don't have to pay the signing bonus or the roster bonus, Manning's contract is cheaper than Fitzpatrick's - it's about $25M over three years before rising slightly in years he's unlikely to keep playing. Indy won't be burdened with a big contract when they sign Luck, so it's plausibly something they could do. And another team could load up with Peyton and still sign a few free agents and stay under the cap, if they don't mind mortgaging the future to do it by giving up at least a first round pick or two. Any likely takers? Jets, Redskins come to mind. Maybe the Cowboys, if Romo finally breaks Jones. Stephen Ross is known to make weird decisions. I dunno.

So far, Buddy's acquired Troup, Carrington, Moats, Batten, Sheppard, and Chris White in the draft for our front 7. Can anyone tell me who wouldn't fit in a 4-3? I honestly don't know how to call it for LBs; I have a sense that Troup is really a fairly pure NT, but he wouldn't start for us in a 3-4 anyway.

I think we'll be a 4-3 team, mercifully. Our talent is pretty well designed for it. We'll start Dareus and Williams inside, which will be one of the best DT pairs in the league. Chris Kelsay will return to his natural LE position, unremovable since Ralph gave him tenure last year. On the other side we'll see some competition between Dwan Edwards and Alex Carrington, but I think RE will be a huge position for us. The LBs will need to shake themselves out.

I should note Alex Van Pelt was fired in Tampa Bay. He might be brought back in some capacity. Or if we like our old backups, I think Frank Reich was fired in Indy.

The low rating combines low YPA with all the picks. All told, he sounds like almost exactly the median NFL starter.

I'd switch holding to a spot-of-the-foul and loss of down penalty. It's sort of an odd play for the current do-over system. If there's a hold on the line of scrimmage on first and ten, it's 2nd and 10, not first and 20. You act as though the held player would have made the play. Pass interference is fine as ruled, I think you just need to work very hard that the refs understand the rule and call it fairly and correctly as often as possible. The range of what might be clean and what might be a big penalty is too large.

The Bills don't have anyone with the title of "Vice President of Football Operations" or what have you, so maybe Nix gets "promoted" to that as a part-time consulting job while Whaley handles the day-to-day as general manager. Who knows? But I hope we at least see some activity.

THis seems most likely to me. Nix is retiring/being pushed out in favor of Whaley. Can't imagine a wholesale changeover.

I think Orton is, at best, a mild improvement over Fitzpatrick. I don't want to spend all our budget on change for the sake of change. We either go for a real, top-flight QB in the draft or we roll along.

I wouldn't put much credence in this normally, but since it's from Jason LaCanfora, I'm inclined to give it more credibility. He works for the league and isn't putting random crap out there to drive up ratings, like anyone working for a network. Anyway, the line is this: "There are some rumblings that a front office shakeup of some sort in Buffalo is not out of the question" It's buried in his round up of the week's games: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d82541a13/article/teams-left-for-dead-a-month-ago-still-fighting-for-playoff-lives?campaign=Twitter_features "rumblings" that a "shakeup" is "not out of the question" is a very, very long way away from "Buddy Nix is likely to be fired," so I mean, don't go nuts. But it's the only thing I've heard yet that the Bills are considering changes this winter.

"[CJ]'s not the biggest back in the world, I don't think he can go out there and carry it 25-30 times." --Chan Gailey, 12/18/11. I don't even know if I agree with him, but as of yesterday, Chan does not plan to use CJ as an every-down back. Based on his production, I'm absolutely mystified.

I've seen enough from Williams and Rogers to make me think that we can afford to let the secondary go this year, even if McGee retires and McKelvin is cut. Maybe some mid-round pick to address depth, but we're strong enough that we can focus on our real needs up in the front 7 and on offense.

It's the same reason that he doesn't trade down. He does, however, feel incredibly lucky that for two years in a row, the random placing of the draft has put him in the exact right spot for 15 consecutive picks.

Okay, doing some quick research, I found that we would not be the first team in NFL history to turn 5-2 into 5-11. Meet the 2001 San Diego Chargers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_San_Diego_Chargers_season Many familiar faces here: This is the team that came from Ralph firing John Butler, who immediately booked it to California. That meant bringing along an old scout named Buddy Nix to be director of player personnel, and signing Doug Flutie, Marcellus Wiley, Sam Rogers, and John Holocek. None really impressed out there, but it meant that the last 5-2 collapse was by a team known as "Buffalo West." San Diego won their first three, dropped two, won two, and dropped nine, so a slightly different pattern. They did pull off a win over the Denver Broncos, a recent Super Bowl champion and perhaps the equivalent of our win over the Patriots. Maybe that's stretching it. The Chargers last win came at Ralph Wilson Stadium, beating us 27-24 in Flutie's revenge game: he scored on a 13 yard run with just over a minute to play. He started every game for that team, who turned the keys over to Drew Brees the next year. If we've got a Drew Brees, that's encouraging. San Diego did fire their coach after that season, bringing Marty Schottenheimer to replace Mike Riley. Riley was in his third year, coming off a 1-15 season. It's hard to find other teams that really compare. The '91 Rams ended the season with 10 losses after a 3-3 start. I'm not sure how impressed anyone was with their 3-3 start. San Diego comes back in 1997 with a 4-4 start turned 4-12 finish. The '89 Bears turned a 5-3 and 6-4 start to a 6-10 finish. Then we get the '93 Dolphins. They turned a 9-2 start into a 9-7, nonplayoff finish. The '95 Raiders did a similar job, turning 8-2 into 8-8 and nothing in January. In any case, there's some company, but we're not in happy company.

Fred got to play in our first three humiliating blowout losses; Wood got two, and while Kyle only played in one, it's hard to see how he's responsible for our offense suddenly losing all its touch.

No, I'm much happier with 60 minutes of vaguely depressing boredom.

Of course, take away a play from the Pats and Raiders games and we're 3-10 and howling. Even Philly was in doubt for a while. It seems like our close games about washed out this year.

I'm on board.

At least we have some company in terms of sportswide playoff droughts. Kansas City, Toronto, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Washington/Montreal all have us paced in baseball. Due to large playoff fields, the NBA/NHL are all ahead us. We don't have to worry yet about setting a post-merger record though. The Cardinals gave their fans 16 seasons between playoff appearances (enough time for the team to move from St. Louis). The Bengals had a 1990-2005 run of futility. The Lions share our current streak and also missed every playoffs from 1970 to 1982. The Packers gave a 1982-1993 run, which we're now exceeding. The Chiefs went from 1971-1986. Tampa gave their fans a 1982-1997 streak. The Saints seem to win the day. From 1967-1987, they went 0-fer. So we've got a decade to go before we hit a true epic futility run, but at least for the moment, we have some company.

Cute, but no way that Sanchez would have dropped to us, I think. At the very least, Green Bay, now with Rodgers traded away and Favre retiring again, would have grabbed him.

Maybe not in the NFL at large, but is there anyone on the team earning more than $3M who's not starting? That kind of money got Geoff Hangartener cut.

It's a solid contract, but don't kid yourself: that's starter money. We're not upgrading the RT position, and using Pears as a swing tackle. So the question now is if the team would be happy to pay Bell and use Hairston as a swing (perhaps taking over RT after the Pears contract expires) or if they're going to simply start Hairston. It seems unlikely that we'll have any 2012 OL starters not currently on the team.

We need to re-sign Stevie Johnson because there's no better way to improve the team for the value of that contract. Looking at the roster currently under contract in 2012, our greatest need is probably WR, and Johnson is one of the better players on the market, and the best option given his familiarity with the quarterback, the coach, and the system. We'll all be pissed as hell when he drops a big touchdown pass. It's how it goes, and it's why he's not going to get Larry Fitzgerald money, or on this market, he won't get DeSean Jackson money. He's not of that caliber. But I'll take his occasional drops over the many times Fitz will throw the ball out of the back of the end zone because Jones, Hagan, and Smith aren't open.

Thanks for the update. It'd make sense, given that Stevie is apparently asking for the tag number, and they'd give it to him if they were going to tag him. I wonder what other teams think he's worth right now.

If Johnson leaves, I can't imagine them doing anything besides spending a #1 on a WR. Which basically means we'll burn off our top draft pick to stay exactly where we are. They need to get this done.