Ray

Very sorry to hear about your father's passing. Very, very, tough when a parent dies. Prayers to you and your family.

Moulds will be VERY hard to replace. A physically big receiver that consistently draws double coverage and can beat it! Not many WRs in the league can do that. I know at times he had the dropsies but he caught close to 90 balls!! That's 90! 50 more than the closest receiver. Evans is a very good receiver but could suffer the same fate as PP if he becomes a number one receiver--especially in year 3 oof his career. That being said, you can't have a WR count 11M against the cap. If it was 5-6M that would be fine unless he has a huge drop-off in play this year.

WEEI the Entercomm sports station in Boston has started streaming over the internet. For us transplanted WNYers WNSA going off the air was a major blow to keeping in touch with Buffalo. I'm hoping that WGR55 will now be able to stream since another Entercomm sports station is doing it--there largest sports station I believe (don't think WFAN in NYC is entercomm, but could be wrong). In the past WGR always stated they didn't stream because corporate wouldn't allow it--well now they do! Maybe there is hope.

All the best and prayers to you and your family at this time. Having a sick family member is very tough on everyone involved. You will all pull through!!!

You're soooo lucky you are close to one!!!

It would start to tear apart the soul of the community. People differ on a lot of things--politics, religion, etc.... But one thing the community rallies around and supports is the Bills. It adds a huge plus to the quality of life of the region. Economic impact is probably a wash after all the tax breaks but they do bring in huge amounts of tax money. 53 wealthy players buy expensive condos and homes and pay the property taxes, plus all the sales tax revenue. I can't see the county (even as poorly as it is run) let a 500+ million business leave. It won't happen.

That is what happens when you sign a top pick. You have to pay them big money. Face it--that is what happens in the NFL today and it happens to all teams. The Pats paid 10M for a CB out for half the season this year. The Rams are paying close to 7M this year for Kurt Warner who played for the Giants last year and will be with a new team this year! I'm sure the Bills want to restructure, but that is today's NFL. He signed a standard contract for a 4th pick in the draft. At least he plays as opposed to many top 5 picks who are gone from their teams--look at Cleveland.

Rochester/32/Boston

Avg/good runner but fumbles and doesn't give you much help in the passing game. A very good back-up though!

Maybe he'll re-sign Nate. That would be nice. I hope he doesn't just let him walk too without at least an offer.

I am hesitant to believe agents but in this case that is three separate players/agents. Kind of scary when you have a OL that needs to protect a rookie QB. At least re-sign him for depth. He knows the team and system and has played well in back-up roles. Just say "we are going in another direction." Don't pretend you want the players back but don't even start negotiations. PW hardly had a large contract offer. I thought by the sounds of TD that he was asking for a 10M signing bonus and a total of 20+ million for the contract. Instead it was 60% of that.

All I am saying is paying Pat 2.5-3M per year is hardly an outrageous contract. The offer I mentioned is NOT much less than the Vikes. 5.5M vs 6M and 250K less the first year? Not a big difference and could be the "hometown" discount PW said he would take. Paying a DT 3M/season is very reasonable. Like I said he probably has 2 more good seasons. His contract demands will/would not cost nearly the purported 5M/year. His demands were reasonable--JJ were not. No way would it have been prudent to pay JJ that amount of money. My argument is that PW could have been signed for a cap friendly number and the contract NEVER would have put us in cap jail. My problem is that TD never even made the effort to re-sign him. If we go with the 4-3 again we could be in trouble if one goes down. Imagine Bannon and Anderson as our interior lineman. That is scary! DTs have to rotate and that combo is not strong.

Do we even talk to our players at all in free agency. What this tells you is that TD didn't even want them back. At least you can make an offer and negotiate. If you don't you are just letting them go and want them to go. He never had any intent to sign them no matter what the cost. He could have signed Pat for 2-3M per year against the cap.

Anderson will never be as good as Pat. Pat is a great DL who can play nose tackle as well. Anderson will be average at best. We have to hope that Edwards plays well. He is good on the pass rush. Next year we will need to draft a DL in the first round because we are very thin there now and could be very weak very soon. Not a good place to be weak. Especially in a division with Corey Dillon and Curtis Martin. Not a good move by TD to just sit there on the sideline. There is nobody there in the draft or free agency this year to replace him.

By the way PW would not be counting 5+ million against the cap. His figure this year would be in the low 3M range. The Bills could have easily made a comparable deal. A 5.5M signing bonus would have very likely kept him here. Amortize that over 3 years and it is 1.8M/year and amortize it over 4 and it is 1.375/yr. Add salaries of 1-2M/year and for the next two years cap figures of around 3M/year for an anchor of your defense. Instead we hope a guy who practiced well but wasn't good enough to suit up for 75% of games will take his place. That's a stretch. Realistically you can count on Pat to have a couple of more productive seasons. His contract that he signed would hardly of killed the Bills. Cut him after two years and he has a dead cap figure of 2M. Not a lot for a great DT. Hopefully Ron Edwards will step up. If either Edwards or Adams goes down we will have a horrible run defense.

Do we have 4-6 LBs good enough to play the 3-4? I could see not signing PW if he was going to cost 5M/year. But signing him for a cap figure of about 3M/year for a great DT is very reasonable in today's NFL. Bad move by TD to not even lift a finger to get him back.

They will sign no one because there aren't any good ones left out there. Edwards and Anderson who wasn't even good enough to suit up for 12 games are our replacements. I like Edwards and hope he can step in for the year.

Apparently he didn't think PW played that well last year. We could have offered a very cap friendly offer very close to the Vikes. JJ was way too much to sign. Bad day yesterday for the Bills. Edwards needs to step up big time. Our run defense just took a big blow. Remeber when we lost Ted Washington and we were going to stop the run with numbers in '01. How did that work out for us?

TH's value is very little in the NFL nowadays huh? Teams would rather trade for other RBs or draft one. Looks like he will be in a Bills uniform next year which is fine with me as a back-up.

Apparently we will just let all of our free agents walk when their contracts are up and not even contact them or their agents. Williams costing 3M per year would not have been a huge problem and well worth the salary cap hit for a great DL. It would be nice if he re-signed Marcus Price or even initiated some contact/discussions with the guy.

I am a supporter of the guy, but not even making anoffer to Big Pat is just plain dumb. If Sam or Edwards goes down with an injury our DL is bad--very bad against the run. He should at least be in contact with the guys. I agree 12M signing bonus for JJ is way too much. But our original offer to Pat last year 4M bonus 11M over three years was pretty darn close to the Vikings. He could have at least made an offer. Also just letting Marcus Price walk is a dumb move for a team needing experienced OL depth and will be starting a rookie QB. So far pretty dumb and not the most diplomatic of approaches by TD.

Close to 4M a year for a 32 year old DT is NOT a "lowball" offer. Actually it was quite reasonable. He could and even still might play with the figures a bit to guarantee a bit more money. Maybe increase SB to 6M. But at the beginning of last year that was a pretty darn good deal.

Advise your client to live in Florida, Texas or Nevada. NYS itself is a huge tax trap but cost of living in Buffalo is very low. Come here to the Boston area and pay 900K for anything remotely new. I don't think it will be a factor considering so many of the other places NYC, New England, San Fran, etc are VERY expensive and much more so than Buffalo. But if it comes down to a bidding war against Buffalo or any NY team for that matter against the Texans or Cowboys or on of the three Florida teams that could be a problem. Your talking hundreds of thousands of dollar more in taxes. I love NY.

Gerard Warren, David Terrell and we were worried about Mike Williams. I'll take him over those two anyday.

Now is the time to sign him because the market will only go up next year. I have no problem paying him a 10-12M signing bonus. The more guaranteed money the more likely he is to stay and that also can be amortized over a longer time to make it less of a cap hit.