Mark Long Beach

Where's Chicken Little? She's missed her cue!

The more the player is on an island the more likely pure talent matters. So TE is a good example, and I believe we need a major improvement there. But even an apparently obvious example like a cornerback isn't so obvious, there's a lot of scheme that matters for them too. A good pass rush makes every db look better. We've also switched up a bit in our zone & man schemes last year and IMO our CB's weren't able to play as effectively as before. Some man CB's can't play zone worth a hoot and certainly vice-versa. yeah, better players can generally adapt, but I think that I'm preaching to the choir here. But I agree with the need for more talent. We just don't have many star level players and our depth is generally poor. I hope that our coaching is better than before. It seems to be in many areas. Especially offense. Before we really seemed to not do a great job of putting the best players out there and in the best situation to succeed. Chan seems to do that with the offense (still skeptical on Def). Even though our record was poor last year, I enjoyed watching the team so much more than the previous years. I also felt like we were working on playing to win and learning the skills needed to do that. I rarely felt that way in the DJ years. He had a better record but I never felt like we could WIN a game, the best we could do was keep it close and hope that the other team lost it. Bleah. We could never go out and seize a game and win it even with a lead (see Dallas on Monday Night). Here's to that changing!

My opinion has changed from my younger days. Having run a company for the last 10 years has shown me that talent is just part of the equation. A talented guy is great, but if he doesn't fit in well with the ethos of the company or fit well with the other employees then he can be more of a liability than an asset regardless of his talent. It's probably not quite to the same degree on a pro football team because of the high level of competition, but it still matters. Especially if you consider the skill sets of the players. A great 4-3 end wouldn't be a good addition to our team right now. Even if he was one of the better ones in the whole league. We just don't have the personnel for him to fit in well. Not to mention that we have way bigger holes in different places and I'd rather see those resources used to fill them. The philosophy of the Pittsburgh Steelers (where we poached Asst GM Whaley from) is to rarely try and get their high quality starters from free-agency. Some of the reasons for this include that expensive free agents are exactly that, expensive: -bigger gamble of resources on one guy who you don't know how well they'll fit in THEIR system -gamble that now the player got paid he no longer cares. -upsetting team chemistry from the imbalance of pay. (remember Peters unhappiness from the overpaid FA Dockery/Walker days?) -may not truly be as talented as appeared because of excellent teammates or schemes that hid their weaknesses. -etc. While Nix hasn't IMO looked as conservative as the Steelers he sure has shown a reluctance to spend a lot on FA and has told us so himself. He looks more likely to pick up a lot of journeymen with the occasional medium respected players that aren't too expensive. Examples of that to me are Dwan Edwards & Andra Davis. I expect Nix will pick up one or two Dwan Edwards type and not any of the more highly sought after (and expensive) players. As a fan _I_ would treat it like fantasy football where any player is completely interchangeable and look for the best player available. I'd only consider lesser talent if who he was replacing was dreadful (see Bills TE position). If I were actually in charge of the Bills player acquisitions, I'd probably be way more conservative and be like Nix and not at all like the Redskins. But for the record I sure hope Nix splurges on one of the top two fa TE's.

I'd still take them! Staffold was one of the players we were rumored to be trying to trade up for that year. This was much more believable to me than the Tim Tebow rumor. Yeah, me as well. Although with 22 players that start and a whole host of subs that are equivalent to starters and ONLY 1 first rounder per year, we pretty much will always have some position that is getting the short end of the stick. We've also not been successful at keeping the three good tackles that we've had recently. Jason Peters was a good left tackle that wanted to be paid like the best in the game, Butler was solid but retired early, and Langston was a pretty good RT that our last coaching staff handled so poorly that we cut him for nothing. I suspect Jake Long will have a pretty good shot at it. Sort of like finding ANY great player at a single position? But yes, I agree, some like LT & QB are harder than others to find. Nice post BTW!

As you said the difference won't be like it is in baseball. Honestly I have no idea how people can support MLB small market teams, they have so little chance to really compete. The gap in the NFL between the big spenders and the little spenders does not look to be very large. The payroll gap looks to be less than 20% counting the accounting games played. MLB's salary range for this year is $36 mil (KCR) to $202 mil (NYY). That's ridiculous. The new NFL salary floor will now be a CASH floor per year which will probably narrow the salary spread even further. With a narrow spread and weak correlation between salary & performance it looks more like the astute talent evaluators & better coaches will get better team results than the teams that "spend the most" like Washington & Dallas.

Actually we were right in the middle of the pack for actual cash spending. Cash to cap spending means we didn't play a lot of fancy accounting games vs the cap. Reaching the minimum spending cap will involve no new strategies or unusual expenditures as we didn't carry "dead money".

Weird. You're basing Nix's credentials on if a FA contract for an ex-probowler pans out or not? huh. I like the gamble. I don't have high hopes, but it's a relatively cheap gamble IMO.

The rookie pool had loopholes big enough to drive a brinks truck through. So the agents(on behalf of the players) did.

I Disagree. He's not a world beater, but he's a pretty decent 3-4 veteran ILB who's played 9 years in the league. He's topped out at 149 tackles in a year and managed 5 sack season as well as an ILB. Averages out to about 90 tackles a year 1.5 sacks. Known as a thumper and decent run stopper who's a bit of a liability in coverage. Could be a really solid 2 down linebacker. He didn't play well with us last year because he got seriously injured (which required surgery) in the first game and tried to play through it. But couldn't do it effectively enough.

Oops. Yeah, this one. I keep trying to forget him. Apparently I can only half do it.

Yes I'd be upset. While I don't think that he's the greatest LB, he's definitely in the serviceable to solid category. We have no one to replace him other than a 3rd round rookie... If we had Patrick Willis to replace him I'd be saying "Thanks for all your hard work Poz, see you later." Don't create an necessary hole. We have enough of them already.

While I don't have high hopes for either of those two, I have very high hopes for Eric Wood, Andy Levitre & J Byrd. Three high quality starters out of a draft is not bad at all.

Lol! Close. I actually think PdadDy has got most of the details & reality right. I just really disagree with his interpretation of them. Oh, and I guess his unwillingness to see that other peoples points-of-view have any validity. The closest analogy to player drafting & FA market is to a poker tourney. It's all a series of gambles. Some of them are BIG gambles and some are small ones. Hoping to win more than you lose. IF you win a big pot (great player) it can make up for a whole lot of little ones that you lose. Similarly if you win enough little ones it can make up for a big one that you lose. Just like in poker, the best don't always win. The best poker players get bumped off all the time. However they regularly (over time) do a whole lot better than the rest. Same in football player management. Scott Pioli & Bill Polian consistantly got better players for their teams than Matt Millen. While Millen is an easy target, the 29 or so other GM's did varying degrees of worse and occasionally better than both of them. But over time, they've done better than almost everyone else. I'm not worried about one individual gamble. Especially one that I think has high reward potential. We hit on Merriman it makes up for a lot of Erik Greens.

Several points: 1> quantifying risk by assigning a percentage like you've suggested can be a useful tool. But it is only one of MANY tools used to analyze decisions involving risk (financial or otherwise). The first half of my life I've been an engineer and the second half a CFO. In both careers assigning a percentage risk has actually been one of the least useful tools. 2> Why are you insisting that any of US, as enthusiastic fans do this quantifying. A drunken Tibetan monk has only a little less information than we do about S. Merriman. I've never interviewed him, seen him work out, barely watched him play, don't have a history with him, haven't talked to his doctor much less had my _employed_ doctor see and evaluate him. Buddy Nix has ALL of these things and more. Plus what, 50 odd years of evaluating football players? I'd much rather believe his view of risk than yours. Nix clearly feels it was worth the risk. 3> IMO you are overstating the reward we can get from other players we could take instead. If you look at the number of pro-bowl players who go to new teams via free-agency the number of them who contribute at that high level is vanishingly small. For every Reggie White, there are dozens players who don't live up to that billing, such as Albert Hainsworth, Hershel Walker, Derrick Dockery (WAY overpaid/overvalued). 4> Similarly there are very few high impact players who change zip code. We might have gotten one. THAT'S HUGE. IMO you vastly underestimate how good it is to sign an impact player, vs a placeholder. 5> IMO you overvalue $2.5 million. You have a chance at getting a better player by paying more money. But 2.5 mil is a small number relative to high impact/expensive players. For example we paid $5 mil for Cornell Green to be our Right Tackle. We got less value than Erik Pears who we paid $1.5 mil for. This I agree with, except the undefined part. I just don't know what it is.

I really, REALLY disagree with this statement. You MIGHT get a better player for that $1-2.5 mil. (key word might) But you almost certainly won't get a difference maker. This is why many of us are completely at peace with the Merriman signing. Sure it's money that could be invested elsewhere, but the amount is relatively small compared to the likelyhood of finding a stud player. $2.5m invested in Merriman is more likely to find a stud than 2.5m towards another player. Yes it means we could offer $5.5 mil instead of 3mil to a free agent. The difference between a 3mil & a 5.5mil free agent player will not find a STUD player vs a roster spot holder. With Merriman it might. How likely? What percentage? Who knows. But SM has shown that he can be one of the better players in the league. If his body holds together, he might be again. That's a good gamble for a mere 2.5 mil.

Everyone agrees that the signing Merriman involves some risk that we pay him and get nothing out of him (like last year). So all we're arguing over is HOW much of a risk it is. Bucky Brooks seems to think that it's a desperate move. I disagree. We can only fix so many things at once, and all player signings are risks. Merriman has shown that he is a rare player capable of changing the game. We have few such playmakers on our team. Very rare are these players and so I feel that the risk of a couple million is a very small risk. The biggest risk to me is that he takes a roster spot but I feel he isn't holding back development of our young players (too young, too raw, too unproven still). Yes we could add that 2.5 mil onto another contract to try for a slightly better player. However, I feel that that level of player is STILL not that good. Zack Miller is a good TE. He is not a game-changer. He will go for more money than we would pay for even with the extra 2.5 mil we would have 'saved' by not signing Merriman. Give me a gamechanger over another decent player any day. There really aren't many high impact players out there. They are expensive and high risk as well-Haynesworth anyone? Personally, I don't think it likely that he'll be a probowler again. But even Takeo Spikes has come back from some devastating injuries and is a pretty good player (although it took a few years).

Vick was the number 1 pick of the draft. I like Vick and think he's got real talent. Now that he's applied himself instead of just relying on his physical gifts I think that his passing will be quite good. He reminds me a lot of Randall Cunningham who was a running QB but by the end of his career he had a real nice touch. Especially on the deeper balls. They were beautiful to watch. Reid is pretty good coach and runs a good offensive system. Vick will take advantage of that.

Oh yes. But I wouldn't cry about keeping Ayodele to battle for a backup ILB with Batten, White et al. We're not deep at ILB at all. With luck, White turns out to be a player. I think Ayodele is below average, but as a 10 year veteran you know what you'll get from him, including effort. You never know beforehand about a rookie.

I really enjoyed DeHaven's part. He did a better job explaining a little more of the purpose of the play and what actually happened during it. Especially nice to see the high endzone view of the plays. You so rarely see that during the broadcast returns.

Absolutely. Essentially they've told us that a deal will get done and there will be a full season. Human nature and negotiating tactics mean that it won't be done until the deadline. We're near the deadline and lo and behold, a deal is imminent. Everything in the last couple months has been preparation for the agreement now. If they didn't have all the previous work it'd be much harder to do a last minute deal because of the complexity of it all. Before then it was all posturing and grand-standing. Fear not, football is coming.

Agree. I like seeing some first hand accounts and help make my own impression instead of solely relying on some writer. I've seen what good writing can do. What comes out doesn't necessarily resemble reality. So it's nice to have a first hand look at the people doing the work (coaches evaluating the players). Now I can see for myself.

Agreed that cherry-picking a few good plays doesn't mean much. But remember football is a game talent and teamwork. Our talent got worse through the year with some injuries, but our teamwork got a LOT better by the end of the season. It gives me some hope that our coaches can get everyone working together. We still need some better talent than last year, but hopefully with a good draft and more development of our young players we can get that too.

I really enjoy these segments and I'm glad that they do them. It's great to get to hear the coaches themselves. I've always thought that Andra's injury really hurt us in for the year. I know that we still didn't play well early but we that's what learning a new system can do. We played the 3-4 much better by the end of the season, but we didn't have as much talent due to injury. I was very excited by both Dwan & Andra's signing. I believe that they will both open our season as starters and hopefully can stay injury free. After our brutal start to the season 0-8 we finished 4-4 and pushed very good teams to the limit during that span (Balt & Pitt). Even with some significant injuries that really showed our lack of depth. (LB & ROT) On the other hand injuries showed our surprisingly good depth at WR which was a major question mark at the beginning of the season. Our young WR's showed pretty nicely and if they continue to develop could be pretty great. We've got a lot of young LBs in Moats, Batten & White. All three of them I think have some real potential. Having Merriman & Davis back as starters will significantly improve our LB corp IMO.

For what it's worth, Ralphy-boy is a part owner of my company. (through the Venture Capitalists) To bad we're not doing so well for him. The VC's are doing okay though.

I like your dream as well!