Luxy312

There's always two sides of the coin. The negative nancy's love it when the media rips the Bills for their offseason moves and absolutely despise any article with a sense of optimism. The die hard fans roll their eyes when any analyst or writer questions what the team is doing and are absolute on the bandwagon when they read articles like this. Personally, I like to stand the coin on the edge. Have the Bills improved their offense? To me there's absolutely no doubt. By how much is a huge TBD. I just ask myself whether I think the Bills would have won more games last year with the guys they have now. It's speculative, but to me, highly likely that they would have won at least 1-2 more games. I don't see anything wrong with that.

This. These guys have things cleaned up ALL THE TIME. The fact that he continued to play doesn't make this news to me at all.

FB's and TE's are not meant to block defensive line players by themselves. When I read that, it sounds almost so obvious, that I wonder why it even needs to be said. They do however chip and release as a receiver. They do provide strategic sealing off of defensive lineman that are already being blocked by our offensive line. Shelton is regarded by many as the BEST blocking FB in the NFL. We didn't have anyone close to his caliber last year. We haven't had a TE that could even pick-up a linebacker blitzing in at least 10 years. Clay has that capability. I think what people are saying here is that with the additional help that a lot of these guys are going to get, that they will be better. They will look better, because they won't be asked to do everything. An offensive line is only as good as its weakest link. Bad OG play last year plagued the guys playing the other positions. Chris Williams and Erik Pears were a joke.

I'll admit that I didn't read all 38 pages of this thread (that's a LOT of pages), but could the person originally making the statement that "we're going to go in a little talked about direction" mean QB by committee? Sure you let the three of them compete to see who starts on opening day. If a guy has a hot hand, you stick with him. If he flakes out and makes dumb moves, you bench him for one of the other guys. Rinse and repeat. Before anyone wants to jump all over me, I'm not in favor of this approach. I'm simply speculating on the commentary at hand.

Not a top-500 NFL prospect and not even top-25 at his position. Talk about a gamble.

He was essentially scheduled to make $7.5 million this year and $8.7 million next year, but none of it was guaranteed. $3.5 million of his original bonus was gonna hit the Saints cap this eyar and $1.5 million next. The extension pretty much tells me that he's getting a bunch of guaranteed money. Just how much is really the question. If the Saints did part ways with him before the start of this year, they take a $5.0 million hit no matter what. At this point, I think he stays put.

Fixed that for you.

Ask this question a couple months ago and I would say no in a heartbeat. Too many off the field issues and looked like he was making terrible decisions in his bowl game. The more that I read now, the more I lean towards a yes answer. He had the best combine of any quarterback. He missed only 10 throws out of more than 100 at his pro day. Before his pro day started, he introduced all of his receivers to the coaches that were there to watch him throw, and threw a bunch of extra balls to showcase them. Some team staff not to be named have said that he's the smartest guy they've seen from a football perspective, to come out of college. Basically he's showing the same type of football acumen that they saw from guys like Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck. I hate all of the off the field stuff. It makes me wonder whether he's mature enough to be a leader for a team in the NFL. Pretty much everything else though says otherwise.

Jeremiah Poutasi for a 5th rounder. He's pretty much exactly what you're talking about. Started off his collegiate career on the right side and played LT for the last two seasons for Utah. He struggled there a little bit with the better edge speed rushers, which makes him a candidate to move to guard anyway. At 6-5 and 322, he paves the road. In terms of the prior poster and Ali Marpet, you would have to pick him in the 3rd or maybe even the 2nd. He's similar in height to Poutasi, but has about 30 pounds less on a narrow frame with much shorter arms. Not ideal for an offensive lineman and you can't coach him to have longer arms. For me, Poutasi is less risk and more reward, and the Bills can fill other positions of need with earlier draft picks.

I believe we would pay him $7.3 million which would include a $500K roster bonus, which would also be the cap hit this year. Next year is $8.5 million and the he would hit free agency. The $21 million figure you reference is the hit to New Orleans based on prorated signing bonus being applied.

I think this question is tougher than people are making it out to be. If you're talking simply the best pure running back and leaving everything else out, I don't know how you would have anyone in the same ballpark with OJ. He was that good running the football, even when opposing teams knew he was getting the ball. That said, he wasn't that good of a blocker in pass protection and he wasn't great catching passes. If I had to pick an all-purpose running back, I would take Thurman Thomas all day. He could do it all. After these two, you can kind of throw a lot of other guys at that next tier. Joe Cribbs, Travis Henry, Marshawn Lynch, and Freddy.

The big question there is what they would have to do contract wise to make room for him. They have the second lowest available cap space right now at less than $2 million of all teams in the NFL.

First, the Bills need to draft players at positions of need in the early rounds of the draft. They need more depth at linebacker and an upgrade at guard. Quarterback is just not a position that they need to reach for in the draft. This is even more apparent from them signing of Cassel and Taylor. Even if they dropped Tuel, they still already have 3 guys that they have told will compete for the starting job. To me, it's a logic fallacy that now the front office would draft a quarterback early and essentially destroy any opportunity for the team to build chemistry. Second and more important is that Petty is projecting right now to be a 3rd-4th round pick value. Drafting Petty in the 2nd would essentially be a repeat of what the organization did with Manuel and completely unnecessary. Petty should be the 5th or 6th quarterback drafted this year and almost certainly a 3rd round pick or later.

Posts like these are very myopic. The Bills have not just added one guy. Of course, they added Richie Incognito. That's an improvement from what was there last year. They added Charles Clay as well. Clay is a far better blocker than any TE on the roster last year, also an improvement. They added perhaps one of the best fullbacks in the NFL in Jerome Felton. Don't forget that he was the lead blocker for Peterson when he went for 2,000 yards in Minnesota. People pointing to last season also completely ignore the fact that it was Marrone/Hacket running the offense. They were SOOO creative that only 66% of the running plays were to the middle of the field. Now, Greg Roman is running the offense. The running game of the 49ers was top-10 in the NFL for four years running under Roman. Now some could say the same about the defense. Sure, Schwartz is gone. I don't dispute the great job he did. But Pettine did a great job before him and Rex Ryan has gotten a lot out of good players with Jets defenses in the past.

It doesn't matter what Peterson wants. The Vikings hold almost all of the cards when it comes to his future. His agent is an IDIOT in the way he's managed this situation. Who would trade for a 30+ something running back that at a minimum is going to get $12.75 million for 2015? He has no suitor to speak of. To boot (edited), why would the Vikings just let him go for nothing? Makes no sense given the 3 years left on his contract.

No. Do you so easily forget that Hacket was the OC and Marrone was the HC? If the organization were going to move on from Manuel, they already would have.

What otherwise would have been a legacy for Tom Brady will forever be tainted. For the first 3 Superbowls, they taped practices and walk throughs that no one will ever have the opportunity to see because the NFL destroyed them. Now we have deflated footballs that can't be explained by any science. Tom Brady essentially becomes the Sammy Sosa of football. Cheater cheater, at least he's not a wife beater.

The Bills organization is trying to win now. They didn't just start a project of building a team. As such, I wouldn't waste a draft pick on a quarterback. There are 4, yes FOUR quarterbacks on the roster right now. 2 of the 4 were just acquired and aren't going anywhere. They're not doing anything with Manuel, who hasn't even suited up for one season yet. Even if they release Jeff Tuel, drafting a QB makes no sense. It's utter stupidity.

Your "ideal situation" hasn't played out for one team in 20 years, because it's unrealistic. 50 first round draft picks and it hasn't happened. Teams that win are not prioritizing drafting a quarterback early unless their winning quarterback up and retires. You are trying to ignore reality, which quite frankly makes you sound unintelligent.

You miss the point entirely. We win 10 games and drafting a quarterback is NOT the priority. In fact, there have been 50 quarterbacks drafted in the first round in the last 20 years. Of those 50, only 4 went to teams coming off of a season with 10+ wins. In every one of those situations, the existing quarterback was retiring, and all but one went to the HOF (Brett Favre, Randall Cunningham, Steve Young and non-HOF Jake Plummer). The average wins for a team the year before drafting a QB in the first round is 5.1 and lower if you take out the 4 exceptions above. Your logic makes no sense in terms of how teams in the NFL are actually running their teams. In fact, ALL of them. If Matt Cassel is the starter this year and the Bills win 10 games, you should get rid of your expectation of a QB next year because it's simply not happening.

So 10 wins and you still think they'll draft their "QB of the future late in the first round next year" and not just continue to play Matt Cassel? LMAO. You just checked a box for me called "crazy".

I'm with you on the issue of Cassel. Quite honestly, the folks that want Cassel to be the starter should have wanted Orton to be the starter as well. They're both journeyman quarterbacks with similar completion percentage, TD/INT ratio, QBR, etc. When all of their measurables are nearly identical in similar situations (having a good or bad defense, having good receivers versus mediocre), I can't see why people would want more of the status quo. I'm not following you at all on Taylor. He's been in the league for 4 years and hasn't been groomed for anything but water boy for Joe Flacco. He's fast and might provide opportunity to use him in the read option, but his accuracy is terrible. It wasn't very good in college either, so there's plenty of data points to work off of. EJ hasn't been much better, but at least has shown us some signs that he can be the part. Carolina, Jacksonville, and Chicago were all game winning drives. Bridging our way how? So you would rather have a 0.500 record with Cassel than risk a 5-11 season with Manuel? Counter intuitive to planning on drafting QB next season. Also counter intuitive to what the front office is actually doing right now in terms of building a team to win now.

OK, let's dig deeper on this point/idea. Who else has Clay visited? Give up? The answer is nobody.

For comparative purposes last season folks, the Bills were 100-1 odds to win the Superbowl before free agency last year and fell to 150-1 after the preseason was over. There were only 12 teams that had better than 33-1 odds to win it all by the time the regular season started. The money is clearly seeing this team make improvements. Edited for Birdog's comments: I've made this bet regularly for close to 20 years.

I don't mind the Urbik restructure given the price. At the end of the day, Buffalo can't have an all star at every position. Football Outsiders had the Bills ranked 26th in run blocking and 19th in pass protection using their advanced statistics. We should see an improvement this season because of Incognito. People forget though that now we have Felton as well. He's a 240 pound LOAD. If we happen to lock up Clay as well, he's twice the blocker that Chandler was. So Urbik takes a pay cut. His other option was getting cut and having to negotiate a contract with someone else. Not sure he would have been paid that much, but who knows?