Greybeard

I agree with everything you said. It does cost him real money. The way I thought of it, assuming the team is at least a break even investment every year, is in the year he spends 102M, he borrows the 32Mil. The next year when he is 20 under, he pays back part of the loan as he will in the future with the under cap spending. So net to the organization, he loses the interest paid on the extra money he spent the second year. I also agree that RW would be aware of net spending/profitability as the owner of any business would. But I believe as long as he doesn't lose money, he is not uncomfortable with spending it. Although that only goes so far as he is comfortable about future income flow. And I wasn't suggesting he underspend. You are so very right about what the reaction would be. If Ralph is thought to be cheap now, by some, I could only imagine the reaction if they didn't go all out to win by underspending. In part I thought there was something I did not understand about how the cap works and there may yet be something. But what really got me was injecting RW into the equation. This is an overreaction on my part but everytime I see Ralph mentioned with money I assume it is a veiled suggestion that he is cheap. For some reason I always over react when I see this. And I do understand, the original post I replied to, in no way called RW cheap. The problem was not the post but me. I guess I am just oversensitive to comments about RW, real or not. Although I will admit, in the 60's he did not want to pay premium dollars for the football team. And I appreciate the effort you took putting dollar amounts on everything. It does make it easy to see.

I didn't read the article, so I assumed it was the HC job. So I stand corrected. In a way I am actually shocked he would be considered for GM. Only in that he has no GM experience.

Marv couldn't win the big one with the best talent in the league. And I doubt the Bills will ever be in that situation again. Or at least the odds are very much against that.

That would probably be me. And I still don't think RW is an issue. The real issue is pay me now or pay me later. If you say it cost RW in interest because he is paying now for future use, I agree. But I would be willing to bet the interest isn't viewed as a big issue. It is TD's responsibility as a cost to the Bills. It makes it harder to keep them profitable. TD's focus is on the cap, not on the interest, even though he has to account for the bottom line. In the end, bonus money has to be paid off to balance the cap. All that dead cap space the Bills can't spend now is because it was already spent and but still has to be accounted for. If money is such a big issue to RW, he could just as well tell TD not to spend to the cap number. From posts here, I believe there are teams that do this.

Thx for the reply. I was aware of the cap working that way but as you said in the first line, its mortgaging the future. Although, as you said, you can load up a little for the present by doing this.

Could you explain how this works. I have been under the impression you can only spend up to the cap. Therefore RW has nothing to do with it. Also, can you give an example of fudging the cap?

This post was a very nice read grog. Thanks for posting.

You can't market without "hype" and you have to admit, there was quite a lot of that going into this year. In fact every year TD has been here.

Hey wait a minute, what about Jim Plunkett. Oh we conveniently stopped at 1971. Guess that means 1970 doesn't count. Oh wait a minute in the last 25 years, 1971+25=1996. Is it really only 1996. I think the Bills were competitive then, so it can't be 96 can it? Sorry I just could not resist.

I've seen Bills teams that would give their coach a raise if he could get 4 wins.

Ever been to Nebraska in the winter.

I think Miami is still riding on the high the Bills gave them.

Looks like league parity. Parity at the top, parity at the bottom.

Congrats I can't stop laughing.

This JJ stuff is pretty funny. I guess he was so successful in Miami all this talk is justified though.

You almost had the job until you said you give up leads in the 4th qtr. Even TD isn't going to hire you if you say that. If instead you said you had a long list of coaches already picked out, even if most of them were from TBD, you could have had the job.

TD has favored rookie HC's. Presumabley it is because he lost his battle to Cowher in Pittsburgh and thus is afraid to hire anyone who is a threat. So what happens, he can't get a decent coaching staff put together because he prefers non-threatening candidates. In his attempt to protect himself from a future coup d'etat, he has undermined his ability to put together a winner, thus threatening himself.

The more I watch, the more I consider what has to be done next year, the more I get this feeling. I can't recall a year where I felt they had so many positions to fill. At least not in the last 15 years. On top of that it feels like a lot of the talent is second string. Maybe I still have the early 90's hangover, but that is how it feels. Of course maybe its just coaching.

How about some links! Several bits of information from different people here and no links.

Nicely said. Where is that thumbs up smiley?

If memory serves me correctly, that was the year the Bills were beating the Fins late in the game. Some Manny Fernandez,a fin Defensive Lineman, took the ball on a handoff and scored for the Fins D. I can still hear Van saying, how could you hand off to a Defensive lineman. I wish I could see a replay of that. Anyone else here remember that play?

I missed most of the game but I did hear the anouncers say, MM said he thought the Bills stood a better chance of winning without him.

Next year they can both co-ordinators. That will buy MM at least one more year.

I watched him on ESPN today. They had a story on the Bengal receiver Johnson. So MI says something to the affect, Johnson plays like he has a chip on his shoulder but he has learned to only have a chip on his shoulder on the field, JUST LIKE I DID. Ha. Sure.