Orton's Arm

In other words, you see this as a cheap shot. Seems to me someone likes dishing it out a lot more than taking it.

Um . . . if you say so. I suppose that, as you were typing, your finger just happened to touch the apostrophe key when you were in the middle of typing the word "its." A slip of the finger, if you will, and not a slip of the mind. Just like last time. Or you could show a little humility and actually own up to being wrong. But I guess that whole humility/honesty about your own faults thing isn't really you.

Are you going to call this grammar error a typo too?

I'm not going to disagree with anything in the above quote. That said, I'll point out that a lot of times it makes sense to ignore debt payments when looking at operating success. Why? Let's say that Bill and Steve each buy professional sports teams for $100 million. Bill pays the entire $100 million out of pocket, but Steve needs to borrow $50 million from bankers. Since Steve put up only half as much cash as Bill, it makes sense that Steve should be getting only half as much in the way of profits. Bankers put up the other half of the money for Steve's team, so they collect some of the profits in the form of interest payments. On an absolute basis, Bill should be earning more money than Steve, because Bill's investment is twice as big.

If the only person Ralph cared about was himself, the Bills would have moved years ago. We owe the man some respect for keeping the Bills here since the beginning. While people like BackinDaDay may have something to say about Ralph in general, it's important we all stand behind him right now, in this particular battle.

Thanks for the compliment. I agree with everything here except the Losman part.

There are two things I'd like to address in your post. The first is revenue sharing for the games. The point I was making originally was that the teams the Bills travel to for their road games probably are similar in terms of ticket revenues to the teams the Patriots travel to for their road games. So the Bills and the Patriots would have roughly similar revenues from their road games, while the Bills would earn significantly less money for their home games than the Patriots earn for theirs. Overall, this means less ticket revenue for the Bills than the Patriots. You say Ralph may be crying wolf. But elsewhere you point out how burdensome it would be for any new owner to buy the Bills. Let's say you took out $400 in debt to buy the Bills at $600 million. Now you're paying interest on $400 million. Now let's say that despite that, you can still make a very small profit in Buffalo if all goes well--say $1 million a year. This profit would enable you to pay off 1/400th of the debt each year. Now let's say Los Angeles comes calling with a deal that would increase your after-tax profits by $19 million a year. So you'd be making $10 million a year in LA, enough to pay down 1/20th of the debt each year. How many business owners could resist this temptation? This is largely what Ralph is worried about, and why he feels the Bills might not be in Buffalo forever. But can you or Kelly the fair and balanced dog guarantee the Bills' new owner that he or she will make a profit at all? No, especially not with the salary cap increasing in response to all the local revenue big city teams are able to generate.

I'll grant you Holcomb knows a thing or two about how to be a QB, but he isn't getting any younger. Besides Nall, who else is there?

The best five non-QBs are Bush, Ferguson, Williams, Hawk, and Davis. If those guys are all off the board when the Bills pick, they should either trade down, or draft a QB themselves. No sense in taking a Ngata or a Bunkley at #8 when neither player deserves to go that high.

If the Bills aren't sold on Nall as the long-term answer at QB, they could trade Nate + their #1 to NO in order to draft Leinart.

Fair enough. So for their eight home games, the Bills are making significantly less money than the Patriots are for their eight home games. Financially, it's an advantage for the Bills to travel to Foxboro, and a disadvantage for the Patriots to travel to Buffalo. But assuming the seven other road games from the two teams are about the same, it stands to reason the Bills are making significantly less money on ticket sales than are the Patriots.

Even if Williams had turned into a perrenial Pro Bowler, I still would feel TD neglected the offensive line. In his years in Buffalo, he did the following: - Used three first day picks on WRs. - Used two first day picks on RBs. - Used three first day picks on QBs. - Used just two first day picks on OL. Of those two, one was a bust, and the other was allowed to leave via free agency after just four years. Count the starters on the field: two WRs, one RB, one QB, and five OL. Add to that the fact one of the WR spots was locked up with Eric Moulds, and there really isn't an excuse for TD's overall drafting patterns.

What annoys me about Roscoe Parrish is that it was the second time in four years TD used a 2nd round pick to address the slot receiver position. Nothing against Roscoe personally--maybe he really will be a good slot receiver.

Good post, except for the part about Holcomb!

Please don't say stuff like this! We'll end up with a running back or a 5'7" slot receiver or a bust!

Not to nitpick, but the Bills' defensive scheme wasn't developed by either Tony Dungy or Monte Kiffin. Tony Dungy learned the Cover 2 as a player on the Steel Curtain in the late '70s. He continued to learn the scheme as a Steelers coach in the early '80s. Bud Carson developed this defensive scheme. Dungy has always given credit where credit is due, and has never tried to take credit for Bud Carson's work.

Mike Brown is talking about poison pills too: http://www.bengals.com/news/news.asp?story_id=5199

If they could get a decent running game out of Antowain Smith, that says something about their offensive line! I agree NE's line was more about playing well as a group than individual stars. That said, I believe Matt Light was playing LT during all those Super Bowl wins, and he's a better player than Gandy. While I don't feel the Bills should take an OL other than Ferguson at #8, I wouldn't mind seeing a LT in round 2 or 3. Typically your rookies contribute little except on special teams, and this LT would be no exception. But over time, he could perhaps develop into the next Matt Light. This is important, because a below-average-to-average LT will need help blocking a good DE, while a quality LT can block that same DE all by himself. So a significant upgrade at LT would be like having an extra player on the field. You bring up a good point about how the middle of the line should be addressed. The Bills' draft could go something like this: 1 - Best player available 2 - interior OL 3a - LT 3b - interior OL Assuming those draft picks work out, this would give the Bills a very good line in a couple of years.

There's entirely too much truth to your post.

I'd LOVE to see Mario fall to #8, but I don't think it's going to happen. If the Bills want him, they'd probably have to trade up.

JP's going into his third year with the Bills, but hey, who's counting? As for the other part of your post, the Patriots had a much better line than some may realize. In their Super Bowl against the Panthers, the Patriots' offensive line dominated the line of scrimmage from the very first snap. This, despite the fact the Panthers' defensive line was felt to be the strongest part of their very strong defense. Despite this, the Patriots barely escaped with a win. Take away this dominant Patriots' OL performance, and replace it with a Patriots OL that's merely "serviceable and affordable," and the Panthers get the Lombardi trophy at the end of the game. I don't want to see the Bills try to get by with a merely mediocre line. If they want to get the running game going like it should be, and if they want to give guys like Evans time to get open deep, the Bills will need an offensive line that's every bit as dominant as they can make it. The Bills have tried to take shortcuts with the offensive line for a very long time, but they've never built a successful offense while doing so.

I'd be a lot less likely to turn on the television come Sunday afternoon or Monday night. Part of me--and I know this is extreme--would be tempted to make a list of companies that advertise with the NFL, and to not buy from those companies.

Based on all the poison pills they added to the collective bargaining agreement, it looks like Kraft, Jones, etc. have chosen the LA route.

I for one don't think that Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder are very happy about having to share some of their locally generated revenues with teams like Buffalo. If they can force the Bills to a market with more corporate sponsorships--such as LA--then that's one less team they will be forced to subsidize. But maybe they are too generous and altruistic to allow such a consideration to influence any of their actions.

Not really sure where this accusation is coming from. Suppose many owners thought they would benefit from the Bills moving to LA. They could set up a collective bargaining agreement with various poison pill arrangements to force this outcome, while leaving most small market teams unaffected. The eligibility requirements I've been hearing about for revenue sharing--and not just from JDG--sound exactly like such a poison pill. The way the negotiations were conducted also strikes me as suspicious. The owners all knew these problems were coming, but apparently some of them waited until the 11th, 12th, or 13th hour to begin seriously negotiating about them. As a result, the agreement that passed did so in a hurried atmosphere with lots of pressure, and without people having time to read it. What was portrayed as mere disorganization or incompetence on the owners' part may actually have been a negotiating ploy on the part of some owners to use the stress and chaos of the situation to insert poison pill provisions. But if you want to go on believing Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Dan Snyder were as innocent as the media portrayed them, go ahead.