JDG

What's a #1 WR?

You act like the MLB and NBA players were going to Europe and Japan during their work stoppages..... Let's face it, the Owners don't make a lot of money during a work stoppage either..... The players could *definitely* gamble that the end game of a work stoppage would be binding arbitration and no salary cap. JDG

Why not? Because anchoring one of the best lines in college football for one of the best offense's in college football history over the past few years isn't good enough credentials? Because Mel Kiper said so? If Marv thinks that Winston Justice is going to be a Pro Bowl Tackle in the NFL you better believe that he is worth the #8 pick no matter what Mel Kiper thinks..... JDG

You act like TE is not a need......

Completely disagree. One thing I have learned about labor relations is that while it is possible to occasionally negotiate a creative provision that is ahead of the industry, it is always a bad sign for that provision if 10 years later no other firm in the industry has adopted it. In this case, the NFL and NFLPA went out on a limb by agreeing to a salary cap in 1994, but 12 years later that position is looking a lot lonelier after neither MLB nor the NBA have come anywheres close to adopting such a provision. I'm not even sure if the NHL has a comparable salary cap provision - though the NHL is essentially a minor league sport at this point. So, let's say that the Owners vote down the NFLPA final offer, and we proceed to the uncapped year of 2007. The NFLPA has made it clear from Day 1 that if we get to 2007, they will simply refuse to agree to a salary cap in the future. At this point 2008 promises to be a disaster for all sides. Yes, the NFL was somewhat successful at using replacement players in 1987, but its a different world now. The TV deals are much bigger now than then. The NFL also was not a year-round sport in 1987. Fantasy Football was at a tiny fraction of its current interest. The Owners would stand to lose a lot of money in 2008 even with replacement players, let alone with a work stoppage. And how would this all resolve? At some point, as the losses from work stoppage/replacement players mount, both sides would likely agree to binding arbitration. And given that a salary cap is hardly a "standard industry practice" at this point, I find it highly unlikelye that a binding arbitrator would impose a salary cap. The simple truth of the matter is that the NFL Owners are earning gazillions of dollars in both revenues and capital gains on the basis of the players, and are trying to share as little of those gazillions with the players as possible. The players have some very smart people who have surely calculated how much money the owners would spend on salaries in a truly free market with no draft, no franchise tags, and no salary cap. The Redsksins raked in what, $200 million in 2004 - anyone seriously believe that Danny Snyder wouldn't spend something close to that amount on salaries to try and win a Super Bowl? The players know that they'd have to pay a price in 2006, 2007, and 2008 to get to that point - but they know where that money will be. Its up to the Owners to decide to share enough of their gazillions with the players up front to make that price not worth paying for the players. JDG

Well, I think the fact that the NFL reps even tentatively accepted the 59.5% figure is a huge victory for the Union. We'll see what happens with the owners today, but it definitely helps the Union's PR battle if the NFL Owners are the last ones walking away from the table. Its not like the NFL Owners won't make many millions in profits under the deal they have in front of them. And besides, if the NFL Owners do turn down the deal, while the next two-three years will be rough for the players, in a few years the players will be freed of the salary cap - which is what they want. Its up to the Owners to offer them a sweet enough current deal to make it not worthwhile for the players to pay the price of the next two-three years to get to a non-salary-cap era. JDG

You've got to be crazy. So, rather than thinking that Upshaw is retraded, isn't the more likely explanation that Upshaw is intentionally trying to understate Management's offer as much as possible so as to win the largest possible offer for his clients? Indeed, given that the NFL's representatives agreed to send a 59.5% proposal to the vote of the owners, doesn't this suggest that Upshaw's tactics in fact worked brilliantly? JDG

I highly doubt it. The Super Bowl is a week-long event, now even two weeks. The NFL does not want people commuting from Niagara Falls to Buffalo each day, let alone across the border. JDG

Good grief - it's a 100 mile drive from Buffalo to Toronto. A similar radius from Philadelphia would include Baltimore and New York City. It only becomes the 4th largest metro area if nobody else gets a 100 mile metro area radius. JDG

But the NFL ain't gonna consider hotel rooms in Southern Ontario in considering a Super Bowl for Buffalo either. JDG

Heck, I guess that I lowballed it at 50%...... JDG

The only 'tard here is the guy who thinks that a highly-paid professional at the top of his profession is a complete idiot, and who can't recognize a negotiating tactic to try and get more money when he sees one. JDG

Let's see, Upshaw is a 'tard for trying to maximize the amount of money the players will receive under the new contract? What turnip truck did you just fall off?

Fair enough. Of course, paying the "dead head" time for an empty cruise ship to sail from whatever locality people actually want to cruise too up to Buffalo is probably prohibitively expensive as well. And believe it or not, many modern cruise ships aren't able to tarverse the Welland Canal any more - which was built for thinner cargo vessels than modern cruise ships. JDG

Actually, it would take a *lot* more hotel rooms. Moreover, Buffalo doesn't have much of a cruise ship terminal, and in any case, there aren't generally an awful lot of cruise ships on Lake Erie, so the cruise ship option is hardly viable. JDG

The Kansas City Metro Area, by some measures, is about 50% larger than either the Jacksonville or Buffalo metro areas. I'm sure that helps generate a lot more hotel rooms than either. JDG

No chance of that. The new regime cut the above players for football reasons as much as salary cap reasons. Its not like we were desperate for cap space.... JDG

Kelly - Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that they did not watch the games. Part of the problem is that Losman is just plain not nearly as quick nor as good at making reads that Holcomb. He's also much less willing to take what the defense gives him than Holcomb. So, some of that difference is Losman's Bledsoe-itis and holding onto the ball longer, even given the same playcall. And let us be clear here - Losman completed less than 50% of his passes. There is zero excuse for that in any NFL offense. If you sustain a sub-50% completion percentage over 9 games you are just plain not that good. Period. For example, Ryan Fitzpatrick wasn't exactly in a dink-and-dunk offense, and he still managed to complete 56% of his passes. So, even if your theory were true, Losman was playing in an NFL offense last season, and while perhaps the difference in play calling might never have allowed him to match Holcomb's fantastic 67% passing, the simple truth remains that if Losman was *any good* last season, he would not have been sub-50%. You're trying to use a detail to explain away a chasm, and it just doesn't hold water. JDG

Don't tell me what I did and didn't watch. I'll tell you exactly what I watched. Oh wait, I already did that. I think you are grasping at straws to try and justify Losman's putrid performance. You act like the coaches were just trying to set up Losman to fail. In any event, either you have a superhuman ability to remember playcalls on 1st and 10 over the course of a season, or you have some evidence for your position that you haven't yet presented (and which I would be very interested in seeing.) I think there is a much more reasonable explanation for your stated observations (presuming that your stated observations are accurate) than the coaches trying to set up JP Losman to fail. -Kelly Holcomb simply makes faster and better reads than JP Losman. Losman, on the other hand, may have a little Bledsoe-disease in not wanting to take the 5-10 yard pattersn the defenses are giving him, and instead waiting for the big play. -JP Losman has accuracy problems, and because Holcomb completes those passes for 5-10 yards, Holcomb gets into a lot fewer 2nd and 3rd and long situations that require sitting in the pocket long enough for receivers to get open deep down the field -Because JP Losman has accuracy problems, teams are much less worried about JP Losman beating them with his arm. Thus, these teams gang up on the run, and send extra pass-rushers. This again gets Losman into more 2nd and 3rd and long scenarios. I'm no fan of Mularkey - as you know, I really despised him this seasons - but I think its just absurd to blame Losman's terrible performance thus far on the coaches giving Kelly Holcomb better play calls than Losman. JDG

Actually, Kelly I benefited from the fact that I never got the chance to see JP Losman's most putrid performances in Weeks 2-4. I did, however, get to watch JP's second stint as a starter. On two occasions, vs. Carolina and @Miami, I observed that JP Losman "needed to start playing beter" early in the second half. Those people around me, particularly in the Carolina game, replied "what, JP Losman looks like he is playing good to me." I response, I noted that yes, JP Losman is playing good (and these were two of his better games), but he is playing just good enough for us to lose. Sure enough, we lost both of those games. I don't think that JP Losman would have completed 55% of his passes with a different gameplan, because I think that last year he simply wasn't capable of it. I am hopeful that he will be capable of it this year. Holcomb, by the way, completed 67% of his passes to the same WR's that JP Losman was under the Mendoza Line for. If the coaches did call more runs under JP than Kelly, I think the easiest explanation is that you call more passes when they have a 65% chance of being completed, than when there is less than a 50% chance of completed. Of course, I am not at all convinced that there is the play-calling difference that you propose. To test your theory out, I decided to look at Bills' playcalling on 1st and 10 outside of 2 minutes for some select games. To be fair to your theory, I tried to exclude games where JP got blown out (which was a lot), and games in JP's "putrid stretch" at the start of the season. So, JP Losman vs. Carolina - 9 runs and 5 passes. Aha! you say! But let's look at Holcomb @ Cincy - 9 runs and 6 passes. Holcomb vs. Miami - 13 runs and 9 passes. How about JP Losman's other "mediocre game" ;-) - vs. Kansas City? 7 Runs and 5 passes. Holcomb in the same game? 3 Runs and 2 Passes. So, its an interesting theory that play-calling accounts for the difference KFBD, but I don't see any evidence for it yet. I think it is far more likely that JP Losman simply sucked, to occasionally rising to the level of mediocrity, in most of the games that we have seen of him so far. JDG

Since when is "concern" a definitive conclusion? I'm not saying that Losman should be cut. I am not saying that we should trade up to get one of the Big 3 QB's (but if one of them were on the board, I would think for a very long time about it!) I am saying this: 1) Kelly Holcomb should be the starter until JP Losman proves in practice that he is the better QB *right now*. 2) Levy and Jauron should at least have some ideas in their head for what happens if next year Losman is still a sub-50% or even still a sub-55% passer; or if Losman fails to complete a full NFL season for the third year in a row. This should involve either a free agent acquisition, or better yet, a mid-round draft acquisition of a QB. JDG

This is part of the fallacy that there is "only one level of bad" - or in other words "QB was X bad when he first started, JP Losman was first started, therfore no worries." This logic isn't much different from "God is Love, Love is Blind, Ray Charles is Blind, therfore Ray Charles is God!" Matt Hasselbeck in his first starts as a 2nd year and 3rd year QB completed 53% of his passes. Delhomme completed 55% of his passes in two games as rookie, and when he next played for Carolina three years later he completed 59% of his passes. Even Rich Gannon, who was pretty bad in his first year as a starter as a third-year QB managed to hit 52% of his passes. Gannon got up to 59.6% the next year though. Chris Simms hit 57.5% of his passes as a rookie, and hit 61% this past year in leading his team into the playoffs in a tough division. The funny thing is, I don't think that Chris Simms is very good, and we all know that Rich Gannon wasn't any good when he first started. Matt Hasselbeck nearly got Mike Holmgren fired his first few years. And yet, JP Losman has so far been measurably far worse than any of these players. Folks, it is *not* the reaction of a knee-jerk angry mob to be concerned about Losman's performance last year. Losman has to improve a lot to simply get to the level of being a "bad" NFL QB. It will take even more to get to the level of decent next year - which is what we are all hoping for. Based on what we say this past year, Levy and Jauron would be very, very, foolish to not have a "Plan B" mulling around in the back of their minds "just in case." JDG

Did he miss receivers? You betcha. Try to the tune of a 49.6% completion percentage. In Drew Brees' second season (he rode the bench as a rookie) he completed just under 61% of his passes, followed by just under 58% the next year. Peyton Manning completed 57% as a rookie, and has been above 62% ever since. So, the only comparison you really have is to John Elway, who completed 47.5% of passes as a rookie - albeit for a different team than the one that drafted him. By Elway's second year, though, that completion percentage was up to 56%. Nevertheless, Bills fans are kidding themselves if they think that Losman's performance last year was typical for any 1st/2nd year QB in the NFL. That just plain isn't true. Indeed, there is a very small group of NFL QB's who performed comparably badly in the first NFL starts and then went on to a Pro Bowl for the same team. JDG

How about JP Losman blowing out his knee in a pick-up basketball game next week? ;-) Or a little less fanciful, how about Jauron and Levy watching both practice film and game film of Losman and deciding that "we think with about 95% confidence that Losman just doesn't have it"? And while maybe not using the #8 pick on Losman, using the 3rd or 4th rounder on him? JDG

The best example would probably be Clinton Portis. The guy rushed for 1500 yards in each of his first two years, and was stuck with a 2nd round rookie contract. Playing for two more years, he had huge injury risk. He only got paid thanks to Daniel Snyder. And it is very misleading to talk about rookies getting $20mil and $40mil deals. Maybe for a QB taken #1 overall. But even high and mid-first rounders are only getting less than $10mil in bonus, usually spread out over a couple years, and only minimal salaries for the life of the 4 or 5 year contract. JDG