Dirtbag

i wish i had your certainty. i suspect if the bills become available and la's still looking, they'll be in play. especially if, as ralph says, they're going to the highest bidder. the faster la steals another team (or two), the better.

as an la resident, i feel that the bills coming here is the ultimate nightmare scenario. any move outside of western ny would immediately cause me to cease being a fan. the la bills would, inevitably, win the super bowl in their very first year, and i would be stuck in a 10 hour commute home due to the victory parade, culminating with my car being lit aflame and my apartment firebombed in the celebratory riots. the la bills would, of course, go on to be the next great football dynasty, accumulating countless championships for their wealthy, well coiffed and mildly indifferent fans. and each additional ring they collect would be like a fist to the head. somehow, sadly, it's a very fitting continuation of my pained relationship with the team.

it was better when al pacino did it to sam jackson in sea of love. i think those were yankee tickets though.

because we don't have a time machine to take us back to the early nineties?

those traits served him well in both vocations.

the entire maybin saga is insufferable. coach chan, please takes this mohawked poseur out of his misery...

welcome to the board, brad! looking forward to your future posts!

no, it will never get better until the bills start winning, as the way it should be. this is no conspiracy -- the bills have been mired in futility for well over a decade and two teams within the east are among the best of the conference. the bills deserve to be considered among the worst in the nfl until they prove otherwise. and i do think that the experts pay attention. in fact, they over analyze practically everything to the point where you wanna puke. it's not like we're suffering from a dearth of nfl news. if the bills actually won on a regular basis and posed a real challenge to the like of ryan and belichick, they would be embraced by the media. it's the definition of a cinderella story.

he actually had vick's age as 31 on the board but jauron, ralph, donahoe and marv all had the final call. not his fault.

i hear you, and this is entirely possible. i still think that a 29 year old guy who hasn't had a huge payday up to now is nutty to take a $10 million dollar hit (over the course of the contract). maybe that's just me though. i also think it's just as likely that the buddy -- who announced that the bills weren't going to be "big spenders" in free agency -- didn't offer the $7 million/year cited in that article. i wouldn't for a minute, however, lay claim to clabo's thoughts the way other posters have. i neither presume a mind-meld with clabo, nor claim to definitely know the details of the bills offer. my opinion is based on the fact that they didn't get him, buddy's own words and typical human behavior. that said, if the bills really wanted him, they had the cap room to blow atlanta's offer away. this gaughan post seems a reasonable assessment of how it went down: http://blogs.buffalonews.com/billboard/2011/07/clabo-deal-not-crazy-money.html

i never said that he wasn't using the bills to drive up his price, nor did i say he didn't have reasons for staying in atlanta. my post simply pointed out that it would take a bit more evidence for me to believe that he rejected $7 mill/year from the bills to take $5 mill/year from atlanta. then i offered what i felt was a more likely hypothesis, of which you're more than welcome to disagree. i agree with you that he likely manipulated the bills to drive up his asking price while always knowing that he wouldn't leave atlanta. unlike you, i don't find it particularly laudable or refreshing. and yes, again, my posts are admittedly all based on opinion. guilty as charged. moving on....

yeah, i went all rogue and decided to post my opinion on a message board. crazy. i'm not sure what you're in disagreement with. in my original post, i noted the suspect nature of leaked reports. it sounds like you agree. regarding your first comment, i never said guys don't have preferences regarding teams. still, i find it difficult to believe that he took $2 million/year less to stay with atlanta. isn't this a 29 year old player whose previous contracts hovered in the $1-2 million/year range in total? it's more likely to me that we probably offered him a comparable deal and he chose to stay home. this suggests that buddy 1.)isn't all that desperate to find a tackle and/or 2)doesn't think it's worth overpaying for clabo. and yes, the above comments are based strictly on my opinion. the only FACT we have as of now is that he chose to stay with atlanta. i could totally be wrong -- the dude might have such a deep, passionate love for the greater atlanta school system and community that the $2 mill/year he's losing in b-lo is but a pittance.

i hear you, and i'm not saying it's impossible. still, the more obvious explanation to me is that we didn't offer him that much and these vague, unsubstantiated "reports" aren't accurate. i just find it difficult to believe any rational person would leave that much money on the table, especially one who plays football for a living. his career could be over at any moment. this discussion points to our limited access as fans. we'll never truly know what was offered, nor what was rejected. anonymous "sources" in news articles all have agendas of their own.

am i the only one who finds it difficult to believe that he chose to take $2 million a year less to stay with atlanta, thereby losing $10 million over the life of the contract? it seems far more likely to me that buddy didn't covet him as highly as these unsubstantiated reports would lead us to believe.

predicted playoffs whiffing on ladainian tasered in the face

i made no such assertions. i don't care how impressive the experts find other teams are on draft day. i think, however, that i have a fairly accurate grasp on how the bills have drafted over the past decade given the results on the field. any objective observer would agree that they've been fairly unsuccessful. my point remains the same: given our track record, we shouldn't be ripping any other team's draft picks. and, as i said before, tebow certainly has more value than maybin at this point. maybe then we wouldn't be sifting through the scrap heap for "wonderboys" like thigpen.

if he's neither good nor great why do you wish a team would sign him? players who can't make a significant impact on a team like the bills really shouldn't be positing for top five money. in addition, donte called attention to his deficiencies via twitter. he might have slipped under the radar if he was a touch more humble. dude deserves what he gets. hopefully the vet minimum at best.

as bills fans, we are the last people in the world who should criticize the draft picks of other teams. i would take tebow's religious whirlybird off the end over maybin's impotent push any day of the week.

word.

as long as he doesn't sulk or show frustration or his head isn't too fragile he's a value at $4-5 million a year? wow. should he do anything to actually deserve more than all of us will collectively make this year? like occasionally make an interception or two?

this points to the the utter nonsense that is reporting preseason (and, actually, regular season) injuries. the original poster posited a sensible question. given the high number of reported preseason injuries currently plaguing the league, any reasonable coach would recommend his players just take it easy for the remainder of camp. in fact, they shouldn't play at all until the season opener. pre-season injuries are, for the most part, a farce. we'll only find out who's actually injured on opening day.

so brutally true. we aren't attempting to cure cancer here. let's stop pretending that assembling a winning football team is a ridiculously, overwhelmingly difficult endeavor. i don't think winning 9 games a year once every decade or so is too demanding a request.

again, if donte is such a playmaker, wouldn't other teams have snatched him up by now? dude overestimated his value. took to twitter. got burned. put his tail between his legs and shuffled back... luckily we have plenty of space under the cap for a backup...

why are we arguing about an irrelevant safety on the 24th ranked defense? donte's most impactful play was when he took a taser to the face at cleveland's house of blues. is there space on the practice squad?

dude, while i applaud your enthusiasm, you have to accept the fact that the bills have dwelled among the dregs of the nfl for years and years and years. as such, they are undeserving of being included in that poll. this won't change until they actually start winning. i'm fairly confident the bills would be embraced by espn and others if they actually turned it around and started winning, especially against the likes of rex and bill. david v. goliath and all that.