Cash

The icing on the cake is how PK is worried that giving up the first-rounder means missing out on RON DAYNE.

My annual game pilgrimage is probably going to have a bigger turnout than normal this year -- like 8-12 people. Is that enough to deal with group sales, or do they need more like 20? Never actually done this before; usually a buddy of mine is the ticket buyer.

Note that Belichick didn't actually deny anything -- just tried to deflect things onto Pettine. '"You've got to talk to Mike Pettine," Belichick said. "I don't know."' He didn't say, "that's ridiculous," or "of course not," or even, "I won't dignify that kind of accusation," but he did say, "I don't know." That's a weird thing to say if the answer is actually "no."

Because bad teams often make bad decisions?

Based on what I saw last year, I'd say that Fitz's game has gone downhill since his time with the Bills.

Good post. For me, a lot of things like this come down to, "of course you have the right to be an a-hole, but why do you WANT to be an a-hole? Why choose to be?"

Maybe he needs to start coming in for extra practice at 5:30am instead of 6:30am?

I was told extensively in the Watkins thread that he has a massive catch radius and catches everything that he can get a hand on. What gives?

Good article. One minor nit-pick: Mel Gray made his Pro Bowls as a KR, not as a WR. Not a big enough hit to his data set to change his conclusions, though.

Where is this country going when old white men are no longer the sole arbiters of what is and isn't offensive?!?!

Agreed -- I was fairly impressed by Schwartz's press conference, and though I remain skeptical, he is definitely growing on me. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course. There's no excuses for him if the D sucks this year -- way too much talent, even if Dareus gets suspended. I am very curious to see how the secondary shakes out. I don't think Corey Graham will ultimately be moved to safety, and if he doesn't, then how is playing time split among him and Robey as slot CBs? The trends lately have been away from 4-WR sets and more toward splitting out athletic TEs to act as a 3rd or 4th WR. Defenses have responded by moving somewhat away from true nickel or dime defenses, and more toward "big nickel" (3 S, 2 CB) or dime defenses with extra safeties or hybrid players instead of CBs.

Yeah, loved hearing Schwartz talk about Robey. Robey can flat-out play, and if it's that clear to me, I would think it would be obvious to a coach watching game tape.

In practice, pretty much every play could be negative or positive. Example: we've heard about a bunch of long "TD" throws by Manuel so far -- that's good! But most of them have come on blown coverages where the deep WR was wide open -- that's bad! Nickell Robey got a sack -- that's good! But that means that the offense couldn't pick up a corner blitz -- that's bad! Given that Chris Brown will look at the positive side every time and Joe Buscaglia will about 90% of the time, I have no problem with someone consistently taking the negative approach. Of course, it's possible for a play to be all bad -- blown coverage, but an uncatchable throw or dropped pass. It's harder, but still possible, for a play to be all good -- really good coverage, but a great back-shoulder throw and tremendous catch by WR, maybe? I doubt it. There's a reason long snapper is its own dedicated position on basically every NFL team. If your LS is also your blocking TE, what happens when he gets rolled up on during a 1st quarter run play? You now can't punt or attempt place kicks. I think it's more likely that they're looking at guys who could potentially fill in in case Sanborn got hurt covering a punt or something. That's not to say that Sanborn's job is safe; I could definitely see him being replaced. I could even see his replacement being MacPherson, if Macky does a great job. But in that scenario, (my guess is) Macky would only come in to play C in a true emergency scenario, and wouldn't be considered as one of the regular 7 O-linemen active on game day.

Agreed about Graham, but the only problem with your Brooks logic is that he's bad at football and Robey isn't.

If throwing deep passes out of bounds to track stars is so helpful, why did our offense stink last year? I don't think defenses have a lot of respect for the deep ball until you actually complete a few.

Yeah, it's weird how teams that usually win 11-14 games get the benefit of the doubt, and teams that usually win 4-7 games don't.

I voted for Week 12 loss, but I was very torn with Week 17 loss. Sad thing is, I don't think the Bills have actually had a mathematical Week 17 shot since 2004, when they lost to Fast Willie Parker and the Steelers' backups. Usually it's around Week 14-15 in the "good" years. It's cool, though. None of this is at all depressing.

I like the post overall, but the author is being very generous to EJ by calling Chandler's non-catch against the Ravens Chandler's fault. I recall marveling at the amazing body control Chandler had to catch a ball that was heading well out of bounds, only to be completely dashed when I saw on the replay how his left foot never actually touched down. And I hate to defend TJ Graham ever at all, but I have a feeling 1 or 2 of the 5 "receiver's fault" incompletions attributed to Graham were borderline uncatchable deep balls out of bounds. I definitely remember a number of deep sideline throws to Graham that weren't atrocious, and maybe someone like Megatron or Brandon Marshall could've brought in and tapped their toes, but Graham caught with zero feet in bounds. Granted, Graham sucks at that type of catch, but I still don't think it's fair to classify those throws as "on-target". A better, more accurate throw still leaves the defender no chance at the ball, but gives the receiver a much better opportunity at making the catch.

For now, haha. Our average height will plummet once roster cuts start. Rodak is also being generous listing Mike Williams as 6'2" -- he's really 6'1".

I've always liked him! ...but I don't get the sense he's at all a part of Whaley/Marrone/Schwartz's plans. Wouldn't be surprised if he gets no opportunity to play and/or gets cut. For the record, their "Secret Superstar" for the Bills last year was Alex Carrington. Obviously didn't work out great, but injury was certainly a major factor. Still, it's somewhat bad that he didn't seem to get a contract offer from either the Bills or the Browns.

I believe the "break even" breakdown requires the old chestnut of draft trade accounting, namely discounts on future picks. Basically, for every year in the future a pick is, you knock a round off its value in the Jimmy Johnson Trade Chart. This is why everyone in the Watkins thread was screaming that we only gave up a 2nd round pick, even though we actually gave up a first round pick. If we had traded our first-rounder in 2016, that would be "discounted" to the value of a 3rd-round pick in 2014. You sometimes see teams trade next year's first-rounder for a pick during the second round (invariably because a player with a "first round grade" was available -- as though there won't be any players with first round grades in the first round next year?), and it's considered a fair swap by the JJ chart. Of course, some people (including me) think that discounting future picks is nonsensical, especially from a fan's perspective. It's possible that a coach or GM can really put a lower value on a future pick that he may not be around to execute, but barring extreme age or terminal illness, we fans can be pretty sure that we'll still be fans of the team by the time the next draft rolls around. So why should we consider next year's first only as valuable as this year's second? If another team offered the Bills a future first for their current second, wouldn't you want them to take it every single year? Relevant to this discussion: http://grantland.com/features/nfl-draft-michael-sam-gay-trades/ Scroll down to "The Worst Trades of the 2014 NFL Draft" -- we rated as the #2 biggest overpay if we give up the 12th pick next year. On the plus side, "if the Bills make the playoffs, it's only a marginally aggressive move," which I think we'd all be okay with.

That is true, but here's some cherry-picked players available at those spots (all were drafted pretty close after the Browns' pick): (Phil Taylor) - Phil Taylor, Muhammad Wilkerson, Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick (Greg Little) - Randall Cobb, Justin Houston, DeMarco Murray (Owen Marecic) - Julius Thomas, Taiwan Jones/Bilal Powell (both RBs like Marecic, but unlike him, neither of them suck) (Brandon Weeden) - David DeCastro, Dont'a Hightower, Cordy Glenn, Alshon Jeffery, Bobby Wagner, Lavonte David If the Browns took Cobb instead of Little and Thomas instead of Marecic, they still wouldn't have a QB, but I think they would've easily won that trade. Maybe Thomas is a little unfair because he was such a late pick, and the Manning effect. But even with Jones turning out as good as he had, the Browns definitely could've (and probably should've) won that trade. The problem is that they drafted total zeroes with two of the 3 high picks they got in return.

I'll be surprised if the D doesn't take a step back. Why? 1.) Loss of Byrd 2.) I'm not sold on Schwartz or the scheme change in general 3.) Just plain ol' regression to the mean. A year after setting the team record for sacks, it's almost guaranteed to take a step back. One could argue that Kyle Williams, Marcel Dareus, Jerry Hughes, Manny Lawson, Leodis McKelvin, and Aaron Williams all had career years last year. It's unreasonable to expect them to repeat -- we'll be lucky if half of them produce at about the level they did last year. And Kiko and Robey both had tremendous rookie years, but it wouldn't be at all surprising if one or both regressed somewhat in year 2. Happens all the time. As for the offense, it really all comes down to QB play, I think. I hated the Chris Williams signing as much as anyone, but can he really be worse than what we had last year? Or even as bad? I think the O-line was already underrated last year (due to poor QB play) and should be at least marginally better this year. The RBs were good last year, they'll be good this year. Adding another dude to the mix doesn't really help us much unless there are injuries, so whatever. The WR corps should be improved if Mike Williams can keep his head screwed on, or if Watkins is the exceedingly rare impact rookie WR. I doubt they'll be much worse in any case, especially when you consider how banged-up Stevie was last year. But it really all comes down to QB. EJ's supporting cast has probably improved, but he won't be stepping into some ready-to-dominate offensive juggernaut. He's got enough talent around him to succeed, but not so much that he can't fail. We'll see how much he improves from year 1. It'll need to be a lot for us to make the playoffs.

Very fair point. Obviously I'm hoping for a multi-All-Pro career now that he's a Bill, but even before the draft I was very skeptical about him. I didn't really see much difference between his pre-draft hype, Justin Blackmon's, and Michael Crabtree's. (And CJ Spiller's, honestly -- I saw a lot of the same phrases in the threads for CJ & Sammy: #1 offensive player/weapon in the draft, elite talent, threat to score every play, etc.) Blackmon is looking like a bust, but probably more due to off-field issues than actual ability, once you factor in the horrible QB's he's had throwing to him. But he certainly hasn't made any of those QB's look like a stud, and hasn't really performed like an impact player aside from that one game. And that last part applies pretty well to Crabtree, too. Solid starter, not much more. If that's all Watkins turns into, then the trade to get him will certainly be a bust, because the Bills are counting on him being a top-tier WR.

Dunno about the Dolphins guard, but Legursky at least was signed as a G/C, and played some C with the Steelers. The "C only" thing (even if it's real at all) gets really muddled with backups, because there really is no backup C in the NFL who doesn't also play guard. I for one would like to see Watkins carry on the tradition of greats like Andre Reed and Dave Moore. You're thinking of Dave Moore, the scrub TE we signed from Tampa Bay, not Mark Campbell, the scrub TE we signed from Cleveland. Campbell wore 84. When I looked it up before my last post, I realized that I had been trying to come up with Campbell's name, but I was at least right that "83" was signed from Tampa Bay.