Cash

Could this be related to that "special steamer" mentioned upthread????

Good point -- I forgot about his special teams ability. Since he (hopefully) won't be a full-time starter for us, he should still be able to contribute heavily on special teams. The Bills get full marks for this signing.

I really like this signing, along with almost everyone else. I'm guessing that Graham will start as the nickel/slot corner. (And make no mistake, that is a starter. All this talk about looking for a 2-down LB should really be about looking for a 1-down LB. Teams only spend 30-40% of the time in "base" personnel with 4 or fewer DBs.) If anyone gets hurt or needs a breather, Robey will come in at the slot, with Graham moving outside unless he's the one who came out. If 2 guys get hurt, then Ron Brooks comes in, and while he's no great shakes, I don't think he's automatic to get torched the way Rogers was last year. I actually really like our depth at CB! (Not really any other positions, though. Maybe D-line or kicker?) Other things to like: the money's right -- about $4mil/year plus incentives. That's low-end starter money, fairly similar to McKelvin, and seems fair for both team and player. Of course, you gotta love that he's from Buffalo and has dreamed about playing for the Bills! And, not that it means a lot, I like that he's had some big success against Brady and the Pats. One would hope that Graham will be a very positive presence in the locker room, especially in terms of bringing a winning attitude.

Excellent post and agreed on all counts. Either signing (Williams/Rivers) could work out well for the Bills if the player elevates his game and becomes a quality starter. But both guys are coming out of lackluster situations, and the Bills are paying them like they already know that both will be effective starters. And don't get me started on the Carpenter contract. Yikes. These are small-time mistakes, and if the players in question perform as well as the Bills hope, then there's no problem. But you can't be right 100% of the time. If they'd brought in both of these guys at the vet minimum or close, I'd feel a lot better about the signings. Although I like the Rivers signing better than Williams. Only a 2 year deal, and with the guaranteed money, he basically can't be cut if he gets beat out in camp. He's definitely an upgrade to the overall depth, even if he's maybe not what you're looking for as a starter. If he does get beat out this year or in 2015 training camp, I'd expect to see him cut rather than earn $2.5 million as a backup.

Probably not, because they benched him before they cut him. Also, even under the old setup, #14 overall wasn't a huge contract. It was the top 5, and to a lesser extent the top 10, that were really nuts.

There are definitely worse backups than Jason Campbell. I wouldn't hate it if we signed him. As for the Browns, the only question is when do they draft a QB? It's possible that they think that they can get one with their late 1st pick.

I agree on Kolb and Caussin, and I won't touch the Williams signing in this thread, but I don't agree with the rest. Carpenter was great last year, but look at kickers historically, and you'll see that their performance is crazy inconsistent from year to year. I don't know how much they're paying him, but given that he signed a 4 year deal, I'm guessing it's too much. In general, I don't think it's smart to sign a K to a long-term deal, especially when he's already not good at kickoffs. (And kickoff distance, unlike FG accuracy, usually is pretty consistent from year to year.) As for the marquee signing, I don't think I need that. Sure, I wouldn't mind it if they signed Jared Allen or someone like that, but I don't mind the "wait for the dust to settle/get lower-tier free agents" strategy. I think it's generally pretty strong, but if you're going to go that route, I think you need to either sign a lot of guys, or hit on an uncommonly high percentage of your signings. Lower-tier free agents are lower-tier for a reason. You're not going to bat 1.000 on them. The Bills went 2 for 3 last year with Lawson, Branch, and Legursky. We keep some of our guys, but we lose talented guys pretty much every year (some more talented than others). If we're going to not just make up for those losses, but actually get better, then something needs to give. Instead of 1 good starter (Lawson), 1 good rotational player (Branch), and 1 unacceptably bad starter (Legursky), we need to add something like 3 good starters and 3 good rotational players. If that also means we have 4 bad and slightly overpaid FA busts riding the bench or cut, so be it. Sometimes it seems like the plan is to hope we stay healthy, hope we get every break in every game, and then maybe we'll have a chance at sneaking into the playoffs. That's not a great plan. Either Dareus or (more likely) Spiller is probably gone in the next couple years. If they draft OT at #9, I think there's a good chance that 2 out of 3 of Dareus, Spiller, & Cordy Glenn are gone. I'll be shocked if all 3 are still on the team in 2017 no matter what.

If I believed #1, then I would agree with the rest of your post. My problem is that I don't see anything to suggest that Williams is actually any better than Legursky. Sure, but who cares? I think we'd all rather spend 3-4 years as a Super Bowl contender followed by 3-4 years of cap hell and stinking, versus 6-8 straight years of being mediocre. One thing you have to say about the Bills' stated strategy is that it's sustainable: they're definitely never going to have so much dead money or such a high payroll that they'll be hamstrung or have to cut premium players. But it seems like all they're sustaining is sub-mediocrity. If EJ is any good over the length of his rookie deal, he'll be grossly underpaid (the way Luck, Wilson, Kaepernick, Newton, RG3, Dalton are now). A lot of teams would take those QB savings and put them into other areas of the team. The Bills seem more content to just pretend they're already paying $20 million a year for their QB, and spend on the rest of the team accordingly.

How about Doug Legursky and Colin Brown? Sam Young? Thomas Welch? Do they tell us anything, or just the hits?

What am I, your intern? Do your own legwork. You can start by finding a write-up that says that Williams was a good signing. I would love to read one, because all I've seen so far is the opposite.

I wouldn't get your hopes up, especially with this quote from Whaley: "With the signing of Chris Williams, I am particularly excited about the direction our offensive line is moving in because we wanted to address this position and we feel like we filled the need with a very good player." He's not saying we took a step towards filling the needs, or that we strengthened the position by bringing in competition, he's saying the need has been filled. Lock it down and move on to other positions. I don't like it. Source: http://bills.buffalonews.com/2014/03/12/doug-whaley-defies-winter-signing-o-lineman-chris-williams/ Precisely. Branch was a guy who I had heard positive things about during his time as a starter in Arizona, and all reports on his time in Seattle as a rotational guy were quite positive. Lawson I knew less about before we signed him, but the book on him was a lot more positive than for Chris Williams. The Bills love thinking they're smarter than everyone else, and signing/drafting a guy who isn't highly rated by the consensus. They're usually wrong. Hopefully they're right this time, but I won't believe it till I see it.

Florio has always been terrible. Nice to see you're realizing that. Although this year, it literally has been "tough getting free agents to Buffalo", because the airport's been pretty shut down.

The Bears benched him, then cut him after 2 games as a healthy scratch. So yes. The Rams did not bench him. Nor did the Bills bench Doug Legursky after he took over as the starter last year. FWIW, ESPN's Bills and Rams bloggers have weighed in on our aggressive signing: http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/120269/bills-taking-odd-risk-in-signing-williams http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/120267/losing-williams-offers-chance-to-upgrade

The Bills talent evaluators though that Doug Legursky and Colin Brown were good enough at LG last year. Not 100% the same talent evaluators, but pretty close, thought that Cornell Green was good enough at RT a couple years ago. The Bears' talent evaluators thought that Williams was bad enough to cut him in 2012, even though he was the #14 overall pick a few years prior. The Rams' talent evaluators apparently didn't think Williams was worth the money the Bills signed him for.

Whaley's really good offseason improved the Bills from 6-10 in 2012 to... 6-10 in 2013. I have a feeling he'll have another really good offseason this year, and we'll wind up pretty close to 6-10 again. I think the 2 things that bother me the most about this Chris Williams signing are: 1.) He was at least a full-time starter last year, which is something. But while the Rams allegedly had some interest in bringing him back, they also allegedly wanted an upgrade. Does that sound like a guy who deserves a big raise? The Bills more than tripled his salary from last year, and gave him about 5x the value of his last contract in guaranteed money. Sure, sign Chris Williams, but sign him to a 1-year deal for $1.5 million or something. 2.) This goes hand-in-hand with the last point, and in fairness, could be invalidated if the Bills surprise me: At the money & length of deal Williams signed, he is 100% definitely our starter next year unless he's an absolute train wreck. And if he gets beat out in 2015 or beyond, he will be cut. Anyone talking about a "depth signing" in this thread is way off base. Geoff Hangartner, Langston Walker, and Cornell Green were all signed as starters, none for huge money. (Walker was the closest at about $5mil/year.) All of them got cut when they lost their starting jobs, 2 in training camp and 1 in mid-season. Williams' guarantees pretty much make him cut-proof this year, but it might be open season next year. I'm getting way off track, but my point is that I don't expect the Bills to do anything else to address the interior of their line this offseason, except maybe a mid or late round draft pick. I think we'll be fed a line about "competition", and the Bills will keep talking up their existing backups like 'Unga and Asper, but that's it. And if Williams turns out to be worse than the Bills think, we're headed for another season of garbage at LG.

Luckily the Patriots and Jets are both pretty weak at DT/NT, so we should be in solid shape there.

Oof. I hope PFF was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy off on him. That's not a lot of money for a starter, but it's a huge raise over what he made last year, and by all accounts he was a mediocre to bad starter for the Rams. Legursky was a bad starter (Brown was a tire fire), so maybe that's still an upgrade? Doesn't sound like much of one. I hope the Bills know what they're doing, because it doesn't seem like they do. This really comes across as another Cornell Green type signing.

You know, we've been hearing this same song and dance every offseason for the last 10 years. I get that the Bills want to emulate the Packers and Steelers, and this is their plan. When is the plan going to work????????

Love it.

Oh come on. You're better than that, K-9. That's like taking out a massive loan and then bragging about how much cash you have. Q: "But what about all this debt?" A: "That's a different discussion entirely. All I'm talking about is how much cash I have on hand!" If you want to say that Aaron Williams appears to be a better FS than SS, or will be in Schwartz's system, that's one thing. But the bottom line is that we lost a starter, and a very good one to boot. If you insist, we can say that the starter we lost was Williams at SS, but we still have a hole in the lineup. I'm not saying the Bills have to run out and sign a replacement safety right away -- maybe Duke Williams could step up? -- but I do expect the Bills to use Byrd's money to upgrade somewhere else if they don't sign a replacement.

Not really. Williams was already a starter last year, so if you move him into Byrd's spot, it still opens up a hole in the starting lineup. Or are the Bills just gonna play 10 on D? I will also say that aside from Byrd and Whitner, pretty much every safety signed for less than I expected. Williams' extension doesn't look like a bargain right now.

Have no idea who this guy is, but if he's even half-decent, this could be a nice depth signing. Someone pointed out in another thread that while our 3 starters (Gilmore RCB, McLovin LCB, Robey nickel/slot) look solid, there's basically nothing behind them. And going the low-priced FA route for depth does strike me as wiser than the draft. Because we have bigger needs than CB to spend a high pick there - we want starters with those high picks. And a mid-to-low round rookie CB couldn't be expected to be an upgrade over anything we've already got, at least not in 2014.

I think our work here is done, folks. <books Super Bowl flight/hotel>

I wouldn't be surprised if Carrington stayed, probably on a 1-year deal. Only other team I could see pursuing him might be Cleveland, since Pettine raved about him in camp. But he got hurt early, and did nothing in the brief time he played last year, so I can't imagine teams are beating down his door.

Huh? http://mockdraftable.com/player/4432/ http://mockdraftable.com/player/1776/ Davis was over 0.2 seconds faster in the 40 (that's not slight), 10" higher vertical leap (huge difference), 8" farther broad jump (not huge but significantly better), and 9 more reps on the bench press. Ebron didn't do the 20-yard shuttle, but I doubt he'd be able to match Davis' 88th percentile time of 4.17 seconds. Ebron might be good, but as a pure athlete, he's not in Vernon Davis' class.