Cash

Absolutely. Case in point, the subject of this thread. If Williams winds up being just an average starter, then the Bills have seriously overpaid him. The risk-mitigator from the team's perspective is that they can cut the player before the contract ends (or ask the player to take a pay cut), but depending on how the guaranteed money is structured, that might take a couple years.

Yes and no. The NFL is technically a soft cap, but it's pretty close to hard. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) The total "cap figure" of everyone on the roster can't exceed the salary cap, but cap figures don't equal payroll, at least not in the short term. Bonus money is amortized over the length of a contract, yada yada yada. The short version is that it's easy to spend WAY over the cap in actual cash payouts in any given year, but eventually the accounting will catch up to you and you'll have to cut guys or restructure contracts. And the window in which you can get away with it is usually fairly short -- maybe 2-3 years at the most.

If we'd drafted Johnny Manziel in 2013 I think we might have a shot at signing Chandler Jones this year.

Fun game! I'm totally cheating, because since players are coming off the board exactly per the rankings, I know if I can safely trade down or wait a full round. Still trying to keep it at least fairly realistic. See below for boring explanation of each pick. Pick 9: TRADED to NY Giants, who select Taylor Lewan, OT Michigan Pick 12: Mike Evans, WR Texas A&M Pick 41: Troy Niklas, TE Notre Dame Pick 73: Billy Turner, OT/G North Dakota State Pick 74: Pierre Desir, CB Lindenwood Pick 137: Aaron Murray, QB Georgia Pick 169: Storm Johnson, RB UCF Pick 201: Russell Bodine, OG UNC 9/12: Bills trade picks 9 (1,350 pts) and 105 (84 pts) for picks 12 (1,200 pts) and 74 (220 pts). If the Giants had a 7th-rounder, I'd try to get them to throw it in. As it is, I'll ask for a future 6th or 7th, and probably get rejected on both counts. Neither is a dealbreaker, as I'm still getting my guy and vastly upgrading my 4th-round pick. The flaw in this plan is that the Giants almost never trade up, but they had huge problems protecting Eli last year, and maybe they see a huge dropoff between Lewan and the 2nd-tier OTs? 41: Tempting to trade down again, but #41 in the rankings is Tre Mason, and who's trading up for a 5'8" running back? Also very tempting to go with ASJ or Gabe Jackson here, particularly Jackson. I guess I'm just hoping that we've already signed a competent LG starter and will be drafting more for depth. Plus, I think Niklas would help the run game right away, and (eventually) upgrade the passing game by stepping in for Chandler. 73: Best OL on the board. Dakota Dozier was also in the mix here -- both played OT in college but might project to OG in the NFL -- but I decided to just go chalk. I'm well past the point of knowing anything about the guys left on the board. The hope here would be that Turner can make it at OT and compete for the starting RT job. If not, then maybe he gets moved inside to G, or maybe serves as a versatile backup who's not great at anything, but won't kill you at any of the 4 G/T spots. 74: 6'1", 200 lb. cornerback with good athleticism, apparently needs work on his technique. Luckily, we already have starters at both outside CBs and Nickell CB, so we can teach him technique while he plays special teams. 137: Why not? I liked him a lot in his junior year, and this late in the draft, he wouldn't be seen as a threat to EJ. 169: His name is Storm Johnson. 201: No one's still reading, right?

My first question is, is this a true extension, or did they rip up the last (ultra-cheap) year of his rookie deal? I.e., is Williams now signed through 2017 or 2018? If the 4yr/$26mil figures are true, then I think it's a reasonable signing for the Bills either way, but it's especially good in the latter case. To my untrained eyes, Williams played better last year without Byrd, because it seemed like he was used more as a deep/center field FS type before Byrd came back. Even if I'm wrong, he still played pretty well all last year, and it's pretty likely that he'll get better with more experience. The Bills aren't paying a super-cheap price, but Williams would have to be an idiot to accept a super-cheap contract extension right now. The Bills are gambling that he becomes an above-average starter or Pro Bowl-level player, in which case his extension will be an absolute steal in 2-3 years. The current pay scale for safeties is probably about to change drastically. The cap just went up a lot, it's projected to keep going up for the next 2 years, Earl Thomas got a TON of attention for his role in Seattle's Super Bowl run, and Byrd and Thomas are up for new contracts in the next year. Williams' average $/year would put him 10th right now, but by 2016, he might be out of the top 20. Will he be a top 10 safety by then? If so, he'll be seriously underpaid.

Sorry, still haven't gotten past the first paragraph or two of the article. Too busy wrapping my head around the idea that WBAL sports director and broadcaster Gerry Sandusky, a man who works in sports, particularly American football, hasn't changed his named to avoid confusion with Gerald "Jerry" Sandusky, the convicted child molester who's associated with Penn State football.

It's never occurred to you that someone who's happier at his workplace might be more motivated and perform better at his job? Or that if management forces a highly unpleasant and unwelcome change in his role on him, that might result in a drop in performance? If that happens at McDonald's, they just fire the disgruntled employee and just hire someone from the vast pool of candidates. If that happens on an NFL team, they don't really have the option to replace Glenn with an equivalent player.

Bumpety bump bump: http://bills.buffalo...itment-winning/ Obviously the Toronto hiatus is being discussed in other threads, but what's relevant here is Graham's take on what this means for the behind-the-scenes power struggle: We know that the Bills won't want to air their dirty laundry, so we in the hoi polloi won't see many outward signs of who's "winning". This is one of the few winning over profit victories that is actually visible to the fans. Theoretically, Jim Carpenter being replaced as head trainer would be another one, but I have to think that at this point, replacing him would be tantamount to publicly confirming Graham's anonymous sources, so he's safe for at least another year. (And if he does go, I'm guessing he'll be convinced to retire rather than be outright fired.) I continue to think that Brandon is ostensibly the CEO with 100% control of all operations, but that certain high-level personnel feel that they are accountable only to Wilson. I also continue to think that Brandon couldn't threaten any serious repercussions (firing, e.g.) to any of the "lifers" without first getting Wilson's approval, which reinforces the lifers' feelings that they're not subordinate to Brandon. I continue to hope that Brandon is primarily on the side of Whaley/Marrone in most or all of these conflicts, and that he's capable of winning these battles with Littman/Overdorf/etc. I'm a little more confident now that that's the case.

I noticed that as well. In fairness to Whaley, he listed Urbik 3rd or 4th, but still... We lose an All-Pro safety and we're supposed to feel better because we kept Kraig Urbik? KRAIG URBIK, YOU GUYS! FEEL THE HEAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you.

The only question is, what was in the rest of that offer? There's probably a reason that the Bills only leaked the part about $10mil/year for the first 3 years. Maybe it was a 6-year, $45 million deal? Maybe it was 4 years, $36 million, but with no guaranteed money? If the Bills are really misrepresenting the nature of their offer, then this situation changes. I don't really think they are, though. Don't get me wrong -- if the full offer was as good as the part they leaked, they would've leaked the whole thing. But I get the impression that they really want(ed) to keep Byrd and made a legitimately reasonable offer. Byrd might be sick of losing and having a new DC every year, and maybe it means more to him to go to a more stable situation where he's got a better chance of making the playoffs. Or maybe he just really wants to see what his true market value is, and once he does, he'll consider the Bills' offer. I don't expect that, but I wouldn't 100% rule it out at this point. Anyway, I don't have any anger or outrage over this, at least not yet. I do think the Bills made a legit attempt to keep him, and I also think that there has to be a limit where the price tag is too high, no matter how good the player is. I knock management a lot, but I honestly do think that if there was likely to be a decent trade market, the Bills would've tagged him. This is at least a little similar to Levitre last year so far. The problem there wasn't necessarily letting him walk -- even at the time, you could easily argue the Titans overpaid. The problem was the plan to replace him was basically, "sit on a pile of money." I hope that the Bills have learned their lesson, and have a much better plan to replace Byrd. That doesn't necessarily mean spending a ton on his immediate replacement, but it does mean taking the money budgeted towards Byrd and spending it to help the team.

If Lawson gets cut, that's a bad sign. My hopes for the Schwartz Era are not high, but we'll see. Hopefully he's smart enough to adapt his D to the guys who are here.

Addition by subtraction. SUPER BOWL, BABY!

I like that both past and present/future are represented here, because the other thread showed that people will answer the "past" question whether it's asked or not. As for me: 1. Rolando McClain. I could've gone with a guy the Bills actually drafted, but I don't want to sidetrack this thread with an "is he a bust?" flame war. 2. Tough one for me. Maybe Anthony Barr or CJ Mosely? Barr is a kind of obvious "could bust" pick, and I'm always wary of back 7 defenders on stacked college teams. Add Clinton-Dix to the list as well, although my list isn't so much "I think he'll be a bust" as "I wouldn't be surprised if he was a bust."

I think he would take Mike Evans, since that's who he compared Ebron to. I know I would. But let's say those 4 you mentioned AND Evans are gone by 9 -- which is possible if the QBs all drop. At that point, Ebron would have to be a consideration, along with Lewan and the ever-popular trade down. Out of those 3, I'd probably favor the trade down, although you never know what kind of offers will be there.

Fully agree.

If Manning's available at 9, we should trade down. Might be able to pick up a 2nd AND a 4th.

Obviously Robinson is going to win, but I'm glad that at least my boy Mike Evans is running second.

I'm not sure I really get your point. The 14-year playoff drought is easy to point to because it really jumps out. But it's just a symptom, and the cause is, "the Bills are a dysfunctional and poorly-run franchise." Even poorly-run franchises sneak into the playoffs once in a while, and the Patriots being so consistently good is one of the reasons that the Bills haven't. But do you think that the Bills are well-run, and that it's only bad luck that's kept them from success? I doubt it, because you generally seem pretty lucid, but again, I'm not really sure what you're arguing. That if we were in a different division but all else was the same, we would've won the division with a 9-7 or 8-8 record once or twice in the past 14 years? And maybe that that playoff experience would've made Jauron or Mularkey or Gailey a better coach, or caused whichever GM to make more/better signings or picks to get us to the next level? (I don't buy that, if that is what you're saying.) I mean, the Washington Proud Traditions made the playoffs in 2012 and I don't think anyone thinks they're a well-run franchise -- they just made one really good move in trading a king's ransom for a transcendent talent at the game's most important position. Of course, they almost immediately started torpedoing that transcendent talent with a series of terrible decisions, which is about par for the course for them. I'll always love the Bills, and I love the community of Bills fans even more, but when the team stinks and it's the team's own fault, I will criticize them. I'm not going to pretend that all is well with the team when they keep putting out this garbage product year after year. I will continue to obsessively watch said garbage product *and* get my hopes up that things are turning around every year, but I can only ignore reality for so long.

Even changing every loss to the Pats to a win during that stretch (which almost always means adding 2 wins) still doesn't leave us with an impressive set of records. And that's unrealistic, because even switching the Pats out with the Browns/Jaguars/Raiders would still yield a few wins over the Bills in 28 matchups. Yes, the Patriots have been uncommonly good during our stretch of futility. And they've owned us during that stretch, which hasn't helped matters at all. But the Bills have been objectively bad against the whole league, not just the Patriots or the AFC East as a whole.

Totally. The other thing is that people spout "BPA" as though there's a clear Best among the players available at a given pick. Who's better, Josh Gordon or Navarro Bowman? Hard to say. The reality is that scouts do their best to grade draft prospects, but a lot of the grades are pretty bunched up. It's not like the top guy on the board has a grade of 100, then the next guy has a 90, then an 80, etc. It's more like there are three 96's, then five 95's, then four 94's, then two 93's, then eight 91's. Who can say that their scouts' grades are accurate enough that a 96 is really "better" than a 95? Now, once in a while a team might find itself in a position where they have one guy left on their board who's WAY ahead of anyone else, and that's when they might do a true BPA pick, even if the guy plays a position they don't need. But generally speaking, "BPA" is just nonsense draftspeak. Would anyone ever admit that they took a guy who wasn't the highest on their board?

Ebron kind of scares me at #9. If they do wind up going that route, I'll watch a bunch of highlights and try to convince myself he's the next Jimmy Graham, but right now, I don't like it. I think the Vernon Davis comp is pretty legit (he's definitely not the athlete VD is, but might be more skilled to make up for it), and if you guaranteed me he would have Vernon Davis' career, I still think I might prefer Evans. Don't get me wrong, Davis is a good player, and he's had some good seasons, but he's also been fairly inconsistent, and he's not a guy I fear if I'm going up against his team. If the 49ers had had a decent WR or two during his time with the team, I don't think his numbers would be quite as good, either. I dunno, I just don't see Ebron as a gamebreaker type TE, and I don't think he'll be a strong blocker, and at that point, I'd rather roll the dice at #9. I think I'd prefer one of the top OTs over Ebron, frankly. The other thing that scares me is his drop rate. I still have flashbacks of Lonnie Johnson and Robert Royal dropping away catch after catch. I totally agree with the sentiment of going after a big-time TE, especially since most of our WRs are young and won't really get better without plenty of playing time. But I don't think Ebron is the guy to justify that high of a pick. I don't think he'll ever be All-Pro or earn his way into the Pro Bowl*. Plus, I tend to agree with another poster's sentiment that Marrone probably wants more of an in-line TE who can help the run game than a guy like Ebron or Amaro who was in the slot 80% of the time. *I say "earn his way into" because with the Pro Bowl being an even bigger joke now than ever, and with both Super Bowl teams ineligible from the get-go, it's not tough to wind up with a 3rd or 4th alternate making it onto the final squad. I could see Ebron squeaking in that way, but I'm looking for more than that with a top 10 pick in what appears to be an excellent draft.

+1. Most posters in this thread are taking Graham's articles to mean that the main source of confrontation is the Byrd negotiations, but the only thing specifically mentioned in the first one was the inability to replace the training staff, and the second one spent as much time focusing on Berchtold as Littman/Overdorf combined. And I don't think anyone here thinks that Berchtold has a hand in the Byrd negotiations? Now, it's plausible that Overdorf is stymieing said Byrd negotiations, and that's a main cause of the leaks. But it could also be a coincidence. Obviously both Whaley & Marrone want Byrd back, but both of them (especially Whaley) have to have a price point where they balk. Maybe the "Eugene Parker is the devil" contingent is right and Byrd's demands are way over the top. Or maybe Joe Buscaglia's speculation is right that Byrd desperately wants to play for a winner, and that results in Byrd asking for the moon from the Bills, then signing for below-market value with a contender when the Bills balk. Either way, it wouldn't tell us much about anything that happened (or didn't) at 1 Bills Drive. Now, if they sign Byrd to a massive new contract, I think that would be a strong sign that Overdorf was put in his place. Say it with me: WE'RE NOT THE WORST! WE'RE NOT THE WORST! WE'RE NOT THE WORST! New rallying cry for 2014?

Interesting analogy. And definitely a good point about 1,000 as a "magic number". Of course, there isn't anything magical about that number of attempts, it's just a nice round number that humans like to work with, and it happens to fall at a fairly convenient spot in assessing a QB's progress. The results would probably be very similar using 931 or 1,234 attempts. (If they weren't, then that's a sign that maybe this is just a random occurrence that showed up due to the small sample involved.) There's probably a way to re-design this study using some kind of range or continuum of pass attempts, but none of us are getting paid for this, nor do we have any influence over any team's actual decision-making, so I don't really see a huge gain from complicating things. Anyway, assuming we accept that there's really something here, what's the takeaway? I don't really agree with the Gladwell/10,000 hours analogy. Yes, more reps/attempts/practice time/etc. will help a young player get better, but not everyone will get good enough to succeed in the NFL, even if he takes every snap for 5 straight years. What Ramius is really talking about is that before a player gets (roughly) to 1,000 attempts, it's tough to really predict if his current play is indicative of his future play. Once he gets there, you have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get. Combining that with Sisyphean Bills' point, I'd say that if you have a young QB with some promise -- he has the physical tools, seems to be liked/respected as a leader by teammates or seems like he will be once he starts winning, shows some flashes of brilliance or at least stretches of competence, and isn't abysmal -- it might actually be worth your while to commit to him long enough to get him to that 1,000 attempt area. Conversely, don't sign him to a big extension before he gets there, even if he's played well. And I think EJ Manuel is a great case study for the former, because he looks like he has all the tools, but certainly had his share of flaws as a rookie. I doubt he'll get particularly close to 1,000 attempts even if he stays healthy next year, but this study makes me think that it's worth committing to him for 2015 as well, regardless of his performance in 2014. If he's not good enough in 2015, then it's time to cut bait and move on. (Probably with a new head coach, because if EJ sucks the next 2 years, our record will probably stink, and Marrone's out the door.)

Great post! I think most of us in the "no OL at #9" camp could live with an O-line pick at #9 depending on who else was available, especially since Whaley has slammed the door on taking a QB. For me, if both Watkins and Evans are off the board, and one of the top 3 OTs is still there, then by all means take the OT. It would fill a need, provide some injury insurance for Glenn, and help EJ's development. But I'd much rather have a WR with a wide catch radius who can turn some of EJ's inaccurate throws into big completions. And some of these OL-or-bust posts are crazy. People are seriously pointing to Seattle as the model of how to win a Super Bowl on the back of your O-line? That only works if you ignore every objective rating of Seattle's O-line and assume that because they won the Super Bowl, they must have a good O-line. PFF rated them 26th in the league last year! Football Outsiders rated them 9th in adjusted line yards (pretty good!), but dead last in both power success (3rd or 4th and short) and pass blocking. If you're looking for an elite O-Line for us to aspire to, keep looking.

Everything? What about the debate in the 16th century about whether the Earth revolved around the Sun?