Cash

Not against the cap, sure, but it does save the Bills actual cash in the form of Anderson's base salary that he won't be getting. I don't personally think that this cut was primarily financially-based, but do you really think he'd have been cut if he was making the minimum salary?

That Anderson was cut is not a surprise -- he was terrible (mostly due to injury) last year, someone else's signing, and probably not a good fit for the D. I think the timing is a surprise -- why right before training camp? Nothing has happened since the last OTA ended, why not cut him then? Or why not give him a shot in training camp and see if he surprises you in practice? The Bills are under the 90-man roster limit, so it wasn't necessary to free up a spot. This is more of a puzzler than a "the Bills suck!" moment, though. I wasn't expecting anything from Anderson this year, and looks like my expectations will be met. According to Spotrac, cutting Anderson puts $1.6 million of dead money on the cap this year, with another $3.0 million next year. So those of you complaining about the Bills not using their cap space should be happy that they found a use for some of it.

Stevie Johnson didn't give the Bills much of a home town discount, if at all. He got a fair deal from the Bills that met his needs and the team's needs. Johnson is in my view a mid-tier or slightly lower number one caliber of receiver. He is far from being an elite receiver. Re-signing with the Bills was a smart move on his part because he was able to be the primary receiver for the Bills which would not have been the case with the majority of other teams. I chose my words carefully up above -- I never said Stevie gave the Bills a discount. I said he signed a "nice" contract, and I would also use the word "fair". In my mind, a hometown discount is when either the player voluntarily takes a below-market deal to free up cap space (a la Brady recently), or if the player wants to be back so bad that he essentially accepts the team's first offer. Stevie's contract doesn't fit that bill to me. Given that Stevie was the first Bill to ever put up back-to-back 1,000 yard seasons, and did it with virtually no help at WR, it would have been very understandable if he wanted more than the 5 year, $36.25 million deal he got. I'd definitely rather have Stevie than Dwayne Bowe, and Bowe played on the franchise tag last year, then signed a 5 year, $56 million deal to come back to the Chiefs (which includes $36.25 million in just the first 3 years -- all numbers per spotrac). Now, Stevie's deal isn't exactly bad, but I think he could've gotten more if he had gone the Levitre route. No one would have been shocked if Stevie had said that he was going to test the market, and if his agent wanted him to sign a top 5 WR deal or something along those lines. I'm very glad that didn't happen, because Stevie's one of my favorite players. What I'm saying is that Stevie is the exception. Guys like Levitre or Byrd are the rule, particularly on a bad team in a small-market, cold-weather city. I don't know exactly what the answer is, because you can't overpay everybody, but you and the Bills seem to have an attitude of "we'll only bring back the ones who want to be here" (i.e., accept our slightly below-market contract offer). I'm just saying that that attitude seems awfully cavalier. I agree that the guys who want to be here should be top priority, and that it's smart to get those deals done. But I just think the team needs to get better at having a Plan B with the guys who don't "want to be here". I really get the impression that the Bills think they're going to convert the whole locker room into "True Bills". They think if they take care of the ones who kiss the ring (CHRIS KELSAY), everyone else will want a piece of that sweet contract extension action. And that strategy might actually work, if they had more Super Bowl wins than losing seasons in the last decade, but I don't see it ever turning around a loser.

Sorry, that's not correct. The 96% figure is for a combination of direct disbursement, scholarship programs (which together make up the 60% figure), the cost of putting on championships (13%), and "programs and national office services" & "other services (such as the eligibility center)" (23% together). For the BCS schools, most of those programs and services aren't benefiting them. Especially the eligibility center -- all that can do for them is prevent their recruits from being able to play. Even if we take the NCAA at face value, which is very generous given who we're talking about, the BCS schools can reasonable say that only something like 75% of the money gets back to them. (60% disbursement + scholarships, and with no NCAA, that 13% for putting on championships has to come from BCS schools instead.) Check the NCAA's Finances page for details. As to the revenue specifically, you're also mistaken. Again, taking the NCAA at face value (per their Revenue page), "NCAA revenue [for last year] was $871.6 million, most of which came from the rights agreement with Turner/CBS Sports. The total rights payment for 2011-12 was $705 million, or 81 percent of all NCAA revenue. Most of the remaining 18 percent of revenue came from championships (mostly ticket and merchandise sales)." Last year was actually a low year in terms of TV revenue as % of overall revenue -- it's usually around 85/86%, again according to the NCAA. But in any case, nearly all of their total revenue comes from the NCAA tournament -- 80+ percent from the TV rights, and most of the rest from ticket/merch sales. The NCAA does stage other championships besides basketball, but there's very little money in them. In terms of specific numbers, the Turner/CBS payout for the men's basketball TV rights was $705 million last year. If the NCAA was saying that they gave back 96% of that, it would work out to $676.8 million, which is about 78% of the NCAA's total revenue, not 60%. Breaking it down further, $705 million is 80.9% of the total revenue of $871.6 million. The NCAA listed "television and marketing rights fees" as 81% of total revenue. So the combined revenue of the women's basketball tournament, the college world series, the Frozen Four, and all other NCAA championships was probably less than $5 million last year. ($710.354 million total would round to 82%, and taking out the $705 million for the men's basketball tournament leaves us with $5.354 million.) That's exactly what I think. Whether it happens voluntarily or because of a court order, that is going to happen sooner or later. I won't predict when, because I've learned to never underestimate the ability of the wealthy & powerful to entrench themselves against change, but it will happen eventually. It could be delayed significantly if the schools/conferences decide to stop allowing EA to use player likenesses in games, because then if if O'Bannon wins, they wouldn't have to make payouts to active players going forward. And once you start giving money to players for anything, you can no longer use your circular "we can't pay them because they're amateurs" argument. However, in order to really insulate yourself from the threat of player likenesses, you have to: 1.) Make sure the in-game player avatars don't look like real players. Not just in terms of faces -- you want to make sure that heights, weights, builds, and skin colors are somewhat randomized compared to actual rosters. 2.) Stop using the actual jersey numbers of last year's team. 3.) Have at least some disconnect between the ratings of your in-game avatars and the perceived skills of last year's players. This is kind of touchy, because ratings are so subjective/controversial already. You could probably keep the ratings exactly the same and do #1 and #2 above, and many people would scream that the ratings are totally random. On the other hand, you could probably randomize the ratings (within reason: RBs/WRs/CB would still be fast, linemen still strong, etc.) and many other people would scream that the ratings still correspond to the actual players. Anyway, if you do all of those things, or even just the first two, then you run the risk of making a very expensive game that no one wants. I think the college audience is probably less into using specific players than the NFL audience (?), but even if that's true, it's hard to convince anyone to buy a new college football game if the rosters are just randomized every year. So if schools want to protect themselves against the O'Bannon lawsuit, it functionally means that there won't be any more college video games. Might take a year or two of bad sales to make it happen though.

Serious question: Isn't there a huge flaw with this logic, in that the teams you mentioned are all wildly successful, whereas the Bills are not? I think you're right that if [any player] "wants" to be with the Bills they will be signed. (Stevie Johnson is a great recent example -- he signed a nice extension that was probably lower than what he could've gotten from the highest bidder. He wanted to come back, and did -- but at a price that the Bills were comfortable with.) I tend to agree with the notion in this thread that the Bills (Overdorf?) come up with a number for a given player's worth and rarely back off it. And that number tends to be lower than what the player's price would be on the open market. But is it reasonable or feasible to expect players to "want to be with the team" when the team hasn't come close to a successful season in that player's career? When a player is willing to accept a fair but below-market deal (e.g., Stevie), that's great, and the Bills have shown some ability to pounce on those situations. But one of their mistakes seems to be that they expect all their good players to have that attitude, when only a fraction actually do. It's fine to stick to your financial guns when 80% of your good players are happy enough to take less than top dollar, but what happens when only 50% of your good players feel that way? What if it's only 20%? The Bills have been bad for a long time. What's the plan to turn that around? You say that if Wood/Spiller force their departure, so be it. Okay, in that scenario, the Bills have lost a ton of talent with little to no compensation. And they were talent-poor to begin with. So how do they fix things? Maybe the plan is to have 3 straight legendary drafts, where you acquire 10 total Pro Bowlers and 5 more quality starters, and most of those players also love living/playing in WNY. At the end of those 3 years, you've probably got a Super Bowl contender, and while you can't keep all of that talent, you can keep enough at team-friendly terms to keep contending, and then you plug in guys going forward a la the Steelers. I don't see this as remotely possible or even plausible. Maybe the plan is to hope you're right about EJ Manuel, and count on his ability as a franchise QB to elevate the team to the playoffs or Super Bowl contention. Then you can re-sign enough guys on your terms who want to be part of a winner, while replacing the rest with draft picks or cheaper veterans who want to play for a winner. This is a lot more plausible, and I hope it happens. But I can't say that it's likely. And I'd be more comfortable with the outlook of the team if it seemed like its future didn't solely hinge on their rookie QB panning out. If EJ is just mediocre, I find it hard to believe the Bills will have/retain enough supporting talent to be a real playoff team. Fitz was mediocre for a couple years, and we still didn't sniff the playoffs.

Most likely. However, the interesting implication is that EA Sports is legally claiming that they shouldn't be involved in Ed O'Bannon's lawsuit, because their hands are forced by the NCAA. If they directly negotiate licensing with the schools or conferences, then that argument goes away, and their exposure is greater. More importantly, the NCAA has been a shield of sorts for the individual schools in cases like this. If Alabama (or the SEC) starts directly selling rights to player likenesses to EA, they have huge exposure to legal action. And that's true whether they sell those rights at what they're worth, or do what the NCAA did and artificially price-fix those rights at $0. I'm very intrigued to see what happens next. EA has announced that their plan is to just negotiate with conferences and/or individual schools and retain all the rights they've had in the past (except the NCAA name and logo, which no one cares about). They're already used to paying extra for player likenesses in the Madden franchise, so legal losses are a lot less scary for them. For the schools, whose business model is built around free labor, those potential legal losses are a lot scarier. But I have to think that guaranteed short-term money from EA, combined with confidence in their legal teams, will lead to everyone signing up.

So in other words, it was a very necessary warning.

Correct. And continuing on to say that Marrone's history as head coach is one of de-emphasizing special teams. So even the one (possible) excuse for our special teams coach's poor track record will probably be irrelevant in this case. But who knows? I'm sure Marrone has learned a lot from his first 4 years of HC experience. Maybe "special teams need to be a higher priority" will be one of them.

Very good post! I know precisely about Chandler81 either as a mod or a poster, but I do know that viewed unto themselves, his posts in this thread and the Byrd thread come across as inappropriate for a mod. Maybe there's some past history that justifies such behavior; I wouldn't know either way. But regardless, I think there are better and classier ways to disagree with a poster, whether they be amateur or professional, anonymous or public.

You know it! NCAA was on my mind again after the EA announcement. Regarding the bolded, what's your source on that? I'd heard some time ago that the NCAA tournament TV deal was the primary source of income for the NCAA, and that they kept most of the money, but I confess that I don't remember where. It always made sense to me, though, because the recent conference re-alignments have been all about football (except the Catholic 7 splitting from Conference USA The Big East). Anyway, I did a quick bit of googling, and I can't find a direct corroboration of your 96% figure. Closest I've got is this, which says that "96 percent of [all] NCAA revenue benefits the membership through distributions or services". But only 60% is distributed directly to the schools -- about 23% or so is mostly tied up in mysteries programs and services, most of which are probably as helpful to schools and athletes as the "convenience fee" that TicketMaster charges. 13% is for the cost of putting on championships, which should probably count for these purposes, because that's overhead the schools/conferences don't currently have to pay. Of course, the schools also aren't receiving the revenue from those championships, which is significant. Or more accurately, school are only receiving 60% of the revenue from those championships, since money is fungible. Anyway, I was overstating it a bit, but my point largely stands: The NCAA is deeply dependent on its basketball tournament for operating income: "In most years, rights fees have accounted for about 85 percent of all NCAA revenue. In 2009-10, the media agreements constituted 86 percent of NCAA revenue. Most of the remaining 14 percent in 2009-10 came from championships (mostly ticket sales)." Last year was comparatively low at just 81% of revenue stemming from TV rights. (They don't give numbers for non-basketball TV rights, but based on the math, I think everything else combined is less than $1 million. Just dividing the CBS/Turner payout from last year into the NCAA's total revenue gives you 80.9%, so no other TV rights have a significant impact.) This year projects relatively high at 88% (per the same page). They don't give any breakdown of the "championship" (ticket sales) revenue, but my guess is that it's nearly all tickets to the NCAA tournament. Okay, so what's the point? The point is that in the big picture, the NCAA makes nearly all their money off of their basketball tournament, and can't survive without it. In the current system, schools are only getting something like 75% of that revenue back. It is my belief that the current environment of big-time collegiate athletics is one of extreme desperation for money, and I don't think big conferences will be happy long-term with the NCAA's huge cut off the top. One thing I definitely need to concede, though, is that in the short term, there'll be no changes. I didn't realize how much of the money did go back to the schools/conferences. And in the short term, the NCAA does provide a very valuable service: it keeps costs way down by ensuring free labor. I no longer think the superconference movement alone is enough to kill the NCAA. It'll take legal victories or the NCAA totally passing the buck to schools/conferences on the legal front. Once schools get to the point where they have to compensate players, the NCAA starts to lose its value. Maybe the NCAA will be smart enough to adapt and survive, or maybe the major conferences will be afraid enough of change that they'll continue to cut the NCAA in, but I hope not.

Fair point. However, SU's special teams were typically quite poor under Marrone, and appeared to be very low on the practice totem pole. I don't recall if he ever had a coach on staff whose sole job was special teams, but if he did, it was only 1 year, maybe 2 at the most. I know Marrone coached special teams himself one year, and I believe the D-coordinator coached them another year. I think another year, special teams were divided among 3 different assistant coaches. In other words, I am expecting some BAD special teams from the Bills this year. Depending on who returns kicks, that could still be exciting though. I don't know how much a coach can screw up a dynamic kick returner.

Don't need to start their own league; they already have those. Just need to start their own basketball tournament. The NIT has been a post-season tournament for ages, and used to be roughly on par with the NCAA tournament. Hypothetically speaking, if the Pac-16, Big 16 "Ten", 16-member SEC, and maybe a 16-member ACC? decided to stage a b-ball tournament to compete with the NCAA, it would be a huge draw, and could very conceivably beat the NCAA Tournament in the ratings. You are correct that the current football system gives tremendous profits to the schools/conferences, and they have no incentive to blow it up. Just minor tweaks like expanding conferences to add major media markets for their terrible cable networks. However, the current basketball system is comparatively very low-revenue, because the NCAA pockets the TV rights for its tournament, and that alone is most of the TV money for the entire basketball season. We know that the major conferences are extremely profit-focused these days. I wouldn't be surprised to see them make a move to take that tournament money for themselves. Possibly a compromise, wherein the NCAA heavily shares the tournament proceeds with the major conferences in return for a commitment to not start a rival tournament. As to your guess: The NCAA only has power or authority when things happen 1 school at a time. The only reason playing NCAA-sanctioned athletics means anything at all is because nearly every school has signed on to the NCAA. But if all the major conferences walked together, who cares if the NCAA dropped all of their football programs? They'd just continue playing each other in non-NCAA games. The BCS was formed by the (then) six major conferences working together -- not by the NCAA. They've shown that they're willing and able to handle their own business when it comes to monetizing college football's postseason. Now, how likely is my scenario? Right now, extremely unlikely. But if, in a couple years, we move to 4 superconferences with very few mid-majors left, I think it's pretty feasible. Especially if the NCAA loses a lawsuit in the interim. I really think that if the major conferences detect weakness in the NCAA, they will strike.

Ah, but you're forgetting about college FAs from past years. Freddie, Garrison Sanborn, David Snow, and Shawn Powell are all pretty likely to make the final roster, so we're looking at more like a half dozen UDFAs if your guess is correct about the rookies.

I disagree. Something subtle like 2 stripes on the sleeve instead of 3, or a ridge of red & blue around the collar instead of just white, sure. (Or the differences between official jerseys and DHGate knockoffs.) But I don't think it's possible to look at someone wearing the Nike jerseys and not see that collar. It's a major prominent feature right beneath the person's face. I feel like to not notice it, you would have to be unable to tell the difference between a t-shirt and a polo shirt.

December 21st, 1941: I just heard about a Japanese sneak attack! I despise the Axis powers! We need to do something about this!

Wow, very interesting. If true, it's hard to imagine jersey sales being very brisk once the season starts. Who wants to buy a non-throwback jersey that doesn't match what you see on the field every week?

Nice. Wish the Bills would follow suit. Or Nike would just get over its stupid plastic collar that does nothing and make a regular collar.

It's a decent piece, but the big point the author leaves out is that he's comparing the best 4 years of Fitzpatrick's career, by far, to 4 typical Cutler years. Actually, you could argue that both his full years starting in Denver (with a good O-line and real receivers) were better than his average season in Chicago. I honestly don't feel like Cutler is overrated at all. Does anyone think he's a top 5 QB? I've never seen anyone say that. I doubt anyone besides Chicago homers would put him in the top 10, either. Fitz was about the 20th-best starter over the last 4 years, Cutler's probably something like 12th or 13th. The differences are: 1.) Cutler had no O-line, whereas Fitz had at least a decent one, possibly really good. (We'll see how much of the O-line's success was due to Chan's scheme.) 2.) Cutler isn't a limited player -- he can make all the throws, and has shown in individual games that he can win a game almost singlehandedly. He's not consistent enough to do it regularly, but Fitz was always a limited guy who needed a scheme to get guys open for him. Once defenses figured out how to play against that scheme, Fitz was pretty much toast.

Hahaha, that's wonderful! You know an argument has gone on too long and everyone's out of something to say when someone pulls the old, "you don't complain when you unfairly benefit" canard. Well done. So this thread is over now, but it was fun while it lasted. Kudos to SJBF for the post of the thread -- wonderful Q&A, really got to the heart of it. Kudos to everyone else for participating, and best wishes to everyone.

Haha, true! In fact, I would have to keep shooting myself in the foot every year. But in my defense, some rich guy is paying me a lot of money every time I shoot myself in the foot. I'm not sure I follow. One issue is that the Bills want home games front-loaded in the schedule because it's tough to sell December games. That will be heavily affected by improving the team, yes. But that's not what I mean by "the issue", because to me, that's a totally independent issue than the one the Bills are complaining about, which is that they play 6 teams coming off extra rest this year, whereas 3 teams play zero, including a team in their division. This is not a problem that could be solved by improving the on-field product. In fact, it would be a much bigger problem if the team was better. Playing 6 rested teams instead of 2 or 3 might cost any team a win or two. If that's the difference between 8-8 and 6-10, I don't really care. If that's the difference between 10-6 and 9-7, I care a lot. No one has bothered to actually spell out how front-loading home games means that your opponents have to be coming off bye weeks or Thursday night games. Thank you. Obviously I care more because the Bills got the short end of the stick this year, but it would still be unfair if the Bills played 0 rested teams and the Patriots played 6. Don't get me wrong, I'd be very pleased with that specific unfairness, but it would still be unfair. Right. Last year, the Bills played 4 teams coming off byes or Thursday games, including Houston after the Bills' own bye. But they didn't get that front-loaded home schedule they want. So what was the NFL's excuse last year? Not really. The Toronto people want it to occur after the CFL season ends (around Thanksgiving-ish). The Bills, after getting pasted by divisional foes the first 2 years in Toronto, now request that the Toronto game be an NFC opponent. Since there are only 2 NFC opponents that come to Buffalo, and only about 5-6 weeks in which the game can be scheduled, the options are somewhat limited. The NFL can't just make up the whole schedule, then decide on which of the two NFC @ Buffalo games moves to Toronto, because both could easily wind up during the CFL season. Nor can they make up the schedule, then pick any home date post-Thanksgiving to switch to Toronto, because that might leave them with only divisional opponents. Now, that constraint shouldn't translate to "play 6 teams coming off extra rest" (or even 4 or 5), but it is a real constraint that other teams don't have. Rogers buys all the tickets from the Bills as part of their deal, then resells them at a price of Rogers' choosing. But the more money the Bills get for the series, the higher the price Rogers must charge to break even. So the Bills definitely do impact the price.

That's a fair point to make, but I still disagree. We all understand why the Bills are doing the Toronto series, and I think we all agree that from a competitive standpoint, it is a huge detriment and very stupid. But I don't think that doing one stupid thing disqualifies you from complaining if something unfair happens to you. To make an analogy, if I shot myself in the foot, that would be really stupid, hurt me a lot, and 100% my fault. But if someone then stomps on that foot (or even the other foot), don't I still have the right to complain? EDIT: Having said that, I should make it clear that the Toronto series does seem to be a legitimate hamper to the schedule-maker, since the Toronto people want the game to always occur after the CFL season ends, and the Bills want the game to be an NFC opponent. I still don't think we can throw up our hands and say that it's inevitable or fair that the Bills would play 6 teams coming off byes or Thursday games, while 3 teams play none. Or that the Falcons should play 4 or 5 teams coming off byes or Thursday games while 3 teams play none.

Do you mean the late-season home game scheduling issue? If so, then you are correct, but that has very little to do with the discussion at hand. MattM was talking about the issue being discussed in this thread, which is that there is a large disparity between how many rested opponents some teams play and how many rested opponents some other teams play. That issue would be much more important if the Bills did field a competitive team. Last year's team might have picked up a win or two if none of their opponents had been coming off a Thursday game or bye week, but that still would leave them well outside the playoffs.

It's a nice start, but I still don't think it's really relevant. Yeah, the Bills suck. What's that got to do with their schedule? The Bills had a favorable schedule in terms of rest in 2009 and went 6-10. Maybe if they'd had the same home/road opponents, but this year's unfavorable scheduling in terms of rest, they'd have gone 4-12. Maybe this year's team has the talent of a 8-8 team, but playing those teams coming off byes will cost them a win or two? A good second step would be to compare preseason over/under lines to actual performance. My guess is that you'd see a small but barely significant factor that suggests that playing a lot of rested teams hurts your win total. I think it's pretty complicated though, because some evidence suggests that playing a road game after a bye is a big boost, but playing a home game after a bye might not be any better than a regular home game. Also, the NFL schedule is so short, it's hard to get enough of a sample to really draw any conclusions. Not to mention the fact that over/unders and point spreads sometimes take things like bye weeks into account, and are sometimes adjusted to account for public tendencies (example: the Cowboys over/under always runs high, because there are a ton of Cowboys fans and they like to be on their team to win). What is really nice about this piece is that it pretty conclusively proves that there is no anti-Bills scheduling conspiracy. These are pretty random results. The Bills' schedule luck was very middle-of-the-road in 2011 & 2010. They got lucky in 2009, and unlucky in 2012 & 2013.

I disagree. Chris Brown's actual complaint boils down to: 1.) The schedule this year is unfair because some teams face a lot more rested opponents than others. 2.) Measures should be taken in future years to lessen that disparity. 3.) Extra attention should be paid to divisional games, and those should never have 1 team rested while the other isn't. I don't really buy the divisional stuff, but I do agree with the first two parts (and did back when the schedule first came out and we had a long thread about it on here). No one really seems to be disputing the first part, just what the cause of it is. But my point is that it doesn't matter if it's just coincidence or if it's a massive league-wide conspiracy or anything in between. The point Brown is making isn't how this unfairness came to be, just that it exists. I personally tend to think that playing opponents off bye weeks is pretty random, because I doubt that the schedule maker looks at that aspect of it. But I don't know. Given some of the NFL's past scheduling shenanigans, I wouldn't be shocked if certain teams were protected and everything else was random. I would be shocked if the NFL was actually screwing the Bills over on purpose. What's the point? What's the motive? Doesn't make any sense. As for Chris Brown's second point, that this issue should be corrected going forward, there seems to be a significant body of contrarians (led by JW and Tim Graham) who think that it shouldn't or can't be corrected, because they insist that it's extremely hard or impossible to build an NFL schedule without such drastic imbalances. I haven't yet seen any actual evidence offered up for this, just an a priori assertion that it can't be done. I don't buy it. Nor do I buy the counter-argument that since the Bills have specific scheduling requests that were met, it must then follow that they play 6 teams coming off rest, while the Patriots (and others) don't play any. Or that front-loading the Bills' schedule with home games necessitates playing teams coming off byes and Thursday night games. I don't see a connection there. If the Rogers Centre has limited availability, then maybe that's a real factor in terms of hamstringing the Bills' schedule, since the NFL is sorta-limited to only 2 potential opponents for that game. But I haven't seen anything suggesting that the Rogers Centre has limited availability. If this complaint of the Bills' is so off-base and outrageous, how about proving it? Go through past schedules and find evidence that playing a bunch of rested teams is not a disadvantage. Or that 2013 is a massive anomaly and typically schedules are more balanced in this regard. (That one's hard to do, because we only have 2 years of consistent Thursday night games.) Or the media-types who are ripping the Bills could call up the NFL office and see what their response is. Maybe the problem is really that there's a ton of "blackout" dates at various stadiums because of concerts, etc., and this is really the best they can do. Again, I think it's just that no one in the scheduling office cares enough either to look at games against bye teams, or to change things if they do notice a disparity. If they did care, I'm pretty confident they could build a balanced schedule without jeopardizing any higher priorities.

Re: the bolded -- I expect that for the most part, they do let him decide on his own angles and content. But they don't need to tell him what to write or, more importantly, what not to write. He knows who pays his salary. How often do you publicly bash your boss or your company? If you answered anything other than "never", you are in a tiny minority. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Chris Brown isn't going to be distributing any content that puts the Bills in a negative light. Maybe if there was a legitimate news story that was negative -- a Bill getting arrested, e.g. -- he might cover it, but he's never going to write a general coverage article that's impartial. Similar thing with the NFL Network. I've heard Rich Eisen say that he's never gotten anything from the NFL in terms of what they can and can't say, and I believe him. But I've also never seen anything but positive coverage on the NFL Network, because no one who works there is stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them.