Cash

Recommended reading for anyone interested in comp picks: http://bloggingthebeast.com/2013/01/27/2013-nfl-compensatory-pick-projections/ The 2012 predictions go into a little more details about the individual predictions: http://bloggingthebeast.com/2012/02/03/2012-compensatory-pick-projections/ I'm hoping this guy does a 2014 prediction once the FA period is over. Anyway, we're at 2 lost and 2 gained so far. Assuming BillsDaily's front office page is correct, here are our remaining unsigned free agents: Kyle Moore Spencer Johnson Ruvell Martin Corey McIntyre Tyler Thigpen Kirk Morrison Remember that low minimum-salary type deals generally don't count. (According to Spotrac, Rinehart got 1yr/$1.75mil, so he should still count.) It's hard for me to imagine Martin, Morrison, or Thigpen getting enough above the minimum to count in the formula. And frankly, McIntyre's likely to be pretty close as well, but might have a shot at getting a decent-ish contract. That leaves Kyle Moore and Spencer Johnson. On the whole, I tend to doubt that we'll wind up with any comp picks next year. Keep in mind that we still have some more roster-filling to do, and may very well sign a few more FAs (who weren't cut by their teams) to above-minimum deals. Looking at the way the rules are set up, I think this would be my FA gameplan if I were a GM: 1.) Target "unwanted" players whenever possible (cuts, non-tendered RFAs or ERFAs like Donald Jones or David Nelson) 2.) Try to sign guys to minimum-level deals whenever possible. Yeah, every team does that, duh, but I mean being willing to take the last LB left for the minimum instead of needing Manny Lawson for 4 years/$12 mil. The guy you're left with probably won't be as good as the guy you wanted, or maybe will be as good a player but a worse fit for your team, but he'll probably still be pretty good, and you get an extra draft pick in the bargain. 3.) Be aware of the way the matching works. For example, once Houston lost Super Mario last year, he was obviously going to net them a 3rd-rounder UNLESS they failed to have a net loss of free agents. So if you've already lost a guy to a huge deal, be extra careful with your signings. If you don't expect to lose any significant free agents, you can disregard rules 1 and 2 because you're only giving up maybe a 6th or 7th round pick at best.

Doubtful. The #1 priority for comp picks is "a net loss of free agents". We've signed 2 and lost 2. (Kolb and Fitz don't count because they were cut, and I'm pretty sure Jones doesn't count because we declined to tender him.) Unless someone signs C-Mac and we sign no other FAs, the most we can get is a 7th-round pick. If we had signed only 1 FA to cancel out Rinehart, then I think we'd be in line for a 4th or 5th rounder for Levitre.

Yes, and I think his name is Geno Smith. I'm not super confident in that statement, but outside of extremely-rare prospects like Luck or RG3 or Peyton or Elway, you can't be very confident in any prospect's ability to become a franchise QB. Smith's resume is good enough for me to be comfortable with that risk at #8, but no one else's is.

I actually agree with their logic on Cox & Calloway. In the modern/free agency era, most draft picks make the active roster as rookies, or at the very least make the practice squad. Calloway was so bad that he didn't even survive the first wave of cuts. That's bad even for a 7th-rounder. You may have a legit beef on Lankster, although I'm not sure if PFF's methodology only counts contributions for the team who drafted the player. If it does, then I think it's about right, because Lankster didn't stick with the Bills very long.

Decent signing. Glad it's a one year deal, especially since the Bills didn't get a bargain. Branch and Lawson are definitely middle-class NFL salaries, not dumpster dives. I'm still very curious to see how the D shakes out under Pettine, but you can never have too many big men up front. And Branch played 55% of the snaps on an excellent D last year, so we can reasonably be sure he doesn't suck.

I always enjoy reading FO, but always get angry at their arrogance and unwillingness/reluctance to question or evaluate their own methodology. For example, this piece contains the following sentence: If 62.5% of the league is "below average", shouldn't that immediately suggest that you're using the wrong value to determine the average? Now, it's possible that the numbers he's using are fine, and there are legitimate reasons for this: i.e., sometimes draft picks are artificially low, but never artificially high. But that idea isn't explored or even acknowledged in the piece. And since the author's using a statistical analysis to determine the average, rather than an arbitrary definition, there's no obvious reason why the league should be below average as a whole. It suggests to me that his original model for draft efficiency (here) was flawed in a way that overstates expected draft value. It doesn't mean that the author's analysis is completely meaningless, but it's infuriating to me that someone could be so obsessed with analytics and next-level thinking (i.e., "let's show how wrong the conventional wisdom is"), but never question his own methodology.

Yeah, can't really disagree with any of their ratings. Maybe Wood should be a bit higher, but like they point out, he was a first-round pick, and hasn't seen the field as much as you'd want. I enjoyed that read; thanks for passing along.

Right. Our hypothetical QB drafted at #8 this year would get just about what Tannehill got last year, presumably a smidge more. Let's say that after 2013, there's about $9 million left on his contract, all of it guaranteed. Let's also say he looked pretty bad as a rookie in 2013, and Murray/Bridgewater/Boyd/etc. all had great years and look like great prospects. There would definitely be some temptation to pick a QB again in 2014. But would the Bills pull the trigger on a new QB, knowing that they have to pay the 2013 guy another $9 million whether he plays or not, and also knowing that many great QBs had very unimpressive rookie seasons? I think the answer's no. The natural tendency of most decision-makers would be to justify sticking with the 2013, with the rationale that he needs time and commitment to develop, and that the presence of another first-rounder on the roster will shatter 2013's confidence and ruin his career forever. Having said that, it's still not impossible. But it's important to consider that with guaranteed rookie contracts, there is no plausible scenario where a team cuts a top-16 QB (or any player) after 1 or 2 years. They might trade him for peanuts, but they won't take the chance of the player clearing waivers and getting paid to do nothing. Not just for cap implications, but also for the real-world cash outlay to a player no longer on the roster. So for a team to draft QBs in the first round, especially the high first round, they would probably have to have a conscious strategy of developing 2 QBs simultaneously with a notion of keeping 1 as a good backup and maybe trading him for picks before his contract is up. Most current/old school NFL thinkers seem to think that a team CAN'T develop 2 QBs simultaneously, because there aren't enough practice reps available. That's why there was so much surprise when Washington drafted a second QB last year, and also why Mike Lombardi repeatedly blasted Pete Carroll for having a 3-way QB competition between TJax, Flynn, & Wilson last year. Lombardi's argument was that with Wilson a rookie and Flynn only having played essentially 2 NFL games, they both needed as many practice reps as possible to develop, and the Seahawks couldn't afford to split reps/playing time in training camp/preseason as part of a QB competition. He also argued that TJax was still young/developing and also needed practice reps, but that sounded dumb even at the time, so I ignored it. I agreed with the rest of his argument, and was very intrigued by how terribly wrong it turned out to be. Was it just that Russell Wilson is way better than Lombardi realized, or was his logic flawed? Old-school defenders should be quick to point out that Wilson actually was pretty mediocre to bad for the first part of the season, and maybe if he'd gotten the lion's share of the practice reps all along, he'd have developed a few games quicker? Anyway, I wanted to bring up the Lombardi/Seahawks commentary, because Lombardi is now GM of the Browns, and has an interesting decision in front of him. I don't remember him being particularly high or low on Weeden last year, but he has no specific loyalties there. Weeden's contract only pays about $2mil a year, but at least the first 3 years are guaranteed. Lombardi can't feasibly cut Weeden and shell out something like $4mil for an empty roster spot. So he needs to decide whether to roll with Weeden as "the man" or bring in some competition. By his own argument last year, he should commit to Weeden, and make sure the coaching staff gives him as much experience as possible to Weeden's development. But maybe Seattle's success convinced Lombardi that he was wrong, and he'll take a different tack this year? Possible, but if he goes that route, I think it's a lot more likely that he drafts a QB in the 2nd or 3rd "to provide competition", and I would also expect Weeden to quickly get yanked in favor of the rookie in that scenario. I.e., the same situation that happened with Losman & Edwards.

Never should've been drafted as high as he was, but DHB is a real NFL receiver with excellent speed and size. Right now we have 1 real NFL receiver on the roster, 2 if you count Graham. And unless you really stretch and count Easley, we don't have anyone who's both big and fast. Not saying we needed to get DHB per se, but I would've been happy if the Bills had signed him. I would like to see them sign a real NFL receiver or two at some point. We only have 2, maybe 3, draft picks that can be counted on to produce viable players this year. (I.e., starters or regular rotation players, like a #3 receiver for example.) You have to have 5 skill position players on the field on every play. Here are all of our current skill position players: Spiller Jackson Choice Stevie Graham Brad Smith Easley Kevin Elliot Chris Hogan Mike Caussin Lee Smith Joe Sawyer (Chandler isn't on the list yet because he won't be ready to start the season, and there's no guarantee he'll be effective when he comes back anyway) Considering that in most sets, only 1 of the RBs will be on the field, we are in especially rough shape. Four of the non-RBs will need to be starters, and probably an additional 3 will need to be regular rotation players (every team runs some 2-TE and 4-WR sets). I only see guy on the non-RB list that should be a starter in the NFL, and maybe 2-3 additional rotation players at best. So we just need to add 3 extra starters at the skill positions, plus a potential franchise QB, plus a starting LG. At this point, I really think the Bills are planning on bringing in 20-30 UDFAs and winding up with at least a half dozen playing regular snaps, including 1-2 at WR. Which is kind of odd, since the Bills just decided to let go 2 former UDFA WRs in Jones and Nelson.

No problem, just seemed like you were harping on it by quoting yourself. I see that as a really unique situation in a different era that is essentially unrepeatable. (Jerry Jones, Herschel Walker trade, draft picks valued differently, etc.) And I agree with your "more common" statement, if only because it *can't* get less common, having never happened before with 2 consecutive regular drafts. I don't know the particulars of the Steve Walsh situation, but the supplemental draft has always been a different animal than the regular draft. If Andrew Luck had gone into the supplemental draft last year, I think nearly every team in the league would have bid a first-round pick on him, even if it was only for the purpose of trading him. Since you get the player immediately, but don't give up the draft pick until the following year, and since the two draft orders don't correlate, teams behave differently in the supplemental draft than in the regular one. Cleveland's an interesting test case. New owner, new everything, and on top of that, last year's first-round QB is 30 years old. I wouldn't be shocked to see them draft Barkley in the first. I wouldn't even be surprised to see them acquire a QB with a 2nd or 3rd round pick, whether that's via draft or trade. As for Jax, they strongly proved my point last year by making no attempt to draft a QB (in a historically good class) despite the amazingly bad rookie year from Blaine Gabbert AND a new head coach. I have no idea what direction they'll go in this year -- now with a new GM and new new head coach, and a better-but-still-bad 2nd year from Gabbert, they could try to justify giving Gabbert another shot, or could draft Geno Smith at #3. Or trade for Tebow, even though the GM says he doesn't want Tebow. Ponder & Locker are good examples of why it's not wise to draft a QB in the first round just because 2nd-rounders usually don't succeed. If teams start drafting 2nd-round prospects in the first, the already-low success rate of first-rounders will drop even lower. I hadn't heard that about Cincy, but it would certainly turn heads if they drafted a QB in the first 3 rounds. It reminded me immediately of the Bills drafting Trent Edwards in the 3rd round in 2007. That was 3 years after JP Losman was drafted in the first round, but only 1.5 years of Losman starting. Not to mention that Edwards was drafted (by a new coaching staff) immediately after Losman's first full year as a starter (and only good year in the NFL). Heads were certainly turned by that pick, and there were a number of (correct) whispers that Jauron and his Havoc Staff didn't feel that Losman was the answer. That was a good deal of media scrutiny for just a 3rd-round pick. Likewise, there would be a lot of raised eyebrows if Cincy took Manuel (or any QB) in the 2nd or 3rd round this year, but neither situation would compare to something like Miami drafting a QB #1 this year. For a team to be willing to take the media hit of "giving up" on last year's first-round QB just 1 year later, they'd need to have a very strong reason. NFL organizations are typically very risk-averse. Most teams would be too worried about the media hit to make such a bold move. Again, I'm not saying it'll never happen, just that I think it'll be extremely rare. I'll actually retract my earlier statement that it'll be a while, because I didn't realize how prime the Cleveland situation is for them to draft another QB this year. According to this article (and others, this was just the first one a quick google search turned up), the contracts for the first 16 picks (including Tannehill) are fully guaranteed. This doesn't have to be the case -- I remember there being a sticking point last year for draftees in the late teens who were trying to get their deals fully guaranteed, so it's negotiable. This is a cap wrinkle I actually wanted to bring up, because it does impact the discussion of drafting QBs #1 in consecutive years. Most pundits/fans agree pretty much universally that the new rookie salary structure decreases the risk of drafting a QB high, since you're not stuck with a Sam Bradford-level contract for said QB. But when you consider that in the top half of the first round, your QB is getting a 4-year *guaranteed* deal, it alters the thinking a little bit. That salary structure is set up for a bad team to pick their "franchise" QB and commit to him for 3-4 years whether he's good or not. Drafting 2 QBs back-to-back is still somewhat feasible, but going 3 in a row is basically impossible unless a team can trade at least one of them. Teams aren't going to want to carry fully guaranteed contracts on the bench if they can avoid it. It's doable if a QB is riding the pine because he's being groomed to be the starter, and probably also if the team considers him a quality backup, but that's about it. I still say that the default position for rebuilding teams will be what it's been -- draft a QB high, make him the face of the franchise, commit to him for several years until he's proven that he can't do it, then repeat. (Sprinkle in a few games or whole seasons of starting the Holcombs/Fitzes/Kolbs of the world in there as well.) Barley is a strong grain, but too inconsistent for the first round. I'd be happy with it in the 2nd, but I only have first-round grades on Wheat and Rice.

Do you have an example from the last 25 years, or an example that involves the regular draft rather than the supplemental draft? Pointing out this unusual situation many times doesn't turn it into a common situation. I also don't think an isolated example from 1989 bears much relevance to the NFL of today. I continue to maintain that whether teams should or not, it will be some time before a team drafts QBs in the top 10 (or even first round) in consecutive drafts. I also think that if/when it does happen, it'll be one of two situations: Either ownership/GM/coaching staff (or at the very least GM & coaching staff) changed between QB #1 & QB #2, or a successful team with a strong reputation in the media drafts QBs in consecutive years in an "outside the box" attempt to replace a retiring QB. We could see the Patriots try such a move in the 2 years after Brady retires, for example. Actually, with the Patriots' penchant for stockpiling picks, I could even see them going into the Brady-less draft with 2 first rounders, and spending them both on QBs. Would still surprise me, but wouldn't shock me. If the Bills draft a QB at #8 this year, I would be shocked if they drafted a QB in the first round in 2014. My only other contribution to this thread is to say that it's depressing that the 2013 draft hasn't happened yet and I'm already looking forward to the 2014 draft. I think this is the least confidence I've ever had in the Bills' ability to field a winning team.

Where's all this anger coming from? Were you guys molested by an April Fool's prankster?

I'm surprised it's just a 1 year deal. I guess Davis is really optimistic about his recovery process and thinks he'll have a nice year this year. If I'm a team, and my doctors say he'll play this year but not really be himself, I want that 1-year deal because I might get him really cheap next year, and I have no risk in case he's never himself again. As for us not getting him, I'm kinda disappointed, but not really about Davis specifically. He's a good player when healthy, but also a major knucklehead, and there's no guarantee he's able to play this year. Having 2 decent TEs who are injured isn't the same as having 1 who is healthy. I'm more disappointed that the Bills continue to not do anything to improve the 2013 team. Was the plan really to sign Manny Lawson, then sit back and pop the bubbly?

I like the idea of trading down, and I'm comfortable with the idea of trading current picks for future picks (especially since the Bills seem to have little to no interest in improving the 2013 roster). However, giving up #8 for a 2nd-rounder and a future #1 seems like a bit of a stretch. I think even the Chiefs or Jaguars would need to add more in to make it fair. And I also doubt that any team in the top ten would be optimistic enough that adding a second top-10 player in a relatively stud-free draft would justify the risk of giving up next year's first-rounder. I think a more likely scenario would be trading down once or multiple times, then trading your new pick (somewhere in the 20s) to a good team (or at least a team that THINKS it's good) for their 2nd rounder this year and 1st next year. Then you hope that team crashes and burns, but even if it doesn't, you've picked up an extra pick over the 2 year span, and that's not counting whatever you got for trading down from #8.

Nope. Multiply Davis' numbers by 1.8 and you get 180% of his numbers, which I think we can all agree would be a good signing. To get 80% of Davis, you need to multiply by 0.8. But now that you bring it up, I'm more interested in getting 180% of Davis pre-injury. Maybe we can sign him on the cheap?

Seems like the obvious solution is to take Davis' numbers only as a starter, multiply them by 0.8, and call it a day.

FYI, Levitre signed for $7.8 million/year, not $8.5. http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/tennessee-titans/andy-levitre/

I agree with most of this. My first quibble is that I really don't like the idea of taking Barkley at #8, although I would probably talk myself into it after it happened. I'm not hung up on the whole USC thing like it's a curse or anything -- Barkley may well be successful in the NFL. I just can't imagine it happening in Buffalo. To go from being a major LA celebrity at USC to being QB of this moribund Bills team, I dunno. Sanchez worked for the Jets (for a while) because being QB of the Jets is a step up, rockstar-wise, from being QB for USC. If we draft Barkley, I hope I'm wrong. But for the record, I didn't even like Barkley last year, and his numbers took a significant hit this year. My other quibble is that if we do draft a guy in the 2nd, he pretty much needs to start. Maybe not the whole year, and maybe not Day 1, but we need to see at least 6-8 starts out of him to have an idea if he's got anything or not. I don't really disagree with your logic, but it seems to me that you and Kirby are arguing different things. You are advocating for what an NFL team SHOULD do in an ideal world; Kirby is arguing for what an NFL team WILL do in the actual world. I tend to agree with Kirby. I think it might* be great if a team could draft a QB at #8 overall, start him all year, then draft another QB in the top 10 the following year, and have a truly open competition for the starting job. But I don't see it happening any time soon, and especially not with the Bills. If it's anyone, it'll be a team with a rock-solid reputation in the media (the Patriots, Steelers, and Packers come to mind) who can safely pull such a move without getting pilloried in the media. I don't see the Bills as the franchise willing to take the heat for thinking so far outside of the box, or being willing/able to think that far outside the box in the first place. And they certainly haven't earned any benefit of the doubt from the fans/media. If they go against conventional wisdom, they will get ripped for it. *Or it might not be great -- perhaps the need to get practice reps/game time for both would stunt the development of both. Maybe they would usually both struggle during games, like most rookies do, and wind up being juggled in and out of the lineup until both of their confidences were destroyed. Maybe the coaching staff thinks they have a clear winner early on, commits to that guy, and chooses wrongly. Maybe one of the QBs holds out or demands a trade before you can even get them both into training camp. I don't know that any of these things would happen frequently or ever, but I don't know that the experiment would work, either. It would be interesting to see someone try it. If there was ever a good time for it, it was Jacksonville last year after Gabbert's disastrous rookie season. The Packers almost did a similar move after Favre left, when then-inexperienced former first-rounder Aaron Rodgers was poised to take over: They drafted Brian Brohm in the 2nd and Matt Flynn in the 7th, prompting pundits to suggest that they weren't super confident in Rodgers. However, I don't recall anything close to a competition for the starting job -- I think Rodgers was the presumed/unquestioned starter all through camp and preseason. Brohm and Flynn mostly just fought it out for the backup job.

Who?

I'm not very familiar with GB's cap situation or the particulars of Finley's contract, but my guess is that they can afford to (over)pay Finley for this year, and will probably target a TE pretty early in the draft or target a potential FA TE likely to hit the market next year, and plan on cutting Finley after this year unless he plays like a world-beater. (And Finley does have the physical tools to play like a world-beater, except for his hands of stone.) I wouldn't be surprised to see them sign Fred Davis to a multi-year deal, with the logic that he'll recover from his injury this year, they'll get to see a few games of him, and he can come back in 2014 and be a solid starter for them. Of course, it's also possible that the $8mil for Finley hamstrings their attempts to fix their D, and said defensive problems also keep them from drafting a possible replacement, and this looks like a major blunder. But since the Packers have been so consistently good in recent history, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have a (good) plan OR that they'll be able to come up with a plan to overcome a problem like this. Ultimately, I think the bottom line for the Packers was that Finley is a useful player, and they'd rather overpay for 1 year then lose him for nothing and have an immediate hole to fill. It's not necessarily the correct attitude. Maybe they'd have been better off cutting Finley at the start of the league year and going after Brandon Myers or Dustin Keller? Neither of those guys signed for big money and both are arguably better than Finley. I doubt the combined cap hit of Myers/Keller's contract + Finley's dead money would equal the $8mil they'll wind up paying to Finley this year.

Yeah, pretty much. As to the original post, I don't care for it. Yeah, no one's perfect. So what? I'm supposed to feel better about the sad-sack Bills because the eternally-good Packers are overpaying for their TE this year? Is that the equalizer that's going to put our teams on the same level? Besides, if Finley ever fixes his dropsies, he'll actually be worth that paycheck. And if he doesn't, they'll just cut him next year. Big whoop. I think you might have found a different reaction to your OP if it had been titled differently. As it stood, many of us (me included) interpreted it as meaning something along the lines of, "see, the Bills aren't so bad, even the Packers screw up sometimes!" My apologies for misreading your intent, but I do think the subject line was misleading in that regard.

The prevailing logic for most of the "draft 2 QBs" crowd is that drafting 2 increases the likelihood of at least 1 being good. (And if both wind up being good, so much the better.) My main problem with that is that it's hard to tell if a QB will be good after 1 year, especially if he didn't play all year. No one wants to give up on the next Steve Young (seriously, go look at his Tampa Bay stats his first two years -- they stink), but no one wants to keep starting Heath Shuler year after year. To use a more recent example, how about Josh Freeman or Sam Bradford? Both put up "decent for a rookie" stats their first years*, and both looked like they were developing into excellent starters as you watched them as rookies. Now, a few years later, it's not too late for either, but Bucs/Rams fans can't be feeling too great about their QB situation. This is a difficult-enough prospect with 1 rookie QB, but adding a second into the mix only makes things tougher. Not necessarily much tougher, especially if one of them wins (or is given) the job early on, but definitely not easier. Do you really think the Bills should or will draft another QB in round 1 in 2014 if whomever we draft at #8 puts up a middling stat line? (And by the way, based on a quick check of pro-football-reference for some random bust QBs and stud QBs who popped into my head, most of the stat lines were pretty similar: completion percentage between 53-60%, about the same number of TDs & INTs within a couple either way, 200-250 yards/game... there's not a lot to differentiate between busts and Hall of Famers through 1 year, at least to the naked eye.) *On further review, Freeman's rookie stats were pretty bad in 9 starts, but I remember watching a bunch of those games and thinking he looked promising. His 2nd year stats were very good, so I guess I conflated the two seasons in my head. Bradford's rookie stats held up as "pretty good for a rookie" upon further review.

Important question: Why did the Bills roll over $7mil of Fitz's cap hit to next year? Theoretically it would be to spend the money this year, right? But aside from a possible front-loaded extension for Byrd, there don't appear to be many spending opportunities for the Bills this offseason.

Who's saying he sucks? Seems to me that this thread is about hating on Kraft, not saying he's incompetent.

Agreed. And not just sign 15-20 UDFAs, but actively plan on 5-10 making the team. That's kind of scary. The more Nix talks, the less impressed I get, and the less sense I get that the Bills have a coherent plan (or that they've shared it with their GM). I get the rationale that with a glutted market of veterans and no championship hopes this year anyway (which is pathetic in year 4 of a rebuild), you want to wait out the market and get bargains. But I don't see anything beyond fan speculation that says the Bills will be doing that. The 1 signing they made, while not crazy money, was an immediate "we really want this guy specifically" signing (called him at 12:01am on first day of negotiation period, e.g.), and wasn't a bargain contract. Lawson didn't get star money, but his contract is decidedly middle to upper-middle class for an NFL LB. The Bills may very well have a plan, AND that plan may be a good one. (Let's hope so!) And if so, they're probably wise to play it close to the vest. But if that plan was "wait out the big-money signings, then fill holes with undervalued bargain contracts," we probably would've already seen 3-4 signings by now. No one at 1 Bills Drive has even mentioned the fact that we lost our starting LG and his primary backup, and we haven't heard any rumors of the Bills meeting/negotiating with a possible replacement for either. Prior to the start of FA, we heard a lot of speculation about Pettine wanting a bunch of (available) veterans who knew his defense, but we haven't heard any rumors of the Bills interested in any of them since FA actually began. Agents usually leak negotiation info to drive up their clients' market, so even if the Bills are running a tight ship, leaks should still be getting out on the other end. I really have no idea what the Bills are doing or whether they have a plan or not. I just can't give them the benefit of the doubt after so many years of ineptness. I won't assume that they're competent, I need to actually see signs of planning/competence before I can trust them. One of my worries is that the Bills DO want to sign a bunch of guys (including re-signing Byrd, Moore, McIntyre, etc.), but they're legitimately so busy with draft scouting (Nix, Whaley, etc.) and a combo of roster evaluation/playbook building (Marrone, Hackett, Pettine, et al.) that they aren't able to get to it. I don't know. It sounds like Nix plans to draft a WR high (great, now just get 2 more), draft a QB high, and sign no one until September. I'm not optimistic right now.