Cash

Mario Williams, but I didn't get the same vibe from his comments as you. I heard it as a purely hypothetical "we'll spend if a guy's there," without any implication that a guy actually is there. Sort of. To paraphrase Buddy, don't worry about it. Said 47% of snaps this year were with a 4-man line anyway, pointed out how often Wade Philips "the granddaddy of the 3-4" (actual quote) uses a 4-man line, mentioned that a 4-3 base will still sometimes use 3-man rush, etc. Was a little peeved (in a friendly way) when reporters brought up Buddy's pre-draft quotes from last year about scouting for a 3-4. Buddy's looking for a little more than just size -- his quote was something along the lines of "he's open even when he's not open." Specifically mentioned a Calvin Johnson type. David Nelson is 6'5", but he's not the kind of guy you can just throw it up to and he'll go get it. I think Buddy saw one too many highlights of Andy Dalton throwing a wounded duck floater into double coverage and AJ Green catching it anyway. But whatever the reason, count me in.

Why is everyone giving Gailey a pass on enacting such a dumb rule in the first place? What's next, anyone who gets a false start has to sit out a quarter? Ultimatums are stupid, because if someone violates it and you don't follow through, you completely undermine yourself, but if you do follow through, all you do is compound a problem with another problem. And especially when the condition for the benching (celebration penalty) is one of the most arbitrary and capriciously officiated rules in sports. If you're going to demand punishment for such a thing, at least keep the threat vague enough so that you can adjust the punishment to the situation. Benching Stevie for a series or two would've sent a plenty strong enough message. To sum up: I like that Gailey followed his own rule that he arbitrarily made. I don't like that he arbitrarily made a terrible rule that was likely to hurt the team, and wasn't smart enough to realize this in advance.

Who is going to shift focus away from the NFL PLAYOFFS to talk about a defensive coordinator change on a 6-10 team? Head coach or GM change, sure. DC change? Very minor news to non-Bills fans.

Terrible comparison. Griffin and Young aren't remotely comparable. Here's proof: Griffin Young See? Okay, on a serious note, I'm pretty much all in on RG3. There are only 2 real concerns I have at this point. First, it's hard to succeed in the NFL if you're actually a well-rounded person with real life goals like RG3 is. The best players tend to be obsessive cases who are consumed by football and have nothing else to fall back on. Will Griffin put in that extra hour of film study, or will he spend that hour reading a law journal? This wouldn't keep me from drafting him, because he's plenty smart, seems to work very hard, and (I'm sure) will be very motivated in the NFL, and there are plenty of exceptions to the "football maniac" rule, but it's still a concern. You could even see a situation like Robert Smith, the Vikings RB, who was really good, but retired early in his career to go to med school. Wouldn't shock me if RG3 plays for 6-7 years, then retires to enter law school. Second, his build is pretty slight. There's a reason that Vick gets hurt every couple of games, but Newton and Tebow combined for 248 rushes this year without a single injury between them (Vick had 76 rushes, FYI). Griffin might bulk up some as he plays, but that would cost him a lot of speed. (Vick hasn't bulked up, but some guys have -- Jake Plummer comes to mind. Unfortunately, Jake wasn't really a good enough passer to do much without his scrambling ability.) Then again, Griffin's not much thinner than Aaron Rodgers, who hasn't had much injury history in 3 seasons as a starter, so we'll see. Again, this concern wouldn't be enough for me to pass on Griffin As for his delivery and technical points like that, I won't pretend I'm a good enough scout to know anything about the details. I just look at the big picture: With that kind of athleticism, putting up those numbers in a strong conference (especially the accuracy!), and with his intelligence and character to boot, I think he'll be a massive success.

I don't care if Maybin breaks Bruce's sack record, I will never fault the Bills for cutting him. If he really turns it around*, good for him. He's a little brash, but otherwise a good guy and a hard worker, and I bear him no ill will. But there's no way he ever would've figured it out with the Bills. Better for both sides to part ways. *Personally, I agree with the many who think his sacks for the Jets are basically a fluke. Rex Ryan's excellent at designing erotic blitzes, and Maybin is pretty fast, especially when he rushes against the slower RTs of the league. Put those together, add in the fact that the Jets have other guys the O needs to worry about before Maybin, and you get a handful of sacks. Good job by Ryan of utilizing the skills of his player. Doesn't mean he'll develop into something more, and definitely doesn't mean that he could've had similar success with the Bills.

Curious why you think he can't play MLB. Please elaborate.

Regarding your statement I bolded, I think it's worse than that. My biggest issue is that the plan is a 4-5 year rebuild, and that's assuming everything goes according to plan. It's already been 2 years, and Ralph is saying that it'll take several more years? That's the best-case scenario? That's pretty insulting. This is pretty disingenuous. Obviously there's nothing the Bills can do until the offseason (unless you believe some of the posters here who think that a mid-season firing of George Edwards will somehow help things), but Ralph is specifically preaching patience for several years, not months. I think if the context of his call for patience was something like, "Please be patient, we can't start fixing our problems until the offseason, but we'll do everything we can as soon as we can," then the fans would be pretty excited about that. Instead it's more like, "Please be patient, because we're not going to be good next year either." There is a massive difference between those two requests. I'm not sure of your point. The Bills have also gone through many regimes and years of drafting near the top. And this regime is the worst of the last 4, based on record. Are we as fans supposed to be cool with that? Are we supposed to count Matt Millen's terrible high picks for Detroit, but not count Marv/Brandon/Jauron's terrible high picks for us? Does the rebuilding clock keep running for Detroit and San Fran, but reset every time the Bills hire a new coach or GM? I don't get it. Even if you do reset the clock for the Bills, we're still nearing the end of year 2. That's 2 offseasons and 2 regular seasons. Asking for a playoff-contending team in year 3 is hardly the same as thinking great teams are built overnight. For me, being a Bills fan used to be about the team, but now it's morphing into being about the community of fans. I love Bills fans and Western New Yorkers in general, and tailgating together or gathering in bars to watch the games on TV gives us a shared experience and something to bond over -- makes us a community. But I can't really say I love the Bills anymore, because the Bills do so little to return that love. It's been so long since they've been good, a return to prominence doesn't look likely anytime soon, and it looks to me like any future success will be largely luck-based and unsustainable. I would like very much to be proven wrong -- seeing the Bills lose still hurts very much -- but I won't believe it until I see it. I don't want to get into a larger discussion about the other guys (I agree with a lot of what you have to say, FYI), but this one is way off base. Evans and Johnson don't play the same position, and Johnson was never a replacement for Evans. Evans played split end or "X" receiver, Johnson plays flanker or "Z" receiver. They both started at the same time and played together full-time in 2010. Evans' replacement was Donald Jones.

Freddy's under contract next year anyway. As for Stevie (or dealing with a possible Jackson holdout), "get him some better players" doesn't exactly translate to "keep the guys we have." I'm sure the Bills will attempt to bring Stevie back (after all, they were in negotiations for half the season, and only recently broke them off), but if it was a lock, he'd have already been signed to an extension. Instead, the negotiations got to a point where Stevie's camp announced that he'd be testing the free agent waters. Clearly there is a price point at which the Bills let Stevie walk. And if someone else meets that price point, I imagine Ralph or Nix or whoever would justify it by saying that Stevie drops too many passes and we need someone with better hands -- like Donald Jones! He's healthy now and ready to break out! Buy some season tickets already! Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit there, but I've seen enough "let Stevie walk, he's not worth the money, he costs us games with his drops" posts on this board to know that the Bills would be able to spin letting Stevie walk about as well as they spun the Evans trade. Not everyone would be okay with it, but enough would that it wouldn't kill them at the box office. I think keeping Stevie and paying Jackson, then adding a stud WR in the draft, is what the Bills SHOULD do, but I won't buy it until I see it. In recent history, when the Bills try to "get better players," that means letting their best player go, and bringing in a new "best player" to replace him. I agree with your draft logic, though. Look for an offensive playmaker to "make Fitz's job easier." I know there's no proof that Ralph sometimes or always makes picks, but there's enough circumstantial evidence that I believe it. At the very least, I think he sometimes recommends guys that he likes, and his underlings choose to make their boss happy. I definitely think he had a major hand in the Spiller pick, and based on the quote in question, I think he'll have a major hand in this pick as well. Luckily for us, drafting a stud WR to help the offense is a good idea for football reasons, not just a stunt to sell tickets.

Didn't/don't want Barkley, but I was hoping he'd come out, b/c he'd be almost a mortal lock to go in front of our pick. I really want RG3, but based on Ralph's latest comments, it looks like no QB will be an option for the Bills this year. Still, Barkley in the draft would've given us a better shot at "our guy", whoever that may be.

Plus he's a good locker room presence... er, that is, he has a big presence in the locker room. And by presence, I mean honker.

I wouldn't have much of a problem with the blackout rule if it was smaller in scope. The way it's currently enforced, any TV station that broadcasts into the blackout radius (75 miles from the stadium) is not allowed to show the game. This basically means that the Bills are blacked out on Syracuse stations. If you're in Syracuse, is it reasonable to ask you to buy a ticket on Friday for Sunday's game? It's like a 4+ hour drive each way with traffic. Even coming from Rochester is no quick jaunt. And if you take it to the extreme, what about the people at the eastern reach of the Syracuse stations? You know what else devalues your product, besides it being horrible? Letting people forget about it. The Bills should *want* people in Central New York watching the Bills on TV whether the game is sold out or not. They aren't going to go to a game because it's not on TV, and they're probably marginal Bills fans at best. Requiring blackouts in Central NY just pushes potential fans towards the Giants and Jets. (And make no mistake -- it's the NFL's rule, but the local enforcement comes at the Bills' request.) A related thing that really bugs me is the way the NFL network games are handled. Now, those are usually primetime games, so it's only happened once so far that I can recall, but once is enough. "Local" games, provided they sold out in time, are required to be shown on local TV. So if you don't get NFL network (or ESPN for the Monday nighters), it's no problem, because the game will be simulcast on a local channel. However, the NFL defines "local" for these purposes as the "primary market", which is Buffalo only. Rochester, even though it's fully subject to the blackout rule, is considered a "secondary market", and thus does not get NFL network games shown on local TV. Such BS. Especially when you consider that Time Warner has a cable monopoly in Rochester, and also refuses to carry NFL network. If you're subject to the blackout rule, then you should get the game on local TV when it sells out, no ifs, ands, or buts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Reid#Head_coaching_record 124-81-1 (.604) regular season, with 6 division titles and 9 playoff appearances in 12+ seasons, with still a slim chance at winning the division this year. 10-9 career playoff record isn't fabulous, but it's a long way past anything we've had since Marvelous Marvin Levy. Having said that, Reid doesn't seem like a great fit to our current personnel. Decent, not great. He famously loves passing and hates running - usually having about a 2:1 pass:run ratio win or lose - and our running game is light-years ahead of our passing game, particularly when Fred Jackson is healthy. Coughlin would probably make more sense in that regard.

Keep in mind also that we could wind up winning the SOS tiebreaker with Miami. It all comes down to our only non-common opponents: Cincy and Tennessee for us (combined record: 15-13), Houston and Cleveland for Miami (combined record: 14-14). Cleveland winning is doubly good, and we should definitely be rooting for Houston and against the Bengals and Titans these last 2 weeks. Houston hosts Tennessee in Week 17 - that could be big for our draft spot. Contrary to what I've been posting in other threads, division/conference tiebreakers do come into effect (if applicable) after SOS, so if we end up with the same record & SOS as Miami, we'll draft in front of them.

It's hard to argue that a guy riding a 9-game losing streak should be brought back, unless you're just a fan of streaks in general.

The first tiebreaker for draft position is strength of schedule (easier schedule = higher pick). The second tiebreaker is a coin flip. If the coin lands on edge, then head-to-head record is used as the third tiebreaker. If that does not resolve the tie, then Commissioner Goodell uses ink-a-dink to determine who drafts first. No one's ever gotten past the 2nd tiebreaker, unfortunately.

Very well said! Personally, I'm pretty demoralized -- again. The Bills have looked like complete garbage in losses to the Jets (1st time), Cowboys, Dolphins (1st time), and Chargers, and looked like garbage for significant parts of losses to the Titans and Dolphins (2nd time). They truly look like a fundamentally different team in the 2nd half of the year. I'm very confused and puzzled as to how/why that is. Unless Fitzpatrick is secretly injured (which is possible), injuries don't explain why Fitzpatrick can't throw any more. Maybe the pressure of signing that big contract is messing with his head? (It happened to Dave Chappelle. If Fitzy walks away from the team in training camp next year, then surfaces in Africa after a couple weeks, I think we have our answer.) Keep in mind that Kyle Williams was playing hurt all year, and wasn't nearly as effective as last year as a result. Merriman wasn't particularly good, although he was playing OLB at an NFL level, something that can't be said about Spencer Johnson. Losing Freddie is obviously a major, major blow, but he didn't get hurt until after the Bills started getting blown out. Certainly the injuries have hurt, and may have cost us a win against Tennessee or the Jets at home, but the bigger problem of the entire team looking like garbage in all 3 phases + getting outcoached on both sides of the ball? That problem is completely independent from the injury problems. We'll see how this offseason goes. If the Bills let Stevie walk, cut McKelvin, and spend their top 2 picks on their replacements, then bring back the whole coaching staff, I'll be pretty despondent. But if we re-signed Stevie, gave Freddie a short-term extension, got a shiny new DC, one with actual NFL success as a DC -- Mike Nolan would be by far my top choice, and I wouldn't be very enthused by Wanny -- and drafted either RG3 or an impact pass-rusher or WR in the first round, and maybe added a starter or two in free agency, then I'd probably be pretty fired up about next year. We shall see.

The 2 biggest receiving yardage totals a healthy Revis has given up in the last 3 years both came against the Bills this year. The single longest completion Revis has given up in the past 3 years was against Stevie in the first game this year. Guys just don't get open against Revis.

Now try this on for size: Last year, the Texans' D was terrible (30th in yards allowed, 29th in points allowed). This year's, it's elite (1st in yards, 4th in points). Near as I can tell, they added 3 starters in the offseason: Jonathan Joseph (a very good and pretty high-priced free agent CB), JJ Watt (a rookie 1st-round pick DE), and Danieal Manning (a excellent KR, but mediocre FS). They also lost starting DT Amboi Okoye, and got only 5 games out of their best player (Mario Williams) this year, compared to 13 last year. They also switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4, which according to any Bills' front office employee, is a major obstacle for a defense to overcome. So how did they go from being a bottom 3 defense to a top 3 defense? Yes, they did add some talent, but does that really explain anywhere near that big of a jump? There's probably some luck/variance involved too. Absolutely. But that still doesn't get us anywhere near the top 5, does it? Put another way: If you looked at the Texans' 2010 defense, would you have said it was loaded with talent? I'm guessing no, but feel free to correct me on this. Are Jonathan Joseph and JJ Watt really so good that they transformed that unit from the dregs to the heights? I say no. Coaching matters, and furthermore, not every player is a good fit for every coach's scheme. I submit that the better strategy is to get the right coaches/schemes in place, then find good players to fit those schemes, rather than trying to assemble a loaded defense, and only firing the coach once it's clear that he can't win even with elite talent.

Absolutely would not have been okay with it, though that's slightly better than my preseason expectations. (I predicted 4-12 on the year, and preseason me would assume the Bills would lose the last 3 games.) I don't think the Bills should blow it up yet, but that doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the crap season they're currently having.

Not if you assume that every team tries its hardest to win every game. Then for two teams with identical records, the one who played an easier schedule is probably worse, and thus needs more help in the form of a higher pick. In terms of your specific example, think of it this way: Miami beating us does make their tie-breaker worse, but the tie-breaker only gets applied because they beat us in the first place. So they drop down from definitely picking ahead of us based on record, to potentially picking ahead of us based on a tie-breaker. Does that make sense, or am I out in left field here? Incidentally, some people have suggested a Loser Bowl of sorts, where the bottom two teams play to get the #1 pick (awarded to the winner, of course). I think it's a cool idea that probably won't ever get any serious traction.

Let's ask Dean Wormer: There is some talk of possible instituting some sort of salary for next year, but right now, it's purely for love of the game.

I happen to disagree, but that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But please do me a favor and take a look around the league. What WRs (not on a rookie contract) are better than Stevie and currently making ~$9mil/year or less? I don't think there's any, but that's just my opinion. I think Stevie's pretty good. Not elite, but pretty good. Post of the thread. MJT should just drop the mic and walk off. I have to say, I'm sick of hearing things like "they can lose without him" or "that'll take us from 5-11 to 4-12. Big deal." That's a great mentality, if you're content to be a fan of a loser team for the rest of your life. Focus on WINNING. Does Stevie contribute to wins? YES. As much as you'd like? Maybe not. Is it easier to win with a good player like Stevie or without him? WITH. If the Bills let Stevie walk, what's the alternative? What's the opportunity cost? If you agree to his contract demands (my guess: something like 4 years, $35mil, but almost all guaranteed, and that's why the Bills rejected it), you might be overpaying him, but not by a lot. He's definitely an above-average NFL starter and has great chemistry with his QB. If you let him go, who do you replace him with? Does anyone actually think that Vincent Jackson or DeSean Jackson will be available for the same price as Stevie? I'll take that bet. And by the way, Vincent Jackson is one of the most maddeningly inconsistent players in the league, and has had multiple contract holdouts. And DeSean Jackson is a smurf who only runs fly patterns. Or do the Bills go WR in the first round, eschewing (potentially) a franchise QB, or a stud pass rusher, or a really good OT, or -- wonder of wonders -- a good WR to COMPLEMENT Stevie? You realize that some NFL teams have multiple good players, right? We could be one of those teams! We already have some good players. If we keep them, and draft other good players to play alongside them, then we might win some more games! I know it sounds crazy, and doesn't mesh with recent Bills' philosophy, but why don't we try it for a change? It's so crazy it might just work.

Tebow will definitely block it. I mean, he'll be on the sideline at the time, but he'll received 100% of the credit for the block. Just another one of those miracles.

Big fan of the LFL. The key is that the players play real tackle football and take the game seriously. Most of the passing games are pretty rough, but overall, the actual football being played isn't that bad. Throw in the visual appeal of the players, and you've got a very entertaining product. I'm gald they finally found a way to make arena football interesting. I also like the fact that Sean "I was sending pics of my junk before it was cool" Salisbury is the color commentator, and that the TV broadcast opens up by showing the betting line on the game.

I think the Bills will try to combat the Broncos' ground game (including Tebow) by getting bigger up front. This means benching Nick Barnett for Lionel Dotson. Look at how much bigger Dotson is! That's gotta help stuff the run!