Cash

I think both us & Miami look high in the early going. As unimpressive as the Bills' post-lockout offseason has been, I'd say Miami's has significantly worse. And the gap between the two teams wasn't very far to begin with. I'd say something like 11 wins combined, provided there's no more major roster acquisitions or losses.

There is literally no player on our roster who would get a first-round pick in return. Teams don't part with those lightly.

Those Miami Dolphins fans are class acts.

Or pitch it out.

All of the DE's (but not the DT's) seem to be high. Possible misprint, possible weight gain. I'm rooting for misprint. Dareus was 319 at the combine. He didn't gain 24 lbs. of muscle since then. People used to say "the bigger the better" about Mike Williams, too.

It is not formally part of the rookie contract rules, but thus far, all of the high first rounders (maybe even all first rounders so far? Not sure.) have had their 4-year deals fully guaranteed. Since the top picks are making so much less now, it makes some sense to throw them/their agents a bone. When you consider how long it takes teams to give up on Aaron Maybin high picks who bust, it's unlikely to cost the teams very much. If anything, it encourages teams to take a longer view when developing high picks, since you can't save any money from cutting them. Also, it's a little off-topic for this thread, but worth mentioning: The Patriots' first-rounder, Nate Solder, is still unsigned. What the hell are they waiting for?

I've seen 2 practice reports so far, and both mentioned that Jasper was consistently driving guys back in drills. So that's a nice sign. Of course, there's a lot more to NFL success than just winning the point of attack, but it's always better to win it than lose it. Also, keep in mind that our O-line isn't exactly renowned for stopping NTs, especially once you get down to the 3rd string or so. My guess/prediction: Jasper makes the team outright as the #3 NT, but doesn't play much barring injury.

Great post! Thanks for taking the time to research and share!

It would be nice to see us "bringing in competition" and "making the team better" at the top of the depth chart instead of the bottom, but I doubt it will happen. At least, not with that last roster spot. I think whomever they get will instantly be a candidate to be cut. Still holding out hope for Zach Miller, though.

Psyched about this! Just bought my season tickets! Playoffs baby!

The thread title is true for every team.

5 tech end might be Marcel's best position, but it's close. He's awesome as a 3 tech tackle, and not too shabby as a 1 tech nose. I actually think the Bills will use him very, very well.

It's stories like these that sap all of my optimism. Moats is an edge rusher. That was patently obvious last year. He is not an ILB. Us fans could see that plain as day, so why couldn't the coaches? Kelsay is very bad at playing linebacker. Moats should be starting ahead of him.

If the Bills could actually convince a couple free agents to sign, Hang might be a candidate for a late training camp cut. He can breathe easy as long as we're below the salary floor, though.

I would say you focus on trying to acquire the players to form a reliable offense, not grabbing more gadget players. I realize that the two things are not mutually exclusive. Or the other option is to innovate something truly new that allows you to beat conventional strategy with less talent. An extreme example of this is the A-11 high school offense. A more moderate example would be the spread option offense in college. (The wildcat doesn't really count, because even at its peak, the Dolphins only ran it about 10 plays a game. They spent the bulk of their offense in conventional sets.) In the NFL, these kinds of innovations can only help you in the short term, because other teams catch on, figure out how to better defend them, and incorporate the best elements into their own schemes. Then you have to innovate something new. Anyway, I could be wrong, but I don't see Gailey going down this road. I think we'll run a pretty conventional offense in 2011. Yeah, we'll be in the shotgun 4 or 5 wide over half the time, but that's pretty common these days. Definitely some non-conventional stuff in there (WildBill or whatever), but probably not much more than we ran last year. We'll see. Should be an interesting year no matter what.

Yay! Nice job getting him in camp on time. No excuse for a holdout this year.

Ha! Seriously though, it might be an adventure getting up to the salary floor. We might see Akin Ayodele signed to a 2-year, $18mil contract.

I hope not. I think every other first-round contract has been fully guaranteed so far, including Miller's and Green's. The #3 pick should not be the one that bucks the trend.

In the 7th round? C'mon. There's a reason they didn't offer Levi a spot on the practice squad after cutting him last year. Levi is no guarantee to make the final roster, much less dress on game days.

John, I'm completely on your side here. These are bush league shenanigans, and I for one will definitely put zero stock in anything this blog claims to report in the future. In fact, I doubt I'll waste my time by clicking on a link that leads to the site. But I don't think you're giving blogs a fair shake. In the early days of newspapers, how rigid were the journalistic practices? Some were pretty good, some not so good. Blogs are just a different medium, and we're still in the fairly early stages of the medium. You seem to think that reliable reporting exempts a website from being a blog, and that underhanded tactics to draw attention are a hallmark of a blog. But the reliable ones are blogs, too. There are plenty of blogs that would never break a story without reliable sources, and wouldn't try to gloss it over if they happened to get it wrong. "Blog" should not be a pejorative. The guys running this queen city sports site are hacks, and they'd be hacks whether they were publishing online, in print, on TV, or on the radio. But not all blogs are run by hacks. Agreed - and I was one of those guys. I got a little carried away last night. I think I was mentally trying to prevent the scenario where we signed Clabo, but I was pissed about it. So I raised my salary expectations way high. Still, one wonders what the Bills' offer was. My guess is that ATL exactly matched Buffalo's offer. If that's how it went down, I wonder what price tag would've been high enough for Atlanta not to match? Considering that Clabo is coming off a Pro Bowl season, has no injury history, is directly in his prime, and has been a starter for 4 straight seasons, it seems like his ultimate contract was below market value. He got about the same as Colon, who (I think) has never made a Pro Bowl, and missed all of last year with a major injury. I dunno, maybe he did give the Falcons a discount. Either way, it's disappointing. It's been a pretty dismal free agency period thus far.

I predict we'll see plays of this type about 2-5 times per game. Just a guess.

Well, that's a bummer. I'm surprised the final amount was that low. Lower than Colon's deal, and he missed last year. I get that ATL matched our offer, but I thought it would be higher. Interesting to see where the Bills try to spend their money next. Hopefully they can successfully address at least one weakness in free agency.

I don't think it would cause any problems short-term, since RT is usually 2nd-highest-paid on the OL, Bell is in no position to make salary demands, and the Bills are well below the salary floor anyway. Problems could arise down the road if the Bills try to ink a decent/good LT who now wants big-time money, or if the Bills get enough good players on the roster that they can't pay them all. If Clabo's really worth $7mil and we pay $9mil, no big deal. But if he's really worth $7mil and we pay $12mil, that's the kind of thing that winds up taking money away from another position where it's needed. Whatever, this is all academic anyway. Let's hope the Bills get him!

I'm kind of thinking somewhere around $9-10mil a year. I just don't want to see another Dockery-esque situation, where they gave a non-elite player an elite contract and it screwed up the whole pay scale pecking order for the line. You can't pay elite LT money to a RT without causing some problems sooner or later.

Great news if it's true, but I don't want to get my hopes up. Haven't seen anything from a media outlet I trust yet, and most of the tweets seems to be re-stating the same story from the one source. We shall see. And for the record, I'm cool with the Bills overpaying to get Clabo, as long as they don't go totally bonkers with the contract. Anything under 8 figures/year I think I'd be fine with.