MDH

Is he 12th pick in the draft good? You DREAM of getting a player of Briggs callibur with the 12 pick of the draft. The guy is one of the best LBs in the game.

So, if CB isn't an important enough position in the cover 2 to give Nate a huge contract why on earth would it be an important enough position to use the #1 pick on? I think there's a chance the Bills do it, but it still makes no sense to me. This team needs to get better in the front 7 of the D and hopefully draft picks are used to that end. As for Crowell at MLB, who knows if that's really their intention but no matter what the Bills need help badly at the LB position. Ellison, Crowell & a non 100% Spikes is not a good LB corps. Crowell was actually a little disapointing last year Imo. He was frequently out of position and, much like London, couldn't get away from blocks once they got the hands on him. Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad LB but if he's out best LB going into the season we're in trouble.

True, but if the Bills can't move him there is no guarantee that they don't pick up someone this year to replace him anyway, which would cut into his numbers. He'd get even worse money next year after sitting on the pine as a #2 RB than he would get this year.

In general I agree with you but if this is the case why let Fletcher walk only to have to replace him with a high draft pick? Why let Milloy walk to replace him with a top 10 safety? Milloy, while not great, was certainly serviceable and if the front 7 was upgraded would have been good enough. The Bills used, what, 5 draft picks last year on the secondary, one on the DL and one on the OL? That might not be exact, but it's not far off. It wouldn't surprise me if the Bills grabbed a CB with pick #1 this year. Overall, that doesn't sound like the plan you plot out. I'll agree that the OL appears to have gotten better but the front 7 on D is much worse than it was 2-3 years ago and now, minus Clements, so is the secondary. Again, I don't disagree that in the long term the Bills could be better off getting rid of Clements (for salary purposes) and Fletch (do to age and below average run stopping) and moving on but people are kidding themselves if they think this D won't be worse next year. They will be just as bad against the run and much worse against the pass. Imo, we're looking at a bottom 5-7 D here even if they use a few high round picks on DT and MLB. The only way this doesn’t happen is if Whitner blossoms into a game changing safety, McCargo comes on like gangbusters in year 2, Youboty (or a draft pick) is instantly a fine CB and whoever they draft at MLB doesn't take long to get accustomed to the NFL. All of that could happen, but the odds are very slim. I'd love to see the Bills grab Harper to play CB as that would help the team next year tremendously and allow them to concentrate on the front seven in the draft. My main beef with this entire thing is the fact that the Bills went to the cover 2 in the first place. They pretty much forced this D on personnel that wasn’t suited for it. Why use a cover 2 when you have a top man-to-man CB in Clements? Why use a cover 2 when you don’t have a MLB or DTs that are suited for it in the middle? Why use a cover 2 when you don’t have the Safeties to play it? So what do they do? They cut the only good/decent DT they had, cut the SS, cut the FS and let the MLB and #1CB walk away via FA after 1 year in the D. The only things the Bills had on D that suited the cover 2 were the DEs. Yet, we wonder why the D is horrid? It’s going to take years to draft all the people this D needs to be successful after the overhaul moving to the D caused. My only hope is that once we get the pieces in place for it Marv doesn’t step down as GM (he is 80+) and the new GM brings in a new coaching staff that gets rid of the cover 2 and begins to bring in personnel for the new D scheme.

The charges were dropped against Lynch by the DA because there was not enough evidence. I love the idea that if someone says something bad about you and has absolutely no proof that suddenly you have "character concerns".

Yeah, the Big 10 sure looked great. What were they, like 2-5 in their bowl games and their 2 "elite" teams both got dismantled. Once they start playing games outside their conference they are exposed as weak teams. At least the Pac 10 went .500 in their bowl games, which isn't great but is much better than that power conference Big 10. Trying to knock Lynch because of the conference he played in is a joke. The guy can play. That being said the last thing I want to see is the Bills use their #1 pick on a RB.

I think you're going a bit overboard in your criticism of Moon. While I agree that I don't think he's a HoF QB to compare him to Testaverde is ludicrous. Vinnie has never been the QB of an offense that teams feared, Moon has. Sure, you can call the run and shoot a "gimmick" offense, at it was, but nonetheless, they put lots of points on the board, mostly through the passing game and Moon led the attack. Moon was one of the leaders of that team and had them in the playoffs year after year (where the shortcomings of the offense became apparent). Testaverde has never accomplished anything of the sort in the Pros. He's been a steady QB who has played for a looooong time and nothing more.

I just can't see the Bills paying Walker that kind of cash to compete for a spot. I'm pretty sure they fully expect Walker to be starting.

It has nothing to do with "greedy agents", it has to do with the CBA which stipulates that the players must be given a certain percentage of the pie. The bigger the TV contracts, the bigger the total revenue and, hence, the bigger the contracts.

As good as Calvin Johnson is going to be, if Detroit drafts another WR with their #1 pick I think the Lions fans will storm the stadium.

When I called you out a year ago about this very thing I believe the link you provided me to illustrate how you "discussed it plenty in the past" was about a year old. That means it's been, roughly, two years since you've "discussed it plenty in the past." Why bother posting on the football portion of the board if that's the case? Why attempt to derail threads that are trying to discuss football with your snide remarks?

You could never tell that based on the venom most posters seem to have for him.

Rookies CBs just about always struggle. Even if they don't, I don't think there is a player that I've ever seen who can come in, as a rookie, and produced at the level Clements did last season. It's just not going to happen. As for the MLB position, that's probably the toughest position on D to come in and play well immediately. He's the QB of the D, he makes the calls and is expected to not only be in the right spot on every play, but to make sure everybody else on D is too. That's a lot to ask of a rook coming in who is just trying to get used to the speed of the game. You can expect a rookie MLB to make loads of mistakes that cost the D, even one who ends up being very good. I can see a rook coming in and producing as well as Fletch did vs. the run but he's going to get killed vs. the pass. As I said above, sure the Bills could be better in the long run but it's highly unlikely they can match last year's production next year either by the draft or through this year's crop of FAs.

It's tough to say whether this D is the worst in the league right now and, honestly, it is because it's just March. Until we know who will be filling out the vacant spots of Clements & Fletcher (and perhaps Spikes) I'd be hard pressed to say just how bad they are. That being said, Bado is right that there is nobody who can step in and be upgrades this coming season over Clements and Fletcher. Nick Harper would be a nice addition, even though he's not young anymore but in terms of this one season, he'd be the best replacement for Nate. That is still a significant downgrade. As for Fletcher, there's nobody on the market that would be an instant upgrade to him either, despite his deficiencies against the run. Sure, the draft could bring someone who will, eventually, be an upgrade at MLB but it's highly doubtful they'd outperform Fletch this season. On another note, I keep seeing people mention how losing Nate is going to hurt out passing game and that is true. But what I've seen nobody mention is how losing Fletch is going to hurt it a ton too. The Bills two best defenders in coverage were Clements and Fletch (obviously, I'm speaking in relative terms here, Fletch can't cover as well as McGee, but for his position he does a much better job). Losing both is going to cripple the pass D and unless they can find somebody to instantly improve the middle against the run (either at DT or MLB, or both) the team isn't likely to be any better against the run either. So what has happened this offseason? The Bills have yet to improve in any way on Defense and have gotten worse in several spots. Sure, it is early, but there is almost no chance of getting immediate improvement at MLB or CB. This D, at least in the short term, has taken huge steps backwards. The only hope is that Marv and Co. and have a stellar draft to fix the interior of the D so that the long term prospects are better.

Nobody "dumped" him. He (and his agent) set up his contract so that there was an 8 million dollar bonus due to him this year. They did this to ensure that he either got this large bonus or force the Titans to release him so he could become a free agent and score another deal. If that bonus wasn't due the Titans don't release Henry.

There is no way in hell Lynch falls to the 2nd round.

Yeah, but they're going to lose Daniel Graham who appears ready to sign with the Broncos. Losing Graham will hurt their passing game though Brady should help their run game.

Clements will never see 80 million from this deal.

If by "great brain" you mean someone who forms an opinion and then instantly believes that opinion to be the "truth" so he holds onto it until the day he dies despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Then yeah, he has a great brain.

This is known as the "tiny ego" defense. You just can't man up and admit you don't know wtf you're talking about.

Do you really think that if King was that good coaches (who actually watch lots of game film, unlike yourself) wouldn't get him on the field or up the depth chart? He's stuck at the bottom of a depth chart because the coaching staff that watches him every day doesn't think he's that good. Despite what you believe, you don't know as much about the players as the coaching staff that coaches them.

Frank Gore has been in the league 2 years.

You'd take Drew and Jones over Portis or Gore?

McGahee for Al Wilson straight up might be the most outlandish trade scenerio I've ever seen. While we're "prefering", I'd prefer if the Bills traded McGahee to the Chargers for LT straight up.

Man JSP, you're the last person who should jump in on this beatdown. The original post sounded almost identical to many that you've made.