thebandit27

Yep. I'm thinking $400M private, $200M from G4, and $250M public

I realize the referendum wouldn't be on fracking; I'm saying that if the state wants to use fracking as a political motive to deny funding, they'll lose that PR battle. I also believe that the team would be able to make the economic impact to the every-man much more palatable than it appears. And no, they won't get $400M...more like $250M IMO

Oh I figured, but I am so incredibly intrigued by Allan Savory's work in the desert that I cannot help but spread the word.

Read the article above Gooooooooooooooooooooooog...that's the exact opposite of what real researchers in the field have found.

If it goes for public referendum, then the side with the best PR is going to win. Along will come the Pegula PR team, armed with their dozens (and dozens) or research efforts that prove that fracking is safe, along with a nice neat presentation that shows just how little impact that public funding will have on most County residents' pocketbooks. If a stadium is going to cost, say $850M (an educated guess based on some of the designs I've seen at our firm--we'd done some of the preliminary site/civil work for west coast stadiums), then you're probably talking about $250M coming from the public. If it were simply a tax increase on individuals, then you're talking an average of $250 per person for each of the County's ~1M residents. But as you know, that's not how it works. All PSE has to show is that the money will come from a myriad of other sources as well, such as: Lodging taxes (paid primarily by out-of-towners) Car rental taxes (again, paid primarily by out-of-towners) Excise and other consumption taxes (which people will always assume they fall on the lower end of) Etc. I really don't think that public funding will be as big of a hoop as you believe. They won't be asking for the moon; they'll be asking for about 30%, which is on the waaaaaaaaaaaaay low end of what teams have had publicly financed since 2000. You can do it through cash allocation or PSLs...or by getting an exception from the league. It's pretty loose actually: http://media.signonsandiego.com/news/documents/2011/12/14/NFL_on_its_new_stadium_loan_program.pdf

Science. Aside from the fact that it's going to take just as much land and water to grow the plants that will be harvested to make this fake meat as it would to raise animals, I'll go ahead and let others eat this stuff--I'll stick with cow, thank you very much. Also, we're shooting ourselves in the foot with regard to deforestation by not increasing the proliferation of grazing animals. The more animals graze, the more plant life grows. Really interesting presentation on it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en Transcript: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change/transcript?language=en

I do remember that, and also admit to being surprised that nobody picked him up. They were obviously thinking that Amendola would be their new Welker, and didn't envision Edelman being the more effective of the two. And yes, he's a total a-hole.

My point on your previous post is that I wouldn't simply dismiss the state's involvement based on fracking...I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole on that subject, since I've got some pretty animated opinions about it. Anyway, with regard to the public, my assumption is that the County would want ownership for revenue purposes. If they do, then they should expect to chip in...if they want no part of ownership (which hasn't been the case with the current venue for the past 43 years), then that's a whole different discussion. See above. It's not about lining his pockets, it's about revenue. Again, I'm assuming that the County wants a stake in the stadium ownership with a lease agreement, similar to what's been done for the Ralph for 43 years. Is it your opinion that the Pegula family should fully fund the stadium, turn it over to the County, and then pay them to lease it, all without the County (or State for that matter) contributing at all?

Yep...watch what Aaron Donald and Kawann Short get next offseason. Escalation has never been more apparent than this offseason, when a guy like Dwayne Allen--who has 47 receptions total over the past 3 seasons--gets more money AAV than Charles Clay, who had 51 catches in 13 games last year. Throw in a guy like Damon Harrison, who got $9M AAV despite playing a mere 53% of the Jets' defensive snaps last year, and we've hit lunacy when it comes to overpaying on the open market. In light of that, we wonder why a guy like Gilmore thinks he's worth $15M AAV...the answer, of course, is that he'll get it on the open market.

Indeed. If the public wants to share in the revenue of the stadium, the least they could do is contribute public funds to a guy that's spent hundreds of millions of dollars into revitalizing an economically unstable region.

The engineering firm I worked for did TONS of work in the fracking field, and we were awarded state contracts with astonishing regularity. I'd be surprised if they don't get funding from the state.

If I'm assuming that a team can easily afford to pay 5 premium salaries (I think it could be as many as 6 depending upon the cap, but 5 for certain), then here's my list: QB (obviously) CB Pass rusher OT Pass catcher ^ in that order

I like it because it basically sets up well for every possibility: You want to kick off? Punt the ball; odds are good that you can pin your opponent inside the 20 for what's now considered a fairly normal drive start. You want to onside kick? Great, you have one down to gain 15 yards. Plus it doesn't remove the element of surprise, as teams can always choose to fake punt and go for a first-down to keep the ball, or they can line up like they're going for it and have the QB punt the ball instead.

You know what's funny Wayne? When there's no Bills' home game, I watch the game mix channel on DTV--my dad has a 66" screen and you can easily watch 8 games at once without missing anything--and I always count the opening kickoffs to see how many are returned. It's crazy, but without fail, at least 3 of the 8 opening kickoffs in the 1:00 games are returned, and often it's 4 or 5. That probably doesn't surprise you, but it was shocking to me; I had this preconceived notion that pretty much every kick was a touchback.

I'm fine with kickoffs, but I will say that if the kickoff has to go, I like Florio's suggestion: Give the scoring team the ball on their own 30-yard line, and it's 4th down, 15 yards to go. Period.

Why is it dumb?

No, it means that not too many people are interested in a 31-year old tackle with chronic injury issues that hasn't started a game in nearly 2 years. You're trying too hard here.

No he didn't. They drafted him in the 7th round of the 2009 draft and have never released him. It's possible that you're thinking of Danny Woodhead, who was cut by the Jets

And so I'll ask: what on earth could possibly make you think that a guy that signed for the vet minimum last year, played a grand total of 11 snaps, can't get a tryout, and has to be plugged on the league's website to even get his name mentioned is looking for anything above the vet minimum?

Actually, anyone can say anything they want. And that's aside from the fact that, right now, the team has about $12M in cap room. I doubt the guy wants $12M/year, so I'm 99.9999999999999999999999999999% sure the team can afford him if they want him. Given that he can't even get a tryout from anyone other than the Bears, who appear to have brought him in merely for leverage with the Nate Chandler negotiations, I'm going to go ahead and guess he's not commanding top dollar. Now lighten up their, Francis.

I generally agree that no one player (other than a QB) is too great a loss to overcome if the depth, coaching, and scheme are well established. I don't, however, agree that certain guys can simply be replaced "next man up" style and expect a seamless transition. Vis-à-vis: I don't think there's a single coach in the NFL that believes Jake Long for Cordy Glenn is an even swap. I guess my point is that it seems like we should expect any old 2nd round pick to come in and replace Gilmore because Darby was able to have some success as a rookie, but that same logic can't be applied to LT, another position to which you admittedly aren't keen on paying premium money (i.e. Kouandjio is the literal definition of "any old 2nd round pick", and there's little doubt that he cannot step in for Glenn if needed). Anyway, I'm fine bailing on this discussion as well. I'm fairly certain that we both believe in our points.

I'm not really changing my point; I'm saying that the examples of teams that weren't paying top dollar are also teams that weren't far off from doing so; the contrast is hardly stark. I definitely don't agree on Glenn. You're telling me that you'd feel totally confident that we'd have the #1 rushing offense and that Taylor would put up the same numbers if Cyrus Kouandjio were starting at LT last year? I think you're on an island with that one. As to Gilmore's impact, Darby wasn't the next man up behind Gilmore--he was the next man up behind McKelvin; a much lesser player. It's also no coincidence that Darby's play tailed off once Gilmore got hurt (in the very same game even). You may be comfortable saying that there's no difference between Gilmore and Kevon Seymour/Corey White/Sterling Moore, but again, I think you're on an island with that opinion.

I don't think it does...if Russell Wilson scores on a bootleg or Beast Mode on a RB dive instead of running a pick route at the goal line, does it somehow make Sherman's contribution different? EDIT: I see Kirby made that point already. As to the top-5 money thing, well, Janoris Jenkins and Trumaine Johnson are getting top-7 money, and Gilmore is a better player than those guys. He's not signing for less than they're getting, and IMO he won't sign for less than Peterson-type money.

Churning through CBs? They had Ty Law as a mainstay at LCB for all 3 of those Super Bowl wins. And Talib was indeed a top-10 paid CB last year for the record (I'm going according to AAV for the record; not cap hit). And it's not as though the others you mention were outliers. Baltimore had L. Webb (who was 12th-highest paid) when they won. The Giants' Corey Webster was 16th-highest. I should also mention, for the sake of context, that I typically consider a field of 96 corners when discussing "starters" (or perhaps "full time players" would be a better way to say it), since the average team plays with 3 corners on the field about 70% of the time. My apologies for misreading what you said about WR and TE--I thought you were saying "same for WR/TE" with respect to CBs, not QBs. It's fine if you don't believe that the position is worth paying; I'm saying that there are relevant data that indicate otherwise. On a more general note: the way the cap is set up, there's room for a team to pay as many as 6 "elite" salaries". If you figure that elite salaries average about $10M AAV for non-QBs, and $20M AAV for QBs, then you're looking at $75M or so in cap room dedicated to your 6 elite salaries. You should be able to manage the rest of your roster with the remaining $90M in cap space (projecting forward, the 2017 cap should be around $165M), provided that a team is landing the high side of the league-wide average 2-3 starters per draft. At the moment, Buffalo has ~$72M tied up over 9 players' salaries. Obviously, that will have to change should they decide that they want to pay Tyrod Taylor like a franchise QB, but when guys like Kyle Williams/Manny Lawson/Corey Graham come off the books, and guys like Aaron Williams and Eric Wood aren't on the high end of salary ranges anymore, they'll end up right in the target are of 6 elite salaries. So the question then becomes, which players and/or positions do you want to dedicate 45% of your salary cap to on an annual basis? For this team, it's shaping up to be: Taylor (guessing $20M AAV) Watkins (figure $15M on his new contract) Glenn ($12M) Dareus ($16M) And then you need to decide which CB, LB, or S you want to spend your other $12M/year on...if it's my decision, I'm going for a CB that I can match against another team's top WR.

I made my point clear. You said that it's an error to pay a top CB like a top CB. I responded by asking when the last time a team won a Superbowl without paying an elite CB like an elite CB--yes, I admit that I thought Sherman got his money in 2013, not 2014. The point remains the same: great teams pay top CBs, or they suffer for not doing so. Seattle won a championship with Sherman, and paid him huge money. They not only went back to the Super Bowl the following year, but have surrendered the fewest points in the NFL for 4 consecutive seasons. NE won a championship with Revis, paying him top-5 CB money. They chose to let him go last year; did they get better, or worse? Denver paid Talib top-10 money in FA (remember, Jenkins and Trumaine Johnson weren't getting stupid money last season), and they won a championship. I'm sorry if I'm not stating my point very well, but I feel like it's quite clear: the teams that are contending for the league title have great-to-elite CB play. That's not coincidental, and I see zero evidence that the decision to pay an elite CB as though he's an elite CB proves to be a bad decision. And again, I'll ask: aside from QB, since everyone and their brother already knows you need a good one, to what player position is it okay to pay an "elite level" salary?