Sisyphean Bills

Think of it as money freed up to re-sign Donte TWhitner. Or don't.

With a handle like Chi-town, is there a chance that this post was by Dick Jauron?

Wait a minute. Didn't he say the same thing about Kelsay?

That's a pretty good summary. Wilson has led an unstable, losing franchise by the seat of the pants. Brown is a bit different in that he has been fairly stable, but his approach is a dust bunny filled time capsule from the past of when his father, who was progressive in his day, ran the team. Wilson is more like Ford in Detroit, Rankin Smith when he owned the Falcons, or even a less caustic version of Al Davis. It's just a revolving door of management, hoping good luck happens.

Is this the argument Gailey used for keeping Trent Edwards as the Bills starter last year?

They let a lot of bad players walk as well. They've re-signed their own players: see Evans, Kelsay, McGee. They sign free agents like Dockery and T.O. and others like Pears. They draft guys, develop them, and trade them with or without depth on the roster. Or they cut players outright after investing in them. Or, as you say, the player may sign with someone else. FWIW, when did I say that there was a better free agent this year? And, how do you know that there will be no one better to play as a downhill 3-4 ILB anyway? (They drafted some LBs, so they may already be here.) The real problem you are alluding to is named Ralph Wilson and his inner circle with their quantum flub ups in their hiring pattern. The root cause of why the Bills roster is a revolving door is that the front office and coaching has been a revolving door. Out with the old and in with the new on the management side has caused total reversals and flip-flopping in direction of the team, leading to more roster purges and turnover in a vicious cycle. That's what happens when your company has no corporate memory and no learning and has to start "completely fresh" every few years.

I hope Dareustein didn't break anything posting the link. I didn't realize it was such hard labor. By the way, I'm not the one calling for Poz's head on a platter. Nor am I overreacting the other way and claiming a montage of TV coverage showed Poz was a "great" player. I'm decidedly in the middle on him. Not that you asked in a polite way or anything, but I thought he was going to be an excellent player when they drafted him, but he has been just another guy. Comparing that to a chump like Aaron Maybin makes him not so bad at all, and yes even a valuable asset by comparison to a worthless player. But, I'm not going to hold my breath for him to become "great".

Well, she has to get her name out there, no?

Actually, I think one can replace their average players with better players too. No need to impose limits on your thinking that only replacing the worst player is a possibility. That said, there is no need to replace an average player with a bad player either. As far as my HoF comment: The oft repeated comment that "you can't have HoF players at every position" is simply defeatist talk. It's an attempt to paper over the issues by suggesting that the Bills cannot get anyone better than an average player, so they might as well suck it up and re-sign average players rather than consider an alternative. The best way to make sure the Bills continue to be a bottom feeder is to maintain the status quo.

So your argument for keeping "Puz" is that you can't have a Hall of Famer at every position? Underwhelming. As is the "great video" of his average, but hustling, play.

Does Tila Tequila really want to relocate to Buffalo?

I distinctly remember Buddy Nix at the Sr. Bowl saying the Bills desperately needed to find better inside LBs. So, maybe the bolded part is "The Plan"?

Actually, I don't disagree with the point of taking a chance. I never said that taking a chance is a bad thing. On the other hand, this is a straw-man to my comments. I was discussing the point of his contract, which can certainly be viewed as either "gambling a pittance" or "a waste of money on damaged goods" as has been done throughout this thread. I happen to think Merriman in the specific is a long shot of a gamble. Not only has he been in trouble off the field, but he has had a number of injuries that have prevented him from playing at all. It is questionable if this gamble is based on the conclusions deduced from shrewd, objective analytical thinking or more on a personal familiarity. Finally, there is a certain degree of trying to have your cake and eat it too when one argues that $2.5M is "nothing" and turns around and tries to shave a few $100K off other numbers to make them look more appealing. (Not implying that you personally did, Ram.)

That's right, PDaDdy. The Bills have sucked for 10+ years. No need to lay that on Shawne Merriman. Shawne Merriman has shown to be an empty shell of his former Pro Bowl self. He hasn't been able to stay healthy and the little he has played, he has been ineffective. The sole evaluation criteria of a good GM is not simply re-signing his own free agents. A far better measure is building an organization that wins and can persist without his direct involvement. Indeed, the best GMs know when a player is a washed up has-been and have already planned ahead and are ready to move in another direction. No, I'm not standing in line to blow Buddy Nix for a job well done on this one.

You are correct that free agency never got started and thus no other team could make an official offer. My bad. On the other hand, Merriman and his agent were quick to pounce on the Bills offer and called it an excellent offer. So maybe Shawne and his agent actually have no understanding of the market and were just talking through their hats like many posters on this board then. Another possibility is that Merriman saw the light and realized that Buffalo wasn't as big a step down from Southern California and partying with porn stars as he had first thought. The money and losing had no influence on his decision.

IIRC, his agent was the one that said that the Bills offer was far better than anything any other team offered. The $5.25M number was from the article by Tim Graham that I linked. If you don't like it, maybe you can inform him what you think of him by email.

You're discussing different events. Yes, more than 1 team put a waiver claim in on Merriman, which meant the team that was awarded Merriman assumed his Chargers contract as is. But, it is also true that the Bills were the 1 team willing to give him $2.5M guaranteed when they gave him a second contract after he injured himself walking out of the locker room to his first practice. His 2 year deal will reportedly default to an average of $5.25M per season -- for a guy that didn't make it through a single practice. It is not unusual at all that the guy that gets paid the larger bag of coin is the starter, and in the case of a fading "name" player will get the benefit of the doubt. It's obvious that the fact Nix is high on Merriman at this point in time is based much more on the name on the jersey and his past connection than anything he has seen him do on an NFL football field in the past 4 seasons. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5978595

4-12 ?

That's reasonable enough. I do think that the jury is still out on last year's draft, though. The Bills were not a good team and they found very little production out of their rookies. That's not the end of the story, but it isn't exactly hitting the ground running.

And there is the elephant in the room. If Fitzpatrick goes down, the master's plan is, what, Levi Brown?

Kyle Calloway wasn't an impactful draft pick by any definition. Not to mention that he was taken in the Modrak Wheelhouse area of the draft. Seriously, he was a 7th rounder. On the other hand, his (total lack of) success belies the claim that the Nix Era hasn't wasted a single draft pick.

Not sure why you don't get it. Whaley was from the Steelers organization. Your point that Nix totally rebuilt the Bills scouting department with his guys is thus a bit of a stretch. Well, that's all well and good but you're applauding these moves which were made in May of 2011 although Nix was hired on Dec. 31 2009. And, that was my point. Yeah. Bill Polian learned everything he knows about running an NFL franchise from Buddy Nix. Gotcha. That's a really strong argument there. Nobody said he had "no system": so much for that straw-man. And your repeated attempts to imply nobody else knows anything about scouting by trumpeting "do your homework" are as laughable as they are transparently thin, which makes you come off as a bit of a wanker.

He hired Moody to back fill his own position and Whaley (whom he hadn't worked with and wouldn't pass the sniff test of being "his scout") to fill Guy's open job and kept the rest of the scouting department pretty much the same, with all the same people. So much for assembling your own team from the start. Though perhaps your "real system" point is that Modrak was fired immediately after the second draft in which the Bills selected every player from the South (while Modrak had spent most of last year scouting a QB in Missouri). Perhaps taking 16 months to form evaluations is the "real system" and not just for players.

That's the real catch-22 of the "We have to see 'em with our own two eyes in real games before we can know anything" argument used to support expertise here. Every player that the Bills may consider to add to the roster (save maybe San Diego Chargers players from several years back), including draft picks, has never played for the brain trust before. If the scouting is still garbage, the results are still going to be garbage. Thankfully, the "Tom Modrak cannot be fired/is doing a special job" argument was shown the myth door.

And the Bills would get the end of the field at the bottom of the falls with each possession...