Sisyphean Bills

In other news, the Nnamdi Asomugha bidding war last year was popcorn worthy.

Can he win 50% of the games he starts?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/seahawks/2013/12/18/seattle-seahawks-brandon-browner-suspended-nfl-substance-abuse-policy/4117903/ Ah, it has more to do with the fact he's just not very good at taking tests.

And, the cap will go up again and today's "unreasonable prices" will look like chicken scratch tomorrow.

The time to worry is after the dust settles.

Is it too late to use the re-signing of Ryan Fitzpatrick here?

The unfortunate corollary is that the Bills have drafted so poorly prior to the Levitre, Byrd class that "elite players" is a mislabel.

Yes, but we're winning in terms of cap space. Oh, and TV market size too! http://www.stationindex.com/tv/tv-markets

Does that name ring a bell with anyone?

Nope. It's still in AZ.

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They could always put a mini-fridge in his locker.

We will see, but the past has shown that an increased gap between spending and the cap ceiling does not necessarily imply spending that money on other players. It is a typical thought by us fans, though.

Sigh. Yes, I fully understand Byrd has his rights in the process too. From a strictly budgetary viewpoint, the argument that the Bills must allow Byrd to walk doesn't hold water. Obviously, that is not the entirety of the situation, which is precisely why I made my point.

No doubt. One point though is that if they tagged him, they have to pay him $8.3M, according to what I've read. Then the leak was that they offered a long-term deal that paid him $30M in the first 3 years. Then they decided not to tag him. The numbers don't seem to work for the strictly budget-driven concept though. $8.3M is less than $10M. So, they offered more than "sticker price" and then balked? And, if he's worth $10M for the next three years, might it not have been worth paying that last year to avoid this eventual fiasco? Or was the $6.9M too much? The difference, $3M, was less than the dead money they ate on the Fitzpatrick deal, which was ballyhooed at the time as a good deal because they could turn around and get rid of Fitzpatrick at any time by some... I get it that Byrd wants to try free agency. That's the system and that's what he wants. And, if he doesn't care to be part of the Buffalo Bills any longer, there isn't much they can say now to change his mind. Good luck to him.

Maybe it's a protest similar to, "But, I got all the options on my Hyundai Accent!" when the rich kid drives up to the school parking lot in his new Mercedes McLaren.

Once his contract was locked in, the Bills could do nothing last year. They couldn't untag him, sign him to a different deal, or trade him.

Seems like an odd system that makes it impossible for all the teams to keep any All-Pro caliber players.

There was a non-story about young guns vs. lifers a while back. Maybe it's about who wears the pants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5zn-mF2-_8 Steve Austin is only worth a backup contract these days ... but, the bionic knees, arm, and eyes.

... when taken with a glass of warm milk, a cookie, and a warm blankie, it's very comforting.

I guess what I am driving at is why the magic number 1000? To get to 1000, the guy has to play. He also has to play for several seasons. (At least 2, even in a pass-ecstatic scheme.) Getting to the plateau, it seems logical that the QB has to "show something". He must be minimally competent, his organization has to be invested and back him, his team has to win games and have a modicum of stability, etc. As an analogy, it is like reaching the base camp. Not everyone can get there and there is a multitude of factors why. Also, not everyone that gets to base camp ascends the rest of the way to the summit. Your correlation suggests that how one did reaching base camp is 0.71 correlated to his mountain climbing career. On the other hand, (and I know you know this) one shouldn't take the result to mean it must be applied to an individual. That is not everyone needs to be given the opportunity to hike to base camp, including (oh, I don't know, let's say...) a chain-smoking, one-legged, naked, blind man so that one can properly conclude if he can climb to the summit. PS: I consider it very likely that EJ Manuel is given every opportunity to make this plateau with the Bills.

Maybe they are empowered after all. It is different to have these shots across the bow of the inner circle fired by the football people before they are terminated, quit, or run off the end of their contract.

Thanks for working the numbers. My question is what is the percentage of QBs that make the 1000 attempts threshold? Clearly, there are backup QBs that never get any opportunity. But, what I'm asking about is the percentage of guys like Trent Edwards and JP Losman, who never reached the 1000 attempts threshold. And, I don't think many people would argue that they need to see him start another season to realize what they got in Trent. PS: Matt Leinart is another one-time NFL starter that didn't make the plateau. (OTOH, Vince Young and Tarvaris Jackson both did, the latter in his 6th season.)