Sisyphean Bills

Actually, that was his response. He followed the vanilla answer up with the "What do you think?" though. That's where the debate begins: should TG have taken that hook? Could he have formulated and asked a 23 word question in the time it took them to part ways? Should he have just shrugged it off? Was his "yes" answer more flippant than EJ's question? The troubling part of this story is that TG's piece paints a picture of a young man in a pressure packed, leadership position in a billion dollar business who walked away from a situation angry rather than address it. We don't know EJ's side of it, but that is the take-away.

That seems like a legitimate take as well. Nothing happened. From what is written in the article, EJ flippantly asked a question that he really didn't want answered to someone not in his entourage as he was being led away by his handler and got a terse answer, which while truthful, he apparently didn't like or want to hear. He could have held up the handler and asked for clarification and refuted TG, getting in his take and explaining how this was now his team; but, who knows, perhaps he had somewhere more important to be. He left, so the article attempts to clarify the answer from TG's point-of-view. Anyone want to fund a billboard calling for the handler's job?

No. There was no assumptions being made. I used Goldson because he was the top paid free agent in last year's class of free agents. His contract is thus the high water mark of free agent contracts and can therefore be used as an authenticated set of numbers for quantitative comparison.

My understanding is Byrd never signed his tender at all. The CBA protects the team in this case by allowing them to hold exclusive rights to the player anyway. But, there were repercussions as well. The Bills had to guarantee him a designated salary, couldn't trade him, etc. The numbers are sort of interesting. The Bills ended up spending $6.9M in guaranteed money for a 1 year rental. The Goldson deal (which was at last year's bargain rates compared to any point in the future) guaranteed him an average of $3.6M a season. Goldson's APY is $8.25M on his 5 year contract. If Byrd is tagged again and nothing else changes in the status quo, then he'll get another 1 year 100% guaranteed CBA negotiated deal which will pay him something like $8.4M. He'll stand to make over $15M in guaranteed money in 2 years compared to $18M guaranteed to Goldson over 5 years. But, the Bills saved $1.3M this year this way, which is around 1% of their cap. That amount of money buys an Arthur Moats' contract.

Me either. There is certainly a difference between a player with a signed contract and a player who hasn't signed anything, but has been tagged under the CBA. Agreed on the last.

Him exercising his option of not signing the tender offer and not reporting for team activities he was not required to attend was financially self-serving. It was his choice not to participate with the team until he had to do so. The Bills placing the franchise tag on him was financially self-serving. It was their choice not to compete for his services on the market. Wasn't there some assertion 3 or 4 pages back that this was the brave, new Bills and the financial people were no longer in control of things?

Yes, but the same group of financial suits re-signed Chris Kelsay back in day, etc. I'm underwhelmed that these two contracts demonstrate the fundamental overthrow of business operations that was alluded to.

Is there any evidence that the financial side of the business is sitting in the backseat now? This thread started about Jairus Byrd, and I don't think the Bills inability to sign him to a deal last year would support the conclusion the financial people are in the backseat or have little to no input anymore. We could throw in the Levitre situation and lack of a backup plan. Or the decision to jettison Fitzpatrick because he wouldn't play ball on renegotiating his contract after Cellphonegate.

No. He fired Hilliard too.

I don't want to suggest anything about your list of names. In fact, I agree there are some very good players listed. However, a side comment: drafting starters is a pretty low bar to set. Specifically, just because a player starts does not make the player even so much as mediocre. Also, drafting starters is easy when the cycle is to gut the roster and change schemes every 3 years. When you cut and trade your entire offensive line, for example, it's not hard to imagine draft picks coming in and starting. Some years ago, there was even a discussion that credited players who played significant minutes (by whatever the definition was) due to other player's injuries to the drafting and team building prowess of the organization. (Slippery slope?) For me, I'd like a better barometer, like if the players being acquired, developed, and retained are turning the team around from a bottom-feeder into a perennial powerhouse.

Are you comparing JJ Watt to a shopping cart?

Reading this thread reminds me that Buffalo oh so rarely has its assistant coaches get promoted to HC gigs.

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Regarding (1): I say, meh to the qualifiers. Winning is winning. One doesn't have to qualify it with which winners make the playoffs. Everyone knows there are winning teams that don't make the playoffs because of the selection format of the NFL playoff system, for instance. Besides, the mathematical correlation between spending and winning isn't "stuck down" because one finds a playoff team in the top third, middle third, and bottom third of the chart. I know you know that. Regarding (2): I included the "middle 8" for completeness. It is interesting though that many of the playoff teams and much of the winning is towards the middle of this chart. Perhaps it is an indication that some teams have better leadership and talent evaluation -- they are able to maximize the talent that composes a winning football team without having to spend like a drunken sailor on the "shiny toys" and such. The top 20 teams in spending had a significantly better winning percentage than did the bottom. For arguing "it's a business", you could flip this around. The teams that maximized their business by minimizing "total cash spending" (maximizing their total cash "savings" if you will), did so at the expense of winning.

Can't say that I like blaming other fellow fans for the team's losing track record. (I assume you are kidding, though.) Every team has to make value judgments about their rosters. The Patriots did that with Wes Welker. He was an excellent player for them, but they had to decide if what he wanted in terms of cap could be replaced by other players and balance the cap better. They let him go and went after Amendola. That was their cost vs. production judgment. The Jairus Byrd situation is coming to a similar point. Do the Bills franchise tag him again? Or do they let him go? And if he goes, then what? There will be other free agent safeties out there; so, if they let an excellent player go, will they aggressively sign another starter on the FA market to plug in? Or will they wait for the dust to settle and pick over the bones? Or throw a mid-round draft pick at a replacement, who'll have to start? We shall see.

You're correct. The chart actually does show a correlation between spending and winning. The top 10 teams in the table had a combined winning percentage of 52.5%, The bottom 10 teams on the other hand had a combined winning percentage of 40%. If we take the top 12, they averaged 54.2% and the bottom 12 had a winning percentage to 38.5%. (The middle 8, fwiw, had a winning percentage of 60.9%.) The data supports the old cliche: you get what you pay for.

O'Neil and Weaver have been mentioned. Also looks like he's going to hire Driesbach (which would dash the theory that Marrone had nothing to do with firing Chuck).

I sort of like the 3rd phase of the game, myself. Though, the Bills did keep Crossman, so getting rid of special teams plays does have a certain appeal. I do agree that the commercial breaks after the extra point and then after the kickoff (which is often just an exhibition in kicking a football out of the back of the endzone) do pack in a lot of commercial snooze time in a big lump.

Within the structure of the shreadsheet, I'm sure he has quite a bit of decision making power.

What do you look like if you take a QB in the first that doesn't work out and pass on other QBs that do?

It's easier than if they used a transcendental number?

If they want to go the route of ex-Lions coaches that fielded some "amazing" defenses, they could fly out to CA to meet with Joe Barry. Just a thought.

Curtis Modkins?

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Bingo.