Gabe Northern

WE COULD HAVE TENDERED HIM...HE WAS A RESTRICTED FREE AGENT. OF COURSE THIS WAS A STUPID MOVE BY THE FRONT OFFICE. HE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO COME BACK...ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS PAY HIM $2m

This has injury settlement written all over it.

People are very emotional about this for some reason. Calm down. It's reasonable to think the Bills will suck this year because: 1. They did nothing to address the offensive line situation aside from sign a 34-year old castoff from Oakland who looked BRUTAL in preseason pass protection. 2. The passing game looks JV High School caliber. Teams have proven you can take away Lee Evans. What's left? Unproven WRs, a drug addict TE, and a QB who looked shell-shocked and washed up last year. 3. The Bills are switching to a 3-4 and many writers think that they lack the personnel to do so. Even if they're okay personnel wise, implementing new systems can be difficult and they could get gashed early. 4. Beyond that, the roster is relatively anonymous. Guys like Kyle Williams are pretty solid pros, but national writers don't know a thing about him. 4-5 wins is a reasonable forecast. 2 wins is a bit pessimistic. Let's hope they exceed all of our expectations and make the playoffs. But that's probably less likely than 2-14.

The late round finds are the work of field scouts. Modrak's focus is on preparing the briefs on the top 100. You know, where we tend to screw up.

I thought the team would cut Kawicka. Just the sense I got from the switch to the 3-4 coupled with the Davis signing and fact that Langston Walker wasn't retained for depth last year. I think he sensed it to and stepped up. I also thought they'd cut Fitz or Brohm soley due to this Chris Brown report about Levi. It clearly states that either they'd keep 2 QBs and Levi would be on practice squad or they'd keep 3 QBs and Levi would be the 3rd on the roster. Any stuff I say on this board is fact-based speculation, or something based directly on a reading of an article. The only thing I have ever stated from inside information is a conversation with someone inside the organization and another from a fellow attorney who does contract work that Tom Modrak runs the draft and every time he's overruled on a good player, it's immediately leaked to the media.

A big knock on him out of college was that he refused to play tackle, which scared teams off because they didn't think he could cut it at tight end. My understanding is that his coaches at Arkansas also hoped to move him to tackle but he refused.

I think you're talking about the Parrish td. It wasn't that big of a deal because there was no one around him. If you have other examples, please let me know.

For the thousandth time: 1.) Kudos to the Bills for realizing Peters was not worth the money and/or would not react well to getting $25 million guaranteed. 2.) Where was Plan B? For months, we were INSULTED by the organization, which insisted a lazy, 375 lb RT could move to the left side and block 3-4 LBs. You cannot look at (1) in isolation. If you do, you just spin your wheels, fail to improve the roster and miss the playoffs for 10 straight years. Making the "right decision" on Peters requires replacing him with an NFL caliber LT talent, which they obviously failed to do.

Midnight on Sunday. But you have permanent access to the games. Easier than TiVo. Great for rewatching series to form your own opinions on players. BTW, in the past, DirecTV has only opened the online to people who live in apartment buildings that don't have the dish. I THINK that this is opening that old arrangement up to everybody.

Read my post. "A little different" than what you represented.

Chris Brown already announced this on his Fan Friday blog. You didn't complete the quote. He announced that Brown will be the 3rd QB. Either they'll only keep 2 QBs on the active roster and Brown will be 3rd on the ps, or they'll keep 3 QBs on the active roster and Brown will be the third. Either way, Brohm or Fitzy are getting cut.

This is exactly the type of signing I'm talking about when I dog the Bills. Bennie Andersen, Tutan Reyes, Melvin Fowler, and now this clown. EVERY time I read we sign one of these guys, I go to check out news and commentary from the newspapers/Board of the team they just left. In EVERY case the word is that the guy absolutely sucks and they're scratching their head as to how he signed with another NFL team. I'm just sick and tired of this nonsense. What about Jamaal Brown? He's 4 years younger than Cornell. Why couldn't we get a competent, NFL-caliber player JUST ONCE.

Funny. I remember back in the day how Gale Gilbert looked like Dan Marino in preseason. I'd wonder why we didn't package him with a 3rd rounder for a first round pick.

I get your point, but sometimes double negatives work when the language seeks to be mildly evasive. Here, the clear intent is to show some empathy for the taunters' frustration without actually embracing the taunters or their taunts.

Thanks for posting. Good review. I check the rankings carefully because I think there's a lot too it. Last year, I re-watched a few games on TiVo with the PFF ratings of players on my laptop. While it may seem ridiculous to give a player a precise number for their performance in a game given that there's obviously a lot of qualitative judgments that go into the rankings, I thought found their offensive line rankings to be quite defensible. I also love how they measure the pressures as a percentage of snaps the player rushes the passer. The issue with guys like Kelsay is not just the low number of sacks, it's being swallowed by a single offensive linemen on every passing down. Anyway, I'd like to think the offense will be better in 2010 than they do and probably give us an extra win or 2 than they do.

No team makes less use of signing bonuses than the Bills. I really don't care that we don't target expensive free agents. I'd be nervous as hell if we signed Peppers, as that's a lot of eggs to put in one basket. My issue is spending on coaches, front office personnel and scouts, and depth. Cutting Langston Walker was the perfect example of what I mean. You can't pay $3 M per year for some depth?

Yeah. Lots of other front offices make terrible decisions too. Great point. (In fairness, Dorsey was picked by the old regime and is not an obvious fit for their defense).

appreciate the name calling. Again this is like saying an apartment owner whose building has appreciated in value 40,000 times over can't fix the plumbing in your unit because all he has in the annual rent because the value of the building is not spendable money. This is an absurd suggestion Collateralized loans for equity extraction are exceedingly common. In household finance, it's called home equity withdrawal. You refinance your mortgage and receive a cash payment when your house increases in value. Ralph could have no trouble getting a revolving line of credit to meet any cash shortfalls. More to the point, the family has made so much money in unrealized capital gains over 40 years that it's an insult that they demand large profits today.

you are misstating things. The team has no debt. There is no risk of not getting repaid because any loan would be secured by the team. The issue is not him going into more debt but simply forgoing dividends. A $39 million operating profit is outrageous when the owner has made so much in capital gains. The point is that operating income in this circumstance is besides the point. It's like owning an apartment building that has increased in value 40,000 times over and saying you can't fix the plumbing because the rent isn't high enough.

How difficult is it to get a secured loan against an NFL franchise that you own outright? You think it would be difficult to get revolving line of credit to pay expenses against a $900 million fair value asset on which you have no debt? Don't like debt? Sell 10% of the team for cash to reinvest. The statement of cash flows includes cash flow from financing activity, making the net asset value very relevant here. The lengths people will go to defend Ralph is staggering. Someone with 40 years of cumulative annualized returns of 25% is not trapped in an illiquid position living hand-to-mouth. The current income earned by the family from the team's profitability is an insult considering how much they've made in capital gains. Get liquid. Spend it. By the way, I love the "I got news for you" insult to start the post. Equity extraction via new debt is one of the most common financing transaction in the United States. This is not only true in the home equity context (cash-out refis) but also true in businesses, whether public, closely-held, or private. Companies targeting capital structures use leveraged dividends, family businesses take on debt to "cash out" to allow family members to diversify into stocks, other businesses manage liquidity levels by using company assets as collateral for credit lines. The focus on cash flow given the circumstances here is just plain stupid.

The article actually mentions the big-spending baseball teams as generating lower profits than the Pirates. I think the same thing is true in football. The signing bonus amortization -- which the Bills don't do -- is enormously costly from a time value of money perspective. Any team that makes big use of signing bonuses is essentially borrowing from future revenue at high implied interest rates to fund them.

Just to be clear: reading about the Pirates makes one think about the similarities to the Bills. Often, critics say things like "the owners don't care about fielding a competitive team as long as the franchise meets its profitability targets." Most true fans scoff at the notion, refusing to believe that the ownership could behave in such a cold, calculated way. Well, here's some tangible, straightforward evidence that the Pirates place dividends ahead of competitiveness. Thinking about the Bills' cash management practices (emphasis over cash-to-cap, refusal to pay signing bonuses, avoidance of cash-rich long-term deals, does anyone really doubt that the Bills' finance department manages team expenses with the aim of ensuring members of the Wilson family get their dividends? It's not that they wouldn't love to see the Bills succeed. This isn't sabotage. It's just that success has to come in the context of meeting the operating profit (which, with no debt is basically pre-tax profit) targets.

I have to take issue with this reply. The front office can manipulate fans by making this black and white: either the team goes after Albert Haynesworth-types and makes a splash in free agency or it doesn't. In reality, outlays relate to 2 factors: paying market rates to keep your good players and paying market rates to sign reasonable upgrades at key positions. We agree that disregarding team chemistry and salary cap flexibility to sign top players is idiotic. But that's not what this is about. With the Bills, every year brings another Cornell Green, Bennie Andersen, Tutan Reyes, Mel Fowler, or Geoff Hangartner. No one ever believed these guys were anything more than decent backups. Signing them to start is basically an admission that you don't care if the team sucks, especially when there's not a promising rookie being groomed so as to reasonably say it's a one year transition. People like to point to the one whiff on Derrick Dockery, but he was starting caliber, at least, and it's not like he had any trouble finding $5 million per year suitors once we went in a different direction.

We may never know? I think it was pretty clearly a PR stunt. http://www.ksdk.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=190085&catid=71

Disturbing article from ESPN on the Pirates. Basically, the ownership is quite content to field miserable teams as long as they can generate the cash flow to make $20 million distributions to team owners. This really makes you think when re-reading Mark Gaughan's article about the Bills ranking dead last in 2009 cap spending and 8th from last in terms of cash outlays. From 1960 to 2010, Ralph Wilson's ownership interest in the Bills has grown by nearly 25% per year -- from $25,000 to a fair value of $900 million. This investment income far surpasses whatever current revenue is generated by big market cities from PSLs, luxury boxes, and other factors. Yet, rather than spend some of this money, the Bills -- like the Pirates -- seem content to generate profits rather than field a competitive team.