hondo in seattle

Cassel did go to the Pro Bowl in 2010. In the right system, with the right cast around him, he can be effective. And he may have that here. And, then again, EJ may step up in Year Three. A fan can always hope. As an answer to the OPs question, this a reasonable guess.

Mercy, Mercy, Here comes Percy... finally!

Overpaying is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you don't do it all the time. If we offered a market-value contract to every FA we wanted, we wouldn't sign many. Some team or another is usually willing to overpay a name FA. So to be competitive, you sometimes have to overpay a few FAs while searching for value elsewhere. It's like going to a fast food restaurant. You might order a few things from the value menu but you might also overpay for one of the premium items to get the meal you really want. The bottom line is the Bills have a lot of talent on offense, defense and special teams and stayed under the same salary cap that Miami, and every other team, has to fit under. Overall, we seem to be spending wisely. If we could only find a QB to spend on.

This is a good point. Except that top-to-bottom the Bills probably have more talent than the Pats if you ignore the QB position. While I'm not sure how I feel about the Clay contract, and we're still searching for a QB, overall I think DW is doing a good job building this roster.

Despite 8 guards, I think, on the current roster I'd be looking for help for the offensive line. Other than that, I'd really try to stick to BPA. In the long run, it's better to draft the BPA than stretch for need players.

Didn't Whaley say Clay is "special"? I haven't watched Miami that closely but I don't recall a TE so special that he deserves $38 million. What am I missing?

I'm not a bettor so maybe someone can explain this. The Bills are now at 33-1. Considering there are 32 teams, the Bills now have an almost perfectly average chance of winning the SB. If every team were equal, every team would have 32-1 odds. Well the Bills were already an above average team last year - we finished 9-7 after all. And our off-season moves only made us better. So shouldn't our odds be better than 33-1? Granted 33-1 is better than the 75-1 earlier this year and the 200-1 we've seen in previous years. But I still think we're somewhat better than 33-1. Maybe I should place a bet on us.

I agree it's a very good thing. I hope he finds so much satisfaction in this great act of kindness that he does more good things.

As I mentioned on page 1, Schaub had tendonitis in the elbow last year. While he claims it was a new problem, he might have just been trying to put a positive spin on things. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2174653-matt-schaub-injury-updates-on-raiders-qbs-tendonitis-and-return The question is he truly recovered or is his elbow permanently shot? I'd be wary.

I'm sure MD took real joy in helping out the hometown kids. But the timing is interesting. There might have been multiple motivations at work.

Shaub's arm seems like it's shot. Ongoing tendonitis maybe? I guess we could fly him in and kick the tires... but they might fall off.

This is all true. But you wonder what good play-design and coaching might do for these guys. Then again, while wondering that, I'd still love to see the Bills sign/draft another guard and tackle.

I guess I can't support Patrick Willis then until Cookie Gilchrist is inducted. Cookie's greatness was compromised by knee problems. Who knows what his stats would have been like if the NFL had let him play straight out of high school and he didn't waste his best/healthiest years of his career in the CFL. Still the man managed to produce a 5.0 yards per carry as a professional and helped the Bills win their first AFL championship. Some fellow players thought Cookie - in his prime - was as good as Jim Brown. Hall of Famer, Billy Shaw, called him, "The greatest football player I've ever seen or been associated with." The man was virtually unstoppable.

Chris doesn't ever publish unreleased insider information. My guess is that he's not allowed to leak anything until it's been officially allowed. He is allowed, however, to mention reports from other sources. Because he does work for the Bills and is privy to certain things, I usually think that if he's citing a source, it's probably a reliable one who's putting out information that Chris knows (or suspects) to be true.

I don't care about EJ versus Tannehill. I care about EJ versus Cassel versus Taylor. I'm hoping EJ becomes better than Cassel ever was. Or I'm hoping Cassel has his best year yet. Or I'm hoping Taylor was a diamond buried in a depth chart.

I didn't find this article very biased. But I also don't find Rodak to be very informative either. The facts he gets right were usually published somewhere else first. And he doesn't always get his facts right.

It's clear Whaley is trying to both building the offensive line and acquire some play-makers for the offense. He did the best he could, realistically, for the QB position. I wish we had landed Iupati (or Beluga) but no team gets every player they want. Shady is a huge deal. When you don't have an elite QB, it's imperative you have an elite RB. Somebody's got to get you some yards. You don't get a player like Shady for nothing and the price we paid was reasonable. Let's hope we do well in the draft and that the offensive linemen we drafted last year step up this year. We'll be in the playoff hunt this year.

I'm generally happy with the off-season. But the Harvin signing puzzles me. Why do we rent an oft-injured, oft-clueless WR when we don't have a franchise QB who can get him the ball? For a reported $6 million for 1 year? They say past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. If true, Harvin won't even crack the starting lineup. Either he'll be benched by the coaches for something dumb, or he'll get hurt, or he'll bench himself. Under the circumstances, wouldn't it have been wiser to pay Chandler his $2 mil than give Harvin his $6 mil? Now we're loaded at wideout but extremely thin at TE having also lost Lee Smith. The hiring of Rex and Roman, and the signing of Shady, all say we're building a ground-and-pound offense. Where does flaky Harvin fit in? Aren't TEs more important in ground-and-pound offense than WRs who don't like to block?

I think Yolo was saying something like this... Lookie, Lookie, here comes Cookie! Mercy, Mercy, there goes Percy!

Of course better players win more games. The shiny toys are going to help. Whaley didn't find a QB because there are no great QBs available. He did the best he could and signed a serviceable journeyman and a younger guy with some upside. As for the OL, it did get better when we hired Greg Roman who knows how to design running plays far better than Marrone/Hackett. Last year's linemen complained about contradictory instructions. The veteran coaches we have now will get better work from the line. Then there's Incognito who was a Pro Bowler his last full season, even with his head planted firmly up his ass. We also added a better RB and a better FB to lead block. Our run game will be better - though another OG would help. I'm with you if your point is games are won in the trenches. And, btw, we did need a superstar RB. When you don't have an elite QB, you better have an elite RB is you expect to win many games. Since the former was unavailable, Whaley got us the latter.

Whaley didn't ignore a QB. There were simply no franchise QBs available. So he did what he could to build up the rest of the team. He resigned Hughes. Since we don't have an elite QB, he traded for an elite RB - we gotta get yards somehow! Then we signed a blocking FB to help create holes for Shady. Whaley hired Rex who should bring our defense to an even higher level. Rex hired Greg Roman who's supposed to be a genius at the run game (which we need) but also salvaged Alex Smith. Whaley signed Incognito, despite his history, because it's imperative we improve our OL. And then there's Percy Harvin who behaved well-enough last year and was signed to a one year trial contract. And now we're going hard after Clay. I'm not sure what else you could have asked Whaley to do. I guess you can blame him for failing to sign Iupati or Beluga but you can't win 'em all. I doubt if Whaley has the scientific expertise to clone Jim Kelly. Other than that, I think he's doing on nice job building the roster this off-season. Maybe our next GM should be a microbiologist.

Most of Whaley's moves make sense. We can clearly see the logic even when we disagree. But releasing Chandler without Clay on the roster is a head-scratcher.

I'm sure that's the hope. But my guess is that we enter the regular season with this depth chart: 1. Cassel 2. EJ 3. Taylor I think Cassel will prove to be serviceable and the Bills will win a wild card spot.

My friend's dad complained about that for decades.

I think Freddy is better than 2 of the 3 backs you named. And while not better than Shady, I think Fred still runs with more authority between the tackles than Shady. The other thing is that Freddy's commitment and motor make the players around him train & play harder. That leads to wins.