obie_wan

Bills situation could be pretty appealing to Griese since there is good chance that Losman will not stay on the field, either to performance or injury. Don't see any teams declaring him the outright starter and paying him as such.

sure the deal may happen. doesn't mean it will turn out good for the Bills. Adding Shelton is a good thing, just don't play him at LT.

you don't easily replace quality starting LTs. Ask the Dolphins. You can plug in Shelton, but he is not an adquate replacement for the production JJ provided.

unless JJ is smart and immediately accepts the $8 mil offer for 1 year.

Dallas is the least likely destination for Drew since Parcells knows firsthand what a turd Drew really is. Drew will go where the coaches are mesmerized by his big arm and big name and have an aversion to closely reviewing game tapes of the last few years.

why would they re-structure Shelton at all and create dead cap problems until they are sure he is teh long term answer to play on the OL. I have big doubts it will be at LT.

you got it right. no way is Shelton is an upgrade to JJ at LT. The only issue with JJ is staying on the field, not his talent.

too bad they are laying off the wrong ones. They should start with top level politicians where the savings will actually generate a 2 fold benefit

Not with the great leadership from the current politicians, who are still more worried about getting re-elected or employing their families.

the grass is not always with someone else's free agent rejects. Shelton is not better than JJ, and MW will be a joke if moved to LT. He doesn't have the footwork to pass protect at RT, let alone at LT. Unless Walter Jones or Orlando Pace is brought in to replace JJ, then the Bills will be regressing at the most important position the OL. Funny how when Drew was the QB, the OL needed to be improved to Pro-Bowl. However, now that DRew is gone, any cheap free agent castoff will be acceptable at LT.

no problem withClumpy - he provides a fine service It is poster who adamantly states that MW does NOT have a $9 mil cap hit

so to meet your criteria, , give the money to JJ, who has shown he can actually play LT and bring in the much cheaper Shelton to play RT and cut MW if he refuses to take a big pay cut that matches his ability with his pay

Asserting false statements as fact will do wonders for your credibility.

hey - don't let the facts get in the way. Now that Drew is gone, the team no longer needs even a good OL, let alone a Pro-Bowl one, so any Tom, Dick aor Harry can be plugged in to play LT. Big, big mistake if TD lets JJ go without a better player committed to replace him.

Exactly- it's one of those "It's always been done this way".

you are correct. the grass is not always with someone else's free agent rejects. Shelton is not better than JJ, and MW will be a joke if moved to LT. He doesn't have the footwork to pass protect at RT, let alone at LT. Unless Walter Jones or Orlando Pace is brought in to replace JJ, then the Bills will be regressing at the most important position the OL. Funny how when Drew was the QB, the OL needed to be improved to Pro-Bowl. However, now that DRew is gone, any cheap free agent castoff will be acceptable at LT.

agree that the proper move would have been to trade down, even if it meant giving away the pick for little value to do so. The Bills should have taken Mike Pearson from UF to play LT in the 2nd round. This also would have prevented the questions surrounding Josh Reed

there is nothing in the CBA that requires guaranteed contracts. However, a hard salary cap is not really possible with guaranteed contracts, because teams would have no flexibility to deal with non-performing contracts. Consequently, teams will be forced to grant guaranteed contracts only in limited circumstances - probably much like the NFL where only portions of contracts are guaranteed. The players were stupid not to get a deal done now, because they will never see the big money that is currently guaranteed under existing contracts. .

Unlike you, I expect that the Bills $8.75 mil Hall of Fame QB to take a little time out of off-season to prepare for the most critical season of his career. But he's never spent the time. With all the talk of Drew having to compete for a job this year and Losman is town, Drew still couldn't be bothered to show any interest. JP may be inexperienced, but at least he's willing to work on improving. That alone will be a huge improvement on how the team reacts to its offensive leader.

The NHL offer is off the table. The deal will only get worse now for the players. The NHL will reduce the cap into the 30's and link the league cap to league wide revenues- as the NFL does. The biggest shocker for the players will be the phase out of guaranteed contracts. A hard cap will not work if the teams can't cut salaries. The NBA has a soft cap and can't make it work with only 5 starters. The players would be wise to fire their reps and get a deal done before teh NHL claims an impasse and imposes its own set of rules.

you are correct - without Drew, the Bills will be able to run a complete NFL offense instead of the dumbed down version required to protect Drew from himself. Drew's biggest problem was not his immobility but his horrible decision making. This led the team to essentially eliminate all passes more than 10 yards downfield, except for gadget plays. Drew generally would not throw the ball until he could see 3 yards of separation. 1. More moving pockets- the blocking schemes in the new offense should be very different. Would agree that OL will need to communicate and be smart. At the risk of sounding racist, it is not by accident that most of NE's OL are not super athletes, but super football players. 2. More rollouts- 3. More screen passes- Drew's mechanics were horrible in executing screen passes. But what do you expect from a player who never worked at improving his footwork, ball handling, pocket presence, etc. 4. Timing plays and quick openers- . A MM/Clements offense may be skewed more toward timing plays where the QB throws it to a spot without the receiver being there yet or even open (as Bledsoe often did in his wait and deliver mode). This is not unique to a MM offense- this is standard NFL stuff and could be the single most noticeable difference. Drew absolutely was incapable of completing quick slants. He rarely would even attempt a throw to someone other than Moulds if he wasn't wide open. And even then, he wouldn't throw it because he had locked onto Moulds. Although JP will struggle due to inexperience, hw will at least attempt to move thru his reads and look at secondary WRs. One item you fail to mention is play action passes. With McGahee the featured weapon, the Bills should be running play action far more than they did last year. The Colts basically run play action on most plays. The biggest frustration last year was Drew's inability to exploit the play action for big plays. He would have all the time in the world, and then attempt to dump off a pass behind the line. Drew had no confidence in his Wrs being able to make plays. This area should improve dramatically in 2005.

those making $500,000 probably qualify for food stamps. maybe if all those "poor" players were a little smarter, they would have realized that a cap only limited the mega-salaries and they would actually make more money. Too bad they will return to a league without those wonderful guaranteed contracts.

watch the games. Drew didn't execute more than a handful of successful screen passes last year. His mechanics are horrible because he never takes the time away from Oregon/ Montana to improve on his deficiencies.

The average pay for NHL players is over $1 mil. The lower paid players are those in the AHL. But they will have a chance to greatly increase their pay as replacement players next year.

Older vets with big contracts were stupid to hold out. They lost a year on their current big money guaranteed contracts. They will be forced to cross the picket line and accept the new rules imposed by the league next year, or lose the remaining years on their big money contracts. You can bet that guaranteed contracts will no longer be the norm when the NHL re-opens for business under its new salary cap.