mjl4sam

Everyone knew Lynch was available, so I don't buy the Bills not shopping him around enough theory. If the Saints were willing to give a better deal than the Seahawks, then they would have made the offer and Bills would have accepted.

Effort doesn't give you more than a 4th rounder. We only got a 4th rounder because Lynch has never averaged more than 4.1 a carry in a season. Oh, and since being traded he only averages 3.5 a carry, which is awful. He has been consistently below average, and if he were on the trade block today I don't know if anyone would even give up a 4th. It was one run, albeit absolutely amazing, but it doesn't change the fact that he's been a consistently below average running back every single year of his career, and the Bills made out on that trade.

What are the "more important" positions? You could make a list of great players at every position that are on bad teams, with the exception of QB. Your examples don't provide anything meaningful.

I think on draft day Nix was thinking Spiller would be a future impact player even if it didn't happen right away. At this time last year, the Bills' roster was so far away from being playoff caliber it made a lot more sense to try and nab a future game changer rather than drafting for need. When you are close to making the playoffs, draft for need. When you are where the Bills were last year, you do what Nix did and draft guys who will be difference makers down the line - then build around them. It might not worked out as planned, but drafting best player available makes sense for a team not on the cusp of contention.

Man up and take the money line! That must pay out pretty nice haha

Assuming you are being serious, the flaw in that logic is that you are presuming teams can control which games they can win and lose. Obviously if a team was predestined to go 10 - 6, they would choose to go 0-4 in the NFC and 10-2 in the AFC and 6-0 in the division. But if a team really had that much control over which games they could win and lose, they would just choose to go 19-0. For an AFC team, it's better to have a better record versus the AFC than NFC, quite obviously. But the thought that a team would lose on purpose to an NFC team to better their playoff chances is ludicrous. Another flaw is that you are assuming that there is an inverse relationship between a team's NFC and AFC record, which is not true.

Is this a joke? Losing to an NFC team does nothing to help or hurt your tiebreaker (until you get down to SOS and what not) as it doesn't affect your conference or division record.

Being scared has nothing to do with it. You can't win games completing 8 passes, having a 50% completion percentage and not being able to convert third downs. I don't think he did anything yesterday to change anyone's mind about him, and he didn't do anything to show that he could become a legitimate starting QB, let alone a great one.

Who is to say he was stringing along the Yankees and the Rangers? Maybe he was seriously considering them. Plus they were the ones who decided to make the offers. And why isn't Cliff Lee allowed to use negotiating tricks? You don't think the teams do the same thing in other situations? Maybe he got some more dollars out of Philadelphia by doing so. Either way, if you are going to pick on athletes this is probablys the worst case you could have chosen. The Yankees and Rangers came to Lee. He pursued all options, as anyone making such an important decision would. There was nothing unethical in this process.

You make some very valid points. I think what a lot of people are missing, though, is Spiller really hasn't been that bad. His YPC is right around league average, and he has shown more of a propensity to run inside as the Browns game showed. I'm not saying he'll ever justify the 9th overall pick but to say he has sucked seems a little unreasonable to me.

It's no doubt much easier for the large markets to win, but if franchises are run correctly they can compete too. Just look at the Rays. Even the Royals have a really good farm system, but they keep wasting money on the Jose Guillen's (richest contract in Royals' history), Jeff Franceour's and Melky Cabrera's of the world - guys that don't help win baseball games. The disadvantage these teams have is when they make a mistake, it sets them back. Whereas if the Yankees make a mistake it doesn't matter. But if they make the right moves, any franchise can compete and the Rays are a testament to that. Even the Red Sox spent money for a long time withouth any World Series' rings to show for it until they figured out they needed to make the right moves.

Still he was awful, actually worse, in his second year averaging a 3.4 yards per carry. CJ is at 4.1.

Um he definitely took less money. In 5 years from now it's HIGHLY unlikely that any team is going to give a 37 YO pitcher anywhere near the annual salary that he'll need to make up for the money he left on the table. Factor in natural age related decline along with the high reality that he'll be injured at some point, and it would take a minor miracle for him to recover the money he left on the table. It may be a moot point because he made a crapload of money, but to say he "didn't really take less money" is inaccurate. If it was all about the money for Lee, he would not be a Phillie right now.

I was at the game and had a blast. How could a Bills fan not have fun at a slugfest in which the Bills come out victorious?

Did we watch the same game? As Nick Mendola said in his immediate reactions to the game, had the stat lines been reversed we would have been screaming for Jackson to have gotten more carries.