QCity

The Panthers have little to no money invested in Clausen, 6M total over 4 years and that's with a lot of incentives, he's only guaranteed a little over 2M. Plus they already said they will draft Luck first. He's not falling to 3rd.

You can't discount a front-loaded contract and the guaranteed money he received upfront. OBD spent $29 million over 5 years on him, that's 5.8M a year regardless of how they structured it. In his mind (and his agent's) he sees 5 yrs/29 mil and thinks "OK, lets start negotiating up from there." Ain't gonna happen Donte. To be honest, I bet the Bills offered him the figure you stated, about $3M - $4M a year in maybe a 4-5 year deal. He might be worth that. Maybe.

There is no official word yet, but it's not hard to speculate. He was being paid ~6 mil per year (5yrs - 29mil), based on his career-high year in tackles, inflated sense of self-worth, and recent posturing, does it really sound like he is willing to take a pay cut? The Bills are not creating a hole by losing Whitner, in fact it will probably feel like an anchor has been removed from the neck of OBD. Of course fans will scream that the team keeps wasting 1st round picks, and they're right, but it's not news.

A lot of people seem to be afraid to cut Whitner as it will open up another hole, when they don't realize that Whitner is the hole. He probably ranks in the bottom 10 SS in the league in pass coverage and playmaking ability, and is average at best in run support (I'm being generous). The reason he accumulated so many tackles is due to fact the defense couldn't get off the field. He is barely average at SS and wants to be paid elite (7+ million) money. Do people really think OBD should pay this guy Reed/Polamolu money to keep him???

The owner can't buy the remaining seats every single week, that would defeat the entire purpose of the blackout. Fans would come to expect that generosity and think, "Oh, only 4,000 seats left - don't worry Ralph will pick that up, let's just sit home in front of our HDTV's" No one on these boards can say for certain that he would not have bought them. Russ Salvatore has supported and worked with this organization for decades (donating to Bills sponsored charities, chartering flights to Miami games, etc), it wouldn't surprise me if this deal was in place all week. And it also wouldn't surprise me that another deal (Ralph) was in place in case Salvatore had to back out at the last minute.

Hey genius, ticket sales are split 60/40 between the home and away teams. You might want to learn how revenue sharing works. Ralph has bought plenty of tickets in the past, you can't say for certain he wouldn't have bought the tickets himself.