QCity

You did? You are going to have to help me out John, I had no clue what Jauron was doing. I always felt he was trying to build a small, fast team built to play in a dome. Nix's plan is blatantly obvious -build the lines. Re-sign Kyle WIlliams, draft Dareus/Carrington, bring in Mario/Anderson. Urbik, Pears, Reinhart, Hairston, Cordy Glenn. And I agree 100% with this philosophy. And as crazy as this sounds, (and I know I will be mocked), he has done a good job building the lines (yes I know we win 6 games every year). Maybe I have been drinking too much Kool-aid, but if Nix decides to let Levitre walk, I'm actually going to defer to his judgement on this one.

I somewhat agree with you about the pulling, but Reinhart was very good when he played LG for us (when we were moving Levitre around). I completely disagree with you about the significant loss of output. Of course not. We have a lot of holes and a finite amount of money to spend. Would you rather spend $8M on a G and $2M on a WR, or $8M on a WR and $2M on a guard? Dwayne Bowe and Matt Slauson or Andy Levitre and Brandon Gibson? Put your money into the skill positions first! The panic over losing an above-average guard is silly.

Yeah, let's not make our back-up SS, CB, entire LB corp, hurt TE, WR2, WR3 a priority. We really have to nail down this guard!

If Reinhart played a game at LG wearing Levitre's jersey 95% of the fans wouldn't be able to tell the difference lol. Yet there are posters here acting like losing the 10th best guard would be the end of days. The hysteria is hysterical.

DING

Well I never said they could, I was just explaining the reasons why a player might choose not to hang it up after spending the last decade here. And I'm certain any team will first have him examined by a physician, who can no doubt assess the condition of his knees better than you or I.

The best cap/contract site just got better

That "little bit of coin" could easily be more than the average person makes in a lifetime. Also, maybe the guy wants to feel what it would be like to suit up for a playoff game.

Ahhh I did not know they requested the full $9.8M. So tack that onto the $13M estimate and all of a sudden you have $23M available in cash to cap dollars. This might be an interesting FA season after all!

I didn't include it. Have the Bills requested that $9.8M? I didn't hear anything unless I missed it. I believe they have until 2 weeks before the season starts to request it...which would have been yesterday.

That's what I get. They have us at $103M - $30M prorated bonuses giving us about $73M in cash expenses. So with a cap of $123M, yeah, about $50M to spend. Before anyone goes bananas, remember that's cash to cap accounting. Watch how fast it goes... Last year's #8 pick got a $7.6M signing bonus with a base salary for a total hit of $8M Our 2nd round pick with get about a $2M signing bonus with a base salary for a total hit of around $2.5M There will be a slight increase this year and then factor in all the other draft picks. So estimate we will need to spend about $15M just on draft picks. Subtract that from our $50M and we are left with $35M. Now let's say we re-sign both Byrd and Levitre. Say we get Byrd at 5yrs $35M and Levitre at 6yrs $40M (guessing). Both will want guarantees of about $15-$18M with a signing bonus of at least $10M. Even with back-loaded contracts that only pay $1M each this season, combine that with their $10M signing bonuses and it adds up to $22M. So that's a generous estimate IMO but subtract that from $35M and we are quickly left with only $13M to spend. And we haven't signed any outside free agents yet. Could we land a FA like Bowe or Jennings or Kruger? Possible but not likely. I'd say lower tier FAs like Dustin Keller and Mike DeVito are much more realistic. (that is, if we re-sign both Levitre and Byrd - and of course we may not be done cutting everyone yet)

lol so true, some are just happiest when complaining. People were wondering who the next whipping boy will be after Kelsey? Here's your answer!

Last day to tag players is Monday March 4th. Expect to get a text soon that says "The Buffalo Bills have applied the franchise tag designation to FS Jarius Byrd. Reply HELP for help, STOP to cancel-Msg&data rates may apply" Even under the tag I still think they will be able to get a long term deal done, but it will be necessary for insurance & leverage.

"Cash to cap" is just a type of accounting methodology, it doesn't have anything to do with spending to the cap limit. It takes both sides to restructure a deal - if it were as simple as you make it sound, teams would be throwing money around much more recklessly than they do now.

I think Arizona is a lock to take a QB. They are currently wasting the prime years of their All-Pro receiver's career because they don't have anyone to get him the ball.

forum explosion incoming

12 days 20 hours till Fitz's $3M roster bonus kicks in tick tock tick tock....

I'm sold!! EXTEND FITZ NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! You convinced me with the arm strength argument.

This may be hard to understand, what with hindsight being 20/20 and all, but there was actually a time when Fitz was expected to be our franchise QB. The year was 2011, and we were fresh off a victory over the Eagles and had just raised our record to 4-1. The fans affectionately called him "The Amish Rifle," and had a cute way of purposely mispronouncing his last name as Fitzgerald or Fitzgibbons (a nod and a wink to how unknown he was). There was a huge clamor from the fans to "RE-SIGN FITZ NOW," and even our favorite contrarian Jerry Sullivan got on board with that idea. So he was re-signed, the wheels quickly fell off, and a bunch of "know it all/I told you so" posters came out of the woodwork to tell us how good they are at picking last week's lottery numbers. I was going to type "The End," but the story is not over yet.

See, I don't think that's much of a highlight reel. That may not be Coastal Carolina, but I saw Tennessee Tech, Fresno State, Washington State and Arizona State in that video. Not exactly powerhouses - and incidentally the only 4 teams he managed to get a sack against. Ok, Maybin comparisons are way too extreme, but this guy does scare me.

Reading the first 2-3 pages of this thread is pretty funny.

Kind of surprising to me, I thought we were getting good value at that price.

Now people are starting to claim Fitz has a strong downfield throwing arm. I think this board started drinking too early today...

That I don't know for certain, I just assumed both.

We already paid him $21M out of the $24M we guaranteed him, so he is getting $3M from us regardless if he is cut (unless he restructures his deal of course).