Mickey

Kluwe is probably the best out there

Please identify the veteran backup that was there for the taking that the front office was too stupid to pick up. Jimmy Clausen? Leinert?

I'd go with Alonso.

For what it is worth, here are the QB's available from other teams' practice squads, call it the parade of horribles: Gregg McElroy - Cinn. Matt Scott - Jacksonville Chandler Harnish - Indianapolis Rusty Smith - Tenn. Tyler Wilson - Oak. Alex Tanney - Dallas Scott Tolzien - GB Seth Doege - Atlanta Ryan Griffin - NO

I am willing to bet that Marrone didn't want to put Byrd in tonight, after only two real practices, he is bound to be rusty, better off with who we have for now.

Yeah, because that is the way to build a winning franchise, through petulance and spite. And because you have said it 137 times, that must make it true. Who needs facts, evidence or proof when you have some guy on a web site saying something 137 times? That would really, really show Jairus wouldn't it? Sticking him with a 20% raise and another years vacation while he then hits it huge the year after, all the while using up a roster spot. That would be a total win for the Bills and totally screw Byrd. Brilliant thinking. I hope you are right but I am not sure how it is in Byrd's interest to risk injury. His health is his most valuable asset and risking it now and jeopardizing what eventually will be a huge pay day may not make much sense to him. If he plays, is he really likely to play any better than already has? I don't think so. His value has been proven. What does he gain by playing this year? The bills wouldn't give him the deal he wants this year, why would they next year? What is going to happen that would get the team to suddenly change their minds on Byrd? I am afraid that the two sides have pretty much made up their minds. The Bills don't want him at the price it will take to keep him so they are going to try and get what they can from him at the price they want until they no longer can. And Byrd evidently feels that the price he is asking is fair and he isn't going to back down. He is justifiably concerned that an injury at this point in his career, with no long term deal to protect him, would be an absolute disaster. The Bills have seen all they need to see of what Byrd brings to the table. They have decided that he just isn't good enough for the money he is asking. Nothing Byrd can do this year on the field or off is going to change that.

Williams played a great game. Even when he got burned deep, he made a shoestring TD saving tackle that limited the damage to 3 points rather than 7. That 4 point difference turned out to be the difference between winning 23-20 and losing 23-24.

on a short week, I doubt he sees many snaps after having only fully participated in two practices

Do you feel overly censored? Is it really such a trial not being able to use jokes containing racist, misogynistic or homophobic slurs? Were you hoping this board would be a safe haven for racial humor? I don't have any problem getting through the day without denigrating people, it hasn't really hampered my self expression. I am terribly sorry you feel so put out by having to go through life without using your favorite racial or gender based slurs to make your friends laugh. The women I know are tough, toughness doesn't have a gender and neither does weakness or gentleness. I wasn't aware that society doesn't expect women to be tough but then, I don't have a stereotyped view of what men and women are supposed to be like. Whether it was meant to be a joke or not, It very much is an insult to women and it does have an effect on them to hear that kind of thing over and over and over again. He has the freedom to use whatever denigrating language he wants, just as I have the right to my say and you have the right to whine about how awful it is to live in a world that no longer appreciates such knee slappers as humiliating a man by comparing him to a woman.

I don't see why comparing a man to a woman is a go-to method for insulting a man. I don't know about the women in your life but the women I know are as tough or tougher than any man. As a father of two daughters, I can tell you that women are not deaf to these kinds of insults and what it tells them about what people who use them think about women.

I have no emotional reaction to Byrd at all either way. My only concern is watching a good football team and we are a better team with him on the field than we are without him. It is the responsibility of this team's FO to put together a good football team. They have failed at that task for many years now so I am not disposed to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to critical personnel decisions. Byrd's job is to be as good a FS as he can be and I think he has done his job throughout his contract. Plenty of other teams have been able to put forth competitive teams year in and year out. I suppose our front office could just be terribly unlucky in having so many of their good players being "greedy" and insisting on getting "more than they are worth". I think it more likely that they are simply poor judges of talent, frequently overpaying mediocre talent (Fitz, Kelsay) and unwilling or unable to hang on to good players. No matter who you blame, the Byrd situation could hardly be described as anything other than a mess. An ugly contract dispute with one of the few proven talents on the team is not exactly the way to have started off a new regime in Buffalo. However they got they there, the end result, a losing franchise, is their responsibility.

We would have to be in a pretty desperate situation to.....oh, wait...

You see the team as an unfortunate weed, soon to be removed, sprouting on a bent grass green?

No, it gives you an idea of how often they update the depth chart page on the team site.

No signing bonus which is the heart of a FA contract, it is what protects a player against career ending injuries. I don't care if it was or wasn't fair. I don't care at all about the team's financial statement. I care about winning games. We are a better team with Bird than without him. I don't think that if last January we were told that the result of the negotiations with Byrd would be a long hold out followed by a nagging injury and a pro bowl player who clearly is miserably unhappy that we would have all shouted "Way to Go Overdorf!!!" You do not improve a team by losing good players. It is known.

Crazy kids and their damn "rock and roll" music! It all started going to hell when they gave women the vote. You see so clearly what all the fools out there simply refuse to see: the NFL is done, over, kaput. Don't believe all that propaganda about the Super Bowl being the most watched sporting event ever or the league's laughably inflated claim that over 200 million people watched an NFL game last year.

I agree with you, we should go into full fledged panic mode immediately and pull the plug on this rebuilding effort before we go too far down this road of failure. Three games, one win and two close losses, is more than enough evidence to pronounce this team and this season to be a completely lost cause. It goes without saying that whatever draft pick we get for Spiller is guaranteed to be a pro bowler and of way more help to this team than Spiller so its not like we would be trading a blue chip running back so that we can draft only god knows who. And while we are at it, I think we should give the injury-prone, soon to be a greedy bastard who wants more money Gilmore. How much longer are we going to waste our time hoping this guy will produce? Stay bold my friend.

Yeah, he is greedy, unlike the team. They are pretty much running a non-profit charity at One Bills Drive. I betcha the fans at his new team will really hate his guts no matter how many pro bowls he makes or how many wins his new team gets with him on the roster. I think you are on to something here. The NFL has been teetering on the edge of collapse, crushed under the weight of all those ever increasing profits. This whole Byrd thing is going to bring down the whole shebang. And if WGR says they can't "discount that he's faking it", what proof could be more rock solid than that? Case closed.

Buffalo had full access to his medical records before signing him and perform their own examination. Yeah, because injuries like this never worsen over time. Never. They always stay exactly the same. Any medical student knows that.

You are so right! I am so glad that Brown is our G and not that stinking Levitre because, well, Yay Money! Boo Wins! And we are so exactly like Seattle, it's a totally perfect comparison. Why can't people see that? Because they don't have your insight, thats why.

Grow up. It's not a team. It is a business. A corporate entity. The players are employees. No one on the "team", not the coaches, not the players and not the front office have publicly expressed one iota of concern about Byrd, as you seem to believe, faking an injury because of his unhappiness with his contract.

I think the money you give a guy is a function of the distance between the quality of his play and that of his replacement. Using that measure, Levitre was invaluable.

Gotta hand it to the front office on Byrd, that was masterfully done. We are just where we wanted to be on that one. We narrowly avoided having a happy, healthy pro bowler in the secondary in his prime. We really dodged a bullet there *whew*.

Yeah, there were tons of top notch #4 and #5 CB's out there we passed on, tons. I distinctly remember this board being in an uproar about how bad the end of the secondary bench was and how nothing was being done about it. If there is one thing that is easy to find in the NFL, it's quality CB's. I don't know what they were thinking, its not like we had two first round picks starting at CB and an all pro safety. Oh...wait...

I am sweeping this one under the rug and hoping like hell that somebody, anybody, gets healthy fast enough to play next week. Unfortunately, Brown at LG is apparently healthy as a horse but he just sucks. No remedy for that. Lets activate Casper!