Mickey

"Could We Start (Jason at LT) Again Please" For the melody: Jason Peters Superstar JASON PETERS: I've been living to see you. Dying to see you, but it shouldn't be like this. This was unexpected, What do I do now? Could we start again please? I've been very hopeful, so far. Now for the first time, I think we're going wrong. Hurry up and tell me, This is just a dream. Oh could we start again please? RUSS BRANDON: I think you've made your point now. You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home. Before it gets too frightening, We ought to call a vote, So could we start again please? EVERYONE ON THE WALL (even the Senator): I've been living to see you. Dying to see you, but it shouldn't be like this. This was unexpected, What do I do now? Could we start again please? I think you've made your point now. You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home. Before it gets too frightening, We ought to call a vote, So could we start again please? Could we start again please? (Repeat 5 times) PARKER: Could we start again?

A very good question. I have no clue why this has taken so long. The longer it goes the riskier it is for both sides. What if Lee goes down for the season in the opener like so many did last year? What if he has a few monster games?

He hasn't decided to become a "mystery man", he has simply decided not to engage in a war of words through the press, you know, the kind of thing that we regularly blast other players like Owens and Johnson for doing.

If we were talking about Cheeseburgers, fine, I could do without them but for God sakes man, this is football. My wife once asked me that if I had to give up one or the other, what would I choose, football or sex? I am not going to tell you my answer but I will say that I paused long and hard before answering and that not long afterwards, I invested heavily in a new couch.

"...messes with their teamates..."????? What are you talking about? This is a holdout, not a divorce. This is the NFL, not a love triangle. These are highly paid professionals who have all had their own problems and successes in negotiating their contracts. Don't project your anger on to the team. I imagine that if they took a vote among the active players, everyone but Chambers would vote that the team redo Peters' deal, now.

The Bills have actually made it clear that the opposite is the case: no new deal for 2008. As for next year, they have said, as far as renegotiating is concerned, "never say never". Still "completely with the Bills on this one..."?

Its quiet. Almost too quiet.

Gemma Ward, from Australia. "...she accompanied her friends to a modelling competition and ended up being scouted herself: I had come straight from my auntie and uncle's farm, and I was wearing this big gray barn jacket with mud all over it. When the scout came up to me, I said, 'No, thank you.' They forged my mum's signature [for mandatory parental consent], and pushed me in front of the cameras.[2] Ward didn't win the competition, but Vivien's Model Agency picked her up after seeing a small picture of her in Kurv, a quarterly, internationally focused, Australian produced, fashion, arts, beauty, culture and style magazine. Here, check her out: If angels exist, I hope they look like Gemma Ward

It was even dumber than that, Williams played RT in college, not the left. I and several others pointed this out at the time and were told that were a pack of morons. Texas had a lefty at QB, we were told, so they played him on the right to protect the blind side. However, he played on the right side his junior year as well when they had a righty at QB. In hindsight anyway it should of been obvious.

I think the team and Peters should sumbit this to non-biding mediation and I suggest your daughter as the mediator, she'd get these stubborn fools, on boths sides, to see the light. Plus she'd make about $3,000 per hour.

How do you even know that rhyme?

Don't even try Bill, its the same logic used to conclude that the problem is lack of communication rather than money or that not much communication is required to say "No" and "Call us if you change your mind." You see, Brandon's principles, like my sainted mother's, demand that he be called first rather than the other way around. Its not the millions of dollars at stake that is the problem, its who owes a call to who.

Why do you rely so much on the notion that "Peters has shut down communications" when the proof is the exact opposite? Brandon himself has referred to "brief discussions" with Peters/Parker. What does that mean to you if not that they have talked and talked more than once? Brandon also said, in response to a question about whether Peters came up when he worked out Hardy's deal with Parker that "...most of the discussion was about Hardy...". What does that mean to you? You do understand that "most of" does not equal "all of". If Peters hadn't come up at all when they worked on Hardy, the answer to that question would have been "No", not "most of..." We also now have had numerous confirmations of the team's refusal to even discuss a new deal for this year. We have also learned that in February of 2007, Schobel didn't have to go to the team, they went to him and offered a new deal even though the one he was on was a blockbuster deal at the time it was made. Did the team go to Peters and offer to work on a new deal for THIS year in February of 2008, the same as they did with Schobel? Not hardly considering they still aren't willing to work on a new deal for this year 7 months later. All the facts aside, since they don't seem to interest you, how about logic. Do you really think its plausible that the team is willing to give him a new deal this year but they just can't get Parker to return their calls or agree to a meeting to work on that deal? What on earth could possibly lead you to believe that is what is happening? You might hate Parker, after all, he is an agent, you might even think he isn't a very good agent, but to be so blinded by anger or so painted in to a corner by your prior posts to think that a top NFL agent can get a great new deal for his client right now if he just answers the phone but still won't answer it, is bordering on the pathological. Really, step back for a second and try to explain why on earth Parker would do that? Something intelligent if you can, if you are just going to post some snarky drivel about Parker being "...stoopid, hyuk, hyuk..." don't bother. PS Shutting down communications with the press is not the equivalent of "shutting down" communications with the team. The only communications that matter right now are between Brandon & company and Parker.

Actually, for the umpteenth time, he was checked out by the team doctors here in Buffalo after the surgery. Brandon himself provided that information. Does that mean he is in top shape now? No. But it does mean that it simply isn't true that the team"never" heard from again after the surgery.

No, but I did hear a rumor that there was a young, all pro LT being shopped around by somebody.

Good one . The key is whether he is accompanied by a sheepish looking fellow in an overpriced suit or if he is greeted by an equally sheepish looking fellow carrying a large canvass sack with "$" on it. That should tell us if he got a new deal or is reporting without one. I think the best odds are on him reporting followed by a decent interval for the team to save face followed by a very large new contract. Just a guess and I know it is so please, no chorus of "how do you know that" replies.

I'd love to respond but for the sake of those sane enough not to venture on to the PPP forum, I think we have a moral obligation to stay away from this here. I only raised it in specific response to a reply that took my quote as an indication of poor judgment in the Peters situation.

Perfectly if the goal is to save coin, not so if you want to win football games. Which would you rather have, wins of $? As for being clueless, your 2nd grade understanding of contracts in the NFL and holdouts is obvious based on all your bleating about what Peters has a "right" to do. He is doing no more than what countless players have done before him, look out for his own financial interests just as surely as the team is doing the same. He is doing nothing more than Schobel implicitly threatened to do just last year when he skipped 4 practices even while the team was already negotiating a new deal for him. Had the team not knuckled under to him, he would have held out just as Peters has done. Are you going to take care of his family if he should suffer a career ending injury as did Kevin Everett just last year? Reasonable minds may differ on the best strategy if we were to put ourselves in his agent's shoes but to be outraged over a player of his caliber trying to get a better deal when his play on the field justifies it indicates another motivation at work. What is your beef with Peters, that he makes more $ than you? Have you dreamed of owning the team so much you can no longer distinguish between its corporate interests and your own? I don't think the team is crazy for trying to cash in on the good bet they made two years ago nor do I think Peters is crazy for trying to cash in on his talent, performance and hard work. I certainly can see why there are those who side with the team here. However, those of us who tend to side with Peters are not afforded any possibility that we could reasonably disagree. It is people like you who demand that all share your opinion that one side is "perfect" and the other a fat, selfish, idiotic, greedy peckerhead. Anyone who doesn't agree must....be...crushed...

You seem to have an endless well of homoerotic fantasy upon which to draw, not that there is anything wrong with it.

I think that is a good assessment. I would just add that they certainly would not want to insult the guys filling in due to the Peters situation any more than they would want to insult Peters. Its just a bad situation all around.

Forget all that, true though it might be, and lets talk about the rec room. Reminds me of Field of Dreams. "Is this heaven?" No, its Spiderweb's rec room."

I quoted Dick Cheney, accurately, how is that "delusional"?? The deluded are those who would ever believe anything he has ever said. Peters' agent has talked to the team. Brandon has said so. I have posted the links many times. He referred to having "brief discussions" with Parker which means A) they talked and B) they talked more than once. You can't possibly be so monumentally thickheaded, so barely able to control your own drool that you honestly think that Parker has not talked to the team, at least long enough for them to say "No" to a new deal for this year and for Parker to say "call us when you change your mind". If it sounds too stupid to be true, it isn't. The idea that anyone would be so moronic as to think that a successful agent is waiting for a deal to drop from the sky is scary. Try to get the few functioning brain cells you have around this simple idea: Peters wants a new deal this year and the team, as has been repeatedly reported as well as being logically obvious, refuses to negotiate a new deal for this year. Thus, Peters has nothing to say to them and they have nothing to say to him or his agent. Stalemate until someone changes their minds on this initial blockage. Or, you could imagine that the problem isn't money and timing of the money, millions and millions, the problem is that no one can find anyone's cell phone number. Yeah, that makes sense Einstein. Sorry about the personal insults but you went there first.

Define little, didn't look like a "little" to me. Funny, when all this started, I recall very few posts at all challenging the notion that Peters is seriously underpaid. That has come about recently as so many other justifications for stiffing Peters have fallen away. Not to rain on your "fact parade" but what the heck. First, lets take a trip down memory lane: This would seem to imply that you feel, or at least felt before your vaginal dryness got the better of you, that Peters' contract is in fact, unfair. And why would that be, could it be because you recognize that *gasp* he is underpaid, the very point I and many, many others have argued? Referring to Peters' hold out, you stated: We now know that "The Bills are demanding that Peters play under his current deal for this season before they will consider opening talks." Times Union and "They also have made it known to Peters' agent, Eugene Parker, they're not willing to renegotiate 2008, insisting any additional money will be paid next year forward." Grahams ESPN article. As Kelly and I have argued for weeks, the team did tell them "no" or as you would have it, to jump in the lake. So now do you see why Peters went with a holdout? But they have as the articles above indicate. So much for your command of the facts. But putting that aside, are ready to recognize that there is at least a smidgeon of a chance that the team has been just as big a jerk as Peters? As for whether and by how much Peters is underpaid: I won't bother with links to all the many posts on the wall, from both sides of the holdout debate, that Peters is underpaid. I'll let you try to win that ridiculous argument against yourself.

No PTR, I have acutally discussed what will happen either way. I have also made the point that "so far" (you do understand what that means don't you??) it hasn't cost Peters a dime. If that statement is not true, please, by all means show me the proof that it is not and I will stop saying it. Otherwise, concede the point and move on to the future speculation regarding those fines. Maybe they will be paid and maybe they won't, I listed many possibilities and having to pay them is certainly a risk which is why I wrote "Clearly, the fines are not exactly a shock to Peters or Parker, they knew that risk going in." A few posts earlier you will find this statement by me: "He will very likely be back this week so in the end, it will cost him very little but it will cost the team. How much? Only time will tell. If we win the first three, no one will care. If we lose them.... " So no, I am not assuming they will lose without him, I instead discuss both possibilities. Sure, I have discussed the possibility of a trade. Do you think it is not a possibility? What is wrong with discussing the possibility? Is it not a possibility that they team could lose their first couple games? I really wish that were not true but this is the NFL, there is a chance they could lose. Mostly however, I have simply referred to the "cost to the Bills" side of the equation as not having a pro bowl left tackle on the field for 2-3 weeks or however long it takes for him to be ready. Other than knowing exactly how many games DJ will keep him out, how is that not an accurate assessment of a "cost" to the team of not giving him a new deal this year? If they win, it won't make a difference, but if they lose... There I go again, "assuming" that one of the only two possibilities will occur, that they will win or they will lose. You know, you might try discussing the issue instead of your every reply to my posts being a personal attack on me. YOu might see that my point wasn't all that radical or even very far from your own: Hold out cost to Peters thus far = Zero $ but Senator thinks he is a "peckerhead". future hold out cost to Peters = we'll see Cost to team = no pro bowl LT on the field for x number of games Future cost to team = zip if we win, more if we lose Yeah, I can see why you want to jump all over those crazy notions.

No doubt they did. And if the team would rather have a juicy lawsuit than a pro bowl left tackle, then good for them. If they want him on the field, at least talking to him back in February of 2008 regarding a new deal for this year as they did with Schobel in February of 2007 was worth a shot. Clearly the Bills think that he will cave and play another year as one of the most underpaid OT's in the league which is why they have refused to negotiate with him in February, March, April, May, June, July and August. It is a game of chicken and so far no one has blinked. This coming week may see the finish of this saga. All those who have been predicting for the last 60 days that Peters will come crawling back tommorow may finally be right.