BarleyNY

I heard some inside info on that. Apparently Harbaugh (who I'm usually not a big fan of as a person) was strongly in favor of cutting ties with Rice immediately. Bisciotti and Newsome told him Rice was staying. The three showed a united face publicly (as they had to), but privately there was one dissenting voice. In this case I have to think there's something that hasn't come to light - injury, looming suspension, undisclosed positive drug test. Something.

I think I've covered my position well in my last and other posts on the topic, so I'm not going to restate it. I started to respond, but I'm just regurgitating what I've already said. It's all there. I will say this, however, and I'm not singling you out as lots of posters have done it: Watching my position mis-characterized and overstated so as to make it appear as though I have an unreasonable or extreme position got old a long time ago. I don't appreciate it. Saying Whaley should have gotten better value from the pick or that I think that Lawson with a torn labrum wasn't worth the 19th pick or that I'd have taken a different player under the same circumstances (Doctson, Jack) isn't the same as railing against Whaley, calling Lawson a bust or saying the season is lost. I've been clear about that, repeatedly.

Damn.

Lol

Not to mention a pretty severe obsession with steaks and steakhouses. He's a decent corner. His problem has been more of inconsistentency than anything else. He'd look great on some plays and very much not so great on others. I get that every corner can get beat, but he's not quite put it all together consistiently enough for most to consider him starter material. Its not that he's an Iggles corner, it's that he's their #1 corner that is surprising.

No ones happier about this than Browns fans, whose team holds the Iggles 1st round pick. Schwartz should be able to retool the secondary and get that defense playing well enough to get a serious look as the Iggles HC in 2-3 years when Pederson gets canned.

The Ravens gave up 4th and 5th round picks for Monroe when they traded for him in October 2013. That's not much for an 8th overall pick. Guess the Ravens will start the rookie Stanley at LT this season. It won't take much to get him now, but I'd make any pick conditional on playing time to hedge against a looming suspension or other issue. If available and engaged he'd be a big upgrade at RT so the Bills should do their due diligence here. As noted, his pay is reasonable.

I do love me some Paula's Donuts. Currently thinking a sour cream glazed would be great. It really is. I like it a lot, but the wife has herself a Prime addiction.

Something non-football/Bills related. What are you addicted to right now? For me it's Trader Joe's Salsa Authentica. It tastes great and has a true medium level burn. Hot enough to be addictive, but never ever overwhelms. It might be the perfect salsa. Also I recently spotted it on a Guy Fieri cooking show when he briefly opened his fridge. I backed it up and paused. No doubt about it. It was there. And why wouldn't it be? It's perfect over eggs at breakfast or with nachos as a snack. For the last few months I've been going through about a jar every two days.

I have loved mental floss for years. Great magazine and merch.

I guess they're not that close yet. Just before a deal is struck is usually when both sides bring out the heavy guns and rhetoric is most fervent. Coaches talk up back ups. GMs leak horrifically skewed alleged demands to the media. Agents do the same. Players skip practices and decide to vacation in another hemisphere. Then, almost as if by magic, a deal gets struck and everyone's happy and bestest buddies again.

I think two things are at play with Fitz: 1) It's not his age so much as it is that everyone knows that he's hit his ceiling. There's no upside. He's a bottom tier starting QB or a really good backup. The other overpaid QBs mentioned either got paid based on expectations (or mostly unjustified hope) that they'd improve and be worth it. Kaep was a weird case of getting paid large this season due to an injury guarantee. 2) He's in no hurry. Nor should he be. This is likely to drag on until the start of TC. Fitz is the Jets best option and there's not likely to be a better one come along before the season starts. But his situation could improve at some point. Some QB for some contender is going to get injured sooner or later. Or maybe Elway will see Sanchez play football. Either way he might wind up with another option that's much better from a ring chasing standpoint and still pretty comparable from a money one. I look at Denver and can't help but to think that they're just trying to get through this season with some chance at a repeat while biding their time. Notably, Brees looks like he'll be a free agent next season and I could see him chasing another SB in Denver while they see what Lynch is worth.

Gotta agree there.

Man, the Jest are screwing the pooch. Their spending and personnel decisions are getting to be a mess. They have a bad cap situation, no QB and it looks like they're looking like they'll lose their best from 7 player after this season. Oh, and they'll lose him in part to retain a guy with big character issues who could be suspended indefinitely with one more screw up. That ship has full sails and is aimed right at some big rocks.

Over a large sample size and/or in the long term, that is correct. Results of any small sample can vary widely from the expected result, however. For example, it's fair to judge a Hold 'Em player who calls 2-to-1 odds on an inside straight draw after the turn. Sure, it might happen to work out in that particular case, but that doesn't make it a good strategy. It's fair to judge it as a poor move even before the river card gets flipped over. In fact, the result of that one instance is meaningless with regard to judging the strategy. Sometimes the right move doesn't work out and sometimes the wrong one does.

http://overthecap.com/thoughts-fletcher-cox-contract-extension/#more-12093 Here's OTC's breakdown of the deal, including comparisons to other big contracts defensive players have signed. Dareus is mentioned. FWIW, they don't think it'll impact Von Miller's deal much because it is largely in line with similar deals, not an outlier.

No sense getting all worked up now. We're still in the foreplay stage - and thus far that foreplay has been, well, uneven. I'll wait for the serious action to get under way before I decide how excited I'm gonna get.

I can only call it like I see it. The general consensus in the scouting community was that there were still prospects on the board with grades similar to Lawson's. If I were to have taken a chance on a prospect with injury concerns at 19 it'd have been an elite prospect like Jack. I could certainly have seen the argument for him. He was universally considered a top 5 prospect. I never saw Lawson put nearly in that class. I get that Whaley is a professional GM, but thats a cop out. NFL GMs make mistakes every single year and some are easy to see when they are made. I don't buy the "Lawson was such a great value that he was worth pick 19 even though he would miss significant time his rookie season" arguement. Not at all. He was the best prospect at his position that I thought had a chance to make it to the Bills at 19. He was in a block of similarly rated prospects that wasn't likely to make it much beyond the early to mid 20s and he plays a premium position. I didn't think he'd make it to 19 due to expectation that most of the block of players he was rated in would be gone by 19. So I was very happy that he was one of the few that made it to 19 as he fills a huge need, but I didn't see him as a player that fell out of his range. Whaley's comments regarding the injury post selection and pre surgery are telling. It's clear that the team knew about the torn labrum, but hoped he could play with it in 2016. That points to the Bills talking themselves into selecting an injured player because he was a quality prospect who filled a gaping need. People - including Fortune 500 CEOs and NFL GMs - talk themselves into convenient, but risky solutions every single day. It's the only thing that makes all of the facts line up in this case.

That's a big overstatement. Yes, the overall production of a player rather than immediate production is far more important, but a pre-existing injury does have an effect on a player's value. Your statement also assumes that an equivalent talent wasn't available. I'd argue that there was so you misstated the actual choice the Bills had. It wasn't: lesser, uninjured player vs. Lawson. It was: effectively equivalent talent vs, Lawson. Whaley & Co. are going to be judged by how well Lawson and their other picks and FAs work out. But the reality is that no GM knows for certain which players will bust and which will be high performers. Every draft pick and every dollar spent is an odds based risk-reward gamble. A healthy Lawson at 19 would have been an excellent risk-reward proposition, but Lawson with a torn labrum at 19 wasn't nearly as good due to his pre-existing injury reducing his total expected production. If you view the situation as "Wait and see how Lawson works out in the long run." then it's easy to push the injury aside and push off making a judgement for a few years. But if the question is "Is it likely that the Bills maximized their draft capital with the Lawson pick?" then the answer is pretty clearly "No, they could've and should've done better." That's not a doom and gloom view. Nor does it mean that all is lost. It doesn't even mean that Lawson won't be a good or even great player. It just means that the Bills took a bigger chance on him than they should have. That opens up Whaley and the organization to some degree of criticism, which is fair. It doesn't paint an entire picture and shouldn't be used as such any more than it should be glossed over and explained away as insignificant. It is certainly a piece of the bigger picture though.

Apparently. I clicked on it looking for an update on Lawson, but, sadly, I'm drawn to continuing it myself. Trying to resist........ Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!

True on the cap room thing. Lotta reasons negotiations can go smoothly, though. The big guaranteed dollars in recent, large contracts by the Bills probably helped a lot. Interestingly, the Broncos seem to have plenty of cap room. They don't have much right now (due in part to Von Miller's franchise tag), but at the moment they have the least committed cap space in the league for 2017. A worthwhile QB would eat up a lot of that and so would a long term Von Miller contract, but they've easily got room for both. I'd disagree regarding companies screwing top employees though. It is pretty common in my experience. Yup. You never know, but at this point there is no need to assume negotiations will get contentious - or that there'd be lasting issues even if they did. Taylor's agent is a concern in this regard, but it's a problem we'd be lucky to have because that would mean that Tyrod would have had a stellar 2016 season.

Thanks. I'll put one on my wish list. Once you get rolling let us know what you think of the whole sous vide thing. Good luck!

Some coaches are even crazy enough to put two or more TEs on the field at the same time.

Yes, but that's a misleading statement. They don't dispute that you should be able to get a better player at a higher pick. They're arguement is that when all factors are taken into account - expected production, rookie and future contracts, risk and trade values of picks - that there's more VALUE at the end of round 1 than at the beginning. In fact, the sweet spot for value seems to be in day 2 of the draft. However - and it's a very big however - they'll be the first people to tell you that you can't build a team with nothing but 2nd and 3rd round picks. You'd have a poor team and a ton of cap space left over (and be well below the league spending minimum) if you did. You still need to spend capital - draft picks and cap space - on difference makers. Analytics not only tries to determine who those difference makers are, but it also tries to show a team where it can free up money to afford those players.

It sure seemed like that's what was alluded to in the article. And that fits what I've seen from both of them. For example, analytics and metrics based sites have rated their drafts and other personnel moves a lot less favorably than more traditional/old school sites.