PlayoffsPlease

It is a business decision. Not a football decision. His option is 13 million, and it is guaranteed even if he is injured. If they don't exercise the option, they can franchise him for around 16 million. A 3 million loss if he is healthy vs. a 13 million loss if he is injured.

I think the marketing department may be on to a new slogan " we are playoff caliber"

Jones has a net worth of 5 billion. He has won three super bowls. Yet bulletin board jockeys are confident enough to call him an ass-hat. Only too funny.

And now the Scott Chrichton excitement is flushed down the drain. I am waiting on pins and needles for the signing of a back up QB, that will send the board into a flurry of excitement that we will have real competition at the QB decision. That should happen soon.

I open up this thread each day hoping to read that the Bills have hired a competent GM who has a track record of building playoff teams. Each day, I am sad when I don't see that.

Has there ever been an off-season that you thought was a disaster?

He just isn't as good at it as the GMs whose teams make the playoffs frequently. He does do a better job than Russ Brandon circa 2009, but that is a pretty low bar to get over.

The fans of almost every NFL team think that there team does a great job in the off-season. For 19 of those teams plus the Bills it fails to translate into making playoffs in the actual season. Its pretty easy to understand why the fans believe this. With the rare exception of a complete tear down and rebuild, every incremental move every GM makes is done with the belief that it marginal improves a team. In a recent example the Bills picked up on waivers a former third round draft pick, who started only 1 game for his first NFL team and developed an injury history, including concussion issues. But on paper this players college career gives him a pedigree that makes him appear to be better than the current "depth" at the defensive end position. Hopeful fans want to believe his NFL track record is not an important data point related to his future prospects. The fans of the team that cut him, think their team also improved by opening up a roster spot for someone to replace a player who never really contributed to the team meaningfully. A true win-win for all the fans. All of the GM's are correct some of the time. All of the GM's are wrong some of the time. The key is to be right more often than the other GMs are right. Fortunately we have a tool to see which GM's are right more often than the other GM's. Its called the regular season, and we measure it with this cool tool called win loss record. All other assessment's of GM performance are simply people's personal biases and opinions, nothing more.

Gilmore played five seasons with the Bills. The Bills didn't make the playoffs once. Its not clear to me that keeping him is less "wheel spinning" than actually going in a different direction and allocating those dollars to other positions/players. I am a bit bi-polar on the Gilmore decision. Based on where the Bills are at as a franchise, I don't think signing him for that much money made sense. On the other hand, given where the Patriots are as a franchise, it seemed to make good sense for them to sign him.

Until the Bills make the playoffs, Whaley will have to be happy with the green participation ribbon, that the 20 non-playoff teams get each year. He has seven of those since joining the Bills.

Steve Christie has 100% more credibility with me as a fan, than the entire Bills front office.

over paying to retain your own draft picks is no more effective than over paying for free agents. It is particular true when there is a coaching change. From McDermott's perspective his roster will be 53 free agents. You seem to have an accurate grasp of the situation for the Bills. Properly managing a portfolio of $167 mm of annual expense is a major undertaking in any field. You need really smart people that understand asset management as well as football decisions. You need people that know both. You CANNOT have a "football guy" that doesn't understand asset management plus a "money guy" who doesn't understand football. That is if you want to win.

There seems to be a lot of fallacies in much of the conventional wisdom that fans use apply to how successful teams use the draft and free agency. I am going to address one of them here: 1. The main benefit of trading down. Some background first. Managing the player portfolio is not vastly different from managing a diverse business with 25 divisions. In this business analogy, a CEO is tasked with constructing a plan to maximize the value of the total enterprise. His only rules are each of the 25 divisions must be fully staffed, the combined payroll of the staff at 24 of the 25 divisions must be less or equal to $167 mm and all existing contracts must be honored. Beyond that he can deploy his companies resources as he see fit. in the football world, the 25 divisions are 1) the coaching staff 2) the 22 starting positions 3) special teams and 4) bench The GM has a separate budget for the coaching staff, and the $167 mm salary cap to deploy for the other assets. His budget goal target is 12 wins. The GM needs to figure out how much each of the 25 "divisions" is going to contribute to achieving the 12 win budget. Its complex, but every NFL player has measurable production that can be used to estimate how many "wins" that player contributes in a season. Players contributions can be positive or negative, just like a division can lose money as well as make money in a business. (Bankruptcy = zero wins in this analogy) Now, life isn't fair. Coaching staffs are unequal. If we assume a rookie head coach with no experience contributes zero wins (known bad coaches contribute negative wins), and Bill Belichek is worth 2 full wins per season, that gives teams with a rookie head coach a deficit to start with. As every NFL fan knows, QB is by far the most important position. It is also the least in control of a GM for the upcoming one season. This requires much future planning. But as benchmarks lets say Andy Dalton contributes a zero, Blaine Gabbert is a -3, and Tom Brady is a +2 wins. If we were to compare the niners and the Patriots, the niners coaching/QB combo is minus 3, and the Patriots Coaching QB combo is a plus four. With 8-8 as the average result in the league, if the entire rest of the of the niners and the entire rest of the patriots were made up of exactly average players, the expected result would be the niner's would finish 5-11 and the Patriots would finish 12-4. This doesn't seem to far off the mark (in truth I think the remainder of the niners lineup is below average, so five wins with Gabbert at QB would be successful). The goal of the GM is to figure out how to get the greatest return on investment for the $167 budget. In the Bills case lets look at a couple of examples. Dareus' cap hit in 2017 is 16.4 million or just about 10% of the cap. The average defensive lineman in the league earns 2.6 million. If we subtract the average salary, Dareus cost above average is 16.4 - 2.6 = 13.8 million. 13.8 million is about 8% of the cap. Assuming for arguments sake that average defensive lineman contribute zero wins per season, If the Bills are going to achieve 12 wins, then that 8% excess above average cost for Dareus means he has to contribute 1 win (8% x 12) more than being replaced by the $2.6 MM average lineman. Its all relative, if Tom Brady is worth plus 2, then to be worth plus 1, Dareus has to have 50% as much impact as Tom Brady does to justify his value. He doesn't. The return on investment for Dareus is below par. Doesn't mean he is a bad player. He is a very good player. He is just paid too much money at a position with below average impact on the results of NFL games. This exercise needs to be carried out for all 25 divisions. It is complicated. So is running a business with 25 divisions. While complicated it can be done. With that background, lets go back to the draft. The main reason the Patriots trade down for more draft picks is not to take "more shots at players" or "third rounders are just as good as second rounders". Its plain and simple, the Patriot's want to have as many of the reserve positions filled with players under rookie contracts as possible. Rookie contracts are much cheaper than veteran contracts for similar role players. When the savings are multiplied across dozens of reserves, it adds up to meaningful dollars. Now on to Stephon Gilmore. Gilmore is pretty much the exact same player today that he was in his rookie or sophomore seasons. He was an incredible value under his rookie contract. He is a terrible value at 8% of the cap. A replacement player from the draft may have only 1/2 of his expected win contribution, but he will potentially be 1/8 of the cost, making the replacement player a much better value. The Patriots management of Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins as the correct strategy regarding high quality players as they transition from modest rookie contracts to very expensive veteran contracts. The proper strategy is too know ahead of time whether or not you will be keeping those players, and if not, getting some value for them while they are still under contract. We didn't do that. The best remaining strategy is likely just letting him walk at this point.

First of all, Whaley is terrible. Secondly, some positions are pretty much better filled with $1m per rookies than $13 mm fifth year players. Gilmore is the same player now he was in year 2. He went from a good value to a terrible value. For example of a team that keeps plugging the same holes, check out the Patriots. I think its Bush's fault.

This is how I imagine the thinking goes at OBD. Chris B: We are getting a lot of people calling in complaining that we missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season since we brought Doug Whaley on board. Russ B. I think the best solution is to shut down the phone system. That will eliminate the complaining. Chris B. Phones are shut down. You were right, the complaints have stopped. No one is calling to complain about us not having phones either. A win win for the Bills, just like when we got Nix AND Whaley.

My favorite thing is that I can use the words vague, savage and salvage on this two bills drive without being censored.

Has any individual at OBD taken public ownership of the decision to shut down the message board without notice?

The real question is, will the Buffalo News reporters know to come here to find out what to write about in their columns.

It really is shameful, that the Bills don't at least publish the archived content.

This is the stupidest issue in all of sports. Success results in continuity. Teams don't fire winning coaches and players. Continuity does not make an inept coach or GM good.

A lot of Bills fans seem happy to have a top 24 GM.

The Patriots seem like a team that is more concerned about winning the regular season rather than the off-season. They have nothing to prove, in terms of their ability to put together winning teams. If a decision doesn't pan out, they move on unemotionally. As long as the Bills draft more starters than the Patriots every year, I am happy. Because nothing beats winning the off season.

I am not an EJ fan. I don't think he will ever be a top notch NFL starter. But at this point I would only drop him as a backup QB for one of two reasons, an improvement in cap space, or to replace him with someone who has the potential to be a better starter in the NFL, than Tyrod. I am not sure bringing on Glennon and cutting EJ does that.. A drafted QB might. The other primary role for a backup QB is giving the team a chance to win some games if the starter is hurt. I don't think the Bills are good enough to win many games with a backup QB. And EJ, Glennon, a guy off the street or a rookie probably all give the Bills approximately the same chance to win, so I am not too concerned about the slight deviations in talent among the group.

Its tough to compare. Nix inherited a lot less talent than Whaley did. And neither made the playoffs. At this point its really like asking what smells better poodle doo doo or terrier doo doo. Not sure it matters.

Not only that, they were undefeated in the 8 games they one, 8-0 baby , 8-0. Sadly they were 0-8 in the other games. The 2015 rendition of the Bills were an example of a team led by a mediocre GM, a mediocre coach and a mediocre roster leading to the quintessential 8-8 mediocre record. So far the two big off-season events for the bills are losing Mario Williams and adding Rob Ryan. Feels like more mediocrity is ahead in 2016. The fans who relish continuity should be happy with another 8-8 season though.