Mikie2times

I don't know if Okoye will develop or not, I just have serious questions if he's the right guy for what we need right now. Our biggest issue is run defense, we don't necessarily need a big guy, but a 19 year old that weighs 280 is probably not who we need either. If he drops to the second, or shows great strength and is available late first then maybe. I just see him being at least one year away from potentially having strong run stopping ability, and most likely two. Later on in the draft his potential could be worth it but not if we stay put. As for Stanton I guarantee he will be a bust. I've watched and played against him in high school, watched most his games at MSU, It's the same story. He has a lot of skill but he completely implodes at times, and will make some horrible mistakes. He's also injury prone, and showed a disturbing decline in play late in the year, and against Big Ten teams. I knew his skills and intelligence would attract some people, but he's just not NFL caliber. One team will end up using a early pick for what amounts to a practice hero.

Lot's of talk about what Buffalo will do with Nate. Some say look at the cap we can sign him, others see him out of our price range. I believe the correct answer is Buffalo will not sign high priced players anymore. We might see guys get some healthy contracts, but Buffalo will never hand out huge money to a FA, or sign one of our FA's if they have unreasonable demands. It's not a matter of cap room; it's a matter of Buffalo trying to even out the financial field by staying below the cap. It puts us at a disadvantage but if it happens it’s something we can overcome. For starters this team and town appeal to certain players. So some players will be reasonable, I would expect JP to be that type of player. Past trying to draft those personalities we need to sign draft picks to longer contracts, and renegotiate our best players as early as possible. We also need to evaluate players like Nate a year or two before they hit the market. If it's clear a player wants to hit the market and our team is in a rebuild mode we need to trade him. Looking back we all knew in 2 years we wouldn't be winning a super bowl no matter how well Nate played. Trade him while he still has value. We could accumulate draft picks and drafting will play the biggest role for us in the future. Obviously it's a different story if we looked to be a contender, but the point is we need to really think long term with some of these guys. We can't just keep losing our top draft picks every year without at least getting something back. This off-season will show if this is true or not. We do have lots of cap room, we have some holes, we look to be on the rise. If ever their was a time to bring in an influx of talent it's now. Just remember, if we don't sign anybody to a huge contract it's not the end of the world.

I'll bring my coloring sticks.

Even with the losses the Patriots look like the Hoover dam compared to the Bills, Jets, and Dolphins. Tom Brady has proven year in and year out that he's a top 3 QB. BB has shown year in and year out he's going to field competitive defenses. The things your saying could have been said after every year the Patriots won the Super Bowl or went to the playoffs. Each year they've lost dozens of players and coaches, and during almost all of they're runs they've done it while being completely decimated at OL or DB or RB or WR. The lesson shouldn't be that some mystique is magically allowing them to do these things. It's that having a top 3 QB and a decent defense will give you 10 wins in a league of parity.

I wouldn't think much of it. IMO more reasons favored Dungy's approach then putting it into Manning’s hands. -The Colts have run well and finished games pounding the ball the last two weeks -They had a very tired Patriots defense on field -They might have seen a match up advantage as they ran on 3rd and 5 earlier in the quarter -BB had to be thinking at least one pass in that series -Running limits the time left for the Patriots to respond -Running limits the likelihood of a turnover -They could still pick up a first without scoring giving them the ball last He probably would have drawn some criticism because it's some people’s job to criticize. But given the circumstances I think three consecutive runs was the best approach for the situation. He took a risk in hoping that he would catch NE playing pass at least once in the series of downs. If he failed he did so without risking a turnover, and all but guaranteeing a tie game with a short clock for Brady.

Lovie would be wise to abandon the deep passing game in this one. If he doesn't it plays right into the Colts defensive plans. On the other side I believe Chicago's defense can force Manning into turnovers. Just because he got over the conference championship hump doesn't mean his big game collapses are over. Manning played well against the Patriots but he nearly cost the Colts the Ravens game with balls that should have been intercepted. This is a game the Bears can win if they have a game plan suited to being a defensive juggernaut. If they try and run with the Colts and let Grossman loose they have no chance. Good Bears Game plan Bears 20 Colts 13 Bad Bears Game plan Bears 13 Colts 24

By drafting a safety that high being elite or not is the difference between being a bad decision or a good one. Whitner should be judged in the context of the elite safeties because he was drafted in a position before most of the elite safeties. I'm not exactly giving kudos to Marv for finding what looks to be a very good safety in the top 10 until that safety turns into an elite one. I especially won't when we could have had Ngata, and I'm not saying such in hindsight. I started the draft Haloti Ngata bandwagon about 4 months before April and half the wall was on board.

I don't think Reed is polished enough to be that guy. I just don't put him in that class in terms of route running, or being refined like a sound vet. Then again I just looked at what’s available and I can't say I can find a player I'm talking about. Not one Bill Brooks in the group. A lot of the 3rd down issues also seemed to come from a lacking ground game. We just need to improve on 3rd down, especially if we have playoff aspirations.

The only way possible we trade him is if we draft Lynch. If we knew we wanted Lynch and he was available when we picked, we would most likely draft him and then trade Willis. Look at it from the Bills and McGahee's perspective. You just drafted a player’s successor during a contract year. It would be a major blow to McGahee’s next contract. Fuming would be an understatement to describe how McGahee would feel. Concerned he would go in a Travis Henry like catatonic state; Levy decides to trade him while he still has a small amount of value left. They would start Lynch, because if they didn't think he was an immediate starter they had no business drafting him. To me if we draft Lynch it's more plausible we trade Willis then keep him. Having said all this I think it’s unlikely we draft Lynch.

I wasn't referring to you in my post, just making a general statement.

I was a proponent of the larger Red Zone threat but I'm not nearly as concerned with it after watching JP in the RZ this year. What I would like to see is possibly bringing in a Vet who can fill in as a possession WR. He doesn't exactly have to be Shawn Bradley, but a good underneath WR with seasoned route running would help out a lot on 3rd down. Issac Bruce seemed to fit that role when Holt came into his own. Moulds seemed to fit the role with us before he left for Houston. We need to get better on 3rd down, and we should by bringing in that Vet and improving our run blocking.

If it's your opinion Lynch isn't going to make a great pro then you’re entitled to it. I haven't watched enough on him to decide one way or the other. My beef with not factoring in Lynch is with the people who think we shouldn't because we need help in other areas, or that RB's are a dime a dozen. To consider Lynch he needs to be graded as an elite difference making RB. A player like that is ten times more valuable then a normal RB, and supercedes all other needs. I'm confident that if we pick him Marv and Co. will do it believing they've found a top 5 RB. To select him under any other condition would be the lunacy you describe.

The reasons you discredit Lynch could just as easily be applied to Walter Peyton (Jackson State), Marshall Faulk (San Diego State), or LT (TCU). All of whom had a significant amount of space to work with do to inferior competition threw out college. RB will be a need in 2008, and if we decide Lynch is an elite RB it's not pure idiocy to consider drafting him.

I'll take one of those with a high motor.

He couldn't pick a coach for us, which hurt him a lot more then his ablity to find talent or manage.

I'm not disputing the validity of what he's saying. Lots of teams try and follow this strategy and aren't successful in locking up everybody. We've even followed this strategy with players like McGee and Schobel, and probably tried unannounced to us with others. The way I read his comments implied it was some sort of Bills error that led us to these circumstances. That if we dealt with these contracts two years ago we wouldn’t be in this position. It came off like that because of the context he's used in previous chat sessions regarding our team. If it was a general comment regarding the strategy all teams should use then so be it. I just don't find similar league lessons explained when he discusses the rest of the teams. The Bills and our fans have a clear inferiority complex but this is one of the examples where I actually believe a writer has an agenda with us, and it's not a positive one.

His comments insinuated a Bills error by not signing our guys two years ago. It wouldn’t bother some so much if it wasn’t part of a routine we see week after week from Mort. He injects comments like this for us, while rarely passing similar judgment for other teams. It doesn't make everything he says unreliable, but he's not impartial when discussing the Bills, so what he says regarding our team isn't exactly reliable either. His insights both good and bad, are no more valid then many of the posters on this board.

What professional injects a comment like that? It's as if he's the one Buffalo let go. It's real simple Mort, your guy TD might have brought in some good players but he couldn't pick a coach to save his life.

In hindsight I believe Buffalo would choose Ngata over Whitner. At the time I don't believe Ngata was Jaurons ideal fit for a DT, and Whitner was for a S. I felt he choose wrong, and still do. But Whitner is going to be a very good player.

All those years the Bills have shown profitability have been years in which league wide revenue sharing was intact. It allowed the Bills to have the cheapest prices, while still having enough for the cap and profit. With the new CBA Buffalo will no longer qualify for all of the revenue sharing they received in the past. Even worse the salary cap is rising at a rate reflecting the entire league, most of whom qualify for all of the revenue sharing. If we want to remain competitive and meet the demands of the increasing cap we will have to raise prices. Eventually we won't be able to raise prices anymore because the Buffalo economy dictates such. We would either lose profits by overspending or spend less then other teams and try and stay competitive. Either situation isn't exactly enticing for Ralph, and I imagine it's even less enticing for a buyer. These are the real problems that face us over the next 5 to 10 years. We need to continue acknowledging them and get creative in how we can keep our team profitable and competitive in Buffalo.

At some point over the next ten years Ralph will most likely not be the owner of the Bills. It's sad, but he's getting older and those are the facts we have to deal with. Whoever it is that takes over will be inheriting a team that is either way under fulfilling the entire cap allotment, or barely reaching it by squeezing out every last possible source of revenue from the Western New York market. The cap won't then just level off, it will only continue to rise, and it will continue rising at a rate much higher then the Bills revenue can or ever will keep up with in the WNY market. No matter what we do now to nickel and dime our way above water something will eventually give, and that most likely happens without Ralph around to keep the Bills in Buffalo. Buffalo will stay loyal to the Bills and do whatever it takes to keep the team. With the NFL going international Canada seems like our only real hope of keeping the Bills 10 or 15 years down the road. If we can successfully become Canada’s most followed NFL team we have a long term outlook, when right now all we can try and do is fight to keep up with the cap. That’s not a situation many new owners would love to stay in. If this comes at the expense of a couple home games a year its hell of a lot better then the Bills leaving Buffalo, both for fans and the WNY economy.

Please explain to me then how we will be able to keep spending up to the cap? We probably won't even come close this year.

We (The Bills) wouldn't want Plexico anyway; he's a complete head case and polar opposite of the Marv player.

Ever since the new CBA the idea of Buffalo being in trouble isn't for the paranoid. Politicians can talk about sell outs, but sell outs won't save us. We could sell out every game for the next 5 years and it won't save us. As each year passes the gap between what we spend on players and the salary cap will grow. It will continue happening under the rosiest attendance scenario we can come up with. How can we remain competitive under such circumstances? This isn't baseball.

It's safe to say this franchise is doomed unless we become Canada's main NFL team. How else could we survive? We pay a fraction of what other fans pay to go see a game and still barely fill it up. Sure if we win we can sell out, but how can we consistently win if we can't spend to the cap. Even then selling out won't be enough to keep the Bills in Buffalo 10 or 15 years from now. Promo's idea might be drastic but drastic is what we will eventually need. Perhaps we could lay out a strategy targeting the Canadian market but not going as far as to move the team or change the team name. Maybe stick with renaming the Ralph , and doing some sort of split for Home games between Buffalo and Canada.