Mark Long Beach

I'm only sad that we missed out on some of the high end developmental LBs. But then again, we already have a lot of young developmental linebackers (Moats, Batten, Coleman, and i guess Maybin plus this years draft of Sheppard & White)

No, he really didn't stink. He wasn't a left tackle nor all that good for a "no huddle" offense but as a run oriented RT he was more than adequate. Far better than anything we have at present (rookie possibly excepted). Besides, no need to burn that bridge, it's already crisped.

Yup. Wildly over the cap. They pushed hard last year and got crunched with a 6-10 record. This could end up being a painful year for them. Not that I mind one bit.

We didn't make a splash last year in FA, but signed 4 probable starters. Unfortunately they all got hurt early (Merriman, Dwan Edwards & Andra Davis), or in Greens case: Sucked AND got hurt. I expect we'll sign a couple free agents that have a good chance for a starting job. Fingers crossed. Hangarter has been a decent/good center who's brought a lot of stability to a position that's been a disaster for over a decade. I just think that Wood could be a very good center. I think it's more important to have good center strength because we're in the AFC east with some high quality NTs than if we were dealing with a bunch of weaker 4-3 teams within our division.

Yeah, but there's little chance he'd come back here after getting treated the way he was. I'm not sure that I would. He's definitely a pretty solid upgrade, but closer to a stopgap at this point in his career. He was a good runblocker and a decent passblocker, but didn't watch him last year.

No joke. I forgot how much of the sky is falling. I'm really glad there are so many people here to remind me.

I think we should rip on the Steelers. They've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about signing free agents! How do they expect to win the superbowl if they don't sign any free agents??? Unbelievable! Break out the Tar and Feathers! Pitchforks! Rotten tomatoes! ...Oh. Nobody has signed a free agent yet?

Yup. Fingers crossed. But heck, I don't think I know how to tell the difference between 355 lbs and 385 lbs. You'd sure notice 30 lbs on my scrawny frame.

I mostly agree here. I don't demand 3 starters, but I do expect 2. Our depth is pretty poor in many, many places so I'm happy with any decent quality player to give competition. What I'm really hoping is that our young players beat out most or all of our signings because they're developing into good players. IMO we don't have many good players at TE and RT so I don't see much to develop... I don't expect the Bills to ignore FA. For two reasons. We didn't last year, and we have to reach the salary floor. Last year was an uncapped year (no floor or ceiling) and we were in the middle of a youth movement with organizational & coaching regime change. So they didn't spend much (wisely IMO) Yet they still signed FOUR free agents that were intended to be starters. Sadly three got hurt very early in the season (Andra Davis & Sean Merriman) and the other was both hurt and sucked (Green).

I'm a sucker for them too. I do think that upstate NY is prettier than here in SoCal (Although the high Sierras are stunning). I just don't miss the ice crystals whipping through me.

Dude. Take a chill pill, or two or three. No team can even cut anyone yet, the first cut date IIRC is Friday. All the Raven's have done is ANNOUNCE some players that they're going to cut. Whoop-de-<dmn>-doo. If we're going to cut someone we'll cut them. But since we're WAY under the cap, we don't need to until they earn it.

Let's do a little math here. Average means roughly half the players that start in that position are better and the other half are roughly worse. Let us even assume that there are a few backups that are better but are behind some of those better starters... How about a very generous 50%. Since there are 32 teams in the league. Half is roughly 16 and an additional 50% is 8 more for roughly 24. To make it simple lets call it 20-25 people. So there are somewhere around 20-25 people in the known freaking universe who are better than said "Average" player. The bottom line is that there are not many players that are better than (essentially) any NFL starter and there is stiff competition to get those that are available. What exists are plenty of _crappy_ players. A crappy player is easily replaceable. A competent NFL starter is not easily replaceable.

Ah the joys of schadenfreud! Freeze Willis Freeze!

wow, what a great interview. I'm rooting for the kid. Thanks for posting.

Yeah. I agree. We just have too many questions throughout the team to believe that spending a lot on one player is going to fix the last one. We have a lot of unproven youngsters than can fill almost every hole we have. They can also prove that they aren't up to the task. If that's the case why blow big bucks on one hole when it might be just fine without him while having tons of other holes & a 6-10 record... Not exactly money well spent. That's the type of play you make when you're a contender. Not a hopetender.

Where's Chicken Little? She's missed her cue!

The more the player is on an island the more likely pure talent matters. So TE is a good example, and I believe we need a major improvement there. But even an apparently obvious example like a cornerback isn't so obvious, there's a lot of scheme that matters for them too. A good pass rush makes every db look better. We've also switched up a bit in our zone & man schemes last year and IMO our CB's weren't able to play as effectively as before. Some man CB's can't play zone worth a hoot and certainly vice-versa. yeah, better players can generally adapt, but I think that I'm preaching to the choir here. But I agree with the need for more talent. We just don't have many star level players and our depth is generally poor. I hope that our coaching is better than before. It seems to be in many areas. Especially offense. Before we really seemed to not do a great job of putting the best players out there and in the best situation to succeed. Chan seems to do that with the offense (still skeptical on Def). Even though our record was poor last year, I enjoyed watching the team so much more than the previous years. I also felt like we were working on playing to win and learning the skills needed to do that. I rarely felt that way in the DJ years. He had a better record but I never felt like we could WIN a game, the best we could do was keep it close and hope that the other team lost it. Bleah. We could never go out and seize a game and win it even with a lead (see Dallas on Monday Night). Here's to that changing!

My opinion has changed from my younger days. Having run a company for the last 10 years has shown me that talent is just part of the equation. A talented guy is great, but if he doesn't fit in well with the ethos of the company or fit well with the other employees then he can be more of a liability than an asset regardless of his talent. It's probably not quite to the same degree on a pro football team because of the high level of competition, but it still matters. Especially if you consider the skill sets of the players. A great 4-3 end wouldn't be a good addition to our team right now. Even if he was one of the better ones in the whole league. We just don't have the personnel for him to fit in well. Not to mention that we have way bigger holes in different places and I'd rather see those resources used to fill them. The philosophy of the Pittsburgh Steelers (where we poached Asst GM Whaley from) is to rarely try and get their high quality starters from free-agency. Some of the reasons for this include that expensive free agents are exactly that, expensive: -bigger gamble of resources on one guy who you don't know how well they'll fit in THEIR system -gamble that now the player got paid he no longer cares. -upsetting team chemistry from the imbalance of pay. (remember Peters unhappiness from the overpaid FA Dockery/Walker days?) -may not truly be as talented as appeared because of excellent teammates or schemes that hid their weaknesses. -etc. While Nix hasn't IMO looked as conservative as the Steelers he sure has shown a reluctance to spend a lot on FA and has told us so himself. He looks more likely to pick up a lot of journeymen with the occasional medium respected players that aren't too expensive. Examples of that to me are Dwan Edwards & Andra Davis. I expect Nix will pick up one or two Dwan Edwards type and not any of the more highly sought after (and expensive) players. As a fan _I_ would treat it like fantasy football where any player is completely interchangeable and look for the best player available. I'd only consider lesser talent if who he was replacing was dreadful (see Bills TE position). If I were actually in charge of the Bills player acquisitions, I'd probably be way more conservative and be like Nix and not at all like the Redskins. But for the record I sure hope Nix splurges on one of the top two fa TE's.

I'd still take them! Staffold was one of the players we were rumored to be trying to trade up for that year. This was much more believable to me than the Tim Tebow rumor. Yeah, me as well. Although with 22 players that start and a whole host of subs that are equivalent to starters and ONLY 1 first rounder per year, we pretty much will always have some position that is getting the short end of the stick. We've also not been successful at keeping the three good tackles that we've had recently. Jason Peters was a good left tackle that wanted to be paid like the best in the game, Butler was solid but retired early, and Langston was a pretty good RT that our last coaching staff handled so poorly that we cut him for nothing. I suspect Jake Long will have a pretty good shot at it. Sort of like finding ANY great player at a single position? But yes, I agree, some like LT & QB are harder than others to find. Nice post BTW!

As you said the difference won't be like it is in baseball. Honestly I have no idea how people can support MLB small market teams, they have so little chance to really compete. The gap in the NFL between the big spenders and the little spenders does not look to be very large. The payroll gap looks to be less than 20% counting the accounting games played. MLB's salary range for this year is $36 mil (KCR) to $202 mil (NYY). That's ridiculous. The new NFL salary floor will now be a CASH floor per year which will probably narrow the salary spread even further. With a narrow spread and weak correlation between salary & performance it looks more like the astute talent evaluators & better coaches will get better team results than the teams that "spend the most" like Washington & Dallas.

Actually we were right in the middle of the pack for actual cash spending. Cash to cap spending means we didn't play a lot of fancy accounting games vs the cap. Reaching the minimum spending cap will involve no new strategies or unusual expenditures as we didn't carry "dead money".

Weird. You're basing Nix's credentials on if a FA contract for an ex-probowler pans out or not? huh. I like the gamble. I don't have high hopes, but it's a relatively cheap gamble IMO.

The rookie pool had loopholes big enough to drive a brinks truck through. So the agents(on behalf of the players) did.

I Disagree. He's not a world beater, but he's a pretty decent 3-4 veteran ILB who's played 9 years in the league. He's topped out at 149 tackles in a year and managed 5 sack season as well as an ILB. Averages out to about 90 tackles a year 1.5 sacks. Known as a thumper and decent run stopper who's a bit of a liability in coverage. Could be a really solid 2 down linebacker. He didn't play well with us last year because he got seriously injured (which required surgery) in the first game and tried to play through it. But couldn't do it effectively enough.

Oops. Yeah, this one. I keep trying to forget him. Apparently I can only half do it.