Fake-Fat Sunny

I see no need to chose one as being correct and the other as being all wrong, but a sensible view uses both these resources and tries to sort out the individual cases. As best as I can tell Steve does a wonderful job with Bills' Daily and seems to have his hands full "merely" dealing with the day-to-day beast of the key updates and keeping us fed with a steady dose of guest articles and during the season his individual grades. Great job and I thank and comend his work! However, he is upfront and clear about his sources of information and thus his limitations. His front office is an essential sideline to tracking the Bills. yet it is a sideline and sometimes falls behind the sometimes fast changing worlf of the cap. Things are great right now as he updated it 2/16, but even then he states it is based on media reports and archived data and unfortunately the media often gets things wrong and contract language is not fully released and changes without notification. On the other hand, Clumpy's work is also far from perfect, but on the good side he acknowledges this upfront with detailed disclaimers and he constantly has shown an eagerness to correct his info when better info is provided. Though his info and presentation is sometimes not up to date because there seems to be some slowness in getting the web gurus to record and post it all, he does seem to update in in far more detail than any front office distillation I have seen and more frequesntly as well. While Bills' Daily thankfully devotes massive time to providing fans with immediate highlights the same super-human effort does not seem to go to the cap page as Clumpy seems to diligently peruse resources like the separate NFLPA salary pages for individual players. I think one can accept that these numbers are correct because if they are not then the NFLPA is not serving its members and it is lying to its partners in the NFL. If you must weight these two sites against each other (though I don't know why you would because even we they disagree they are still both valuable resources) then I'd ask for your judgment on the cap impacts of cuttting Prioleau. it has been generally reported on the web that cutting him results in a cap savings over a million bucks. Yet, Bills' Daily reports that a cut of Prioleau actually lowers out cap room by a few hundred K. My guess is from the multiple reports I've seen that Clumpy and the several reports are right and Bills Daily does not reflect reality on this one. I certainly hope Clumpy is right because if he isn't we lost another resource I was counting on to allow us to make a few moves.

The big advantage Diem has over Jennings in getting a big contract is that he was able to start all 16 games last season and this was the second time in his 4 year career he was able to do that. JJ has shown signs of being a good player, but GM's seem to value reliability and JJ has never started a full 15 in any year of his career and has also been dinged a few times and needed to be replaced by Price to finish games. Diem did miss three games in '03 as you point out but came back to do 16 last year. Ignoring these occurences may make us feel better but it seems to be a real factor in market value and market is what this is all about. I hope JJ stays as well, but the Bills should not give him top 5 OL money ($7 milliom), top 10 OL money ($6 million) and the huge cap hit MW will get unless he restructures even makes the rate of $5 million that lesser talents than JJ have gotten to play LT a questionable number. I hope the Bills sign him. but risking losing him to see if we can knock the price needed to retain him down to $4 million (and I hope $3 million cap hit) to sign him strikes me as a good team building move. Everybody wants youth but reality only allows you to pay them so much. Indy has made a choice to do without the best D players and instead hope that having one of the best D oriented HCs in the game will help them win it all. This has been a bad bet the last two years even with Manning playing lights out.

Failing hearing this mention from a few other sources or something by name closer to home this rumor seems fairly baseless and actually against the Bills interests at this point. Even if one judged Teague to be inadequate at center, why on earth you would cut a player who has played LT before and whose cap hit is far below that of other Bills OL players (even with an escalator when camp begins if that is what you are describing) when you might lose your starting LT to FA simply makes no sense. Clumpy's wonderful resource on Bills cap hits is undeniably thorough and evem if you quibble with a number it is the best resource avalable and he is happy to update it if there is a better number around. He has MW logging a massive $9.17 million cap hit that clearly must be restructured before the season begins. It would seem any cuts the Bills make on the OL have be done with restructuring of this number in mind. Its hard to imagine that even a worse case scenario that this team would give any thought to weakening its ability to find someone to play tackle by cutting Teague.

One of the big pieces of leverage on players to encourage them to act correctly is that even if they have a competitive relationship with the owners that would tend a layer toward threatening or deciding to screw his bosses because they might screw him, the teamates have a collaborative relationship with each other. MW may have the right under contract to stick with the agreement the Bills voluntarily signed with him, but to keep an outrageous contract his play clearly does not merit will hurt his teammates and their chances to win the game they all play and have been rewarded for doing so. MW hasevery right under the American system of commerce to screw the owners by forcing them to keep their word and to screw his teammates as well. However, if he does this it is going to be a long season as he goes to work each day with these teammates and listens to the mounting ragging in the local media he will get. MW already reacted to a bad situation in an unprofessional manner last off-season. His team responded with a good carrot and stick approach with JMac sending out the word MW may be moved to the lower paying position of guard, but the team rewarding him with a gameball when he played well at tackle. I hope they keep up this carrot and stick approach, but it strikes me as working best when the stick is applied by pressure from his teaamates rather than heavy-handed prodding from the team or the usual blather from the media and us fans.

My understanding is that the problem for Peters is that he just did not demonstrate the mental prowess for anyone to risk drafting him (given that smarts help but being bright is not an essential requirement for a pro athlete this is saying alot). This apparently is evidenced by a pretty low score by Peters on the Wonderlic test, but be it the Wonderlic or the SATs people recognize that test scores do not always tell the tale for an individual and Peters actually was not drafted because when teams interviewed him he came off as a nice guy but clearly an enchilada short of a combination platter mentally from what I hear. When the Bills signed Peters and worked him out he impressed everyone with incredibly soft hands and some great quickness certainly for a guy that big and actually he is just flat out fast at any size. However, his "slowness" tended to be reflected in him having blocking problems for a TE and some difficulty picking up and adjusting to line call changes. Apparently his physical talents are just hard to deny and the Bills became worried that some team might actually be willing to give up a roster spot to snatch Peters off our PS. We activated him, but listed him as a T to emphasize to him that the key to him staying in this league and actually being a playing TE is going to be found not through his receiving skill which cannot be denied, but by him applying himself and learning how to block. The Bills were forced to actually use Peters as a TE by injuries to Euhus and Campbell, but still he has not shown the blocking execution to be trusted with the QBs life. His lack of focus on fundamental issues was seen virtually right away as he checked into a game as a extra TE, but forgot to notify the refs that he was TE eligible with a tackles number and we got penalized. The good news for the Bills however, is that they lined up Peters as an opponent on the scout team for ST and it turned out he was essentially unblockable by our frontline ST. ST pass rush turned out to be the perfect spot for him because the tasks are simple and if he screws up nobody dies. It paid off for us immediately as he not only got a block on an interior rush on ST, he has the ball skills that he hopped right up recovered the ball in the endzone for six. Overall, he looks like a great project who at the very least is a real ST weapon and with practice. time and support may actually become a weapon at TE. However, i would not mistake his listing on the depth chart and athletic prowess as some sign he is ready for LT duty. RT maybe but even that is a jump and even if he can do it, you lose the soft hands and speed he has shown when used as a tackle.

From the way it looks right now I suspect they will try to upgrade the OL though improvement of current players rather than by acquiring better players. The constraints on getting new talent appear to be: 1. MW is scheduled to have a cap hit of about $5.8 million. If JJ is resigned at the going rate for solid LT talent of about a $5 million annual salary or even for the lower $3-4 million cap hit in 2005 that this salary brings one begins to exceed any probable budget for the OL and adding a new salary for an LG even at Villarial levels looks doubtful. Perhaps with a renegotiation for MW that lowers his 2005 cap hit (his play certainly mandates lowering it though we are still hopeful he has turned the corner and become a professional, with a little hardball and no FA market for JJ, and the Bills viewing LT improvement as fubndamental this all could happen but this is a lot of ifs. 2. The latest best figures available from Clumpy lower our available cap room by a couple of million to around $7 million. 3. The Bledsoe cut though welcomed by many and giving him a "mere" $4.3 million 05 cap hit in deadspace compared to the $6.5 million to keep him leaves us with a savings of $2.2 million but a new need for a back-up QB. It seems very possible that the cost of a credible back-up QB will exceed this amount and result in the Bledsoe cut reducing out cap room, though theoretically we can go with a more affordable back-up though this likely means getting a player like Kordelia, Batch or McMahon as our back-up. At any rate the better the back-up QB we get the less we have to spend on an LG. At any rate, LG is an issue. but it does not strike me as unreasonable to hope/expect JMac to improve the LG in 05 from his level of play in '04. Even if folks judged Tucker or Smith to be disappointing in '04 why would one assume that they will not improve at all and exhibit the same level of play in '05? Actually when you look at the somewhat logical rate of improvement continuing, Smith stepped up from being good enough to make the Ravens PS in '03 to being a flawed but not unreasonable starting LG for the Bills in '04. It actually strikes me as less ground to improve for Smith to jump up in '05 to be a fulltime starter quality player in 05 than the amazing improvement he showed last year. If Smith had "merely" achieved the feat of being a reasonable back-up for us last year, I would have counted it as a pretty good year for Smith moving from the PS of one team to the active roster of another. Though he was not the fulltime starter we wanted his achievement last year was quite impressive. Further, there are two specific areas he needs to improve to be a credible fulltime starter. His pass pro (the more difficult talent to master) was good but he was not as authoritative as we want him to be at run blocking. i see no reason why JMac cannot improve his run blocking aggression and achievement. He also was not as effective as we want the LG to be in the redzone. Improvement in this specific area is not impossible either. I think we most likely will be forced by cap limitations to improve internally at LG, but I actually think Smith is the more likely candidate to get the work and focus to do this and Tucker will be called upon to play the critical role Price played at tackle by being our first back-up option for both guards and the center position.

This likely would make no sense as neither of our top FAs (JJ or Phat Pat) are anywhere near the top 5 in average salary that a franchise tag would mandate (or even top 10 which the transition tag would mandate if we had one). If we tagged them it would clearly be part of a strategy to trade or release them. PP was not one of the top 5 WR, but he was for most pundits the top WR available and we had a team AT where the owner shot off his mouth too much and promised fans and more important Vick that he would acquire Price. There was as closed to a guranteed trade partner as you can get so the tagging made sense and despite some initial angry surprise from PP he and TD co-operated in getting the deal done. JJ is now creeping up the charts as among the top LTs out there as better LTs like Pace and Jones are tagged or signed, but there is still no guranteed (or likely) trade partner out there as only 3 or 4 teams (max) have both the need and the cap room to sign JJ to a big deal. If the Bills were to tag him. they would have to release him rather than pay a top 5 OL salary for him and by that time the market would have dried up and JJ would have been screwed. Generally using the tag just to screw folks is not done as the team would destroy their rep among players in a big way and have difficulty acquiring new FAs or hanging onto players. Tagging looks really doubtful. If I were JJ and the Bills tagged me I would sign the $7 million annual offer in a hot second because though it is not the long-term deal he wants that would pay him even more, it is alot more than he will likely get on the market.

The firsr key here is what they decide to do with Jennings if they resign him for even as little as a $4 million cap hit it will be quite difficult to fit a new LG into an OL budget with MW scheduled to bring a cap hit of around $6 million. If you want an LG then root against them resigning JJ most likely.

I think the dirty little secret here is that Bledsoe's mindboggling mistakes did not cause us to crap out this season (despite what the Drew-haters have to say one can certainly attribute any loss to any of mistakes us imperfect humans make in a game, but outside of the fumble by Bledsoe returned by Seymour in a game we seemed destined to lose to the B champion anyway, I think there were relatively few game turning errors I would attribute to Bledsoe (or certainly to Bledsoe alone) whereas there were several of those types of plays in 2003 where I feel Bledsoe almost singlehandedly screwed the pooch to lose games. Likewise when you look back at the wins despite what Bledsoe lovers would have you believe there were relatively few wins I would attribute to Bledsoe as playing a major role (I think it was the first win against Miami he threw the ball against the wind effectively while the Miami QB struggled. My sense is that if JP can achieve being as big a non-factor in the results of our season as Bledsoe was in 2004 then he can be carried by the team and will have a great year. Like Bledsoe against Pittsburgh he will be open to fault for not delivering a victory for his teammates when their play sucks, but even against Pitts I find fault with the ST for laying egg with the Clements fumble and the Lindell chip shot miss and the D for letting a 4th string RB run for 100 yards as the big failings in that game and creating a situation where the usual blah game from Bledsoe was not enough to correct for their unusally bad play.

I don't think the accelerated cap hit from the Bledsoe cut leaves us much choice. We are looking for a back-up QB with a cap hit of about $2.3 million. From the available list I think Batch, Stewart and MacMahon are what we are talking about. Remember no one is talking about a starter and I would have no clue is that was what I was talking about, Whi do you want as your number2? Shane Matthews? What does he or some other #2 have to offer you.

This actually one of the big reasoms why our shopping list starts with a back-up RB because WM cannot be used like we need to use the RB with a young QB. I like Shaud Williams but much more as a change0up and third down back because we need someone to do what we wanted Travis Henry to do for us. The key question for us is not who starts at QB but who teams with WM to be like Staley and Bettis were for Pitts.

This why Clements/MM run the dipsy-doodles as a used part of the playbook. The team needs to provide the threat that they may go deep and I am happy to expand my dictum, to make it run the ball and run it again and throw just enough passes to keep em honest. However, keeping honest with the young QB and relying on the young QB are two way different things. Relying on JP a lot or really much at all is probably not going to be a successful way to go. JP has some essential roles in our winning team, but it starts with handing the ball off to WM and involves him doing that 40 or more times a game. It involves him using the speed of Evans and the circus catch ability of Moulds a real threat, but my sense of winning football is that this threat will be made real with 20 or so throws a game and if it gets much higher than that we are probably losing and maybe big time.

Run the ball and then run it again. Folks who somehow expect this young QB who never has started and NFL game to come in and be the second coming of Elway or Joe Montana are almost certainly engaging in wishful thinking. The Pitysburgh model of last year with Duce Staley and Jerome Bettis running the ball and a corps of WRs like Hines Ward gathering in anything thrown near them is the way you turn a rookie like RoboQB into one of the winningest rookie QBs ever. If the Bills can make 9-7 with Bledsoe at the helm, they can drag a young learning QB to a winning record as well. I expect Losman to have an up and down year. If he doesn't do too much damage to our W/L as he learns the game we may well make the playoffs. Pitts in the championship game like Buffalo against Pitts fell short when the counted upom a young QB to lead the team to victory. The best example of a young QB leading a team to the ultimate victory has been NE with Brady where actually the point the have emphasized and people now agree with as they argue whether Brady is really that good or not is that the way they win with a young QB is that it is the TEAM that wins. So what should JP do. If he never throws the ball 30 times in a game and most games he only throws it 20 times this will be a good season indeed.

No I don't think that sources of capital will want to invest in Goodenow and Bettman's NHL. but if they did not have to invest in these idiots but could own the property outright that is a completely different thing. What the networks sale is commercials. What a sports product can deliver is eyeballs in a male demographic which allows you to sell commercials to beer brewers and other folks. By losing this season and potentially another, the NHL owners have created a vacuum where another source of capital can come in and buy some subset of the NHL players, and deliver a product which fills TV space and allows them to sell commercials. The questions to ask are not about the NHL because in this formulation the entity is gone and the owners are left holding their investments. Ther question is can the sport of hockey be produced at a cost which allows for the selling of commercials at a rate to make a profit. TV folks are fairly desperately looking for sports vehicles to fill air time that they have created entities like the X-Fames, the XFL, Bounceball (or whatever the heck it is called on Spike, or USA and even tried to make a go of the WNBA to no avail. The question is whether the vaccuum left by the NHL can be filled by another product that makes capitalization worthwhile. I think it is possible, If you scraped the cream of the best players in the world, put them on 8-12 teams to fit a TV schedule you are talking about drawing eyeballs at a fairly minuscule level to make this have more viewers than many shows on TV today, If this new entity allows the athletes to essentially keep all the gates receipts, merchandising and cuts them in directly to some of the ad money you might have a going concern which dispenses with the middlemen of the NHL owners.

Unfortunately I think the Bills are going to be limited in who they get to be the back-up by an inability to pay more than a cap hit of $2.2 million for the back-up. Additional expenditure will begin to eat into our $9 million or so cap room TD has created and I think this money is going to be devoted to LT, starting DT and other needs, If we exceed $2.2 million in expenditure then the cap hit for cutting Bledsoe exceeds the cap cost of keeping Bledsoe under his own contract. Just as the accelerated bonus of trading Bledsoe to the Bills played a significant role in NE totally missing the playoffs the year after and the year before the won two SBs in a row, so too might exceeding $2.2 million cause an accelerated cap hit from a team correctly deciding to do away with Bledsoe wreck the team the next year. Perusing the list with the reality of cap hits in mind, Kordell may be the best choice and actually Charlie Batch may be missing from the list. Johnson will probably will have a cap hit which makes him difficult for us to get.

Gleason does leave out an important part of the story with his recitation of events at the end of the article. The key to the NFL story was not simply that Lawrence Taylor caved and the rest of the players followed suit and the owners won. It's that the players caved and got rid of Ed Gaevey and under the leadership of a fellow player, Gene Upshaw they got the good advice to surrender and the moveto decertify the NFLPA as a bargaining agent actually got the owners to also cave rather than have to live in a free-market world where teams actually had to compete with each other using money to buy the best players. The Garvey proposal was for 52% of the gross. By threatening to remove the union as a partner in helping the owners restrain free trade with the player draft and other rules, the owners were willing to concede an amount which is now equal to roughly 70% of the designated gross and the players are making more money than they ever made under the pre-strike deal under the growing partnership between the NFL and NFLPA. The stupidity of the result of the NHL lockout will produce a good result when both owners and the players realize they are not going to make the most money by beating up each other, but they will make the most money by cooperating with each other and collecting dollars from the fans and whatever network is interested in them. Ultimately, the facts come down to we customers may be willing to pay money to see the best hockey players in the world. However, we certainly will not pay a nickel to see the owners do whatever they do. I hope that the lockout produces an outcome like the HFL strike which to my mind might (simply might) be: 1. The players and the owners get a clue and like the NFL players who went beyonf Garvey the NHL players seem to need to get beyonf Goodnow and the NHK owners need to get beyond Bettman. There should be a cap but like the NFL cap it should be a negotiated deal like the NFL CBA which gives shared power to both sides, assures "honesty" or both parties by a virtual total release and sharing of information, and lets them get about the business of giving certainty that the produce will be there for the networks which allows them to spend what nickels they can on the league. 2. Failing the two sides getting along, i would be in the market for replacement owners because there is plenty of capital out there, but a more limited pool of the best hockey players in the world (now that Europans are part of the NHL mix). If I were the players i would be talking directly with NHL cities about these cities taking over ownership or control of the emoty arenas and I would solicit their interest in forming city teams to compete against each other. The owners themselves have a lot of money and thus can buy a lot of politicians so this idea may not fly, but the key to this is capital and its an optiion I'd play with. 3. In addition to a municipal option as a source of capital, I'd also look ino corporations potentially following a Mighty Ducks model or organizing them as an alternative source of capital to become replacement owners. 4. Another idea to pursue into checking into its viability is the a TV network. The amounts of money at play in TV land simply dwarfs the amount of money at play running a league. One clear failing of the NHL on ESPN was a lack of effective interest generation in the NHL. However, the number of eyeballs one needs to get is actually not a huge number for television purposes. One of the other failings of the NHL as a TV show was that you could see the lockout coming and no network really took or marketed this uncertain proudct like it could be marketed. If a network itself became the owner and it gets the bulk of the money from selling commercials and players get the bulk ofthe money from ticket sales, merchandising or whatever some arrangememt can be made, In the end, I think the owners and players need to co-operate and failing the ability of Bettman and Goodenow to coioperate get some replacement owners.

The Bills have put us firmly between a rock and a good place by handing the job to JP. My preference is to have a youngster either take the job from his predecessor, or at least produce good results as a pro which make sitting him down impossible to do. However, this is not how reality has played this one out and the just because the job has been given to JP based on nothing but potential does not mean that he cannot prove himself worthy of the job. Reality being what it is, I hope the Bills can find some cushion for the rock if JP should unfortunately get hurt again (I think the RJ experience has made many Bills fans a bit gunshy and it is way to early to fear that JP is injury prone due this boo-boo at the hands of a fellow Bill in practice) or he is not the player we hope he is. Unfortunately, the most qualified guy to be a #2 QB for Losman is actually Drew Bledsoe (who filled this role perfectly for Tom Brady in 2001 because reality forced him to do so) and he ain't gonna do it (and most Bills fans are so addicted to either loving or hating Bledsoe that it is great for TSW that he won't). The question is who should be our #2. The Bledsoe cut puts a real crimp in our cap that makes this one a toughy. A mere $2.2 million is left over after the acceleration of the Bledsoe bonus and signing anyone for more than that means cutting into out cap room. This likely leaves out folks like Jeff Garcia or Kurt Warner who probably want to start anyway (this is a factor because they won't come here and I hope we are not going to get into such handholding for JP that we will need to stay away from anyone who plays well for fear of upsetting him), Looking at the list, the candidates look like Chatlie Batch, Mile McMahon and Kordell Stewart. I pass on MacMahon because he was not able to even complete 50%of his passes in his two biggest seasons of starting for the Lions (not to mention that his biggest seasons saw him start 3 and 4 games respectively). Charlie Batch is interesting though it has been quite awhile since he last saw starter duty also for the Lions. However. for the last several years he has done back-up duty with the Steelers and I am pretty sure that he is familiar with Clements/MM and their system and more important they are familiar with him, If e is good for the braintrust who am I to argue without further evidence from play as a Bill so I will accept this if it comes to happen with the same fact-free optimism I have for JP's prospects. However, the guy who intrigues me the most from looking at their records is Kordell Stewart. On the up side I see: 1. Working with MM/Clements clearly improved his play in the 2001 season 2. He has said and done the right things in his move to the Ravens where he was clearly brought in as the #2 for Boller and did what was necessary to help the team including playing the role of punter for the first time since HS. 3. He has experienced success in the NFL before and has seen a lot and even been to the big Dance once before as a rookie. Just like Bledsoe, I would not pick Kordell as my #1, but he has many aspects of his game that look like he can be a good #2. Given the cap limitations caused by the Bledsoe cut make my choices Kordell or Batch in that order.

I actually think between the shortage of marquee QBs in the NFL, the false perception that you need a marquee QB to win in this league, and the marketing machine of the NFL and most teams that easily tries and does sell water to a drowning man that Bledsoe should be able to make out financially like a bandit from getting cut by the Bills. I saw one article in a Texas paper which talked excitedly about Bledsoe replacing Vinny Testaverde (I don't know about getting excited about Bledsoe coming in, but certainly replacing Vinny is something to be excited about) and about him mentoring Drew Henson who obviously needs a lot of help and ain't ready yet. It talked about signing Bledsoe for millions which will be prorated over the at least 2 years (if ever) that Henson will need to be mentored. This sounds logical to meand think about it finacially be for Drew. 1. His NE contract bonus is accelerated and done as far as the NFL cares and Bledsoe already has the bonus, but the amount of this contract "for life" was set based on a yearly rate for Bledsoe which I think (I may be wrong) works out to $3-4 million a year. 2. The Bills contract is now accelerated and the bonus is already paid out to Drew at about $2 million a year this year and next, 3. If Bledsoe were to receive a contract from Dallas which paid at the same rate the Bills were scheduled to give himit would amount to a cap hit of $6.5 million. I suspect the market will reward Bledsoe for getting cut with a contract similar in annual payment to his Bills deal and if you add in all the accelerated bonuses he will not only pocket another $6 million this year but he will be getting paid at an annual rate of about $12 million. Not bad, I wish I was laid off like that. Finances aside, in terms of on the field stuff signing Bledsoe would likely improve the Dallas team and their W/L this year. Improve means not that they would be good or even adequate, just simply that they will be better running a new O with no tape on them for awhile managed by Parcells. As bad as many Bills fans wanted to feel about Bledsoe, Dallas' QB situation was a train wreck and even worse. Again having a QB that they are committed to even though it is Bledsoe will not make things adequate but it will almost certainly make things better. I think that the work which MM/Clements did with Bledsoe will help Dallas and Parcells immensely. it was a good reminder that just because running is far from Bledsoe's best game that doesn't mean that he can't be used as a runner at all. Even if folks want to deny reality, Bledsoe did pull off a nice fake and pitch on a QB sneak leading to a WM TD. Bledsoe did hit Evans for TDs a couple of time rolling out, and Bledsoe even ran the QB blitz successfully on 2 and 9 or so after WM got stoned on 1st down and the LBs blitzed wide on Bledsoe selling out to the passing play and leaving the center of the field open to an easy QB draw setting up a 3rd and short yardage. A team cannot depend on Bledsoe to earn his money running, but to not run Bledsoe at all make his passing game less effective.

Obviously folks can answer how they want, but I ask this as a serious football question looking for some specific and as detailed as folks want to get responses about the nuts and bolts of plays (rather than the usual tired tirades or personal attacks on Bledsoe that this will mean fewer sacks cause Drew is a statue or a stiff). Generally, I am coming to the conclusion that Bledsoe ran out of town because though TD and MM promised him an honest chance to win a competition with Losman, they were clear to him that the Bills offense was going to be one offensive style and the "new" Bills style was going to lend itself to what Losman does best rather than be based on what Bledsoe does best. Bledsoe would get a fair chance to do better than Losman but he was going to have to do better at QB in an offense designed for Losman rather than one designed for Bledsoe (the this is my team comment from Bledsoe). Ultimately I think Bledsoe realized that even if he beat Losman out in a Losman offense it would only be for a shorttime. At any rate, I am really looking forward not so much to see Losman do his stuff (that will be nice but players are merely players to me and are fairly exchangeable as far as I'm concerned as I care more about the TEAM) but to seeing a fuller version of the MM/Clements playbook run by a player who has more of the skills it was designed for. I think that the rants which labeled Bledsoe a statue were overblown as though the running game is not what he is best at all, s Kevin Killdrive showed us, if you don not run at all you are soon ineffective. One of the best things about Clements/MM this year was that they realized this and from plays like a couple of throws or TDs on the rollout from Bledsoe to Evans, a nice Bledsoe fake of a QB sneak and then a pitch back to WM for a TD and even several QB draws for positive yards, Clements/MM got production out of Bledsoe by moving and throwing and even running him. By designing the offense for a more mobile QB. I expecty to see a lot more nifty Clements/MM plays and I am curious what folks think they will be. The following is my thought on how the offense will generally be different, and I curious what other folks think as well: 1. More moving pockets- the blocking schemes in the new offense should be very different. Rather than the OL dropping back to form a wall within which Bledsoe is expected to pass, I would expect the new offense to employ a style which requires some athleticism and mobility from the blockers as they will either move the wall of blockers in the pocket to the left or to the right. This will provide an advantage to the interior line as the bull rushes which sometimes put Teague on his butt will be less effective if the pocket as a whole is moving left or right. This mode can also be more effective against stunts as the DL will have to not simply move to a different spot to rush but will need to move to a moving spots to find a path to the QB. Though the moving pocket provides some benefits in combating stunts and power rushes, it will add an intellectual challenge to making it work. Not only will Teague be called upon to do more multi-tasking (an area where he had problems in the past as doing line calls, a shotgun snap, and deal with a charging DT proved to be too much for him to deal with sometimes in the past), but the entire OL will be called upon to not only do the same things they did in the past, but now do them while moving laterally at the same time. Simple o understand and difficult to do while a 260lb fast opponent is trying to eat your QB. 2. More rollouts- Evans showed his effectiveness at this game and Losman will add to this by putting in a dangerous run option that Bledsoe could threaten but Losman should be able to do 3. More screen passes- One of thegreat frustration of watching Bledsoe was that he often seemed to fire the same pass whether a player was 20 yards away or 5 yards away. The modern QB is trained to throw the ball hard, fast and where only the reciever can catch it on every play and the pro receiver simply needs to step up and catch this hard fast pass, but Bledsoe just seemede to lack the touch to differ his hard fast pass to a near receiver as to a far receiver. it is to be hoped that the new offense will take more advantage of the screen pass as statisitcally Bledsoe simply completed far fewer of these passes than the best QBs in the league did. It will be ironic if complaints about Reed, Moulds or Henry's droppsies are improved by having a QB who can still throw it hard and fast but with a little better touch. 4. Timing plays and quick openers- while I doubt we will go to the West Coast offense, the Bledsoe style by design and certainly by practice has been for plays to go on long enough for a receiver to break free and then a lasar beam throw comes in. All too often (until it was improved by the MM use of the alarm clock which substituted for Parcells yelling throw the damn ball in practice alot) this led to the pat, pat, pat, sack than anything else. A MM/Clements offense may be skewed more toward timing plays where the QB throws it to a spot without the receiver being there yet or even open (as Bledsoe often did in his wait and deliver mode). I expect to see a lot more timing plays. This will be difficult for the receivers and QB as it will require more co-ordination between them (and some embarassing moments when they do not coordinate) but it can be done 5. More naked bootlegs- One great tool is to send the motion one way and the QB the other with a receiver in a one-on-one. When this works the QB has all day and can undress the DB. When this doesn't work exactly the QB wil find himself up against a defender with no blocker. If the QB is more fleet than the defender you can end up with a play like he one where Chad Pennington undressed Bills LB Robinson. If the QB is less fleer like a Bledsoe against Mo Lewis you end up with a collapsed lung. I suspect we will see the Bills O banking on Losman's mobility and running more naked bootlegs. I expect to see more plays of this type in 2005.

It appears to me (meaning I and we can easily be wrong on this and other ideas spouted on TSW) that what Bledsoe was likely told is that he will go into the mini-camps and 2005 season as the number 1 QB on the depth chart, BUT the team as a whole was going to learn and practice 1 basic offense, because learning two offenses (1 designed for Bledsoe's strengths and one designed for Losman's strengths) would be impossible for some to do well (dimbulbs who are talented players like Peters for example) and more difficult and less effiicent for everyone. It is possilble to install a few special plays geared to a particular player, but in general the Bills will have one base Bills (Clements/MM) offense. The difference is and what likely surprised Bledsoe was the decision that our base offense was going to be designed around what Losman could potentially do well rather than be based around what Bledsoe could potentially do well. Bledsoe could still beat out the young Losman if he was more productive than Losman on the field but he would have to beat him out using an offense designed for Losman (more naked bootlegs, more moving pockets, more rollouts, more screen passes, timing plays and quick openers) rather than beat him out using an offense designed for Bledsoe's strengths (static pocket, deep throws, late developing plays). My sense is that Bledsoe made a decision that he was not likely to beat out JP or beat him out for long playing JPs game. As far as a vet, I think if the Bills can find someone who can prosper in the JP offense, this is the player to get. I doubt it is Matthews though I think he will be fine a disaster QB. He is an older hand who can see lots of stuff and understand what is going on, but as Marv used to say, "when a player starts thinking and talking about retirement they are retired. I think Matthews is done and I hope we do better for a back-up.

I think onw of the reasons there were more sacks of Bledsoe running the Kevin Killdrive offense than when he ran the Clements offense was that Killdrive seemed to buy the false conclusion that Bledsoe was a statue. Clements/MM instead ran an offense that realized that just because Bledsoe was not nearly at his best running the ball or throwing on the run, he could still do it and even be effective doing it if it was employed time to time and was not used as the routine for Bledsoe. In fact, because Killdrive refused to use Bledsoe as a runner at all (I remember few QB draws, sneaks on short yardage, and in fact many running plays at all by the RB even on 3rd and short) that Ds knwew the pass was coming and just flat-out rushed the passer with no hesitation that the Bills might just run or run Bledsoe on the play. This past year we saw Bledsoe actually run plays like the fake sneak on 3rd and 1 and pitch back to WM for a TD, passing for a TD on the rollout a couple of times to Evans and amazingly pick up 5-7 yards on a QB draw play on 2nd and 9 after WM got stoned on 1st down (which did happen from time to time). Trying to get a 1st down on 3rd and 2-4 yards is just a huge difference from trying to get a 1st on 3rd and 9 because the D is laying for a pass play after we got stoned on 1st down. The Bills had fewer sacks under Clements because we were likely to run any time on almost any down and an LB who went wide on a rush on 2nd an 9 was running the risk of giving up 5-7 yards to a QB draw if he left the middle unprotected so fewer blitzes were called or the LB will hesitate a moment and make sure it is not a quick hitter run up the middle. Just cause Bledsoe was not nearly at his best running, this did not mean you never ran, in fact it meant you had to run some just to keep the pass rush honest.

This is interesting as I think the "way" in the NFL is to train the QB to throw it the same way every time with almost total disregard for applying touch. Obviously a QB is expected not to throw it 50 yards when the target is five yards away. However, the method seems to be to train the QB and the receivers to expect the 50 yard throw to come to him hard and fast and where only hecan catch it and to also expect the 5 yard throw to come in hard and fast and where only the reciever can catch it as well. Bledsoe seemed to have the failing in his game he lacked "touch" on short passes because in addition to coming in hard and fast (the expectation) they sometimes seemed to come into the WR as though he was twice the distance away that he was. NFL receivers are expected to catch hard and fast catches all the time and this is reasonable, but still there is some level of touch on these hard fast passes which Bledsoe often did not show. I'm not sure what name you give to the third variable which gives a hard/fast pass touch or not, but Bledsoe lacked that and QBs like Brady have that and it makes a difference in their accuracy results.

My sense is that what the Bills told Bledsoe and Bledsoe had trouble adjusting to is that if the Bills situation was one where Bledsoe was clearly the #1 and Losman the #2, the basic offensive design would be skewed toward Bledsoe's talents and as the team would be taught one base offense, Losman would need to learn it and how to run the offense designed for Bledsoe in Bledsoe got nicked and Losman had to come in. Instead, the Bills did offer Bledsoe a "fair" shot at competing for the starter's job, however, the offense he would be competing to run would be one designed for Losman and skewed toward Losma's talents and capabilities. Not being an offensive guru, I'm not sure exactly what that would mean, but in general I suspect that the O designed for Losman is going to employ a lot more: 1. moving pockets 2. naked bootlegs 3. designed QB runs like the QB draw 4. other plays which simply don't tend toward the Bledsoe talent of hang in there until the last minute and count on the QB to make the huge throw and if necessary take the huge hit but get the pass off. One of the fallacies of folks who call Bledsoe the statue is to pretend that just because Bledsoe is not at his best when running or moving to act like he is incapable of running or throwing on the move. He can do these things (as seen this past season when he hit Evans for a nice TD while rolling out, as he did on several QB draws he ran and when he faked the sneak and pitched it back to WM who went in for the TD. My guess is that Bledsoe can run an offense designed for Losman (just as he ran an offense designed for Brady in the must win game against Pitts for the 2001 AFC championship), however he even if he runs it successfully (to a win) he is not going to run it perfectly or put up glistening stats (aswas the case in the Pitts game). Bledsoe in essence made a choice that he was not going to run an offense designed for someone else. My sense is that what Bledsoe did not see coming was how clearly MM and the braintrust were going to say and operate that even if Bledsoe beat out Losman on the field, he was going to have to do it running an offense designed for Losman rather than do it running an offense designed for Bledsoe. My impression is that Clements/MM actually have such an ornate and specific O plan that it surprised Bledsoe how different a Losman based O is from a Bledsoe based O. I also agree that there is a difference between trade interest in a player a perception of a player's skills. Teams like Dallas still perceive that Bledsoe has skills which can helpt them win, but they do not perceive there was any need to trade for him if they could just pluck him off the waiver wire.

It comes down to a question of personl management and lifestyle. $120K a year is not alot if you are actively managing your money and making it work for you. If you are investing in efforts like opening stores that take a lot of upfront cash to set up (most of that cash you would borrow from banks anyway, but your personal stake is the collateral for large loans), are managing the new stores, etc, or alternately if you are going off to this island spot, that fasion show and paying for your entourage to accompany you 120K ain't much. However, if you are more passively managing your money investing in mutual funds, diversifying your holdings, and still doing a lot of work, but your work is to monitor the reports from others who are working daily and all the time to pool your assets with many others, then it doesn't matter whether your income is 120 million or $120K because you just buy either more or less of the pool based on your monthly income. The impression I get is that this decision varies all over the board. Many of the players who are in finacial trouble are actually in the former mode and really are not making their money work for them, they are simply spending it on parties, yachts and stuff. The difficulty that many players have when they come into wealth is simply saying no as a surprising number of friends and relatives come out the woodwork and suddenly are your best buddies and want to "share" in the work of making your money work for you and they will do all the work and the player takes all the financial risk. The impression that I get from the athletes I have interacted with is that I suspect one of the primary benefits of the lockout is that it is now far easier to say no to friends and family who are looking for them to invest in some idea that will allow them to get rich quick when really the best idea is to get rich slowly and stay rich.

Doing this move early does save Bledsoe from twisting in the wind a bit, and this treatment of a player as human being rather than just as a commodity will hold TD and the Bills in good stead with FAs in the future as they shop for teams. Rather than the message a future FA will or can take from this is the correct message that TD and the Bills are willing to cut a guy aimply when they are done with him, they have sent out and are selling their framing of this as they are doing a "stand-up" thing for this guy when actually they are throwing him out the door.