The Avenger

But Buddy and his supporters keep telling us that you build through the draft. Are you guys seriously telling me that you think a Wilfork/Haynesworth combo for the Pats is better than Dareus/Jasper/Troup? Next you're going to tell me Tom Brady is a better QB than Tyler Thigpen - why do you guys love NE so much? Can't you see they've built their organization the wrong way and we're doing it the right way?

Excellent strategy on the part of the Bills - lie in wait for a few decades, let everyone think you're a small market team who doesn't spend, throw money at guys like Kelsay, don't sign any free agents and let your own good free agents walk and then POW!!!! Jump out like a hungry tiger in 2020 (or maybe 2030 depending on how dedicated you are to the setup of this ruse) and start spending your way to a championship - NOBODY would expect it! It would be downright diabolical!

Another requirement - you must be able to land on IR within the first 3 weeks of the season - think you can do that?

Can you swing back and pickup a Kelsay or Maybin jersey?

What I really love is that if you Google the headline you'll see that dozens of media outlets posted the story verbatim on their websites, meaning not only did this little ditty get by the AP writer and any editor involved there, it also went right by people at various newspapers, TV stations and radio stations - doesn't anyone ready anything anymore?

Jeez - I thought EVERYBODY knew that Ethyl bromide boiled at 101 degrees F at atmospheric pressure - come on people, think! Does the AP have to spell out EVERYTHING?

Meh - it's not really hot until it hits 300 degrees F - if you're complaining about it when lakes, streams and rivers turn to steam you're a puss.......... I bet these same people compain when it gets to -180 degrees F in the winter, too - everybody knows it's not really cold until the nitrogen liquifies.......

My thermometer out in the shade is reading 108.1 right now north of Boston. The humidity is very high, but oddly there's some wind - feels like someone putting a blow dryer on you...... Had to work from home and my central AC just can't keep up so it's over 80 degrees in the house. Growing up in Buffalo I can take the cold with the best of 'em, but this heat kills me - I could never live anywhere where today wouldn't be that far off of normal (i.e. - most places in the South). I don't understand how my father can live in south Georgia......

It's probably not even the floor that matters - it's the gap between the floor and the cap. My argument is that there will be small market teams who only spend to the floor and there will be larger market teams who spend to the cap. Throw in different approaches to accounting (cash to cap like Buffalo vs. all sorts of creative accounting/cap management tactics used by Washington) and you can have a sizeable gap between what types of players Buffalo can obtain vs. what types of players Dallas or NE can obtain. It may not be as bad as baseball where some teams' entire payrolls are what one or two star Yankee or Red Sox players make, but I see it heading that way. In my mind it won't take much for the NFL to divide between the haves and have nots when it comes to getting high dollar players.

Overall I think what's going to make the small market teams like Buffalo and Jacksonville happy is a lower cap floor number that will allow them to spend less on payroll. That may make small market team owners happy, but it has the potential to divide the league between the teams who have money and spend it (Dallas, NE) and teams who don't (Buffalo, Jax, Cle) - hard to see how we would become competitive in a system like that - just look at baseball.

The issue is not the cap - the issue is the cap FLOOR - how much will the Bills be required to spend. The Bills will not spend up to the cap limit - they will try and stay as close to the floor as they can. The don't need to cut guys to make more cap room. Anyone the Bills cut will be because they don't fit or the coaches feel can't contribute. The cap floor will probably be about $15 million below the cap limit and if we have nearly $35 million under the cap the Bills are probably looking to add another $20 million to the payroll because they are required to - that means resigning thier own and maybe bringing in some depth players - there won't be bug names, there won't be big dollars and they won't spend to the cap limit.

In other news, Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead........

I know most people probably saw the story that ran recently about Marcel Dareus spending his time mowing lawns, but CNN had an artile with video that ran today people may be interested in checking out: God I hope he's careful with power equipment...... CNN Story/Video

On Sirius this morning they mentioned that they thought the cap was going to be $120-$123 million and that the floor was going to be $108. Their cap number for the Bills was $98 million, meaning in theory they had $25 million to spend. But, with a team like Buffalo the important number is the floor - if the Sirius numbers are right the Bills are only going to look to spend another $10 million and they can pretty much do that by doing deals with good money up front. It's really hard to say where the Bills really are in the cap (so many different figures) but I thik the Bills will do what they usually do - try and resign their own and bring in some depth players in free agency - no big names, no big contracts.

My trailer is NOT leaking! Oh wait, no apostrophe - never mind........

I remember doing Boy Scout fundraisers with Freddy Donuts - get a car load of donuts, go to someone's door, ring the bell, ask if they wanted to buy a dozen donuts - practically sold themselves....... Just realized that the article was written by a good friend of mine - I forgot that Matt was on the business beat for The News......

You said exactly what I was going to say - Bills fans are an optimistic bunch. It never fails - every year before the season someone posts this poll and well over 50% have the Bills finishing better than .500, and usually 1/4 to 1/3 think we'll get double digit wins. In the past decade we have had 1 winning season, 2 seasons at .500, zero seasons with double-digit wins and zero playoff appearances. They say that previous performance should not be used to predict future performance and that is true, but I don't see where we have drastically changed into a playoff team, nor do I see our divisional opponents as getting substantially weaker. I'll know it's fall when I come back here and read how we are going to the playoffs because we beat the Chiefs and Raiders or suicidal posts from fans wondering whether this could possibly be the worst team in Buffalo Bills history because we haven't won a game yet. I'm thinking 5-6 wins (I predicted 4 last year and got it right).

So sorry to hear the news. A 10 month battle sounds like it was a very difficult time - may peace be with your family.

Exactly my thought. As a Bills fan watching them fail to capitalize on so many opportunities and then make some mistakes and fail to hold the lead I knew exactly where it was going. Brutal. Painful. Not completely unexpected - been there before. If someone asks me what it's like to be a Bills fan I may just reference this match.

Looks like Amazon's content is amazingly thin..... I say that Netflix is a near-monopoly because the content library they built is by far the most extensive - kudos to them for building it - and they can use that as a pretty big hammer. The problem I have is that it affords them great power to make changes to plans and pricing like they just made - how soon until they raise prices and further limit how much you can consume? To be fair, I understand that this is not all Netflix - I know their content licensing costs are going to go up exponentially when their contracts with the studios go up. But their costs haven't grown exponentially yet and they're already jacking the prices up on the consumers. I really don't like where this is all going. Studios are going to demand huge money for their content and distributors like Netflix and Amazon are going going to have to fork over huge fees. In return they'll get exclusivity to content catalogs. In the end each one of these distributors will probably be charging far more than they are today and you'll have to subscribe to multiple services to get all the content you want - no one service will have it. In the end it's not going to be fun for us as consumers.

So I got the e-mail from Netflix today telling me that my subscription which now encompasses unlimited DVDs (1 at a time) and unlimited streaming will no longer be what I get once my gift subscription runs out. Instead, I can choose the DVDs for $7.99/month OR the streaming for $7.99/month but if I want both I have to pay the full boat - $15.98/month. Hey, I understand prices go up and Netflix is going to have to pay more to the studios for content but they don't even give you any sort of price break for getting both services. Besides that, their prices haven't gone up yet - they still have deals that generally run through 2012 and are reporting some healthy quarterly profits. That, paired with a down economy where people simply aren't going to go for nearly a doubling in price to keep what they have today makes me wonder how many customers they'll lose. Redbox at $1 a night looks like the way to go - heck, if they doubled their prices to $2 a night it would still be a pretty good deal. I hate feeling like I'm geting gouged by a company that has attained near-monopoly status.

After reading this article, how long do you think it will be before someone trademarks "Sarah Beth Palin" just to piss off this girl? She seems so happy that her full name isn't yet trademarked.....

And the best part about this is that ALL deep water pools (i.e. - anything other than a kiddie pool) run by ths state are closed as they sort this out and retrain. Glad the kids aren't out of school and it's not a holiday weekend.........

Are there any sports collectible message boards you could post to letting people know you were looking for this? My sense is once you connect up with people who deal in the stuff somebody could locate it or point you to the right person. Asking fellow fans is a good idea but it looks like none of us have the answer.

I think just about anything by 2 Live Crew would make a really inappropriate wedding song..... Slayer is also not a big wedding band - Haunting the Chapel, Hell Awaits, Angel of Death, Alter of Sacrifice, Read Between the Lies, Seasons in the Abyss.....the list goes on and on......