Pyrite Gal

The good news though if this easily and reasonably doubtful "logic" is true is that the Peters injury may be serious and not healed yet, but if the Bills KNOW there is a Peter injury issue, they are not taking action we can see like they judge it to be a big long-term problem. They have operated with Chambers as the back-up and plug in for Peters when he can (will) not play. If in fact, you are right that the Bills Peters know he is not recovered from injury and are pretending he is fine, then this logical thread would have them moving to replace Peters if they thought this was a long-term issue or simply just uncertain. If in fact, they are hiding injury information they are taking no seeable action that indicates they judge this injury problem to be a long-term issue.

I think folks are making a mistake when they are judging the quality of the Bills draft simply on one factor such as team building over time (certainly a lead legitimate criterion) when actually reality dictates that other factors also MUST be taken into account at the time. In fact, despite the ultimate importance of the goal of building a team over time , there are simply other reasons which reality thrusts upon the Bills (or any team) which assessment of quality based solely on whether a pick is THE best long-term strategy alone simply come off as unrealistic whining. Sure building in the trenches (or the even more unrealistic affirmation of drafting for the OL is a preferable thing to do, but this "NICE" approach is so undermined by reality that merely complaining it has not happened in reality comes off as the football fan equivalent of holding your breath til you turn blue. Reality simply commands that one take into account: 1. Though building in the OL trenches is a preferred method, individual player quality often dictates picking at another position- I'm sorry to disappoint smart fans like Bill (or even constant whiners like some of the other OL acolytes on TSW), but in a specific given year it would simply be stupid for the Bills to pass on taking a blue chip player at another position of need to take a lower ranked OL player with the pick. An example of this was the 06 draft where the Bills had the #8 pick. The only OL players deemed worthy at the time of a top 10 pick were gone (D'Brick was long gone) and it would not have been reasonable at all even if one did the correct assessment and picked an OL rookie who started immediately (Mangold) at #8 rather than late in the first where he was actually taken. Picking to fill a need position like SS was not unreasonable in terms of strategy (even if one wants to whine "do not take an S in the 1st" is simply ignoring the reality that Whitner was not even the 1st S taken in the 1st round that year and was not even the last. Even complaints that attempt to assess this on what happened later rather than the knowable must ignore the reality that though the NYJ OL oriented choices were great in 06 ending in a playoff appearance, they saw NYJ finish with a pathetic record in 07. There simply may be hard to even argue intelligently against reasons why the preferred method over time may not be a reasonable choice at the time in question. Reality simply dictates that all draft decisions happen at a specific time in question and not over the long-term. To fault a team for not having a long-term actual occurrence may be true but really amounts to little more than howling at the moon after mentioning this truth a couple of times. 2. One of the central reasons in reality that should be cited by those who demand an OL focus is that the Bills have unfortunately been bad but generally not bad enough to pick early when the franchise OL players are available- One sad fact that if one is going to rant repetitively about the failure to go OL in many drafts over time is that for most specific drafts the Bills routinely seem to finish poorly enough they get a pick between #8 and #12 (three consecutive drafts in that pesky thing called reality), but this position routinely has resulted in the best OL players (like a D'Brick) being long gone, but the pick not being low enough that picking a player like Mangold (or many of the Indy picks by a team who routinely does well enough to have the 1st pick generally be late in the 1st). In most specific years your long-term reasonable strategy simply has made little sense utilizing the Bills resources at the time. 3. Its not like the Bills are so stupid they are simply ignoring your logical strategy- IMHO the Bills have suffered a great deal not from being conceptually stupid, but instead from being episodically incorrect. They in fact pursued your strategy of 1st day OL emphasis a couple of times when they had early picks and they were simply bad rather than just mediocre. The result have been horrendous choices like Mike Williams or not optimal choices like Jonas Jennings. Have they not pursued this strategy enough? Sure we all wish they had made better choices every single time. However, even if though this is true it is so obvious as not to really not make it that worthy of repetitive observation (and I say this as a person who obviously has not problem with being repetitive). The OL rant is so obvious and is so counter to reality in individual years that even I find it droning as an argument. and so on and so on.

Exactly. This thread is prompted by Chris Brown reporting on what Adam Shefter says the unnamed representatives of Jason Peters allegedly said to the Bills. Huh? This is a vaguely interesting story if true since even if true it leaves out so much of what the reality is that led to this impasse. Actually, the likelihood is that this story is probably missing several big fat key elements for anyone to reasonably draw a conclusion from.

I'd put Alex Karras in the HOF merely because of University of Mars comment. It broke up his fellow professionals on MNF Gifford and Cosell to such an extent they could not broadcast the game for a few minutes because they were laughing and even several minutes after the well-timed comment they were giggling while broadcasting. I almost blew my milk through my nose. Regarding Tasker being incredibly impressive he was so good they had to change the rules of the game to stop him from doing what he was doing. There are few greater tributes to a players' prowess.

I think this situation simply shows one of the ways in which principle and reality have diverged in a world where business and the buck seems to trump a lot of things. I think most would agree with the principle of a person's word being their bond. From a standpoint of principle and morality, Peters made an agreement to commit to playing a certain number of years and was rewarded richly for making that commitment. However, this principle of fairness and humanity and business practices in terms of the agreement and what has become the norm of operation in the NFL diverge a lot. First, the CBA got its start within the context of operation where the team owners had huge advantages over the players such that when the players attempted to increase their agreed upon % of the take of gross revenues to 52% in the mid-eighties, the team owner locked out the players who used to have to work "real" jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. The NFL owners so badly beat the NFLPA in the lockout, ironically it set the table for for the NFL players led by Gene Upshaw (the team owners profited for years by taking advantage of the colleges being their minor leagues and unlike MLB and the NHL they did not have to pay for player development as college football with a huge government subsidy for state schools picked up that cost for the NFL- yet this created a situation where the NFL players not only developed loyalty beyond their NFL team but a bunch of them were college graduates who had the intelligence and the friends to hire a bunch of NY based lawyers who after the replacement game debacle convinced the NFLPA to threaten to decertify itself as a bargaining agent. In the face of having to operate in a more classic capitalist free market system, the NFL owner beat a hasty retreat to operate within a more socialist system which restrains trade and pays the players dearly for this in the new CBA). At rate some vestiges old the old unequal power arrangement remain such as the owners having the ability under the CBA to simply cut a player and walk away from an agreement. The players do not have the same right to by agreement as the owners to unilaterally abridge the contract, but the operating practice has been that player routinely hold out when the free market would likely pay them more if there was in fact a free market. To me while the difference in rights afforded to the owners and the players does not justify the player not living up to their word, the simple fact that the CBA does not require team owners to honor their word does simply make the CBA not a document based on principle. Why it surprises people when some players do not act in a principled surprises me. 2. The NFL use to be a sport that happened to be a business. Now it is a business which happens to be a sport. Again the principles folks argue for are correct. However. the simple fact is that the CBA is not an agreement based on principle. Peters is simply holding out to try to create a marketplace where there is not one. Though Peters "owes" to the team to play hard, it does not surprise me at all that human nature having its limits will result in Peters focusing on his next contract whenever he signs one. In the abesence. I suspect Peters performance will simply suffer the next three years if he does not resign and extend now. Principle says the Bills should not cave and simply require that he live up to his current deal. However, in this case reality simply saws just get 'er done. I wish we lived in a world where principle dictated behavior, but instead its the golden rule in reality, he has his the most gold rules.

In this case there are some objective signs that speak to his quality as a player: 1. The Bills recorded the least number of sacks in their history since the stat started being kept and Peters as the LT as usually lined up against the other teams sackmaster. 2. He was voted to the Pro Bowl by the balance of player/fan/coaches though since it was his first time and the Bills are not a fixture in nationally televised games it was his peers and the coaches which led the charge for him in this not perfect but not ignorable honor. 3. He is very young and should be a fixture for years when he is signed. It is true that there is a lemming quality to these assessments, but this is certainly not the only explanation for the recognition given to Peters and in fact given the plaudits which he got right from the start from JMac as the best specimen he had ever seen at tackle in his long career. Also given real world progression he made in shifting from TE to OL and then from RT to LT it seems a far better bet that he is the real deal.

Ralph is not in the HOF for some reason (which none of us outside of the NFL good ol boy network including me and you know with any certainty to justify more than fact-free theorizing). My guess is that specific reason is some wide enough held opinion among his fellow owners that this obvious honor has been denied to him (and appears that it will be until its a posthumous award). Ralph has generated some common negative feeling among a large enough crowd in the NFL that they were able to deny him the honor after he was nominated several times and actually the negative feelings have hardened since then as he has not even be nominated for years. Anger or disdain over what may be perceived as a rich guy constantly harping on the poverty of his smaller market franchise could well be the basis for this feeling though likely some specific acts such as him making a handshake deal with Jimbo which simply allowed him to ignore the salary cap may be it.

I agree with you taking the challenge of Mr. Wonderful as I think JP is by tangible measures in better shape than Edwards at this moment. The reasons are thus: 1. Contractually, JP has one season to go til he is an FA and Edwards has another 3 or maybe 4 til he hits FA and this puts Losman on the face of it in a better position contractually. 2. JP basically as the #2 faces three general contract possibilities: A. His play in a limited role simply sucks but even under these circumstances he likely scores not the biggest but still a pretty substantial FA deal. He is a former starter at QB in the NFL and a relatively young one at that. Even if he sucks this season the Bills will play him as little as possible if he is ineffective so his QB rating number s will still be pretty good for a player. All he needs is to sign one contract and someone likely will talk themselves into JP being their savior and accept most of the excuses for his bad plays. Even if he sucks JP likely still makes a significant FA killing even if a lot of it is conditional. B. More likely, JP will play the way he has before as a sub and just like him coming off the bench and winning the Jets game and actually stringing together a series of wins, he if he plays should give someone a real reason for hope and he makes a killing. Sure someone can claim they can see the future of his play and he will never be good, but beyond these simple opinions if JP performs off the bench like he did last year he makes a killing. C. The third case is that he gets in (due to injury or a sophomore slump by Edwards and he plays great, If so he writes his own ticket, Contractually even if he is bad he still makes huge bucks. Contractually Edwards on the other hand showed good stuff last year but he needs to put together several impressive years before he can be deemed to be in great shape contractually,

My sense is that it is way more complicated than just seeing whether it is a sellout in assessing what impact this has on whether the Bills move to Toronto or not. It would be simple if both games sold out at the exhorbitant prices they are asking. I think this result actually would likely mean the Bills stay in Buffalo as this would indicate Toronto is so NFL hungry and rich that they would buy anything. In this case given a choice between Toronto money and Buffalo money the NFL past performance is clear. They would choose both and keep the Bills in Buffalo raking in the 52,000+ season tickets and related cash while also bellying up to the huge Toronto market which would have demonstrated that they will pay any amount of money for any stupid NFL product including pre-season exhibition games. However, the market indicates that there is a ceiling (though a pretty low one as 4/5 of the tickets to a meaningless game at dilly prices have sold). More interesting and potentially more troubling is that the Miami game is not a sellout right off the bat. Is this because the ticket prices are exhorbitant, because its packaged with a meaningless game, because Miami sucks as a team, or what. Who knows for sure and my guess is the NFL will test future markets by lowering the price and seeing what happens. As far as this game, my guess is that Rogers has the bucks to guarantee its a sellout. It probably bodes well that the short area in sales seems to be corporate rather than the market as a whole as an effort like Buffalo's Business Backs the Bills effort which succeeded in selling enough club seats to cinch the current deal can be mounted to reach a sellout. Its only 11,000 tickets and not for a real season ticket package so this effort can be made without the massive publicity indicating this is a tough sale. I think Wilson is right that it is a virtual certainty that the current unsold tickets sell out. Ultimately the answer is likely going to be more market research before a definitive answer is reached. The current answer is that yes Virginia there is a ceiling, but how high (low) it is and the nature of the cause of that ceiling (price, the NFL really is not that popular, the uncertain economy, something else) will need to be figured out. I know us impatient Americans want an answer yesterday but the real world does not work that way and more market research needs to be done.

On the question of whether Jauron being a D minded coach does he know offense. I think the simple answer is yes. If Jauron had no clue how an offense works then he would simply suck as a defensive coach. In order to be a good DC, one has to have a clear idea of what opposing offenses are trying to do and construct snd implement Ds which can stop. The problem which I think folks really are trying to get at is whether a defensive minded HC has the chops to pick OCs who can coach the game and implement a working O. I have little doubt that Jauron understands Os, their strengths and their weaknesses a D he designs can exploit. What very good and even great D coaches like Greg Williams have lacked in being an HC and having an OC who ran an effective unit is that GW seemed to lack the ability to: 1. First, choose and OC who could design an effective O and who could make good play selections and calls during the game. He ended up choosing Kragthorpe as he chose assistants who did not have the chops to replace him as HC if thet were successful and Kragthorpe proved to be so unsuccessful GW had to at least allow him to be canned with time on his contract (IMHO likely a move engineered by TD to weaken his HC so that the HC could not run him out of town like Cowher did but who knows on the outside really). 2. Second, he did get/choose an experienced OC in Kevin Killdrive but Killdrive was so damaged by his last failures as an HC he was in no position to threaten anyone above him. Incredibly poorly, GW seem to allow Killdrive's initial success to stop him from forcing Killdrive to change his playcalling and method of operation when Killdrive became incredibly predictable during the latter part of his time in Buffalo. A good HC IMHO opinion is able to pick co-ordinators who can: 1. Design an offense (or defense) and run it flexibly so that it puts the players in a good position to win. 2. Oversee the position coaches and the training so individual players improve their game. 3. Be devoted to the team first and after being successful with the team then worries about cashing in and getting a higher position with another team, Jauron unfortunately has not yet show the ability to pick a OC who can fulfill these tasks. I hope he can with Schonert.

I pretty fully agree that Schonert will not automatically be better than Fairchild, but the sense of certainty that I have this his offense will be more productive than Fairchild's is that I agree with your comment in a later post that even a a toadstool should do better than Fairchild. Its not guaranteed for sure, but little is in this life of ours and quite frankly my problem with many of the post which make predictions with a claim they are drop dead certain is that if this game was predictable it would certainly be boring to me. I and some of folks whose views I respect the most on TSW (Simon has shown some great football understanding IMHO but I think he was flat out wrong in the amount of belief he seemed to put in Raion Hill, BADOL has shown not only great understanding of many football issues in my view but he has shown great diligence at times in researching key issues but I still think he places far too much import on the decision to let Clements walk as I think it is fairly clear that in his last season here Clements was a good player but not even in the top 5 of CBs in the NFL much less someone who should be paid the biggest contract ever given to a defensive player in the NFL which NC would have been dumb to sign for much less than that even if the Bills had offered it under the new CBA at the time and given the CB market NC was going to be overpaid a huge amount while the Bills were going to a D scheme which did not even get the most out of the good but not great NC talents). Even with folks I think a lot of I think they can be completely wrong about aspects of the game and this is more than true for me and my sometimes cockeyed views as well. However, the odds seem to speak strongly for Schonert proving to have a more productive O than Fairchild. Think this because: 1. The afore-referenced low bar set by Fairchild. its just as likely even if all things were the same that someone else will screw the pooch even worse than a bad Schonert and because the game is so influenced by how the odd shaped ball bounces I think the Bills at least will be 31 instead of 32 even with a horrible Schonert. 2. Overall I do think HCs get too much credit and too much blame, but I think the Bills O with a new OC will be helped by the continuity of having the same HC. He has direct experience with what worked well and what worked poorly last year and should simply out of self-preservation help to keep the best and leave the rest in terms of the 08 offense compared to 07. 3. The continuity should also prove helpful in that the current Bills O braintrust should know better than anyone else what worked and what did not last year. The change of OCs provides the Bills with a great chance to throw out what did not work and keep what did work even if it was Fairchild instead of Schonert's idea, 4. The sophomore jinx is a reality and no one should assume that Lynch or Edwards will be better just because they are older. However, both have shown evidence that they are good players (though not great) and the likelihood for them is that now they will play like guys who have 1 years experience and improve their games rather than have sophomore slumps. They are not immune to failure but it is more likely I am pretty sure that they will improve. 5. Though thankfully they are beyond their sophomore years, the Bills OL did start 16 games together with the one miss being their consensus acknowledged best player. it seems quite likely that simply due to chemistry that the smart bet on this one is that OL improves and this is over a result which saw them give up a record fewest sacks. Injury is the big danger here with the OL. Its preseason and everyone is O-0. i simply do not see how anyone can be anything other than cautiously optimistic about this O. I think the fact that I believe they will be better but still fall short of being good enough (yet) reflects a pretty reasonable cautious optimism. Like you Nobody KNOWs for sure what will happen but cautious optimism is certainly warranted by the facts on the ground.

The answer to your question IMHO is the the reason the O results stunk last year was mostly a failure of Fairchild to develop and implement and effective O. The buck of course eventually stops with the HC who generally get far too much credit for things working and far too much blame for failure. However, the initial primary responsibility for running an effective O is the OC's and it simply amazes me that he got promoted to his new job with the results our offense produced. Will Schoenert do better? Yep, as it will not be hard to be better than worst in the NFL. Will he be adequate? We will have to see. The team will have better players on O (a #2 WR who will likely not produce better results than PP, but who simply presents demographic issues because of his height which likely will force Ds to adjust to us rather than have us adjust to them). Both Edwards and Lynch in the second years should reasonably give us improvement. Finally, the lack of production of the Fairchild directed O provides a template for improving the O performance. A key likely will be whether the massive retool we have going on on ST will consistently generate good field position consistently for this team. I think the O is still a year away from the adequacy we want, but it should easily be better.

There are several tests at the Combine that measure raw arm strength and I do not remember the exact numbers for amount of weight or number of reps Edwards was able to do. However, when a player (particularly a QB) comes up short or does much less than the norm on these tests then the prospect draws the label of weak armed and tends to plummet in the draft ratings and guesses. Edwards was generally seen as a possible but unlikely 1st round choice but a definite by the 2nd round pick. When the Bills 3rd round choice came around the Bills pick was seen as a surprise. In part this was because after an improving near the end of the 07 season Losman was seen as our definite QB, but also because it was generally agreed that Edwards would be gone by round 3. From what I have seen Edwards problems are not due to a weak arm (actually to some extent a problem which can be mitigated through careful weight training is needed as increased muscles can throw off mechanics) but due to poor footwork which does not allow him to get his full "arm" behind a throw. This mechanical technique problem can also be improced through work. I think the weak armed Edwards complaint is a myth.

My sense of the O issues raised in this report and in reality are: 1. How will our scheme man and utilize the short passing game? Particularly if we are going to run something which can be classified as a West Coast offense, the Bills will need to establish with clarity the short passing game which was really nothing short of pathetic when one looks at the actual production last year. TE Royal led this unit with all of 25 catches and even worse, RB Jackson led this crew with 22. If this is truly going to be a weapon which we utilize we need to double what it takes to be the team leader at these positions. If we want other teams to fear this weapon we have to triple the real world production of the team leader at these positions. We theoretically have players with the tools to do this at RB where Lynch demonstrated good receiving skills in college and back-up Wright also showed some potential with this aspect of his game. However, to actually double their output would seem to require a virtual complete retooling of our O approach and the difference between theory and reality is so huge for doubling the output as to be doubtful and tripling it would seem an impossible fantasy. At TE, 25 catches was a career year in output for Royal and TE would most likely be considered as a 6th blocker in past Bills usage so turning this position into a true receiving option (much less a threat) would seem to require a major retool by Schonert. I simply do not realistically see how we expect this to work consistently and we seem a good year away from having effective short passing production. 2.The OL challenge is huge but can possibly be met by the starters. I think one reasonably can feel good about our starting OL prospects as individuals and reasonably hopeful that the chemistry which was showing signs of emerging will blossom in what will virtually be a second full season together for this unit. Individually- Peters- Consensus agreement in the NFL that he is the real deal at LT as he was elected to the Pro Bowl. A great achievement for any 5th year player and phenomenal for a UDFA at the key LT role. Part of the first Bills OL to start 15 games together in recent memory which gave up the fewest sacks in Bills history ever. Most feel a deal is a deal and he signed up for a long time but his accomplishments lead even those of us who feel morally a deal is a deal realistically simply show him the money. Resigning him with a huge pay raise simply suits the Bills interests so really just get her done. Dockery- Gives Bills a powerful tandem on the left side and needs to achieve Kent Hulllike status as the team leader to meet expectations for his experience and the amount of money he gets to be considered successful. He is set up to do this. We'll see but I certainly hope this is the case and almost believe it will be. Fowler- I had little doubts he was a talented player when we got him as he was someone I wanted us to draft when he hit the league. However, he never proved himself at stops in Cleveland as the team drafted Faine (since gone from Cleveland) to be their center for a long time with Fowler on the team. He settled in MN as deep back-up in Matt Birk's IR year, but lo and behold asserted himself to become the starter on a team with running productivity. Pro Bowler Birk came back and he was available. He was gettable as nagging injury issues seeded doubts about him. However, having started 16 games two years in a row he has answered the injury question. Further, he has shown that he is a smart and mobile player showing athleticism to allow him to be a pulling center on outside rushes. Not so fast though because though Fowler appears to me (and obviously to the Bills coaches who have not even acquired someone to challenge him) to be adequate as a player no one mistakes this average starting center for a Pro Bowl candidate. Particularly since us Bills fans were spoiled by the very good skills and even better leadership of a Kent Hull at center, Fowler though he called blocking assignments for an OL which gave up few sacks overall, they never have generated the authoritative push one demands from an OL. Fowler's athleticism breeds complaints he is light in the loafers in terms of weight and authoritative push. And Fowler has a lot to prove on the field of play before he merits much confidence. Can he produce on the field in an overwhelming way? Maybe he is talented and he is young but he still has to show more. Butler- Not only did he start 16 games at a non-college position for him, but he clearly fell in the draft not due to a questionable talent but due to one low class move in college (clearly cheapshotting a defenseless opponent) which earned him a suspension. However, he showed his talent by mastering a new position to such a level he was rewarded with big bucks. It is very reasonable to be hopeful about him. Walker- its very hard to teach big and this is a big boy. Playing for Oakland raised questions about his NFL performance, but yet he did show some signs of talent last year and like much of the rest of the OL is young player who can improve with more coaching and the building of chemistry. Overall, I think one has to be quite psyched about the prospects for this OL. However, one also needs to live in great fear of any injuries as the back-ups are simply unimpressive players like Chambers or talented guys a bit long in the tooth like Wittle. The low total sack numbers were real and should not be ignored (though JPs fleet footedness and Edwards quick release are part of the story here. All Bills fans can help by praying to the deity of their choice for OL health. 3. The WR situation could work well (but probably will not this year. Evans needs to show that the real Evans was the one we saw his first two years and that last years drop off in his production was likely due to the failure of the Fairchild O to use the getting older skills of PP at #2 WR well. The failure to use the RBs well as receivers or get much out of the TE were also factors which left Evans as the only real threat outside occaisional good use of Parrish. Parrish has impressed me alot with how he bounced back from the initial injury to demonstrate he can produce in the slot. Yet, we are dependent on one player (who already has had a troubled start with the law) producing at #2. He is another big boy and his mere presence and college rep should create more opportunities than last year for Evans. The bad news is that even if Hardy avoids the slow start of an NFL career which has fallen many a highly valued WR, that if he produces at about the level of the few WRs who made an impact immediately his numbers will look a lot like PPs last year. QB- A lot of the debate has been much ado about nothing. Edwards looks like the real deal but likely still needs a year or two. The thought his arm is weak I think is silly and the strength tests he took at the Combine raised no red flags. I think him not hitting the long bomb yet is more a question of footwork IMHO which does not allow Edwards to get everything behind his throws. My sense is that JP is actually a better QB right now, but in the long run Edwards has far more upside. JP is also done as a Bill since he declared his final start of last season make or break for him and he unfortunately broke, Even his teammates have lost faith in him asthe new messiah. t would not take much to win back his teammates with a solid performance, but I doubt local media and a few vocal fans would allow this. Overall, we are fine this year training the O, but I doubt this O is going to be productive as we want this year.

My understanding of the Robbie case (which is based on seeing but not perusing in any depth several articles so I can easily be educated by someone supplying links to more authoritative articles) is that Robbie for whatever reason had not done much estate planning and family fell victim to that. It easily can happen as some folks simply refuse to confront the reality of making out a will or aggressively seeking estate advice because this means admitting one's mortality. A person may also simply be stupid (something I can easily believe about a Fish owner) as well. Given the myriad ways our complicated tax code allows a smart person to escape some (not all but some) of the alleged death tax take, yes some do involve several years of small consistent action. However, some such as setting up an irrevocable trust for a charitable purpose and then aligning and handing out trustee control over that charity in a manner than benefits the heirs is something that does not necessarily require tons of time to make work. In fact, though thanks to the distrust between the NFL and NFLPA that opens the books of these private businesses in ways generally not subject to public scrutiny we actually know a lot about the bottomline of the Bills take. However, we outsiders no nothing really about how Ralph may have actually been sharing his wealth he will leave with selected heirs so he actually has been doing the slow distribution you talk about. If he was smart he actually could have been distributing shares of the Bills to heirs for years, done that distribution by gifting type B stocks which have full market value but no voting control over the team while maintaining prefered stocks with voting control so the assets escape an estate tax. I doubt this because his family heirs have shown no interest in running the team, but this does not mean he has not done this or something else. In fact, when Ralph's will is made public it is virtually guaranteed that he and his lawyers will have set it up to do something which will surprise us all. All in all though it is sad when a family loses an asset like a farm which has gained cash value so that a sale must occur to pay the taxes, it actually in reality is hard to feel totally bad for the poor heirs. In Ralph's case even if a sale is forced of the $800+ million asset he paid chump change for, then his poor heirs will lose 45% of this money to the tax man and they will be forced to settle for merely half a billion $ in inheritance after taxes. Sure they may lose roughly half a billion to Uncle Sam but they will get almost half a billion they did no work to get if Ralph leaves the asset to his kids. I simply do not feel that bad for them getting "ripped off" in this way. Wouldn't you love to get ripped off and settle for half a billion.

When you site the Bill and Melinda Gates example, this is just the type of hijinks that the law would allow one to do which might allow an enterprising individual such as Ralph to keep control of the team within his designated heirs but still serve the community if he chooses. One can avoid a lot of the bit of inheritance taxes by "giving" the wealth to a charitable institution as part of an irrevocable trust. This trust can be controlled to some degree and hire within the bounds of the marketplace family members or other heirs to in run the team. This would in fact be giving away the asset rather than allowing one's heirs to simply sit on their butts and collect the millions and NFL team produces as though it were a printing press. It does not allow one to escape the so-called death tax and simply pocket the bucks as though your Dad was the king. However, one can set things up in a manner where the designated heirs essentially maintain control of management of the asset, gets paid some huge but not exhorbitant amount money, but essentially never have to pay for a meal again if you choose as this "manager" would be royalty as far as this town is concerned. I think the problem is here that folks seem to want 100% and somehow act like they are getting robbed when simply having 75% of the largess involved is a king's ransom. There are a ton of creative ways where a good trusts and estates lawyer can figure out a way to configure passing on this asset which would still allow a designated Ralph heir to control the team and pocket tons of bucks (though not the megatons inherent in ownership in our pseudo free market society.

Having no interest in assaulting little boys I have not worked for the Catholic Church. My sense is though that after being fortunate in my life financially and having accumulated some stuff, the simple fact is that the best things in life are not things. I certainly am not Warren Buffett or Bill Gates but it is quite easy for me to see why two of them after successful careers accumulating assets are devoting much of their current time and effort to giving tons of assets away to charitable institutions of their choice. What they did before in life is not a bad thing at all IMHO, but it is very good to see that they are making the hard work "payoff" by being in a position to give most of their accumulated wealth away. I hope Ralph is secure enough to do the same.

Lest folks make the false assumption that it is only the poor who want to soak the rich who favor what luntz et al have successfully dubbed the death tax note that the extremely wealthy such as Warren Buffett and 118 other fat cats have strongly come out in favor of inheritance taxes. Buffett went on record saying: "Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit," Buffett told the New York Times in 2001. "[Repeal would be like] choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics." Buffett also joined a campaign in 2001 to preserve the estate tax alongside 119 other wealthy Americans, including George Soros and Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates, Sr.. Details can be found at > http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/pf/taxes/b...e_tax/index.htm < Folks very rich, very poor and in between see value in the estate tax. The problems thrust upon the relatively few folks (even if it is thousands of farms we are talking within a base of 300 million people which would make 3 million farms at 1% relatively few) whose family farm wealth is a problem there would seem to be a targeted solution which gets at solving these few problems rather than allowing the Donald Trumps of the world hide behind these intrepid family farmers. The simple fact is that if you are going to spend 3 trillion on a war you choose in Iraq the money has to come from somewhere. The estate tax with it sizable exemptions and can be avoided if one chooses to donate the money to a reputable charitable cause (or even create a real irrevocable charity which runs the Bills for the benefit of the WNY community- one would need to fight the NFL which would prefer to stop future Green Bays but as Cleveland demonstrated the NFL can be beat) and really is a solvable problem despite the WSJ's politically motivated slant.

I will take a cut at this since I think this is actually THE question in order to get at how legit it is for people to be disappointed or not with last year's performance. First off, the reality is that the performance was was 7-9 and the Bills missed the playoffs AGAIN. On an absolute basis this was horrendous and a real disappointment for a Bills fan. That's the facts. The question however of HOW disappointing and how easy or difficult to bear these facts were comes down to the question of whether they IMHO: 1. Fought the good fight and did the best they could given the slings and arrows of reality (for example when Wade unilaterally surrendered one year saying we had no real chance at the playoffs even though we not mathematically eliminated. A Colts team which had the same record whom we played in one of the remaining games did in fact make the playoffs despite several teams being ahead of us- this was not fighting the good fight and I expect my team to do that). 2. All teams have good and bad breaks which actually do make the difference who wins and who loses sometimes over-ruling actual talent. The key for how well I (and I think most fans) bear the disappointment is if the bad breaks were of our own making or simply befell us. (example, if the refs mess up the coin flip I probably give my team a pass for losing a game in OT they actually should have lost in regulation based on my talent guess, however, when we lost the Home-Run Throw, I felt this was an unlikely bad break which we could have prevented by the simple act of players staying in their lanes and the team itself deserves a lot of grief for mishandling its salary cap so that they had to cut vets who might have stayed in their ST lanes). The breaks make a difference in how I feel. 3. Future prospects make a difference. If we lose and see little prospect for improvement disappointment is harder to deal with. Overall, I felt that 7-9 was a disappointing record for us in 07 but it was a disappointment I can deal with well because: 1. The team did not give up on itself and actually remained truly mathematically possible for the playoffs until late in the season. 2. The simple fact is that we had more players on IR than any other team in the NFL. These injuries seemed to be a random mounting series of bad breaks (literally in some cases as events like fractures to Pos or Kevin Everett's spinal injuries would not have been prevented with more stretching or better preparation. Though individual game failures like the Dallas debacle should have been avoided, Dallas was a better team and the game was entertaining. We beat a better Skins team when Jauron keeping it close allowed us to take advantage of an unusual Joe Gibbs miscue. Sometimes you get the bear and sometime the bear gets you. 3. I like our prospects for the future. Some key player and youngsters need to step up, but we have a chance. Overall, it was disappointing to lose last year but the team really produced a record which was consistent with the difficult to control breaks of the game and the future is uncertain but looks positive. The bottom-line is I think a reasonable fan feels bad about the result but not as bad (and even quite good) about the effort.

I don't remember, but I thought that he was a fat right tackle with a history of a bad ankle. McKinnie and Jones were there. He was a dumb pick by any standards. RTs don't go that early. It never happens, and this is no accident. At the risk of appearing to defend the pick of Williams when the simple reality is that the was a huge bust who really showed with his performances that he lacked the character to play NFL ball. It horrible to imagine he was picked that high when he had no talent, but even worse he actually showed he did have some talent which led to him: 1. playing OK but not great his first year and it was this that actually led to a reasonable sense of excitement by some Bills fans that his play improved at a level normal for a rookie in his second year that he actually would show some real ability to be a solid starter in his second year. One actually lets Williams off to easy to claim that the problem was that he could not play and the Bills braintrust simply was not good enough to see it. Based on his physical performance in college guarding the blindside of a left-handed QB on his lonesome and based on some nice agility showing in static tests at the Combine it was actually not unreasonable at all to think that he could make the jump from RT to LT. 2. Even after his play fell apart after the death of his grandmother who raised him, he actually with good coaching application of sticks (he publicly called him out with the threat to move him to G from the bigger payday slot of tackle) and carrots (he awarded him a gameball after he logged a sack free game against a good RDE) by JMac he looked like his play might revive and Bills fans were hopeful entering MWs last year here. However, it was not the Bills coaches who picked him but MWs failures himself not to step up for his teammates and himself that is the bad thing here. You are correct that a team does not pick an RT at #4. Rather than simplistically indicting them for his weird idea it is obvious that the Bills braintrust had every intention of flipping him from RT to LT as quickly as they could. The failure of the Vinky, GW and TD was not a strategic one of drafting their hoped to be RT at #4. Their failure was choosing a player who proved to be mentally incapable of surviving a tough life challenge to not let down the city that drafted him. I think it is too facile to pretend that anyone with half a brain would have picked McKinnie (also a stunning disappointment as a player or Evans (a surprise to even most professional observers) over MW with the info one had going into the draft. This does not excuse the braintrust at the time and I think that JMacs handling of MW was actually quite impressive but ultimately a failure.

The FO does make some fairly questionable moves with alarming frequency, but for the most part it seems that they are making the moves to implement Mr. Wilson's strategy (whatever that may be since his goals seem to be hard to decipher at times). Overall though it is hard I think to objectively give a FUBAR judgment to an FO which has: 1. It really takes 3 years to accurately assess a draft, but the signs are so far so good on the first draft done by this FO under Marv's guidance (do you disagree? and if so what objective facts show this draft to be an abortion- it was a draft which produced significant PT by the rookies reflected in their getting a lot of starts- if one tries to argue the trueism that draftees can start on a bad team when it comes to the ultimate stat this team improved on a 5-11 record with a 7-9 record). In the first draft the FO simply oversaw a team which got better and their draft played a significant role in this result. The jury is still way out on the 2nd draft but they produced the same record with the team leading the NFL in players on the IR. Sure we all have a gosh given right to complain but given the objective facts it looks pretty irrational to complain about the first two drafts by this FO. 2. Another major responsibility of the FO is to manage the salary cap. IMHO the Bills seem to have paid beyond the what the market would have likely offered for a few players like Kelsay. However, the damage of these bad contracts in some cases simply points out that the salary cap dictated by the NFLPA as the majority partner in their operation with the team owners has simply created a cash cow which must be applied to salaries by rule, Even with the questionable contracts the Bills remain in position to resign Lee Evans to a sizable deal and to even payoff Jason Peters whose performance far outstrips what the Bills intelligently gave him to lock him up. Few would argue against the Bills have put themselves in a position where they have few prominent FAs to sign and players who show promise such as Pro Bowlers Peters, Schobel and even McGee are locked up. 3. One area which I think is open to legit complaint is the choices this FO (and most important its owner) has made in going after FAs. The Bills seem to have given an awful lot to get Dockery, Walker and journeyman Wittle and have not gone after some of the higher profile FAs at skill positions. Still rather than seeing this as beyond recognition the Bills are spending on the long neglected trenches and have forgone going after stars who would have generated bidding wars or older players who produced on the field but have questionable character issues. Overall, it seems pretty recognizable as being a team being built for an owner who throws nickels around like they are manhole covers. What are the objective reasons you have for complaining about the FO.

My sense is while the relative strength of the conferences is "interesting" as you say because it makes a real though marginal impact in assessing players, this issue simply wafts toward being an interesting sideshow when actually measuring individual players as being draft worthy or not. Raw talent is the base determining factor as to how good a player may be. However, other factors such as individual determination, finding the right mentor (be it an HC, a parent coach, or a parent figure to help guide the athlete through the slings and arrows of being just past childhood with millions of dollars in your reach simply overwhelm the issue of strength of conference. There are simply too many great pros who actually came from weak Div. 1A or lower division conferences and also busts who played for great schools in great conferences to really worry about this issue as more than an interesting sidelight for NFL or Buffalo Bills consideration.

By wining they have put themselves in a PR situation where the threat to move gives them to leverage a deal that gives them more public money for private purposes. Than quotes from inside the Chargers indicate a strong interest in moving is ironically one of the more likely signs that they would be happy to get a hefty public bribe (with the bonus of having this private entity get the public paid for stadium for their profit and probable sole use. One of the main reasons I think the Bills are actually unlikely to move to Toronto is that the team is doing public work to lay a foothold in this market, Unfortunately, its when a team is silent that the Mayflower moving vans tend to show up in the middle of the night, By far the greater likelihood in the Bills case would seem to be that given a choice between a franchise in Buffalo and a franchise in Toronto, the NFL likely would chose the option that generates the most cash for them which is to have two franchises in both the proven developed small market of WNY and the unproven but certainly far larger market in Toronto. The NFL generally follows the money and the money is not simply in throwing away 40 years of work which guarantees about 40,000 season tickets without breaking a sweat and over 50,000 with some work. I have yet to see anyone make a credible case as to why the two areas do not have the money and the population base to support two franchises. Follow the money and the money says keep the Buffalo money and exploit the Toronto money.

Poz clearly showed a lot in his brief appearance last year, however, he also showed some clear typical rookie limitations in his game as well. Its never too early for a true Bills fan to be hopeful this year how things will play out, but it really is a little early for any objective analysis to declare that what will in essence be the completion of his rookie year will be a breakout for him. Pos showed tremendous speed last year and good recognition of plays, but unfortunately a lot of this came from him recognizing that he had been fooled into taking a false first step backward on running plays or that he got sucked into taking a step forward on what turned out to be a pass play. He showed tremendous speed and recognition because he was able to get credit for making the tackle and completing the play. However, in his brief playing time he looked like a poor man's London Fletcher out there leading the team in tackles but all too often making the initial hit pretty deep in our defensive backfield as this rookie could be fooled by a vet OC disguising his play calls or a vet player giving him a false read on whether it was a run or a pass with his stance. One good sign is that Pos after getting IR'ed would have been well within his rights as a player to skip the games and just show up for rehab and sometimes for meetings. Instead he chose to play an active role carrying the clipboard as injured players are allowed to do in street clothes (and sometimes refuse to do because injured players sometimes cannot deal with not being able to play and do not like being around for games, It is to be hoped that Pos got the good benefits a player can get from sitting on the bench during games and soaking in the plays and pro formations and reactions, Too many folks buy the idea that if a player cannot play his year of development is lost. Actually this does not appear to be true for the more cerebral player. Pos might in fact be a breakout player this year. I hope he is. However, we still need to see some improved on-field performance before anyone can reasonably draw that conclusion.

I think there is a wide middle ground between Clements haters and those who argue that the Bills made an awful mistake by deciding not to pay him what the market dictated was his worth. In fact, as demonstrated by the Niners rewarding him with the biggest contract ever given a defensive player when arguably he was not even in the top 5 CBs in the NFL that Clements would have been a financial fool to sign any contract the Bills offered him at any point when he approached FA. The key reason why it is almost certainly a spurious argument that the Bills made a mistake in not signing him as he approached FA (IMHO the drop dead date for it being irrational for Clements to sign anything but something approximating the gigandous deal he got was sometime in 2005 when it became quite likely that Clements would be one of few top 10 in the NFL CBs available in the FA for the 06 or 07 season if he could force the Bills not to tag him. As it was, the Bills exercised their right to tag him for the 06 season and then intelligently agreed to not tag Nate for 07 even though they had the right to do this because if they had tagged him it was pretty questionable whether NC would have been worth the franchise cost in 07 since we ran a system which would not have taken full advantage of the "playmaker" and in addition to that, Nate would be financially smart to hold out and do everything he could to hit the open market for the 07 season as even the enormous franchise salary simply paled next to what NC actually commanded from the FA market. I am certainly and clearly not a Nate hater as I totally agree that NC was the best CB available in the FA market for the 07 season. The problem was that Jauron/Fewell had decided a version of the Cover 2 was the best D for us to use as our base and in the Cover 2, the CB like all starters plays an essential role, but the role played by the CB in this D is not one that utilizes NC's strengths as a playmaker. Both the Bills and NC recognized that it would have been a waste for us to pay him what the market would deliver to him as an FA and even what the market guaranteed him if he was franchised for the 07 season. In 06 the Bills and NC correctly agreed to guarantee that we would not tag him (as was our right) for 07 in exchange he gave us what we were already owed in his coming to camp and being a happy camper in 06 and in exchange we gave up nothing since it made zero financial sense for us to pay him what the market would give him for 07. The only way it would have made sense for the Bills to sign NC would be if we decided not to run some version of the Cover 2 (a D scheme which led to Indy who won the SB in the 06 season being quite willing to let the moderate talent CBs that were on their SB team walk rather than pay them their market rate and a D scheme that another playmaker type Dre Bly publicly complained about and announced early that he simply was not going to play in the Jauron designed Lions Cover 2 an was going to get out of Dodge as fast as he could) would be if the Bills had decided not to play Cover 2 and instead build the D around the skills of NC. NC is in fact a good player. However, I have not seen any objective arguments (even yours BADO) that Clements is so good it makes sense to build your D scheme around him. The failure of SF to improve so much with NC (they were better but not great) and actually what we were confronting at the time (NC really had a pretty awful 05 having made a horrible play laying a PR on the carpet which was part of costing us a win in the final game which might have gotten us into the playoffs- it was the NC miscue, Lindell missing a chipshot, the D failing to stop a Pitts team playing subs as they rested for the playoffs and of course Bledsoe not being a good enough player to overcome these failings which led to the loss) which made it easily the right thing to do to not pay NC what the market would give him for an extension or even as a franchise player in 07. Nate also would have been an economic fool to sign such a deal so I really doubt even if the Bills had been silly enough to want to extend him that NC would have signed for any amount the 05 cap constrained Bills could have offered him. Arguing Nate is good is certainly correct (anyone who hates him or does not recognize that he is at least a good player does not understand football). Actually one can reasonably argue after he recovered from a bad 05 that he is a very good player. However, it simply is not credible to argue that he was is worth building your D around him or that he was worth the biggest contract a defender ever received. NC got very lucky that other teams had locked up the better CBs like Champ Bailey or even Winfield with huge contracts, AND, better FAs like Assante Samuel were taken off the market by tags, AND finally that the Bills did him a great favor by not forcing him into the market after a lackluster 05 but instead tagged him for 06 but agreed to let him walk in 07 when though not the best CB in the NFL he was easily the best CB on the market in an BFL where many teams had not decided to go with a Cover 2 in part as a means for not having to pay huge dollars for a CB.