Pyrite Gal

The NFLPA (or either party of owners as well) will not simply accept a deal which pays them alot, OR, more than they deserve, OR more than they have ever gotten before, OR however you want to phrase it because that is not the American way of operating. Our country has become such an economic power because we are always pushing to get the next marginal dollar. Our society has no agreed upon sense of how much is too much. Thus negotiations almost always go down to the wire and sometimes the clock is stopped and negotiations go into overtime as we push for that last marginal dollar. Humankind is generally like this, but our society has become such an economic (and thus military since global economics is sometimes done at the point of a bayonet) power because we mutts have made pursuit of the deal into an artform. In this case the last marginal dollar is a whole bunch of money which will be divided among two relatively small groups the owners and the players. it only makes sense that this will take until the last minute and in fact go into overtime. There is some danger that both sides will fail to agree to and shot themselves in the face to spite their nose (this undortunately is also part of our American style) but both sides seem to have left childish things behind them when the NFL demolished the NFLPA in the mod-80s and the threat of actually having to compete in a free market if the NFLPA decertified itself caused the owners to come running back to the table. Though many fans still view this as a wrestling match, the owners and players seem to have outgrown this childishness and are about making $ rather than killingeach other.

Exactly! Some folks seem to want confuse their own views and goals from football as a fan with the views and perspectives of team owners and players of pro football. What may make perfect sense to me based on my desires/goals as a fan or based on my sense of ideology is very different from the desires of an owner or player of the game. In addition my own ideological sense of what is right and wrong and the owner/players sense what is possible in reality are two different things. This dichotomy is true for all fans but some posters just don't seem to get it. The financial risks of being an NFL owner are so low because they have built up a relationship with their customers over time. In addition, when they kicked the NFLPAs butts so bad during the lockout that they threatened to decertify, a partnership was thrust upon the owners where the investment has become even more low risk. Folks seem to think that there is some sort of blood battle here between the owners and players with which they can pick sides. Actually, the owners and the players are merely involved in a negotiation over how to divide your and my money. There are three sides to this equation and the other two must cooperate to get your money. The major issue of who gets the majority of your money has been settled (the NFLPA) they are merely locked into negotiations over whether the split will be 60/40 or 56/44. It will almost certainly end up around 58/42 or both sides will get much less if there is a work stoppage in 2007.

The justification for the large rookie contracts are: 1. They provide a base of high pay that the vets work from. Right now when the best FAs negotiates they start at a demand to be among the best paid players on their team and in the NFL. By setting based salaries for 1st round draft choices so high, it ratchets up the payments expected and demanded by FAs and when a highly paid rookie performs it ratchets up his salry even higher as he demands a raise. 2. They help defend the NFL and NFLPA from their largest vulnerability in our system. When you look at it, the NFL and NFLPA live on the un-American approach of restraining trade. In a real free-market system all college players would be like Maurice Clarett. At whatever point an individual feels he has services to sell in the marketplace he has a right under the free-market to do so. However, the NFL and NFLPA have developed a system called the college draft and has together aggressively sued and stopped Americans like Maurice Clarett from entering the market. The public (through its courts) accepts this because this anti-free market approach works and produces a great product. The college players accept this because in this system they have a chance if they are great players and play by the rules to get a huge contract if they are a slotted draft choice. If individuals did not have the ability to score big contracts, then one would see a bunch of Maurice Clarett lawsuits until one found a court venue where they won. Both the MLB and the NBA draft players who are well below 18 years old and deal with these prospects in their system. The $ for these prospects comes out of the teams and thus out of the pro players salary pool. The NFL has a system where a separate collegiate body runs their minor league and develops players for them at only the cost of the Combine to scout it out in terms of payments to prospects. This is the real goose that delivers product to the NFL for free and by offering a few huge contracts to the best college players and managing it through the proration of the salary cap it has worked for a couple of decades. The huge rookie contract are a tool through which the NFLPA lays down a high baseline for salaries and also undercuts opposition to its resraint of trade practices.

Certainly Upshaw cannot claim all the credit for the good things happening to the NFLPA (and likewise he should not get all the blame- or does someone disagrre for demonstrable reasons that he should get all the credit OR all the blame). However, this being said. I think one can take a look at the results in the real world of the NFLPA after the last big labor dispute (the mid-80s lockout) and today and there is a world of difference between the two and the difference is clearly positive for the NFLPA. After the lockout the NFLPA had its butt kicked. The owners had gone to replacement players and though the product was much worse with the XFL level platyers, it seemed pretty clear that the NFL could last longer undergoingthe meltdown associated with producing a bad product than a critical mass of the players could. Hiwever, it was under Upshaw's keadership that the NFLPA canned union boss Ed Garvey (who decided to tale a step down from the NFL and run unsuccessfully for the US Senate as a major party candidate) and hired and took the guidance of folks who crafted a tactic of the NFLPA moving to decertify itself as a bargaining agent for the players. In the face of having to operate in a free market where NFL owners would actually have to compete with each other like good ol Americans, the owners rather quickly agreed to the CBA where the NFL and the NFLPA joined together in a developing partnership which instead took the communistic rather than free-market approach of restraining trade. Over now what is approaching two decades, the NFL is seen as the best managed major sports franchise in professional sports (if one disagrees it should be simple to argue why you think that the NHL, NBA or the the free-market approaches of the MLB have produced a better product). It gets pretty silly pretty quick for anyone to try to justify any particular ideology (either total frr-maarket or total communism) using the NFL as a case study or an example). It ain't about being a slave to some ideology, its simply about doing what works. Upshaw truthfully has been the leader of the NFLPA during a time when the actions of the NFLPA ran afoul of particular ideologies on either extreme. It has taken stands which have resulted in marginal players getting cut a year or two earlier than they would have been cut under other systems (and likewise it has adopted systems under which particular marginal players at particular times lasted a year or two longer than they would have under other systems. Still I think it is difficult for anyone to lay out a case that the NFLPA has not profitted greatly and changed the relationship between employers and employees dramatically since the mid-80s. I think it defies reality to argue that this change has not accompanied a huge increase in he $ delivered to players from this business enterprise. Finally, while one can try to argue that these great changes and these great positive changes all occured while Upshaw was a long for the ride or in spite of his efforts and again NO ONE has really laid out any objective arguments for this point and all they have are simple rants claiming that finally folks see Upshaw is an idiot. I think not. Real life is what real life is. Coinciding with the last 20 years or so of UPshaw's term the NFLPA has seen a massive increase in the salaries and wealth it has responsibility for delivering to its members.

Again folks need to understand that while certainly the owners own the individual teams, the league is really composed of a partnership between the owners and the players. Yhe owners know that they cannot produce or even probably survive if the individuals owners lived in an NFL dictated by the fre market. The big chsnge happened due to the mid-80s lockout when the owners kicked the NFLPA butt so badly that the NFLPA threatened to decertify itself as a bargaining agent for the players. Rather than operate in a free market where the individual owners bid against each other for individual player services, they rather quickly (considering the level of rancor during the lockout) agreed to a CBA which provided the players with as much as 70% of the designated gross. Yhe NFLPA has already won a huge concession from the owners in that they have already agreed to switch to a system of total revemues as the base for considering player salaries rather than the DGR sustem. The owners have agreed that the total will result in an increase in the NFLPA take from hhe pie and the level will range from a low of 56% for the players to Upshaw's demand that the final number must start with a 6. No matter, it is a fair argu,emt to say that with any take over 50% of the total gross that it is really the NFLPA which will be the majority owner in this partnership.

Quite frankly assessing this as to who "blinked" first strikes me as a completely wrong wau to look at this. As the former asst. counsel to the NFL said in an interview on NFL Network this is really a partnership between the NFL and NFLPA. Both sides realize that the worst case for both parties is no deal made at all. When they do not play both sides lose more of your money and mine and in the end they will do what is necessary to make a deal. He pointed out that if anything the NFL has already agreed to a major concession because they have agreed that the player share of the pie will increase. They are simply negotiating now about how much that increase will be. There really are three parties at work here. The owners made the big concession that they will increase the NFLPA slice of the pie because the owners are not united as they are divided about 2/3-1/3 with the smaller group being the richest owners. As best I can tell Upshaw and the NFLPA has played tthe conflicting interests of these two sides off against each other to the NFLPA's advantage quite well by demanding that their be revenue sharing as part of any deal. My guess is that the revenue sharing discussion will get put off and it is in exchange for this "concesssion" that the NFLPA has already achieved a major win in that their slice of the pool will get larger. A view which describes the NFL and NFLPA primarily as warring parties went out the window when the owners kicked the players butt so badly in the mid-80s lockout. Yhe NFLPA threatened to decertify itself and because the owners knew they could not survive in a free-market system where they all bid against each other for player services the current partnership reflected in the CBA was created.

Before you get all exercised in addition to keeping in mind the post above also consider: 1. In addition to talking about wanting young fast players Marv has also said since he was hired and all along that a team needs primaily to run and stop the run. If one takes this Marv dictum as gospel rather than simply taking his words about young fast guys as his sole interest, then one would say go Ngata. 2. I think even a big boy like Sam Adams can reasonably be said to be quick even though I'm sure his 40 time would not lead anyone to call him fast. What Mgata needs to be considered a "fast" DT is demonstrate an ability to have a quick first step and to pull off the 10 yard pursuit of a runner not the speed to pull down a gut from behind in the open field. I think Marv could easily want to put together a fast Bills team that include a stout run plugger of great tonnage as well. He is not looking to put together a bunch of DL players who look like Coy Wire simply because they are quick. Marv;s statement does not mean no Ngata at all.

Exactly! It is amusing to see some folks talk about NFL owners taking all the risks when today's NFL ownership is as close to a risk-investment as you can get if you got in on near the groundfloor like Ralph or you have tons of capital like Snyder. I think part of the entertainment value some folks seem to get from performances is that people love to assoiate themselves in their minds with celebrities or rich folk. While a team may be taking risks of choosing a particular player as to whether you get a championship or not, the fact is that NFL ownership is like owning a printing press for money because it makes little difference how that or your team of players perform in terms of your investment or making a profit. Whether your team performs like NE or like AZ you make a profit. Whether Flutie starts or RJ starts you make a profit. Teams can even do a lousy job selling tickets and not sell as many seats as anuone would prefer, the TV money is so huge you make a profit. Granted this is America and we became the economic and miltary power we are by operating with a sense that there is no such thing as too much money. Businesses in our society squeeze every dollar out of every profit center the business has. When your manager increases your profit margin from 30% to 31% the American question is to ask (demand) that manger why it was not 32%. Not that there is anything wrong with that, its the life we were brought up in and thus it is the life we choose. However, I think what most NFL owners have figured out but some fans have not is that though there are owners and there are players, these two forces are in partnership. What some try to think of as a war between these two parties that they want to choose a winner, is merely a dispute to divide up your an my money. In our society the owners profited through the mid 80s after they destroyed the USFL by operating in an un[American manner which was a monopoly that restrained trade. What Upshaw and the players have done is insert themselves into this partnership and get a slice of the pie. Since labor peace allowed them to gurantee to the networks they they would provide a product with consistency and stability that consumers wanted to watch, they have been willing to pay the NFL partnership goo-gobs of $ for the product. The owners did not mind giving up 70% of the DESIGNATED revenue, nor will they be unable to deal with giving up 60% of the total revenue because both figures will be signficantly larger than getting 60% of the total revenue back when they were at war with and kicked the NFLPA's butt. The NFL would not produce a good product if it pursued a free market approach where the richest teams simply bought the best players in a free market. Instead, the NFL and the NFLPA join together to restrain free trade for player's service and tale action to block youngsters like Maurice Clarett from pursuing the American way and selling their services to the highest bidder.

The Bills can and will easily make him an offer that makes it so silly for another team he chooses to negotiate with to make him a better offer. Even if some team makes him a better offer, the Bills retain the right to match it (which they if its a sweetheart deal for us which is less than amount he could get from us in negotiation) or do not (if they offer him such a risky amount we will not go for ut and in exchange we simply get a bunch of draft resources. I know of only a relatively few cases where even an RFA gpt a deal (and one of them Coles ended up getting cut by the Skins and going back to the team he escaped from with his wallet considerably heavier). I know ofno EFAs who were signed away from a team which made them a qualifying offer. We have Peters for at least a year and probably two. There is no need and proably no real ability on anyone's part to negotiate with him this year.

A few folks on TSW have explained it pretty fully. Just as Yvel Vram was the opposite of Marv Levy (though I love Marv), Dik Smub was an opposite view of the import and glory of Wade, Barry Brady was a mixture of names of a TV character whom many (and I felt GW looked like (at least before he got an HC job and was coloring his hair to look young), and FFS was the opposite of a great song by another fellow whose named shared Mularkey's initials, so too is this name the oppposite of the true head coach(es) of our beloved Bills! Thats what I will say about it in my usual too lengthy way!

I think Kirwin misses the boat on this one because he does not seem to look at this the way the NFL players as a whole and as their leadership has since they got their butts whipped by the owners in the mid-80s during the replacement player debacle. Kirwin is correct that a significant (but way smaller than the majority) number of vets will have thier careers killed during this dispute. However, the NFL players have won out as a union since the replacement player debacle by resisting advice based on fear and warfare (NFLPA chief's Ed Garvey's demand which led to the players being replaced that they get 52% of the gross) and instead players have profited both as a group and individually in a big way by actually threatening to eliminate their own union the NFLPA as a bargaining agent for the players. This tactic which as best as I can tell was lead by some very smart lawyers who were employed by Upshaw and the NFLPA forced the owners to see and agree that they could choose betweem the joy of beating the crap out of the players and their union over the mid-80s strike/lockout or instead they could enter into a new partnership with the players where both sides would make more money than they ever made before under a new CBA. Instead of a mere 52% of the total gross receipts, the CBA insituted a labor peace which allowed the new partnership to fashion a deal with the networks where the players got a sliding scale between the upper 60s and lower 70s % of the DESIGNATED gross. Even though owners quickly moved toward maximizing the non-designated revenue streams like club seats rather than designated parts like general ticket sales, the $ delivered by the designated stream of TV money was so huge (and was only possible if the NFL could guarantee the quality of the product which the CBA provided) the players have made more $ both as a group and individually than they dreamed possible (or deserve since for the most part the players are jist dumb pampered jocks). Kirwin seems to miss the fact that though yes some vets will lose their jobs: 1. The vast majority of players are youngsters who stand to get great benefits from hanging tough for a new labor deal which they will sign one or more contracts under if they have been in the NFL less than 4 years and may well sign another contract under if they have been in the NFL4-7 year. Kirwin is really talking about a universe of players who have only this year they can reasonably expect to sign a contract. This is a signficant but still clear minority of the NFLPA. 2. Athletes tend to have an inflated sense of ego and themselves. Even many of the athletes who are part of this on their way out minority still believe they are the biggest fastest mofo on the block and their natural tendency is to believe that they will last long enough to cash in on a new deal even if this is not true. 3. Most of the NFL players have made more money and gotten more bennies than they wever dreamed possible. Unless they are total Travis Henry like idiots (many are actually but these fools also tend to think they will play forever). Particularly in a significant part of this way smaller than majority pool that Kirwin is talking about, they are set for life with even half reasonable financial management from the NFL pension system and because money making opportunities do not stop for a retired player who is old enough to be in the group Kirwin is siting. 4. Pride makes a difference. The former NFL players I have met are proud men. Upshaw and the leadership have convinced the players (convincing them was not hard to do when the NFL minimum got up over $300K and the NFLPA negotiated salary cap exceptions which makes it easier to keep vets around, and the NFLPA was prominent in joining with the NFL to restrain trade in an Un-American way by suing to stop underage players from accepting what the market was happy to give them for their skills) that winning for them means taking risks on these final contracts for vets in return for having players share in the extraordinary wealth their labor is creating and the NFL harvests. These men in general seem willing to take the risk of losing out that this marginal group of vets faces in return for having had the chance to make far more $ than they deserved, to be a part of building something which will last, and which if they are good enough to play will reward them by gettimg their share of a new contract which will give them a % of the total gross rather than the designated gross. The key to Upshaw's (and the NFLPA's) position is that even the owners are starting with an offer of 56% of the total gross (of a larger pool of $ which makes the Garvey 52% look like chump change) and Upshaw says that the final deal will have to start with a 6! Even better, I think Upshaw and the NFLPA deserve kudos (at this point as we will see what they end up with which is where the real judgment by the players will be made) because they have created negotiation where instead of a united group of owners negotiating with the NFLPA, the negotiations have been between the haves of the owners versus the have mores. Upshaw has joined with the majority of the owners who have instructed Tagliaboo-boo to wotk in partnership with Upshaw to push 6-12 rich owners like Jerry Jones, Dan Snyder and Kraft into a revenue sharing deal with the Rooneys et al. Kirwin misses the point that right now Upshaw and the NFLPA leadership has really dealt the players a winning hand. If the players do not break down and allow personal profit and fears to pick off a substantial portion of them the workers will end up getting 60%+ of the total gross revenues.

Its tough because I have my panties up in a wad as much as any Bills fans and I would love to see a bunch of great signings to rebuild last year's sorry team. However, I think the smarter move is going to be making a couple of targeted signings right now where we see some good cheaper players at the positions where our holes are so huge and the potential market of players is relatively small that targeted signings will improve the team. Things are so up in the the air right now without a CBA aggreement, that I suspect the players who will be willing to sign right away are those who do not have a lot of faith that they will be able to sign for a lot more later once the rules of the road are clear. Alternately, there may be some players out there who are pretty good but have poor representation and they can be signed to a contract now when if they had waited they may have been able to craft a better deal to fit the marketplace. There certainly are such players out there. For example, when Travis managed his money so poorly that he had an immediate need for upfront cash and TD and the Bills were actually able to sign him for what the team considered chump change (TD showed his was willing to throw away a similar amount of cash in bonus to sign an FA he then later allowed to be cut before a real game). The players likely to be willing to sign in this unclear environment are likely to be players who judge having a bird in hand as a better deal because their age or injury uncertainty makes them willing to take the risk of signing right away before it is crystal clear how you sculpt the best contract for them or what the market for players at their position will look like. My guess is that at positions of great need for us like DT where we will need a couple of player anyway, a targeted signing of a player who may be older or an injury risk makes sense. However, I think the best of the FAs will wait until their is more clarity in the market and I hope the Bills do not give up the ranch and the dog just to sign some glitzy guy because the sweet spot will occur later.

Actually, I flat out disagree with this conclusion. Its actually very hard to disagree with this woulda/coulda/shoulda analysis because by definition when one starts with an assumption that past actions were different then it is virtually guaranteed the future would be different. The problem with this proposition is that you simply assume that it would be different better than different worse in term of outcome. However, in this case, if the thing you assume is different (the Bills draft Pennington in 2000) there is no reason to assume that anything whatsoever would be different about the Bills outcome in 2000 or 2001 for that matter. The major even reasonably forseeable difference caused by your assumption is that the Bills would be without Flowers at DE. This change actually makes little difference in terms of the outcome of Bills play as essentially even having drafted Flowers he made no real contribution to the Bills. The team lacked DE talent with Flowers and under your assumption the team would continue to lack DE talent. On the other side with your assumption the team now has Pennington. Well in real life for NYJ Pennington sat and learned for virtually all of two seasons before he took the field as a consistent starter for NYJ. It appears more than reasonable that he he would have followed pretty much the same course of action if he had become a Bill. In the 2000 season he would have sat on the bench as the disaster QB behind DF and RJ. The Bills had already signed these two to contracts which locked up over $10 million in salary to these 2 QBs. RWS had already engineered the lesser paid of these two multi-millionaires sitting against Indy and the Titans to play the richer of these two QBs, RJ. In the 2001 season, TD's first Pennington in the AVP spot likely moves up to #2 QB when DF is a cap casualty and likely plays even sooner than he did as a Jet due to RJ being injury prone, but Pennington is actually the QB of a team in 2001 that was 3-13 because both the offense and the defense were horrendous. IMHO, the major story for the failure of this squad was that we foolishly went to the GW TN D which was a 4-3 when switching from a 3-4 actually necessitated that we have more quality on the DL. Having lost Big Ted and bruce as cap casualties, Wiley to FA and being about to see Hansen retire, this team and D failed because it was missing a DE of Jevon Kearse quality and put Raion Hill in to be Blaine Bishop and it did not work. Add to that the unfortunate loss of Sam Cowart and the results would not have varied a ton likely with RJ, AVP, or Pennington at QB. As far as the O went, we had lousy QB play, but a big problem that year was actually that we had Sheppard as OC and he would have been bad enough to deserve being canned regardles of which QB he was making worse. The conclusion you reach that we would be much better with this single change ignores the fact that the single change you offer would not do anything at all to change the personnel on the D which was a large limiting factor on the results achieved by this team, and also it would do noting to change the overall lack of good guidance that GW and Sheppard provided for this team. If you want, you can inject some theory that Pennington (who was not even the NYJ starter at this point in real life) would somehow have made the D better with his ball control of the O, AND would have made Sheppard an OC who did not get canned with time left on his contract, AND would have made GW a great offensive HC, but everybody would laugh.

Everything is in play with negotiations breaking down, segmenting off, restarting. etc. Its unclear what the final outcome will be and folks will simply have to deal with that uncertainty to put up the "best" (not perfect at all, but Clumpy's # strike me as the best possible distillation of the Bills current situation) possible estimation of numbers. Another good reason to assume that this "best" possible distillation is likely to be pretty accurate, while the CBA negotiations provide a pretty wide range in terms of what could possiblh happen (a final cap # which either greatly disadvantages or advantages a team like the Bills) is that the final number is likely to be somewhere in the middle and neither totally screw nor totally advantage the Bills versus other teams in a large way. Clumpy's numbers are probably pretty close to what reality will bring and under those numbers Marv have plenty of cap room to do good things and it appears a fairly decent number of talented cap casualties to shop among.

Exactly! I think the lead factor in our decision is not a debate over need pick versus BPA pick (I think the answer to this is that the Bills factor in both approaches) but instead the overarching question of which player will help us win fastest. We have so many needs that even though Davis is likely to be the BPA when we pick, it will probably make more sense for folks to hope Everett develops quickly enough with his mutant speed for a TE that he can become our #1 TE. We will still need to draft a TE because it is doubtful any of our current roster will be a viable #2 (Campbell is too old with too high a cap hit, Euhus might but it is questionable, Neufeld won't and Peters might but he is a tackle on our team). However, word is this is a deep draft for TEs and while Davis may be a BPA overall, we can probably simply take the best DT available (likely Ngota) even if he is a lesser player overall than Davis and get our back-up TE with our extra pick in the third round or maybe even on the second day.

A lot of this is the good ol debate between whether your draft for need or simply take the BPA regardless of need. I think the opinion that the Bills (and reality) are not simply black or white and do both with a particular draft emphasizing one or the other depending upon the ultimate team need at the time (getting to and winning the SB) is actually how this is done in real life. I think the mistakes some folks are making is treating this like a fantasy league exercise and not placing into account what is I think the lead factor which is: What addition will make us a winner quickest? Sometimes when your team is on the verge of going far with one addition it is all about need. If you are a team like Philly a couple of years ago and clearly what you need is an upgrade at WR, if the BPA is a recreation of Tony Boselli mixed with Forestt Gregg it does not matter, you instead get the WR you ned even if he is not the BPA. On the other hand, if your team is not close to winning it all next year, then your interest in BPA is heightened and you go with the BPA when you draft. What makes choosing a pick for the Bills is that clearly we are not going to win it all next year so picking the BPA even if he is not at a need position (and the BPA is clearly a cut above the rest) yu might well go with someone like a Davis over a Ngota. However, even though we almost certainly a not a player away from an SB berth, the Bills do have an overwhelming need to win now due to 5 playoffless years under TD and given RWS' age. My sense is that Vernon Davis looks to be an extraordinary player and a good candidate to meet the BPA test when pick #8 comes up, but this team has such a need to at least make the playoffs this year or at worst next season that it is hard for me to see the Bills going with Davis while Everett sits in the wings. This team will probably use more 2 TE sets, but the fact is we can only have one lead TE. Maybe Everett will not become this lead. However, he has the mutant chops in his background that he might. Particularly given the depth at the TE position in this draft, my guess is that the Bills look for the extra thrid or a second day pick for another TE in case Everett does not recover and none of our keepers (Euhus in particular) are able to step up for him. My guess is that we are so thin at DT and Ngota looks like a good talent even though I supect Davis is a better player that we go with Ngota (unless an OL talent like Brickashaw drops to #8 which I do not see happening.

I think that one of the most important things for Mayor Brown in wanting to move the stadium is to change epicenter for WNY back to Buffalo being the hub of activity and focus rather than the sprawl of focus out in the various burbs. The decision of UB to move its central campus to Amherst had several impacts and effects: 1. It provided a massive subsidy of state funds for building development and the building of roads and sewers to the Amherst area. If individual towns and businesses had to pay the cost for transportation and sewers that has been essential to the development of indiviual businesses or malls investments in them would make little economic sense/ 2. The flight of large amounts of capital and this subsidy coincided with a decison to totally disrupt Main St. downtown to build the Metro. While the Metro made sense in and of itself as a people mover, the decision to build it when they did coincided with a sharp reduction in the number of people coming downtown as the locus of action moved out of the City to the Amherst campus and the new shopping malls because the business center downtown was under repair. Thus, many WNYers have not been in town for years. However, while building a stadium actually makes little economic sense for the municipsliyy as a specific case (Stadiums across the country have proved to be albatrosses on a pure dollar and cents analysis, this has been particularly true of the single use stadiums used for just one sport whose dates of use need to be filled from a limited market of events bih enough to justify their use beyond 10 dates a year guaranteed by the football season). However, it may make some sense when the collateral business opportunities of restaurants and hotels are figured in (though even this addition probably will not flip the scales to make this investment pay) but when one adds in the very extremely difficult factors of once again making Buffalo the centerpiece of WNY and getting folks used to the idea of traveling into Buffalo regularly it MIGHT make ecnomic sense.

The draft is certainly one of the great examples of "groupthink" in sports and our society and the internet has made this even worse. An idea can with rapid speed become a self generating prophecy. If the initial ideas are simply hype we can be well on our way to pulling a "Bode Miller" on issues and predictions.

One of the fun things to watch during draft time is which lies folks are spreading around to try to get other teams to spend an early pick or trade up to get somebody they really don't think that highly of. My guess is that the biggest one going right now is folks pumping up the value of Jay Cutler as an early pick. Sure he is surprisingly good for a Vandy guy, but please, Leinart was such a winner in college and Vince Young pulled off one of the most impressive games by an individual ever that any GM who passed on these two in order to take Cutler while they were still on the board would easily place his career at risk and likely be strung up by the fans if he passed up these two who have provided real world proof they were top talents/ I think folks are pumping up Cutler as the best QB on the board in the hopes that opponents will take him and have one less high pick to use on what they really want. We'll see!

Badol among others who make this claim as part of their attempting to paint TD as a complete failure (actually he did somethings well and somethings poorly IMHO, the thing he did most poorly was picking an HC he could control who was not the best HC candidate out there and it was fatal to TD and unfortunately the Bills Actually, I think you are right and I will try to watch myself not to do this )but I do tend to get worked up when people try to revise history such as when JJ's rookie season was described in one post as being "superb" "solid" is actually only as far as the SF site which is putting its players in the best possible light was as far as they would go and "promising" is about as far as I would go to describe his rookie campaign. Actually, I think that contract holdouts are entirely relevant to on field performance because when you hold out your on field contribution is guaranteed to be zero. The holdout cost him half the season with MN and cost him the usual development that all rookies must go through as he started the final 7 games but for at least part of it had to split time with a reserve. Sex on the party boat does not translate to the huddle (unless he is servicng guys in the huddle, but certainly part of the reason that Vikes coach Mike Tice got fired was that between his own dinging for scalping tickets and the many problems that the Vikes had off the field clearly impacted this product which in the end is entertainment. One irony here is that I think actually the Vikes silly off field antics translated in part to better play on the field. It got so bad for the team interacting with outside parties at one point they seemed to look inward and hunker down and put on a nice winning streak this season. It did not prove to be enough to save Tice's job, but while off field antics and on field play are different things it goes a bit far to claim that they are not related or not to be mentioned or considered.

I just think it really is an exaggeration from my recollection to deem JJ's rookie season superb. If you think that either you or I am biased, then as a third party I think one need look no further than the official SF website which is paid to be biased and supportive of their players. Even they only go so far as to descibe JJ's rookie season as "solid". A lot of this is semantics and perhaps the mistake here is that I am misinterpreting your labeling of his rookie year as "superb" as being more enthusiastic than you are and by superb you mean the same thing as solid, but I don't think so. In my view, I think that it would be fair to describe MW's first season as solid as well. However, since he started from his first game and started 14 games compared to JJ's 12 I think that MW actually had a better rookie year than JJ and I would not describe MW's rookie year as being anything near superb, nor would I use this adjective to describe JJ's initial season. I guess what surpises me is that so many folks hold JJ in such high regard. His injury proneness emerged right away. It reallu is instructive to review the history of JJ on the SF website. Rookie year- Left a game with a leg injury and was inactive the next game. It also sites him having a recurring foot injury that brought him in and out of the lineup (interestingly though he did apparently start a couple of games at LT his rookie year) 2nd year- Probably his best year IMHO but once again was knocked out of game and was inactive for the next with a leg injury 3rd year- This time it was a hip flexor injury which forced him out of a game and left him inactive for the next one. he deserves credit for coming back but this merely led to a toe injury which put him on IR and he was gone for the end of the season 4th year- This year they note he was inactive for the first time that season with an ankle injury and again he deserves credit for playing through pain with a shoulder injury they deemed serious enough to site. However, this description does leave out a concussion JJ suffered which I remember which knocked him out of a game for us. 5th year- His first year with the Niners saw him sign a huge contract and start all of 3 games before he ended up again on IR. I was quite pleased that the Bills refused to sign him to a big deal as an FA and actually though that SF did us a big favor by taking him off our hands. JJ plays well when he is in there, but as bad as our OL was, it would have been worse with an unjury prone player slotted in as our LT. I hav been somewhat repetitive about this simply because I keep responding to any revisionist history which attempts to claim JJ was superb, he was not in there consistently enough to be judged one of the best and SF is paying for this now in their salary cap.

Right on target. The notion that JJ had a superb rookie season (like MW he had a good rookie season and showed promise) or that he was some how entrenched at LT at that point is a mere fantasy conjured in folks mind who are for various reasoms looking to: 1. attack MW (I agree was a failed player who did not work out in large part due to a lack of personal commitment and toughness) OR 2. Looking to indict TD as a total failure (I agree he deserved to be canned) OR 3. Want to claim that BM is a great (or simply very good) player and use the fact MW failed to support this claim (this I disagree with pretty much across the board since both MW and BM strike me as both would have been lousy choices by the Bills. The fantasy of BM being a very good player has somehow grown to now include the contention that with BM on the left side and JJ on the right side these two would have anchored the Bills for a long time. This notion ignores the fact that at best JJ was an average pick by the Bills who simply proved to be too injury prone to be a worthwhile investment for the Bills (though the notion in the theory launched by Dawwg that JJ had a superb year at LT his rookie season is simply false so I do not know where it came from. Boy the lengths people will go to try to improve that some conclusion was obvious and all one way or the other. My posts are so long because I think that this complex situation is usually not extreme either way and my take is usually both very on one hand and on the other. Folks seem to only take the one quote or part they disagree with, then inflate that to some exteme view even I disagree with and then claim I am all wrong. Believe me, despite the verbosity and the length I do not feel extremes generally on most football issues.

Cliff notes begin: I for one do not miss MW because of his poor play, but I also am very glad we do not have McKinnie given the problems we have seen in his brief career. Cliff notes end The problem with McKinnie is not that he made one silly transgression and everybody (particularly pampered athletes) makes mistakes, it is that he repetitively is involved in various episodes that represent questionable character judgment or being a team player. If we restrict this to mere football rather than personal assessments, it would even be another thing if he was all that great, but beyond pancaking his collegiate competition there really hasn't been a lot of noticeably great play from McKinnie. If folks want to argue MW failed as a player and the Bill's made a bad choice picking him, there is little intelligent argument against this as he got cut and bye-bye. I think folks conveniently want to ignore the whole set of occurences though when they seem to want to use the fact that MW was bad to claim that BM was an obviously better choice because he is great (he is not and has demonstrated play and actvities in his career that show the contrary) or that everybody said BM was a better choice back then (many or most did not in fact and numerous links are provided in this thread that say the opposite). Even worse some arguers are trying to claim that picking MW made no sense because no RT is worth a #4, which is true but to try to make this claim and ignore the likelihood that TD and the gang chose him with the desire to flip him to LT is simply a silly argument. I assume that folks who make this point do not want to get into a lengthy dissertation to claim that the theory that MW could make the flip successfully was a silly idea. It certainly was based on this never happening. However, it would take some lengthy arguments and a few points to attempt (unsuccessfully actually because the idea of pulling off this flip may well have worked based on the demographics and experience in college of MW, but its impossible to prove a negative) to prove this so I assume that the argument of an RT is not worth it is chosen because this silly point is easier to easier to argue against. The key thing here is that MW was bad but this in no way means that BM is good. The best move if the Bills could have pulled it off was to trade down and get away from all the limited talent bums like MW, Harrington, and McKinnie. I for one do not miss MW because of his poor play, but I also am very glad we do not have McKinnie given the problems we have seen in his brief career.

Certainly compaed to the rookie MW, Sullivan who had started before in the NFL was a vet. My point was that I think having Sully beside him settled MW at least a little that he could in fact learn something from the RG. Things fell apart real quick though when MW was the guy with greater experience (given he was starting while Pacillo was inactive or sitting on the sidelines) and he was supposed to lead this coordination. MW was not up to it and they screwed uo. Do you disagree? It is interesting me that part of the improvement in MW's game after his meltdown in the "voluntary" minicamps he missed was that he was playing next tp a vet Villarial once he broke back into the line-up.

He's well on his way to becoming a rich man's Antwan Randle El. Still a first round talent but perhaps not a top 3 (or even top 10).