Cash

Sad to see Mr. Wilson go. RIP.

Knowing how Winslow II's career shook out, would you take him at #9 in this draft? I definitely would not. And Lande is trying to pump up Ebron by saying he's not as good as Winslow II. Not saying anything about Ebron, just don't think Lande is very persuasive.

Money quote: "He is the best tight-end prospect I have evaluated since Kellen Winslow Jr.," Lande said. "...he is a rare talent who could be better than Jimmy Graham." Someone should tell Lande that if you're trying to pump up a prospect, you should compare him to someone who panned out. Or does Lande think that Winslow II was better than Jimmy Graham?

Wow, good deal for the Bills. Very surprised he wound up getting less than his last deal. Definitely like this re-signing!

I'm against taking Lewan at #9, but I'd be okay with either of the top 2 OTs. Not in love with it -- would definitely prefer Evans or Watkins. I'd be okay with Ebron as well, but he doesn't really wow me.

Strongly agree, although I'd be against Tue/Wed games. The main revenue driver for the NFL is the national TV deal, which has been skyrocketing and presumably will continue to do so, since live sports are one of the few TV programs that are DVR-proof. A 16-game, 18-week regular season doesn't give you any added ticket/parking/concessions revenue, but it does give CBS/FOX/NBC/ESPN another week of games to broadcast, and doesn't dilute the quality of those broadcasts very much. On top of that, you don't have to pay the players any more in this scenario*, as opposed to increasing every player contract by 15% or whatever. *Okay, technically you would have to pay the players more, because the salary cap is defined as a percentage of revenue, and a bigger TV contract would result in a higher salary cap and salary floor. But there wouldn't be any change to existing contracts, which is something that would have to happen to increase the # of games in a season.

Agreed. The cynic in me thinks that he's very likely to be a training camp cut this summer.

I know no one's asking me, but I'll take a stab anyway. I don't like a straight linear ranking, though -- how big a difference is there between the 16th and 17th best guy? So I'll go more tier-based: Tier 1 Jimmy Graham Gronkowski (significantly lower, but only due to health concerns) Tier 2 Witten Vernon Davis Julius Thomas Jordan Cameron Tier 3 Gates Olsen Jordan Reed If He Stays Healthy Charles Clay Heath Miller (only b/c he's a very good blocker. As a pure receiver, he'd be a tier or two lower.) Tier 4 Martellus Bennett (borderline Tier 3) Dennis Pitta (borderline Tier 3 if healthy) Ladarius Green (I think he'll be Tier 3 or 2 if anything happens to Gates) Brent Celek Pettigrew Delanie Walker Chandler Fleener Ertz Kyle Rudolph Jared Cook Garrett Graham Gresham Tier 5 Zach Miller Brandon Myers Owen Daniels Ed Dickson Jermichael Finley (always been overrated, and now has major medical concerns) Tony Gonzalez (dude, Gonzo retired. You can't count retired players. That bumps Chandler up to 23rd in your ranks.) So I'd put 11 TEs clearly ahead of Chandler, to the point where they'd be very significant upgrades. I'd probably rather have some of the Tier 4 guys than Chandler, but at what cost? We haven't seen the details of Chandler's new contract yet, but the old one was for peanuts. I definitely think Pitta or Bennett would be an upgrade over Chandler, but either one (esp. Pitta) might be making double what Chandler is making. I don't think either one is $2-3 million/year better than Chandler. Pettigrew is fairly close, but based on blocking alone, he might be an upgrade over Chandler even though he's a Robert Royal-esque receiver. I'd definitely rather have Chandler at (guessing here) 2 years, $6mil than Pettigrew at 4 years, $16mil. Pettigrew is not so much better than Chandler that he's worth 50% more per year. Now, if we're paying Chandler something like 2 years, $10+ million, I will absolutely change my tune. For now, I'll assume he's making significantly less. If the money was equal amongst all Tier 4 guys, I'd probably put Chandler something like 18th overall, but again, without much difference between #14 and #24.

Yeah it does, actually. That's kinda how it works. Did I just get trolled?

Overall, I'm mildly happy about this signing, assuming the $$ was comparable to his last deal. I get Kirby's point about upgrading the position and all that, but 1.) I'm not as low on Chandler as he is, and 2.) I firmly believe that you upgrade positions by keeping your decent+ players and adding to them, not by changing names at the top and leaving the garbage below untouched. In other words, to get better at TE, we should be looking to get rid of Lee Smith and/or Chris Gragg, not Scott Chandler. Now, having listened to Doug Whaley's interview on WGR, here's my very subjective take: First off, when they asked if he was set with TEs currently on the roster, he did technically say 'no', but immediately spun that into the 2 classic clichés of "we're always looking to upgrade at every position" and "it creates competition". Later in the interview, he spoke lovingly of all 4 TEs currently on the roster, saying they have different strengths: Smith - Blocking (Toad) Gragg - Speed (Princess) Chandler - Size (Luigi) Moeaki - Combo of all. (Mario) Q: "Are you planning on [Moeaki] being a *big* factor on this team?" Whaley: "That's the plan." (Then went right into more cliché about competition.) So my (again, highly subjective) takeaway from all this is that there's zero chance they sign another FA TE, and Ebron at #9 is very unlikely. Wouldn't 100% rule out Ebron, especially in a trade down, but given that Ebron is a pass-catcher with questions about his blocking, he doesn't seem like a great fit next to Chandler. I think Plan A is Chandler & Moeaki compete for the starting job, and the loser probably still plays in 2-TE sets, with Moeaki being more of the blocking TE in those sets whether he starts or not. I think Plan B is Moeaki flames out, and we run back the TEs we had last year. I think the Bills will be open to drafting a TE in round 2 or later, but would only do it if they really do value a guy above where they're drafting. I want Troy Niklas, but I have difficulty thinking they'd take him in round 2 over whatever of WR/OT they didn't take at #9. (FWIW, Whaley did mention how deep the OT class was, for those of you who want or expect the Bills to pass on OT at #9.) If Niklas or AS-J was there in the 3rd, I think the Bills might pull the trigger.

Yeah, and once they're in cap hell, they might spend a few seasons going 6-10 or worse. If they were smart, they'd be going 6-10 with cap room to spare, like we are.

Could this be related to that "special steamer" mentioned upthread????

Good point -- I forgot about his special teams ability. Since he (hopefully) won't be a full-time starter for us, he should still be able to contribute heavily on special teams. The Bills get full marks for this signing.

I really like this signing, along with almost everyone else. I'm guessing that Graham will start as the nickel/slot corner. (And make no mistake, that is a starter. All this talk about looking for a 2-down LB should really be about looking for a 1-down LB. Teams only spend 30-40% of the time in "base" personnel with 4 or fewer DBs.) If anyone gets hurt or needs a breather, Robey will come in at the slot, with Graham moving outside unless he's the one who came out. If 2 guys get hurt, then Ron Brooks comes in, and while he's no great shakes, I don't think he's automatic to get torched the way Rogers was last year. I actually really like our depth at CB! (Not really any other positions, though. Maybe D-line or kicker?) Other things to like: the money's right -- about $4mil/year plus incentives. That's low-end starter money, fairly similar to McKelvin, and seems fair for both team and player. Of course, you gotta love that he's from Buffalo and has dreamed about playing for the Bills! And, not that it means a lot, I like that he's had some big success against Brady and the Pats. One would hope that Graham will be a very positive presence in the locker room, especially in terms of bringing a winning attitude.

Excellent post and agreed on all counts. Either signing (Williams/Rivers) could work out well for the Bills if the player elevates his game and becomes a quality starter. But both guys are coming out of lackluster situations, and the Bills are paying them like they already know that both will be effective starters. And don't get me started on the Carpenter contract. Yikes. These are small-time mistakes, and if the players in question perform as well as the Bills hope, then there's no problem. But you can't be right 100% of the time. If they'd brought in both of these guys at the vet minimum or close, I'd feel a lot better about the signings. Although I like the Rivers signing better than Williams. Only a 2 year deal, and with the guaranteed money, he basically can't be cut if he gets beat out in camp. He's definitely an upgrade to the overall depth, even if he's maybe not what you're looking for as a starter. If he does get beat out this year or in 2015 training camp, I'd expect to see him cut rather than earn $2.5 million as a backup.

Probably not, because they benched him before they cut him. Also, even under the old setup, #14 overall wasn't a huge contract. It was the top 5, and to a lesser extent the top 10, that were really nuts.

There are definitely worse backups than Jason Campbell. I wouldn't hate it if we signed him. As for the Browns, the only question is when do they draft a QB? It's possible that they think that they can get one with their late 1st pick.

I agree on Kolb and Caussin, and I won't touch the Williams signing in this thread, but I don't agree with the rest. Carpenter was great last year, but look at kickers historically, and you'll see that their performance is crazy inconsistent from year to year. I don't know how much they're paying him, but given that he signed a 4 year deal, I'm guessing it's too much. In general, I don't think it's smart to sign a K to a long-term deal, especially when he's already not good at kickoffs. (And kickoff distance, unlike FG accuracy, usually is pretty consistent from year to year.) As for the marquee signing, I don't think I need that. Sure, I wouldn't mind it if they signed Jared Allen or someone like that, but I don't mind the "wait for the dust to settle/get lower-tier free agents" strategy. I think it's generally pretty strong, but if you're going to go that route, I think you need to either sign a lot of guys, or hit on an uncommonly high percentage of your signings. Lower-tier free agents are lower-tier for a reason. You're not going to bat 1.000 on them. The Bills went 2 for 3 last year with Lawson, Branch, and Legursky. We keep some of our guys, but we lose talented guys pretty much every year (some more talented than others). If we're going to not just make up for those losses, but actually get better, then something needs to give. Instead of 1 good starter (Lawson), 1 good rotational player (Branch), and 1 unacceptably bad starter (Legursky), we need to add something like 3 good starters and 3 good rotational players. If that also means we have 4 bad and slightly overpaid FA busts riding the bench or cut, so be it. Sometimes it seems like the plan is to hope we stay healthy, hope we get every break in every game, and then maybe we'll have a chance at sneaking into the playoffs. That's not a great plan. Either Dareus or (more likely) Spiller is probably gone in the next couple years. If they draft OT at #9, I think there's a good chance that 2 out of 3 of Dareus, Spiller, & Cordy Glenn are gone. I'll be shocked if all 3 are still on the team in 2017 no matter what.

If I believed #1, then I would agree with the rest of your post. My problem is that I don't see anything to suggest that Williams is actually any better than Legursky. Sure, but who cares? I think we'd all rather spend 3-4 years as a Super Bowl contender followed by 3-4 years of cap hell and stinking, versus 6-8 straight years of being mediocre. One thing you have to say about the Bills' stated strategy is that it's sustainable: they're definitely never going to have so much dead money or such a high payroll that they'll be hamstrung or have to cut premium players. But it seems like all they're sustaining is sub-mediocrity. If EJ is any good over the length of his rookie deal, he'll be grossly underpaid (the way Luck, Wilson, Kaepernick, Newton, RG3, Dalton are now). A lot of teams would take those QB savings and put them into other areas of the team. The Bills seem more content to just pretend they're already paying $20 million a year for their QB, and spend on the rest of the team accordingly.

How about Doug Legursky and Colin Brown? Sam Young? Thomas Welch? Do they tell us anything, or just the hits?

What am I, your intern? Do your own legwork. You can start by finding a write-up that says that Williams was a good signing. I would love to read one, because all I've seen so far is the opposite.

I wouldn't get your hopes up, especially with this quote from Whaley: "With the signing of Chris Williams, I am particularly excited about the direction our offensive line is moving in because we wanted to address this position and we feel like we filled the need with a very good player." He's not saying we took a step towards filling the needs, or that we strengthened the position by bringing in competition, he's saying the need has been filled. Lock it down and move on to other positions. I don't like it. Source: http://bills.buffalonews.com/2014/03/12/doug-whaley-defies-winter-signing-o-lineman-chris-williams/ Precisely. Branch was a guy who I had heard positive things about during his time as a starter in Arizona, and all reports on his time in Seattle as a rotational guy were quite positive. Lawson I knew less about before we signed him, but the book on him was a lot more positive than for Chris Williams. The Bills love thinking they're smarter than everyone else, and signing/drafting a guy who isn't highly rated by the consensus. They're usually wrong. Hopefully they're right this time, but I won't believe it till I see it.

Florio has always been terrible. Nice to see you're realizing that. Although this year, it literally has been "tough getting free agents to Buffalo", because the airport's been pretty shut down.

The Bears benched him, then cut him after 2 games as a healthy scratch. So yes. The Rams did not bench him. Nor did the Bills bench Doug Legursky after he took over as the starter last year. FWIW, ESPN's Bills and Rams bloggers have weighed in on our aggressive signing: http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/120269/bills-taking-odd-risk-in-signing-williams http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/120267/losing-williams-offers-chance-to-upgrade

The Bills talent evaluators though that Doug Legursky and Colin Brown were good enough at LG last year. Not 100% the same talent evaluators, but pretty close, thought that Cornell Green was good enough at RT a couple years ago. The Bears' talent evaluators thought that Williams was bad enough to cut him in 2012, even though he was the #14 overall pick a few years prior. The Rams' talent evaluators apparently didn't think Williams was worth the money the Bills signed him for.