Gaither Signs A One-Year Contract

[GR8PRKN]

Exactly.

 

He had to sign his tender in order to be traded. He also had to sign his tender in order to play for the Ravens.

 

In any scenario, a player and his club can mutually tear up an existing contract and replace it with a new one.

 

The only thing that raises an eyebrow is that Ed Wang was injured just two days ago.

 

Gaither had until June 15th to sign his tender, so the timing is a bit interesting.

 

 

Good insight... I agree it may be setting something up, however I am a bills fan and am use to disappointed…..

[milehiLou]

willis and marshawn out on the town in baltimore, i can see it now...."what choo up to willis?" "call me gooch" "im driving, all guns in the trunk, and weed up front" "look a pile of cars, lets both of us run into the back of it" "im the best back in the league, dont you think so marshawn?" "i do, go ahead and start, i wont put up a fight, just like with ol fred" "i hate buffalo and their educated fans!" "yeeeah mee too"

[Thoner7]

Gaither would be the best LT on the team this year. He would be the best RT too.

 

Either way, this year and movin forward, Gaither on the team improves the team. Thats my 2 cents.

[sharper802]

And at the end of the day, what did it matter? The Bills were (and are) well under the cap, so it ultimately had no impact on the team other than the opportunity costs from neither guy panning out. What they got paid affected nothing.

Except it was these contracts that infuriated Jason Peters and forced the team to trade him. He was the third highest paid player, yet he was by far the best player, the only one to go to a ProBowl and played the most important position.

So yes it mattered.

And for those who say Levy was not in charge it doesn't matter. If he wanted to put his name on the GM position then he has to live with the complete disaster his tenure as GM turned out to be.

[sharper802]

And if the Bills wanted to pay Peters the going rate, they could have, with cap room to spare.

 

His 'me first' antics and the front office's feeling he wasn't a Pro Bowl worthy player, based on performance, caused them to pass--not the Dockery or Walker contracts...

So they thought Dockery and Walker were ProBowl worthy? It is a business and you pay players based on performance and the players expect to be paid accordingingly. Anything less is a slap in the face. You would feel the same way if you had a job that didn't pay minimum wage.

[Bronc24]

willis and marshawn out on the town in baltimore, i can see it now...."what choo up to willis?" "call me gooch" "im driving, all guns in the trunk, and weed up front" "look a pile of cars, lets both of us run into the back of it" "im the best back in the league, dont you think so marshawn?" "i do, go ahead and start, i wont put up a fight, just like with ol fred" "i hate buffalo and their educated fans!" "yeeeah mee too"

 

 

Word.

[Thurman#1]

I guess the 1 year deal at $2.3M sets the market for a RT. If we do trade for him I would expect his agent will want to renegotiate a longer term contract for a LT, not a a RT. Looking at this number I am just amazed at what we paid Langston Walker and Derrick Dockery!!

 

I am so uncomfortable with Bell, Meredith and Wang as our LT prospects ... I hope the door is not closed on Gaither.

 

 

Sets the market on an RT? Um, no.

 

I believe that figure is simply the amount the Ravens tendered him at as a restricted free agent. In other words, he signed the tender. RFAs have no bargaining power whatsoever. They have only the choices of signing the tender or not playing, basically. So this figure has nothing whatsoever to do with the market. Gaither isn't on the market, and won't be till he's an unrestricted free agent.

[Thurman#1]

And if the Bills wanted to pay Peters the going rate, they could have, with cap room to spare.

 

His 'me first' antics and the front office's feeling he wasn't a Pro Bowl worthy player, based on performance, caused them to pass--not the Dockery or Walker contracts...

 

 

You're missing the point. Peters had always been a great team guy till the Dockery and Walker contracts (not to mention the sudden switch to LT) made him legitimately feel underpaid. There was plenty of fault on both sides there.

 

And meanwhile, we have no LT worthy of the name.

[marsadale]

Levy had no say for the simple reason he was not equipped for the job. If he knew what he was doing (he was well aware of his limitations) he would not have approved of the transactions for the exorbitant contracts. The real problem with the Dockery and Walker acquisitions was not adding them to the roster so much as paying premium prices for pedestrian talent.

 

Your point about Levy being mostly a figurehead is spot on. He was a non-entity because he was incapable of doing a GM's job. Expecting someone in a position of substantial responsibility to be accountable is not unreasonable, it is standard practice. As far as Jauron having final call on personnel decisions it was a direct result of him being hired by Levy. If Levy would have been half competent in the phony GM role he assumed Jauron would never have had the authority he was incapable of doing well.

 

The decentralized system created by the buffoon owner (as a response to the Donahoe power center) was doomed to fail from the start because it was an idiotic idea to begin with. The clown owner established a fractured system in which there was little direct accountability. At least now under Nix there is a conventional NFL organizational structure. He is accountable for the football operations. That is how it should have been.

send my regards to the dolphins when you get back home

[Malazan]

And at the end of the day, what did it matter? The Bills were (and are) well under the cap, so it ultimately had no impact on the team other than the opportunity costs from neither guy panning out. What they got paid affected nothing.

 

It may have given some other people playing alongside those ideas ideas.

[LGB]

If the Bills really wanted another LT, he would be signed by now and would be getting up to speed with the new offense.

[JohnC]

I agree with the mindset of this post, but I disagree about Ralph being a "buffoon." The man has no business being involved with any football decisions, but there is nothing that anybody can do about this. He hired Levy and Jauron, a pair of incompetent men who not a team in football wanted, and they ran his team to the ground. Still, the profits continued to roll in. Mr. Wilson is not a football man. He a is a GREAT business man.

 

The notion that Wilson is a "GREAT" business man is a bit of a stretch. The aged owner bought the Bills for a small amount of capital when the AFL was formed half a century ago. He put up the capital for a long shot venture. When the AFL merged with the NFL his asset multiplied many times over in value.

 

As an owner he has benefited from the local authorities building a stadium for him and giving him reasonable lease arrangements. He has also benefited from a league structure in which the wealthier markets subsidized the less wealthy markets. Mr. Wilson has his Michigan finance man, Litton, tightly run the operation so that there is a consistent profit stream. The main revenue source for the league and the Bills is TV money. Over the past 8 years the sole owner, Ralph, has earned nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

 

My central point is that it would be nearly impossible not to make money from these various revenue sources when the owner has no debt and doesn't have to share any profits. I don't begrudge the owner making a hefty profit. But in my view it would have been even more profitable in the long run to hire competent people or not fire competent people to run the football operation.

[GrudginglyPessimistic]

I agree with the mindset of this post, but I disagree about Ralph being a "buffoon." The man has no business being involved with any football decisions, but there is nothing that anybody can do about this. He hired Levy and Jauron, a pair of incompetent men who not a team in football wanted, and they ran his team to the ground. Still, the profits continued to roll in. Mr. Wilson is not a football man. He a is a GREAT business man.

 

Nix appears to be a competent GM. Gailey appears to be a competent head coach. Their success will depend on just how much Ralph interferes with their professional decisions. One promising sign was the fact that they didn't waste picks on more defensive backs. Levy/Jauron would have undoubtably done so. Nix/Gailey drafted big defenders, which is a great thing. If Ralph will allow them to draft good blockers next season in lieu of flash gadget players, or even a qb who will get killed, the Bills will become a good football team in short order.

 

I respect other opinions, but imo it is just that simple and it has been for many, many years.

Totally agreed that this all goes back to a judgment about Mr. Ralph as a football guy. Folks can wail as loud as they want about this being Levy's fault, but this indictment leads one right back to who was the ONE guy who made the decision on hiring Levy as GM (and to that matter who was the ONE guy who made the decision to summarily fire TD after TD undeniably did a mediocre at best job after the ONE guy totally had a dysfunctional relationship with Butler.

 

One pretty much has a choice between giving Levy a free pass as a geriatric who stepped up to do a job in a horrible situation or give him a free pass because he was so incompetent that it clearly raises the question over who hired this incompetent anyway.

 

How does anyone think there is a rational explanation which begins and starts with an assessment of Levy?

[Doc]

Please stop with the "the contract given to Walker and Dockery made Peters mad" stuff. It's apparent from listening to Peters that he had a massive ego. And that ego was always going to demand to be paid no matter who was on his team, because he's not living in a box and sees what other people get paid. He saw what a rookie, Jake Long, got, and he saw that NFL coaches, players, and fans voted him to the Pro Bowl. Then he hired Eugene Parker to make it happen.

[Bill from NYC]

Please stop with the "the contract given to Walker and Dockery made Peters mad" stuff. It's apparent from listening to Peters that he had a massive ego. And that ego was always going to demand to be paid no matter who was on his team, because he's not living in a box and sees what other people get paid. He saw what a rookie, Jake Long, got, and he saw that NFL coaches, players, and fans voted him to the Pro Bowl. Then he hired Eugene Parker to make it happen.

 

Fair enough Doc. That makes sense, but you cannot cite me an instance of a team trading away a highly rated left tackle (other than perhaps Roaf because of very serious family issues and Leon Gray in the Dickerson trade). You keep these guys because they are SO hard to find. This is why they are drafted so early almost every single season.

[Kelly the Dog]

The notion that Wilson is a "GREAT" business man is a bit of a stretch. The aged owner bought the Bills for a small amount of capital when the AFL was formed half a century ago. He put up the capital for a long shot venture. When the AFL merged with the NFL his asset multiplied many times over in value.

 

As an owner he has benefited from the local authorities building a stadium for him and giving him reasonable lease arrangements. He has also benefited from a league structure in which the wealthier markets subsidized the less wealthy markets. Mr. Wilson has his Michigan finance man, Litton, tightly run the operation so that there is a consistent profit stream. The main revenue source for the league and the Bills is TV money. Over the past 8 years the sole owner, Ralph, has earned nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

 

My central point is that it would be nearly impossible not to make money from these various revenue sources when the owner has no debt and doesn't have to share any profits. I don't begrudge the owner making a hefty profit. But in my view it would have been even more profitable in the long run to hire competent people or not fire competent people to run the football operation.

 

His business savvy is credited with sealing a massive television contract from NBC for the AFL. His business decision (along with a personal commitment) to lend money to keep the Raiders afloat preserved the league. He was one of the main guys who initiated the merger with the NFL. He's made some bad decisions but he's also made a lot of astute ones.

[wonderbread]

I disagree.

 

It had a huge impact on the team in that it set the pay structure for the OL. Two years later Jason Peters emerges and becomes a Pro Bowl LT and for a number of reasons is making peanuts compared to Dockery and Walker ... both of whom are very average at best.

 

I believe that these poor decisions affected the entire OL and especially Peters.

 

Bad business almost always has secondary impacts.

 

 

ahhhhh Logic hurts my head!!!

[Doc]

Fair enough Doc. That makes sense, but you cannot cite me an instance of a team trading away a highly rated left tackle (other than perhaps Roaf because of very serious family issues and Leon Gray in the Dickerson trade). You keep these guys because they are SO hard to find. This is why they are drafted so early almost every single season.

Roaf is a perfect example of off-field stuff making the decision. I don't know what stuff went on behind-the-scenes, but I think that with his injuries, attitude, and performance in 2008, they felt he wasn't worth near what he was asking for, regardless of the difficulty in finding a new one. It's not dissimilar to what they did with Clements, and that proved to be a good move.

[Bill from NYC]

His business savvy is credited with sealing a massive television contract from NBC for the AFL. His business decision (along with a personal commitment) to lend money to keep the Raiders afloat preserved the league. He's made some bad decisions but he's also made a lot of astute ones.

 

All true. Also, I am not sure how much more money he would have made if the Bills had not been awful for the last decade. He certainly would have had to pay MUCH more for coaches and general managers, and even that comes with risk.

This is NOT to say the profit would not have been higher. I just don't know how much of a difference it would have made.

[Mickey]

I guess the 1 year deal at $2.3M sets the market for a RT. If we do trade for him I would expect his agent will want to renegotiate a longer term contract for a LT, not a a RT. Looking at this number I am just amazed at what we paid Langston Walker and Derrick Dockery!!

 

I am so uncomfortable with Bell, Meredith and Wang as our LT prospects ... I hope the door is not closed on Gaither.

 

 

I am just as uncomfortable as you but rather than waste money on yet another guy who can't play, I prefer that we do the best with what we have until we can find a guy worht the investment. Whether that is by trade, free agency or the draft, I don't know. Buddy has made the point several times and it makes a lot of sense: Adding a guy who can't play doesn't solve the problem, it makes it worse because you spend time and money hoping that the guy will improve and he never does. At the same time, though Gaither may not be all that good, he is better than what we have so I see the argument in support of signing him or someone similarly situated. Glad I don't have to make these decsions is all I can say. After the Dockery/Walker disaster, I am ready to give Buddy's way a shot.