Roc City Bills Backer Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 Tim Graham had a good piece on what our AFCE competition spent in relation to wins. The ratio is pretty interesting, especially being in the infancy of our off season and with free agency about to begin. Here's hoping our FO and Ralph toss around some coin and make some FA moves to turn this ship around! http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/25482/bang-for-the-buck-what-afc-east-spent GO BILLS!!
Typical TBD Guy Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) Only $104.41 million payroll? Bottom line: Ebenezer needs to spend some $$ this free agency period. Edited January 25, 2011 by Internet Tough Guy
zonabb Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 That's without a doubt the most irrelevant, horribly elementary use of statistics to make a point I think I've seen in sports. Wow, stick to X's and O's and away from math and economics TG. Leave that to the people who understand statistical methods and things like correlation better than you obviously do. There are so many flaws in the logic I won't waste our time with it.
JPS Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 That's without a doubt the most irrelevant, horribly elementary use of statistics to make a point I think I've seen in sports. Wow, stick to X's and O's and away from math and economics TG. Leave that to the people who understand statistical methods and things like correlation better than you obviously do. There are so many flaws in the logic I won't waste our time with it. +1. Well put.
PDaDdy Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 That's without a doubt the most irrelevant, horribly elementary use of statistics to make a point I think I've seen in sports. Wow, stick to X's and O's and away from math and economics TG. Leave that to the people who understand statistical methods and things like correlation better than you obviously do. There are so many flaws in the logic I won't waste our time with it. All it shows is correlation not causation. To ASSuME anything more is on you not on the writer. Generally we know if you want to win you have to pay. We don't pay, we don't win. Again not causation BUT definitely a correlation.
jumbalaya Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 Only $104.41 million payroll? Bottom line: Ebenezer needs to spend some $$ this free agency period. It is okay to have a low payroll if your money is spent wisely. We spent $104M for very marginal talent, Jets and NE spent more but have much more talent per dollar than we do. We do not have the talent that even commands $100M per year. We do not have a top five player at any position in the AFC let alone the league with the possible exception of Kyle Williams. KW is a key part of the run defense that gives up 200 yds a game so my enthusiasm for him is quite tempered. Anyone that is mediocre on this unit looks like a superstar in comparison to the rest. Our offense has 4 #1 picks, the two recent OL #1 picks are still on their rookie contracts so their annual number is very low. The #9 pick overall can't break into the starting lineup while a rookie FA RB picked up off the street looked just as good. Our other #1 pick on offense (Evans) makes me ill. An absolutely pathetic aggregation of players. Our defense's best player is a 5th round pick, the capabilities of our secondary is unknown because the 7 in front of them just suck. The backfield has two number one picks who would not start on any other team in the AFC East but could conceivably at least make their squads as back-ups. Stroud, Johnson, Edwards, McCargo, and all of the linebackers do not even make the other teams in the AFC East. Troup gets a pass because he is a rookie whose jury is out. Spend a lot more money is not always the answer but when you spend frugally, spend wisely.
Cash Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 I don't get how anyone can logically defend the Bills on this one. They were 29th in the league in total payroll (which suggests cheapness), and 30th in the league in cost per win (which suggests incompetence). Of course, a more thorough analysis would include front office costs (GM, scouts, coaching staff, etc.), but I imagine the Bills would get slightly worse if those were added in. Now, there is one caveat: Due to the restrictions on free agency in the last year of the CBA, there was an unusually limited pool of free agents available last year, so it's possible the Bills were willing to spend money, but (correctly) figured that no one out there was worth spending it on. But I'm not taking it on blind faith that they're going to start either: 1) Opening up the checkbook, or 2) Spending money wisely. They haven't done either one in a couple years now, and our GM has said publicly that he doesn't view free agency as a major way to build the team. His comments were to the effect of, you should spend your money on re-signing your own players. They've done some of that (Chris Kelsay and Shawne Merriman, and hopefully Poz), but not enough to significantly increase the payroll next year. Let's face it, to get better, this team needs to either start bringing in outside talent while not blowing their draft picks, OR start nailing their draft picks and never ever let a talented player leave in free agency. Unlike some people, I'm fine with the second option, I'm just not confident it's going to happen.
BillsVet Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 Another factor here is that Buffalo has jettisoned quite a few higher paid players. It's not a comment on their play, but re-signing Clements, Fletcher, Peters, and Greer would raise that figure considerably. Lynch probably factors in there as well. The fact is, Buffalo hasn't had many to re-sign because their draft picks and free agents have been so horrendous. The only guys they've extended to long term contracts in the past few years who commanded a decent salary have been Evans, Stroud, McGee, Schobel and Kelsay. Stroud will be cut and Schobel's retired, so they'll be at most 3 players on the roster next season. It's been repeated ad nauseam, but if RW committed to and could attract the better football minds, he'd get a lot more value out of his cash outlay for players. He eschews that simple concept and keep bottom feeders while hiring people who should be retired.
spartacus Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 Another factor here is that Buffalo has jettisoned quite a few higher paid players. It's not a comment on their play, but re-signing Clements, Fletcher, Peters, and Greer would raise that figure considerably. Lynch probably factors in there as well. The fact is, Buffalo hasn't had many to re-sign because their draft picks and free agents have been so horrendous. The only guys they've extended to long term contracts in the past few years who commanded a decent salary have been Evans, Stroud, McGee, Schobel and Kelsay. Stroud will be cut and Schobel's retired, so they'll be at most 3 players on the roster next season. It's been repeated ad nauseam, but if RW committed to and could attract the better football minds, he'd get a lot more value out of his cash outlay for players. He eschews that simple concept and keep bottom feeders while hiring people who should be retired. hey it's not Buddy and Modrak's fault that Maybin and Spiller have returned just about zero on the investment of top 12 picks - some else made the picks over their objections - maybe it was Ralph's niece pulling the strings (yes - Buddy was on board for the Maybin pick) when you have pat-time retirees working from distant homes running your talent evaluation and acquisition process, you should not be surprised by the underwhelming results.
Adam Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 So when the salary cap comes back, we have more room to sign some guys than the other teams
Mark Long Beach Posted January 25, 2011 Posted January 25, 2011 As everyone knows our top picks have essentially bombed out for the last 10 years or so. We have very little game changing talent. High quality players like Lee Evans and Schoebel get paid (and even some not-so high quality players like Kelsey). The problem is we just don't have many people worth paying. Would I like to have kept some players that we let go? Sure, Pat Williams & Greer for example but for the most part I have had no problems with the large amount of players let go. Not many have we missed. We get a few more game changers and some success our payroll will go up.
Zulu Cthulhu Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 It really is a simplistic and irrelevant article for all the reasons others have pointed out above. Graham points out as much himself in it - pointing to the Bucs spending around the same amount of money as the Bills, but still winning 10 games.
Lv-Bills Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 I'm not usually an ESPN basher,, because it usually doesn't rile me up enough to care. But this is one of the dumbest articles I've ever read in my life. You've gotta be kidding me. I'm not even going to get into it to debate it....yeah....it's not even worth it. The best info I got from it, is that the Bills payroll is very low.
playaction Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 So when the salary cap comes back, we have more room to sign some guys than the other teams No because NE, Wash, NJ(b), JerJones and the like will see that the cap is mighty high, without much revenue sharing.
Orton's Arm Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 That's without a doubt the most irrelevant, horribly elementary use of statistics to make a point I think I've seen in sports. Wow, stick to X's and O's and away from math and economics TG. Leave that to the people who understand statistical methods and things like correlation better than you obviously do. There are so many flaws in the logic I won't waste our time with it. I disagree. Tim Graham simply listed each team's payroll, and then divided that payroll by its number of wins to determine its cost per win. He did not advance any particular statistical or economic theory. He merely provided raw data for us as fans to chew on. But apparently a few fans decided to chew on him instead! I'll grant that Graham isn't exactly going to be in line for a Pulitzer Prize over this piece. It's just a niblet of potentially interesting data--no more and no less. Maybe when you clicked on the link you expected a full-fledged article, which this clearly was not. But that said, there's nothing wrong with knowing how much the Bills spent in relation to their divisional rivals, or where that payroll ranks in comparison to the other teams in the league.
Zulu Cthulhu Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 Regurgitating raw cap data seems a little simplistic and lazy for ESPN's official AFC East blogger.
SDS Posted January 26, 2011 Posted January 26, 2011 That's without a doubt the most irrelevant, horribly elementary use of statistics to make a point I think I've seen in sports. Wow, stick to X's and O's and away from math and economics TG. Leave that to the people who understand statistical methods and things like correlation better than you obviously do. There are so many flaws in the logic I won't waste our time with it. Read much? "Page 2 contributor Patrick Hruby ventured to find out by comparing dollars spent with games won -- the financial and on-field bottom lines to determine "Bang for the Buck." " Maybe you should leave reading comprehension of sports articles to people who understand complex entities like letters and words better than you obviously do?
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