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If it's not cheating, then why would only three teams dare do it only three total times over 25 years when every year there is 20+ chances to do it?

 

The Bills did something slightly sleazy, more of breaking an unwritten gentlemen's agreement, to acquire Steve Tasker from the Oilers. That was during something called Plan B free agency and teams used to slip injured players through waivers, knowing most teams would not put in claims for them. The Bills considered Tasker too good to pass up so they claimed him. But I don't put that on the poison pill scale.

 

The Bills didn't do anything sleazy, the Oilers just took a calculated risk that ST's wasn't that highly valued by most teams, coaches. Tasker was a waiver claim, not aPlan B FA acquisition. In plan B you could only protect a certain amount of players, the others were FA's. There may have been some ROFR for teams to match. Whatever. The Wolford deal centered around the use of escalator clauses that made him much more expensive for the Bills if they matched his contract, than he would be for the Colts. The NFL outlawed escalator clauses the next offseason. There obviously are other loopholes that teams have used to pry FA's away from their current teams, but the escalator clause was banned in "93.

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The Bills didn't do anything sleazy, the Oilers just took a calculated risk that ST's wasn't that highly valued by most teams, coaches. Tasker was a waiver claim, not aPlan B FA acquisition. In plan B you could only protect a certain amount of players, the others were FA's. There may have been some ROFR for teams to match. Whatever. The Wolford deal centered around the use of escalator clauses that made him much more expensive for the Bills if they matched his contract, than he would be for the Colts. The NFL outlawed escalator clauses the next offseason. There obviously are other loopholes that teams have used to pry FA's away from their current teams, but the escalator clause was banned in "93.

 

Marv Levy was the color analyst for the Bills pre-season games in those days and in the summer of '86, several months before he replaced Bullogh as coach, he RAVED about Tasker in a pre-season game against the Oilers. Wasn't surprised in the least when one of the first things he did as coach was claim Tasker off waivers that year. Literally within days of being named HC.

 

GO BILLS!!!

Posted

The Bills didn't do anything sleazy, the Oilers just took a calculated risk that ST's wasn't that highly valued by most teams, coaches. Tasker was a waiver claim, not aPlan B FA acquisition. In plan B you could only protect a certain amount of players, the others were FA's. There may have been some ROFR for teams to match. Whatever. The Wolford deal centered around the use of escalator clauses that made him much more expensive for the Bills if they matched his contract, than he would be for the Colts. The NFL outlawed escalator clauses the next offseason. There obviously are other loopholes that teams have used to pry FA's away from their current teams, but the escalator clause was banned in "93.

The escalator clause was he had to be the highest paid offensive player. On the Colts that meant nothing. On the Bills, he would have to be paid millions more, ahead of Kelly and Thurman and Reed, etc. It was a poison pill.

 

As far as Tasker goes, back then they had some different rules, and if a young player was injured early you would sometimes have to waive him before you could re-activate him. It was an unwritten rule that teams wouldn't put claims in on these young guys. But the Bills had a TE coach who was on the Oilers the year before when Tasker was a rookie and he raved about him to Marv who had just taken over. Marv's first move was to put in a claim for him and the Oilers were furious. It wasn't against the rules but it was against the somewhat unwritten law.

Posted (edited)

From Pro Football Talk's "Three and Out" series for week 8:

 

2.  Who in the hell is Chris Hogan?

 

If you don’t know, you should.  The former Penn State lacrosse player opted to give football a try on a lark, attempted to go to Syracuse and play for current Bills coach Doug Marrone as a graduate student, and ended up at Monmouth due to NCAA transfer rules.  Hogan now plays for Marrone, and Hogan has played his way into the No. 3 receiver role in the Buffalo offense.

 

Hogan, you may recall, was dubbed 7-11 by Reggie Bush during Hard Knocks in 2012, when Hogan and Bush played for the Dolphins.  After landing in Buffalo last year as a special-teams contributor, Hogan has earned his playing time.

 

“I always tell the players that you’ve got to put yourself in a position where the coaches have to play you because that’s how well you’re playing,” Marrone said this week. “I think Chris has done that.”

 

He made an even stronger case for more playing time with a leaping 28-yard grab that put the ball on the Minnesota two, one play before the game-winning touchdown pass from Kyle Orton toSammy Watkins.

 

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/10/25/week-eight-three-and-out/

 

It looks like Marrone has always had a liking for Hogan.

Edited by KikoSeeBallKikoGetBall
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