Who are Most Under/Overpaid Bills

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

At Billszone Clumpy has update his salary cap page (we are currently $3.55 million under an amount which should allow for signing the rookies, keeping a small cushion in case of injury or opportunity like the Milloy situation and of great import allow us to lock up a player long-term like McGee (possible) or Clements (doubtful as I think he would be nuts to agree to resign at a rate we can afford until the new salary cap kicks in).

 

However, scanning the detailed results (Clumpy really does a fantastic job) it raised the question for me of which players are great values for their relative output and who is grossly overpaid.

 

Underpaid- McGahee was my first thought at a cap hit of $1.7 million for output that shows every sign if he remains healthy of really being one of the best players in the league (the average salary of the top 10 RBs in the NFL is around $5.5 million and today I have WM easily in the top 10 RBs . Yet, I pass on labeling him as my underpaid candidate because I want to see him do again before I give him this note of achievement.

 

My actual candidate is London Fletcher who still takes in a completely rediculous salary for a human being to play this boys game of a cap hit of $3.8 million.

 

Given that he has led this team in tackles for several years, that he even surpaassed Chris Spielman for the season record for total tackles his first year (a number produced with an OL player usually in his grill because our weak DL allowed an OL player to be assigned to this MLB when he was at the point of attack. Given that he is the teams D captain and always impresses me that when something happens on the field and the Bills get jobbed by a refs interpretation he almost always seems to realize the problem and be lobbying about it before anyone else is, and given that he stepped up last year and even produced as the short kickoff return guy on ST, his contributions and leadership on this team are unequalled on the D even compared to Pro Bowlers Spikes and Adams.

 

For this he gets lofty pay which actually is below the cap hit of $4+ million which Adams takes in and $5.4 that is the Sopkes cap hit.

 

I certainly do NOT advocate that Fletcher get more or that Spiks get less because like all of America, level of salary and what folks deserve to be paid are two completely different things and the market rather than fairness rules. However, looking at bang for the buck the only negative I see in Fletcher is that he occaisionally gets out of control with his play and he is a little short but he easily delivers play for the $ from our cap which exceeds his peers.

 

Overpaid- As I scanned the list this was looking like a tough choice as TD really is a great negotiator who only overpays on occaision like with Lawyer Milloy where supply/demand when he hit the market and the unforseen retirements of both Cota and our Plab B battle left us with a huge SS need. However as this list was in alphabetical order, one needed only to get to Mike Williams enormous $7+ million '05 cap hit to see the definition of overpaid.

 

This true not simply looking at the normal world were all NFL players are grossly overpaid for what they give to society (they are not firefghters who brave flames, soldiers who brave enemy soldiers orteachers who amazingly face our kids each day) but MW is grossly overpaid in terms of output compared to other OL players (mostly LTs guarding the QBs blindside). The MW salary weighs in at a level which appears to be around thee average of the top 5 OL players.

 

While I am hopeful that the ship of state for MW has finally been righted by JMac for MW, even if he accomplishes the uncertain awesome task of stepping up his game at RT to another level and makes the flip to LT, I doubt he will be play at the level of the best LTs though he will be paid like them.

 

I think the bottomline here is that the smartest thing TD has done with the draft is to trade away our future 1st round picks for an immediate need at QB in terms of getting the vet Bledsoe to replace RJ and getting Losman to be trained to replace the failed Bledsoe because a top pick is slotted and will get a contract that simply is overpaid be they Mike Williams or Peyton Manning (who for all he is paid as never even help deliver a sniff at the Indy ultimate goal of an SB win and only recently finally pullled ahead of Ryan Leaf in terms of delivering even playoff wins to the team which drafted him.

 

Manningcertainly makes losing fun to watch, but like it or not, Indy is paying him goshawful amounts of $ to lead them like the Bills to being a loser.