Nate will test FA market

[plenzmd1]

"France said he's had no in-depth discussions with Buffalo"

 

thats the news part to me. we really havent been trying to work on anything? or they wont bother to even to listen to any offers from the team?

 

No need to talk with Nate at this juncture as there is no way he would sign anything, you would just be negotiating agaisn't yourself. IF bills offered $5, France would say maybe we can get $7 from somewhere else. If I was France, that is exactely what I would council. Once Novemebr hit last year, no way Nate was signing anything put in front of him by the Bills. Maybe, just maybe the Bills learn a lesson here and try to get Evans, reed, Etc locked up before their walk years

[Kelly the Dog]

even if we DID sign him to that contract and after bonus we had... $25mil left. doesnt that still leave us in the top quarter in cap space?

In other words, you know/understand less than zero about how the salary cap works.

[BillsVet]

You can read that story any way you'd like, but no conversation between the agent and front office less than a month from free agency isn't a good thing. In the end, they'll show minimal desire to keep him and when he leaves have some excuse ready. That's nothing against Nate, but if the front office has a reasonably competitive offer (see close to the highest bidder) and he leaves, are we really willing to spend on anyone at all in free agency?

 

What happened to the part about keeping free agents and drafting well? I guess there are exceptions, and one is NC.

[DrDawkinstein]

In other words, you know/understand less than zero about how the salary cap works.

 

 

im throwing out hypothetical numbers for right now. that is all.

[Kelly the Dog]

You can read that story any way you'd like, but no conversation between the agent and front office less than a month from free agency isn't a good thing. In the end, they'll show minimal desire to keep him and when he leaves have some excuse ready. That's nothing against Nate, but if the front office has a reasonably competitive offer (see close to the highest bidder) and he leaves, are we really willing to spend on anyone at all in free agency?

 

What happened to the part about keeping free agents and drafting well? I guess there are exceptions, and one is NC.

What exactly is the point of talking and talking to him now if there is zero idea of what the market is going to bring? Unless the Bills are prepared to bring him an offer of 50 million or more right now, with about a 15-20 million bonus it's fruitless to talk to him about a contract. And they're not. It has been clear for a year now that he was going to test the FA market, as he well should.

[DrDawkinstein]

What exactly is the point of talking and talking to him now if there is zero idea of what the market is going to bring? Unless the Bills are prepared to bring him an offer of 50 million or more right now, with about a 15-20 million bonus it's fruitless to talk to him about a contract. And they're not. It has been clear for a year now that he was going to test the FA market, as he well should.

 

i think the numbers you stated are about the starting point for negotiations. and if we're not going to offer that, then we'll never bother talking to Nate and his agent at all. and that makes me seriously wonder about this franchise.

[Kelly the Dog]

i think the numbers you stated are about the starting point for negotiations. and if we're not going to offer that, then we'll never bother talking to Nate and his agent at all. and that makes me seriously wonder about this franchise.

That's not necessarily true. Because the Bills might very well be offering or thinking of offering him that money, but a month before FA he's not going to sign it, so what's the point? The part you're right about is this is the very low end for him. If anything, he may think of it as lowballing him.

[Kelly the Dog]

im throwing out hypothetical numbers for right now. that is all.

The point is you don't subtract 9 million a year from how much we have in salary cap even if you sign a contract worth 9 mil a year. If he signed a 63 million dollar deal with an 18 million bonus, our cap hit this year would be about 4 million, not 9 million.

[DrDawkinstein]

ah, the way your post is worded made it sound like you thought they were not going to offer him that AT ALL. i gotcha.

[DrDawkinstein]

The point is you don't subtract 9 million a year from how much we have in salary cap even if you sign a contract worth 9 mil a year. If he signed a 63 million dollar deal with an 18 million bonus, our cap hit this year would be about 4 million, not 9 million.

 

EXACTLY why im highballing these numbers, to show that even if the hit was DOUBLE what it normally would be, we STILL have more than enough cap room to sign other FAs and our rookies. my point was that even if he cost us $14mil this year (which is ridiculous) we still have the cap space.

[Kelly the Dog]

EXACTLY why im highballing these numbers, to show that even if the hit was DOUBLE what it normally would be, we STILL have more than enough cap room to sign other FAs and our rookies. my point was that even if he cost us $14mil this year (which is ridiculous) we still have the cap space.

Is that why you said this:

"even if we DID sign him to that contract and after bonus we had... $25mil left. doesnt that still leave us in the top quarter in cap space?"

and this:

that averages to $9mill/season. we're $39mil under. that leaves us with $30mil left....

[DrDawkinstein]

yes, i apologize for not stating "hypothetically speaking" or "so in an EXTREME CASE".

 

stop getting so worked up, youre gonna do some permanent damage on the wall.

 

obviously i know that its going to be UNDER the average of the contact this year. that why i used the average number.

 

you guys nit-pick every stupid detail like any of this talk actually matters....

[daquixers_is_back]

In other words, you know/understand less than zero about how the salary cap works.

 

Kelly is actually right, because we would have much LESS than 9 million count against the cap for Nate this year .... contracts tend to be backloaded, which Is why I and other posters suggested doing a front-loaded contract in this case.

[DrDawkinstein]

Kelly is actually right, because we would have much LESS than 9 million count against the cap for Nate this year .... contracts tend to be backloaded, which Is why I and other posters suggested doing a front-loaded contract in this case.

 

I KNOW kelly is right, i never disagreed with him, read the rest of the posts. i was using extreme numbers to show an example.

[todd]

No friggin way. Just because it is a business doesn't mean you can't conduct yourself honorably, and going back on your word is not honorable.

 

the bottom line is the job of management is to put together a winning team.

 

i would tag him and say,...."sorry Nate...it's not personal. it's business."

 

who said what and when makes no difference. when the Bills win the Super Bowl next year all will be forgiven.

[Pyrite Gal]

7 years, $63 million. Would you do it?

Probably not, but it depends on what my strategy is for building a team capable of winning and I (and as best as I can tell) all of the TSW posters do not know what the Bills strategy likely is, so its hard to tell.

 

Clearly, some folks have an idea of how they would build a winner such as the posts which advocate big spending on the OL and in particular building for the long term by drafting good prospects developing them and paying them the big bucks when they prove their worth.

 

I actually agree this is the "right" to do it. However, I think TD did as well but given the cap constraints he found when he got here, TD's strategy was to make a couple of high stakes attempts at top-level draftees, but as the Bills cap issues did not allow them to spend much more on high level OL picks (as they had other fish to fry like trading a first day pick for a QB after the RJ/Flutie cap mismanagement and spending early choices on CBs like NC), TD attempted to solve the OL issue by drafting and training late picks and trying to catch lightening in a bottle with by getting talented but injured players like Farris or draft pick Sobieski.

 

This strategy failed completely as MW proved to be a bad choice bust (and actually the leading alternative choice McKinnie would only have been a marginal improvement) and JJ proved to be injury prone.

 

Further, the draft low and develop strategy also failed completely because OL position coach Vinklarek was not good enough and after he got canned replacement Ruel was about equally inexperienced.

 

Finally, the alchemical effort to gety something out of folks like Farris or Sobierski proved to be a dry well.

 

I think Marv also basically agrees with a strategy that would see us spending significant draft resources on OL players, but unfortunately after the TD failures at this strategy accompanying an unacceptably long drought in making the playoffs, the Bills simply have to many holes to fill and not enough time to draft and develop OL players as one should in a perfect world, we seem to be pursuing a strategy of using the acquisition of JMac (finally an adult in the position) to acquire "known" commodity FAs and develop late round picks and UDFAs to build the OL. Not preferable but like it or not its the reality.

 

There have been hits and misses so far (Bennie Anderson and Tutan Reyes being the notable ones). However, the quite possible development of late choice Pennington, FA Fowler being able to start 16 (something he had never done before which he did last year while being adequate (no more than but no less than and given he beat the injury bug for at least one year this a good job so far by the braintrust, firt day pick Preston being adequate but we will see this year, and UDFA Peters turning into a big positive gives folks some reasonable hope of things working out.

 

The big OL starter question is at LG IMHO, where Gandy is probably worth keeping because he is credible backup at various OL position (lots of experience and a guard's body with one good year and one bad year as a starting LT but a legit question whether he is the answer at starter anywhere.

 

Still, there are possibilities at FA for an LG, possibly a draft choice but one would need to go high and there may be other needs depending upon the team-building strategy, and we have begun to get some back-ups with potential though this just means they have not proved anything yet (Merz actually got a start and Butler was well-regarded by the draft pundits).

 

Overall, I think we draft to increase our depth and go FA to find a someone likely to contribute next year.

 

Still, I think Marv's thinking starts with running and stopping the run and though we have used a lot of recent draft resources at DT, I suspect we go there again this draft.

 

As far as Nate goes, I think our cap total is high enough that we can actually afford to pay him and still spend bucks else where to meet our needs. However, given our use of the Tampa 2 scheme, I simply do not see us spending the $ required to lock up NC on a CB whose skills of being able to sit on and jump routes or run with speedy WRs lend themselves more to our old D style.

 

My sense is that our CBs will be asked to press cover WRs the first 10-15 yards and then let them go to the safeties or MLB playing the deep zone in our Cover 2 (which might be more accurately be called a Cover 3 actually). Rather than playing with his back to the QB and running with the WR, we want a CB who is a good handfighter and competive guy who will press cover.

 

This description sounds a lot like what Yabouty brings to the game in terms of plusses and minuses and I suspect that particular after he returned belatedly but created enough trust in the staff for him to be used as a starter against NYJ (where he plated not brilliantly but well) and he got some PT in other games he can reasonably be expected to take the nickel slot and will be given a shot to be the #2 CB.

 

I think the key for us to see what we plan to do with Nate is actually going to be found in how Kiwaukee Thomas is handled. If he goes then Youbouty is likely the nickel and we need another starter. If Thomas resigns then Youbouty is probably seen by us as NC's replacement and we likely let NC goes.

 

The other wildcard in all of this of course is what happens wih F-B at MLB. The concept of us franchising him seemed silly to me when I first read it on TSW, but he shows no signs of slowing down in his production and I simply do not see us accepting taking a step back while a rookie like Willis as talented as he may be goes through learning how to make the more diverse than the norm reads our MLB is required to do as he is required to cover like a safety or tackle like a ST depending on what the O does on a particular play.

 

I actually would have more confidence in DeGregorio being a productive MLB for us than in a rookie and it seems far more likely that if we go with an LB in the 1st we get Timmons or Poluszny and then shift Crowell to MLB.

 

I like NC, but particularly since I do not think we will employ his full ability in our scheme, i do not see us spending Champ Bailey money on him.

[todd]

Reed is locked up.

 

No need to talk with Nate at this juncture as there is no way he would sign anything, you would just be negotiating agaisn't yourself. IF bills offered $5, France would say maybe we can get $7 from somewhere else. If I was France, that is exactely what I would council. Once Novemebr hit last year, no way Nate was signing anything put in front of him by the Bills. Maybe, just maybe the Bills learn a lesson here and try to get Evans, reed, Etc locked up before their walk years

[DrDawkinstein]

Probably not,

 

I like NC, but particularly since I do not think we will employ his full ability in our scheme, i do not see us spending Champ Bailey money on him.

 

FIXED!

[The Jokeman]

Not counting the signing bonus he gets too. I think I would go after a guy like Harper. Great cover 2 corner.

I really feel Nate's the best way to go. One thing on Harper, is he's 32 years old and while he could be a good short term solution one has to wonder how many years he has left. Of course we could hope Yobouty develops behind him for a season or two but by then Ashton gets a chance to start he could be eligible for free agency. David Macklin is another UFA with experience in the cover 2 but a little bit younger then Harper. I've also stated in other threads that Travis Fisher should be considered due to his youth and working under Ferrell in St Louis, of course he's a risky pick due to his injury filled past.

[eball]

And in other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.