excellent piece by Mike Lombardi in SI

[Orton's Arm]

1. I dont think dockery and walker are overpaid. If they are, perhaps they are slightly, but not as much as people make it out to be. Dockery was widely regarded as a very good young, up and coming guard. The Bills were smart to not let him leave buffalo without a contract. Dockery would have gotten a similar contract somewhere else. And i'd rather have dockery on the Bills for his current contract than have dockery somewhere else for $5 million cheaper. As for walker, he's another young up and coming player. Look at what tackles are getting paid. Walkers 5 for 25 contract isnt too far off from where his talent level is.

Given the Bills' situation, it made sense to sign both those players.

2. As for letting the CBs walk, theres just 2 comments. We dont know how this new bills front office will deal with re-signings in the future. As for McKelvin, we'll have to wait 5 years to find out. Who knows what the team (or NFL) will look like then, so speculation is pointless. I'd rather have him stay here, but I can see certain situations where its acceptable to let McKelvin walk if it comes to that.

I see two legitimate strategies here. One is to use first round picks on CBs with the idea of giving them extensions. The other is to avoid using first round picks on CBs, with the idea that CBs aren't worth top dollar. I would disagree with the idea of using a first round pick on any position, if the plan was to have that position go first contract and out.

[Mickey]

Given the Bills' situation, it made sense to sign both those players.

 

I see two legitimate strategies here. One is to use first round picks on CBs with the idea of giving them extensions. The other is to avoid using first round picks on CBs, with the idea that CBs aren't worth top dollar. I would disagree with the idea of using a first round pick on any position, if the plan was to have that position go first contract and out.

I don't think teams adhere to strategies like that independent of what they have in the locker room. Our defense needs to improve and if you look over the talent in the locker room on defense, especially after signing Stroud and Mitchell, the place to improve was at CB regardless of whether CBs are or are not the vital players they were back in the day. It is where we had to go to get better, so we did. We are solid at SS and FS. We just extended/re-signed our DE's. We used a top pick last year to get a MLB and we signed a top OLB in Mitchell plus, Crowell has been one of our few playmakers. We used a top pick on McCargo and he is coming along fine and we signed Stroud. The only position left to try an upgrade was CB where we were thin on numbers and talent.