COMMENTARY
O-linemen prove to be stuffed shirts
Twenty-five months ago the Buffalo Bills’ decision-makers were tearing rotator cuffs patting themselves on the back. They had just signed guard Derrick Dockery to the biggest contract in team history and supplemented their euphoria by overpaying for offensive tackle Langston Walker on the free-agent market.
The shirts-and-ties put two and two together, adding Dockery and Walker to incumbent tackle Jason Peters and center Melvin Fowler, and felt the team’s long-standing offensive line woes had become a thing of the past. Surely not once and for all, but at least for the foreseeable future, which, we’ve now come to learn, meant about a week and a half.
Two more 7-9 seasons later, we’re right back where we started, only worse. Dockery’s gone, not even traded, just up and released, $18.5 million (or two Toronto games) the richer for having stopped by. The final year of a three-year deal was checkmate for Fowler the chess master, who was pushed to the sidelines as last season evolved. The good news is, at $7.2 million total, at least he came NFL cheap.
Not so Walker, he of the five-year, $25 million deal. You want Walker at your dinner table. The man possesses an encyclopedic worldly knowledge and spills it in layman’s terms. I’m just not sure you want him at right tackle, and certainly not at left tackle, which is where he’s bound to end up now that Peters, the one offensive lineman this franchise has developed in ages, is off to Philadelphia.
Whether parting ways with the pricey Peters equates to financial prudence is secondary to the core issue, which is that the front office can’t build an offensive line. The New England Patriots weren’t going to break the bank to re-sign left tackle Matt Light back in 2004, even though he was arguably the most valuable member of the offense outside quarterback Tom Brady. Light remained a Patriot, and for far less than free market value, but the front office message was clear: We’ll get along without you if we have to.
The difference, of course, is that the Patriots draft wisely and develop talent expertly. The Bills do neither. Granted, this ineptitude spans multiple regimes, from Tom Donahoe (he of the Mike Williams pick), to Marv Levy (he of the Dockery-Walker acquisitions) to the current multiheaded monster. The common denominators are chief talent evaluators Tom Modrak and John Guy.
Then again, the disturbing trend predates them both. The Bills haven’t drafted an offensive lineman who produced over the long haul since Ruben Brown way back in 1995. Meanwhile, four of New England’s five line starters were drafted between 2001 and 2005 and the other was signed as an undrafted free agent. The Patriots have a master plan. The Bills operate on whims.
The front office will probably deny it, but it’s now clear that the signing of Terrell Owens was nothing more than an effort (and a successful one at that) to spike interest in advance of Peters’ impending departure. The idea was to hasten season-ticket renewals and cultivate new sales before dropping the bomb that the offensive line would be undergoing yet another extensive overhaul. Yes, the Bills have enhanced their receiving corps. But will it do them any good?
The problem isn’t that the Bills refused to commit roughly 10 percent of their cash to the cap to Peters. That’s a colossal price to pay, particularly for a small-market franchise. Their payroll has risen more than 25 percent in two years. It has to stop somewhere.
What’s disturbing is that the Bills are once again poorly positioned to absorb such a loss. They face one of the tougher schedules. They will be waving goodbye to T. O. after one season. And then where are they besides picking high in the draft, for whatever good that does them?
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