Buffalo Bills Have Two Advantages On The Stevie Johnson Front

the Price was not right.

Sure he player well against revis. On slants for 10 or so yards. Steve is good, but he is not a guy you can just throw it up to. Or is gunna beat anyone deep for a big td.

I like him and want him, but he is still second tier.

but IMO his agent is playing this thing pretty good for Stevie. He knows very well what you said in this story is true about the backlash.

I still am confident that there will be a deal, just not right away. I give it two to three weeks and we should start to hear some stuff.

7.5M could simply be a base salary number. He might also be wanting something like a 20M signing bonus for all we know.

under the same rationale, Johnson and his agent may be ok with the franchise tag this year…

If I was him, that would be sitting in the back of my mind during this process. How quickly all his “loyal” fans tried to run him out of town.

We may get what we asked for after that game.

Ive been pretty quiet this offseason and one of the reasons is Im really waiting to see what this team does with Stevie Johnson. If he leaves the sense of spinning tires will simply be too much. They traded Lee Evans with the slogan that it was time to hand Stevie Johnson the numeber 1 gig. If they let him walk one year after saying that I don’t know how I’ll respond but Im pretty sure it wont be what the front office is looking to elicit from its fanbase.

Beavis and Butthead also come to mind.

I’m tired of developing talent and letting it walk. We have been the leagues farm team for that last decade it has to stop. The Bills are the sole reason I pay any level of attention to the NFL. At 29 I really don’t have a lot of good memories aside from Superbowl parties when I had no knowledge of the game itself. I believe they will bring him back but if they don’t that may just spell the end of my caring about the team. If it were me I would resign Stevie and if what I hear about Marques Colston potentially hitting the market is true I would make a serious effort to sign him as well.

is it the beer????

The football???

Or a combination??

Does winning come “naturally” in Detroit? In the past four seasons, they’ve gone 0-16, 2-14, 6-10, and 10-6. Their entire history has been a fight to get up to mediocre. But they don’t have a problem getting FAs. Vanden Bosch signed with them the year after they had 2 wins. So did Scheffler and Burleson. Shouldn’t there have been some mass exodus in 2010 and 2011?

If Chris’ Brown’s report that if it were 7.5 per year it would be done then i’d have to think 9.5 would be enough to keep him for a year and keep negotiating. doesn’t seem that far off does it?

The 49ers already have a WR who plays essentially the same role in Harbaugh’s offense as Stevie would in Crabtree. Crabtree finally blossomed this season in Harbaugh’s offense and, arguably, has a tad more speed than Stevie.

What San Fran needs, like the Bills, is a speed receiver to open up the underneath areas for Crabtree and Vernon Davis. Braylon Edwards didn’t work out, in part due to injuries, and they lost Morgan early on. Morgan had been coming into his own as a deep threat, but who knows how he will come back after his injuries.

Injuries also hit the Oakland WR corps hard this season. Whether Oakland would be that interested in Stevie Johnson could greatly depend on how much of a change there is in the organization’s philosophy now that Al Davis is dead and their new coach’s approach. Up until now Oakland has wanted receivers with deep speed almost exclusively in recent years. And, when they’re healthy, they have some decent ones.

Louis Murphy (who also has speed) and Chaz Schillens are their two “possession” receivers. Murphy was hurt a lot last season and, for some reason, Schillens didn’t get a lot of playing time until very late in the season, even though a lot of fantasy folks predicted that he would have a big year.

With those two coming back, would they really want to spend big money on a “possession” receiver like Stevie? I think it depends on whether Al Davis’ son will allow the new coach to put in a very different offense than the one that he father insisted on the club using.

The thing you have to understand about Stevie Johnson is that he is a possession receiver who uses his ability to get off the line of scrimmage and body positioning to get open, has the ability to occasionally go deep, but uses his ability to get YAC yards to get good yardage.

There aren’t a lot of “possession” receivers like that who are capable of playing on the outside and getting 1,000 yards a season—T.Owens was one, Andre Reed was another—or of being a team’s # 1 WR option.

Usually, it is a team’s speed receiver that has a better chance of becoming the # 1 WR option on the team—simply because speed allows a receiver to quickly put up yardage and TDs that it would take many more receptions for a slower “possession” receiver to log. Think Randy Moss vs Wes Welker when they were both playing for the Pats—Welker has a fair amount of speed and can get deep on occasion, but makes his living underneath, while Moss would stretch the defense and could get a TD on any one play. Because of the constant threat that a good speed receiver poses to the defense and his ability to get yards and points quickly, a speed receiver has a better chance of leading his team in yards and TDs and becoming its # 1 WR (Hakeem Nicks is the NY Giants # 1 WR even though Victor Cruz, their slot receiver, led the team in receiving yards, etc.).

Having a “possession” receiver capable of putting up 1,000+ yards a season can make a team’s offense very good because he will keep the chains moving on drives. But, a team doesn’t really need or want to have too many “possession” receivers because, as the Bills showed after D.Jones went down, defenses can “pack it in” if they don’t have to deal with a legitimate deep threat, allowing them to close down the “windows” that the QB has to throw through and making it more likely that the QB will get picked off. However, a team that has a 1,000+ yard “possession” receiver playing opposite a legitimate speed receiver can put up a lot of points—because they have the ability to score quickly and still move the chains when they need to.

Normally teams don’t like to pay “possession” receivers # 1 WR money because it’s thought that “possession” receivers are easier to replace. But, Stevie Johnson falls into what I think is—or at least should be—a category that is the exception: he’s a “possession” receiver who is so good at what he does (no one else did to Revis what he did last year), a team without a quality speed receiver. Put a legitimate “home run” threat speed receiver on the opposite side of the field and Johnson has the potential to put up even bigger numbers (see how Cruz did when he and Nix were healthy together). In the absence of a traditional # 1 speed WR, he has been the team’s # 1 WR and is a proven commodity.

You have to pay for that. And, I believe that the Bills will. If they won’t, a much more likely pair of teams that could use him would be the Jets—who lose P.Burress, but have S.Holmes—or Pittsburgh—who have M.Wallace, but may feel that it’s time for Hines Ward to “hang ’em up”.

If the Bills want to put a high-scoring offense on the field next season, they need to re-sign Stevie Johnson and either 1.) sign a top quality speed receiver in FA; 2.) draft a speed receiver in the draft (although there aren’t many speed receivers in this draft who are as big as Gailley likes his WRs to be); or, hope that M.Easley or D.Clowney can emerge as a legitimate deep threat this season. When healthy, Easley and Clowney have the speed that you would want at that position, but neither has been able to put it together yet in their careers—due to injuries in Easley’s case and inconsistency in Clowney’s. D.Jones has a chance, too, but he’ll have to stay healthy, too, and show more than he did before getting hurt this past season.