Good morning Rumblers,

Happy Monday! Whatever the heck that means.

Over the last several days, our Bills have been quite busy. We've signed Stevie, Chandler, Morrison, and word is out that we might Tender Urbik and Rhinehart. It looks like Buddy is sticking to his plan to keep our own, build through the draft, and pick up key FA's.

As expected, there was much excitement on this site from Bills fans over the past several days, which in some cases I can understand. We finally have a "star-type" player who decided to stay in Buffalo over the big pay day and greener pastures elsewhere. Not only that, we got to keep him at "home town" discount. We resigned a TE coming of a career year for relatively cheap, and we managed to convince a rather productive LB earlier in his career to stay here, when quite honestly he had no incentive to be here, considering he didn't play much last season and will be asked to play a position he hasn't really played in several years. So Bills fans have a legitimate right to be happy. We have 30 mil in cap space to sign big FA's and a top 10 pick in this year's draft.

But the question is, at this point are we a better team then what we were last year? I ask this question and I ask it now, because during all of the resignings, I witnessed some Rumblers going as far as saying that we are better team now. I've seen people overly excited that we resigned Morrison, and say that LB corps is set with Morrison, Shep, and Barnett, and that this team is poised to compete for the AFC East title. Now, these comments were coming from some very senior Rumblers; guys, who I respect and whom are really knowledgeable. I heard Rumblers say "well, with an extra year in the system and more training, our players will be better".

Have I missed something folks? Honestly, please educate me if I have. The last time I checked, we were 6-10 with the same exact players we resigned. Morrison, wasn't even able to start at OLB over Kelsay and Spencer Johnson in a 3-4, and now I'm suppose to believe he's the answer? Chandler, is purely a redzone guy and in between the 20's, he's virtually non-existent. And Stevie, as much as we love him he's not a "number one" receiver (which I'm open to debate this fact with anyone). The fact, that we signed all of these guys before the start of FA, may mean that these players agents either knew that they wouldn't have gotten much interest in free agency or wouldn't have gotten paid what they did. Did we jump the gun?

Now, I pride myself on always trying to bring perspective to a situation. I'm not an optimist or pessimist, but I'm a realist. I don't want to rain/reign (too lazy to verify) on anyone's parade, but resigning players that aren't all that talented just for the sake of spending the mandatory cap figure doesn't fly with me. Have you noticed, that we are the only team that has been doing this? Have you also noticed, that we are the only team that haven't made it to the playoffs in 12-13 seasons? I'll hold my opinion on this offseason after FA and the draft is completed. Unlike most, I'm not excited with the recent moves, because I wasn't excited about last year's roster. I'll be excited when we do something unexpected, like get a top tier Free Agent or two and draft well for a 2nd straight season. I'm a little concerned, that because we resigned Chandler and Morrison that we won't target these positions in Free Agency. I think we should be looking to upgrade at TE and SLB, and if we did upgrade via Free Agency, that means we just overpaid for backups. Doesn't make much "cents".

So what do you say Rumblers, are we better?