Apologies for the late posting today, folks - finals started today, and your humble narrator has been quite busy. I appreciate those of you who have taken the time to post thoughtful FanPosts and FanShots on this slow day; keep that up - they're fun to read. In lieu of a more thoughtful post (which I'll have up bright and early tomorrow morning), here are a few newsworthy talking points for y'all to ponder while I prevent myself from flunking out of college:

The NFL has announced dollar amounts that each team has to spend on its rookies - drafted or undrafted - and with 10 picks plus several free agents in the fold, the Bills were allocated the eighth highest amount to spend on newbies. The team will have $5.3 million in 2008 cap space to spend on those players.

Speaking of cash, if you're buying tickets to see the Bills play in Toronto this season, don't plan on purchasing that plasma TV you've always wanted as well. Tickets for the Bills' games in Toronto will average $183, with the most expensive tickets (non-VIP) a whopping $295. To compare, seats in Buffalo are roughly a fifth of the price ($60). SBb4idie's FanPost

In Vinnie Iyer's pre-season power rankings, the Bills check in at #13. That's nice praise this early; the article is also chock-full of super hero references (the Bills are compared to Captain Marvel - awesome). Football + Super Heroes = Fantastic Read.

Jemele Hill of ESPN.com's Page 2 examines the non-existent relationship between Demetrius Bell and Karl Malone. Let's just say she's not a believer that Malone will be winning Father of the Year awards any time soon.

Looking for more info on Buffalo's UDFA QB, Luke Drone? This article has you covered.

The Buffalo Bills are in the midst of their first mini-camp of the 2008-09 season - rookie mini-camp - and Buffalo's top draft picks are reportedly performing well in their first professional workouts.  Be sure to catch the official site's coverage of the three-day camp - the fine folks over there do an outstanding job giving us practice reports, player interviews, and other information.  It's all great stuff.

Not surprisingly, rookies are still the talk of the town this weekend in Buffalo.  While I prepare for my final week of college classes and final exams today, here's some reading material for y'all:

- Sal Maiorana of the Democrat and Chronicle takes a look at Bills fourth-round cornerback Reggie Corner.

- Jeff Matthews of The Town Talk examines the non-existent relationship between Bills seventh-round pick OT Demetrius Bell and his biological father, former NBA star Karl Malone.  Malone has been shockingly absent in Bell's life, but the new Bill may be starting to make a name for himself.

- Scott Pitoniak of the Democrat and Chronicle takes a look at the new rule that will allow Army football players, including Bills fullback Mike Viti, to pursue a career in professional football.

- What does the Toronto Sun think of Ralph Wilson Stadium?  Well, it got mixed reviews.

- Finally, here's the article that's sure to spark the most discussion from y'all today.  Jerry Sullivan believes that the money we're getting from Toronto should go directly to Lee Evans' bank account.

We'll be back early tomorrow morning with an article outlining reasonable expectations for WR James Hardy's rookie season.  Until then, go Bills!

Losman's future may be decided over draft weekend (BuffaloBills.com)

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the Buffalo Bills had made the decision to keep quarterback J.P. Losman, who earlier this off-season had requested a trade out of Buffalo after losing his starting job to rookie Trent Edwards. The reports were based on COO Russ Brandon's comments at the team's annual pre-draft luncheon; it is now becoming clear that while these reports were not erroneous, they may have been misled.

Mid-to-late April is routinely a time in which NFL executives league-wide are keeping team news very close to the vest. Interviews this time of the year are generally canned responses, incredibly generic overviews of the draft process, and not-so-veiled attempts at avoiding questions. Brandon's short answer, in which he merely stated that Losman was still a part of this Bills franchise, may have been an example of these truthful-escape answers typical of this time of year.

Pro Football Weekly is now reporting that they've heard whispers that Losman is still available via trade, likely with a third or fourth round pick as the asking price, and the team would still like to move the signal-caller over draft weekend. Whether or not that happens is another question entirely, but it seems likely at this point that if the Bills get a fair offer for Losman's services, they'll honor his trade request. I don't expect that offer to come, but if it does, it wouldn't be shocking at all to see the Bills pull the trigger.

People... Russ Brandon Isn't Picking.
I've been bothered this week by reports such as this, discussing the meaning of Russ Brandon's first draft after his big promotion. Yes, Brandon's role of COO means that he'll have a much more prominent role in this year's draft process. But in Buffalo, that means very little.

The "consensus" style that the Bills' front office has employed for the last two years has been discussed so often that it's almost cliche at this point. But Brandon's opinion - again, valued more highly than in past seasons - is only one of dozens that will be sought in the team's war room next weekend. Every Bills coach will have input, and as we discussed last week, the final decisions will be made by VP of College Scouting Tom Modrak and head coach Dick Jauron.

I'm as curious to see what happens with this franchise with Brandon in charge as well. But that scope does not reach far enough into pro and college personnel matters to pin the success or failure of this team's on-field performance on Brandon. He's an orchestrator, not a decision-maker. So keep that in mind before you start to rip Brandon, as will inevitably happen over the next year. He's not as involved as local media make him seem to be, though he is involved to an extent.

Sometimes, the NFL Draft can get overwhelming. We've spent weeks upon weeks breaking down draft prospects, strategies, and all the other wherewithal you hear about this time of the year as it pertains to the Buffalo Bills. For me personally, it has gotten to the point where any hard news is a breath of fresh air (or a "fresh of breath air", if you're Robert Royal).

Here are five Buffalo Bills articles you should be reading (if you haven't already) - and two of them aren't even about the draft!

The official site has a nice piece up on SLB Angelo Crowell this evening. It outlines Crowell's off-season rehabilitation after triceps surgery, his thoughts on the new defensive additions (specifically new running mate Kawika Mitchell), and the upcoming season. An excellent, non-draft related Bills article. Fresh of breath air indeed.

A certain Mr. Bialy of RealFootball365.com thinks that DE Al Wallace, a participating member of the Bills organization for about 3 defensive snaps last year, should be re-signed in lieu of drafting a defensive end this year. That ought to make some of you squirm in your computer chairs. I happen to disagree with him - Wallace can be considered a nice Plan B option (or Plan C to the Harvey Contingent), but the Bills would be best served finding some speed off the edge in the draft - wherever that happens.

Jerry Sullivan of the Buffalo News talks draft. His (probably) correct thoughts? Lee Evans has a ton of negotiating leverage with the Bills right now, and the team will probably go defense with their top pick. His (definitely) incorrect thoughts? Russ Brandon isn't building this roster, Mr. Sullivan - that's all Dick Jauron and Tom Modrak.

The official site covers everything said about wideouts at yesterday's pre-draft luncheon.

The Niagara Gazette gets specific about draft day wideouts, however, noting that Modrak yesterday confirmed that WR Malcolm Kelly has NOT fallen down Buffalo's draft board due to his poor 40 times. His post-workout outburst may have left a bad taste in Buffalo's mouth, however.

Stay tuned - much more coming your way tomorrow morning!

The Buffalo Bills' 2008 schedule has been announced, with the Bills' return to Monday Night Football the highlight. The Bills will host the Cleveland Browns on MNF, the second straight season the Bills will host a Monday Night game. The team will also play its regular season matchup against the Dolphins on December 7th in Toronto. The full schedule (once again, big ups to Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit for coding up another beauty):

Let me be the first to announce my displeasure that the Bills are playing the Dolphins in Toronto. What is the international appeal with that franchise in the first place? Not to mention the fact that watching the Bills pound our biggest rivals into submission is one of the better home games of the season - and it's happened exactly that way for a few years now. Why the NFL exported a division game, I'll never know. Exporting the Oakland or San Diego games makes a whole lot more sense to me. But maybe it's just me. I'll miss watching our defense torch John Beck, though (live anyways).

One positive: the Bills will not play the Patriots coming off of their bye week this year. The Pats' bye is in Week 5, and they face the 49ers in Week Six. The NFL finally caught themselves there (or realized we'd caught them).

Thoughts on the schedule?

The Buffalo Bills' 2008 pre-season schedule was announced today. The Bills, oddly enough, have two "big" games this pre-season - or, at least, as big as a pre-season game can get - when they host Pittsburgh in their modern debut in Toronto and appear on a Sunday Night contest in Indianapolis. Here's the full schedule:

Fri 8/8: @ Washington, 7PM
- Cool. It's... the first game of the pre-season. I always like that game - it's probably the one pre-season game that I actually enjoy watching. Football returns to us, Bills fans, on August 8.

Thu 8/14: vs. Pittsburgh, 7:30PM
- This game will be played in Toronto. Anyone else feel that a pre-season game is an inauspicious start for the Bills in Toronto? No one at that game will care about the outcome. The Bills signed up to play three pre-season games in Toronto; they should have waited until 2009 for the first one and started their Toronto gig off with a bang in the regular season. But maybe that's just me.

Sat 8/23: @ Indianapolis, 8PM
- This is the night game, to air on the NFL Network at 8PM eastern. (All other pre-season games will air on WKBW.) Which means that if I can't find a way to get the NFL Network by August 23, it will be the first game I'll have missed (whether in person or on the boob tube) since 2004, when I had to miss a Bills loss to the Jets (16-14) while singing at my cousin's wedding. Hard to be upset about that one; I may actually be irked a little about this one. The third pre-season game is the "most important" pre-season game, after all. Update [2008-4-3 15:19:28 by Brian Galliford]: This game, will, in fact, air locally, so we're all set. Thanks, Krenn.

Thu 8/28: vs. Detroit, 6:30PM
- You bet I'm going to this game. I paid for tickets to eight games at The Ralph, and this is the first one of the '08 season. To quote Ron Burgundy: "It's boring, but, it's part of my life."

So yeah. That's the pre-season schedule. Stay tuned for one more Rumblings post later on this evening, as we'll break down our SBNation NFL Mock Draft selection.

Contrary to reports last week which indicated that the Buffalo Bills would not be receiving compensatory picks, the NFL today awarded the Bills with fourth and seventh round selections. Compensatory picks are awarded based on net free agent loss from the previous off-season; the Bills lost several prominent free agents last season, most notably CB Nate Clements and LB London Fletcher, and those losses led to some nice additional selections for the Bills.

Last week, the official site's Chris Brown reported, via team VP Jim Overdorf, that the team would not be receiving any compensatory selections. My belief that this report was Overdorf preparing for the worst has been proven correct. Even though the Bills added Derrick Dockery, Langston Walker, Jason Whittle and Josh Scobey in free agency last year (they also lost Mike Gandy and Andre' Davis, giving the team no net free agent gain or loss), the Bills will get two extra picks.

That fact alone confirms that not even NFL personnel have a clue as to how these picks are distributed. Net loss/gain has long been rumored to be the predominant factor; clearly, the quality of free agents is taken into account as well.

What This Means for the Draft
I love the flexibility that these two additional picks give the Bills in the draft. With two fourth-round selections and three seventh-round selections - as well as the remaining possibility of trading QB J.P. Losman - the Bills will have extra picks to move up in the second and third rounds if they see fit. This increases the team's chances of adding more than one impact player in this draft (most likely at WR, CB, TE or DE), just as they've done in the last two drafts (Donte Whitner/John McCargo in 2006, Marshawn Lynch/Paul Posluszny in 2007).

Thoughts on this supposedly shocking, but not really that surprising, bit of news?

Update [2008-3-31 15:44:6 by Brian Galliford]: BB.com reports that the overall selections are #132 and #251.

One of the more controversial potential moves for the Buffalo Bills this off-season - and a move I've championed for quite some time - is the proposed shift of third-year safety Donte Whitner to free safety. For a year, my theory was passed off as valid, but unlikely to happen. Then the Bills spent part of this off-season entertaining the likes of Marlon McCree, bringing the Whitner-to-free talks back to life.

Now, Anthony Bialy of RealFootball365.com - a writer I very much enjoy - sounds off on the topic. His thought? Whitner should stay at strong safety. Since we live in a democratic society, however, I have the ability to (respectfully) poke holes in his argument; I'll do that right now:

It's hard to argue here as far as Whitner goes - though he takes bad angles too frequently that result in big gains, he's generally a very solid tackler in the box. My problem doesn't lie with Whitner, however - it lies with the rush defense as a whole. If moving Whitner back to free safety and adding a safety (or using a current option) at strong makes Buffalo's defense better, how can it be considered a bad move?

I don't know about y'all, but I distinctly remember watching George Wilson get run over by Willis McGahee in Buffalo's victory over Baltimore last season. It's not like the free safety isn't important in run support. Whitner would be an absolute force from the position in that department - perhaps the best run support free safety in the league. If the move backward makes us stronger at free safety, better against the run and gives Whitner more chances to make big plays (something Bialy admits needs to happen), I again ask the question - how is it a bad move?

That's just it - it hasn't worked, and Whitner hasn't "traumatized offenses" by any stretch of the imagination. Our defense, the past two seasons, has been dreadful, and Whitner was a part of it. He's been impressive in terms of leadership, character and intelligence, and I'm very glad he's a part of this team. But if we can make him more productive and the defense better as a whole - which is more than a "slim" hope, as Bialy puts it - it's a move you make. It's that simple.

With the Bills losing out on McCree, however, it seems more likely at this point that Whitner will, indeed, stay at strong safety (unless the team gets a superb training camp out of John Wendling). That's not the worst thing in the world, as Whitner does have the ability to improve at that specific position. I just don't understand Bialy's argument in the least - it's one thing to keep Whitner's responsibilities consistent so that he can grow, but if you're compromising the effectiveness of your defense in doing it, it's just a bad idea.

The official site updates us on the progress of Ko Simpson, Whitner's running mate as a rookie. Mr. Whitner seems very excited to have his draft-mate back; it's going to be interesting to see how Simpson responds to early strenuous workouts on his surgically repaired ankle.

More Donte Whitner: his early quote in this Buffalo News piece got me pumped up for a season that's still six months away. QB Trent Edwards had some adrenaline-inducing comments as well (discounting the fact that he shaved his rookie beard).

Free agent linebacker Josh Stamer has signed with the Tennessee Titans. That's one special teams linebacker to bite the dust; if the Bills can't re-sign Mario Haggan now, they'll almost certainly look for a depth strong-side linebacker with special teams potential in the draft. Unless, of course, they're comfortable with Blake Costanzo in that role.

As it's planned out now, sireric will have a post up this afternoon about this year's tight end prospects. We're going to be asking for a lot of community input from y'all on this, so stay tuned. And if sireric gets busy, Kurupt will take his place - we're loaded with content, so keep your browsers locked in to Buffalo Rumblings.

Good morning, fellow Rumblers. I'll be out of town until this afternoon for a job interview! I promise you all that I'll have a much more interesting, Buffalo Bills-related discussion up later this evening; for now, I encourage you to visit any of the discussions we've had in recent days, especially our re-tooling of the needs list. We're still looking for input on that discussion as we revise our needs list heading into the draft.

For now, as I stray a bit further away from Bills country today, I thought it would be prudent to take a quick look at what's happening outside of Buffalo in the NFL, as well - with a little help from three of SB Nation's finest football writers.

Even though Fooch at Niners Nation is clearly distraught over Commissioner Roger Goodell's punishment for tampering against the 49ers, I have to applaud the efforts of the Commish on this one. I've enjoyed the cracking whip of Goodell's tenure so far, and think he's taken good strides to keep the game as honest and fair as possible.

If he really wants to be fair, however, he can't stop there - because if tampering is punishable, so too should the full-on coaching staff and roster alterations be in Miami. Bill Parcells hired an entire coaching staff before a head coach, and then signed a guard (Justin Smiley) about thirteen seconds after the free agent signing period started this year. Miami certainly isn't the only franchise who have made sketchy moves - if I remember correctly, the Bills themselves signed the first free agent last year, inking Jason Whittle shortly after midnight - but Goodell needs to continue this vendetta against tampering. It's a good thing.

The folks at Behind the Steel Curtain take a look at what an uncapped NFL could look like not only from a league perspective (owners, players and lockouts), but from the fan's perspective as well. It's certainly the worst-case scenario, but it's worth discussing at any rate.

Once in a while, one of the bloggers at SB Nation scores a wicked cool interview. That happened to us last off-season when we interviewed Paul Posluszny. Today, ETVal, who runs the excellent blog Big Blue View, features an interview with former Giant great Leonard Marshall. I'm happy to report that the Marshall interview is much more in-depth and interesting than our Posluszny interview, and it's a pretty interesting read, even if we're talking about a team that beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl. Congrats, ETVal!

We'll see you this afternoon for much more on the Buffalo Bills... we promise.

We've officially hit the lull between the end of free agency and the beginning of serious draft preparations, so Buffalo Bills news is a bit hard to come by these days. However, there are a few topics floating around that we can discuss this evening; I've also got a couple of exciting tidbits to share with y'all about our glorious network, SB Nation.

Chris Brown, at the official site, further explores Buffalo's safety position from the perspective of second-year man John Wendling. In the article, Brown once again brings up the potential move of Donte Whitner to free safety - a move I've been publicly backing for nearly a year now. Is Wendling a potential answer at strong safety if Whitner's position is switched? Where do Bryan Scott and, more importantly, Ko Simpson figure in at that point? What of George Wilson, last year's pleasant surprise? Safety is quickly becoming Buffalo's most log-jammed position, and it's sure to bring up some debate heading into the regular season.

Pete Prisco, perhaps my favorite NFL columnist, gives the Bills some love in his latest piece:

He then names receiver and cornerback Buffalo's most likely first-round draft routes. Not exactly going out on a limb, but hey... he didn't say left tackle, did he?

Connor Byrne, in one of his more interesting articles of late, takes a look at Dwayne Wright's rookie season. Many Bills fans are quickly forgetting about Wright - a point Byrne emphasizes - which may be a mistake. This kid still has talent, and any runner that's tough to bring down between the tackles and can catch the football belongs in this league. I still like this kid, and think he can be a contributor in 2008.

It had been a week since I'd done it (I was on vacation last week), but our first round mock draft tracker is once again up to date. I'd like to urge anyone who hasn't seen this before to take a gander; I'd also like to urge everyone who has a mock draft source they like, but is not represented on this page, to let me know so I can add it.

Starting next week, the football bloggers of SB Nation will be kicking off the second annual SB Nation NFL Mock Draft. The mock will be hosted at our NFL Draft blog, Mocking the Draft, and will feature two full rounds of draft-style mocking. Each team blogger will be making the selections. I urge every one of you to take a gander at the rest of SB Nation's football blogs as we head toward this network-wide mock - the rest of the bloggers do a super job of keeping their communities up to date, and the fan commentary is first-rate. We'll be discussing the SBN Mock much more leading up to draft day.

We've finally gotten the OK to discuss this publicly, so I'll do so - SB Nation has launched a brand new blog platform, called SBN 2.0. It's still unclear (to the bloggers, anyways) when the NFL blogs will be updated, but SB Nation's baseball blogs are making the jump in time for the start of the MLB regular season. Personally, I cannot wait to get this site updated so y'all can enjoy the shiny new features, but if you're looking for a sneak peak, take a look at some of the MLB blogs that are updated. Over the Monster is one example (no, I'm not a Red Sox fan - I'm an Indians fan, meaning I can't wait for Let's Go Tribe to make the switch this week).