Buffalo Bills Sign Guard Chris Williams

by Steve

Per Adam Schefter the Bills gave former St Louis Rams guard Chris Williams a four year contract worth $13.5 mil with $5.5 guaranteed.  Basically $3.5 mil a season to be the starting left tackle.

Williams, (turns 29 in August) started all sixteen games for the Rams last season.  Walterfootball.com had him ranked as the 17th best guard available in free agency.  At the the time of the hiring WF had 11 "better" guards still unsigned when the Bills flew C-Dubs in sometime in the last twelve hours or so.

It is a position of glaring need for the Bills and this fills it.  How good the guy actually is to me is difficult to fully quantify.  The Bears clearly saw talent in the guy when they drafted him 14th overall in 2008.  He played mostly at tackle (both right and left tackle) before being moved to guard in his third season.  And the word injury is sprayed all over the dude's wikipedia page although he seems to have stayed healthy last year on a one year $2.75 mil contract extension.

From PFT:
"It may not be the safest of bets given Williams’ history as a first-round washout in Chicago and a player who failed to distinguish himself in Buffalo [sic], but it’s never been easy to get free agents to come to Buffalo without paying a bit of a premium."

Ouch, although not exactly unfair.  Plus he is only a guard and is $3.5 mil for any football player with a $133 million cap all that much of a risk? Ya know 2.6% of the entire cap?

Then again we get this from Walterfootball:
"I just gave the Redskins a "D" for giving $17 million overall and $5 million guaranteed Shawn Lauvao, yet Chris Williams is worse than Lauvao, and he's getting even more guaranteed money from Buffalo. This obviously has to be a worse grade, so you know what that means. Millen time!

Chris Williams is not a good player whatsoever. His best role would be as a backup lineman, and a mediocre one at that. Yet, the Bills are paying him to be their new starting left guard. Maybe they're overcompensating because they never replaced Andy Levitre properly, but they're just making things worse by giving a pedestrian player like Williams this much money."

Evidently the grade of Matt "Millen Yellow King Kielbasa" is not very good and Mr walter is very down on the signing.  Ouch.  I guess at least he isn't Derrick Dockery.  Geez.