Sanity reigns
OK. My faith in the collective sanity of Jason Peters, his agent and the Bills' front office is restored with the news this afternoon that the Bills' star left tackle will, in fact, report for work starting Saturday. So Peters is not going to automatically kiss goodbye the $191,176 he's scheduled to get for his first paycheck. Obviously, he's subject to fines and no doubt will be hit with some. But something tells me it will be a fraction of the total that has accrued. The Bills need Peters back. Peters' agent, Eugene Parker, is one of the most accomplished in the business. It never made sense that Peters would hold out into the season, since he has three full years remaining on his contract. If he sat out the whole year, what was he going to do, repeat this whole process again next year? Nevertheless, the fact he had so little contact with teammates and Parker had so little contact with the Bills over the summer made one wonder, might he be mad enough to embark on a fruitless, Don Quixote-like exercise? No. Saner heads prevailed. Peters still has a great case to get a new contract eventually. The Bills no doubt recognize he's underpaid relative to the rest of the team. If Peters does his job, there should be room for agreement. The worst case scenario for both sides would be for Peters to get hurt. That would complicate future talks big-time. But we're getting way ahead of ourselves. Peters will be here. He will be in the lineup eventually, if not Week 2 then perhpas Week 3.
---Mark Gaughan
