Mario Williams Leaves the AFC South – A Good Thing For Everyone Involved
By Luke Sims
Mario Williams has moved on to the Buffalo Bills. With the largest defensive contract ever given to a defensive player, Williams has brought media interest back to Buffalo. Media coverage of Buffalo is a decade high, considerably higher than when J.P. Losman was drafted to be the starter the Bills needed.
And after the first three games of the season, nobody will care once again.
Mario Williams has secured financial stability for the rest of his life ($50 million guaranteed will do that for you) and he has also secured irrelevancy.
It doesn’t matter how good Williams plays in Buffalo, it doesn’t matter how many pro-bowls he may make, it doesn’t even matter if he successfully returns to pre-injury form (which he should). The Houston Texans are going to be successful without him, and the Bills will continue to be bottom feeders.
With the amount of cap space that Williams will eat up every season the Bills won’t be able to recruit top-tier talent in free agency again for a good bit of time. They will have to rely on the draft. How well has that worked out for them in recent years? Not so great. Even with Fred Jackson running the ball and Stevie Johnson continuing his impressive stat lines, it won’t pan out for the Bills.
Ryan Fitzpatrick can’t carry the team, he just isn’t the perfect quarterback to do it. The team continually finds ways to collapse on itself. Starting 4-1, the team won two more games all season.
Not to mention that the defense will continue to be mostly anticlimactic. 30th in points allows and 26th in yards allowed, Williams will not suddenly turn this defense into a contender. Will it get better? Sure. But it won’t become a top ten defense over night. One good player does not a defense make.
But back to the point.
Williams is happy with his money. The Texans are happy with the ability of their defense to still play at a high level without him (see season 2011). The Colts are happy beause Mario Williams won’t be terrorizing their first year quarterback. The Titans are happy because either Peyton Manning or Matt Hasselbeck can excel when given time, or not given time. And the Jags are happy because phantom pressure increased about 400% when Mario Williams is around twice a year (or so I hear).
The Black Hole of Buffalo has swallowed Mario Williams to irrelevance.
And the league, especially the AFC South, is happy.
Sure, the Jags didn’t get somebody to pair with Jeremy Mincey. But dang, that schedule just felt a whole lot lighter with Mario Williams far, far away in western New York.
– Luke N. Sims