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Sunday, November 17, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The Bills weren't looking for the next Kurt Warner, Tommy Maddox or even Marc Bulger when they invited 88 out-of-work football players to a unique gathering last weekend in Buffalo. They wouldn't mind finding the next Ray Seals, though.

"We might sign five or six of them," said Tom Donahoe, Buffalo's president and general manager.

NFL teams will invite up to a handful of players at a time to their facilities for a workout during the season to keep their "ready" lists updated, but what the Bills did was unique. It was the idea of their pro personnel director, John Guy -- Bill Cowher's first special teams coach with the Steelers.

Guy talked to Donahoe about the idea in September. Why not hold a combine-like workout during their off weekend?

"Fine," Donahoe told him. "Do it."

They called agents, told them of their plans and asked them to send some of their best players not under contract with a team.

"We could have had 500," Donahoe said.

The Bills agreed to pay the travel expenses of five players; the remaining 83 had to pay their own way to Buffalo. They held two sessions of workouts with the Bills coaches conducting each. One group started at 1:30 Saturday, the other between 2 and 2:30 and they were done by 4:30. The Bills taped everything.

"It was fun, well-organized," Donahoe said. "It was kind of neat. I've gotten a heck of a lot of calls about it. There are so many guys out there who just want a chance."

Donahoe was with the Steelers when they signed Seals as a free agent from Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers discovered Seals, who never played college football, on a minor-league football field.

"We had three quarterbacks who were productive," Donahoe said of last week's participants.

One was Quincy Gray, who played at Florida A&M.

"There were three or four defensive linemen and a couple of defensive backs we might consider for next year," Donahoe said. "But the tight ends were bad and the linebackers were bad. A couple of the kickers were decent, but I'm not giving you those names."

Donahoe said it "gave us something to do on the bye week," but others in the NFL don't think it will catch on.

Ron Hill, the Atlanta Falcons' vice president of football operations, used to bring in five players at a time when he worked the same job with Jacksonville because Coach Tom Coughlin wanted to keep current on the talent on the street.

But Hill has cut back on that with the Falcons and he certainly isn't interested in holding a combine for 88 players on a weekend during the season.

"I'm glad he did it and I didn't," Hill said.

Every team has their "ready" lists during the season, a ranking of players at each position who can be signed when the need arrives. That could involve signing someone to the practice squad or beefing up a position hit hard by injuries or incompetence. When the need arrives, coaches turn to the personnel department, who turn to their "ready" lists.

They start anew during the summer when teams play exhibition games and then start cutting players. Their lists include each team's list of practice-squad players, because they are free agents until they join someone's 53-man roster.

"When I was in Jacksonville, we'd bring in five guys a week, regardless of whether we needed them or not," Hill said. "We've kind of gotten away from that. First of all, it's expensive; second of all, you may like the guy but you can't make a change anyway.

"You're fooling with the chemistry in the locker room, fooling with a lot of things to tweak a roster. Some people have no regards for that, some people do. Tom [Coughlin] didn't mind changes; Dan [Reeves] does. They are two extremes.

"We feel very comfortable with our ready lists, and if we have to go get a guy, we know which practice guys to go get, you get a guy who was in camp with you who knows your system, or a veteran guy."

Hill, by the way, says the ready list for kickers is a poor one.

"They are few and far between. There are 32 teams and each has one; some have two. Now's not the time to look for players."