Friday, February 21, 2014

Bills working with Byrd's agent to put price on safety

BY NICK ST. DENIS

The Buffalo Bills have their ballpark idea of what safety Jairus Byrd is worth, and Byrd's camp has an opinion of its own.

Over the next few days, the sides are giving each other their respective takes.

The Bills' brass is talking to Byrd's agent, as well as the representatives of the rest of the team's pending free agents, at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis this week and weekend.

"Before we got here we set a priority list and set the parameters of value that we have on each of these guys and we’ll go from there and see what they think," Bills general manager Doug Whaley said at the Combine, via BuffaloBills.com.

Byrd is clearly the Bills' top priority for the second year on a row, this time after nabbing four interceptions, a forced fumble, a sack and 48 tackles in 11 games last season coming off an injury.

If the 27-year-old does hit the open market in March, he won't be available for long. Plenty of teams, namely the rival New York Jets, have Byrd on their radars.

“Obviously we want to have all of our free agents back, but in this system that’s going to be hard to do," Whaley said. "With the salary cap you can’t get everybody, but we’re in touch with every one of the agents for our prospective free agents."

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