By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Langston Walker – Signed by the Bills in 2007

It wasn’t Langston Walker’s fault that the Bills offered a lot of money as a free agent. It simply was a case of not getting the most for the dollars.

Walker was a second-round pick of the Raiders in 2002. The offensive tackle was a reserve for a few years, but finally became a starter in 2005. Walker started all 16 games for Oakland in 2006, so he was in a good bargaining position when free agency arrived the following spring. Buffalo handed over $25 million over five years. It didn’t match the payout to Derrick Dockery ($49 million), but it was still a good-sized deal.

Walker showed up every day for work, starting in all 32 games for the next two years. But he was considered an average offensive lineman by some. The Bills opted to make some big changes in their struggling offense shortly before the start of the 2009 season, and he was one of the victims. Walker went back to Oakland, and was a starter in 2010 before exiting football.

Here’s a 2010 interview with him:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *