VJ91

6'8"? Kind of sounds like a Langston Walker clone, only much more raw and inexperienced. With his weight "stretching out over his 6'8" pretty quickly"...(whatever that means), Langston still has not made All Pro once in his 6 year career, and nobody is really thrilled that he's slated to be our new left tackle full time. I don't have high hopes for this rookie free agent, to be realistic.

I'm so glad I read this article. It absolutely proves my point of how stupid all of these "metric" personal stats are. We can start with this one statement towards the beginning: "...Ellison is a career backup, and Tinoisamoa led St. Louis defenders in tackles last year." Gee, that sounds like signing Tinoisamoa to replace Ellison would be an upgrade to me. But then the "over-statistical jerk" , as Marv Levy might refer to him, compared his Point of Attack (POA) blocks, yards per attempt allowed and gap fills for both players, and it seems that Tinoisamoa might not be that much better the Ellison after all. Gap fills?? Here's the only stats that matter to me, although I have to admit I am not a statistics major: Tinoisamoa, '08: 104 Tackles, 3.0 Sacks, 2 Forced Fumbles. Ellison, '08: 73 Tackles, 0.0 Sacks 0 Forced Fumbles. So, yes KC Joyner, signing Tinoisamoa and starting him in place of Ellison really is an upgrade.

Don't know if this link is out there already, but check out these pictures (no swimsuit type) posted on her website: http://www.mariaverchenova.com/ How does Russia keep bringing us these drop dead gorgeous world class athletes? I thought Russia was completely ruined? Communism is gone. But so is food, jobs and life as we know it here in the good old USA. And yet, there seems to be an endless supply of hot young women who can play sports. Simply mind boggling. This Verchenova young lady is hotter then all the rest. Takes your breath away.

What the f### do mean, a lame SB victory? Are you kidding? That has got to be the absolute stupidest take I have read on this board to date. I wonder how many Steelers fans thought the win was lame while they were partying and parading in Pittsburgh the next few weeks?? And you are trashing Cowher for taking 15 years to win it? It's now been officially 15 years since the Bills last played in a SB. I'm just as much of a Bills fan now as I was then, despite the fact I don't go to every game as I did in those days. Real NFL football fans have to appreciate SB wins no matter how many years come between them, since teams win so damn few of those games to begin with. Look at those Steelers fans. Before Cowher won his lame SB against the Seahawks, the fans waited those 15 Cowher years, plus another 11 more years, since their last SB win way back in the 1979-1980 season. That's right. Steelers fans had a 26 year SB drought between victories. You still think they though Cowher's win was lame, in 2005?

Wow, a bust after seven whole games? Playing with that talent laden Chiefs defense? Why, Dorsey should have had 12 sacks, 120 tackles and 53 solo tackles behind the line of scrimmage after 7 damn football games, right?

I would trade next year's number one for Dorsey in a heart beat. He was the 5th player taken in the '08 draft. He may have "struggled" with the Chiefs pathetic defense in his rookie season, but just think about lining him up next to Stroud this coming season. He could forget about switching to end, and play his natural tackle postition. The biggest obstacle would of course be his contract, since the Bills already have two first round picks to sign from this draft.

First, I applauded Jackson's class despite his frustration with the process. You sound like you are accusing me of trashing him. Secondly, when you try to compare pro athletes and their world with "regular employees" and our world, you are just wasting your time. If you were earning over $450,000.00 per year, as Jackson was, and you were able to earn it for 4 years, banking about half of it, would you then have any problems sending your kids to college? Now that Jackson and his agent have negotiated a salary worth about 5 times more then that, I can't imagine the cost of sending his kids to college will weigh too heavily on his mind. Pro athletes don't hold out for more money because they need it. They hold out for it because they think they deserve it, and it is a status symbol amoung their peers of acceptence and respect. I mean come on now. Did Jackson get his degree from Coe? I think he did. But would that college degree line up a job in any other walk of life for him that would pay him the minimum $465,000.00 the Bills could have paid him without renegotiating? See what I mean? Playing the "I have to take care of my family" card is laughable to the rest of us taking care of our families earning hundreds of thousands per year less annualy.

You have to be joking, right? You obviously were not in Rich Stadium during the 51-3 blowout win over the Raiders that earned the Bills their first trip to the Super Bowl. It was easily louder then the :30 mark of your link above, in the first quarter when Talley ran back his interception that started the blowout....and it stayed louder the rest of the enire game. You want a similar Rich Stadium situation to that last second blown snap by Romo that gave the Seahawks that playoff game win? The AFC Championship game at Rich Stadium the year after the Raiders blow out. This time, the Broncos were giving the Bills all they could handle, and more. Despite a late game injury that knocked Elway out of the game, his back up Gary Kubiak (current Texans HC), started moving the Broncos down the field for a go ahead field goal. With less then 2 minutes to go & already in Bills territory, a Broncos running back fumbled after gaining another first down. The Bills recovered and the noise level that rose out of former 80,000 seat capacity Rich Stadium (now down to 73,000 capacity plus luxury suites), when the ref signaled Bills ball made your Seahawks fans sound like polite appluase at a tennis match.

Why can't a back up player or special teams player also be a team leader? He will be replacing the young and immature Marshawn Lynch, in the starting lineup, for the first 3 games at least this season, to answer your question directly. (Not that anyone can consider Lynch much of a leader at this strange cross roads of his career.) Do you remember the last great Buffalo Bills teams? Do you remember players like Mark Pike, Kenny Davis, Frank Reich, & Don Beebe? None of them were starters, but all of them were terrific team players and leaders.

Excellent point. These radio sports heads can be just as egotistical as the athletes they talk about, and Cowherd is one of the most egotistical. If the Buffalo Bills had no super stars, and had just finished up a boring 6-10-0 season, and then Ralph passed away, the team was sold to a group who moved the team out to Los Angeles, all of a sudden those exact same below average players and boring team would all of a sudden become cool and relevant to talk about every day on his show. The one radio show I enjoy listening to and really find no traces of egomania running amok, is Mike & Mike. The two guys play off eachother with much more light hearted comedy and at the same time have much more intelligent sports takes then most of the others.

Really? Less then 40 yards in half of his games, huh? Yet he averaged over 15 yards per catch, and scored 10 TD's. Lee Evans, in the absolute prime of his career, averaged just over 16 yards per catch, and scored all of 3 TD's. Now, try to follow me here. Evans biggest problem was having no decent alternative WR for Edwards to throw to. Enter 35 or 36 year old Owens, (every time someone posts negative about T.O., he seems to get older) and even you have to admit that should free the young talented Evans up for a more productive season, and the Bills should still get at least 5 to 6 TD's from Owens himself, if he stays healthy.

I have really come to admire Freddy. He is not afraid to voice his opinions, even when he has zero negotiating power. On the other hand, he is also mature enough to know when to back off, take a deep breath, and continue being a team player. He balked when the Bills were slow to offer him an extension when you knew he absolutely deserved it. He used his agent to "negotiate in the media" a little bit, when the agent whined how the Bills refused to reward the most deserving athletes. Then he & the agent shut up and he reported for workouts. Next thing you know, he has his unconfirmed 4 year deal, for an unconfirmed 2 Mil per plus unconfirmed extra incentives. Here's what he said about the process: "The terms that we came to, we didn't quite agree on in the beginning," he said. "You can say there was some frustration at times, but I think that's part of the process. Today's the day it's over and done with and now we have to play football." When you consider the degree of greed and selfishness all around Jackson in the NFL today, you can't expect a better attitdue then that, and it's obvious Jackson will now become a leader in the locker room.

Cowher head coach, Holmgren GM & Vice President of FOOTBALL OPERATIONS. And now, I'll wake up.

Cowherd is really going out on a limb with that take. T.O. compared to a circus? DJ won't be able to control him? Belicheck would never have signed him? No way, no way and no way What' next, is Mike Shoop going to accuse Russ Brandon of bringing in T.O. just to sell more tickets? Wow. It really must take a higher level of intelligence to get your own sports talk radio show these days. I'll bet Cowherd finished off his rant about T.O. and the Bills by predicting the Bills will finish 7-9-0, right? Who cares what these talking heads say? T.O. got his TD's for Dallas last season, and if he gets his TD's for Buffalo this season, he will be worth every cent, every VH1 camera shot, and every bit of elephant crap he leaves behind.

Unless of course the Bills go 4-2-0 in the division, and 8-2-0 for the rest of their schedule, and win the AFC East with a 12-4-0 record, right Skoob? Or on the other hand, the Bills may go 5-1-0 in the division, and then tank the rest of their games with a 2-8-0 slate, and finish with their 4th consecutive 7-9-0 season. In the 16 game NFL regular season, every game means as much as every other game, division opponent or not. And the goal for this franchise should be to just win enough overall games to at least get a damn road playoff game after 9 years of being out of the post season! You talk about those great Bills' teams in your post. In 1988, the Bills lost a road game to Cincinnati, a non-divisional opponent, and it ended up costing them a trip to the SB. The AFC Championship game was held in Cinti instead of Buffalo, and the Bills lost.

Best description of the "Cover-0", "11-Gap", "Tampa of 1976-2"*, Perry Fewell defense I've heard so far!! *For you younger posters, the 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs went 0-14. Their coach that season, when asked about his team's "execution" after one of the losses, said; "I'm in favor of it."

I'll answer your questions sincerely. (1) Levy hired DJ because he thought DJ was a younger version of himself. (2) It's already unfair to Bills nation that DJ is still the coach after his amazingly pathetic streak of 3 straight exact 7-9-0 seasons. Sincerely, I really don't think DJ will get the Bills into the playoffs this season, and will get fired. If by some miracle this team does make the playoffs, why in the world would the Bills fire him then??

I don't value them at all. Every sport already has more then enough stats to show us game in and game out. The only stat that I care about is the one that has been stuck at 7-9-0 for three years now. If the team can somehow improve on that stat by at least 2 or more wins, and sneak into that 6th spot in the AFC, I could care less about all the individual team and player stats they compiled to get there!

1.) Baltimore Colts won a SB in the early 70's then moved to Indy in 1984. 2.) Oakland Raiders won a SB in the mid 70's and another in 1980. Moved to L.A. in 1982. 3.) L.A. Raiders won a SB in 1984, then moved back to Oakland again some years later, and remain there today. Granted, it has not happened often, but it is more about money & economics then it is about winning Championships. Reverse the Ravens winning a SB after leaving Cleveland; to the Cleveland Browns winning a SB first. You know, imagine the Browns stopped Elway's "The Drive" in the mid 80's, and held onto win that AFC Championship game, and then went on to upset the Giants and win that SB. Browns nation freaks out. Cleveland throws the best parade ever to date back then in 1986. Then they continue to play in that oversized rock pile of a stadium on the lake for 10 more seasons, and Modell moves them out to Baltimore anyway!

The only way winning a SB would help the Bills stay put, would be if it could propel the Bills to raise ticket prices up to at least the NFL average, including adding many more premium "PSL" pricing for seats that don't carry that expense today. In addition, the excitement of finally winning the big one would need to lead companies in the Bills marketing zones to buy up all the suites that may remain empty today. Short of that, winning a SB or not really has nothing to do with the economics of the Buffalo Bills, and any chances of new ownership outbidding others for the franchise, after Wilson dies, and then still being able to afford to keep the team here in Western New York. If you remember, the Los Angeles Raiders actually won a SB in 1984, just after winning a SB as the Oakland Raiders in 1980. In neither case, did Davis care about winning those games in the respective cities. He moved the team out of both of them, and back to Oakland again anyway.

Nice job Peter. Predicting DJ will put up his 4th consecutive 7-9-0 season. Yeah, I would say that would be the safe prediction. Nothing like putting hours of research into the Buffalo Bills, eh? What else does he predict about the Bills, that DJ won't smile or show any emotion all year, or that T.O. will lose his temper at least once? Man, this guy is money when it comes to knowing his stuff.

Wow, that rag came up with 7-9-0 for the Buffalo Bills?? How did they ever come up with that? How original. How thought provoking. They really laid their reputation on the line with that article, huh?

Please consider your sources....Dilfer at least started and won a SB. I'll give him credit there. But as analysts for ESPN, he and Hasselback suck. They have not uttered an intelligent sentence between them yet. Here's when Phillip Rivers will remind me of Dan Marino: when he throws for at least 20 TD passes a year for 10 consecutive years in the NFL. Or, when he throws for 44 or 48 TD's in a season, as Marino did. Rivers is good, and he's thrown 20 or more TD's for three straight seasons, including an awesome 34 last year. But let's see him keep it up there for 7 more straight seasons, before we start putting him in the same room with Dan Marino. And Ryan being compared to Tom Brady after his rookie season? Well so much for accuracy. Although Brady wasn't a rookie, the first season he became the starter 4 games in after Bledsoe's injury, all he did was lead the Pats to a SB Championship in 2001. Then he led them to 2 more SB wins over the next three years. In my own 40 years of watching NFL football, the only QB comparison I can logically make compared to those amazing results is one Joe Montana! I think maybe we should wait for young Matt Ryan to lead his team to their first playoff game victory, before Tom Brady comparisons come flooding in!

Butler played right tackle in college, and was so "impressive", the Bills drafted him in the 6th round. I know that with O-Linemen, some 5th, 6th 7th rounders and free agents end up having great careers and make Pro Bowls. But Brad Butler has not distinguished himself as one of those guys yet. Walker is an average right tackle at best. Chambers is an absolute nobody, and Bell is a 7th round undistinguished player, who has never started a game in the NFL. Your credibility rating is not too high, being so optimistic about this group of tackles.

Franchise him? That is always the worst way to go, especially with a QB! Look at that trade the Pats had to make just to dump Cassell's one year 12 Mil. contract. They "tossed" in a terrific veteran linebacker with a couple of good years still in him in Vrabel, and still didn't even get a #1 pick back from KC. Why? Because the Chiefs had to deal with that insane contract of course, that's why. Besides, the Bills have not used the franchise tag since.....wow, I don't remember the last time they used it. Have they ever used it? They could have and should have used it on Nate Clements. Not that Nate has lived up to his contract he ended up signing with in SF, the Bills still could have used his talent for at least one more season, and ended up spending less then the 49ers gave him.