San Jose Bills Fan

Both approaches (even the non-approach) are valid. Whatever one is comfortable with.

Good stuff again. Some nice writing and humor as well. I was tickled by this one: "The rookie Schwartz is so green Kermit the Frog wants to mount him." Speaking of green, the Peter Pan guy reference was a smile too.

Touche'

Da' Norris will make $465,000 for this year. The fine ($21,000) is about 4.5% of his yearly earnings… off the top… pre-tax. The average American makes about $46,000 per year. An equivalent fine for the average American is about $2100. So no, Da'Norris is not rich and yes, that's a big fine considering the infraction.

Boss will not play this week due to the concussion he suffered on the play. Was it an egregious foul? No. Is it the kind of DB response that the NFL is trying to legislate out of the game? Yes. My only objection is that you have $9 million/year players getting fined the same dollar amount as second year players drafted in the 4th round. THAT's the part that's unfair, IMO.

Sounds to me like you have a Matt fetish.

Canks… you're no crayonz. "Trust me." BTW, I MISS crayonz… any truth to the rumor that he's been banned around here? If so that's a huge mistake. The guy was harmless fun.

So he used to go to the movies with Richie Incognito instead of his wife? Wait till Goodell hears about this.

This is an interesting perspective complete with a pertinent comparison.

Regarding the Jets game, the Bills were outcoached on BOTH sides of the ball and yes, it is concerning to me. I will continue to harbor these concerns until which time it's obvious that our coaching staff has learned enough not to repeat these basic mistakes. To the discussion about Wanny being in the booth instead of on the sidelines: Isn't the whole point of being in the booth that you can see what's happening on the field more clearly? I wish I knew if/when/if at all there was an attempt at changing defensive strategy against the Jets. Even for the casual fan watching on TV, it was obvious what the problem was. The victory over KC doesn't lessen my annoyance on this point. As far as our coaching staff, I sincerely hope it doesn't come down to this but to repeat a comment upthread (and to re-state a thought I've expressed several times before) yes… this team is much more talented than it was when Gailey took over and if it becomes necessary for Nix to fire Gailey and his staff, I think the pool of qualified candidates will be better than it was 3 years ago. Another one of Dr Dareustein's thoughts that I agree with whole-heartedly is that I would like for this team to have an actual IDENTITY and I don't want that identity to be that they are chameleonic and changeable. I don't want our identity to be that we are adaptable to our opponents. That's not an identity… it's a lack of an identity. If you watch the Forty Niners, this is a team which dictates to their opponents much of the time. They'll bring in one and sometimes two extra O-linemen and defy their opponents to stop their running game. Yes a team has to out-strategize their opponents but they also have to have an identity. It seems to me that Gailey is a bit too "clever" sometimes… too cute. That's my sense of the Bills offensive identity right now… clever and cute.

From Tim Graham's Press Coverage Blog Post: "The Browns are arguably the best 0-2 team in the league. They're three plays away from being 2-0. They could have beaten Philly and could have won last week against the Bengals. They've lost by a combined eight points in two weeks. "That's what the betting public is looking at right now." And here's the type of Vegas analysis we hope to deliver in this series: Teams that start a season 0-2 are 80-57-1 in Week Three against the spread, a .584 win percentage. "If you base your betting on that kind of success, you have a pretty profitable bankroll," Staniszewski said. The win percentage goes up to .642 when betting only the 0-2 underdogs. For the record, Sunday's over/under total is 43 1/2. The last time the Bills were road favorites was Week Four last year. The Cincinnati Bengals were 3-point underdogs and won outright, 23-20. Keep in mind also that it's been 8 games and counting and over one calendar year since the Bills won a road game.

Yeah but Mitch probably had a lot of money tied up in his bike. Anyways, RIP Mitch.

Cleveland has a good O-line and Richardson is orders of magnitude better than any running back we've seen this year… in fact based on his performance against Cinci last week, Richardson might be the best running back we face this year. Weeden is not a "bad rookie quarterback." He is simply a rookie quarterback. I like Weeden but his inexperience will ultimately work in our favor. Cleveland has a very good defense, albeit they miss massive run stuffer Phil Taylor. The Browns are at home. They are desperate to get a win. The Bills are favored by 3 points. This will be another tough game. I think the game will be pretty close before the Bills add a late score to pad the final margin.

Interesting. DQ and Rubin are good run defenders for sure but Cleveland didn't slow LeSean McCoy down at all in week one and then they played a Bengals team which is pretty average in the run game. On top of that, the Browns are missing space eater Phil Taylor and looked a bit softer against the run than they were last year. I'd be surprised if they were ranked highly in run defense or average yards per carry against. I seriously doubt that Cleveland has what it takes to slow down our rushing attack. I think it's more likely that Gailey will abandon the run than that Cleveland will force us to pass.

Whoops! Rinehart is who I meant. How dare you take me to tasker.

And then there's the question of how many downfield throws they've made this year so far compared to the rest of the league.

There was an infamous thread last season regarding the Bills O-line and whether or not they were good. In that thread, I kept asking the question, "well… which lines are better?" If you want to talk about being among the best, you have to discuss what other lines are contenders. On another point, historically speaking, we are NOT in an era of great offensive lines. There is probably not one O-line in the NFL right now which would compare to the historically great O-lines. Part of the reason for this is the continuing liberalization of free agency and the fact that you simply do not see many O-lines that have played as a unit for a significant number of years. CBiscuit makes the point that the Bills O-line hasn't been together that long. However in today's day and age, "The Wolfpack" is actually a very continuous, stable unit. Wood and Levitre were drafted together in 2009. Urbik was drafted the same year and joined the Bills at the very beginning of the 2010 season. Pears also joined the Bills in early 2010 as did Erik Pears. So you have 2 guys who are into their 4th year together and all 5 of these players are going into their 3rd year together. Only Cordy Glenn is a newcomer. Considering the youth of the unit and the player movement in today's NFL, this is a well-seasoned, cohesive O-line.

I personally have no desire to see CJ Spiller get any more touches than he already does. I tend to view football players as having odometers… while all individuals are different, a heavier workload tends to shorten one's career, IMO. I certainly don't want to see the Bills run Spiller into the ground like they did Fred Jackson last year. In my perfect world, the Bills would have signed one of the several very attractive free agent running backs last year and employed a three headed monster at running back… this team would benefit greatly by having a physical, punishing running back to line up behind this offensive line and TE Lee Smith.

Two of last year's playoff teams, Houston and San Fran are also primarily running teams and Seattle which is a cusp playoff team (they made it in 2010 and missed last year) is primarily a running team. I think MRW is right. The pendulum is swinging ever so slightly back to the running game.

Thanks Bill. Great stuff. I never understood Gailey's recent infatuation with the spread offense passing attack. When he was hired here I'd read a News article which stated that Gailey was an aficionado of the running game. We've seen very little evidence of that here in Buffalo. Then this past week the Bills FINALLY made an earnest attempt at running the ball and in his post game comments he calls himself "old school" and an adherent to the run game. All late last season you and I were commenting on his maddening tendency to abandon the run, even when the score did not dictate it. Marv Levy famously said (paraphrasing) "If a coach starts listening to the fans, he'll find himself sitting with them" however when a team has a very experienced and educated fanbase, I find it to be the height of arrogance to ignore public criticism of the team. My great fear with Gailey is that he is a stubborn, defiant old faq. Certainly if Gailey had listened to the fans, the Bills wouldn't have gone on a 1-11 slide last year. Last week we fans criticized the soft coverage by the defensive backs and the Bills addressed that. I really hope the light has come on for Gailey and that the next time we play the New York Jets we actually try standing toe to toe with them and slugging it out because I believe the Bills have the trench workers to be very successful playing smash mouth. I'd like to see the Bills emulate Houston and San Francisco. Perhaps the Bills will become the team that you, I, and so many other blue-collar Buffalonians have lusted after for so long… a cold-weather, smash-mouth football team.

I believe that Nix is pretty respected in the scouting community however I absolutely can't see how his pre-draft comments could possibly sway the opinion of other scouts. If a scout knows and trusts his evaluations and watches the video, how could you believe that Glenn was athletically limited? Before the draft, I watched two plays on YouTube where Glenn laid out completely horizontally (like a receiver making a diving catch) to pick of outside blitzers. I really can't remember ever seeing an offensive tackle leave his feet like that to intercept an outside pass rush. Now granted some scouts don't like when O-linemen leave their feet but that's not the point. The point is that his athleticism both in a straight line and in close areas was obvious. I'm baffled and mystified that he lasted till the second round. Maybe a lot of these scouts aren't really very good at what they do?

This is Matt Ryan's first year in this offense designed by the new OC, Dirk Koetter. Ryan's previous OC for his entire career was former Bills Head Coach Mike Mularkey. I've read that the Falcons players like the new offense better. Well, well, well…

Tito, give a heads-up post before your next visit. People will give you all sorts of good advice to make sure you have a great time. It's not uncommon to get invitations to tailgates, etc.

I see fullbacks across the league yield nice returns on their 2-3 touches per game. It keeps the defenses honest and having seen CMac with the ball in his hands, I'm not convinced that he couldn't do some good work in a jumbo set.

Maybe it's subjective but on a lot of plays, I find myself thinking that they either missed an egregious foul or they made a ticky tack call. It just doesn't seem well-officiated.