San Jose Bills Fan

Yes he spent 6 years kicking around as a player. Two of those years he was on NFL rosters, 2 of those years he was on NFL Europe rosters, and 2 of those years he attempted and failed to make NFL teams. I seem to remember him saying at around the time of the first cutdown that he had been cut several times himself so he knew how hard it was on the players. My sense of Marrone is a guy with tons of smarts but lacking the athletic ability to have a bona fide NFL career.

However EJ was holding the ball way too low, a bad habit that he's had since college. Had he been holding the ball properly it's quite possible that he wouldn't have had it stripped.

Yes I believe it was two consecutive 36-yard gains and the first play that you mentioned was a more difficult play than the hail mary if I recall correctly.

Kudos. Beautiful part of the country. Peak color up there must be breathtaking.

:D BTW, no more in Ballston Spa?

He's also an injury waiting to happen. Pretty early on in the process when the Bills invaded the Phoenix area on their coaching search, they set their sites on Marrone. I seem to remember that they scheduled but then cancelled a 2nd interview with Kelly.

FWIW, McShay didn't have EJ in his top 5 QBs.

Ninety-nine percent of this thread is no different from the many lengthy Byrd discussions we've had before going back to the offseason. However below is a very under-discussed aspect, IMO: Let's say for the sake of discussion that Byrd truly can't play due to the PF: On one hand I wouldn't expect Byrd/Parker to sacrifice leverage by publicly disclosing that Byrd was medically unable to play/practice. On the other hand it's unlikely that the Bills knew or thought that Byrd was unable to play/practice based on the fact that he played through the condition last year and had a whole offseason to treat and rest his feet. So we're left with: 1) Byrd truly can't play and thus he and Parker were hiding the severity of the PF. 2) Byrd's condition is no worse than last year but he refuses to play on it without a long-term contract. The two above possibilities can be viewed: 1) From a strict business/legal perspective. 2) From a philosophical/moral/ethical perspective.

The Chiefs return 6 Pro Bowlers and numerous other talented players from last year. Then you add Andy Reid to the mix. Sounds like an acute case of ass kissing. :lol:

I sense that you and the original composer are gonna be "lawyering up."

And just like that, all of us now know more about pressure schemes than Dave Wannstedt. Great job Jon! BTW, I love that you use an old black and white of Sammy Baugh.

That's a fun theory. All I know is that neither team had anything to play for in the season finale.

Why would you think of that game and not the season finale when we slapped them silly?

It sure does. It's like tilting at windmills. I'm not sure who they were trying to jump ahead of but giving up a 4th, 5th, and 7th to move up one spot seems like a pretty bad move to me.

However with a large enough sample size, all those things even out. I think with about 160-170 plays run you're nearing that point of statistical validity.

Yeah I always thought it would be great to merge threads by combining the posts based on the time stamps of each post.

I freaked when I read your post about Gilmore having a setback. Thanks for correcting yourself. It's even better to go back and correct the post that contains the erroneous information.

Shortcut? What are you talking about?

I believe Gragg has been inactive for the first two weeks. I thought he showed very well in preseason and he looks to have been a steal in the 7th round. I'd also like to see him suit up on Sundays.

And that's the thing. The Colts are not "the final piece" away from being a championship team. They're not even two or three pieces away IMO. If I were a Colts fan I wouldn't like the trade. They could have traded for Mikel LeShoure (who looked godly in preseason after losing some weight after a fine rookie season) for a much lower pick. Again I agree with mannc completely. Richardson has proven nothing except that he's been an ineffective NFL running back. I think the whole "be happy that the owner wants to win" analysis is a big miss. Yeah it's great but you have to analyze the move itself. For instance, I didn't like when the Bills traded for Drew Bledsoe. I'd seen enough of the guy to feel that he wasn't the answer at QB. Was it a bold and aggressive move by a regime that wanted to win? Yes. Was it a good trade? Perhaps. You're dead-on again. This is shaping up as a great QB draft with numerous candidates emerging. This is possibly a historic QB draft class.

It's pretty hard core and more trouble than most people want to bother with. But attempts to streamline the roster and the draft have pretty much failed so I guess most of the guys like it the way it is.

Rights fees? Undermining live television ratings?

I have a few takeaways from that video but the biggest one is that Marrone and EJ have a very good relationship. EJ smiled every time he was interacting with Marrone. They seem comfortable and casual with each other.

I agree wholeheartedly that part of the ingredients for this trade were a meddlesome owner and the desperation of trying to make sure the team doesn't backslide this year. Really good points.

Pretty much. To my eye, the Bills are much improved in this area compared to the last two years. Also New England is an excellent running team (7th last year) and Carolina was 9th in rushing last year and 3rd in rushing the year before. In our very small sample size, we've played two good running teams.