All_Pro_Bills

All great points althought I still think they need to address the front 7 on defense in the coming draft/free agency. Still this team, players and coaches alike, has come light years since the first couple weeks of the season. At the onset of the season I thought this was a 3 year plan to become competitve. After the past 6 weeks I now believe it might be next year vs. 2012 assuming they are able to seriously address the deficiences in the offseason.

More than a poor choice of words it was a poor choice of communication medium. If they just called each other nobody would be the wiser about their conversation. The problem is almost everything said now is out on the public domain. So these guys need to be a little more aware of what they say and where they say it. Along with that we as a society have become overly sensitive about everything. It might come as a revelation to a lot of folks but you don't have to like and approve of everything other people do or say. All I ever hear lately is somebody crying the blues about being 'offended'. I get offended too but I just deal with it, move on and don't make a felony case out of what somebody might say or do that has absolutely nothing to do with me personnally. What I find most puzzling about all the PC police is how they preach constantly about diversity and tolerance but then they turn out to be the most intolerant of others. Their objective is to control everyone's thoughts and actions vs. truly being respectful and diverse. People on this board might agree or disagree with me, but that's just the way things go.

The O-line has been a surprising area of improvement over the past month. They still have trouble with picking up some basic defensive line stunts but that should come in time as the unit works together and improves coordination and communication that can only come from experience. Overall, a positive. Adding some starting talent and bench strength to the tackle position next offseason should be a priority. Offensive statistics since the bye week point to improvement with 3rd down conversion rate, number of offensive snaps, yards gained, and time of possession. O-line improvement may be the single largest contributor to the incremental improvements in the defense too. Instead of being totally gassed by the 4th quarter the D is getting more than a few minutes of clock-time between series.

This is the thing I find most troubling about the Bills current situation. As a fan I can tolerate a season or two of ineptitude if it's building for future success. The premise of rebuilding through the draft (which I support) is the players you draft are better football players than the players you have on the roster. But if your 2010 draft picks can't make it onto the field and you acknowledge your veteran players aren't good enough to produce then you're not rebuilding. All you're doing is creating the illusion of rebuilding and you're really just running in place. Going nowhere season after season. IMO, the only great draft the Bills have had this century is the 2001 class and maybe 2009 (jury out on Maybin but that's not looking good). This team hasn't made the playoffs in 10 years, 11 now building through the draft. The way the league is structured it’s almost statistically impossible to pull that off unless you're doing something so fundamentally wrong. I do have faith in Nix/Gailey because I think they're 'real' football guys but the 2010 class has me concerned. In retrospect, you could probably have done better than the Bills this decade by using more or less a ranked random probability system by taking Kiper's top 3 best available at the time of their pick, put their names in a hat, and pulled one out then choose that guy.

Successful organizations develop a balance and optimization of many objectives, business, personnal, customer satisfaction, product quality, community involvement, profitability, etc. Generally, businesses that focus on one specific goal tend to fail to deliver value to their employees, shareholders (if any), and customers. So sure, its a business but look at owners like Mark Cuban, Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder. Personalities aside, you honestly believe our ownership has the same passion for winning as these guys? Look what ownership changes have done to just two franchises in our division, Bob Kraft and Woody Johnson. One businessman replaced another at the top but somehow the results were different. We might argue they are simply better businessmen than the owners they replaced but I believe the extra ingredient is passion. And passion for winning is lacking at OBD. You can argue the point that it's a business until the end of time but the basic fact is that to the fans it's not just a business. Maybe we should all treat it like it is, just like the Walmarts, Fords, etc., of the world. And if the fans viewed this like an ordinary business this team would be out of business already for selling a substandard product and sued for misrepresentation.

Really after all we've experienced during the past decade, is there anyone on TBD that honestly believe winning is a priority of ownership and management?

Fortunately, or not, these Toronto games are scheduled at a time when putting the team at a competitive disadvantage by trading home field advantage for revenue doesn't really matter. If it was a case of the team missing the playoff's by 1 game lost in Toronto I might get a little more excited about it. I think the big loser here are Rogers, the Bills football team, and Bills fans that lose one home game. It seems highly unlikely the sponsor is recouping their investment here. If their objective it to bring the NFL to Toronto full time I can't see how this series is helping that cause. While you lose a lot of the atmosphere of a 'live' game watching on TV it just seems the place is deader than a morgue. Whether or not these games 'help' keep the team in WNY is TBD but at this point it doesn't appear to be generating a lot of interest in the team north of the US border. Much of that I suspect has to do with 0-8. How can you blame them? That all said, I find it impossible to disagree with posters that have expressed their frustration with ownerships lack of commitment to winning and there does not appear to be any plan in place to plow the proceeds from this series into the team to improve the product. Ownership seems content to squeeze as much positive cash flow out of the franchise as possible with the least amount of investment sprinkled in with a little PR. Bottom line: Winning is not a priority.

We can debate the merits of Polian's specific picks and draft classes but you can't argue with results, winning. 13-3, 12-4, 14-2, and 5-2 so far this season. The decision to fire Polian and side with one of the finance guys was probably the biggest of many blunders perpetrated by our owner. That decision just points out where the real power in the organization was, is, and will be until ownership changes hands.

Unfortunately I think this is a purely academic exercise. A problem with no solution. I watched the 30 minute 'shortcut' replay of the game last night. They show more or less every play. IMO, after watching that, there is no way to stop the run with this set of players. The Chiefs had 45 rushing attempts for an average of 6.1 yards per carry. I can count on one hand the number of plays where the Bills D held the point of attack of got any penetration on the play. On most plays they were blown off the ball, as a group, 3 or 4 yards past the line of scrimmage.

+1 Forgot about that one, the elusive Chad Pennington putting the moves on Eddie and walking into the endzone. One of the low points of the Williams era produced by the 'coach on the field'. Equally sad was seeing Kelsay, who is described as a 'leader', getting singled up and manhandled out of the play by a TE. Something that struck me as pitiful yet humorous at the same time from yesterday's game.

I think you're description is pretty accurate and sums up his play yesterday. I personally like the guy and being kind of an underdog he's easy to root for. He's got the intelligence and moxy to be a great quarterback. But he lacks the physical skills of the tops QB's to go along with the brains and guts.

Assuming the Bills have the overall #1 choice and Luck is the 'can't miss' real deal franchise quarterback I agree you want to take him. My reasoning goes a little further than just the filling of this critical need. What it also allows the team to do is stop looking. How many draft choices and false starts have we gone through since Kelly retired? With that search ended, what it does is give the team the ability to focus its resources on fixing the other crtical needs on offense and especially defense. I like Fitzpatrick. He has 2 of the 3 traits a great QB requires. Football intelligence and the right attitude. What he lacks is the superior physical skills. IMO, most of his mistakes are caused by his shortcomings in this area, inaccuracy, arm strength and not mis-reading the play or lacking the fortitude to make a play. On a team that has a good defense, O-line, and running attack he would be quite effective. But they got to get it right. Taking a QB first overall is a high risk, high reward selection. Get it wrong and you're back to the drawing board a couple years down the road.

I'm not ready to label the draft a bust but you pose an intriguing question. One I ask weekly watching other teams. The answer resides at the core of the problem at OBD. Statistically, Bills management is at the left side of the bell curve when it comes to the capability of evaluating and acquiring players.

+1 We're all looking for the same thing, a good football team that gives an honest and solid effort every Sunday. IMO, a complete and fact-based chronicling by a national media writer of 'how did we get here' to the point where anybody would even raise the idea of an NFL team being beaten by a UFL team would be a worthwhile endeavor. Start with the day Polian was let go (and why) and take it from there. Look at the poor drafts, the dysfunctional decision process, the power structure within the organization, ownerships hand in this mess, the loyal but suffering fan base. Point the spotlight on what's really wrong here rather than ridicule the players. Layout a blueprint for turning it around and hold ownership and management accountable for making it happen.

Another hypothetical question: Can an amateur sports writer do a better job of choosing topics of interest than a professional writing for a popular web site? Let's get the Vegas odds on that....

Good term... pseudo-information. Some might call most of it misinformation. The tricky part of all this technology is not to let it do the thinking for you. What’s wrong with America? If you haven’t, I’d suggest reading ‘The Fourth Turning’ by Strauss and Howe. Their work suggests history runs in cycles with 4 distinct periods in each cycle and we’re simply entering the 4th period when things unravel. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_18?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+fourth+turning&sprefix=the+fourth+turning

Assuming he's got something left picking him up would eliminate one immediate position of need. I'm thinking in terms of next season. The reality is Merriman isn't going to be thrilled to come to the Bills (and its nothing about the Bills in particular) simply because players in his situation prefer to go to a contender rather than a rebuilding environment. To win him over, Nix/Whaley/Gailey will need to convince him they're serious about building a winner over the next couple seasons. If he buys into the program and comes on board that would give off a pretty good signal of confidence from the inside to me. That said my expectation is the Bills will pass on Merriman and he'll likely land somewhere else seeing situational duty on an already good defense. Surprise me Buddy!!

The other thing most companies would do is perform some root cause analysis to identify the problem areas, document the current processes, develop a list of process improvements, define a future state, and then develop a transition plan to be executed in order to redefine the organization based on the vision of the future. Losing is just a symptom of the problem. The lack of talent is just a symptom of the problem. No franchise QB is just a symptom of the problem. Bad drafts are just a symptom of the problem. Poor free agent signings is just a symptom of the problem. The root cause (if I might jump ahead) is the management team cannot properly evaluate and acquire the necessary talent to produce a winning team on the field. So the solution is to re-train the current staff in proper player evaluation techniques (whatever they might be) or replace the management team with a group of professionals that can correctly evaluate and acquire talent. I'll wager that while Ralph recognizes the problem he will do absolutely nothing fundamental to change the organization, management personnel, reporting structures, or the business processes used at OBD. What we're likely to see is some token cosmetic gesture aimed at producing the illusion of progress while in reality nothing will change. While I started the season with a positive outlook I'm becoming more and more negative and I'm afraid we're at the mercy of blind luck rather than some well thought out strategy to achieve success on the field.

The root cause of the problem is this defense simply has no playmakers. Nobody the offense needs to account for on every play. If you're going up against the Bills defense who are you afraid of? Nobody.

A buddy of mine at work has Jets season tickets and he always says to wait until after Thanksgiving for the Jets to start falling apart. He thinks the curse started with the fake Marino spike (if anybody remembers that play) many seasons ago. Rather than spike the ball to stop the clock him faked the spike and threw a quick out to the WR (Clayton or Duper I believe but might be wrong) just past the endzone pilon to win the game. Otherwise I could care less what the Jets do (I think Joe Namath said this also to Suzy Colbert when he was dead drunk on the side lines on MNF) because we've got our own problems to worry about.

I've had similar thoughts about Maybin. If the Bills were playing a typical 3-4 I can see the value in putting him out on the field. The LB's are the weakest link of this defense. Outside of Poz (who constantly misreads or takes a couple steps the wrong way) making some tackles 8 yards down field I really didn't notice any of the other's doing anything notable especially in pass coverage where they appear to run around aimlessly in the secondary (they remind me of the movie Stripes when Bill Murray's company is wandering out of the woods at the obstacle course!). IMO, he came out of college too soon but listened to his advisors (Arington, etc.) about going for the big money and then had the balls to hold and and then contribute zippo. That should have been a humbling learning experience but I suspect the guy's still very immature, listening to the wrong people, and the big money doesn't help keep the dude hungry for success. Physically he wasn't and still isn't capable of handling NFL caliber offensive lines as a full time player. But its inconceivable that a team that generates no pass rush and possesses no linebacker that can cover any TE or RB, cannot identify a dozen or so situations during the game where his speed and quickness would be an asset to a defense that is so dysfuntional. Knowing our luck, I can see the Bills giving up on the guy while he physically and mentally matures and gets picked up by a team that employs a sophisticated 3-4 where he somewhat excells.

+1 Nix/Whaley need to replace Modrak with their own choice for the job while the college season is still in session. Being the common link to so many ineffective drafts logically leads to the conclusion that he's had a major hand in draft selections, whether directly or indirectly by 'filtering' information to the final decision makers. The sad truth is that for the last 10 years we'd have been better off picking from Kipper's best available list.

In the Jets game the D was just physicially beaten no and's, if's, or but's. In the Jags game this week I saw more mental lapses and players either out of position, taking the wrong angles, running themselves out of the play, over pursuing, etc. How many times did Jacksonville run the reverse play for 20+ yards? Each time the DE and OL on that side of the field ran themselves out of position instead of maintaining their gap and holding the edge. What is this defense anyway, a 4-3, a 3-4, what is the DC's schemes and what is he calling out there? IMO, we've got an inexperienced DC with a steep learning curve trying to install a scheme with players that are totally unfamilar with it. At this point I'm left wondering if the Bills version of the 3-4 is named after the number of points they intend to allow vs. any kind of player configuration. For all intents and purposes this is the same group of players as last year and I see a serious coaching issue here. As for the original thread topic I thought Troup played well considering it was his first experience with extended playing time....

Here's a thought to ponder over (add this to the end of the thread title) - 'before I do?'. That means not being around for the hoped for resurgence under new ownership.

You're right about the Bills being small and weak. But rounds 2 thru 7 produced a host of defensive players and a couple OT's (one hurt, one cut) and yet even on a team that has so many weaknesses none of them have logged any meaningful playing time. The league is full of players that were not drafted in the 1st round. That just means the players you've drafted aren't any better than the one's you're trying to replace. So rather than rebuilding you're stuck at the bottom of the standings forever.