st pete gogolak

Is some of this on Marrone and the ridiculousness of Mike Williams being in Marrone's doghouse? When Woods was out of the game (most of the second half), I saw a ton of one wideout, two TE's and one fullback sets - geez, what is this? 1974? Not only that, you're going up against a good if not great Jet's front seven. Really -you'd rather have Lee Smith, Chris Gragg or Frank Summers in the game instead of Mike Williams? Really? Stupid, just stupid.

Two pressures up against Sheldon Richardson? I'd say that's pretty damn good. This is really an indictment of Marrone. Urbik should have been starting from game one - ahead of Chris Williams, Richardson and Pears. Now we need to get Pears out of the lineup. We got the bye week so it's our last chance to put together a decent O-Line. Cordy Glenn is our long term answer at LT, but he's also our best OL. Can you convince him to play LG for the remainder of the season for the good of the team? Can he? I'd give him an extension with LT money if it eases his pain. I'd move Henderson to LT where he looked very comfortable in preseason. So left to right it would be Henderson, Glenn, Wood, Urbik and Hairston. I still can't get over how decent Hairston looked as a rookie. He looked better than Pears ever did at RT, certainly as good as Henderson looked at RT. If you don't want to move Glenn, can CK play guard at this point? Left to right Glenn, CK, Wood, Urbik and either Henderson or Hariston (not thrilled about two rookies in the O-Line). It was obvious Richardson had to be moved out of the starting lineup. I think it's equally obvious with Pears.

Cordy Glenn is our best O-Lineman and a potential All-Pro or Pro Bowler at LT. That being said, the guard situation appears to be desperate enough to call for desperate measures. Henderson looked very comfortable at LT during the preseason (granted it was preseason). How about a short-term fix of Henderson LT; Glenn LG; Wood C; Urbik RG and Chris Hairston RT. I still remember how good Hairston looked as a rookie and thought, man this might be our LT of the future. It's obviously not an ideal situation but it has the advantage of getting Pears out of the lineup and reducing the number of rookies starting from 2 to 1 (as opposed to replacing Pears with CK and having three rookies OL starters). Again, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Dan LeBatard (who I think is pretty much a jerk) was discussing who is a better receiver - Jordy Nelson or Brian Hartline. Bottom line is that it's not as ridiculous a question as it appears because one has Aaron Rogers throwing to him and the other has Ryan Tannehill. Put the Bills' wideouts on Green Bay and they'd all be under discussion for All-Pro.

He is who we thought he was. . . and we let 'em off the hook!

When the trade was announced I posted that I understood the rationale for the trade but I was against it because it was there was simply too much risk involved in the trade. As far as why the trade was made, Whaley was intent on getting an impact player. That player wasn't going to be available at 9 (Taylor Lewan, Eric Ebron, Anthony Barr anyone?). (Please no "we should have traded down for Benjamin or Beckham" - too much hindsight in that). So in that sense I understood why the trade was made. Now that it looks like we will finish in the 7 - 9 win neighborhood (give or take a win), we will probably be the "winner" of the trade on a what we gave up versus what we got basis. The remaining problem is that the trade was made on the hope that Manuel would be a legit #1 QB. That doesn't look like it's going to happen. So we're still left with huge hole at QB and no #1 pick to fix it. Bottom-line. Did we "win" the trade? Very possibly. Would I want a do-over and keep next year's no. 1? Yeah, probably.

Zero. None. Nada. You've got a putrid offense and a defense that looks like it's going to be anywhere from ok to really, really good. I would think that any coach with half a brain would scrap the no huddle entirely other than 2 minute drill. They should look at film from the Jets from the early 90's when Boomer Esiason was their QB. The team wasn't very good but they were hugely aggravating to play. They would milk the clock from the first possession of the game. They always seemed to be in 3rd and 2 or 3rd and 3 (very few negative plays). If they picked up two first downs, six minutes would be off the clock. That's exactly what we should be doing.

Patulski started and played for a couple of years but being #1 overall he's in the running. Cowlings was terrible. Cousineau we turned into picks, one of which I think was used to select Jim Kelly. I'd also nominate Phil Dokes and a personal favorite is Fred Swenson. Same year we drafted Patulski we drafted Swenson (the other Norte Dame DE) with the first pick of the third round (which would be equivalvent to a mid 2nd rounder these days). He was CUT IN TRAINING CAMP, never played a single down in the NFL.

I will argue against all comers that Maybin - because of his draft position, utter lack of production while on the team and the players at his position that we passed over to draft him - was the single worst draft choice in the history of the Bills. If you look back at it, the 2009 draft was a very strange draft indeed. Many, many busts in the top ten (Jason Smith, Tyson Jackson, Aaron Curry, Sanchez, Heyward-Bey) and yet, when the Bills drafted 11 looking for defensive help on the front seven they passed over Orakpo, Brian Cushing and Clay Matthews! Incredible.

This isn't the first time anyone's mentioned this - and believe me I know there is ZERO PERCENT chance of it happening - but I would love to have the powers that be bring Chan back in a role similar to Dick LeBeau's role in 2004. Jerry Gray still held the title of defensive coordinator but LeBeau was some kind of "defensive consultant". I think our D was first or second ranked in the league that year (part of that was playing an uber-soft schedule but still). Keep Hackett as OC and bring in Chan as a offensive consultant. The worst aspect of Chan as OC was that he was also HC. There was no one to reign in his worst tendencies. He would be a perfect consultant to help run a spread offense and would also be a big help to EJ. Like I said, it won't happen, but it should.

Absolutely! If you read any of the Sabres forums you recognize an honest to good tank job. It's kind of brilliant. Don't waste picks on QB's, finish last and draft Winston! You don't even have to worry about that pesky lottery issue.

It's silly to say there's no downside risk to the trade. Of course there is. Even if new ownership cleans house, I'm guessing Whaley and Marrone would still like jobs in the NFL. If Manuel gets hurt in preseason and the Bills bottom out, Whaley and Marrone are the guys who traded two-time Heisman trophy winner Jameis Winston, franchise savior, for a wideout. Probably won't look good on the resume.

When I saw JAX pick Bortles, I thought someone I really wanted (Evans or Matthews) might have a chance to slid to 9. I HATED the trade when I saw the Bills move up to 4. Bad teams should never give up next year's #1. But look how the draft played out. Evans and Matthews gone. Look who was actually picked at 9 - one trick pony Anthony Barr. What would this board have looked like if we stuck at 9 and picked Taylor Lewan or Zack Martin? Face it. At 9, the Bills were stuck in no man's land. Too low to get a true blue chip and too high to get a "value" pick. Trade back you say? With whom? For whom? Maybe St. Louis trades up to get Donald. But what do you get? An extra 3? I still don't love the trade but I don't hate it either. Whaley was aggressive in going after the consensus #2 player in the draft. They are now in a position to trade Stevie for a #4 or #5 and recoup the 2015 #4. As long as they are not a bottom ten team next year, they make out ok with the trade. Of course, it all comes down to Manuel, but that would have been true no matter who they picked.

Yeah, when I saw this I also thought it was a nutjob TJ for Jimmy trade. Maybe acquire Brandon and trade both of our Grahams for one of the Saints? Frankly, I don't know if we'd be able to pull off a TJ Graham for Otto Graham trade and he's dead.

I know there have been about a thousand threads on Levitre and about a thousand on Byrd but I don't remember this coming up for discussion. If it has, I apologze. The Bills knew that they could tag either Levitre or Byrd and were going to lose one of them. Why tag Byrd and not Levitre? I think they are both quality players but continuiity and cohesion are supposed to be critical to offensive line play. It would have been sweet going into the season with another year of an OLine of Glenn, Levitre, Wood, Urbik and Pears/Hairston. I assume its easier to plug a free safety into a lineup than it is a guard. Second, and more important, there was at least hypothetically a legit replacement for Byrd on the roster - A. Williams. That clearly wasn't true for Levitre. On top of that, the Bills didn't sign a vet FA guard or draft one but do draft a safety in the fourth round. This doesn't even mention the Eugene Parker issue. I'm not trying to look at this with hindsight but seriously, what was the thinking behind tagging Byrd?

Jay Berwanger was very first player drafted by the NFL. I think he was a Heisman Trophy winner. Never played a down in the NFL.

Why assume that Dallas Washington and NE would outbid all other teams for college talent? If they did, they would run into salary cap issues pronto. Granted, San Francisco a year ago could have gone all out for Andrew Luck with Bay Area location, Harbaugh as coach, but if some other team offered significantly more money, maybe he follows the money. The point is, the salary cap eliminated the need for a college draft.

Do away with the rookie salary cap but keep an overall cap for the team. You've got $90 million to spend (or whatever the number is). Yes, college players would be free agents free to join any team that they want. Contenders however, wouldn't necessarily hold a huge advantage. Presumably they would be chock full of high-priced veterans. Teams with more cap space (smart teams, bad teams?) would/should have more money available to pursue blue chip college players. Look, no system will be perfect becasue Ozzie Newsome will always get better players than Buddy Nix but if you think outside the box doing away with the draft will actually help bad teams more than maintaining a college draft.

Going all the way back to Jay Berwanger, the purpose of the draft is to help bad teams improve at the expense of good teams. So how is that working out for the Bills, Lions, Raiders, Chiefs and all the other cellar dwellers for the last ten plus years? It's easy to argue that before the rookie salary cap, the draft was actually a net negative to bad teams, saddling them with horrendous contracts for mediocre players (everyone from Sam Bradford to Aaron Maybin). The thing is, the veteran salary cap made the draft obsolete. Granted that teams with good management will always do bettter identifying good players than teams with bad managment, but eliminating the draft will probably lead to more parity than the current system. For example, rather than make incremental changes year by year, a team could decide to clean house of most of its veterans and sign a core of talented rookies and let that core mature over 3 - 4 years of playing together. A team in need of a quarterback (anyone know a team in need of a quarterback?) could target two or three QB's to pursue irrespective of their "draft position". There would be absolutely no excuse to find a "franchise" quaterback, or at least no excuse to try to find one. Of course, I don't expect it to happen. Everyone is too vested in the present system to make any changes. The league makes too much money televising the draft, ESPN, et al. make too much money from mock drafts, draft previews, etc. etc. But if you really think about it, the draft is an anachronism that should be dumped in the wastebin of history.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. David Shula was 3-13 in back to back seasons and was brought back for a fourth year. Had another losing season and was brought back for a fifth year. Now that's a cheap organization!

I know that one incompetent organization brought back a loser coach for a fourth year after three losing seasons, but has any team in the history of the NFL brought back a coach for a fourth year after compiling 15 wins or less in his first three years? I'm sure its happened but I'm too lazy to look it up. As an aside, how about Mike Zimmer as head coach, assuming he can bring in a competent OC.

There is an answer that satisfies both sides of the equation but it won't happen. Hire Cowher as HC and Gailey stays on as OC. Gailey is clearly, obviously and unmistakenly in over his head as head coach. I still believe, however, that he can be a good to very good OC as long as a strong HC is there to rein in his worst tendencies (i.e. slow down the tempo, run the ball, etc.). Cowher could retain or fire Wanny. Totally indifferent to that. Of course, I understand that this won't happen in a million years for a million different reasons.

The factoid that Gailey has a single win in three years against teams that finished the season with a winning record (New England '11) led me to do a bit of research as to how that stacks up over the course of the Dark Ages (post Wade Phillips 2001-2012). The results, while not suprising, are pathetic. The Bills have a grand total of 14 wins in 12 seasons against teams that finished the season with a winning record. That averages out to slightly better than one win per year. Even that number includes the garbage win over the Colts on the last day of the '09 season and the win against the Redskins during the '07 season a couple of days after the Sean Taylor murder. A couple of interesting tidbits. Dick Jauron won 7 games in '08 without a single win over a team with a winning record. In fact, in over 3 1/2 years, Jauron only won three games against teams with winning records - the Redskins game and two games against pretty mediocre Jets teams. That's why I personally despise Jauron infinitely more than Gailey. He played to eek out wins against bad teams and got absolutely crushed by good teams. The last Bills team with a winning record ('04) only beat two teams that finished with winning records. Ironically, the '05 team only won 5 games but 3 were against teams that finished with winning records. That makes Mike Mularkey (5 wins) the valedictorian of the post Wade Phillips era. So to sum up, that's two - count 'em two (New England in '03 and '11) signature wins against quality teams in twelve years. As always, credit has to go to Bills fans who put up with this slop year after year after year after year.

Sorry, I guess the entire title of the thread wouldn't fit. It should have finished "in a desparate attempt to obtain a QB". I like it. You can't get much more idiotic than that, other than to bring him back as GM.

This really should be a poll but I'm to lazy to set it up. OK, now. Here goes. The Bills "braintrust" decides it's more important to have Aaron Williams on the roster than Colin Kaepernick or Andy Dalton, more important to have Kelvin Sheppard than Ryan Mallett and more important to have T.J. Graham (!) than Russell Wilson or Kirk Cousins. So clearly, this offseason will be utter desparation time for Nix and/or Gailey (assuming either one is still here) to obtain an NFL-quality starting QB. Options include: 1) Trading a #1 for Matt Flynn or Cousins; 2) Using a Top Ten pick on someone who shouldn't go in the Top Ten (Barkley, Jones?); 3) Sign an over-the-hill FA (Michael Vick?). If these are the options, I'd rather go with 3 - Vick or someone like him. I don't want to waste a Top Ten pick on a QB reach, either through trade or draft.