Sisyphean Bills

Yes. But remember everything is different now. Mularkey walked away when Ralph had Brandon and the cronies running the ship, and Marrone walked away when Pegs had Brandon and the cronies running the ship. It's night and day.

That's your defense of the organization? An obvious pivot?

The comparison was between the types of WR, but don't hurt yourself trying to understand trivial relations.

Hogan runs precise routes and has excellent hands. Some coaches would rather have the Steve Largent than the Renaldo Nehemiah.

He looks like a different guy. Of course, he was running wide open through the secondary at times. And he now has a QB who can throw with pinpoint accuracy. So, he pretty much is a different guy.

EJM was a QB that Buddy and Doug talked themselves into. Buddy freely admitted that he had reservations about EJM on film, but it was after he talked to him that he started to come around. I'm sure EJM is a nice guy and said a lot of great things, but Nix should've believed his eyes. Unfortunately, Nix had also driven the bus into a cul-de-sac. He didn't have many options and had to roll the dice. And that underscores the lack of strategic thinking in the organization. Instead of drafting and developing guys, this team has been of the treadmill of letting players go, rather than paying them, and having to draft to patch holes. Multiply that by the fact that draft picks don't work out anywhere close to 100% of the time, and the team is always playing guys from the "Modrak Wheelhouse" on the field. 6th and 7th rounders, UDFAs, and street FAs no other team wanted. And the everything-is-fine narrative offered is that this is somehow doing a really terrific job. But back to QB. If the Bills had drafted a backup QB with the intention of having Chan Gailey mold him into his starting QB, then we might actually have a QB. But they didn't. Instead they spent their drafts trying to switch to a 3-4 and then a Miami defense and then ...

You need a well-rounded and cohesive team. The Broncos won a Super Bowl recently, and QB was actually a physical weakness they had to cover up, while being a "football IQ" strength, a motivating leader, and omnipresent in commercials. Drew Brees has largely been wasted in recent years. Great QB on a team with a putrid defense. Expecting him to put up 60 to 80 points every week doesn't work.

The irony being that if Rex takes the blame, then it will be the "newest apple" that gets thrown out. Again. Sounds like a marketing dream come true.

The argument for continuity boils down to this: does Pegula believe in the culture and direction that Rex is working to install in his organization? Does he believe it can be successful and sustainable? There may be any number of reasons that Pegula would answer no. But, if his answer is yes, then continuity is the right decision. Pandering to the fans—for what exactly? selling more inventory?—is the wrong decision and just perpetuates the culture of treading water.

Well, it does burst the bubble of the absolutists that maintain Russ Brandon has never had any input whatsoever to the football side of the business. Obviously, he has had input and continues to be part of the brain trust. And, of course, claims that he is making all the decisions are equally ridiculous. ... more importantly, can the Patriots fumble a few more kicks?!

Kind of you to wash his hands. Unfortunately, reality is that Whaley was right in the thick of projecting and drafting Manuel. The good news, if you're a card-carrying Whaley Party member, is that Doug may survive the EJM pick to draft the next Franchise Savior at the position. (Or he may choose to follow tradition and continue playing cast-off craps while replacing lost pieces one by one with his drafts.) So hopefully he learned a thing or two about the scouting, drafting, and development of QBs with the EJM situation. Whaley's chances of surviving a second epic fail at the Franchise Savior is highly unlikely to be survivable. It will be completely and entirely on him.

The old owner relied on Russ Brandon, even "gave the keys" to his favorite toy to Brandon at the end. The new ownership has promoted Brandon to run both the Bills and the Sabres. Whaley is a holdover. Marrone would've been a holdover, but they hired another windbag when he quit. The drumbeat of losing continues unfazed. Assurances that up is down and down is up now aside, I'd like to taste the proof in the pudding.

What needs to be done then? Keeping the revolving door spinning at warp speed with new coaching staffs, perpetual purging and rebuilding of the roster, and reinventing the scouting/"HR" department every few years has, well, not moved the needle out of the losing in 16 years.

One of the points that Nix made at his introductory PC was that he believed the Bills already had talent at the QB position. He made a joke about it being hard to play when laying on your back on the field. Nix went out and hired his head coach, Chan Gailey. And he is known for his own brand of stubbornness concerning the QB position. I guess Bowles has finally benched Fitzpicks, but Gailey has stuck with the guy for much of 2016. (Maybe Chan will get Reggie Ball out of retirement.) These two were certainly on the train with shaving the yak again at the QB position. On the other hand, there was the leaking of Nix' phone call. He clearly wasn't a Fitzpicks guy. Later actions and comments confirmed that he really didn't believe in Fitzpicks and had been chomping at the bit to draft a QB. So it begs the question. If Nix, "GM of football", wanted to draft a QB earlier, then what was the hold up? Was he hired with the condition that rehabbing the stable of young, bad QBs was a priority? Another curiosity: Chan Gailey said, at first, he was going to have an open look at the QB position. Then Trent Edwards was the one getting all the work at the #1. Fans were surprised because Fitzpicks had outplayed Edwards the year before. And then, when Edwards trotted out of bounds, refusing to throw the ball, refusing to attempt to make a play, Gailey benched Trentative, Trentative was cut, and the explanation was "we weren't going there again." A very curious comment. Was someone else in the building pushing Trent Edwards forward? Was this a frustrated coach and GM exerting their authority?

He does have a good track record in the NCAA. (His stint in the NFL was, well, not so much. Hence the jest.)

I've heard Schiano's name thrown around for a number of jobs. He's apparently an "It Girl" at the moment.

Ever seen the dummy on Myth Busters? Buster? The dummy they put in front of explosions, trains, etc. Charlie Strong was UT's Buster.

What's more believable? That the Pittsburgh Steelers (as organization that knows how to win championships), in desperate need of a QB themselves, would've entertained trade ideas to pass on Rothlisberger or that a guy who was held the title of GM, sits in the war room, conferred daily with the football people as team president, etc. had nothing to do with or say about personnel?

If you run your team based on feedback from the internet, drafting Cousins was the worst thing any team ever did—at the time.

Well, there is plenty of room on the bandwagon for more people to crow about how Brandon improved Wilson's personal profit margins with the Toronto deal.

I'd love to see some solid QB play at that position. But at times the QB mantra skates way out on the thin ice of hyperbole. Winning is made easier when one has a team with a stud QB. Big chunk plays can be executed. The team can respond to adversity and some mistakes. But this is still a team game. Look at Drew Brees and the Saints. In recent years, they've been a team with a proven QB, but the defense has sucked hugely and they've struggled. Cam Newton was a world-beater last year. The team around him this year has changed and suffered injuries and likely won't even make the playoffs. At the end of the day, "just put Tom Brady on the Browns and they're in the Super Bowl" isn't a very good argument.

Did you watch the game? Because if you did, you saw a bipolar team executing and competing in their own peculiar bipolar fashion. The team that took the field in the 1st quarter whipped and battered the Raiders. The Raiders were on the verge of being steamrolled. Then there was the 2nd half team. Sacks, turnovers, 3-and-outs, couldn't stop anything, couldn't tackle, couldn't line up. Bipolar is the perfect word for the egg the Bills laid.

Did you know Watkins had an injury history at Clemson? Speaking of which, the Bills do seem to be a team that tends toward the side of the spectrum where injury history isn't as important a factor. Willis McGahee might be the poster picture for that approach, but Shaq wasn't on a lot of people's boards this past year. At some point, it might make sense for someone in the building to ask if the franchise is truly getting best value for risking draft picks on damaged goods in the modern-day NFL where 1st contract and then he's gone is the general rule of roster development, or if it is a strategy that amounts to treading water.

Perhaps the fact that most of the players know they'll be around longer than the coaching staff has something to do with this. As a player, why bother investing in developing your game under the flavor of the month coach's system? When things go bad, it's nothing but a death march and everyone knows it. Ownership will just hit the easy button in December or January. The coaches are circling the drain and the players are texting their agents on where they can skip town to.

I wasn't going to go here, but. It's not nice to mention that Brandon hired Doug Marrone, was directly involved with the Rex Ryan hire, or took over as GM when Marv Levy bolted. Click your ruby Bills slippers and repeat: "He has nothing to do with football." Get your priorities straight as a fan. Make lots and lots and lots of money. It's easy to be great. Russ is the only one that can do that. All those gold bars that they got the Rodgers group to fork over, the dull thud of them dropping into Ralph's safe deposit box, that is really and truly what it's about. Believe me. That is what a real football fan craves. It's very, very, very good.