Sisyphean Bills

There is a big difference though. There are other NFL people that think Whitner is a solid player. Contrastingly, there was only 1 team in the NFL that was willing to make Kelsay the highest paid 31 year old OLB in the NFL. Also, the player himself factors heavily into a re-sign. Do we really think Whitner is happy to be a Buffalo Bill? Does someone that is excited about where he is tweet about how embarrassing it is to play for a laughingstock? I'd say the chances are excellent that Donte is going to test free agency and going to be the Bills latest one contract and done secondary player.

Another One (Season) Bites the Dust

What happened to the 20 game pre-season plan?

All you need to know is that they have one. Somewhere. In a box.

Whitner may be tweeting and pedicuring his way off the team. They might keep him at the right price (assuming he is willing), but it's not exactly that he is irreplaceable.

What they are saying is that Maybin would look a lot better if the coach would line him up in such a way that no one will try to block him. Because if the OT can get one hand on him, it is over. He folds like wet tissue paper. But, he does it so quickly. The fact is the coaches have dumbed it down for him big time. They were going to move him to OLB, and he showed he couldn't handle it. So, they moved him to "rush specialist" which is supposed to be his strength. They even dumbed it down to the point of having him pin his ears back and go get the QB. He flat out sucks at it and did absolutely nothing. The coaches saw it and he is now on the bench. I mean, if you are a football player and your best attribute is rushing the passer and the coaches take everything else out and say "go get the QB" and you can't even do that, what else is there? Oh, yeah. Trying him at WR cause he looks chiseled like T.O.

One year, eh? Well, there's kick in your Kool Aid. They're going to have to completely change philosophies to turn it around in one year. If there is even NFL football. Even if things go well, I expect the Bills will follow the same shallow trajectory of the Lions and Browns, their fellow Lake Erie laughingstocks.

Would you rather it was Russ Brandon?

You're right, it was his 3rd season and first with the Bucs. (The years with the Jets weren't on the first page I called up.) You have no point whatsoever. It's not hard to understand at all. He was a spot player on a team that won a Super Bowl for the 2002 season, which is ancient history for most of the players on the roster. Your point is as relevant as saying Morris Unutoa would be a leader in the locker room. What sort of franchise relies on the "leadership" of their worst players? What sort of players follow the team !@#$-up as their leader and model of excellence?

He was a rookie on that Bucs team and that was a long time ago.

There is really no good reason to invest more time and energy on a bust. This is all like some kid that flushed his allowance on a shiny new toy that broke 10 seconds after he got it out of the packaging. Just move on.

Seems like a pretty fair question. Gailey said he is "searching for answers", yet on the defensive side of the ball there really isn't much of a mystery, is there? Jauron built a Tampa-2 defense to play like the Colts. They ran a very basic scheme with very few wrinkles. They had small, undersized players that had simple reads, and ran to the ball. The defense wasn't built to physically whip anyone. The trouble with radically reversing the identity of the defense is that the offense sucked, and it wasn't just the coaching, though coaching certainly played a part. They are still short on that side of the ball as well.

It seems like Luck has his head on straight. He doesn't seem like someone that thinks life is measured by a bank account.

I have a very bad feeling about this...

Schein apparently got it from Jay Glazer, who I believe broke the news initially.

Heard it from Adam Schein. YMMV.

Maybin hasn't been on a football field that much period (college or pro), so who knows. From the little I have seen, he seems to have excellent short-area quickness and that's about it. He's very wooden and mechanical and does not show fluid athleticism. If he was a gifted natural athlete then the Bills would have been and still be working him in much more at OLB, as it's not like they have great OLBs on this team. Still, the fact is that they stepped back in pre-season and put him in a much more familiar role, as pass rush specialist, and he has come up puny. So, this myth that Maybin is some sort of freak athlete that could play any position on the football field if he was given the chance is a pipe dream.

The pain of transition. Gailey and Edwards want to run a defense that has some sophistication and that they can adapt to take away the strength of the opponent on a weekly basis. They are finding that the last staff coached a dirt simple defensive scheme that allowed them to plug in rookies and street free agents from week to week; so, by keeping it so simple those guys could come in and play fast. The downside of the Jauron approach was that the defense was very static and offenses that could execute were able to exploit it. There is going to be more turnover on defense as they try to find players that can handle and execute the system they want.

Actually, Buddy was National Scout for the Bills and the Assistant GM in San Diego before that. He prefers to scout in the southeast because he has more contacts there (seeing as he's from there), but to say he doesn't scout nor has never scouted a player from some other region of the country is nonsense.

Investing the off-season in Trent Edwards. The rumor is that Nix never even picked up the phone and called other teams to shop Lynch. When the Seahawks called, he just took the deal as they offered it.

If the plan is to roll out for 3 years to get back to respectability, then there is no need to force the drafting of the next David Carr in year 1 when the next Peyton Manning may be coming out in year 2 or 3. Who wants another ride on a JP Losman crash-and-burn only to see another Aaron Rodgers lead elsewhere? The guy has no football instincts. Let some other franchise waste time and money training him to be a ballerina.

People that propose the Final Solution have lost perspective. Ralph's desire to win is and has been there; indeed, it is arguably a part of the problem, and this ending is no doubt harder on him than the fans. He's sadly correct in that his approach and the sycophants around him have led down this Highway to Nowhere. When Ralph does finally pass on, there is no guarantee whatsoever that an owner like Donald Sterling doesn't buy the Bills. It is indeed sad that a Hall of Fame owner could never really put it together.

Of course there are disputes and lots of players are royal pains. So what? Welcome to the real world of the modern NFL player. If Peters was a complete dick, then the FO still !@#$ed up royally because they didn't bother to address the situation like professionals that had a clue about building a winning team and draft his replacement, even though they could have taken Ryan Clady. The facts are that the Bills went out and spent millions on garbage veterans like Dockery, Walker, and Fowler. Dockery in particular was rewarded with the highest contract in team history -- for a guy that was below average! Peters was a vastly better talent (although apparently brought more baggage) than those players and paid less. He had a legit beef. He went to the man controlling the purse strings and Brandon by his own admission told Jason to get the !@#$ out of his office, that it was Lee Evans turn to get paid. Anybody that has followed this team for any length of time realizes that they do not value OL play. Again, people in their front office have said things like "He's just a lineman. We can find 5 fat guys and line them up." Even after the trade, Brandon came out and said that Jason had earned some bonus or whatever to try and paint a picture that Peters was manufacturing his own dissatisfaction without cause. Again, if you've followed this team any length of time, there are many stories of where Ralph himself has intervened for the player to give the player more money than Ralph's hired help would like. Again: dysfunction is as dysfunction does. It's all part of the gestalt of a FO that is the class clown of the NFL and pouring glue in their shorts for cheap laughs. In the final analysis, sure it's looking like Peters' doesn't have any motivation any longer and getting something for him wasn't a bad thing at all.

The entire coaching staff.

The point is, and always has been, that it should have never gotten to the point that our best player was so disgruntled that he forced the Bills to trade him. No matter what the Brandon apologists want to believe, it takes two sides to have a fight. No team can win if they are actively pissing off the best players they have. Edit: I say that full well knowing that Peters is not getting it done anymore. 20/20 hindsight does not excuse bad decision making. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.