Sisyphean Bills

Riddle yourself this. If the Bills had a star studded DL last year, why would the first order of business for the new regime be to switch schemes and draft a bunch of front seven players? Before even fixing the OL or upgrading the QB position?

Some would call that exemplary leadership.

The Bills were 30th in the NFL against the run. The DL was a big reason why.

A lot of people would be surprised if they win more than 2 games. Just sayin'.

Who makes the most money?

You mean "Whatever Works" isn't a specific scheme?

All the plays you would normally run to make a small receiver that can't catch the ball look awesome.

We'd have traded our next 5 1st round picks for Big Ben along with 37 defensive backs.

There's a difference between (a) and (b)? If you don't know the play and can't pick up what the coach is dishing out, the guy that is .001 seconds slower in his underwear on the track is going to take your opportunity and run right past you.

He does have the Polaroids.

You can never have too many RBs.

Not an inspiring argument.

I forgot the smiley, but I was being sarcastic. I'm not holding out hopes of Trent being the QB of the future at all. It looks to me like Chan is going to use this season to try and figure out what he has on the offensive side of the ball. The offensive scheme was so chaotic and lousy, that it never gave the players a chance for success. Besides, it wasn't like they could bring in 53 new players in 1 off-season, and the strength of the HC now is offense. We'll see what he can do as far as coaching them out of the hole they've dug.

My post doesn't make sense? What doesn't make sense is your piss poor "logic". Your defense of Edwards play amounts to: he shouldn't want to play to the best of his ability because the rest of the team sucks and he should get his coaching staff fired for forcing him to play in less than ideal circumstances because he is concussion prone and doesn't want his eggs scrambled. You've got to be kidding. Nobody put a gun to his head to play football. He could be making money in some other business. Nobody forced him to be a QB. Name a QB that has an ideal situation and never takes a hit in his career. (Hint: there are none.) Then you got the whole character thing all ass backwards. If your team sucks, you make it better by working harder. You don't take an in-plant vacation and say, let someone else deal with all the **** hitting the fan. Doing the latter makes you a part of the problem and a highly expendable scumbag. Does the guy not have any pride or self-respect? He takes a job only to lie down when things go wrong? To short-change his own reputation and those around him because you (and maybe he) perceive his situation as hopeless? That's the definition of a quitter and loser. Only an !@#$ goes to the job site with the notion to get his boss(es) fired through his own lack of effort. Finally, there is a good reason not to play like crap and try to get your coach fired. The film says to other coaches, "I suck" and the window of opportunity in the NFL is small and short. Hanging a "I suck" sign around your neck means you are on the fast path to bagging groceries with JaMarcus Russell. Not being a leader isn't a bad thing for a person. Being a wallflower as an NFL QB is. And if the defense is, he's a wallflower because he's scared of getting hit and/or wanted to get his coaches fired, then that defense sucks heartily and Edwards should be cut yesterday because he is a self-serving, underachieving prick who'll never get it. PS: There is no dishonor in realizing you aren't suited to do something. The honorable thing, if Trent is afraid of concussions and doesn't want to get hit, would be for him to retire and go on to his life's work. The most dishonorable thing he could do is sabotage the success of the organization to avoid taking another hit.

Everyone's favorite? Ugh!

I'm not sure why you are trying to conflate concussions with perseverance, determination, and drive to be great. Trent Edwards has from the day he arrived said things like "I'm just along for the ride". Unfortunately, in football you want a leader of men to lead the team on the field. Players don't usually play for the coach in the press box. They play because they are inspired by a guy like Jim Kelly or Peyton Manning and don't want to let him down. Anybody that thinks the Bills go to 4 straight Super Bowls without Jim Kelly is ignorant. Nor am I sure why you would confuse me with a Dick Jauron apologist or fan. I'm thrilled Dick got the bobbitt treatment. He was a terrible HC and seemed to push all the buttons he could to get his ass fired.

On the rosy side, those field goals kept the game close, meaning that the Bills woulda coulda won more!

No duh, no results are available as yet. But, I'd rather have a coach that says he expects to win and he is all about winning and expects his players to do what it takes, than a coach that spews happy family pablum like "They're good guys. They work hard. We like our guys. I hope we have a chance, and things go swimmingly this year."

They did the QB no favors last year. Total coaching failure: switching to the pseudopod no-huddle "system", dumbing it down, firing the OC, dumping the "system", going with a play-caller with no experience and an offensive staff of limited experience. Indeed, it looks to me like Schonert brow beat Jauron into changing the system to jump start the offense and the more Jauron slept on it, the less he liked it and the more uncomfortable he was with going away from his favored ultra-conservative approach. Jauron's blind spot, and what has sealed his legacy as a failure as a HC in the NFL, was his inability to hire an experienced NFL offensive coach and turn that part of the team over to him to run. As far as the team around the QB, they blew up the OL and went into the season with 6 positions out of 6 being manned by different people. Throw in TO and the fact that Bong Lynch got himself suspended and you had 8 out of 11 positions changed. Continuity comprised only of Edwards, Evans, and the Reed/McIntyre/whoever spot is simply not enough. Edwards showed he wasn't the sort of QB that is going to take command of the mess and forge a team through sheer force of will. Instead he sat on the end of the bench and offered quips like "I'm not a fan", I'm just punching the clock for my paycheck. One really wants to jump in a foxhole with a guy like that. Not.

I like it and think it is a change. He's telling everyone what his expectation level is: he's here to win. It's not about being buddies and trying hard to get better anymore; the results do matter.

Actually, it wasn't that line, as in the OP. Levitre and Hangartner, but the rest of it was a blur of random players (some mentioned in other posts in the thread, some not). Not that any of it matters at all, since the offense of last year has mercifully ceased to exist.

The defenses knew we weren't capable or willing to go deep; Jauron was going to play it safe. 'Nuff said.

I think I agree with your first part, but I'd put it out there as simply fan-fueled hope rather than certain fact. Hopefully, Buddy can leverage the disastrous decision-making process of recent years to sway Ralph into making good changes that actually improve the team. The franchise needs better leadership, direction, and decision-making and quite desperately. We'll see where the ride goes ... but until they hatch, I'll hold off counting the chicks.

Maybe. There are a lot of factors, many of them beyond the control of Buddy Nix. (Buffalo is not a place players want to come, frankly.) So giving him (and/or Chan) all the credit or blame isn't entirely accurate. You can't really prove anything from a negative. Just because she doesn't buy a car doesn't mean she was following her master plan that she would like to walk everywhere she needed to go. It is just as likely that she didn't have the money to buy a car in the first place. Or that she preferred to ride her motorcycle. Or ... Indeed. The indications are that it is different. The question is to the degree. I have taken abuse here for years for saying that Jauron was more involved in things than those that wanted to dip him in Teflon wanted to believe. He put his fingerprints all over the product last year, and it was not a good thing. He got himself fired in fact. The decisions made by the Jauron-Brandon tag team were a disaster. It forced Ralph's hand. Are the decisions that Nix-Gailey are making better? Who knows, but we hope so. They can't be much worse, fortunately. I'm not expecting much this year. It's the honeymoon period; I understand that. I do want to see progress and a team actually being built, rather than more of the same old same-old of the team treading water and regressing as quickly in one area as they can improve in another.