Sisyphean Bills

I have no idea what Manziel is like in practice, etc. Is he a hard worker? Does he prepare? Does he know the offense? What about Davis? Can the coaches give Davis more plays and an NFL caliber gameplan? We don't know. There is clearly pressure to play 1st round QB picks. I've read a lot of it on this board wrt playing EJM. And sometimes I wonder if GMs/owners even listen to their coaches. Jerry Jones marveled and gushed at the spirals Weeden threw in shorts, but it turned out he was the QB the Browns drafted after all.

Agreed, because these are the same guys who gave themselves a gold star with Ryan Fitzpicks. The argument has been made in other ways, but there simply is no legitimate excuse for a qualified NFL GM to not always be on the lookout for the next guy to lead his team. The clown show came up with Tyler Thinwing Thigpen and Kevin Konkussion Kolb. You really have to wonder. Are they going out of their way to be this bad? Some of these decisions ...

And baseball is an uneven playing field. Certain clubs enjoy gigantic economic advantages. Add that fewer MLB teams make the playoffs annually than in the NFL. So the sports aren't apples to apples. But to the larger point: yes, it is possible for a franchise to get turned around. Even the Bills did it in the late 80s and early 90s. In the NFL, it is hard to be this bad for this long. Other dysfunctional teams take advantage of weak schedules, a fluke hot-steak (RG3), or whatever—heck, even Tim Couch took the Browns to the playoffs—to slip into the playoffs here and there. The NFL system is designed to do precisely that.

You know those little glider airplanes that kids make out of balsa wood? It's like that. Only the kid was handed a brick instead of balsa wood. Cool looking stone slab, but how does it soar? One might apply the same to the offense. It's not like this OL looked anything remotely like the 49ers collection of 1st round picks and man-mountain studs. The OL under Marrone was a total disaster.

I think Pettine is a dead man walking at this point. The GM might be toast as well.

I posted the odds of missing the playoffs this many times in a row several years ago. It goes well beyond blind luck at this point. There is something in the water perhaps. One might even conclude this is a demonstration of skill, that the team is intentionally trying to not make the playoffs. Edit: Back of napkin calculation, something like a 0.05% chance of pulling off a 16 year streak.

Some franchises draft WRs instead... though Matt Millen did publicly state he had no business running an NFL team.

The Bills have a history of hiring people that take what's working and ... well ... muck it up. Same tune, different vocalist.

I don't think he sucks. I don't think he is consistent enough to elevate an entire team around him, but the Bills haven't had a QB of that caliber in, like, forever at this point.

There was talk about Osweiler on NFL Radio yesterday... and during the conversation the Bills came up as an example of exactly how not to handle the QB position and QB contracts. The summary: you can't hamstring your franchise by giving franchise QB money to just some guy who is penciled at the position. WRT Brock: There isn't enough tape on Osweiler and nobody, not even the Broncos, really know what he can do yet on a consistent basis.

Maybe "same" meant "same uniforms"?

I can't parse the question. This team is built to win with zero margin for error. But they make mistakes, which cannot really be taken as totally unexpected at this point, and well. We know the rest.

Has it been confirmed that Roman actually called that? I'm wondering if that wasn't a case of a rookie trying to bounce it outside. Whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad.

Well, he can always hang his hat on the development of Kaepernick.

They need to keep looking.

I think the ref said that they thought McCoy left the huddle looking out of the ear hole of his helmet and has one of those bobblehead springs for a neck. It did sort of make sense over the PA system, but now that one thinks about it with a lower BAC...

Somehow it seems a little incongruous that an offense that features tens of thousands[*] of blocking schemes and a combination of plays and packages in the trillions[*] would come from the same coach's mind who doesn't know what a 2 minute offense is or how it might operate. I wonder if there is an explanation other than "Roman is dumb". It's possible, I guess. Maybe he has never seen an up-tempo offense. Maybe he has never seen a college game in the last 10 years or so. Anyway... [*] These estimates were calculated with a Magic 8 Ball .

What should be obvious is that the Patriots are a very beatable team at this point in the season. The Bills truly didn't do themselves a ton of favors in this one. Even with that, they kept it very close. The Patriots offense wasn't really all that good. With some better tackling, it could be argued the Patriots offense could've been blanked.

He has pictures.

On paper maybe. I'm not convinced Tyrod has the accuracy and arm to run a WCO consistently. We had a guy named Trent Edwards here once upon a time who tore it up with the 2 to 6 yard passing game though. I do agree with the confusing. I think the players are confused on offense and defense both. Why does Roman just have Watkins line up as the split-end every play? Why not use some motion? Is he just another Lee Evans? Is the offense just a big bag of tricks? Form and flash without substance? Do they have an identity? Or are they really profoundly stunted because of the QB they have?

It was clear the defensive players were stopping because of the whistle. Anybody can "score" when the other team isn't playing. Even Amendola.

How much time was spent by officials reviewing their calls anyway? It seemed like that 3rd quarter was 3 hours long. And I wasn't surprised that the bias of blown calls favored the Patriots. PS: Sorry the whistle came with the ball in the air. No play and 15 yards on Rex. The completion was awarded as a "just give it to them."

I think he's right. At the very least, Urban Meyer needs to attempt to appear in charge. Though maybe putting the inmates in charge will help keep his blood pressure even.

Should it be asked if Bills management was doping Troup up because he was the linchpin to the 3-4 scheme they imposed on a roster that had, prior to their arrival, consisted of smaller, agile, fast defenders playing the Tampa-2? It's not like some people on the outside didn't see that this would be a big problem for the organization to move from the undersized, speed and pursuit scheme to the oversized, jumbo mode defense overnight. There are many examples, but Bills football people, perhaps squeezed for nickels and pennies by the accounting department, have often been caught with their pants around their ankles by going with a one possible hope at a position roster. Should that player not work out, a coach gets fired or the injury excuse is trotted out on the threadbare carpet for a press conference. I hope that's changing inside the walls of One Bills Drive. While some may praise the "skill" of talent evaluation when an undersized, weak UDFA is the next man up and "starts", another question to ask is whether those cheap fill-ins are actually a serious component of producing a product that wins on the field. But it takes objective self-scouting to evaluate an entire roster and improve the entire team. This isn't picking on UDFAs and 7th round picks, the Modrak wheelhouse. In some cases, like the Seattle Seahawks teams of the last couple years, one could argue that the cheap UDFA who looks like a physical clone of the starter may be serviceable as a substitute and his play isn't a season-killing drop off.