Sisyphean Bills

Winfield. Glad we didn't pay that guy.

So they could convert him to DB?

Does it really matter? He could blame himself, blame his dog, blame the kid selling hot dogs, or blame his 1st grade teacher. It's just jaws flapping. Nothing is going to change. They aren't going to look for better players. Nobody is going to get benched. They aren't going to change schemes. They're just going to do what they've been doing since last October, when the wheels exploded off the wagon.

The LT situation is a microcosm of why this team is blowing apart at the seams. Ignoring all the stuff that led up to it, the Bills traded their starting, Pro Bowl LT. They don't bother to draft a tackle and stated publicly (and somewhat arrogantly) they didn't think they needed to adjust their draft board after the trade. They announce they already had a LT on the roster and that flipping Langston Walker from RT to LT was the plan. They go through camp and all of pre-season with Walker as the first-team LT and taking the reps. The backup LT is playing a little RT and injures his back and misses time. The week before the season they make their final cuts. They try to trade their LT. They have no takers and so they cut their second LT. They resign a swing tackle that cleared waivers. They start the kid that was their 3rd option at LT. He has had back trouble and gets injured. Who'd have seen that one, right? They then have to go with what is in essence a 4th string scab player that was out of the NFL entirely -- at both tackle positions. Does that sound like a organization with superior planning that is going to be successful? It's not like one couldn't see this train barrelling down the tunnel, either.

You mean the only holdout which happened after Russ Brandon told him that he could go !@#$ himself because he wasn't getting a new contract and after they had paid two other inferior lineman elite money?

The book is starting to close for me. Trent had to emerge as the true leader of this team this year. This team blows in terms of leadership, and it is almost palpable. Good teams have passionate leaders that can make everyone around them better. Trent has displayed all the leadership and enthusiasm of one of the lemmings in the middle of the column running over a cliff. Football comes down to things like blocking and tackling. And, the Bills have assembled a cast of players that are slow, weak, blow blocking assignments, and pull out on tackles, amongst other problems mentioned across this board. This is a bad team getting worse. It wouldn't be surprising to see Browns fans pleasantly surprised a week from now.

With the spectre of a lock-out looming on the horizon, Dick Jauron is probably safe even if this season reaches epic train wreck status. Does anybody think Ralph is going to pay Dick Jauron to sit home and pay a name coach a huge salary to sit and wait for the lock-out to end?

*belinda*

Rock on, brothers. Rock on.

It's part of the Bills commitment to excellence.

The "beauty" of this arrangement Ralph has put in place (the same arrangement that Mike Meathead Mularkey quit from saying that he felt it wasn't an environment in which he could be successful) is that all the decision making is clouded, confused and confounded. Nobody is at fault, there are no checks and balances, no hierarchy, and decisions just sort of happen spontaneously. Wilson may be nervous about "his job" because he senses he should fire himself as the President of this cluster.

Edwards is now 13-14 as a starter. Guess that jalopy broke down.

What happened to the theory that the players choose Jauron? And, then let him down?

The context of the show is that they almost always try to find the silver lining for every team regardless. To just shake their heads and say, "Wow, the Bills were awful," was a Detroit Lions sort of moment. "The Bills QB and WRs are on different planets at this point."

8 rushes for 4 yards from your Pro Bowler.

Schottenheimer just said "the Bills can't come away from that performance with anything positive at all." He also said that Trent Edwards is "really struggling." I think I heard a shovel load of dirt hit the top of the pine box in the background as well.

8 in the box means 1 safety. You see, 4 lineman + 3 linebackers + 1 safety = 8 players. Typically, the S is brought up on the edge so that he can use his speed effectively and minimize his size liability. That let's you overload the point of attack. In the Bills case, we have tweeners at LB -- guys that are big, slow safety types. So, our LB corps is small and underpowered and susceptible to the run. This might work ok if our offense jumped on people and gave us a big lead and forced the other team to pass every down. But, we don't have much of an offense.

What about Overdorf's involvement? He is heavily involving in deciding which names on the lists they attempt to sign.

There is some truth to that. I think that the margin between winning and losing in the NFL is quite small (in most cases) actually. Most teams have player talent, have some holes, and have good football people making decisions and trying their best to get the right mix of players into the clubhouse. If you hire a great manager of personalities, he has to have the authority to make the decisions and the right people under him to allow the team to make the best decisions. If the manager is truly a duck out of water -- a candy store manager -- then it places even more pressure on those under him to coach him up and enable him to make the right decisions and set the correct vision and path for the organization. That hasn't happened in Buffalo. I don't know if that is entirely Ralph Wilson or a bit of it isn't Brandon blowing sunshine up the old man's posterior to some extent. Nevertheless, it is a degree of short-changing your program though in that other organizations have guys that have been players, coaches, done scouting, done recruiting, etc. in the first-person sense running their shops. Guys that have long connections to many, many other NFL people over their lifetime. Those contacts and information sources and "tricks of the trade" would be very difficult for a good candy store salesman to pick up and actually excel with on his own. When Russ Brandon started showing up just last year doing his own scouting and asking the "fraternity boys" questions, they snickered a bit, yes. And, it wasn't because he had a decade of working in the marketing office.

To paraphrase: Once you start thinking about it, and you might not have thought about it a week or three before, but once you do start thinking about it then you might have to think hard on it and do something.

First, this argument may be right that in some of these cases, the tank is just empty. OTOH, it could be completely incorrect to infer that nobody has any interest whatsoever in some of these guys. The poor economy is having an effect on the NFL. Many teams are cutting costs. And part of that equation is that a team can pay a young player much less money to sit on the bench or be a marginal starter than they would have to pay an experienced veteran to do the same. And, from the other side, a player that was once a star in this league and paid a premium may not want to go back into the meat grinder for a veteran minimum contract anyway, especially for a team that is just playing through its 16 game schedule to get to the next off-season.

Usually, the middle of the run defense is considered the DTs and the MLB or the NG and ILBs. Only here would we consider a pair of safeties that line up 15-20 yards off the ball as the cornerstones of a run defense. Has anyone put an APB out on Marcus Stroud?

Still, that doesn't mean he knows what he is doing or that he's doing a fantastic job. Defending the indefensible decisions of the brainless trust just makes him look like a goofball.

It works against Trent.

Sure. "Every team" has no depth whatsoever. More rock solid analysis.