Sisyphean Bills

How does the "nothing special" feeling fit with the fact that the line in 2007 gave up the least number of sacks for a Bills team ever? I'm not picking on your opinion. I'm actually curious because at the end of 07 posters here were claiming the Bills had an up-and-coming great line; and, with the addition of James Hardy and the subtraction of Steve Fairchild, the offense was going to be awesome in 08.

It was notes from a Bills Backers meeting written by Lori Chase. Good enough? http://www.twobillsdrive.com/articles/game_day/127/

Of course the hold out was after Russ told Peters that he wasn't going to talk to him period until after he got a deal done with Lee Evans, if and when that ever happened. It begs the question: WTF? Is the Bills brain trust capable of only holding one thing in its collective head at a time? Or is it that they can't make good offers and retain more than one top player a year? How would that work out if the Bills actually did hit gold and had a great draft class with several superstars all playing out contracts at the same time? Even if it is an economic limitation, why slam the door in the guy's face? Not exactly a great negotiation tactic, as it led to a holdout and eventually getting rid of a talented player that could've helped the team be better.

We hope so. And, if it doesn't pan out, we can trot out the excuse that "TO hit the wall and there wasn't any talent."

Actually, you weren't just talking about 2008. Here is a direct quote: "Do you really think that the Pats even thought twice about playing us for the past several years??"

It will be interesting to see if the QB myopists will demand Edwards be nailed to a post and his nuts set on fire (those Romans really knew justice and a good time) if/when the Bills offense comes out and lays another steaming pile. Can't point the finger at Losman any more; and, the rest of the team, coaching included, is wholly irrelevant, eh? I'll have to go get some marshmallows for the witch/QB burnings... How could you forget this? http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter?game_id=2934...&week=REG11 7 touchdowns in 7 possessions is not just getting killed. It's is being embarrassed, pillaged, humiliated, folded, spindled and mutilated.

Note the trend of that graph. Downwards. Some fans are sick of their team being insignificant, and know it's got nothing to do with other fans opinions on various topics. Unfortunately, that's reversing the cause and effect. Switching coaches every 2 or 3 or 4 seasons is the effect of hiring the wrong coaches in the first place. It's also not entirely accurate. The only head coach that has been fired in the last decade was Wade Phillips when he refused to fire assistants as Ralph demanded. Gregg Williams played out his contract, turned down an extension, and left. Mularkey agreed to stay on, saw changes he didn't like, and quit. And, Jauron is still here after 3 almost mediocre years. Odd that you bring up Losman, who was the QB of the team in the 1st year, the year you started out saying was a "good season". Play it again, Sam.

It does seem that the current regime often takes fliers on lower tier free agents in the dream that they will develop into better players. (Click your ruby slippers, Dorothy.) Unfortunately, that has not really been the reality. (Aside: I keep seeing claims that Stroud was a great free agent signing, which he wasn't of course.) There has been some discussion of coaching in other threads: the usual stalwart arguments that the "players play hard for Dick" not withstanding, the fact that virtually every free agent brought in to Buffalo has become an worse player and ended up getting cut by the Bills, often on a slippery slide right out the league, isn't exactly in the same mold of coaching as, say, the Patriots.

Bring back Gary Crowton, Dick. It worked well the last time.

Agreed. God forbid anyone have an opinion. PS: The coaches don't suck. They blow.

My point was that trading for a player's rights does not necessarily mean you are "stuck with his contract". It does mean the contract is picked up as is, but you're assuming Dockery would not have entertained renegotiation of his deal. That argument rings hollow, since he did take a new deal and turned down another Buffalo-type deal (apparently) from the Lions.

I'm not sure how relevant that is given that the Lions agreed to make the trade and even, supposedly, offered Dock more money and more than Washington did after the Bills cut him. The Redskins, for their part, have not been a team to agonize over a couple of shekels in recent memory. On the other hand, if I was in the Redskins shoes and knew Dock was very interested in returning to the team, that the Bills only started shopping him around a day or two before they'd have to pony up a big bonus, felt he'd be a solid addition but missing out wouldn't hurt the team, and really didn't want to give up anything to the Bills -- I'd be tempted to roll the dice, wait, and pounce when the blivet hit the fan.

For the sake of fact-free discussion, let's say there is a 10 page form and various supplemental documents. How long does it take to pull that together? How long does it take a professional in the business that's managed trades before to pull the paperwork together? Opening vertical files and filing out the forms should be the easy part. This was not a renegotiation, apparently, so the dollar amounts weren't a concern. Yeah. More speculation: it may have been the case that the Redskins strongly suspected the Bills wouldn't be able to work a trade out and were willing to just sit tight and hope to catch Dockery on the rebound. Agreed.

Slam? It was a joke and I even included a smiley; and, of course, he wasn't mentioned in the thread -- that was the point of the joke. Comical that you mention "class" and "slam" in some ad hominem comment.

Lynch was quietly smoking weed while the dude that stole Davis' identity was making a racket. Big difference.

He's the one that brought up "maximized his ability". That is what I was commenting on. In fact, I don't even disagree that Van Pelt may have indeed "maximized his ability". My comment was to the effect that his "maximization of ability" elevated him all the way to a damn poor QB, when he did play. I don't care if someone liked Van Pelt as a backup QB. I think he is a nice guy, myself. I find trying to play a semantics shell game to pretend that "maximized ability" really had no connection to his on field play to be confusing at best.

That's sort of funny really. Herm had 4 winning seasons out of 8 and won 2 out of 6 playoff games in his career. Jauron has 1 winning season out of 8+ and won 0 out of 1 playoff appearances.

What's your point? That his short, chubby body "maxed out its ability" with a backward ball cap on and holding a clipboard? Since people usually come here to discuss football play, as in on the field, saying he was great at not playing is a nice little tap dance.

Yet, statistically-speaking he is among the worst Bills starting QBs when he was on the football field. [edit]

During the draft, teams do have to put in trade agreement "paperwork" with the league -- the league has to verify that the deal is legit, etc. In fact, if the league says that the trade wasn't filed in time, the next team in the order can take the pick ahead of the teams making the deal. I agree that the process is streamlined, well understood, and certainly people aren't napping, doing beer bongs, or playing bridge in the spare conference room. I think you are overselling the idea that filing paperwork for the intention to trade involves battalions of lawyers and the faxing of reams of papers to, fro and yon. The league has to know what the contracts involved are, but I'd bet they already have it on file and certainly the Bills would have it and not have to draft a new one from recall. (just kidding, btw) The funky bit from Gaughan's blog is that the Bills never filed anything in regards to extending the deadline 5 more days on Dockery. Why? Dockery got on the plane and went to Detroit for the physical, so it doesn't make sense that he had nixed the deal beforehand -- unless he just likes getting on planes and flying around to kill time. And like you asked, did the Bills really shop Dock? Were they aware the Redskins were very interested? The fact that they didn't even begin the process to slide the deadline, knew it was fast approaching, and then turnaround and use the same deadline as their defense for not making a deal seems like fancy tap dancing, does it not? Again, I guess we could just blow it off completely because the offer on the table was the 7th round pick, but then again the Bills found Bryce Fisher, Jay Riemersma, Tom Nutten and Kurt Schulz in the 7th round -- and those guys were all NFL starters. Another interesting question is how Dock went from being someone the Bills thought so highly of to offer him the richest contract in team history to come to Buffalo, to someone that they apparently felt had essentially no value in just 2 years. Is that not a self-indictment against their own scouting and decision-making? Every team makes mistakes, and nobody should expect total perfection; however, the Bills record these past 9 seasons is exceptional in that the mistakes have consistently outweighed the good decisions (and many of the same people have been there throughout and have even been promoted).

No love for midgets here?

Had the TV on while I was doing some drywall ... they had a segment on "coaches on the hotseat" and I believe Dick Jauron's name was the first one that came up. It might have been second, I suppose, but it was one of the 5 they discussed. "The Bills have been mired at 7 wins forever..."

I have to disagree with that somewhat, Spart. The AFC, and especially the AFC East, was a very pass-oriented conference at the time. The defense the Bills ran was pretty capable against Marino, Elway, Esiason, etc. Unfortunately, the NFC East was the dominant division in the NFL and its dominance was through it being the home of smashmouth football. The Cowboys, Redskins, and Giants all had huge offensive lines that blew massive holes in opposing defenses. Against that, the Bills smaller 3-4 defense didn't fare well, that's true. It's unfortunate that the Bills never got to play the 49ers in a Super Bowl. If they had, Buffalo just might have gotten its championship. Slips through the fingers...

Well, not putting the lead back out there wouldn't be all bad.