Sisyphean Bills

He has to spend a minimum floor according to the CBA. Why the applause?

Yes, it is possible to simply not be sold on Trent Edwards as a savior and buy into the hype that he single-handedly wins football games. To have that opinion does not require any sort of comparison as the evaluation can be done simply on Edwards own body of work. But, it leaves me wondering if the Edwards fans (or insert derogatory homosexual stereotypical reference) will take to ripping on Gibran Hamdan (or whoever the backup is) next year whenever and wherever Edwards struggles. Or whether they'll pull out injuries, bad coaching, bad scheme, lack of weapons, bad blocking, 3rd year "rookie", etc. and not even at how two-faced it is to use the exact same arguments that they called "excuses" for the last player, and the player before him, and the player before ...

That's what I said. Although, that's not the happiest conclusion from this. But, yes, the vast majority of the team is reportedly very happy with the status quo. They love Dick to death and can't wait to get to work each day. Ralph's own conclusion was that they'd need to "not be complacent" and draft some players (do they have an option to skip the draft?) and hope that some of the young veterans take on more leadership. No changes to upset the stats quo anywhere in the organization. Applying the Tuckman theory to an entire organization is forced, but we don't even have to go there. There may be a couple of players that aren't thrilled out of their minds with everything, but extrapolating that those few personal situations (one of the examples is no longer part of the organization, so it has been "corrected" already) has caused a tumultuous locker room with plenty of constructive conflict resolution by team leaders seems forced at best. (Speaking of which is Brandon ever going to pick up the phone and talk to Peters' people?) Maybe we need a poll to see if anybody thinks that Ralph will pay for the entire organization to go climb Denali, or some other adventure activity, to learn how to communicate and work together better?

You should look at the data as it is clearly laid out. I'm referencing this data; I think you're looking at something else -- no big deal. The Bills are 28th overall in operating income (just behind the Colts and Steelers, two small market teams that have very strong personnel departments and win). $12.4M is a nice profit but not as nice as Dan Snyder's $58.1M. The cash-to-cap is a bean counter device to restrict the "football guys" from running amok like John Butler did. The device neuters the football operations ability to offer high dollar signing bonus type contracts and pro-rate those bonuses. If you actually have confidence in your personnel people, then having to eat numerous contracts constantly shouldn't really be a problem -- not that the Bills personnel decision makers have done such a great job to warrant that confidence but the sword cuts both ways.

This data shows the fallacy of the cries of "poverty". The Bills are neck and neck in terms of revenue with the New York Giants and Jets (and those teams just took on big debt). It's by design as the NFL shares revenue across all members. The Cardinals, Colts, Chargers, and Falcons all made the playoffs on similar revenue streams. The biggest inequity comes with 3 franchises: Washington, Dallas, and New England. Only one of those teams has had success in spite of this disparity - indeed, in the Patriots case their success on the field has lead to success on the business side. From the owner's perspective, the Bills are on the low end of operating income, so the franchise isn't as profitable as other franchises. And, to a seller, the franchise is on the lower end in terms of value. The Bills problems are many, but they've placed many financial barriers upon themselves, such as "cash to cap", not selling the naming rights to the stadium, pocketing the Toronto deal money.

If you can't follow that a theory that tries to wrap up group dynamics in 4 (or 5) words is an oversimplification then there is nothing more to discuss. Also, if you can't see from reading posts here that Jauron is far from the only bearer of all blame, well, what can one say? Finally, Tuckerman's model is over 40 years old. It's not a revelation to everyone.

Yeah. Well, take solace in the fact that it's tough to win in the NFL.

Stopgap, perhaps?

Trading up for him was a brilliant move with Alex Brown still on the board.

Well, Eric, you don't have Dick to kick now.

I think Tuckman's model is an oversimplification of real-world team dynamics and leadership. But, that said, the "everybody loves Dick" comments suggest that this team is not in the storming stage at all (excluding Jason Peters and the departed Losman). At least publicly, it looks like there was a jump made straight from forming to performing, with coaches just delegating responsibilities and players free to self-organize and figure out how to perform their jobs. Since everybody is their own expert and things are delegated for consensus all the way down the command chain, there is no accountability and nobody takes any blame -- we're all doing our best and working hard, bad performance is out of our control. For example, quotes like: "Well, it wasn't a breakdown in any particular area; we just seem to have a variety of breakdowns and we'll work on fixing them."

It's a different mindset, for sure. Johnson is trying to dictate to the offense and take away what they want to do. By stunting the DL and flooding one side of the offensive formation with pressure, he is trying to take away one side of the field and force the QB to hurry and hopefully pull a Losman. The Tampa-2 by contrast is a vanilla defense that just tries to cover the entire field and force the offense to execute plays with precision. It's a blanket defense with the idea of maintaining sound gap control against the run and keeping defenders sideline to sideline against the pass to keep the offense honest. Of course, it requires all 11 players to execute their defensive assignments very well because an offense can and will exploit breakdowns and weaknesses. It's basically the defense that Bill Walsh designed his West Coast offense to beat -- get the ball out quick and accurately, hit a seam, and rack up the RAC yards.

A 10 yard cushion could be soft man, man under 2 over, cover 1, cover 2, cover 3, cover 4, ... The depth is about not getting beat deep. It's like a partial prevent mentality because your afraid your corners can't run with the receivers. It's the NFL. No defense sits in the same coverage every play all season long.

The scheme is one thing, but it seems like that Jauron and Fewell have tried to mimic Dungy's "smaller speedier" implementation as well. The trouble with that is it is a poor run defense, especially against teams with a solid power ground game. If the offense can't get out to a big lead and force the opponent out of their ground game, the defense can get steam rolled. And that has been the Achilles' heel of the Colts for quite some time. The Bills offense is nothing like the Colts offense, so the chances of jumping out to a big lead are remote. The Bills implementation of the cover 2 is further weakened by the fact they have nowhere close to the necessary athletes up front to bring pressure with their front 4. So even if they can force an opponent to be one-dimensional offense, that team can still move the ball almost at will. See the Chiefs game. Forcing an opponent to slowly march down the field very methodically is great when you have Peyton Manning and have blown out to a 3 score lead. Not so much, when you're behind by a score or two late in the 4th quarter.

The Tampa 2 certainly had more success when it was employed with a Who's Who Hall of Fame lineup like this: Greenwood, Greene, Homes, White, Ham, Lambert, Toews, Thomas, Blount, Shell, and Edwards or even a lineup like this: Spires, McFarland, Sapp, Rice, Singleton, Quarles, Brooks, Kelly, Barber, Lynch, Jackson. It doesn't look so hot when employed with guys like: DeVries, Darby, Redding, White, Sims, Lenon, Lewis, Fisher, Smith, Bodden, Bullocks.

Good. That would help the Bills get back up to the lower bound of the salary cap, money they have to spend.

No way does any franchise that knows what they are doing pass over "the next Peyton Manning" to keep their wagon hitched to Tyler Thigpen.

Hmm. Let's see, if we trade and cut some OL then our line will be worse. So, we have a brittle starter and a brittle backup. Something is missing though... I got it! Let's get rid of Marshawn Lynch because we won't need a running game in this scenario.

I'm not sure how eventually franchising Peters will save the Bills money or be shoving his face in it. His base salary would more than quadruple when he gets franchised and because of the bad blood the front office is promoting, the Peters camp is definitely not going to be the one trying hard to work out a long term deal. Since a team only has one franchise tag, the Bills could easily be forced to decide between Peters and another player. Seems like a classic Buffalo Bills strategy though ... heck, it might be the new ownership's problem so fug it.

He sure did light it up in 2001, though. On the bright side, he had nowhere to go but up from there.

Might want to reconsider the declaration, "We've got our franchise QB!" Of course, Buffalo hasn't been so great at finding and developing franchise QBs. Joe Ferguson ... Jack Kemp ... man, it's been a while. A long while.

Interesting ideas, but there is no way that Bill Polian trades a franchise LT to build a team. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he doesn't work here anymore.

I'm confounded by him thinking everything is fine with this team and that he should try to insult anybody that doesn't see it his way. Hey, I said this team was a 7-9 team in August and he "female dogged" it that I was overly negative then.

Here's a stab at the challenge to "grade" the Buffalo Bills 2008 team. I'll strive to be objective in my assignment of grades and not round up the grades as a homer. My grading scale is as follows. A means an elite NFL player, a dominant player that is top-5 in the NFL. B means a player is destinctly above average in the range of 6-12 at the position. C means the player is average with C+ shading to above average and C- shading to below average. D is below average and in the range of 21-27 at the position. F is sucks -- bottom 5 league wide. QB: C- Trent was statistically middle of the pack and had some good games against a cream puff schedule of defenses. Still, he struggled badly for a stretch, especially against the 3-4 with combination coverages. He also cannot stay healthy. JP Losman flamed out in spectacular fashion, showing yet again new extremes to screwing up. Though that pleased some posters it was not to the benefit of the Buffalo Bills. RB: C- Marshawn Lynch was middle of the pack in terms of yards per game, touchdowns scored. Fred Jackson was a servicable backup. I added the minus here because of the FB position, which was manned by a couple of street FAs that offered very little to the offense. WR: D Statistically, this group just did not show up on the radar at all. Is it the QB, the scheme, terrible coaching, a bad line, or a lack of talent? I'll spread the blame equally in all areas. TE: D- Royal is right on the line as one of the worst TEs in the league. Since he's the best (apparently) the Bills have, this group is very weak. OL: D Plenty of sacks, not a lot of scoring, a sputtering gorund game -- the OL takes that on the chin. Jason Peters is the most talented lineman this team has had in a decade and he's caught up in a pissing match over his contract and his play dropped off. The pivot was a disaster and neither Melvin Fowler nor Duke Preston are anything more than scrubs in the NFL. DL: D Buffalo got a solid F in pass rush and a solid D in run defense. Were among the bottom feeders in terms of giving up rushing TDs. Stroud did not appear very active statistically, but that was because he was being double teamed regularly. LB: C+ Posluszny had 110 tackles, making him a solid ILB. Add a pick and a forced fumble and 7 PDs, and he had an average year. Kawika Mitchell lead the team (tied) in sacks despite being mostly misused in coverage. Ellison had a fairly good year statistically, well within in the C range. DB: D+ A D-/F borderline in terms of turnovers. Did well in not giving up TDs through the air, but that may be because teams ran the ball in. There is talent here, but it's hard to see it because the run defense is pourous, there is no pass rush from the DL, and the coaching staff refuses to manufacture QB pressure in other ways for long stretches. K/P: B Lindell made 30 FGs, which was on the edge of being top 5. However, he also missed more FGs than any other PK in the top 5. Moorman was solidly in the B range. Kickoffs were among the shortest but coverage was very good. Coaching: D Jauron has never shown he's anything more than an average NFL head coach and is regularly schooled by the better coaches in the NFL. He's not the worst coach, he can coach a team to wins by minimizing mistakes and taking the air out of the football. His staff is nothing great, especially on offense where the team has no identity and no core competence. Overall: This is a somewhat below average team as is indicative of their 7-9 record against a schedule loaded with cream puffs, an 0-6 record in the AFC East, and an unusual and bad 2-8 collapse.

Why don't you tell us what your grading scale actually means? If it is just something you pulled out of your rear, say so.