Sisyphean Bills

There's a possibility the Earth could explode tomorrow, too. Glad you agree. Back to the original point, Dick Jauron was hired by Levy in reaction to Mularkey bailing out. Most of us where very critical of Mularkey for quitting at the time and there was a lot of people rushing to Ralph and Marv's defense. Mort and Mularkey were both kicked repeatedly by Bills fans. Now at 6-6 and a mathematical chance to make the playoffs, Bills fans are freaking out. Everyone is on the hot seat including the owner. And not just fans, but a former player and employee, Thurman Thomas came out as a critic. Maybe there is a sense out there that this team is not on the rise, that it is not better than it was under Tom Donahoe. Maybe there is a fear that Mularkey and Mort were spot on -- that the way the Bills front office was reorganized was a recipe for fuggeduptitude and undermined chances of success.

Let me rephrase my response. I think your arguments are absurd. But, I didn't say they weren't possible.

Marv going in to a new situation and telling people exactly how to do their jobs like an egomaniac would have been completely out of character for Marv. It's possible. It's also possible I'll win the lottery today. Yes, Marv and Ralph are well regarded as liars. http://www.spotlightingnews.com/article.php?news=1817 http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2289987 http://buffalo.bizjournals.com/buffalo/sto...fn&brthrs=1 You'll find the 3rd article interesting as Levy is quoted as wanting a "straight shooter". Odd for a guy masterminding conspiracies and distorting the truth.

Hold onto that hatred, man. Keep it close to your heart.

It's just a hypothetical presented as a discussion point. I'm not putting it out there as a certainty or as something for JP haters to get their panties all twisted up about. If it helps you get over the JP knee jerk, substitute the name "Woody Harrelson" for JP everywhere in the hypothetical. For instance: if Woody is basically done as a Buffalo Bill, but he somehow comes out of the casket and leads the team to the playoffs, what the phuk would you do if you were the hydra-GM? Also considering the Poised One has played the position like a timid gopher, popping up, tossing the dirt 5 or 6 inches, and shooting back in his hole...

excuses += 1;

This could be very interesting. If JP comes out and actually performs exceptionally well, head and shoulders above Trent's play of the last 2 months, and the Bills win this game going away, it will be the only victory against an AFC East opponent and the only victory over a team with a winning record this year. What do the Bills do then? If Trent's groin concussion is fully healed, do you put him back in with the playoffs on the line? If his groin concussion is only partly healed? If it isn't any better, and JP has to play a game or two more and continues to play very well, what do they do then? If Trent is done for the year and JP runs the table to get the Bills in the playoffs, do the Bills turn around and let him walk? (OK, seriously, the team as a whole has shown no evidence this year they can beat average or better teams, so the likelihood of any of this is pretty damn minuscule. JP playing better than Trent isn't that far fetched -- Trent is playing like absolute crap of late. But, it is the ultimate team game, and just changing the QB doesn't necessarily mean the entire team will suddenly start playing well.)

The irony is that Levy's first move was to talk to Mike Mularkey, decide he was the right coach to go ahead with, and to talk him into staying. Hours after that agreement, Mularkey decided to quit rather than be a lame duck head coach who had just fired part of his staff. Levy's second move was to hire Jauron after he'd lost the initiative. Once the new regime was in place their first decision was to declare the Bills were going with all-new offensive and defensive systems -- the "what's new" was the Mike Martz offense and the "what's cool" was the Tony Dungy defense. They proceeded to clean house under the pretense of cash-to-cap and instilling a winning atmosphere. The winning never happened; there may be more smiles on people's faces, but that doesn't actually correlate to winning. Which circles back to the irony of it. Going in, Mularkey and the systems he ran were judged to be "what the team needed to move forward". Soon thereafter, the team was being blown up.

Donahoe wasn't out of work exactly. He was manning a keyboard at one of ESPN's computers. Donahoe was actually President and GM, so he was probably making discount presidential money.

Bastard!

They may not know exactly who they are going to hire, but they need to have some idea of the qualities that they are looking for and the direction they want to go, right? I mean, otherwise, they will just be hiring a guy based on the number of lists he has in his pocket, that he looks familiar, or went to a fine college.

This logic makes no sense. The AFC East in 07 had one of the best teams in the NFL ever, the Pats, one of the worst teams in the NFL ever, the Dolphins, a very bad team in the Jets, and finally the Bills. The Bills, like any other borderline middling team, should've been able to have a winning record in such a "difficult" division, and they did have a winning record of 4-2. The strength of a division must be taken as a whole and not simply by looking at the one team at the top. Because the 49ers used to routinely coast to the playoffs with great records did not mean that the rest of their pathetic division was any good or that playing in that division was "difficult". It just meant the Falcons, Saints, and Rams sucked and by majority rule the NFC West was a division of cream puffs.

My answer to my question is that Jauron has always been a bit of a panic hire as a head coach. McGinnis was the choice in Chicago, and after a major flub up, they scrambled and got Jauron. In Detroit, Millen was grasping at straws and promoted Jauron to a position nobody wanted, even Jauron. In Buffalo, the Bills wanted to retain Mularkey, he quit, and they had to scramble and find someone else willing to take the job. The second factor is that Jauron has no record of success, and so cannot command top pay and is seemingly always on a short leash. To hitch one's wagon to Jauron seems an unwise move for a coordinator; he won't get paid well and the stability seems very transient. It's a vicious cycle.

Next year's schedule is shaping up to be much tougher than this years. Instead of cream puffs in the AFC and NFC West, the Bills play the AFC and NFC South, teams that are actually playing very good football this year. The 2 conference games may actually turn out to be against teams that improve from this year rather than teams that are making smoking craters in the ground like the Browns and Jags did this year. If the Bills walk into that with little more change than a cleaner mirror & new flashpots, they stand an excellent chance of getting rewarded with a very high draft pick.

It's kind of hard to defend Turk on that premise though, is it not? He hasn't once come up with a well conceived game plan to attack a 3-4 defense. It took him 11 weeks and a few phone calls to figure out he might have an advantage working from the press box on game day...

Football wise, I believe Petrino had left the Falcons without an offensive identity. Recall that he was hired to figure out a way to help Mike Vick; Vick went to jail, Petrino moved on, and the Falcons were left holding the bag -- a gimmicky college system that the players never bought into. Total train wreck. Anybody that knew anything about running an offense in the NFL was a huge improvement. Enter Mikey. In J-ville, Smith ran a fairly conservative defense. They brought in Greggo, who loves to dial up the blitzes and press man. Big shift there potentially (I haven't seen much of the Jags this year), and it may be some answer as to why the wings fell off their airplane this year.

It begs the question, why is it that Dick has been in this league for eons and yet he can't find a single outstanding coordinator that will come with him and help him succeed as a head coach? He's a nice guy and the opposition is always quoted as gushing about how much they like and respect him...

And, if he isn't, he can just be put in the IR list to increase the head count.

Thanks, Adam. I think I can agree with the general sentiment behind that. Firing the head coach (and most likely staff) shouldn't be done in a fit of anger, because he wouldn't play the QB I wanted or some such. It's a major move and it should be a part of an overall plan to achieve a vision of improving the team and winning a Super Bowl. Last time the Bills changed HCs, it was blatant that they did so with their pants around their ankles. Just pushing buttons ala Al Davis is definitely not a plan. (On the other hand, Al isn't afraid of going after young superstar coaches somewhat prematurely and occasionally striking gold -- before running them out with his lunacy.)

Well said.

Adam. When is it time to call a spade a spade in your book? I highly doubt many true Bills fans are looking at the prospect of blowing it all up and starting from scratch, yet again, with unbridled jubilation. It's unwise to assume so. As Bills fans, we want the team to be successful and in the hunt for a Super Bowl. That's why they play the game. But there has to be a time of reckoning, a time when there is some accountability, doesn't there? If not, then you have the Detroit Lions and a Polyanna owner that thinks if he gives his clueless President/GM/coach a couple more seasons, then against some vanishingly small probability, something like 1 over the Shannon number, the light will just come on and everything will be hunky-dory. Does the team really have to slip all the way over the brink and free fall into oblivion with multiple 0,1,2 win seasons in order to truly know, "Gee, Dr. Spock, this wasn't such a great plan after all?"

It is pretty comical that in a thread critical of Trent Edwards, people assume they can trot out JP Losman, take yet another dump on him, and think their clever ruse will cause everyone to just forget that Edwards has been the QB playing like crap. Yawn. JP sucks. He's also 75% out of the door. Yippee, hooray! Another bust for the Bills!

7. Cause every once in a great while, a jellyfish can get a good sting on a Dolphin.

I just when I read this stuff. Snap your fingers and guys that have no agility will instantly become coverage LBs, etc.