Sisyphean Bills

The Bills had very little cap space when Tom Donahoe took the job of Pres./GM.

Marv arrived before the 06 campaign. I guess you could spin the addition of Tripplett, Fowler, and Reyes and the drafting of McCargo as "building the lines first"... But then many might say 3/4 of the top draft picks were on defensive backs, while 2/4 names above are no longer on the team and the other 2 are suspect at best. Well, at least, the Bills have gotten something out of Butler and Williams.

I think Chevy Nova is more like it. In Spanish, "no va" means "no go".

Of course, it wasn't like the Patriots were significantly under the cap and had no other elite FAs they wanted to keep.

I heard he's hitting the tackling dummies so hard, their collective IQ has dropped.

Just wondering... you aren't a Donahoe fan are you?

I heard that the "glorified kick returner" has put the ball in the end zone more than the rest of the offense combined (according to Jim Miller).

OK, the two elite lineman the Bills have acquired out of college and who played for the Bills in the 00s were Pat Williams and Jason Peters. Both of these guys were supreme longshot UDFA rookies. The OL and DL that the Bills have spent draft picks on have been spectacular busts like Flowers and Mike Williams to roster fillers like Merz, Bannan, and Anderson. Really, Aaron Schobel is the only draft pick that one could say was a solid draft hit. Every time the team has to draft another "cheap" 1st round CB to replace the Pro Bowler they let walk out the revolving door, it is another opportunity to draft a franchise lineman that slips through their fingers. So how is it again that "building" around DBs that leave after 4 or 5 years a solid strategy? Frankly, the Bills hitting on Jason Peters as a franchise LT was astronomically long odds. How that can be construed as a "plan" is mind boggling. But, I'm glad it worked out. Because, if Kirk Chambers was the Bills starting LT, the Hamdan fan club would have gotten to see their hero see plenty of action.

I have a hunch that Corner is going to make this team and maybe with emphasis.

Wes Welker isn't that big, but he used and abused our secondary like it was something scabbed together on the cheap.

It was sort of hit on in another thread, but it isn't really so simple as "change sucks / continuity is good". The Bills in the 90s were one of the model franchises in the NFL. Success breeding success. They weren't the most static franchise, never having any changes -- there were changes -- there are always changes. But, what the Bills did have was an institutional memory of what worked and what did not. It was a matter of keeping the train on the tracks. Even after Jim Kelly left, even in the middle of the Johnson vs. Flutie family feud, the Bills were loaded for bear on defense and had one of the deepest teams with a solid mix of veterans and youth and an excellent defensive coach. They were perhaps one lateral away from winning it all. But, the whole thing got blown up. Disillusionment with lots of "free spending" that hadn't netted lots of championships set in and wholesale house cleaning took place. Whatever wasn't new and shiny was thrown away and replaced with something new, where new equals better. The front office was wiped out, the coaches, the systems, a veteran purge ... and when that didn't work, they tried purging the coaches and players again ... the NFL is just like the NCAA, you just have to out recruit everybody was the slogan du jour ... and when that didn't work they tried purging the front office, which led to another purge of coaches, systems, and veterans. It's been a fuggin Merry-Go-Round to nowhere.

No, they drafted 3 CBs because they aren't very happy with the talent they have at the position and wanted to raise the level of competition. They also brought in a FA this past off-season. It's not that hard to understand. The defense was a mess against the spread formations last year. This is the NFL. You don't win by simply having the best starting 11 and a bunch of wannabes that got high accolades from their hometown newspapers. You have to have some contributing depth because there will be injuries. You have to have packages and situational players. You have to have guys that can excel on special teams. Youboty may have potential, but he hasn't come anywhere close to being a "1st round" caliber player. If he makes the 08 team, and that is far from assured, he's going to have to make huge strides and prove he's significantly more valuable (if he's only on par with, say, Cox then it's likely they'll keep Cox and hope he has a quicker rise in his NFL learning curve) than either Corner, Cox, or James. Resting on his draft laurels isn't going to pay the freight.

In audibles, we trust! No prob, BTW. It was a plausible theory, so I wanted to see if it held up to analysis.

I wasn't offended at all. Sorry if you were offended. Feel free to quantify your feelings as much as you wish. It's just a message board and my comment wasn't about *you* at all. In fact, your post just brought up a funny memory. Peace.

Unfortunately, the data doesn't support this. The first 4 games of the season, the Bills averaged 49.5 offensive plays per game (10.25 ppg). The last 4 games of the season, the Bills averaged 60.5 offensive plays per game (17 ppg, thanks to the Dolphins). PS: Games 5-8, they averaged 60 snaps a game (22.25 ppg). Games 9-12, the average went down to 53.25 offensive plays per game (13.5 ppg). The record: 1-3, 3-1, 2-2, 1-3. So, October was a great month, with the Bungles, Ravens, and Jets on the schedule. PPS: The Bills were the worst team in the NFL in terms of offensive plays (57.4 -- the NFL median was 62.9, which comes to 87 more plays over the season). Note that the Bills were never, for any of the 4 game stretches above, as good as the median NFL offense in terms of snaps per game.

I used to work with a kid that would go into meetings and quote statistics like that. "In a month, blah blah will be 97% complete." "Blah blah is 80% of optimal and will be 90% when I get done." I'll never forget the meeting when his boss called him on it. "Why do you say 80%? Why not 83.234799%?" Receiving a blank look, he went on: "You love to throw around percentages and have absolutely no data whatsoever to support any of it."

The Bills drafted 3 CBs in this year's draft. If that is not an indication of how they view their "1st round talent" depth at the position, then nothing is.

Steve Fuller. Marv Levy actually wanted Montana, but his GM went after Fuller. Walsh wanted Fuller and was pissed that the Chiefs jumped on his guy, so he "settled" for Montana. Now, Walsh is acclaimed as a genius talent evaluator and it was his death bed call to Marv Levy that led Edwards to Buffalo.

It doesn't take a good organization that long. It does take an organization that marches to a slogan du jour (winning "cash-to-cap" over games) and repeatedly makes the same mind numbing missteps a long time to trip and accidentally fall in the honey pot.

You may not have meant this, but just what were the "mounting injuries" situation on offense that decreased offensive production? Let's take a look at the offense and who actually missed time. RB: Lynch was dinged up for 3 games and came back. A-Train was lost for the last 6 games. The combination of the above meant Action Jackson got to play in 8 games. WR: Price missed 12 games. Josh Reed 1. Lee Evans 0. Parrish missed 0. QB: Losman missed 3+ games "due to injury" but it was unclear if part of it wasn't more of a benching. Edwards missed the reminder of the Jets game and returned to a backup role until Losman got benched permanently. Again, hard to say how much was purely injury related and how much was leaving Losman in there. TE: Royal was active 16 games. Everett missed most of 16 games. His replacement Gaines filled in "well" -- so well he was let go at the end of the year and the Bills went after Teyo Johnson, who was himself cut before training camp. OL: The starting 5 went the whole year with Peters getting knocked out in week 16. So, I don't really see where the injuries started mounting causing a reduction in productivity as an effect on offense. One might say Peerless Price was a big loss, but his production was a paltry <2 receptions per game. One might say the Losman injury disrupted things, but they better be wearing an asbestos suit and be ready to get flamed. One might say that the loss of A-Train was the decline "towards the end of the season", because his was the only loss in the back half. But that would contradict people that say Fred Jackson was an instant upgrade to the plodding Thomas and point to Thomas being unceremoniously dumped at the end of the year. That leaves (backup TE) Everett's devastating injury, which happened in the 1st game of the year. It doesn't add up. There were other teams in the NFL that had far bigger offensive injury situations than the Buffalo Bills and yet their offenses were statistically better (Rams, Panthers come to mind). Meanwhile, a largely healthy Bills unit, depending on the stat, ran neck and neck with the Chiefs and 49ers for worst offense in the NFL.

The Sunday Night game in 07 was easily one of the most embarrassing and lopsided beat downs that I've ever seen in the NFL, but I wouldn't say it was disappointing. The Bills walked out of the tunnel defeated. SB XXV.

In 5 years, it would be amazing if even 1/4 of those players was still in Buffalo.

Of course, Jim McNally was a sh1tty OL coach and had nothing to do with Peters development whatsoever.

Rich Gannon was very critical, IIRC, of the Bills and was able to predict plays from tells with wicked accuracy. He also was pretty critical of the defensive scheme. I know he called out some Bills defensive players for essentially being slow learners and not playing their roles within what he considered a pretty basic D. Anyway, no worries. I'm sure the audibles will fix it.