Sisyphean Bills

Totally agree on the first point. It was a criticism I made at the time, as you may recall. I'm not convinced yet on the second point. But, I do hope you are correct.

A leader that lets other people do his thinking for him is called a follower.

Yeah, the team had lost confidence in Gailey (and especially Wannstedt) last season. They played like it and as they say, "the tape don't lie." Edit: A big part of that is not hitting the ground running. Gailey came here and tried to resurrect Trent Edwards as his first order of business. (In fact, that may have been THE reason he was hired in the first place.) That was a large part of getting off to an 0-8 start. Some people at the time dismissed it, claiming Gailey was methodical and even "decisive". That the first year was just an evaluation year and the plan would come together in the second year. But this just gets back to my earlier post: look at the plan and how its executed, not if they promise Nirvana in the future.

You know, back in the days when this team actually won games consistently and made the playoffs by dominating the AFC East, I don't ever recall people chest bumming and gushing over how much cap space the team had. The talk then was about how the team might have won the Super Bowl if not for an illegal forward pass. So, yes, most teams now realize that they have to deal with the cap and have sound plans on how to do so. Indeed, every team has the same cap system to deal with. However, some teams like the Patriots seem to both manage their cap and continue to win football games.

"Culture change" is often pure propaganda by a leadership group. For obvious reasons, leadership can't come right out and announce "we don't know what we're doing and we !@#$ed it up badly", so they try to sell belief in a better future. Who doesn't want to believe in that? But, if one applies a little objectivity, things get better by having an actionable plan on how to get better and executing it, not on rhetoric and playing to the peasants' dreams of the future.

We know Kolb has every sign of having Rob Johnsonitis -- guy simply can't stay in one piece and is a sack magnet. Fitzpatrick had other problems, but no one can say he was brittle.

When the team is bad and rebuilding again, it's not so much an either/or thing. It's like commercial fishing. You have to catch fish you can sell, so they have to be good quality, but at the same time you have to catch enough fish to stay in business.

Last I heard the Bills never really even showed any interest in bringing back Levitre. The a posteriori curve fitting is to say that they knew he was too expensive all along. At the time, they showed a total lack of interest. Not to mention that Buddy Nix has openly stated he wanted to build a bigger and stronger team and has gone "bigger is better" repeatedly. Ah well. It's easy analytics to see smokescreens and get 3-way calling.

You're reading too much into what I wrote. I am not advocating that you never go on a date because you can't get a date with a super model. Far from it, in fact. What I am saying is going on a date with the first girl that you see isn't necessarily a "well thought out plan" for a fun date either. (There seems to be some assumed implication that the first girl you see is a super model because she was there. That's false.) Actually, I have no problem with trying to improve the QB position. If you have nothing, then a Chad Pennington-type is an upgrade. No doubt. Gailey's problem was that he expended all of his energy and what was left of his career trying to make chicken salad. He didn't develop anyone else. And Buddy didn't really even try to improve the position, instead going all-in on the notion his coach was a miracle worker who could fix a QB's athletic limitations.

You probably have a point there. Marrone is no genius for reaching for his own ex-QB far ahead of where many others have him ranked, assuming Nassib isn't a total bust. Of course, if he is a bust, I still think Marrone looks like a fool -- as you say, he should have known better. So in that sense, there is no upside to Marrone either way. Having a Trent Edwards/Ryan Fitzpatrick type of QB that can win 6-9 games a year may be good enough for you, but that's not going to be good enough for everybody. And Marrone's "inside track" on Nassib isn't going to squelch any criticism if it came to that. Building a winner isn't simply the act of selecting a QB in the first round. The guy actually has to be an elite player. There is a difference between selecting Brandon Weeden and RG3. Or more to the point, Roethlisberger or Losman.

This offseason is not in the books yet. What he said is generally correct though. Williams came to Buffalo and his first starting QB was the sack-prone hold-over Johnson, who turned into the roly-poly Van Pelt. Mularkey came in and his first starting QB was the hold-over Bledsoe, but he did draft Losman, so I'd say he'd be an exception. Jauron's first year he stuck with the hold-over Losman. Gailey's first year he stuck with the hold-over Edwards, who turned into Fitzpatrick when Edwards jogged out of bounds rather than unlimber his faster-than-a-sharpshooter arm. (In the meantime, the Bills were having a rather remarkable run of 1st round picks.) So, other than Mularkey, none of these coaching staffs has hit the ground running at the franchise defining position that would make or break their career (at least in Buffalo). Oh, to be sure, they have mostly shared the "addition by subtraction" approach to roster building, but then I don't think that's exactly what Bado meant.

It would seem to be an absolute steel cojones pick to take Nassib at #8. Marrone would go down as a freaking genius or go down as a total nitwit who doused his career in gasoline and played with a Bic lighter.

OK, but can he read a playbook?

On the nose. The Kolb deal is reaching agreement, hit the pause button -- work out a deal with another DT -- hit the play button and ink Kolb to a contract. Business as usual or urgency?

Really? Let's quote the post and highlight it for you. I don't honestly remember every word I said, but I can tell you that I didn't expect much activity on the QB front unless they felt someone was a premier player. And your post is once again disingenuous. If you told me that the guy to replace Fitz was Kolb, yes, I'd be underwhelmed. If you told me that they were bringing in Kolb (EDIT: on the cheap, no less) to compete with a high draft pick, then my reaction would be decidedly different. Something tells me you recognize the duality of your post. You quoted his line about October of this past season and responded to it. So, I was curious if you were honestly that far ahead of the curve on Fitzpatrick or not. In fact, this post appears to be saying that you aren't sure what you wrote then about Fitzpatrick, but thought the Bills wouldn't make any moves at QB. It then appears to say that you'd be underwhelmed if you knew Fitz would be replaced with Kolb at that time. Which is curious because Kolb was on his hot streak and most Bills fans were still thinking the Bills had a shot at the playoffs in October. Then, it appears to say that if you had known then that a cheap Kolb and an unnamed QB drafted high in the draft would replace Fitzpatrick then you'd have the opposite reaction -- not underwhelmed, but perhaps excited? And lodged in the midst of this is the word "disingenuous". Nothing personal, of course, but I don't know where you were going with this particular post and I found it confusing as hell. Sorry for the interrupt.

Not to interrupt you two, but are you saying that you were ready to dump Fitzpatrick after week 4 of last season? That would have been seen as somewhat out on a limb at the time seeing as the Bills were 2-2 and the talk was about how they could still make the playoffs as a wildcard after getting spanked by the Patriots. Not saying you weren't done with Fitz, but many weren't at that point yet.

Don't know about the thin skin, but he does come across as someone that doesn't think very highly of the Buffalo Bills organization.

A regional kid with sky-high bust potential with Russ Brandon behind the curtain ... haven't we seen that movie before?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9150017/source-mike-jenkins-oakland-raiders-agree-one-year-deal

These guys might not agree with your post. http://www.nyu.edu/

Yes, but does he believe in fairy tales?

"Need"? Hardly. But, they just might do it. If you go by their history, they are a virtual lock to draft another RB high in the next few years.

The problem the Bills have had with drafting CBs is that they haven't had a DL that could generate a hint of pressure much of the time. It's like buying a shiny new deep threat WR and not having a QB that can throw deep. Or having a QB with zero mobility and putting a bargain bin o-line in front of him.