Sisyphean Bills

Urban Meyer QBs haven't really done much overall in the NFL. Tebow and Smith (Harris as well, though he was not as hyped) have both been disappointing overall. If the Bills trade for Smith, there is a good argument to put him in a college read offense. But, it's not clear if he'll actually withstand the beating of a full season in a full-blown spread option offense at the NFL level. He's rather lean and lanky in body type. In 8 years, he's made it through 2 seasons. PS: Not saying that he is not worth a look.

Well, I think Pucillo was actually not the worst OL ever. He started games for 3 different teams. But, by that, I'm not saying he was very good either. He was just another body and one of many bad lineman the Bills have started over the years. (I see the OP wanted only guys that started games, so I guess Jasper is out.) Corey Hulsey was pretty dismal and started. The list is too long... At a different position: Torell Troup started a pair of games. Aaron Williams is a terrible CB. PS: Raion Hill anybody?

on the football field.

There is something about the Bills and Notre Dame... Seems sort of strange to see names of guys that played on some of the better Bills teams all over this thread. With many eras of fail, you'd think there would be plenty of bad players to choose from on those awful teams.

Was he worse than Jasper?

Are you sure that he wants to be left alone? He was the one blasting the Bills regime in interviews. Not the action of someone that's moved on and wants to forget.

Note: McKelvin is a FA. Can't cut him. Only decision is whether to try to re-sign him.

The consistent thing with Fitz is that his teams lose more than they win.

Trenton Robinson was a rookie. He started ahead of a 6th round rookie. How is that impressive exactly? Sure it does. That's why the Ravens game plan was to target Donte Whitner and knew the middle of the field would be open for business. He's making the same mistakes that he did when he was in Buffalo. While he has not made strides, the guy has been on a stacked Ohio State defense and a stacked 49ers defense and gotten kudos for "being there" and delivering kill shots. Don't be surprised if Harbaugh moves in another direction at SS next year.

Fixed.

Nassib didn't play in the SEC either.

I'd take him over that knucklehead Young Sr.

It's not Little Joe's fault that Hop Sing never got the laundry done in 14 seasons.

Goodell? He's a Patriots fan. Follow the smoke to the video tapes, man.

The OP must be a Jets fan. Why else would anyone want the Bills to forfeit their pick?

Yeah, like I said during the game, some things don't change much.

We'll never agree on this, I'm sure. It is perfectly fine for Smith to chuck Crabtree within 5 yards. He did. The contact continued past the 5 yards and Smith was holding as Crabtree pushed him to the ground. The chuck disrupted the timing of the play as did the mutual hand-to-hand shoving that followed. No way was the ball that came out catchable. So, I think the refs got it right. Lost in your point is that the 49ers had multiple point blank shots to win the game and came up with nothing. Sorry, you lost me on how the refs "stole" the game.

Did you even read the sentence that you bolded? You clearly didn't understand it. Here is a hint, "strength of the team" doesn't have to mean it was dominant and world-beating; and, that is certainly not what I meant. So, you're not on point here. Anyway, I see Dave has already given you the stats.

Is it your contention that the Redskins have not tried to address their QB position or that they did not make the playoffs? Any statements about the proficiency of their passing game are your own straw-men. Really. So, it's not "silly" to bet your career on a guy that leads you to a 16-32 record and getting fired? Maybe it doesn't meet clinical insanity as you say, but it isn't exactly a prime example of strategic thinking. Hell, it doesn't even meet the reflex reaction of self-preservation. You seem to be hunting the wrong tree. I've never claimed that Ryan Fitzpatrick is the only problem. Far from it, in fact.

For starters, I wasn't saying that the defense couldn't be addressed "first". I'll get back to that. Is there a reason you are trying to divert the point away from the fact that the NFL is becoming more and more an offensively-oriented, and particularly passing, league? Obviously, there are different ways to build a team, and I never said otherwise. You choose to arbitrarily pick the two most recent Super Bowl teams, so let's start there. The core of the Ravens started 17 years ago and that team won a Super Bowl 12 years ago on the back of one of the greatest defensive units ever assembled. So, yes, their defensive core was built a generation ago and they have maintained a high level of play as evidenced by their annual playoff appearances. Players and coaches have come and gone on that defense, but Lewis and Reed have held it together. Joe Flacco, as everyone knows, was added much later than Ray Lewis. But, so !@#$ing what? The Buddy Nix regime's history is one of 3 years. Admitting that the Ravens drafted Lewis and Ed Reed a football generation (or 2 or whatever) ago doesn't change the facts on the ground from 2009 onward. To be successful, you want to be thinking ahead of the curve, not always trying to catch up to it. You want to understand the trends in the current NFL to compete in the current game. Why did the 49ers go from the doldrums to the Super Bowl so quickly under Jim Harbaugh? Was it because they loaded up on defensive talent before he got there? Was it because they drafted a great RB in Gore before Harbaugh got there? Not really, otherwise the guy before Harbaugh wouldn't have gotten fired. Harbaugh brought the team flexibility and creativity to mold a team around its talent. He got much more out of Alex Smith than his predecessors. He put Kaepernick on the field using a lot of concepts from the Nevada offense and let him play a game he was comfortable playing. Let's compare apples to apples though. It's not fair to compare Buddy Nix record to sustained success like Ozzie Newsome, clearly. The best comparison points are the Seahawks and Redskins since they rebooted their entire organizations from top to bottom at the same time as the Bills. Both of those organizations spent considerable resources trying to address their QB situation. The premise that one cannot address QB and also address other areas of the team is clearly false -- both of the Seahawks and Redskins disprove this assumption of mutual exclusivity. By the way, besides both of those teams being significantly more aggressive in trying to fix the QB position, they made more roster moves overall and both of those teams made the playoffs this year. But, let's get back to the 49ers. Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers did not start out by scrapping the defense and offense when they came in, but chose a different course of fitting the system to the players they had. He also proved far from gutless in his ability to change starting QBs mid-season and navigate his team to the Super Bowl. So, they didn't go the big purge route, but can one extend that as a plank to defend Nix's record in Buffalo? No. It is disingenuous when it comes to the QB position. Jim Harbaugh replaced the QB he inherited with a QB he took in his very first draft class. In other words, the current 49ers leadership definitely didn't focus on getting a RB to replace Frank Gore as their first order of business. By the way, Nix hasn't really upgraded the defense. Under Jauron, the defense was the strength of the team. Now, after 3 years and 2 system changes, it is the weakness. So, while it is true that the defense could have been improved and maybe there was a plan, the plan was poorly executed. The term "first" is selective and misleading. The GM's job is to upgrade the team. Again, why can teams like the Seahawks and Redskins start getting players on both sides of the ball, but the Bills focus on drafting for a 3-4 first? The defense was that the Bills couldn't know what they had on offense until Gailey saw it first hand on the field. Then, after a couple of games, it dawned on him what Perry Fewell had known months earlier -- Trent Edwards wasn't an NFL QB. The focus then shifted to the Fitzpatrick salvage project and flip-flopping on the defensive scheme. So what of that great plan? We start down the 3-4 road, turn into a hybrid defense because we never had the players, junk it and go to a 20 year old 4-3 scheme, and do next to nothing on the offensive side of the ball other than exchanging Spiller for Lynch and wringing the turnip Fitzpatrick in a pass-first offense. Oh, and the we'll build through the draft turns into signing Mario Williams to a monster free agent deal. While contemporaries are turning their franchises around, the Bills begin another rebuild with an entirely new coaching staff. So, yes, there is more to the criticism of the great plan than simply not drafting a QB.

OK, but this zero-sum statistical game is wholly irrelevant to what I wrote. The scoring in the NFL has steadily been trending higher as have passing yards. That's not reflected in a single year of stats such as W-L records and who finished with what ranking relevant to others. That's not to say that running the ball is dead. The Vikings got to the playoffs on the legs of Peterson this past year. Having a defense that can slow someone down isn't a bad thing either. If you just want to focus on the Super Bowl, the scoring is up there as well: 51.4 ppg last 5 years, 45 ppg 10 years ago, 33.5 ppg 40 years ago. Edit: By the way, I can and do think it was plainly exposed as a bad plan. Chan Gailey got fired. People want Buddy's head on a platter. The head of the organization announced that the brand is tarnished. If that's not getting exposed, nothing is.

Exactly. Nothing would be worse than to have the officials making crazy judgement calls to decide the Super Bowl. Can you imagine if the Super Bowl was decided on a total job call like the Seahawks / Packers game? They let the players play in the Super Bowl and it is not officiated as tightly as other games. This is a well understood fact. I don't get why people assume the Ravens were the only team getting away with things. I saw the 49ers guilty of blatant pass interference, a face mask, holding all over the place ... and those flags weren't thrown either. The way it should be. Let the players decide the game on the field.

It's not ridiculous in the least. It's fact.

Teams have to know that the Super Bowl is officiated differently than any other game. That's just the way it is.

So, you think signing a guy that intentionally lines up in the wrong places in games is a good idea? Pat Kirwan said it best: "Can I cut him twice?"