Utah John

I'll be a lot happier when I hear about Robert Kraft expressing regret from losing twice to the Bills in the same season.

It sure is nice that Andre Reed is in, and we don't have that annual angst about lack of respect for him. He certainly deserves to be in and it was terrible it took so long. Tasker, and Kent Hull for that matter, I'd like to see in, but neither has a good chance, I'm afraid.

Megatron probably is the most physically gifted WR ever. But the HOF? Bo Jackson might be the most physically gifted PERSON ever, and the most complete threat at RB the league has ever seen. He was also an amazing baseball player. And Bo Jackson is not in the HOF for either sport. Jackson's career was shortened by injury, while it might be that Megatron shortens his career voluntarily. The HOF voters will look to some imaginary scorecard -- career totals, MVPs, Super Bowl rings, etc. If the player's career is shortened and he can't show great totals, he's pitched aside by the selection panels.

So if you gave a painter two colors and one brush, and he couldn't paint the Mona Lisa, you'd fire him too? BB's a pretty tough boss. DeGuglielmo did a great job considering what he had to work with. That's not to say the Bills should go after him. Kromer did a great job, making our good players look really good and our crummy players serviceable for the most part.

I don't think Denver will even get the 17 unless Carolina gifts a pick six. I respect Denver's D and Wade's craftiness, but I don't think they can keep Cam entirely under wraps. Panthers 24-10.

Sounds like Percy Harvin v2. High talent, heavy baggage. Of course Harvin was doing fine until he got hurt.

If Taylor does worse next year, a large part of the cause will be the tougher opponents. The Bills had a huge opportunity this year with their schedule to get a wild card slot, playing the AFC South and NFC East, when both divisions were bad. And the collapse of Wrecks' defense kept them out. Even if the D rebounds next year, the tougher schedule will probably keep them out again. Then in 2017, with yet another new coach, we'll rebuild again. But don't necessarily blame TT. He is not doomed to regress. If anything he should get better if the Bills re-sign Glenn and Incognito, and get another threat at WR.

What's surprising to me is that the NFL is giving up its leverage card. For years they've coerced cities around the country to pony up a billion or so for a new stadium that will generate huge new revenue streams for the owners and the league, without much direct benefit to the community. And they've used the LA bogeyman to scare them into going along. What will they do now? Threaten to move a team to London? That's just crazy.

Maybe this is going to be a good cop bad cop routine. Wrecks seems unable or unwilling to crack the whip, and none of the lower-ranking coaches would do it if Wrecks didn't, so maybe he hired his brother to instill some discipline.

So the airline pilot comes over the intercom and tells the passengers, "The bad news is we're lost. The good news is we're making excellent time." The football coach tells the media and the public, "The bad news is our team is a disorganized, leaderless mess that utterly failed to achieve its potential. The good news is I'm everyone's buddy so they like playing here and drawing big paychecks for showing up without working very hard." Roman was an excellent hire and along with the better talent at QB, RB, and the O line has delivered much better offensive play. Thurman is a joke. We need a real D coordinator. Thurman doesn't even get the plays called in on time. The best option, not to reward Wrecks' failure, would have been to bring in an experienced HC like Hue Jackson and a real DC, such as Jim Schwartz. Or Mike Pettine now that he's available. The argument that the available coaching pool is bereft of talent so we should be happy to keep Wrecks is about the worst case of damning by faint praise I've ever seen. Not a word about what a great job Wrecks did or how the team is really on track for the future. Nope, just bragging that those other losers are worse than our loser.

I remember an interview with Kyle Williams sometime during training camp or just afterwards, where he said something to the effect of the D was great on paper but they hadn't done anything yet. I think he saw his teammates not being serious about becoming the best possible, and this was his way of nudging them. If so, it was too little. At least he's enough of a leader to try getting them going but not enough to slap them upside the head.

We did have some bad timing this year. The Chiefs, for example, were terrible to start the year, then found their game. The Bills played them when they were doing well. The Bills played the Giants when they were doing well, early on, and the Jet played the Giants after the Giants had collapsed. So it goes. That isn't the league screwing the Bills, it's just bad luck. Any team that loses to Jacksonville shouldn't blame anyone else for their failures. Tough scheduling affects all teams. The high number of teams coming off byes or longer weeks to play the Bills is a recurring issue but get a straw - and suck it up. Deal with it, and win, so we get more of the Thursday night games, to get longer weeks for ourselves.

It's farther from Mexico.

It will be good for younger football fans to see just how great a running back Simpson was. I hope they include a couple of clips of him from the shows where they had top athletes in various sports competing against each other. I think they called it the Superstars competition. Simpson was a completely dominant athlete, even among the best from all sports. That was a different era, before the media found out it could sell ads and papers from exposing the dark side of public figures. I heard rumors about Simpson's private life in the early 70s in Buffalo, but that was considered off-limits. So the lack of news stories doesn't prove the lack of issues, even back then. The Bills with Simpson, Ahmad Rashad, the Electric Company, and Joe Ferguson, had a great offense. They couldn't play defense in those years, otherwise they'd have made the playoffs more than they did.

Pettine was seduced by the chance to be an NFL head coach. Only problem, while the Browns are technically an NFL team, their front office is bush league. Pettine never stood a chance. I am not sure Pettine is HC material, but he's a great DC. He worked for Wrecks in New Jersey and seemed to get along OK,. though he did come here to get out from under the shadow. He might be willing to come in and return to DC. The biggest problem will be getting his boss from getting in the way of the repairs Pettine will need to do.

I think this Jets loss will be a sore memory for years to come, like the Bills losing in the last game of the season a few years ago, to the Steelers backups, when Bledsoe was the QB, and when a win would have put them into the playoffs. Think about this from the Jets viewpoint. They lost to a team with nothing to play for, with 10 (more or less) starters on IR, a defense that had collapsed into mediocrity, only one WR and no TEs, a rookie and a street FA at RB, etc etc etc. Except for one RB the Jets were healthy. Their OC was our HC and still knew many of the players, as did the Jets QB. They had Brandon Marshall beating up our secondary. And they still lost. Why? They couldn't get the Bills off the field, largely due to TT. Also because they screwed up and didn't cover Sammie on intermediate routes. Just like the Bills lost to the Steelers in the coming out party for Steelers RB Willie Parker, the Jets lost to the Bills when TT got onto the national stage, even if it was in a supporting role.

This is a guy whose destiny was to be a great backup QB. But he keeps getting into starting QB situations, and he's not good enough for that role. Fitz is a great guy, a great teammate. Did you see the hug Fitz and Eric Wood gave each other? His teammates on the Bills wished him well, completely, except when playing the Bills, which is as good as it gets. So he's a very rich man thanks to the Bills, but will probably never get to the SB. Possibly never get to the playoffs. His kids will take that trade -- the money over the playoffs -- but I'll bet he'd give up a few million (boy that sounds stupid when you see it typed) to be in a better situation as backup, behind someone like Brady or Carson Palmer. Someone who can be relied on to be ready to step in if the starter is injured, and keep the boat afloat. With Fitz as TT's backup, we beat Jacksonville, no question. Possibly even Cincinnati. Being as frank as possible, the Jets won 10 games thanks to that great defense, a very good O line, Chris Ivory (one of my favorite RBs), Brandon Marshall, and Chan Gailey doing a great job in his proper job. Fitz could be Fitz and usually the defense would bail him out. Just wondering -- if the Jets do the math like the Bills did, and figure Fitz is never going to win them a championship. They draft a QB high and figure that rookie can love life with that D, that O line, those receivers, etc. and look to the future. So they cut Fitz loose. I wonder if he still has his house in Hamburg...

He must have been trapped and not able to get away from the questions. So he didn't answer anything. If Wrecks wanted Thurman talking to the media, he would have been talking to the media, so he was doing what his boss wanted. Just a big F U to the newspaper that's giving Wrecks a hard time.

That sounds good, but who's going to catch them? Hands of stone McKelvin? Where'd he go? Graham? My money is on Mario Williams, finally making the full-time conversion to cornerback that Wrecks has wanted him to make all season.

The difference between now and the previous years of failure for both franchises is the availability of cash and the willingness to use it. The Pegulas are crazy rich and have no other goals I know of than to have both sports teams win, and to help rejuvenate the Buffalo area. They also provide donations to Penn State but the Buffalo area is their baby. The Sabres have a clear plan and path ahead. It's going to be exciting to watch the progress over the next couple of years, and I think the Pegulas' cash is going to help keep the talent pipeline stocked. The Sabres were always Terry Pegula's primary interest and that seems to be where their focus is -- think about all the hockey-related development downtown and then ask where the equivalent football-related development is. The Bills are Kim Pegula's domain. She is extremely smart and perceptive, and is nobody's fool. With billions in their pockets and no need to think about pinching pennies (like Ralph Wilson and his toadies did), the Pegulas will spend what it takes. I feel confident that if they think Wrecks Ryan should be canned at the end of the year, they'll do it, $27M or no. If he is retained, it will be because they chose to retain him, not that they were afraid of losing money or looking like they're in over their heads. I really don't think Whaley is the problem -- he put the talent together on offense to address the deficiencies there -- but Ryan screwed the pooch. On one hand there's an argument from a management perspective that retaining Ryan is rewarding colossal failure, which is bad for developing the culture of winning. On the other hand there are some legitimate reasons (not many) why the Bills failed this year, and it's not good to change and change and change, so there's a case to be made for keeping Ryan. But Whaley is a keeper. Both Whaley and GMTM have their franchises moving in the right direction. Russ Brandon seems to be staying out of the way, as he should. Not selling off a home game to Toronto anymore was all the contribution I needed to see from him.

The Bills could offer a $10K signing bonus -- that could work.

Getting back to the discussion early in this thread, the Bills use the running game for 5 yard gains, and the Pats use the passing game for those short gains. The simplistic question is, which is better, but since we don't have Tom Brady that's not a useful question. Brady is a fully experienced, highly talented QB who sees opportunities and grabs them. Taylor may be able to get there consistently as well, but until then the Bills are better off running. A strong running game beats up the defense and tires it out. It also demoralizes them if they're gashed over and over. But the Bills' approach lets the D key on our WRs running longer routes, without as much need to be alert for the mid-range passes the Bills never seem to use. The Patriots' pass-centric offense works because of Brady and McDaniels working to their strengths. Also it makes the pass defense cover the whole field. If the Pats had more WRs than Edelman (Amendola is a toy, and the rest are not very good), the Pats would be almost unstoppable. Gronk is of course an outstanding player, but teams are finding ways to cover him when there's no alternative for Brady to look for. So the bottom line is I think the Bills are playing to their strengths on offense. With another RT and possibly a RG (Miller needs to improve, or be benched) and a better #2 WR, their range of strengths will expand. (Also consider that Whaley DID address those holes, with two RTs in last year's draft including a #2, and Percy Harvin -- sometimes things don't work out as expected.) If they had played to their strengths on defense, they'd be 12-3 right now and contending for a first round bye. But Wrecks' foolishness is another topic.

We might have better overall talent than the Jets, but how do we match up in the leadership department? Who are the leaders on the Bills? Kyle Williams, but he's hurt. Aaron Williams, but he's hurt. Mario Williams, nope, great player but not a leader. Jerry Hughes seems to be the only player on defense who's excited to play, and he's a head case who can't go a whole game without a stupid penalty. On offense, Wood I suppose. Watkins could become that guy but doesn't seem inclined that way. Shady ought to be the leader but he doesn't seem to want the job. As much as I hate what Wrecks did to the defense, I see a team that lost so-so players but good to great leaders, like Fred Jackson, Scott Chandler, and maybe Spikes. Without leadership among the players, supporting the coach, a team can't win.

-- No sacks today but the Cowboys do have an excellent offensive line. -- It's hard to evaluate some of the performances. We were without our two starting CBs and struggled to stop some deep-bench WRs. Against Romo and Dez these guys would have been helpless. -- The Cowboys have a very good team but screwed up by not keeping a capable backup QB. The collapse this year due almost all to Romo's absences makes it clear how important a good QB is. The Bills haven't had a really good QB since Bledsoe's first year. And they still come close every year. That's a tribute to the team. They've had QB play most years from guys at the level of the Dallas QB today, and usually do a lot better than 4-11. If Taylor can develop a mid-depth passing game, and the Bills defense can figure out what Ryan is talking about (or even better, what Ryan's replacement is saying), there's a bright future if they can get those things done before Shady gets old. -- I am fine with Taylor attempting a limited number of passes. He hasn't had his primary targets in place most of the year -- Harvin disappeared, then Clay and Woods, and Hogan is turning out to not be a keeper. Too bad, I thought he might turn out like Edelman. Good job by Watkins getting open with no other real threats for receivers.

Training camp, when Wrecks Ryan put in the defense that destroyed the team.