Ronin

So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we could trade him for a 1st that could net us Mariota, you think that would be terrible? I'd ship half of our D out the door for a good QB right now.

What do you predicate these "big" changes on? I'd love to see big changes, but so far there's no hard evidence that any are forthcoming. Pegula didn't make any when he took over the Sabres and claims to only be a casual fan and not attune to the real issues here, which frankly I'm not sure is possible if he's really a fan and has a brain, which clearly he does. The issues of this team should be clear to every village idiot in WNY.

No one ever seems to mention the cow sitting in the soap dish. How about this great rushing D that we supposedly have allowing 140 yards again. Everyone raves about Schwartz but our rushing D has sucked moose balls for the last 9 games. Seriously, it's played like it's ranked at the bottom of the league. I'm expecting the Pats to easily get over 100 rushing yards on us and win the game with 9 or fewer drives. A good house-cleaning cannot possibly come soon enough. If Pegula does not make an announcement tomorrow sometime then get ready for business as usual at OBD.

LOL No doubt.

Maybe he's gearing up for the rest of the season when we start sucking and they play better. Ten to one he's getting a greater number of calls and e-mails from Giants fans on the topic.

Same here, no attempt here to disparage or launch an assault on you in any way, but much of your post is your perception. Next time try doing some homework before posting some of these things. There are enough people here that post opinions and expect everyone to gobble them up like they're established facts. Brandon got paid to sell lemons to people. He was in on it the whole time. It's been clear for years, at least to those looking at thing objectively, and before the starts of seasons, that this team was not going anywhere every season. The whole thing has been based on lies and for the greater part of that time Brandon was the Chief :Lying Officer. For that reason alone he needs to go when new ownership comes in. Littman, Overdorf, and Majeski can follow him out the door for similar reasons and because they're ancient fixtures here that also don't know what they're doing. Whaley: Who says that Whaley's "a great football mind and great professional?" Besides some fans and media that is. He's an idiot and is in over his head. You said Whaley does have a track record with a winning organization (Steelers). But what did he do there in Pittsburgh? You don't know, maybe some in the Steelers' organization know, but no one knows exactly. Seems like everyone that we or another team hires is automatically responsible for all of the good things that happened to his prior team under his purview but not responsible for any of the bad things. How absurd is that approach. Whaley is now on record, locally, as having been the primary impetus behind the drafting of Whaley. So while some may "blame it on Nix," there's absolutely no basis for that shifting of blame. It was Whaley. And don't ask me for the link(s), I've posted them in the past and you can google them yourself. Whaley, like all of our other prior GMs, has done a similar job of drafting. Let's not forget that Whaley didn't come here prior to last season, he was hired in 2010 top be the top personnel guy here. #1!!! He was the Asst. GM and Director of Personnel. So what now, Nix takes the blame for all of the 2010 thru 2013 drafts? Makes no sense. For some stupid reason the Bills just love drawing overhyped guys from Pittsburgh. I don't get it. Did you bother to look at our drafts during Whaley's tenure as such? The only thing left from his debut season is Spiller, who's a role-playing RB and has one foot out the door. The only thing left from 2011 are Dareus (Mr. Personal Issues), underachieving Aaron Williams, and Searcy, who's been a backup to date. From 2012 Gilmore is struggling to cement his status as a 10th overall draft pick, Glenn's playing well enough, Graham's gone, Bradham's underachieving (remember how Whaley told us that he was really a 1st-rounder?), and Brooks is around as a backup. Next season no doubt a few of them will be gone too under new ownership. Then there's last year's draft of course which has essentially Woods and Alonso as its only notable players only a year later. Manuel is a bust at 16th overall and Whaley just knew better than everyone and anyone that Manuel wouldn't be the 2nd to 5th rounder that others said he was. Woods has been good not great, Alonso's been great. So during Whaley's entire time he's managed only one major impact player in the drafts, Alonso. There are a couple of good players, but none have stepped up to the level of impact yet. Dareus may be gone soon too, his inconsistency due to his menstral cycles hurts the team more than it helps. Roster seems solid to you? Really? Looks to me like the LB corps isn't ready to take on a single good passing team. We couldn't last season and our best and only notable pass defender there, Alonso, is out for the season. Spikes is a major, not minor, major liability on passing downs. I don't think that there's a worse MLB against the pass in the entire league. Really. The Pats took him out routinely on known passing plays for that very reason. So unless you want to claim that Marrone's better than Belichick ... Rivers is OK but hardly anything above average, and Bradham has sucked since he's been here incapable of holding a starting spot. Preston Brown is OK but he's not much better against the pass than Spikes is. Our secondary is just as bad as it was prior to last season when a pass-rush happy DC made it look better than it really was. Byrd's gone now, our only impact player in the secondary. McKelvin has sucked for years. Williams hasn't been great either. Searcy starts for the first time in replacement of Byrd and has struggled since he's been here too. Gilmore has not made the kind of progress that's expected from a 10th overall, not even close. Were you aware that despite our franchise record sack numbers last season we allowed 28 passing TDs, 3 more than in 2012? The DL is very good if not great, especially every third or fourth game when Dareus decides to show up. But that back-7 is far from even average which we'll find out soon. Marrone is a good head coach? Based on what exactly? His .500 record in a sub-par secondary conference and entry into the inaugural Scott's Asswipes Bowl twice on 8-5 records? FWIW, his successor with much worse QBs and sophomore skill position talent as his top players achieved a 7-6 record, only a game worse than Marrone's best, and he did it in the ACC. Had you considered that? Marrone is 6-10 in the NFL and at times looks like he's daydreaming about being on a beach somewhere on game days. He's clearly in well over his head. Coaching has been a huge issue here. So not sure where you get this stuff from other than just making it up because it sounds good and originally it was what the talking heads in the media were mimicing.

LMAO

I'm tired of getting GMs and coaches that produce negative results and tired of the people that hire them and tired of the team treating us all like suckers.

Different league back then. The average of the top-20 QBs back then was around 3,200 yards. The average of the top-20 QBs last season was over 4,100 yards, nearly 1,000 yards more. Apples to oranges. It's also a lot easier to throw TDs in this era where the league has done everything it can to enhance the passing game.

Based on the voting results we deserve the team that we have and have had.

I can't resist, but who's supposed to carry the ball on 3rd-downs? Did you even consider that? Last season Spiller was 4 carries for 1 yard and not 1st-downs on 3rds. In 2012, his big year, he was 11 carries for 33 yards and 2 1st-downs and 1 TD (short). 3 for 15 conversion, well below average. Those rates are abysmal. The team doesn't use him on 3rds because they can't afford to. Brown was 11 for 16 yards in 2011, two 1st-downs. Brown was 12 carries for 18 yards last season, one 1st-down. 3 for 23 conversion. Abysmal. Not even 2 ypc. Dixon, 6 carries for -4 yards last season on 3rds.

It's going to take a while to get WNY back to the kind of economic standard that an NFL team would thrive in. This growth that they say is finally showing up must be sustained, not merely a brief blip on a chart. Remains to be seen, but there's a long way to go to get it up to par. Otherwise, Gaughan just states what the informed already know.

He seems to have great hands. They did try to use him yesterday on something akin to a bubble screen though, and the play failed miserably. That's on Marrone and Hackett, but if they think that they're going to use that crap that they used at Clemson using Sammy, they're not as smart as some may like to think. That stuff has proven not to work in the NFL. It may work at FSU against the rest of the ****ty ACC, but it's not going to work in the NFL. Been tried.

That's it right there. Belicheat is supposed to be some sort of genius coach, well then how come with record setting offenses and far better offenses than he had while he was cheating can he not score significantly more points in the playoffs as his teams did when they won the SBs? We're not talking about the D here, we're talking about the O. In conference championships and Super Bowls from through '06 his Pats averaged 28 ppg and the D averaged 20 PA. In conference championsjhips and Super Bowls from '07 and after his Pats averaged 17 ppg and his D averaged 23 PA, and his offenses have been significantly better. Overall his teams have performed better in the regular season. The only explanations are that the cheating helped or that all of a sudden a lot of NFL coaches all of a sudden got better than Belicheat who was viewed as a legend in the making at the time. Say what his apologists will say, but there's always going to be an asterisk next to his name unless he can win one clean. Once Brady retires he's finished. He's never been a good coach without Brady.

Doesn't sound real smart for a GM that's promised playoffs this season. Get rid of Stevie and Spiller and make the playoffs. Sure. How about signing a QB that can actually play, that'd be more exciting to hear. No way they recover their lost 1st-rounder for Spiller. If they're lucky they'll get a 2nd-rounder from a team that's likely to draft late in that round. Score! In the four games that he had over 100-yards rushing, he had only 1 TD and we lost three of those 4 games. In the three that we lost he faced the 22nd, 30th, and 31st rushing defenses. He's a cherry-picker. Also, how about decent performance on 3rd downs.

I'm sure that if he can post a good workout video on youtube everyone here will be all over him.

I'm not so sure that that's agreed upon. They have no choice because he's getting the money and if they don't play him and fail they'll look far worse than they already do and likely will during and after the season. Each of the three QBs has his very limited set of assets, but none has demonstrated that he is a capable starter in the NFL. Both Lewis and Manuel posted comparable average per game numbers last season. Lewis had a slightly higher completion %, a better ypa, a lower TD% but also a lower INT%. Yards/start were just about identical. Both had the same win % as starters. I'm not seeing a significant difference. Everyone will talk about how Lewis sucks in camp. Yeah, well ... Manuel is good? Hardly. Tuel brings something different but not better or worse seemingly. We have three backup caliber QBs on the team. The only question is are they all more #2s or #3s.

Is that a joke? They rolled the dice in a huge way last season by reaching up out of round to get a QB that wasn't even rated as a 1st-rounder by most draft experts. Then this year they raised the stakes in an enormous gamble by trading away next year's 1st to get "tools" that last year's wonder pick won't even be able to make effective use of. But LOL Yeah, OK. If this gamble doesn't pay off this immediate season Whaley will never have another GM job and Marrone will never be the head coach for another NFL team.

So far all we've gotten is rumors and they've been almost categorically wrong. Is this another rumor, or a factual tidbit? And some people say that this hasn't turned into a media circus. All that's missing is the VW bug with the 14 clowns in it.

So the assumption here is that Pegula's being played. Is that a wise assumption? Pegula will automatically top whatever bids come in, so let's get as many bidders as possible to get him to raise his very reasonable (rumored) offer, to something ludicrous. It won't be very funny if Pegula doesn't like being treated like some stooge or sucker that's on the other end of the line and unable to get off the hook. He may very well show the trust that that hook isn't quite as firmly embedded as some like to believe. Who are we to say what Pegula will or will not do or to insist that he'll mortgage his life to do us a favor when he may have little chance of even recouping his investment during his lifetime?

Don't we always. Let's let the process play out prior to speculating. I was hot when reading this. Almost everything we've heard though has been pure speculation and false in hindsight, so why give this crap the time of day until actual facts get out. I wouldn't love this. Pegula has been very decent in this process and appears to have altruistic motives for buying the team. Right now he's being treated like a sucker by fans anyway, who knows how the trust is treating him. He's wealthy, he's not a fool. I cannot imagine that if he feels that he's simply being run up by the trust that at some point he may tell the trust to go screw itself. No matter what we think here, the economics of the region and the fact that it's the smallest TV market in the league don't bode well. We should be on our knees that a guy like Pegula is willing to bid $1B for the team much less more. These assumptions that he'll empty his porfolio just to buy this team at prices and costs of building a new stadium that would make it being a sound business investment iimpossible in his lifetime are not necessarily true and just rumors right now. This trust is being overseen the same way that they have run the team. Exactly. And why doesn't this raise questions as to what the trust's goals really are? Because if the trust was interested in a fair price for the team with a serious commitment to keeping the team here, they just had it. Now they're complicating matters and not being happy with that. I've never been sold that the trust's first loyalties are to us as fans. I guess we won't find out until we find out. Uhhh, because people react to assumptions and rumors.

Yes, because every other starting QB in the league doesn't suck and isn't flirting with permanent irrelevance in the NFL. Really? Do you really need to have that explained? Seriously.

I don't know about that, hasn't Marrone said he wants to run more? Not sure how much more you can run that being 1st in the league in rushing attempts, but it doesn't sound like it's going to go down, they're mitigating what Manuel needs to do, same as they did at FSU after they threw in the towel on trying to correct him. They keep talking as if they're going to try to keep Manuel down to 30 or fewer attempts per game. That doesn't suggest that they're going to be running a whole lot of 4 WR sets.

I can't believe everyone's getting upset over this. They played the starters for what, two series? They're just trying Hogan out. They know what Woods can do, he's arguably the best WR on the team right now and is the only one that's taken a significant number of reps from Manuel. Think of it that way. I don't know how many times I've pointed out, to the seeming outrage of many, that this team has hardly and preexisting chemistry between its QB and WRs and that that is going to be a huge negative this season. You don't just develop that "in camp." It takes many real-time games to get that going. Look at Brady last season and there's no comparison between Brady and Manuel, they're at opposite ends of the spectrum. Actually, in light of the many things that make them seem like they don't know what they're doing, and coincidence or not, they should be applauded for giving Hogan, Mike Williams, and Watkins the most playing time. Woods and Goodwin have already played a season with EJ. Heck, maybe even start those three with the first team next game. We know what Goodwin is, a flyer, that's about it. His value is going to come down to whether or not Manuel can hit him. Woods is a pretty universal WR that can run a bunch of routes. Not sure exactly how good he is yet, but whatever level that is he won't be held back by a lack of versatility. Hogan only seems to have skills as a slot guy, so it makes sense to give him more reps right now. Actually, what makes the most sense is for Manuel to play most of every preseason game still, but that won't happen. The one that needs the reps more than anyone, and to help everyone, is him.

Maybe they can ressurect that same system they used for Bledsoe. (not this again) I think that 5-11/6-10 may be generous. I'm thinking 3-13 and Cleveland having a top-3 pick. If Winston comes out I'm going to be pissed.