Ronin

Yes, far too much with most of it being well outside of his area of expertise and therefore competence. That's pretty much my point. He has far too much power for the team's good. He shouldn't have it. On paper it's good, in theory he's been a huge part of the reason for the lack of the team's success. You cannot have it both ways.

Sorry, those aren't football related things. The Bills, I think, are the only team that has a president/CEO and one that has made more decisions that the owner typically makes. Other owners haven't been incapable of making good decisions for an extended period of time, and therefore most presidents don't have near the power that Brandon has. You know this, what kind of game are you playing here? If you don't want the truth, then just accept lies.

Yeah, how'd that go for us?

Brandon sells the proverbial ice to an eskimo. He sold off his integrity years ago when he became a politician-like figurehead for the team promising improvement year after year. If anything he said were true during that stretch then we've have made the playoffs the last six seasons and won the Super Bowl the last two. About the biggest thing he did was moving camp to Rochester/Fisher, but BFD, such a small percentage of fans were even able to benefit from that, and none of it had to do with success, again, merely PR stuff, that it borders on irrelevant. I'd have preferred the team staying in Fredonia if it were going to help them play competent football come the fall. Don't get me wrong, moving camp to Fisher was a good idea, but it's also largely irrelevant in the grand scheme. From a football perspective, yes, he has little if any relevant role. And what he does have, ... please tell me what, should easily be able to be handled by a GM like every other team in the NFL does it. Brandon is only where he is because he's a "local boy" of sorts, but primarily because Wilson trusted him, and not for any other reason. His promotion was widely criticized at the time and only now is being spoken of fondly upon Wilson's death. He was good when he was in charge of ticket sales, but he's been given way way way too much power and authority for the good of the team from a football perspective otherwise whether or not he yields it or not also being irrelevant.

I see them regressing this year in terms of record as well. Marrone's clearly in over his head, Hackett shouldn't even be in the NFL, and with Schwartz, who knows, but honestly, he was a terrible head coach. I'm afraid that Schwartz is going to be the anti-Pettine and overemphasize the rushing D, which is equally if not more issue-laden in today's NFL. We'll see, but I'm hardly enamored with the hire. Thank you, ... I didn't mean on paper, I meant practically speaking. Most teams let the GM run the team who in turn hires the coaches, and when that's not the case it's usually due to a meddling owner like Jerry Jones. Brandon is nothing but a PR man, period. Is that really necessary? Maybe in Buffalo it is given all of the soap opera like issues related to the team in recent years, but from a football perspective he has no role.

He's had our support the entire time he's been here. He's expendable and should be released and the running of the team turned over to someone that knows and understands football in modern America more. He's in well over his head just like most of the people in the most key positions on the team. Talk about shooting hope in the knees. What Brandon says or does has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the future disposition of the team, if you think he does then you're being naive.

I don't think I've ever seen someone go from being a dunce to what he's being talked about as right now so fast. Somehow I'm guessing that the pendulum swings back shortly either after the Draft or otherwise after the season. We need a bipolar drug dispenser on the way in here. LOL They're all still in the mourning phase where truths aren't spoken apparently. It's one thing to follow the "if you don't have anything good to say, then don't say anything at all" axiom for now, but pumping someone up like people are pumping up Brandon is bordline comical. I'm trying to figure out WTF he's even doing here. We have a GM, Whaley, we have a head coach, Marrone.

Statements like that and the reasoning behind it are entirely lost on the majority of posters here. Hence the discussions about building a new state-of-the-art stadium in downtown Buffalo or Niagara Falls. I also don't agree with the initial poster's premise that Marrone's here until the team is sold. IMO he'll regress this season, likely going 4-12 or 5-11 again, and if we don't go at least 8-8 in '15, I don't see how they cannot fire him. If that happens and they do keep him around, then what a nice final few years in Buffalo it will have been. Far from the glory days of the Polian era Bills. If the team didn't address that last year when they drafted him then they're dumber than they appear to be. One thing not mentioned at all is that stadiums for filthy rich people the likes of which buy football teams are nothing but toys for them. The municipalities/states typically pick up the financinging, which is like someone paying the interest on your home. They all want the newest and best stadium that others pay for or which debt, not their debt, but public debt pays for. So whichever city/state offers this, namely the best stadium and the funding of the financing for it, will be the next home of the Bills. If that happens to be Buffalo, ... when you stop laughing ..., then so be it, but NYS doesn't have a pot to piss in and the taxes for any would be owner are the highest in the country. So if the team leaves, blame state politics, not anything having to do with new owners. Just as the state has chased out just about ever major enterprise outside of NYC, so too the likelihood of the Bills leaving are just as great. And by the way, the "ROI" for teams these days are based all but entirely on stadium naming rights, PSLs, and luxury boxes/suites, and lastly, how much of the financing tab the state that its in picks up. I doubt that Buffalo makes the top 50 cities in the nation for its ability to compete in that way, and that includes WNY.

That's only half an analysis. Do the other half. Hughes looked good entirely because of the system that we ran, which overemphasized rushing the passer at the expense of pretty much everything else. Don't agree? Then how come our record didn't change? How come we allowed 3 more passing TDs despite all that pass-rush? How come our passsing yards-per-game were not significantly better than last those from the season prior? How come teams with the most pedestrian RBs, only one among the top-15 rushers in the league, and only one that rushed for over 1,000 yards, all had a tremendousy easy time rushing against us to help their teams win games? You're going to see that overemphasis on the pass-rush diminish significantly this season. When it does, we'll likely see those lofty sack numbers decrease. That's not to say that the D will be worse because maybe just maybe Schwartz understands that it's not just sacks that define a D. If Hughes had not had 10 sacks this past season, you wouldn't have said he was any good. I don't know how we can claim that the D was good given what they allowed to a bunch of bottom tier starting RBs. You can like what the Bills have done all you want, but your and my opinions don't mean much. I really think you're going to see the D revert back to what it's been, particularly now that we've proven, as if there weren't enough data points from other teams out there already, namely Minnesota in recent years, that paint a clear picture that you need more than just sacks to win games from a defensive standpoint. In fact, some of the teams against which we generated the most sacks still have well above average offensive days against us, largely due to their passing games. See the NO and ATL games as to prominent examples. Meanwhile, the turd floating in the coffee cup that no one seems to be able to acknowledge is the ease of the offensive slate of teams that we faced this past season, starting with NE. We'll never ever see as marginal an offense in NE for as long as Brady's their QB as we did this past season. Contrary to popular opinion here, the strength of offensive teams really does make a difference. Again, witness how well both Atlanta and New Orleans played against us, particularly in their passing games, despite us having hung 10 sacks on them combined. All that "pass pressure" and yet not a single INT and bookoo passing yards and ridiculous completion percentages, not to mention 6 passing TDs and 66 offensive points in those two games. At some point you've absolutely gotta reconcile that, you can't just cite the sacks and say "we've improved." In those two games alone, we had 10 sacks, BUT, we also allowed 228 rushing yards (114 avg.), 54 of 81 (67%), 6 TDs passing, 643 passing yards (321 avg.), and 809 total net yards? Did those sacks really help? I don't see how? And what, if we hadn't gotten them, what, they'd have logged another 2 or 3 hundred yards and even more points? Anyway, you only think that Hughes is better than he is because of sack numbers. But either way, you cannot use a single example of how one fair-to-mediocre player previously, that may or may not have improved after raw sack numbers, is a predictor for more of the same, you know that. Yeah, it worked out great, we improved by exactly 0 wins against a very easy schedule of offensive teams, that just oh by the way, we likely won't have this season. "A lot of talent" is relative, isn't it. It can be argued that most or all teams have "a lot of talent." It's how we compare to other teams. We have many glaring holes though John, you know that. Depth is necessary, but only once you've got a solid starting 22, which we are far from having. We still lack a real play-making WR. SJ and Woods are good, but hardly, thus far, top-tier WRs. We haven't had an impact TE since Polian's days. With FJ having one foot out the door, Spiller is hardly a 3-down RB meaning we don't have an impact starting RB either. We have depth caliber play at at least one OL spot, only above average in two others. We now have two starting caliber LBs and still need a third and then still more depth. Who's starting at FS? How can anyone say that this player will be even mediocre much less better right now? Aaron Williams excelled in last season's D, but how will the otherwise disappointing player play this season w/ Byrd gone in a defense that's gotta be more well-rounded with more responsibility befalling him? I don't have high hopes. As to the DL, sure, they logged bookoo sacks, which netted us nothing, but they allowed teams with even the most pedestrian rushing games to make mediocre RBs look like top-10 RBs. Is/was that a good thing? I don't see how. We don't have as much talent as you may think, particularly starting, and when contrasted with the other divisional teams, less. One of the most well reasoned and thought out, and best, posts that I've seen in a long-time! Major props for a very concise well-thought out analysis, not to mention a rare one in discussions of this nature.

Reminder: The Bills have one NFL playoff win apart from Polian's influence. I'm not sure I see the Bills doing anything ever 'til Wilson isn't the owner. As long as Belicheat is the Pats' coach, no matter who their QB is, they'll be better than we are. I can't stand the guy and I think he's overrated and has benefitted far more from Brady than visa versa, but props are due when props are due.

By the way, Spiller had his greatest average rushing up the middle at 5.8 this past season. It was lower across the board for Right, Left, Right Sideline, and culminating with Left Sideline where he averaged only 2.6 yards on 21 carries. So this notion that he runs better to the outsides clearly wasn't borne out this past season. I mean why would a coach continue to run to that side if he was averaging only 2.6? If you ask me, teams are merely covering him better after his quick start in '12. Jackson's in the middle of his curtain call, the team had better find a 3-down solution at RB or they'll be screwed there going forward too.

He had plenty of outside plays and still didn't put up. I think it's time we all ask ourselves whether or not his 2012 season was anomalous. I definitely think it was. He wasn't a great rusher at Clemson, barely eclipsing 1,000 yards only once and then only as the direct result of getting an extra conference game in the ACC CG against a horridly weak GA Tech team. I also love this "in space" ditty. Give any player "in space" and they're going to get you a lot more than they would while being covered. Therein lies the big "secret" to this analysis. Coming into 2012 teams pretty much wrote off Spiller as much more than a role-playing RB and he came out and surprised everyone, primarilly in his first two games with diminishing returns after that. Consider, he had half (3) of his TD total in those first two games, 3 TDs total in the last 14 once teams started to take him a little more seriously. I'm willing to grant that he's among the more enigmatic RBs out there, but having said that, he's a feast or famine type as the original post says. I mean who can afford to play a guy hoping that every third or fourth game he breaks a long run, which usually doesn't even go for a TD? As to this "in space" thing, one thing that gets overlooked is the speed of defensive players in the NFL. Ensuring that a player gets the ball "in space" is the goal of every play. It's never the goal to try to throw the ball to a player that's double or triple covered, or to run right at the strong side of a D unless your OL is bigger, stronger, and faster than the DL on that side. It's always the goal to hit a receiver that's wide open or give the ball to a RB that has plenty of green to look at. Having said that, what does it say for a player that's only effective "in space?" To me it says that he's a role player and like the original post says, akin to a slot machine whereby the hope is that the payoff will be worth the wait, but the fact is that the house is still the ultimate winner with players like that, and if those "payoffs" come against weaker teams and/or in blowout losses where opponents are more prone to allowing us to run to our heart's content, it means little. The Bills are 2-7 when Spiller rushes for 100 or more yards in the '13 and '12 seasons. They're 3-4 when Spiller scores a rushing TD in the '13 and '12 seasons. With a one-game overlap, those wins were against ... 2-14 KC in '12 5-11 Arizona in '12 2-14 Jax in '12 and against the 12-4 Panthers this season in a game that was arguably Manuel's best. Even then, of Spiller's 103 yard, one long run of 46 yards from the Bills' 20 on the first play of a drive in the 4th Quarter was nearly half of that with a relatively insignificant performance otherwise in that game. The result of that drive was a FG. So shouldn't the question be how instrumental Spiller is in helping the team win critical games, not merely beat up on the few teams that are worse than we are? Should we even need Spiller at all to beat teams that are 2-14 or 5-11? If so, what a sad commentary that is. I see little real or significant contribution from him, particularly in the most important of games. In 2 games vs. the Pats and their horrific rushing D this past season he was 36 fo 146 rushing, and 4.0 ypc with 0 TDs. Against Miami and their not much better rushing D he was 27 for 94, 3.5 ypc and 0 TDs. Against the Jets and their 3rd ranked rushing D he was 23 for 15, for not even 1 ypc, and 0 TDs. That's 86 for 255, 3.0 ypc, and 0 TDs in 6 games against the division this past season. In 4 seasons, career, vs. the AFCE he's 266 for 1,128 and 2 TDs rushing, including that monster game vs. the Jets to open the '12 season. That's not even average NFL performance. 'nuff said.

The only proven impact starter that we've signed is Spikes. That's it.

Also, and just by the way, I blame coaching and the front office, the same coaching and front office that's still there, for the plight of the offense. They made their dumb choice to live or die by Manuel, and die they will once again leaving us wondering who our next coach will be after next season and for the 2016 season as we enter our 17th season of playoff futility, and pass our 20th anniversary of playoff winlessness, in yet another "world class" rebuilding project in Buffalo. It's pretty sad when the best that you can hope for is new ownership and what must come to pass to make that happen. Whom are you suggesting is trolling? Based on your thread start in another thread, you're the one that seems to think we've done a good job in free agency thus far. Why is beyond me. But here's an exercise for you to conduct, how about putting up how our AFCE rivals have done in free agency and then conducting your rankings based on that. Because from where I and everyone else sits, all three teams have actually improved their teams indisputably. Let's keep in mind that none of them had losing records. You can do the math from there.

LMAO Good one! Actually, I'm overly focused on the notion that the following teams, none of which ranked among the top half in the league in rushing, posted the following rushing yards against us: Bengals: 165 Bucs: 165 Jags: 159 Falcons: 151 Steelers: 136 Miami: 120 Then of course NE and the Jets with their rag-tag crews of non-superlative RBs averaged 185 yards-per-game RUSHING against us in 4 games. So yeah, I'm looking at silly irrelevant stuff like that. LOL PS ... you won't find more than one RB on all those teams combined, that logged over 1,000 rushing yards last season if my memory serves me correctly. So it's not as if we played against the top RBs in the league. In fact, of the top 16 rushers in the entire league, we faced only one, and he wasn't on any of those teams. So in fact, there wasn't one RB on the aforementioned teams that had more than 860 rushing yards, and that RB was Le'Veon Bell who averaged a paltry 3.5 ypc for the Steelers. By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, you're not going to win many football games by allowing 150 or more rushing yards per game like we did in nearly half of our games while allowing liberal amounts of rushing yards in four others.

Well, that was the problem with Pettine's D, it was precisely feast-or-famine as the team put every one of its eggs into the pass D basket. Wise? I don't think so, but hey, what do we know, we're not "experts" like those getting paid the big bucks to post one losing season after the next while justifiably earning the title as the league's most futile team. The Schwartz will rectify that to an extent, but that extent remains to be seen. As of now, all three other AFCE teams are better than we are, by a significant margin. These comments are nothing but unwanted noise in an otherwise quality thread. But hey, as long as you feel good about yourself.

Again, Searcy's shown nothing, absolutely nothing, in 3 seasons, so your statement has a good likelihood of being the reality here. As to strengthening one area at the price of another, agreed, although I'm not sure that this was an even swap. It could be b/c the MLB position is so critical and for that reason alone. But Spikes is not pass-D specialist, he's better against the run, kinda like London Fletcher was although I'm hesitant to suggest that he is as good as Fletcher was in that role. A whole lot of that is going to come down to the Schwartz's defensive system and how that changes our overall D, which is a certainty, and to what extent the players change (improve/digress) in that same system. It'd be foolish to think that we're going to pile up the sack stats again, but then again, what did that get us? It got us the same-old same-old ultimate result. So if the rushing D is bolstered to the extent that third-rate RBs can't amass 100+ rushing yards against us routinely, then it could be a net positive. Again though, I'll still defer to the notion that all three other AFCE teams are well ahead of us in free-agency thus far and since they were 8-8, 8-8, and 12-4, I'm pretty much expecting that we'll have three winning teams to contend with this forthcoming season. There's absolutely no room in any division for 4 winning teams. Hence another losing season. If the season were to start today, I'd say 4-12 again given the tougher schedule. 1-5 in the East.

Well, he was never a ball-hawk like Byrd was in college either. 3 of his 4 INTs in his pre-draft season, as a Jr. I think, were against terrible QBs that never made it to the NFL and on terrible teams. He only had 2 others in 3 seasons there in a conference that, let's face it, wasn't exactly challenging for the offensive powerhouse conference of NCAA football. Meanwhile, he's had 3 seasons here to show us something and he hasn't. I suppose the 4th time's the charm, but I wouldn't bet on it. Also, it's pretty lofty when you imply that he'll fill Byrd's shoes when we haven't had a S in Buffalo play to that level since what, Kelso?

Grabbed this from the Wager thread to start one about comparing how the rest of the AFCE teams are doing relative to us. Well, considering that we haven't had more than 7 wins for 9 seasons now under four different coaches, to think that we're going to magically post more can be considered to be overly optimistic. Spiller's not likely to post more than 6 total TDs since he's done that only once in one anomalous season in four, and of those I'd expect all of them to be in games vs. mediocre to bad opponents. Also, fwiw, Spiller logged 43 R/R TDs in 4 seasons at Clemson and added another 8 in returns. In 4 seasons here he's logged 17 R/R TDs (of those over half were in a single season) and only 1 in the return game where he was supposed to shine, just like Goodwin, but hasn't, just like Goodwin. Mario should be evaluated on his overall play, not merely his sack tally. He sucks against the run and if I were GM I'd find the quickest way to free up that money and buy a few other good/solid players with it. Of the AFCE teams, the one that's done the least/poorest in free-agency thus far is us. All three other teams have made significant net upgrades. At best we've remained about the same assuming that Spikes' contributions to the D equal Byrd's. I would say that the net upgrade from our other crud LBs to Spikes is big, but so is the degrade from Byrd to whomever will play FS now, presumably Searcy. Searcy has 7 INTs in 6 seasons college and pro, and of those 4 were in one season. That's an average of 1 INT/season. I don't see how Searcy is going to provide the TOs that Byrd has. I'm sure that a kool-aid-ish explanation follows. Either way, so far all of the other three AFCE teams have outperformed us in free-agency. It doesn't take much to do the math considering that we were in the basement this season. We also play much better rushing teams this coming season than we did this past season when we allowed even the most pedestrian RBs to post career days. So it remains to be seen how well Mario and Spikes and the rest of our front-7 handle that. Granted, much of it was this pour every resource into pass-rush short-sighted scheme of Pettine's, so we'll see if The Schwartz can do better. May the Schwartz be with us!

So you base your assessment of the Bills drafts over the years on last year's draft? This just in, there's a reason why we haven't been to the playoffs in 14 years and why Wilson hasn't won more than 1 playoff game without Polian's influence.

Say what? Based on TDs/touch he's among the least productive starters out there. 1 TD for every 43 touches. That may not be a big deal to some, but consider what they've said and still say about him, they say that he's a home-run threat every time he touches the ball. Really? averaging just over 3 TDs/season. It's no wonder fans in Buffalo overrate their team. In terms of yardage, his problem there, both this and last season, and he was a cut above useless in his first two seasons, is that he's massively inconsistent. He'll post three or four great games that carry his statistical averages, but then doesn't show up for half the games and posts only so-so results in the other handful. He's just as inconsistent as Manuel is inaccurate. In his only 4 games over 100 rushing this past season, 3 were against horrid defensive teams, particularly rush D. The only good one was Carolina and Spiller's numbers in that game were, not unexpectedly, carried by that long 77-yard run. After that he had no other TDs, rushing or receiving in those games. He was pathetic in 8 games and so-so in the other few. Has anyone considered that last season was simply an anomaly that caught the league off-guard? He's clearly not a 3-down RB, he's a role-player. Many RBs have posted similar seasons never to have been heard from again. McFadden is one of them. He was a 4th overall draft pick by the Raiders a couple of seasons earlier. I see Spiller following similar footsteps.

I imagine that he'll be no better than he's been, which is as a low-end starter tops. What, are you one of those guys that thinks that free agents that come to Buffalo are all of a sudden going to become better than they were and are? If anything it's the opposite. Just look at Whitner, Lynch, Fletcher, et al. Anyway, I think we're finished here.

Come on now, just look at the QBs and their overall records. It's not as if the other teams were essentially winning teams apart from playing the Pats. Even the year that was mentioned with Cassell starting, the division played two other divisions with only one winning team among them, the aforementioned overrated Leinart-led Cards. That's it. But here have been the QBs in the AFCE during that stretch: Van Pelt, Bledsoe, Holcomb, Losman, Edwards, Fitzpatrick, Manuel Testerverde (washed up), Pennington, Bollinger, Favre (washed up), Sanchez, Smith Fiedler, Feeley, Frerotte, Harrington, Lemon, Pennington, Henne, Moore, Tannehill In 39 team seasons, that's 21 QBs, not even an average of 2 seasons/QB and an average of 7 QBs per team in those 13 seasons. I doubt that you can find another division with any three teams, even arbitrarily from season to season to make it easier, that has that kind of lame track record. Does that alter your stance any? Meanwhile we get Rivers, another Kawika Mitchell caliber LB. LOL Whaley's sure carving out a niche on the Mt. Rushmore of the NFL.

Were they cheating during three of those Super Bowl seasons? I'm guessing yes since they've failed to make it back with anything close to that frequency much less been able to win one with notably better teams in a notably weaker division. If you take any three teams, arbitrarily from season to season, from each division, the other three AFCE teams, the Jets, Fins, Bills, have been the weakest three in the NFL since 2001. I've conducted that analysis. Keep in mind, that's the three weakest arbitrarily from season to season, whereas in the AFCE, it's been exclusively the non-Pats three. That's a striking revelation.

As long as the Pats have three teams like the Jets, Fins, and Bills they'll compete for a playoff spot too. As to Brady, he's among the best ever, so it's hard to say how they'd have been with just a very good QB. Brady has made Belicheat more than Belicheat made Brady. Belicheat's never had success with any other QB. Cassel's Pats beat a bunch of schleps that season. Outside the division they beat only one winning team, the overrated Cardinals with Leinart as QB.