GrudginglyOptimistic

The thing which rings true about the post is that it seems to recognize that Jauron is only a symptom but the team leader who set the parameters for what Marv should look for in hiring and approved the deal and signs the check. All the posts that call for Jauron's head strike me as fine analysis of the current situation but lousy analysis of the whole team situation. As bad as someone wants to complain about Jauron racking up three mediocre 7-9 years that still leaves 7 years of our 0 for the decade playoff run unaccounted for. Complaints about Jauron no matter how statistically well documented they are just are so much whining and bleating without at least a full recognition of the one item all these losing teams and situations share in common in terms of decision-making.

Whether it is a total rebuilding year, the painful being bitten to death by ducks of another 7-9 year, or lightening strikes (though likely lightening will have to strike twice in the same place to make this true) this team actually is competitive, the old truism that you have to take this one game at a time is simply true. The focus now that the regular season has begun needs to be all on NE. Even worrying about or getting one's panties all up in a wad about facing TB at home is simply wrong headed if one is worried about TB. One game at a time is the WORD(s)!

Until we see them stink it up on the field of play I do remain grudgingly optimistic. I am not optimistic for any sane reason (firing your OC just after the end of preseason and dumping your starting LT and installing a starting LT who never started before makes predictions of doom quite reasonable). I am grudgingly optimistic despite all rational reasons pointing toward disaster because I love the Bills, this is just a game and being a fan irrationality is called for quite frankly. I think being pessimistic before the season even starts says a lot more about the poster than it does about the football team because afterall the Bills are tied for first right now and will almost certainly be ahead of someone when Sunday night ends. Why not hope for the best even if one expects the worse!

In more particular order, I generally agree with what you are saying but have a couple of disagreements; 1. Big plays in the pass game is the #1 need in my book. It actually can quite possibly happen as we have the WR weapons in TO and Evans and the feakish speed and open field running ability of Parrish and the NE defense has been great but clearly is much changed in terms of starting personnel. Our own wacky disruption with Turk getting bounced and our young OL makes it quite likely we will not be effective with our O but hope springs eternal and if we hit a couple of long passes early we can set a great tone for this game. Likewise if we miss and go 3 and out a couple of times it will likely be a long evening. 2. Significant and consistent pressure on Brady- NE is gonna score points one way or the other, that is a likely fact. The question is whether these are gonna be easily obtained scores which will dictate this game for the Bills disadvantage or whether there is consistent pressure so these scores will almost certainly occur but NE will need to fight for them and earn thenm. 3. Rather than no turnovers I think it is more important the Bills win the turnover battle. I have no problem with the Bills giving up a couple of turnovers with a hard-pressing O if we can get key fumble recoveries from ST and timely INTs for three turnovers on them. Two for them and 1 on us is by far the likeliest best we will do but I do not expect or demand perfection from us in turnovers if we are putting the pedal to the metal in our passing game. In fact, though TE should go into this game working for no turnovers, if he is pressing to make no mistakes he almost certainly will make them in AVPs first game as OC and the O is gonna need some help from the D to hold its own in this one if we want to be rational about this. 4. Just a rook caught a key pass in yesterday's Pitts win, teams are going to need someone unexpected to step up and make a play so this is a true observation but no where near an expectation unless a player is named. I really doubt Schouman is gonna be that man due to his indiviual abilities and the likely diminished role the TE will play. If you are looking for a TE, Nelson on the goalline fade route is a better bet than Shouman anywhere. Maybin continuing the rush chops he showed in your biggest likely Bills bet for a game changing individual play. 5. If this team is relying on Jackson they likely will lose. 150 combined yards would be an outstanding accomplishment by this Coe College youngster andover 200 as you hope for is a wild fantasy in my book. If anything, if he got a good 35-40 yards burning the clock in the 4th quarter I would label this an outstanding contribution even if he ended up with less than 100 combined.

And Ralph hired Marv after he butchered the decision he made to hire TD which came after he butchered the relationship with Butler leading to him leaving us high and dry which came after he butchered the relationship with Polian who merits a bunch of praise for building the winner of the early 90s. The amazing thing to me is that folks seem committed to wanting to either blame Marv for his errors in rebuilding the team in a GM role he was too old for, or wanting to blame Jauron who has racked up an amazingly consistent 7-9 mediocre record which is totally consistent with his past levels of relative failed achievement as an HC, or wanting to blame a consistently poor performing functionary like John Guy, or whomever when the obvious common thread in all of this is Mr. Ralph. He is the only clear link to the entire 0 for a decade non-playoff run and clearly deserves blame far more than Jauron, Levy, TD. Butler, etc who simply were not here for a majority of these failures. Ultimately, it was Mister Ralph who hired all these folks and signed their checks. He merits great credit for keeping the Bills here when he could have moved for bigger bucks, but right along with this deserved credit comes the deserved blame for an 0 for a decade playoff performance. Quite frankly this strikes me as a case closed response to any complaints about Jauron, Marv, Guy. Modrak, etc.

I think this is far more intelligent description of what happened than folks simply blaming this on the stupidity and poor football sense of John Guy. Another factoid to add into this mix is that the this year saw the OC who was responsible for the entire offense this OL monstrosity operated within got let go at an unprecedented point close to the season beginning. Was this Guy's or Modrak's doing? Sure in part I would not be shocked if either had a key role in this, but the likelihood in my guess is that both probably heard about this in some meeting as a done deal which surprised even these insiders. One needs to reasonably look up the food chain for a common thread to the failed OL, the failed Offense, and the failure of this team to be 0 for a decade in making the playoffs. Though Jauron clearly deserves the lead blame as HC for the past three years of 7-9 mediocrity, the trail of tears also clearly starts in a time period which goes back to the hiring of TD/GW, actually back to the leaving of Butler, and on back to the canning of Polian during the glory days. The common element is the team owner Mr. Ralph. He certainly deserves great praise for keeping the team here but right along with it clearly accurately deserves to be found at great fault for presiding over the mangling of a decade of Bills football which goes far beyond blaming GW, Marv. Modrak, Jauron, or whomever.

The problem with your theory is that the Bills in fact did cave from Peters and other Bills players perspective. Peters goal was pretty clearly to get paid double digits in millions of dollars. He might have liked it if he got this from the Bills, but his actual goal was to holdout of voluntary practices and camp to force the Bills to treat him like an FA. That is exactly what he got. If your thought is correct then it follows that half the Bills should hold out. Don't you see this?

I think it is a mistake to draw the conclusion that the offense is becoming more conservative because DJ was on Schonert's back all the time because there were too many formations. A contrary explanation which would fit the facts as we understand them is seen in a team going to the no huddle. This was not a conservative offense at all as it was run at an extremely high pace and when it worked produced a highly productive and aggressive offense. However, this was an offense which actually had very few plays that it ran (I have heard numbers as low as six) and really only one formation (with slight variations with a man in motion to hide the simplicity and WRs flopping sides from time to time). It actually was the fact that the Bills could run several plays (some run/some long pass/some short pass) from the same formation and using the same set of players that made this offense so deceptive and difficult to stop. The Turk had multiple formations and rotated many players that the smart opposing coach and players would know exactly which play the Bills were gonna run given a certain down and distance and which formation they chose to use and which player package they had go out. Jauron easily could have been on Turk to reduce the number of formations he used in order to make the Bills less easy to predict what they were gonna do. One of the other advantages of the no huddle is that when you got it going well it actually simplifies things a lot for your young inexperienced guards. Opposing Ds do not have a chance to huddle up and decide upon exotic stunts and blitzes to use and since substitutions are limited the opposing DC does not have the ability to send in exotic blitz packages and also your young guards are blocking the same player play after play. If the Bills simplify correctly rather than be more conservative they can instead set things up to run an aggressive pass game.

DJ deserves a big part of the blame either way in that he either muzzled a good one in Turk or he hired a guy not capable of doing the job. I do not disagree that DJ is worthy of blame, I also disagree with anyone who wants to let Turk escape blame for this debacle. In our history one need only look back at Marchibroda for a perfect example of an OC and HC who were oil and water but the team proved to be successful anyway. Even if it is not reasonable to hold Turk to this lofty standard, the team saw little even hint of consistent success under his term. His results do not make a good case at all to believe his self-serving interpretation of why HE & Jauron failed.

Outside of general dislike tor Jauron is there any specific reasons to lay the blame for the ineffective O on DJ rather than Turk? I do not think so. Even in the example you site the big difference here between the aggressive go for it O in this example and the team's lack of offensive aggression would actually seem to be the turnover which put the Bills deep in the Seattle side of the field,

Fish rot from the head down. There is one common denominator to the question of who hired (then fired) Polian, then hired (and screwed up the relationship with) Butler. then hired out of desperation (and then fired) TD, hired out of desperation Levy (at least he did not can him) and then oversaw the creation of the Brandon led FO. Who also signed the contracts (and then fired) Wade, GW, Mularkey, and now Jauron who many find to be a horror who just got extended by someone. All the caterwhauling about Jauron really strikes me as whing because it simply is not Jauron's fault at all for starting the decadeless playoffs. What is it if Jauron is canned that makes folks feel that the problems will be solved or that we will do something different?

I find your analysis on what they were trying to do a bit simplistic as you seem to boil it down to it either being one way or the other way. I think reality is a bit more complex than it being a simple case of one or the other option. Fir example, it struck me that the problem here probably was not a lack of talent, but a general difference in offensive philosophy for running a no-huddle based attack. Turk seemed to want to run his plays out a particular offensive set and thus to run multiple types of plays a team needed multiple offensive sets. The problem with this approach which my sense was Jauron wanted to simplify is that he wanted the Bills to be able to run different plays from the same offensive set. If not, then the set the Bills chose wouldtip off the opposition to what play they were going to run. The no-huddle when it ran well under Kelly was a pretty simple set-up. The Bills would line up the same way virtually each time, but they might go with a run or a pass from the same set. The WR or the RB might be going deep or might be cutting off the route from the same set. The defender had to read the individual player but the Bills had talent in a number of areas that if the D bit on one fake or had one misread then someone was going to be open for a TD or big gain. My sense is that you are right that limitations in Turks teaching ability and his ability to take input were big factors in this not working out, but my guess is that Jauron was getting pressure from Ralph to do something to make it work and Turk did not show the ability to make any progress or to make it look different enough that he was at least trying and it was an interpersonal breakdown rather some inability to see what was happening which did Turk in. Your explanation seems a bit too simplistic.

The embarassing thing is that the current CBA finally saw the owners facing reality that it really is the players whom us fans find entertaining to watch and the owners are simply sources of capital and a tool for organizing the teams. Bills fans have really been penalized because our tool for running our team has proved to be such a blunt bad tool for the last decade. The owners made the same mistake most of the rest of us made in not realizing how badly the economy would implode. My guess is that the owners and the NFL realize they have to sleep in the bed they made by deciding prior to the meltdown to re-open the CBA, but as the owners likely have their most weak teams with billions on the line while the players have their most weak members with mere millions on the line, it is the team owners who are gonna cave on this fight.

The current CBA is not in my opinion an embarrassment for the NFL team owners as under it the the team owners make far more money than they ever made under previous CBAs and certainly than they did under the "good ol"days when they beat the crap out of the NFLPA and forced the NFLPA from simply trying to be tough guys and instead focus on the good ol American goal of making as many $ as possible. It is clearly true that the players are getting a solid majority of the gross take as owners agreed to under the current CBA. However, in exchange for this deal which makes the players partners but arguably majority partners the team owners have conspired with the players to guarantee the networks a stable product. This stability has allowed the nets to agree to multiyear deals with the NFL where it delivers incredible amounts of wealth to the team owners. Sure the NFL team owners can emphasize showing they have bigger cajones that these steroid jacked up athletes, but it is now clear the cost of doing this would be the NFLPA decertifying itself and the owners would have to compete in a true free market which ironically would kill the league. The players are getting 75% of the new revenues but this is only a testimonial to the numeric fact that they got a much smaller share of the old revenues under the previous CBA. Particularly in these times of fiscal uncertainty its hard to see how they hang tough long in negotiations unless they are willing to risk some of their own going down or are willing to carry some likely hefty fiscal burdens of the weaker fiscal teams (not Ralph unless he has taken out significant loans we do not know about using the Bills as collateral). Sure some of the more foolish or fiscally unlucky players will also fall by the wayside. However dozens of NFL players sre essentially gone from the fold each year but it is rare for an owner to go down and if the tap of game money is turned off there is a huge difference between keeping some number of millionaires afloat and keeping millionaires afloat.

Yeah, but the other pesky fact here is that the NFL team ownership is made up of people as well. What appeared to have happened from my outside less than accurately informed view is that while the past is the past and is not totally accurately predictive of the future, past interactions of the owners indicate that this group will find it difficult to commit to going to the mattresses for too long on this one. The owners likely fall into a bunch of different types: 1. Like Ralph, the ones who are pretty secure financially with few loans and little adventurous investing cause they are way old and thus can curmudgeonly do what they want. 2. The ones (maybe Snyder or maybe Jones) who have more money than they know what to do with and tend to shoot from the hip with this great moneymaking toy. 3. Others who are heavily leveraged and have enough liquid cash to play the billionaires game well, but really a couple of bad breaks could seriously wreck the house of cards they are playing. 4. Several other types which are definable groupings but us on the outside cannot say for sure what is happening. My sense is that the financial meltdown which began last fall and has stabilized under Obama, Bernanke, Geithner, et al has probably impacted all of the rich folks billionaires or millionaires heavily. However, the system is listing and yawing badly but has survived the fall storm (what this fall will hold we will see). However, my sense is that though the owners did a heavy lift last year by casting the dye to re-open negotiation, it would not surprise me that if they took a revote knowing today what they know now, they likely would not have added in the variable of a contract re-opening to the fiscal mix. Still, the situation created was the one they had and they re-opened the maw and now they are all in it. Who knows for sure what everyone's condition is (part of the way the game is played is that both sides will present themselves as being strong and united whether they are or not). However, it is a pretty good bet, that the most troubled teams are in even worse shape as the credit markets have dried up and being neither a borrower or a lender is pretty good advice in these times of fiscal uncertainty. A lot depends upon the leadership at a given point in time. My bet is that it is even harder to herd the cats of ownership now than it was a year ago and that the default is gonna be make the same deal pretty much. The NFLPA is hurt because Upshaw died and new leadership has not made itself apparent but my sense is that the messed up outliers among the millionaires is actually a far easier lift and group to either be helped to crawl along or to be jettisoned to live or likely die on their own makes the NFLPA situation an easier one to manage. The team owners are likely even more fractured than before with the old guard like Ralph fiscally strengthened by their past conservative investment while the go-go guys are likely in some danger of folding up and becoming ex-billionaires in a stressful situation. The NFL entity is now run by Goodell who appears to be a son of Tagliaboo-boo and likely is even more pro the current CBA in this time of uncertainty than even the old guard. For the most part the current dispute seems to be about real money as it involves 100s of millions of $, but in the big picture it is still a pretty small fraction of the billions of dollars at play in the whole enterprise. In these moments of fiscal uncertainty I simply doubt that the team owners are going to be able to risk its outliers in this group who may be in real danger of becoming former billionaires. There certainly are players who are likely to become ex-millionaires, but quite frankly this happens all the time to the Pac-Man Jones and Michael Vicks of the NFL even in good fiscal times. I think the team owners are only as strong as their weakest members and the number of weak ones or potential weak ones has gone way up since fall. For the players this number has gone up as well, but in the the end you ship out some meat and bring in some more meat and life and the game goes on.

Not so fast with this assumption. The speed with which one side or the other may crack is not based on a simple computation of who has the most cash or assets on hand, but also how these assets are utilized as collateral to pay loans. If an NFL team or its owners as individuals are highly leveraged and owe large regular interest payments to a large capital holder such as a bank then this party will still owe regular payments on their loans regardless of whether the team plays or not. If the owner is like Ralph Wilson who probably has little or no liability on a team he paid a few thousand bucks for long ago this owner can hold out. However, if you are a team owner who had to lay out several hundred million for your team you almost certainly took out a bank loan to capitalize the purchase. Of course individual players may also have significant personal loans they owe and thus cannot afford to see their income stop, but in general the amount of loans owed by an individual will pale in signiificance next to levels corporate indebtedness. My guess is that the vast majority likely increase their wealth by orders of magnitude from a season of NFL take and likely part of the reason the CBA passed overwhelmingly is that few NFL owners are in the loan freedom the NFL players are in and thus they would outlast owners with normal business debts.

Nice article but a ground rule double at best. It would be a bit harsh in my judgment to call this a blowjob on the Pill, since much of what he says is true (he was built for Bills fans to love and he did a great job in relief generally when called to come in off the bench for a downed QB)/ However, I think labeling this a handjob is accurate as it must give AVP pleasure to read kind words about him and Sully does not get on his knees and lie about stuff. However, he really only tells half the tale of AVP as a Bill since yes this fan was quite confident when he came in relief but I simply cringed and hoped for the best whenever he was the game starter and both good teams (like the Pats who embarrassed AVP in a start at the Ralph (I think it was still Rich at the time) or the Jets who disguised coverages and picked him off at least a couple of times in one game. Is this relevant now? Doubtful but then Sully brought up the past with his half accurate description of life with AVP I think my response is fair game. Potentially it also may be relevant if AVP proves to be more of a talent making in game adjustments but is simply outclassed when each side prepares.

I found Sully's article to be poor reporting (and likely sucking up to AVP to get him as a source) in his fawning description of AVP's play. I think that any columnist who cared about the truth more trying to give a hand job to a players ego would summarize AVP as yes being a good strategic ally for the starter Kelly, and being a great performing back-up when the D had its usual let down after it had knocked the starting QB out of the game, but his performance was generally just plain bad when the team was forced to start him in a regular season game. Don't get me wrong I love AVP as a personality and really liked his play coming off the bench. However, when an opponent had a week to prepare to face him and in particular hide coverages to get him to throw to an area he thought was opened AVP could simply be raped by an opposing D. The only thing a little worrisome about AVP taking over (worrisome about his individual talents as the disarray of the team itself merits a different order of concern) is that this football Brainiac seemed to be fairly easily fooled by opposing football minds who had time to prepare for him, AVP did well under immediate pressure of coming into a game to sub for a wounded Kelly (as he did against Pitt in the playoffs where he steered the team to a TD while Kelly got the needle in the lockeroom and came back) or for am injured starter when he steered the team to a winning FG in one game, However as a starter he simply got taken to the woodshed as he did against NE at home in a full game after he had starred in an enforced sub role (I think it was a demolition of TC which won him the start) and he did in a start against the Jets were hidden coverages cost him a couple of INTs. I hope he has learned a couple of things as a coach that will help him set a good tone against preparation.

The good news is that Turk did not run a productive O and he got canned. There is a very clear measure for AVP which is to have the O he leads score points or he also gets canned (probably along with DJ and everyone else. The fact DJ and Turk had serious difference likely means that the AVP led O needs to be different than the Turk led O which is a good thing.

Like fish, teams rot from the head down, Firing Turk is a mere sideshow for the team needing to be rid of someone up above him if they want to win (and I think Jauron is also a symptom rather than the true cause of the rot of the last decade.

Is AVP the answer to our problems? Nope. I really doubt it. However, can he produce more with these players than Schoenert? My guess is that this is much easier to do than being an adequate answer. For now I am willing to live with reality and the reality is that the AVP faces the first step of being more productive than the Turk O. It is not an incredibly hard lift to better than Turk.

One thing I did like about the firing is that I think the timing is as good as you can get if you make the bad decision to promote him and the even worse decision not to can him after he showed little last year. The late canning denies the Bills little unless you can him soon after last season. It does however, make it pretty hard for Belicheat and other opponents to hire Turk to scout the Bills. My guess is that Belicheat is already thinking about giving him an interim job, but my guess is that 8 days is not enough time for it to be worthwhile for NE to glean and install much for the first game. Schoenert seems likely to end up with a team that opposes us later this season, but every week the Bills will be able to change away from Schoenert's faulty game plan and make him less valuable as a steal for opponents. I think for the most part opponents are not all that worried about facing the Bills and have no need to steal plans they are going to be able to defeat straight up if the Bills are stupid enough not to jettison alot of Schoenert's thinking and planning.

You certainly can run well with a small OL but all it takes is co-ordination and practice. With the Bills firing their OC and the pre-seaspn just ending these are two commodities we will not have. My sense is that the best bet for the Bills offense is to do the best you can with what you got. Since what we got is flat out speed at one WR and a serious individual threat at the other WR, that an aggressive passing attack rather than smashmouth football is the best way for us to go. it may be particularly advantageous (we should not expect a good attack merely getting advantages where we can find them) is to actually use the 3 WR attack we have practices on occasion with speed freak Parrish as the 3rd WR. When this line-up is employed using the no huddle we have been practicing, though it is doubtful this can be a consistent juggernaut, it will force the opposing D to adjust to our lead covering a bunch of real threats. We will suck and we are trying to create a situation where they suck more. Edwards has an impossible job that may be beyond a young QB, but if his job is to read progressions looking for a quick breakdown called by our aggressive WRs this may be the best we can do. The good news is that if this mode forces Ds to think coverage rather than complex blitzes it helps our too young OL a lot.

The situation is that reality is reality and thus what do we do now. Repeated lamenting by folks that we suck and are in deep doo da are understandable but really pretty silly after 24 hours or so let it out now but after this the situation will be the same. My sense is: 1. Since Jauron apparently did not push this I assume Ralph or Brandon did. Either way it simply emphasizes the deep doo doo. The key I think is at this point if you are Ralph you look at what you got and see what you can salvage. My GUESS is that you likely find the most competent person internally to do this which is likely AVP and get him to take on the virtually impossible task of getting all he can out of what we got (whatever scheme Turk leaves behind) and tries to fix the many things likely wrong as best he can. 2. Look outside for the chance there is some lightening strike of a savior out there like Chan Gailey who just got canned. Can Gailey fix it? Almost certainly not. Can he make it better. This will not be hard to accomplish as it looks so bad offensively. 3. Open talks with Jauron about how he can prepare for his exit after the season ends. Aggressively leading the team to a win is not Jauron's style. However, moderately leading the team to a soft landing as he departs may be just right for him. 7-9 is going to be hard to accomplish in this situation but may be a goal that fits Jauron's MO.