hondo in seattle

My thoughts are a little different. There were games last year when our opponents clearly respected our run game but did not respect our passing game. Roman will always find ways to get yards on the ground. But to score points, we can't be one dimensional. We need to be able to throw long, short, outside and over the middle. We've got to make the opposing D defend the whole field. Dak could - if he ever actually lined up - help us with what we're already good at. He would not be a nice complementary piece offering a strength where we currently have a weakness.

It's probably not a matter of stupidity. He wants to look dogged/tenacious to his constituency - someone who will keep on fighting for them, even against long odds.

If memory serves, I predicted 10-6 and a playoff appearance last year. The QB situation worked out better than hoped. Greg Roman did the kind of job I expected from him. But I was surprised by the mess Rex made with the defense. So my expectations are more conservative this year: 8-8. I really hope my low expectations are wrong. And I really need us to beat the Hawks in Week 9. But I'm predicting mediocrity.

I can't wait till the Bills come to Seattle on November 7. If we lose that game, I'll hear crap for weeks. If we win, though, I'll dish it out for months. Maybe years.

Interesting how young some players retire these days.

Is there anyone in the beginning of the draft that DW is enamored with? And how would we know? DW's HC complained about thin depth. Clearly DW has taken the issue to heart this offseason but I don't think the project is complete. It's pure speculation, but I don't think Whaley will want to give up picks to move up in the draft.

Unfortunately, by far the team I'm most emotionally invested in is the Bills. Second, is not even close. The only other pro teams I follow at all are the Sabres and Browns. Neither has won a championship in my lifetime. And I'm not quite old enough to remember when the Bills were winning AFL championships. And, by the way, I'm a Purdue alum... not much going on there either. Staying out of airplanes with me is a good idea. My Seattle friends are glad I don't root for the Seahawks. Back to the Brownies, we all know baseball lends itself to analytics better than football. Yet isn't it possible that DePodesta unearths some statistical tendencies that personnel departments in the past have not noticed? What really is the relationship between a QB's hand size and cold-weather success? How important is an OT's arm length actually? Is the 40 yard dash meaningful at all? Is there a better way to measure functional speed? Stats have been part of the NFL forever. I'm not convinced teams are always measuring and talking about the right stats, though.

I think this is an interesting observation. I don't believe the story of the Pats success begins and ends with Brady.

I get this point of view. But there's another. Intoxicated (alcohol, drugs) drivers are probably to blame for the majority of fatal driving accidents. And health care costs get driven up by people who knowingly do unhealthy things because inevitably some of them don't have insurance and we end up paying when they eventually suffer the consequences. But do I think Gordon should be banned from football for a series of alcohol and marijuana violations? No. There's got to be some common sense applied.

While never a star, DeBerg is proof that QBs need time and game experience to develop. His first year under center, he completed a paltry 45% of his passes with a QB rating of 40. A couple years later when he played for the Chiefs (1988-91), a more mature DeBerg completed 58% with a rating of 81.8.

Apparently NFL.com thinks we're drafting a tackle. Their 5 different mocks all have us taking an OT or DT. » Daniel Jeremiah: Sheldon Rankins, DT, Louisville » Charles Davis: A'Shawn Robinson, DT, Alabama » Bucky Brooks: Jarran Reed, DT, Alabama » Lance Zierlein: Taylor Decker, OT, Ohio State » Chad Reuter: Sheldon Rankins, DT, Louisville Apparently they think we're relatively set at the skill positions and need help in the trenches. Another guy on our radar is: » Moritz Boehringer, WR, Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns: Bills attend workout It's about time we started mining the Unicorns! http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000644054/article/afc-east-draft-winds-rumors-connecting-players-nfl-teams

I admit I laughed when I read this. Good point. The first game I ever watched from beginning to end was a Browns - not Bills - game back during the 1968 playoffs. Their opponent was the Dallas Cowboys. This was when the Browns ruled the Century Division while the 'Boys were kings of the Capitol Division. Because the Browns were losing early, I rooted for them and they rallied to beat the 'Boys. I've had a soft spot for the Brownies ever since. It's obvious that I live under a curse when my favorite NFL team is the Bills and my next favorite is the Browns. I must have done something unspeakable in a previous life.

I agree with all this. DePodesta is smart - smart enough to understand football is a different beast than baseball. Innovation often comes with desperation. The Browns have never played in a Super Bowl and have earned a miserable 87-185 record since reestablishing the franchise in 1999. Why wouldn't the Browns try something new? It'll be an interesting experiment. But this is scary... HASLAM'S NEW COMMITMENT to Money(foot)-ball model evident in restructuring of Browns front office into Harvard West. DePodesta reports only to owner. Final say on 53-man roster now belongs to Sashi Brown, 39, fellow Harvard grad and Browns' former general counsel who worked on salary cap and player contracts. Brown, in turn, hired Harvard grad and former Colts pro scouting coordinator Andrew Berry, 28, to be Cleveland's VP of player personnel. Browns' top analytics mind, Ken Kovash, promoted to director of football research and player personnel. Fourth Harvard grad, Kevin Meers, is now team's head research analyst. In total, three of top four decision makers have no NFL scouting or roster-building experience. Cleveland brain trust now unlike anything else in football, which is exactly the point.

IF we draft a QB and IF Tyrod flops... My mind can't handle more than one IF at a time. But Tyrod would have to play a series of bad games before I'd pull the plug and started a backup. Young QBs have growing pains and it's often best to have them work their way through the problems. And while Tyrod isn't young in age for an NFL QB, he is young in game-day experience.

As good as or better than... Winfield and Clements? Edgerson and Byrd? I don't know... I just hope the two of them stay healthy so we can find out.

I'm all for agents talking up their clients. I can tolerate agents making public threats about holding out, demanding trades, and the like. The agent wants all the leverage he can get to negotiate a good contract for his client. I don't hold it against the player when the client uses hardball tactics. That's just business. But knocking the other players and coaching staff, in my opinion, is out of bounds. I hope TT tells Bakari to shut up.

It's hard to know how much influence Whaley had before Nix's retirement. Clearly there was a lot. But didn't Doug hire three new key guys in the weeks after his promotion? In other words, didn't he make some big changes once he got the authority to do so? In other other words, DW was not the de facto GM before Nix's retirement. He wasn't allowed to do everything he wanted to do.

Great headline! Agreed. Some days it really is better to be a Bills fan than a fan of some other club (in this case, the Iggles).

Best wishes to A.J. When I saw headline on CNN that a NFLer was retiring early due to concussions, I hoped it wasn't a Bill. But you certainly can't blame the guy. With his Stanford degree in hand, he's probably going to have a bright future. If he had stayed in the NFL, maybe not. Cool he mentioned the Bills Mafia.

I guess this is the source of my discomfort: While I watch almost all Bills games, I only rarely watch other NFL regular season games. Obviously, our starting CB duo (Darby/Gilmore) is very good. Robey has looked great at times, not so much at other times. Mario Butler has been just okay in limited action but is still learning. Beyond that, the depth chart is mostly a mystery to me. Pretty much the only things I know about White, Moore and Arenas is what I've read which is often contradictory and certainly not universally positive. If we're in nickel half the time, will we have 3 quality CBs to man it? Will we have good guys to step up when there are injuries?

I really should have proofread my post... thanks for the corrections. I'm struck by how much our depth chart has changed the past two years. Being remade for Rex this year? Or just natural attrition? In any case, I still wonder about out depth. Here's an excerpt from a MMQB article: Any NFL coach will tell you that there aren’t enough quality corners to handle all the league’s dynamic wideouts. http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/04/06/nfl-george-iloka-cincinnati-bengals-safety-position-free-agency That's the league wide situation - are we better off than the average team?

I wasn't happy when we let McKelvin walk. As a recent thread pointed out, teams run nickel defenses over 60% of the time. Additionally, injuries are a fact of life. We need at least 3 starting quality DBs with some good backups. So I looked at our roster to see who we had with today's signing of Sterling Moore. I also looked at game starts as a gauge of experience... Stephon Gilmore 51 Corey White 20 Sterling Moore 19 Ronald Darby 15 Nickel Robey 12 Javier Arenas 12 Mario Butler 1 Cam Thomas 0 Merill Noel 0 Sammy Seamster 0 Despite the numbers, I'd still like to see the Bills draft another good DB.

My death is inevitable, too. I still don't like it.

Sadly, we can justify a lot of positions at #1. I don't mean to knock DW but we seem to have a lot of needs. Which leads me to hope we go BPA.

Standing = nostalgic but boring Charging = dynamic What is the standing buffalo doing? Chewing its cud? The charging buffalo looks powerful, exciting, maybe even dangerous.