hondo in seattle

Like most here, I don't want to see Fitz suit up as our starting QB ever again. But I don't want to see him cut either - at least not yet. I find the idea of having ZERO QBs on the roster frightening. Any QB we draft may turn out to be worse than Fitz and there aren't any impressive FA QBs available. I mean, this is the friggin' NFL - you can't go into the draft without a single QB under contract. Even if we do draft a good QB, he would benefit from a smart mentor. It seems to me, under the circumstances, restructuring Fitz (if true) would be the best option. Hopefully they restructure would allow us to cut him later without a huge cap hit.

Scary thought.

According to his bio, Russ Lande (the author of the article) used to be scout for the Rams and Browns. Surprisingly, there's not another QB on his list of top prospects until Tyler Wilson at #33.

We all agree that running around the block and playing b-ball are better than doing nothing. But Stevie himself says that if he worked out harder (i.e. followed the instructions in his off-season workout booklet) he could maybe accumulate 200-300 yards more. I'm not arguing the figure he presented is accurate - only that he knows his effort is far from total. So we have a situation where Ralph is paying Stevie 100% of the promised salary. But Stevie is only giving 80% effort in the off-season. Worse, Stevie isn't doing his best to help his teammates win. I never played NFL ball but I did lead soldiers into combat. If I found out one of my men didn't do his best to prepare, I'd be freaking pissed that he didn't love and respect his fellow soldiers enough to do the right thing to help them survive and accomplish the mission. Obviously, the stakes are a little lower here. Football is not a game of life or death. But, still, if you care about your teammates, your going to do your utmost to help them win. Stevie is no Randy Moss on game day but his lack of commitment during the off-season is a disappointment. I liked Stevie before. I like him a little less now.

Count me amongst those disappointed in Stevie. Every player has an obligation to his teammates and coaches (not to mention the fans) to be his best. By his own admission, he didn't do his best. I think he's letting down his teammates. Using his own numbers, he might have gained 200 or 300 more yards if he had worked out in the off-season. How many more TDs would that have been? How many more drive sustaining 1st downs? How many more wins?

I was at that game with my toddler daughter. She's a journalist now and, sadly, a Raider fan. The game wasn't as close as the score.

Good research! But I'll nitpick. The NFL didn't form until 1920. So any football club before that was not an NFL team. If you look at the standings, the Buffalo clubs were good back then. http://www.nfl.com/history/standings/1921 I can't recall what year, but I remember once reading that the Buffalo franchise was cheated out of the NFL Championship because some other club counted non-league games in their record. Back then there were football clubs outside the NFL that weren't that bad. The NFL didn't have a monopoly on the best players or teams. The league champion was the club with the best record - though most believed only league games counted and everything was exhibition. Buffalo had the best record against other NFL teams but the championship was awarded to another club.

Have you guys seen the fan map posted on another thread? http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18d0rfk0hn1lppng/original.png Most clubs have large regional fan bases. Buffalo's, fan base on the other hand, is geographically one of the smallest - including only Buffalo and outlying areas. And the Buffalo itself isn't very populous. We really need Southern Ontario.

+1

Neither was very good actually. The D was good back then.

This is why Russ Brandon's regionalization efforts are so important. Buffalo does not have a large population and our fan base doesn't extend far beyond Buffalo. We need to get South Ontario to back the Bills if we want to cement the Bills long term future in WNY.

This is a good thought. The Bills have signed a stadium lease and now a contract with Toronto. Both these inked agreements make it more difficult for a new owner to relocate the franchise. I'm hoping we have a 10 year deal with St. John Fisher with a $10 million opt out clause. The more signed deals tying us to the region, the better.

First of all, $20 mil is the asking price, not the negotiated price. But it's not a crazy starting point. Flacco is a guy who will complete about 60% of his passes, throw 20 TDs against 10 picks, and average 220 yards or so per game. This is about what he's been doing the last four years. Oh, and he'll win some playoff games. Maybe that's not "elite" but it's pretty damn solid. We haven't had a guy who could produce like that year after year since Kelly. So I'd pay Flacco $20 million a year to be a Bill if that was an option.

Buffalo is, as I recall, the 3rd smallest market in the NFL. Green Bay is smaller, but Green Bay represent the whole state of Wisconsin and is owned by their fans. The Packers aren't moving. I think Jacksonville is also smaller and Jax fans also worry about losing their team. There are bigger cities out there, LA prominently among them, that don't have NFL franchises. Worse, the Buffalo market is stagnant while other cities enjoys healthy growth and prosperity. 100 years ago, Buffalo was perhaps the 10th biggest city in the US. Now the Buffalo metro area is about 40th, and it's only going to drop further down that list. Let's not forget that ticket prices in Buffalo are among the lowest in the league - if not the absolute lowest. While this is good for fans, it sucks for the Bills as a business. The smallish Buffalo economy just doesn't support a higher price point for tickets. Why would a billionaire owner want to keep a billion dollar franchise in a non-growth market when there are - financially speaking - much better options out there? Russ is doing everything he can to answer that question. If he succeeds in creating an active fan base in Toronto and Rochester, we may actually have some hope of keeping the Bills in Buffalo long term. If he fails, I seriously worry about the consequences. I'm not signing the petition.

I keep hearing Glennon throws a good deep ball, but not much else. Who was it that said that one of the best indicators of future NFL success is accuracy? You can't teach it, so they need to bring it with them. From what I hear, Glennon just isn't particularly accurate. Then again, all these QBs have some flaw or another.

This is how Lance Armstrong rationalized his actions and got himself into trouble: "Everyone else cheats so I will too." I prefer the Marv Levy approach (i.e. Levy the Coach, not Levy the GM): win with character and class.

+1 We're comparing a QB we ultimately didn't want to another QB we ultimately didn't want. What's the point? In both cases, we needed better. Let's hope this time we actually find better.

"It was a terrible mistake. And we knew it was wrong while we were doing it." This is a quote from Greggo. An honest, contrite confession? Or the appearance of one in a quid pro quo with Goddell?

Auburn BB, thanks for the post. Interesting insights from Polian. I'm not a draft geek so let me ask... How many drafts don't include, in retrospect, at least one NFL caliber QB? My hunch is that it's not many but I could be wrong.

The pistol is ground-breaking? It's been around for about ten years now. But it's really just a tweak on the shotgun - which has been around since the 1930s - with the QB a couple steps further up. Chan also liked to use the spread offense. So does Chip Kelly. The spread has also been around since the 1930's. Hardly ground-breaking, Chip Kelly's spread is different because he mixes in other elements and does it uptempo. Chan's spread isn't unique - or uniquely successful. But the bigger point is that Marrone and his coaches are a bunch of football geeks, in the mold of Jon Gruden.

One thing I like about Jon Gruden is that he’s a football junkie. He says that last year he seriously considered being Oregon’s OC just for the opportunity to learn Chip Kelly’s uptempo spread offense. He also, by the way, studied what Marrone was doing in Syracuse. Gruden loves analyzing game tape and discussing new ideas with the best football innovators out there. Gailey and Wannstedt are cast from a different mold. Both seemed to just do what they’ve always done in the past. Their attitude seemed to be, “It worked before so why try something different?” Chan was smart enough to tweak some of his outdated ideas enough to create a modicum of success on the offensive side of the ball. Wannstedt, not as bright as Chan, just stubbornly stuck to what he knew and failed miserably on the defensive side. In contrast, the new coaches are true students of the game. From all that I’ve been reading, Marrone, Pettine and Hackett are football geeks like Gruden. They know where various schemes originated and how they evolved over the years. When they hear about a coach getting success with something new, they’ll study game tape to see what they can learn and borrow. Hackett calls it getting your “Ph.D in football.” When Marrone was first hired, he said he wanted coaches who lived and breathed football. I think football geekdom was part of what he was talking about. He wanted guys who obsessively study film and pick the brains of the best coaches out there. Mike Pettine, our new DC, is one of those guys. According to accounts, Pettine is always scouting other defenses for new tactics to confuse and stymy offensive coordinators and quarterbacks. Pettine’s defenses at New York were a varied – and mostly successful - smorgasboard of borrowed schemes. Even Pat Morris, our new Offensive Line Coach, spent this past season with Gruden and his “Fired Football Coaches of America” breaking down game film and learning new concepts. Marrone seems to be putting together a group of thinkers and experimenters. While this won’t necessarily equate to success, I’m getting excited to see what the new Buffalo Bills look like on the field.

I've never heard him say that he'll keep us in a 4-3 base. Maybe the closest he comes to actually saying something like this is in this piece from Chris Brown: Bills new defensive coordinator Mike Pettine was asked in a 1-on-1 interview with Buffalobills.com if he’s married to the 3-4 base defense coming to Buffalo. Here was his response. “I’m not. Again it’s a situation where I think people try to compartmentalize too much and just broad stroke it 3-4, 4-3, what are you? And my answer to that question is yes to all of the above,” Pettine told Buffalobills.com. ”We are a multiple front, attacking, pressure-style defense. We’re going to play man coverage, we’re going to play zone coverage. What we’re going to do defensively is take advantage of what our players do well. “I’m not bringing in a defense, this is going to be the Buffalo Bills defense. It’s going to be built around the explosive athletes that are here. Again starting with the front and that’s the solid foundation here and moving to the linebackers and secondary stacked behind them. It made the decision so much easier for me looking at the roster.”

Fair enough. But given that we're built to be a 4-3 team, I would expect Pettine's utilization of a 4 man front to be more common with the Bills (at least in Year One) than it was with the Jets. He seems comfortable enough with the 4-3 that he won't be reluctant to use it if that's where our talent's at.

Pettine deployed the 3-4 only 37% of the time. Here's a good article on the various formations used by the Jets. http://bleacherrepor...se-is-not-a-3-4 In another article this past June when he was still with the Jets, Pettine said he would be using a lot of 4-3 against AFC East opponents: "For the better part of three seasons, Pettine and Ryan have relied on innovative and unconventional tactics to create havoc within the framework of their 3-4 scheme. Although the Jets will retain some of those 3-4 roots, Pettine admitted that “we’re going to be more 4-3” to generate pressure on opposing quarterbacks in 2012. The Jets have finished 18th, 7th and 17th in the league in sacks under Ryan. Pettine went so far as to predict that the Jets may not play any 3-4 base defense in their six AFC East games that feature three teams with spread offenses. “We might not play a snap of base defense in a division game this year,” Pettine told me. “If it’s five snaps a game, that’s probably a lot.” http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/jets/2012/06/jets-will-rely-on-the-foundation-of-the-defense-and-play-more-four-man-fronts You might say Pettine will run a 3-4 base, but it doesn't mean a lot when we'll be in base less than half the time. It's good to have a guy who thinks creatively, unlike Wanny.

I'm going to take Pettine at his word when he says talk about a base defense (whether it's 3-4, 4-3 or 46) is pretty meaningless since he will use a variety of defensive alignments depending on our personnel and the offense we're playing against. For example, here's an excerpt of an article by Mike Florio on PFT: With 3-4 guru Mike Pettine taking over a defense that has been constructed to operate as a 4-3, the big question for the Bills has become whether Mario Williams will for the second time in three seasons be asked to play outside linebacker. The easy answer is yes. And no. Pettine talked about his new job with the Bills’ official website, and he was asked whether he’ll be using a 3-4 or a 4-3. “The answer is really yes to both,” Pettine said. “We’ll be a multiple front, multiple coverage defense. The trademark of our defense is we’re going to be smart, tough and relentless. How we configure it is more player-driven. I’ve always believed that you don’t fit your players to your scheme, but you fit your scheme to your players. What I see here is a group of explosive athletes and playmakers and we’re going to put them in a position to do just that. We’re going to be in the configuration that gives us the best opportunity to win football games.” http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/11/3-4-or-4-3-for-bills-under-pettine-yes/