Hplarrm

Its also way too early to draw conclusions given that the Bills opponents have been some pretty poor teams thus far this season. Of course this factoid des not bode well for a negative assessment of Mario, but the simple fact is that it is too early to tell anything in terms of trends.

I think the deal ihere is that Gailey clearly puts a high value on forcing the opponent to prepare for the possibility the Bills might run particular schemes or use particular personnel packages oly to see him cross up and not use them. They have made much less use of the Wildcat than advertised. My sense is that they are throwing out confusiing statements about Jax and Spiller as a technique to make things more difficult for Bellicheat. If this is true I say more power to 'em. If making things even marginally more difficult or unexpected for the Pats means lying to me or fololing Bills fans then I say lie to me!

Well, it certainly sends a message to the team that everyone had best perform all the time or pay. Whether this is a good mesage remains 2 be seen!

The key thing here is that for next week, its important that Bellicheat is preparing his team to face either a Jackson oriented run attack (most likely from the linited info us armchair HCs have) oOR a balanced Bills O featuring Jax as led but a good dose of Spiller (least likely from my armchair medical view) to potentially a pass oriented attack because both Jax and Spiller are significantly hobbled (not likely bit possible). I hope that this publicly comes out as a gametime decision as this maximizes Bills chances of wasting Pats PT. Overall, I hope Gailey views that though this game is mucho important (not only critical division opponent but a table setter for two tough games on the road against SF and AZ, but overall its a long season and I woould rather see Spiller sit than undergo a lot of risk.

I must admit that as far as Easterbrooks often spot on assessments in TMQ, I still run into the wall of him trying to ride the skepticism horse with his diatribes on global climate change in the 90s, only to have to finally release an article in the mid 2000s where he announced he had moved from skepticism to convert on the main issues surrounding the climate change debate. His oops sorry I messed up on the fate of the planet, but now accept what I say about pro football arguments really makes me want to barf and reminds me to lament the time I had to waste spending on Easterbrook's histrionics on an important issue.

I don't think anyone can correctly point to games Spiller won for this team. However, I also do not think that it is reasonable to expect him to "prove" he was a worthwhile pick (even a worthwhile top 10 pick) that the demand for folks to be excited about his performance is that he demonstrate he is an HoF worthy player. I think Jimbo for example was an idiot though I also think this idiot was a HoF worthy player because he time and again did what you are asking for of really virtually winning games for his team through his individual play and leadership. Spiller did not do this Sunday and has not done it at all during his brief career. However, despite the fact I agree generally with many of the points in your assessment, I think it asks a bit much (in fact it is downright silly) to demand that Spiller demnstrate this level of ability before folks get excited about his play. Even though Kelly is a deserved HoFer in my biased opinion, he actually was not until well after he led the team to its designation as the "Bickering Bills" before he was able to consistently make the demonstration you are demanding of Spiller before you get excited or praising of him. Even with the bad fumble looked at in its worst light, his statistical, big play and overall performance was one of the few bright lights in Sunday's debacle. Has CJ shown us the wins you ask for yet? Nope. No way no how. Is the standard of him showing us these wins a reasonable declaration for anyone to get excited about his real world performance. Nope, this standard is not reasonable at all for a young player. I think a reasonable football person should by no means declare Spiller HoF worthy based on his performance to date and Sunday, but I do not think it is unreasonable at all to be very excited and even give some serious props to Spiller for his not perfect but vey impressive showing Sunday!

Bingo on your identifying Dorin Dickerson as a guy who may come out of this seeing a lot more use in our"new" injury forced O. Dickerson and Smith are two of the few Bills officially placed on the depth chart at other positions but were clearly destined for other use from what we saw of their use in pre-season and practices. It would not surprise me at all to see Dickerson with his 4.4 40 clock speed (amazing for his FB/TE size) lined up outside. Gailey requires all his WRs to knw each other's positions, my positions and it will not surprise me if the Nelson injury forces us to use Dickerson as a WR. There is also an interesting quandary in that one of the thngs Gailey seemed to have liked to do in his past lives is get talented players the ball in space. I had thought last year we would see more use of Spiller as a WR than we did. The RB situation is much lessened with the loss of Jackson so simply using Spiller as an RB would seem to be dictated but still we may see him shifting out to WR more.

Actually its not really a baby yet if you are only a little pregnant.

My nature is to tend to be positive about things, but to match up wth my previous post about what (if any) positives to be built upon as like it or not we deal with yesterday's debacle. Here are the negatives I suggest: 1. First, ths too is actually a positive! I am positive we should fire Jeff Littman! This is not a firing from him doing something like firable insubordination by Eric Moulds or the self-immolation of QB Hebert (what was that this self-admitted idiots first name(. In fact, I would be happy to see Littman cashiered even though as best as I could tell he did exactly what he was supposed to do which was to be hard-nosed and be primarily driven by saving the team every nickel he could rather than having building an SB winner (or even participant, or even the chance of participating). He did his job. However, there is simply no way to fire the team owner in this society of ours which like it or not is the worst except for all the rest. I guess since no one gets out of here alive, the decision will be made by a higher pay grade than mine about when Mr. Ralph leaves this world (and when this happens this region will be confronted with the key questions of we ultimately face a situation where we either for the most part all stand together or its pretty much guaranteed we all fall apart). Since we cannot fire Mr. Ralph I instead call for the firing of Jeff Littman for pretty clearly following Mr. Ralph's orders which have led us to our 0 for a decade+ playoff less streak!

I ask the moderators to please lump this in with any other threads they judg useful as even though I have laid off reading folks initial rending and whining about yesterday. Perhaps there is another thread which looks at the current FO from a positive start rather than the obvious negatives. However, if this is a sole post which approaches this issue as a flat out positive to start they might want to keep this separate. After yesterday's debacle, there is a lot to be said (and I am happy to join folks in saying them) about the Bills failings in any number of areas. Yet, I will start my rants about Gailey/Nix by actually praising them for one specific actionwhich quite frankly is probably the most useful starting point about changes which should begin right now. It is also the first reasonable starting point for any discussion of how Gailey/Nix have met their responsibilities as the lead of the FO and a primary duty of drafting good players. They look like they made an interesting and as it is playing out (with the season ending last year and game ending injuries to Jax yesterday). Good job on the Spiller pick. When the pick eas made for me it was in the context of my being a future is now Gerorge Allen kind of guy. I ended up giving the new FO the benefit of the doubt because they were new. However, picking an RB, almost without regard to talent if you have one of the best all-around yardage producrs at RB already seemed like an interesting (read odd) choice. Yet, with his yardage production yesterday and yet another injury to a great RB who unfortunately is on the wrong side of 30. He demonstrated serious production yesterday. In that regard, I start off by pointing out the one positive which I suspect almost all agree on. If one is looking for a positive after yesterday's demolition ya gotta start with building around Spiller. Item #2 of the positive view of Gailey/Nix decisions. It is questionable whether any team wants to give up a roster spot for the johnny one note of a kickoff specialist. However, it is hard I think for anyone to reasonably negative about the performance of Potter yesterday! He was 3 for 3 in creating touchbacks on long kick-off attempts and the one place he failed was in the failure of the team to recover an onside kick (which turnout to be such dumbluck even when they work, it is not something I think needs to be a big worry at all right here, right now. The Potter question remains an open one simply because this team needs help in many ways right now that a roster spot risk on a development player who almost certainly will not work out does have merits which allow it to compete as a concept with a kick-off specialist who did his job yesterday. Like no human being Lindell ain't gonna last forever (as his season ending stint on IR last year showed us) so big picture aside my primary comment on Potter is to praise the FO for this choice and to suggest he go get 'em next time on the onsides. Item 3+- Well I did my part here by stating two things to build on. I leave to my fellow Bills brethren and sisterns to add other positives to build upon

I think the Gailey answer to this key question is not simply depth but also depth through versatility. ailey has done a good job (at least on paper so far but it becomes clearer the game is not played on paper) of getting players with deverse enough pay styles and abiities they can field multiple roles. Brad Smith it the primary example of this who is not great at playing any position but has put up unusual real world results which show him to be unusual versatile in that he is a not totally unreasonable disaster QB (a rule change helps them here) but also a sometimes useful Wildcat QB (again hate the Wildcat if you want but its third and short utility is statistically not reasonable to deny and by trying to work on BS disaster QB ability there is the potential (which means you have not done anything measurable yet) of possibility here. In addition, he is a demonstrated adquate #4 WR, and can actually be used a lot on ST as a pretty good KR guy (a role since diminished by a rule change) and even a demonstrated tackler on returns. Again, there is a clear demonstration from Gailey that he has a substantial role in mind for a player who some whine a lot from their couches should actually be cut. Gailey values verstility. Other folks on the roster in assigned roles like Dickerson who on paper shows flat-out great speed in the 40 for a FB no less. Again Gailey values verstility. Add to this other players whom he acquired like Spiller who though he has not yet demonstrated in a pure way his versatility part of the resume which brought him here as a not unreasonable top 10 choice was his demonstrated in college ability on returns as an open field runner and also achievements with RAC as a pass catcher. How does this versatility add up to depth in the real world? Well, much to the surprise of all, Gailey went through the last cutdowns with only 4 WRs (including the recently injured Smith)! He showed little fear of a lack of depth here which was just odd given the use of empty backfields and 4 or even 5 spread receivers. Gailey did pick-up a couple of WRs (Easley and Martin for the PS) but oddly to many watchers did not get the best receiver of this lot of cuttees in terms of Roosevelt and then when push came to shove augmented the WR crew with ST contributor Martin rather than WR specialist Roosevelt. The bottomline seems to be that what Gailey really values is the depth given by Spiller and others for WR and he is using this to feel comforable holding onto kickoff specialist Potter. The answers to questions about what is Gailey's plan Bs. the answers are more depth through versatility.

This is starting to sound like Gailey and Ryan being the Vizzini chrachter in the Princess Bride lodged in a battle of wits against the Dread Pirate Roberts. Vizzini constructs these ornate plots based on what he assumes his opponent is really trying to do but is ultimately killed because the Dread Pirate simply over powers Vizzini's too clever by half thinking by taking a much more straight-forward approach to winning this game he has designed. If in fact Gailey/Ryan are engaged in a similar type of overthinking, the likely key to this game will be one team fallimg back on something simple but outside of the box to overwhelm the opponent. What is Gailey's Ibocaine for this game?

Sorry, John, I can see what you're saying, but I am very interested in making sure I set a tone for the game where I am interested in Stevie Johnson building upon a couple of very solid performances against Revis last year, that I am quite interested in the Jets best player on D know that he is going to have to work hard all day. The Jets are used to being quite certain that Revis is at least not gonna need any help and that there is a fair chance he is gonna shut down the opposing lead receiver and greatly restrict the opponents offensive scheme. One of the best things the Bills can do for the run game is to force Revis back on his heels the whole game so that not only are they short their best NT and a hard-hitting safety but Revis is not able to look inside first but is thinking about the passing game. Running your strenght against their weakness makes good sense, but quite frankly I like our blockers more as a strength on passing rather than them demonstrating to date that they are a good running unit. My sense is that the Jets know they are in deep doo-doo against the run, and will be pumped to do what they can to stop the Bills from establishing a grind it out approach. I simply do not have the confidence (yet) in our O and its run attack to set the tone for the game purely based on their being able to push a even a weakened opponent around. Make my first play a play action fake which almost certainly will suck the Jets depleted defense into trying to stopp the run. This will give even Fitzy a bunch of time to let Stevie put a double move on Revis and catch a relatively short pass but have space to run after the catch. Once the Jets are thinking hard about how to deal with the potential for a Bills O willing to pass and amazingly whether to help Revis out, then the Jets run D is not only missing two of their key run defenders but the second string guys in there are leaning back instead of leaning forward and FJ and Spiller will get to pick their holes. I would rather see Revis be a shut-down CB because he has figured out how to beat our prime WR than have him hold SJ without a reception in the first half because we never throw to him. The best thing this team can do for the running games is to demonstrate a willingness to throw the ball right from the start. But then perhaps you have more confidence than I do on the ability of our guys to simply beat the Jets with our runnng power. I think we need a full playbook and a 60 minute effort to win. I have not seen enough production from our Fitz led O to believe in them simply blowing through even the depleted Jets squad using half their playbook. Perhaps you have more confidence in our O than I have.

For me its too soon to separate any positive feelings I have about any student athletes who decided to honor their commitments even in the face of utter dishono by PSU from each other. There simply is no penalty which strikes me as too large to punish PSU for what those in charge of this institution have both willfully done or at best when it comes to those in charge allowed to have happened. Its quite sad that many student athletes and PSU supporters who had nothing to do with the horrendous acts are simply being harmed as PSU as an institution gets a punishment which it rightly deserves. However, as saddened as I am by student-athletes and supporters who did no wrong getting harmed (and yes innocent parties from the folks who earned their nickels hawking gamebooks and souvenirs to the student-athletes and PSU rooters are being harmed in real and in some cases significant ways) this harm simply pales for me compared to the lost childhood and lives of the children the PSU infrastructure allowed to be sexually abused over years and years. The PSU rooters, student-athletes and other innocent parties are victims in this case. However, they are victims of Sandusky, Joe Pa, and the folks who were in charge of this situation. I do not view them primarily (or much at all really) as victims of the NCAA, the new PSU folks who accepted these penalties or anyone else. Even further, comparing the victimization of these people with the victimization of the kids raped by Sandusky (whose actions were at the very least allowed by those who had the responsibility not to allow them and really I think many are likely in fact guilty of criminal facilitation of Sandusky's sick actions) is not a good idea. Its not a good idea because taking the road of compaing victimhood does not offer real solutions. It is particularly not a good idea for pro-PSU supporters because any comparison of the harm done to the not guilty of anything PSU supporters is really rendered small and meaningless when compared to the crimes against helpless children caused by Sandusky and facilitated by many in charge of PSU football. My feelings of sorrow really do little good here, but I generally will reserve that sorrow first for for the abused kids and then devote it to the PSU rooters also victimized by the actions of Sandusky and the actions or inactions of Joe Pa, the PSU sports hiearchy, Sandusky's wife, etc.

I am no sure this is such a no brainer in that what I suspect is the case IF (and the spin that there is only one sticking point sounds like political spin to me) its a question of whether the refs can be held accountable is that the refs do not trust the NFL hierarchy to in fact only hold them accountable for game mistakes. It would seem to me to be a great likelihood that if the NFL were allowed to simply sit without pay any ref who it judged blew a call. that amazngly you might find that refs who stood up for themselves and demanded their fair slice of the massive NFL take would disproportionately be the one's who are discplined and held "accountable". I doubt the refs are confident that a system which allowed Goodell and the boys in charge to sit them based on the owners judgment is gonns be acceptable to the refs. I for one would not blame the refs if what they objected to was being disciplined by idiots like Jerry Jones and Art Modell. My guess would be that one might construct an accountability system which both disciplined and protected the refs but such a check and balanced system is probably gonna need some brains to figure it out.

To me its an over/under situation. After all the games are done in the first week there will be a general assessment. Every week during regular season there is usually some bang/bang call where Instant Replay shows that essentially the refs missed the call (either they simply missed the play and sometimes misapplied the rules. Its roughest early in the season and tends to get better as the refs simply practice their craft. It strikes me that the replacement refs likely can get away with one badly missed call per week. If the refs can hold it under one horrendous video per weekend, then the NFL is in the drivers seat. However, if there are merely two plays a week the refs obviously blew it then union will beat the NFL. My guess is that even with the professional refs there is often one silly play per weekend even under "normal" circumstances. Given in every game you are going to have the losing ream crying foul deserved or not its gonna be tough for the NFL to tell the story they want to tell. The NFL has a leg up in that my guess is that the sports "journalists" actually are going to do wha their bosses tell them and reaally are going to go out of their way to praise the refs and not draw a lot of attention to their miscues.

The most interesting thing to me about Nelson is that he seems to have that rare and often intangible "chemistry" with fitzpatrick. When its 3rd and a chunk its Fitzoatrick rather than Stevie Johnson whom Fitzy seems to be passing to and he has shown good ability from my biased point of view run his patterns properly so that he gets to the 1st down marker when he is thrown the ball.

In addition to once running a 4.4 40 (outstanding for someone big enough to play FB) more importantly Dickerson demonstrated routinely in pre-season practices that he is one of the fastest players on the Bills. He is listed on the depth chart as both a TE and a FB and really meets the classic definition of an H-Back and Gailey plans to use him that way. He obviously is not a starter but with only 2 years in the league he is not only a youngster with a lot of upside but should make an immediate contribution as shown by the #s he actually accomplished in pre-season and apparently he is willing to stick his nose into the play and sacrifice his body.

What I would prefer is to see the NFL expanded but broken up into two divisions. One would be the premier league which would have a normal playoff system to produce the SB winner. The other track would be either a single game between the teams with the two worse records or could be a losers bracket playoff between the four worse recprds. I would like these playoffs because the stakes would be real if the losing team (or two teams in a playoff of four) would drop down to the secondary league for the next year. Thus two teams would move up from the secondary league to the Premeir League when the losing teams go down. There are a host of business problems with this type of model as teams which lose their Premeir status to become secondary league teams would likely lose some of their panache and thus sponsors. The Bills oddly under such a system would for the most part been fine since though our playoff qualification record is horrendous for a decade + only once in tha time were we in the bottom 4 and never in the bottom 2. However, I would much prefer some real stakes in winning/losing.

Shhh! Don't give Littman any ideas for how to save a nickel as his previous MO has been to do anythig to save a nickel without any regard to the area's pride in the team!!!

Easley has the history the PS was designed for. He is a great talent as was shown in the last pre-season game where he exploited a Lions team of scrubs exhausted from having to redo a KR play. While it was far from an unbelievable achievement, Easley demonstrated an ability to catch the kick-off while still scanning the oncoming tacklers, pick a point of return and then made the proper read and had the speed to run it in for a TD. Add to him showing some good ability in scoring the TD his tremendous effort in getting the 2 point conversion in that it all came down to his having the personal desire to break the plane of the goalline even with multiple :Lions trying to hold him back. All this being said, he would not have had to rely on his strong personal will if with a little more experience he had run the route a step or two deeper downfield. With more PRACTICE he might develop the ability to run his routes a little better and not have to rely on his talent and desire alone.

One thing which seems crystal clear is that the key person who seems to buy what you refer to as this "Smith nonsense" is noneother than Chan Gailey. One thing I give Gailey credit for is that he seems to have some particular plan or vision in mind in which Smith seems to play some central role. I am really not sure what that role is but I do know for pretty sure that he is the HC and I (and YOU) are not because Gailey has forgotten more about building a quality NFL offense than we will ever learn. Does this make him immune from criticism? No, not at all. part of the reason he gets paid the big bucks to merely coach in this boys' game is that his work is subject to and we armchair gurus are encourages to critique his work. What seems clear though to those of us like you and me who do not understand what the heck he is doing is the problem here is far more likely to be that you and I just do not understand what he is trying to do rather than this or that player simply sucks (though the market, coach's player assessments, and some pretty good or at least unique stats on Smith's part) all say oherwise. My sense were there were a number of likely "tells" about the role Gailey envisioned for Smith 1. Greater practice emphasis we could see on him throwing the ball indicated to me he likely would be called upon to throw more in 2012 and the obvious place for him to throw from was the wildcat from which he routinely ran rather than threw from last year, but the pass threat is what made him extremely effective on 3rd and short last year as the mere threat gave him the nickel to read and run against. 2. Part of the Gailey success with O in the past was his use of athletically successful but not fulltime QB material like a Kordell Stewart. In Vince Yound and Brad Smith Gailey seemed to have two of these type players. I expected something weird to happen but had no clue adnd now that VY is cut I hve even less of a clue. 3. The TJax pick-up is interesting as Gailey already had him in mind for something in mind when he saw TJax was likely available. He was not even willing to wait until the likely FA time to get him. I wonder what is up? I am happy to admit I am clueless about what this might be, and your vitriol against Smith is an amusing indicator that I am not the only one cluseless here. I think the most intelligent thing about my view is that though I am quite certain that Gailey may well not succeed in his grand strategy, I am pretty sure there is an explanation for this which goes well beyond Smith simply sucks and the braintrust does not realize this.

I think the key stat for the NFL this weekend is an over/under as to whether games are significantly impacted by poor ref calls by the replacements. 1. If there are under 2 games where the refs are even noticeable then I think this is a big win for the NFL and they can then proceed to dictate terms to the real refs. 2. However, if lets say there are two definite highlights of clearly wrong ref calls. I think it is gonna be quite tough on the NFL as these two bad calls will be linked together in a video tape and also lumped in with the close calls which always happen (maybe the refs were right but maybe they were not- and this might happen to experienced as well as the junior league refs we have). Particularly if these bad calls do not impact outcomes (lets say they make a stupid punt spot in a NE game already decided this fauz pas will not be significant, then the NFL lives to fight another weekend. 3. However, if more than 2 games see their outcomes altered by bad ref calls then the whole week and/or season gets asterisked as the final outcome of who is in and who is out of the playoffs will get determined by a series of bad calls which will be shown time and again on replays throughout the season. The moderators might easily choose to lump this into an ongoing thread about the refs. However, I have tried to quantify this into poll results and I am curious what my fellow NFL zealots think!

Huh? Smth is the reason why you can afford to keep Potter. If you cut Smith, this team then needs: 1. A disaster QB so you keep Thigpen and Jackson 2. Another back-up WR 3. Another ST guy as Smith can be used both as a gunner and a back-KR guy 4. A wildcat specialist- as long as this is an offensive set you are going to use of 3rd and 1 or 3rd and 2, now that you have cut VY if you are gonna cut Smith then you better train someone else quickly for the Wildcat role (improve Jackson passing threat or anytime he is the Wildcat you face 7 or 8 in the box. If you cannot keep Smith (either due to injury or you panic and cut him after last night then Potter is also gone as you want to add a couple of guys to the roster to fill Smith's back-up roles and to continue running the Wildcat (which without regard to whether you like it or not was a critical part of their 3rd down offense last year and QB coach Lee was the one who invented it with the Dolphins.

I thinkj that you do not seem to calculate that the true value of the Wildcat to the Bills and the great value that Brad Smith in particular provides for the Bills. My GUESS is that one of the primary things Gailey must love about the Wildcat is that it forces the opponent to spend time in practice the week before installing and practicing to deal with the Wildcat. For Gailey the calculation is that if the opponent spends some chunk of time having their DC prepare tp defend against the Wildcat (I suspect this involves a decision by the DC whether their base D works well against it, and if it does not deciding whether to nickel against it just in case ex-QB decides to throw). I think that the impressive thing about the Wildcat last year was that in 100% of limited # of cases it produced a 1st down running last year. I have not gone back and looked at the film, but my guess is that the opponent used a nickel against the Wildcat each time to minimize the risk that BS might hit a long pass and against the extra DB and the D falling back into pass protection mode it was a simple read and run for a 1st for BS. It makes little sense for you to have a problem with this or to conclude this is cased closed evidence that Smith sucks. This year Gailey has publicly committed to BS as the #3 (a point which those who want to predict that Smith will be cut seems to simply assume that Gailey is quite content to lie to the Bills customers ane the media about- maybe he is but if so he should also expect to never be trusted again if his continual claims of BS being the #3 and his use of him all pre-season and his position on the publicly avaialble depth chart was all a lie and not be trusted in the future) and seems set to use BS's past collegiate abilities as a QB in more passing out of the Wildcat. Even if opposing DCs judge the Bills always run out of the Wildcat, I am curious as BS always ran last year because opponents always nickeled up and it was always an easy read and run for BS to a first down on 3rd and moderate distance. At any rate he big advantage to the Bills for keeping the Wildcat capability (and in particular to commit to BS running it with his 100% success rate running it last year for 1st downs on 3rd and moderate distances and his "potential" but as yet unrealized passing threat his mere presence takes away time and reps for the opponent prepping for the Wildcat. Smith's mere usage in the Wildcat not only produces the actual l good game results which others have described in detail (and fortunately you at lest acknowledge) the other impossible to quantify advantage is that it forces other teams to do less preparation for our base offense. I love the fact that we run the Wildcat because it likely makes our base offense operate better (to the extent that opponents take time away from prepping for it as they use more time to prep for the Wildcat) but Smith himself is likely one of the prime reasos we can spend a roster spot on a kickoff specialist as BS provides plan Bs at WR, back-up KR, disaster QB, and all around depth on ST. Smith flat out strikes me as a worthwhile keeper!