Hplarrm

We have been lit up a number of times in the early season by the opposing TE so rather than focusing on simply getting someone who was supposed to do the job Maybin or Dareus was supposed to do as an outside rush threat, it might suit improving our D the most to get a strong side LB who yes provides an occaisional rush threat but his real skillset comes from his ability to shut down the opposing TE and read plays well so he can stuff the hole (at the hole rather than 5 yards into our D) as the pick-up. Unfortunately this type of LB play usually does not happen until a player gets a couple of years of getting burned until he learns NFL Os. The OLB we need might best be found in FA if there is an OLN who fits the MO of a Nick Barnett- a good player who does not get a lights out contract from the team that owns him and thus is available on the FA wire. I tend to try not to look at the available FAs or even the potential draft picks until after we are mathematically eliminated sp I think all would be psyched to hear of specific player suggestions as this thread does or even better references to some FA and/or draft websites which have info on specific players. Many thanks for asking this question and gearing it toward specifics!

Actually, though he bears a significant chunk of rightful "credit" for this debacle, Modrak's reign of error: 1. Does not include the full period of bad Bills drafts. Only one man gets full "credit" for being a driver on the football side of team building. 2. Like all talent evaluators Modrak's career rep is about even (unfortunately he built a rep doing well in his initial gigs but like a stovk picker and most gamblers his Bill record evened it all out. However, the thing he did badly here with no record of having done it well elsewhere is manage the many forces like HCs, Baeancounters, public opinion (driven by whiners such as Sully and the WGR idiots) and most important the owner, Modrak rarely seemed to get the team working together well. 3. By far the biggest factor is that to be a successful owner you have to be not only a good talent evaluator and leader of a team but also a good businessman. As a top flight sportsman and businessman Ralph proved time and again he is merely a good businessman.

My sense was that the mods are doing WJWDo on this. Turn the other cheek. Adhering to the terms of service on all things except religious discussion would be the Christian thing to do. The reasponse to all accusations of questioning his religion based power should be thats what you say.

Reasonably hopeful but uncertain on the first part ((I have that unreasonable fan faith but 10+ times burned has slowed me down a bit) but +1 agreed on the second point!

Umfortunately there is a difference between a game shot for and produced for use of an announcer and a game presented with better use of graphics and occaisional use of an analyst to explain replay aituations and other significant game actions where the on field activity is not sufficient to show what is happening. Do you nor agee that simply turning the sound down (and also thus losing any crowd noise or reaction) is a completely different thing than I am proposwing? Sugggesting simply turning down Dan Dierdirf amd his blather while still a great idea, to simply suggest this as a reasomable alternative simply is silly.

For the most part I do not think very much of Phil Simms analyst work (in fact I do not think much of any analysts work and wish that the net works would give another try of the effort mounted in the mid 70s when they did an announcerless game relying on ambient sound. The announcerless game had some serious drawbacks (explanation of weird calls and amount of gametime left- however, with the advent of a continous clock/score on screen and the first down line, it would be a different world today. As much as I love Steve Tasker and am pleased West Herr is keeping his family fed, it would be nice to see a game which was produced with the graphic showings designed to compensate for no announcer and to have an analyst insert themselves once a quarter to explain odd ref calls). At any rate, though Simms is often an idiot, it's great to see someone utter a caveat to the lemmings hard after Luck as their next savior. It's true he might be the next Peyton Manning and the multiple SBs he has led Indy too and one (oops make that one). I admit I have not studies Luck enough to have a real opinion on whether he has not shown he can make the pro throw consistenly as Simms maintains (I assume he means long throws across the field rather than downfield or throws on the move under tight pressure and a collapsing pocket or with so fast a release the pocket rarely collapses on him). However, one of the most annoying set of posts on this board for the last year plus for me have been those which hoped the 2011 Bills were 0-16 so they could get Luck. The 5-2 record may not result in a playoff for us (but at least our destiny is in the Bills hands) but it is a stark statement of how stupid the Suck for Luck folks were. Even if Simms is wrong and he is the next Peyton Manning in skills, we are seeing this year what the frail human body constantly dodging NFL LBs who run like DBs in DE bodies can do to a player. Relying on only one player in today's NFL simply does not work to win the big one.

Bingo! It seems to almost certainly be the case that Chandler's disappearing act has far more to do with other teams shifting their D to cover the TE possibility and the end result to take from this is not that Gailey simply refuses to call the plays he was successful with early in the season (or the equally counterintuitively stupid notion that Fitzy refuses to throw TD paases to Chandler) but instead the D is not leaving him wide open as they did on many of his key catches so far. Is Chandler ineffective now? No,more likely his stellar play is causing safeties to lean his way and that helps jackson blow right past the safety who comes in to tackles Jackson a little late and with a poor angle as he has been looking for the reverse or now David Nelson is running free when we have two YE sets.

I just say thank gosh he is not here or we would be distracted by overindulgence in the QB controversy making the DF/RJ distraction seem rational. good luck Denver and good luck Tebow. I certainly prefer where we are now to where we likely would have been if Sully and GR got to play the Tebow game.

My guess is that what Gailey and Fitz have brought to the Bills O is that he has a good clock in his head that depending upon the play clicks1 oe 2 seconds and occaisionally three before the ball should be out of his hands. This varies on the long route they will throw in from time to time, but even for those Fitzy has the football intellect to check the cushion and the double coverage potential before even on these plays he lofts it for the receiver to run under quite quickly after the snap. Even still though I give Gailey and then Fitzy the primary credit for the low sack numbers, the OL deserves great propos because they are being so effective in run blocking as well. Even this the props are shared with Jackson who simply is an outstanding runner for the style we play (he is able to avoid or run through the first hit) and the OL coaches who have made this unit work with multiple (Urbik Bell( injuries Way cool

Your last point is key as ultimately this is the goal of the ultimate goal of the overseers who control life for us Bills or NFL addicts. The goal is to make every single minute of every single game exciting so that viewers keep their eyeballs glued to the game. The Bills are likely example #1 in the entire league of this phenomenon as aready twice this season they mounted record comebacks against deficits which any logical person would know they were too great to overcome. Even better for measuring accomplishment of that mission both yesterdays game and even the Cincy game to a lesser extent saw our team build up leads that in other football lives would have dictated the game was over, but lo and behold. Think about it. If this was your grandmother's NFL even us psychotic fans in a great mood would have mostly hung onto the game to see us pile up more points and be curious whether we ended up scoring over 40 points. However, aster taking a whizz we would have not run back to the TV without taking the time to thoroughly wash our hands if the game was a laugher. Instead, when a commercial popped on at the 2 minute warning, we held it and hopped there was no overtime and sat through the entire commercial because suddenly the game was in doubt. In fact, the memorable play in this "laugher" was actually the Bills lining up and sucking a vet offsides to get a first down which finally iced the game with about a minute left. One aspect of this team I really dislike is that no lead is safe when we are winning. However, one aspect of this team I love is that no lead is safe when we are losing. I agree we need to get better on D fast, but I am under no illusion that Roger Goodell is not parodying former Pres Jorge Bush in declaring mission accomplished when he sees the Eagles furious attempt at a comeback and Cincy grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat at home last week.

Its a tean game and the Bills team (and Kyle Williams actually) are 3-1 right now. Ifyou ask Williams whether he would prefer to make the Pro Bowl as an indivdual or make the playoffs as a team he would of course choose both but given a choice between the two its the playpffs hamds dowm. I have sero problems with Willaims play as long as the team wins 75% of their games. Talk to me about Williams poor play when the team is below .500.

Hank Jr just demonstrated that as a politiician he is a good singer/ His problem is that he seemed to forget, if only for the space of part of one interview that he gets paid to be an entertainer and not to make politically charged comments. He dies have a perfect right as an American to hold any political views he wants, but ABC also has a right to hireanu entertainer they want within the bounds of their contractual agreement to promote the product to their chosen market. Hsnk Jr's problem is that he chose to make a political analogy (or comparison as this is a difference without any relevance the quesrion at hand( whixh a significant enough part of the targerted market will not fine entertaiing/ Hank Jr. meeded to keep his own queston in mind. Are you ready for some football. I think much of the target market to be entertained would say yes! Hank chose that instead of entertaining the majority of the market place who do not xare one wa or the other about Obama to make a politica; comment that speaks tp a much smaller part of the marketplcace which is more interested in politics than football. He is psyimg thr price (ABCpays him their nickels to entertain) for choosing to make an inarticulate political statement. He has a right to his opinion he does not have a right to collect nickels from ABC to piss off any segment of their market.

15-1 baby!!!!

The stat I heard this weekend which interests me the most is the one says says in the upper 70% of teams which go 3-0 make the playoffs that year. As one who lived through the debaxle year where we started out 4-0 and utterly failed to even ge close to playoff ready this stat is merely a stat, but I am happy to hope for but await the gaining of a playoff berth before I declare even adequacy for any unit on this team. This does not stop me from having the usual fan dreams of 16-0 right now (hey both of our major league sports teams are undefeated right now). As far as the OL goes I am pleasantly surprised because I figured that they were a gppd uear and a half away fro adequacy due to the need for adequacy. I am overjoyed to wromg so far!

Its because the rot starts at the top and one has a couple of layers of incompetence to go through before the blame falls on Lewis. Either one believes the FO and the owner are more to blame or instead you do indict the Lewis performance and this demonstrates the FO and owner are incompetent for keeping him. Either way you feel about Lewis as an HC the two layers above him are pretty clearly incompetent.

Many thanks to Pass the Pipe for being so WRONG WRONG WRONG in such glorious detail when comparing his predictions to the game reality!

Agreed that the chopblock was a legit call (the rule is that you cannot block low on a guy engaged with another blocker and Wood clearly went low on his block and the defender was already engaged with Rinehart- complaining about this one comes off as mere whining) Also the PI call was legit as the rule states that both players have a right to go after the ball but in this case the Bills was clearly looking back at the QB and trying to get back to a short pass but was impeded by the defender. IF the defender also was playing the ball and his positioning to get it was what impeded the Bill then no harm. However, the defender only even made a quick look back and showed no appearance of playing the ball (like turning around and trying to catch it which he seemingly woulda/coulda/shoulda done if he in fact saw it in his brief look backward. It is apparent however he did not see it as he made no attempt to play the ball. Instead the defender seemed most pre-occupied with holding his hands out to claim he did not hit the receiver (though ironically by putting two hands up this is defined as faceguarding. On the face of it I think the Pats guy has no good arguments that he did not interfere with the receivers right to try to catch the ball. On the other hand, I do understand the call against Byrd. Yes, I think it was a legal tackle in slo-mp and yes a legit question as to what he could have done differently. However, by agremment of the NFL at the urging of the NFLPA to cutdown on potential head injuries ir strikes me as the best of bad reasons to make a bad call. I think in retrospect with the benefit of replay and slomo I question the call, but in terms of bang bang plays in the heat of the moment I understand that if the refs have any question the benefit of the doubt in this case goeas to penalizing the player. Ubfirtunate but legit but as long as the refs are consitent in protecting players or calling PI when probably there against both teams (which the even more crucial endzonw PI call wiping out a Pats INT was made I have no problems with the refs calls at all in this game.

The times they are the same. Sometimes the refs play a significant role in making a bad call but really most would have to admit that though the blown ref call was significant that actually it simply played a role in the outcome but did not drive the outcome (es. the Bills OT loss ro the Boys a few years back where some bad refereeing where keys to the outcome but even without these bad choices the Bills blew plenty of chances to win with some bad playcalling under Jauron. In addition there are a few cases where bad ref calls actually determined the outcome (ex. a Rurkey Day gane where the refs blew the coin toss and ended up giving the bsll first to the wrong team which won the game in sudden death/ Fortunately these cases are rare. Fortunately though this never should happen it is a real rarity thar bad refing makes THE difference. Tjis game today was likw most NFL games, a few bad calls were c;ear;y made but so it is in most NFL gamrd but these mistakes did not significantly alter the course of the game. This is how it is for the most part and this is a non-issue for this and mostmes for the recent past and the futur, ttills Pats gamrd

I think the D troubles mostly stand to highlight the amazing work done by Gailey in his OC role, 5TDs in 5 offensive possesions is a starl dempmstration of his play calling and O despgn skills. From several decades of watching too much NFL games I consider myself as having very good fan knowledge of the O game. However iy is clear Gailey gas forgotten more than I or most fans know about MFL offense.

Stats do not lie but peoplr do. The only stat that matters is whether the Bills are 2-0 or 1-1 at around 4;30 EST on Sunday. One quick way to become 1-1 is if the players worry much at all about the team's and particularly their individual stats. This team will have a far better chance of winning if they do not think much or at all about making a statement to the goofballs at ESPN pr evem the local blatherings of the alleged journalists at WGR or Sully. Us fans are entitled to worry about whatever we want, but I hope like heck Gailey suceeds in getting this team to pretty much focus on executing on the mext play amd not think about silly stuff like making a statement to stud athletes like John Claytonor even the more logical distractions like the opportunity they will have if a 2-0 tean faces NE at home. In fact, if the players think much beyond the stat of getting a W anyway anyhow against Osk whether they generate great stats or not this team will ve 1-1 when they face NE.

For those of us whose primary entertainment is from on the field amd though know ;ots pf details about Fitzwhathisnames stats we know little about his backstory except that he went to Harvard, besides being a lame takeoof on Jaws nickname what is the storu on this Amish Rifle name. Is he really Amish or at least from Amish country or is the claim he is simply a poor man;s Jaworski?

To the extent this statement is true it actually is a pretty thourough indictment of the Bills from top to bottom. What does it say about the FO of this team that they would spend such huge salary on a player you deem merely a decoy. Further, what does it say about the Bills coaching that they could not find an effective way to utilize such a decoy. Its great for Evans that he is gone to a team which utilizes him well in the passing game. Its fine for the Bills O as well as we never seem to make good consistent use of Evans (outside of whatever role his decoydom played in Johnson's breakout year last year. On the face of it though it seems pretty ridiculous that the best we could get for a starter WR was a stupid 4th.

I R still here as a reversal of the name of where the buck truly stops. However, I like most fans (I suspect) have had feelings renewed which I had begun to forget how good they felt. The game was so fantastic to see us win going away that I have no prob at all ignoring the case that the game was so uncompetitive as to make the entertainment simply be enjoyimg the Bills efficient demolition of the Chiefs. Heck, I am even happy to give Pears props for being so with it mentally that he could even miss three correct blocking attemots on one play (we still need to upgrade the position because he missed but it really is impressive that he had the right idea but poorly executed three times in one play. Rich- a fantastic job of analysis with incrediby helpful sites of clock times. It reduces my missing of Lori down to merely missing her hearfelt love but the substance is not missed as you are providing a welcome dose! I owe deep apo;ogies to Chandler as I had advocated simply St. Louis Ramming the TE position and go more with Roscoe in the slot. This move would have been disastrous as it is clear that the OL needs TE help quite often, but it would have cost us the game as Gailey correctly diagmosed and Chandler executed grandly the Chiefs' TE vulknerability. I have no complaints about the game (I will leave that to the idiots at WGR) but I do have some suggestions of improvements I hope to see (and also some apologies from this fan for not believing hard enough. OL- Tremendous production! I am overjoyed that I appear to have been wrong that this team was a player and a half short of even mere OL adequacy. The Bills coaches did a great job of getting huge performance out this unit which more than did enough to allow Fred Jackson's running excellence and Fitzy's solid enough and quick decision making on the pass game shine. I srill have quesstions about the simple quality of play of many of our OL stalwarts, but give great credit as credit is due to the OL position coaches and to the players themselves for demonstrating effective chemistry in game one. its way to early for this fan to declare victory (one case is merely and incident, two cases may in fact only be a coincidence, and you need to see the same thing happen at least three times to reasonably declare it a trend. There are miles to go, but still one MUST be productive one time in order for you to have any possibility of being productive two times. The effective work was a combination of factors including Firzy's solid and quick decision-making (his physical limitations still exist but what football is all about Charlie Brown if players overcoming their individual physical limitations from Fluties height (or lack thereof ) to Montana's less than physically imposing stature to still achieve great results), Jackson's dogged and tough running, the OL chemistry and most of all in my mind, great playcalling and set-up by Gailey (who once again showed he has forgotten more than most of us armchair fans know about offense. Scoring over 40 on the road against a team which made the playoffs last year is simply scoring over 40 on the road against a team which made the playoffs last year. TE- Again props and my abject apologies to Chandler. That being said, my suspicion is that the great use of the TE in this game was due to the Chiefs having a specific flaw in their D coverage which Gailey saw that they singled the TE or even left an opening that the smart TE and O could exploit to leave the TE uncovered in the redzone. I suspect that the Raiders and future opponents will skew their coverage to account for Chandler but this will create an opportunity for Jackson/Spiller to be utilized in the passing game more OR for the WRs to face more single coverage and they and Fitzy will be called upon to step up. Opponent TEs- I count us fortunate that the Chiefs stud TE was out with an injury and that Pope and their back-ups were simply not good enough to exploit a TE coverage problem we had. In the actual game a limited talent like Pope was able to burn us a couple of times on what fortumately turned out to be short passes early on and later the Chiefs had a TD taken away from them by the camera review when their back-up backk-up TE could not hold onto the ball. What was the problem we had with the gap we had in TE coverage which fortunately KC was not able to exploit because they had a TE drop a pass originallt ruled a TD? My sense is that this game tells us little beyond the need for every player to keep improving their game. I am psyched.

My sense is that we need to remember the example of Stevie Johnson. First he had two non-productive years for the Bills before bursting out. Spiller had an even bigger rep so giving up on him even if he is non-productive this year would be pretty stupid. 2. I would like to see Spiller at our #2 WR spot, It would get him the ball in space and he had some good receiving stats in college. We have a need there.

One measure I use about whether a team is adequate is whether all of their home games should be won. The Bills have been inadequate to me for the past few years as the NE homegame was a likely loss and the reality is we lose a couple of others at home each season. The marks of a very good team are winning on the road and also how you do against last years playoff teams. \ Yesterday's performance bodes well in these last two regards big time. It may be just a one-off incident. If it happens again it may be a co-incidence. If it happens--well I am getting ahead of myself