SoFFacet

Perhaps one of the best through 3 weeks. They are probably playing a bit above themselves right now though. Don't be surprised if they cool off a little bit. But they are definitely much better than we thought.

You can start by keeping your trash in the politics section, thanks.

Agree, RB is the one position we shouldn't draft. I think round 4 would be a good place to pick a WR to replace Parrish.

The effectiveness of Nix's drafting was brought up in this Tuesday's Sal/Leo articlein the D&C and got me thinking. While it is quite apparent that Nix and Gailey have succeeded in improving the performance of this team, it is also the case that the primary engine for this improvement thus far has not been the draft. Nix is on record stating that the Bills intend to build through the draft, as well they should. However, Nix's drafts have produced but one starter to date - Dareus. The question is whether or not this indicates a lack of drafting competence on the part of Nix, despite his demonstrated skill in finding gems in UDFA and the waiver wire. I, for one, do not believe this is fair criticism. It is unreasonable to expect to find year 1 or year 2 starters after the 2nd round. Surely, it is possible, but the odds are against it, especially for the trench positions that Nix has devoted so many draft picks to. Those kinds of players routinely require several years of seasoning before developing into solid players. Worth mentioning is that nearly all of the draft picks are still with the team. I would say then, that the only pick that can be fairly scrutinized at this point in time is Spiller, since he was a 1st round pick and could reasonably be expected to be a starter by this time. I think that most people recognize that Spiller could still become a great player for us, but lament the opportunity cost of picking Spiller (to date, a backup RB) instead of what could have been by this time a starting DE or LB - which we could really use right now. My personal theory is that at the time of the 2010 draft, Nix and Gailey still didn't have a good idea of how good or bad the team they were inheriting was. They couldn't know for sure how many and which players were actually bad, or how many and which players only looked bad because they were surrounded by actually bad teammates, or because they were directed by actually bad coaching.They couldn't know how many and which players that were currently actually bad could be coached to improve, or how many and which players were lost causes. Sure, there were plenty of fan and media opinions on such matters, but as has become readily apparent, the fans and the media rarely have accurate impressions. Nix and Gailey rightfully didn't trust those opinions. So they decided to make no assumptions, disregard everything that the fans, media, Dick Jauron, and everyone else thought about that 2009 Bills, and draft the Best Player Available, period. Enter CJ Spiller. Under the no assumptions approach, many players that had at least some fan and media support were determined to be actually bad, and were removed. Edwards, Lynch, Pos, Whitner, Maybin, Evans, the list goes on. The accuracy of Nix and Gailey's assessments of those players is evident in the team's turnaround this year. As it turns out one of the few actually good players that Nix and Gailey inherited was a running back (Fred Jackson), which has diluted Spiller's impact (Spiller has also diluted his own impact by underperforming expectations so far). Still, I can't blame Nix and Gailey for their approach. Without making assumptions there was no way to anticipate the needs of the 2011 Bills.

Gailey doesn't believe in franchise qbs, only winning qbs. Fitz is a winning qb.

That happened on the pat's last td. One of our LBs gave him a good push as he was crossing, but Brady just held the ball and stared Welker down until he finally came free. It was actually kind of amateur but his protection was just that good.

Its basically the trend in the NFL right now against qbs like Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Manning... even Fitzpatrick. Blitzing is bad. They are too smart and fast, they will almost always see the blitzes coming, organize the blockers correctly, get the ball out in plenty of time, and scorch you. You have to hope to disrupt them with 3-4 rushers and drop the rest into a mini-prevent. You can't really stop them from getting yards, so you force them to drive the length of the field in small increments, maximizing the chances of them stopping themselves via penalties and turnovers. At worst, the condensed area of the red zone somewhat levels the playing field and gives the defense a good chance at forcing a field goal - which in today's NFL against those offenses can be considered victory for the defense.

Did he seriously suggest that the Bills' offense is (almost) cheating?

Any midseason trade would probably do more harm than good. It would be seen as a lack of confidence by the FO in the team already on the field. The new guy could be a distraction and might not buy into Gailey's mentality. Think Ocho in NE, but taking place midseason. Plus at this point of our team's development, the picks are more valuable to us.

Even assuming all of your estimations are correct, your reasoning supports only the conclusion that the NFL has an abundance of mobile quarterbacks, and Fitzpatrick has average mobility compared to his peers. While the word 'average' is by definition a relative measure, there is a large absolute difference between average compared to a poor field, and average compared to a strong field.

I agree that a good coach will adapt his strategies to suit the players he actually has on his team, but at the same time every coach has in the back of his mind a preferred strategy for a hypothetical unconstrained roster. Based on what he's done in the past at Dallas/KC etc I don't believe that the Bills offense this season is significantly different than Gailey's unconstrained offense.

I'm playing Nelson in my flex spot this week. I don't have a great bench but I am starting him over D. Henderson, E. Decker, D. Alexander, and C. Spiller.

Yeah, they uniformly pick the favorite in 10/15 games. ESPN expert picks are srs bsns.

I think that's a little backwards. Gailey had the choice to keep Evans if he wanted. Evans was traded because Gailey determined that the deep ball to Evans was not part of the plan this year. More to the point, he determined that Evans was not part of the plan this year once he concluded Johnson, Jones, Nelson, Easely, etc were all better. Even though he spoke politely of Evans in the aftermath of the trade, Gailey's comments made if fairly clear that after evaluating Evans for a year, he did not think highly of his overall WR skills. Evans basically received an elongated form of the Edwards/Lynch treatment.

The FG turned out to be the right call. We won by those 3 points. Also if Lindell hadn't missed the 2nd FG (no fault of Gailey's strategy), we could have averted all the drama of the red zone on the last drive by running the clock to :01 and kicking another FG, thereby winning 37-35.

Yeah, they got exposed by a QB who isn't supposed to be very good and his backup receivers. Of course, I have a feeling that Raiders fans feel the exact same way about their secondary. Dare I suggest that we draft... more DBs? Lol. On another note, I'd just like to commend CG for keeping a cool head and taking the guaranteed points by kicking the FG to make it 14-3 at the time. A lot of people were unhappy with it but we ended up winning by those 3 points. If we go for it and don't make it, we end up in OT instead (or worse, the team becomes demoralized and folds). Also if Lindell had not missed the FG at the end of the 1st half (no fault of Gailey's strategy), the 1st FG would have looked even smarter since the entire nerve-wracking end-game sequence would have been unnecessary, as we could have run the clock down to :01 and kicked yet another FG to win 37-35. Major props to Fred Ryan and Steve for leading us to TDs on 5/5 2nd half possessions. Even Spiller looked game today.

Its just aggravating to see how many Chiefs fans are blinded by rage. In the comments section of the article they all vigorously dispute the conclusions of the article. To me, Berry got up and even began playing again after the hit. So the ACL obviously wasn't gone until later. Then there's the possibility that the knee was slightly injured by SJ's hit, which contributed to the ACL later. If thats the case then first, people get small injuries from legals (non-dirty) plays all the time, as would be the case here. Second, blame for the ACL should go straight to KC's medical staff for allowing him to go back in.

CJ's performance so far is worrisome, but only because of his former draft status. By picking a flashy weapon as opposed to a trench player that high, especially when the trenches were (and remain) so questionable, that guy basically has to become a dominant force, at least become a major contributor to the offense, or else it was an inefficient pick. As a situational running back who thus far is seemingly always stuffed for no gain, we should be fairly upset with how the Spiller pick has panned out thus far. Thats not to say that he can't improve, and we should obviously keep him and see how much he does, but I wouldn't hold my breath for Sproles 2.0.

This is exactly how I feel. Thank you. Yes, people like you are so desperate for a "Franchise QB" that they are missing the bigger picture. People like you are completely unwilling to believe that said QB could come any way but with a glamorous #1 pick. Completely unwilling to believe that a player like Fitz could have been initially misjudged or could improve beyond what he once was. Completely willing to ignore all team's defensive needs and to blow up all the team's offensive progress this year in the name of chasing some mythological savior. Open. Your. Eyes.

Per Gene Wojciechowski's article on espn: Nevada's coach was asked about OSU Prez' comments:

Mixing facts and opinions to give the impression of listing only facts is a common fallacy. I took the liberty of dividing up your list of 'similarities' into the facts (top) and opinions (bottom).

By your logic if any detail of the game that RF had no control over was magically changed such that we had 35 points at the end of regulation instead of 34, RF would have turned in the same effort but somehow be deserving of different praise? Thats retarded. RF is making a huge effing difference, the problem is that we need 10+ more players to be making the same kind of difference he is - then we might win.

It means that winning is an overrated metric for determining how good a player is. If RF is playing better than Brady, but loses when Brady wins, there are 52 other players plus coaches that share responsibility for that. But instead the conclusion is that RF isn't good enough?

People, our offense put up 34 points and 500+ yards on Baltimore. I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and claim that any offense that can play like that is a contender's offense. The problem is now 100% defense (well maybe 90% defense, the OL still makes me worry).

Oh I get it. Screw chemistry, screw leadership, screw continuity, screw the fact that he's currently throwing at an elite level. Lets trade away the one player who is pretty much 100% responsible for turning this offense around, for a draft pick!