Mickey

If you get out, someone will have to take your place who also can't afford to miss time from work. I know it is a pain but if you get it over with, you are free from having to serve for 7 years or something like that.

Tagging Price was hardly genius, it was a move predicted here on this board long before it happened and with all due respect to the dedicated fans on this site, we are not exactly a Mensa Chapter. Drafting Kelsay might look a lot smarter if he hadn't already traded up to take Denney, a pick so lame that it required us to pick another RDE in Kelsay. Besides, the jury is still out on Kelsay as an every down starter. He had an encouraging year last year but the league is littered with the lost careers of guys who looked good in spot duty. I think our second half of the season resurgence was due more to the vagaries of the schedule than McGahee. Willis is a fine back, no question but we will never know what the fortunes of the team might have been had we picked to improve the awful line we have rather than pick a great back to eventually replace a very good back. I don't know how much credit to give TD for picking Travis who you refer to as "a future pro bowler". If he is that good, didn't we waste a pick on McGahee? If he is not that good thus justifying the McGahee pick, then maybe we would have been better off getting a lineman with that pick instead of Travis. You can't have it both ways. A "genius" makes the play offs in 3 years, he has had 4 and still no results. He has made some good moves and some that weren't so good. All in all, the results on the field have been medicore at best so although I am not calling for his head, I am not willing to christen him a genius. Not by a long shot.

I like it but it is too heavy on selecting by need. I don't think that is TD's gig, it is just too boring to select based on filling roster holes. He likes the unexpected. On top of that, I don't think he has much respect for having a good kicker on the roster. How else would you explain Lindel?

I disagree, Buffalo has had far more extensive rebuilds before in the late 60's, 70's and mid 80's and had to accomplish such rebuilds without the luxury of free agency and parity which permit far more rapid turn arounds now than in the past. TD has had just as many draft picks and just as much money to work with as other teams that have made the play offs. If by "couple of decent seasons" you mean not making the post season at 8-8 and 9-7, again, we disagree, I don't find those results "impressive" at all. If wins and losses matter in grading out a GM, "mediocre" would be a generous grade for TD right now. He has already had a year longer than most GM's get to show results. At some point, he simply has to produce a play off team. As for this draft, I have no idea what he will do. He usually thumbs his nose at conventional thinking like drafting a good player to fill a hole on the roster and instead goes for something clever. If the expected thing is to trade Henry for Shelton and then take the best C or DT in the second round, odds are he will do something else entirely. Besides, when it comes to the offensive line his clear pattern is to try and get by on the cheap with has-beens and never-wases rather than to committ sufficient personnel resources to secure the best available talent. Drafting Mike Williams is the only deviation from that habit he has ever shown. Maybe he is due again to put some jack into the OL but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Gee, all those brilliant moves and yet his record is 26-38. Any more of that kind of brilliance and we will be a cold weather version of the Cardinals. I think TD has made some good calls over the years but on the whole, he has been a good deal less than brilliant and if wins and losses count for anything, he is closer to being considered a failure than a success.

We should have no illusions about Shelton. We need him because, with the loss of JJ and the lack of a quality backup, we are pretty much desperate to come up with an answer at LT. It is the most critical position on the entire offensive line. Even without losing JJ our line was, at best, mediocre. If we get Shelton, I'd say that we might not be any worse than we were last year, I won't feel that we actually improved much. That will depend on the guards they signed and what McNally can do with them.

Chandler actually had some speed and size, more so than Chrebet.

My recollection is that he only started one year for them and that was it. They had lost Tony Jones and had no one left besides Cooper Carlisle, a perennial back-up. Didn't they sign Ephraim Salaam in free agency to replace him the year we signed him and Blake Brockemayer? They were in an "anyone but Teague" mode that year in figuring out their starting LT.

I am not sure that is really a fair question. If being a good blocker was simply a matter of having certain quantifiable physical qualities then all you would need to guarantee drafting a pro bowler would be some measuring tape, a stop watch and some weights. It doesn't work that way. My reasons for thinking that TT is less than a sure thing at LT has nothing to do with my believing he is physically limited in some way, it is based on me seeing him miss too many blocks. Whether he missed them because he misread the defense, was too slow, too fast, too weak or too strong, I don't care. You may be right that Teague has some talent as yet untapped that JM will bring out so I see what you are trying to get at with a question about his skill set. I will say this, I spent a lot of time with my recorder playing back running plays this past season to focus on the line. At times, Teague would make a great play out of nowhere. I recall one where he was leading on a sweep and a LB came knifing into the backfield through a gap just behind the play. The LB would have made the tackle for a loss but somehow Trey was able to stop his own momentum enough to dive back to the inside and pick the guy off in the nick of time. It was a great play, no question. However, he just doesn't make them very often or very consistently. For every play like that there were a fistful of plays where he simply got beat.

They cut him after one year as a starter. As it turns out, he didn't have the talent to play there.

He has had the opportunity to be a starting LT in this league on two occasions and did not measure up. That is why Denver let him go and that is a team that has a history of being a pretty good judge of offensive line talent. We brought him in with the idea of him starting at LT and he was unimpressive enough that we moved him to center, a position he hadn't played since college. As a center, he has been little better than mediocre. I guess anything is possible but speaking for myself, I am not looking forward to handing over the most important position on an already struggling line to a 7th round pick who has struck out as a LT twice and has been a marginal center at best.

So what you are saying is that 5 years into his regime, he really does have a plan to build a decent offensive line? I don't care how he gets a line in here, just that he gets it done and does it soon before our defense evaporates and we have to start rebuilding that too.

The guy definitely needs to be sedated but as far as his point that the o-line sux, he is right, it does.

He has done well with a number of signings such as Fletcher and Spikes. Notice however that most of his best signings were guys he paid a lot of cash for, some might even say, "overpaid". Certainly, the teams that lost them and their fans might take that position as so many here have on players like Jennings, Pat Williams and Winfield. The FA's he has missed on are the guys he signed on the cheap, realitively speaking of course. Teague, Lindell and Campbell probably fit that bill though some would argue that Teague has been at least adequate. If you "overpay" a guy who performs, I think that is something you can deal with. I think it is even worse to pay for a guy who doesn't perform even if the price tag is low, it is still a waste. Even a cheap contract can be too much for a loser.

No offense can get by on all passing all the time or on all running all the time. There are very few defenses in the NFL that are so bad that you can just tell them up front that you are going to run or pass and beat them anyway. You have to have a credible threat at both ends. The idea that you can just buy more beef than the other guy and pound it at him a yard at a time is a romantic view of football that just doesn't measure up to reality anymore. You have to be able to protect your QB and move the ball in the air to win consistently just as much as you have to be able to run the ball effectively. Denver in particular over the years has demonstrated over and over that a versatile line that can run and pass block is the way to go. I think that the Bill's offensive performance last year demonstrated in game after game that the line was not good enough to stop the defense if the defense didn't have to guess. We were awful on first down runs and even worse on third downs where we had to throw due to the yardage. Simply adding pounds and inches on to the line will not guarantee even a boring, plodding yet effective offense. If it were that simple, teams would all do just that. There is more to blocking than weight. I understand what you are looking for but for my part, I have heard the cliche, "power running team" so often on this board I want to scream. It is a meaningless phrase. Take the Patriots, they are not wedded to any particular offensive philosophy. I have seen them run like crazy, throw like crazy and everything in between, often all in the same game. That makes them difficult to predict which means the defense can't gang up or overplay anything. The Patriots look to exploit the particular vulnerabilities of the defense they are playing against, they don't adhere to some ideological offensive theory, seeking to bend all to their will. You go dime, they draw; you go two deep, they screen; you go 8 in the box they go with a WR screen knowing a missed tackle is 6 points, and on and on. We don't need to run for the sake of running, what we need is to gain yards. Throw when they are plaing run and run when they are playing pass. That's my offensive philosophy and for that, you need guys who can pass and run block. Maximum options, that is the key.

I guess fake-fat doesn't like him because of his playing hard to get. I don't know jack about him. I do know that our line is pathetic and if TD and McNally think this guy can play, then lets get him.

I don't care if he steals his drinking money from the collection plate every Sunday, I don't care if he is mean to old ladies and I don't care if he is a locker room towel-snapper. I am not recruiting a church choir or a scout troop. I want an offensive lineman who will gnaw off the knee caps of a DT before letting him get within 10 feet of JP. I could care less if he is a "quality individual". If he can block, sign him. Some of the best players we have ever had were jerk-wad !@#$$ off the field though, in memory, we tend to retroactively canonize them.

Sphinge, man, that stuff is food of the Gods, misca.

That is a point that can't be over emphasized. We lost our starting QB, our left tackle and an excellent defensive tackle. You can't argue that QB and left tackle aren't key positions so clearly, the offense will undergo massive change. Then again, given its performance, that might be exactly what is needed. Still, the fact is, there is lots of uncertainty about the Buffalo offense that would have to be taken into consideration by a FA thinking about coming here. I assume that free agents would prefer to come to a winner which means, at the very least, having a solid shot at winning your division. In our division, that means beating the Patriots who are now justifiably recognized as one of the best teams in NFL history. I'm not sure FA's looking for a division title would have us at the top of their list. If it is money they want, great fans and the best food on the planet, Buffalo is the place.

The plain facts are that JP spent the better part of camp and the regular season carrying a clip board. No, he is not a pure rookie but he is not exactly a seasoned veteran either. Take the post that started the thread and replace "rookie QB" with "untested first year starter". The issue is whether his experience, or lack of it, is a turn off to free agents. I have no idea if it is or not but the claim that JP lacks experience is a simple fact. He is not as raw as a just-drafted rookie but he also is not as experienced as he would have been had he not been injured or a back up to a QB that didn't miss a snap due to injury. I see no basis for speculating that free agents would be any less turned off with Drew at the helm as compared to Losman.

Yeah, he will definitely be able to turn those 8 yard losses into 3 yard losses. I can't wait. This isn't Michael Vick we are talking about. We need a line no matter who is the QB and frankly, with a virtual rookie behind center, that is as true this year as in any other. No one has yet invented an offensive scheme or system that does not need effective blocking to work. That has been true since the days of Amos Alonzo Stagg and it is still the truth today. No doubt JP will make some plays on occasion in the face of poor blocking but that will be the exception, not the rule. You don't base an entire offense on the QB pulling rabbits out of his helmet. A wee bit of an example: When OJ first came to Buffalo we had a lousy offensive line. Saban came in and built the team around OJ, starting with the line which is why we had a converted tackle at TE, Paul Seymour. The result was that OJ, as good as he was, was ordinary when are line was bad and when it was good, he became the best there was. No matter how great your skill guys, you have to have a quality line to win in the NFL. Wasn't it Bill B. of the Patriots, he of the three SB rings who said of our offense: "... that line is for sh*t...?" What does he know, right?

This looks like more of the same old, same old: trying to piece together a decent offensive line on the cheap. Generally, you get what you pay for. McNally will have to spin some straw into gold or we are going to spend the season watching Losman inhaling smelling salts on the sideline.

You are absolutely right. That fur of theirs is something else. Even here in Syracuse I keep a kiddie pool for him to soak in if he gets too hot. Kind of like what they use at training camp.

Bernese Mountain Dog. Great with kids, only barks at strangers.

Are we talking about the same guy who played four games on a broken leg? I don't think either the team or Travis owes an apology to the other. We had a chance to improve with Willis so we did. Travis is a back who is good enough to start in this league. Why shouldn't he want to go elsewhere and start? I don't see any villians here or any need to trash a player simply because he is moving on.