Mickey

I think they will want a 3rd down back. MM's system is heavily reliant on "packages", personnel sets for various situations. Henry was the 3rd down back before he got hurt and S.Williams was afterwards. That means they need a guy with soft hands and who can pick up blitzers. A free agent might be just the ticket here so we don't have to wait for a rookie to learn blitz pick-ups. We have enough trouble already protecting the QB.

That is an excellent point about the LG. TD has a history of that with signing CV. I think he is pretty pleased with that FA signing and as such, is encouraged to try it again to get another guard.

Before we can start speculating in detail as to who we are going to draft and what personnel moves we are going to make from trades to franchise tags and so forth, we need to target our needs. Obviously, if we lose Jennings and Pat Williams, you start there. We have Anderson from last year's draft and Ron Edwards actually played fairly well in spots so I think we could absorb the loss of Pat Williams a little more than we could the loss of Jonas Jennins. The OL is adequate at best, it can't afford to lose people because there just isn't much depth. Having put the money on Willis, we need to follow through on that investment and try and give him the best line in football. Price is no starter and I am not sure Williams is ready to move to LT. I think they may have to sign Jonas so that we can focus on landing a guard for the left side. In any event, I will target needs for now based on both coming back since they are on the roster now. Defensively we need another CB to replace Troy Vincent who is now a safety. I know they like Greer but the bottom line is you can't have enough CB's in this league. We need another body there, preferably someone we think can start in time, somebody like McGee. I have been very disappointed in Jeff Posey. He just doesn't make plays. Maybe it is the system and all, maybe the playbook is slanted to London and TKO, I don't know. I do know that you almost never hear his name called. Don't get me wrong, I would have no problem going into 2005 with the same "D" but if we are looking to see where it could improve, I think Posey is possibly the weakest starter in the group. A DE with some speed to give us some depth, a developmental guy would be a welcome addition. On the offensive side of the ball I think we need a G on the left side and I think we need to get a project OT to cover us in case of injury or another head case incident with MW. I am not happy with the TE group but I don't think the front office is interested in adding to what we already have. I think they are happy with Campbell, Ehus and Neufeld. I just don't think they block all that well which is why you see Peters/Banaan/Denney/Adams checking in on running plays which is a giveaway to the defense. Since Travis is gone, we need another RB to be the back-up, I don't like the idea of S.Williams being our only option there. A good center prospect would be nice to push Teague who I think came on pretty well this year. He is good when he is in motion on sweeps and reverses and such. Where he struggles is in pass protection. As always, we should keep an eye out for a WR sleeper. Reed is just not getting it done as the third guy and Aiken may be just too slow to be effective here. I'd like to see a big guy, like some of the guys picked in later rounds that were surprises this year. Remember the jump ball against J'ville that lost us the game? I'd like a receiver we can throw to even when he is covered. The guys who are that big and still have speed are first rounders but there are guys who are not as fast but just as big who would be around later I should think. As for special teams, get rid of Lindell. I remember how nice it was to know that every kick inside of 50 yards was automatic and that if we needed a 55 yarder to win it in OT, we had a realistic shot of making it. That was life with Steve Christie as our K. I am not slamming Lindell, I am saying he is no Steve Christie and frankly, that is what I want. Your kicker will likely score more points than anyother player on the roster. It is worth it to spend some jack and draft capital to get a guy we can put on autopilot at that key position for the next 10 years. In order of importance I would list our needs as G, K, RB, OLB, CB, OT, WR and TE. I know that is high for a kicker but you know, Christie made 67% of his kicks from 40-49 yards and that includes stats from late in his career when his leg strength was markedly reduced. Lindell is in his prime and only hitting 57%. Looking at our schedule, there is not doubt we are going to have some close games and I am positive that Lindell will cost a few wins if we give him the chance. He is a decent kicker but if we have championship aspirations, we need better than "decent". Does anybody think NE would have two rings without Vinatieri? What do you think our needs are?

Nope. The one way he does it is to trade our 2006 first rounder along with some other goodies like he did last year to get the Losman pick late in the first. That might not be a bad idea if he thinks we are a playmaker or two away from the promised land. That is when you trade against your future to make it happen today. The pick would be a late first rounder, similar to what happened with Losman. Is there anyone that late that is a key guy given our needs?

Evans is the real deal. Almost makes we want to ditch the "power running" obsession and let Drew do what he is best at, the deep ball. Let Willis get his 100 in the 4th running out the clock.

I find it interesting that the prevailing opinion among those fans is that Buffalo would be crazy to let him go given how close they came to the playoffs this year.

I had a girlfriend like that once, drove me crazy whenever we went to the mall and she drove. She'd circle and circle and circle. We finally made an agreement, when she drives, she can circle, when I drive, first available spot and no complaining. That didn't last. One time she started in on me because I wouldn't circle so I drove up to the door, hopped out, tossed her the keys to her car and ditched her right there. I had a beer or two at Hooters, bought a book at Borders and took a cab home. "I can't beleive you did that" she said. I made sure to marry a "non-circler".

My understanding is that Gere has been very active in international charities, in part because of his involvement with Tibet I believe. The people paying for the PSA apparently thought he was a good choice for this gig. He majored in philosophy while he was in college and considers himself a humanitarian first, an actor second. He spent time in Tibet and Nepal in the late 1970's and in the 80's visited refugee camps with a bunch of doctors in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador even while the war was on. He founded Tibet House, a nonprofit for the preservation of Tibetan culture. He is also very active in raising funds for Survival International, another charity that helps native tribes across the globe from East Africa to the Amazon to Argentina. He has been extremely active in combating AIDS through out the world, from Russia to New York to Bombay. He was recently invited by a political party in Taiwan to speak at a film festival triggering criticism from the opposition party that Gere would unfairly boost the profile of the other party. He visited refugee camps in the Balkans in 1999. He supports Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and numerous other organizations. In June of 2003 he was invited to Israel by an Israeli peace organization. He went and met with refugees, terrorist victims, all sorts of people including Arabs as well as Jews. He returned in December of that year and met with Israeli settlers and Palestinian legislators. He visited Ramallah, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Bethlehem and Jaffa. He returned to the area again in June of 2004 and again met with jewish settlers and palestinian leaders. He attended a film festival and a charitable exhibit of his black and white photos documenting the suffering of Tibet under Chinese occupation. You may not agree with his politics or think much of his charitable efforts from cleaning up brothels in Bombay to Tibetan independence to battling Aids. However, the guy is no Hollywood phony and I think deserves better than what he is getting here. I don't want to be a wet blanket when people are just goofing around but I think Gere is actually the opposite of what most people complain about when it comes to famous people. Another good thing about Gere, he pretty much refuses to talk to the press about anything. The best thing about Gere? He grew up in Syracuse.

JP's main guy will be Sam Aiken, the best WR on the roster that will still be on the field late in the fourth in a blow out which is the only time JP will be on the field.

If Bill B. knew what he had, why wasn't Brady starting from day one as opposed to only after Drew suffered a sever injury? Bill B. let Drew go because Brady played great and they won a SB with him. It had nothing to do with whether he thought Bledsoe was great or lousy, it had everything to do with the obvious conclusion at that point that as good as Drew might be, Brady was better. He took over as coach in 2000 and he started Drew all year and in the off season did nothing to indicate he wanted to bench him. Drew was the starter in 2001 and would have remained there if not for the injury. Why do you give MM and Tom C. so little credit? Having coached JP day in and day out and watched both players play the game up close and personal and studied every ounce of game film, why can't you accept their judgment that for now, JP just isn't ready?

The criticism of every fan on every team that hasn't made the playoffs for any substantial period of time is "dump the QB" and when that doesn't work they move on to "dump the coach". That is the nature of the beast. Football is a complicated game, too complicated for most people to have the time to come up with anything more than "dump the QB". Lets take a hypothetical sack of Drew Bledsoe and how the coaches look at it compared to what the crusaders conclude: Coaches: The weakside backer was blitzing so the slot reciever was supposed to break off his route to the inside into the space being vacated by the blitzer. Instead, he ran a deep curl while Drew watched his back waiting and waiting for him to break off the route. The blocking scheme called for the RB and the LT to double team the backer with the rest of the line sidling to that side so that the LG was on the DE, the C on the DT and the RG on the NG/MLB. Instead, the LT stayed on the DE who was now blocked by two guys leaving the RB one on one against the blitzer and we lost the match-up. Drew failed to realize early enough that the slot man blew the hot read so by the time he went to another receiver, he was getting hit. Crusaders: Drew is a statue.

Yeah, that Gere, donating his time and fame to try and help get Palestinians to vote, what an a-hole. If there is one thing I can't stand it is famous people who give a crap about something besides their next oscar nomination. Really, is there nothing else in the news today more objectionable than a famous actor making a PSA to get out the vote in Palestine?

Not exactly, they had a great a defense and some good receivers.

If I kept the thermostat at 68 and insulated, could I get that down to about $1,500/month? I'm in the market.

If Bledsoe is that bad, how bad is the head coach for starting him? You can't take the position that Bledsoe sux so bad that only an idiot would want him to start without conluding that the guy who started him is an idiot. I agree with MM, Drew is the best QB on the roster. The instant that changes, you bench him but not one second before. Of course, the non-hysterical option would be to conclude that the question is a little more complicated and that reasonable football minds could disagree and leave it at that.

Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me there are players on the field that aren't quarterbacks, wide receivers or running backs???!?!!! What are these "offensive lineman" of which you speak?

We don't know for sure but we do know that MM doesn't think he is ready. He actually sees JP play all the time in practice. I know it might seem silly to rely on a head coach with a life time of experience in football and all of his assistants who have first hand knowledge of JP's abilities to figure out if he is ready to play but stangely, I prefer their judgment to that of fans who haven't seen JP in practice.

Those who wanted Drew benched 7 weeks ago are back in force after Sunday and from what I can gather, their point is that anyone who at all thinks we should keep him is a moron, an idiot, a complete fool. That being the case, why aren't they calling for MM's head? Certainly, MM wouldn't hesitate to bench Drew for JP if he thought for a second that JP gave us a better chance to win. Obviously then, MM believes that Drew is the best QB on our roster and so he is the starter. He clearly then is a moron, an idiot, a complete fool because he doesn't see what the brilliant Dump Drew crowd knows is the absolute gospel truth, that JP should have been starting 7 weeks ago and sure as anything ought to be the starter next year. Instead of repeating the same old complaints over and over about Bledsoe, why not focus your ire on the guy who keeps him at the helm. Shouldn't we fire MM for starting Drew in the first place? Afterall, he is only the head coach, he has only been watching these guys play day in and day out since August, what the heck does he know?

"never know until you try"???? What do you think he does in practice, wash towels? He plays in practice, the coaches watch him, they watch Drew and then they decide who is the best QB on the roster. We have tried him at QB, in practice plenty of times. Starting a QB isn't entirely guess work, the guys actually play the game in practice. The coaches who make a living evaluating them don't need to play him in a game to have a very good idea if he is ready. If a guy isn't able to do it in practice, why would he be able to do it in a game? For better or worse, justified or not, Drew has become the focal point for all the frustration that comes to every team that doesn't make it to the post season. JP isn't ready, the coaches know it but the fans, because they haven't been treated to watching him explode in an actual game, cling to the fantasy that maybe, just maybe the coaches are wrong and he is ready to go. If MM thought for one second that JP would give him a better chance to win than Drew, he wouldn't hesitate for a moment to make the switch. The fans who wanted JP to start 7 weeks ago ought to quit complaining about Drew, WE GET IT ALREADY. Their real beef is with Mike Mularkey, he is the guy who clearly believes that Drew is the best QB on the roster. Start posting that MM should be fired immediately for starting Drew since, in your opinion, it is absolute insanity to start him.

"perhaps they could do the same with Losman" ??? I am hearing a lot of this line of reasoning, that we may not know if Losman is any good but we know Drew isn't good enough so lets take a chance on JP. That might be accurate as far what we as fans know. I don't think it is true at all though when it comes to the coaches. They have seen these guys play and play and play. JP isn't invisible nor his abilities a great mystery to them. I think they know exactly what we have and what we don't at this point with regard to both quarterbacks. Based on that, they gave the nod to Drew and stuck with him. There is another way a QB can prove that he should start besides actually starting. He simply outplays the other guy in practice. That is all he has to do.

Series by Series, this is what we did on offense: First: We run Willis on first and he goes for no gain. Forces a pass on second and it is incomplete which then leads to third and long resulting in a sack. Moorman gets a 53 yard punt (lots of roll) but it comes back because Denney was downfield early. They end up with the ball at the 43 instead of where it had been, the 29. Second: This is after the Randle El fumble. We run Willis on first, this time for 5. We run a play action pass on second and Drew hits Moulds for 9. Willis runs for 13, 20 and a 3 yard TD. Three successive first down plays. Nice. We try a squib kick for some reason that gives them the ball at the 46 but a face mask penalty against Aiken makes it even worse, they start the drive on our 49. Third: Drew throws a pick over the middle. We were hoping to catch them off guard with play action on first after we ran so well on the previous series. They anticipated that. Middle LB out muscles the TE for the ball. Fourth: Willis goes for no gain on first down for the second time in the game. WE try him again on second and ten and he loses a yard. On 3rd and 11 Moulds runs a crossing pattern and drops the pass which had hit him in stride. Would have been a big play but instead we have to punt from our 15. Fifth: We had a first at the Pitt 35 after the Spikes pick, a Pitt penalty and a 6 yard run by Willis but it all comes back due to a crackback block penalty, a 15 yarder that takes back to our own 44, first and 20. Three incomplete passes follow including a drop by Josh Reed. Sixth: We run Willis for 4 and follow with a short pass to Neufeld for 5. On third and one Willis is stuffed for a 1 yard loss. Power running team? Seventh: With only 1:41 left to play Drew takes it 43 yards all passes with the exception of on 2 yard run by Willis. We get to the Pitt. 20 and kick a field goal. Half time. Eighth: Willis goes for no gain, again, on first down. Drew sacked on second down, third and 15. Moulds drops his second pass of the day on a crossing route. I haven't checked the tape yet so maybe the DB made a play. Anyway, we punt. Ninth: Our best drive of the day and it almost put us over the hump. Drew goes 6 for 6 on the drive for 48 yards and Willis has runs of 5, 7, 16 and 2 yards. The interference call against Reed kills the drive and Lindell misses the FG. AAARRRGGGHHH. Tenth: Willis for only a yard on first. Short pass on second setting up third and 6. They blitz and you know the rest. Eleventh: Willis for only 2 yards. A completed pass on second for 7 sets up a third and one. Williams fumbles the pitch on a misdirection play which I think we ran because we were getting stuffed at the line for most of the day with the exeception of two drives. Punt. This one hurt, we needed to answer that Steeler defensive TD. Twelfth: We finally get the ball back after Pitt.'s nine minute drive that had been stopped four minutes in but was kept alive by an off sides penalty on Sam Adams. We throw and throw and throw. Drew connects on a long, long, long bomb to Evans for 56 yards. The onsides kick fails and that was it. There were 5 first down runs that gained nothing or next to nothing. We also got stopped on third and short when we ran a couple of times. All told there were just lots of mistakes. From every corner people were just goofing up. Even Moorman shanked a few. EVery time it looked like we might start pounding on these guys, something went horribly wrong. On top of that it was a safe, close to the vest game plan that just didn't provide opportunities to make big plays to help overcome those mistakes. It was a game plan built on an assumption of error free play. Given the mistakes were making, we needed to gamble more in my opinon. The biggest disappointment for me was not being able to just run them over which is clearly what the game plan was designed to do. It didn't happen consistently enough to put the Steelers away. You can blame it all on Drew as I am sure many of you do but this was a teamwide, across the board festival of mistakes.

I disagree. Starting a rookie when your team stinks is one thing, starting a rookie when the guy you got took you to the brink is another thing entirely. People tend to look at the QB position as a saviour, the be all and end all of a team's potential. They therefore have unreasonable expectations when it comes to a QB's performance and they focus on him with a microscope while at the same time giving the rest of the team a pass. We lost that game because we made many, many mistakes. A few were Drew's fault but most were not. Take away Nate's fumble, Josh's interference call or the missed FG and maybe we are here talking about the amazing resurrection of Drew Bledsoe, getting his team into the playoffs after an 0-4 start. Look at how many times we ran on first and got bupkus. That set us up for real problems on offense, it has all year. We are trying to be a power running team but we lack the power to run with consistent success against teams playing the run which they all do on first down. If we were in an extended rebuild phase, fine, utterly waste the entire regular season using it as an extended pre-season for JP Losman. However, if you think this team can make the playoffs and after just missing this year I think that is the case, you start the best guy on the roster.

He didn't say anything about not being evaluated, stop reaching for something to throw at the guy. Besides, I don't really care if he is humble or arrogant as can be. All I care about is whether or not he is the best QB on the roster, if he is, it is "his" team. What he is supposed to say? "Awww shucks guys, I know am no good so I will have to win the job in camp from a kid who spent the last year limping on the sidelines in a tracksuit holding a clipboard." If he thought his abilities were so eroded that he wouldn't go into camp as the presumed starter he should retire. Whether or not MM officially declares the QB position "open" or not is quite possibly the most unimportant, meaningless factoid I can think of. Even without such a declaration, if one QB is clearly better than the other, that guy will start, guaranteed it won't make any difference if MM declared it an open competition or not.

Faith in metaphorical truth, sure. Literal belief in something that is demonstrably not literally true isn't faith, its delusion. It is how they delineate between the patients and the doctors in mental hospitals.

Its a pretty long book, you'll have to be more specific than that as I am not sure what you mean by "passages". The Bible is not just a description of spiritual matters. It has a historical aspect to it. Proving that a historical event described in the Bible actually happened doesn't really get you very far. It doesn't prove divinity and that is the way many people of faith look at it though certainly not evangelical christians. For example, we know a lot about ancient Egyptian history. Some of it we have learned from deciphering Egyptian writings, some from archaelogical discoveries. Their texts describe both spritual and historical matters. Proving that a set of hieroglyphs describing an ancient war is accurate does not prove that the Sun God Ra, also discussed in the same set, actually existed. Proving that Jericho existed and that it fell doesn't establish divinity. That isn't what most researchers find important anyway. However, if your faith demands that you take the Bible as being literally true from cover to cover, then proof that the Bible is wrong about Jericho is a threat you have to defeat somehow. It can't be tolerated. For evangelicals who believe thus, it all has to be true right down to the last word. For them, proof of historical accuracy is proof of divinity and the lack of historical accuracy conversely threatens the divine.