Mickey

At the time, I argued for taking McKinnie, not because I foresaw Williams as a bust but simply because he played RT in college, not LT. Those with whom I argued believed that Williams was only at RT because their QB was a lefty. I argued that regardless, Williams didn't go up against the best pass rushers week in and week out and that playing on the right is like being right handed, its not so easy to switch to being left handed. I just saw more risk with Williams than with McKinnie and with the 4th pick, who wants risk? That was essentially a disaster for the team. As for Winfield, arguing that he is good but not great thus we were justified in letting him go as he we would have had to "overpay" to keep him, misses the point I think. When you lose a guy like that, you have to replace him and that means that he costs you a draft pick. Two really, the one you used to get him and the one you used to replace him. There is no guarantee that his replacement will be great either or even as "good" as Winfield was. Whoever you get will also require time to become the veteran Winfield was. If that replacement doesn't work out, then you have to spend yet another draft pick. Its also not as if his replacement would be free. So one hand you have a solid player worth "X" who is asking for a new contract worth X + Y. You have to weigh the "Y" against the drop off in quality while you find a successor, the worth of one or more draft picks to find that successor, the time to find & train him to be at least as good as Winfiled and the contract of that successor. I would even add the possibility that if you do get lucky and find a successor as good as Winfield, sooner or later you are going to face the same issue all over again. Fans who simply look at the new contract a player like Winfield is demanding and conclude that we should let him go because, for example, he wants 30M for 5 years and he is only worth 25M for 5 years are focusing on the easiest to see factors and ignoring all the rest. Really, the bottom line is that you do not improve a team by letting its most productive players go. Winfield had problems for sure, he probably is not a hall of famer but he is as good or better than anyone we have had at the position since. He might be one of the surest tacklers I have ever seen. The Patriots and Bellicheck stayed away from him and instead always focused on going against Clements. That kind of respect doesn't drop from the sky, the guy could play.

Has he ever played Left Tackle?

True enough at the college level but there are guys like him every couple of years and they never make it in the NFL.

He has a weak arm and his numbers are inflated by playing in a top program. Need I remind you of the last first rounder we took from Texas? I like Jevan Snead and even better, if he comes out as a junior, Jake Locker from Washington.

Yeah, he was awesome against the 0-4 Bucs... No matter how good Bell becomes, that just means if we kept Peters we would have had two good tackles.

Yeech. This year is a good year for QB's in the draft. I'd much rather have Jevan Snead or that kid from Georgia or, if he leaves early, Jake Locker from Wash. than retread veteran or young guy who failed somewhere else.

Whatever their futures might hold, none of those guys would be starting for virtually any team in this league but ours. I am sick and tired of hearing for the first 2-3 years of every guy we draft that they are young and its too early to judge them. When the freak are we going to draft a guy that is damn good from the git-go? Stafford already looks better than Trent and don't tell me he has a better cast around him in Detroit.

I am not sure what "capable QB" means, if it means one that wins, he isn't that. If it means one that takes a team to the playoffs, he isn't that. If it means he can remember the play book, stay out of trouble off the field and never be late for Sunday school, then yeah, he is capable as hell. And the idea that gosh durn it, we just don't know yet if he is as good as Tom Brady is about as viable a belief as unicorns and lollipop forests. Yes the line is lame but so is our QB. Lucky for him, there is no viable alternative on the bench as there was when Bledsoe and later, JP, was stinking up the field. So he has 12 games left to rescue his career and I hope he does but in the meantime, I'm keeping my eye on Jevan Snead and Jake Locker (May God show him the wisdom to declare as a junior).

Respectfully, I disagree. Certainly we have had lousy coaching and no doubt, with a better surrounding cast and more consistency in our schemes, Trent would be playing better than he is now. But so to would anyone you put behind center. Trent has shown his shortcomings often enough now that they can't all be passed off as the results of a crappy line, a crappy coordinator, etc., etc. As it turns out, Trent is still smart, but his talent was never all that great and where it really counts, having the guts of a gambler, he just doesn't have it, never did, likley never will. He has 12 games left this year to try and show something and as skeptical as I am of him as a franchise QB, I am still holding out hope though I recognize that its more desparation than hope at this point. A good QB is really hard to find. That is why they get paid so much. Teams should always be on the look out for overlooked talent and project guys because you always have to have a plan B. Which is why I can't understand why Gibron, likeable though he is, is still on this team. He is not and never will be a legit #2 let alone a starter. Is there no long shot, project, overlooked small school kind of guy out there anywhere that could be holding that spot? You can't get lucky a-la-Fred-Jackson if you don't take a gamble. Yep, I admit it, desparation masked has hope. That is where I now live.

What is this "middle of the field" you speak of?

Right, and getting rid of a starting two time pro bowl LT has no effect on depth....

the pick last week on a throw to TO was a slant, however, we had just run two slants to Evans and the Saints were looking for it which is why Greer sat on the route. Its also what they faked when TO was open on that long one, they took advantage of the DB playing the slant and blew by him. Terrible pass though.

I hope you are wrong but ever since the cleveland game last year I have worried that he just doesn't have the confidence to bounce back from adversity that a QB simply has to have in this league.

Whoa, is "march one inch" supposed to be a play on the name Marshawn Lynch? If you were hoping to show off how clever you are, you kind of did the opposite.

Gotta go with Ted's. The lump charcoal they use is what does the job. I live in Syracuse where Hoffman's is king and everyone loves Heids in Liverpool but to me, that stuff is lame compared to Ted's. Love those shirts too, the black ones, any way to get one without being an employee?

You must be a conservative with liberal demons dancing in your head and death panels created by foreign born Presidents invading your dreams. It is too early to give up on Maybin and too early to know how Oher will make out. Certainly, no one could argue with the need for a good LT but no one could seriously argue against the need for a good pass rusher. I think in the long run that Oher will prove to have been the better pick but that is based on my faith in our front office getting it wrong. Our personnel people are the George Costanzas of the NFL, everything they do is wrong thus, the opposite of what they do is always right. All they have to do is do the opposite of what they think they should do and we will be champions in no time.

The reason he didn't play much against NO is that the coaches don't share your enthusiasm over his performance in the weeks prior. I think it is way too early, by about a year and a half, to pronounce him to be a bust but that having been said, the front office is not getting it done. It is their job to get it done. And if they don't, they will eventually be looking for jobs, and rightfully so. I have high hopes for Maybin not because the FO values him so highly but despite that. No substitute for speed, no substitute for quickness, that is why I like him and am optimistic about his future. You can always come up with reasons that seem logical as to why they passed on any given player, such as the one you give here, that other people didn't like Oher either. But in the end, they are and should be judged on finding the diamonds in the draft despite whatever reasons there might be to pass on a guy who turns out to be a real player. Being right when other teams are wrong on a player is what builds championship teams.

Announcers say this all the time but I think the answer is pretty simple. The defense knows you need 6 so that is where they play you, giving up the 4 yarder. Since that is what the defense is giving, that is what the offense takes with the plan being for the receiver to carry it that extra yard or two. This is especially so when throwing shallow crossing routes or to TE's, RB's and beefy WR's like Reed. Those guys are expected to be able to fall forward for a couple yards. I am not saying it is the best strategy but it is a strategy, not just some sort of bonheaded mistake by the WR. One of the problems with it is that often, the receiver has to come to the ball as it is almost always a bad idea to wait for it to get there. That means going back towards the LOS which means instead of 4 yards and falling forward for 2, its now a 2 yard pass and unless your receiver is 12 feet tall, he isn't going to fall forward and get the first down, he needs to break tackles or make people miss. I'll take that bet with Andre Reed but not with Lee or Josh.

Actually, Johnson had a stronger arm

Jauron has been the coach for a lot longer than just the last three games. There is plenty of proof in the record for him to be judged a likeable failure.

This happens every year with offenses short on talent. First few games, when no one has any film on eachother, things look good. Then defenses see what you are doing, shut down your one trick pony and the crappy offenses are done.

Really? Do you honestly think Trent is as good as anyone in the league apart from 4 guys? I would rate all of these guys to be significantly better QB's than Trent: Peyton Manning Eli Manning Phil Rivers Ben Rothlisberger Tony Romo Bret Farve Kurt Warner Donovan McNabb Matt Ryan Tom Brady Drew Brees Good arguments could be made that these guys are also better than he is, or soon will be or once was: Joe Flacco Jake DelHomme Matthew Schaub Aaron Rogers Kerry Collins Carson Palmer These young guys are looking like they have a pretty good future so far: Stafford Campbel Sanchez Frankly, out of those 20, if age weren't a factor, I'd trade Trent for almost any one of them. Because of age, I'd drop McNabb, Farve, Collins and Warner. Hard to tell with Sanchez, Stafford and Campbell, just too young but I'd still be willing to do it for Stafford and Sanchez. This is a big year for Trent and it would be unfair to judge him based on yesterday, just as it would be unrealistic to base a judgment the other way based on the Tampa game. However, I don't buy at all the notion that we ought to stick with him because we can't do much better. He is the guy for this year but come the offseason, if he hasn't shown a lot more than he has so far, buh-bye. I thought it was a big mistake to have no young project guy on the bench or a wily old vet just in case. Hamdan is just taking up space and Fitzpatrick has shown that he is not very likley to ever be more than a back-up. You can't get lucky if you don't take a chance. We seem willing to do that with tackles, why not with QBs? He seems to do well when the play as designed is open but when it isn't and he has to improvise or make something out of nothing, he just doesn't seem to have a knack for that. Not yet anyway.

The game isn't being blacked out, the whole Yates county thing has nothing at all to do with why the game isn't on in Syracuse. Onc channel gets the AFC and the other gets the NFC. In interconference games, the conference of the visiting team controls. NO is visiting the Bills so it is designated to be an NFC game so only the NFC channel can televise it, not the AFC station. The stations alternate double headers, one week its an NFC double header, the next its and AFC double header. This week the double header goes to the local AFC affiliate who can't televise the Bills game as it is an NFC game. The NFC channel can only televise one game. Normally, since the Bills are an AFC team, they show the Giants and the fans in this area expect to see them on that station every weekend. Rather than upset that to show the other station's team, they are sticking with "their" team, the Giants. They have no interest in increasing the amount of fans for a team that plays on another network most of the time and in competition with the team they usually show. What is stupid is that the NFL doesn't take these things into account when scheduling the games and has no provision for local affiliates to trade their double header days back and forth. But I can't blame the NFC network which can only occasionally show the Bills from putting on the same team they always do, the Giants, even here in Syracuse. I am sure they would rather televise the Bills all the time but they don't have that option, they have to pick an NFC team. The Giants practiced in Albany which isn't too far from here and the Jets practiced in Cortland, only 30 minutes south of Syracuse. When I moved her in 1967 and through the 70's there were no Bills fans, the team usually stunk. Everyone was a Giant, Jet or SB winner fan. Any team having success would have a lot of temporary fans here, Oakland, Dallas, Miami and Pittsburgh mostly as they were the good teams in the '70's. I was one lonely kid on that school bus in my Bills blue knit hat with the red pom-pom. It was surreal watching all these kids in Sunny Miami Dolphin crap trudging through 2 feet of snow to get to the bus.

I have the sunday ticket off of a direct tv receiver from my brother's house in virginia so even if it were blacked out, I would still get the game. It isn't blacked out so anyone with the Sunday ticket will be able to watch it. This means my Dad will have to actually leave his house and come to mine. Please send him your thoughts and prayers to steel him against the horror to come.

Well, they looked pretty good actually over the first 4 games just last year. They scored 34, 20, 24 and 31. They threw for 215, 239 and 279 and Freddie and Lynch combined for over a 100 yards two or three times as well. But I agree, I like this pick up better than an older guy more susceptible to injury. Plus, this guy can move at least which seems to be the direction they want to go in after trying for years to do it with size.