AKC

I'd like to be wrong here for the sake of our season, I just can't see it with the blind faith in TAnderson or worse yet being forced to play Edwards on running downs. We can fix this with a situational run down player, even someone on twilight time, and I'll be surprised if we don't see this addition. On Farr- you are correct that the Rams did not use big interior linemen. I think Agnew was only playing around 280, Farr was probably a little lighter than that.

He had a lot less wear and tear on his body back then, plus he's now in his 30s. Unlike a lot of other 'backers in the league who would take less risk if the line underperforms and a game has gotten away from the D, London will continue to play full out even if Edwards proves to be the run sieve I see when he's in on rushing downs. This will expose London to a higher risk of injury than some slacker who gives up. To answer your question about who he played behind in St. Louis while London was winning his Super Bowl ring- the Rams used a rotation of Ray Agnew, DeMarco Farr and Jeff Zgonina. Being only the 3rd best lineman in that rotation, Zgonina is still a productive interior guy in Miami.

Even if Anderson evolves as a good run stopper, we will have merely a "starting rotation" of three interior linemen- one a superior interior player who can excel against the run and pass, a one-dimensional pass rusher and one making his plays on first and second down. This is basically a "bare cupboard" DLine rotation in today's NFL and any peek at our schedule should be a warning to our management to bring in competent help on the interior DLine before the 5th week of the coming season. If it doesn't happen you won't have to worry about London Fletcher getting knocked around the field all season by OLinemen- he'll be an injury casualty before we reach week 17 due to his big heart/play through anything style.

Like you, I believe we have FAR more to fear in relation to the quality of our DLine against the run than we do about any other area of our team. For Christ's sake- at least on the OLine we have a rotation of guys who have actually played at this level! Here's a string expanding on those concerns: DLine Woes

I've had the procedure and at least from my own standpoint I'd tell you to be aware of a couple things that won't be stressed by the facility who is looking to do it- A) You WILL lose peripheral vision, the more your correction the more you'll lose. B) You WILL suffer some loss of low light sensitivity. I definitely have a NOTICABLE loss of night sensitivity. C) I read a lot for work and personally. I was not warned that my reading without any lenses from the day after the surgery would cause me to end up with a fine ability to read without glasses but sacrifice some of my long range correction over the first couple months (and of course permanently) . They offered some hokey option to have "one eye set fotr reading and the other for distance" which sounded worse than where I started, but in the long run it appears to me that they right now are only capable of getting you good on one or the other.

The fact that Aaron has been a top sack artist over the first four years of his career apparetnly doesn't qualify him as a superior player. How about: 5 Fumbles forced, third best league-wide in 2004 among all DLinemen, along with 3 Recovered Fumbles, making him fifth league-wide in that category plus 4 passes defensed. Makes you wish all our players were as "mediocre" as Aaron!

Before calling a guy who's averaged 8 sacks a season over the first 4 years of his career "mediocre", one might consider the averages over a like portion of the careers of the "best" players in the league at DE- Strahan- 3.8 Kearse- 9 Kerney- 7 Simeon Rice- 10.2 At least based upon his ability to pressure the QB Schobel scores much closer to "best" than to "mediocre".

The loss of confidence I sense is specific to his inside move- he had been working on a combo punch and swim move in the end of '03 that not only picked him up 2 sacks but made him more dangerous outside as it became harder to overplay him to the oustide and risk the inside rush that has mostly awful outcomes for a QB: Picks/Batted Balls/Fumbles and of course Sacks. I'd concur with your observation that he was used more situationally last season, including an increased reliance on inside stunts along with zone coverage duties. My concerns are simply that he not lose the good work he previously had put in developing a new hand technique that makes him a far more dangerous one on one rusher, a skill he's already proven competent in.

I like his talent but was disappointed in 2004 to see him revert back to his reliance on favoring the outside move. He was making good progress on his inside move exiting the '03 season but he seemed to lose confidence in it between seasons and took too many of those looping sprints around the OT. Some of that is by design but I'd like to see Krumrie get him back on track to become less predictable by taking an inside move with more frequency.

I'd merely offer this advice: Enjoy the first quarter of the season. Short of a good DT being brought in I'm guessing you'll see my doomsday prediction playing out very clearly before our Bye in week 9. And at that time there'll be no way to correct our lack of quality AND depth in the middle of our defense.

Or to simply discover how bad. You can have faith in Edwards and Bannan against the run- I've seen way to much of both of them to buy into that. Again, it would be great if Anderson were a break-out player in '05 but even then we'd be just "adequate" with two "quality" DTs. I'm surprised by how fans downplay the fact that the winningest management group in our league over the past few years plays a 3-4 and yet they've got better depth at the DT spot than we do! The simple fact is we don't even have adequate starters at DT and we ADDITIONALLY have no depth.

Pat Williams remains a "quality" run stopping interior lineman with excellent hands in the running game, giving him both the ability to force plays away or make tackles. Ron Edwards is a known quantity- he's become a solid passing down lineman who plays too high to be effective in the run game and consequently too many running plays go right over him. He is NOT a good run tackler. We know virtually nothing about Tim Anderson. Even in the weakest divisions in the league, a rotation including AT LEAST two "quality" interior linemen is the absolute minimum for being competitive today. No objective source would make the claim that we have two "quality" interior D Linemen when in fact we merely have one. The last time a team even got to the Super Bowl with one "quality" interior linemen we watched Tampa run the ball down the throats of Sam Adams and a group of role players like we're looking to put on the field this season. We'll see Corey Dillon twice, Curtis Martin twice and almost surely Rickey Williams twice this season plus Priest Holmes, LaDanian Tomlinson, Stephen Davis and Rueben Droughns. A good case could be made for us being non-competitive against any of those teams- leaving us lucky to win 7 or 8 games this coming season. It's safe to assume that finishing .500 in the AFC East will be a dead end, and without adding at least one solid interior D Lineman our schedule of potent running offenses will simply destroy the most humble hopes of the 2005 Bills.

Conceding an opening day performance limiting Domanick Davis to 100 yards simply based on the field and opening day adrenaline, I'm guessing the New Orleans Saints game will be that last game of the year before it becomes evident that the moniker for our '05 defense against any decent rushing attack should be "The 4th Quarter Fold".

There's no doubt in my mind that short of Tim Anderson being a phenom, something we've seen absolutely no indication of, we're in big trouble this year at the DT spot and it's far and away our biggest personnel problem. Assume Sam has a Sam year, 10 very solid games and 6 with a little less than stellar effort. Assume Ron Edwards plays well on passing downs but continues to struggle against the run. Mix in a good dose of the unknown of Anderson and the likelihood of seeing 2 of the 3 best rushers in the league last year PLUS Ricky Williams 6 times. One measure is to look at the Pats; they've got Vince Wilfork, Ty Warren and Richard Seymour plus a host of 2nd-tier interior linemen and this is a team that plays a 3-4 predominantly. The writing on my wall says without some help at DT London Fletcher will be wise to increase his life insurance policy before we hit the pre-season. We're almost promised the worst Bills rushing defense in the recent past and at a time when the quality of running backs in our division is at likely a historical high point. 2005 for the Buffalo Bills may bring new meaning to the phrase "Bad Things".

I'm less concerned with his speed because his athletic gifts have allowed him to rarely walk away from a "jump ball" wihtout getting the better of the defender. It's the lackadaisical one-handed garbage and the outright bounces off his uniform that have forever frustrated this fan. IMO he just doesn't have the superior concentration of a great WR like Marvin Harrison.

Eric simply doesn't have the great hands of many receivers in the game today. The best receivers in football come up not just with hard to catch balls but they rarely ever miss a ball in their natural range. Eric has never been able to do either of these with regularity- he will get an occasional highlight grab but for the most part he's proven to have inferior hands in a league where WR opportunities are critical to reducing your QBs exposure to the reality of increased pressure from more athletic rushers and more refined rushing schemes. That little first down drop that seems innocuous is instead the cause in many cases of a D being granted the ability to T off on a backfield and consequently the ball being turned over the the opposition, an opposition in many cases employing far more surehanded WRs. Eric is a talented and experienced WR who is capable of making big plays, and in those areas he's a top 15 ot 20 WR in this league- unfortunately when his reliability is factored in he "drops" out of the top 30.

You oughta do a little homework before second guessing me ;-) AFC Domination In fact, not only does the linked article support my numbers to the EXACT percentage, it further points out that the AFC domination was greater (or to use your phrase "more staggering") than AT ANY TIME DURING THE NFC PERIOD YOU REST YOUR WHOLE ARGUMENT UPON! This surely does beg the question- ARE THE PATS THE WEAKEST SUPER BOWL CHAMPS EVER? Hey- Thanks for the tipoff on opposing conference strength! I never would have bothered considering that angle if you Patsy fans hadn't taken the losing side of the "Pat's Dynasty" argument and kept on arguing it even after it was clearly out of your reach! How interesting to find out that conference strength ALSO lends further support to the "weak champion" position.

I'm giving credit where credit is due to one Mr. Daniel Webster who proclaimed the multigenerational foundation of the word "dynasty". The only difference between the a-whipping the AFC has been putting on NFC teams during the Pats run verus the opposite situation when the NFC was the dominant conference is that their champs were whipping on all the AFC teams in the big game. Today, when the AFC is regularly pounding the NFC all season long (AFC won a staggering .688 against the NFC in '04 reg. season) we are forced to suffer through the embarrasment of watching the Pats limp through field goal squeakers under the same circumstances where the past NFC champs exhibited domination.

You're within grasp of the golden ring- Yes, a win is a win. And a squeaker is a squeaker. And a squeaker of a win can never be characterized as "dominant" as those before you have insisted, and a non-dominant champ can never be characterized as a dynasty as those before you have insisted. Otherwise the world still spins on an axis 23.5 degrees from vertical once every 24 hours and the Pats have won three Super Bowls without dominating a single one, leaving them the poorest candidate among all NFL champions in the history of the sport to be considered a "dynasty".

Well Sybil, your other personalities have been less embraceful of the AFC championship game as a measure of anything- in fact the 4 the Bills won in a row have been laughed off as no accomplishment at all by your other screen names in this very string- so no, I'm hardly feeling munificent enough to grant praise on pulling off a two-score win two weeks prior to the big game; your Pats still have never won a championship by more than the gayly stockinged little toe of your kicker's foot. Now on the other hand I'll have to concede to you anything "obivous" since among the 5 languages I speak fluently you've discovered a word I'm unfamiliar with. Perhaps you'd care to explain it to all of us?

I don't see that as any more impressive than the Titans putting up 48 against the Packers in week 5, because after all the subject we're talking about is championship games ;-) You bandwagoneers are so stuck on believing your team is something they're not that you can't process the fact that they've dominated no one in the big game, unlike the teams in NFL history considered by all rational fans of the game as dominant. You've tried to argue your losing position under three different names today and the result is the same- you're simply wrong to try to pass off the Pats as a "dominant" champion, and if you're not a dominant champion it takes an awful lot of spelled glue tubes to make the jump from "non-dominant champion" to "Dynasty".

I see no reason for you to be embarassed by the fact that your team has been unable to exhibit dominance over anyone in a championship game. But it is a simple fact. Thanks for making your first post as in insect with us- now back to the question on the table- Cite for us JUST ONE of the teams who have consecutive championship wins that were less convincing than the Patriots 3 point "kicker" victories. Once we have your answer we'll be able to consider the basis for your additional inquiry. In the meantime see how long you can balance that cone-shaped cap on your head!

Sorry to interrupt your turnip dig but the actual question was whether the Pats could be considered even the lesser title a "dominant" champion or even if that did they reach the level of "Dynasty"? But don't let a few tugs on that bottle of Old Spice keep you from your regular fiddling with the altar boys at service tonight ;-)

Take into account anything you want, there's simply no way a 3-point win in football qualifies as "dominant" in my dictionary or yours regardless of the level of competition. You either dominate an opponent or you don't, and a field goal kicker's margin of error will never crest the level of "dominant". Jan Stenerud never dominated a game anymore than Adam Viniatieri, and your championships were won by AV- whether you are willing to admit that or not. 5 Super Bowls over 14 years- I'd argue THAT'S exactly what the term "dynasty" means- Lombardi won three consecutive championships with the same team- not a dynasty until another generation of Packers went on to win the trophy. The SB9 Steelers were a whole lot different team than the SB14 version- completley different receiving corps/only two of the same OLinemen and over half the defense changed over- but I'm willing to entertain your definition that 5 years in football does not constitute multi-generational and therefore disqualifies the Steelers from the lofty height of "NFL Dynasty". Go on with your thesis and I appreciate the discussion; we'll explore that multiple personality disorder in another thread ;-)

While we appreciate Trolls with the good sense to actually enter genuinely into the discussion, it's important you accurately represent my original points: A) The margins are simply an indication of dominance, only one criteria one might consider when assessing a "Dynasty". On margins only one team has a more dismal record among league champs than the Pats, one of only two champs with negative margins in the big game. Being on the average minus 8 points in Super Bowls is hardly a signifier of "dominance". B) Dyanastics have a multigenerational foundation, and since the whole meaning of the word is based on this it is only logical that multiple generations of the same team would have to win the championship. That situation exists among some teams (Steelers/Boys/9ers/Packers/etc.) but it simply is non-existent with the Pats, hence their disqualification IMO as a dynasty. Make an argument perhaps that the unique nature of changing rosters makes even a separate year another "generation" in football; I won't bite but you might gain some traction if you can fashion a cohesive position like that. At the same time no sane person one would argue the Pats "dominance" in the big game and I'd take the position that that is exclusionary in and of itself to attain the exalted level of "Dynasty".