jad1

Gray's a punk for wanting a HC job? Well Cotrell also wanted one, as did Marvin Lewis, Jim Fox, Jack Del Rio, Romeo Crennell, and just about every DC in the league. Gray's job isn't to groom a successor, and the Bills could easily retain Krumrie by promoting him if they want to. Bottom line is that the Bills 3rd quarter defensive stats were amazing last year. If they repeat those numbers again this year, Gray WILL have head coaching opportunities, because he will prove himself to be a great on-field manager. If that happens, Mularkey, Donahoe, and Wilson are responsible for finding and hiring Gray's replacement, not Gray himself.

I've watched the footage of Losman on BB.com, and Losman's technique, in my opinion, looks solid. Maybe your looking at different footage, but there's really nothing alarming from what I saw. And he looked extremely solid throwing the ball in preseason last season, before the injury. Coming out of college, the rap on him was that he left his feet to throw, making him fundamentally unsound. But his college completion percentage was good and interception ratio was low, so his "poor" mechanics didn't seem to hurt his on-field performance. In your defense, though, maybe he did pick up enough bad habits from that Patriot mess to ruin his career.

Petyon Manning, John Elway, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Daunte Culpepper, Donovan McNabb, Steve Young, Joe Montana, and Troy Aikmen are examples of players who's college careers were clear indicators of their NFL success. Sure there's busts out there, that's why teams hire guys like good GMs to run their teams, instead of Mike Brown.

Doug Flutie and Boomer Esiason.

Is it possible to sign two older geezers than these guys? Oh well, two more senior citizens for the early bird in South Florida. Florida fans will be happy to know that the next time they're following a Lincoln Continental with it's right blinker on for 16 miles, they just might be following one of their new favorite Panthers!

Right now, I'd take these numbers for JP, without an argument. And I wouldn't care what people called him.

Yeah, his handling of the coaching situation in mid-2003 is my biggest criticism of him. In my opinion, Williams was definitely not on board with the type of team Donahoe wanted to build, and that became more and more evident as 2003 rolled along. In my opinion, though, it's a forgivable sin, because I'm not certain that a change could have saved the season, and it's uncertain to what extent it would have affected his decision to hire Mularkey the next season. Les Steckel or Dick LeBeau could have won a few games, but were they really the long-term solution for HC? It could have also split the locker room if the interim coach proved popular. So in the long run, staying with Williams might have given a measure of stablity to the team. The only veteren lost during Williams flame-out was Rueben Brown. And while we're both disappointed with the patience he showed with Williams, you have to admit that the same patience he showed Mularkey during the 0-4 start has paid off. I often wondered if Bledsoe wasn't here, who would have taken his place? Would the Bills been better off last season with Garcia, Brunnell, or Warner. It's hard to say. While Bledsoe was hardly the franchise savior many wanted him to be, he did provide stability at the QB position, which enabled Donahoe to build a team around him. The rebuilding process would have been severely damaged the last 3 years if the Bills had to spend draft picks and cap money on a QB-of-the-month club. Bledsoe allowed Donahoe to build up other areas of the team, and let him pick his spot to draft his sucessor. To his credit, the team he has built outgrew Bledsoe. Despite the Williams setback, Donahoe has managed to keep the team on an upward curve. He's stocked the team with solid veteren FAs, and has drafted a good young core of players. And he's done a great job recovering from the necessary firing of Williams. Donahoe's made mistakes, as every GM does, but he's made strong recoverys from them. I believe that's a sign of a good GM.

Yeah, Donahoe's such an egomanic you'd expect him to be sticking the contract into everybody's face, yelling 'How you like me now?!' And if you can completely restock the roster of an NFL team and post a winning record 4 years later, you're in the wrong line of work. You should be a highly-paid GM.

Your comments are so far from the truth here, I don't know where to start. Polian's 3rd year here was '88, not '87. His record by the end of '87 was 11-20. Needless to say, those of you who scream RECORD and PLAYOFFS, couldn't have been happy with Polian's record at the end of '87. To Polian's credit you acknowledge that he inherited a mess. However, your refusal to acknowledge the mess Donahoe inherited also discredits your argument. Polian did not draft Kelly, Reed, Talley, or Smith as GM. Those guys were on the roster when he took over. Conversely Donahoe has purged 52 of the 53 players he's inherited thanks in large part to the salary cap, which you somehow claim encourages quick turnarounds. So Polian inherits a core of HOF players, while Donahoe has to purge millions of dollars to get under the cap. How did their first years turn out? Polian 4-12, Donahoe 3-13. Polian is one win better. In their 2nd year Polian is 7-8 (non-scabs 6-6) while Donahoe is 8-8. Polian improves the team by 3 wins, Donahoe by 5 wins. 5 wins matches Polians largest season-to-season improvement, by the way. In '88, Polian's 3rd seasons, the Bills explode to 12-4. Donahoe's Bills, in his 3rd season, fall to 6-10. Donahoe's biggest season-to season backslide is 2 wins. Polian's 4th seasons sees the Bills backslide to 9-7, 3 fewer wins than in '88. Donahoe improves his team by 3 wins in his 4th season, to 9-7. So both GMs inherited a mess (although Polian inherited a better team), both improved them rapidly, both suffered backslides. Etiher Polian is an "average" GM or Donahoe is a pretty good one, because these guys have more in common than you would admit. And if you can tell me how posting a 9-7 record is "backtracking" for Donahoe, I'd like to here that twisted logic. Despite the cap and FA there are no quick "turnarounds" in the NFL. The Pats, Rams, Ravens, Buccaneers all spent most of the '90s accumulating talent to win their Super Bowls. If you take a close look at how these teams were built, you'd see that it still takes 5 or 6 years of accumulating talent to build a consistent winner in the NFL.

You strike me as the type of fan who would been have calling for Polian's ouster back in '87, after the Bills finished their 6th straight season without a playoff appearance. And no doubt you would have been calling for Kelly's benching, because he just finished his second losing season. Am I right?

Again you offer no proof that Donahoe is an egomanic or that he is afraid of a strong coach. And if you look objectively at how Donahoe has run the team, you'll see that your speculation is wrong.

Henry's a Titan now. Clog up their board with this nonsense.

Knock up your wife. That way she won't be able to travel when the wedding rolls around, and you won't want to leave her on her own that close to her due date. Works every time!

If Gandy and Anderson were less popular than Verba, wouldn't they be hosting Vegas champagne parties while Verba was in an NFL camp somewhere? By your logic, James and Alexander must be less popular than Henry, because Henry was traded and those two weren't.

Saban looks like a tool. His players can't stay out of jail, he spent most of the offseason bending over backwards to bring back a quitter, and his QB of the future is a guy who once gave himself a concussion, banging his head against a wall. Right now, Saban looks more like Butch Davis than Bill Belichick.

That's true, but the team would have had a much higher pick in last season's cancelled draft, so this is a set back in it's aquisition of young talent. We'll see how much Crosby will help the Penguins fill the oldest building in the league.

Yeah, that and out-of-control health care costs. Of course taxation and healthcare costs certainly haven't hurt executive salaries or dampened the stock market over the last 15 years. Too bad nobody's compensated with stock options, right? They'd make out like bandits. Wait a minute....

Maybe Lito decided that as an undersized CB with 6 career interceptions, he wasn't quite ready to break the bank yet.

Let's see, of the guys you mention, only Heap is considered top 5 at his position, and that's at TE, which is near the bottom of the position salary scale. Clements has a chance, with a strong season, to be the highest paid CB EVER. There's no way that Moss, Minter, Horn or Stroud will ever be the highest paid at their position. There's no way a TE will be paid as much as a top-level CB. Your belief in this "so-called" fairness is naive, to say the least. You should have learned from the Henry situation the importance of market value. Market value trumps "fairness" in all cases of player moves. Clements market value, in the new TV contract era, is going to be huge. And not knowing what the market for CBs will be in 2006, TD would be foolish to make a move today. Most likely, Clements will be franchised. TD will be smart to pay him the average of the top 5 CBs with current contracts under the new cap. This will make Clements a bargain in 2006. It will also give both Clements and the Bills time to figure out the new market value, which will put both on better footing to negotiate a long term deal. The amount of money Clements will command on the open market and the new salary cap will make this an ugly negotiation.

Clements, a pro-bowl CB, is going to be an UFA the first year of the new television deal. Why the hell would he have agreed to anything before 2006? Donahoe would love to tie him up at pre-2006 rates, before the salary cap jumps, but Clements, most likely, isn't stupid enough to do that. Like the Henry trade, Clements resigning is going to all be about the market. Right now, it's unclear what that market for an elite CB will be, so both sides are in wait-and-see mode.

Wasn't that the 'nicknames' class? Struggle student trying a nickname: "Drew Bledsoe much that he needed a transfusion." (Berman shakes his head).

As a pro bowl back, I'd expect Henry to rise above the learning curve. They had 3 months of mini camps, 6 weeks of training camp, four preseason games, and it still took Travis more than a quarter of a season to learn his blocking assignments and pass routes? How much practice does he need to keep from tripping over the line of scrimmage? This is further evidence that Henry played himself out of the starting position.

There's no way TD should have drafted Clark over McGahee. McGahee is a top 5 talent. Clark is a TE, and not a very durable one at that. I like the decision Baltimore made with Lewis, and there's no argument New Orleans did the right thing in replacing Williams with McAllister. Travis was treated like a guy who stunk the place up in 2004 and lost his job to a better player. Maybe if Henry ran for a couple 100 yard games and scored 3 or 4 TDs at the beginning of last season, but still lost his job, you'd have an argument. But he flopped, and that's no way to keep a guy as talented as McGahee on the bench.

One quarter of a season IS a HUGE opportunity to prove one's worth. There may have other factors contributing to the Bills losing streak, but name ONE play Henry made in those games. Name one time where he put the team on his back like a pro-bowl player should, and lifted them to a win. It didn't happen. At a time where he was fighting for his position, he stumbled, missed blocks, and ran the wrong assignments. He was terrible. Did you really expect the Bills to name Henry the starter this season? After McGahee was instrumental in their best win streak since the early 90s? Mularkey is supposed to say, 'nice job Willis, but I'm starting the guy who had his best seasons under a different coaching staff?' Because this seems to be what Henry expected Mularkey to do, even after his own horrible performance in 2004.

He did nothing the first 4 games of the season. Henry was worthless last year. McGahee outperformed him in the preseason, but Henry was still given the starting job for the opener. If Henry is just as good as McGahee, he sure as hell didn't prove it last season. No 100 yard games + No TDs + No wins = no starting job. Henry LOST the job after he was given every opportunity to keep it, and then he quit after losing the job, even though the McGahee-led Bills finished the year at 9-2. And Travis expects to be handed his starting job back? Because he was good 2 years ago? Yeah, right. Too bad Travis didn't have the pride to EARN the job back.