Last Guy on the Bench

Yep. You can feel whatever you want. And I would agree with you on this one.

Nice work, people. This needs to turn into a poll. My votes from what has already been suggested (based purely on entertainment value): 1) Wide Starboard 2) The Wreck of the Ryan Fitzgerald 3) This Boat'll Have a New Captain in Three Years 4) Ashton YouBoaty How about: Home Run Rowback

Rhubarb . Now that's actually funny. It's all good. I'm a big admirer of Marv, so this thread has gotten me worked up a bit. I just don't understand the narrow (and in my opinion unrealistic) views on coaching that equate quality with how things turn out in a handful of games rather than looking at the body of work as a whole.

Yes what someone chooses to eat is an excellent reason not to like them. Well done. Besides, the point was that Marv wasn't being hypocritical in the pork chop way that Jim implied. Otherwise, I would agree with Jim that people who criticize hunting while happily chowing down on packaged meat don't have much of a leg to stand on. Hunting your meat is much more honest, in my opinion. Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian. Feel free not to like me either. Marv and I can console ourselves over a nice plate of Tofurkey.

Marv is a vegetarian.

I'd forgotten that. Good recall. Those teams did play like crap on occasion, but they never played scared. People can question any number of individual decisions Marv made, but I don't think he made any out of fear.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Great post. Super Bowl fever makes people insane. Winning the Super Bowl is a huge crapshoot. So many things have to go right. A few plays go differently and Brady and Belichick have won zero. Or five. (I think they are both all-timers, BTW.) The way to judge a coach or team is consistency in terms of being in the hunt. Marv and the gang couldn't win the big game because they lost 4 Super Bowls (3 against superior and/or extremely hot teams)? Really? Those conference championship games weren't big? Those other playoff games? Those comebacks? Those division clinchers? Those games against arch rivals like the Dolphins who had been pounding the Bills for years? Those Monday nighters? Marv's Bills won a donkey load of big games. They were competitive and entertaining and resilient for a decade. They were a joy to watch. But sure, Marv had nothing to do with it.

Good point. This past decade, the drafts, the player signings, the coaching/admin changes, and the press conferences surrounding them have been the most exciting moments for this franchise. Sadly I've gotten used to it and now seem to confuse those things with football itself. I would love to have my brain re-washed by actual football highlights. Here's hoping Whaley and Marrone are the guys to make that happen.

That's for sure. It was stunning. I never thought someone could make Russ Brandon look like a paragon of authenticity. Never heard such dense corporate-speak in my life. Not saying either guy is inauthentic as a human - from all accounts they are both good guys. I'm just talking about their approaches to public communication. I hope Whaley does well, and I'm sure he is as hard working and likable as everyone says. But press conferences are going to be painful. From that respect, I miss Buddy already.

Didn't hear this, so don't know the context. But are you sure that rather than taking a dig at Wannstedt, he didn't simply mean the other team had to game plan around Mario (i.e., implying Mario was good, from that respect)? I can't see Buddy taking a cheap (even though true) shot at Wannstedt. I can see him defending Mario's overall play by highlighting the respect that opposing teams had for him.

Exactly. Any metric that equates a FOOT in the broad jump with one bench rep is absurd. Say there are two guys with the same vertical jump. On the bench, Player A does 25 reps, player B 22. But Player A has a 9' broad jump and player B has an 11' broad jump. Player A will have the higher "explosion" number. Nonsensical. If we are just looking at explosive athleticism, I'll take the guy with the massive TWO FOOT advantage in the broad jump over the guy with the very slightly stronger upper body. Even if he got the weighting right, though, it's still too reductive to mean much. Too many other athletic factors in play.

"Average in college?" As in middle of the pack out of 120 FBS schools? Really? You don't have to think he will be a great pro to acknowledge that EJ was at least above average. If he was average (i.e., somewhere between, say, the 40th and 80th best FBS QB in the country) then the Bills just made the worst draft pick in the history of the the NFL.

Yeah, it's the same on Game Pass, which I have, living abroad. I imagine it's the same for Rewind. They just show the plays themselves, and it comes in under 30 minutes a game. You do miss some of the drama and the build-up, and if you lose your concentration for a second, you forget what down it is. But it's pretty great. I like it to quickly catch up on games that I've read about as being good. I can plow through the best games of the weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday in a couple of hours total. But if it's a game I actually care about, it's still worth watching live, or at least the full-length archived version (fast forwarding through commercials). I, of course, always watch the Bills live. If they play well, I'll watch the 30 minute archive a couple more times during the week and then again during the off-season. It's a drug.

My point was that if EJ rocked it against Florida, he might not even have been there at 8.

Again, I just think it's tone. If your opinion is that EJ isn't Brady, Manning, or Wilson, you offer a good (though not certain) argument. But asserting that he will never win a game by himself based on a very small number of games feels like a stretch. You just don't really seem that interested in discussion about this. If your mind is mind up, well OK. I'm just not sure why anyone's mind should be made up at this point. I do appreciate your insight, though.

It's not the opinion, it's the tone of certainty. You pick out a few games, each involving dozens of players and coaches, specific conditions, specific systems, etc. and then offer your prediction of the future of a still-developing young player as a fact. Not saying your opinion is not educated. And of course, you might be right. But lots of people with very educated opinions get their player prognostications wrong all the time, either because they didn't account for all the different variables at work (nor could they have), or because players change over time. This is a forum for discussing opinions, but when people present opinions as stone-cold facts, and do it over and over and over again, well, they provoke an understandable reaction. I'd say the same thing to anyone who says repeatedly that EJ will definitely be an all-pro. I posted that vid link, because I was really interested in hearing different takes on EJ's play during that game beyond the obvious stats and end-result. As for me, I have no idea what he will turn into. I'm optimistic, but wouldn't bet a penny on my opinion either way.

Agreed. I never understand people who are so sure about the future of still-developing younger guys. It's a complete fantasy, masquerading as critical thinking, to imagine you can see players' futures clearly. The guys who spend their lives evaluating this stuff for a living are geniuses if they get it approximately sorta kinda right even 50% of the time.

OK, so two per year.

I recently watched all FSU's offensive possessions in the infamous 2012 Florida game. Full game is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NCdvC9LSlg It wasn't fun, but it didn't bum me out as much as I thought it would. EJ made some bad decisions, but it felt like one of those games that just didn't go well and kind of snowballed on him. Used to happen to Kelly at least once a season. Happens to almost every QB. Also, I think I read somewhere that he had hurt himself the week before, so wasn't playing at 100%. On the plus side, he hung in there mentally. The team came back. EJ's late fumble that killed their chances was not actually careless IMO. He got his clock cleaned. Looked to me like he had the ball pretty securely, but when he got hit his body went limp and he just let go of it. He lay on the ground without moving for a little bit. It was a KO or something close. On another board, a poster mentioned running into Bill Polian at a golf tournament on Friday. The poster said he chatted with Polian for a while about the Bills' draft, and Polian apparently said he had EJ at the top of his rankings until he watched the Florida tape. That seems like a lot of weight to give one game, especially when the guy has played well against some other good teams and in bowl games. If other NFL teams over-weighted that Florida game, and if, as I suspect, it was just one of those days and not indicative or EJ's overall ability or mental toughness, it might have been the best thing that's happened to the Bills in a long time. If EJ plays lights out in that game and they beat the number 4 team in the country, maybe he would have been wearing a KC, Oakland, Jax, or Philly jersey right now. Just a thought.

You can also download full episodes on iTunes. I'm just discovering the show and really enjoying it. Murph is smooth.

Fair enough. I guess, though, I'm a little more anxious to see EJ develop than to eke out an extra win or two this year. If Kolb is a lot better, and we are actually a good team with him, so be it. But if he is just a little better, due to veteran savvy, I'd rather see EJ. Basically I'd rather go 6-10 with EJ than 7-9 or 8-8 with Kolb. If Kolb is so much better that we have a shot at the playoffs, that's another story. No way to really quantify it in practice like that, of course, so it's really up to Marone's gut feeling about the best long-term direction to take the team.

I love watching Ray Lewis play, and I think he is the 2nd best player (all positions) of the last 10+ years, behind only (gag) Tom Brady. (Not looking for a Brady fight here, but I just think he's owned the league in a way no one else has this century, and I hate that I think that.) That being said, LT is miles above Lewis in my mind. That dude owned the field. I can't think of another defensive player in my lifetime (watching since the 70s) who could mentally and physically dominate the game like him, and the ones who were close like Bruce and Reggie, weren't linebackers. IMO, LT is the best overall NFL player of the last 40 years. Never saw Butkus really, so I can't comment on him. I know he was tough and crazy, but so was LT, and I can't imagine Butkus was nearly as much of an athletic freak as LT.

This. Well said. It's really not about how ready he is (no one is ready coming out of college) but about how mentally resilient he is. If he is resilient, let him get ready on the field. If he is less so, let him get ready off the field, which will be slower and less fun for the fans, but still OK. I think you are right, though. He sure seems like the kind of guy who can handle the inevitable lumps.

Anyone heard if any of our rookies have that late exam/can't participate until June thing going on? I forget the exact rule, but it has to do with when a draft pick's college actually finishes the semester. I hope they are all eligible to come in next week.

Good post. The glee with which people instantly pile on is disturbing, let alone the racist tone of some. I'm taking lots of joy in the EJ pick, and no doubt Geno isn't coming off too well right now. But there is no reason to wish him ill. And as many have pointed out, this could all be so much froth. Maybe Geno turns into a HOFer and EJ ends up as just a very likable bust. I don't think so - I couldn't be more excited about EJ. But anyone who claims to know how things will turn out is crazy.