Florida Bills Fanatic

You're right on. I'm still trying to thaw out the beers that I smuggled into that game in my pockets. That game was over before it started. Raiders freaked out when they saw Bruce out for pregame warm up in a sleeveless T-shirt. If people are measuring every game against that one, they should stop watching any games. It's easy to see the areas needing improvement without trashing all of the coaches and players.

Like most of you, I am completely frustrated by the play of all of our wide receivers not named John Brown. When I watch recordings of our games and can rewind and replay certain plays, two things stand out to me. It appears that there is very little variation in the combination of routes run by our receivers which allows DB's to sit on these routes. It also explains why almost all of our big passing plays occur when the original timing of the play breaks down and the receivers deviate from the original routes. The second obvious problem has to do with the receivers inability to recognize a blitz and adjust to a "hot read" pattern. On most offenses, this responsibility falls to the slot receiver or the tight end. Sometimes it is the wide out on the side from which the blitz is coming. Brady, Edelman, and Gronk made a career making these adjustments. When you watch the Bills, you will hardly ever see a receiver make the adjustment. This results in a sack, a throw away, or Allen running with the ball. I don't know if Daboll is being forced to run a high school offense because that's all the players can handle or if that is the limit of his coaching capability. The problem is deeper than whether the game day actives should be Foster or McKenzie. Until the Bills address these two obvious problems, we can expect more of the same and we can read more whining about the symptoms rather than the causes.

I'm not either. As long as the old man is tuned into the headsets, nobody outside of the Patriots knows for sure who is actually making the calls. He may be riding with training wheels but I can't believe that the Master Cheater is giving that kind of complete control to a novice.

You are exactly correct. You need to match the availability of free agents and prospects available to you in the draft with the needs of the team. It is crazy to think that a GM would blindly follow some arbitrary strategy to fill out a roster. Every time I read some "gem" like this from a sports writer, it just reinforces for me that the vast majority of these writers are just journalism majors that are really clueless about their subject. Augie, your post also reinforces for me the fact that I receive more relevant and useful information from the posters on this forum than from any other source. Thanks

I suppose it depends on the criteria. Some people really emphasize statistical achievements while others include the intangible impact on the game. I really like his intangibles. When he is not double covered, he wrecks the game. When his team faces a critical passing situation, they seem to look to him and he delivers. He has played hurt trying not to miss playing time. He is a willing blocker and is an asset in their run game. He has stats that place him among the league leaders in various categories. I also consider the joke that was the Dallas passing game before they acquired him from Oakland and how good they quickly became. If he becomes a FA, he will be the best option out there and will be extremely expensive. If Beane wanted to dump a boatload of cash on a guy, I'd be okay with it being Cooper. I also believe that Cooper will be highly selective in choosing a team. He had problems in Oakland because he didn't like all of the losing. IMHO he will only consider playoff caliber organizations and may not want to play in a cold weather city.

We aren't all that nice. Case in point, my former neighbor dropped one of those a--holes in the parking lot after the game. The guy was an idiot and one of his friends admitted as much. Unfortunately this parking lot action was better than the game. Hope we are ready to play this week. Go Bills!

I was just thinking the same thing when I read your post. It seems highly unusual. At first I thought maybe it just seemed that way because we are seeing it so vividly in the AFC East. Then Cincinnati and Washington pop up with Baker and Cleveland close behind. I think the Bears are headed to a meltdown as well. In addition, a number of players have gone off the rails also. I just saw that Trent Williams has taken a page out of the AB "How to Destroy Your Career Playbook" and the sequel "Helmets Make Me Crazy". We also have Michael Bennett believing he knows how he should be used better than Bill Bellicheat. I'm just glad the Bills are not in the middle of all this drama.

The coaches see all of these guys at practice in a competitive setting a lot more than any of us. We may not like the way Peko has played but I would venture a guess that Taylor hasn't shown enough in practice to jump ahead of Peko. That may change if the team continues to struggle against the run and Taylor gives some indication that he would improve the d-line rotation. As we fret about our run defense, we should also consider the amount of time the Bills spend in their nickel defense. The Eagles hit several nice runs against the Bills when they were in their nickel. I also thought the tackling was pretty terrible on Sunday and it wasn't just one guy.

I think you're correct about the QB play. He has pretty good stats given that they have no o-line and bad defense. Problem in Cincinnati is the ownership. Brown is a knuckle dragger and should have sold the team years ago. Dalton will be around the league for a while yet. He would be an immediate upgrade for Denver, Washington, Tampa Bay, Titans, and Chicago. He could be an effective bridge guy for any of those teams if they are developing young players.

This basically equates to buying a draft pick (aka Brockweiller to Browns a couple of years ago) in exchange for giving LA some much needed cap room. Just reinforces the journey into full tank mode.

I can't believe that there will be much of a market for Bell, unless the JESTS eat almost all of the cap charge. He has a very large cap number and is not a young guy. I thought at the time that the reckless signing of Bell and Mosley, would end up poorly for them. They would have been better served to sign more lower cost guys to fill more of their roster holes. I also remember the national media gushing praise over the JESTS for these signings and speculating that they would be playoff contenders again. I can't see Beane spending money and draft picks on Bell or Gordon. It just seems inconsistent with his approach to things so far. I'm glad that it's the JESTS and Miami that are floundering in roster purgatory and not our Bills.

Contrary to your take on this, I believe Daboll's game plan and play calling was a complete joke. He apparently didn't realize that he was playing one of the worst secondaries in the league. He continued to call running plays into a stacked box on first and second downs. The Eagles have been killed with screens, seam routes, and throws to backs underneath deeper routes. Daboll did almost none of this. The Eagles gambled that Daboll would initially try to go run heavy on a windy day and he did exactly that. When it became obvious that the Eagles were in clear pass rush mode, he did little to move the pocket or force them to cover the field from sideline to sideline. There were some open receivers but the Eagles did a great job of bringing quick pressure up the middle to force Allen to move and destroy the timing of the play. The Bills are also very predictable with the position groups they have on the field. When he puts Lee Smith on the field with Gore, there is a very small probability that they will be passing and an even smaller probability that a throw will be going to either of them. Good play callers break the tendencies, Daboll does little to do this.

QB runs at the wrong time have been a hallmark of Daboll's ineffective play calling. He continues to set up an empty backfield on first and second downs that invites a blitz from the defense. Daboll continues to frustrate me. In the first series of the game, he comes out trying to run Gore into the strength of the defense that had the box loaded. The Philly secondary has been horrible in coverage all year and he decides to establish a running threat before trying to pass. He did nothing to back off the safeties and linebackers. Eagles have been susceptible to weak side screens, seam routes, and passes to backs in the flat that are run underneath deeper routes. If the fans understand, this why can't Daboll.? Running the QB into a stacked defense has been ineffective except for a couple of red zone plays.

I agree with you completely. In addition, Bills can't afford for Daboll to have another first half clunker. Philly is missing some players from their front seven and have been more vulnerable to the run game and screens. Given all of this plus the horrible secondary, there is no reason to be predictable or one dimensional.

Also reduced using the coefficient of friction for the air and leather ball (or cat fur), just sayin'

There are some guys that we may think of being rather obscure but they are talented guys in a bad situation. Guys like Paul Richardson in Washington or David Moore in Seattle could be available for a decent price. I don't expect Beane to mortgage the farm to buy second or third tier guys that may be available. Raiding someone's practice squad may be more likely than anything at this point.

If you had washed it down with a shake from Anderson's, you'd be my new hero!

I thought that they got away from the running game too much. They had pretty good success with Gore off right tackle and then stopped going there. Allen also had a couple of nice gains on the right side as well. Miami brought a lot of blitzes up the middle which left the center of the field open. You'd expect the slot receiver or a tight end to make the correct read and run the hot pattern in behind the blitzing linebacker. I only saw that happen once during the game. It also appeared that Allen had a lot of time on several plays and didn't have an open receiver. Other than Brown, the receivers played poorly today. As others have already pointed out, Daboll had a really bad first half. It almost seemed that the Bills were expecting that Miami would just mail in the game. With all of that said, it's still pretty cool to be 5 and 1.

I suggest you go back and watch again, particularly the New England game. Please pay close attention to the plays when Brady was chased from the pocket and had to run out to his right and throw the ball away. There were several of these in the game. You'll notice that he was unable to step up into the pocket as he normally does because Oliver had quick penetration. I understand that fans want to see sacks and quarterbacks knocked on their backsides but forcing a throw away on third down to get the defense off the field is also a great outcome. It's also interesting to notice the lack of double teams on Hughes this year. Teams recognize that they can't slide the guard out to help on Hughes and reach block Oliver with the center. Oliver's quickness prevents this. IMHO Oliver is doing exactly what the Bills drafted him to do and I bet that they are very pleased with him.

You are exactly correct. In addition, he's an UFA next year. Why trade any assets for a guy who isn't getting the job done and will be able to walk next year ( unless franchised) ? These insane potential trade posts get ridiculous. People seem to want Beane to chase every guy that a team wants to dump. Unless there is a rash of injuries, I don't expect Beane to make any deals that involve giving up draft picks or significant amounts of cash. He is setting up to sign the best of our own and make significant draft additions. We've watched him for a couple of years now and the strategy seems to be pretty clear. Given the results to this point, I'm okay with his approach.

A law suit at this point in time would be a fool's errand. He terminated his last contract. His play had deteriorated and was no longer as effective as he had been earlier in his career. He had also gone on record about the type of payment that he would require. From the owner's perspective, he had alienated a significant percentage of the NFL's customer base and many of their sponsors. It isn't hard to understand why 32 owners felt that having him around wasn't worth the hassle. Proving a concerted effort by the owners to keep him out of the league, is not easy to prove contrary to popular belief. Lastly, getting to play in the NFL isn't a right that belongs to any individual. As far as the claim of racism toward an organization that has minorities as the majority of their employees, it would be a significant uphill fight in court. Personally, I wouldn't have been upset with him getting a shot to prove himself in a training camp. He had the right to protest to draw attention to a problem that is important to him. I don't think he anticipated that his actions during the national anthem would result in the severe push back that it received. I would have picked a different method to protest.

Most of these shows are unwatchable. They fail to focus on relevant information about the game that you are watching or the games that are in progress. Having four or five people sitting on a table and all trying to talk or goof around is useless. I used to enjoy Tom Jackson and Chris Berman on ESPN.

I don't disagree that the rule is pretty nondescript about hitting the player low. It does not delineate any exceptions. I have to admit that I have seen other hits not called where the blocker provided the impetus for the collision. Unless the rule is altered to call out exceptions, the most we can hope for is to call it consistently.

He fills several needs for the offense that many of the posts have identified. One of the more subtle things that he improves is the blocking on running plays. He is a willing blocker with a more physical presence than Zay or any of the other receivers. Although we didn't see it on Sunday, he's the kind of blocker that can make bubble screens a real weapon. I'll be very interested to see how much he is used in the future

Make their linebackers play coverage in the passing game. This will require some passing on first down and throws to the backs and tight ends. Bills should be able to take advantage of some of those match ups when they are in their base defense. Protecting the ball is an absolute necessity.