Bob in STL

I have been to 12 NFL stadiums. I get back into town to make two Bills games a year on average. Buffalo is definitely one of the worst places to see a game. Unless you like rowdy, drunk, and obscene fans ( not just limited to the twenty year olds), and extremely poor facilities. If you are a young man with a wife and young kids this is not a great place to go. Bills games used to be an excellent NFL experience at one time but those days are long gone. Our collective tolerance for the drunks is ruining it. On the postive side there are still lots of great places to tail gate. ECC lots are still good but they used to be excellent until raided by RV's. (Thanks Ralph)

This hurts. I do think chan has better players than DJ had, maybe not the first year but right now he does. Chan has no chance of beating DJ. He seems like a decent guy but where is the tough part? He refuses to go strength against strength and therfore asks players with limited ability to do more than they can do. Take of the headset and kick some azz Chandler!

Remember "a tough game for tough men"? Where is it? Last week Wade Phillips puts 7 and 8 men in the box and says try to run on me, I will give you the pass because I don't fear it. So Chan does not try to run at all, even though running is our strength. Afterward he says "they took that away from us". A tough game for tough men? Came you imagine a team stopping Vince Lombardi's power sweep and Vince saying, "oh well, they took it away from us so we stopped running it". (?) This week, there were mistake and penalties all over the place and Chan says nothing to his players or to the refs. Bellichek is yelling at the refs all the time, Chan takes the calls in stride. A tough game for tough men? Today we ran every play on the last drive from the spread. Did they dictate this to us and did Chan decide this? We took our best player and flanked him out wide to run deep every play, even though our QB cannot throw deep. Spiller belongs in the backfield as a threat to run, a threat for a draw play, a shovel pass, a screen pass, a safety valve pass, or maybe isolated on a LB in a designed pass pattern. Spiller needs to be involved. With the game on the line I want to go to Spiller, not TJ Graham. This game is not that complicated. Chan spends the game inside his headset and reading his papers. How abpout saying something to a player for a change? A tough game for tough men? Where were the tough men when Fitz got blown away? The Bills look to be a reflection of their coach and I don't see the tough men anywhere.

It kind of did. It kept us from trying any running plays. It is inexcusable that we ran every play on the last drive from the empty backfield spread and that Spiller got the ball one time in the last 2 minutes. A time out or two would have helped us, of course with Gailey you never know.

I think you mean "pre-throw read" and you are assuming the play was designed to go to Graham as the primary reciever. Correct? Lots of things happening here: the Pats disguise their coverage, rookies run the wrong pattern, Fitz blindly throws to a spot. Was Spiller on the field? If I am Fitz I start with Spiller in the backfield. I use Graham or Jones as the look-off to pull the safety or flood a zone, then look at Stevie, then big tall Chandler, then Spiller as a safety valve. That is my order. Rookies like Graham need to be wide open to get the ball.

Thanks for teaching me about football.

We wanted to run George Edwards out on a rail remeber? Wanny has better players with more experience and he comes up with a defense that is much worse. Give this defense to Perry Fewell and it would be better. The game has past Wanny. He does not adjust.

So why do we design the most important play of the game to go to Graham when he has a history of bad reads? All I saw was three Pats and Graham. Sure looks like Fitz threw to a spot and Graham was not there . Kind of a dangerolus call in the middle of the field. I am upset that we played that entire last series with Spiller lined up wide and with an empty backfield. That alignment takes away the threat of a draw, a screen, or outlet pass to Spiller isolated on a LB. Spiller can score from anywhere in the field but he has to have the ball.

Was Jones on the field? I don't think so.

Agree. Not looking for us to start a war but really, no response. I feel Pears would have been there. Wood or someone needed to get in there and show up. So what happens .. Spikes knocks the crap out of Freddy next.

Some (hopefully intelligent) things to consider: Fitz is a backup in this league, no matter how many linebackers he takes on. His record speaks for itself. Not one single Bill came to Fitz's aid, a sure sign of a soft team that is giving up. Nix better take a QB soon and his failure to do so could cause him to reach. At a minimum it will cause some very big expectations for whoever that person is. This is crazy that for the second straight year Fitz's heir apaprent is not on the roster. The best player on the team does not get 12 touches a game? Spiller is on our team right? aYet we played with an empty backfield for every single play on the last drive. Nothing like making it easy on the Pats. Buddy Nix too smart? First time I ever heard that one. Our coaching staff continues to be out-coached week in and week out. The stupid penalties speak volumes for a lack of discipline and readines. I point to Chan for that.

No -- it does not make sense. I'll humor for a minute. I grew up in Buffalo and went to college in Rochester. Graduated in 1981 (Chick Knox era) and knew many fine people from the Syracuse area while at RIT. The overwhelming majority of them were Giants fans and could care less for the Bills or the AFL/AFC. For that matter, most did not really follow pro football very much. Fast forward 3 decades and things have changed. Since the Super Bowl years lots of "die hard Syracuse fans" such as you, your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers have emerged to join Bils Nation. My allegiance goes back much further. I fly back to Buffalo and attend two games a year. I have a huge family still in the area. I sit in a Bills Backer bar with 30 to 40 other devout Buffalo expatriots and we watch the game every Sunday at this new invention called a "Sports Bar". Sorry if that does not meet your standards. You can go back to you misery now and rest assured that you feel more pain than the rest of us.

Wilson had a bad day today and he really he has been a step behind all season. Poor tackling and slow to make decisions as evidenced by the last TD. His play is in decline. Has anyone seen that Whitner kid latey?

Last week when a Cardinal took a personal foul their Coach came out on the field and ripped the guy a new azz. Since that penalty three Bills have been called for that same penalty and Chan has showed nothing .. at least not on the field. I would be nice to see some emotion on this team. I am not talking about stupid end zone celebrations either. I am talking about players and coaches beign held accountable by each other and to each other. Some leadership on the field would have helped today. After the game all the players interview have the same excuses ... "the other team made plays too", "it was close", "could have gone either way". Loser talk for teams that lose.

Oh. That rights. Thanks for helping me. Well back to Bill in NYC --- Good comments once again Bill. From now on you should change your name to "Giant from NYC" or "Jet from NYC" because someone living in NYC should not be named Bill.

Good points. I guess he did not want to risk a time out on the challenge? Did he comment on that one? The second point is a nuance of the game that he is not at. He is not a great game day coach. He is still learning the "run out the clock" concept.

Got to admit this made me laugh. I needed that.

^ Dumbest post ever. Can we put this in a sticky as a reference point for stupidty?

You will be back. This disease we Bills fans have cannot be cured. If it is any consolation we will not lose next week. Cheers!

Sure seems like the game has passed Wanny by. I say that because of his inability to adjust. Our talent is better than this. Yes, we need some LB help and our corners are very young but this is crazy. This defense should not rank as one of the worst Bills defenses of all time but right now it does. Today our defense got a little better as the game went on but could not make the big stop in the end. Not defending Wanny but the offense has two chances to seal the game ... they failed to get first downs, we had a 21 yard punt (that is another story) , and then the egregious INT.

His problem is that he has too many bars on his face mask. The extra weight is forcing his head down and he is not seeing the play. Get him a more standard cage face mask .. he looks ridiculous.

Really? Tries to hard? I would say that he does not prepare enough. There are not enough options in the gameplan plan to counter what the other team is bringing. Especially on defense. But Chan turns the defense over to Wanny right? Sorry, he does not get a pass for that. Chan is proving he is an Offensive Coordinator in this league and that is all. His game mangement is poor. His erratic decisions almost cost us last week and it did cost us this week. Sorry Chan but you cannot keep dodging bullets in this league. He needed was one first down and then maybe a decent punt. He chose to have his fragile and medicore QB pass the ball. His QB of choice proceeded to make every mistake in the book, leading to an ugly inteception. He locked onto Jones, he missed a wide open Stevie for a safe play, and then he under threw the out pattern that the CB was sitting on. Here is what Chan said afterwards: Gailey said his confidence in Fitzpatrick, who looked sharp before the interception throwing for three TDs while completing 27 of 35 throws for 225 yards, hasn’t changed. “He made a bad throw at the end. Other than that, he played really, really well,” the coach said. “He made one bad throw. If you get rid of all the quarterbacks for one bad throw, you are not going to have any quarterbacks left.” Hey Chan, this is not about one bad throw. It is about a very bad decision. It is about poor executiuon., It is about a team that cannot close a game at home with the lead. Chan is proving he does not bring enough on game day and his team is a reflection of their coach.

Maybe the extra time off will helped him? I expect his contribution to be more emotional than anything else. We could use it. I don't see a lot of leadership on this team. Defenses don't pounded two weeks in a row like we did if the players are accountable to each other. Welcome back "Lights Out".

Sadly, Thiggy might not have made it either. Buddy Nix - this is what you give us at QB after three years?

Positives: 1. We won 2. We won on the road 3. We won a game we could have easily lost 4. The defense did some things differently and better Negaitves: 1. Fitz is regressing 2. We have no backup QB (again like last year)