silvermike

The Bills' woes on offense are not due to injury, anyway. For that god-awfiul Browns game, the team fielded its entire starting offense except for Brad Butler and Derek Shouman. I like those two players, but if your offense can't stand to lose a marginal TE and a decent RT, then you simply don't have the depth to play in this league.

Wow, that's all-around a terrible mock draft. This seems better: http://www.draftcountdown.com/sub/Mock-Draft-A.php

And that was the peak of the Bobby April era, I believe. McGee was a demon and Fast Freddie Smith was going to the house.

I'd say you have two options - spring league in football-mad cities without hockey or basketball teams, or a summer league in cities without baseball teams. Summer really may be too brief to shoot the gap between the NBA Finals/Stanley Cup and the preseason. Would you watch a minor league championship over an NFL preseason game? The AAFL seems to have fallen apart, but it sounds like a better idea to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_American_Football_League Notable, but non-NFL worthy college players playing for teams grouped by state. I'm not a big college football guy, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

The remarkable thing - look at Tennessee's numbers. #1 in yards per carry, #2 in sacks allowed, #1 in hits allowed. 1 win.

Good lord the UFL is run by morons. They decided to run their inaugural schedule during the most sports-dense part of the year - hockey, NFL, NCAA football, basketball and the freaking World Series? Who's going to watch some minor league game? spring/summer league is completely the way to go. Put on football games while NFL fans are looking for something to do after the season.

I think one way to check on draft success is this - compare your pick to the next player taken overall, and the next player taken at that position. It limits 20-20 hindsight to the actual next-best option available, rather than just stabbing around a list of better players later in the draft. So just for argument's sake, here's us in the 21st century . 2000: Erik Flowers vs. Anthony Becht and Darren Howard. 2001: Nate Clements vs Will Allen (both next overall and next DB). 2002: Mike Williams vs. Quinten Jammer and Bryant McKinnie 2003: Willis McGahee vs. Dallas Clark and Larry Johnson 2004: Lee Evans vs. Tommie Harris and Michael Jenkins; JP Losman vs. Marcus Tubbs and Matt Schaub 2005: none 2006: Donte Whitner vs. Ernie Simms and Tye Hill, John McCargo vs. DeAngelo Williams and Claude Wroten 2007: Marshawn Lynch vs. Adam Carriker and Kenny Irons 2008: Leodis McKelvin vs. Ryan Clady and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie 2009: Aaron Maybin vs. Knowshown Moreno and Bryan Orakpo. So how would you all break that down? I'd say Flowers, Williams, McGahee, and Losman are clear losers on both categories; Evans, McCargo, McKelvin and Maybin earn splits. Whitner is a better DB than Tye Hill, and I'm not sure how to compare him to Simms. Ditto Lynch vs. Carriker. Clements is the single clear victory.

Pet peeve - that doesn't meant anything. It's "For all intents and purposes"

I'd say our personnel problems split into two categories: Bad scouting, and bad assessment. When we take Mike Williams over Bryant McKinnie, or Chris Kelsay over Osi Umenyoira it's bad scouting: we knew what our problem was, but we couldn't figure out who would have fixed it. This is generally forgiveable, I think - there's a lot of legit disagreement on the relative values of college players. When we don't know what we have or what we need: see the drafting of Willis McGahee, Roscoe Parrish, and Donte Whitner, it's really an embarassment. It's one thing to take the wrong DT. It's quite another to think we need a strong safety when our defensive line is a sieve.

Tennessee was the #25 pass defense in 1999; Baltimore was #6 (incidentally, we were #1). Flutie had good games against Pittsburgh (#4) and New England (#7), and bad ones against Baltimore and Miami. He was inconsistent against good defenses, and of course, capable of throwing a total clunker against Tennessee. There was a chance Flutie would have had a good game, and better-than-even odds he would have had a bad game. But Johnson had a terrible game capped by a good drive. They gave him a chance to win, he took it, and they lost it for him after that. He didn't win it through the first 58 minutes.

I think it's gotta be hiring Jauron. There was never any reason to think he might have been a good coach. Gregg Williams didn't pan out, but he was a stellar defensive coordinator in Tennessee who could have been a homerun. When you look at hiring coordinators, he's the kind of guy you have to look at, I think. He just wasn't the guy. Good GMs need to make those calls correctly, but I don't think it was a ridiculous decision. Mularkey was more questionable than Williams, but he was again, a guy who had had some success on a good team that seemed to play above its talent level. It didn't work out, but I at least see how it might have. Still, I can't defend this move like hiring Gregg. And then there's Dick Jauron. Never a prominent assistant, and a total washout in Chicago. Had most recently been a coordinator and an interim coach on a woeful Detroit team. I have no idea why anyone thought he might end up being a good coach.

Rob Johnson was 10 for 22, 131 yards. No TDs or picks. He was sacked six times. He pulled it together enough to engineer a lead-changing FG drive as time ran down in the 4th quarter. The yardage and completion percentage was worse than any game Flutie had that year. The Bills played well enough in that game so that despite his earlier failures, Rob Johnson could have won it for them. I don't htink that proves anything for him, I think it just goes to show that we had a really good defense. Over the course of the season, Flutie had been more successful facing equal or better defenses. Just because we should have won the game with Johnson doesn't mean that we weren't more likely to have won with Flutie.

We're definitely sitting next to the guy in the orange helmet - only Browns fans really are in our boat.

Honestly I'd stretch the damage all the way back to the day Polian left. Butler was better than the current round of chumps for sure, but he won with Polian's players, and could barely manage to make the playoffs when he still had Bruce, Reed, and Thurman. He gave us our first three botched attempts to replace Jim Kelly: Todd Collins, Doug Flutie, and Rob Johnson. Look at our drafts 1993-2000: http://www.drafthistory.com/teams/bills.html Who's really a standout from that whole list? Winfield, Moulds, and Reuben Brown. That practically washes out with the past decade.

As to firing Jauron midseason - honestly, who the hell even cares any more? It's not like this team just needs a little shakeup to end the season on a winning streak. There's no assistant coach who's worth auditioning for the top job. The best part about Jauron being fired before the end of the season is that it forecloses any possibility of him coaching us next year.

Look on the bright side - only one of our first rounders in the past decade has left for a big contract somewhere else!

Fanning fan?

Never has the old adage been truer: "If you have a two starting quarterbacks, you have none"

Does Trent care if he starts or not? They're just riding out the season.

Look, if you're arguing about whether Trent Edwards or Ryan Fitzpatrick is a better QB, you might as well quit wasting your time. They're both awful. Who cares who chokes away games/does just enough to not choke away games in the home stretch here.

The Bills will win a game where they nearly get tripled up rushing and passing.

Man,this is a crappy league

Sure, but wouldn't you want to know if you needed 2 scores or 1 when you mount thoselast drives?

Wait, why didn't they go for two there?

Sorry, what was that about "Lee is unconscious?"