Mark Long Beach

Nice! That brought tears to my eyes!

First off, Thanks, I have enjoyed the conversation, even though we don't agree on the overall view of Ralph & the Bills. It's been so much better than the constant Ralph is cheap/the world sucks/massive negativity that is far too often the posts around here. As for Gleason's article that ownership matters? Duh. That premise is true. Look at what Mark Cuban has done for the Dallas Mavericks (a previously garbage team). As for Terrance Pegula? I know nothing of hockey. But hasn't he owned the team for less than a year? To paraphrase Dennis Green: if you want to crown him then crown his a! It takes more than a year to prove he's worth anything, but hey hopefully he will be. But even according to the article, Peluga lost a bundle on that one year, will he be willing to keep doing that? That's not a sustainable business model. As for the Bills: I'm not claiming Ralph is a saint. I am also not lavishing praise on him. I think he's made some very poor decisions that has cost his team dearly. I think the single biggest failure was in not finding a way to keep Polian who has shown to be the best GM in the NFL and while he was here he did great things. His number of missteps over time has resulted in a overall 40% win/loss percentage. We've been to the playoffs 17 out of 51 seasons, also below average, but been to championship games 6 out of 51 which is above average. Overall this puts him squarely as a below average owner. But this doesn't make him a villain in my eyes. It seems to for many people. But note this last decade has brought our record down from a 49% w/l record before 2000 to the depths that it is now. So before this lost decade, for 40 years, we essentially had a 50/50 w/l record. Hardly the nightmare owner he's being portrayed as. Ralph is an old guy. At 92 years old he can't run a football team and hasn't been able to for a long time. He's been looking for a GM since he lost John Butler back in 2001 and this decade has been a disaster of GM hires (and subsequent coaching hires). Donahoe had a good reputation but couldn't live up to it. His attempt to restore faith in the fans with the return of Marv Levy was a short term pr success but was an absolute GM failure. His best staff member in Russ Brandon (who is great at his day job) inherited the mess and was also not up to the task. Now we have Nix and Whaley who are widely respected throughout the NFL. Will they succeed or fail like Donahoe? I don't know. But I like them significantly better than the previous choices, including Butler. I don't blame Ralph for trying to find a solution. Mainly because if it fails he tries again. This is different from the true disasters in professional sports ownerships like Detroit where they stuck with a failure for 10 years, or Cincinnati where success is not an option, or the raiders which would be mind-numbingly bad for longer than the Bills if it wasn't for "chucky" Gruden (quickly fired). In this decade we've gone through 5 different GM's trying to find one that can do the job. (Butler, Donahoe, Levy, Brandon, Nix) I just don't understand how this can be interpreted as not caring. It's an example of poor hiring for sure. But the mistakes have been replaced quickly by GM standards and hopefully (knock on wood) we've got a good team in our law firm of Nix, Whaley & Gailey. I hope they prove to be even better than Polian. I'm pretty sure they'll be better than the last decade.

We've had a winning season about 40% of the time. Which is about our overall w/l record. Over time we're below average. We've also won 2 championships and lost 4. so out of those 51 years we reach the championship game on average every 9 years. This average is actually HIGHER than expected given the number of teams in the league, especially given our below .500 overall record. The last 10 years have stunk, no doubt. But the league is cyclical and I like our GM, Asst. GM and some of our new players. I'm hoping for a team on the rise again. If all you care about is winning go jump on the latest bandwagon team. To say the Bills players, coaches, owner or GM don't care is lunacy.

I'm sure there's a bridge around here for you. Or maybe the Pats need another fan, they're likely to win a bunch this season for you.

It's all a matter of perspective. Littman helped spend and spend to get us to the Superbowls. Since it's his job to keep spending within a limit I have no doubt of battles with Polian. That's the nature of the two jobs of Polian to build a team and Littman to keep it within spending limits. But we were a big spending team back then. That's hardly in spite of Littman's obstruction. The real reasons of Polian's departure have been kept under wraps, but I've always been of the opinion that it really started getting personal. Not just job conflict. He is and I admit and agree with this. But why does he not get credit for when things go well? We had several great runs and a handful of other good ones. We've stunk lately agreed. So he fired them and brought in new people. Almost a complete new football staff, new coaches and new players. But why not the credit for bringing in Nix and rearranging the scouting staff (& firing Modrak), bringing in a well respected Asst GM in Whaley, bringing in an experienced coach with a winning record??? Ralphyboy isn't out there catching passes and he's not out there coaching them, he's not out there scouting the youth and he's not running the day to day organization. We've changed practically all of those things and it looks to the better. Why not any credit?

Not a better cover guy, not as good of a tackler. Was replaced BY THE JAGUARS with Poz. There's a reason he was unsigned until today.

Hey man, the Detroit Lions, Washington Redskins & St Louis Rams are 2-0 in preseason! They MUST be good!

Our record has been crappy to average for 10 years+, I can't argue ineptitude of the past, it's recorded. Now we've also had high turnover because of it. A parade of GMs, Coaches & Players over that same span. Only a few people have remained for a significant period of time. Do we blame Moorman because our record has sucked? Maybe it's Fred Jackson's or Terrance McGee's fault? Of course it's not their fault and we don't blame them, even though they and other players performance is what's truly being evaluated each year. So Coaches get blamed. GM's get blamed. But we've replaced them and restructured our football org and our scouting staff. So Littman & Overdorf get blamed. Really? So they're the problem... Well then it must be their fault when we were going to Superbowl after Superbowl four years running. (Littman had same job, Overdorf had Director title now has VP title) So then it's Ralph's fault. Well I agree. But only so far as he's the owner and thus ultimately responsible for everything. Now in his time he's had good GM's and bad ones. I believe that he's got a good one now and has a good management team and is working on a good team of players. My fingers are crossed that he does. A good GM (& their orgs) field better teams over the long haul as individual years can vary considerably. They need to be stable to get there. Stability is important but only to a degree, as we all know the example of Matt Millen's stability of suckitude. Wishing for Ralph to leave doesn't fix things. Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. He won a Superbowl as Raven (ick) and have been a good team since. Good thing they ran Modell out of town huh.

One not-so-good preseason game and the sky isn't just falling it's made it to the ground and is apparently suffocating most of the posters.

The only signs of turmoil is an indirect claim of one by an article written by JW. An article that is for the most part reporting on the teams failures for the last decade (of which there are many). The implication that a disagreement exists in the front office has people scurrying for their tin-hats. The Bills ARE a business and of course 'business side' people ARE involved in decisions. This is true for all teams in the NFL. Nix is the guy in charge, not the guy doing the heavy lifting. That's true for all people in leadership positions of large organizations. Having Overdorf doing the negotiations does not mean that Nix has been usurped. The GM's job is to make the final decisions. Some GM's are good horse traders and so take an active role in trading. Our GM is a good scout, i bet he takes a more active role in scouting than most GMs.

By the end, I hated watching him play as well. Of course I hated the _entire_ offense, it was dreadful. No imagination, no execution and little skill. DickyJ's teams were brutal to watch. I hated not ever having the ability to win a game, just to hope that the opponent would lose the game. Ugh.

During the preseason it's fairly common for all the number to be handed out to the camp bodies. Sometimes there's such a logjam that more than one player has the same number. It's wildly different for the regular season. If the scrub makes the team, his number would be re-assigned.

It's too bad there isn't a bridge nearby. It'd be nice to have a good football conversation instead of the same junk parroted over and over again. Wow, I've never heard that Ralph is cheap before. The world is a better place now that someone else has said it. Oh, or maybe it's the same people saying it again. and again. It's a tired rant. So JW's article reminds us that we've not been a good team in a decade. Yup. JW tells us that we've burned through executives and coaches who've been unsuccessful. Yup JW tells us that we're cycling through our players at a relatively quick pace. Yup. Where's the surprise here? I'm an optimist but I can't deny these things. We haven't done well because we haven't had a good combination of coaching, administration and recruiting. If the people hired to run the job can't do it you move on and try to find someone who can. Therefore we fire GM's, Coaches and or Players who can't do the job. We SHOULD be cycling through players looking for ones that are better. Who can argue with this?? In the past 10 years we've drafted ONE star player, Kyle Williams in the 5th round. I'm hoping that some of our new players will add to that total (such as Darius, Stevie, etc). The rest have been a combination of some good players and a bunch of okay players and a number of turkeys. I put Lee Evans as one of those pretty good players and he has been for 7 years. JW has insinuated that there was a disagreement in our front office over the trade of Lee Evans. Whoop-de-Dmn-doo. Even if it's true. No executive committee should be unanimous on everything. If they are they're nothing but a bunch of yes men. This was not a trade of one of our building blocks. Therefore he's expendable just like most of the players on our team. The move is justifiable. We have a lot of promising looking youth that _could_ be building blocks. Finding one of those is more important right now than keeping one who definitely isn't. Because we have so many possibilities, Lee becomes more expendable. Look, I like Lee Evans and wish him well. But he's on the downside of his career and hasn't been especially productive for us lately. He only had 600 yards last year as a #1 WR. Our current Head Coach complained that he's not versatile enough for his offense. Since he's not a building block, not especially productive, not a good fit for our offense and only has two years left on contract and maybe prime career, I have no problem with moving on (and rumored that he wanted to traded to a contender). It's my opinion that we can find someone to replace that performance out of our youth, even if it's a little bit less this year (the heart of the disagreement IMO).

Nonsense. Of course they were doing those things to some degree or another. All teams do some of these things. However, what I'm saying is that they were concentrating more on victory than evaluation. That is to say, concentrating more on putting on a confident show for their fans than to on practice. I'm not knocking them for it, but I'm recognizing that the game has less meaning than if they were approaching it the same way we were. They have a new coach and they desperately need to remove the stink of Rod Marinelli who was 6-20 over his last 26 games. (and also botched MANY personnel moves such as getting rid of Cutler & probowl Brandon Marshall while drafted Tim Tebow) Look, there's a reason that the Detroit Lions have are 2-0 preseason right now and have gone 3-1, 3-1 & 4-0 their last 4. Oh and don't forget that 4-0 preseason? that's when they went 0-16. If you're really playing to win a preseason game you're going to win it. Look, here's an example from this game: Our left tackle D Bell was clearly getting outperformed by Dummerville & Von Miller, by Chan Gailey's own words he refused to shift protections over and refused to allow TE or RB chipping to slow them down. Thus whenever Bell was beaten that current play was in serious jeopardy of being ruined and the entire possession(!) could be ruined. And in fact both of these things happened more than once. That is NOT playing to win the game, that is playing to evaluate how players are playing. This is not what the Denver Broncos were doing in this game.

And FAR and away their best record since 2002 (next closest was 5-11). So what did they do? They fired their coach naturally.

I disagree completely. This was all about the fans. They blitzed, and blitzed and blitzed in the SECOND pre-season game in a year with a shortened off-season. This was their first home game of pre-season as they opened in Dallas. They were 32nd in the league in points allowed and yards allowed per game. They had a HORRIBLE record and defensive stats last year and were trying to get the fans excited about their team's defense again. This was a show for the folks at home.

I remember one nice stretch of games that he looked really nice... and then got injured. Has got some talent, willing to sacrifice his body a little too willingly.

Yup. San Diego liked Drew Brees so much that they picked a new QB with the #4 pick in the draft. Well to be completely accurate they drafted Eli Manning NUMBER ONE in the draft. Since NYG desperately wanted him they ransomed him off for a boatload of picks and money. Included in their haul was the #4 pick in which they drafted ANOTHER QB in Phillip Rivers. They sure liked Drew Brees didn't they. They then let Brees go in free agency. I think he's done just fine in New Orleans.

Yep, it doesn't matter where they came from, just as long as they can play. Drafting a lot of players at a single position doesn't mean it's a good thing. In fact it can mean just the opposite in that guys keep getting drafted but can't play that position. So they're wasting draft picks trying to make up for earlier mistakes. The simplest example is Detroit drafting a WR three years running with their first round pick. Lots of picks (or free agency signings) at a single area does not mean strength at that area.

Sometimes the internet sucks. Of course it's perfect for the chicken-littles of the world

That was the topic du jour back then. Everyone had a favorite big receiver that we HAD to draft (with our first round pick no less)! So many were shocked that many dropped to the second round, AND now how many of them are busts even for 2nd rounders. Bummer that we fell for it too. At least it wasn't our first rounder. We only got 1 good catch out of him.

This makes logical sense to me. It gives more first team reps to Urbik who needs it and some good first team reps to Rinehart who (according to Gailey) has earned them by playing well in practice. Short term cohesiveness can be overcome. As other posters have said, if everyone believes that there is a ceiling and they can't displace the starters what's the incentive to work as hard as possible. We've traded out Lee, dumped Maybin, and promoted Rinehart. All moves that show confidence in the younger players to move up the pecking order. That's a good thing.

Sweet! I always moved the window off the bottom of the screen to try and hide it. Was imperfect.

Sounds like pretty decent dreams to me.

He's done well enough and has progressed every year to reduce the amount of screams for a new LT. Right now everyone is hollering about a RT. He's worked hard and gotten better. Has the backing of the coaching staff (multiple coaching staffs no less). Still needs to improve and be a little more consistent for most people to be happy with him. Not an all pro, but potentially a solid player. Most of the debate has revolved around him as a player and his skills therein. Others on our team have been discussed more for their off field antics than on field play. That's a good sign. I'm rooting for the kid.