Mark Long Beach

Our O was confused, aimless and laughable. Without a doubt, injuries hurt our ability to field a great team. Poor coaching also held us back. We were not cohesive on the offensive side of the ball, we were predictable and not so talented that we could always run student body right and be successful with it. Individual coaching I thought was generally good, but our high-level coaching was poor. The only exception was Bobby April who did a very good job throughout special teams. Sure we have some weak links, but our coaches never really helped them out. A good coach should be able to cover for weaker players with good plays and good strategy. We did not do a good job of protecting our weaknesses and taking advantage of our strengths. The only strategy we had that seemed to "work" was keep the score down and hope our offense lucked into a victory. Weeee. We have some pretty good talent. I hope that some of our youngsters step up and fill some of our holes. I hope the new coaching staff can use our talent well. I'm happy with what I've seen so far.

AFC vs NFC probowl, roughly two players per position. Plus injury selections so 21 players sounds about right.... Or am I missing something.

Easley is apparently ONLY practicing on the outside (not typical for a Chan-run offense who wants his receivers to know all of the positions). So he won't be a number #3 receiver because the #3 receiver will operate primarily out of the slot. So IMO he'll probably be the #4 receiver who is destined to replace the #1/#2 outside receiver in case of injury or he makes the astonishing leap to be our starting #2. Given that not only is he a rookie but a raw talent (he only has ONE year of being in a passing offense in college). I doubt he starts as #2. I'd love for him to be so good that they can't keep him off of the field!

Being on the west coast it's easier to wait until the games are over to watch. With a young kid, new house and one and a half year marriage, my sunday's aren't free. But I do get late nights free. So I found that I really liked game rewind because that's when I was available to watch anyways. With all of the above I'm too poor to pay for sunday ticket and ditched directtv/cable altogether. I'll resubscribe to rewind.

And since we've not been terribly successful, we get more than our fair share of gloom-and-doomers projecting their dreads onto the rest of us.

Levi Brown? A project. It'd be stellar if moves up to be a competent backup, and a home-run if he's even a mediocre starter (ala Trent Edwards). One of only a half-dozen or so if he proves to be a good starter.

snicker, well played.

Well, the Seahawks traded their 3rd round pick in the 2010 draft (along with it's 2009 5th) to Philadelphia for a higher 2009 3rd round pick. The Seahawks have also traded their 3rd round pick in the 2011 draft to San Diego (for QB Whitehurst). Can we PLEASE stop with the Seahawks offered us a 3rd rounder and we turned it down crapola. They didn't have one to offer.

Naw. There's all kinds of views as to exactly how the team will do. But in my opinion, some people well do better than expected, some youngster's will progress, some people wont, and some will get hurt. It's all opinion as to what the future holds. The problem that many people have is the completely negative nancys who continually say the world is ending. We have no talent, our players suck, our coaches suck, our owner sucks, our schedule sucks, boo hoo. Eventually, some of us more rational fans snap at these people who continually drag everything down. Of course we're rebuilding, of course some parts of our team are going to struggle, EVERY TEAM struggles from year to year. Some of the better teams struggle less and I hope we get to join that club this year or next. But meanwhile I'm going to enjoy a new coaching philosophy, a new defensive scheme (thank God for no more cover 2 outside in the cold), and new young players who have the chance to be great. I hope they do. Meanwhile, I don't appreciate people who can only piss in peoples wheaties because we're not the baddest team on the block. I'm happy to discuss how good we'll be, or how bad we'll be, or who's stepping up, or who isn't. That's great! That's what I come here for. But take the perpetual dark raincloud elsewhere.

I don't know... How much?

Truthfully, the numbers weren't clear to me either. I blamed it on being tired, and that the numbers he was quoting seemed to disregard the players on IR... or something like that. I think 40% is probably a little high. That's a wholesale gutting. But I think that the physical NUMBER of players that are gone will be high because we brought in so many extra to cover for the huge amount of injuries that we had. I think that we'll keep many of the starters from last year, but most of the fringe players will be new ones, and many backups will also be new ones. I also see Ryan Denney, Josh Reed, Incognito, Chris Draft, Gibran Hamdan, Jonathan Scott, Todd Johnson(s), Seth McKinney(og), Kendall Simmons (OG), Stamer, Buggs and Hairston. I don't think Hamdan, Draft, Philip, Simmons, Hairston nor Smith were active roster guys. Many of the others were Special-Teamers or injury replacements. As Doc pointed out above we still have a LOT of former players that are sitting on the bubble of sticking around or not. Chambers, Gaddis, Parrish, Schouman, Ellis, Kelsay, Mitchell, Youboty, and others. Maybe we will get to 40%!

http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/...ad-most-keepers Unsurprising in that the Bills have had one of the highest turnover of personnel already. Only 4 teams have kept less people so far. One description by a competitor about our recent teams stands out for me, it was something like: "The Bills always play hard, but they're not hard to beat." I think that this has sums up our team very well. The late John Wooden said "never mistake activity for achievement". Well we've always played hard, just not effectively. We're a very young team in transition, hopefully we can develop that youth and remove the stink of mediocrity. New coach, new GM, new staff, keeping the fewest number of previous players. Sounds like a good start to me. It also doesn't just feel like change for changes sake. It really feels like we've got a plan and hopefully the right guys to carry it out.

Roscoe has some talent. He's worked well as a punt returner. I don't believe he's the best in the NFL by any stretch, but he's good. Or he WAS good. Punt and kick returners typically have a short career due to the kamikaze nature of the position. While I agree that our offense has repeatedly sucked and have not made good use of our players talents, Roscoe hasn't shown much as a WR. Welker has always shown that he's been a good WR, and is a spectacular one in a good system with a good QB. Hester has shown he can be a bit of a WR, but Dante Hall never did. I think that Roscoe is more like Dante. He's repeatedly shown that he can't get open and I don't think that will change. If he gets his mojo back as a PR he might stick on the roster and occasionally show up for a gadget offensive play. but IMO that's the best case scenario. I think that it's more likely he'll be cut.

I would be surprised by this. While I doubt he's in our long term plans as he likely won't be a good fit in the 3-4, by all spoken accounts we'll be running a hybrid 3-4/4-3 defense. This is to compensate for our lack of talent and depth needed to run a pure 3-4. Since Kelsy was a decent starter for us last year as a 4-3 end, I suspect he makes the team this year to help us run the 4-3 when we do. IMO the only way he doesn't make the team is if we really hit on most of our draft picks. Even then it's a gamble to count on rookies, even if they look good in practice. Kelsey is overpaid, but he's not a bad player, just not a difference maker. (A common theme on our team unfortunately)

I Second that. Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed it. I remember wanting to watch it when it came out. I'm glad that I finally did. It's interesting to watch the reactions of others to someone who's out of step with the majority. Oh yeah: screw the Fins! 'cept wacky wicky, I'll root even more for him now.

I never even considered them draw plays. Technically they might be draws but I always felt they were more like a slightly delayed hand-off. No surprise, no significant delay, no real selling of a pass play. They were failure of design as well as execution. I guess I should have said that I miss a _successful_ draw play.

I've never heard of such a thing! Well at least I haven't seen one from my beloved Bills, for what feels like an eternity. from: http://www.buffalobills.com/news/article-3...77-ad245d201556 I would like an extra helping of this please.

Kirk Chambers will be cut just like he was last year. We brought him back only because we were decimated with injuries on our OL. We'll keep him through camp so that he can learn the system and therefore we have another emergency backup should the line get decimated with injuries. That's all. Move along, nothing to see here. Move along.

I would love that. As another poster said, I'm glad we're finally getting linebackers with some size. We're not a dome team, we're a play-outside-in-the-cold-and-mud team. I won't miss the small, speedy LBs needed for the cover-2 scheme at all.

Hey, I LIKE being undefeated!

Agreed. Our young receivers need time on the field to prove that they belong or that they don't. We ain't winning the SB this year, TO can last maybe one more year anyways so why wast the development (or lack of) of our young WR's. No point holding their development back for little gain.

Don't forget we were also running the no huddle at the time! That really helps an inexperienced player.

I'm a little baffled by this as well. We spent our #2 and our #3 picks on our defensive front 7 and we signed two starting free agents. Potentially 4 starters or at least players that should see significant time. Since our backfield is very strong, how do we get a _worse_ defense out of this?? I doubt we'll cut that rushing total in half. That would be amazing. (But I would enjoy seeing it!) It would take some all-worldly play out of our newcomers.

To be fair to the op, the odds ARE stacked against him. Count how many QB's were drafted total in those slots, it's probably 5-1 or more against finding a quality QB. If you count undrafteds then I'm sure the number will be higher. The point of the OP stands. Historically there's been some success stories (of varying degrees) out of the later rounds (list of QB's provided) BUT definitely the odds are stacked against Levi being one of the those successes. Don't get me wrong, I sure hope that he is!

I also agree that it's around 75% we keep all three. I personally wouldn't mind the possibility that we trade Lynch if we get a really good value for him (2nd rounder on up). I especially wouldn't mind it if we got a surprise success story such as J. Bell is more elusive than he looks. Many years during training camp/pre-season a very important RB goes down with injury on a team that doesn't have a good backup. That team becomes desperate to get a quality RB. Lynch is a quality RB and expendable/available for the right price. I'll take somebody overpaying us because their desperate. That's much better than us being desperate to get rid of him. He's useful to keep him and under a long contract. We hold the power.