RuntheDamnBall

John Wawrow shot this one down in another thread.

There ain't much to learn about a guy's performance against WVU's D. They are atrocious, hardly d1 quality.

I see Jones at his best making the gimme plays, buoyed by a much better supporting cast than Smith had. I agree, and I'm a culprit, that Smith has been overhyped and come back to earth a bit. But I think his arm plays better in Buffalo than Jones' does, and he has a dedication to the game that will translate and flourish with the right coach. Also, for the "Akili Smith" guy, give me a break. The numbers are not a product of a mirage offense - argue if you want that there are a lot of RAC yards from the likes of Tayvon Austin, but Smith has a great TD/INT ratio, a few years in an offense as a pocket passer, and most of what you want in an NFL QB. He's not Luck or RGIII, but he can be a very good QB in the league with the right weapons and protection. We have both.

Waaay too high to be drafting Landry IMO. He is a mid first rounder, not a top ten QB.

Spoken like a dude who quickly forgot the days of Dockery and Mike Pucillo.

Said this before and I'll say it again. If they can afford to re-sign Kelsay every two years, burn money on Merriman, and give Fitzy over $21MM for the past two years, they can afford to keep two elite players that they drafted. I agree with the OP. F--- this team if they let these two get away.

Yep. And if his defense wasn't JV quality you would have seen a big win over Oklahoma. That was a hell of a shootout.

Where are you getting that the top OG's are averaging $10MM a year? Everywhere I look Mankins at $8.5MM average is the #1, which means top 5 are averaging the $7.5MM I singled out. And as for the $18MM I was wondering about that and should have given you the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, if that's what it takes - which I doubt - yes. The Bills need to overpay these guys if it is necessary. If not they will be overpaying their replacements and getting lesser production on a learning curve, or paying them rookie scale and dealing with growing pains.

Show me where an NFL team is going to sign a guard and a safety for $18MM a year each. The straw man game is fun but average salaries of the top 5 guys at safety are around $9MM including signing bonus amortized. Top 5 salaries at OG are around $7.5MM including signing bonus amortized. If the Bills can afford to extend Chris Kelsay every two years, or throw money at Shawne Merriman, or give Fitzpatrick $21MM over the past two years, but can't fit those two elite players that they drafted and developed under their budget and cap, but then I quit. The only excuse for it would be if they really wanted to play somewhere else, and that's still an indictment of the organization.

If they lose Levitre I will lose my sh*t and it will help ensure the Bills' endless sojourn in the desert. They better be locking up both him and Byrd at all costs.

Right. I think the decline of Barnett is most alarming - the scheme switch didn't help, but still... The LBs are definitely a horrorshow. Upgrades there HAVE to help the defensive backs - I really believe this.

N RV

He is paid like a starter, and he just isn't that. At $5MM as a backup who might see 3-5 games in a pinch, I love Fitz. At $10MM per with no improvements in sight, he's a nice guy earning way too much money while clearly demonstrating that he is out of his league. What someone needs to be asking Nix and Gailey is not why they are starting Fitz, but why they are in a position where Fitz is the best they have.

I think this is probably it. But, is it not fair to ask if there is equal mistrust of the scheme itself, then? Is the scheme so flimsy that one missed assignment will sink it every time, or is this a case of breakdowns across the board?

We should probably pass on a QB of the future and draft a WR again to work with Fitz. It has worked out so well in the past that it can't help but pay off greater dividends in 2013. In all seriousness, if they want to pay some real cash for a big-time FA WR, I'm all for it. Still, this team is going nowhere until it is better-coached and gets better QB play. Oh, that and some LBs who can actually play defense.

I cannot recall a single coach ever having been demoted to a coordinator's position after serving for years as the head coach. You move somewhere else to take an OC position after you're let go. Why in hell would Gailey want to stay somewhere where the organization has voiced doubts about his ability to do the job? I get it that he has the Cowher connection but I think him staying on in a lesser role is even less likely than bringing in Cowher in the first place. I like the guy from Stanford, could live with Saban, and really wouldn't mind seeing Wade come back, provided Ralph could thaw that relationship with money.

The Graham pick may turn out to be fine but it's a he'll of a lot harder to find a very good QB than it is to find a serviceable wide receiver. At the same time, Spiller's performance has taught us not to judge these guys too quickly - and maybe that the staff doesn't know what they're doing with them to begin with. I'll give Graham a pass for now. It is not his fault where he was drafted, or whom the Bills passed up for him. The frustrating thing is watching guys like Kaepernick, Dalton, Wilson, and Cousins slip past the Bills when it should be obvious to anyone that our QB has severe limitations. Fitz is not terrible, but he'll never be terrific. And you have to be getting some terrific QB play now and then to win in the NFL. Drafting Aaron Williams instead of a QB looks like one of the bigger blunders of the Nix regime. It's the kind of move that lends credence to Bill in NYC's feelings on DBs and the Bills.

To the OP: I'm gonna refute your argument, and to do so I submit Philip Rivers and Norv Turner. One is (or at least has been) considered a very good QB, while Norv Turner has always been thought of as a coach who gets in the way of his team's greater success. Others have called Dungy a coach that couldn't take his team over the top, and one that may have held Peyton Manning back from winning more than one title. Granted, Belicheck was never THE Bill Belicheck as a head coach, until Brady fell into his lap. But the long and short of this is that there are a lot of ways to the promised land, and fewer ways to sustained success in the NFL.

Fitz may be outstanding in the way that a parking ticket can be outstanding - his position has been ignored for far too long - but I can't see beyond that how he fits that description.

You gotta take off your fan blinders here and note that if you were in the same kind of demand for what you do that Byrd is for what he does, you'd be doing the same thing - weighing the hardships of moving, dollar amounts, commitments, and loyalty. He was not some street free agent the Bills took a chance on. He was talented enough to be a top-50 draft pick, has more than merited it, and the Bills should pay him if they want his services. He doesn't owe anyone a discount. He has provided tons of added value relative to his rookie contract, and deserves to be paid at least like a top-10 safety. Byrd may like Buffalo and its direction enough to edge toward staying if the dollars are competitive, but he absolutely has no reason to hurt his negotiating position. If he said he'd like to stay, that's no indicator, either, because that's often PR / fan goodwill offered to ratchet up pressure for situations when the team is not willing to up their offer.

Might want to pull out the tape of how Fitz played against SF... on Halloween.

That is indeed the good news. There is talent on this team. Unfortunately they haven't to date recognized the dearth of it at HC and QB, the two most critical positions on the team.

Yeah, I think we've finally reached the promised land when we can outplay the other team for the entirety of games and still put up only 12 points of offense. He can put up some respectable numbers but he can't find the end zone when he needs to, and his coach is not helping matters any. Look at it this way instead: When the run game isn't producing (or being allowed to by the coach, your pick), your QB has to put up more than 1 TD and 250 yards plus an INT. Sorry. The fact that he's the best the Bills have had in years does not ipso facto make him good. The sooner the front office realizes this, the better. This stat always needs more context - because I think you can group the games into at least two separate categories. 1) games that got out of hand, where you simply HAVE to pass more than run to have any hope of catching up, and 2) games where there was a stubborn insistence on passing despite holding a fragile lead, a clock to manage and futility in critical situations I generally think your premise is correct, though.

Oh god, I just threw up in my mouth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man