leh-nerd skin-erd

catmando---i did not see the colts play yesterday, but i'm not sure i follow your point here. we agree that a great offensive line really helps a qb.... i think the original point was that it's tough to judge an unknown qb's potential behind a horrible line. admittedly, i used Manning as an example because he's an elite qb known for his skill behind center. i agree 100% that he makes his line better with his play, and i'd not think to suggest any buffalo qb over the past decade would reach that level of greatness even with a "great" line in front of him. on the other hand, i'd be very surprised to see the colts havea run at perfection and greatness with THIS season's buffalo bills offensive line as the first line of defense to Manning--even before the first lad fell to IR. we agree that the bills needs a good line to shore up the o, yes?

absolutely. i've been saying for years that until they get a line that plays well together, nothing else matters. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and even Joe Frigging Montana could not consistently deliver stellar performances behind the pig of a line we've had most of the last decade. i see it like this: let's take any top notch qb in the league. in fact, let's got with peyton. he goes to practice each day, takes the reps with the first team offense, has a nice practice, and is a real leader of the team. 6 days a week, when he leaves practice, he walks down a long and dark hallway to get to the parking lot where his benz is parked. unfortunately, on 4 of those days, vince wilfork is hiding at the end of the hallway, jumps out, yells "i love IHOP!" and stone cold punches peyton right in the face. i'd think that after a while, in spite of his inate ability, football smarts, and leadership skills, sooner of later peyton is going to get a bit jittery walking down that hallway. brohm may or may not be the answer. i would be willing to bet if he plays behind a substantially similar line next year, there is a high probability that he will not be successful. For the Love of God, fix the line. And damn dick jauron for his 4th year plan.

i'd love to see them bring someone in who can win football games, and lots of 'em.

i think perhaps fewell is going to keep eveyone guessing. it's sort of like sending out brohm incognito.

I don't have any clue if TE ultimately has the gumption to be a good qb for us or anyone else. Obviously he's not been consistently good in Buffalo. However, I think it's interesting to watch Fitzy struggle the last two games and to see Owens and Evans end up with 6 catches. I think in some cases, a change in philosophy (and coaching) does wonders for a player. Edwards clearly struggles getting the ball downfield, but playing behind an offensive line made of swiss cheese, with a crappy run game lead by an OC who was a rookie last year, subsequently fired a couple days before opening day on the road against one of the best -coached teams of the decade, and being placed in the comforting arms of a guy who's claim to fame was that he played behind a HOF qb in Buffalo---well, I don't know, but seems like a tough task. Bring in a good coach, someone with some pedigree, build a line and let him decide. I could care less who leads us to victory, but how about a talent evaluator with some talent take a shot at it. I find it not coincidental that after a decade of ignoring the line, and f-ing it up when they tried to fix it, that we haven't had a qb worth a spit back there. Fitz looked terrible yesterday, like it actually hurts him to throw the ball.

i always thought she was nice looking but never much of an actress. in the blind side, i thought she was smoking hot. she was a total amoaickwwotbditp*! *adoptive mother of an inner city kid who went on to be drafted in the pros (it's the next big XXX website)

well yeah, if you want to look at past success as an indicator of being successful. don't forget, he had _______ (insert name here).

That mix up was big game Bills-worthy...

correct bb. let's dissect the rumor. shanny is offered $10m per seasona and ownership interest in a near-billion dollar franchise and declines after 7 hours of consideration? the leverage angle is a bad one. he's one of a handful of coaches on the market that would appear to command a sizable contract to come back and coach----what leverage did he need beyond that? would it surprise the other 31 teams in the league that he would be in demand? assuming he was offered all that and a bag of chips, i guess i'd figure he wasn't the right guy if he turned it down. in the end, i'd think it was a mistake to read too much into what happens over the next month or so. those that feel brandon is a rube who can't get it done are selling him a bit short. the business of football is an entirely different thing than the game of football. i'm hoping they see the sense of the marriage of business and the game for all we long suffering fans.

this is the confounding part. Let's get an established coach who won a championship with another team. As they say in the equities market, past performance is no guarantee of future success. I'd agree with you to an extent, but whiffing on this past decade without even being close to playing in january sucks worse than 0-4 in SB's. At the same time, I'm 47 now and realize that whether they win the SB or not, my life doesn't change dramatically. It'd be nice to celebrate the victory for sure, but before we contemplate that we probably have to make the playoffs. I'd love to see Marshawn and Freddy behind a good zone blocking scheme and a good line. Maybe we find out that the only holes Marshwan can consistently hit are the ones with an chubby Canadian chick on the other side, but I'd love to know what he and Freddy could do with some consistently good line play. I'd love to see ANY qb in a Bills uniform behind a consistently good line with time to throw. Wouldn't it be nice to judge that a qb didn't have "it" after a season where someone else couldn't argue that our line sucked something awful??? besides, Promo, we're Bills fans. part of the rythym fo the dance is to have somethign to complain about. How awesome would it be to complain about how Shanahan only got us through to the second round of the playoffs? we could really have some angst over that! Go Bills. Happy Thanksgiving.

And on the 8th day, He created Gibran. And, He thought, it is good.

whaaaaat? "All that and the Bills were tied...and...that will cost you your job?". The Titans game was a symptom of the problem. Using another game from this weekend, if the pats fired belichick for the 4th and 2 play, it'd be fair to say that. Jauron was fired because in the 4th year of his contract, he's overseeing a team that is very difficult to watch, very difficult to get excited about, and loses with alarming regularity. Consider: 1. Year 4, 4 losing seasons. 2. I can't recall a game where they didn't lose ugly this year. McKelvin, Parrish miscues, the loss to the Titans, blown out in the 4th. 3. The offensive line plan would have been fine if it hadn't ultimately sucked something awful. Blame Trent all you want (I say this generically, I am not suggesting you personally have blamed him) but we don't run block consistently well, we don't pass block consistently well, and we consistently struggle to put points on the board against team that aren't necessarily world beaters. When your offense is revamped, and then your offense is horrid, and you're in year 4 of the contract, you have to, as they say in Goodfellas "Answer for Billy Batts". 4. TO is brought in and has done little to help us win. I think in the end, the natives just got restless. I want ANY coach of our team to win and make us competitive. i don't care if he smiles or yells on the sidelines, I just want him to win. Now, when he loses, certainly his style gets criticized. Jauron was fired for 48 months of not getting it done. Not all his fault to be sure, but did you feel hope for the end of this season or next? By the way, I thought the Bill's achilles heel was offense. We had NO on the ropes defensively for way longer than we had a right to expect, barely scraped by the Jets when Sanchez had a horrible day, lost to Cleveland 6-to-frigging-3 and...God, make it stop.

forget the beer, put the generous offer of a free ticket aside---the fiance chumped you by getting your sister better tickets than you got her? i don't like the sounds of this guy, not one bit. he's up to no good, he's after something, and if you love your sister, you better tell her you saw him making out with an ugly girl with a del rio jersey on at half-time. friggin rich boys and their fancy club seats, but they don't want to pay a dime towards universal health care. what does your mom think of this punk? moms usually have good instincts.

"My dad thought I was a jackass" absolutely made my day. Back in '83, I came home from college after growing a sweet 'stache (think Napolean Dynamite here) and alllllll my friends had told me how good it looked. My girlfriend (now wife) wasn't crazy about it, my Mom had pretty much the same response as yours did. My dad, however, came in from work, took one look at me and started laughing hysterically. God love him, I shaved it off almost immediately. He tried to tell me how much he liked it, but the damage was already done. "My dad thought I was a jackass." Good stuff.

true. dat. jc, the guy's behind center for 3 super bowl wins, guided one the most prolific offenses in the history of the game, had his team on the threshold of a 4th sb title and currently sits at 6-2. i'd love to say otherwise, but you have to work pretty hard not to respect brady as a great qb.

Trooth, I've been saying similar things for years (as have others, I know). A few years back, CBS did a spot where they were trying to show the genius of Tom Brady on display. They ran a replay with a clock running and Brady did indeed release the ball quickly, in the 3.5 second range. Then they showed Losman, time awastin', getting sacked around 4.something. However, one of the key differences on display was the structure of the pocket around each qb. Where Brady had time to set up and throw---and indeed did his part by making the read and releasing the ball, the o-line for our fave team was breaking down virtually from the start, though not necessarily in a way that allowed direct up the middle pressure. A good description, I'd say, was "anarchy in the streets". I'd love to see a qb in Buffalo face something other than consistent anarchy in the streets. I'd love to have the certainty that our next "He's no good" qb failed miserably with a a good to great offensive line in front of him. When you lack consistency up front, all hell breaks loose. The story of the line in Buffalo is that when you alwayd do what you always did, you always get what you always got.

wellllll, while that may be true, the argument isn't whether or not the game has become to soft where the qb's are concerned, the question is whether or not the rules were violated. if it constituted a rtp penalty as currently defined, it would seem unwise to just let it go as boys playing the game. it's a tough game played by tough guys, and teams that can get away with violations of the rules undoubtebly will try. put another way, there's nothing untough about submitting a play for review if you think it's a dirty play. of course, there's nothing that prevents us from having a coach with a pulse, either, and we're letting that one slide by.

fair enough then. we probably agree on 90% of our thoughts on the bills, it's just some of these hot issues still sting a bit. have a good night. tim

but isn't it awesome to have been around so long that the standing Buffalo is cool again? I'm not not 60 yet, 48 this year, but my 10 year old loves the throwbacks. a few years back i was speaking with scott berchtold at a party, when he lived near my sister. the question came up about the past acquisition of randy moss---at the time still considered by some to be a malcontent who would divide the team and maybe had loss a step or three. when sb was asked about it, he looked almost surprised someone would ask it and said basically----"duh, yeah. brady/welker/moss?? we're very concerned!". so, alot of th news and focu was on how it might divide the pats,while the guys in the know, well, knew."

No need to make it personal, but if you feel like you need to, go to town. The post I replied to, and some of the subsequent things you've written lead me to the conclusion that you place the failure to re-sign Peters squarely and solely at the feet of Bill's management. I disagree and think it's an oversimplification of the situation. You wrote at one point that the oft-cited commentary that Peters would never re-sign in Buffalo was impossible to prove. I agree with you on that. How could we really know what happened? All I was suggesting was that the decision to re-sign a player is not as simple as pro-bowl = we gotta sign him. I contend that the Bill's may rightly have questioned his attitude toward the team and his time in Buffalo, and his desire to play at a high level if they signed him to a fat contract on his terms. I also contend there are other working parts to the team, including but not limited to other contractual issues with other players that they must thing about. I guess you see it as Peter's holding out so he wouldn't get screwed by the man, I see it as the man might have worried about Peter's sticking it to him. In my personal life, I became self-employed because I have a set of skills that work for me, quite nicely in fact. I left a nice job that paid well and offered very nice benefits because I felt like I could be happier controlling my own destiny. Along the way, wisdom was acquired that allowed me to quite rationally come to the conclusion that in every interaction between two parties, there are three likely outcomes: What party number one says, what party number two says, and the truth, which is generally somewhere in the middle. In Peter's case, say what you want, think what you want, but I find it hard to find him the only aggrieved party in the NFL who HAD to skip camp and show up at the last moment. Better players than him have played for less than "market value" based on their past accomplishments. Finally, speaking of over-simplification, the NFL is a complicated game. The decision to sign, or not to sign, one player does not guarantee success. I never suggested that not signing Peter's should have resulted in a better line, just as I'm sure you wouldn't guarantee me a top 3 offense if they had signed him. I'm no fan of the Bill's management and share the frustration of virtually every other loyal Bills fan and agree changes need to be made. At the same time, I won't give Peter's a pass for how things ended up just because he was an all-pro, and won't assume he was a victim here.

Hardly a silly supposition at all. Peyton Manning becomes the highest paid player if football, Tom Brady, Ben Rothly, Peyton Drew Brees, et al, are by definitionn not. Tom Brady lead the most prolific offense in the history of the NFL just a short time ago. Rothly delivers one of the clutch performances in the history of the game. Come on, each time a new guy is the highest paid at any position by extension there has to be a minimum of three of four who might reasonably be expected to feel slighted. Your scenario works get in theory, but ignores real word factors. In the end, I respect your right to argue that Peters was mistreated, I'll continue to hold that Peters was a large part of the problem.

but you also have personalities to be concerned with, and that's a big part of the pciture. is the guy a leader, a cancer, somewhere in-between? will he show up, do his job and be done with it? will he get his payday and lose the fire that brought him to the top of his game? there was plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they were taking a chance re-signing peters to a huge contract at that point in time. in fairness to the bills, they have to take that into cosideration. and, the nfl is littered with high profile players who signed for big money elsewhere and said team was sitting at home, just like the Bills, come playoffs. Taking your argument to the extreme, shouldn't the pro-bowlers each year look to renegotiate their contract based on the new standard set with rookies and free agent signings? Should most of them holdout if they didn't get a new deal struck? I'm absolutely ok trashing the bills brain trust for decisions made for virtually forever, but on this issue, peters was as much the problem as anyone else.

Of course there's no saying he would not have held out for more money after renegotiating in 2007, right? He was happy as a clam when he renegotiated the first time, too. We as fans weren't clam-like, though as he went on to be one of two holdouts in the NFL last year. All the great players in the league...and he was one of two not to show up to camp. There's no telling what would have happened, and we're more than one jason peters away from being respectable on offense anyway.

To quote The Terminator in Conan The Barbarian, the Jet's plan is "to cwush your enemy, see dem driffen before you, and to hear dee lamendations of dere women.". The Bill's plan is to keep Trent Edwards from being sodomized. This game will probably get ugly, very quickly.

Plus, it would have taken away our ability to see the Bill's whoopty-doo flip-a-rooney let's win it on a You Tube play to end the game like it took place in some local elementary school parking lot. You just can't find entertainment like that these days.