finknottle

What about the guys in training camp? Somebody made some career assumptions in a hurry. Life ain't always fair. You can't give every player 8 games, 16 games, 2 years, ... You pop him in. Four uninspired-to-bad games. Sit him down, take another look later when it makes sense for the team..

I'm still surprised we didn't sign him to the practice squad. I realize he doesn't play DT where we are now thin, but I'd feel safer if we had a prospect at DT in case we get an injury there too.

I agree 100%. Nothing makes me shudder more than picking a WR, or especially a TE, in the first round. I think I'm still carrying the trauma of the Perry Tuttle and Tony Hunter. Perhaps one factor is that skill players need to contribute immeditely, peak around year 4, and start to diminish around year 6. OL and to a lesser degree DL start later, peak later and play longer. This buys you a little more time to adjust them to NFL-level play, making them safer picks. You don't have that luxury with, say, a RB. If he's not ready to play untill he's 25, it's too late.

Get used to it. The climate is like a spinning top that is beginning to wobble, and we've packed too many people in fringe areas. Frankly, it's too late to do anything about it so we might as well enjoy the ride. You can add to it that we have increasingly many outbreaks of both man- and animal-borne disease. Outbreaks of mad cow disease used to be so rare that embargoing that countries produce made sense. Have you noticed that outbreaks are getting more or less annual? That's what happens when you pack the same type of creatures densly. Most of the fish we consume now comes from fish farms, which are now being moved to the oceans where disease can be passed among stocks with greater probability (though we work to prevent it). This increase leads to a truely dangerous risk: that one of these days something virulent may arise, expand in a fish farm, and spread to open water. A real contamination of global fisheries would starve millions.

Sort of a chicken-and-the-egg thing, isn't it? If you've never played qb musical chairs then you don't think about it. But if you go through two years of what he had in Cleveland, then you'ld have to be a bone-head not to be aware that your job is always up in the air. I bet you cant find a single quarterback who always starts who looks over his shoulder, nor a single qb whose career has been yo-yo'd who doesn't.

But I'm not pointing at some and not others. I'm arguing that you cannot say "So and so can win a Superbowl but whatzit cannot," by showing that there have been great QB's that didn't and merely servicable ones that did. The other guy is the one saying Drew lacks some essential ingrediant that proves he can never win it, so it would fall to him to tell us what it is about Drew that seperates him from anybody who has or could have won one.

Yikes! That's depressing! I don't feel real good about any of those games! Can't we just play the Jets 11 times and call it a season?

I don't fault the refs for making mistakes - in fact, I think we need to get away from this obsession that the ref has to catch every call, and get it right. I'm more troubled by the perception that the refs are handing a game to one team or another. Common sense say's that it's nonsense, but the NFL is after all a business who does better when certain markets dominate. Redskins-Steelers Superbowl: great for the next television contract. Seahawks-Bengals Superbowl: not so great. The dollar difference in those two lineups and the accompanying playoff ratings (were this the year going into television renegotiation) could be easily be $100 million for the league.

I hear this a lot, and it's probably true, but not for the reason the idiots think. He probably won't simply because he probably won't. Guess what? The same is true of Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Warren Moon, and countless others. On the other hand, it seems that it is the likes of Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer who do win them. So what do we conclude? That most starting QB's have a chance to win the Superbowl if everything falls into place. Drew has as good a shot as anybody else on a winning team.

After yesterdays games, I'm beginning to wonder if the fix is in.... I'm not even talking about the Bills game, about which I'm obviously biased. I also watched the Ravens-Lions, and I really think they had it in for the Ravens. They stopped the Lions about 8 consecutive plays inside the 5, and on the first 4th down there was a questionable penalty and on the second they called it in when I couldn't see how... Plus Ravens were being ejected and flagged left and right. Then I watched the Redskins-Broncos, and I thought the officiating in the last 5 minutes was atrocious. Every time the Redskins failed on fourth they would keep the drive alive with a dubious downfield penalty - it's like they were doing everything possible to give Gibbs the win. I'm really beginning to wonder.

Are you saying that we should have started JP because that's what the San Francisco braintrust is doing with (or to) their quarterback? Yeah, there's a team to emulate.

You are all half-right. I looked at the numbers and found this for WM: 1st Half: 17 for 50 yards, 1 TD 2nd Half: 14 for 36 yards, 0 TD, 0 production rate. He's the problem - we need to cut this loser!

That's what happens sometimes when you are ahead. It often says more about the coaches and their strategy and play calling than it does the offense.

No, not dodging. I think the benching is a tempest-in-a-teapot. Holcomb will bring stability to that part of the offense allowing the team to focus on other things. The Bills will live or die on problems like the defense and the OL, and will muddle through the season a decent team. JP will go back to number 2 on the chart. He and his fans will have a good cry, get over it, and in two weeks the trauma of demotion will be forgotten by all. At some point we'll put him back in, and he'll be better prepared to play and the team will be better prepared for him.

We won't finish fourth in the AFC East. We might not even finish third!

So far he's 14/19, 192 yards, 3 TD 0 INT 0 Sacks. The other guy is 9/17, 98, 0-0-3.

Half the fans here will tell you that the solution is to run WM more. I guess that means constantly run on second down as well...

He finished 20/26 passing, 1 TD 0 INT. He's hanging on by a thread.

Once again WM had a lower ypc than the other teams back... Lets give him the ball more, and Moulds/Evans less!

I agree. He's an (almost) stud CB at a price we can afford!

With Holcomb starting, will Josh Reed disappear as our go-to receiver? Just wondering if he and JP had a practice-buddy thing going ala Reich and Bebe... Nice to see Moulds and Evans getting numbers like they should again.

No, I don't have a problem with Evans at all! My point is only that the venom towards Moulds seems hypocritical when Evans is left alone. I think they were both ok in what they said.

Yes, but that was too hard for me to address. Do you mean position coach in the sense of training them, or head coach in the sense of calling a game which will help them succeed? I find it nearly impossible to judge how well a position coach teaches. We all hear how great Wyche is (and McNally for that matter) but do we really know? It's more reasonable for us to assess how the coaches call the game and how that effects the qb performance, but even that will take (me at least) more time and distance before I feel good about having an opinion.

In today's NFL, three years. The third year is when you see if his system and his players works.

You're right. Based on the Faulkneresque blue stuff it is quite clear that Mularkey doesn't know what he's doing and that Wilson and TD had to step in and make him do the right thing if we want to win. It's Mularkey who doesn't want to win - as long as he has excuses like a green qb, his job is safe.