gobillsinytown

I'd rather have a guy who is smart enough to avoid getting into bar fights.

Langston Walker: Now with the Raiders, not as a starter. Derrick Dockery: Back with the Redskins, as a starter. Obviously this doesn't say much for our front office when it comes to picking linemen in free agency. The only real promise I see on the line are LeVitre and hopefully Wood, if he can fully recover. Let's all hope Ralph really means what he says and gets a good football guy in the front office, because the first thing he's going to have to do is work on building the O-line.

"........................but he never has come close to leaving Indy." This is the operative part of the article, as far as the Bills are concerned. This seems to indicate thet he was set to take over the GM position from the start. Also, Bill can't consult with the Bills and still work for the Colts, even in retirement. That would be a conflict of interest.

It's an interesting time to be a Bills fan. It's also great to have former players like Kelly to be passionate about the team. And it wouldn't suprise me if Kelly is part of an ownership group. The players in this era are making enough money to make that happen if they're willing to pool their resources. As far as Kelly damaging Trent's confidence or damaging the team.......doubtful. Trent's confidence is already damaged, and no potential head coach or GM is going to take Kelly's comments seriously. This will be about two things: 1. How much control the new coach/GM will have. 2. Money. And I think it will be in that order. The top candidates already have enough money, so the main issue for them is how much control over the draft and free agency they will have. If Ralph truly means what he says, then he's going to have to give control over to whomever takes the job. I can understand that he might be a little gun shy about that, since the last time he did it was with Donahoe. But I'm hoping that he doesn't care about that now, since he knows he's got one more shot at getting the team a Superbowl before he dies.

You're right, but I think that the real problem is no stability along the O-line. Only Bledose/Henry had something resembling a quality NFL line to work with. QB/RB tandems work better when the QB isn't getting drilled into the turf on pass plays and the RB isn't getting hit behind the line of scrimmage on running plays.

"....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." Thank you. And I don't think Brandon is going anywhere. All the info I've read about him indicates that he is considered a rising star in the business/marketing end of the league. Actually I'm not sure how many football decisions he has really made. From my understanding, the GM position was going to be a "by committee" thing, with Modrak/Overdorf/Guy/Brandon making decisions as a group. Obviously it didn't work, so Ralph will bring in a football guy and Brandon will go back to concentrating exclusively on the marketing end. I would think that if anyone or any group of people should be worried about their jobs, it would be Modrak, Overdorf and Guy. Personally, if i were Ralph, I would question Modrak's committment, since he doesn't even live in the city. Maybe for a scout it's not really necessary, but I've always thought the arrangement was odd.

The report was that the surgery was "successful". Not sure whether it meant "successful" in the sense that the surgeon was ble to put everything back together properly, or "successful" in that he should make a full recovery. My layman's guess is that "successful" meant that the surgeon was able to put everything back together. Whether or not he will be able to play again probably didn't enter his mind. I'm again guessing that they will wait for the swelling to go down and then re-evaluate. Hopefully, everything stays in the proper place so they don't have to go back in again, and he can begin rehab. That's going to be the hard part for him, because from my understanding it's going to take a lot of dedication as well as a high pain tolerance. By all accounts he's a very tough guy so if anybody can do it, he can. I hope so. It would just suck to see a guy like this not to be able to do what he loves.

The problem is that it's in the middle of the season. A GM is going to want to bring in his own HC and staff, and most likely some of them are under contract with other teams. The same with any HC candidates. That's why I think the team is doing a lot of looking and talking to potential candidates, but won't really be able to do anything until after the season. And if it's true that Ralph is really as ticked off as reported, then the whole organization is being evaluated from top to bottom. If that's true then there definitely won't be any movement until after the season.

The big elephant in the room regarding this issue is the economy. At this point any person or gorup of people who might want to buy an NFL team are going to have to take out a sizable loan to make it happen. Currently, that money is going to be difficult to come by, even for a mostly sure bet like NFL football. I'm not saying that the NFL won't expand again, but I think plans for immediate expansion are on hold.

I'm starting to re-think my theory that the Bills only seem snake-bitten each year with injuries. So with Eric out, won't this be the seventh different O-line configuration come Sunday? And doesn't that make three starting O-linemen out for the year? I'm sure other teams have similar injury problems, but this is getting ridiculous.

Well if he's going to do anything maybe now is the time to find out. Put him in there and let him sink or swim. The Bills have nothing to lose, so maybe it's time to find out if he has any potential.

Maybin thought baloon: "Man, I can't wait to get back to my dorm room and hit that soroity hottie.....wait, what? I'm in the NFL now?"

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the game, but based on what I'm reading here it seems that Fewell is going to be at least a little more aggressive. And why not? It's highly unlikely he'll be the head coach, so why not try some things and see what happens. If he can get the players to buy into that, it might even be a little fun for them. Within reason....why not have some fun and fly around? Let the QB (whomever it's going to be) take some shots down field. Or let the O-line just line up and just try to blow people off the ball in the run game instead of trying to get cute with pulling and trapping to try to make holes. I think that's what most O-linemen really want to do anyway.

Why not? Everyone on the team is playing for a job now, so I think it's time to see if the UFL can produce any NFL level players. Why not bring in a few guys, especially O linemen.

I guess those 12 tackles were made by someone else.

Of course it's a cover. Even at 91, and even if he were the senile old coot that so many people make him out to be, he would still know who Shannahan is. The other thing is that the Rooney rule is still in play here. They have to interview minority candidates for the coaching job. And even if Shannahan is hired as GM only, he's going to want to bing in his own people, and I'm sure at least one of them is currently coaching for another team. So that means he absolutely cannot contact them, unless they want to face punishment by the NFL for tampering.

That's what I was thinking. If Edwards is truly free and clear of consussion effects, why keep him benched? I don't think Fitz has shown anything better, unless they're seeing something on film that we don't have access to. Either that, or the entire coaching staff is just desperate to try anything because they know the rest of the year is an evaluation of their jobs.

Wow! Real facts and even some mild sarcasm on this board? While it's true that there really isn't any real factual basis to bring Rusty back since that kind of detailed data would be very difficult to come by, it does seem to me that in a very general sense, the Bills' performance under Rusty's program in the 90's does seem to be better than under the current program. Since the team ran a very fast paced offense then and seemed to avoid the kind of injuries that plague the team now, you could draw a basic conclusion there. The centerpiece of Rusty's program was diet. The players appeared to have bought into the program. Rusty is now the strength and conditioning coordinator of the Bears, so at first glance his program hasn't translated into wins. The Bears currently have four players in IR.

Peter King says because he supposedly told us month ago..... 1. Shanahan will not take the Bills job before the year ends. Says Shanahan thinks there will be more coaching vacancies by the end of the year and wants to see what's available. 2. Lots of people in the Bills organization are scared that Ralph is going to blow the whole front office up. Says that Ralph is so upset about going 7-9 three years in a row and now worse this year that he might blow everybody out and start from scratch. Then Florio "explains" that: The Bills can't hire someone now because of the Rooney rule which requires that a minority candidate to be interviewed. If an outsider is hired now, the Bills would then have to comply with the Rooney rule after the season and do it all over again. I would assume that means they would have to conduct interviews AFTER they already hired somebody. King then said that Lerner of the Browns wants Mike Holmgren, but that Holmgren will do the same thing as Shanahan is doing and wait until the end of the year to see what the landscape looks like. I would link but can't get it to work......go to everyone's favorite football site, profootballtalk.com. The video is there.

If he does that, you're going to have a whole new set of problems. Any owner or group of people who buys this team will immediately be in a large debt hole. That will, at minimum, mean increased ticket prices, parking prices,personal seat licenses, etc. At the worst, the new owners will move the team. Of course, that might actually be what some people on this board want, since it will open up a whole new world of things that they can be indignant about.

Exactly....it's going to be tough to make this transition right away. Plus, I don't think the defense is quite as bad as they look, since they seem to be on the field all the time. They're certainly not going to be confused with the '85 Bears, but there's some talent that could be built on.

Unfortunately it's always a crap shoot in the draft with first round QB's. It was definitely a bad roll of the dice for Bradford this year, getting hurt in the same place twice. Some teams are probably going to shy away from him because of that, although he will still go in the first round. I think the team needs to continue to make O-Line the priority, since it appears we're done drafting DB's in every round now that Jauron is gone.

I thought Bradford might have been a good pick but not with that shoulder. That's always been the risk with draftig a QB in the first round. You can get Peyton Manning..........or Jemarcus Russel.

You're right that the O-Line isn't everything, but it's a critical piece. IMO the two most critical pieces are O-Line and defensive front seven. You build from there. If you put a mediocre QB behind a good line you can go pretty far, but not all the way. The same with putting a great QB behind a bad line. You have to have both to consistently contend every year.

This thread......do not want.