Orton's Arm

> This reminds me of the "turnover ratio is unsustainable" argument from a few years back. I was the one who started that thread! The Bills had a winning record at the time; and many thought that they could sustain that record for the rest of the season and maybe into the playoffs. The problem with all that was that the Bills were getting dominated by the decent-to-good teams they faced; but were sometimes able to use turnovers to mask that dominance. Something like that can last for only so long before the defense stops generating turnovers at such a ridiculous rate. Once that happens, the team gets exposed. The Bills did not look like the more dominant team yesterday. Yes, they won anyway. I'm sure they'll steal a few more wins over the next few years. Nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. But the Bills are a re-Bill-ding team. I'm more interested in signs of the rebuilding effort's progress (or lack thereof) than I am in whether the Bills can steal a couple extra wins in a non-playoff season.

I want to see the Bills produce the quality of play one associates with an 11-5 or 12-4 team. Thus far this season that hasn't happened. It certainly didn't happen yesterday against the Dolphins! Nor has it happened for the last 12+ years. Sometimes the Bills will win anyway, despite playing far below the level I envision for them. Some people consider wins like that stepping stones. We've had plenty of wins like that over the last 12 years; and thus far those wins have served as stepping stones to precisely nowhere. I would argue that you first have to win in the off-season before you can win in the regular season. I'd also argue that to a large degree, the regular season is the measurement tool for how much you won or lost in the off-season. For example, you might think you won a big off-season victory when you drafted Player X. But how good does X look when he plays in the NFL? There were a series of off-season victories we needed to achieve in order to become a legitimate Super Bowl contender. Some of the positions were linebacker, #2 WR, and above all, quarterback. We appear to have achieved some of those needed off-season victories. But quarterback is still a huge question mark. Until that question mark is replaced with a legitimate top-10 QB, the Bills will not be a realistic Super Bowl contender.

> Defensive backfields are very much like Oline. Don't let Bill from NYC hear this!

Fine. But what's your opinion of the Peerless Price trade? By the time we'd traded him away, he'd become a good deep burner/#2 WR. Do you think the Bills made a mistake by trading him for a first round pick? What about Antoine Winfield, who signed with the Vikings after the Bills let him go first-contract-and-out. Wouldn't it have made more sense for the Bills to have franchised him; and then trade him to the Vikings or Jets? That way we'd have gotten something in return; and something is always better than nothing. If it was a mistake to let a good player like Winfield walk without getting any compensation for him, then it might also be a mistake to let Byrd walk without seeing what draft picks we can get for him.

> All calls to trade any solid player for draft picks are ill conceived. Herschel Walker says hi.

This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw. O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton were playing golf together. Bill Clinton said to O.J., "I will not rest until I find the real recipient of Monica Lewinsky's sexual favors!"

The problem with a movie like that is that by the time the movie ended, the guy got the girl. In fact, the guy got both girls: the pretty but shallow blonde he'd originally wanted, and the pretty French foreign exchange student who turned out to have a great head on her shoulders. He had to choose. I'll grant that the Bills got a girl also, metaphorically speaking. But this metaphorical girl isn't at all like the pretty French foreign exchange student. She's not even like the pretty but shallow blonde. The Bills are a team which will take a knife to your heart, time and time again. That means that metaphorically speaking, the girl they got has a knife in her hand and a murderous look in her eye. The girl they got is Esther! In Orphan, the mother had suffered from alcoholism; but had stopped drinking. She'd also experienced a miscarriage, and had a garden of white roses to honor the memory of her lost baby. Esther was a 33 year-old woman who looked like a little girl. Her goal was to destroy her adoptive parents' marriage and seduce the father. Her adoptive father asked her to do something nice for the adoptive mother. She therefore cut down all the white roses in the above-described memory garden, and gave them to the mother as a "gift." With a big smile on her face, she told the mother, "I picked these just for you." The mother was horrified, grabbed Esther's arm, and pulled her. The father tried making excuses. "Esther didn't know what these meant to you." Esther went into the shed, put her arm in a vice, and tightened the vice until her arm broke. (The same arm the mother had grabbed.) Then she showed the broken arm to her adoptive father, and asked him to protect her against the adoptive mother. He responded by letting Esther sleep in his bed for the night, and told his wife to sleep on the couch. Discouraged, the wife went to the liquor store and bought some booze. She was very tempted to drink a bottle, but ultimately poured it down the sink. Esther discovered the empty bottle and showed it to her stepfather. Esther also made it look like the mother was responsible for letting her SUV roll down a hill in neutral, while Esther's (very young) stepsister was in the back. (The SUV did roll down the hill in neutral, but the mother wasn't the one who'd put it in neutral.) That is the kind of girl with whom the Bills have ended up! If someone like the French foreign exchange student is in your life, that's a big positive! If someone like the shallow blonde is in your life, then that's mediocre. But at least she's pretty. If someone like Esther is in your life, nothing good will come of it! And if the Bills are in your life, nothing good will come of it either! Esther gave her family nothing but stab wounds and other injuries. The Bills have given their fans W*** R****, the Music City Miracle, and over a decade of no playoffs.

I'd rather have a loss at 51-48. If I'm putting up 48 points a game, that means I have my franchise QB, and a good supporting cast to go around him. Give a good GM a few years to focus on defense, and he will put together a defensive unit which can keep teams to much less than 51 points! That's when you start winning Super Bowls. It's very hard to win Super Bowls 10-9. Unless you're the Ravens of 2000, it's very hard to hold good postseason opponents to 9 points.

You guys want an unpopular opinion? I'll give you unpopular! Assuming EJ doesn't work out--which he probably won't--then in a year or two the Bills should go into full-on expansion mode. Step 1: Cherry pick no more than five of their young, promising players, such as Glenn and Kiko. Set those players aside. Step 2: Wait until after the draft. Anyone just drafted also gets set aside. Step 3: Everyone else gets put up on the auction block! It would be a big event, and all 31 other teams would be invited. All players not set aside in steps 1 or 2 would be sold for future draft picks! Nothing but future draft picks would be accepted as payment. Step 4: Release any players not set aside in steps 1 - 2 or auctioned off in step 3. Step 5: Sign a bunch of scrubs to fill out the roster. The Bills should only do this when an Andrew Luck-type prospect is going into his senior year. The above five steps would nicely set them up with the 0-16 or 1-15 record necessary to take that Luck-style prospect! They'd also have some extra draft picks from having auctioned off their team, plus whatever players they'd set aside. That's a good foundation right there! With two or three good drafts and a few judicious free agent signings, they could make the playoffs. Plus, they'd have a young, strong foundation--a perfect starting point for building an eventual Super Bowl champion!

The problem with the rankings you're using is that they're based on yards per game. Why is that a problem, you ask. It's a problem because the Bills are using a no-huddle. In fact, they're using a very fast-paced no-huddle. That approach artificially inflates the number of snaps per game. Artificially increasing the number of snaps per game makes the offense look better than it deserves, and the defense look worse than it deserves, at least if you're using per-game stats. The solution is to use per play stats, because those don't get distorted by the no huddle. Thus far this season, Manuel has averaged 6.6 yards per pass attempt. That's slightly better than Trent Edwards' career average of 6.5 yards per attempt, and slightly worse than the 6.7 - 6.8 yards per attempt Fitz typically averaged under Gailey. Our passing game is slightly less effective this season than it's been the last few seasons. As for the running game: Spiller's average yards per carry this season is much worse than it was last season. Yeah, Fred Jackson is doing better. But the improvement in the Fred Jackson running game is not enough to offset the decline in the Spiller running game and the decline in the passing game. On the other hand, the defense is allowing significantly fewer yards per carry this season than it did last year.

Marv was also badly outcoached in the Bills/Giants Superbowl. Bill Belichick--one of the people who outcoached Marv--is known for going for it on 4th down.

I agree that he's a class act. If you look at my earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that a) I'm rooting for the guy, and b) that I think he'll fail. I can see wanting to de-emphasize b) out of respect to Fitz. After all, he's a good guy. On the other hand, there were plenty of people around here who'd greatly overestimated his football ability. Over the years, I've heard plenty about how Fitz could supposedly be the long-term answer at starter; and about how he was supposedly a top-10 QB. Some people even compared his yardage totals and passer rating to Jim Kelly's; and pointed out they were fairly similar. They concluded--falsely--that Fitz was playing at or near a Kelly level. The truth was that Fitz's annual yardage total was inflated by pass-happy play calling. His QB rating was inflated by his tendency to prefer short, high percentage passes. But his yards per attempt wasn't even close to Kelly's; correctly indicating that his level of play wasn't Kelly-like either. If all of us here could agree that Fitz is a nice guy and a mediocre QB, there would be less temptation to criticize his play.

Exactly. The Bills went for it twice on fourth down: once when they didn't make it; the other time when they got the Chandler TD. It's easy after the fact to cherry pick the fourth down attempt which didn't work; while remaining silent about the one which did. If the Bills had a crystal ball, they could avoid whichever 4th down attempts were destined to fail; while going for it on 4th down whenever destined to succeed. But since the Bills don't have a crystal ball, it's unfair to cherry pick only the fourth down attempts which didn't work. We're better off commenting on the generalized strategy of going for it on 4th down more often than a guy like Jauron might. I like the more aggressive strategy because it makes sense mathematically. However, I'm less comfortable with the offensive play calling. For example, there are too many runs into the pile of guys in the middle.

Good post! I also fixed a minor error.

> For a lot of reasons, keeping Levitre was still the best option of the 3. I'll grant that the Bills had room under the salary cap to afford to greatly overpay for Levitre. Maybe even greatly overpay for Glenn and Wood as well. I'll also grant your point that Levitre's contract could have been structured in a way to get a lot of the cap hit out of the way now (when we have plenty of cap space that's being wasted) rather than later (when the cap might be more of an issue). > If there is no urgency in this league "re-builds" never get off the ground. Thus far, Manuel has played like a bottom-10 QB. I realize he's a rookie, and that rookie QBs often improve. But the single most important part of any rebuild effort is to obtain a top-10 QB. Without that, there is very little chance of winning a Super Bowl. > Example: this is a team that has pounded now 5-0 teams like Denver and KC teams in recent years | The hottest horse will oft be cool, | The dullest will show fire; | The friar will often play the fool, | The fool will play the friar. - (Old Song; quoted in Chapter XXVI of Ivanhoe) > Alright......so you pass on Levitre......then sign another starting quality OG and a couple other > of the vast amount of bargain free agents that were on the market and your new head coach isn't > looking like another guy who just can't seem to turn the Bills fortunes around. The Bills need to focus less on looking good or obtaining others' approval; and focus more on discipline. Overpaying three out of five OL--including absurdly overpaying for your LG--does not necessarily constitute a disciplined approach to the salary cap. On the other hand, letting your best draft picks go first-contract-and-out is not disciplined either. The correct solution to the Levitre problem would have been to extend him before his rookie contract ended. Once he hit free agency--and once the Titans offered to absurdly overpay him--the Bills were faced with a no-win situation. A star player at LG doesn't benefit you the way you'd benefit from a star QB, LT, RDE, or WR. Not that Levitre is a star LG; even if he's being paid like one. You still need a solid player at LG; but you can get that in the third round. He probably wouldn't be much of a drop-off from Levitre. I don't like blowing a third round pick any more than you do. On the other hand, if the Bills greatly overpay for their talent, then that sets up a situation where they'd bump their head on the salary cap long before reaching a Super Bowl level of talent.

Good post. > It would really suck if the hope I'm feeling right now is akin to my undead wife coming back to kill me to > avenge herself after our undead son killed her... Yes, that would be bad! The horror has to end sometime, doesn't it? I mean, it has to!

Imagine the following conversation: Some random guy: What do you do for entertainment? I'm not asking you what you do for a living, because I assume that's boring. I want to know what you do for fun. Me: Lots of things. Him: Such as? Me: For one thing, I'm a Bills fan. Him: Tell me what it's like to be a Bills fan. Me: Back in the early '90s, we got our hearts broken four years in a row in Super Bowls. Including W___ R____, which is one of the most painful sports memories ever. Him: But surely things picked up after that? Me: Depends on how you look at things. If you prefer painful individual moments, we got another one in the late '90s with the Music City Miracle. If you're more inclined to a slow, steady, dull pain, we've gotten plenty of that in the 2000s. It's been 13 years since this team has made the playoffs: the longest active playoff drought in the NFL. Him: And this is what you do for entertainment? Surely you must be joking! No sane human being could possibly . . . The correct movie to describe our experience is Orphan! Orphan is a horror movie. But someone watching it for the first time, without reading the previews, won't realize it's a horror movie until toward the end. Only a movie like that can adequately depict what it's like to be a Bills fan.

It's hard to root for a team like the Bills and not have issues!

> You've got to look hard to find a QB playing worse than EJ Manuel. I agree that, based on his current level of play, Manuel is a bottom-10 QB. But which QB has the higher ceiling? At this point, we pretty much know that Thad isn't the long-term answer. With Manuel, there's hope he'll improve. Personally, I'm not overly optimistic that either QB will be the answer. But the Bills need to figure out for themselves, one way or the other, if Manuel is the answer. They can't do that with him on the bench.

Orphan. Orphan is a movie about a woman who looks like a little girl. She gets adopted. She attempts to break apart the marriage of her adoptive parents, so that she can marry the husband herself. When her attempt to seduce the husband fails, she goes into a rage and tries to kill the entire family. She managed to kill two people, and seriously injure another. Very different from the sunshine and happiness the parents had expected her to bring them when they adopted her in the first place. The gap between expectations and reality was about the same in Orphan as it is for Bills fans.

The Bills had at least three options at LG: 1) Re-sign Levitre 2) Re-sign Reinhardt 3) Sign Colin Brown The problem with option 1 is that the Titans greatly overpaid for what Levitre is actually producing. Had the Bills overpaid Levitre by an even greater margin, that would have driven up the cost of extending Wood and Glenn. Bumping up near the salary cap isn't a great idea for a team with below-average overall talent. Especially not for a team whose starting QB is on his rookie contract. The problems with option 3) are obvious; and you touched on some of them in your post. As for the Cleveland game: had Tuel been given any pass protection at all, he might have produced something. Reinhardt would have given the Bills a credible starter at LG at a very fair price. Not as good as Levitre, perhaps, but good enough to get us by for now. Instead of being forced to draft a LG in 2014, the Bills could have chosen to wait until 2015 or 2016; if they liked the 2015 or 2016 LG prospects better.

Good post. Up until a week or so ago, Thad Lewis was on the Bills' practice squad. No GM in the NFL felt he was good enough even to be a backup QB, let alone a long-term answer as the starter. As for the game film of Thad: he was more accurate on short passes than on deep throws. Most of the short passes were to stationary targets. There was very little in terms of hitting moving targets in stride. Even though his arm is stronger than Fitz's, he seems to suffer from exactly the same accuracy issues Fitz had. Except maybe even worse. He has good wheels, as he showed in the preseason. On the other hand, as others here have pointed out, he has a tendency to hang his receivers out to dry. He's probably good enough to give us respectable QB play for the next few weeks. But a long-term answer at starter he clearly is not. If the Bills were committed enough to Manuel to take him 14th overall, there's nothing about Manuel's first few games which should cause them to end that commitment. Giving Thad starts when Manuel is healthy would be absurd. I agree with you that Tuel showed potential in the preseason. There's a reason the Bills signed him rather than Thad Lewis. While I grant he played poorly in the regular season, the circumstances were about as bad as any rookie QB could ever expect to face. No pass protection. No running game. An outclassed coaching staff. Receivers who couldn't get open. No snaps in practice in the week leading up to the game. A hostile stadium. Even the weather was bad. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single thing which could have gone wrong for Tuel but didn't. If we're not writing off rookie Manuel after four mediocre games, why write off rookie Tuel after 1.5 bad quarters?

A lot of it comes down to EJ. If EJ is the guy, then keeping Stevie makes sense. If EJ isn't the guy, then the next 3 - 4 years of Stevie's career will have been wasted; at least if the goal is the Super Bowl. Not only that, but if EJ isn't the guy, then trading away Stevie for a first round pick gives you extra ammunition with which to acquire the guy.

Agreed. Which is why he's worth a first round pick. The real question about Stevie is, is the Bills' time now, or a few years from now? If it's a few years from now, it makes sense to trade him away. But only for the right price (a first rounder).

Fine, then we can .