Orton's Arm

I'd pick Lee Evans myself. Losman is likely to be a bust, McGahee has regressed during his second year, guys like Parrish and Everett are unproven, Schobel isn't what I'd call a dominant player, and Clements isn't the playmaker he thinks he is.

If the idea is to remove Bills from the Wall based on off-field behavior, Smerlas isn't exactly where I'd start.

Let's see: he's an offensive lineman with a ton of talent, but who is lazy and has weight problems. I'm trying to remember where I've heard this before . . .

Realistically, the Bills won't be good in 2006 regardless of which line they choose to focus on. The earliest the team can get serious is 2007. So the Bills should focus on drafting offensive linemen in 2006, because those players take time to develop. Then in 2007, they could draft defensive linemen who could come in and contribute right away. With both lines under control, the Bills would have some real potential.

The answers to these questions should be no and no. Marv once said that once you start listening to the fans, soon enough you'll be up there in the stands watching games with them. Meaning, you'd get fired. I want the head coach who can best compete with Belichick when it comes to X's and O's, and who can get the most out of his team every Sunday.

If that happens, maybe RW will respond by bringing back Mike Mularkey!

Let me get this straight: you read a story that was largely conjecture, and now you're looking for implied quotes. You're layering conjecture on top of conjecture. What we do KNOW: 1. Mularkey initially stated he would continue as the head coach. 2. Later, Mularkey fired a number of his assistants. 3. Levy came in as GM, and hinted he had head coaching aspirations. Ralph Wilson put him in his place AFTER Mularkey had resigned. 4. Mularkey quit a few days after firing those assistants. Without trying to overthink things, let's see what possible reasons for quitting emerge from these facts: Possibility 1: Mularkey couldn't hire new assistants. Given the timing of his resignation, this emerges as a strong possibility. With a new GM, it may be that most assistants felt Mularkey was on a one-year job interview. The man interviewing him wanted Mularkey's job. If you were an assistant, would you want to be a part of that situation, on a team with little talent? Possibility 2: Mularkey had come to realize Levy's head coaching aspirations, and felt this would cause him not to get a fair shake. Granted, it wasn't until after Mularkey quit that Levy said anything publicly. But if Levy was saying things publicly late in the week, maybe he'd made hints to Mularkey behind closed doors earlier. Possibility 3: In discussing the team's player selection strategy, Levy might have said that Mularkey would no longer be getting players specially suited to his kind of system; but instead would be getting more generic players. If Levy indeed said this, it would make it clear that Mularkey was halfway out the door. The comment might also have made him afraid he wouldn't have the tools to do the job this upcoming season.

Which just goes to prove that even a blind squirrel can find a nut. I realize there are those out there who consider Marv more than just a blind squirrel. But if that's true, why does he have just one nut?

Joe Gibbs isn't trying to hire someone else to be his team's head coach.

A good post. However, I think Belichick is too cynical about everything--including himself--to be considered arrogant. I also don't see the staff Marv assembled as being anything particularly special. Ted Marchibroda and Wade Phillips were good hires, but beyond that I didn't see a whole lot of innovation coming from the coaching staff he assembled.

Looking at guys like Parcells and Belichick, you hear about their coaching trees. You hear that so-and-so got his start under someone like that, only to become a successful head coach elsewhere in his own right. Marv was in the league for many years as a head coach. How many successful head coaches or coordinators currently in the league got their start under Marv? I don't know of any. So I'm not expecting Marv to do that great a job selecting the Bills' next head coach.

I'm going to take the middle road with this post. On the one hand, the Patriots over the last few years have benefited from favorable officiating and weak competition. Consider that in 2004, only one playoff game took place in which both NFC teams had winning regular season records. Over in the AFC, there were very few complete teams. You had Indy, with a perfectly good offense but no defense. You had Pittsburgh, with a good defense but questionable offense. But other than the Patriots, there weren't many AFC teams that had the whole package. Still, one can't help but respect the Patriots for their consistency. I remember them putting together a very long winning streak during the regular season. Going 10-0 in the playoffs over a three year span is a solid achievement. Did they achieve the same level of dominance as the 49ers of the '80s or the Cowboys of the '90s? No. But I do remember the way the Patriots defense held Peyton Manning and the Colts to just three points in that playoff game. Consider that with Holcomb under center, the Bills have never scored fewer than 16 points in a game. So holding Peyton & co to just three makes a much stronger statement of dominance than anything the Patriots did in the Super Bowl; much like the Bills' most emphatic statement of dominance came in the playoff game against the Raiders. But ultimately, the Bills of the '90s had the consistency to make it to four consecutive Super Bowls. Thankfully, the Patriots have fallen short of this.

An interesting article that is starting to change my mind about DeHaven.

Both as a defensive coordinator and a head coach, Wade Phillips provided an elite level of defensive coaching. The players--especially on defense--loved him, and it always seemed you could count on that defense to come up big in big games. But the quality of offensive coaching was below-average. Too often, the Bills adopted a pass-happy offense, despite the fact that the offensive line was ill-suited to pass protection, and the quarterback (Rob Johnson) was a sack waiting to happen. But the Bills' big, slow, strong offensive line was well-suited to running the ball directly at smallish defenses; a tactic that should have been applied more often. In the playoff game against Tennessee, the Bills were pass-happy in the first half, resulting in no scores, two sacks/fumbles recovered by the defense, and one Tennessee defensive touchdown. In the second half, the offensive coordinator got things right by running straight at Tennessee's smallish defense. As a result of doing in the second half what they should have been doing all game long, the Bills kicked what should have been the game-winning field goal with just 17 seconds left. But the very last play of that game is a good segue into my point about the quality of the special teams coaching. Tennessee returned the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown. IIRC, that was the second time that year the Bills had lost a game due to allowing a TD return on a kickoff. The quality of the special teams coaching under Wade was abysmal. Overall, Wade is an elite defensive coordinator who didn't do a good job making the transition to head coach. His teams won more often than they lost on the strength of great defense.

I agree that teams win or lose games, not individual quarterbacks. Manning's offensive unit didn't do much to help him against Pitt. On the other side of the equation, you could compare Peyton Manning to Frank Reich. Reich engineered two playoff wins during one of the Bills' Super Bowl seasons: the comeback game against Houston, and next week on the road against Pittsburgh. Compare those two big wins to Peyton's one win against KC. Some players, like Frank Reich, are at their best in big games. Peyton Manning has yet to prove this.

An excellent post that ought to definitively put the issue of first round QBs to rest. As you point out, there's QB talent to be had in the first round, and it's awfully tough to get to the Super Bowl without solid QB play.

Let's see: a Bill Polian team's season came down to the final kick: a 46-47 yard field goal attempt. Wide right. 'Nuff said.

Peyton Manning & company have earned a higher degree of authority and respect than the guys on our team.

It might not have been either his family or the administration forcing him out. He was basically on a one-year job interview. It's unlikely that any but the least qualified and most desparate assistants would want to abandon their present jobs to come work for a man under those conditions. That would leave Mularkey with a very weak coaching staff. He'd also have weak talent, because the Bills are in rebuilding mode. At the end of the one-year job interview, he'd be lucky to have four wins. So he'd get fired, and it would be hard for him to get another head coaching position ever again. Making his situation even weaker is the fact that Levy seems interested in getting back into coaching. Any time your boss wants to take your place, he's less likely to cut you some slack. Mularkey's best career move was probably to do what he did, instead of setting himself up for failure.

Quite frankly, TD won't even win enough games to make you swim in your own bathtub.

Maybe the Jerry Gray interview shows the Bills are getting serious about obtaining the first overall pick in next year's draft.

Martz is too much like Gilbride to be considered for offensive coordinator, let alone head coach. I liked that gum-chewing replacement for Martz though. That guy seemed to get a lot more out of the Rams than Martz did, and his playcalling was more run-oriented and more effective. If the pool of HC candidates is weak, why not give this guy serious consideration?

When you have no coaching staff, there's something to be said for a two coach approach. Say you start with an offense guy. You let him stay a few years, giving him time to install his offense coaching staff/system. Then you fire him, replacing him with a defense guy, who will leave the offense guy's work intact, while fixing the defense coaching mess. The Bucs did this. First they brought in Dungy/Kiffin to fix the defense. After Dungy was let go, they brought in Jon Gruden to fix the offense. The Colts were the same way. Dungy was pleased with the Colts' style of offense and coaching situation, so he left the offensive system and coaching staff intact. Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way here in Buffalo. When TD got here, he came to a team that was well-coached on defense, but poorly coached on offense and special teams. Firing Wade was the right thing for Wilson to do; but Wade's replacement should have been on the offensive side of the ball. Instead, all four of the final candidates for head coach were defense men. Mistake. The hiring of Gregg did nothing to help the offense or special teams coaching, while causing a downgrade in the level of defensive coaching. Now along comes Mularkey. Just as Gregg failed to install a successful defensive coordinator, so too Mularkey failed to install a good offensive coordinator. So now we're up a creek without a paddle.

You should read my sig.

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about whether Holcomb or JP is better. Even if JP were to become the next Montana, it wouldn't make Holcomb any less of a football player. What impresses me about Holcomb is that, in the 2005 season, the Bills never scored fewer than 16 points in a game where he played the whole way. Never. It didn't matter how bad the offensive line was, or whether there was a running game or not, or what the playcalling was like. When the final seconds ticked off the clock, the Bills always had at least 16 points on the board. Do you know what the smallest Patriots' score was for the season? 16 points, which they did twice. Compare the Patriots' line to Buffalo's, or the consistency of their receivers, or the quality of their playcalling, or the TE situation. There's something to be said for a Bills QB who led the offense to the same level of consistency as the Pats despite not being given the same tools for the job. Maybe there aren't enough other now players on the Bills to build a team around Holcomb, and maybe the time has come to trade him away. But he deserves nothing but respect for the job he's done here in Buffalo.