Orton's Arm

I think a lot of what you're seeing is due to the offensive line just not giving him any time to throw. Now, you say there have been plays when he did have time, but got rid of the ball quickly anyway. And that's true. But with Bennie Anderson helping protect his blind side, he has to expect the worst. As for looking over his shoulder, I think that's a natural response to the merry-go-round he and Couch were on in Cleveland. An experience like that causes you to become more jaded and less trusting. I don't know the details of why he chose Buffalo over Cleveland, nor what Cleveland did or didn't promise him. I haven't heard Holcomb say he'd be content to be a career backup, in fact I've heard him say the opposite. But he's said that he accepts his role here in Buffalo, which is to come in if Losman gets hurt, or if the team needs a spark.

And yet he once again led the Bills to 17 points on a day when the running game wasn't there. Is Holcomb good enough to mask this team's manifold glaring weaknesses? No. But that doesn't make him a bad QB.

Keyshawn Johnson had similar complaints about Neil O'Donnell. Holcomb is an O'Donnell-like QB in that he manages the game and takes care of the football. If you had a good defense and a good running game . . . Holcomb wanted to be a starter, but nobody wanted him in that role. He came to Buffalo with the understanding that he'd be the backup. Had he started screaming, "Bench Losman and put me in there," people would rightly complain that he was disrupting team chemistry. He has expressed frustration that his quality of play hasn't earned him more opportunities, but it sounded to me less like a man trying to get Losman benched, and more like a guy who just wanted to start somewhere.

I agree with this. A QB is supposed to have a clock in his head. Once that clock goes off, he's supposed to get rid of the ball. RJ's biggest problem was that he lacked this clock. Let's say you were a QB that had the misfortune of playing behind what TD strangely insists on calling an o-line. Should the clock in your head be faster or slower than it would have been had you been playing behind New England's line?

There is a rookie salary cap. The money you spend on rookies counts against your salary cap as a whole. The amount you're allowed to spend on rookies gets adjusted depending on where you pick in the draft.

The First Amendment freedom of speech provision prohibits the government from censoring any speech based on content. No matter how strongly the government may disagree with the content of what you're saying, it doesn't have the right to stop you from saying it. However, none of this applies to the owners of private property. You can kick someone off your own land for any reason whatsoever. This applies to business owners too. Since you're entering someone else's land (Ralph Wilson Stadium), you have to play by the rules of those who own the land.

Holcomb may not make as many exciting plays as Losman, but those dinks and dunks are more useful than you might think. Look at the Raiders game. Ralph saved some dough on plane fare by not having the offensive line take the trip out west. Or if the o-line did indeed show, I didn't notice. There wasn't a running game. But with Holcomb at QB, the offense still put up 17 points. The offense was likewise dominated in the NE game--no running game, no offensive line. But it put up just 7 points with Losman under center, and those were scored in garbage time. For a team that doesn't have an offensive line--and the Bills certainly fall into that category--Holcomb is the better QB.

It's the curse of Bill Polian. The team's never been the same since Ralph handed him his pink slip.

I can't believe I'm reading all this! Think of the relationship the Bills and the Pats have had these last few years. The Pats got our first round pick. We got Drew Bledsoe. The Pats just finished humiliating us, as they do twice a year every year. Slavery was theoretically abolished slightly after the Civil War, but every member of the Bills organization is owned by the Patriots. It's humiliating, it's degrading, it's terrible. Now along comes, um, Miami, with a chance to inflict some punishment on the Pats. I say, good! 0-for-the-'70s was a long time ago, and the Bills need to repay more recent grievances--or at least, to see them repaid. Besides that, the Dolphins aren't the only team with a record in jeopardy. The Bills are the only team to make it to more than two consecutive Super Bowls. I'd love to see the Patriots knocked out of the playoffs--the sooner the better--for that reason alone.

T.O. is an absolutely great receiver who sometimes says the wrong thing off the field. If he says something negative about Losman, maybe that will make him mad. Losman plays at his best when he's mad. The problem with T.O. is that he's as good as he's going to be. So you'd want to sign him if you were a player away from doing something special, as the Eagles were last year. The Bills are a few years away from being special, so this may not be a good fit.

One of the interesting things about the article was that at least 19 of T.O.'s teammates attended his birthday party. That shows that maybe things weren't as one-sided as the Eagles made them out to be.

Good leaders lead by example. Has Moulds really been leading by example this year?

Excellent point. In addition to embarrassing the team while off the field, it's been a while since he's done anything special on the field. Back when Moulds got hurt in 2003, Bobby Shaw stepped in and became the go-to receiver. IIRC, Shaw had about 800 receiving yards that year. Now he's out of football. So the 511 yards Eric has this year fail to impress me--especially when the other team always gangs up to stop the run. People cite Moulds' paycuts as a sign of generosity. They are not. A lot of contracts are set up from the get-go to force a renegotiation at some point. Take a contract that pays a guy a $5 million signing bonus, then an annual salary of $1 million, $2 million, $2 million, $2 million, and $10 million. Everyone knows there's no way the player is collecting that $10 million in base salary in year 5. Why put it in there then? Because now the deal is technically a five year deal, so the team can amortize the signing bonus over five years instead of four. Also, after year four, the team gets first crack at negotiating the next deal with the player, instead of letting him hit free agency. The player has some power too: he can simply refuse to renegotiate, forcing the team to cut him after year four.

Nick, you may have a point here. Any coach, when handed a roster like this, would have had a losing season. As for the points people have raised against him: - I'm not going to judge the Eric Moulds situation, because we don't know the whole story. - Not to pull a Greggg, but it's easy for your playcalling to look lousy when your players can't execute. - Besides that, Mularkey is doing two men's jobs: his own and Tom Clements'. Whenver that's the case, it's easy to look lousy in both. Promote Sam Wyche to offensive coordinator and the problem is solved. - Taking four games to start Willis was a good move for two reasons: it gave him more time to get back to full strength, and it made him appreciate his starting position more when he had to earn it. - The Losman flip-flops were Losman's own fault for playing as poorly as he did in games 2 - 4.

Not that we don't need another TD thread, but I'd like to get back to talking about Wade Phillips. I felt that when he was the head coach, the defense was coached well, while the offense and special teams were not. The playoff game against Tennessee was a case in point. The Bills' offensive line was big, strong, and slow. The Titans' defensive line was small and fast. Whenever that's the case, you're supposed to run the ball down their throats. Instead, the OC went pass-happy, resulting in a first half in which the Bills were held scoreless. However, the Titans' defense scored when a DE went untouched to the QB, and scored off the resulting fumble. In the second half, the Bills enjoyed offensive success by placing more emphasis on running the ball. The pass plays were more successful because the defensive line was getting worn down by all the running plays. But the playcalling should have been that way all season long, instead of just the second half of the playoff. As for the special teams . . . maybe the less said the better. What I'm getting at here is that the playcalling is a reflection of Wade as a head coach. On the defensive side it was great, but not so for the rest of the team.

Congrats Nick on a trip most people can only dream of. Your account made me feel like I was really there.

Are you saying he should be made offensive coordinator? I know that Ralph has to keep paying Mularkey's salary until Mularkey's contract is over, or he quits.

I liked Ritzman. He certainly got enough sacks--I think he was the preseason leader--and he just needs to develop into more of a run-stopper too.

No doubt you're right, and this team could easily be 8-8 or 9-7 next year with the right moves. But when I wrote the team could "do something," I meant "it could do something worth doing." As in, it could have just about as good a chance as anyone to win some playoff games.

An excellent and witty post. Which is why I made the exact same comment on this thread, one page earlier.

Maybe it's time people in the NFL stopped acting like a blind herd, and actually started thinking for themselves. Ron Wolf built his team into a Super Bowl champion, which is more than most general managers can say. Jimmy Johnson once managed to say something intelligent. He said you can be safe and be good, or take a chance and be great. Hiring the #2 personnel guy from a team like the Colts or the Patriots would be taking a chance to be great.

Benching the veteran center in favor of a rookie would have been very disruptive to the line. I could see where the coaches wouldn't want to add additional disruption to the line even if they thought Preston could play.

As for what to fix . . . this team is two years away from being good. By the end of those two years, the Bills need to have become elite along both lines, and at QB. If they do that, and if everyone else on the team is at least decent, they'll be able to do something.

Agreed. Rob Johnson could make the throws, he just couldn't stay on the field or avoid the sack. Losman reminds me of a slower Michael Vick. A guy with a strong arm who can be dangerous in the passing game, but who is too erratic to do what Tom Brady does.

If I was Ralph Wilson, I'd eagerly be pursuing Ron Wolf. If Wolf won't bite, then I'd look at people like Chris Polian, or someone who's a part of the Patriots or the Colts or some other successful organization.