Orton's Arm

Funny, but that's exactly what we were told about Donahoe five years ago.

In 2001, we got Nate Clements, Aaron Schobel, Travis Henry, Ron Edwards, and Jonas Jennings. In 2003 it was Willis McGahee, Chris Kelsay, Angelo Crowell, and Terrence McGee. While I respect the 2003 draft, I believe the 2001 draft was better, because there were two and a half successes in the trenches (Jennings, Schobel, and the half success of Edwards) as opposed to the Kelsay half-success of 2003.

And after the day is done, they join each other at a support group. It's for general managers who have lost power struggles with prominent head coaches only.

Actually, Tom Modrak served as assistant GM in Pittsburgh to TD, before striking out on his own as Philly's GM.

I keep hearing how Tom Modrak has been this great addition to the Bills' staff, and that he will receive serious consideration for GM if TD gets fired. But TD's best draft while in Buffalo was in 2001--before Modrak got here! If the Bills were better at drafting without Modrak than they were with him, why on earth should Modrak be GM?

This Tucker to the Pats deal--following on the heels of their devastating victory over the Bills--is a classic case of adding insult to injury.

Show up.

Sort of. Come gameday, Bill Belichick wears his emotion on his sleeve. The word "emotion" is singular because Belichick experiences only one kind of emotion during football games: a generally disgruntled/dissatisfied/ugly mood kind of emotion. I mean, the other year I was watching a Super Bowl, when Belichick challenged the ruling on the field. It was the sort of challenge which could have gone either way. The camera zoomed in on Belichick's face at the moment he learned he'd won this important challenge. Not a flicker of happiness or relief interrupted the steady stream of disgruntled energy emanating from that expression. Looking at his face alone, you'd think he'd caught his wife cheating on him, and that he was busy plotting how to kill her and her lover.

Yeah, but at least he's better than the guy he replaced. Oh, wait, Modell fired Bill Belichick to get Billick! Nevermind.

And who's the guy who chose Peyton Manning when many felt Ryan Leaf would have the better career? Who's the guy who had so much confidence in Edgerrin James that he ignored Mike Ditka's offer of basically an entire draft? Who's the guy who hired Tony Dungy?

Any time a team has success, there's always the question of who should get credit for what. Barry Switzer's Super Bowl ring with the Cowboys showed Johnson's earlier successes were due more to talent than coaching. Indianapolis's more recent successes have made it increasingly clear the man most responsible for the Bills' Super Bowl run was Bill Polian.

There are three ways a coach can contribute to his team's success: - Motivating the players. Marv seemed excellent in this area. - Choosing coordinators and assistant coaches. Marv's record here is decidedly mixed. His only offensive coordinator was Marchibroda; everyone else was a failure while in Buffalo. His only defensive coordinator was Wade Phillips; all his other attempts at coordinators failed. - Contributing to game day X's and O's. Belichick does this in New England by looking for opponent tendencies to cleverly exploit. Speaking of Belichick, it was clear the Bills were heavily outcoached in their first Super Bowl. Overall, Marv's contribution to X's and O's was disappointing. If Tony Dungy can take a Bill Polian roster and go undefeated (or pretty close thereto), Marv Levy should have been able to take a Bill Polian roster and at least get a Super Bowl win.

I like Frank Reich, but by making him head coach, you're setting him up to fail. He needs to be first a QB coach, then an offensive coordinator, then a head coach. Assuming that he's interested in coaching, which he doesn't seem to be. But if Reich did take this coaching path, it would be a dream come true for me, and I'd support him through thick and thin.

I like the idea of Capers at defensive coordinator. I don't like the idea of keeping Donahoe.

You think money makes all your problems go away? Think again, pal. TD is feeling like a failure right now, and who knows how long that feeling will stay with him? Granted he has failed, but I still feel for the guy.

A quarterback also needs to know when to get rid of the ball in a hurry. Sometimes the deep pass isn't there, and you need to take the dump-off. Quarterbacks like Brady and Holcomb are good at doing this, though Brady is the better of the two.

That's going pretty far.

I'm not one of those guys who blames Bledsoe for everything. In fact, I think he can be a great QB under the right circumstances. But he does take a lot longer than Brady to read the field, and he's too likely to lock into one particular receiver.

Vic Carucci article At least this is a new situation for Bledsoe!

This wins my award for post of the week.

Flutie had a good year in 1998--his rating was 87. In 1999, teams did a better job of defending him, and his rating fell to 75. For comparison, Bledsoe's rating was 86 in 2002, but fell to 73 and 77 in his next two years with the Bills. Now, you say that a QB rating doesn't measure wins, and that's true. It measures the contribution to the win the QB happened to make. If Flutie was piling up the wins in the late 1990s, it was because he was lucky enough to be on a team with a great defense.

When CTM is wrong--a frequent enough event--he usually says it in one line also.

He wasn't saying he was Tedy Bruschi. He was saying that he was right when many others were wrong. I find it difficult to believe that YOU of all people are defining this behavior as arrogance. I mean, if that's being arrogant, then you, sir, are one arrogant monkey indeed.

But look at what he's had to work with. Even great coaches like Bill Parcells have had some rough years when dealing with questionable talent. Bill Belichick's first season in New England was (I believe) a losing one. Those two men were also their own general managers, and in time could solve their teams' personnel issues. Look at the issues Mularkey has had to deal with. For one, the children's book. This book was about a race between a football player and a tortoise. The story goes something like this: the tortoise, confident of his superior speed, gets off to a late start, and generally goofs around during the race. The football player--let's call him Bledsoe--proceeds at a slow and steady pace. The tortoise sees that Bledsoe has taken a large lead, and is close to winning the race. In a dramatic finish, the tortoise eats ground like it's watermellon, and crosses the finish line a shell's length in front of Bledsoe. But the problem with Bledsoe wasn't merely that he was slow. It was that he took too long to read the field. In the absence of very good protection, Bledsoe was a sack waiting to happen. So you'd need a very good offensive line for Bledsoe to succeed. Yet last year, the starting left guard was some guy who couldn't even make Baltimore's final roster. This year, the guy we have there is even worse. Nor are other offensive line positions awe-inspiring displays of football prowess. I felt Mularkey did the best he could with the cards he'd been dealt. But let's face it; those cards weren't very good. Nor was Mularkey given the tools to solve Buffalo's defensive problems. You can't switch schemes without switching players. Given Buffalo's lack of talent on offense, clearly the plan was to emphasize that side of the ball. So because Buffalo had to keep the defensive players the same--at least for a year or two--it had to keep more or less the same defensive scheme. That meant Mularkey's choices for defensive coordinator were effectively LeBeau and Gray. Mularkey's first choice was LeBeau, who has done well in Pittsburgh.

Agreed. If the players--such as the o-linemen--are receiving some of the best position coaching in the league, and still aren't doing their jobs, then TD should have found himself better players. I take it this is a reference to the Losman interception? Personally I liked the fact he was giving Losman some red zone experience, and throwing the ball when the other team probably expected run. Losman admitted to making a horrible throw, but that interception could have happened at any point in the game when Losman dropped back to throw. Should Mularkey have stopped calling pass plays after the first three quarters? In the 4th quarter, the Bills had 12 running plays to just seven pass plays. That's about the right ratio. If this is in reference to the Moulds situation, I see it as a case where Mularkey doesn't want to show the world the team's dirty laundry.