Pyrite Gal

The only way the Bills pay Greer the same amount they pay McGee is if the huge increase that the current CBA has brought to the cap and players salary vastly forces the Bills to shovel out money left and right. In terms of relative player value on the face of it McGee is far more valuable to the Bills: 1. McGee gets a shot at making all the plays he is making because other teams are generally choosing to pick on Greer because McGee is better than he is. This is likely to increase because despite Greer finally showing some consistency in regular season (until last year he was outstanding in pre-season only to see his performance tail off in regular season making him often the 4th CB at best on most teams he played for, McGee has been even more impressive getting a couple of nice INTs so far. 2. McGee has the added value of being a top level kick returner. It seems far more likely to me unless there are some injuries that this may be Greer's last year as a Bill.

Personally, I think its dumb to pick any QB in the first unless you pretty much plan to let him get better by sitting and watching the pro game a bit. The incredible record of first round pick QBs failing to deliver an SB win for their team from Dallas choosing Aikman in the 80s until Robo QB finally led the team that chose him the 1st and this was followed by Manning finallt leading the team that chose him in the 1st to an SB finally showed that after the long drought it can be done. However, the situation on the Bills not having the support across the team which the Steelers had for RoboQB and not being able to wait for almost a decade to build a team around a Manning (if they somehow found one) indicates strongly that drafting a QB in the 1st was not (and I think still is not) a good strategy to pursue. Overall, I think though the JP pick was not a good strategy, I can see the sense in doing it as the Bills had decided that the draft was a method they were going to use. If you invest in the foolishness of using the draft to get a QB, the strategy of trading future picks to move up was far better than the alternative of waiting until the next season and drafting the first QB taken in that draft. This was noneother than the aforementioned Smith. JP has shown at least some ability to play the NFL game successfully (even with his poor training, he was able to come off the bench after Edwards got hurt and beat NYJ. He then actually performed so well in the next few games that even when Edwards recovered he left Jauron no choice but to start him against Jax because JP was performing so well. Fortunately for TE and Jauron, JP called himself out and declared the Jax game last year as make or break and like it or not he broke by anyone estimation. My sense is though that JP did show last year when he forced Edwards to stay on the bench that yes he can play to pro game. Not well enough obviously with the lousy training and deficits he brings to the game, but he an Edwards had roughly the same QB rating and really struck me as about the same last year. This adds up IMHO that you go with TE as you man first this year as he is younger and really this O is not built for his strengths as he really is a player who does better improvising and the Bills style O which depends on a lot of coordination to run a WCO style is far better suited to Edwards than Losman, Though this true, it seems like a false leap of logic to somehow draw the conclusion that because Edwards does a better job running our O than Losman that this means Losman cannot produce anywhere with any D. On he contrary, I think that Losman has proved to be too inconsistent running our O, inconsistency means he actually has demonstrated he can do quite well sometimes. I simply see it as a leap of illogic for some to conclude this means he will be bad all the time everywhere because he is bad too often here. If folks want to make that claim then how to do they explain all the things JP has done well here which made football professionals confident enough in him to give him the starting job in 2006 (under circumstances even JP disagreed with), AND had troubles that year but had most Bills fans feeling psyched about his possibilities in 07 until he got Wilforked and Edwards gave folks even more hope, AND came off the bench when Edwards got dinged and until he called himself out in the Jax game proved to be good enough to keep Edwards on the bench. These are at least three examples of JP demonstrating on the field that while he clearly was not consistent enough to be our best alternative as starting QB he has shown on the field that he can play the game episodically and it is not hard to imagine some other team emphasizing the best of his game and de-emphasizing the rest.

Even TD saw this one coming from a mile away and given our OL was so bad and they missed so badly on the Mike Williams choice they had lots of reasons to try to hide their heads in the sand and re-sign JJ. The facts simply were he never started all 16 games any year he was here (a feat achieved by 4 of 5 Bills OL players last year and the one who didn't is probably the most talented OL player on the team Peters). In his final season here he did answer the bell 14 times but given that some of those were after he was knocked out of several games with a variety of injuries he was only able to play the complete game 75% of the time. JJ defines injury prone even more that RJ as his maladies were too a number of different joints and body parts as he suffered ankle, shoulder, and post concussion effects that cost him PT. I found it outrageous that SF was willing to plunk down $12 million for him and he clearly was one of the best non-signings we ever did.

Right on target IMHO. Its simply way too early to tell if the marginal improvement which Trent has made through his hard work this off-season is gonna be large or is gonna be small. I for one am just pleased as punch that he has shown the commitment to make this effort and produce results which depending upon what happens may be large or may be small. The irony here in this ultimate team game is going to be that the adding of muscle mass and flexibility which may well make the most difference in whether Edwards proves to be injury prone or not is actually likely going to be how Walker/Butler/Fowler/Dockery/Peters and assorted blitz-pick-up meisters condition themselves. If some equivalent of Mo Lewis gets a clean shot at him for some reason regardless of his muscle mass numbers or how bendy he is his lung can get collapsed. Overall, i would actually disagree with the initial premise of Simon's first post in this thread. I would disagree with labeling Edwards as injury prone. i do not think there is any officially or widely accepted definition of this term of art. To me, I give the label based on the real world record of injury produced by a player in the NFL game. NFL training and conditioning by what I have seen is so superior to what goes on in college (even at pro like programs such as the one at Stanford) that there simply is not a useful comparison between the two. I think a player is correctly labeled as injury prone when he repetitively misses games (and in some cases serious practice time might be considered equivalent to missing actual PT) due to a series of injuries to different parts of his body. RJ struck me as being injury prone because he continually kept coming down with a series of different bumps, bruises and separations which were bad enough to cost him playing time. The thing which he was prone to was that any specific hit seemed to lead to him having an injury to some part of his body which cost him PT. One week it was a separated collar bone, the next week a concussion, and then a couple of weeks after that it would be some muscle tear or pull. He would recover fine and when he came back he would throw some brilliant TD pass. However, I felt he was prone to have some type of time-costing injury from every hard hit. Jonas Jennings also struck me as injury prone. He was a very good player and was judged good enough by SF they rewarded him with a huge FA deal. Still I was quite happy the Bills did not open the vault for him despite the fact our OL was in very bad shape because as a Bill he had never started all 16 games. Even worse, one of the reasons he would only be able to start 14 games was that in about 1/4 of every game he started he would end up getting helped off the field and someone else had to finish because he was hit with a muscle tear, a shoulder joint strain, post concussive reactions, etc. I was not shocked at all when within a couple of regular season games for SF on to the IR he went with a different serious injury than he had before. Some players suffer recurring injuries to a specific part of their body. Jim Kelly had a recurring bursa sac problem which knocked him out of a couple of games and he had another injury which saw Frank Reich have to come in for 3 starts in the regular season and also have to start for Kelly in the Greatest Game Ever Player (hit echo chamber and here grand music in the background when you read this). However, as this was a specific problem one could pad him up and shoot him full of cortisone to deal with this specific problem. He has had the individual intestinal fortitude that despite this injury he would play through it. RJ and Jenning were injury prone IMHO because they showed a tendency to be hurt in different parts of their body and because they were not strong enough or stupid enough to simply play through the pain and compensate for any physical limitations from the injury. Thurman Thomas suffered a serious injury in college but he showed no signs over his career of being injury prone like a lesser player like RJ or Jennings. IMHO it is simply too early for Edwards to deserve to be labeled injury prone. he has gotten off to a troubling start as he was knocked out of the line-up last year, he got slowed down in pre-season last year and his college career (which I do not lump in as being equal to his pro career so it is little more than an indicator to me) was marked with PT costing injuries. JP himself got knocked out in practice his first year. he got knocked out of the game last year. However, the second injury came from a dirty hit and was seemingly unrelated to his first boo-boo that I do not think he deserve the label injury prone. I do not think Edwards deserves it either but certainly both are reasonably put on the watch list even though they have not earned the full "honor" yet.

Not being a doc (or even playing one on TV) I cannot comment on the specifics of your hypothesis. In general, your hypothesis sounds like a reasonable one. The problem is that it ends up coming down to something some boxer (it might have even been that poet laureate Mike Tyson which I will paraphrase. Every athlete has a good theory until someone hits them in the mouth. Has Trent doing off-season conditioning helped him avoid injuries? Almost certainly. Being better conditioned is better than being worse conditioned. Duh! The question is whether being better conditioned (more muscle mass and it is to be hoped more commitment to stretching and even some disciplined yogaesque movements to increase his flexibility (actually probably increased flexibility will do more to help him avoid injuries than increased muscle mass. My guess is yes it has helped but probably in such a marginal amount that it is unlikely to be a difference maker for him in terms of any proneness to injury. You are correct in soliciting feedback from a doctor or some other medical professional as I guess a real answer to the question you raise is going to be one which states with some backing whether improvements Trent made in a mere off-season of conditioning made more than a marginal difference in his ability to avoid injury. I would be surprised if anyone could make a credible case that this improvement will be much more than marginal unless Trent was so bad before he really did no stretching whatsoever before exercising. I think the ultimate finding is quite likely to be that any marginal improvement he gained would simply pale next to the heaviness of an impact if a D rusher hit him going full tilt or the impact of him getting a year older. The amount of flexibility one loses because you age a year can be offset by more diligent exercising but in the end father-time is gonna get us all.

You are right about no one truly knowing what will happen after two games (the fact that no one can know is what makes it interesting. However, there are certain facts such as beating Jax who we might well compete for a wildcard slot for at this point is a huge factual advantage. The fact that they lose a tiebreaker to us if it comes down to head and head puts them three games behind us though we have only played two games and this is big. Homefield advantage is one of the NFL stats that historically proves to be an advantage. Beating a potential playoff team on the road is simply huge also. On the subjective side, while only two weeks of results are not conclusive of anything, again one has to feel very good about beating an NFC playoff team comfortably at home and about getting a Jauron style victory on the road against a conference opponent. The fact this team got off to a solid start (very important in any game but for this team in particular), the team did not panic though Jax put a serious hurting on them in the 3rd quarter (particularly given time of posession and the heat) but they did the Jauron thing of just hanging around and then they struck successfully and hard getting a jump TD from their big draftee WR. This result is hard to imagine being better for the Bills. The team MUST continue to take it one week at a time, but we fans are pretty justified in going crazy.

Clothes clearly do not equal character. If so then simply hire the best dressed person and watch how many incompetent people you get who dress the part but do not have the skills to get the job done. However, a willingness to go out of one's way to fit the ethos of a group you hope to partner with can tell a lot. If a player roles into a meeting wearing non-traditional attire and give off a vibe or send a message that they are gonna act how they want to act regardless of what their potential partners may think, it can easily be the smart thing to do to not set a partnership with this self-centered person. If Troupe wore non-traditional attire but also presented messages that he cared more about our common interest in winning than he did about what style he wore this is one thing (an a good thing from my perspective- Walter Payton did not dress like I liked to dress and won a Soul Train award for his dancing but he was always a gamer and a good individual and I do not care how he dressed). However, there are individuals who are clearly legends in their own mind and they chose non-traditional dress as part of their sending a message that they were going to do what they wanted because they were self-centered. Troupe's attire meant less than what he was trying to say when he chose to wear whatever he wore. If he gave off a vibe that he was a Me-first or Me-only kind of guy then regardless of whether he wore a pimp hat because he was a baby momma guy or if he wore a traditional suit but was faking sincerity, the Bills were right to stay away.

Yep. Its amazing to me how once a Bill ceases to be a Bill I tend to forget what their stupid names were. Rearsmegma was the guy and his reaction to FO requests always struck me as quite odd. It appears not abnormal at the time for players to renegotiate deals to reduce cap hit as the method used actually at least delivered the same amount of money to the player over time and the renegotiation helped the team be better. Remerspoop had every "right" to refuse to renegotiate the deal at the time, but it seemed far from the right thing to do as the balloon payment was clearly more than a TE was worth to most teams. However, Remersidiot had the Bills over a barrel since the TE is grea to have when the player is Gonzalez great but hard to replace as it is so unusual to find a player who can do well at both blocking and receiving and the super receivers are so rare to justify a big hit. By forcing the Bills to meet their word (my sense was that the contract was designed to in fact force the Bills to renegotiate a deal which paid more to Remerswhiner, the problem was he always showed possibilities of being a big downfield threat but never turned these threats into consistent reality. he never did and i was happy when he left.

The TE use and roster choices have been weird to watch from the outside for several years. The Bills had seemed to have given up on getting more classic TE production which really has not been here sent Metzelaars (what was that idiots name who was an all catch and no block TE who despite having a rep as a God-squad evangelical refused to renegotiate his contract for the same money over time and instead forced the Bills to live up to the contract and take a bigger salary cap hit than we wanted- we went elsewhere the next year) and instead for several years seemed to try to make an H-Back approach work. Royal historically had been a good blocking but marginal catch player whom we definitely needed as the OL needed help. However, this year it seemed like with the Turk as OC, the OL had finallt come into its own enough that we need not rely on a blocking TE. The team gave hints of going to more of a spread O which would have us get Parrish onto the field more in a 3 WR base set. In this configuration the TE would be the odd man out with the FB filling the blocking role on blitz pick-ups when needed at at the POA on run plays. The receiving ability of the FB would be a bonus also which if strategically employed could equal the production of blocking first TE. However, several sticks in the mud seemed to be reality which derailed these plans: 1. Lynch really is a more dangerous runner as a lone back. He is tougher even than advertised so he can do the slogging and heavy lifting following a lead blocking FB, but his feet and vision are good enough and his ability to keep moving forward even if he is hit in the backfield made the FB focus a minus as much as a plus. Perhaps better to go one back rather than TE-less to get Parrish on the field. Even worse, the journeymen FBs we got in here proved to be fairly worthless as safety valve receivers. 2. Royal had shown some signs of receiving talent in his time here (a couple of nice toe-tapping catches) but his lapses in concentration from time to time made him little of a receiving threat. However, he really has begun to show some production as a safety valve who can catch 5+ a game and has made a number of critical TD catches as well. Even with less of a blocking demand we use him, Royal has played well enough we cannot sit him. Still the Turk seems to not want to commit to the TE position as a key part of our base O as the Bills have yet to develop a solid back-up who is both injury free and consistently productive at TE. Pray for Royal's health and continued productivity since if he gets hurt neither Schouman nor Fine has shown the productivity or ability to be injury free to make them good plan Bs. It will be interesting to see what plan B is it turns out the Bills have been quite productive using the RB as a receiving weapon as our O goes more toward a WCO or spread approach to operating. We shall see.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/powerranking...2008&week=3

I have always had my doubts about the ESPN Power rankings. IMHO, the network is too caught up in promoting individual players as stars so they can sale commercials rather than taking a more cold-hearted analytical assessment of teams. They get too caught up in pushing large market teams (the Favre hype) and old winners (If Brady was around ranking the Pats at 6 would be low but without him this strikes me as too high). Still, looking at their rankings and our schedule I hope they are right in their rankings as only one of our future 08 opponents is ranked higher than us in the ESPN rankings. And this team is the Pats who I think they rank so highly because of what they have done in the past and their #6 ranking (4 above the Bills) simply does not reflect how much trouble they are in with the loss of Brady. Not only do I feel like they have the Bills ranked too low, but still every single Bills opponent for the rest of the season is ranked by ESPN as being less powerful than the Bills. In particular, when you consider that we have 6 games of our remaining 14 against teams that rak in the lower quarter of their rankings, that this does not even include NYJ who they have overhyped with Favre, I think things bode well for us. In fact the three weakest teams in the NFL in their judgment are the Rams, Chiefs and Fins whom we face twice. When one considers of that of the games they see as "tougher ones" for us we actually will get both the Chargers and the Browns at our house things bode well for us if ESPN is right.

This is exactly why I think it is to early for anyone to go off the deep end and declare Jauron a success. The original post did however offer folks who went off the deep end the other way and declared his hiring to be a mistake and to attempt to explain away any successes he showed as somehow being evidence of him being a loser. 2+ seasons are too early to declare him a success, but the improved results his first year, holding stable despite leading the league in players on the IR, participating in some good fundamentals like experiencing successful drafts so, and leading the team to a great start in his not blow-away way do indicate that extremely negative views about hiring Jauron were unfounded.

Exactly. I simply maintain that it is too early to declare victory at least until a Jauron team makes the playoffs. However, what I am giving folks a chance (if they are football knowlegable enough to take it) to do is declare defeat on the notion several folks offered that Jauron was a bad hire doomed to failure as demonstrated by their interpretation of his past record. I think in 2+ years (not a mere 2 games) of improved performance in the ultimate stat, Ws, underlying activities like hiring and keeping good coaches (Jewell, April, and now it appears Schonert after hiring a clunker in Fairchild), participation in what appears to be some very good drafting, getting rid of some aging, injured and bad hair players (sorry TKO but it was time due to injury, sorry Fletch but your leadership stay coincided with little results, sorry Moulds it was great while it lasted but you did not take being surpassed by a younger talent with good grace, and goodbye WM you are a good player but don't let the door hit you on the way out, overall with Marv righting the ship of state after nothing less than a horrendous ending to the TD/MM era (it was bad because not only did this team lose into the double digit in games but with the demotion of Clements and the suspension of Moulds things were not only bad (5-11) but in fact the manner it happened was nothing less than horrendous, Jauron oversaw a very impressive turnaround. One should be able to both see that it is to early to declare victory (I know this fan will not be happy with my Bills until we make the playoffs) but that one can declare defeat of an argument which some made that Jauron was a bad hire who had never done anything positive. One should be able to see that the opposite of declaring victory would be to declare defeat of the notion that Jauron is a Bill Parcells. Jauron is not a Parcellian HC. The defeat I declare is that of the notion that Jauron was a bad hire at the level of a Rich Kotite. Though Jauron has not proven he is a football god he had proven he is not a stiff. This was the contention that some seemed to want to make based on their assessment of his past record. From their initial willingness to simply disregard his Coach of the Year success as either dumb luck or really other people's work to their unwillingness to see that he actually did some good work with a really bad franchise in Detroit (the smartest thing he did was to get out of Detroit as quickly as he could). Declaring him Lombardi then (and even now based on his record) would be wrong. All I am saying is that declaring him Rich Kotite was wrong also and though his record of rebuilding the team nicely so far after 2+ years is not enough to declare victory it is enough to see that the early predictions of DDDOOOMMMM were wrong. I would think folks who want their sage wisdom to be respected on TSW would welcome the opportunity as Bill fans and as TSW denizens to admit they were wrong.

Give 'em a break, even tonight's disasters mark an improvement over when they blew the coin flip call of a game going into overtime.

You are right that Jauron is not Lombardi, but the issue I see is that some seemed to insist he was Rick Kotite. I think that those who loudly or continually declared him a stiff as an HC have in fact been proven to be flat out wrong. IMHO he is no Bill Parcells who can improve or even win with a bad team (we saw this in Detroit for Jauron) I am not saying he is. I am saying that those who seemed to say he was a bad HC or a perennial loser appear wrong in simply discounting his 13-3 Coach of the Year effort as: 1. He directed a 5-11 Bills team to a 7-9 record the next year (not a winner and no playoffs so an inadequate result IMHO but clearly improved in terms of performance). 2. He directed the team to another 7-9 record which with a superficial look may be counted as simply staying in the same place, but the fact this was accomplished while the team was unfortunately leading the NFL in players on the IR list hints at a better performance than merely holding his own. Overall, when one also considers the HCs key role in drafting decisions and overseeing teaching of youngsters, I think Jauron deserves a lot of credit for the two quality drafts under Marv and the third one they just pulled off. 3. The two wins are way to early to declare this season a success, but it is not too early to write the obituary on past comments which asserted that Jauron was a bad choice with no past record of success. His Coach of the Year honors and a rep he has built as a level-headed team builder are a past record of success. His two 7-9 records with teams with huge failings inherited from the TD reign of error do not prove he is a great coach Lombardi or Parcells. However, these two seasons and two games of frighteningly boring wins do prove to me that those who went over the top in the other direction and claimed his hiring was a disaster were wrong wrong wrong. That's all I am saying. It looks like he is about to get an extension and I think this is a very good thing. Do you and others who have ragged on him?

I did like it when they got the booth to rerun Jackson hitting the ground during a kick, noted that they had never seen it before and theorized as to what he was doing. I took this seriously because when Tasker talks about ST I think this is worth a listen. it will be interesting to see if the Bills do this again or April is setting up some bizarre play for the future. My sense is that most announcing crews would have either ignored this because they had no explanation or they simply would have missed it. I think Tasker does notice things and mentions them that other announcers do not notice.

I think the equation here is no blood no injury no suspension (docking him a game would be unjustified in my view and I am glad I have not even heard that seriously proposed). However, in this case Pos intent does not matter because all players have a responsibility to each other to control these weapons known as their bodies. When Pos felt that he had a grip on something other than a jersey he had a duty to let go. The NFL has eliminated the major/minor distinction for facemasking as they all are judged as bad. By turning around the helmet (despite the fact that the player and the Jags equipment manager deserve a stern talking to to properly strap down their equipment, Pos fully deserve the penalty and if he had injured MoJo then he would have deserved a suspension as well. Fortunately he did not so he should be a little lighter in the wallet but that is all IMHO.

I also think like another post that horrible is too strong and indictment. Yes he did noticeably badly on a couple of plays and on the holding call, but this young player also was part of an OL which in the first half blocked for Edwards having enough time and little enough pressure to hit almost all of his passes. Likewise the rush game was quite effective in the first half with much of their lack of production stemming from failing to even be on the field for a majority plus of the 3rd quarter. Any rational assessment of Butler's play also needs to take into account that most of the Bills rushes were actually to the Butler/Walker side rather than the Peters/Dockery side. Is Butler perfect? No way, there are clear flaws in his game. However, the C+ Bills Daily gave the Bills OL is about as low as one can reasonably go in assessing this game where the QB rating for Edwards was flirting with the 100s. Butler needs work, Peters needs to get in shape, Fowler actually probably does not get enough credit for his line calls and Dockery and Walker are worth the huge money they got if the OL produces like this all season. However, labeling this good but troubled at times performance horrible by any of the OL players is simply not supported by the facts.

The key for this fan of the Bills in judging any trade is what do we get out of it. If we trade JP, it starts with us getting a credible #2 for him (already doubtful as a proposition since if the trade partner has a credible #2 then why are they trading this QB away) and something else of value (preferably a player with proven though likely limited abilities as draft picks are important but in general tend to be extremely over-values in this fantasy football driven world).

From what I saw your read on this looks correct. The keys to me seem to be making more than a superficial reaction to this that virtually all NFL plays involve positive actions by a number of players or breakdowns by a number of players though the simplistic habit is to try to praise or blame one (and sometimes two) players for being responsible for the success or to blame for the error. The NFL is interesting to me because it excels most other sports in being a team game despite the tendency of the money marketing machines to one to elevate one hero or blame one villain. The second key is for folks who really care about the team to seek and advocate a good compromise that promotes the team rather than choosing up sides (FO vs. player or RJ vs. Flutie) and if they are successful in penetrating to the team's notice undercutting the teamwork that makes winners and makes this sport enjoyable for many of us.

I think the earlier response to one of your posts by Mickey hit the key point. Reality simply provides more than two alternatives of either you love everything Peters does and he can do no wrong or awarding him anything or finding any mistakes by him means his is schitt. I think the real world solution to the overall problem is that the Bills should show Peters more money than he has ever seen before but not every last cent they have. We showed Peters great respect and gave him a wonderful contract when they gave an extension to this UDFA. In return we got a great deal that he signed on with us for 3 more seasons from today. Since then he has even stepped up his accomplishments a huge notch in that this UDFA not only won the starter job which got him the extension but he won (and deserved in the view of many experts) the starting Pro Bowl nod at LT. The Bill should not show him all the money in the world because he has only done this for one year. However, his additional achievements of being the best LT in the business does make him a good investment for a big chunk of change in exchange for even more years bound to the Bills. There also seems to be a reasonable compromise here in that part of this big deal should be for non-guaranteed money so that both he and the Bills share the risk of this big deal. If he proves to be so bad then the Bills can simply cut him loose. If not this compromise then fashion some other one. The problem here is that both the Bills refuse to pay out any money for a new deal in 08 and that Peters refuses to talk at all unless the Bills agree to pay out early. Both sides should talk and make a deal. As far as this game, the folks who give him a D really undercut their own credibility. We all have seen LT performances where the opposing end get multiple sacks and continual pressure on the QB and they do not throw a key block on a TD. We have seen LTs perform so badly that the QB cannot have a great day like Edwards did. What plays did Peters do a good job? In addition to the knockdown blocks cited, he did his job quite well i suspect on the long pass to Evans and the TD to Hardy. If you honestly think Peters deserves a D then how much worse are games we have seen quite often where the end gets multiple sacks and the QB is unable to do anything. Peters did not have a good day as his man beat him and caused a fumble. However, if on your scale this gives him a D your scale needs some work to reflect games which LTs produce somewhere is this league quite often.

I definitely do not want him to be a homer, but for me a good announcer reflect the flow of the game with what they say. I think the game call missed several different points I felt were going on: 1. Garrard seemed to be struggling out there IMHO right from the start. My sense was that this was because there was actually a lot of pressure up the gut from Stroud who likely had something to prove against his old team and given the interior OL injury problems. I think the game crew might have carried this story if there were undeniable evidence of it in sacks by Stroud. However, there was not and they failed to explore whether there were other signs a. the poor rush performance by Jax in the first half b. Stroud getting a piece of a sack which correctly was generally credited to Youbouty c. a pass later blocked by Stroud penetration which would not show up in the boxscore As the game wore on we finally saw a sack by Williams and overall I will need to go back and focus on the interior line play because my sense is that it really told the tale of why the Bills were effective initially. 2. I think it would have fit the game flow for Tasker to be even more effusive about the onside kick. i think it would have fit a good storyline because it was potentially of great import as it forced the Bills D to be out there continually in the sweltering weather. I think that part of the Jax thinking to take this risk may have actually been because they knew how much trouble the interior OL was having and a good way for them to tire Stroud and co. out was to risk the onside. Ultimately I think Garrard needed the help. 3. I think an aggressive storyline on these points though they would have necessitated a back and forth rather than a homer announcing style was that in the end, Garrard showed how talented he can be on a nice scramble to the outside and when an interior sack by Williams who survived the deluge was a key to turning the tide. he needs to worry less about being accused of being a homer and simply broadcast the game. In fact, if he is fair and balanced in the face of the next three games likely looking more like the first game in terms of flow and ultimate outcome that this game in terms of flow and the same outcome Tasker will be more jarringly off from reality if he does not let good Bills play drive his announcing.

He probably should be. The players are responsible for controlling their actions. Sometimes a player may touch a facemask, now that 15 yards is the only penalty I hope there are more good non-calls when it has no effect on the play or safety. It may even be the case that reflexively they yank it. If so they deserve the 15 yard penalty they get for this dangerous play. However, Pos held onto it hard and long enough that because the Jax player had his helmet on loosely enough (something the player and equipment manager should be talked to about as well) that it turned completely around his head in Pos's grip I think Pos clearly did not maintain proper control over his tackling style.

I like him as an announcer. A. He knows ST play better than anyone and his insights are to be taken seriously and are often good B. He still is connected to the community so understands what is going on here. C. He does make the mistakes in every game that every announcer makes of misidentifying players but because he is simply just as bad as his peers I mostly find these mistakes amusing and not bothersome for me. However, the one thing which I do find annoying is that he seems so afraid of being seen as a Bills homer he seems to go out his way to praise the opponent or their players. Jax looked like crap in the first half and it would not have been bad broadcasting to say this. Instead, Tasker seemed to go out of his way not be seen as a Bills homer and the failure to really note how Garrard was struggling ran counter to how the game felt and flowed. I have no problem with an announcer flip-flopping in who they sing the praises of as long as the performance on the field flip flops also. IMHO. a good announcer could have sung the Bills praises over Jax when they were dictating play in the first half and then been equally effusive about Jax when they dictated play in the 3rd quarter. Reality could easily have allowed for also singing Scobee's praises as he was Jax's offense for a while and also found failings with the Bills as the 10-3 lead did not equal their dominance and this left them open to problems. A good announcer then would have seen these problems come to fruition when the Jax O made half time adjustments to equal the Bills and the Scobee led ST pulled Garrard's fat our of the fire with the onside kick and long FG. It was in fact exploitation of Garrard leading to the McGee INT and the Youbouty sack that along with a beautiful long throw by Edwards and the TD did Jax in. By trying so hard to be evenhanded, Tasker really did not reflect the flow of the game. I do not need Tasker to be more evenhanded as a goal, i think he is a better announcer when he lets the flow of the game (either pro or con Bills) drive his coverage.

I think some of those who were most vocal in declaring Jauron a loser were noted by many of us because they were quite clear and vocal in doing this. The fact that they may choose not to acknowledge this will be noticeable the next time they are stating something as an indisputable fact. I for one am happy to see a free pass given to anyone who admits they were wrong about something (and its not for me individually- I'm not that bright- to give them a dispensation its for the TSW community as a whole). However, its the folks who simply rant against one Bills and then move on to the next one without any acknowledgment they were wrong that I find silliest.