Pyrite Gal

I certainly have no sense at all that Baker should start for us, I just mentioned it as a curiosityas part of a "fair and balanced" assessment of TD's reign of error for us. Another issue I find a bit humorous is why some folks seem to have such a negative impression of TV's work at FS ranging from those who said that for age and cap reasons he should be cut to the implication in your post that being beaten out for FS by TV is a sign of weakness. I disagree for these football based reasons. TV certainly is well into the backside of his career and is old enough that he may one day suddenly hit the wall and his career for us as a starting quality FS are done. However, that day fortunately is not here yet as: 1. He tied for the team lead in INTs last year with McGee. 2. He tied for the team lead in fumble recoveries (only a paltry 2 but given even the best of the rest had only 1 the combination gives him the sole team lead in turnovers produced. This simply is a fact. 3. The switch to the Cover 2 plays to his strength of being more of a cover guy than a tackler (though he shows no fear of hitting also). 4. The idea of cutting him rather than Milloy is particularly non-footbsll thinking since in fact it is the zone blitz which we are abandoining which plays to Milloy's style. It would also have been cap silly as Milloy's cut provided the Bills with arounf a couple of million in cap advantage while a Vincent cut only provides a couple of hundred K. 5. Even though TV has certainly lost a step or two in speed due to age, folks seem to ignore the fact he had a step or two greater speed to lose given that he had enough speed at his peak to cover the quickest of opposing WRs. The move to S from CB which he initiated (unlike mpst athletes who think about themselves rather than the team first) already demands less flat out speed than the CB position. 6. I hope TV does not suffer from some sudden play quality outsge (no sign of that as he led the Bills in combined turnovers last year) because he has an even more critical role to play for the Bills given all the young DBs we acquired. Whitner, Yobouty and Simpson can do a lot worse than learning the game and vet coverage techniques from Vincent. Not only will the switch to the Cover 2 likely extend his use to the Bills (and if we use the Tampa 2 which divides the centerfield duties into thirds of the field rather than half it even plays to TV's demographics even more) but our desire to train the youngsters in coverage technique (particularly Yobouty who is assessed having first round senior physical skills but a still should be in college as he has a junior or sophmore level of football intellect leading to episodically outstanding but inconsistent play), but off the field TV has commanded the respect of his peers such that he was voted President of the NFLPA and has led the way in organizing post football business classes for fotball players at an Ivy-League business school (TKO for example has said they are great). My sense is that there are some folks who have bought the anti-union rap given by some ideologues that they actually probably dislike TV as the head of the NFLPA. So what. The key for him teaching rooks the better way to be teammates is that the NFLPA under Upshaw, TV, and a host of bright lawyers delivered a deal which not only builds on the partnership they created with the NFL in the first CBA, but made it clear that the NFLPA are the majority partners in this arrangement getting 59.5% of the total revenues (this strikes me as appropriate since what the team owners provide is capital and history and with potential new owners there are tons of entities that can provide capital. The historic legacy which folks like Ralph, Al Davis and Wellington Mara have provided the game which is important and this should not be simply totally dismissed. However, like or not, the Grim Reaper eventually comes and visits us all and the unbreakable rule is no one gets out of here of alive. Not only will Ralph, Al, and the other old guard follow the trail blazed by Wellington Mara, but it is appropriate in my opinion that the players are in fact the majority partners as I might pay to se Ralph and Al put on shoulder pads and try to beat the tar out of each other once, but really the players are the difficult to replace part of the game and any source of capital can be replaced by another rich entity. No one can replace the history and early risks Ralph brought to the game, but like it or not he will die so having the NFLPA step up to be majority partners over the new $ like Dan Snyder strikes me as the best thing for traditionalists to advocate since in the end we cannot keep Ralph around beyond his time.

When did we sign Rashad Baker he was #1 on the depth chart at free safety at one point and I think this happened because he was the best we had rather than injury (but I may be wrong). He is no longer a starter because we got Vincent (maybe he moved up when Vincent was injured) but is still 2nd on the depth chart and while it is in no way his best move it is a positive that if we are adding up contributing UDFA 's acquired on draft day he may be part of the list.

Whoops accidentally cut this off before finishing: 1. No seconf day starters. I agree 2. Too many WRs etc. Not an episode but a general trend so no comment as I think this is an observation and would love to see the objective favtual support for this observation. 3. Pick of Reed. Again a very good move that worked well its first year, stunk when Reed developed case of the droppsies his second year (though the reasonable thought that he could step up after a productive rookie year made it possible to tag Price), then injury made Reed unproductive his third year, though he showed enough his fourth year to be resigned, As he was extended and we are apparently going to a Rams like passing game with multiple WRs the jury is still out on this one as well. 4. Mental traits This general comment elicits little more than the fact-free opinion we fans are entitled to and i would love to see specifics. 5. Ross Tucker- I will leave this laugher of a complaint to the commentary in a piost above. 6. Inadequate attention in draft MW demonstrates that the problem was not inadequate focus but poorly chose focus. I prefer us havin taken Clements, McGahee, Evans, a try for a QB of the future and Whitner to the OL players available anyway. Who specifically did you want with your 1st rounder) 7. Jenning- Not extending the injury prone Jennings was actually one of TDs better moves. He never played a full season for the Bills and actually missed parts of 1/4 of our games his last season (his two missed starts and going out early in the previous games with a concusiion, leg sprain , upper body boo-boo or one of the plethora on injuries he suffered with the Bills. Not only would have cost the Bills something like market rate huge conract SF paid him last year to end up quickly on IR, but you end up also having to pay the cap hit mandated by a Marcus Price or whomever is going to fill in for him. Again, the Bills problem was not a lack of attention to the OL (this was one of two positions where TD got a roster player (or two) each draft year but the problem was not lack of attention but poor assessment and training bu Vinkt and Ruel. Thanks for the additions (the ones which made sense) and keep 'em coming I hope.

Many thanks for the specific additions! I must admit that I took less time to make up an initial list of TD failures that I did the list of good TD episodes in a companion post as I did not have a bunch of time left and I figured that the throng would provide details easily which you finally did. I definitely feel that TD deserved to be canned when he was (if not sooner becaise the handwriting was on the wall that GW was a mistake pretty early (even though I thought his reliance on tomfoolery like his airhorn was silly and said so on TSW at the time. I still felt that we Bills fans owed him the benefit of the doubt, but I think I was on record calling for GWs ouster (or at least massive supplementation) even after the team improved to 8-8 becayse he clearly was in over his head). However, the extreme world of the internet clearly was different than the nuanced wotld of pro football as I think a football based assessment of TD shows he deserved to be canned in the bih picture but a detailed assessment of the episodes shows some good (and even great like his handling of tagging PP moves( but also some real clinkers as my poll list gets a start on and your additional details adds to. I think even your list is a mixed true and false analysis of what really happened. Specifically: - Letting Antowain Winfield walk- So long ago it seems even I do not remember the specifics. Yet I agree in general as I thin A-Train got a bad rap from fans he did not deserve for his play, though the specific of his contract which I do not remember could have mandate he be cut as we were paying for Butler's bad move of allocating over $10 million to the QB position, and overpaying folks like John Fina. A-Train was still a productive player on the field and he showed with the pivotal role he played as a cog in the SB winning Pats teams. Not his biggest error and perhaps one we were contractually forced into, but he was a player who did not deserve to be cut based on his play on the field. - Cutting Antowain Smith and using a 2nd round pick to replace him I assume you mean Henry and i thought he was more than an adequate replacement for A-Yrain - After going 3-13, TD traded away a first round pick for an aging player (Bledsoe) Rather than being a failure in concept ir even execution, I thought this was actually a great move by TD for a year and due to a horrendous second year by Bledsoe I thought he should have been cut then and we could call it a wash. Particularly as I am fairly certain that our loss of a 1st played a key role in TD holding out for a replacement 1st from AT (which then became WM) I think this was a wash. It clearly was a great move as we desperately needed a replacement for RJ when the Flutie/RJ devacle came to an end. Our FA choices looked like the oft-injured Chris Chandler and eternal back-up Jeff Blake. Pulling off a trade for Bledsoe really was great for the business and excitment about the Bills after a 3-13 season as was evidenced by the Welcome Drew event at the Ralph which drew at least 10K in the midst of the off-season. However, even in addition to the business benefits, the real measure is on the field and it is hard for me to imagine a QB performing much better than the 2002 Bledsoe. The team record improved from 3-13 to 8-8, the second biggest improvement in NFL history and got an deserved a Pro Bowl reserve nod (if you dusagree fine but name the AFC QBs who deserved the sub role more?) Even those who want to claim that Belicheck and NE fleecing the Bills for two guaranteed victories shows that they took the Bills in this trade are forgetting the fact that NE which won an SB in 2001 actually missed the playoffs in 2002 and it was payin off the accelerated cap hit for traading Bledsoe to keep Brady (moving on was clearly the correct thing to do in the big picture by trading Bledsoe due to the accelerated cap hit killed them for a year. Ectending Bledsoe was a stupid TD error, but getting him was a good move IMHO. - Failure to look for the QB of the future until late in his tenure This is correct, though I'm not sure who this woulda/coulda/shoulda QV would have been. - Trading away a first and second round pick to take a step backward at QB, when the defense was built to win either now or never Actually, trading a second for the JP was not a bad move given we had not gotten a QB of the future earlier as you noted. It really was little more than trading a seond and a later pick because in return for the 2005 first rounder given up we got a 2004 1st round choice in return. Particularly given that the first QB taken in that draft was #18 pick Rodgers moving the pick to 2004 was a smart move. JP clearly has shown he needed the training IF he ever works out. Again, what was stupid was once he made the bad choice of extending Bledsoe, he made it even worse by cutting him (and getting his accelerated cap hit) and handing the job to JP (even JP went on record saying it was the wrong way to get the job. Bledsoe was an inadequate QB, but he was better than a JP who had never started a pro game before. I think the team felt that TD had changed 2005 into a pre-season for JP when as you said the D (with better attitude than their cashing it in because TD had cashed it in) was about as good as they were gonna get. Bledsoe was bad but better than JP and the team semmed to sense this and gave uo like their leader/GM had. - Letting Clements' contract expire We'll see, because certainly the way it is set up now we likely have the replacement on the roster and the Bills can still extend NCs cintract from their current position of great leverage. Even if they do not, then they get NC playing hard in a contract year for him. I thinks its simply to early to draw conclusions about this because it may work out better than if we extended him after last season coming off a Pro Bowl year than if we extend him now and potentially even if we let him walk and go with McHee-Youbouty/Greer/King as our starting two and nickel. Simply too early to draw conclusions on this one. - Failure to find any starter-worthy players on the second day of the draft, except McGee - Too many WRs and RBs taken early on draft day - Using a second round pick on Josh Reed, when the Bills already had Moulds and Price - Failure to select players with the right mental traits (toughness, work ethic, passion, etc.) - Cutting Ross Tucker - Inadequate attention to offensive line on the first day of the draft - Failure to extend Jennings after year 2 or 3

It would take a bit of research to get specific, but prior to the deal being reached on the CBA, there were a number of players who were cut to save cap room whom the teams were relunctant to cut but they had to, This was an extraordinary time due to the CBA uncertainties but I count anyone cuttiing a player for cap reasons whom they did not want to cut as poor cap management. An example of a team who has not handled the cap well in my view would be the TN Titans, they gave large contracts out without an extraordinary return in terms of Ws. Even with the McNair cut (leaving them with Volek and vince Young they not only finished with a worse record than the Bills this year but have afair shot doing it again this year). NYJ has also been notoriously bad at cap management and I think in part Edwards escaped to a better situation as they have a few years of cap work ahesd of them and they just had to chop a lof of their OL to make it work. A lot of this assessment is really retrospective because the cap situation has changed quite abit as teams are better at managing it now than they we when TD was hired 5 years ago. I think it is not unreasonable to say in this league where success is imitated that TD deserves credit for some trailblazing moves not normally done which other teams likely are immitating as part of the cap management example he provided. He deserved flat out to be fired because he did not meet the bottom line of getting the Ws to get to the playoffs during his reign of error. However, though this true, what some fail to see that though he did fail in the big picture it does not mean he did everything wrong. In fact, when it came to reading the market, and managingthe business side, TD was one of the best. Personally, if I had a choice Id rather see him win on the field and screw the business sidde, but we have no choice. For the Bills, even though there were cuts at that time such as Milloy, I think actually we wanted to get rid of this player as his heavy hitting style was more appropriate to the zone blitz than to the Cover 2.

Do you mean the 2006 Draft, Bills drafting since the early 90s, TDs drafts or what? 1. If he (and or you) are refering to the 06 draft, Shein's comments are old and boring but appropriate. We are fortunately beyond the draft debatable (because reality will prove them to mostly be incorrect) claims of value and into reality here players truly demonstrate their worth. Shein's comments are old because when the players take the field in a scheme developed by Jauron et al, we will begin to see with a real conclusion being made in about three years what the truth is. Shein's comments are appropriate though because he is a commentator and not a journalist. A journalist (or real newsperson) should have some sense of objective presentation while a commentator is there to have opinions even though many of them wil be proven wrong. There is a logic to what the Bills did in this draft and we will find out probably rather quickly whether it is as stupid as the namecallers claim it is. If this draft was so badgiven that the Bills clrarly were looking for an immediate starter at SS and an immediate contributor at DT we will know soon enough how we did. 2, If the reference is to Bills drafting since the early 90s, clearly the last 10 years have produced no HOF candidates while the previous ten years produced several (Bruce, Kelly, Thomas, Reed) Part of this was the team picking in the top 10 twice (Ruben is no HOFer but the consecutive Pro Bowls make this a pick that worked and MW was a total bust). Yet overall, the odd virtually complete failure of a number of #2 picks and the failure of second day picks (besides McGee) to do much is part of this downturn. yet, I wouldn't say this downturn is more than a bad pain rather than an implosion, If anything it is an effect of the real implosion which is the horrible relationship between the team owner and his main minions since Marv deserved and got the boot (Butler shined on Ralph and left town, Wade got canned an arbitrated by Ralph, Ralph quickly hired the experienced but battered by his firing into fearful decisions TD, TD hired the not ready for HC GW, then TD hired MM who quit when TD deservedly gotcanned). Good commentary would have focused on this record of failed relationships at the base rather than nitpicked at the draft which is effect and not cause. 3. I still have yet to see any objectively based demonstration of a bad record of drafting by TD. I think people make the mistake of assuming that because TD does have an objectiely bad record of W?Ls and not making the playoffs in his tenure (this is a demonstrably horrendous record he deserved to be fired for) that the cause of this must have been his bad drafting. Wrong! His bad record and bad production was apparent in his first three years and he actually oversaw a fairly good draft in 2001. Its hard to accurately assess a draft before three years and already the hand-writing was on the wall because TD had already made hi first and horrendous blunder of hiring GW and not genral managing this team to win and make the playoffs, but instead to make sure he was not fired by a guy h hired. IMHO, this all goes back to us fans placing far too much emphasis on the draft as the key to building a team. It is important but at best is simply a part. The ironu here is that overall, i woul rank TDs draft management as: 1. 2001- Very good- He picked 2 Pro Bowl recognized players in Henry and Clements and also got a DE who was worth extending. He picked a number of players who contributed to a bad team ravaged by cap hell. The draft was not a great one as there were no potential HOF candidates selected. However, if you told me that 5 years out we would have two players stil in the squad, one of whom resigned long-term, anotherwho most feel merited a franchise designation and a thrid who you got with a first day pick from trading the other Pro Bowler who then got suspended for substance abuse on his new team, I'd say OK. 2. 2002- Horrendous- Shades of Butlers last draft for us. 3. 2003- At the edge of drawing rational conclusions. TD' effprts actually saw some innovative use of the draft: 1. trading the first for a vet QB the year efore to replace RJ after the RJ/Flutie debacle was a great business move which worked out about as well as could be demanded in 2002 and Bledsoe's arrival (as seen by the raucous Welcome Drew event) really totally changed (breifly) the QBs role in fan feelings for their team after a 3-13 season. His 2002 play on the field bore this out as he deservedly hot a reserve Pro Bowl nod for his play (if you disagree then say which AFC QBs deserved tghe reserve nod more) and most important helped lead the team to an 8-8 finish which was the second largest W improvement in a single season in NFL history. 2. The trade of our first in the 2003 draft was made a wash at best though by Bledsoe's horrendoua 2003 which I think he deserved to be cut for. It can easily though be judged a wash as our lack of a first was a big part of TD taking the risk to replace the 1st by tagging Peerless and insisting on a 1st for him from AT. This 1st turned into McGahee. While it is undeniably true and significant that he is the fastest Bills RB to gain 2000 yards rushing the jury is still out on him because of his downturn at the end of last season as the Bills totally imploded (and also due to some questionable off field comments by him about "baby momma" which are irrelevant to football on the field right now but clearly is an issue to watch to see if they move into relevance later. Overall, though it is still a year too early to draw rational conclusions, this draft result bodes well as not only did WM's injury allow us to get a player regarded as a top 5 talent prior to his injury at pick #23 (again the 2001 pick of Henry pays benefits as his prescence made it possible to sit WM for the year he needed to recover into a starting RB for us), but already #3 pick Crowell deserved and got extended, second day pick McGee made the Pro Bowl. and even 7th rounder Haggan got extended due to his ST play and to backstop the fact TKO got injured. Only flyer Sobieski (a talented njury player) is a gone from this draft that will almost certainly be judged to be a good effort) and if WM is utilized and performs well catching the ball, there is an outside chance this may be judged a great draft year. 2004- Too early to tell with by my sense 2 of these 6 being gone by opening day. Yet. Evans will be the #1 WR (we will see if he plays like one though his first two years were very good) and Losman was slotted in as starting QB before he deserved to be. No one can reasonably be said to be confident or even optimistic he will prove to work out. however, it would be both bad business and bad football to write him off before this season. 2005- TDs last draft overseen is way too early to draw rational conclusions, but fan optimism about half of the three players drafted (Parrish, Prestron, King) is not unwarranted. The injured Parrish did not set the world on fire last year, but this second round choice eventually showed some of the moves that excited folks about him and showed no negative signs like the droppsies which hit Reed after some initial excitement about his rookie output. There are real world examples of players of his current profile both really blossoming their second year or oing an el foldo. Preston was probably the most accomplished of the 05 choices as he made the starting lime-up toward the end of the season due to Villarial injury and was generally felt to have accirded himself well as most second day picks are not even up to starting a game their first year. King also showd some good signs and in this DB prospect laden team is second on the depth chart and will take on Greer for a legitimate (though still unlikely) shot at being the nickel this year. The irony here is that i think many fans becajse of the too lsrge importance they assign to the draft (again it is important, but judt not that important... my guess is that there are always a couple of players on any team you can point to among their players whom they acquired by the draft and inflate that into a claim they were built by the draft, but likewise I'm sure there are also great players who acquired as high level or mid level FAs, through trades or as UDFAs who are pivotal players. Just as it would be silly to claim they were FA driven by holding up a couple of examples, it is not corrext to claim they were draft driven by siting a few examples). The numbers are what the numbers are. On average a team will acquire about 8 palyers from a given draft and this is a pretty small part of the total 53 man roster Even if you tried to use time to build the number of draft acquisitions to roughly 24 over three years (the length of time it tales to reasonably assess a draft, still less than half the rosters spots in the last three years were draft acquisitions and in addition to adding more acquistions one must also take the cuts into account (again for example but not proof since we had a bad team, only 2 of the 12 draftees from 2001 on the roster and only 3 of the 10 2002 draftees are on the roster). Folks try to make the claim that we are bad because we do not resign players (does anyone want to claim that bad starter ron Edwards, drug abuser Travis Henry or the injury prone Jonas Jennings should have been given big bucks). There is a better case to be made not that the Bills should resign youngsters but that they should pick better players (well duhh). However, even this contention ignores the fact that the draft is a crapshoot. Actually in 2001 as Bills still have through negotiation and use of the franchise tag their top two picks on the roster and traded away another first day selection for a third rounder turned in Yobouty, the yield of two Pro Bowl selections and two good players and a BAP pick this year as not a bad outcome or one outrageously below what the draft yields for a good team. Actually, bad drafting strikes me as more signficant as a sign of the real mistakes of the TD era mishiring his HC and the resulting staff rather assigning blame to the effects rather than the cause of this problem.

I assume that it is me you are refering to saying I railed against folks for talking about TD. I assume your are correct but I do not even remember saying this/ However, since I did, boy was I dumb before. Your posts pointing this out has shown me how dumb i was before. Thanks for contributing to my knowledge og this issue, which must be hard to do given stupid hypocrisies like this one. Now folks can go back to reading and talking about the Bills instead of posting about my stupidity.

I don't think anyone could rationally look at the end of the Bills last campaign andnot see a team that had lost its heart. The real issue is what do you do to restore that heart. Diagnosing WHY the team lost heart last year is a key to figuring out how to restore it. However, I think that it is crucial to start off by realizing that different players lost heart (however you, Milloy or whoever defines what that means) for different reasons. A key to failure to address this problem unfortunately starts out with recognizing that simplistic buzz phrase answers which are usally the way things get expressed in these internet are not going to cut it. One of the differences between a team and a TEAM is that on a team one fellow who may be the leader (usually until times get tough which they always do if only due to unpredictable injuries or bad bounces by this oddly shaped ball). However, these teams usually run by a legend in his own mine like a Tom Coughlin fall apart into back biting when things get tough. The "Bickering Bills" of the late 80s found in Marv an administrator who somehow found away for a diverse bunch of personalities from me-first Andre Reed, to is their a woman somewhere I can throw a drink in the face of Jim Kelly to god squaders like Frank Reich to me-only personalities like Bruce Smith to all be individuals but somehow work together. The recently incredibly successful NE Pats are somewhat defined by Bill Belicjeck, but many team members loudly and publicly accused him of totally screwing up the Lawyer Milloy negotiations but fortunately for thm a series of early bad injuries and the beating at the hands of the Bills forced them to fall apart or stand together and they did stand. I think one can fairly say that MW, WM, Adams, JP or whomever all lost heart last year. The key is how you encorage several different men on this team to stand up and show their brand of leadership at an appropriate time to the appropriate group. How does Marv or Jauron as team leaders (or Marvron if these two truly work together and are seemingly joined at the hip) diagnose and develop a strategy for each of these men. My sense is that they correctly let a couple of guys go because i see no way that they develop and implement a good strategy to helps these players restore their own hearts for the team (this has got to be done by the individual and cannot be effectively forced from the outside generally). I think MW was such a bruised personality and seemingly a happy go lucky guy I think cutting him lose was the right thing to do, I think Sam Adams is about Sam Adams and he is too far along to be changed so cutting him lose is a good idea. I'm not worried much about WM because he is such a younster and I think can be brought into line by an older player setting the right example. Definitely avoid being impregnated by him unless you want to become a "baby momma" (as he youthfully and disgustinly refers to the mother of children. I assume folks are somewhat pissed at Troy Vincent because he is president of the NFLPA whom folks seem to hate. If folks are upset because he doesn't play enough cause of injury complaints well all he did was tie for team lead in INTs without playing all the time. Particularly given all the young DBs we drafted, and the need for their to be coordinated leadership of the many pivotally placed youth on this teams (Evans.JP,WM, the rookies) being able to work with the older players like Fletcher and Vincent will be key for the front office making this team a TEAM. I doubt that NC gave up on being productive as he had too much money to gain by producing. I would not be sirprised if his problem was pressing too much and looking to make a spectaclar play. On field and of field TEAM leadership will have to work to make sureClements plays within himself I suspect to get maximum production. JP will be fine unless his confiedence is shot by the butffeting he received as he screwed up alot. The tumor his he is a brash fool and I hope so as this type of attitude may well shepard him through the learning phase younsters must fo throug before they become vets. So yep the Bills lacked heart at the end of last season and I think the key is for the braintrust to not lack intelligence and try to improve things with a simplistic one sixe fits all approach.

Its hard to say because it is unclear what LeBeau would have done in reality. However, one of the things which really muddies the waters in comparing the two is that I think the D performed better under Gray's full control in 2004 than it did under LeBeau's design with Gray's control in 2003. There is a theory that the 04 improvement should be attributed to LeBeau as well as the players just got better as they got used to LeBeau's design. However, the events in real life do not support this theory: A. Gray had sole responsibility for good work done by the Bills D with LeVeau off in Pitts. Specifically, LeBeau had nothing to do with designing a gameplan for 2004 opponents. In virtually every game the D design was good enough to stymie the opponent or at least keep the Bills in the game before Bledsoe fumbled it away. Second, for those games where the D was get beaten with its initial gameplan, Gray showed real skill in designing and implementing adjustments which stymied what the opponent did well (the best example was Sammy Morris runniing for over 80 yards in the first hald of one game, but getting held to less than 100 yards in the total game as the Bills adjusted. LeBeau can not be credited with this good work under Gray. B. It is not like the Bills D improvement was all due to LeBeau and Gray played no role in this in 2003, IMHO it was very impressive how quickly and well Gray mastered the LeBeau zone blitz to do the playcalling. Any claim that the improvement was all about scheme and the playcalling was irrelevant or dictated ignores the fact that part of LeBeau leaving was because he wanted to play call. If the D had slipped from $5 to $10 or so then i think there would be a case to be made about LeBeau leaving killing the Bills, however, its statistical ranking improved amd I think is an indicator of Gray doing good work in 2003 and thwen followed by very good work in 2004, only to se his work suck in 2005. My sense of why the team failed under his guidance in 2005 I think is attributable to Gray not varying the D ebough that year. Having 10 of 11 players back has great advantages, but a big disadvantage in that there is tons of film on the scheme and on the techniques used (and over used) by particular players. There is a powerful desire to dance with the one who brung you and to stick with what works, but the NFL is a league where if you are not improving you are being passed by and the Bills D not vary their approach enough and got passed by big time. In addition, the broaded context which the D operated within was bad and actually quite dysfunctional. MM abd TD had ab aooarebt dusoute about the QB and I think overall they felt that the O situation was going to mostly be a learning experience for JP, As triubled as Bledsoe was and as stupid as it was to extend him, he was even worse to cut him beause even though he provided only a limited chance it was a better chance than going through the JP learning curve. Gray sucking in not changing of the D enough and also the D falling victim to larger issues is IMHO a big reason why we lost last year. However, this fact does not alter the fact that he did a good job learning the LeBeaus design and calling plays effectively with nor the fact he improved the Ds performance after LeBeau left.

Exactly! TD flat out deserved to get canned due to his record of not getting to the playoffs on his watch (a fact which I think stemmed from his initial fatal mistakes of putting a higher priority on hiring an HC he could best if nrcessary rather taking a risk of his own job by hiring a winning HC). However lost in the autodrive ranting that he sucked in all areas, is the fact that he made some pretty great moves. This episodes of nice work were easily overshadowed by the bigger issue of him hiring out of fear rather than being strong enough to take risks. However, I think a fair and balanced (to use a phrase) assessment of TD is one of being pretty good on a lot of the specifics, but in the end being fatally flawed in terms of broader context,

Yeah, I mostly stuck this in the survey as an option, though there were other things on the list like his move of transition tagging PP and then managing hios anger well so he could pull off the trade with AT that I thought were far above the norm of what most GMs can do. The cap management work by him I think was better than average, but some GMsare good and some are bad, While I do not think his cap management his first year and overall qualifies him for football goddom, I think that actually he does deserve some significant credit for this work. If cap management were so easy, then why doesn;t everyone do it well and why do so many teams still do it poorly? Cap management issues were a big factor in a significant chunk of the NFL swallowing hard and taking the CBA deal that essentially the NFLPA demanded. The two hammers were going to be no huge raise in the immediate cap figure which was forcing a bunch of teams to cut players they did not want to cut. The second was the prospect of an uncapped year where differences in skill at cap management were going to get washed away by differences in cash flow.

Personally,Ii think he never recovered from an initial mistake of hiring an HC who was not ready to move beyond being a great DC. GW had little feel for the offensive side of the game, destroyed the OL (even further as it had gotten bad under Butler) by hiring Vinky who has never been an OL position coach and replacing him when he had to demote his lifelong buddy with the equally inexperienced Ruel, and even screwed up the D by allowing or insisting Robinson and Jenkins be signed. Yet, though I think his and our fate was cast right from the start, I am curious what other folks think (though a lot of the general rants against TD have struck me as fairly misguided as I have seen little evidence that he managed the crapshoot of the draft worse than the average GM) and in this poll rather than general indictments, I am looking for specific cases.

This is a companion off-season poll to one asking about his worst moves so if folks are looking to simply vent their frustation or to jag off while ragging on TD I am also providing another thread for folks to do that. This ask was inspired by Rico noting in a thread about Schobel being extended that he was surprised when this worked out and he thought it was one of TDs better moves. Certainly, there were a ton of posts dancing on TD's deserved grave as Bills GM which seem to claim he could do nothing right. However, though I think he deserved to be fired (failing to deliver a playoff berth at all during his five years here with little immediate prospects to accomplish this after a 5-11 season is ultimate stat which totally justies his dismissal IMHO), I think there were a number of moves he made which were among the best I have seen from a GM. In the end, I think he failed because he was just too defensive and bruised after gettingfired and run out of town by a guy he hired in Pittsburgh that he coul not uild a winner here. However, his inability to overcome this problem makes me think of Branod in On The Waterfront, he coulda been a contenda if he was little more secure and had either hired Fox or tried to attract Lewis here instead of hiring GW. At any rate, I am curious what folks thought he did that was his best move (and the above tries to clear the deck of the ranting agaist TD that asking this heretical question might easily inspire, but we will see).

As long as you are not silly enough to buy either extreme I think this is cool (not that anyone cares much what anyone else on the internet thinks). My sense is that Guy is simply more of a logistical manager than a vision manager selling his ideas. Under this framework it can make a lot of sense to hire him (again and again apprarently as he has played this role in the several versions of schemes in the GW reign of error, played this role under different leaders running different schemes under MM and is going to play the same role under different schemes for completely different leadership under Marv and Jauron. Either the Bills are operating completely contrary to the hiring/firing accountabilitu which has made the free market so successful (and I think is a primary reason for screw-ups by our el Presidente in Iraq and elsewhere that he values loyalty over competence big time, but thats another thread amd board). I really doubt that Guy has survived so much hiring and firing in the last 5 years due to him having compromising pictures of Ralph, out of political correctness or whatever ideological foolishness folks choose to believe. I think he gets valued and rehired because he is a very good manager and a team player who is great at making this complex train run on time as he oversees the scouts and an international intelligence gathering network. He likely gets hired (again and again( because his is not about the content of the decisions, but is very good at getting reports about the particulars of players in multiple leagues at multiple levels on multiple teams to the decision makers in a timely and understandable way so that they can make the decisions. My sense is that it is simply incorrect to believe that the OL development methods and decisions were Guys ideas or his final call. The method was at initiative of Vinky, Ruel and then JMsc working first with what they got to build a system that fit the schemes of Sheppard, then Killdrive, next Clements and now within a context provided by Farrell. To believe differently would mean also believing that Guy somehow had the final call on the selection of players for the OL scheme and somehow survived the failure of his OL unit schemes time after time. One would also have to believe he bears significant responsibility for these schemes and survived having 3 OCs fired out from over him and then got hired to have te final call again. To buy into this would be so silly I do not see it happening. What simply makes more sense is that he is the furthest thing from a figurehead in generating a lot of intelligence which allows others to actually make the decisions. Managing this sprawling global (with NFL Europe and the CFL as part of his oversight) would take far more take far more than a figurehead to run it well. Yet, he may have no role in really making decisions of which scheme we run and still be far more than a figurehear to manage this system to make it work.

I'm actually curious whether Schobel will actually attempt to put on a little additional weight the is off-season as the switch to the Cover 2 from the zone blitz will actually reduce the need for him to be lmore manuverable and the lighter weight which sometime come with this. My understanding is that Schobel shed 5-10 pounds from his rookie season as the move to the LeBeau and then the Hray zone blitz demanded greater athleticism from him as he at first played the short zone in pass coverage (allowing TKO and Fletch to blitz more ) but he actually improved his body and play even more that by 2005 he was comfortable playing some man to man against releasing RBs and TEs. He did a great job at this body sculpting IMHO as he managed to cut weight while also increasing his resilience against the run as he learned how to get and use leverage on OL plauers. He eve improved his sack game (as seen in the increase in sack stats by developing additional moves he was comfortable with to beat a block and rush the passer. It will be interesting to see if his weight now goes up as his pass coverage duties will drop and his pressure the QB and run stopping duties increase in the Cover 2. As I think run stopping will still not be his primary responsibility in the Cover 2, it still might make sense for his weight to increase, but speed and explosiveness will be a key to the rush in the Cover (or likely the Tampa) 2. Yf any additional weight is simply bulk and blubber, it might make him harder to move on run plays. Hpwever, in the best worlds it will be extra weight from extra muscle which should allow him to pressure the QB still while also being a bigger more difficult load to move out of the way on rushes.

Actually the constant blitzing from the zone blitz scheme worked quite well for two years. However, what seemed to be the case to me was that with two years in the film can opposing DCs had tons of material to use to figure out how to beat our D and actually I think with the return of 10 of 11 starters, individual opponents had a lot of tape to review to figure out the tendencies of our team at particular down and distances and which moves our individual players liked to use. I think not only was our D weaked with the one replacement player for a starter (Edwards for Phat Pat) not only was a downgrade in starter quality, but also was a downgrade in back-up quality as Edwards was quite productive for a few plays a game when he did not have to pace himself, but just could not produce or even stay healthy when asked to play a lot. I think Jerry Gray is actually a far better DC than folks give him ccredit for. The way he quckly mastered LeBeau's scheme such that he could call good plays with it so we finished statistically 5th among Ds (not nearly as impressive as the ultimate stat W/L but it was impressive to go from a D abortion GW's first two years to good statistical production with LeBeau's scheme. Further, many expected a down turn in our D production when LeBeau left after not being given play-calling responsibilities. Specifically, folks thought the 04 D would founder making in game adjustments without LeBeau and even if it finished in the upper thrid of the league statisticallym it would slide under Gray. Instead the D improved statistically from 5th to second under Gray and he was able to do good gameplanning to a 9-7 finish, and even better he did great in game adjustments (an example was Sammy Morris tearing our D a new one in the first half, but adjustments kept him below 100 yards rushed overall. Gray and his D foundered completely last year in good part IMHO because they did not vary the approach enough to fool opponents and keep them guessing. I expect that we are going to see some better D performance this year because: 1. Its not hard to do better than the dismal Gray led work of 2005, and 2. Opponents will not have much tape on our knew scheme until mid-season and will only have ideas (some of which will work and some of which will not) and not tried and working plans on how to exploit our D. The need to change is one of the reasons why I hink some posters are drawing too many conclusions about how the Bills will employ the Cover 2 merely based on the way Jauron has traditionally run it. It will actually likley be quite different as DC Fewell is yes a Cover 2 guy, but he ran a version called the Tampa 2 which actually used the MLB to divide the field into thirds rather than halves. By having Whitner resposible for less field than in a traditional Cover 2 it should help him. It also plays well to TVs strength and his age as his ability to make reads (he is an extremely bright guy with lots of experience and though he is not afraid to pop people, his best game is coverage rather than the runstopping required of safties in the zone blitz that used to be our D scheme. I also thing folks are incorrectly assessing London Fletcher. Again as lontime D captain he has shown himself to have great football knowledge. Speed is great when you have a lot of field to cover, but I think making good reads and not taking a first step in the wrong direction will usally nullify apeed. I do not care how fast you are if one is counting on speed to help you overwhelm Peyton Manning you have a long afternoon ahead of you. Fletcher has both reasonable speed and a constant motor which with his football intellect should allow him to do well in a Tampa 2 scheme. Some may voice a fact-free opinon that he is a bad cover guy but. 1. He definitiely is shorter than the average lionebacker, but even though this is true there must be other skill he has to have allowed him to be credited with more tackles than any other player in the NFL the last five years. 2. Folks point to the shortness and find fault with his vertical leap (they are two different measures actually) but even if this is the case it means he may be at a disadvanage for some jump ball situtations but for this to occur the QB better be confident and throw the ball in exactly the right place because an experieced player like Fletcher should have the receiver closely marked. 3. Even though he may be at a disadvantage on a jumpball, Fletcher has demonstrated the ability to track the ball well in flight and the hands to reliabily handle the ball as he has been second on this team in kickoff returns behind McGee. IMHO, the key and the wildcard for me is whether we will generate the pass rush with out undersized DTS (of the top 4 on the depth chart the heaviest is listed at 304 lbs). If the passrush is solid (pressures and not even sacks will be fine. A QB will not have time to throw up a perfectly placed jumpball on Fletcher if he is running for his life or throwing off his bsck foot because our DTs shoot the gap.

One of the reasons which I think plays into Schobel not looking like a 12 sack guy and not beng feared as a pass rusher is that actually in the zone blitz scheme as Jerry Grau designed and ran it the last three years, Schobel was actually not called upon to pressure the QB at all in many passing situations. The zone blitz worked because the OL did not know whether the blitzers would be the traditional folks on the DL or whether there might be an unexpected blitz from an LB or safety. The zone blitz compensated for the hole left by one of these blitzers by actually having the DEs drop back into short zone pass coverage or in Schobel's case due adding to his athleticism by shedding a few lbs, these past three years he would even do man to man coverage on the TE or cover the medium zone. I actually was most impressed with his registering 12 sacks by the fact this was not the typical RDE role of rush, rush, eush in passing situations. I suspect he will be credited with having a much better year if his sack #s merely go up because he is pressuring the passer more.

I'm curious. Exactly what performance levels does an RB have to achieve to at the mediocre MFL back level and what would you say is the next step above being mediocre and what do you have to accomplish to deserve that status?

Some folks are into this for the soap opera of fan adoration and some are into for the being overly technical about the game of football (I count myself upon the latter). As I see to each their own and both approaches or something in the middle are fine with me. I just hope people do not fool themselves as to where they fall on this scale. A lot of the WM situation reminds me of the face-off Larry Centers had with GW after the Bills signed him. GW made a thinly veiled implication that any Bills who did not show up for the "voluntary" camps was showing a lack of commitment to the game and more important letting his teamates down (this view actually may have been true of some in particular rookies or younger players). However, Centers simply responded and in no uncertain terms that he had performed well in the NFL and shown up for work at the mandatory sessions in top notch shape and ready to go. He fully understood the desire of a new coach with a new team to have everybody there, but it was not agreed to that this how the players would operate for voluntary sessions and as long as he did show up on time and in shape he felt he owed no one the time. GW beat a hasty retreat on his pronouncement as Centers was seen as and became a leader on the Bills. While WM has not been around long enough or accomplished enough to command the respect Centers deserved, it is clear from the public nature of the workouts at the U, film of WM working out there and the added muscle in his frame last year that he is not slacking off working out there. While building camaraderie is nice, I see know pronlem with these too-rich employees having a life outside of their work. Particularly if there is clear evidence of them working hard to imporve their play, I have no problem with WM or another player getting excused from an OTA he really needs no excuse for missing. It was some former Supreme Court Justice (Frankfurter or Brandeis I think) who was fond of saying that he could in fact do 52 weeks worth of work in 5o weeks. but he could not do 52 weeks worth of work in 52 weeks. The NFL actually is not hard lifting compared to someone who actually works for a living punching the clock and it certainly is extremely well compensated for whatever heavy lifting is required. However, the NFL season is certainly intense and high profile in terms of being judged all the time. I do no begrudge at all any player for taking time away from voluntary camps. This is particularly true if that time is spent working out in your own setting or even appearing on NFL Network which promotes the game and players can do this without any judgement of them at all by the media.

Definitely Guy is not the pupper master and I used this phrase as this is the impression given by comments such as one which tried to segregate JMac's work from Guy's work as though the position coach is only responsble for training and the Director of Pro Personnel is responsible for or has "the final call" on player acquistions. It really does take a fertile imagination to conjure up a world in which it is Guy who should be held accountable for the Bills miscues. He certainly bears partial responsiblity as all the Bills front office does for the record on non-playoff runs while they were in charge. However, again I think that it takes an extreme view that probably is not the reality at all to conclude either Guy should be held accountable for the miscues or he is simply a figure head. Certainly there are a bunch of folks who have been in the Bills leadership since 2001 who have not been held accountable with the cost of their jobs for the team's failures during that time (Ralph primarily among them but its pretty impossible for anyone to hold the team owner accountable). To me the far more logical explanation of why Guy is still around that he may in fact work very hard and do quite well as a functionary and essentially a logistical manager for the team. Whether it was GW's dumb ideas after he was foolishly hired by TD, or MM's failed ideas after TD got a mulligan for GW and hired MM, what Guy has done well is OVERSEEN the evaluation of players on other teams, other leagues, the Bills own personnel etc. His job does not appear to be to make decisions about what the data and opinions he collects means, but really to do the logistical work of making sure that this data and opinions are collected. I can easily see how Marv and Jauron could want to keep Guy around, if one thing they require is to make sure that they have a bunch of scouts flying all over the country covering a bunch of games. That those scouts give back information and their opinions about what they saw in some standardized and comprehensive way, and that all this info showed up my desk and I could easily link to it in a computer when I wanted. If Guy provided good order and complete info in a timely way to GW so he could then make his lamo decisions with input, and likewise Guy oversaw getting this same quality and amount of info to MM so he could make his bad judgments, iy would be dumb of me to fire my Director of Pro Personnel because of bad choices GW or MM made with this data. Guy does bear responsibility for 2001 on like all of them bear responsibility. However, you create intelligent accountability by firing the idiots like GW and Vinky for making the decisions to fly the plane into a mountain, not the mechanic who made sure the engines worked on the plane. From all I can see in the real world as far as whose head rolled for the all acknowledged and easy to see bad decisions, it simply makes no sense that Guy is a figurehead. My sense is he does a good job as a manger of a sprawling national operation making sure that visits are done and reports are made in a timely and usable manner. In fact, there are so many people involved (scouts, players, teams) over such a large geographic area, you have to have a high level person in charge of the logistics or it simply will not work, My sense is that the proof is in the pudding that Guy has made it possible for GW and MM to puish their foolish plans and that Marv and Jauron are happy to have him to do the same job of oversight to get them the info they want to make decisions. Lets just hope the result is not as bad as it was with GW and MM making decisions under TD.

I hit this link and actually got to a column about something other than the Bills. it was by Gregg Easterbrook who produces TMQ about football, but it was him declaring himself a belated convert to being concerned about global climate change. It was funny to see his thinking finally join the 20th century, but outside of climate change is even partially as bad as it might be then the Bills are curtains I'm not sure beyond Easterbrook once again proving to be too clever by half, what the relevance to the Bills is.

I think you have the correct cut on this. Folks need to realize that like it or not the primary value of us fans to the NFL is that we provide great crowd noise and excitement the TV production where they truly make the big bucks from the TV networks, Don't get me wrong, ticket sales are definitely a positive thing and the team owners love making bucks selling tickets. However, this appears to pale to me in comparison to the dollars scooped up by selling the TV product. Crowds at the stadium are an important part of selling that show. However, the dollars are what the dollars. The blackout rule allowing games to be televised if there is a sellout actually probably removes the disincentive for having a team in LA in a smaller stadium which the NFL could sell out in this large populaion base with not a huge extra effort. However, the extortion opportunities to get taxpayers to ladel money into team coffers are substantial with the LA threat to hang over municipalities heads is a great tool. As a Bills fan, its nice to Ralph bellying up to the trough to insert keeping the Bills in Buffalo as a political weapon in this year's NYS governor's race. There is now a greatly diminished return to team owners for selling skyboxes and premium seats to us rubes as the NFLPA has gotten a 59.5% of total revenues rather than a defined gross payment which gave team owners full claim on this pool. However 40.5% of a ton of money is not 100% of a ton o money but its still good. When one throws in the welfare payment of a governmental stadium authority putting up the capital for a stadium which the Bills can use as if they own it, its welcome free cash. While investments in stadiums are of quetionable greater value than other investments in the economy of a municipality based on the studies I have seen, the building of such a stadium in and under-utilized area such as downtoen Buffalo would certainly be a relative boom for this town, If the cost of this investment can be spread across all of NYS with a state funder authority then it is a great benefit to this area.

Rather than describing the work on QB the last few years (since the beginning of the end of the Jimbo era) rather than describing the actions as concessions and compromises, I would describe them as a over focus on what turned out to be a futile search to find the next Jimbo. One might accurately describe the bad players as compromises but I think our problem has been that there has been such a panicked effort to find the next Jimbo that the misallocation of resources to this search has damaged our ability to build a winning TEAM. Specifically the over0allocation has beenL 1. Ralph himself led the charge by for whatever reason calculating that Kelly would last far longer than he did. He promised to reward Kelly in his next contract only to have Jimbo forced into retirement so there was no next contract (Ralph omly miscalculated by a few years). The truth of this was seem in that he had to pay Jimbo a million bucks walking away money. Fortunately, it did not count against the cap, but I do wonder if this transgression is behind him not getting into the HOF and it clearly set the tone of QB panic on this team. 2. Butler himself miscalculated badly how long Jimbo would last as I was surprised the Bills did not pick or acquire an heir apparent at QB in 1994. Instead they reached and spent a 2nd on Todd Collins the next year as the handwriting was clearly on the wall and then rushed him into starting before his happy feet were trained out of him (oif they ever could be). 3. Butler then added insult to injury by trading a 3rd for the idiot Billy Joe Hobert. 4. I'm not sure what it is that you add to the insult after injury, but the Bills did go back on their word to Flutie by giving the job to RJ, signing him to a huge bonus before he proved himself on the field (I think it would have been fine for the Bills to pay him a few extra millions if they had at least waited through pre-season and actually part of the way through the regular season before signing him to the big bucks. Even though there is some risk it only took a few games before it was clear JP was prone to injury, but we had already panicked. When Flutie actually performed as our scouts expected, we then were forced to sign him long term to pro rate the payments. Even with this move we had to cut experienced ST guys and the result was young Porter did not stay in his lane and the Home-Run Throw up occured. 5. As in the case of the scouts correctly prediciting Flutie's play, i do not think it was a bad move for TD to get Bledose (the alternatives were Chris Chandler and Jeff Blake). His 2002 season where he got a legitimate Pro Bowl reserve designation (if you disagree than simply name the AFC QBs more deserving of the reserve honor that year) shows this was a good move. The acquisition of a replacement 1st the next year was outstanding. However the same infection bit TD and he panicked and instead of cutting Bledsoe after a horredous 2003 on the field he extended him. His adding insult to injury was that he then handed the starting job to JP who had done nothing on the field to deserve it. the fact is rather than concessions and compromises the Bills have a continous history which stems from Ralph of over allocation and mis focus on the QB psotion.

I have few problems with the diagnosis that many players including the draft acquisitions had worse 05 than 04s (well duh the team was 9-7 in 04 and 5-11 in 05). What simply is not substantiated by the many true facts you lay out was the the failure of the team was led by those widespread failures of draft choices. Most draftee declined in their productions but also most FA acquisitions declined in their production. In addition, some (only a few unfortunately) draftees improved in production from to 05 and also some (only a few unfortunately) FAs improved in their production from 0-4 to 0-5. Even worse with this analysis, is that it does not attempt to get at what I see as the lead reason for these failures by draftees. For some it was likely poor picking of players who were not as good as hoped and for some their careers might have been salvaged by better player development. This distinction is a serious issue as it would mandate a different approach or solution in each case and this is where I think good conclusions based on good analysis is most helpful to read. I found your post a little disappointing because it strung together a bunch of true facts while conveniently avoiding true facts that undercut the conclusion (this form of argument is not a rarity at TSW unfortunately). Even strangely it left out a few true facts (like draftee Moulds suffering a downturn in production) that might even support the broad conclusion drawn. Overall, if one wants to attempt to draw a conclusion from the various factoids it would actually be that we had some seriously dysfncional team leadership in TD who for whatever reason made a horrible choice for his first HC and then GW exacerbated or made real this mistake by hiring an inexperienced and unproven staff that failed miserably on the offensive side of the ball, made some poor draft decisions and even worse really did a poor job of training and developing OL players. In terms of conclusions the source of much of this problem has been eliminated. TDs desire to never again be fired by an HC he hired led him IMHO to pass on two coaches (Fox and Lewis) that he feared might beat him if they turned on him likw Cowher and instead he hired GW whom he knew he could beat if push came to shove. Even worse, GW had the same infection and hired a staff without the experience this team needed, but had no one who could naturally beat him. Even worse, his failings were obvious enough to TD that he went out and hired folks to supplemt GW's failings but failed to insist on the OC he advocated and took HW's choice Kevin Killdrive and he hired a previous OC as RB coach but failed to force GW to make Killfdrive vary his O when it failed in 2003. I think good analysis would go beyond statimg obvious facts and drawing half and false conclusions from them.

I'm curious what you judge as being a solid starter? By my judgment, about a third of the teams in the NFL have what I consider to be a solid starting QB, The rest IMHO (including the Bills) have a troubled situation with their starting QB that runs the gamut from hopeful to quite doubtful regarding their QB prospects. This is an interesting question so I hope I find the time over the next few days to look at this with some specificity. However, mostly through strength of numbers I would put the Bills much more toward the hopeful. Just as an off-hand example without having examined this with the detail needed to make a very good argument, a few examples of my judgments are: 1. Skins- Starter Mark Brunell finished with not a bad QB ratin last year, but given that they have none other than Todd Collins and a rookie behind him, this strikes me as a troubled situation at best which given Brunell's mileage and history of injury and the not ready at all to start talent behind him. One can be charitable and reasonably give the team the benefit of the doubt here as they did crawl into the playoffs last year, but even if one has enough grace to call Brunell a solid starter you would reasonably call this a troubled situation and have real doubts about their QB play being even adequate in 2006. 2. Chicago- I do not think there is anyway one can describe this 2005 playoff team as having a solid starter at QB. Rex Grossman is the best performer they got and he has been a victim of so many serious injuries as a player one has to put them in the doubtful category. Fortunately for them, having a solid QB is not a "must-have" to proviude a slot in the playoffs and make it a successful season, but the more mediocre your QB the better your D needs to be. 3. Tampa Bay- Here is yet another 05 playoff team where one at least flirts with and probably goes over the line calling him a solif starter. His QB rating (a very flawed statistical measure of QB performance but the best QB stat around) was at about the 80 level which in some folks minds divides th adequate from the inadequate, but if you play TB an opponent is looking elsewhere to stop this team than focusing on Simms who I think one can onky call solid if you give him credit for making the playoffs which other stars on this team carried him to, Will the Bills make the playoffs in '06? Very doubtful. Will any of the 3 Bills who might become the starter have a successful season? Doubtful also any of these individual wiil. Will the Bills have a successful player at QB in 06. The asnwer could well be no, but I think the answer is probably yes. In my sense the odds for the individuals are these: 1. Holcomb- I would put the chances of him being a successful starter at no higher than 25%. However, I give him this 1 out of 4 shot at producing a QB rating in the upper half of the NFL and leading the team to at least a reasonable shot at the playoffs though i doubt they make it (remember in '04 even that team led by Bledsoe came within a game and posted a winning record. Jauron would have to ptoduce the same D results he had when he was NFL Coach of the Year with Chicago a few years ago. While no one will get rich banking on this team being a defensive juggernaut, one would also be silly to totally say it is impossible that this team which will bring back a reinforced core of a D which finished second statistically in the NFL year before last wil not post impressive results this year. If Jauron finds a way to produce good results from this Cover 2 unit with undersized DTs (going by the traditional run stopping model), Holcomb could make some noise leading this team. He has produced as a playoff QB episodically in his career and he now has even more expeerience which allows him to get mileage out of mundane performance in a Brad Johnson like way. 2. Nall- I would put his chances at having a productive season as starter at no more than 10%. However, he has been watching Brett Favre for a while which has to help in the book knowledge area. In addition, with the brief performances he got backing up Favre he actually was quite productive on the field. Finally, the Bills braintrust saw something in him they liked a lot and even though I give him a slim chance of working it out, it is possible. 3. JP- I know some TSW folks have written him off and it is quite true he has not produced as a QB in his truncated by injury rookie year or running the D until he was benched first full season. However writing him off now and acknowledging how stinky his 05 play was are two very different things. While in no way making a claim JP is the equivalent of Favre or Young, the lessons of reality have simply been taught about jettisoning a QB too early. JP was a ballsy productive stud running for his life at Tulane. Between those accomplishments (which were no guarantee he could be an adequste Pro QB) TD at least was smart enough to see that Bledsoe could not be counted upon to do the job and that the 2005 drafts had little offer at QB. His mistake was promoting JP to starter since he was so frustrated with Bledsoe (whom he was mistaken to extend). I was impressed with JPs initial pre-season work as a rookie til hhe got injured (where not you and if not what problems do you point to). I was impressed with the continual improvement in JPs performance that season after MM taught him a valuable lesson (if you put on the uniform be prepared to play) by throwing him to the wolves to mop up against NE and in future mop=ups he improved from being garbage to being quite impressive by the end of /04. I thought he sucked last year even despite flashes of brilliance as in pre-season and in the first quarter of the Miami game. He may have been ruined in terms of development by operating within a virtually totally dysfunctional O and team last year, but to write him off at this point would judt be silly. I think he has the same real talents he had coming out of college, and I give him a 1 ot of 3 chance at being productive this year. Now if (and its probably a big IF) the Bills braintrust is smart enough and strong enough to let this be decided on the field, rather than make the same fatal mistakes Butler made with promoting TC, spening on Hobert, and pre-maturely giving a bonus to RJ, or the mistake TD made of extending Bledsoe after a horrendous season and then promoting JP who had not taken the job on the field, then the Bills can actually add together the chances of these three players to compute their chances for finding a successful QB in 06, I think a 10% chance for Nall, a 25% chace for Holcomb, and a 33% chance for JP adds up to well over a 60% chance the Bills will find a successful QB from one of these three. The key will be for the braintrust to have the smart and the strength to let this play out on the field. I like these chances much better than I do those of the three teams I mentioned above. So I agree that about 2/3 of NFL teams are troubled at the QB position and sheerly through strength of numbers of each of these men being doubtful to work out, but in reality someone can step up. I'd go with us as QB. The more critical issue for this team getting Ws will be wether the ST maintains its good production (quite likely I think as Marv et al will make it an evern higher focus than MM) AND the D is productive (maybe it will be as a former NFL coach of the year with defensive chops has probabbly forgotten more than you orI remember about NFLs Ds. However, I do not see how we will get it done. However, I watch the game every weekend because I am surprised every weekend and am not a legend in my own mind (depsite the length of my posts) who thinks he knows it all.