Pyrite Gal

The official Bills website has an interview with new OC Fairchild regarding his views on various aspects of the O. He was asked about the OL and while not going into the specifics about individual players he did say: SF: "I think we've addressed that already in the meetings that we've had. You've got to have athletic tackles and you need a physical inside three (guard, center, guard). I think the offensive line just sets a tone for your whole football team. We'll do everything we can to make it a strong unit." While this does not imply directly that Teague who has started in the NFL as an athletic tackle is a definite goner, I know few folks that would describe his play or his demographics as a center as being those of a "physical" player. While the ramblings of an NY Post sports columnist that the Bills have already decided to let him walk should not be taken as gospel, these comments definitely strongly indicate that Fairchild is looking for a different type player than Teague to set the tone for the whole football team.

I think Crowell was extended because first he can play the game. He showed he can be a positive force as an ST player, as a credible fill-in as a starter in mu;tiple games for Spikes, and in the difficult position of calling defensive signals as a credible back-up for the speedy but aging London Fletcher. Before this thread digresses into folks attacking the general quality of Crowell's developing play as the attempt to demonstrate he cannot play SLOB. If any do not agree that his signing was a good idea given his age, development as a strong ST player, his being a credible fill-in after the devastating loss of Spikes and also a credible back-up for Fletcher who will not last forever, the please say so now and let folks judge your football judgment. Second, I think Crowell was extended because he has shown good play at two of the three LB positions. Can he play the third position? Maybe or maybe not, but given what he has shown it is not irrational that he might well be able to play the strong side even if he is not the prototypical strongside guy in terms of his height and weight. Fletcher for example is a bit short for the typical MLB, yet he has led the NFL intackles credited to him for the past five years and his also the team D captain. Playing the strongside is far from a guarantee in terms of Crowell, but in fact if Spikes comes back flipping him to the other side to see how he does is far from an irrational idea.

The question though is rather you need at least a good quality player at TE (or #2 WR for that matter) in order to have an even adequate offense? I think the answer is clearly yes. Are Campbell, Euhus or Neufeld quality players at TE? I think the answer to that question unfortunately is no. hey are OK but not quality players. Campbell has shown occaisional flashes of brilliance but as an older player a year removed from a major injury he simply is not the quality TE qwe need. Euhus has never shown he is and is coming off his injury. Neufeld is a jorneyman at best. True Everett has had no chance to prove himself, but potential simply means you have not done anything yet. I think Badol has the right cut on this because I would feel about as comfortable counting upon the unproven essetially rookie Everett to be an adequate TE about as comfortable as I would feel counting upon Aiken to be my number #3 WR. It could happen but I certainly would not count on it. I think it overstates the case to claim it would be equal to expecting Aiken to be our #2 because that ain't gonna happen in real life and there is some chance that Everett who essentially was a red shirt in his first pro year might possibly surprise and be a high quality TE from the start. However, the Bills need a real answer as a back-up at TE.

In many ways it is hard to say who the other WR should be as we have lil' true idea what type of O we are going to run. I do not think we will have the depth of personnel at WR to run the same type of O Fairchild ran in St. L so i suspect we will see a run first/pass second O here next year, rather than the high-flying we may go deep on any play (but we still have Faulk) O Fairchild learned under Martz and ran successfully there. The players we have behind Evans for WR depth indicates to me that the run first mode will dictate getting a Jurevicious type possession guy as our #2. The first time I saw this specific suggestion of JJ here was from Simon a couple of weeks ago and it made sense to me then with my only concern being JJ being on the backside of his career. Watching him in the SB set that concern aside for me for next year as the threat he provides will remain until proven otherwise. The threat of Evans deep will force dts of him that will make JJ more effective. If JJ is also productive, then it will make the Fairchild job to utilize WM more as a pass catching threat with great RAC. If this is the triple threat then watch out. I wouild see Parrish being a great #3 providing a great speed threat that makes Evans and JJ very difficult to deal with in 3 WR sets. Howecver, I would not agree to the central premise here because Moulds renegotiated to a doable contract is a far more dangerous threat than JJ and I think while Moulds is not a Marvin Harrison, he is close to being that type of WR than Wayne is. The key to the Bills receiving game being dominating next year is not the question of who replaces Moulds but actually whether former RB coach Fairchild can utilize and squeeze more out of WM as a receiving threat and also get a credible back-up for WM if he is going to be so central to our O.

My Reed assessment is: 1. 1st year- quite impressive performance and not unreasonable to hope that he would continue to develop into a credible #2 (making good on the college production which got him theBiletnikoff award as the best WR in college) and thus tag and trade PP. 2. 2nd- Huge disappointment as his on field production actually digressed as he developed a bad case of the droppsies. 3. 3rd- Still showed no WR chops and a little ST performance in a season cut short by injury. Evans pick demonstrated the Bills were looking (and finding) elsewhere for current #2 and future #1. 4. 4th- Showed some good ST play and demonstrated he can even play a little #3 or 4 WR. However, drafting of Parrish and prescence of Aiken who is better on ST and is a #4 WR as well makes paying anything beyond the vet minimum and chump change too much for Reed. If the market gives him more than that I say adios and wish him well.

Not unreasonable at all, but I am curious why you are so up on Jerman and down on Gandy that you have them in the depth chart positions you have them.

Thanks!

As best as I can tell TD seemed to be motivated either conciously or unconciously by making sure he was not fired by a guy he hired as he was by Cowher in Pitts. I agree that they key point if one must choose one for his failure were his HC choices. I have less of a problem with the MM choice as it was a productive one last year and the discipline he showed staying the course until the winning streak was impressive. However, the same demons which brought him to hire a guy he could beat if he had to like GW over doing everything he could to attract Lewis here or make a good judgement to hire Fox seem to be the same demons which made him: 1. Stupidly extend rather than cut Bledsoe after two seasons when it would have been a wash for the Bills to do this. 2. Realize belatedly that Bledsoe no longer was QB enough to lead this team to glory so he cut him with the additional cap hit of doing so and handed the job to JP who himself commented that this was the wrong way to win the job. Just as with last year, I think MM (and Clements) can do the job under the right conditions, but ultimately it was the demon of trying to prove himself which was TD and our undoing.

I also disagree with giving him the starting job regardless of his play on the field and the other person who agrees with me is JP Losman who when he was handed the starting job by the cut of Bledsoe based on his brief QB in training appearances he said that it was the wrong way to win the job but he would do the best he could. To simply hand him the job for training purposes regardless of how he plays is simply the wrong way to build a winner. My sense is that a big part of the Bills D sucking last year was that the team and players lost their "edge" when they sensed that TD had decided to use the 05 season as a pre-season training camp. What I call the "edge" only is a small marginal difference, but in this highly competitive league where the difference between the eventual SB winner getting blown out 31-0 by a Bills team they eventually blew out 0-31 in the final game, small mental differences in play make huge differences on the field. I'd start JP even if he was not as good as Holcomb in the first game if his play in pre-season and the feel he produces in camp is good enough that the team seems to feel he has a good shot at being a quality QB before the mid-point of the season. However, if he shows limited mental progress or continued difficulty translating his very good skills into being a consistent winner, I would go with Losman and ask/demand that JP somehow show me some stuff in practice, as an ionjury replacement or in mop-up duty which forces me to bench Holcomb.

Is anybody sold on him that he can produce as a NFL QB in 2006? If you are sold on this then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sale ypu as well. The good thing about this is that it is going to be settled on the field. it strikes me as silly to either declare him a definite bust or to declare him a definite SB quality QB at this point. Folks can obviously have reasonable opinions about whether they think he can step up this year, but none of these opihnions are stone cold locks and I suspect he will be a much different quality QB at the end of the year than at the beginning.

I think the problem here is that any assessment of Gray which tends toward the extreme (as fan posts often do) must take the road of ignoring or discounting actual D production under Gray or the view simply is stupid. A view that Gray is a great (or even veery good) DC has to somehow explain or discount the Bills D performance under his guidance as DC in 2001, 2002, and 2005. A view that gray sucks at DC needs to somehow explain or discount the Bills D performance performance under his guidance as DC in 2003 and 2004. As our spiritual leader Rodney King would say why can't we just get a long. Bothe extreme cuts leave something to be desired and their seems to be a more accurate assessment of Gray somewhere in the middle. 2001- Gray's D did not produce Ws on the field and that is the real name of that tune. However, almost all the Bills staff gets a mulligan for bad performance that year as we were in the midst of cap hell. However, it is instructive that the one person who did not get a mullign even though he was still under contract was OC Sheppard. His O was bad but it was bad in many ways because of him and his QB. He paid the price with his job and the fact no one complained and that the O performance improved drastically in 2002 with a new OC and QB are indicators that placing extraordinary blame on Sheppard was probably correct. What does this mean for Gray/GW and their D? It actually puts the performance of being an even more impressive version of inadequate play than simply giving him a mulligan for bad players. The D performance that year was actually better than I expected (I did not expect much) particularly with the injury to Cowart and mishandling of the HJ/JH cuts (part of the blame for this misassessment lays on Gray's door). I remember the D as generally performing well for 3/4 quarters and then falling apart in crunch time. This to me was a sign of good gameplanning but in the end poor play by the players and/or poor training by the coaches and poor exectution by the team. For that year: Was Gray great? No! Was Gray very good? Probably not. Was Gray good? Probably yes. Was Gray less to blame for this debacle than Sheppard, the QB and the O? Almost certainly. 2002- Again Gray's D did not produce and I think he deserves a good chunk of the blame for this one. The O was productive for much of the year under Bledsoe as Moulds, Henry and Bledsoe all got a Pro Biowl nod and PP did not despite catching 94 passes. The D production did improve as the season went on, but as the O's output also generally dropped as well and then had an upsurge with reasonable weather in our last game against Cincy, I think that the explanation for both occurences is at least in part from games like the bitter cold than even stoned Favre in GB and the monsoon against SD here. The main fault of the D I would point to in this year was poor player assessment of how much guys on their way out like Jenkins who we had inked in at SS or Robinson at OLB had left. They sucked (as the Pennington fake and TD run on Robinson showed and the benching of Jenkins to allow the poor playing Wire to take the SS spot show. The question is only whether these poor assessments were primarily the blame of GW (even in this case Gray cannot escape being at some fault) or primarily the blame of Gray being too much of a player's coach. 2003- LeBeau's first year provided some hint that maybe it was running an inappropriate scheme (again this would be Gray's fault to some extent as it is his D even if he was just following dumb orders from GW) that was part of the lack production. I had pretty much concluded that Gray and GW bigtime sucked after the first two year's of D non-performance and GW's chosen OC deserving getting canned. I assumed that Gray was merely kept because if you fired GW's DC as well it is pretty weird keeping him around. However, Gray simply impressed me by mastering the zone blitz quickly and well enough to do all the playcalling. Gray did actually appear to do this work as if he was merely LeBeau's puppet for playcalling, I don't think LeBeau would have missed doing the playcalling so much that he left. All signs oint to rather than LeBeau deserving all the credit for this D ranking 5th statistically among all Ds, that it in fact was a LeBeau/Gray (or maybe Gray/LeBeau) collaboration. The real stretch of an excuse here seems to be the claim that it was all LeBeau's work rather than the claim Gray did some good work here as part of the team and in fact did the lead work as the game playcaller. 2004- This was the year where gray really showed what he could do. With LeBeau gone, there was no question of the results being to Gray's blame or credit. It was LeBeau's scheme and though Gray honestly must be givn credit for mastering it quickly and well enough to playcalling in 2003, it was reasonable to worry that there would be a significant downturn in D production under Gray without LeBeau's guidance. In 2004 LeBeau would not be there to do gameplanning for individual games, nor would he be there to analyze the first half and design mid-game adjustments, nor would he be there to implement these adjustments quickly. LeBeau would also not be there to design and install D improvements during the bye week. Yet, not only did the team not see a statistical downturn from 5th in the NFL (a top 10 ranking would have been good but almost certainly be a sign that 2004 progress was mostly this was LeBeau's work), but in fact it's output improved statistically from 5th to 2nd in the NFL. Certainly part of this improvement was likely facing weaker teams in 2004 than in 2003 (actually it is not like our '03 opponents were some offensive juggernaut) but overall folks who try to explain or excuse the 04 improvement as being LeBeau's work would have a much better case to make if the result slipped or merely remained the same against weaker opposition. However, the D statistical output improved as it should have against weaker opposition. I think by far the more credible explanation is that under Gray alone, the team performed at least as well under him alone racking up even more impressive results against the weaker opposition rather somehow claiming this was all due to work done by LeBeau before. When one takes into account that LeBeau had zero, nada, zilch, and no role in 2004 individual gameplans for opponents, had no role in designing or installing mid game adjustments and had no role in bye week adjustments, it is simply incredible to give LeBeau all or most of the credit for the 2004 D output. LeBeau is a far better coach (and D coach as shown in us losing the final game of 2004 to Pitts) than Gray, but Gray's work in 2005 was extremely good. 2005- As good as Gray's D production was in 2004, it certainly sucked bigtime this past season. However, again based on reality it seems like little more than fan wailing and bleating to blame all of this failure on Gray. he is simply a mixed bag of good work in some circumstances and bad output in other circumstances. I think 2005 certainly showed gray's lackings. however, they appear to me to be an inability to put his D over the top in a dysfunctional or less than perfect teams as great DCs like Buddy Ryanor marvin Lewis were able to do, and not some overarching indictment that he always fails. The facts seem to be that Gray did well in 2003 and 2004 and folks cam try to excuse these results as not having anything to do with him, but that argument is pretty feeble and does not line up with the events.

I like the idea of folks presenting other options for starters as I did not worry much about it as the time since it became pretty clear that despite his horrendous 2003 TD was going to stick with Bledsoe and unforutnately extend him. Bledsoe was a great trade for us prior to the 2002 season as after a 3-13 season forced on us by cap hell, we desperately needed at least a .500 QB to replace the failed RJ and the cut Flutie. Our choices seem to be FAs like Chris Chandler and Jeff Blake. Thus, getting Bledsoe for nothing for the 2002 season with the 2003 pick (which TD replaed with a phenomenal tagging and trading of PP was a great move to make when it was done. Unfortunately, Bledsoe was so bad as the GW team imploded in 2003 that overall he simply was a wash for the Bills if we had cut him then. TD finally figured out that the extension was merely throwing good money after the wash, but the damage was done. Though I never looked at the alternatives seriously enough to engage in the fantasy of what we should have done, I think the alternatives you present are interesting also: 1. I think if you keep Bledsoe as a starter you have to draft Losman. It was clear to me he probably was not going to lead this team to the playoffs in 04 (MM and Clements along with Bledsoe did an impressive job even coming close in 04), but he clearly was not the Bills QB of the future. Giving away the resources needed to move up to get Rivers, Manning, or RoboQB would have been fatal for this team likely resulting in an 04 result which likely would have looked a lot like 05 did for us. By trading the future consideration and a later pick for Losman the Bills at least gave themselves a shot at having a QB of the future from the draft an still got Evans who was a pivotal acquisition for this team. I simply do not see option 1 as realistically possible because if you keep Bledsoe you almost have to trade for Losman as there was clearly no QB available worth a high pick in the 2005 draft. 2.I like Kelly Holcomg, but if his lengthy good career he has demonstrated that he is a great back-up capable of playing a great game here or there (even in the playoffs) but he has not demonstrated that he is consistent starter quality, This year he showed for example that he is signficantly better than JP Losman was last year, but as he really failed to get much more than adequate play out of this O in his appearances for the Bills this year he demonstrated his limitations. Beyond a good episode here and there he simply has not shown the consistency necessary to be an adequate starter. For example he showed some signs of life in the game against Cincy, but in the final game against the Jets (as he did in the final quarters against NE) he demonstrated he is not someone you want to count upon as more than being a great #2 QB on your team. 3. Warner is a rich man;s Kelly Holcomb. At least he is a has-been in comparisons to Holcomb likely being a never-will-b, but Warner's best days are behind him. His play is not worth the cap investment it takes to get him. 4. Trading up for RoboQB would likely have been the worse choice of these options. The Bills 04 team was not nearly as good or had the same benefits which helped RoboQB develop into a quality starter right from the beginning in Pitts. If we had Big Ben as our our starter in 04, even though Big Ben as a total player or as a rookie QB is far better than Losman my guess is that 04 with Big Nen starting would have looked much like 05 with Losman starting. RoboQV has demonstrated that he is a far more talented player than JP. However, the rookie Big Ben demonstrated by his play thst a key to his success was that the powerful Pitts running game gave him the time to become a pro and could be depended upon to provide a stable base at the start of games, to convert crucial third downs and kill clock at the end of games. The line led by players of Faneca;s talent really allowed Big Ben to learn what a Hines Ward could do. Certainly RoboQBs play was part of this success, but as he demonstrated with an interception filled poor performance in the playoff game against a great NE squad with a badly depleted secondary, he was still a rookie and could not be counted upon in crunch time. If the Bills had RoboQB in 04 his development would have been set back a lot. Even Big Ben says a critical part of his development as a QB who proved capable of leading Pitts to an SB win this year was that he simply sucked against NE in the conference championship lst year and he swore it would not happen again. If Big Ben had been the Bills QB in 04 it is diubtful to me he would have had this experience he had in 04 til 06 or later with the Bills. Our running game would still have been in the midst of the upgrade from Henry to WM and the OL would still have been piss-poor even with the addition of another player through the draft. Add to that the team would be minus whatever they gave up in 04 to move up in the 04 draft and RoboQB would have been lucky not to suffer the same injury fate which cost JP gametime in 04. 5. I think they draft Losman, but the question would have been who would have been a better QB to groom him than Bledsoe was. Someone with Holvomb's temperatment and better than Bledsoe skills would have been the best choice but I'm not sure if that man existed. Bledsoe probably has the temperament to be a back-up as he proved to be once Brady took his job, but at the price we gave him to extend and start this was not doable. Holcomb simply has not demonstrated the consistent success necessary to be counted upon to start as an NFL QB.

This seems like a dispute over semantics rather than reality. If one judges making "only $8-9 million dollars in salary as being "screwed" when under other circumstances you could have received a roughly $18 million bonus payment in a bonus prorated over the life of the contract then he got screwed. However if one is going to chose this terminology then one should also recognize that almost all people would be very happy with life if it screwed them in this way. Brees had the chance to make way way too much money for playing a boys game taken away from him. Thus he only made way too much money instead of way way too much money. I think a better word to use to truly reflect this situation is rather than terming Brees as being screwed instead it is prorbably more accurate to say he was marginally disadvantaged by a fair application of the rules. Since he got hurt this margin is a significant one, and that should not be ignored. However, it is simply hard for many folks to call someone "only" getting $8 million in a one year salary as being screwed. He probably hopes he gets screwed again and again like this.

Bimgo!

i think folks keep apologizing for Jerry Gray because the indictments of him as being a horrible or even a below average DC simply do not match up with the facts. Jerry Gray is simply not great, nor is he entirely bad or clueless. Like most people he is a mixed bag of doing some things well and some things poorly. The question is if one agrees with this mixed bag are: 1. Where are his strengths and where are his weaknesses and can the strengths be emphasized and the weaknesses avoided or compensated for in order to get good results out of a D under his guidance. 2. Is a good assessment of this mixed bag simply that he is average, slightly below average or slightly better than average. My sense is that overall that Gray is a slightly better than average DC. He can suck with the worst of them under bad circumstances and the Bills had these circumstances in 2001, 02, and 05. Weaknesses- 1. Unlike the great DCs he cannot produce a good result when the O or overarching leadership is bad. DCs like Buddy Ryan with the 85 Bears or Marvin Lewis with the Ravens ran a D that was so dominating it virtually did not matter how positive the O performance was as long as they did not make mistakes the team would dominate. Gray was not only unable to get this performance from his Ds, but he demonstrated that when an idiot like GW was running the O his Ds fell apart in the final minutes or withing the context of dysfunction like when Gilbride ran GWs O, or the Bills melted down under MM, his results were simply bad. 2. He is a bit too much a player's coach and depended upon old hands who were players with him lik Jenkins or Robinson at LB to have something left in the tank when they did not. Strengths- 1. He proved to be an incredibly quick study as he mastered the LeBeau design zone blitz quickly enough to do quality play calling in 03. 2. He demonstrated the ability to learn the gameplanning and adjustment duties quickly also as without LeBeau he demonstrated quslity production in both these aspects of the game in 04. It strikes me as illogical to want to give credit to either GW or LeBeau along for any good things to be said about the Bills D during Gray's time. 1. GW is a great DC, but simply is a lousy HC based on his performance. The fact that we suddenly saw vast improvement of the D performance with Gray doing the playcalling when they jettisoned the GW scheme and went to the LeBeau scheme is a pretty clear showing that any 01, 02 failings were as much GW if not more his fault that Gray's. 2. LeBeau deserves a ton of credit for the Bills improving his design, but not giving Gray some props for this performance makes no sense. A. If Gray did nothing in 04 and it was all LeBeau's doing why did LeBeau choose to leave. He was not doing the playcalling in 04. If this was an important thing to the D why did he miss it. It was LeBeau\s design and he deserves a lot of credit for this, but it was Gray's playcalling in 03 and he deserves credit for this. B. The claim that the D's improvement in 04 was a residual of LeBeau having been here the year before ignores the fact that LeBeau had no role in individual gameplanning in 04 or in making adjustments during each game. Gray's D produced in this regard as the #2 statistically ranked D in 04. LeBeau whoseD was #1 was better but Gray was pretty good. In addition to not having LeBeau at all in 04 for individual game planning or in game adjustments, the recalibration and retraining of the team which occured in bye week of 04 was all Gray leadership. C. The easier schedule issue is a real one, but if the move to Gray alone from the LeBeau/Gray partnership (folks do not seem to want to even give Gray credit for any good result in 02 actually) actually showed Gray was bad, the team's statistical improvement from being the #5 D in 03 to #2 in 94 is not consistent with these results. There would be a good case if even despite weaker opposition the D only heald its own without LeBeau or dropped to #10 from #5. However, certainly in statistical measures or by the observations of most observers, the D performance actually improved under Gray wihout LeBeau. Definitely it took a downturn in 05, but this seems more to me to be an effect of Gray's weakness in producing great D results in the face of the O being bad or in the face of poor HC leadership. I think that the facts indicate that Gray is at worst an average DC and actually I think he is slightly better than average. However, he was not a great DC by any stretch of the imagination. I think folks keep apologizing for him because those who attack him do so with arguements that simply do not correspond to the facts.

Exactly right! If one insists on starting and ending the TD story with assessment of one issue (if one insists on this then you insist on being WRONG because winning is not about a decision(s) in one area of team building, its about how you get decisions in multiple areas (the draft, FAs, contract negotiations, teaching and development, coaching game decisions, etc. to all fit together) then one should foolishly focus on the coaching selection issues rather than the draft. The 2002 draft was by far TD's worst, but even this one contained a number of decisions which were quite reasonable choices at the time (trading down was the best way to handle the #4 as the worthwhile picks like Freeney could have been taken lower and if the Bills had pulled off the same results as they did when TD traded down in 2001 it would have been great- he cllearly was capable of doing it as he did it the year before but it takes two to tango to trade). This draft analysis is detailed but leaves out key facts that you think a detailed analysis would note: 1. McKinnie is soild mostly because he is adequate with MN in their troubled set-up and he had mucho problems from the start. MW is a clear bust, but it is by no means a sure thing that McKinnie will not also prove to be a bust in real terms of would have been if the Bills took him and subjected him to development by Vinklarek and Ruel. 2. Reed's career can be dismissed to this point as an unproductive player on an unproductive team. However, he did look very good his first year and few to no one really second-guessed credibly his play making it reasonable to allow PP to walk. Again when one takes into account the full story rather than insisting on incorrectly only focusing on the draft, PP's real world non-production with AT that gave the Bills a 1st with which they chose McGahee was probably one of the best pieces of work done by TD. 3. A real analysis of the Denney pick needs to take into account the reality of the Bills having a desperate need at DE (as shown by them having to pick Kelsay the next year not simply because Denney was not good enough but because we badly needed another DL player to actually run a rotation). One can argue that Denney was not worthy of being the first DE taken in a draft that needed a DE and one would be right. However, the reality is that since the Bills had such a primary need on OL and no DE was near worth a #4 pick then the question is whether Denny is worth your second pick. He was not but what other DE at the time was and the Bills again did not trade down for him as would have matched his worth, they instead took a WR who many had going in the first who actually produced his rookie year to make this look like a good move. The question whether given reality Denney was worth your third pick or trading up for him. This was not an unreasonable choice to make in my view. All in all, I think TD deserved to be fired, but his drafting, even looking at the sorry results of his 2002 draft do not effectively make this case. What makes the case for firing him is: 1. His clear poor decision-making in the real world as he chose the had to be fired GW over the SB reaching Fox and the incredibly productive with Cincy Lewis. 2. Further, GW hired under TD, the had to be fired Sheppard, the idiots Vinky and Ruel, and needed LeBeau to be brought in to resurrect the D. Replacing Sheppard with Gilbride was simply a move from bad to momentarily good but eventually worse. 3. Finally, he chose MM to replace GW but the entire thing melted down this season costing TD )andMM by resignation) their jobs. This draft analysis is interestng, but in the end full of sound and fury and signifying little.

The situation with NC seems pretty straight-forward. NC neither played well (a top 5 CB in the NFL) by most standards or his public goals (the #1 CB in the NFL). Yet, he pretty clearly has more than a credible case for being the #1 CB on the Bills (though McGee is pushing him for this designation in the view of most) and the likely cost of an FA CB of his age and past quality (a Pro Bowl nod last year) make him an important Bill to keep. The franchise tag dropping down after Winfield's contract moves into a lower salary amount this year makes tagging him a reasonable way for us to keep him particularly since the overall cap # for NFL teams is up. As a Bills fan, I'd prefer if we tag him as next year is a contract year for him and he will work hard to perform. If he is all about (or moatly about) the $ he may lose a little of his edge if we sign him long term.

I think NC is tagged and stays here. Leverage dictates if he wants the dollars he will have to sign for far less than he would have gotten last year after a Pro Bowl season, but thats life and even at a lower amount it is far more money than he has ever seen and will be set for life. It actually might be best for the Bills if he actually refused to negotiate and played under the tag. We can afford it with the cap going up and he will play next year like it was a contract year because it will be.