2020 Our Year For Sure

Great thread. I'm with you. The way the schedule shakes out (CLE, SF, KC), we could very easily be 8-4 heading into a home game with Miami. Sure the last three weeks have hurt...but there's every reason to be optimistic. These are three very winnable games. You would have thought some of these people didn't sit through Gregggg and Mularkey and just hopped aboard the bandwagon when we were 4-0. Haven't any of you ever watched this team lose before? Suck it up! Shut your yappers, and keep fighting. That is what it means to be a Bills fan, to me. "Fight on, my men," Sir Andrew said. "A little I'm hurt but not yet slain. I'll just lie down and bleed awhile, then I'll rise and fight again." Time to rise, Buffalo. Circle the wagons. Go Bills!

Because the team doesn't have one quality pass rusher at the moment. The Giants watch Strahan walk away and Umeniyora go down for the year, and they still have Tuck and Kiwanuka generating one of the better pass rushes in the league. The Bills have nobody. Pass rush is the most important aspect of a defense imo. If whoever is 'buying the groceries,' even if it is Jauron, is unwilling to hunt down pass rushers and blockers instead of cornerbacks, then we need someone else to start going to the grocery store. Still, that doesn't necessarily mean he can't be a good chef.

I think thats pretty safe to say. Are you aware of some of the starting defensive lineups they fielded in some of the wins last year?

I'm not backing him as General Manager, I'm backing him as Head Coach. He has done well with the personnel he has. If you want to analyze his personnel decisions in the offseasons, I (probably ) won't interfere.

I'm sorry, but three straight losses are not going to cause me to give up on someone who has over the course of two and a half years performed better at his job than most expectations. We've won 5 games and lost 4...sure we're down right now, but what makes everyone so convinced we can't bounce back? We are right in the middle of this playoff picture, folks. These are indeed trying times. Its when your team is faced with a bit of adversity that your mettle as a fan is tested, not when your team is 4-0. The greatest coach in Buffalo Bills history once presented his team with the following: "'Fight on, my men,' Sir Andrew said. 'A little I'm hurt, but not yet slain. I'll just lie down and bleed awhile, then I'll rise and fight again.'" Where has that spirit gone, Buffalo? This Bills team was 1-3 last year, and nearly came back to make the playoffs. This year, we packed some early wins into our back pocket to minimize the damage from this snag in the road we seem to have hit. We are one game away from both the AFCE division leader(s), and the wild card holders. What is there to panic about? You can try to suggest that injuries are somehow the head coaches fault or you can give him credit for doing a decent job when the majority of his starting defense was sitting on the sideline last year. Its up to you. You can decide a conservative defensive style can't win in this league, or you can open your eyes to the fact that the Colts weren't any more aggressive with their defensive calls when they won the Super Bowl than we are now. Again, your decision. If you really want to know my opinion, I think its disgusting that Buffalo Bills fans have LOWERED themselves to saying things like, "We're going to lose anyway, so we might as well blitz like its Madden and throw in the towel." This team is sitting a game out of a playoff spot with 7 weeks yet to go! What makes you so sure we're going to lose? Have we not won more games than we've lost this year, running the defense as scripted by Dick Jauron and Perry Fewell? I'm so glad guys like Paul Posluszny, Marshawn Lynch and Lee Evans don't have the type of weak, squeamish mindsets you find in most of the crew on The Wall.

His tenure with the Bills speaks for itself. You can look at this thing any way you want to: you can just scope out the tip of the iceberg and note that he's lost more games than he's won, and conclude that he can never be a winning head coach. If you want to be pessimistic about it, that case is certainly available to you. Or you can dig just a bit deeper, and consider the personnel he's worked with during that time. In year 1, he overachieved. In year 2, he again overachieved. In year 3, he's 5-4 and in the thick of the AFC playoff hunt. Whats to complain about?

We're still here. Unfortunately there's going to be about 8 or 9 threads daily calling out Jauron until our next win, so we're not looking to get into a debate in every single one.

The bride played Fred on Angel. I was wondering if I'd see her again.

The rough time we've had against winning teams is certainly worrisome. Jauron is by no means perfect, and nobody here should claim they're 100% sure he's going to get us where we want to go. But until this becomes a real problem and keeps a Bills team that belongs in the playoffs from getting there, it isn't enough to say he should be out of a job. Which is exactly why I didn't use injuries as an excuse. And you may not care what his temperament is, but countless posters here have bitched about him not having "fire" or "passion." The bottom line is indeed the bottom line, that being that he's overachieved in two complete seasons, with the jury still being out on his third. So far the third season isn't going too badly: Jauron's Bills are over .500 and sitting in the thick of a playoff race.

If injuries are a legitimate excuse, then Jauron's tenure has been all the more impressive. I didn't want to go there.

And yet the Bills won more games under Dick Jauron in his only full seasons with the club than we had any right to expect, given their personnel. The very definition of overachieving. You may not like his temperament (in which case you probably wouldn't want this guy as your head coach either), but the results thus far have been positive. One tough skid where we've dropped 3 out of 4 doesn't change that. He's done well with what he had in his first two seasons, and just past the midway point in his third season, he has his team at 5-4 and right in the thick of the AFC playoff race. Its understood that the way he goes about his job rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but the W/L results during his tenure here don't justify all the complaining, imo.

Whatever floats your boat. The Bills have made it clear they disagree. http://blogs.nfl.com/2008/10/16/gonzalez-h...mself-to-blame/

lol So has Brian Moorman.

He's coached two complete seasons in Buffalo, and overachieved in both of them.

Yup. Jauron is a conservative control freak who vetoes any playcall from his offensive coordinator that involves downfield passes. I'm still working on exactly how JP Losman and Lee Evans once connected on two 80+ yard touchdowns in the same half.

Right, and this problem isn't solved by Fewell screaming into the headset, "JUST BLITZ!!!!!11" This defense isn't built to blitz at any of the three levels. The coverages aren't made for it, the secondary isn't built to play man-to-man bump and run, we're made to play with less than 4 linebackers on the field, and the linebackers aren't particularly good at blitzing. I'm afraid there's just going to be a lack of a pass rush until we can improve the personnel along the front four. It was foolish to go into another season with Kelsay/Denney manning a DE spot...some of us were ignored when we were screaming as much prior to the draft. All that said, I do think Fewell calls significantly more blitzes than people are giving him credit for...the posts saying he only calls 2 a game are laughable. Poz alone probably blitzes a good 4 times a week.

No. Its more important to have a roster spot for Matt Murphy, Copeland Bryan and Justin Jenkins than Angelo Crowell and Aaron Schobel.

Its not really about being excited, its about looking at the big picture.

There have been PLENTY of early round offensive linemen who have come out of school and been good from day one. Just about every first round guard whose been drafted in a good while.

I'm not sure we'll have the money to pay the going rate for quality FA linemen.

Maybe only one DE, we did take Ellis last year. I'm definitely down with two interior linemen and another DE though.

San Diego.

Who is Cooper Anderson?

Maybe its just the first time in the last 8 years.

I believe 'Sheed comes off their books as well.