BillsVet

The Bills need an owner who will let football people make football decisions. He's had mixed results when he delegates this responsibility of running the franchise. Polian was outstanding and TD was horrible. Brandon cannot be considered a GM versed in personnel, nor could his predecessor. Still, even though RB has the title of GM, he can't hire and fire coaches. The TD experience is not reason enough to avoid having to hire someone who can handle personnel.

Consider the "GM" and then what his feelings were after the inner-circle met in Detroit at the end of December. I don't believe for a second that Brandon was crazy about having DJ shoved down his throat. No one can market that guy to a fan base starving for success. TO was released on 3/4. He signed with Buffalo on 3/7. Other teams may have been interested, but none were willing to match Buffalo's price, ergo he goes to Buffalo. That was a Brandon marketing move in the wake of keeping DJ, because he knew how season ticket sales were faring.

There are those who have disallowed any sort of criticism of the team on the basis of it being preseason. Last season many of these same fans refused to permit criticism when Buffalo went 0-3 in their first division action after a 5-1 start. After three years of football and four off-seasons to acquire more talent, we're still wondering if this team is good enough. That should be enough evidence to indicate the rebuild wasn't good enough. It's time for a complete re-structuring of this team. Much like their offense, the Bills front office personnel keeps doing the same thing and expects better results.

Drafted as a SS but has been switched to FS for this fourth full season. When top 10 picks change positions, it's not usually a good moment in their careers. That is, unless you think Bryan Scott is another Troy Polamalu.

RW may be a wealthy man, but his football acumen is dreadful. Go back and see how he signed OJ just before the regular season in 76. Unfortunately he failed to the notify his HC Lou Saban, who was planning an offense that would not have Simpson. Or how Chuck Knox was not re-signed after the 82 season and left for greener pastures. Knox and Saban were the big reasons behind Buffalo's only 3 playoff appearances (in the NFL) from 1970-1987. RW likes control and struggles with people like Saban, Knox, Polian, Butler, et al. who figure they'll handle football decisions. So why not hire a coach who'll suck but won't question ownership?

TD's drafts of 2004 and 05 hurt this team a great deal. When I see guys from the 04 and 05 draft class getting long term deals (Rivers, E. Manning) it makes the selections of Losman and other misses hurt more. Levy was set up to fail not only because he didn't know what he was doing, but partially because TD's 04-05 drafts stunk. Brandon never scouted a player, negotiated a player contract, or made a trade before January 2008. His being sold as a legitimate GM (with RW making the big moves) is an insult to the intelligence of serious football fans. Good teams have good GM's or personnel people: Polian, Jerry Reese, Andy Reid, Kevin Colbert, AJ Smith, Belichick, et al. Russ isn't even in their hemisphere, and worse, he can't make the big decisions when they must be made. No one can doubt that RW and Littman made the call to keep DJ.

Say it with me: zero TD's scored by the first team offense in more than a half of football. It's the pre-season, but we are allowed to draw conclusions when the starters are not as good as other team's starters. Regardless of whether you're willing to admit it, there are similarities between the post-season and regular season.

The Bills are quite adept at building a team with sufficient depth to avert disaster if one significant player goes down. They don't need Levi Brown nor Derrick Brooks simply because OT and LB are already very deep with late round draft picks, street free agents, and undrafted free agents.

With all the trouble they've had against 3-4 defenses, yesterday should have been a better opportunity than what they made it. If it's true they trotted out a vanilla game-plan on offense and defense, my question is why? It seems like they're more concerned with not showing anything than actually using pre-season to prepare for the regular season. We'll see if they change their tune when Pittsburgh hosts them next week. If we thought GB was rough, I've got a feeling Harrison and Woodley will be a much bigger challenge.

Even though the league can keep teams relatively equal in salary cap dollars, they can do nothing about the people who actually use that money. There's no question a chasm exists between the bottom feeders and those who regularly have post-season success. PIT, IND, and SD aren't big UFA users. NE hasn't signed a big UFA since Adalius Thomas in 2007. Yet all four win season after season. I chalk it up to talent evaluation in the draft, and they've all built long term successful organizations this way. I recall when Jerry Jones was spending big in the mid 90s and pushing cap jail off one more season. It didn't work. Now, teams realize success does not lie with spending more in UFA, but remaining far beneath the cap max and doing the due diligence before draft day. It is possible to rebuild quickly, so long as a team has the right people upstairs who can identify and draft talent. Atlanta and Miami did it, but not without their ownership looking in the mirror and realizing there was a huge problem. My problem with the Bills is on two fronts: coaching and management. There's no question talent exists on both sides of the ball, although not as much as I'd like in the trenches. 2009 should be interesting, but if they have a bad season, I'm interested to see how management beyond the coaching staff is addressed.

How many teams open the season 0-3 and make the playoffs? Starting 0-3 You'd better jump to conclusions after Week 3. Do the research first.

I was not at RWS during the final days of TD's tenure. But I've read and spoke with season ticket holders from 2005 that it was got ugly. It's still August and opening day isn't for another 3 weeks, but if this team starts off slow, I anticipate big problems at RWS. You can only hype a team so much before fans demand results. For three years the team has talked about the good things without really changing anything. Promising everything and delivering nothing is wearing thin among Bills fans.

DJ's biggest issue in nearly 9 seasons as a NFL HC is an inability to find good coordinators. No one he's hired as a DC or OC has ever been considered for a NFL HC job. Thus far, he's gone through six coordinators in 8 seasons of being a full time HC. None of them (Gary Crowton, John Shoop, Greg Blache, Steve Fairchild, Perry Fewell, and Turk Schonert) should be considered innovative or up and coming coordinators. If the man can't pick a coordinator, then I can't see him knowing his own players.

The front office has been essentially in place for the better part of the decade. They have not earned the benefit of the doubt, and waiting for them to deliver in personnel is worthless. In the last five season of AFC play, 4 teams (PIT, NE, IND, and SD) account for 17 of the 30 playoff appearances. Obviously the executives in those franchises, Kevin Colbert, Belichick/Pioli, Polian, and AJ Smith have it figured out. Another five teams (NYJ, DEN, BAL, TEN, and JAC) have been in the post-season twice. That means 9 out of the 16 AFC teams account for 90% of the playoff berths. Just four teams have not made the playoffs in the past five seasons of AFC play: BUF, OAK, CIN, and HOU. This front office is being schooled, especially the owner who isn't a Mike Brown, but still has his hands all over this failure. After three seasons, I expect more. This teams is 3 seasons removed from an almost total rebuild. They need to win now, not 2-3 years from now. And that means nuking the organization if they don't win in 2009.

Let's face it, the Bills aren't making long term plans because the owner is nearly 91. The stadium lease is up after 2012, the front office is eerily the same as it was when TD was around, and the HC couldn't get fired despite going 2-8 to finish 2008. What this team needs is something akin to what Arthur Blank, then owner Wayne Huizenga, and Clark Hunt have done with Atlanta, Miami, and KC respectively. They blew up the franchise, from GM on down and went into total rebuild mode. Except a funny thing happened to the first two teams last season. They hired competent front office people in Tom Dimitroff and Bill Parcells who brought a new attitude to the team in the wake of repeated failures. TD may have failed, but that's no cause to avoid allowing football people to make football decisions.

I definitely agree...in that the coaching staff has a propensity to place their own players into positions for failure. We used to say in the Army that people are either set up to fail or succeed. It's the job of the on-field managers, i.e. coaches, to know their personnel's strengths and weaknesses. I don't have the feeling DJ does, or he's unwilling to acknowledge it. How does a coach with 30+ seasons in the NFL not know what to do in pressure situations, or repeatedly make the wrong call? Personally, I believe he's just not that good and he knows it.

Starters versus starters last night was not encouraging. If we're to believe continuity is going to propel this team, then I expect more. The coaching staff remains the same, as do most of the starters on offense and defense, save the OL. Last night I saw a team with nearly a month of practicing and two preseason games regress from last week. For the record I like Edwards, but his last two games he's 17-21 for 124 yards. Losman used to have stat lines like that as well, although the OC has changed. It is indeed one preseason game, but teams should be improving during preseason, not getting worse. The "it's one game" argument carries no weight in my mind, preseason or regular season. I recall watching preseason in 07 and 08 with fans remarking that it was only preseason. Both of those years, it was definitely a foreshadowing of things to come. I firmly believe this season will be no different.

The Packers are in the midst of implementing a 3-4 defense under new DC Dom Capers. Trent mentioned that GB threw a lot of looks they weren't prepared for. I cannot help but remember him saying this, along with Posluszny last season. This is a trend with Buffalo coaches in that the team sees looks they're not prepared for. Unacceptable. Billboard Buffalo News I cannot comprehend the fact that the team didn't work against the 3-4. Their starting defense should be struggling, especially new 3-4 DE's and those OLB's like Kampman. But they didn't look bewildered against the Bills starting offense. Frankly I don't care how those second and third stringers play against their opposing backups. But in that first half, Buffalo clearly was beaten bad and after a month of practicing, I expect more. I truly don't think TO's presence would have changed much, but it's a convenient excuse to exempt the coaching staff from preparing the team. It's going to be a long season.

I have a feeling that as the season progresses there will more frequent max protect blocking called. I just purchased the 2009 Football Outsiders offering and their analysis notes that only the Chiefs went max protect less than the Bills. I just don't think they can sacrifice receiving options for blockers and there should be plenty of 2 TE sets. I do agree WRT to Elam, I wish Peters would have gotten a hand on the him. But it's absurd to make that play call, especially for a coach who's been in pro football more than 30 years.

It is such a subjective statistic, yet many fans who want nothing more than to malign Peters hang onto is as fact. Certainly pass protection schemes and other variables play into it, but tell that to those who flat out hate Peters and cite the 11.5 sacks allowed. I vividly recall Abram Elam running around Peters in the away Jets game last December. Yet how many OLT's are called on to block blitzing DB's? Not many, primarily because it's a mismatch.

That may be a stretch considering the schedule. 5-11 or 6-10 is very possible.

How many times does it take Turk and Dick to figure out the 3-4? Right, it's pre-season and they don't want to show too much. I forgot. Buffalo saw the 3-4 eight times last season and never developed a game plan for it. The thing which irritates me after tonight's performance is the GB put it into place just this off-season. We're not talking about NE's version here.

Playing timid? DJ and his coaches cannot help but impart a timidity onto many of their players. They coach scared, and it's no surprise some players, particularly TE, play scared. They don't take shots down the field, the defense won't blitz much, and physically they're dominated more often than not at the line of scrimmage. Conservative football is for the fourth quarter when you're up 21 points. The Bills seem to have a habit under DJ of playing that way until they're down big.

Jauron is a french name, correct? Because he's surrendering like a frenchman right now.

All right, I'm going to say it: Hamdan sucks. There's a reason he's never been trusted as more than a 3rd stringer. He has no touch on his throws, and regularly hoists up wounded ducks. May the chroisen ones now enter the fray.