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Mort still can't get over Donahoe firing


FluffHead

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Actually, this was a HUGE miscalculation. He mortgaged the 2005 draft to take Losman in 2004 on the reasoning that there were no QBs in 2005 worth taking. Aaron Rodgers was drafted in 2005. Epic fail with the forecast scouting = Modrak. The conspiracy theories that Donahoe sometimes reacted to what Pittsburgh was doing may not be wholly true, but sometimes one has to wonder if there wasn't a grain of truth there. Mularkey later said he knew Losman wasn't ready. :(

 

Donahoe was aggressively negotiating a trade-up to grab Roethlisberger, but couldn't close a deal when Houston balked on any move.

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I would reverse that...but I know I am in the minority. Particularly in the Jauron/Levy/Brandon time, there was truly awful football management.

 

I really think the Bills were much closer to being a playoff team when TD was fired, than they are right now. Name a GM who doesn't make mistakes. What I liked about TD, he was a master at working the cap, rarely (if ever) over-payed FA's, and took real, bold moves to address issues. They weren't always the right moves, but he also wasn't afraid to cut his losses. People point the Mike Williams and McGahee picks as terrible...but almost any GM would have picked Mike Williams, with the same needs, when TD did. And, for all the BS about McGahee, he has a solid, if not spectacular, career. He pissed off Bills fans on his way out, but there were few gripes (that I recall) about him as a teammate, or his lack of work ethic.

 

To me, TD's biggest blunder was forcing Mularkey to make Losman the starter, before he was ready. It was bad for the team, and possibly, hurt Losman. It may have been the right move to dump Bledsoe at the time, but Kelly Holcomb wasn't an adequate replacement.

 

In the end, it was more the relationship that TD had with the owner, and some other front office people that likely got him fired...more so than the wins and losses.

 

 

 

Well...this may all be true, but lets look back on the drafts since, in another 6 years, and see how bad those were.

 

I will go to my grave swearing that trading up to pick JP Losman in the first round was not as bad a move as trading up to pick John "friggin" McCargo! A guy still waiting, after 6 years, to make an impact of any kind, other than a franchise salary cap.

Tom Donahoe is still the reason why this team will not a lot of big free agents... Remember Donahoe said that Drew Brees would never make it in the NFL.....LOL !!!!!

Go Bills!!!!

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Tom Donahue has not been hired as a general manager for any NFL team post his Bills employ.

 

That's all I need to know. I don't know what Mort's problem is but it's all really old news.

 

Jabari Greer is a good football player. I feel some of his performance is in part to Gregg Williams who is the definition of a man who's talents are far better coordinating rather than head coaching. You have Gregg Williams in a position which suits his talents best and he makes all the players on the defense perform better.

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In other news, Marv Levy, Russ Brandon, and Buddy Nix will or haven't been employed by another NFL team in a Personnel role since their tenure or when their time with Buffalo is over.

 

The issue isn't so much what a guy did or didn't do 6+ years ago, but rather Buffalo's management structure which does not empower their GM nor provides adequate resources to build teams. Free Agency this year will tell the story whether this team is focused on improving or not. I'm not a fan of hoping draft picks can play out of the box, which seems to be a hallmark of the Bills from 2006-present.

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The issue isn't so much what a guy did or didn't do 6+ years ago, but rather Buffalo's management structure which does not empower their GM nor provides adequate resources to build teams.

However in the case of Donahoe, he was reportedly given complete autonomy to run the Bills football department.

 

He was such an autocrat that it was reported that he refused to return Ralph Wilson's phone calls… one of the things which eventually led to his dismissal.

 

Donahoe had a lot of power but unfortunately made some bad decisions.

 

 

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[bing! Shocking no one ever notes this.

 

It's the first thing I think of everytime Mort goes on the Donahoe crusade. He can be bitter all he wants, but I don't think Donahoe will be getting a job in the NFL anytime soon. Too much time has gone by for him to be on anyone's short list.

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I still think this franchise would be in a better place today, if TD hadn't been canned. I also don't think Mike Mularkey was a bad coach. What happened after TD was fired really set this franchise back.

 

So true. Brandon and Levy were clueless drafting.

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TD was a very mediocre GM who struggled to find a coach and QB as well as put the team in a bad cap situation BUT he did stack the D with talent and found a couple players here and there on offense. While Marv/Jauron/Brandon were terrible at running the team. In the end both era's were turrible to quote Charles Barkley.

 

As far as Nix goes the verdict is still out. His two drafts are so so. His two firsts in Dareus and Spiller are looking like solid picks BUT his seconds and thirds haven't made a huge impact yet (Carrington and Troup specifically as Williams and Sheppard haven't had that second year). If Nix and Chan want to keep their jobs they are going to have to keep the talent that is here like SJ and Bell and make a big impact in the draft and free agency.

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I can't link from my mobile, but mortensen just tweeted along the lines if "sure is funny how many Players Donahoe signed in buffalo are playing great football elsewhere (Jabari Greer)". He's correct about Greer but there aren't many elsewhere. Seemed like another shot at buffalo by mort when I thought that ship had sailed

 

 

Yes all of our recent GMs - Donahoe, Levy, and Brandon/Jauron, and Nix have all done a better job of finding UDFAs then they have at finding impact players in the first 3 rounds.

 

Maybe that is why UDFAs do so well in Buffalo, the competition here sucks?

 

Maybe that is why we have not made the playoffs in a decade and why we have no pro bowl players?

 

Thanks Mort.

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I can't link from my mobile, but mortensen just tweeted along the lines if "sure is funny how many Players Donahoe signed in buffalo are playing great football elsewhere (Jabari Greer)". He's correct about Greer but there aren't many elsewhere. Seemed like another shot at buffalo by mort when I thought that ship had sailed

 

It seems that Mort doesn't realize that TD has not picked up a GM gig since he left Buffalo.

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I can't link from my mobile, but mortensen just tweeted along the lines if "sure is funny how many Players Donahoe signed in buffalo are playing great football elsewhere (Jabari Greer)". He's correct about Greer but there aren't many elsewhere. Seemed like another shot at buffalo by mort when I thought that ship had sailed

 

Because Mort is right? Ralph should have just left TD alone and things might have worked out. But as TD said a couple years after he was fired, he couldn't get Ralph to quit calling him 2+ times a damn day

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Because Mort is right? Ralph should have just left TD alone and things might have worked out. But as TD said a couple years after he was fired, he couldn't get Ralph to quit calling him 2+ times a damn day

That would make me want to leave, anyway.

 

Nevertheless, another problem Donahoe had was seemingly drafting the skill position players instead of building the lines. Mike Williams was the right pick at the time, but he just didn't work out. He let Pat Williams and Antoine Winfield go (and if anyone thinks it's because Gregg Williams didn't want fat players, then why was Sam Adams on the team?) and never replaced them with good enough players...it was like he always tried to pick up players off the scrap heap and win by building a cheap team.

 

Gregg Williams was a gamble when John Fox & Marvin Lewis were the hot commodities - it turns out Williams is a better DC than head coach. Mularkey seemed like he was on the way to being good, but didn't want to be part of the mess after Donahoe was let go and Marv came in.

 

Mort should just let this thing go. Donahoe won't be hired for anything more than a consultant job, so there's no point in trying to praise his draft picks from 8 years ago.

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