Do You Think Its Possible...

[Bill from NYC]

Willis McGahee - carries 284, yards 1128, avg. 4.0, 13 TD's in only 12 starts. Not bad for 3/4th of a season and no OL. The biggest problem with the O was the limited QB who now resides in Dallas.

 

  I agree that the OL still needs to improve and I'm being patient. But the outright hysteria being promoted here does not impress me. Many have their minds already made up concerning the impending failure of Losman, the OL and the inability of our Coaching staff to improve anything. I may be concerned around Labor day, prior to the opener, if problems are SHOWN to be real, through training camp and actual pre-season action.

 

  Declaring certain doom a FACT in mid-March is beyond assinine.

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Mark, how many rushing TDs did the Bills have before WM was inserted as a starter? Rember, this is a "smashmouth" style offense, right?

 

My point is that Travis Henry and a rookie coach kept the Bills away from the playoffs just as much as did Drew. Wrt Travis, probably much more so.

[Fezmid]

  Declaring certain doom a FACT in mid-March is beyond assinine.

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Are you calling someone an ass?! Need I remind you about this:

http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?act=boardrules

 

 

I'm not predicting certain doom. However, there is major uncertainty. The FACT of the matter is that we went 9-3 over the last 12 games of the season and are now going to revamp the entire offense. Assuming Buffalo was even looking at any free agents (which I'm not so sure about myself...), if you had a chance to play in Buffalo with a completely new offense and an unproven QB or play on a different team that has been more established and the money was similar, where would you go?

 

(well, I guess I'd go to the Bills, but I'm a homer. ).

 

CW

[Mickey]

The players know something you obviously don't:  HE'S NOT A ROOKIE

Any rookie QB has no prior training or practice with an NFL team prior to mini camp after the draft.  Right now, JP is training every day at Ralph Wilson Stadium, while every rookie QB is nowhere near an NFL supervised schedule.  No rookie QB has practiced with veterans or had a team's elder statesman comment on how he was lighting it up against one of the NFL's best Ds in practice last December. 

 

My answer is that no player is worried about playing with 2nd year veteran J.P. Losman.

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The plain facts are that JP spent the better part of camp and the regular season carrying a clip board. No, he is not a pure rookie but he is not exactly a seasoned veteran either. Take the post that started the thread and replace "rookie QB" with "untested first year starter". The issue is whether his experience, or lack of it, is a turn off to free agents. I have no idea if it is or not but the claim that JP lacks experience is a simple fact. He is not as raw as a just-drafted rookie but he also is not as experienced as he would have been had he not been injured or a back up to a QB that didn't miss a snap due to injury.

 

I see no basis for speculating that free agents would be any less turned off with Drew at the helm as compared to Losman.

[Rico]

If the QB and not $$$ was a factor,

more FA would come to Buffalo now that Bledsoe's gone.

 

The whole league saw his performance on our one Prime time game against the Pats,

& no FA in his right mind would want any of that.

[Mickey]

Are you calling someone an ass?!  Need I remind you about this:

http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?act=boardrules

 

 

I'm not predicting certain doom.  However, there is major uncertainty.  The FACT of the matter is that we went 9-3 over the last 12 games of the season and are now going to revamp the entire offense.  Assuming Buffalo was even looking at any free agents (which I'm not so sure about myself...), if you had a chance to play in Buffalo with a completely new offense and an unproven QB or play on a different team that has been more established and the money was similar, where would you go?

 

(well, I guess I'd go to the Bills, but I'm a homer. ).

 

CW

273652[/snapback]

That is a point that can't be over emphasized. We lost our starting QB, our left tackle and an excellent defensive tackle. You can't argue that QB and left tackle aren't key positions so clearly, the offense will undergo massive change. Then again, given its performance, that might be exactly what is needed. Still, the fact is, there is lots of uncertainty about the Buffalo offense that would have to be taken into consideration by a FA thinking about coming here.

 

I assume that free agents would prefer to come to a winner which means, at the very least, having a solid shot at winning your division. In our division, that means beating the Patriots who are now justifiably recognized as one of the best teams in NFL history. I'm not sure FA's looking for a division title would have us at the top of their list. If it is money they want, great fans and the best food on the planet, Buffalo is the place.

[bobblehead]

My God, how did we go 9-7 last season ? According to you guys, The Bills have the worst OL in NFL history and maybe the worst team of all time ?  The heck with steroids, I want an investigation into this 9-7 lie.

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I guess you failed to read that Buffalo is revamping their entire offense. I mean, yeah, I know the that only the QB and LT is gone since the last game of the season, but still, we are revamping our entire offense. I read it here, and we must be coerced into thinking this.

[Fezmid]

I guess you failed to read that Buffalo is revamping their entire offense.  I mean, yeah, I know the that only the QB and LT is gone since the last game of the season, but still, we are revamping our entire offense. I read it here, and we must be coerced into thinking this.

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Apparantly you don't follow Bills football very much, because that's what MM said after DB was released (the "revamping the entire offense"). He said that they're going to tailor things towards JPLs mobility, etc, and that's one of the reasons they weren't going to have an open competition in camp (can't remember if MM or DB said that part).

 

CW

[Mark VI]

I guess you failed to read that Buffalo is revamping their entire offense.  I mean, yeah, I know the that only the QB and LT is gone since the last game of the season, but still, we are revamping our entire offense. I read it here, and we must be coerced into thinking this.

273685[/snapback]

 

[bobblehead]

Apparantly you don't follow Bills football very much, because that's what MM said after DB was released (the "revamping the entire offense").  He said that they're going to tailor things towards JPLs mobility, etc, and that's one of the reasons they weren't going to have an open competition in camp (can't remember if MM or DB said that part).

 

CW

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no, I don't follow Bills football very much, thank you..

[Fezmid]

no, I don't follow Bills football very much, thank you..

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No problem, thought you might like that info

 

CW

[CoachChuckDickerson]

Somebody want to tell me what free agents are staying away from Buffalo because of JP? Did we bring some big names in that I was not aware of? I'm kind of confused.

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

On the specific point of this thread, I doubt JP's prescence has a definable or definite impact on attractiveness to FAs:

 

1). His prescence at QB over DBs cuts both ways- For some it is an upgrade over DBs bad plat and for others it is a downgrade from a vet to a youngster. As this team's record was more determined by excellent D and ST play the switch does add up o a lockstep choice for evey FA in terms of assessment of Bills prospects so I see no trend.

 

2). Some folks hate problems but other folks love them as challenges- Again there strikes me as no lockstep choice that all or even most FAs make or that they all make the same choice with the same intensity of their ultimate judgment being effected. Some FAs might judge JP as a great talent and thus choose not to come here because the youngster will get all the attention (would a back-up QB get a real shot here?). Others might judge him a likely failure and want to come here (the back-up FA QB decides to come here because he thinks JP will fail and he will start). Thus FAs making the same assessment of JP might make totally different decisions depending on their personal goals and personality make-up.

 

3) Other factors will have a bigger impact on our prospects than JPs play- MMs whole game is not so much to have the QB star and carry the team, but to have the QBs options be so unpredictable he and the team are difficult to defense. The D and ST became such leaders on this team in fostering blow-outs that JP as a younster needs to be thought of more as making few mistakes to bring us victory (something RoboQB did as a rookie in Pitts last year during regular season so it could hapen rather than JP being John Elway and carrying the team which probablty will not happen).

 

I agree with the post up above that if an FA is influenced most by a question of whether the Bills can win the division next year, he is better off judging how vulnerable NE is rather than how good JP is in figuring the potential for us to win the division.

 

I simply see no consistent trend regarding JP that is driving FAs away or bringing them here.

 

The broader point which several posts lapsed into (as any Bledsoe obsessed poster would was assessing last season's failure. I think folks are simply short-sighted to lay all over even most of the blame on the door of Bledsoe's play. Granted DBs play was insufficient and inadeqate, but he had a far better 2004 than his horrendous season of 2003.

 

He played a critical role in helping the team to victory in a few games last year (though he never carried the team to victory in a Montana/Elway fashion). This is shown for example in his receiving a couple of As and several Bs for his play from Bills Daily.

 

However. he also stunk up the joint and received and deserved a couple of Fs for bad play that hurt this team.

 

Bills Daily grades are not the be all and end all of correct QB assessment, but they do make a good point in that they even gave Bledsoe a D for horrid individual play in a game the Bills won in a blow-out. QB play is important often central to the game outcome in terms of W/L but it can also be conter to the final outcome.

 

I think Bledsoe can correctly be faulted for not being Joe Montana and making the judgments which would bring us to victory. I think he can be correctly faulted for not being John Elway and running or passing us to victory. However, almost all QBs are no Montana or Elway or have their skills and this requirement would be dumb to aspire to. If anything, fault Bledsoe for not performing like a Trent Dilfer and getting in the Ds (and the ST in our case) way as they dragged us to victory.

 

I think that BINYC's point is a good one praising WM for his work in a shortened season as one of the real plusses for the Bills last year. However, if one agrees with this point then a poster can more logically find fault with Henry than with Bledsoe as the overarching cause of our losses last year.

 

Personally, I find it a bit facile to blame any one player for killing the season as my sense is that you win and lose as a team. Certainly a change can bring marginal or even significant improvement, but even signficant improvement is just a cog in the wheel and can easily be overcome or pointed to falsely as THE LEAD FACTOR.

 

Bledsoe failed us by not carrying the team when we needed to be carried in the Pitts game, but I think our bigger problems in that critical game was that the D and ST failed to play at a level they had achieved throughout the season. As the buck stops with the HC, if you want to blame anyone for that loss, I would blame MM and TC because they seemed to be overwhelmed by the enormous opportunity the game provided us and did not prepare their players to step up the way they did when we went to Seattle.