Football post

[erynthered]

Hey!! Lets argue 2006 & 2007 & 2008 & 2009 draft slots. I saw a kid out of Puberty High school in North Florida run a 40 in 4.2. HOLY SH*T.

 

Come on 2005 Season, please start. Christ.

[IDBillzFan]

And LA, I'm not raggin on you personally. It's just a little too frustratin' to be spoon fed pablum from an organization that should have its act together a little more than it apparently has.

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Defending Donahoe doesn't mean I'm happy with the team. I'm not. But I understand and accept that first and foremost, this is a business, and businesses can't operate unless they're profitable. The buck is the thing. Not just because some fan comes across the country every year for a game, but in part because of the team's impact on the local economy. It brings outside money to local vendors while creating a number of jobs for the local workforce. I'd wager to say if the Bills ever folded or moved, a number of businesses in the area would be toast. So profitability first. TD is pretty damn good at that.

 

Look at Dan Snyder. He's a whore businessman, so he puts a new shade of lipstick on his pig every two years, and he sells tickets and merchandise like crazy. His way sucks, but he's profitable.

 

I think the only person who can adequately judge Donahoe is Wilson, and as long as Donahoe is putting some serious dough in Wilson's kitty while also managing the personnel finances of the business, then Wilson will wait another year to go to the playoffs. It's not just about winning. It's not.

 

Think about when Bledsoe came here. If TD's job was just winning, Bledsoe would have flown into Buffalo on his own instead of Ralph taking the jet to Montana. And when he got here, there wouldn't have been a rally and you wouldn't have been able to buy ready-to-go Bledsoe jerseys, season tickets, etc. Plus now you're selling out a bunch of games, which turns into local TV...

 

Another thing: if we didn't get Bledsoe and kept moving forward, who's to say we'd have made the playoffs by now anyway? Who the hell did we have back then who was going to make a difference by now?

 

On the other hand, if the Pittsburgh game wasn't so crappy, we would have made the playoffs this year. In fact, we were a missed field goal or a lucky last-second Jaquar TD pass away from making the playoffs just this past year. Imagine: win any of those first four, and we're in.

 

Okay, we would have backed in. But in criticizing TD, the one thing you hear a lot is "playoff drought, playoff drought," so apparently they don't care how we get there. Just get to the damn playoffs. (Personally, I do. I hate backing in. Nothing but pigs to slaughter and a gambler's wet dream.)

 

Plus, ook at the list of teams who have made the playoffs since 2000 as was posted above, then ask yourself this: How'd you like to be a Cardinals fan? Do you think Cards fans are in a better position than Bills fans right now? How about the Redskins? Do Skins fans look like they have it made lately? Would you rather be in their shoes?

 

TD is good for Buffalo, and I think he's done more good than bad with the team, and I think we do have a very solid foundation for the future. Unfortunately, it's based, to a large extent, on one thing: Losman being successful. The kid has to produce at some point, or you won't see TD around for a long time.

 

The good news is, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.

 

I'm fired up. And the first thing I require of a season is to have a reason to be fired up early.

[Nanker]

Defending Donahoe doesn't mean I'm happy with the team. I'm not. But I understand and accept that first and foremost, this is a business, and businesses can't operate unless they're profitable. The buck is the thing. Not just because some fan comes across the country every year for a game, but in part because of the team's impact on the local economy. It brings outside money to local vendors while creating a  number of jobs for the local workforce. I'd wager to say if the Bills ever folded or moved, a number of businesses in the area would be toast. So profitability first. TD is pretty damn good at that.

 

Look at Dan Snyder. He's a whore businessman, so he puts a new shade of lipstick on his pig every two years, and he sells tickets and merchandise like crazy. His way sucks, but he's profitable.

 

I think the only person who can adequately judge Donahoe is Wilson, and as long as Donahoe is putting some serious dough in Wilson's kitty while also managing the personnel finances of the business, then Wilson will wait another year to go to the playoffs. It's not just about winning. It's not.

 

Think about when Bledsoe came here. If TD's job was just winning, Bledsoe would have flown into Buffalo on his own instead of Ralph taking the jet to Montana. And when he got here, there wouldn't have been a rally and you wouldn't have been able to buy ready-to-go Bledsoe jerseys, season tickets, etc. Plus now you're selling out a bunch of games, which turns into local TV...

 

Another thing: if we didn't get Bledsoe and kept moving forward, who's to say we'd have made the playoffs by now anyway? Who the hell did we have back then who was going to make a difference by now?

 

On the other hand, if the Pittsburgh game wasn't so crappy, we would have made the playoffs this year. In fact, we were a missed field goal or a lucky last-second Jaquar TD  pass away from making the playoffs just this past year. Imagine: win any of those first four, and we're in.

 

Okay, we would have backed in. But in criticizing TD, the one thing you hear a lot is "playoff drought, playoff drought," so apparently they don't care how we get there. Just get to the damn playoffs. (Personally, I do. I hate backing in. Nothing but pigs to slaughter and a gambler's wet dream.)

 

Plus, ook at the list of teams who have made the playoffs since 2000 as was posted above, then ask yourself this: How'd you like to be a Cardinals fan? Do you think Cards fans are in a better position than Bills fans right now? How about the Redskins? Do Skins fans look like they have it made lately? Would you rather be in their shoes?

 

TD is good for Buffalo, and I think he's done more good than bad with the team, and I think we do have a very solid foundation for the future. Unfortunately, it's based, to a large extent, on one thing: Losman being successful. The kid has to produce at some point, or you won't see TD around for a long time.

 

The good news is, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.

 

I'm fired up. And the first thing I require of a season is to have a reason to be fired up early.

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And that, my friend, is a bee-ooo-tee-full post!

 

Thank you!

[Yoho]

I think some people are underestimating just how important having a strong franchise from a business perspective is to the future of the Buffalo Bills.

 

We have an 87 year old owner whose family has already announced that they will be selling when they inherit the team. If we are going to have a chance to keep this team in Buffalo, it had better have a strong foundation, support and income. If Donohoe's only success is accomplishing that, he has done his job as far as I am concerned.

 

When you add to this the fact that we finished incredibly strong last year, I am willing to give him a few more years.

 

I will never root for the Los Angeles Bills and never want to see that day. Thanks Tom, for making that less likely.

[cåblelady]

 

 

I'm fired up. And the first thing I require of a season is to have a reason to be fired up early.

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Hear! Hear!

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

This a great thread and really touches upon the many key issues for us fans doing whatwe do and evaluating the GM. I think folks often seem to post as though they forget that many things are necessary to be seen as a good GM (how the fans, how the rest of the NFL and of course how the owner make this rating can all be legitimately different and they are all important), but really nothing is sufficient in and of itself to get rated as a good GM by all these stakeholders.

 

As a fan my own rating for how the GM is doing is pretty intensely linked to W/L. His work with the business end is critical because even though I tend toward the future is now view of the world, I am aware of and do care about the future (I care a lot about as it involves my two nieces, my nephew, and my god-daughter, but I am quite willing to mortgage the future for current achievement when if come to mere, but important, entertainment like the Bills). Thus TD's work with business end of the Bills is important and impressive, but W/L is really the bottom-line for me.

 

Thus, I think that the rational approach overall is to judge TD pretty harshly and as a failure when it comes to W/L and the bottomline fact we have not even lucked into the playoffs during his tenure. The other issues creep into my evaluation of TD when I consider the question what should we do about the fact that the W/L under him has been crap.

 

It is here that the two factors of "what have you done for me lately" and what are the prospects for the future come into play. TD's W/L record as GM is crap but it does not lead to me automically advocating his ouster because his biggest mistake in my mind was choosing GW as HC and the latest in that regard of going with MM is a definite improvement looking at W/L and most commentary.

 

In addition, while the youth of JP creates some uncertaintiees, the prospects for the future are pretty good if JP should happen to be the real deal or more likely are pretty good if the Bills are smart enough to do what Pitts did with RoboQB last year which is to actually depend upon other players (the Bus, an opportunistic D) to win games (even though in the modern marketing world RoboQB got too much credit for the Ws which he was an important part of but did not cause alone). If the team repeats the D performance (likely) and the ST performance (uncertain as a lot is determined by how the funny-shaped ball bounces), and emphasizes teaching JP to not make mistakes I think we will do well.

 

Overall, though I join others in this thread in finding So-Cal's posts a bit too addicted to an over-focus on his view of Ts work (he clearly loves the Bills so I think his views would be even more palatable if they were couched in that adoration rather than in finding fault with TD because he has failed to date) I was quite impressed with his list of factors to judge a GM by.

 

Thus, I will use that list though i think I have somewhat of a different cut on the judfments and most importantly which are the prime jufgments for a fan (for pundits and for Ralph because I think all three can have legitimately different views).

 

+++ Attendance (I give him 3 stars rather than 2 here (3 is my highest grade) because I don't think it is possible to do better than the sellout and near sellout years we have had and the good potential for this year all the tickets being sold. I think that his work shows great work on the fundamentals which can make this performance sustainable as the Business Backs the Bills effort seems to be a working piece under his leadership, the move of the pre-season camp to Rochester is an important part of the regional marketing strategy and increased butts in the seat in pre-season (playing a pre-season game in Rochester will make this even better and eventually the Bills may make the move to capture more of the Southern Ontario market and even play agame in Toronto but this is down the pike. I do not see how one can do better with the realities of this market and the Bills maturing beyond a fairly primitive marketing state in the 90s (it was not long ago tha will call tickets were divided into shoeboxes and this year we are even making a deeper move to digital technology where tickets will not be ripped, they will be scanned).

 

++ Cap Hell I give him at least 2 stars here instead of the 1 So-Cal gives him and the only thing which stops me from giving him 3 stars are some forgiveable errors (which were errors nonetheless like giving a significant advance to Jason Glidon which cost us cap room for no product and also far less forgiveable sin of negotiating cap hitting restructurings with JH and HJ in 2001 and then cutting them and then getting burned as Raion Hill was incorrectly assessed as being able to replace HJ and Cowart got hurt (this could no be predicted) but having cut an MLB we ened up having to start Spoon (who was later cut as not being good enough). However, the strange thing to me is that many posters seem unwilling to give TD much credit for getting us out of cap hell a year or two earlier than expected because they say that TD simply did some things he was forced to do rather than make good decisions.

 

Yes he did make some errors as described above, but the consistent mismanagement of the cap which see from NFL teams like AZ and CIN shows that it is not a simple thing to do, and the cap problems and long term issues of good teams like SF shows that managing the cap can be done wrong and it is not an easy thing to do. Butler made some future is now choices which I agree with in that he extended the contracts of good players to hang onto them at the cost of our cap future when the team was close to its goal in the late 90s. However, he again showed that cap management can be done poorly by making a series of mistakes in addition to his reasonable moves like letting his QB fears cause him to mismanage the cap allocations given to RJ and Flutie. Overspending on one of them was easily forgiveable, but overspending on both at the same time resulted in us having to cut some ST players who would have stayed in their lanes and this cost us a playoff game.

 

TD on the other hand has managed the cap well for us and deserves a lot of credit for doing this.

 

+++ Marketing I gove this same grade as the attendance issue which i think is an accurate indiator of good marketing and in essence is the same thing.

 

+++ Generating interest Same thing in terms of grading as marketing and attendance. One can actually give separate grades for these three as they can be parsed into their parts of the ultrimate goal, but i think it is simpler to lump them together unless there is a partioular aspect someone wants to argue can be better seen by the parsing.

 

++ Rebuilding I think this one might be better discussed in dividing this into rebuilding the team (he gets 1 star due to the W/L record) and rebuilding the franchise where he had to move the franchise into the second-half of the twentieth centrury on the way to move into the 21st centrury (he gets at least 2 stars and maybe three for his business efforts).

 

+ Coaches In the what have you done for me lately world I live in, his good moves with MM. Which led fairly directly to getting TC (a TD choice over Killdrive which he stupidly let GW have his way on), hanging onto Gray and Krumrie from te former coaching regime. and getting JMac (the franchise and geography attracted him rather than him being drawn to MM so TD shares the credit with MM here outweigh the bad move of hiring GW. I would give TD a double minus for hiring GW who simply was set up to be a great Administrative Assistant to TD with his lists and contacts than to be an HC (his failins were he had no O chops to match his great D resume and he did not have the security to hire O people older, more experienced or better than him to make up for this failing.

 

I judge TD's failing in hiring GW as understandable as the last HC he hired, Cowher, had run him out of Pitts but though understandable it was non condonable because he passed on two other HC candidates (Fox and Lewis) who seem to have done an adequate to very good job with Carolina and CIN.

 

Nevertheless, though I do not think TD has gotten over his passive/aggressive behavior which led him to allow GW to fail as long as GW was directly to blame. I think he has achieved a fuller by-in and and exertion of control over the on-filed performance by hiring a competent HC whom he knows and can work with (he thought he had this with Cowher and did not so he hired GW who was not part of his legacy but he allowed GW to make his own bed so he was the judge rather than the judged on GW's result.

 

I'd give him at least 2 minuses for the GW episode, but this gets swept aside for me by the 1 star (2 if we had made the playoffs) he gets for his current hire of MM.

 

++ Scouting I think that TD gets a lot of credit here because subjectively the acquisition of a scouting talent like Modrak and holding onto him despite him being an obvious candidate to GM elsewhere is TD sciuting kudo. The nuts and bolts of the scouts is hard to assess beyond the production of the players on the field (the W/L is bad, but the 04 results were good if inadequate, and the prspects are good). Overall, the Bills seemed to have made good scouting assessments on a number of UDFAa and high priced FAs (Spikes, Fletcher, Baker, Adams) which have been good and really have acquired outside of Bledsoe few players who are viewed as stinking up the joint despite our investment.

 

I think one has to give the scouts an the docs great credit for the McGahee pick which surprised everyone and TD clearly is making acquisitions (WM when he had Henry, picking WM when we had a DE need because he figured Kelsay was good enough and would still be there, the initially it work but so far failed pick surprising pick of Reed which allowed us to let Peerless go) shows some good scouting within a plan to try some outside of the box things.

 

Horrible scouting on the placekicking front is his major failing in my mind.

 

+ The Draft I disagree with those who judge TD to be a bad drafter becaise O think the draft is important but really is secondary feature in building a good team behind dealing with FAs and managing the salary cap in the modern NFL

 

TD has a little bit better than a 50/50 record at finding draft gold, but 50/50 is pretty good even with 1st round choices in the draft. If there is a legit complaint about TDs work is that the finding of a late drafted player like McGee who becomes a contributor to this team is a bit few and far between that a better GM should produce.

 

However, even the late round draftees seem to be making a good contribution on ST even though they are not making the Pro Bowl and as long as the occaisional draft pick like McGee and Fas like Spikes and Adams do make it one star here is fine with me.

 

++ Trades Even more impressive to me than the PP move (which is the #1 trade as the something we got for nothing and the something is is WM) is TDs work on the marginal side making trades like a 7th for a starting TE in Campbell or at least getting some value for Olandis Gary we signed and realized we would cut. TD again seems to be headed toward some trade wizardry as moving TH for some value seems to be iminent.

 

-- Record My sense is that not even lucking into the playoffs during his tenure gives TD a double minus in my book. This item is the most improtant item for me as a fan but of course does not invalidate the other good work he has done or RWS making a totally different assessment than me because he owns the business and I do not. It seems totally reasonable to me to be totally disappointed and even frustrated with TDs W/L as a fan and to advocate that he stay because things appear in positive shape for the future with W/L and if I step back and look at the health of the franchise and the business which is of no immediate concern to me it is pretty good.

[Ralonzo]

The 4th pick is probably not high enough to get Ferguson.

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Looks like they don't even have Debrickashaw (jeez... even for a brother that's a %$@*ed up name. as Devo said, slap yer mammy) going in the 1st. That, and the Bills picking 4th overall, mean this article is pure crap.