Why I think folks dosagree about same Bills fax

[Pyrite Gal]

Part of this is simply that some folks once burned are just pretty negative about the current huge question marks surrounding the Bills.

 

However, beyond this simple explanation which applies to some folks, it is interesting to see where many other Bills fans actually are in agreement about the challenges which confront our prospects, and even pretty much agree on the strengths and weaknesses of the Bills braintrust which is running the show.

 

Still despite this generally shared assessment of these challenges you have these folks making predictions which are dismatrically opposed in terms of the outcomes for our team.

 

One often sees phrases like whether the glass is half-empty or half-full to describe these disagreements. They agree about the details but draw very different conclusions about the likely outcome.

 

I think the difference is to some extent founded upon whether the poster approaches this problem as a whole or approaches it in a one problem at a time way.

 

If one looks at it one problem at a time and takes on each problem as an individual issue, there actually are some fairly reasonable solutions with a reasonable chance of things working out for each of these problems.

 

For example, if you look at the QB battle of JP v. KH v. Nall, my sense is none of these three is likely to be the QB that we need to lead us through a whole winning season.

 

JP is the most highly regarded of the lot based on where he was drafted, but the facts are he simply sucked last year. The debate is whether you give up on huim now or not.

 

KH looked and player better than JP last year (which is not saying much acutally) but in 10 seasons he has never produced consistenly over a whole season despite having some good episodesof success.

 

Nall also had a good QB rating in his brief appearances mopping up for Favre, but there is simply a big difference between mopping up and playing real starting football.

 

Individually, none of these QBs is likely (has a majority chance) of being the starter we want and need this year. However, when you look at this as a whole rather than individually. a 40% chance of JP success, a 25% chance of KH success and a mere 10% chance of Nall success adds up to a majority chance of the Bills finding an adequate QB from these three.

 

This math working out assumes that the Bill's braintrust is reasonably efficient (if not they will get major grief baased on pre-season performance rather than the usual fact-free whining they always get) at making judgments about which olayer peforms best in camp and chooses the player whose on field production in pre-season is most likely to result production of Ws come regular season (no mean feat actually but it is hard to hide bad on field performance or use it to resist good of on-field production in this personnel testing time.

 

However, in this case if you make your judgments mostly based on individual assessment pessimism is rational, However, if your judgment is based on looking at the whole optimism can be rational.

 

Interestingly, this step-by-step judging vs. making a more holistic judgment has the opposite effect when done on another basis.

 

One can see a way that the QB problem can be solved if you take a broader view than looking for a favorite among individual players.

 

One can also see a method for addressing the complaint that TV is getting old and that the back-ups DBs are too inexperienced by combining these two issues to propose that TV is well placed to train the youngsters and that we can easily get by with him playing since afterall the fact is he tied for the team lead last year in both IMTs with McGee and fumbles recovered with several players. Again if one takes an individual player assessment then pessimism is warranted but if one takes a broader view then optimism is reasonable.

 

The issue has also be cited that it will take the Bills awhile to learn and adjust too their new schemes and this is a problem, The broader view flipside of this issue however is that there won't be much tape for opponents to study of us running the offense until several games into the next season and there will not be much of a play log to identify Bills tendencies at certain down and distances for quite a while. Early in the season the Bills will be well ahead of the opponents in terms of understanding what we are doing. As lomg as tjere os some modicum of success in learning and implementing the new schemes while we learn them this situation should actually work to the Bills advantage early in the season.

 

Overall, I think that the most optimistic of Bills fans are those who take a moderate view of the situation. If one is so into the personalities and the soap opera aspects of the game (oh gosh Willis isn't at the voluntary workout, JP does not have a QB temperament and other off-season Entertainment Momently type trrash) then one can easily get focused on individual issues which lead to pessimism.

 

On the other hand, though I think a moderate view leads to taking a problem at a time approach to problems in the off and pre-season. It's easy to see how one can rationally be pessimistic when one assesses there is an OL problem, AND, there is a starting QB problem, AND there is a back-up RB issue (and WM's production outage in the second half of last season), AND there is a unproven TE issue, AND etc. etc. etc.

 

Its easy to see how one can take a holistic view and say that though the OL, RB. QB or whatever problems may be solved individually well, it is quote unlikely that ALL of these problems will be solved and the result is going to be 5-11 agaion if we are lucky.

 

However, though I understand the rationality of pessimism when you look at this as a whole, my sense is why adopt this holistic assessment right now. Training camp before the third pre-season game and the period after the draft is not the sa,e as tje regular season because it is a time where rather than the key to winning a game is integration and making all the units on the team work as a TEAM.

 

There is an ability unlike the regular season with 80+ guys on the roster and the ability to divide up into units with incredible individual attention to work on these issues separately or in essence one at a time (but a bunch of issues at the same time).

 

My sense is that optimism and viewing each glass as half full rather than half empty (or even 1 quarter full rather than 3/4 empty is the thing to do. Once the real games are near or have started then we will be forced to view things holistically and the measure will be all about what have you done for me lately and what will you do next game.

 

I'm optomistic now because later I will have no choice but to be realistic whatever the regular season brings.

[Dibs]

This is really a touchy topic because most everyone...optimistic/pessimistic/neutral...believe they are themselves, realistic.

Take myself for instance.

I believe I look at things in a neutral fashion, assessing the positives & the negatives & coming up with a realistic assessment of how things are & where they are likely to head. The thing is....so does everyone else....pretty much.

 

I put things down to being Dogmatic or Pragmatic.

Those that are dogmatic formulate opinion & rigidly stick to it discounting opposing arguments often without logical rebuttal.

Those that are pragmatic formulate opinion but are willing to adapt &/or concede to the concept that it may be in part or even totally wrong.

 

A board full of pragmatists might be a far more level & thoughtful place but it certainly wouldn't be as fun.

 

 

....also, many might dosagree about the fax because they do not bother to spell check. ...try & find the google toolbar....it has an onscreen spell checker.

[ricojes]

http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?showtopic=48164

[Scraps]

Individually, none of these QBs is likely (has a majority chance) of being the starter we want and need this year.  However, when you look at this as a whole rather than individually. a 40% chance of JP success, a 25% chance of KH success and a mere 10% chance of Nall success adds up to a majority chance of the Bills finding an adequate QB from these three.

719541[/snapback]

 

Dude, how do you come up with this math? Only one of these guys can play at any given time. If none of them has a likely chance of success, why do you think any of them will be adequate?

[krazykat]

Part of this is simply that some folks once burned are just pretty negative about the current huge question marks surrounding the Bills.

 

However, beyond this simple explanation which applies to some folks, it is interesting to see where many other Bills fans actually are in agreement about the challenges which confront our prospects, and even pretty much agree on the strengths and weaknesses of the Bills braintrust which is running the show.

 

Still despite this generally shared assessment of these challenges you have these folks making predictions which are dismatrically opposed in terms of the outcomes for our team.

 

One often sees phrases like whether the glass is half-empty or half-full to describe these disagreements.  They agree about the details but draw very different conclusions about the likely outcome.

 

I think the difference is to some extent founded upon whether the poster approaches this problem as a whole or approaches it in a one problem at a time way.

 

IMO a lot of it has to do with the backdrop that whoever's doing the assessing uses.

 

For example, for anyone that's ever played flag football and played with an ex-pro on one team, everyone is astonished at how good that ex-pro is. Well, that's relative to us casual flag-football players. If that player were stacked up against other pros then he might not be so impressive.

 

So we evalutate everything on paper. Then in camps where there's no real competition, hits are limited, etc. We see them and say "wow, they're fast," or strong, whatever.

 

We see everything going swimmingly and read the same from those that cover camp. When a player's not playing well there's usually some rookie or other player that has never started that is the reason why. "This guy's gonna be good."

 

Why? Because he runs well in pajamas?

 

How does he play when he's chucked at the line and his route is disrupted?

 

How does the QB react then when his primary or secondary is knocked off the timing?

 

We hear about how great the offensive linemen are. But who are they blocking? Anderson, Denney, Kelsay? Players that didn't do much in the NFl last year and not playing 100% under real conditions in camp and definitely going out of their way to make sure that our own offensive linemen don't get hurt.

 

Then we put it all together and say how great it's all gonna be. How everything's "coming together," but that's against nothing.

 

The others realize all that and don't see anything that suggests that against the above average and maybe even the average players around the league, the best that we're gonna be is average in many spots if even that.

 

They realize that just because Dick Jauron told them so that maybe it won't be so because all coaches talk like that but obviously they don't all produce winning teams.

 

Then there's ignorance. I don't mean ignorance of knowledge. I mean ignorance of facts or likelihoods. Whenever a coach or player comes to the Bills fans want him to shine so they dismiss his past and hope and assume that they're going to see more from that player here. But does that make sense? For a third or fourth year guy maybe, but not for guys five or more years in the league. We know what they are now and the chances of any one of them improving by much aren't good But the glass half full types that you mentioned think and hope for the best.

 

The problem is that when you hope for the best that new coaches, new inexperienced coordinators, a new system, new lines, a new starting WR, a new TE, a new GM, new DBs, a key player LB coming back off of major injury, new defensive linemen that are smaller and considered as pass rushers mostly when we couldn't stop the run last year, etc.

 

It's like hoping for it all to come together at once when the odds of any one of those things happening are less than 50/50. And even if they were better than 50/50, the odds of all things working out well end up being very, very low.

[Pyrite Gal]

Dude, how do you come up with this math?  Only one of these guys can play at any given time.  If none of them has a likely chance of success, why do you think any of them will be adequate?

719683[/snapback]

 

This is my guesstimate of their chances of working out. It tries to reflect that if you put a player like JP through a reasonably long development process, my senmse is that 4 times out of 10 it will turn out he does the job adequately for you and ends up after retiring being considered a good (and in a less than 1 out of 10 cases) a very good QB.

 

This occurs (in my estimate) 2.5 out of 10 times with development effort being devoted to KH (the 2.5 probably emds up with the epitaph on his career being he was a goood back-up with episodes of success over 10 years but then he was given a starting job by the Bills and in two years or so he ran their new St. L style well throwin short passes which produced RAC yardage.

 

Nall I guesstimate this never done anything but be good at mopping up episodes at proving to be an adequate starter once out of every ten times.

 

The key to this math working since only one player can get the minutes in games at a time is for the Bills braintrust be efficient at allocating those precious game minutes to the player they judge worthy of them.

 

My sense is that Jauron and Fairchild havw enough experience with several teams, several QBs (from folks who had adequate seasonns and games to failures) in St. L, Buf,, Chi, Det. and other places that they will be able to make efficient judgments about which of these three deserves precious game time,

 

If they can decide that JP, KH, or Nall cannot make it and they waste little of the time of our ultimate QB on the 9 out of 10 cases if the decide Nall is the loser, the 7.5 of 10 that KH is the loser or the 6 of 19 that JP wouldn;t work out, they can devote that time to developing an adequate QB.

 

The first thing I am most interested in is not which QB the Bills belief in but which QB they give up on so there is more time for the other two.

[kasper13]

I'm a diehard Bills fan going on 31 seasons now- no need to go into my Bills pedigree here- and I have zero expectations for this season. In fact, I think the Bills starting QB for 2007 will be playing on Saturdays for Notre Dame this fall. It won't bother me one bit if the Bills go 2-14 this season. I just hope Marv is around long enough to turn the organization around back into what it used to be. That's all I expect and it doesn't have to be this season or even next season. The QB situation this year is irrelevant to me as is the Bills entire 2006 season.

[NorthWesternBill]

Well call me an reTard, or call me a fan... After reading all theese posts one way or another... I still think the bills will surely surpass 5-11 this year.. and be a pleasant surprise to even the most negative of nancy's. Maybe it is this fresh Oregon air I get to breath that allows me to think this way?

[Buftex]

I dosagree!

[Pyrite Gal]

I dosagree!

719999[/snapback]

 

Whoi?