Easterbrook calls it, as we all see it...

[BLZFAN4LIFE]

It's interesting to read an accurate article like this when today I came to the conclusion that this season will be NO BETTER than the previous three. I don't care what any of the overly-optimistic homers have to say. I watched the GB game twice and realize that the '09 Bills are just another sub-.500 Dick Jauron lead ball club. They have no chance of making the playoffs. They don't even have a chance at a winning division record. This is Dick's 4th season and he sounds like a broken record. Just yesterday he was praising our division and talking about how we have to learn from our mistakes. WTF have you been doing for 3+ years Dick?

We've got a QB who (IMO) is trying to tell the world that the coaching staff is incompetent and doesn't have the team prepared and instructs him to dump the ball off. Then we hear that after the GB debacle the first thing the team does is work on short passes.

Dick is soft and apathetic. He produces a soft and apathetic football team. He has no fire and no hatred of losing and his players follow his lead. Why should they go the extra mile when their coach doesn't demand it? The '09 Bills have a destiny and that destiny is last place in the AFC East. There's no way around it. There's no denying it. It's a freight train headed our way.

This organization is (and has been) letting its GREAT FANS down.

[zazie]

Because we have a roster of "hard working guys, who lnow football, practice hard and are good teammates" Jauron seems to believe this is the recipe for success and our front office supports him in this fantasy. The percentage of passes completed for ten yards or less is a terrible indictment on the QB and the offensive coordinator. The fact that Jauron elected to change not one coordinator or position coach (Sanders only came due to a quit) speaks volumes about how blind DJ is. His offense sucks, has sucked for a long time and appears to be headed for the same results this season.

Why would DJ change a coach? These guys LIKE to coach together. They do a great job on Friday of preparing. They are in the office early, and often stay late, they work hard.

 

How could DJ justify changing one of them?

 

Especially since he has the gall to stay himself; the coach DJ needs to change the most, is DJ.

[zazie]

Excellent post on the Bills woes. Jauron should have been fired last year. Is Turner Gill available?

I would not only take Gill over Jauron, I would thake UBs offensive Coordinator over DJ. I don't even know his name. Does not matter. ANYONE else over DJ. Maybe even Skooby

[Sisyphean Bills]

We've got a QB who (IMO) is trying to tell the world that the coaching staff is incompetent and doesn't have the team prepared and instructs him to dump the ball off.

Wouldn't be the first one either.

[GrudginglyOptimistic]

What moves a man, to write such a lengthy post?

Its the internet who says I am a man?

[TheChimp]

Fixed for you.

 

Signing TO was a blatant marketing move, not a football move.

WINNER

[keepthefaith]

The only difference between and Continuity and a Bucket of sh-- is the Bucket!!

 

Funny and true.

[agilen]

Anybody see this quote?

 

"Of course, there's no point in being sentimental in a vacant house. Jacksonville has more trouble selling tickets than any NFL franchise, averaging 60,400 per game last year, versus 70,700 in Green Bay and 67,750 in Buffalo, the league's other small markets."

 

I thought the general consenus was Buffalo had between 71,000 and 73,000 seats (I guess depending on how you term the club seats).

 

Is 67,000 general admission tickets not including club? I sent Easterbrook an email about it.

 

I figured he'd be a pretty good authority on a subject like that since, you know, he's from buffalo and all.

 

Its because we played a game in Toronto with a much smaller stadium...brings the average down.

[first_and_ten]

It's interesting to read an accurate article like this when today I came to the conclusion that this season will be NO BETTER than the previous three. I don't care what any of the overly-optimistic homers have to say. I watched the GB game twice and realize that the '09 Bills are just another sub-.500 Dick Jauron lead ball club. They have no chance of making the playoffs. They don't even have a chance at a winning division record. This is Dick's 4th season and he sounds like a broken record. Just yesterday he was praising our division and talking about how we have to learn from our mistakes. WTF have you been doing for 3+ years Dick?

We've got a QB who (IMO) is trying to tell the world that the coaching staff is incompetent and doesn't have the team prepared and instructs him to dump the ball off. Then we hear that after the GB debacle the first thing the team does is work on short passes.

Dick is soft and apathetic. He produces a soft and apathetic football team. He has no fire and no hatred of losing and his players follow his lead. Why should they go the extra mile when their coach doesn't demand it? The '09 Bills have a destiny and that destiny is last place in the AFC East. There's no way around it. There's no denying it. It's a freight train headed our way.

This organization is (and has been) letting its GREAT FANS down.

 

Greenbay ran stunts and gimmicks on defense. Edwards said that they did not expect a complicated package to be used against them by GB. We do need to take this under consideration when trying to evaluate a preseason game. That being said, the game did not inspire confidence. I can certainly understand the pessimism but I just don't think preseason games should be weighed too heavily. If I recall correctly, the Bills beat the Steelers last year in the second preseason game. We all know how things turned out for Pittsburgh. I'm not predicting a great year but I think we won't truly know how good the Bills are until the bullets start flying for real.

[zazie]

Greenbay ran stunts and gimmicks on defense. Edwards said that they did not expect a complicated package to be used against them by GB. We do need to take this under consideration when trying to evaluate a preseason game. That being said, the game did not inspire confidence. I can certainly understand the pessimism but I just don't think preseason games should be weighed too heavily. If I recall correctly, the Bills beat the Steelers last year in the second preseason game. We all know how things turned out for Pittsburgh. I'm not predicting a great year but I think we won't truly know how good the Bills are until the bullets start flying for real.

Kind of makes you wish preseason could last all season long, this year

[tennesseeboy]

5. The general though is that it was Ralph who completely soured the situation by forcing Flutie to the bench and then starting RJ whom he over-invested in against an Indy team which simply gave up when it became clear from the scoreboard that they were not going to improve their playoff position in that game and Indy LB Bennett ended his season that game. RJ shredded an Indy team going through the motions and lost the last playoff game the Bills have seen this decade.

 

I guess Johnson misplayed that darn kickoff with seconds left and failed to anticipate the Music City Miracle? If memory serves we were winning just before that kick.

[Wagon Circler]

The thing I do not see is why anyone thinks that if Jauron were canned that Ralph would not go forward and make a decision for a new HC with roughly the same MO of high character failure.

 

The common denominator for all the Bills FO failures since the glory days is one and only one guy.

 

1. The innards of the early 90s Bills teams are set when Polian and Ralph collaborate to pry open Ralph's wallet and draft and sign Bruce. Director of scouts and personnel John Butler also contributes to Bills glory with a great call to get Thurman and a host of other acquisitions of HOF worthy talent and even the hiring of wildman Marchibroda as the OC.

 

The era begins to screech to a halt when Ralph in what pretty much seems as a personal move by him cans Polian, the good news is that the ball has started rolling down the hill and takes a great long run before it is knocked off track by a series of bad football decisions that Ralph has his fingerprints all over.

 

2. The Bills completely miscalculate how much Kelly has left. Some of this falls on Butler as they waited at least a year too late to draft a replacement for Kelly and ended up stretching to pick Collins (in retrospect hindsight is 20/20 and his career was long enough that a first day choice seems reasonable, but clearly he was from a running school at U Mich and he needed another year of training before he was asked to run a pro offense and we paid for rushing him to start with him having happy feet).

 

Ralph personally miscalculated badly by making a salary cap violating handshake deal with Kelly to reward him in his next contract (my GUESS is this is part of why it took him so long to make the HOF). He ended up paying Kelly a million to simply walkaway without a stink when he got concussed by Jax out of the NFL.

 

3. Ralph signed the check and had to play a role in the idiotic decision to get Billy Joe Idiot when it became clear the rushed along TC was not gonna make it.

 

4. Ralph also had to have played a central role since he wrote the checks in the decision to sign Flutie to his incentive laden deal (a good move IMHO) but then stupidly hand RJ a wad of guaranteed dough to be our anointed stater when we had promised Flutie a fighting shot. This stupidity set up a situation where if RJ proved injury prone or failed (one could see from his record in Jax he might be well be injury prone even though he was talented. Ralph signed contracts with RJ and DF which essentially doomed the Bills to a cap disaster if RJ got hurt and DF played like AJ Smith thought he could. Ralph cannot reasonably escape blame for this disaster.

 

5. The general though is that it was Ralph who completely soured the situation by forcing Flutie to the bench and then starting RJ whom he over-invested in against an Indy team which simply gave up when it became clear from the scoreboard that they were not going to improve their playoff position in that game and Indy LB Bennett ended his season that game. RJ shredded an Indy team going through the motions and lost the last playoff game the Bills have seen this decade.

 

6. Ralph totally mangled and mishandled the resigning of Butler his last year here, Even if you want to blame the now dead Butler for playing Ralph, Ralph handled the relationship such with Butler that he wanted to play him and he had little plan B if he had even seen Butler playing him.

 

7. Ralph canned Wado (who deserved to be canned after he publicly gave up with 3 games left to play) but stupidly then tried to appeal his way out of paying him. Everyone told Ralph he would lose and he lost.

 

8. Having bollicksed up the GM/HC situtation, Ralph then hired TD. Not bad in terms of football knowledge and negotiating balls but horrendous at HC hiring as the last guy he hired Cowher ran him out of Pitts. Clearly having pledged this would not happen to him again, TD hired Administrative Assistant GW to HC the team and together with one hand tied behind their backs (if not two hands) they mismanaged the team leading to GWs firing.

 

9. Next was the Mularkey episode and this disaster wrought by TD and Ralph leading to TD getting the boot.

 

10. is the Marv/Jauron debacle- What makes anyone thinks that the results would be any different if Jauron got the boot?

HOPE

[PromoTheRobot]

Wow. That article was really an indictment...sad to say that its the same thing average Bills fans have noticed over the course of Jauron's tenure at Buffalo...hopefully, something magical happens this year and the Bills come thru for us. It's been a long time since we've had a season to cheer about.

Well we all have a choice then: Support our crappy NFL team or lose our crappy NFL team. Forcing change by not buying tickets only works in large markets where an NFL would be crazy to leave. By not buying Bills tickets all you're doing is asking someone to move our team for lack of support.

 

A better idea would be to hold a protest of some sort. Maybe stay out of the stadium until after kickoff so the place is empty when the game starts. The TV cameras will pan the stadium and it will be visally embarressing for the Bills and Ralph. Or have a "Dump Dick" rally in Niagara Square. But of course Ralph has to hire a new coach and what are the odds that he'll actually hire anyone better? Then we need better scouts, and so on. Any wonder why Ralph just throws his hands up?

 

PTR

[zazie]

Well we all have a choice then: Support our crappy NFL team or lose our crappy NFL team. Forcing change by not buying tickets only works in large markets where an NFL would be crazy to leave. By not buying Bills tickets all you're doing is asking someone to move our team for lack of support.

 

A better idea would be to hold a protest of some sort. Maybe stay out of the stadium until after kickoff so the place is empty when the game starts. The TV cameras will pan the stadium and it will be visally embarressing for the Bills and Ralph. Or have a "Dump Dick" rally in Niagara Square. But of course Ralph has to hire a new coach and what are the odds that he'll actually hire anyone better? Then we need better scouts, and so on. Any wonder why Ralph just throws his hands up?

 

PTR

I say the odds are close to 100%. How could he find worse? Mickey Mouse would be better.

[Mr. WEO]

Anybody see this quote?

 

"Of course, there's no point in being sentimental in a vacant house. Jacksonville has more trouble selling tickets than any NFL franchise, averaging 60,400 per game last year, versus 70,700 in Green Bay and 67,750 in Buffalo, the league's other small markets."

 

I thought the general consenus was Buffalo had between 71,000 and 73,000 seats (I guess depending on how you term the club seats).

 

Is 67,000 general admission tickets not including club? I sent Easterbrook an email about it.

 

I figured he'd be a pretty good authority on a subject like that since, you know, he's from buffalo and all.

According to the Bills media guide, they averaged 73,000 in 2003.

[Adam]

Anybody see this quote?

 

"Of course, there's no point in being sentimental in a vacant house. Jacksonville has more trouble selling tickets than any NFL franchise, averaging 60,400 per game last year, versus 70,700 in Green Bay and 67,750 in Buffalo, the league's other small markets."

 

I thought the general consenus was Buffalo had between 71,000 and 73,000 seats (I guess depending on how you term the club seats).

 

Is 67,000 general admission tickets not including club? I sent Easterbrook an email about it.

 

I figured he'd be a pretty good authority on a subject like that since, you know, he's from buffalo and all.

Is the front office following Jauron, or is Jauron just doing what the front office tells him- and don't worry, as long as a new QB and coach is trotted out in February/March, you and the rest of the fans will fall in line....just like always

[Beerball]

Link

 

in 2008, 75 percent of Buffalo's passing attempts covered 10 yards or less

[Dan]

Link

Drop one safety to run deep with Evans and the CB. That leaves 9 guys to crowd the LOS. Hence, no running lanes, no YAC for WR screens and checkdowns, plenty of sacks/QB hurries, and one of the worst offenses in the league. Why our coaching staff can't see this and make the appropriate changes is beyond me.

 

As others have said, when all you do is take what the defense gives you, you're playing right into their hands.

 

 

 

Ahhhhh... does it really even matter? At this point, its like putting the ball on a tee and the kid still striking out. Some kids just shouldn't be playing.

[2020 Our Year For Sure]

I don't think it has much to do with coaching. One idiot quarterback was scared to throw the ball anywhere but sideways, and the other idiot quarterback would stand there until he got sacked.

[Flbillsfan#1]

I don't think it has much to do with coaching. One idiot quarterback was scared to throw the ball anywhere but sideways, and the other idiot quarterback would stand there until he got sacked.

If you take JP's numbers out of there the percentage probably goes down to 10% passes thrown for 10 or more yards.