Archives for September 22, 2004

”’I’m the quarterback here. And I’m going to be the quarterback here,” Bledsoe said after practice Wednesday. ”The players on the team know that. The coaches know that. And that’s just simply the way it is.”’

‘Levy used to post plus-minus trends on the locker room walls in Buffalo. One of his favorites was when teams had a plus-two edge in turnovers in a game, they won about 90 percent of the time. This season, teams with a plus-2 edge in games are 15-2, or 88.2 percent. "If you play well, you win the turnover battle," Levy said. "We’d stress that. But we didn’t want to get them too uptight about it, either. You don’t want them to be too careful or conservative. They have to be able to execute. So you don’t talk too much about them, either."’

‘"We’ve definitely squandered some opportunities," Mularkey said. "I explained to them that, offensively, it’s the inconsistency. We have moved the ball. We do have good drives and then all of a sudden we get down to the red zone. . . . Do we need to score more points? No question about it. But at least we’re getting down in the area to put ourselves in that position."’

‘Bledsoe is the kind of player that even sportswriters root for, and, believe me, that’s saying a lot given the depth of cynicism in my profession. Sadly, being a good guy doesn’t put any points on the scoreboard.’

‘Johnson doesn’t buy into the thinking that this might be Bledsoe’s last hurrah. “No way,” Johnson said. “Drew has a lot of pride. He’s an amazing competitor, a great leader, a prideful person, and his legacy means a lot to him. He wants to be remembered as a premier quarterback in this league. None of us, especially Drew, wants to leave on a down note. If his body lets him play, there’s no doubt he has a lot left.”‘

‘Sam “Wicky Wacky” Wyche is comin’ to tahn.’

‘The first order of business should be to fire who ever is in the booth in charge of telling Mularkey when to challenge a call. Mularkey said his coaches told him they didn’t get a good enough view if Travis Henry got in on fourth and goal. I have a VCR in my house. This team has a lot of money. Why can’t they invest in one.’

‘As I see it, you can sure put a lot of the blame for the Bills putrid offensive start on #11, but not all of it. Not by a longshot.’

‘Over the last 16 games, the Bills have one of the worst records in football. Their offense is more lackluster than it was in the dark days of the mid-1980s.’

‘The good news is that they have two weeks to try to figure out what is going wrong. The bad news is the Patriots have two weeks to come up with a defensive game plan. Will it really take that long?’