DazedandConfused

No and I mean specifically posters on TSW, pundits, in the press, any so-called experts and even Ralph himself knows exactly what will happen after he is dead, nor can any of them unilaterally decide this no matter how much money they have. However, what Ralph says is of great import since as 100% owner of this asset with little or no debt attached to it that we know of, how Ralph decides to dispose of this asset in his will will determine a lot of the framework of what happens, With this knowledge this strikes me as fact: Ralph can leave this asset to an entity or in a manner which either promotes it being sold to some entity that will move it or he can dispose of it in a manner which virtually assures the Bills will stay in Buffalo. The bet based on his current comments almost certainly has to be that he would dispose of it in a manner which keeps the team here. There are myriad legal ways he can do this such as leaving the team to an irrevocable charitable trust. Of course their are downsides to this in terms of keeping the family in traditional control which it would be difficult (though not impossible with a fleet of lawyers and a larcenous heart) to do in this model. However, it can be done in a manner which both kicks a bunch of cash to Ralph's heirs and avoids the heaviest of capital gains inheritance taxes which a traditional sale of the team would entail. Maybe he won't, but he can if he wants to and his current statements indicate this may well be the case

I completely agree that Ralph deserves to be in tge HOB due to historic role in the founding of the AFL and his willingness to risk his 10K back when this was real money for an NFL owner. However, this deserved praise does not invalidate the fact that he has presided over a team that has gone over a decade without tasting the playoffs. It is also my opinion that this fact is in a large part based in dumb personal decisions by Ralph from him thinking Jimbo had a lot of career left when he was done as a player (I think the Bills with Ralph in charge waited at least a year too long before getting a replacement for JK and then rushed TC along. Further, there was series of Ralph miscues from his handling and assessment of his relationship with Butler, using his "right" to dicker with is team to play a role in the promotion of Rob Johnson, authorizing a bad deal with Flutie and RJ leaving us in a fatal cap position, mismanaging his relationship with Wade, putting us into a position where we had little choice but to go with TD and then letting TD make some dumb moves along with his good ones, etc etc etc. Praising Ralph for getting his deserved honor is a good fact. Doing this however, does not invalidate that the truth is that fish rots from the head down and a lot of the horrors of the past decade has the buck stopping with Ralph. Reality is simply reality and even a semi-intelligent mind has to see that all these facts are real and should be acknowledged. The only morons are those who judge he is all bad or that he is all good.

Forget about the "professional" assessments of the OL experts on TSW. No one knows for sure how Peters would do on another team. If someone claims they do simply laugh and ignore this post. The simple fact is this: Peters is acting like a child in dealing with the Bills. However, if upon being traded if he happens to give up on childish things (this may happen and it may not so who cares what us dimestore psychologists predict) and becomes the anchor of his new OL for years to come. Whoever engineers the trade for the Bills will simply go down in football history as the idiot who traded away a franchise LT with two Pro Bowls to his credit (regardless of whether they were deserved or not) for a 1st, less or even if it is slightly more this GM will be known as the guy who got smoked by some other GM. The downside (whether it actually happens or not, one would have to argue that these events which no one can predict will not happen. Some folks may be so tired of what they see as Peters antics they would simply be happy to see him gone for a couple of draft picks. This is easy for a fan to do, but the down side risk is too high unless the GM has tremendous cojones. Nobody I have seen is accusing Brandon or any of the Bills braintrust of demonstrating this. If someone wants to make a convincing argument that the Bills will trade Peters they do not have to try to prove something about him as a player. Instead they would need to argue effectively that the Bills have the grombas to make this move.

Exactly. Jauron has no record of consistent success as an HC so it is legit to question what he will be able to achieve. However, a much more obvious and glaring lack on this extremely young team is of demonstrable on the field leadership from quality players. Mitchell does have the make-up of a player to fit the needs of a winning team somewhat. As a former member of the SB winning Giants he can demonstrate and speak with the authority of someone who has been there before. However, no one would mistake Michell for a Pro Bowl quality player who is gonna as a rule make game winning plays though he demonstrated he can from time to time. Unfortunately the Bills need to formulate a mix which includes high-quality play virtually all the time rather than mere episodes of great play over the season which Mitchell does from time to time, but not all the time. No one player is gonna do the job and like the Bills teams of old where Kent Hull, Bruce Smith, Jimbo Kelly, Darryl Talley and others played a refuse to lose attitude that got the Bills to four straight SBs. Mitchell alone is necessary (he fills one of the needed roles) but is far from sufficient to fill all our needs. Jauron also, even if he was good enough) which raises a serious question given his record of yes being a very good quality person but he simply has not produced enough success to merit any confidence that he can make this work. I feel even worse right now about the Bills failing to pull the Ralph trigger on FAs Tony Gonzales and Brett Favre last year. While neither are adequate players because of their faults, the fact that both have been high quality players on the field for years is one of the missing elements we need.

This adoration of draft picks strikes me as a NY Lotto type of management strategy to building a football team. As the Lotto folks say you can't win the Lotto if you don't play, but there is simply a real difference between building a winning football team and depending primarily on the draft as a means of building a good football team. Yes good players have to come from somewhere and yes good players tend to get drafted. However, the draft is only one way of building a winner including good UDFA signings, good FA signings, and the odd trade to building a winner. Drafting well is necessary but far from sufficient in building a winner. Keeping players (even less than desirable ones) and building good chemistry seems a far more important factor to building a winner rather than simply investing in stocking up draft picks who even in good years have a 50/50 chance among first round picks of being a starter for your team in their first year, In fact, a player needs three years of play before he can reasonably be described as a bust or a hit for your team. Bills fans allowing their frustration to get the best of them and advocating shipping a player out mat feel good for dealing with this one over-priced player, but it just a different thing than building a winning team.

Yep. I got offered by the private sector what it was worth, but fortunately got a bailout.

I think part of the problem here is that we outside observers are being a bit too rigid in defining a team as either adopting or dropping a particular defensive scheme. The simple fact is that if any teams is so easily definable as running any one sche,e or the other the vast % of the time, this team will simply get eaten alive by opponents who will figure out the weaknesses of that one scheme and then keep on beating it until the opponent adjusts. The Tampa 2 is actually an example of this as basically it is a Cover 2 scheme which seems to this non-professional to basically be a scheme which makes greater use than standard NFL 4-3 Ds of the safeties as downfield cover guys. What makes the Cover 2 different than the norm, is that is employs the CBs primarily as short zone cover guys, outside run stoppers and CB blitzers, and requires the safeties to not only do their traditional jobs of middle run tackling support and TE/RB short zone coverage, but gives the extra duty of primary deep zone coverage on the WRs. This D became doable and the latest new thang because safeties developed a range of athleticism, speed, and talent that folks like Polamalu and Sanders had the game smarts and ability to do well in this massively diverse role. Though this approach at first gave OCs fits, they made adjustments to find and pick on the Cover 2 weaknesses. Basically, it called for a safety to many things over a lot of field. OCs found that if they simply flooded the deep zone, that even the best safeties could not cover two guys at once and that when you sent three or even four guys deep you ended up with an LB covering a fast RB or a slot WR, in the weak deep middle seam as the safeties went outside to cover fly patterns. The Tampa 2 was basically an adjustment to deal with this Cover 2 weakness. The Tampa 2 in order to work well requires an MLB with the speed to actually play pass coverage well in the middle deep zone, AND the tackling ability to do the traditional MLB job of tackling sideline to sideline, AND the football smarts to read the play quickly to determine whether the play is a run or a pass. For the Bills London Fletcher brought a lot to the table to play this role. He is a sideline to sideline tackler who traditionally led the Bills by far in tackles to his credit. He has great pass coverage skills and in his last year as a Bill led the NFL in INTs by an LB. His ball handling and deep ball reading skills were so good he played the role of the short kickoff return guy for the Bills as well. Yet, despite some clear talents he proved not to be good enough to make the Tampa 2 work for us as though he did make the proper reads and had a very good number of solo stops to his credit, he continually left Bills fans feeling that he would make his initial contact too deep in our D backfield to make the good tackles/solo stops and INT #s work for us. I think we went with Posluszny for a range of reasons (the Bills got a youngster with dynamic speed and very good tackling ability that we could mold into a Tampa 2 MLB and by replacing the old guard Fletch make the team Jauron's team rather than LeBeau/Cray's team), but ironically though Pos has proven to be as advertised in terms of speed, smarts and tackling ability he actually looks a lot like London Fletcher to me as making the hits but too deep into our D backfield. To me this is because though our safety play has been good, the Tampa 2 (and even the Cover 2 for that matter) need not just good but outstanding safety play in order to be imposing and dictate to the OC what he can try to do. Whitner seemed on track after his first two seasons to be the man who would make our Tampa 2 imposing (he proved clearly to be the best safety drafted his year being a better performer than Huff taken a pick earlier) and improved his second year to seem on the edge of becoming a Pro Bowl worthy talent. He also seemed to realize the import of his assignment and made leadership pronouncements guaranteeing the playoff this year. However, the injury bug which had hinted at being an issue for Whitner his first two years really emerged this year and he missed critical PT and seemed slowed and was not as imposing as we would need to make the Tampa 2 work.. Our other safeties have proven to be surprisingly good for a late draftee and an FA pick-up but not great either hence our Tampa 2 does not strike me as idiotic, but simply we are not good enough to make it work.

The problem is that under the salary cap with bonuses that simply cutting a player does not allow a team to tear it down and start again. Please correct me if I am wrong but we have already paid Kelsay a bonus which means he will be "stealing" salary from us for at least a couple more years whether we cut him or not. If this is the case Ralph has shown no inclination to pay a player big bucks to go play for someone else and benching him may happen but cutting him? I doubt it.

You are right that it is pretty clear that when you look at the production of the Bills braintrust overall, they are mediocre at best. However, as much as they appear to be incapable of running an effective O, signing FAs who are difference makers, or clock management in tight game situations, the draft record of this crew over the past 3 years has simply been outstanding. The past drafts have produced starters on this team from second day choices the first couple of years under this regime and overall folks such as Lynch and McKelvin were pretty good choices and though Witner did not have the breakout year we wanted this year, its hard to argue with the team having picked the best safety in his draft to fill a definite need. Hardy is probably the only first day clunker in the last three and its even too early to declare him a bust yet. I agree with faulting the Bills for many things as the proof is simply in the pudding, but being good at drafting ain't one of the problems here.

The key to whether he is a lock or not is pretty much dependent upon who will be the alternative options at QB based on when he retires. Folks seem to want to treat HOF membership as being determined by the stats a player puts up, but this view forgets: 1. This is a popularity contest determined by a select group of voters and not by a clear set of objective standards. Sure stats are crucial as this makes up a big part of how those voters will feel, but it presumes a bit too much to claim that he is a lock until we see how the rest of his career goes, whether he sucks up in an appropriate way to voters, and factors such as what happens to him in retirement (OJ has the stats to clearly belong in, but if voters were taking a crack at voting him in now then stats be darned). 2. Its the hall of FAME and not the hall of STATS. The victory today and him becoming the only QB besides Craig Morton to make it to the SB with two separate teams and also him making it back after a 7 year hiatus are simply accomplishments that add to his FAME. My guess is that he is in, but folks need to put this in the context of reality if they are gonna make bold predictions.

I look forward to the resident stat hounds providing you with a specific answer to your QB question (though likely as not one will have to slog through a lot of fact-free opinions on which QB sucks or not to get to a good statistical analysis. All I do know of a statistical vein was a few years back when there was a draft that folks generally viewed as a pretty strong crew, I checked after one year to see how many of the players picked in the first round were in fact first on the depth charts at their position for their team. In general, I felt that the conventional wisdom was that a player whom a team spent a 1st round pick on should become a starter in his first year. My analysis of this particular draft was that if the conventional wisdom led to an expectation of a first round choice becoming a first year starter was like the conventional wisdom often is pretty out to lunch. My general recollection (I can look back for the specific numbers but though I think stats are a great INDICATOR, the mere numbers are not enough of a stone cold lock predictor that this merits more than a mention) was that actually only slightly over 50% of the first round picks from a pretty strong draft were in fact the starters for their team after a year of play. In fact, there was a strong bias toward these starters being from the first 10 picks in the draft (no surprise here as only the first ten generally deserve the appellation "elite players" IMHO and also the first ten choices are usually earned by pretty weak teams so that not only do they get the best players but they likely have a lot of openings to fill not having made the playoffs that year), in terms of the slightly over 50% of first round picks who were starters at the end of the their 1st season. Sure, one hopes that your first round pick turns out to be a Whitner rather than a Williams (first round who ended up being considered a successful player rather than a bust for an elite pick) but the real life occurrence is that even with a relatively high pick in the coming draft, it is a simple statistical fact that the player we will get in the 2009 draft with a pretty high level pick is statistically unlikely to be a first year starter.

These are two different questions. Even without any evidence besides his words, I have no doubts that Ralph wants to win. He is involved and shows up to games and spouts off and makes statements about the state of the game and the team that indicate a strong interest in winning. However, this is a different question that whether he places such a high value on winning that he is willing to do what is necessary in terms of sacrificing his own desires and judgments which time and time again over the past decade have been shown to be wrong wrong wrong in making good team building judgments. From his failure to get along with a proven winner Polian, to his misjudgment and handshake deal with how much Jimbo had left, to his repetitive meddling and over-reaching to the team's detriment trying to get a QB to replace Jimbo, to his stupid handling of the Wade situation, to his mis-reading and mismanagement of the Butler situation, to his putting to much faith and giving of unchecked authority to TD, blah, blah, blah, Ralph has demonstrated to me that desire is not his problem, competence in football decison-making is. I thank him a lot for keeping the team here in this small market when other NFL owners like Modell to Frontiere have simply followed the money, however, i do mutter beneath my breath and even curse his actions publicly as though these other owners were idiots they did oversee the creation of winners.

Even if one agrees with your initial premise (several parts of which are clearly debatable) its a big jump from these initial thoughts to a conclusion that this player will be useless to the Bills next year. 1. Folks simply recover at different speeds from ACL tears depending upon the nature of the tear (how clean or not), the success of the surgery (a good repair or not), a virtual dice roll of post operation infection (both Manning and Brady were hit by post-op infection, diligence at rehab and other factors. Its simply too early to conclude how fast Hardy is gonna recover or not. 2. His problems seem a lot to be a lack of understanding of the routes and the game which can be greatly aided by a player having to take a seat and watch film, an off-season of study without the distraction of being able to go dancing at the disco may be a very good thing for Hardy as a performer. 3. Sure he may be a step slower in flat out speed but unless surgery is really botched he will be the same height. I think the big thing which may hinder Hardy's development and use is not changes brought by the injury, but the fact we did not make a change at OC and got a coordinator he can design good routes and get Hardy free on fade patterns. I am far less concerned about whether he has lost a step of speed that whether he comes back with the same or better ability to make a sharp cut on a short route. Worries he may have lost a step are simply overblown and unwarranted until we get more info.

The Kevin Everett "thang" was actually just a reference by me to tip my hat to FNL for actually taking on a serious issue which they did well before the particulars of the Everett incident. Thus my mention of it was not specific to that traumatic event and apparently better than can be hoped for results from that tragic hit. For me (and this is just me as other folks like my wife chooses to spend her limited time on this planet in different ways than I spend mine on lots of stuff and this is good) it underscored how different my enjoyment of the Bills and my wife's "enjoyment" of FNL were. Ironically, FNL is actually a probably more relevant pursuit than the Bills as at least she was able to consider notions on serious issues like those raised by a traumatic football injury to a player. For me as a Bills fan, I was also forced to consider these issues in real life as I was concerned about whither Everett and then inspired like most as though the hit cost his his career, his current level of recovery was an inspiring story of some great medical work and also diligent effort by him. However, ultimately as a Bills fan, my approach to Everett was life and the seasons go on and I was more concerned about the trivia at TE for the Bills about Royal not cutting as a player than about Everett not being able to be a player anymore. In most ways this strikes me as sad as Everett's situation says a lot more about the state of the human condition and is of greater import than Royal being paid handsomely to fail to do the job. However, as a Bills fan, Royal ends up commanding more of my thoughts and time than Everett as there is no possibility of Everett playing the game. The irony for me of it all is that FNL has a lot less to do with reality than the Kevin Everett situation as ultimately they are just acting and fantasizing, but actually if I paid more attention to the non-reality of FNL I would actually be devoting more time and giving more consideration to the issue of traumatic injury of a star athlete. Go figure.

The lil woman is downstairs as I write re-watching the first two seasons of FNL in anticipation of watching the 3rd season when it is finally broadcast over the air (or at least over wires if you do not have a Direct TV). I watched the first couple of shows with her a couple of years ago but dropped it when I decided it MAY be good TV but it was not good football (IMHO). The TV show spent too much time on who was sleeping with whom (or who wanted to sleep with someone or really not sleep at all but roll in the hay for a relatively short period of time. I'd be as likely to tune into FNL as I would watch Kevin Everett's rehab (an apparent plot line on the show with various overlays of belief in God, the Supreme Being of your choice and questions of whether he is gaming the events to influence who wins a football game based on how hard fans are praying). FNL is in no doubt a quality TV show and I wish them well and a 4th season. However it struck me as having limited appeal to someone looking for good football.

The simple likelihood regarding drafting a C or a TE is that if you are demanding that this player contribute significantly to the team as a rookie or start in his first year, once you get out of the elite players (a top 10 choice) it begins to get pretty unlikely this is gonna happen for a team. Though the conventional wisdom is that a first round pick should start at some point in his rookie year, the actual real life occurrence is that a look at the end of the season depth charts reveals it is just a little over 50% of first round picks who are listed as #1 on the depth chart. Even worse there is a strong bias toward these successful players (though often it is the case that these players start in part because their teams are so bad or the cash commitment and media commitment forces a team to start a Mike Williams even though many have given up on him) coming from a top 10 pick. I am not sure what are pick will be but likely the mediocre Bills finishing 7-9 yet again will be picking just after the elite players are gone, The Bills if they are looking for immediate help from a C or TE likely are going to have to go both draft choice and FA to likely find a contribution next year at these positions unless they can pull off another outstanding draft like the one which saw them step up to get McCargo, but it was actually second day pick Williams who seemed like a redundant choice at the time who gave them even a mediocre starter.

I totally agree that the problem is that Jauron has never been able to get good and consistent production out of his OC. Sure various O stats did improve under Schonert, but they merely improved from horrendous to extremely disappointing. Like it or not the offense under the Turk and DJ was simply inadequate. Even the improvement is not fast enough to match an improvement like the meteoric rise which saw the Fish go from 2-14 to the playoffs under Parcells and the Jets fall short but improve to just short of playoff worthy under Favre. However, I think your conclusion that the problem here is Jauron going conservative does not really fit the facts of what happened. A pivotal play this year for example was when the Bills with a lead late in the game sent JP on a rollout on a pass play and the resulting fumble led to an opposing TD and a loss. The conservative thing to do would have been to send the Beast into the line for a couple of yards and a cloud of astroturf and then rely on Moorman and the D to seal the deal. Jauron took the heat for this being his call and the conservative thing would likely have been the right thing to do. This episode is consistent with other non-conservative bad calls which Jauron has made like trying to have Edwards throw in the shadow of the Dallas endzone leading to an INT when an FG would have made it that much more difficult for the Boys to pull off a win which took a miracle anyway. In his first year as HC with the Bills ahead of the Pats and a 4th and 1 he sent WM into the line (who apparently forgot the down count) and we turned the ball over and the Pats marched back to the win when the conservative move of kicking the FG might have made the whole season very different. I agree that Jauron needs to simply make the O work in order to improve and he has shown little to no signs of doing this throughout his career. However, I think your theory that he is too conservative simply does not fit a bunch of real world key examples.

I also doubt he would suddenly become a hardass as this is a question of personality and it hard to see how he would change radically his personality at this point/ I suspect he will make changes because he clearly is on the hot seat, but these changes are likely to be intellectual changes rather than stylistic changes. This would probably be a good thing because if the difference were to be he suddenly became a hardass this likely would lead to failure anyway as this change in style strikes me as a stupid change rather than one that would make a difference in results.

I would not be so sure about not Birk. It seems pretty clear that rather than youth we need leadership and experience on the OL. At 32, Birk is by no means ancient by OL standards. Even though he in fact did lose a season to injury he has come back from it and played 16 games a couple or even several seasons since the injury. In addition, center is such a clear need for this team after they declared the Fowler experiment over and given Preston's meltdown at the end of the half in a late game this year. I think Birk fits this team far better than Gross.

I do not disagree at all with your basic argument which seems to argue if a team is good they will be good. The draft is a crapshoot exactly because most teams do not manage it well and this is difficult to do. The simple stats are that though the conventional wisdom is a 1st round pick should be a 1st year starter, the reality is that only a little bit over 50% are and in fact there is a heavy bias among these 1st year starters to the first 10 picks (my definition of an elite player). These 1st ten picks tend to start because they are the truly elite and the teams with the first ten picks are generally not your consistent winners but really bad teams. If you look at the teams that continually do well, strong drafting teams like Indy where Polian has done a great job using draft picks to build his OL, but again how easy is this to do and even if you do, Indy took a very very long time before they finally won it all so they prove if anything that being a great drafting team in no way is a guarantee of SB success. Again, my basic argument is not that the draft should be ignored. it should not as good players have to come from somewhere and good players tend to be drafted so the draft must be a place where a team must go. My argument is that it is football foolhardy for a team to focus on any one aspect of player acquisition as being the end all and be all whether this is the silly approach of figuring you are gonna buy your way there with FAs or the foolhardy approach that merely by emphasizing the draft you will win it all. The irony of this thought is that actually, the last 3 years of Bills drafting under the current regime as actually been pretty top notch as it continually has produced players who start and comfortably command their positions on the team and within the league even in comparison to other players. However, this pretty good drafting simply has produced records of 7-9 three years in a row.

Yep

Overall, I certainly agree that good players obviously have to come from somewhere and the nature of the draft is that better players tend to get drafted (and drafted in the top 10). However with this obvious proviso, the draft is simply overrated. It is helped by the tremendous marketing which the NFL and ESPN provide for the draft as a tool for fantasy football fans. Yep, a Peyton Manning does come along every once in a while, but the best players are more like the extreme of Tom Brady who is most notable from a draft perspective in that 30 over teams had a shot at him 5-6 times and simply passed on taking what has turned out to be the best player in football for several years until he got hurt. Sure the Bills should emphasize the draft as a means of getting players, and sure there is some 20/20 hindsight which one can say woulda/shoulda/coulda about which player they should have taken. However, I just do not see any kind of reasonable changes which this team would have made to do a better job at drafting players since the faux pas of wasting their #4 on Mike Williams (and even this error saw the #3 choice actually taken in this draft be a disaster and the alternative best reasonable choice at LT McKinnie prove to be an idiot who while not as bad as MW was clearly also a problematic player and no walking revelation. The problem with the draft for this team right here and right now is that it simply seems incredibly unlikely in a real world where about 50% of 1st round choices are not even gonna be starters after a year that the draft simply holds little likelihood of answering this teams problems to produce the Miami-like from 1-15 to the playoffs results we fans badly want. The simple fact is the Bills will not need to invest in the draft or any single method as the way to build a winner, but instead have to succeed in using the multiple methods of player acquisition most likely led by the immediate payoffs of a revolutionary FA acquisition who adds value to the players already existing on this team, AND get good and lucky in the draft, AND make another Peters like hit from UDFAs and even make a key trade (where is the next Welker?) to build a winner. Be as good as we can be in the draft, but a lead focus on this as the way we are gonna make a difference and the other methods of player acquisition are just nice things to do strikes me as a recipe for continued failure for this team.

I think that this view is mere wishful thinking by folks who want to see Jauron punished for the Bills completely failing to meet reasonable expectations in 08 or folks who believe Jauron would be gone for sure if he racked up a 0-fer or couple of win season next year. Actually merely looking at past performance, the best prediction of how the Bills will do next year is obviously 7-9. I think the whines from some fans that Jauron is a total idiot who can do nothing right and has nothing to offer the Bills are simply wrong. Yes he is to some extent a football idiot leading his team to losing games that they should not have blown if they had taken some fairly obvious conservative actions (kick the FG against Dallas with a lead in a game last year instead of calling for Edwards to hit a tight pass which led to a debacle, kicking the FG with a lead late in his first season road game against the Pats, not roll JP out in the NYJ game). However, he did well leading an horrendous team his first year to a mediocre record, and also did well getting to 7-9 while leading the NFL in players going on IR. My guess is that even with a tough schedule we will see the Bills flirt again next year with a .500 record, I doubt they do better than 8-8 with a tough schedule, but supplemented with a non-playoff high draft pick and the youngest team in the NFL getting older this team will likely prove to be an adequate NFL team who will finish at .500 or better if the oddly shaped football bounces the way we need. They could do worse than this year, but I doubt it will be worse than 6-10 with the talent we have. Its unfortunate as crawling arounf .500 will be like simply be bitten to death by ducks as we simply have not taken the right risks to make this team a winner.

The key (as it should be) for is to go at least .500 in the division. IF (a big IF given the 0-6 result this year) hold our own in the home games (a reasonable team loses only one at home but we have not been reasonable for a while) steal a couple on the road (KC is possible but it truly is a steal after that we come out with 9 wins and still need some help to get inbut it is possible.

With the Fins storming from 1-15 to the playoffs in one off-season, the beauty of the Rozzelle model of doing business is that every team (except Detroit) is in fact close to making the playoffs next year IF they make the right moves in the off-season. However, staying the course with Jauron and the crew does not seem like a major league move like hiring Bill Parcells (as far as Detroit I do not think even Parcells can reverse the the Matt Millen wreckage in one season). I think the problem for us Bills fans is that even if one gives Ralph the benefit of the doubt and believe in Jauron having this team on a positive track, the speed of his past career long achievements is likely a team he took to 7-9 3 years in a row improves to 8-8 or 9-7 next year. With some lucky bounces of the ball and intersection of some planes (the Pats and the Fins planes colliding over JFK is the type of event which will do it) the "improving" Bills still need some help to make the playoffs and are fairly likely to last only a round. The DJ re-hiring seems like a commitment to adequacy at best on a good day after 3 years of medicore results at best.