DazedandConfused

My sense of the OL is that the key to its success is not going to be the quality of a particular individual player but whether they develop the ephemeral quality good chemistry in world record time. The keys to whether this happens are: 1. Player leadership- One element the OL has clearly lacked since the glory days of the 90s has been the difficult to question never say die player leadership Kent Hull provided the OL. He was never a league wide heralded stud like Ruben was and the inherent inequity of the play/performance (which led to us ovepaying Fina because he was our best bet at LT though he was adequate at best and then play LG Brown LT money since he was clearly our most heralded player even though Hull was for years our most valuable OL player). We are clearly demanding and thus expecting a lot from Hamgartner, He actually seems to have enough vet experience and apparently is a nice guy who might provide it. The problem is that at best he seems good but not great and we are gonna ask a lot. We will see. I think the most recent mediocre repeating 7-9 Bills squads have the play of Dockery as showing the leadership failure. Not only did the interior OL with its bright pulling center Fowler fail to see the hugely paid Dockery asset itself in short yardage, but my GUESS is that the Bills in part blame Dockery for not asserting himself to force Peters to be a stand up teammate. The BIG Bills management error was in not really replacing the OL leadership Mouse McNally provided (he even carrot and sticked idiot Mike Williams into brief good performances and being a good person when he lost the Grammy who raised him and not having strong enough O leadership for the conservatively minded DJ to overcome the lack of solid player OL leadership. We will see how Hamgartner does. He has never been a great player, but then neither was Hull. Hamgartner needs to give a refuse to lose ethic to his young OL teammates. Coaches can help coach the technical points but cannot replace onfield leadership and the breaking in of Wood til he becomes a vet he needs. 2. Our O scheme better generate a ton of WR pressure- Gone are the days when we had the biggest OL in the NFL and we planned to simply beat down opposing Ds. The new O scheme had better take some pressure off its very young OL by simply forcing opposing teams into a zone with dts commanded by Evans speed and growing athleticism and TOs proven RAC abilities. Add in Parrish who should be a monster with imprecise route running if he is consistently singled in a 3 WR base O and have Reed (miscast as a #2 and potentially devastating picking on LBs as a #4) and also Hardy (you can't teach tall and he was drafted as a #2 when he will be our #5 and Johnson (not short at 6' 3" and showed the talent Hardy should have shown) and we really are loaded at WR. This loading at WR is essential since we are still a year (at best) away from adequacy at TE and FB is a placefiller at best. The young OL needs Evans to step up into the consistent #1 I think he can be (Edwards needs to step up here IMHO to make this happen as you cannot teach speed either and Evans not only has this but has hinted at times a real athleticism which impresses me). Like all human beings who are lucky TO is getting older. However, if the Bills were depending on him to be a #1 this would be laughable. If the Bills were depending on him not to blow up for more than a year, this would also be laughable (TOs demonstrated rep as a problem in SF, then Philly and then Dallas is that he is great his first year so I think the stories and comments which call him a cancer are simply bleating and whiining. Even with the age drop-off I expect him to have he should still prove to be the best #2 WR the Bills have had in years. The key is for Turk to step up in designing slants and pressuring routes (run picks until the refs stop us from doing this) and go for the kill consistently on O. If the D is forced to zone up by the match-ups and not given time to run veteran stunts by things like the no huddle, our young OL will get to take on folks 1/1 and should have the talent to do this. Trent will have to watch and dump it off when the OL gets beat or find the open WR when they send run/blitz packages, The Woods/Peter comparison is a silly distraction I hope the coaches ignore and smarter fans avoid.

I also agree with the Buffalobill post this responds to that anyway you cut this it is simply too early until we see virtually how the whole season plays out whether the OL switch was an intelligent thing to do. W/L will be the objective measure and even that will have to be based on a pretty fully subjective assessment of the developing OLs play in producing that result and a lot of woulda/coulda/shoulda theorizing on how that production would have been with Peters in the fold or not. For me, I was not disappointed at all in how Peters acted. I was not disappointed because I pretty fully expected him to care about money more than he cared about the team. That is how he acted. Lowlife yes? Disappointing? Nope. Not unless you bought into the load that the Buffalo Bills corporation values the team and an ethic of fairness first and individual achievement second or as a by-product which MAY happen to come along with a consistent effort to produce a good team first and foremost. I had this quaint notion about the team in the eighties and through that great moment where a bunch my friends (and a few strangers) who gathered together to watch the SB against the NYG all silently held hands as Norwood line up the FG that went barely wide right. This feeling was reinforced when 20,000 or so folks gathered in Niagara Sq. and welcomed back our team and gave group forgiveness to a tearful Scott Norwood. I held onto this feeling despite the ongoing warfare between the owner and the NFLPA over the CBA (a fight where in essence the players first won recognition as partners rather than "mere" million dollar victims of the owners and eventually with the last CBA (where arguably the NFLPA having won by agreement 60.5% of the total receipts became the majority partner). I could tolerate this as it was merely a battle between the rich and the filthy rich. However, Ralph has set the tone of yes starting of with a great thing that he deserves great praise for of keeping the Bills in Buffalo after he could not buy a team for a piddling investment in the towns where he wanted to own a franchise. Ralph kept the franchise here despite big offers of $ to move it elsewhere and he deserves praise for that. However, Ralph has led the mangulation of this team (often for his own personal grins and foibles) that has made it pretty unreasonable to expect anything but the money grubbing team second attitude demonstrated by Peters as he negotiated with the Ralph corporation. I wish Peters had acted differently. However, his actions are pretty consistent with the me first WNY second attitude he has shown since the firing of Polian and the glory days through his screwing up the handshake deal with Kelly, led the destruction caused by sometimes hilarious (I laughed so I would not cry) mismangement of the QB situation. His messing up the Butler situation and then adding insult to injury with his mishandling of the HC situation since, the hiring and non-management of the flawed TD, etc etc. I agree that Peters was a money grubbing idiot but you seriously were not disappointed by this were you? If so you ignored the horrendous mismangement of this team that started at the top with Ralph that led to us being 0 for a decade in playoff appearances. One can easily kick the Peters dead horse with the info we have right now. However, its hard to take that indictment seriously until we build up at least year of reality to base this upon. This dead horse activity is not helped when one ignores the reality that this fish started rotting from the head down or ignores the reality that any assessment not based in real world W/L performance by this team and then a subjective analysis of the OL role is gonna be at best an apples and oranges comparison given no justice by an attempt to compare the old LT with the new LG.

And in the free market where the athletes have the ultimate decision on who an agent who routinely persuades kids thet are worth more than the market will give them are out of the business. If these kids cannot figure out that this particular agent has developed a rep for overestimating his clients worth and then fails to deliver his client a contract above the slotted level after a bit of a holdout frim signing, this agent will begin to lose business. If the player is too much of a sheep to figure the past contracts the agent has signed were not outstanding, the n the other agents competing for contracts will make sure that the rookies know. You also paint to simple a picture of the agent as some Svengali that is the only force driving a player. As much as the agent may be telling the kid to hold out, the players Mom and/or Dad are ready to move into a new house as soon as the player signs his deal and can pay for it outright or get a loan to payback hos Mom for years of cleaning his nose at Pop Warner football. In addition, bring along every relative who he has not seen for years is now acting like his best bud. There are a few agents out there who are singular gods to their clients, but reality says it is a lot more and an agent as the sole influence (much less director) of an athlete is the rare case. it sounds like your agent friend has been a good persuader and sold you a bill of goods exaggerating the single agents role.

I also do not remember any article making a credible claim that the Bills offered him $10 mill a year. However, it would be incorrect to claim the Bills stance was to offer him nothing and I do remember talk of them having serious negotiations with Peters and though the Bills never appeared near to offering him the 10 he wanted (and eventually got from Philly) they were pretty clearly ready to drop some serious change on Peters. Do you agree they appeared ready to give a significant (but not nearly the astronomical amount he wanted) cash on Peters. If so this would not seem to be consistent with the view he is a worthless sack of crap. How do you feel about this? Why do you think your conclusions diverge so wildly from the Bills who knew him best? Another thing I think we can agree upon even taking your extreme views of Peters into account is that his agent Parker did a pretty amazing job representing his client. In fact, the more you diss Peters, then the more I think you got to tip your hat to Parker. Think about it. If you are correct that Peters is such a sack of excrement, then this shows an even greater nod that must be given to Parker as he held out his client to get such a huge deal. In fact, even if one takes the stance that an agent should be about more than the money, then by taking the stance Parker had him take he got his new deal when if he really sucked as you say Peters is doomed to fail in this league. If Parker made the same assessment you made then it mean kudos for Parker who forced the Bills to trade him to big bucks he would never be in a position to get a great deal since sooner or later the world would realize the same thing you do and about Peters sucking. Another point we should agree on is that the Pro Bowl is more of a beauty contest than a true assessment of skills. The fact that Peters won this popularity contest twice in a row does lend credence to the claim he is widely thought to be a great player. I think on the face of it we all should agree that: 1. The Bills coaches and FO thought pretty highly of him as a player or they never would even have offered him likely the largest contract ever given a Bill even though it fell short of his goal of $10 million. 2. Parker did an amazing job getting this sack of excrement a huge deal. 3, His being voted to the Pro Bowl represents a pretty wide finding by the coaches, the fans, and his fellow players that would constitute pretty wide acceptance of a conclusion he is a stud (even though you and I may not agree with their conclusion.

It depends. The center has the responsibility for reading the likely blitz routes and calling the blocking scheme on each play and the QB bears ultimate responsibility for the play call being appropriate to his read of how this play matches up with the likely implementation of the opponents D scheme. I do not know which specific play you are referencing, but Fowler could have easily called for a package which gave Peters the direct responsibility for LDE (and if we are confident in the abilities of the LT to also have chip block duty on a safety coming around the end though I doubt Peters or any LTs in this league will be so dominant against even an average LDE that they could pull off this double duty). If the base blocking scheme is the usual standard, responsibility for a rushing safety would either be on a blitz pick-up by the RB, or we would depend on the QB and the WR on that side to recognize the pass rush and expect both to make a hot read and the QB will hit the WR doing a slant into the now unoccupied medium zone the safety is leaving unguarded with his blitz. If we have called a run, the RB now must try to avoid the onrushing safety and if he does he has a lot of grass in front of him to run on. The bottomline is that Peters easily could have had no responsibility for a safety coming around his end and the Bills will depend on the RB and the QB to make the right reads to exploit this rush. Thats this fans unknowledgable sense of this -play.

Agreed. The funny thing is that after watching thr beginning of the first episode of the TO show (and after a short viewing tuning switching to something more interesting when I realized the Bills are going to be a later plot line in this "reality" show is that the true measure for TO of how well Buffalo is a good place for him or not is how well it fits into the storyline of his telling his tale. My guess is that if the Bills are winners in 09 then TO being part of this winner is the likely plot line. If the Bills do not win, then the plotline is how TO deals with adversity. If there is something else going on in his life (will TO marry or settle down for example) TO is likely fine as a Bill as his dealing with the team will be background noise rather than major plot. If on the other hand the team does not do well and there are no other significant plotlines then my guess is TO acts a fool to make for interesting TV. The answer for the Bills is the same as always. Just win baby.

My sense is this a pretty good situation for TO in terms of football. His partner WR is a speed guy who almost certainly demands a dt. There is a pro bowl runner attracting attention away from the passing game. The young QB us not likely to be a threat to the TO personality like McNabb or Garcia and does not have the rep of Romo so TO runs the roost, The problem for TO is that Buffalo ain't LA and this small town does not fit his star needs. However, Toronto is just up the road and it would help to hace him market the club there. He only has a 1 year deal so whats the problem do whsts the problem?

For me the answer is that i do not care who starts as long as the team as a whole is doing well. If Jackson were to prove to be such a stud in yards gained if he gets a ton of star time with Lunch forced to sit, my guess is that this depends upon whether Jackson productivity came because he and Rhodes were such an effective duo or on his own. If Jackson does well on his own I probably start Lynch cause I know the team will be better off with a one-two punch and I like the idea of Lynch knowing Jackson has set a standard he better exceed or I have given him a chance but unless he exceeds Jackson totals as a starter he is gonna lose his job. Ironically if Jackson racks up his good individual numbers because Rhodes and he team up to make Jackson successful I am actually more likely to go with Jackson as my starter and Rhodes as my #2 rather than break up an effective combo. So it not only matters to me what Jackson does but how he does it.

I for one do not see these athletes as being revered people or role models so I care very little about what they reportedly said and care a lot more about what they actually do on the field in games. Even my judgment of their performance though I am quite rabid about it as a Bills fan is extremely limited in its importance because though it is a game I care a lot about I realize it is only a game. Thus in the big picture, I think it is quite reasonable to be "miffed" about something a player says repeatedly. but this expression in the third hand sourcing of a media article strikes me as pretty far from something to get pissed about and probably does not rise to the minor league level of even getting miffed about it.

I think you are on target. The Bills camp opened early as they had an extra pre-season game with the HOF game. Maybin can fail to sign all of this week and still conceivably suit up for and possibly even play in 4 pre-season games (there is a growing consensus that this should be officially reduced to 2). Maybin will still suffer because the rest of the league will be a week ahead of him if he does not sign until this weekend, but actually what will be more problematic for him is that he will be three weeks behind his Bills teammates as he personally competes for a spot on the team. The good news for us Bills fans is that with our DL rotation, we should be able to play Maybin in the situational role he is meant for even without full practice for Maybin. If we envisioned him as a 3 down player his Waitout (again this is not a holdout as he has no existing contract to hold out on) we might be in a bit of a panic, but we always envisioned him in a situational role so he well can learn anddevelop chemistry for this. Do not get your panties up in a wad until next week.

[quote name='BillsVet' date='Aug 2 2009, 11:19 PM' post='149 IIRC, there were two dissenting votes within the inner circle against retaining DJ after the season finale. I'm guessing Modrak and Brandon wanted the guy gone, with the most important votes, RW and Littman, electing to keep the recently extended DJ. Brandon's been marketing this team for a decade and knew he couldn't attain the same season ticket levels without a drawing card. I still believe he was the impetus to signing TO, and pitched the idea to RW and Littman, who both concurred. It was a indeed a brilliant marketing move in the wake of a lousy (from a marketing perspective) start to the off-season. I still can't believe TO is here, and here's to hoping he keeps the fans excited in the regular season. Brandon deserves credit especially for finding someone who won't be the Kelsay/Royal/DJ soundbite that we've been hearing for three years running. As always (and as it should be) it all comes back to how the team does on the field. The team has a chance not seen since the Reed/Lofton/Thurman days of having an offensive attack tool. It is quite possible that the OL cannot give the QB enough time to exploit these weapons, but if the Evans/TO duo demand two dts and the Bills add further pass coverage pressure with a 3WR base set, they can force the D into a zone coverage which greatly diminishes the pass rush and allows Lynch/Jackson/Rhodes to run wild on the spread D. If the coaches make this work we will be fine and if they cannot then they should get out of dodge.

To be accurate at all you have to add Ralph W. to this list since in the end it is he who signs the paychecks for all of these acquisitions and clearly has veto power over any of the big signings (and may have been an impetus for any of these acquisitions rather than being an undeniable veto over any big decisions. For Ralph and all of these individuals, they have to be rated a mixed bag. They all have some involvement in individual good moves as well as some responsibility for stinkers. If one is looking to assign blame for an individual the bigger your indictment of any individual then the bigger the indictment of Ralph for hiring or continuing to pay this jerk. In my book Ralph deserves a ton of credit for keeping the Bills here. However, this credit does not invalidate his role in all the bad moves or hiring any individual you want to declare an idiot. Ralph also bears pretty specific blame for QB debacles and also for personally mishandling the relationships with GM's Polian and Burler and then hiring and failing to properly manage TD. Its hard for me to see how any logical person cannot start and virtually finish laying the blame for 10 years of playoff failure at Ralph's door. Fish starts rotting from the head and its true of this team's failure as well. These failures do not eradicate the fact that Ralph deserves huge credit for keeping the Bills here. Likewise however, this great and essential move does not totally invalidate the reality of his failings as a team owner.

Agree with your post. I would add that: QB- What interests me is actually how little play the Trent Edwards injury issue has gotten, I think this is particularly true given Edwards history of past injury (I define injury prone as a player missing PT due to injuries to different part of his body). As Trent has lost playing time to an arm injury as a rookie, a concussion last regular season, and missed some PT in an exhibition game from an injury I do not remember being revealed last year he just barely meets the objective criteria I use (the loss of exhibition PT is not the same as regular season PT but given Edwards' youth and the critical need for him to develop chemistry with his team I think it qualifies siting this injury). Given the question marks which surround his back-ups talents (can either of these two men do 3 starts credibly if called upon, this strikes me as a real crap shoot. WR- Simply scary speed. Even with TO likely to have the reduction in production that comes to us all with age (he should easily be the best #2 WR we have had in years. Parrish does have real limitations seemingly in consistently running sharo patterns, but no one logically questions his speed or proven ability to run after the catch paralleled with his PR success. If the Evans commands a PT (which he does based on his speed and demonstration of some athleticism making catches). If TO still demands a dt (quite probable as an over and under is the most effective way to avoid his RAC ability) and Parrish offers a threat though even if he is inconsistent, an opposing DC must account for him going to the house on each place they play him, a base 3 WR is the way for us to go. OL- On the face of it the Bills are in big trouble on the OL due to youth. This kiddie corps may step up to be great but based on real occurrences in the NFL this is simply unlikely. Still the OL has a fighting chance under specific circumstances: A. The WR attack proves successful and the need for multiple dts forces opposing Ds into limiting their pass rush to the four DL guys as the OLBs are playing pass D rather than blitzing and the MLB is staying home to guard against the run. An attacking Bills pass game would be the best friend ever to a young OL. Add to that a quick release by Edwards and there likely will be minimal sacks. B. If the Bills successfully run the no huddle they will rush Ds to the LOS without a huddle to decide to run stunts and complex rushes difficult for the young OL to match. The opponents will also be limited in the substitutions and sackers will be pacing themselves to last rather than rushing like madmen all the time. Its as much up to Turk and the coaches to effectively design and implement a system as it is for the players to be talented. RB- 3 potential starter quality players allow the Bills to absorb losing Lynch for 2-4 games. I like the potential of this O. The question is whether Turk is up to it,

One thing which has always been true about TO is that he likes to be different and in folks face in what appears to be an almost desperate desire to get folks attention. The funny thing now is that TO has developed such a rep for being an a-hole and a cancer that the best way for him to be in folks face and to be different is by doing things which emphasize him being a team leader and solid citizen for the most part. TO will always be TO an mouth off with the stupid opinions he is entitled to have as a human being and an American like his Michael Vick remarks (a bad football idea if the concept is to sign him with Buffalo, he plays well because he is unpredictable, but the NFL game these days is about getting productivity from your teammates because they develop a chemistry to be able to predict what their colleagues will do. As a football player Vick will almost certainly do amazing things individually but he is unlikely to make you a better team because his teammates and opponents can never predict what he will do next). However, the good news for Bills fans is that at least for this year, TO is able to maximize attention to him through idiotic (and a little sad if you ask me) efforts like the TO Show on VH1 and be in folks face by performing like a good teammate. For a year (which likely includes at least one and probably two episodes of bad luck where the Bills suffer challenging losses) their appears to be a perfect storm where TO can get the little things he needs by being a good guy on the stiff that counts and being an idiot on stuff like his opinion on Vick which really do not matter for long in the big picture.

As far as signing Maybin, in a perfect world it would be great if # 12 and #10 were signed sealed and delivered, but last I checked the world is rarely perfect. The RUMOR that Crabtree's signing is unlikely is a pain, but no where near the problem if we heard that the #12 pick is problematic and refuses to sign. Virtually by definition, the #12 must be signed and Maybin's agent and the Bills will react based on the public reports of this signing which must be declared to the league are released. The #10 amounts are also critical to the slotting, but by past practice this contract will be estimated by the Bills and Maybin's agents. They will simply estimate what the #10 normally would get to figure out the slotting. What Crabtree asserts he deserves because they feel he should have been a #6 or higher is not a drop dead certainty to delay Maybin's signing. In fact, with this word widely out it make it far more likely and reasonable that the two signings will not be totally linked.

This is why I think it would be stupid to sign him. He is a great athlete, but the resulting distraction of the argument over whether he should be allowed to play or be banned for life will almost certainly result in this team playing worse football. He is a great athlete I agree, but this greatness means that a team needs to be built around his singular style and great and difficult to predict reactions to a particular play that in many ways one must build a new chemistry among the O players and even install a substantially different playbook. Sorry for polluting this misspelled attempt at starting a petition with contrary views, but again these views are not based on the morality (or amorality of this situation) they are based on a sense that he is undoubtedly a great athlete (though legitimate doubts and additional distraction are added by the unknown impacts of his several year hiatus have had on his play. My views are based on a pure football sense that their is a prety fair likelihood that he hurts this football team in productivity. Signing him and trying to plug him in (and really build the O around his unique skills to have any chance at being effective) is almost certainly gonna be bad football for someone interested in the Bills. I would just as soon watch re-runs of Desperate Housewives rather than tune into what likely will be episodes of Desperate Football team.

I am sure that the NFL players and their lawyers are developing contingency plans for a range of possible SCOTUS outcomes, but I find it hard to believe that anyone who works on these issues as a professional (or has an oz. of knowledge of past court history has any drop dead certainty about any particular outcome. They would be wandering even further into fantasy land if they think they can predict how third parties (be they they the NFL. the MFLPA, and the networks who really call a lot of the shots on this since they ultimately control the money) are gping to react to a SCOTUS decision which is possibly predictable but there are too many reactions and counter reactions which are going to write this story for any drop dead certain prediction to be much more than the height of fantasy, Of the many possibilities here the default most likely scenarios are those that predict the world tomorrow will be much like the world is today. The more galactic the change predicted it may on some planers in some universes turn out to be right, but the greatest likelihood is that these predictions willl simply be wrong. Here on TSW it is the place to engage in fantasy what ifs, but one would hope that if one wants to be taken at least somewhat seriously on an issue that involves the difficult to predict SCOTUS (we do not even know with great certainty what the dynamic of group interaction and horsetrading will be on the court with a Sotomayor joining) not to mention that theorizing how the many key stakeholders will react to whatever the SCOTUS decision turns out to be is a pretty uncertain art at best. Again, my sense is that past history tells us any ruling is likely to be written to be pretty narrow. It may force galactic shifts vis a vis NFL reactions to companies who advertise, but it is pretty unlikely that any ruling will also galactically change the business relationship between the NFL and NFLPA. Even if it does, the likelihood is not that the NFL will roll over and die from its subordinate position, but these over testosteroned athletes will look foe a fight. Likewise because the the NFL has cleverly managed to lay off their development costs onto the colleges (a huge tax-payer subsidy to the NFL owners as opposed to their MLB, NHL and even NBA brethren who are forced to give huge speculative contracts to 16-19 year olds and for MLB and the NHL pay through the nose for junior leagues to develop these players). One side effect the the NFL owners welfare queenage is that they get players who are adults and some of whom actually got educated while in college learning their craft. These bright boys like the Upshaws, Troy Vincents and even TKO who has pursued Ivy League education in the off season are not smart enough with loads of free time to become lawyers but these men are smart enough to hire smart NY lawyers who helped turn their getting rolled by the owners in the 80s into the CBAs of the 90s and beyond/ I think the interesting discussion would be what will be potential NFLPA counter moves if the exotic pretty unlikely outcome of a slam dunk SCOTUS ruling of immunity from antitrust was given not only for NFL interaction with advertisers but took the extraordinary judicial activism step of invalidating a negotiated settlement to give all the cards to the NFL. After pissing in their Depends, my guess is that it becomes more likely that some NFL stars see themselves as held back by the mere hundred thousand aire scrubs and look seriously at starting their own league. If they do something like this, and guarantee the networks a product to sell commercials around without the uncertainties of unhappy workers to spoil the delivery of the product to sell soap with the star players may be game. Some players likely will be scaredy cats and love he security of having Rich Kotite yell at them, but given the multi-millions players have made and the smart ones have invested, it is not a wild idea that these players can find the capital to set up their own league and have to split the proceeds with even fewer players. I know for me given a choice between watching a team led by John DiGregorio and a bunch of replacement players and a team led by Pro Bowlers Schobel and the miscreant Lynch I would watch the good players. The main lesson the past has too teach us about a fantasy future where the NFL wins it all is the replacement player debacle of the 80s. The more thorough an NFL victory the more likely it will become for the NFLPA to simply overturn the chessboard and write new rules. I think with the replacement "win" in the 80s the owners let a genii out of the bottle that they will find it difficult if not impossible to put back in.

I think this exposes one of the flaws in your thinking. IF (and this is a huge IF) a SCOTUS ruling gave the NFL a total anti-trust exemption which gave it huge power in negotiating with the NFLPA, one of the things you can say for sure is that the NFLPA would not be happy. If there was such a seismic shift in the context of the rules governing the game, this would naturally be followed by a seismic shift in the agreements which govern the relationship between the NFL and the NFLPA. In the face of this disruption the "labor peace" which has allowed the NFL and the NFLPA to make more $ than anyone dreamed imaginable under life before the current CBA would be the order of the day. The networks supply amazing amounts of wealth to the NFL and NFLPA because this entity can basically guarantee that under the long term agreement reflected in the current CBA they can sell the networks product which they can use to sell soap in commercial ads. My sense is that rather than the galactic change Munson and you seem to want to sell as a certainty, that one of the basic certainties which would come from such a large shift in the facts of operation is that certainly the players would get a smaller cut of the pie than they currently get (they will not be happy and threats to guarantee presentation of the products the networks want to sell will still be their trump card though the mechanism for doing this would be less clear. This in turn would lead to many owners not being happy at all because without the guarantee of having product to sell they will make less money. I think you are flawed in coming to a conclusion that in fact the NFL is pushing for a ruling WITH the implication of a galactic shift because in essense they would be asking the courts to rule they will make less money. Why would anyone in the NFL even imply they are asking for a galactic change in doctrine? Not because they want this, but because this may create useful leverage for them in the current negotiations with the players over CBA extension. I think at worse the NFL MAY love the idea but in the end they would hate the reality because they would make less money (the ultimate ruler and why Tagliaboo-boo joined with the NFLPA to get the owners to walk the plank and make the NFLPA not only partners but arguably majority partners as the their CBA cut starts with a 6. Add to this that not only do I think you misread the NFLs intent with this move you misread how the court tends to make findings. If they decide to go for a 5-4 ruling they may in fact make new law, but in order to get Kennedy they end uo making the new law apply fairly restrictively rather than the galatic change you describe in this case. The Supremes could easily immunize the NFL from lawsuits by businesses as led to this case, but they also could make such a ruling and in the same opinion declare that the ruling issue reagarding the NFL and NFLPA is not an ideological interpretation of SE that immunized the owners from anti-trust, but in fact past recent practice is affirmed and the current CBA agreement is quite lawful and it is both the case the NFL is immune to lawsuits by company's such as needle but not immune to lawsuits from the players, These finding are ideologically contradictory, but here in the real world ideology simply does not rule. it is a factor but does not rule. In the end the Supremes can do whatever 5 votes say us the law and to get to 5 my guess is that the result will not be as earthshaking as you suggest. In fact, if it attracts 6 or 7 judges, an outcome which rules for the NFL in the Needle portion of this suit but then affirms past practice in the parts which impact the NFL/NFLPA relationship is the likely outcome of any ruling, Ideology and theory is often secondary to reality.

I think most responses seem to try to answer the question who is the Bills weakest starter. While this is a worthwhile consideration for any fan, I think a real answer to the question of what position is a weak link which makes a somewhat likely difference in whether we post a lot of Ws this season, the question is more one of whether we have a credible plan B for a particular position. We either are gonna count on the starter not getting injured (a possibility but no gaurantee in this league, or we hve a credible plan B if the starter goes down, gets nicked, or simply is not diverse enough in what we can do that his being on the field basically telegraphs what play is going to be called. My sense unit by unit is: DL- Good potential to be a relatively strong link now with the addition of passrushing mutant Maybin. For the first time in quite a while we can credibly run our DL as a rotation with two or more candidates able to play competently at each position. Even though a player like Kelsay is overpaid for his level of production as an individual player, folks overstate the fact that because he definitely sucks for what we pay him this does not mean he can play a a valuable role in a rotation having only to play a couple of downs per series rather than pace himself to last a full game and play at least 3 downs in a series. A lot of responsibility goes to the coaches here as they will need to do good assessment to decide whether we should just cut bait on McCargo and utilize Denney more as a DT or we can somehow revive (or is it simply vive McCargo's play to make him a credible reserve for Stroud/Johnson/Williams. At any rate, I think we likely will have to cut a least one former NFL player/starter in this unit (likely McCargo IMHO, Copeland Bryan and maybe even recent draftee Ellis to get down to 8 players. This unit should be good enough and if mutant Maybin proves to be a monster this unit could quite easily become an extremely good link. LB- I unfortunately see weakness here. If everyone is healthy and everyone plays up to their demonstrated capabilities this unit will be adequate. However, particularly in the NFL real life is what happens while you are making plans and I doubt everything will go as planned with the LBs. I like Ellison. He has done a lot to become an adequate NFL starter when players of far better resumes and better athletic talent do well to merely be camp fodder and punch their ticket to get big bucks and all the girls they can eat in Europe. That being said this team needs better than adequate from their OLBs. Mitchell does add a lot more to this still way young team since at least he has been there before, but this team not only suffers from a lack of depth at what use to be a solid position but could pretty desperately use another solid starter. This is one fan who hopes that Maybin actually finds his muse at OLB as I think we are gonna have to cut a former starter in our DL rotation so there is room for Maybin to make OLB his own. DB- I know folks kvetch a bit about the Bills drafting so many CBs, but I see the logic of this: 1. Few are complaining about the McKelvin pick as he is now #2 on the depth charts but his big contribution to the team is as a return guy, the picking this year was of clear BPA at the time Byrd and late picks who are essentially depth picks anybody we take. 3. These depth picks are most likely to contribute this year (if at all) on ST and April has earned our respect for ST picks. 4. As far as position play goes, the rotation we are going to employ on DL actually raises the import of having cover guys so adding to DB depth after devoting our first pick to the DL make sense. Overall, the players simply need to step up. Pure and simple. Perform and get more INTs (quite possible as some of our DVs were proven heist masters at other levels and they have demonstrated broken field running ability if our darn pass rush would force opposing QBs into more mistakes) and force more fumbles and we win. Simply defense passes without getting turnovers and like last year this team merely improves from horrible to mediocre. Just make some plays. Offense and ST to follow later.

Totally agreed that to the extent we do this as a change-up it might make sense but this is simply not an issue of major importance unless the proposal is to make this our base D in which case it seems wildly inappropriate for the players we have. Specifically, even if Maybin proved to be such a monster in the 3-4, I still would not make this our base (what we line up in well over 50% and in fact most of the time) because even if Maybin is a monster, a team needs to have other personnel who can run this D effectively is Maybin should happen to get injured (we saw what happened to Poz as a rookie so this is possible even if not likely), OR if Maybin gets nicked and slowed during the season and can play but not perfectly or even play well. OR like many rookies once he gets past the 11 or 12 games he played per season in college his play begins to suffer just when we get to playoff crunch time. Even if Maybin is monster in the 3/4 we would not make it our base D as we have no back-up who can consistently be the pass rush specialist from the DE or even OLB position if we build our base D formation around one mutant players' talents.

This just as much a testimony to how they were used and how OCs viewed the opportunity of playing against them as it is some kind of measure or even indication of the their quality as a athlete. I do not know the Jets D scheme with Revis as a rookie, but if it was a normal scheme for the NFL he likely would have been challenged far more as a CB than McKelvin since as a Cover 2 (and more accurately a Tampa 2) CB McKelvin's primary role was not as a shutdown or downfield CB but as a short zone and run support CB. Likewise, at the base of any Revis stat, a significant factor in a many of these stats like passes deflected would have been what he presented compared to the other CB. If the other CB is a bum my passes deflected or INTs may be down because opposing OCs are picking on the other side. Overall, this simple statistical comparison is pretty worthless without some real world context.

I think ironically that Maybin's totals will be as much or more of a test of Fewell and the D braintrust as it will be of Maybin's talent. I think Maybin has demonstrated the collegiate performance and weight stats that the Bills could employ him in a manner that we could see some pretty wild production from him (for example, I think he may quick enough that we might be able to use him to buttress our too weak LB group and produce great sack numbers from being used as an OLB, but we would have to see how he took to such non-DL use. I think the big problem may actually be that Maybin has such a unique brand of skills that the only way to use him effectively may be in a spot role as a 3rd down rusher. Particularly if he is utilized as a DL player, I think the open question is whether he demonstrates enough strength at the point of attack that his being in the line-up simply demands the opposing team take advantage of him by running right through him. If he does not show strength at the point of attack, it will limit the Bills to using him only on 3rd and long where the opposing team will never run on him because even if successful it would give them 5-10 yards when what they need is 10-15. He has to show he can stand up to the run and he will inflate his sack numbers with a few on 2nd down or otherwise he can only watch on 2nd downs or 3rd and short because the Bills will not put him in. Likewise, he needs to show ability to cover the pass in the shortzone as this is a method we often employ Schobel to do. If he can only sack and cannot cover then it further limits the amount he will play. This would reduce his sack #s and also allow OL players to simply concentrate on stopping the rush because that is all he is n there to do. I think he has shown in college that in fact he can stop the run and that he may be able to cover the pass as well. We shall see what is reasonable at all to demand/expect from him depending upon how he allows the Bills to use him and whether the braintrust is smart enough to use him well in a D mode.

One of the ironies here is that the true determinant of whether McKelvin is a shutdown CB is not that he constantly makes great plays which we see to stop passes, but actually that opposing OCs decide that the better target to go after is other CB. A player who performs as a true shut down CB can achieve this not simply because he is a great player, but simply because he is so much better than his partner CB than OCs never go his way because they can pick on his counterpart. A lot of this shutdown designation depends upon whether your team runs a static D where the CBs never flip sides to match-up against the WR of the Ds choosing. In this regard, the Bills D would never have a shutdown CB as long as our base D is the Tampa 2 style D we employ. In our D, the CB rather than having his primary assignment be to cover the WR all over the field (like any good D we should have the ability to run different styles as predictability is a death knell for any D), actually has the short pass zone (12-15 yards max) and responsibility for sealing the corner on outside runs. It actually is our safeties who have the deep cover duties mostly. The Bills seems to be setting up for a shift toward a more classic D style with our building of the ability to play our DL in rotation and the accumulation of a number of DB candidates and players with the flexibility to play either the traditional CB cover role or the safety run plugging role. My guess is that the Bills braintrust has accumulated players who can take on a number of different talents for playing Cover 2, Tampa 2 or traditional types of styles. They will then choose a base style based on who shows the best ability to produce a solid D. Likewise in particular games we might adopt even radical departures fron our base D to match up well against the opponent. In any case I doubt we will pursue a model which highlights McKelvin, McGee or whomever as a classic shutdown CB.

My sense is that the Bills are not on a timeline that they demand that McKelvin become a shutdown CB this year. The general conventional wisdom is that you need to see a player for3 years before you legitimately can reach a conclusion about whether a player was a great draft pick or a mistake. My sense is that the Bills have this as a legit timeline for McKelvin as: 1. He is already demonstrating substantial returns on ST as a return guy- this is the area where I would look for McKelvin to prove himself rather than as a shutdown CB. 2. Unlike Clements whom the Bills drafted and started immediately because of our lack of competing talent in front of him, Leodis is unlike a draftee like Whitner not our #1 CB, that's McGee. If I am an opposing OC, I look at McKelvin this year and until proven otherwise as the CB I want to pick on rather than the vet McGee. My sense is that with less than a year as a position CB for us, McKelvin will likely need to go through a full year sometimes getting burned by a vet WR before we see him as a shutdown CB. Maybe in the 10 season but pretty doubtful for 09 except maybe at the end of the season, but even that is doubtful as I think the emphasis on geting 09 production from McKelvin is going to be us making a difficult but nice to have this problem choice between Parrish and McKelvin on PRs. 3. The other sign that it is unlikely he will become our shutdown CB in 09 is that though he is second on our depth chart he should see some good competition for even the #2 slot from FA acquisition Flowers and maybe from alleged starting CB talent Youbouty. I think McKelvin will be asked to step up his productivity but this will be first on PR rather than CB play and also that there is a not impossible chance that Flowers or Youbouty will at least pressure if not even surpass McKelvin. Add to this the Bills devoted a surprising amount of resources to increasing CB depth and it appears unlikely the coaches see McKelvin as a sure thing shutdown CB. It will be great if he surprises but it will be a surprise if he is viewed by us and opposing OCs as a shutdown CB this year.

I think the only idea involving the tag is simply one to wait and see. See how he performs in 09. If he sucks or is a demonstrable cancer in his first year (though this is doubtful he will be such an idiot as his habit with other teams has been to win fan adoration his first year and then screw it up afterwards) then let him walk. If he ihas a great year on the field but shows no sign of being a cancer then by all means show him the money unless there are some objective signs which he may be a cancer then let him walk away. Lets see also how well Hardy or Johnson do in terms of giving us options. Deciding tag him now or extending him would just be dumb.