DazedandConfused

A good nickname to bring up as it serves as a reminder that the Deadskins rode a collection of small WRs known as the smurfs to an SB victory in the mid 80s. The keys were that it is not simply size that matters, but the motion in the ocean that made the diff for the Skins was that they had an effective running attack (not brilliant if I remember back but effective enough in episodes so that the D could not just focus on covering the smurfs tightly and just beat the heck out of them. The Skins also ran an effective O with good routes and made far more use of a huge OL (the Hogs) and ran routes which allowed the smurfs to get separation (often by using near illegal pick plays again if I remember correctly). The Bills have simply in my judgment not run their offense well as the pieces are their on paper but we have never configured their usage to maximize what they do well and minimize the deficits that they have.

Agreed that found guilty or not guilty my guess also is that his NFL career is over and either way this is a sad thing for a human being. The more important personal point being observed, as far as the relatively trivial point of what this means for the Bills, I think this will be a more effective team if it gives up on pursuing a lead blocking FB full house backfield approach of trying to run the ball (even with journeyman McIntyre we never have had the talent to run an O which called for a Sam Gash in his prime or Larry Centers quality player at FB. If the sad loss of McIntyre results in the Bills investing more heavily in a 3 WR offense which utilized the speed and proven deep threat ability of Evans, the RAC and proven productivity of a even a TO in decline and the speed and surprising toughness in the slot of Parrish I think this O will be far more productive. Even more interesting as though I can see the appeal of having a smash mouth FB team with a quality FB, this team simply has not had and has few prospects of getting an FB adequate to this lead blocking role (among the problems was that even though the OL had big boys they never have had the Kent Hull refuse to lose leadership and attitude to be an irresistable force on short yardage). Particularly since Lynch has shown a proven ability to not go down with the first hit, I think this team will run better running a spread offense which forces the D to play a bit wider. Add in that if TO has not declined so much with age that he commands a double-team to cover him, the speed and threat of Evans and Parrish simply force the other team into playing a dime coverage and a Bills RB even as a lone rusher will almost certainly be more productive that the Bills simply creating traffic in the middle of the field trying to follow a McIntyre lead block. I am sorry personally for the tragedy which has befallen him, but will be quite happy as a Bills fans if we went more toward picking up H-backs with flexibility to play FB and some TE and we simply write off the great lead blocking FB as a nice idea in theory but simply a fantasy if we think we are gonna find adequate FBs.

What the Jones/Snyder guys care most about is money. The question is whether a Bills team that is gonna be sold when Ralphie passes on creates more money for the Snyders and other team owners by cashing in to get 1/31 st of a franchise fee, or their is more money to be made by selling the team to the highest bidder that is going to keep the team in Buffalo. The Jeopardy answer is..... Who knows? The thing that is amusing about the posts that declare it a stone cold certainty that the Bills are gone is that there is this little thing called reality which will bias the situation strongly one way or the other 1.Even Ralph will not be able to control things because he will be suffering from this little thing called death after he is gone. He can strongly bias the Bills to leaving by dying intestate with no will like Joe Robbie did or he can strongly bias it toward keeping the team here by doing something like leaving the team to not-for-profit as an irrevocable trust which allows his heirs to both avoid substantial estate taxes while maintaining some degree of control over the asset and even gets a steady source of income depending on how he sets up the trustees. Alternately, Ralph has the money to hire a boatload of trust and estate lawyers to construct a legal scheme which falls somewhere in between selling the Bills to the highest bidder (likely some out of town money bag) or even secretly as 100% owner of the team having agreed to something which binds the Bills here forever. 2. Even beyond the situation which Ralph leaves in his will another wild card is when he happens to happens to go to great beyond. If its a semi-long exit with him clearly going to leave but not yet, this may give extra impetus to someone being able to put together a collaborative that can bid for the team (even this outcome can be good for a Kelly led group but may be bad for another municipality to put together a bid. If Ralph kicks off just after some other city undergoes a trauma like the one which galvanized Cleveland this will likely have direct impact on whether a move makes sense or can be done. 3. The status of current NFL to expand their product into where the REAL new money is with efforts to penetrate the European, Mexico City and even Asian markets will have a marked impact on a Bills move. Perhaps the status of timing of this potentially hugely profitable move impacts a Bills move when Ralph does as possibly making it more likely the team may move if their are overseas bidders who would want a "real" team or actually less likely if in the face of trying to get a major investment into a team, a recently moved Bills team would provide a real wold lesson that one may not want to get over-attached to your new franchise because the NFL has proven that selling 50,000+ season ticket base and rabid support does not guarantee that a team will stay put in your town. 4. A zillion other things I am not thinking of, My sense is that this is too uncertain to make a bet (and actually with the current economic meltdown and drying up of the credit market it likely will be several years before the crew to buy a team could be put together. My GUESS is that if Ralph dies tomorrow the bird in the hand of 50,000+ season ticket holders looks pretty good when seeing all the empty premium ticket seats in Yankee Stadium. My guess is if Ralph dies soon then the highest bidder coming from someone who keeps the tesm here becomes a greater likelihood. However, declaring the team gone for sure (or to stay for sure) is a fairly silly prediction. The stay position is the default which only gets the nod most clearly due the current uncertainty making buying and moving the team just too big a risk to be credit worthy or even for a Bill Gates to take.

My understanding (I am certain I am wrong about at least some of the details of the CBA as it takes the combined efforts of 100s of legal beagles working for the NFL and NFLPA to write and understand it so please correct me with as specific references as possible and we will all learn) is: 1. A key to the latest CBA was the the NFLPA demanded and received that the salary cap would be determined based not upon designated gross receipts (this element of the old CBA led teams like the Bills to reduce the total size of the Ralph to convert general ticket sales which were designated to be split into premium seats which the owners got all the proceeds) to now the cap is based on the total team receipts. Under this configuration there is no distinction for team owners and the NFLPA between premium seats, booths, etc and general ticket sales because they are all subject to sharing by the team owner and NFLPA as now the salary cap is based on total team receipts rather than merely a designated portion of gross receipts. This explains why under the old CBA the salary cap was based on a sliding scale of the designated gross receipts which got as high as the NFLPA getting as much as 72% of the designated gross to now "drop" to the NFLPA getting 60.5% of the total gross receipts. Gene Upshaw and the NFLPA dictated to the NFL that the salary cap proposal from the NFL to the NFLPA needed to start with a 6. Ralph and the boys met this dictate by awarding the NFLPA with as close to 6 as they could get by designating 60.5% for the NFLPA. Even with this extraordinary number it still took major twisting of arm of the old guard of inidivudalistic owners by Tagliabue to get the CBA agreed to. Overall, I think the error that some of us armchair analysts make is that we still think about the NFL as being a free market model where individual team owners make purely individual decisions about what is in for their own team. This quaint notion was never really fully true as the NFL individual owners were competitors on the field, but in the business offices the individual teams were partners with each other and competitors actually with opposing leagues like the USFL and other major sports like the NHL or NBA with whom the seasons had major overlap and they were competing for the consumers entertainment dollars and discretionary income. The NFL cut a deal with the US government to get conditional agreement to violate the free market. The NFL restrains trade and has not only successfully locked out of the market against competing football teams but the government allows it to collude together with the NFL draft and bans even adults from signing contracts at the best deal the free market can manufacture for an individual player with an individual owner. It is simply incorrect to make judgments about what will happen based only on what helps the Bills bottomline of the Bills as a corporation owned by Ralph Wilson. When Ralph dies the NFL as a whole has an absolute ability to accept or reject whom Ralph's estate sales the Bills to. For the NFL, they are looking not only to generate income not only from the highest bidder for the Bills, but also there is substantial value in keeping the Bills in their original town and provide a link for new far larger markets in Mexico City, Europe, and elsewhere overseas by linking these new markets to the history of the NFL. Will it make sense to move the Bills franchise to a new town? Possibly. However, it can easily make more financial sense for the NFL as a whole to retain the franchise in Buffalo as a selling point for them to allow new markets where the potential for allowing Mexico City to be part of five decades of history with traditional NFL locales such as Buffalo, Green Bay, Tampa Bay or even smaller markets or less viable economic engines than Buffalo and its existing 50,000+ season ticket base. Might the Bills move? Possibly. Will the franchise stay in Buffalo or be a hybrid Buf-Tor Bills? I think this second alternative to moving actually will produce more $ for the NFL entity than it would for simply selling the team to the highest individual bidder. It is simply an error to think of the Bills as being based on a free market model which never really existed because the true owner of the NFL entity as a social entity beyond the individual owner will make more money by keeping the franchise here and sell its ties to the NFL traditions to the truly big market of foreign cities. 2. In addition to it being a fundamental error to not understand there is more money to be made in social rather than free market models, there seems to be limited understanding that rather than individual owners simply kicking the players butts as was done in the mid 80s lockout, the workers embodied in the NFLPA are actually partners rather than mere employees of the NFL. In fact, now that the new CBA delivers the vast majority of total gross receipts to the NFLPA they arguably are the majority partners of this endeavor. We see this reflected in the old guard like Ralph and Cincy having to be dragged kicking and screaming into this new deal by none other than Paul Tagliabue. Since the signing of the CBA we see the NFLPA actively promoting discipline against players like Pac-Man Jones, Chris Henry, and Micheal Vick because their idiocy endangers the market product and reputation of the entire parnership by these individuals being their stupid selves. Under the traditional American free market every individual has the right to take drugs, sell dog fights to the extent the laws allows them to be cruel to animals, or do whatever and the market will decide who gets to sale tickets. No more in the modern NFL model where individual rights are constrained by corporate agreement. Its actually quite amazing really that in the MLB and other major sports 16 year olds can sign contracts to sell their skills to he highest bidder but in the NFL 20 year olds are not allowed to do this because their "classmates" have not graduated yet. In exchange for this government agreed to restraint on individual rights, the NFL gets the benefit of unlike MLB and the NHL where they have to pay and take risks to develop 16 year olds into athletes. In the NFL colleges take all these costs on (in exchange for getting to pump up their own alumni giving and ticket sales for bowl games and March Madness) by paying for this player development. The real irony is that by not getting the rights to these athletes until they have been educated in college, a talented tenth led by Gene Upshaw, Troy Vincent and the like have parleyed this into an NFLPA which by threatened to dissolve itself and force Ralph and the boys into a true free market instead got the current CBA which recognizes the workers as the majority partners in this thing we call the NFL.

I do not think this wholesale indictment of the quality of the OL is merited. Did this unit produce at an inadequate level in 08. Yep. The LG, LT and C are gone from this team when they easily could have kept any of the three of them and the proof is simply in the pudding that this unit was inadequate last year. Even worse there are good statistical indication (not proof in my book because stats are like Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of untruth in this world, lies, damn lies and statistics- one can selectively choose and bend almost all statistics to make a particular case, but that being said it is also stupid to totally ignore statistics even though they do not prove most things because they can be an INDICATOR of a greater truth when used properly, judiciously and are subjected to analysis to find the greater truth) that the team did not do well at several important aspects of the game. This includes being a force in short yardage that commanded the line, depending upon the shifty moves of Lynch to pick up positive yards on most plays but Lynch had a record of the first contact on him coming behind the LOS but he was good enough to avoid being tackled for a loss and also giving up the critical sack in 08 at the wrong time. However, the INDICATION that the problem was not simply that these were talentless bums is seen in the 07 season. Despite the fact there is good statistical indication that this group was underperformers in short yardage, the simple fact is that this team gave up the fewest sacks ever recorded in the history of this stat. Is it proof that they were great. No. The ultimate stat is the W/L and this TEAM was 7-9. However, a failure of the pass pro does not appear to be the reason for this slightly less than adequate team performance as indicated by the low sack numbers. This sack number total appears to be an indicator of something real in that it is a compilation stat which shows this team gave up few sacks on a consistent basis. Few would argue this is not important and they would look quite stupid if they made that claim. This OL with good support from the TE as they often were in max protect mode and nice blitz pick-ups even though they usually went with a rookie RB prevented the QB from being tackled for a loss at a record pace. This number is a good indicator that while playing against some of the most talented sack meisters in the league a number of times (two face-offs a season against Jason Taylor and the Jets fielded DL guys who were sack producers) and the OL held the line on the much over-rated but still a good indicator sack stat. They even did this with a rookie QB starting a lot of the games and with the pluses and minuses of a running QB in Losman who called upon the OL to make lots of play adjustments and hold their blocks a long time because JP might escape if they held their blocks. The non-sack production in 07 is no proof that this OL was great but is a very solid indicator that this crew showed some talent at an important aspect of the game. 2. Was this a singleshot stat where they excelled at pass pro at the cost of sucking against the run? No. A legit question as it is often the case that the football lord giveth in one area of the game but this is balanced by he/she taking away in some other portion of the game. The Bills O was not consistently solid in 07 so this may be an INDICATOR that this was the problem. However, on a deeper look, the 07 team actually showed some good run attack achievement as they blocked for a rookie RB to chalk up a 1000+ yards. This also was not great and the failings of this team in short yardage are still real. However, this team and its RB provided a real world consistent threat that indicates that it was not that the players simply sucked and could do nothing but that for a variety of reasons they were inadequate last year.

The interesting thing to me is the job that opposing teams had to do when facing the Bills (or any upcoming opponent) of reverse engineering some version of the playbook and breaking that down to spoonfeed it to your D to attempt to diagnose the play from the positions taken by an opposing player. One of the reasons the K-Gun apparently was so difficult for the opposing defender and the opposing DC was that from the same formation the Bills might run or pass. In addition, the pass plays might be deep routes or cut-off routes from the same formation. Add into this that without the play delay or stoppage with the huddle, the opposing D was not able to make substitutions so defenders were on the field for longer than normal with no chance to take a rest or get a blow when the Bills flipped sides with the O and a defender was forced to run deep downfield repetitively to cover somewhat fresh offensive players who had not had to run downfield repetitively or knew that the pass was not coming their way so they did not run as hard as the defender who must treat every play as coming his way. Looking at this (I assume its true or some sad person really does have too much time on their hands) it does not seem that difficult for the individual player to understand as like the WRs who can leave the huddle after hearing the first words because nothing else which will be said alters their route running in the least, an individual player needs mostly to learn which parts of the massive book to ignore as he only need focus on a very small part of the O to make it work. The most interesting part of this post is actually what is not there. Like the K-Gun it was neat until opponents caught up with it that you and the D had trouble figuring out what happens next.

I see the Bills keeping a probable 4 DTs out of a probable 8 DL players for the rotation we are going to keep. McCargo is likely the 4th DT behind Stroud, Williams, and Johnson but a crowded field at DE means someone on last year's roster is going bye-bye as I suspect Schobel, Kelsay, Maybin and Denney are likely keepers. Particularly as we seem committed to a rotation, folks like Denney who have demonstrated the ability to swing between DE and DT have a leg up. McCargo will likely end up competing with guys on last years roster like Ellis and Bryan for the 4th DT slot and to the extent any of these players demonstrates an ability to play both DE and DT credibly he is more likely to survive the battle. The difficult thing is I do not remember seeing much flexibility in how these 3 players demonstrated skills in being used flexibly or proved to be such a monster in play at their position that I see much of a leg up for any of these three. If Maybin can launch an even more devastating pass rush from OLB and is strong enough on run plays from OLB (I think he can do this as he demonstrated good strength playing the strong side against a TE block last year but also can defend the pass so he is not a liability at OLB this would give the Bills some flexibility that they might not need the 4th DT to be a swing guy. However, I would not be shocked if a recovered from injury Ellis proves to be such a strong situational pass rusher that he win the 4th DE slot and Denny gets the 4th DT slot as a swing guy and McCargo becomes the odd man out.

I think CFLstyle has the correct logic on this one. I think it is a mistake to simply think the Bills and the Bengals are both NFL teams and both make the same relatively simple to state static assessment of whether a player is awesome or not or even whether they have a better player available or not. If only it was that simple and short enough for someone to make a simple assessment on the internet. Actually the Bills and Bengals do play in the same NFL, but it is an NFL which has developed beyond the simple model of the golden rule (he who has the most gold rules) of the pre mid 80s lockout by the owners where they kicked the butt of the Ed Garvey led NFLPA which was demanding an unheard of 52% of the gross receipts. The owners completely crushed the NFLPA by locking out the players just prior to the season (the weakest financial point for union members who were paid on a per game basis) and brought in "replacement players" and managed to sell that product to the customers. It was true it was not NFL quality play, but the uniforms were the same so it looked right and as all the replacements were at the same level, the games were competitive and it became clear that the NFL would get less money than the norm for this inferior product, but it was clear the owners would last longer than the individual players and the NFLPA fell apart. The owners proved flat out that they had bigger cajones than the players and they totally won this battle of the titans. However, they also totally lost the war for macho supremacy, The NFLPA was beaten so badly that it made for a perfect storm combination of: 1. A set of workers so badly beaten in their attempt at traditional union organizing that these overly proud athletes were willing to trust a college educated leadership (a by-product of the seemingly nifty deal the NFL owners had engineered where colleges (including in many cases the expenditure of tax dollars for pro football mills like U Nebraska or U Texas) to subsidize the cost of player development and training that other major sports leagues like MLB or even the NHL absorb as a cost of the pro team doing business. The NFL laid several necessary seeds for the NFLPA by sending the players off to college where a talented tenth actually learned their lessons in addition to playing football and then the NFL destroyed the NFLPA so utterly in the mid-80s lockout that the smarter players could be sold the model now embodied in the CBA and the rest of the players open to trying anything including threatening to decertify the NFLPA as they attempted to beat the owners. 2. A smart bunch of NY lawyers who figured out the nuts and bolts of how to run a league where the workers were partners rather than well paid slaves. This model became the new CBA. 3. A few smart folks who ran the NFL using the Rozelle model which envisioned an NFL which deliver more wealth than imagined to the team owners, but the cost would be the owners would not even be able to pretend to be the free-market entrepreneurs such as Ralph Wilson 40 years ago but instead would be. These visionaries decades ago began a set-up which pursued downright un-American ideas like rewarding mediocrity (the worst team gets the first draft pick, like restraining free trade (the draft not only locks players into signing with one team instead of competing in a totally free market) and even restricts adults from signing with whomever they choose when in sports like baseball and hockey minors are able to sign contracts. When the new CBA came up for negotiation Gene Upshaw was able to declare that the players were going to get a share of the total gross receipts which started with a 6 (the final deal rewarded the NFLPA with 60.5% of the total making them arguably not merely a partner but in fact the majority partner of this entity. This compares so favorably with Garvey getting his head handed to him when he was pushing for a mere 52% of the gross. Within this new context two teams like the Bills and Bengals are not only operating with different set-ups within a framework dictated by non team owners but operating under a salary cap which means that every team is in a very different place in building their team. Individual contract decisions by a particular team in a particular year are dictated by cap status, where they are in terms of timing about when they expect to win, and a lot of other variables which MIGHT make Jones a reasonable choice for us at a reasonable price he would agree to with us. On the other hand, his existing contract may be quite unreasonable for the Bengals (particularly if it had large backloaded not guaranteed but agreed to salary. This is essentially contractually why it made sense for us to cut Ruben but the Bears got a few very good years out him at a great price for them as the Bills had already shipped them tons of money.

Peters was judged by someone who has coached a very productive OL a few time Mouse MacNally as the best OL prospect he has ever seen. While part of the position coach's job is blowing all sorts of smoke to pump up their troops, the real facts are that Peters pretty much demonstrated that all the hype about him being unblockable when he forced his way with his play onto the Bills ST (the Bills took a risk on him when they signed this UDFA but we were forced to sign and activate him when the market started sniffing around to sign him off of our PS) when he not only blocked a punt but had the football presence of mind and soft hands to recover the block and score 6. Further, he managed to prove in the real world that he was not only capable of starting at RT but made the jump to LT. His second Pro Bowl nod is fairly correctly seen in my view as undeserved, but his first nod was pretty much deserved in all views. This recitation is made not simply to kiss Peters butt but because these accomplishments were real and you don't have to be Peters Mom to realize that and one is simply being a fool to totally discount the real world parts of this. The next step in somehow equating Bell to Peters because both were inexperienced is even worse. If Bell can even be a solid back-up on OL this year his progress would be notably nice. The idea that he is a dead lock certain starter might happen on this planet but is such a silly thing to bank on its simply laughable to argue this is what is gonna happen. I think an objective assessment of Walker is that his failures in Oakland speak a lot more about how bad the Oakland coaching and systems are rather than provide a flat-out indictment of Walker. I do not think anyone would accuse the big guy of being a ballerina, but he did prove to be a fairly effective LT who played an important and impressive role in our 4-0 start last year when Peters proved not to be ready to start at all initially and not ready to play a full game for a while. Can Walker do the job there for 16 games or against the best pass rushers? No his limited good play last year (after a fairly impressive season at RT the year before) does not prove he can do the LT job. However, these facts do make it a reasonable hope that he can fill the role. As far as our suggestions for the OL I think it makes much more sense for us to devote consideration for what plan B is gonna be if Walker gets hurt or does not work out. This is the real question worthy of stewing over on TSW. Folks should save the ad hominem attacks or name calling that he is simply a fat tub of goo for WGR or some other lame media outlet.

Hiring former stars cuts a lot of different ways. Some are the positive aspects you mention or are implied by the questiom, but some are negatives for this team in the present. For example, is the coaching work being judged by the team hierarchy, his peers and his players based on the job he does right now or like some of the fans based on feelings about pass success? This is good "baggage" that has the positives of connection to past winning, but the negative that implications of letting him go are larger than judging his current performance. Can the connection to the past tradition be supplied simply by having the old-timers around from time to time without diminishing the old accomplishment with current performance? Like it or not, the current goal is to win the SB and these past teams were certainly great but failed at this goal. There may be some taking the best but leaving the rest by having the old-timers around but not in a working role.

I think like the real Rice her next gig is going to be dancing with the stars (unless Barack grows some cojones and demands justice for those responsible for torture and her next gig in is white and black and involves mostly bending down to pick up the soap.

Many vets do not cry foul because they realize that the market forcing an excessive allocation of $ in the crapshoot known as the NFL forms a basis for driving up vet salaries. When a Mike Williams signs for far more than he is worth because someone made a stupid #4 draft choice it forms the basis for Jason Peters being able to get a huge deal from Philly for him to play LT. If you take a small view of the situation then every dollar paid to a rookie comes out of a vets pocket at contract time. However as smart folks like Pete Rozelle and Gene Upshaw realized the key is to take a larger view and all the ships rise with the tide of speculative bad contracts for rookies.

An interesting strategy, banking on TO to become he spiritual guide and moral leader of a team. As I was thinking through the recent and current Pro Bowlers on this squad looking for the accomplished leaders this is where I began to realize that a concern I have long had about the relative youth of our Bills simply gives us little on field leadership. Jauron in theory is a nice guy and strong moral guide. This may be true (if one ignores the factual occurrence that the Jauron W/L is simply recent historical adequacy tending toward mediocracy) but it takes a mix and good coaches and good players are essential elements of a winner. I thought about TD and maybe there is some epiphany about to happen, but honestly I am a pro-TO rooter that believes he can go for a year without a meltdown and after that all bets are off. And I am an optimist about this. The conventional wisdom is that he will demonstrably divide the team this year and your view of him is the contrary that he is going to in fact be a positive. I think the middle ground is not where you are on this and though I expect one solid year with minimal problems I do not expect two and I think we will be lucky to have him not be a negative and I am not sure why you would have some expectation he in fact is going to be a positive. There is no experience with TO that backs this up.

John, I'm with you that MAYBE these individual things COULD happen (and as a Bills fan I hope they do). However, as someone who visits the real world sometime (usually not on Sunday) I know that it is pretty impossible that all these things are gonna happen. Up to a point I think 2 things are key: A Coaching as our coaches need to squeeze everything they can out of every player and good coaching and competition will be key plan Bs when some of these dreams fail will be huge, B: The team still lacks enough vet leadership that has been to the big game before (Mitchell is not nearly enough) and/or has achieved success in the NFL (Lynch and Schobel are about it and each has big ? after their name after the past year. I also go completely off the track with the Nelson pick as he is a year or more likely two away from being a balanced starter adequate at both the block and the catch and nobody on the roster is a credible full replacement if he goes down and we have to wait anyway. I hope your wish comes true but probably will not.

Add in consideration of ST play which ultimately will be the true determinant whether we keep an extra CB or an extra safety or a WR or LB and I think that your cut on this is pretty much on target. I think that the April assessment of which player was a better ST candidate or not made the ultimate decision on whether we drafted more DBs or some other position.

The thing that is wrong with everyone is not that they judge Jones or Pashos to be great or even very good players, but that they have real doubts whether Langston Walker or the retinue of other tackle prospects (Butler, Levitre, Chambers, Bell) are going to be even adequate for the Bills over the course of the season. Even if join you and feel Jones and Pasho are garbage they may well be interested in them if they judge our alternatives as sub-garbage. Who do you like from the options we have?

Lack of strength to fight off blocks is an interesting problem as the key is to figure out where the lack of strength comes from, the change to make and then implement it. What this diagnosis sounds like is something similar to what cost Ryan Denney his first year as a Bill and which plagued Schobel his first couple of years. The lack of strength was not something which could be fixed by the player being more diligent in the weight room or getting away with taking steroids. In these two cases it was actually poor technique that they had gotten away with in college, but once they got to the pro where opponents and their coaches analyzed tapes to a minute degree, stuff that folks never knew or where not good enough athletes to take advantage of became a real problem. With Denney, he apparently did not ben properly at the point of attack and allow his legs to drive him and help him fend off blockers. He had tons of arm strength and this allowed him to simply toss off blockers at the college level. However, in the pros, even mediocre or weak blockers schooled by their coaches could easily lock Denny up and it essentially made it impossible for him to even be active most of his rookie year. However, by his second year he learned better technique and played much better that by the end of his first contract later in his career the Bills decided to extend his deal. Likewise Schobel. He is a relentless pursuer and actually quite athletic, but he had not developed a good second move. If a blocker locked him up and was willing to hang on as he kept working to get lose Schobel was defeated. He was relentless but there were a couple of plays where the blocker simply pancaked him and Schobel spent his time fighting to get up rather than chase down the QB. Schobel actually pulled off the neat trick of actually dumping weight rather than bulking up to deal with the lack of strength problem. He knocked off 15 lbs or so from his base weight and increased his agility which allowed him to cover passes in both the short and even the middle depth zone in the LeBeau/Gray zone blitz used by the Bills and he developed a second move to increase his sack total to levels where he became a legit Pro Bowl DE. If Eliis gets good guidance and focuses his work on whatever he and the coaches diagnose as his problem even after a non-existent rookie season he might come back to play well next season. No guarantee this will be the case at all (and the Bills fortunately are not betting on it since they remade the DL with a good 1st round pick whom it appears can play the situational pass rush role we need), but we should be able to tell by the pre-season games whether Ellis has remade his game.

Thus really depends on the medical IMHO. If we think he is able to make the starts and not be too hobbled to play adequately then we pay him (the going rate seems to be for a salary under $3 mill and for an LT the docs think has a decent shot at doing the job then get er done). The cost to us if he turns out to be not up to it is that he adds competition but costs reps for our now incredibly young OL. A problem as experience helps the youngsters but none of them are so deadlock certain to work out (in fact if past real world experience is your guide none of them will be ready this year except maybe Walker but then also maybe not in terms of his past play). 09 is important to us as the only year we are guaranteed TO, as protecting Edwards is key and as Ralph is gonna die sooner or late. I say let the docs take a look and if there is a chance then opt for competition being a good thing over letting the youngsters learn by getting Edwards killed.

I agree with taking this fuller view of things. Whats the Bills have done is to some extent kick the can down the road in that the future plan MAY work out but it puts a lot of pressure on the coaches to find and develop the chemistry of this group to get performance out of them. Looking back at the recent faux pas of overpaying Dockery for his his performance definitely, overpaying Walker for his performance (probably so far but he will get and actually deserves from a nice performance so far to actually earn his enormous salary in the LT role) and their failure to maintain a good relationship with Peters (IMHO he reacted like a jerk to the fact the Bills were paying him RT market rates for doing the LT job and were overpaying Dockery and Walker at the same time they were giving him less than the market rate since there was no market for him until the Bills caved and traded him so he could get his demands met). The mistake people seem to want to make here is just because Peters was an idiot they want to claim the Bills FO is smart. Both were idiots when it comes down to this situation.

If we wanna woulda/coulda/shoulda into the past the Bills FO did a lousy job managing their employee whom they could have likely easily extended after his Pro Bowl nod in 07 for far less than the $10 million annually for 6 years the Bills delivered to Peters by trading him. The Bills were pennywise and poundfoolish in not tearing up his contract signed at an RT salary after he made the Pro Bowl as an LT (he deserved the first nod unlike the second) . Overall this is likely a disaster for the Bills as it has demonstrated to future FAs that the Bills will give a player what he wants if he simply throws a hissy fit. I like the talent they draftedon the OL but overall it is unlikely these rookies will play like vets their rookie year and overall the Bills have pretty much surrendered for the 2008 season unless a lot of lightening strikes for us.

Two words are key to understanding these picks: Special Teams. Just as the Bills drafted Mario Haggan in the 7th round and he never played credibly as a back-up he was still recognized for the valuable contributions he made to the Bukks as an ST player.

Looking at events as they have played out in the real world, I hope that these players reach the level of key contributions to the team that 7th round draft pick Mario Haggan achieved. No one who has paid much attention to football would mistake him for a a player adequate to be a position player for the Bills on any kind of consistent basis. However, he was a key part of an ST unit which by any of the mathematic measures generally agreed to be an accurate projection of ST output Haggan was a key player in this unit. On the odd occurrence a late round pick (or even a UDFA like Peters) will turn out to be a starter. However this rare occurrence should not drive your drafting strategy as much as the faillure of Kennard Cox should not drive your strategy. My assumption is that these players were the next ones up on the Bills value board to contribute to an ST that once again was #1 in the NFL by most statistical measures. Assuming this was the logic behind this pick and a CB in the 6th I have no problem with these picks

My major problem with the Bills FO is that they caved to Peters demands by giving him exactly what he was looking for which was a contract extension which makes him among the highest paid OL players in the NFL. Peters public demand was for roughly a salary of $11.5 million a year and a contract extension and the Bills traded him o Philly which gave him a deal for an annual salary hit of $10 million over the next 5 years. Sounds like a cave in to me that has Peters/Parker laughing all the way to the bank. Perhaps the FO tries to take solace in the fact that they did not sign the new deal with Peters themselves so rather than the money coming out of Ralph's pocket to Peters he instead is going to give it to Wood, Levitre, whomever we draft next years and whatever FAs force Ralph to pay out his share of the money guaranteed to the NFLPA under the new CBA. The bottomline will actually be the same for Ralph regardless of who the money goes to, the difference is whether a team distributes the set amount of $ an NFL team must pay to their partners in the NFLPA. The Bills FO failed to properly manage one of their employees who used the fact that the market he set for himself with two Pro Bowl berths (deserved or not this is how the market reflected in the votes of coaches., fellow players, and the fans judge his worth to get into a pissing match with this employee even if he was under contract for two more years, The FO set a horrible precedent which may come back to bite us as soon as the Fred Jackson situation where they have demonstrated that if a player can increase his public leverage, the Bills will blink and give that player what he wants as long as they are not paying for it. Like it or not the Bills gave Peters what he was looking for (the current average of the top 5 OL salaries is about $8.5 million and the Bills arranged a deal for Peters that exceeds even that amount). The amazing thing is that some posters seem to want to feel we showed that idiot.

From a production standpoint what I mean about not having a good scheme is that we have not made it work. I think all agree with that. Is it a lack of talent? I would say yes. Royal did somethings well (I think our pass pro was good in 07 and I suspect Royal being a good blocker as part of that) but despite him hitting career bests in catches the last two years he never seemed to be someone as a fan I felt we could get a lot more out of him or that other teams seemed afraid of him. Was it a lack of good coaching? I would say yes to that as well as we have seen what good coaching can do for the TE position in the past because there was even one year where some how or other the Bills got good production that our opponents somehow did not easily seem to be able to predict and combat as the Bills got production from Rearsmegma because Friggin Lonnie could not catch and good blocking from Lonnie because Rearsmegma could not block. An objective measure of this production (it seemed like only one year's worth to me) was that Rearender was able to parlay this into a big contract (which he later screwed the Bills on as he forced them to pay the huge out years rather than renegotiate and Friggin Lonnie unbelievably got signed by some other fools when he left here and we were gifted with what I remember was a first day compensatory pick for the package where the NFL listed one of our significant FA losses as Lonnie. The pick of Nelson strikes me as simply following the past as even with a former TE as the HC we simply have failed to get consistent production out of the TE slot, this is the coaching fault I find. Add to that talent because as much as many of us feel Nelson is a good performer as an individual player, I have not heard or seen anyone say that they are confident he is ready to be an adequate pro TE right away. In fact, the assessments of him speak highly of his receiving ability but state he still has a lot to learn before he becomes an adequate pro blocker. The worse thing is that even with that assessment he is probably a better option as a starting TE than either ST ace Schouman or the potential good receiver but still learning Fine. These are the reasons I do not see us as being adequate in 09 commiting to conventional use of the TE. i think going qith 3 WRs as our base offense offers us better possibilities for production and putting resources into TE rather than improving other gaps on this team does not strike me as a good investment. Do you or others agree or disagree with this view and if I am wrong I would love to have the pieces I am missing beyond some leap of faith for showing it. Thanks

The big problem with this is that even if it works out (I suspect Wood will and quickly and I have grave doubts about Nelson as we do not have a scheme which uses the TE well) it is gonna take some time most likely. I am quite pumped that we finally seemed to have been motivated by the huge gap left by us letting go our starting LT that this team has loaded up and then some on durable flexible talents who seem quite likely to one day develop the chemistry with some of these players working out and some not to give us a very good OL. The problem is this will take time and as pumped as I am I still am left with the cold feeling that 09 is essentially a write off year for development. This happens so we have no choice but to deal with it. However its a bitter pill to take after being 0 for the millenneum so far for the playoffs, there is a special need for immediate production as this is the only guaranteed year with TO, having folks learn to become vets and relying on journeymen to protect Edwards is dodgy and in the big picture I am surprised because there is no guarantee of Ralph anytime and especially one year after another. It does not appear that the Bills FO could manage things with Peters to a reasonable outcome (something I actually blame the FO big time for along with the childlike Peters as paying bigger bucks to Dockery/Walker than Peters was simply a miscalculation- it does not forgive Peters but does not make the FO look very good). I hope we will be better in the long run but that being said even with a malcontent Peters we are not putting the best team possible on the field this year.