All_Pro_Bills

My take on Manziel is he's got talent and potential to be a decent pro QB. In college he didn't have to try too hard because those abilities and the players around him were superior to most opponents. So he pretty much could goof off and still win and outplay most opponents as evidenced by his current activities. In the pro's things are much different. Everybody is a superior athlete, big, fast, strong. Also lots of them grew up poor and driven. So you get superior athletes that are willing to make the sacrifice to be the best and that's not going to be topped by some priviliged kid with talent who won't put in the work. Simply, right now Manziel doesn't appear willing to put in the work and effort up to this point. So he's getting the crap beat out of him on the field and his off the field antics make him look stupid. Maybe he wakes up and figures it out, or maybe somebody close to him give him a good slap in the face and he realizes he's wasting this opportunity. Or maybe he follows his current path and he ends up a total bust and a big time loser. It's pretty much up to him to decide if he wants to party or work.

All of that and they still only won by virtue of a missed XP. If not for that the media might be saying how a beaten and battered Brady overcame it all to lead an OT comeback win. That said, New England losing has put a smile on my face the whole day today.

If NE wins by less than 14 pts. I'll be surprised. The Bronco's got lucky beating a Steelers team without their best WR, down to 3rd RB, and a QB with 1/2 a throwing arm and still had to sweat it out into the 4th quarter. They should devote their time to preparing for the game rather than wasting it talking to the media and sending out tweets.

Since ultimatums without a realistic plan rarely work, I would rather hear the owner gave the GM and HC some direction to put together a plan that detailed exactly how they are going to make that happen. A plan TP would review with Whaley and Ryan by the end of the month that identified what went right, what went wrong, what can we fix, what can't we fix, what are our constraints, etc., and what are the steps the organization is going to take, and when, to get things right. I don't know anything about Pegula's business philosophy but if my suspicions are correct and he's approaching this as a business problem then I'll wager this is what he will want to see.

Whatever the schedule the BIlls will have to beat good teams to make the playoffs. They went 1-5 against teams that are in the playoffs this season. That just isn't good enough. To me the biggest positive going into next season is that QB is no longer the team's number one need. Sure they could upgrade the spot if the opportunity presents itself but there is no sense of desperation and resources can be focused elsewhere.

The team should release Goodwin. He's fast but injury prone and the roster and position spot can be better utilized.

I never root against the Bills. The last time I pulled for the Jets was to beat Baltimore in SB3. But that was a different time when its was the AFL vs. The NFL.

Every one of these QB's comes with issues whether it's performance, behavior, age, just to name a few. Otherwise, why would they be available? For the Bills the big questions are do they think Tyrod has shown enough to consider him a solid starter going forward and what the team needs is a viable back up option? Or does the team need to bring in a free agent with the promise of an open competition for the starting job? My biggest concern with the Bills is exactly who is going to make the evaluation on the QB situation? I don't have a lot of confidence they're get it right. Because looking at the teams track record for what seems like forever, they don't seem to have the skillset to sort things out when it comes to the QB position. The recent past is littered questionable decisions that even to the casual observer appeared to be wrong at the time. Such as, they picked EJ who in the 1st?

Yes, the prevailing wisdom at the time was the Bills needed some incremental improvements and one of these needs was a 'better' head coach. Ryan was supposed to be that incremental talent on the sidelines that would provide the Bills with the edge needed to push out 1 or 2 more wins and get into the playoffs. Some other additions were made on the offensive side and the logic was that if the offense would improve a bit and the defense would hold steady the team would be more successful. The offense did show improvement but everything else was a disaster. I'll admit it that at the time of the hire I expected Ryan to be an improvement but I just haven't seen anything to justify that belief during the course of the season and likely into the future. My wife said it best at the time saying "why would you want to hire a coach who's known as a defensive genius that you scored something like 90 points against in two games last season"?

IMO Terry Pegula made a major blunder and its not meddling here or there. He should have cleaned house of all Wilson regime personnel from top to bottom immediately after last season, enlisted the support of some subject matter experts, hired a new general manager, and then let that GM identify and hire a new coach who would be charged with hiring his staff. This would have established organizational structure and ensured everyone was on-board with an single strategy and approach to the team both on and off the field on day one. Right now we appear to have a GM and head Coach that aren't on the same page with personnel and philosophy regarding players, schemes, you name it. Just looking at the results this season shows this arrangement simply can't and won't work. This team has clearly regressed in so many ways including both organizationally and statistically and the sooner ownership comes to this conclusion the better. While its a big financial hit I think ending the Rex Ryan experiment after this season is over has to happen for this team to make any progress. It's time for ownership to admit a mistake and take the right actions to get things moving in the right direction. This season is lost but there is time to save us all from several more years of this soap opera of an organization. Rex the person seems like a great guy to sit down and have a beer or two with but to me its obvious he's not the guy I want coaching my team.

In looking at the scenarios and the schedules I've pretty much conceded 1 wild card spot to the Chiefs. I see the competition for the final spot between the Bills, Steelers, and Jets as the most likely outcome. The Steelers have the Bengals and Broncos left on their schedule. If they win both of those frankly they deserve the playoff spot. The Bills just need to win out. For all purposes its playoff time now. Lose and they're out. But none of the 4 games left are against an 'elite' QB which has pretty much been an automatic loss with this crew. Rex generally doesn't let an average QB beat his defense. That means the games should be decided by how well the Bills offense executes and protects the football. I just don't see them losing to Dallas based on the performance of their offense I've watched without Romo. Just dreadful. The defense is good. I wasn't all that impressed with the Redskins on Monday night either. I haven't watched much of them and expected better based on the pre-game build up. The Eagles game is a toss up at this point and their victory over New England was due to some rare mistakes by the Patriots rather than stellar play from the Eagles. They got lucky. It might boil down to week 17 and a winner take all battle with the Jets for the final spot. A game between two teams that have brutally disappointed their fan base in the past when the chips are on the line.

Why didn't Goodell make his move against the Patriots the Monday night game the week before?

Nice to see him admit the current process, whatever that is, is insufficient. But a veteran HQ should have a workable and effective process in place game one of the season. Just another example of Ryan's lack of attention to the critical details and 'little things' that make up the thin margin between winning and losing most weeks in the NFL. Rather than spending his time playing the baffoon by planning stunts like wearing a Clemson helmet to a press conference those wasted moments and brain cells would be better being focused on the week's game plan instead.

This post is a fantastic summary of the frustration I've felt, and I suspect most here do, as a Bills fan. This team, and franchise, is emotionally and mentally weak. It's not a bully as Rex claimed he was building but rather a sissy that gets pushed around. Rarely does anyone make a big play when the games on the line. As for Ryan, I just don't see him being the guy to change this, rather than that he's reinforcing this problem and he's not the answer.

This. Let's try something new. Have the GM hire the head coach, not the owner and the marketing guys. Flush this turd staff down the toilet now before things really start to stink, l believe we've seen enough since we've been down this path way too many times.

My Jet fan friends warned me about Ryan's game management problems telling me you'll see for yourself soon enough. And here we are with this challenge screw up. So, does Pegula cut his losses at $20M and eat the 4 years or do we endure this nonsense for another season or two? Does anyone truly believe Ryan is the guy to coach this team? Sure you can argue 11 games is too small of a sample to jump to that conclusion but why lie to yourself. You've been here before and know where this goes.

The team competed today but the coaching staff lost the game. And the challenges? Awful. Two he wasn't going to win, two he would have but didn't challenge. Looking at things not really any upgrade from Marrone at a much higher pay level.

Look across the field to the other sideline last night and tell me what level of integrity you see?

There were certainly some head-scratchers with Roman's play calling but I think the core problem is the offensive line is once again a liability combined with a first-time starter QB that is learning on-the-job. To this point I believe he has the smarts and the work ethic to improve but his ability to 'read' the defense and go through his progressions with the receivers but its just good enough yet. The other concern is Taylor's durability. He's taken too many hits while in the pocket or scrambling and needs to protect himself better or the protection needs to be changed to expose him to less potential physical contact. If he's degraded or out next week I have a hard time envisioning the Bills are coming out of Sunday at 6-5 with EJ back there coughing the ball up 2 or 3 times.

LOL. There's absolutely no evidence that play would have been a TD if not for the whistle. Its wild speculation and there's 50 yards to the end zone. What if Darby doesn't pull up when hearing the whistle, jumps the route, and intercepts the ball with a clear path to a pick 6? Let me speculate, not a single media source is going to say the mistake cost the Bills a TD. More Patriot ball washing by the lapdog media..

Why would a receiver 'give himself up' under the circumstances? Down one score, seconds left in the game, no time outs. if in the mind of the official he believed a player would make a conscious decision to give himself up and stay in bounds while the clock expired to lose the game then his competence, judgment, and motives need to be questioned. That excuse is at best lame and at worst a blatant lie to cover up a major screw up.

When the Patriots players ran onto the field from the bench the offense expressed its intent to substitute. Whether the actually did substitute is not relevant. The officials noticing the offense was attempting a substitution should have stopped the clock and the ref should have stood over the ball to prevent the offense from running a play. Once the offense had set its lineup for the play and the defense had an opportunity to respond the ref should have started to clock and allowed the center to position himself to snap the ball to the QB. If handled properly the play should not have resulted in a penalty for either team. But they screwed this up along with maybe a dozen other plays most of which went against the Bills which should be no surprise to anybody here! Like the last play of the game where Watkins was ruled to not have gotten out of bounds. Sure looked like he got out from every angle. My only explanation on that one is the officials thought the rules had reverted to the college level where touching a player down is not necessary. On the whistle BEFORE the receiver caught the ball (clearly shown on replay) I think the refs blew the play dead because Brady was out of the pocket and they were protecting him from what the official thought was going to be a hard, clean, legal hit on the sideline. A mistake which somehow cost the Bills over 25 yards. Just mindboggling incompetence. My apologies to the board for venting a little off topic.

My wife says the Bills are going to win and ordered me not to have any negative thoughts or yell at the TV tonight so I can't post anything bad. The way I look at it the Bills are playing with house money here. Win and or lose they have games aganst Houston, KC, and the Jets. Those are the games they need to win to make it to the playoffs. Throw in 3 NFC East non-conference games. Its possible they go 5-1 in those next 6 and finish 10-6 in a wildcard spot. Nothing to lose tonight, no pressure.

A conspiracy doesn't need to exist to explain bias in officiating. All businesses have formal rules and procedures. If you examine those at your job you'll likely conclude the way work gets done has very little correlation to how closely the procedures in place are followed. At my job for example, I suggested that if we followed the exact intent and instructions of the countless and sometimes senseless procedures in place absolutely nothing would get done. So what does that have to do with officiating NFL games? Its because all organizations have social and political processes that for the most part are informal. This applies to the NFL business. You won't find these documented in any league information or procedure documents. An example might be certain owners are said to have more 'influence' than others at league meetings. How can this be? This extra power isn't documented anywhere and there are no league rules applying to owners that grant one owner more power than another but it is something that exists. These political and social actions govern how things work more than rules. So on the field you don't touch Brady or you get a 15 yard PF but Cam Newton gets told (allegedly) he's too young to get the call in a certain situation. Even though the rules apply to everyone equally and evenly in the book. There's no formal rule or discussions or conspiracy. The NFL doesn't tell officials to protect Brady or Manning, or call holding or PI on specific players or team. Simply, everybody knows how 'it' works. And what we witness every Sunday is just the playing out of these informal systems which result in the questionable and puzzling calls.

I couldn't agree with the original poster more. The game will simply not be called with any consistency. That's guaranteed. But that's also true throughout the league. I know we're Bills' fans and we focus on the bias we witness in our team's games but the fact is if you watch a lot of other games this is happening every week in most every game. Depending on the crew, the teams involved, the quarter of play, the specific players involved, the score at the time, and so on, the ref's just call things differently. The lack of consistency in enforcing and interpreting the rules is mind-blowingly awful. That all said the Bills can do a lot to further their cause by avoiding all those stupid personal foul and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties which seem to multiply every time we play New England. And don't hold or block in the back on every single kick off and punt return. These types of penalties were real factors in the first meeting. Maybe they lose, maybe they win, but don't giftwrap the game by giving up a lot of free penalty yardage by playing undisciplined football. Make them earn every foot on every play.