NewHampshireBillsFan

Pat Williams was an undrafted FA when we got him. He did pretty well as a NT for us back in the day. Just saying.

With Nix and Gailey calling the shots now, it is much more likely the Bills will trade down to try to get more picks to fill more holes, especially with the switch to the 3-4. I think Nix will feel confident that he can find good players in all the rounds. The point is Nix has everything to gain by having many draft picks where he can show his mettle in picking great players and everything to lose by putting all of his eggs in a basket for one potentially awesome player. If that potentially awesome player didn't pan out big time he would look like an idiot as a GM. If he gets several good players and the team clearly improves he will be given credit for starting to turn things around.

I don't think anyone will give up a decent draft pick for him. No good reason to release him so that he can just sign anywhere else. I think we just hang onto him and either force him to retire or he may well suck it up and come back for one more year rather than just retire and leave so much money on the table.

I'm just happy that NE* has this headache to worry about. Either they end up overpaying somewhat to get him a long term contract he is happy with or he plays the year under the franchise tag and is disgruntled to some degree or they trade him and then have to figure out how to replace him in their already declining defense. The nice thing is the NE Patsies* peaked a long time ago and so did Belichick* and Brady*. It won't be a sharp collapse but a slow decline as each year the struggle to be an elite team gets tougher and tougher for them. New players don't pan out as well and older veterans retire or sign elsewhere. They begin to get more and more desperate for the draft to give them players to fill much needed slots (kind of like the Bills). It will be a joy to see this process unfold year by year. If and when the game refs stop giving the Patsies* the favorable calls in most games they will really be in trouble. But the good news for them is that is still a long way off. They will still get all the calls for a while longer.

Hamdan is the 4th QB on the team and was already waived by the Bills in November 2009, once TE lost the starting job. The only reason he was resigned was because of injuries to both Edwards and Fitzpatrick. When he was waived no other team showed any interest in him. The point is this is not the guy, now or ever.

The problem for NTs is that they are lumped in with all DTs for salary. A top NT is worth a lot more to a 3-4 team than most DTs are to a 4-3 team. Teams like NE take advantage of that with the franchise tag. I would love to see Wilfork play like Jason Peters did for us. I would love to see Wilfork get knocked on his butt by a center and then get up and realize he shouldn't feel so bad because his salary is not that great.

It is good to know that the current players will be evaluated fairly by people that have no reason to favor someone just because of where they were drafted. But hopefully they will also see some decent potential as well. It takes a long time to build from the draft and a few FA pickups. The bozo Tom Donahoe's attitude was he wanted to clear most everyone out who had been on the roster before he got there. That is why he made no effort to hold onto great players like Pat Williams. I don't see Nix/Gailey being that dumb.

Gailey said there are 4 options the Bills have with QBs: current roster, draft, FA, trade. Gaughan then surmised somehow that TE had a better than 50% chance of starting based on this? The thing is TE lost not only his own confidence but that of the previous coaches and his teammates. That is not a good base to build a new career as the Bills starter under the new coach.

I think the Bills success and the excitement it will illicit will be done step by step. So far I like all the coaches Gailey has brought in, the switch to the 3-4, and the whole mindset that they will evaluate all the players and what needs to be done for the future step by step. Unlike most new coaches these guys don't feel compelled to either praise the current players or make it clear that everything is going to change now that they are here. Donahoe, Williams, Mularkey, and Jauron did not talk or proceed anything like this current group of Nix, Gailey and his assistants are currently doing. I predict they will succeed and bring a new winning mentality and the playoffs soon. I like the fact they have ideas of what they will do but also will be flexible to bring out the talents of the players actually on the field at any given time.

Bledsoe and Rob Johnson. Why do SMART teams usually not trade first round picks for aging QBs? It is like Levy said, "if you listen to the fans you will end up sitting with them". That is where Donahoe is today partly because of the bonehead trade for Bledsoe. And we got to 9-7 with Bledsoe partly because we had a pretty good defense at that time.

My defining moment on Edwards came when Jim Kelly said publicly that he once had hopes for Edwards but it now was time to move on and try to find a new QB. I would say that Kelly, better than most for many reasons, knows when it is time to give up on a Bills QB.

Based on your analysis, exactly why would another team want this $9 million dollar aging receiver? Many teams struggle to stay within the salary cap and this wouldn't help them.

True. The only thing that gives me some confidence is that most people outside of Buffalo totally laughed at the Levy hire as GM and laughed even more later at Brandon being nominally in charge. Actually a lot of people seem to be laughing at Nix but more because they don't think he is suave enough to be an NFL GM. I guess what makes me feel better is we can't do any worse than we have done the last decade. Hopefully, we will do quite a bit better.

Basically, the Bills have not done well in evaluating QBs, both free agents or draft picks, over the last generation. Plus they also have not developed them properly either. We have only had 3 QBs that were very good to great over an extended period in Buffalo and most of our playoff appearances were with either Kemp, Fergie, or Kelly. Flutie had a couple of exciting years for us also. But I think I will trust Nix and Gailey to make the right decisions going forward on QB whether it is to get a new veteran, a rookie in the draft, or even make one of the current guys work. At least we have great talent evaluators in charge at this point after such a long period of idiocy at the top. I'm not saying Levy was an idiot but it would have made more sense to bring him back as HC instead of DJ, and give the GM job to someone else.

The point is not whether you could never find a QB from California who could play in Buffalo. I'm sure that that would be possible. What Kelly is trying to say clearly is that you have to have a certain toughness to play in cold weather that especially TE did not have. When you have a QB like TE say after a loss that that was the first time he ever played in snow and that he has a lot to learn about it, that is not a good sign. The Bills have lost whatever weather advantage they once had mostly because of attitudes like that. Compare that remark to Joe Ferguson, from Louisiana and who played at the U. of Arkansas. Joe said he realized early on that he would have to master the winds at what was then called Rich Stadium and he did and nearly always outplayed opposing QBs in rough weather in home games, even QBs who were considered much better QBs than he was. Now, whole teams, like the Patsies, routinely outplay Buffalo in bad weather in Buffalo, taking advantage of the bad weather much better than the Bills. Look at the last game against the Patsies in 2008 as an example. The game against the Colts at the end of this season was an exception to that. The Colts are much worse in bad weather, including Manning, than the Bills.

In today's NFL going to the super bowl is not something that can be worked for over many years and then you get there for sure. There are teams like the Chargers who do really well during the regular season and never get to the SB. There are teams like New Orleans and Arizona that come out of nowhere to get to the SB. Then there are teams that get to the SB quite often, even with quite different rosters like the Colts and Pats*. The main thing we have to work for is to have a good team. Then we will at least get our shot at going back to the SB.

A NT from the south would love to play in the cold. The problem with playing NT is not that you get too cold but that you are sweating like a dog from battling 2-3 OL people every play. If it is slippery every def. player will be impacted even if they grew up in White Horse, Yukon because the offense knows what it is trying to do on a play and the defense has to react.

Knox was the most innovative, both on offense and defense. With offense, showing that the shotgun offense could be extremely productive, esp. on 3rd down where the Bills got a 60% 3rd down conversion rate for the whole year!!! when they started with the shotgun in 1980. Had he won the SB, which he came close to doing with Buffalo in 1980, he would be recognized by everyone as the best Bills coach. On defense he pioneered the 3-4. Regarding the SB, the Bills narrowly lost to the Chargers in the divisional playoffs on the road, with several questionable calls as usual against Buffalo. Had they beaten the Chargers they would have easily beaten the Raiders in Buffalo; they had already beaten the Raiders 24-7 earlier in the season. The Raiders went on the defeat the Eagles in the SB since they didn't have to go through Buffalo to get there. Anyway during the Knox era Buffalo was perhaps the most innovative team in the NFL. We haven't been that for a long time.

When Jauron had any influence on the draft he always picked DBs high. As he said you can never have enough good DBs. Personally, I always thought this was a kind of insurance for DJ. If the gig in Buffalo didn't go well and last for him he could always go back to DB coach because he could claim that was a strength for the Bills. It WAS a strength for the Bills but partly because of all the high draft picks when we had other major needs like QB and OT.

Ronnie Jones was the worst special teams coach since teams started to have a coach exclusively for special teams in the NFL. The kickoff coverage was so bad they started to just kick the ball high in the air to around the 35 yard line and be happy to have the opposing offense start at about the 40 after every kick off. Although Wade Phillips was in most ways a decent coach he should have done something about the special teams after 3 or 4 games and removed Ronnie Jones then and simply allowed him to do some defensive quality control or something. This is one time when I wish RW had stepped in earlier in the season and done something. That team still had a playoff quality defense and they should still have probably made the playoffs.

I'm surprised he got a decent job this quickly. It wasn't long ago that Alex was an offensive quality control coach and he wasn't a QB coach for long. But I think it helped that he is a bright guy and he couldn't be blamed for all the offensive problems the team had last year. This continues to dispel the notion that Bills assistant coaches, not being among the best paid in the league, are somehow inferior and that is a big reason for our problems. When coaches leave here they mostly seem to be offered good jobs elsewhere and stay on other teams staffs for a long period. But now some people are already being negative about our new assistant coaches. I say that when THEY leave here some day they will also do well getting decent jobs elsewhere.

OJ was the best Bill. Anyone who saw him play on a consistent basis would probably agree with that. In terms of being illusive in the open field no one who ever played the game came close, including Jim Brown. How many times did two defenders come from two different directions to tackle OJ and he faked out both of them at the same time such that the two defenders smacked hard into each other and ended up on the ground while he sped through them for a touchdown. When OJ got past the line of scrimmage a thrill used to go down my back because of the potential for something amazing to happen on every play. I loved Cribbs and Thurman and of course Kelly and Bruce but OJ was a one time only in history NFL talent. Other RBs may have had better numbers and better strength, but no one did what OJ did on the field.

I wouldn't be so negative. We basically don't know what these guys will do. The funny thing is we often think our assistant coaches are not as good as the coaches on the premier teams that pay well. Yet when Jauron gets fired and all of his assistants are free to go several are hired immediately (Fewell, Kugler, Studesville) by quality teams like the Giants, Denver, and Pittsburgh. Some positives with these new hires is that people who have coached with Gailey before want to coach with him again and also since these guys have been around each other a lot they will have developed a consistent philosophy on how a team should be run, etc. When Gailey was hired, as late as the hire took place, some complained that Gailey would have to scramble to pull together any staff but that is clearly not the case. He is bringing in all the people that have worked with him before that he respects. DC is the lone big question mark and concern at this point.

Bringing in McNabb makes about as much sense as bringing in Bledsoe did. I don't think Nix and Gailey are that dumb. You've got to get a top QB in the draft or a young backup with potential for development. McNabb is too old and beat up by life in the NFL. He would bring as many negatives as positives.

You can count as few as 15 including Gailey. Pitts was only an acting HC due to health issues with the HC. That doesn't count. Fewell was the interim HC but teams do not count interim HCs because they are only filling out the year for a fired HC. With Pitts and Fewell gone Gailey is 15.