NewHampshireBillsFan

I predict one thing about Jason Peters in Philly. The Eagles will cut him in a salary savings move before the end of his contract. You heard it here first. Although this year might be OK to good for Peters, I see nagging injuries long term and also lack of effort once the novelty wears off of having a big contract. In life when someone has a bad attitude like Jason Peters did for parts of two seasons, things will come up in Philly that will dictate a bad attitude there as well. You can't just turn it on and off in a sport as brutal as football. He was a slacker his last year here and he will find he will at times be a slacker in Philly even if he doesn't intend to be at this point. That is why it was best the Bills did not re sign him. He would not have been great for the long haul based on his personality.

Players are not nor have they ever been treated the same by the officials. And it is much worse now than ever because of all the big TV money and general hype about superstars, esp. QBs. There is no hope for that to change because the league is a thousand times more worried about Brady* or Manning going down than TE. The officials are only people and they understand how their bosses think. No one has to spell it out for them. They understand instinctively that certain players and teams should be protected more than other players and teams. The results of this are totally obvious in the way the various teams and games are officiated.

You have to at least let a coach be the coach he wants to be and make his own decisions on who he will play, etc. With Donahoe he meddled way too much. I don't think much of Gregg Williams or Mularkey but neither really had a chance to do his own thing. Going back to our last playoff game when we were all still young 10 years ago, RW supposedly decreed that Rob would QB! Even though you have a strong personality like Parcells in Miami I don't get the impression he is trying to micromanage the coach. DJ is the first coach in a long time that actually gets to coach without interference. Unfortunately, he is the kind of coach that needs a guiding hand. So we can't win at this point. If we get a young and talented coach in 3 years, after DJ's contract is up, my main hope is that they will let him coach and not meddle.

Quite true. And the sales pitch will be that the Bills will go out and get a proven OC to take over the offense and DJ has proven to be fine for the defense (in spite of several thousand rushing yards given up this year).

He gets to 8-8, possible with our weak schedule, he is back for absolute certain. We make the mistake of thinking that if we complain long enough about something it will have to have an effect. No it won't. Marv Levy has stated that if you listen to the fans you will end up sitting with them. RW thinks the same way, if you listen to the fans you will soon have the same money in your bank account as the fans. The point is $6 million for the 2010 and 2011 season is a lot of money to pay out in Ralph's mind and Jauron will probably have to resign for us to see him go anytime soon.

I don't think people properly realize that the American economy will NEVER come back in the style we were used to. I do a lot of business in China and they are basically going to kill us this century, economically. And protectionism won't work because Japan does that and they have basically been in a recession for 20 years now because they won't let cheap goods into their country. During tough times all these high prices in Dallas will not last. On the other hand Buffalo is ALWAYS in bad shape economically and we still sell out the stadium! So the ticket prices are low. We could probably raise the prices 20% and still sell out with a playoff caliber team. I would HATE to be in Jerry Jones's shoes right now. He has overextended himself and he is in for tougher times. Buffalo knows what it is like to have difficulties because it has nothing but difficulties.

Ralph will keep DJ until the end of the year and if his record is below 7-9 let him go and feel sincerely like he is doing us a HUGE, HUGE favor by eating the last two years of the contract. If memory serves me correct this will be the first time RW has ever eaten 2 years of a coach's contract in our history. I think Bullough at most got a half or one and a half years of salary when he was dumped. Plus his salary was much, much lower, even in today's dollars.

Marv: 1.) Is a great man full of a lot of wisdom, knowledge of history, etc. 2.) Marv was a very good coach, but not great coach. He should have run one more play before that FG attempt IMO. He knew Norwood was not that good on grass. But in other ways he could have adjusted things, especially in the first SB game. Also, maybe more importantly the players should have feared him at least a little. For example Don Beebe made the point that the Bills lost the SB because Kelly, Thomas, etc. were partying all week at the SB. That should never have been allowed. Also, there was that ridiculous thing of Bruce Smith, during the SB week!!!!, making some fuss about some racist message he had received in Buffalo. Under Shula, Noll, etc. he would never have had the nerve to make such a stupid distraction. 3.) Marv at best, had modest success as a GM. By all reports RW did NOT want to hire DJ and was quite adamant about it but Marv finally talked him into it. On second thought Marv's tenure as GM was pretty bad. The DJ hire trumps anything else positive he did. But what do you expect Marv to do at this point, say he shouldn't have hired DJ?

Anyone on the Bills staff could be named interim coach without interviewing a minority. DJ was named interim coach of the Lions without any problem. The only thing you can't do is say if you do well as the interim coach you will be named permanent coach without interviewing anybody else. I don't think Fewell should be the HC however, at this point. He would be easily over matched in that role by most other coaches in the league. Plus he would have to do both the HC and DC duties at the same time. April is really the only choice that might make some sense from the current staff although his star has dimmed this year. But this is academic. RW will definitely get the whole year out of DJ unless the team is like 2-9, even then he will probably keep him until the end of the year. RW's main goal in life is to not lose any money on a coach or GM's salary by firing anyone early. He has always been the same way. If DJ somehow staggers to 7-9 he will be back as HC next year.

The QBs we have had were not that good since Kelly. We have taken castoffs from other teams such as Bledsoe, Flutie, Rob Johnson, Holcomb, etc. These people were not starters on any NFL team when we got them. We have not spent a really high draft pick on a QB. Losman was not a high first rounder and he was just a bad pick. He lacked some basic intangibles necessary to be a great QB and seemed to think the way to win was to get 2 or 3 TD bombs a game. No good team is EVER going to let you do that. He, along with Edwards, stinks at getting the 20 to 25 yard pass to work. Supposedly in practices they practice those kind of passes but it never works in games. So QB talent is the key issue, but that being said the Bills have never hired a coach that was considered a master QB developing coach, either as HC or OC, at least in the post coach Levy days. Marchibroda might have been considered a great QB coach and it showed with Kelly.

More and more the officiating is a problem. The officials seem more and more intimidated by teams like NE* and the calls reflect that. With the relative parity in talent the refs can really take one team out of the game and that often happens. The emphasis on fantasy football is kind of weird. People have artificial rosters of players. The NFL likes that because then teams moving, bad officiating, and bad management of teams (like the Bills) don't really matter because you just pick new fantasy players and watch the games for that emphasis. Ticket prices in the major markets will completely price out the average fan fairly soon. The NFL will go the way of the NBA to some degree. Less and less people will care. College football will probably again surpass the NFL in interest the way college basketball greatly surpasses the NBA in interest.

I remember that 9-7 game against the Broncos. During the Knox era. We trailed the whole game until the last play and then won with a short FG. It was electric in the crowd when we won. I wish we could feel that in the stadium now.

Expect to see a rather modest change at the end of this year. DJ and most of his staff goes, the FO stays the same, and they bring in a younger, more aggressive talking coach. Call him Gregg Williams II. Back to the fog horns at training camp, etc. If by some miracle we reach 8-8 this year, expect DJ back as coach.

Excellent analysis! Of the 6 of 8 who did not return to the SB, there are reasons for most of those. In the case of Ditka, he was not the same w/o Buddy Ryan as his DC, even thought they couldn't stand each other. Seifert inherited everything in place in SF and few would consider him a super coach. Vermeil was quite old when he coached again after winning with the Rams. Stram was also getting to the end when he went to NO and NO was such a mess he didn't have enough time. Jimmy Johnson was not into staying long with the Fish. The point is a great coach, who is not over the hill, could do wonders for the Bills. Actually at this point a decent journeyman coach who is not too old could probably do wonders for the Bills. But only if they had full football authority.

DC for Belicheat*. Belicheat* owes him big time for not making a fuss about the videotaping scandal, for never making a fuss about all the bad officiating in the Pats*/Bills games, for never trying to get revenge on Brady for Wilfork/Losman, for never letting his team get mad about losing all those games in a row to NE* so that some players might get a little rough with NE*, for making it seem like it should be a normal thing that NE* should always be our master and we should at best hope for a WC, and for never saying anything even remotely controversial when playing the Pats* twice a year. Compare that to Rex Ryan's FIRST game against Belicheat* and what he said before the game and what the result was.

I don't think RW is thinking that far ahead. He waited until Donahoe's contract was completely over before getting rid of him. AT THAT POINT he called Marv and asked his opinion about possible GMs and then asked Marv what about he, himself coming in as GM. Marv asked to think about it and called back the next day and took the job. The point is RW is not sitting around at this point considering GM or HC options. He is thinking: 1.) DJ may still pull out a respectable season and then he will keep DJ. 2.) If DJ even gets back to 7-9 he will keep him because with all the young players and injuries they will be better next year. 3.) If DJ finishes with a really horrible record he will reluctantly have to eat the last 2 years of the contract and AT THAT POINT he will start to look for a new HC, probably still retaining Brandon and the rest of the FO.

Roscoe, another "clever" pick by Donahoe, who spent his entire career in Buffalo trying to be "clever" to prove it was he and not Cowher who the Steelers should have kept.

Being a serious football fan is not really about entertainment. When your team wins it is a type of euphoria and when they lose the symptoms are similar to clinical depression.

The idea of hiring a competent GM and turning over control of the football team to him is a good idea. Donahoe was not the GM that should have been hired. He lost a power struggle to Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh, and I would at this point assume I would have sided with Cowher. But besides that Donahoe was determined that no HC would ever trip him up again so he hired two losers that have never been HCs again once they left the Bills and probably never will be HCs again. Also, Donahoe was a micro-manager who messed things up more than he helped when he did interfere with the coaches. I think it is better to hire a top notch HC who also would be in charge of all football decisions. Still I like the Chris Polian idea.

Its easy to change Wikipedia for anything. If it is stupid they will change it back within 24 hours.

Washington in some ways is a great place to work for a HC. Great salary and money for free agents. Expectations are also sky high because of that and the owner is somewhat meddlesome. Don't be surprised if some of the big name coaches choose something other than DC. Than being said I don't think the Bills will even try to get one of the top 3 guys since they wouldn't want to come to Buffalo with our current situation, plus we would not be willing to pay them. Its funny that as RW heads towards the end of his life his top priorities come out in his actions. His top priority is to leave the maximum money to his heirs and winning a SB is clearly not even a priority anymore. From the football side he just wants the Bills to try to get respectable enough to keep the fans off his back.

I could never root for the Bills to lose, myself. But I take a different view on the idea that if things get bad enough RW will have to bring in a big name coach and turn over the keys to him. DJ may indeed be gone if the team goes 4-12 but the next coach may not be who you would hope for. In the mid 80s the Bills were 2-14, 2-14, and 4-12 for 3 straight years, 8-40 overall. His answer to that situation was to bring in a HC that was not even coaching in the NFL any more. No other team wanted him as a HC. Around the same time the GM we had could not continue and a guy who worked himself up from a low level scout ended up becoming the new GM. So Levy and Polian were not at all high priced, well known solutions to 3 horrible years. The only time that RW went with a big name coach was Knox in 1978, 31 years ago. And that was before big name coaches were paid that great except for Shula, Chuck Noll, and a few others. Knox was not considered in that league. He had never won a SB. He was respected but not an elite coach like Cowher, Shanahan, etc. Dream on if you think 4-12 solves all the problems. It won't.

Having worked in the generally poorly run American corporate world for years, I can relate to the analogy. The only thing I would disagree about is that Ford is doing well. Chinese companies are doing well and even European companies are doing better than companies like Ford. If the Bills were a corporation they would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Because of revenue sharing and because they are a local monopoly they survive. RW doesn't understand how to turn this around. The most important thing he could do would be to hire a top-notch HC who would also be the head of all football decisions, including the draft. That HC would then bring in his people so that there would be one consistent strong organization, from top to bottom. Hiring another Donahoe type would not work because strong GMs usually want a HC they can control and that rules out the best HCs.

Maybe someone would give us a very low round pick for him. The problem is no one would want to pay the $6.5 million salary based on his performance to date so the trade could never work. Besides all that all the teams in the league would look at the Bills like we were a total mess (Peters, Schonert, Walker, etc.), which I guess we are. Also, it would seem to us fans like they were completely writing off this season, which I guess they are anyway.

It can be tough to make a good decision on a hew hire. That is why you do everything possible to make sure people like Polian, Butler, and Smith want to stay and do stay, and before that Chuck Knox. Wilson has hired some of the worst HCs in the modern history of the NFL and one of the worst GMs (Donahoe) so he should have learned to keep the good people he had at all costs. He has never fully valued good people on those rare occasions when they fell into his lap.