SouthGeorgiaBillsFan

Don't gamble on it.

The only problem with that is that free agents and proven talents don't want to play in Buffalo. Would you? Therefore you have to pay a considerable markup just to get them on your roster, which is a fundamental factor that lead to this talentless state of the organization. We complain about offering low value contracts and about not bringing in top talent without the slightest consideration that the two issues are completely interrelated. So what you're saying is basically that stupid people get mad at intelligent comments. Somehow that isn't surprising.

Can you name 1 player on the Bills that anyone would give up better than a 4th round pick for? Lee Evans is probably the ONLY one who might pull a 3rd rounder - but that is doubtful - I mean for flip's sake Randy Moss only pulled a third rounder, and Randy Moss, baggage and age included, is indescribably better than Lee Evans ever will be. While Lynch may not necessarily have been the best on the team, the point was very much debatable. Personally, I think he was our best player. However, this was not a bad move, because Lynch was gone to free agency asap anyway, and since we have zero chance of competing before that happens, might as well recoup some value while you can.

I pretty much agree with your assessment. I do disagree with you on how valuable Lee Evans is - on a normal NFL team he is beyond expendable. I do agree that right now the Bills absolutely cannot afford to get rid of him. But his contract is still an albatross, and the Bills seriously need to improve in talent evaluation in order to improve this franchise. Ultimately, that is where we are foul, and that is where we must look to fix the franchise.

I'm not sure picking Orlando Pace or Jake Long with the #1 overall pick was much of a reach. Ultimately, the foundation of a football team is the line of scrimmage, and thus we should just forget about drafting any LBs, WRs and even QBs. I would like to see every pick in the draft go to a linemen. As far as trading down goes, considering the dearth of talent on this team, if the Bills cannot find someone to draft in the top three, I don't imagine they will find too many teams interested in giving up their 2nd rounder to move into that position. I mean no team in the NFL needs a high draft pick worse than the Bills.

I get the distinct impression you haven't watched Mallet play too often.

You mean kind of like how Eli Manning was drafted by the Chargers, refused to play there, and went on to win a SB with the Giants? Doh. Stupid facts.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I personally hope he comes back and shreds the Bills some time this season. It would be poetic justice.

Did I say that or are you completely illiterate? I think they have done as well as can be expected considering what they inherited. But this franchise is dysfunctional and has been for a long time. I'm more than willing to be patient and see what Nix and Gailey will do in time - and I've stated as much repeatedly in numerous posts. But right now this franchise is in the worst shape it's been in since before Jim Kelly arrived.

I like Mallet. I am biased because he plays in the SEC, and that means he is playing against the closest thing to NFL caliber defense that college football has to offer on a weekly basis. Other than just reading a stat line, I cannot understand why anyone would prefer Luck.

The Bills *are* dysfunctional. Do you really not see that?

Let's see. He's driving against the best team in the country with the game on the line and they KNOW he must pass. Did you happen to see when he killed Georgia's rally with a late perfect drive last week after the Bulldogs had tied the game in the fourth quarter? His poise was remarkable. But yea, let's draft another PAC 10 QB and lose for another decade. W00T.

Yea. He just threw for 350+ yards against the far and away best team in the country. But right. Let's get that guy from Standford. Playing in the Pac-10 is a great way to prove yourself.

Hmm Mallet has 322 yards and counting against the top ranked defending national champion Crimson Tide. Kind of a no brainer imo.

FightinIrish, you are now on my very short list of Bills fans on this website who are capable of critical and rational thought. Nice posts man.

How about: With a dearth of talent at virtually every position, what exactly did you expect? Did you think that some football gurus were going to come in here and turn this team around in one off season? Perhaps Dick Jauron deserved a little more credit than what he got, considering he coached the team to a record that was well beyond what the level of talent should have allowed. No wonder no good coaches would entertain coming here. You think Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden want their reputations tarnished by a tenure of ultimate failure because they are being asked to lead the least talented team in the NFL? I mean our first draft under the new regime really wasn't bad. We drafted arguably the most talented player in the draft and focused heavily on the defensive line. Only time will tell whether these picks prove to be significant factors in turning the franchise around, but the philosophy seems to be headed in the right direction. It was pretty stupid for anyone to expect an improvement this year, considering the overwhelming lack of talent on this team. It is going to take three seasons before we start to reap the benefits of the new regime. The only bad part is that if they fail, that is three more years of time wasted. But based on what we've seen so far, cautious optimism is not at all unreasonable at this point. But cautious optimism is the hallmark of an unsuccessful franchise, and at least for the time being, we probably are the worst team in the NFL.

Obviously you have never watch even one single entire game of Mallet. Give me Mallet or give me death. I'll take the proven SEC QB who consistently shreds the top defenses in the country on a weekly basis.

Don't bother judging anyone you sanctimonious pr!ck. The world would be better off without you and your ilk, and the bottom line of it is that people like YOU who continue to pass judgment even after penance has been served, or really who think you have any right to be judgmental in the first place, are a greater detriment to society than Vick by several orders of magnitude. I am not a Christian, but I'll be damned if that Jesus dude didn't have some pretty profound insights, among the greatest of which is "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." You can be a lover of animals all day long. I personally am a lover of humanity, even with our many flaws, because though we are capable of unspeakable evil (dog-fighting not being even close to fitting that description), we are capable of redemption and forgiveness as well. And those qualities are a small measure of what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom to begin with. So you can take your opinion and shove it up your a$$.

The only way teams toy with other teams in the NFL is by running up the score. Teams are going to score any time they can, period. To suggest otherwise is pretty absurd. To those of you who keep criticizing Donte Whitner for not being able to cover a TE: if you knew anything about the game of football you would know that a TE matched up against ANY defensive back is a favorable mismatch for the offense. Even the best defensive backs in the league are over matched against mere average TEs. That is why linebackers are supposed to be covering TEs. If you are looking for explanations as to why we can't seem to contain TEs, look no further than our extremely undersized and untalented line backer corps rather than at our exceptional secondary, which is one of the few strengths of the team (and it should be considering how we have squandered away our draft picks on those positions). Please people I know this team is frustrating and 95% of the general populace must assign blame for anything in life that doesn't go according to their own wishes, but good grief. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate places to lay the blame for the Bills seemingly perpetual ineptitude. To actually sit there and blame those few positions where we have some talent pretty much qualifies you as a f*&^ng ret@rd.

New coach, new schemes including a 3-4 defense when we are obviously geared for a tampa 2 as far as personnel goes, and no TO to make any kind of plays over the middle (he was still our most productive receiver last year). Sounds like about a 6 games regression to me.

"The philosophy of the Bills has almost always been not to go after top Free agents and I tend to agree with that philosophy." You mean like James Lofton, Cornelius Bennett, Bryce Paup, Drew Bledsoe, Takeo Spikes, London Fletcher, Terrell Owens, etc etc etc... "I think part of the reason is that they intend to suck this year and try to get a high pick to get a QB and #2," lol...and this is why Bills fans don't get paid to run the franchise.

Well he is our #1 receiver, and truth be told, I really wish we didn't have to say that.

Well let's see Alphadawg. There was a time when the forward pass was not legal and all you could do was run the ball, and guess what - every team did it. So there goes that theory. The fact that we threw the ball twice as often as we ran the ball (almost exclusively on short routes that don't take time to develop) is an iron clad indication that the coaching staff has zero confidence in the line's ability. Trust me - Chan Gailey, Trent Edwards, and pretty much everyone else in the Bills organization know more about football than you do. So just put a sock in it.

I agree that Trent may be broken. But I don't see how we could ever make a meaningful evaluation of that until we get substantial improvement on the O-line. I mean the Chargers game after the concussion in AZ was probably the best of his career, so I'm hesitant to say that he's never been the same. The only thing I'm really 100% confident about is that no QB in the NFL could be successful on this team.

I agree with what you said to a moderate extent, but I think its hard to expect him to have confidence considering the situation he is playing in. No time to throw and no weapons to throw to (Lee Evans is just too easy to shut down considering there is nobody else that any defense in the NFL needs to worry about). Does his awareness suck? Yea right now it does, because he is getting bum rushed from the edge on a regular basis. IMO these are things that could be corrected if we could get some consistent blocking, allowing Trent time to throw and allowing the running game to take some pressure off of him. I mean god, if we could get some 2nd and 3rd and short situations, his check down passes would be much more effective wouldn't they? If we could play action, we could throw the ball down the field. It really boggles me that some people continue to remain in denial that the offensive line is not the source of all our woes. I suspect those people are the ones who said "!@#$ Jason Peters" as well... Look anyone with a modicum of knowledge about football knows it all starts at the line of scrimmage. No blocking means you lose. No pass rush means you lose. It is just as simple as that. What compounds the problems for Trent is that he has no tight end to throw to, no possession receiver who can make that big play on third downs, no deep threat since Lee Evans will beat a double coverage exactly 0 out of 100 times, he has no big target who can consistently make a play over the middle of the field. I mean there is absolutely no dynamic element to this offense, which makes defending against us rather easy. Stack the box to stop the run. Blitz on passing downs. Double team our only legitimate receiving threat. Then watch our offense flounder and punt. I'm not really sure what is so difficult to understand or accept. I think a lot of you guys are mad because we don't have a Peyton Manning or Tom Brady type QB, but really you might as well forget about it because it is very unreasonable to draft a highly touted QB and then have to pay him absurd amounts of money just to watch him get demolished week in and week out and then fade into obscurity. On a related note, the interior of our line is not all that bad. A couple of good tackles and we would be pretty solid I think. I wouldn't mind an upgrade at center but that is so low on the priority list at this point that we can just forget about it for a while. I like the approach Nix and Gailey have shown in the draft and I believe they might get this ship turned around. I believe they have accepted that this year is a complete wash, and next year we probably have exactly zero chance to make the playoffs (I do believe we will see some substantial improvement next year however). By year three I think we will have a legitimate chance of making the playoffs, and by year five we should be up to a contender level. But all of that is probably moot because people will be calling for Chan Gailey's head before this season is halfway over. No way he survives long enough to see his plan come to fruition. And its all because the overwhelming majority of football fans have zero understanding of the dynamics of the game or how to build a winning franchise. We need to just accept that there will be no instant gratification with this team. We need to accept that at no point in the past ten years have we been anywhere near a contending team who could add one or two pieces to make a legitimate run. We need to accept that we are going to get bruised badly before this turns around. We need to allow the staff to truly rebuild this franchise. I mean just look at the Patriots and Colts before Manning and Bledsoe/Brady arrived. They were perennially two of the absolute worst teams in the NFL. They took their knocks while building a foundation for success. And what is the most common denominator between those two teams, beyond hall of fame QBs? Dominant offensive lines. So please people, let us just shut our mouths, take our licks, and be patient while Nix and Gailey build our foundation for success.