Sisyphean Bills

Well, that's a rap.

Hunh? I wrote "things might work out for some of these other teams too" in reference to posts that waxed on about how much the Bills had improved and you come back that I implied the Bills did not improve. Um. Okey-dokey.

I think it is pretty obvious why the league wants to soft sell this and wish it to go away. Billions of green backs.

Apparently. Just last week, I heard talking heads on the NFL network re-thinking the company spew on this issue -- that maybe the agreement was not so wonderful after all. Jerry Jones name came up as a guy who had pushed this deal hard and now even he wasn't backing it (although from the polar opposite reason as Ralph -- he doesn't want to share money from all his side deals with the rest of the NFL).

That'd be cool by me. All I'm saying is that things might work out for some of these other teams too in 2008 and they could be "surprise" teams. Like Cleveland was in 2007. Nobody knows.

As far as the system thing, I don't disagree that a system can be jury-rigged to fit the data to whatever point someone wants to make. (And, yeah, that happens.) OTOH, if the formula/system and data are given it establishes some credibility that the analysis is 1) correct and 2) being done openly. At any rate, thanks for taking the time to post the numbers you collected. I, for one, did find it interesting.

Like he knew all about it already?

Look everyone! It's a drive by trolling!

Why is it difficult? Here is a system. Break the draft into groups of 10. With 96 picks in 3 rounds that's 10 groups. Picks 1-10 would get assigned a weight of 10, 11-20 a weight of 9, and so on with 91-96 getting a 1. Compute the weighted average. Seems fair enough. I think it'd be more interesting to see what sort of value the pick had anyway, since in the end its the production on the NFL field that counts. Maybe 2 points for every year on the team as a starter (3 for being a stud/Pro Bowler?), 1 point for being on the team, 0 points otherwise.

Simple solution. Re-run the data as a weighted average instead of a leveled average. Your point that taking 3 3rd round CBs is not the same as taking 3 1st round CBs is valid. It'd be interesting to see the weighted data...

On the other hand, the Bills are not the only team trying to improve themselves. The Jets were a major player in free agency, for example. Not saying that's all going to work out for them, but they are definitely not the same team as they were last year. We got Stroud. They got Faneca. Still, your point that this isn't the most difficult schedule still stands, if for no other reason than its the NFC West and has Miami twice.

Ain't that the truth. At one point, I heard the talking heads saying, "I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of people and not one of them, not one, had a single decent thing to say about this guy." (Wow, really? Who the !@#$ are these "people"? Hopefully not his family.) The part that got me laughing though was the bald assertion that "everybody knew there was nothing to it." Um, yeah, riiiiight. It was obvious because it took 7 months of legal posturing by the Patriots, NFL, Walsh, and Specter to get him to turn over the "nothing" to the NFL offices.

I thought this was one.

I thought your question was going to be about why they'd throw away from the corner blitz.

Yes. Pulling the trigger is definitely the step after pointing the gun.

"We're a good football team when we're healthy. How good, I don't know."

It's not really so starkly black and white. Great coaches get the most out of the players they have. These hypothetical great players don't just get beamed into the organization by Scotty. It's disingenuous to say that great leadership comes from having a "perfect team". With a perfect team, a wooden post could be a great leader.

Like, with winning?

Lets not forget he was offensive rookie of the year once upon a time too.

Wow. I was expecting that much sooner...

And this absolutely nothing to to do with today's Bills and front office. I find it rather ironic that you keep comparing Jauron to Coughlin. Jauron's best professional success came when he worked for Tom Coughlin (other than the "Mike Brown saves us again" season). In fact, Dick Jauron would, arguably, never have been considered for a head coaching job without the strong start Coughlin displayed with an expansion team. And since there are some that want to marginalize that achievement, it should be said again: that was an expansion team. Compare what they did out of the gates to the Browns, Texans, and Panthers. Sure, mistakes were made, but Coughlin did an incredible job and the small market Jaguars continue to be a formidable football organization. He's not the next great coach. He is the great coach. He just needs a chance to show it. Damn front office and bad players keep dragging him down.

The Hardy pick is intriguing. It's be different to see a Bills WR with some size operating in the red zone, that's for sure. On the downside, we have to think of a new name: Hardy doesn't suit "Smurf Attack".

No doubt about it, the Bills need someone to balance the field. Even if Hardy becomes a starter opposite Evans, I don't expect teams to really respect the Bills passing game until such time as Edwards, Evans, and Hardy show they can push the ball down the field against different looks. It's a tall order, but then Hardy is one tall dude.

Yeah. All the people bitching about the board is pretty stale.