Utah John

The Bills lose to the Bears and Lions without Watkins. 1-4 would feel a lot worse than 3-2. Granted without Watkins our 1st rounder would probably be another 6-10 pick. As it is the 1st rounder the Browns will get will probably be no better than 20th.

In a game with two strong defenses, I think it's better to kick off to start the game. If the other team can't move the ball, it's stuck with poor field position and you get good field position as a result. Which is what happened to the Bills, you might have noticed. It took most of the first quarter before the Bills could get anything going. I was really surprised when I found out the Bills won the toss and elected to receive. It could have been a difference maker for the game. Fortunately the defense played great and the offense got good enough.

CJ is a great back ONLY when his wheels are balanced and he's got performance tires. Fred Jackson finds ways to excel regardless of his bumps and bruises, but he's just a better footballer than CJ. Gailey found ways to get CJ in the clear and that worked well. The O line now, especially the interior O line that needs to pull in front of sweeps or screens, is really bad this year. For this reason I think Hackett might actually be doing pretty well, designing game plans that avoid disasters from our weak guard play, while keeping the defense honest by rushing a lot. Against a great defense like Detroit, there wasn't any room. Against weaker, slower defenses, there could be a lot of room around the corner for CH. Of course CJ is aging. I don't know if CJ might have a lost half a step since Gailey departed, but he doesn't look quite as shifty. Still really fast of course. He ran the kickoff back 102 yards in 11 seconds, while making a cut near the start and then slowing down at the end, wearing full pads and a helmet. That'll do. But when he has to make people miss he loses a lot of his speed, more reduction than I see with other backs or what I remember his first year or two. Generally RBs who rely on speed and quickness fall off the cliff younger and quicker than powerful, tough, thinking RBs like FJ. Look how quickly Chris Johnson became so ordinary.

The run defense is doing very well, but consider most opponents had weak O lines and was using backup RBs, so maybe it's not time to send Schwartz's sainthood application in to the Vatican just yet. Let's at least wait till Thanksgiving. The Bills actually have the #1 rushing defense measured in YPG allowed. 71.0. Seattle is #2 at 72.3. Sounds great (and it is great) but that often means teams opt to pass more. I'll feel better when Gilmore and McKelvin cover better, and both Williams safeties tackle better. Who's gonna cover Gronk? Does anyone know if Kyle Williams will be back to face the Pats? The Pats have gashed the Bills before and probably will figure they can do it again. It would help a lot to get KW back.

The Bills played against a great defense today, with a weak O line. The interior of our O line couldn't do anything against the Lions. The inside running game was really tough, and none of the Bills backs could get wide against the fast LBs and DBs. So Orton stood in and made more good throws in one game than EJ has in four games. He hit Goodwin on a deep pass where he dropped it in, and he hit Sammy (hitting defined loosely, which is OK in Sammy's case) with tight, direct spirals. Against the Bears, EJ put up ducks twice which our WRs skied to pull down. That could have gotten two receivers killed, but fortunately didn't because the guys were so wide open they had time to leap and get back down. But neither chance was necessary, if EJ could just throw an accurate pass beyond 15 yards.

Early in the game, the Bills lined up to punt, and the Lions had 10 men rushing the punter and only the return man back deep. The Bills' gunner was wide left, all alone. How hard would it be for the punter to hit the gunner on a 15 yard crossing route? No one to cover the guy, no one to break up an easy, soft pass. And only one player, the punt returner, to beat. I don't think I've ever seen 10 men rush on a punt, and might never again, but it would be smart to have a fake punt check ready to go at all times.

I think he's a potential fill-in for Easley on STs until Easley recovers. He might even play Sunday if the Bills think he's in shape.

I have to disagree with those who say that benching EJ means his career with the Bills is over. This just gets him back to where he should have been all along, on the bench watching an experienced QB runs things. After a certain point of proficiency, a person learns best by doing along with coaching. Prior to that point however a person learns to fail, and that's all EJ was going to do by playing, keep failing. He doesn't get it. But that's OK, a lot of 1st-3rd year QBs don't get it, and then they figure out what's going on and become good professional QBs. This detour is actually the straightest path to EJ being successful in the long run.

When Watkins declined to expose his body to a brutal hit to reach for an off-target EJ pass for minimal gain, people gave him grief. Woods went ahead with the catch this time, got clobbered, and actually hurt the Bills because the completion kept the clock running. These guys all want to be successful. They think, correctly, it's their job to run the correct route, get separation, and catch the ball. But time and again, no matter how well they do their job, the ball isn't where it needs to be. This isn't college, where a superior athlete WR can dominate college-level DBs and where a QB has a much wider space-time volume to hit. This is the NFL where most times the ball has to travel through a very narrow range vertically to get over LBs and then down, and get to a nearly exact spot, at nearly the exact right time. It's amazing really to see a professional QB achieve that level of accuracy, and then to be so good that people assume he'll do it right over and over. Yet, that's the job, fella, and if you can't do it your WRs are entitled to get frustrated. Not that they should act out and embarrass their QB publicly, but they do need to get the point across.

It's really hard to win year after year the way the Patriots have done. The secondary key is Brady, but the real key is Belichick. He might be a dour bore, and may have cheated from time to time, but he's also an amazing coach who's held that team together year after year by taking the players available and figuring out how to win with them. But parity being what it is, sooner or later the late draft picks and regression to the mean are going to pull down the talent level to the point where even the hoody can't turn what he's got into gold. I thought the time to overtake the Pats was last year, when they had no WRs except rookies and tricksters, but they still won, helped in large measure by poor competition in their division. This year they still have no real threats and WR, the O line is old and crumbling, the aging defense is getting gashed, and Brady might be thinking about how nice it would be to travel with Giselle. If the Bills can get competent QB play, the time for an empire change could be at hand.

It's less important how Orton did against Detroit, than what Schwartz can dial up against his old team.

Let's see if Orton can play pretty well for this year and maybe even next year, while EJ figures things out and gets past the failure label people want to stick on him. THEN let's see what EJ can do. There's no reason not to draft QBs in 2015 and 2016 -- some GMs say you should draft a QB every year -- rather than hoping EJ is eventually ready to go; but EJ could be ready to go in a year or so, and he has some of the attributes you want in a starting QB. Like I said earlier, this just takes EJ back to where he should have been all through 2013 and this year too, sitting behind a veteran QB and learning the game.

In my view the Bills have taken EJ back to where he should have been at the start of 2013. Sitting behind a veteran, and learning. I don't see a lot of difference between Orton and Kolb regarding talent level, so starting now EJ is back to being the future QB of the team. Where he should have been all along. Remember last year when Kolb got hurt there was a carousel of QB candidates through the Bills' camp, looking for the Kolb replacement. The Bills couldn't find anyone adequate so they tossed EJ into the fire. Now they're pulling him back out. I don't know if EJ has what it takes. I think he has the arm but he's afraid to use it. I think he's smart enough to learn the system. I question his moxie. What I do know is this, that he was never going to become successful by continuing to fail, and that's all he's prepared to do now. If he sits for the rest of this year, and maybe next year, that will still be less time on the bench than Aaron Rogers had sitting behind Bret Favre. He will still be a young man with a great deal of athletic potential. The failure of the Bills organization in this is not necessarily in drafting EJ, it's in not securing a replacement for Kolb, and then not having game plans that fit EJ's abilities. For all the criticism of the Texans game plan, i.e. too much passing, keep in mind those passes were open, but both the passer and the receivers failed to convert. With better skilled players the game plan was fine, and would have been pretty smart since the Texans were focused on stopping the run. So where was the adjustment to realize the passes wouldn't work, so it was time to switch to a run-centric offense? Hackett is a bigger problem than EJ.

They're benching EJ, not cutting him. Remember at the start of 2013, the plan was to sit Manuel and have Kolb play while EJ learned. Kolb got hurt and Manuel looked decent so they put him in. He played OK for a rookie. But he's playing worse than ever now. The Bills want to win, and they really do have the talent to do so. Sure they have weak areas, like every other team has weak areas, but the future is now, as George Allen used to say. (If you don't know who George Allen was, you missed a lot of good football in the day.) So you've got Fred Jackson pushing himself to play hard every play. But he's 33 and is going to break down eventually. Are you going to tell Fred Jackson to suck it up, keeping being an overachieving hero and burn out and when EJ finally figures things out we'll send a photo of the Bills in the playoffs to wherever he's living at that time? No, you owe it to Fred Jackson to take your best chance at winning. Let EJ sit and watch and learn. This year, maybe next year, like Aaron Rogers did behind Bret Favre in Green Bay. EJ has real talent and skills, but he's in over his head, and he's wasting a year of the careers of his teammates.

Chandler says EJ made some great throws. Hmmm. He made some routine throws that any competent QB is expected to make. Nothing brilliant, nothing really difficult. He missed a LOT of other routine throws that any competent QB is expected to make. Just as bad, he didn't even see wide open receivers that even one of his overthrown softie passes could have gotten to.

Byrd is a smart player who worked well in Pettine's systems. Like a lot of other players, his skills might not translate into success elsewhere. He is not a physical specimen like many other safeties. He reads QBs and sees how plays are developing, and he reacts. Why he isn't able to do it in NO, I can't say for sure, but it is probably due to what he's asked to do by his position coaches and DC. Either that or he got tired of faking injuries, so now he shows up but doesn't really show up.

The answer is, probably yes. Whether he's better right now that everyone else is not the only thing that matters. If the Bills thought EJ was as good today as he's going to get, he'd deserve to be cut. They look at him as a red-shirt rookie, who is learning as he goes, and they see enough potential to keep him on the field even if he costs the team wins that they could reasonably get with an average QB. So the reason he would probably start for other teams is that they have immediate AND longer term needs, and they're looking ahead.

There do seem to be different rules in the last minutes. Last year the Patriots were playing the Panthers, and Luke Keuchly mauled Gronkowski in the end zone -- no call. Our Corey Graham got away with PI at Chicago. Woods was definitely denied the chance to run. The refs could have figured Woods initiated the contact, but the guy had his hand on him. There's no way it wouldn't have been called except in that situation, where PI would have set up the Bills on the 20 or so with a minute or more on the clock, and a chance to win. But gosh EJ was terrible. Most of the passes that were dropped could have been thrown a lot better. Several incompletions were to open receivers but the pass was not where it needed to be. Even against Chicago, it was only because two of our receivers could elevate and snag EJ's high wimpy throws that the Bills were able to move the ball in critical periods. Fortunately Fitz gave us ample reminders why he wasn't the guy, either. Watching him miss open receivers, in such sharp contrast to what Rivers did last week, shows how rare and special it is to have a superior QB.

The first one to come to mind was Nate Odomes. He was a great CB for the Bills but couldn't transfer that when he signed for large money with Seattle.

Gailey was a good coach, who could be a great offensive coordinator. His biggest failing was his choice of defensive coordinators, and bad luck on defense. Dave Wannstedt looked like a good plan, but Wannstedt's view was that a dominant defensive line could mask weak LBs. Then Mario Williams hurt his wrist and Marcel Dareus didn't show up, and the defensive line wasn't a force as expected, and then it turned out Wannstedt couldn't scheme. All that is the responsibility of the head coach, but it wasn't like Gailey was a fool. Some reasonable things he did just didn't work out.

No, I think Schwartz's schemes are much better balanced to defend both the run and the pass. The pass defense is worse partly because of the absences of Byrd and Kiko. I think it's a good enough defense to win games just with competent offensive play. Last year, it wasn't.

The only way you can say RGIII is a bust is to look at "bust" as another term for "broken." He got caught up in the hype of the Skins making the playoffs in his rookie year, and his idiot coach and the incompetent team doctor were complicit in playing him and subjecting him to further and disastrous injury. I don't think he'll ever be the same special player he was. He might turn into a competent professional QB, doing the things expected of normal players, but he clearly had the special and rare skills the Skins went after. But you don't buy a Ferrari to haul manure, and it was a real shame how he was treated by his team.

Tell me which Bills players will be injured, and when, and I'll tell you how confident or pessimistic I am.

Maybe they could each score some free tickets.

Evans was on the downhill part of his career when he was traded, but I had the sense that the Bills were trying to do right by him by sending him to a playoff-caliber team to give him a shot at least once. It was clear the Bills weren't going to get Evans to the SB. If Evans had held on to a particular pass from Flacco it might have worked out, too. (Actually I think the defender knocked the ball out of Evans' hands, so it wasn't a drop.)