Red Squirrel

A write-in vote for Mallett here.

Some points that I don't think have been covered: Using cumulative stats tells a story but not a complete one. If you are to assume (and frankly this is a dubious assumption) that comp% is significant when judging accuracy, you HAVE to look at individual games to get a more complete picture. In Fitz' case, he was above the *seemingly* all-important 60% mark in well over half his games (8 of 13, or 61.5%), but still finished 57.8%. Two games under 50% did a great deal of damage. BTW, this was the same case last year when we were comparing Fitz to Edwards...Fitz' numbers were ruined by the Jets, while Edwards threw only 5 passes against the best pass D in the league BY A MILE (he completed all of them...for one whopping first down, of course). Most of the Fitz backers here have already pointed out that he attempts higher degree of difficulty passes; how much of this is him or how much is because of game situations is hard to pin down, but the results are predictable: Pass attempts 21 to 40 yds (Ignoring longer than 40 due to most of them being hail-marys; Brady thanks me): Fitz: 54 attempts (12.2% of total attempts); 26% comp; 5 TDs; 2 INTs Brady: 30 att (6% of tot); 47% comp; 6 TDs; 0 INTs P. Manning: 77 att (11% of tot); 30% comp; 10 TDs; 5 INTs Brees: 49 att (7.4% of tot); 44.9%; 9 TDs; 3 INTs and a couple guys who had higher QB ratings than Fitz but I feel had worse seasons: E. Manning: 54 att (10% of tot); 41% comp; 9 TDs, 3 INTs Palmer: 35 att (6% of tot); 34.3% comp; 6 TDs; 3 INTs Clearly, longer passes are harder for EVERY passer to complete; Brady is the best at it and still is under 50%. Peyton Manning is almost equally "inaccurate" on longer passes as Fitz...is it a coincidence that he has a similarly high percentage of long pass attempts? I really wish I had time (or knew where it was already computed) to run all QBs and also find out league averages on all this stuff. Another point: fans here were quick to dismiss Fitz' numbers early this season because of so-called garbage time. This is an example that shows you just can't have it both ways: NE and JAC were covering pretty loose, and Fitz made them pay (although obviously not enough to overcome the Bills' wet toilet paper defense). So he's accurate in situations when he's getting little pressure and the safeties are 50 yards back. He also was deadly accurate in '09 in a snowstorm, and also throwing bombs when teams overplayed the run. What does this prove? That under ideal circumstances, his accuracy isn't much of an issue. I got into it here a year ago with folks who thought Fitz couldn't improve; he did, and might continue to do so. I thought touch was every bit as much a problem as accuracy. I thought he too often rifled dump-offs to the RBs when he needed to take a little off. I thought he fixated on receivers and ignored the TEs and RBs too often. I thought it was extremely troublesome that he fumbled 6 times (lost 5) in his last 4 games after only fumbling 2 times (lost 0) in his first 9. These things are fixable. The defense............

I don't remember much about what JK allegedly said to irk Harbaugh, but I do remember Harbaugh was an INCREDIBLY frustrating player to watch. He would CONSTANTLY push the limits on intentional grounding, and every time it happened it was with two guys draped around him after he'd backpedaled 20 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Then he'd hoist himself up with a tremendous (and quite melodramatic) effort, and repeat. I thought he was a clown and his career revival was a bit of a fraud. But having said that, what he's done in a short period of time at Stanford is pretty close to miraculous. And that is considering he isn't all that great while the game is going on.

A guy that hasn't been mentioned that I like is Robert Griffin III of Baylor. He's a red-shirt soph; I believe that makes him eligible to come out, but I could be mistaken. I thought Luck was also a red-shirt sophomore, but he's listed as a junior on ESPN.com even though he's only played 2 years. Anyway, Griffin is bigger and throws better than most of the other guys that are asked to run a lot; 18-4 TD-to-INTs this year. Good background, known as a good leader, and the other coaches in his conference cannot praise him enough. Tuberville called him the best QB in the country and Mack Brown thinks he's an obvious Heisman candidate. And he's winning at a school that hasn't done much of that lately.

What are you, 2 years old? Go find your mom's teat, you little child.

So I guess it was the QB's fault when Darryl Stingley's neck was broken?

God, you are a classless fool.

Dilfer did a TON of losing, often in embarrassing fashion, until he came to a team that had an historically great defense. In '99, if you did actually watch, you would know that we had a very good D. Not a single, living, breathing soul has ever claimed it was historically great. We will never know how Flutie would have done against the Titans. I thought Johnson showed more in that game than he did in those week 17 blowouts that I'm sure you loved/were hoodwinked by...and as we all know, we had the game won until David Boston's incompetent father didn't get himself in position to see the illegal forward pass. Being that I am honest and don't come here to give smartass one line answers, I can admit that I have doubts the game would have been any different with Flutie...but I have little doubt that there were MANY losses after that game that would not have happened if Flutie had played.

I guess the fact that Eric Moulds was injured in the 6th game, missed two weeks and played hurt the remainder of the season had nothing to do with that drop. The game Moulds was injured in and the two he missed were the three worst games of the season for Flutie. To make matters worse, in two of those three games, the defense was a no-show; the third was a win against the Ravens, who actually defended Flutie ten times better than Parcells and Belichick ever did...until the last minute. Flutie got ripped for that performance; he had a 32.8 QB rating that probably was in single digits until the last play of the game...little did we know at the time, that Ravens D was on the verge of being one of the best in the history of the league. It also didn't help having Thurman miss most of the season. And even though he was way past his prime at that point, it left them with out-of-shape underachiever Antowain Smith, and untalented Jonathan Linton....not exactly two appealing options. The team finished 8th in the league in rushing with those two averaging 3.7 and 3.4 a carry; take Flutie's rushing stats away, and they drop about 10 places. And also, Andre Reed was running on fumes; he spent the 2nd half of the season feuding with the coaches about losing playing time to Peerless Price. And even though I was disappointed in Andre for lashing out at Flutie late in the year, I agreed with his beef with the coaches because Price was absolutely horrible at fighting for balls in traffic. I don't really relish getting into these arguments 11 years after the fact, but come on! You guys should have learned you were wrong about Flutie no later than the end of 2000; if somehow it escaped you at that time, it should have happened by the end of 2001. But here we are after 8 more years of misery, and you guys are still ripping the last decent QB we had. I get that he isn't Kelly; if someone came on here and claimed that he was better than Jimbo, then I'd agree that was nutty. That has NEVER happened, and the bashing is just so absurd that every once in a while I have to get on here and take it on.

There were aspects of TO's game that disappointed me; he just wasn't as tough or as physical as I remember him being, and we all know his hands have been erratic for several years. But the guy did show he can still run and is still capable of big plays. While I understand and accept why he isn't a Bill anymore, I also have to say that if anything were to happen to Evans, I'd be a little bit annoyed if Nix didn't try to bring Owens back.

Well, I'm not saying the Jonas Brothers will be close to the Beatles, but if "Beatles For Sale" were released today, critics would kill it. Well, actually they wouldn't, and we all know they wouldn't. Yes, patience is dead. And yes, Moulds would have gotten slaughtered by fans here after his first two seasons (he actually did get slaughtered by Bills fans on usenet, which was a pretty wild place to discuss the Bills back then). There should be a rule along the lines of Godwin's Law to keep people from making any comparison between Edwards and Kelly.

I like it when people agree with me , but I don't entirely agree with you . Like I said to DrFishfinder, that "historic collapse" was mostly because the schedule was front-loaded with garbage. I'm not a Jauron fan, but you are laying it on real thick here. I think they dealt with adversity pretty well the one year when they had about 25 guys on IR, and I don't think all those injuries were because of poor conditioning....most of the time, injuries are a result of bad luck, and it slays me that nobody wants to admit this. Folks just have to blame somebody. I'm also a Mets fan, and NOBODY is going to tell me that several guys who played 155+ games, some for YEARS, all of the sudden were betrayed by their conditioning/trainers/medical staff. That stuff was just plain bad luck. When it isn't bad luck is when you go out and sign or draft guys who already have a track record of unreliability. Conditioning... (where's the smiley that's giving the raspberry?). My single biggest beef with Jauron is the rare occasion I agree with the masses...he coached not to lose. If "Prevent Defense" were personified, it would look exactly like Dick Jauron.

A brief statistical analysis of Trent's 2008, pre- and post-concussion: he had a 93.9 QB rating before it (admittedly pretty good), 81.3 after (not exactly cratering). Almost none of that difference comes from completion percentage (66.4 pre, 65.1 post), which is where I would expect to see a difference if he was having post concussion symptoms. Roughly half of the drop in QB rating came from getting picked off more often. Exactly where I would expect to find a difference due to playing better teams. Amazingly, he was sacked only one more time post-concussion, in 130 more attempts...another area where I would expect a brain-damaged player to get worse...but he didn't; he got MUCH better at avoiding sacks. The concussion theory needs to die. He didn't have a drop off; the schedule got harder. The entire team found life much more difficult when they started playing teams that didn't suck. Which brings me back to the topic of the thread, Jauron: Trent's getting crunched in the noggin had nothing to do with DJ's downfall. I hope I didn't sound like that. I liked him as a hire, I thought the team played pretty hard for him, and I think some of the criticism of him (and the team in general) tries pretty hard to have it both ways: he's an idiot, but boy, do those players stink...well, either one of those things is completely wrong, or both of them are overblown to varying degrees. Or else we'd be the Detroit Lions. Yes, they did. If this is supposed to show Trent's diminished capacity, then what about Denver? Are we now going to pick each game and if he sucked, THOSE are the games when he had side effects?

I guess the "Edwards Concussion Theory" is like Rasputin...you just can't kill it. This isn't the first time I've tried, as have others. Is it possible that Edwards' concussion had lingering effects? Only he can know for sure. But the rest of us have to go with the evidence: Cumulative record of the teams the Bills faced in first 4 games: 16-48 Edwards best game of the season almost definitely was his first one AFTER the concussion vs SD. Common sense tells me the concussion didn't mean squat. By the time they started losing, he'd had 3 weeks to recover, and in the meantime had one pretty good game against a far tougher opponent than the first 4. As far as the Jauron stuff goes, I think you put way too much stock on those 6 games, and have projected it onto the FO. I think a more realistic way of looking at it was that they always seemed close to turning a corner. We all know about the 7-9, three straight years...you only have to reverse a couple games a year (and Lord knows, there were a number of gut wrenching close ones in the Jauron years) and you have at the very least a team that is vying for a playoff spot.

Great post. I can remember back when my cable company first got ESPN (1981, I think), they were all over the CFL because the Alouettes had signed Ferragamo, Overstreet, and a receiver from the Bears whose name escapes me. They had some bird brain for an owner who thought he could singlehandedly lift the status of the league to the NFL level. But Ferragamo tanked (just like with the Bills), the Alouettes were awful, and all three players came back to the NFL with their tails between their legs. The guy that I really liked in that era was Condredge Holloway. That guy was an awful lot like Flutie. He was short and could scoot. He had fantastic field vision; the Argos ran the Run-and-Shoot, and he spread the ball all over the field, and he had great timing for when to go long. I looked his numbers up, and he really only had one huge year. But pretty much every year he had more TDs than INTs, and always had impressive yards per attempt. I think he could have crossed over to the NFL if they weren't so hung up on size. He certainly could have been an upgrade over the clowns that passed through Buffalo between Ferguson and Kelly.

Ironically, I think you defeat your own argument. Essentially, the Bills traded two years of a worn-out OJ for Jim Kelly. The only problem is the eight years in between....which was mitigated by also receiving a 2nd round pick in 1980 for OJ, which became Joe Cribbs. They got several other picks for OJ, too. We politely won't mention who they were

Dwight Drane?

Just like he did with Vernon Gholston?

I think you could count the guys who spurned the Bills for another league as busts, but at least they didn't cost any money. Just a guess about Mike Dennis, since there is little info readily available on him....maybe he didn't play those two years because of the war. That is purely a guess, but the time frame matches up.

Flowers played only 31 games with the Bills. Not sure why you count only Bills games for other players, but all NFL games for him.

If the question is just, "Who is the biggest 1st round bust", without adjusting for where they were picked in the 1st round, Flowers is on top of my list. And I say that reluctantly, as an ASU fan. I suppose because of following that program, I thought it was predictable that he'd lay an egg. His performance was nothing special at ASU until the end of his senior year. I believe he was playing at around 220. Then, all of the sudden, he blew up. Next thing you knew, he's 250 and racking up 3 or 4 sacks at the senior bowl. Then, he's even heavier at the combine and somehow hasn't lost any speed. I don't know what is more mysterious ; how he achieved this, or why guys who were actually good at their job...this was pre-Donahoe...didn't have suspicions. Even if you are sure he was clean, you can't ignore the fact that he didn't play like a 1st rounder in college, and it was probable that he wouldn't continue to run like a 220 pounder. I have a tough time rating Mike Williams as big a bust as Flowers, but I can see the point when you consider how high a 1st round pick he was. He and some of the others, like Patulski, at least hung around for a while. I may have missed it, but I don't think I have seen the name Perry Tuttle in this thread. He was the 19th pick in '82, and he did turn into a good player...for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

You cannot be serious. This is one of MANY excuses made for TE. It might not be #1 on the list, but it's up there.

I've got two; 1st is 1980, Bills vs Jets at Shea Stadium. When we could see the stadium from the car, it was 3 hours before the game....we missed about 5 minutes of the first quarter because of massive traffic. Shea was just horrible for football. Because it was round, half the "good" seats were 12 miles from the field. And we had bad seats...the open-end end-zone, where the Mets eventually put their picnic section. These were temporary, wooden bleachers....the type you see at your local high school. It was rainy and cold, and the wood soaked up all the water. No vendors came to that area, and bathrooms were nowhere near us. Dimwitted Jets fans (are there any other) just waltzed up from their assigned seats in the back rows and stood in front of us....until shoved out of the way. But the day turned out pretty good. Fergy hit Frank Lewis for a game winning 31 yd TD with about :15 left. And the play happened right in front of me, and was the only thing that happened the whole game that I saw clearly. The second one is Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, late '90s. People around the country have no idea what a decrepit old dump that place is. It is passable for college games, especially for ASU students who paid less than $40 for season tickets. But at NFL prices, you need better than metal bleachers that reach a temperature of 9000 degrees on a September afternoon. You need better concessions. You need bathrooms that when you walk into them you aren't ankle deep in mystery liquid. It was still a better place to watch a game than Shea, however.

All good examples to back up your point. Each situation is different; I have no recollection of any of those guy's situations other than Brady's. To be clear, I can envision many scenarios where Levi makes the final roster. The one I am not buying is the one that involves a guy going from a battle for #1 to out the door.

This is really the only part that I feel it is worth further debate. I just cannot envision a competition between 4 guys where only two are considered to be #1, and the loser of that gets whacked. And I also can't imagine why any of you think Brown could come in 4th behind a group of guys that everyone criticizes, after himself getting bypassed by every other team at least 6 times in the draft, and then be in such demand that the Bills couldn't pass him through waivers and assign him to the practice squad. That is all.