Red Squirrel
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Posts posted by Red Squirrel
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Scary thing is, in '09, Edwards had a higher completion percentage and QB rating. Both threw 1 more INT than TD. If you look at stats, there was absolutely NO improvement when Fitz took over. Niether would hang their hat on '09, not should they. I think Fitz is garbage and has a longer resume to prove it. TE may be as well. Maybe it's Brohm beacause we have less proof of how bad he can be.
It depends on how you look at the stats.
I've tried to go over this in the past in an old thread, but here we go again: Ryan played 2 WHOLE GAMES against the best pass defense in the league, and those two games killed his numbers. Trent played 2 series against the Jets, completed 5 of 5, remarkably (or typically) for only 1 first down. Ryan came off the bench twice and got significant playing time after NOT getting 1st team reps during the week; Trent, in the same situation, threw about 3 passes (and then got hurt). This sounds like excuses....yeah, for Fitz' stats. I take the trouble to do this because remarkably, Fitz is treated like a dog's dingleberry here after winning most of his games, while Trent could only beat the mighty Bucs and still has a thriving fan club.
One more thing for the people that like stats: check out the splits for these two guys on ESPN.com. You'll see that Fitz and Trent are almost statistically equal on passes under 10 yards. Isn't that supposed to be what Trent is so wonderful at? The LONGER passes are why Ryan's stats lag; he attempted a massively higher percentage of them, trying to jumpstart a dead team. There is no denying that Fitz had some ugly throws this year; the game in Toronto was so hideous it was hard to not claw my own eyes out. But he still put 10 more points on the board in that game than Edwards did against the effing Browns. Edwards seems like a nice kid; I will not attack his character or read a lot into offhand remarks. But I have watched him enough to think he needs to go somewhere else.
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I'd like to see TE behind a good offensive line, with a sound offensive system drawn up by a competent offensive coordinator. Then let's see what happens.
The question I'd have to ask you, and the dozens of other people who keep at it with this line of reasoning, is this: if he can't win games, can't score points, can't gain first downs with a bad line, then why do you think he'd be better with a good line than Fitzpatrick would be? Wouldn't a good line help Fitz?
I'll try it this way: If Fitz + bad o-line > Edwards + bad o-line, then
Fitz + improved o-line > Edwards + improved o-line
I'm all for exploring other options...McNabb being the best one that's perceived as possible. But going back to Edwards....this is not justifiable.
One other point: LeFevour was passed like he was standing still by not only Tony Pike but also Jarrett Brown (who no one talks about here) during Senior Bowl week. He was better than Tebow, but that isn't saying much. Not saying he can't develop, or that he isn't worth a late draft pick, just that LeFevour fever at this point is pretty silly.
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Every time I see Jim Leonhard make big plays, it makes me sick that Whitner was kept instead.
This is absurd. Nobody thinks Whitner was a good draft pick; this is no secret. But Leonhard is AWFUL. If you get sick over this, you need to be put in a padded room.
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Isn't it welch, not welsh?Indeed. Welsh are people from Wales.
"Welsh" is the original expression; the insulting usage that we are talking about here originated from English snobbery (I know; hard to believe
)."welch" has been used so often in place of "welsh" that it has come to mean the same thing.
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Last night, for $2000 in the Double Jeopardy round.....
The answer:
"The only number retired by this team is Jim Kelly's # 12"
followed by dumbfounded silence from the three contestants. Not one of them rang in or even took a guess.
I swear I'd kick ass if I ever got on that show. I'm real weak in the Mythology category and don't know squat about any current TV shows or movies. Other than that, I think I'd do alright.
My wife suggests I try out, but my problem is I don't have any amusing anecdotes to share during the first round break that don't involve getting messed up or getting into a fight. "So Alex, back in '79, I was real fked up at Mulligans one night, and took some mushrooms and went down to the Continental, got into a dustup with some fool with Boy George makeup and a ring through his nose, etc etc" Or I could tell about the thousand times I shoveled my parents driveway, 5 minutes before the Amherst town snowplow shoved most of the street's snow back into the end of the drive.
Great story there.
At least I know who Jim Kelly played for.
I watch the show regularly and the contestants NEVER have interesting anecdotes; most of them just make you cringe, like that black kid tonight who talked about losing his 5th thru 8th grade class elections. If he went to his speech therapy class and stopped lisping, he might have picked up a couple more votes.
And he was the cooler of the two boys tonight.
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Good list. Brown was the only RB that was better than OJ. If you had seen them play there wouldn't be any question about it. Lets not forget OJ didn't play on good teams either. They were very mediocre teams.
If you go to Chicago they will probably have a hard time naming the Bills QB's when OJ was there as well.
The other thing that needs to be kept in mind about OJ is he started out with a dimwit coach that had no idea how to use him. 3 years were wasted that way. To put it in perspective, they flashed a stat on the screen during the pro bowl about Peterson, Emmitt, and a handful of other guys getting 4000 yds in their first 3 years; OJ had less than half that total. It wasn't until Saban came back that he was used properly.
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Did you have to throw that in? The lowest point of his great career if I am not mistaken, he only played in that amount of games because of a drug suspension. I might be wrong and I am sure if I am I will be corrected on this board.
You are mistaken; the drug suspension was for 4 games in '88. In 1991, he missed all but 5 games because of knee surgery.
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yeah, I already corrected myself.
Actually, I corrected you.
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I believe the only argument against it is that Ed 'too tall' Jones might've had more sacks than Bruce if they had kept sacks as a stat back then.
I think you mean David "Deacon" Jones; "Too Tall" wasn't even the best pass rusher on his own team; that would have been Harvey Martin.
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EDIT: i'm talking players only.....on-field.
i'm going to say Thurman Thomas......
League MVP.....and best all around all purpose RB to ever play the game !!
#1- Thurman
#2- Bruce
#3- O.J.
#4- Cookie
#5- Kelly
**EDIT (stolen from the "wildrabbit"):
What most fail to realize is... the Bills used the running game to set up the pass. The Bills used to run more then they threw the ball in the Kelly era. While the Bills O line was better then most, it wasn't even close to what Emmitt Smith had in Dallas......
I like your list, but I take some issue with your characterization of the K-Gun era. Yes, they ran more than they passed, but a lot of that had to do with having 4th quarter leads and grinding it out until the clock read 0:00.
I thought the beauty of that offense was that they did what ever was working the best. Except for SBXXV, which is a big reason why I'm not on the Kelly bandwagon for this. That was their best chance, and he chose to call almost 40 pass plays when the Giants D hardly had any linemen on the field and Thurman was shredding them. But as annoyed as I always have been at Kelly for that, I'd still put him ahead of Cookie, who may have been a great talent but didn't do it in Buffalo very long...and was a pain in the ass
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I don't see why someone like Scott Player (who ever that was) even wore one, it was below his chin and served no purpose other than to meet league rules of wearing one. My guess is Owen Wilson wore one in high school, maybe that is why his nose looks like it has been broken a dozen times.
+1
The first time I heard of Owen Wilson was when I read a movie review that said he looked like his nose was broken by a DC-10.
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WOOT WOOT!
I got 49 out of 59...would have had 50, but I mispelled ......
You might want to edit the name out of there; I did the same thing, but don't want to help others beat our scores!
Anyway, there's another name, much shorter, which fouled me up. And about 3 guys I wouldn't have come up with if I had 8 hours.
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I got 45; got all but one after '95, but pretty much blanked out on the earlier ones (other than '83; those ones are easy to remember).
re-edit: Sorry about briefly giving one away; talk about brain farts.
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Fewell's decision week 15 to re-bench Fitz in favor of Trent, the QB that was initially benched, speaks louder volumes. Coaches don't go back to the QB they deemed unfit to play the position unless injury forces them to or the guy they replaced him with proves he's even worse.
The lengths some of you go to defend Trent speaks loud volumes, too.
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For arguement's sake I will not debate who makes better decisions, although captain check down I believe is the result of three years of DJ's coaching.
However even if Fitzy made the right decisions his throws are wildly inaccurate. He missed TO more than he delivered a catchable ball. I don't believe you can coach accuracy. Trent's disturbing trend of checking down and not pushing/forcing the ball downfield can be corrected with a new coaching staff, IMHO.
Once again, someone misses the point. Jauron was Fitz' coach, too. The line sucked for Fitz, too. TO dropped balls for Fitz, too. The tight ends all got hurt for Fitz, too. The D didn't stop the run in Fitz's games, too. If anything, Fitz had things worse....3rd team in 4 years, o-line MORE beat up after he took over.
I purposely avoided defending Fitz with stats in my last post because I know the short attention spans here really aren't suited for long explanations, even when they make sense. But here we go: Fitz completed over 65% of his passes at RWS. That is not wildly inaccurate. In the games where he was the primary passer, he was under 50% twice...both times against the Jets, the best pass defense in the league. Contrast that to 5 (FIVE) games where he completed over 60%. And ironically, according to the splits on ESPN.com, Fitz is MORE accurate than Trent on the shortest passes, and is equal to him on all passes thrown under ten yards; he falls behind Trent in completion percentage based on the massively higher number of attempts he made of over 10 yards.
And once again, we are back full circle to my original point....Ryan tried to force the action, while having all the same negative issues circulating around him; his stats took a beating, but the TEAM responded well to him. And by the way, he's about 10 times more elusive in the pocket than Edwards. Do you think Trent can be coached up in that area? I sure as !@#$ don't.
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edwards has BETTER NUMBERS then fitzpatrick! why would you dump a better backup?
God, I hope you're being sarcastic.
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If you watched the games, you'd notice that they won in spite of Fitzpatrick's poor play. He's wildly inaccurate and makes poor decisions with the football. The Bills won those games by averaging 4 interceptions forced a game in "Fitz' wins". Edwards played better the first half of the 2008 season than Fitz has ever played in his entire career. Again, I hope we'll have better options by the start of next season, but that's why there's reason to believe Edwards has higher upside than Fitzpatrick.
Since you took the time to pore over the stats to figure out how all the wins in '09 were due to opposing INT's, I thought I'd point out a few stats, too.
1st, you seem to be impressed with the first half of '08. You do realize that the 4-0 start was against teams that wound up a combined 16-48, don't you? And that Trent threw a whopping 1 TD per game in those wins, right? And that he threw more than 1 TD in a game only once the whole '08 season? Actually, his three best games the whole season were after the opening winning streak (and, for those who want to bring this up, AFTER the concussion).
I could also pick and choose stats to defend Fitz (like how his numbers are skewed from 2 relief outings when he wasn't getting 1st team practice reps, and how they are REALLY skewed from having 1/5th of his attempts against the best pass defense in the league), but that isn't really what my point was about. My main issue is with the tendency of Edwards supporters here to blame all of Trent's woes on the O-line (and Adrian Wilson, which I already debunked), but ignoring that Fitz was playing and more often than not winning under the same (if not worse) conditions.
Adding to this is you saying Fitz makes poor decisions; on this issue, I have to wonder whether you watched the games. Edwards makes one decision, over and over....dump it off. You are NEVER going to win throwing 2 yard passes on 3rd and 8 (although you do save your QB rating). Fitz, on the other hand, gives his WRs a chance. His decision making is so much better than TE's that there isn't even a choice between these two.
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It would be really something to see Chan work some magic with either Edwards or Fitz. My opinion is that Edwards has a higher upside than Fitz. Edwards has lost confidence in himself, but the pourous O-line greatly contributed to that.
Exactly why do you see Edwards as having higher upside?
And the OL excuse; this is just stomach turning. They both played with the same line!
Fitz: 5-4
Edwards: 1-5
There's all you need to know to make a decision.
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Could it be....the 3 DUIs? And that after getting suspended for a couple games for this issue already, he might wind up getting half a season if it happens again? Not to mention what a judge might do to him if there's a 4th.
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I live in Jet country, they love Rex .
I don't deny they love him, but I sense less childishness than I normally get from Jets fans. In '06, they had Mangenius posters on their bedroom walls by week 2.
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As for Ryan versus Mangini, Ryan got the Jets a playoff win which is something I would take in Buffalo. While he inherited a lot of talent he also had a rookie QB who was erractic and cost the Jets multiple games.I am not saying Ryan is in the elite of coaching but he has reenergized the fanbase in New York.
I'm not so sure I agree with the highlighted part; I'm in their media market, and my sense is while there are some Jets fans that eat up the trash talk, Ryan is still viewed warily here. They know they really jumped the gun by nicknaming their previous fat slob coach "Mangenius"; they know that for all Mangini's quirks, he didn't leave the cupboard bare. And there is some recognition that shooting your mouth off like Ryan does creates bulletin board material. Of course, one more win, and he'll be the best thing since Rockne, because that's just the way Jets fans are.
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There's a lot of breathless talk about these coordinators turning down interviews; let's see how uninterested they are after their teams are eliminated. An awful lot of this talk from Schottenheimer and Grimm (which we haven't actually heard from his mouth) could be designed to show their current players they are still loyal to them. Let's see what happens after this weekend's games. The two guys I mentioned might be done for the year, or other names might pop up from eliminated teams. I can only speak for myself, but the only experienced coach I liked going into this process was Cowher, and I like him less and less every time I see him grunting and slobbering his way through another halftime show on CBS. And I HATED how Donahoe rushed out and signed Greggggg and deemed it more important to sign a HC rightnow than to give proper consideration to candidates that still had teams in the playoffs. I am still patient about this process.
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when you've gone
vs Alabama
@ Florida
vs Georgia
@ LSU
@ Auburn
for the last month, I'm going to be he last guy to give you sugar about playing Tech.
#1, you probably heard some knob on ESPN or CBS say this, and they have a vested interest in hyping a product they've paid a lot of money for.
#2, if many teams within your league have weak non-conference schedules, then you can't compare yourself in a positive OR negative way with other conferences; this is just common sense.
#3, when you have the 4 tomato cans in the beginning, you only need 2 wins afterward to be bowl eligible; this has already happened several times, and not just in the SEC.
#4, the scheduling scenario you describe DOESN'T EXIST.
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The SEC has HUGE built in advantages; in most conferences, there are only one or two schools that get quality fan support win or lose; that number is about 7 in the SEC. A big reason for this is in darn near every SEC town, there is no competition for the sports fan's dollar. So the stadiums are just rockin'. And that is great. And what follows, obviously, are massive athletic department budgets, fantastic facilities, salaries for coaches that would cause our team's owner to have a stroke. The problem is that SEC schools are also bullies. They regularly schedule almost all of their non-conference games at home against tomato cans. The 12th game in the schedule...in the PAC-10, it became a conference game. In the SEC, it's a game against a Louisiana directional school. Most fans who are serious about college football know this; it's why we hate the SEC, and root against it even when it means rooting for other schools with severely skewed priorities like Texas.
Basically, what I'm saying is: SEC fans, keep up the chant. You can win 6 out of 10 BCS championships, and you still are underachievers.
Jake Plummer to be FA
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
I have never heard anything to indicate that Tillman's death had anything to do with Plummer quitting. And I followed these guys fairly closely because I went to ASU and had season tix in 1995 and 1996. I am not saying it wasn't a factor; I just doubt it.
I think the overriding factor with Jake's retirement was Shanahan. Jake had a great year in '05; he made the pro-bowl, cut way down on picks. And one bad playoff game (not even that bad, really) caused Shanahan to turn on him. Shanny drafted Cutler, rushed him into the lineup the next season even though the team was winning, and likely cost the team the playoffs. Jake then wanted to be released; instead Shanahan traded him to a team that had about 37 QBs under contract, and was set to have a free-for-all competition. Jake had had enough, and quit.
From what I've heard, it is extremely unlikely he would make a comeback. I would have loved it if the Bills had drafted him in 1997. I think it would have made a tremendous difference on both his career and on the Bills. But it's 13 years too late.