GrudginglyOptimistic

Make ni mistake about it. Virtually any NFL offense should concern me as a fan (I mus admit facing Detroit likely would not even concern me but that is another post). To some degree, I hope that the players have a sense of urgency that fear can inspire for every team they face, and if they do not have that sense of urgency with any opponent they may well lose. However, as a fan, there are certain opponents (like NE in the old days before Brady got tentative with his injury that simply raised a sense of fear when we faced them that we almost certainly were gonna get blown away. Maybe its just me and my sense of the Aints in the old days when they were a laughing stock that does not raise my radar above the concern level to fear, but a look at the stats (which were nicely provided by OC in Philly in an earlier post) that made me feel that when one looks at it on paper (with a reminder the game is not played on paper so stats are an indicator but not definitive and NO despite being easily the highest scoring team in the first two games this season does not create fear in my heart on facing them. If anything, NO strikes me from looking at the team and this game as a great opportunity which we can quite reasonably take advantage of to get a win which draws national attention. Consider: 1. Their offense clearly is productive this year and Brees when you look at his career stats for NO is an effective QB. However, the starting point for assessing any teams record is to look at their opponents. NO stcked up their high scoring result against a Detroit team that behind their rookie QB may be one of the worst in the NFL. Their second game was against a Philly team which looked like one of the class of the NFL in pre-season, but the loss of McNabb has this team. Its too early to write Kolb off but one can already see the analysis that the Saints were not as good as they appeared after their 2-0 start. 2. The analysis by OC also points out the great average drive starts NO earned in their first two games which was just above the 40. No prob as they earned it. However, the Bills every season under April have been one of the best ST teams in the league despite being mediocre at best in other facets. It is simply difficult to see the Saints profiting from a lot of good drive starts against the Bills. 3. The other part of drive starts is the great benny that turnovers give you. One thing that looks good on this team after too few games to establish a trend is that they look pretty careful with the ball. They need to avoid bad luck like the fumble amidst some tough running by Jackson and again get lucky with the bounce of this oddly shaped ball and they need to have been taught the proper lesson by the idiocy of mcKelvin against NE (thinking aggressively and trying to stick a fork in them was good trying to do this though with no blocking and your hands team in front of you with NE having no choice but to make a desperation strip was just dumb. If TE shows the same care with passing the ball he usually shows (you are allowed one foolish pass per game but only one) the Bills may well be able to avoid the fate of Detroit and Philly where OC noted none of them came from tight coverage by the Aints but the QB airmailed the ball each time. 4. This raises the question of whether their QBs were so bad due to the Saints D. The good news for us is that the Saints stats do not look like it. As undeniably productive as their O is (with the benefit of good field position a solid Bills ST and a careful TE should not help create) their D looks pretty bad even playing goshawful Detroit and a wounded Iggles team. Their D is in the bottom third of the league in almost every defensive category. They can be attacked successfully, in fact two teams playing with a hand tied behind their back with a rookie QB making his first pro start ever and a back-up also making a surprise start were badly outscored by NO but their offenses drew some blood also. Fears that it was the Saints pass rush which caused these problems are not reflected in the stats as even with each game locked up they only registered 2 sacks and only 1 by their DL. The conventional wisdom may be do not no huddle to keep Brees on the bencg, but at least at the start of the game they should in fact no huddle as this will make it harder for them to run exotic blitz packages to get their LBs run blitzing. I would say go no huddle until you are forced to make the clock run because your D is exhausted or you are so far ahead you want to burn clock. 5. The good news is that we are at home and this historically provides an advantage that is worth points. ST needs to play as well as they have in the past. Edwards needs to avoid turnovers as he has in the past, and the Bills need to run (as the first two games showed you can do on the Saints) and to stop the run (Stroud needs to play as he has done so far as a Bill). All in all, I look forward to this game.

Though I think the specific idea of dividing up days is silly, I do think the general division of optimist v. pessimist is a legit division. While those who watch ONLY Fox News or MSNBC are so weak that they can only hear folks who agree with their preconceived notions, I think that if anyone is interested in truth they need to hear both extremes even if the extremes are pretty silly. As far as the Bills I remain grudgingly optimistic. On paper this team really has no chance of making the playoffs, but unless your prime interest is in a fantasy league about this fantasy the game is not played on paper or on your Madden 3012 TV screen.

[quote name='tecmobowlbills' date='Sep 24 2009, 07:48 AM' post='1567264' I know its been said but man we need to slow the game down against New Orleans. The less Brees has the ball the better. This just makes me angry at Lynch. If he wasn't a dumb A$$ we could use our two talented backs and pound the ball. Thanks Lynch, thanks a lot I do not think one should be too sure that the approach going in should be to slow the game down. While this seems obvious at first glance, one does not have to glance too far to see that the interplay between NO and its first two opponents was dictated by the fact that both Det and Phi were playing NO with one hand tied behind their back as rookie QB Stafford saw his first action ever in the game against NO and Phi was being led by McNab back-up Kolb . It is not surprising at all that Brees was operating a NO which had little fear that the opponent holding their own in a QB-led offensive battle. The no huddle is key for us in that its primary advantage for us is that it makes it much harder for an opponent to run complicated blitz packages on us which are hard for our inexperienced OL to pick up. Opponents neither have the time to substitute the packages of players they want to run different rush packages nor do Ds have an opportunity to huddle up and communicate to each other which different rush stunts they are going to use. The no huddle reduces the pass rush to more simple straight forwas man to man blocking. Turnovers are going to be a big key to this game and if we can minimize them by playing in our own normal pace, we will likely be better off running the no huddle than not. We will need to execute to avoid a lot of three and outs, but as the NO D is the lower third of the league in most D stats, I do not think starting out we should fear running the no huddle.

BINGO we have a winner! There is a thread on TSW started by a person with the moniker OC in Philly who was nice enough to not only review the NO games so far but also provide us with a somewhat detailed analysis of his key statistical findings, They pointed to NO getting an average drive start just past the 40 yard line due to good ST play on their part and also due to short yardage after turnovers. Play ST with the same effectiveness we have had even during the incredibly mediocre winning% under Jauron is going to be a good start. His review of the INTs earned by the Saints seemed to almost all not to be from tight coverage by their DBs but by poorly thrown balls which hit the defender right in the numbers. Edwards in the past has thrown the ball fairly tightly and one would hope that the would not have a fit of errant throws that the non-starting talent at QB the Aints have drawn in their first two weeks (newby Stafford and then deep reserve Kolb). The young Bills OL will be tested as they also will need to continue to give TE time and space to throw and not have to hurry the ball. He also felt that the Saints demonstrated they can be run on and again a key to beating Brees (he is a good QB and will get his share of passing scores in almost all circumstances so simply hoping to fool or beat him is not a high probability strategy for beating him. The key to beating Brees will be: 1. Good ST play that wins the field position battle 2. Good tackling that stops the Saints running and creates more 3rd and longs 3. Few turnovers denying Saints short fields

I think this is wrong. The old TO M.O. is to be a pretty good teammate to all his first season and then to become more of a divider later in his time with a team. This is what the old TO did in SF (it took more than 1 season before the division set in, PHilly (He was pretty solid with all teammates his first year but he and McNabb had a breakdown pretty quickly in his second season, and in Dallas (again he was a solid citizen his first year and much of his second before he and Romo had trouble fitting into the same room but as Romo is not cashing checks he wrote when it was declared his team, TO might have been right. If you are interpreting TOs notariety to point as an emergence of the 2nd or 3rd year TO this has not been his past MO and is likely more in the mind of the poster based on the national media also jumping to the final act rather than any TO particulars.

Very good OL play generally so far! I was very impressed with how they picked up the Pats pass rush (though to a great degree this was helped by Belicheat generally dt'ing both WR as this drop the pass blitz down from a complex zone blitz type of scheme to more straightforwad one on one blocking), Add in the no huddle so there was minimal time for NE to hatch and change rushing schemes and the TE quick release and all of this was just as big (in fact bigger part) of the story as good player performances. Also, before we get all quishy on Bell, even he said his footwork was lousy. He still need a tremendous amount of work on the fundamentals and my guess is that he not only is a full season away from adequacy at LT but likely a season plus. His inexperience is reflected in the large number of false starts he has and he clearly has gotten the message that if you get beat (and he has and will some more when he faces the best of LDEs) then just drag the opponent to the carpet, The OL is far more effective than last year's unit (though after only two games it is hard to tell I would judge them as not as effective as the 07 unit but we will see). A big advantage came not only from Belicheat simplifying their task with the dts but Tamps Bay likely being the weakest team we will face all season.

The answer is there is no v. here! They are both Bills and we Bills fans are lucky as all get out as fans (and should praise the football assessment guys for picking an RB in the draft who made the Pro Bowl in his second year and Marv for likely endorsing the acquisition of a Coe College grad who was not only judged undraft worthy in the NFL but not even good enough to make an Arena league team). In s likely unsuccessful attempt to pre-empt minds that are too small to deal with having two starter quality RBs at the same time, a team can certainly use two starter quality RBs. Injuries happen to a heavy hitting role like RB. Idiocy like that which still infects the young Lynch can get a guy suspended. More weapons is a good thing to have. Jackson's one good and one extremely good (the fumble cost him from deserving the label great for today's superior effprt) RB outings in no way create an RB controversy. Instead they simply give the hard-pressed AVP another tool to add to his arsenal when Lynch comes back for game 4. Even if Jackson were to replicate his performance today next week, my guess is unless something in how they practice tells me different, I come back in game 4 with Lynch as my starter, but with him knowing that with him under a 5 year contract (I am pretty sure that it what he signed for and Jackson just having re-upped at a substantial raise that likely has him thanking his highly skilled stars for the chance to start and excel for an NFL team, and that he has no hissy fit to throw at all if he resumes the role as a #2 for Lynch when he comes back. The Bills management task with Lynch just got even easier for the Bills. Not only is he locked under contract for a couple of years, but the NFL (backed by the NFLPA which now represents the interests of its members not by fighting every disciplinary action but by reminding young players that the NFLPA is not only a partner but arguably the majority partner (the get 60.5 % of the total gross under the current CBA) of this enterprise. The interests of the vast majority of the NFLPA is reflected in the actions and attitudes of players like Troy Vincent and TKO who do not wanted to see their fatted calf killed by the idiocy of Pac-Man Jones. Lynch can easily be welcomed back as starter, but now there is a clear alternative if he wants to continue to drive on Chippewa St or carry guns in his gym bag. I love it that we now seem to have two clear options at RB and controversy, there ain't none (except in the minds of some media and a small but vocal fan contingent).

Thia post really misses the key point of the Bills D problems on Momday. By far and I mean way big way by far the big negative receiving stat on the Bills in this game was Ben Watson's line where he got 2 TDs on long passes in the final 5 minutes of the game which cost us big time. The bulk of the 24 Moss/Welker catches added up to the Bills having a two score margin on the Pats until the Watson receptions did us in. The key to these receptions in my book were: 1. The Bills going to their prevent D in the final 5 which statistically was the right thing to do I could grant them but the stats do not take into account: 2. The Bills D simply failing to have anyone step up and make what could have been a game-winning play at crunch time 3.. The injury to Pos likely hurt us big time as he has shown great game speed and after two years with our version of the Cover 2 (including not to be undervalued time watching how it should work when he go hurt as a rookie) switching to Buggs when it is the MLB who bears lots of responsibility for deep middle coverage in our Tampa 2 style D this loss was a big one that Belicheat exploited big time. 4.. Our safeties really needed to depend upon our CBs doing the same thing they did early in the game when they correctly applied the coverage we were running to effectively deny their great WRs the big play Moss did get one long recept for 31 yds but his effectiveness in this game simply pales against his past multi-TD outings against a feeble Bills D. We really should have required our CBs to step up more and really blanket the WRs with tighter coverage than we ran all game and allowed the safeties to help out the very young and lesser talented Buggs over the middle. On the offensive side of the ball as Jauron, TO, the local media, the national media (though they are missing the real story as they are operating on a TO as cancer story ignoring the fact his MO has been to be very nice his first year (and the fan base knows he needs to challenge the opponent deep more (even if the throw misses and he airmails it and misses everything this is better football than never throwing deep). However, the double teams which NE used consistently to deny our WRs the ball is a big part of why TE had 2 TD throws to TE Nelson and RB Jackson as NE abandoned them one on one to dt the WRs. The stat results were unfulfilling to those who banked on Evans/TO on the fantasy teams, but for those who are interested in the Bills the fact that the O performance teamed with an all important INT by Schoebel to give us a two score lead before we seemed to forget the game was 60 minutes long and not 55. However, focusing on the Moss/Welker #s and not showing any understanding of the dynamics which underlay the poor stat performance of the WRs is simply an incorrect way to view the game.

The ambivalence is misplaced if it is about the simple size of the contract rather than the % of the cap allocated to a particular player. These contracts are outrageously large simply because the NFL is making nickels hand over fist over elbow and the NFLPA was able contractually to reach an agreement which makes them arguably the majority partner in this enterprise with the players guaranteed 60.5% of the total gross take. If folks are revolted by the amount of player salaries right now then just wait until the NFLPA and NFL agree to a rookie salary cap which lessens the take of the rookies and thus heightens the take of the vets. As lomg as we keep buying the salaries are gonna go through the roof and beyond. I must admit I feel better about the players being grossly overpaid than if Mr. Ralph, Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder simply got richer.

I don't think so. Greer is a good player, but he was always well behind McGee on the depth charts and deservedly so. McKelvin is an inexperienced idiot wunderkind when it comes to kick returns and he simply made a bad mistake that turned out disastrously badly on Monday. However. he has shown good talent as a position player at CB with the athleticism to cover many #2 WRs one on one. This is what he did on Monday, and though he and McGee gave up double digit catches to both Moss and Welker (easily arguably among the best #1 and #2 WRs in the league) they covered them by giving them a ton of space to work underneath but closing quickly to minimize their RAC yardage. This was actually quite an effective strategy for keeping points of the board even if this bend but do not break strategy gave up tons of yds and catches. What this did was allow the Bills to get pressure on Brady without having to go with exotic blitzes which would leave the center of the field open to short passes. For 55 minutes they held the mightt Pats O at bay to the tune of opening up a 2 score lead. Unfortunately, its a 60 minute game and in the last 5 minutes the Bills played the odds and got ripped for a TD by a Pats drive which burned clock while it gained yards on our prevent D. This worked fine except for two things. A. The loss of Poz left Buggs doing deep cover up the middle in the Tampa 2 style Cover 2 we run. He and the closing safeties got a new one ripped twice by Ben Watson on deep middle TD catches, B. We burned three minutes of clock on the Pats TD and were slated to get the ball back. If in at least 3 runs and a punt we forced the Pats to use all three of their TOs they would have had a minute or less to cover yardage likely like the amount it took them 3 minutes to cover the last series. However, this scenario is based on typical ST oerformance which does not include a player trying to return a kick for a TD without any blocking and coughing up the ball when he is gang tackled. The CB play was a minor factor in why we loss. If Greer had been around then he would likely have replaced Corner as the nickel back and likely would have produced roughly the same results matched up agaiinst Galloway primarily that Corner produced. Greer had some great games as an INT getter, but actually McKelvin produced similar outstanding INT results but did this in regular season rather than in pre-season as Greer had a habit of doing.

Many thanks.

This analysis of the specifics is helpful and thanks, but it does immediately raise the question of what this means in regard to the ultimate stat of points produced and points allowed. Yes, it is clear that when one looks at the little picture of individual productivity, their WRs got twin double digit production in catches and our incredibly talented WRs got 2 and 3 catches respectively. However, until the final 5 minutes of the game we were two scores ahead and their WR productivity in yards did not mean productivity in points and the Bills difficulties in WR productivity still saw then with a two score lead thanks in large part due to the offensive productivity of Schobel after a turnover. I think that the playcalling the Bills use seems much improved under AVP compared to under Turk (it may be that the BeliD directly took our WRs on which is what reduced their catches and gave us openings for screens, a couple of nice QB scrambles and the TD to the TE Nelson). Perhaps the actual route running taught will change as well with the use of better slants and some pick plays to get separation. Likewise, their O getting a lot of WR production is fine with me if it results in a 2 score lead for us with 5 minutes left. Ironically, though their WRs were a key to their winning drives in terms of advancing the ball (with a couple of charitable spots of the ball for 1st downs as well, but this is merely whining as these spots did not make the difference in these drives), the irony is that both TDs came from us playing their WRs so tightly we left the TE open up the middle as the coverage of the MLB deep up the middle is critical in the Tampa 2 we run and the safeties were too WR focused to get over to the middle in time to help an overmatched Buggs who was in at MLB. I want to see some improvement and adjustments to the WR patterns, but still I would prefer we take what they give us if they are leaving the RB in a position to get over 125 yards in combined yardage if the result is going to be a 2 score lead because our bend but do not break D is holding a team like the Pats down at their house.

On target! McGee demonstrated that he is the go to guy for us on D (though the way that WRs were productive in yards though not productive in producing points for virtually the entire game was painful though effective in the ultimate stat to watch). He probably is not the guy for us to give extra KR duty to and take also take additional risks with the way we play our D. McKelvin is a high risk/high reward player on KR. We got the get burned part of that equation on Monday. The interesting thing to me was McKelvin's reaction that he would do the same thing again. One actually needs a bit of that attitude to be the type player he is. My guess is that actually no one likes being embarassed and McKelvin will be a little bit more reluctant to take big risks when there are huge upsides to playing it safe. If he takes from this never take risks he is useless as a return guy and I hope his post game talk has a bit of reality attached to it. If he takes from it still take risks but not all the time when the risks without blocking of getting stripped are so high and the downside of getting stripped are so devastating, and you do not NEED to make a play to win then if he loses taking this risk he will be a better player. 2 downsides against you then take the risks, but three downsides probably not unless you NEED a score to win.

Parrish is a bit smurf like on paper with his size as measured on paper. However, his very good punt return average and his willingness to play a very tough game in the slot as the #3 WR are both real world indications that describing him with the waifish sophistry you use does not fit the reality of the situation. My guess is that if you had to choose your partner in a knife fight between Roscoe or someone writing a commentary on his play, the person who chose the guy with the computer to be their second would be very dead. Yet, I recognize the comparison of a pro athlete to us armchair athletes is not really fair (though your claim he goes down if there is a stiff wind sets a weak boundary for fairness) its probably more realistic to compare him to other atheletes. Is Parrish as tough a guy willing to throw himself into any return? In general, I would say his record of injury indicates a bit too much of a willingness to throw himself into harms way. In addition, I am wishing today that McKelvin was a bit more willing to simply take a knee than launch himself into a return with no blocking help whatsoever.

My point on Kelly was that it seemed pretty clear to me from watching him as a player that his mental ability was still there that got us to 10-6 but physically he was showing the wear and tear he put his body through. From the recurring bursa sac problems with his arm to his not being as mobile as he used to be to avoid sacks it simply looked like a matter of time til some sack artist laid him out. This came in the Jax game. The problem of the Bills led by Mr. Ralph miscalculating how much he had left was something I saw when the year before they drafted Collins I found myself surprised they did not take a QB in the draft or failing that acquire an FA back-up for Kelly. There were two reaches for in the TC case. 1. He came from a winter weather run first school at U Mich and the Bills were clearly taking a risk that even if TC proved to be a sufficient talent that he would even exceed that great accomplishment by being a stud quickly in his career. I do not think anyone envisioned the happy-feet he turned out to have but it would have been not unreasonable and in fact a rational expectation that he would need another year before he was asked to start. 2. Did he in fact have the talent to be more than a solid back-up no matter how much time we gave him. Plan A was clearly to have Kelly last a year or more and ONLY Mr. Ralph could make the handshake deal so it was him as a person who committed to the Plan A of going with Kelly as the starter even though we were likely a year or so short of our plan B being ready to start (whether it was Mr. Ralph or not who decided to not draft and begin training his replacement a year earlier than we did). The fact of the handshake deal makes it impossible to reasonably describe Mr. Ralph as a bystander in this process.

Sounds good (or at least better than knee jerk reactions to start by reaffirming past Mr. Ralph failures and Brandon personnel management failures by starting with a firing of Jauron) to me. The irony here is that I doubt that Mr. Ralph has the maturity to crawl across glass on the Polian issue. Perhaps Polian committed some personal affront that Mr. Ralph cannot forgive, but as far as the good of the Bills as a team we would likely profit from him acknowledging his past errors.

My thought exactly. Perhaps the biggest indictment of the Bills FO lack of progress with Jauron in the saddle was the parallel between this 06 game and this one. In each case the Bills had the games destiny in their own hands and due to a mental decision by a player (McKelvin in this case and I think WM losing track of which down he was going for the endzone on a 4th and 1). We lost the game. In both cases, the Jauron led team surprised the Patsies with their early season fight, but in both cases the team lost due to their immaturity. In a more competent world we would have learned from the earlier error and through team continuity either the return guy would know to take a knee in the endzone or if a talented newbie like McKelvin would have been reminded by an older hand of the game situation.

The problem which needs to be fixed however is that the clear past record of GM management by Mr. Ralph has been: 1. Had toxic relationship with Polian leading to him getting canned 2. Had toxic relationship with Butler leading him to leave us with Mr. Ralph being clueless about the relationship 3. Rushed into hiring TD when Butler left us twisting and Mr. Ralph failed utterly to manage obvious TD failing that he made sure an HC he hired was not gonna run him out of town so he picked weak HC GW and then weak HC MM before Mr. Ralph canned him. 4. He hired Marv out of some desperation and when Marv went back to retirement he installed the Brandon fiscally oriented reign of error. Under these mismanaged GM situations (does anyone disagree they were managed poorly by Mr. Ralph) he had a series of HC disasters with the fired Wade, not ready for prime time GW and MM and the current Jauron regime. What on earth makes you think that the current Mr. Ralph/Brandon hiring effort would do anything except the same level of HC hiring effectiveness that has brought you and others to the point of wanting DJ gone. Making the same mistake over and over (and over and over in this case) again but for some reason expecting a different result is one definition of insanity. Mr. Ralph cannot be fired as owner (except by a higher power) so I think the clear answer for a Bills fan (even if it is an unlikely to occur answer is to advocate the hiring of a real GM who then would hire a real HC. Merely firing DJ and then depending on Mr. Ralph/Brandon to do something different seems simply foolish to me. What is your or anyone who advocated canning DJ plan to make this different?

I actually do not think we are terribly far from at least turning this thing around so we are moving in a better direction (actually winning playoff games may be a bit further away but simply being truly competitive to make the playoffs would be a first step in the right direction). However, I see little chance of success or improvement which starts with firing Jauron as the Mr. Ralph habit of: Mangled GM relationship with Butler leading to canning Wade Mangled GM relationship with TD leading to letting go GW and forcing MM out Mangled GM relationship with Brandon leading to canning DJ would simply keep going with the canning of DJ. Add to that Mr. Ralph remains with a mangled GM Brandon simply making another HC hire and it becomes even clearer that merely canning DJ is advocating nothing in terms of promoting a better future for the Bills. Marty has no history of winning the SB but clearly as good a record of getting Ws as you are gonna get without winning the big one. Gruden at least has an SB win to his credit (though I doubt he gives up the cushy Monday night gig for HC work so quickly). However each of these thoughts is far better than the defining silence of those who loudly advocate canning Dick but offer no opinions not only of an alternative but then what we really might do to make a difference for our team. Yelling for canning DJ comes off as mere flatulence without also saying what step B is or having at least a notion of addressing the real problems at the top of the Bills foodchain.

I doubt it as I have not seen one from any TSW posters. I totally agree that Jauron is not the HC to get the job done here so I have no problem with canning him. However, as some have said, responsibility starts at the top and last I checked though the HC is the top of the on field hierarchy, the problems with this team go beyond the on field foolishness of McKelvin and clearly extend to the player selection and acquisition and the losing result under its owner since the great work of the last GM with independent cojones, Polian was sent packing by Mr. Ralph. There are few steps as silly as somehow blaming our 0 for a decade playoff streak on an HC who has failed by racking up three pathetic 7-9 records in a row. Merely calling for the firing of Jauron would be laughable if it were not so patently stupid as a call for necessary change. Perhaps canning Jauron might make a little sense if it were part of some larger grand plan for fostering the systemic changes need for the Bills to exceed mediocrity. However, I have sen nothing accompanying these calls for pseudo change that would indicate it is a step beyond merely flailing about to pretend to be different when the result would almost certainly be what we saw under Mularkey, GW, or if we were lucky under Wade. What should a Bills fan do? From my perspective, unfortunately there ain't much to be done while Mr. Ralph is Mr. Ralph. He deserves a ton of praise for keeping the team here when there were bigger bucks to be made elsewhere. This is a fact in my book. However, if one is honest this good fact does not nullify the fact that the losing attitude which permeates the team extends from his inconsistent meddling with the team and his sour relationships with key Bills such as Polian and Butler. His seemingly pennywise and poundfoolish mismanagement of the team since the relationship he had with Butler led to him leaving us high and wet has been simply horrible. His dabblings at QB have been the lead disaster we have never recovered from and it seems difficult to me to argue that he was not directly and virtually individually responsible for much of it. 1. Only he and he alone could make a handshake deal with Jimbo to award him in his next contract (though such a guarantee directly flaunted the salary cap. Kelly had no next contract and Ralph paid him a million bucks walking away money showing this was an illegal deal. Ralph (with whatever Butler complicity but there was only two hands shaking here) completely miscalculated how much Jimbo had left when even an outside idiot like me could see we needed to start grooming a replacement a year earlier than we over-reached for TC. 2. This started a chain of QB miscues which while they cannot be laid solely on Ralph's door, there was enough real $ involved that clearly he played a big role in mismanagement of the RJ/Flutie situation, possibly the Hobert deal, probably the Bledsoe mismanagement and likely the JP mismanagement. At any rate, no one fires the owner, and no one should root for his death (as this may well mean the team leaves) but one hopes that he will get a late life personality change that turns him into a good owner as he is the problem at the top in my view that some folks stupidly want to lay on Jauron. Jauron is not up to the job bit he is not responsible at all for 2/3 of the bad times. What I think a Bills fan should advocate though is that this team and Mr. Ralph find a real football guy to be the GM for this team. Beancounter Brandon may well be good at what he does, but managing a winning football team does not appear to be it. If there is anyone who should be cashiered now it is Brandon. Job 1 of he new HC is gonna be to hire an HC who can do the job that Jauron cannot. However, merely canning Jauron would be do bass ackward as the new HC would be hired with the $ and personality constraints as what we have had that firing Jauron is simply advocating that this team do nothing to make real changes that might make a difference.

Agreed Jauron is not the right coach for us, but again why is firing Jauron more than simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I do not think anyone can credibly argue that Jauron is anything more than 7-9 mediocre. However, it seems equally silly to call for his canning as though this would change anything when the problem is why this team is 0 for the decade and Jauron bears blame for only 3 years of this decade of disaster. If folks want to argue that Jauron should be fired because we need a fruitless act that does little to address the real issues, then fine. On the other hand if someone wants to advocate a real step toward changing the problems that have made even the mediocrity of Jauron an improvement over what we had before then I am all eyes and ears.

Last I checked the top was not the HC but is an involved owner (which Mr. Ralph clearly is) or perhaps you want to recognize that the top of the modern NFL team is the GM if the owner delegates authority to them. Certainly, the HC bears primary responsibility for the onfield issues of a given week (for example when Joe Gibbs made a stupid mistake last year which allowed even the lowly Bills and Jauron to beat them it was on Gibbs rather than Snider who is quite the active owner). However, it strikes me as flat out ignorant to think that merely by replacing Jauron you are gonna make The or even A big difference for a Bills team which is 0 for the decade in terms of playoff appearances. Jauron deserves complete blame for being a mediocre HC who has reeled off three straight 7-9 seasons (and after surprisingly efficient performance for 55 or so minutes last night and 5 minutes of the most horrible football I have seen in a while) he seems well on his way to another mediocre season. However, it is beyond me how you want to blame Jauron for the first seven years of their 0 for the decade performance when clearly it is THE PROBLEM this team needs to address. Firing Jauron is not even a good start on this task and smacks completely of rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. The starting point seems to be to be loudly and consistently calling for Mr. Ralph to hire a demonstrated great W/L guy as the GM and then that football guru being given the latitude which Polian was given to build a winner is a far more intelligent step than merely shipping oit Jauron so we can hire the next Mile Mularkey or GW on the cheap.

This result was stupid

I think the point proven quite clearly by your post is that an intelligent assessment of what makes a man one of the greatest coaches in NFL history cannot simply discount character. Think about it. BB seems quite clearly from the case embodied in the links you kindly provide to be one of the and perhaps the best football mind to ever HC a team. Yet, in the face of that which I think one can take as a fact: 1. His Pats teams definitely are a playoff team and a serious contender for theSB each year, but despite this greatness are nowhere near a sure thing to win it all. If anyone wants to claim that being the best football mind ever is a guarantee of perfection or of winning it all merely look back to the 2007 season where the "perfect" team with the "perfect" coach proved to not able to achieve a perfect result. This irony certainly allowed me to smile a bit in the face of any claim of drop dead certainty with any prediction on TSW! 2. To claim greatness for BB one can do so only if you state as a given laying aside a little thing called character. Even if one flat out assumes he is the greatest football mind to HC a team, the realities are: A. The "great" football mind was merely inadequate in his first extended HC gig at Cleveland where in 5 years he produced Mr. Ralph like results on his watch. There likely is no greater proof that having a great football mind is not the everything or the only thing if one's goal is MERELY to be a winner. B. Having a "great" football mind throws in stark relief the utter timidity and silliness shown by BB who threw his lot and character in with a team when he agreed to be their HC and then showed the true quality of his character by quickly doing a 180 on his commitment and jumping ship (likely for a higher dollar amount that would come with a Bob Kraft gig. C. The Belicheat designation is brought into even sharper focus when BB himself demonstrated his own self-doubt and feebleness when simply being the greatest football mind to HC ever was not good enough and he had to flat-out break the rules by using film to get an advantage illegally. For all it works, your links and Belicheats history are a pretty clear demonstration to me that there is a bit more (a little thing called character) to being the best football mind to HC in NFL history. Belicheat clearly has the best mind of anybody to ever be named HC, but given his lack of a good heart his is merely a suit I am glad is not the Bills HC. I even prefer having DJ to him and if one gave me a choice between the pain of watching this Mr. Ralph hired coach lead my team to mediocrity or having Belicheat lead my teams to wins (and the hysterical defeat season before last to NYG, I pretty clearly would take the losing agony to the winning glory every day of the week. I guess that makes me a loser, but I do sleep well at night which is PRICELESS as they say.

The one thing that the coaching staff has proven time and time (and time again) is that they are quite capable of winning 7 games. If one starts out with an assumption that the big wildcards of overall talent and the OL in particular working out, then a prediction of another 7-9 season is not crazy at all. I am not declaring that this will happen with drop dead certainty, but you set the parameters of assuming that key question marks are answered positively. With these assumption, there are few doubts based on previous experience that this coaching staff is quite capable of mediocre results. I think this points to what I think is the real truth in all of this that the quality of the coaching staff Mr. Ralph has led us to is clearly mediocre on its best days. However, bad the coaching staff Mr. Ralph has hired is, they are a symptom rather than the cause of our problem. All the diagnoses which lay out a case blaming Jauron are not inaccurate, they are simply misguided bleating and whining that fails to diagnosis the real cause of the Bills problems. Mr. Ralph.