GrudginglyPessimistic

As I was thinking about the prospects for Edwards, Fitzy, and Brohm it suddenly became clear to me that the chances are more likely that the Bills view one of the three current QBs standing up to assume the QB of the future role than us finding that QB in the next draft. The simple likelihood is that even if we draft a stud QB in 2011 that the he and the team almost certainly will not make the playoffs his first year. Yes there is the single example of Ben RoboQB not only making the playoffs as a rookie QB but winning it all, However, a 2011 Bills team even with a stud rookie QB will be coming off of 11 straight playoff less years. Bills fans pretty much grudgingly accept that 2010 will be a rebuilding year with no playoffs likely. However, if the Bills end up depending on the 2011 draft to give them their QB for the future there is a good likelihood that even if that QB is Peyton Manning quality like Manning his rookie year will be a learning experience. Teams like the Jets with rookie Sanchez did go deep in the playoffs with their rookie QB, but the team did at least make the playoffs recently in their pre-Sanchez iteration. This will not be the case with the Bills. Its hard for me to believe that Nix in the crew are going to be wiling to wait until 2012 at the earliest to end the playoff drought. I must admit to having little faith in in any of the three QBs currently on the roster proving to be our next savior at QB. Thus I think that the plan B when our current QB does not cut it is gonna be FA (or even a trade) instead of expecting the 2011 draft to be the key one for us.

In theory this gives one a target list for the positions to be filled in the next draft with an FA supplement (overlay). QB - FA acquisition strikes me as the most reasonable option- if one is drafting your QB of the future then your strategy calls for making the playoffs finally in 2012. WR- Evans is the existing answer DT- interesting that Stroud is being moved outside it appears CB- McKelvin better develop SS- whither Whitner FB- 3 WR as basic set?

I agree this is obvious, but apparently the idea that competition is the best is lost upon the original thread in this post. That post invited longwinded statements of the obvious by advocating we MUST give the starter slot to TE NOW without competition because this is so obviously logical. It does not matter that this so-called logic demands that we ignore: 1. The reality that the Bills ignored the promise of competition to give the starter job (and guaranteed starter money and then guaranteed starter money Flutie won by performing as our scouts said he would and he hit all of his incentives. 2. The reality that Bledsoe simply sucked on the field his second season and TD decided that so-called logic demanded he extend Bledsoe's deal. 3. The reality that JP by his own admission did not win the starter job the way he should have won it (by winning a competition on the field) and was given the starter job before he deserved it or the braintrust was committed to it. 4. The reality is that TE had a great start but the simple fact is he missed PT to three different injuries in his first two years and by this objective standard (which Mr. Logic should argue is not a good standard to give the label injury prone to TE if he really thinks we should GIVE him the starter job. The Bills problem in this fans view is that in a slavish quest to try to make up for Mr. Ralph flat out making a dumb football assessment that Jimbo was gonna play for a long time when he ignored the salary cap and made a handshake deal to reward Jimbo in his next contract (which never happened and the Bills simply GAVE Jimbo a cool million to walk away because they pursued the same logic this thread advocates in GIVING the job to Edwards without competition. Hey its still off-season but this thread invites longwinded statements of the obvious as it advocates a so-called logical approach which ignores statements of reality it somehow refuses to incorporate and ignores objective assessments of injury pronosity (how is that for a longwinded pseudo word). As the original post invites: Bring it on. Why does logic demand we ignore reality? Don't the Bills have a clear record of making bad decisions to give the starter job to players who their logic dictated they start but reality proved they were not ready (at best)? Don't the Bills have a clear record of going with injury prone players as starters without having a reliable back-up in place since the Frank Reich/Jimbo days? Logical smogical

Even if the Bills were to decide to simply give the starter job to Edwards without him winning it on the pre-season without competing against Brohm and Fitzy such a move actually also is giving the #2 job to Fitzy without giving starter PT to Brohm. This is important as in his past history Edwards has proven to be injury prone, I lay this unfortunate label on Edwards for objective measurable reasons. To me a player deserves the injury prone lable when they lose valuable PT 3 times in 2 seasons to injuries to different parts of the body (one wins the IP label to me when a hit causes injury to various body parts rather than a nagging injury to the same body part- Jimbo was tough enough to play through most injuries except a nagging bursa sack which needed constant attention). In his first two years TE lost PT to an arm injury, a concussion, and an undefined injury which the coaching staff said was not the arm that cost the youngster valuable starts in pre-season. Add to this his college career getting disrupted by injury and there is a pretty good chance that even if given the starter job we quite likely are gonna have to go with the #2 for chunks of the season. I liked Fitzy but do not have the confidence in him to be my likely starter over Brohm which simply giving the starter job to TE is likely to mandate. I think the Bills are better off with a competition as we simply need to know more before anyone earns the QB job.

I think this points to a problem which I think the Bills have had under Schonert and actually OCs back to Kragthorpe that I do not think that the Bills route designs within their offense are very good at getting a lot of separation between the receiver and the defenders. My sense is that given the raw speed that the Bills had in their WR crew (Evans and Parrish- along with the not world class but still must be respected downfield abilities of TO) the Bills should have commanded a lot more respect from defenders than they got and thus created more room for RAC. My sense was that the route problems we had were: 1. Pretty predictable play calling which allowed defenders to crowd the line rather than hang back to see what the Bills were going to do. 2. We needed to come closer to breaking the rules setting pick plays and running into defenders trying to cover our receivers. A couple of nasty licks would force defenders to put their heads on a swivel watching out for a hit rather than simply covering our man tightly. Yeah we would get penalized from time to time for setting picks but this is a worthwhile price to pay. 3. We needed to run more slant pattens 4. The offense needs to use the RBs as receivers more. The fact we did not do these things well ended up with our receivers tackled quickly after a reception.

The key logical point here is that it has been demonstrated time and again (picking JP over Flutie when it was clear that RJ was the better QB on paper, picking JP over Bledsoe as the Bills had stupidly handed the starter job to Bledsoe when he had demonstrated on the field that though he deserved it after his first season he did not deserve to be extended after his horrendous second season, and then pocking Edwards as the starter after his quick emergence. Edwards had actually earned a starting nod with his play, but his play also showed him to be a victim of numerous injuries to several different problems causing him to also earn being deemed injury prone. He earned the starter nod but should not have been given the permanent job as the next Jim Kelly as he had demonstrated losing PT 3 times in two seasons that he should not be GIVEN the keys to the Bills O without an answer being found for a reliable back-up. Giving the QB job to anyone without his earning it would LOGICALLY be quite dumb.

Even for the "interesting" stories there would have to be too much intricate choreography involved for a conspiracy to occur (was somebody really planning on collapsing Bledsoe's lung to get Brady in there) and the script as you read it is actually a bit different than you read (like it or not Manning only has 1 SB win credit on his resume and like it or not this poster child is gonna go down in history as a great almost in so many ways. I agree that results do get pushed in particular directions, but I think the push comes from reality (almost everyone was rooting for NO after Katrina) rather than this being the dictate from what Charles Schultz called in a Charilie Brown Christmas "a large eastern syndicate" that runs things. People desperately want to believe in conspiracies because this states that someone is in charge and that curses "THEY" are running things. I am afraid the desperate truth is that things just happen. Sure they are related if only temporarily but it is simply wishful thinking to pretend that someone is in charge and everything happens for a reason or based on someone's plan.

The question remains though as to whether you know of any objective evidence as to how this conspiracy works in detail or is it all just a "theory" based on guessing what could possibly motivate events happening the way they did. Are folks claiming that this vast conspiracy involves the finely tuned and co-ordinated actions of not only Kelly and Reed to mount such an unlikely comeback, but their fellow "performers" on the opposing D who somehow engineered a tip drill TD to produce this unlikely TD. I only wish it was a conspiracy because if it were these guys are really good.

I actually used to be a subscriber to a theory that NFL games were fixed. However, a friend came up with an argument that I found difficult to counter and I now am pretty sure they are not fixed. She asked, of they were fixed couldn't they produce results which were more interesting? If I was fixing the games I know even I would create better storylines than they come up with/ If it was fixed it sure would be a lot more interesting than it is.

I think throwing them into the same category is superficially correct as they were all let go rather than resigned as FAs, but the reasons for each particular case were so different that to treat the all as being the same has skin deep accuracy but in reality is simply incorrect. Specifically: Clements- would have been a fool to sign any Bills offer which did not give him what the market was likely to give him in a what was pretty clearly going to be a tight CB market when he hit FA. Clements took a risk that he was not gonna get hurt, but he had already demonstrated that he was a legend in his own mind who likely would take this risk unless the Bills made him something like the nonsensical offer he eventually signed. True you want to resign your own if you can, but it seemed to me that there was no way Clements was gonna sign a deal that did not pay him far more than he was worth. He was a pretty good player, but really always was the correctly #2 CB behind Winfield early in his career here. Interestingly, his great calling card as a playmaker proved to be his failing for us as his laying a PR on the carpet in a must-win game for us against Pitts scrubs cost us (along with bad Bledsoe play and Lindell missing a makeable FG) big tine. When Clements hit FA he was arguably the #2 CB on the Bills behind McGee and there was a clear question as to whether the FO would have been the big fools to sign Clements to the size contract the market demanded or Clements would have been a bigger fool to take any Bills offer as the CB market tightened even more and Clements walked away with the biggest deal ever signed by a defensive player at the time. McKelvin was a pick-up made necessary by not signing Clements but my sense is that McKelvin could make fumbles on returns at a cheaper cost than Clements could make fumbles on returns and letting Clements go was not a bad deal to make, Winfield- On the other hand this was not a good guy to let go, but reality does have to recognize that TD had lined the ducks up to actually resign Winfield with cap money set aside to do this. While Clements was a showboater who never seemed to act like he had been there before everytime he made even a marginally good play, Winfield was a big time hitter in a little body. The Bills seemed poised to make him a substantial but reasonable offer and he seemed poised to sign it. However, the unexpected happened and TDs plans for SS were to bring in Chad Cota and Ainsley Battle and let these two duke it out on the field to see which could retire as the Bills starting SS. However, both of these men joined the Bills and then retired in camp leaving us with the unacceptable plan C, Coy Wire. at starting safety. To make the situation even more singular who should come on the market but none other than Bellicheat completely hamhanded the negotiations with Lawyer Milloy and then cut him just before the season over chump change. By paying him tons above the market rate (which was quite high as Chicago also had an SS need and cap room to play). The Bills used AW money to get Milloy (and with him a pretty up to date Pats play book and a lot of mo which turned into a 3?-0 Bills blowout of the Pats on opening day. In the long run not a good purchase, but for that Sunday afternoon worth every dime. The bottiom line is that any attempt to claim losing Clements and losing AW (who walked after playing a season to a gigandous MN bid made possible by a arbiters ruling giving MN cash in hand to play with which then caused AW to renege on a deal he agreed to in principle and change his plane ticket from his agreed upon new home (NYJ I think) to MN. Anyone who claims the Bills simply let AW walk rather than match are ignoring the fact we did not have $12 mill or some other outrageous figure in cap room in a one time payment to AW. The details of the other folks you mentioned are not as stark as this CB example (do you want to argue we should have kept McGaghee and developed him?) but the simple notion our problem is that we do not resign are own is just that simple.

Totally agreed that this all goes back to a judgment about Mr. Ralph as a football guy. Folks can wail as loud as they want about this being Levy's fault, but this indictment leads one right back to who was the ONE guy who made the decision on hiring Levy as GM (and to that matter who was the ONE guy who made the decision to summarily fire TD after TD undeniably did a mediocre at best job after the ONE guy totally had a dysfunctional relationship with Butler. One pretty much has a choice between giving Levy a free pass as a geriatric who stepped up to do a job in a horrible situation or give him a free pass because he was so incompetent that it clearly raises the question over who hired this incompetent anyway. How does anyone think there is a rational explanation which begins and starts with an assessment of Levy?

I do not understand why your point would dispell the argument. My understanding is that the argument is exactly the one Gailey is making that the Bills lack specific good enough players who are gamebreakers and differencemakers.

I think the irony here is that my sense is the Bills should be happy to keep Parrish on the roster even if he has trouble getting off the LoS. When he is used well in the PR game, he gives the Bills a proven playmaker on a team which Gailey identified a primary lack as being we need more players who are a threat to take it to the house everytime they touch the ball. I think the complaints about Parrish dealing with tackling in the real world are simply myopic concerns since they simply ignore the fact that he produced in the real world as a PR guy in this league. He might fail to be a produce as a WR in this NFL, but if so my sense is given Parrish achievements in the PR game and the fact you can't teach world class speed if it turns out to be the case he simply is not productive as a WR this says as much about the coaches not using the threats he has well as it does about Parrish himself as a player.

Force is too strong a word. I don't think anyone seriously had Wang pegged as anything more than providing back-up depth on this OL as a fifth round choice. Before the Wang injury the Bills had something between serious question marks to glaring holes at LT and RT with Green and Bell. Today with injury to Wang the Bills have the same issue and holes at the T positions. Few (if no one seriously) saw Wang as the likely answer here. The Bills had big time pressure yesterday and it has only increased marginally today.

No they are not objective! But then who is? Its like the modern news media. Is CNN, MSNBC, Fox News or whomever objective? The answer is without a doubt and across the board NO! The key is that if one depends on ANY one single source for news and information you will get a biased view. BuffBills.com is actually a reasonable source for info but it all comes with the bias of a corporation whose basic mission is to get as many dollars from Bills fans as possible. This source along with the Buff Snooze, the limited coverage of the Bills provided by national outlets like ESPN, the corporate money making ramblings of local radio and most important what you see and hear with your own eyes when the game is played can give you the best sense of what is happening. Its tough because to really know and understand stuff requires devoting time and attention to the game. Most folks choose not to do this for a boys game and amazingly even for our democracy. Anyone who depends upon a single source gets a biased view.

My sense is that over the past decade and a half a big part of the Bills problem has been that team we all love since the loss of Jimbo as consistently tried to replace him by designating their new Jimbo based on the learned assessment of someone in charge rather than by seeing a player produce Ws on the field. A. The draft is always an item of legit debate but it is now demonstrably clear that Ralph himself made a critical football error when he made the handshake deal only he could make with his handshake deal to despite salary cap limitations he was gonna reward Jimbo fiscally with is next contract. Ralph erred in judging how much Jimbo had left and thus they delayed a year too long in drafting a replacement for him, likely reached in picked TC and then rushed him into the starting role when all he had shown on the field was good accuracy in the pocket but happy feet when put under pressure, The designation of a savior without on field production was our problem. B. The Bills signed Flutie to an SA deal with a promise at a chance to win the job on the field and then simply made that promise a lie by not only trading for RJ (they actually did not overpay to get him as a promising vet QB commanded a 1st at the time), but they made the big mistake by simply designating him the savior by signing him to guaranteed starter QB $ without requiring that he prove on the field he was not injury prone. He turned out to be and even worse for us capwise Flutie hit all his incentives when he actually got a chance to play due to RJs extended stints on the DL. Again the designation by what things looked like on paper killed us. C. The Bills took a big risk (as one must do in this game from time to time) getting Bledsoe. However, this was a risk based on Bledsoe actually having at least QB'ed teams to the SB previously and actually he took over for an injured Brady in a must-win game in their run to the SB and did throw the winning TD. Yet the team made a mistake which was not based in real world onfield performance by extending his contract after the wash of a great 2002 but then a horrible 2003. TD had decided to hitch his wagon to Blledsoe and his decision to extend him ran totally counter to all onfield evidence. D. TD then added insult to stupidity by then declaring JP the starter even though JP himself said that he would do the best he could but simply anointing him was not the way anyone should get the starting QB job. I am simply thankful that Gailey is not taking the legend in his own mind approach of many fans and either declaring one of the three QBs a starter (or declaring Edwards as done when there is no real reason to do this yet though some fans was to declare him done- I personally think he is also too injury prone to make him your starter but I am not so stupid as to insist on this without some factual chance for him to try to prove himself while still under contract. A truly open competition is the way to go. I agree that if a team has two (or 3) starter they actually do not have a starting QB (yet). However, we have until after the second pre-season game to allow reality to let us choose the starter and it would be silly and counterproductive for Gailey to designate one at the point,

I was born in Chicago in 59 and was a lifelong Bears fan with my football rooting reaching its Bears peak in 85 cheering for the most defensively dominating squad I had seen up until that point cheering for the Bears 46 D. McMahon was a great guy to root for as well, but it really was for comic relief rather than his play as my feeling as a fan was that this Bears squad had its best chance of scoring a TD when the other team had the ball and the heavy sacking, fumble causing and INT happy D squad overwhelmed virtually all opponents that year (the one exception to Mercury Morris's glee was the squad that cost the Bills from running the table that season). McMahon was clearly one of the toughest SOBs to ever play the game. He showed he was an OK talent at BYU in college (though clearly he was no threat to Sid Luckman's play at QB for the Bears), but his play was further limited as a pro by injury after injury. However, he played through them. Thankfully the 85 Bears needed little O production from the McMahon led squad (Walter Payton was actually clearly the heart and soul of the O and Mike Ditka forever deserves disdain for letting Fridge Perry carry the ball in for short TD after the D gave the team the ball deep in Pats territory in the SB that year). McMahon was a sideshow that year but boy he was a great sideshow to watch and root for.

Many thanks for you many analytically quantifiable posts related to the draft. I really appreciate them as being far from the fact free opinions which often dominate boards such as TSW. However (and there always is a however with any statistical analysis) the stats presented by you do leave me wondering whether there has been any statistical calculation of how critical the draft is to ultimate team success (which my sense is best statistically measured by your choice of W/L, playoff appearances or if you want SB appearances or wins). Has there been any statistical statement of a convergence between draft grades as assigned by DraftTek and actual team accomplishments as measured by the stat of your choice. My guess is that yes there is some relationship (good players have to come from somewhere and the draft is a mechanism for distributing players. Good teams by definition will have success and good players . However, it would also not surprise me to find out that even though one can statistically determine draft quality based on a comparison of where players were in relation to their professionally assessed expectation, if when one compares how teams did in this relative assessment that there is no obvious trend across all teams in terms of comparing draft quality to real world assessment. There may well be a few outriders (Detroit always has bad drafts and always has a poor record). However, my guess would be that one will not find a clearly distinguishable trend across all teams. Has there been such an analysis comparing draft outcome to actual team success?

The best thing about the attitude this article takes is that it does not have the Bills on the track to declare some player the next savior (be it JP, RJ, TC, or whomever) but lands the goal squarely on the back of the HC who simply needs to make it work without regard to who it is. The big mistake I think the Bills have made the last 10 tears or so has been to simply designate some QB sap the savior without him proving it on the field (even worse, when the a player had failed to perform according to the script as in RJ proving injury prone after they handed him a huge contract and Flutie just winning as at least AJ Smith thought he would they have stuck to their script over reality). Fitzy, Edwards, or Brohm, I could not care less who does the job as long as one of them does it and if not simply move on. Overall, I think Edwards has demonstrated talent at times but seems injury prone to me, Fitzy is gung ho but has limited proven ability, and Brohm has not proven a darn thing yet. I doubt any of them are the answer but hope each of them actually proves to be the one, but if not I am happy to wish them well and move on. I do not see why anyone wastes the time to hate on any of them or feel that making a fairly cowardly prediction that any of them will definitely fold is the right thing to do.

What you say is flatout true. If the Bills ever demonstrated that they can walk on water, the folks at WGR and Sully would merely take it as proof that the Bills cannot swim.

I only refuse to believe something I read when I read it on the worldwide web.

I'm sorry to say that this is really an outlandish statement. Sure, you hope (and even demand for a team to be dubbed draft wizards) that the 1st three choices will contribute immediately, but it just does not work that way in reality. I had a lot confirmed for me when I actually took the time with a draft class generally dubbed pretty strong in the conventional wisdom of the day and looked back a year after they were picked to see how many of the first round choices were first on the team depth chart at their position a year after the picks. The draft class did turn out to be a fairly strong one, but even a year out a little over 50% of the first round picks were starters in the second year. The reality is that career paths like the one taken by Eric Moulds are not the norm, but not a rarity. A player can easily prove to non productive in his first year (or even for two years in Moulds case) and then turn out to be by all watchers to be a consensus All-pro and the best player on the team (he then can deal badly with him getting older and can become a cancer as well and deserve to let go as Moulds was. Demanding that the first three picks contribute immediately is even more outlandish. It can happen, but you are setting yourself up for upset if you expect this to happen.

The other factor which I think needs to figured prominently into this equation if one is considering the question of whether your team should draft a QB in the 1st is not merely how many starter or stud QBs are 1st rounders but also how many of these franchise QBs play for the teams which drafted them in the 1st round. There are certainly a number of prominent examples of players who were drafted in the 1st round such as Trent Dilfer was who proved a total bust for the team which picked him and then after he went FA landed in a situation were this first rounder then went on to win an SB with another team. Granted one can claim in this case that his Ravens gig was a special case, but a good statistical analysis would also include: A. Early round picks like Favre, Young or most recent SB winner Drew Brees who were declared a loser or worth parting with by the team which chose them but went on to storied carriers with SB winners. B. A number of definite 1st round choices who actually did not play with the team which selected them for various reasons but ended up leading other teams to SB victories with draft day or near draft day trades that had them develop elsewhere such as Elway or the more recent Eli Manning. Granted the trades happened so quickly that one might consider these players to essentially have been developed by the teams which acquired them on draft day, but for analysis of the real world situation the impacts on cap issues and items such as the quality of the team they ended up with are relevant to this consideration. C. Another factor which needs to be considered as part of the specific consideration whether a team is better off picking a QB in the first (again quite a different thing than having a 1st round selection leading your team) is the broader consideration that not only are you weighing this option against finding a Tom Brady in the 6th or a Joe Montana in the 3rd is that real world examples of SB winning QBs have been found through a variety of means from plucking Kurt Warner from his previous job as a boxboy for Walmart to finding two time loser Brad Johnson to lead your TB team. The simple facts of the case are that the recent successes in leading a team to an SB win for the teams which drafted them of Peyton Manning and Ben RoboQB are actually relative rarities where the previous successful example of a team drafting a QB in the 1st who led the team which drafted him to an SB win goes back to the late 80s pick of Troy Aikman by Dallas. Rather than picking a QB in the first being an obvious way to get the QB you need, this method was essentially not successful in delivering an SB win during the entire collection of players chosen in the 90s and early in the current millenium until Manning led the team which chose him to an SB win in the later 2000s. In fact if the requirements are that the player chosen by the Bills needs to either be as good as P. Manning or the team need to be as good as the Pitts team which RoboQB fit into then looking at both the quality of the players whom the Bills has a shot at and making an assessment of how good the Bills were then drafting a QB in the first would have been a pretty bad move by the Bills in retrospect since they acquired Jimbo.

While there is a lot of chatter out there about whether Brohm, Fitzy or Trent Edwards is the man we want at QB, my sense is that this choice is really going to have a secondary impact on whether this O improves or not over the defective DJ version of past years. First, I think this is true because none of these 3 players really has more than a snowballs chance of becoming the QB the Bills want and need (I would rank them this way at this point- 1. Edwards actually has shown the most skill and productivity at this point making a very good start as a rookie with good accuracy, an intelligent ability to read defenses and a surprising amount of mobility and a willingness to stick in the pocket. However, he simply sucked as last season closed out as the haphazard O designed by the suddenly fired Schoenert and then managed but fatally flawed by AVP helped turn him into Trentative Edwards. Can Gailey perform the same magic on a failed Edwards that he has performed in resuscitating other failed QBs? I think Gailey actually has demonstrated he has the skills to do this, but the problem is even though I think Edwards has some good playing tools to work with, I think he has demonstrated in his short pro career (and how his college play ended) that he his simply an injury prone player. My measure of a player deserving the label injury prone is if they miss important PT 3 times to differing injuries in two seasons. With Edwards losing time his rookie year to a bad wrist, and his sophomore year to a concussion, I add this in to him missing some valuable practice time for a young QB to an unspecified (but different than his previous injuries according to reports) during pre-season. I think Gailey might be able to pull off the trick of reviving TEs performance but in the bigger picture who cares about this if he cannot stay on the field. 2. Fitzy- demonstrated to me he is a good choice for back-up with his performance late last year. Yet, no one mistakes this Ivy-League guy who is probably a great pick to have analyzing the game from the sidelines and being a confidant and a Frank Reich level at best short-term backup to the starter as a serious long term answer at QB. 3. Brohm- probably the most credible upside and potential to become a long term answer, but he defines the idea that potential simply means you have not done anything yet. His plaudits in college appear real and he showed real signs of being a big time player for GB in the post Favre era. However, one cannot overlook that with that table set for him he got beat out as the #2 by a 7th round pick. Brohm showed he did belong here in his brief turn running a bad Bills O last year, but he has yet to demonstrate that he deserves to be considered a serious threat to be the Bills QB of the future. I hope one of these men surprises (it could happen though I doubt it since TE has apparently worked on his body, Brohm does have the right attitude so far, and Fitzy just hangs in there amd #2 is all we expect). However, none of these men have demonstrated enough to make one feel that the answer to the Bills QB questions is not yet on this roster. The second reason though is that there seem to be some pretty crystal clear areas where this O needs to improve in order to perform at an NFL level: 1. Run better patterns which by design create more separation- We all noticed the lack of simple slant patterns in the Bills O last year and in addition to that the Bills need to go right up to the line in running more illegal pick plays where receivers do more crossing patterns and get in the "way" of opponents trying to do tight coverage on our WRs. It was simply a travesty that this team had the raw speed that Evans, the demonstrated speed and open field running ability which Parrish showed on PR duty and added the HOF threat of TO and this team could not get the separation and DB threat these men would seem to easily have. I blame the O performance not simply on poor play (though that clearly had a big role but a lot on poor route design. 2. Make better use of the RBs as recievers- Actually going back a long ways part of the Bills problems at WR has been their inability to use the RBs productively in the pass game (there was one particular game I found particularly confusing where the Bills were actually in the playoff mix in the final game and noneother than that idiot Willis MaGahee caught a pass for a sizable game to start us off. However, the play got called back on a penalty which had little to do with the gain and the Bills O simply never seriously went to the RB pass again and lost as the O sputtered). This team used to use the RB pass as its bread and butter during the Thurman days and folks such as Marshall Faulk demonstrated this was a serious tool league wide. Yet, even with guys who showed talent receiving in college like Lynch did the Bills Os of the past few years have never made good use of this tool. Perhaps the coming of Spiller who shows all the signs of a great 3rd down tool and is not a 3 down back signals the building of an RB pass catching threat. If we keep Lynch he can do more in this area and one of the great Jackson surprises was not only how well he ran but that even in our stiff O he is a pass catching threat. I know folks hate the check down but this is one fan who would love to see more RB touches in space out on the wings rather than rely on a smash mouth style we do not have the OL to run effectively. 3. More diverse play calling Was I the only one who could pretty much call the Bills plays before we ran them (and sometimes even the whole series which seemed to revolve around run, run, punt as our theme. Do not get me wrong, I think AVP is a gamer, but he looked to me in over his head in terms of playcalling that really fooled the enemy and in fact dictated the game to them. I do not expect this team, particularly with its learning at best QBs to simply run the other team out of the game. However, with a little more commitment to a spread offense rather than pretending this young OL is gonna run over everyone, using the TE as a feint or downfield rather than as a pseudo OL player, and more use of Wildcat style attacks which dictate to the D who is in and how they will set up I think this O can be more than a laughing stock.

My sense is that folks make a judgment about the quality of the opinion offered based on the little amount of evidence (5 seconds of tape) and the galactic declaration (Brohm is the obvious choice over Edwards) and that is what evokes laughter. The main point probably made by your argument is that the conclusion you have drawn about Edwards that he is done almost certainly deserves a second look if the conclusion that he "pushes" the ball because that is the quality of player he is if it is based on the same type of limited evidence/galactic conclusion thinking you offer, the conclusion that Edwards is done is probably incorrect. My sense is that one of the reasons folks are enthused about Gailey is that he has a proven track record of getting good productivity out of failed or limited QBs, As enthused as folks are about what Gailey may be able to do for Brohm (or even Fitzy) this same line of thinking could well mean that he is going to also squeeze new productivity out of Edwards. For me its an open 3 way competition this year and I really could not care less which QB wins it as long as one of them shows significantly more production under Gailey than they did under previous Bills regimes.