ramses

But is this true? I would say this year proved that is not the case with our top rank defense and our bottom rank offense. Even 3 pro bowlers and a fourth who can get after the quarterback wasn't enough to get us in the playoffs. I would have traded hughes for iupati this year. Maybe all it would have taken is one great G to elevate the play of the oline where people like woods can just focus on his job and not cover for the crappy play on either side of him. Then maybe we would have had a better run game. Then maybe our pass game would be more respected and the qb wouldn't be under so much pressure. Etc.

Yup, as much as this was a shock and disappointing to some, there usually never is a good way to reveal bad news that satisfies everyone.

Agreed with this completely. Without Hughes, and with kiko back, we're still a top ten def, maybe even top five. QB upgrade number 1 priority, then mult new OL, then Hughes if reasonable - in that order

i agree that spikes brings something other than actual on the field play with his salary which is very beneficial, but i don't think that is worth a huge premium. so i would sign him if it can be done reasonably. however, if we don't resign him, then i think getting a veteran, multi-position, multi-down LB is important in case Brown, Kiko, or Bradham go down. i haven't seen much from Powell or the rookie Johnson to make me confident if one of the 3 starters goes down. and i think rivers may be a salary cut next year.

disrespect still from national media. it is spun as rodgers and manning having bad weeks against us, which doesn't give much credit to the role our defense actively had in those historically bad weeks from 2 hall of fame quarterbacks

anyone else have a fear that he'll be a warren sap, haynesworth, or alan branch - play hard for contract then cruise? always a fear, and something in my gut says be careful, especially given his off-field issues last several years. there are some people that you know that you can throw a lot of money at and they'll still play hard, like kyle williams and jj watt, because they either love the game or love to compete. i'm not sure if dareus is built the same, although he has been a good soldier since the season started.

as it is, too much log jam at receiver. i think either williams or SJ will not be with the team this year. remember guys, there is only one football and it doesn't matter how many offensive weapons you have if you keep having 3 and outs because we don't have a line to protect EJ or open holes in a running game. and no quarterback routinely has time to get past their 3rd-4th read anyway. excited about Watkins, but this is all dependent on EJ and what line we have next year

don't know if it has been mentioned, but if we hadn't 'missed out' on kuechly by one pick in 2012, i don't think we draft kiko this year. blessing in disguise

even more questionable to me is why no offensive lineman in the nfc north has done anything significantly about him these last several years.

he played better today compared to previous games. i would not say he played 'great'. i think we can interpret this game as 'great' only in comparison to the stinkers he's laid the this season. the good news is we don't need to draft or sign a WR this offseason - the problem is the QB. whenever one of them gets open deep, which has not been infrequent, fitz cannot get it to them. the scenario you have to envision - what would brees, brady, rodgers do with our receiving corp of graham, nelson, jones, johnson?

this is the first game in years i didn't watch either at the bar/tv/online. i usually read all the news articles on twobillsdrive about the team after the game and leading up to the next game. this is the first week in years i didn't read a single article about the team during the week. my blood pressure thanked me today, all-in-all, i didn't really miss anything and enjoyed this sunday more as an nfl fan.

if we do beat houston, can anyone remember a bigger upset in bill's history - where a bills team ranked in the bottom #5 beat a team ranked in the top #5? i don't think our win against NE last year counts because we weren't ranked as one of the worst teams then. any veteran bills fan have input?

arthroscopy is basically a (minor) surgical procedure wherein a flexible tube with an attached camera is inserted into any joint space. it doesn't necessary mean surgery was done - it can be done simply to "take a look". if the joint space is clean, no intervention is done. if there is something wrong (debris of any sort, bony, ligamentous), the surgeon has the option of correcting it right then and there. kinda like a colonoscopy - sometimes the gastroenterologist takes a look and gives you a clean bill of health. sometimes a polyp is found and the doctor can go ahead and remove it. a clean joint space is a happy, pain-free, full range of motion joint space. any 'debris' can cause problems with any of these aspects. arthroscopy is generally a same day procedure, done in an outpatient surgical center - very low risk.

the way this team is playing, the only team i'm confident this team can beat for the remainder of the year is jacksonville (and only if MJD is still hurt). every other team is way out of our league, or just playing better

these days, it doesn't seem to matter much where you are drafting, but your willingness to trade up. so we may finish with a worse record than say AZ, but if they need a QB, and they are willing (and we aren't) they can always leapfrog us to take a QB. this is of course unless we have the #1 pick

as much as he has been our whipping boy, i would easily count kelsay as one of the few members of the team who actually care (or at least play like it). as said above, he's a veteran and has earned the right to be vocal. and compared to mario williams, his salary is a freaking bargain - as much production this year compared to mario at a fraction of the cost.

although dareus may need it, i agree with 3rdand12 - i think kelsay was calling out mario. i think the veterans collectively would have more easily corrected dareus' behavior as he is just a young 2nd year player - behind the scenes. i think kelsay is calling out mario in a public but somewhat shrouded way as it is probably harder to change the behavior of a $100 million man who has previously been well accomplished.

i thought he played pretty good today. he was getting consistent pressure and was very close to a strip sack. could be a good 3rd down pass rush specialist while kelsay gets reps on downs 1 and 2. granted this was against a not-so-good offensive tackle. anybody else have any thoughts?

agreed. if we had lost this game, i think gailey would have been more pressured to bench fitz. as it stands, fitz has bought himself some time. TJ cannot have played much worse then what we saw today. and the team's WR's and defense have got to be low on morale with the QB play

ill take the 'hopeful, but question the pick until graham shows me something' approach. which by the way may not be this year as nix/gailey don't tend to play offensive rookies much - look at spiller who was picked #9. i won't fall in love with the pick just to avoid being called a troll. to all those posters who reflexive have blind trust in gailey/nix/bills management and automatically criticize posters who question this pick - there are veteran posters on this board who have correctly disagreed with bills management on past picks (see maybin, mckelvin, mccargo) - so i wouldn't throw the 'troll' label around too loosely and lastly, no has brought up that perhaps nix was suckered into trading up for this guy. there are rumors that someone was interested in taking graham before the bills 3rd rounder, forcing nix to trade a 7th. but just as nix spread the rumor that glenn wasn't a LOT to cause him the drop, some other team out there may be laughing how they got the bills to trade away a pick by dropping misinformation.

yeah, there's been a lot of trashing of our o-line last year, which really doesn't make too much sense to me. that was probably one of our best/most talented positions as a whole last year, and one of the best o-lines we have had in years. yes, you can try to explain the ranking by saying that fitz gets rid of the ball quickly, but that doesn't explain how we were at the top of the league in rush yards per attempt (even with most teams in the 2nd half of the season stacking the box because we couldn't throw). it's not likely that we ran well because of the o-line but were rarely sacked in spite of the o-line. the more likely answer is that overall, we have a good group. having said that, LT probably was the weakest position on the line. and we can use C and LT depth

this past year, we were a pass-first offense. gailey has gone on record to say this is largely his offensive philosophy (mirroring what is going on in the league) but our two best players on offense are RB's (jackson without question - i would argue that spiller is a bigger offensive threat than johnson). we have correctly switched our defense from 3-4 to 4-3 because we have better personnel for that. so why don't we do this for the offense? i think most of us agree that we don't 4-5 WR's to run 4 or 5 wideout sets. there isn't even consensus that we have a #1 receiver, while we have two homerun threats at running back. we should not be at 55-65% passing team; it should be the reverse. is this wrong?

on a somewhat related note - this issue makes what the players are asking for in the collective bargaining agreement a little confusing (?hypocritical) to me. on the one hand, they nobly want to ensure that the health of players is taken care of when their careers are done, with generous pensions and health insurance. on the other hand, when you fine them for helmet to helmet hits...they raise a stink and say that hitting is part of the game and this isn't tennis. as a medical professional, austin collie needs to hang it up; per some specialists - permanently

to all those (including gailey and stevie himself) that said that part of johnson's recent success is due to evans drawing double coverage or a safety rolled towards him, i guess we're about to find out if this is truly the case. anyone think he'll be as productive these next few weeks, as undoubtedly he'll draw the most secondary attention among our wideouts from here on out...thoughts?