hondo in seattle

I'm part Buddhist and part Stoic and try not to allow people or circumstance affect my thoughts or emotions. Come wintry cold or stormy wind, I typically maintain my equanimity. The one exception I make is the for the Buffalo Bills. Each week during the Fall, I willingly put my mood into their hands. And when we lose, I curse & moan and I'm freaking miserable for the rest of the day! Why do I do this to myself? Why do any of us? P.S. I'm making peace with the idea that the Bills won't make the playoffs this year because they don't deserve to play in the postseason. In this matter, the Football Gods are eminently fair.

Marv Levy's best quotes were great. But if you cherry picked his most mundane or defeatist sound bites, you'd get a different impression. I don't think you can judge Marrone's overall impact as a leader by a couple of short clips.

I have no idea how Williams is behaving in meeting rooms, how he's practicing, how much he's studying, what kind of attitude he's demonstrating, etc., so I have no opinion on whether or not he deserves playing time. Though I do get the concern. This guy's been productive in his past.

The stats and eyeball test tell me the same thing: Orton is pretty good, but isn't great. And given the arc of his career, his play is about what I expected. I have trouble understanding the fans who think he's just awful. Just look around the NFL and I think it's easy to find worse QBs. Orton's certainly not the biggest problem with our offensive production. In any case, he wears Bills colors so I'm a fan.

This is an excellent post but I'd go with Kelly Holcomb. He doesn't have Orton's accuracy problems - KH completed 67% of his passes when he last suited up for us.

Or, "The Bills Inside Run Game is Breaking Down"?

I so disagree. Great organizations celebrate their history. Military organizations do it. Great, established companies (like Mercedes, for example) do it. Great teams should do it too. Teams are more than a collection of players. Traditions matter and foster a sense of unity and commitment. Celebrating heroes of the past helps create a culture of winning. Besides, the Bills of '64 were lions of the gridiron and deserve to be recognized.

Yeah. The Fire-Rex movement could gain some currency if Sanchez plays well. Especially given the frustration with Geno and Vick.

That's pretty much how I feel. Awesome QB, terrible human being. Maybe he's reformed now but I'd have been murderous if he did that to my daughter. Should be in the Hall of Shame rather than the Hall of Fame.

The Bleacher Report just published their list of the top 50 players from the first half of the 2014 season. Two Bills make the list, not surprisingly both play on the defensive line. Mario Williams came in at #16 Marcell Dareus came in at #20. Do any other Bills deserve to be in the top 50? bleacherreport.com/articles/2242359-ranking-the-nfls-top-50-players-at-the-midseason-mark

We'll make it to the playoffs if we deserve to be in the playoffs. These next few weeks will be very interesting. Going 3-1 over the next quarter of the season would be a huge victory and put at the entrance to the postseason.

Gailey was one DC away from being a good coaching with a winning record. Had he a good DC and a good QB, he would have accomplished some fun things with the Bills.

If the BIlls win, everyone will start taking us seriously as playoff contenders (including me). While KC isn't an AFCE team, they're fighting for a wild card slot just like we are. But is seems many of the NFL gurus rate KC ahead of the Bills. Beating them causes a reassessment. A must win? No exactly. But a big win? Absolutely.

A lot of teams in the AFC playoff hunt were playing each other. Inevitably, some of them lost. I call it a good weekend. It will be a better weekend when we beat KC.

FtD... one of the most entertaining and informative posts in a while. Cool stuff. I think any GM would come across as knowledgeable. Good to know Whaley is also likeable and down-to-earth. Wonder how much you can infer from omissions. Whaley didn't praise Marrone much... Does that mean he's not enamored with his head coach? Also wonder if there was a little hubris involved in the Williams signing. Being that Marrone is an ex OL, maybe he thought he could salvage Williams.

Sully is always the contrarian. When other's say black, he says white. But I'm more used to him being negative when others are positive. His defense of Hackett when everyone else criticizes our OC surprises me.

All true. But these are wrong stats (says the devil's advocate). The stats that matter most are big plays and turnovers. And the Bills lead the NFL.

Here's a curious thing... Marrone learned how to run an offense from Sean Payton. Payton is far better coordinating a passing game than a running game. Marrone - along with this protege, Hackett - seem likewise better at coordinating a passing game than a running game. That was obscured last year by all the turmoil at the QB position. But seems clear this past few games.

Like most Bills fans, I’m not a huge fan of Nate Hackett’s performance thus far. But let me play devil’s advocate today and assert this: Hackett is a good at coordinating a passing attack and competent-but-hamstrung at coordinating a running game. Passing. In Kyle Orton’s best year as a starter, he notched a 87.5 QB Rating. His rating under Hackett so far is 104.0. In three years with Chicago, Orton passed for 161.2 yards per game. In his time with Denver, he average 248.1 yards per game. With the Bills so far, he’s averaging 282.0 yards per game. Under Hackett’s tutelage and in Hackett’s system, Orton is enjoying the very best year of his career. Rushing. The Bills are averaging just 98.9 ypg this season and fans want to see more power sweeps, counters, and so on - not to mention screens. But many of these plays require talented, agile OGs which the Bills lack. 3.8 ypc and 99 ypg is acceptable, if not brilliant, performance for an OC working with this interior line. Big Plays. Brian Billick, former SB winning coach, has written a couple articles over the years about the importance of the “Toxic Differential.” He explains: It has long been a proven adage that if you have a plus-2 turnover advantage on your opponent, you will win the game 80 percent of the time. If you have a plus-2 explosive-play advantage, it equally leads to winning about 80 percent of the time. If you have both of those, you win close to 95 percent of the time. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000419687/article/toxic-differential-watch-out-for-bills-texans-in-the-second-half Under Hackett, the Bills offense is producing a lot of big plays (35 explosive plays by Billick’s count) while not turning the ball over a lot. Combined with the ball-hawking skills of our defense, the Bills have the NFL’s best Toxic Differential. Interestingly, Seattle led the NFL last year. I don’t believe the Bills lead the Toxic Differential rankings in the highly competitive NFL by accident. Understanding the importance of the Toxic Differential, Hackett’s scheming and play-calling are designed to produce big plays for the Bills while limiting turnovers. In sum, given the hand he’s been dealt, Hackett is doing an admirable job as an OC.

That is interesting. He says the Toxic Differential is predictive and then predicts that the team with the best Toxic Differential in NFL won't even make the playoffs.

Some guys are late bloomers. I hope this isn't just some temporary thing with Orton and he can sustain this level of play for a long time, if not improve upon it. I also hope the EJ eventually blooms and becomes Orton's capable successor some day.

Great idea! I'm in.

I really doubt a Super Bowl winning coach, even an unemployed one, is quite as unintelligent as you seem to think. I think what Billick is arguing is that a team with a good Toxic Differential is likely to beat a team with a bad Toxic Differential. The bigger the differential, the more probable the result. So Toxic Differential is predictive. There are so many metrics in football, football coaches have long been trying to find out which ones matter most. While some posters on this board love QBR and PFF ratings, I doubt if these are used much by coaches. According to Billick, and he would know, coaches do look at turnovers and big plays because they are meaningful - more meaningful than many other stats. You make an interesting point about turnovers because they have a rather random nature. You can't control them but as a coach you can influence turnover numbers in a number of ways. Given their importance, you need to.

While I'm a proud member of the Hacketts Critics Club, I've been wondering about this all year. What I want to see as a fan is an offense that can move the ball - by ground or air - consistently all game long. Think early 90s Bills. We obviously don't have the talent for that yet. But maybe what Hackett is going for instead is an offense that produces big plays and doesn't turn the ball over. I've also been a sometime critic of Jim Schwartz. I'd like to see more blitzes from him and more creative defenses, a la Rex Ryan or Mike Pettine. What he gives instead is a no frills Steady Eddy D. I doubt if it's coincidental that the Bills excel at the Toxic Differential. Billick says the Toxic Differential is widely used because it has high predictive success so I'm sure Marrone et al. use some version of it. In highly competitive environments, people don't excel by accident. They excel because they have a plan.

Nice find! We all suspected that watching Kyle would be a good learning experience for EJ. It's good to get confirmation. EJ seems to be studying Kyle closely - not just Kyle the player, but Kyle the leader. Kyle's own evolution as a QB makes me hopeful for the current Bills with Orton under center but also for the future Bills with EJ under center. "What has happened to EJ, some of what Geno Smith is going through, it happened to me early in my career... There is always a lot of stuff you could worry about. If you let yourself do that, that is when you get into trouble... I'm throwing the ball better now than I ever have in my life. I'm thinking in games as well as I ever have.''