hondo in seattle
-
Posts
10,996 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Gallery
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by hondo in seattle
-
-
don't know how many of you saw last night's Inside the NFL, but when our KC segment was over, i couldn't help getting the feeling that our head coach responds more like a sulking fan on a message board than someone in a position to impact the game.
fyi - it's hard to tell exactly when these were uttered - because the show's editor had a job to do - but here are a few of his more pessimistic remarks captured during the game - directed at no one in particular:
- after the Brown fumble - "that's a touchdown.. that's not like it's not a touchdown.. that's a touchdown"
- sometime after that - "we should be up by a helluva lot more than this"
- after the Charles TD - "4th and 1.. unbelievable"
- toward the end - "we had opportunities"
i'd rather hear him screaming, "they're killin' me Whitey! they're killin' me!" - than this sad sack crap.
jeez, coach.. if you're disappointed with how your team's playing - get engaged, when it counts - or buy a ticket!
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.
- after the Brown fumble - "that's a touchdown.. that's not like it's not a touchdown.. that's a touchdown"
-
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.
-
Shouldn't the title read 'Breaking down the Buffalo Bills' only running play'?
Or, "The Bills Inside Run Game is Breaking Down"?
-
Let me think of how to say this...
Living in the past is a great thing to do when your team has nothing to look forward to or you want to have a cheap headline. I call the Patriots gimmick celebration yesterday cheap. It is not at all a jealousy thing, it is a stupid thing. Patriot fans are Johnny Come Lately. How many Patriot fans were there in 2000? How many Patriot fans gave up when Bledsoe got hurt? When the Patriots had an awful season, how many fans shrugged and turned to hockey or baseball or even go look at that horse face Geiselle to get their fix?
Celebrating in the past is fun and nice but it is meaningless in sports. There are justifiable events: recognitions - wall of fame events, Hall of Fame inductions, prior years Super Bowl trophies. But, to go back a number of years to celebrate what was is cheap and cheapens the past.
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.
-
Haha. I apologize but watch Sanchez play well for Philly. Coaching matters.
Yeah. The Fire-Rex movement could gain some currency if Sanchez plays well. Especially given the frustration with Geno and Vick.
-
he is also one of the biggest, most under-reacognised rapists of all time.
no doubt he's an all-time great at the sport, but the man should have been banned from the nfl years ago.
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
-
I mean mid-way through the season you control your own destiny in almost all scenarios, but I love how our's looks...
4 teams in the AFC at 5-3, and you can say all of them are 'over-achieving' 5-3.
Bills, Chiefs, Dolphins, and Browns.
We play all other 5-3 teams in the next 4 weeks (with the jets sprinkled in for some fun!). What a better way to look at it and say we do our jobs and come out of there with wins, we start taking over all these tiebreaker scenarios, and make our way into the playoffs!!
(Also - Pats looked great yesterday, but they could come back down to earth, and if we did go on a good run we may be looking at a chance for the division at that point too!!)
Getting EXCITED!!! Wish I could be at the game this Sunday!!!! GO BILLS!
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.
-
Agreed. The Bills D was epically bad. From 2010 - 2012 the Bills D ranked 28th; 30th; and 26th in pts/game against. Unless you have an elite offense with an elite QB, you're not going to overcome that as a team no matter how creative you are on offense.
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.
-
Interesting (to me, anyways) analysis - not that Jerry is one of my favs, mind you.
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.
-
we still score fewer than average points. i do not think our unit on offense is below average in overall skill. that makes me question the coach.
with our 43 point game 6 turnover game we bumped up to 21st in ppg, the previous 7 games had a 19.3 which would slot in for 26th.
Even with our 43 point game we are:
31st in yards per drive. 32nd in plays per drive. 32 in time of position per drive.
football outsiders ranks us 32nd in offensive drive success rate
we are 24th in points per drive despite being 2nd in average starting field position.
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.
-
This offense is a product of Marrone's scheme and philosophies. He's ultra conservative so that's how we gameplan on offense. Or at least that's how it looks like we gameplan. Perhaps Hackett is limited to what Marrone wants to do. We don't really know. All I know is that I'm not going to try and convince myself that our offense and production is good because it hasn't been. Marrone inherited a pretty solid offensive line and a top 5 running unit and both units have regressed significantly since he took over.
I've criticized Hackett a lot over the last year and now I'm starting to believe that Marrone may be the problem.
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.
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.
-
I really wasn't trying to paint Billick as unintelligent, I was just trying to say his grasp on statistics probably isn't as strong as he thinks (I could be wrong). I've worked with many accomplished people that I consider to be intelligent (physicians, engineers, even CFOs paid to analyze numbers) and I am always a bit taken aback when I discover they don't fully grasp basic probability. Is there a correlation between successful people and aptitude with probability? In my experience, not a strong one (I'd estimate an r-squared of .3
)I don't, however I can give you an example of a guy talking out of both sides of his mouth. Yesterday Billick told us the Bills were atop his toxic differential list (predicting success) and today he predicts us to miss the playoffs. Maybe I'm missing something?
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.
-
I plan on using my gift card to purchase a RG and then donating it to the team. Anyone care to help me with this purchase?
Great idea! I'm in.
-
Super Bowl coaches aren't exactly known for their mathematical acumen. Plus, there's a reason Billick is in the booth and Marvin Lewis is on the sidelines, but that's going off topic.
First of all, is this metric actually predicting anything, or is it just telling you what happened? Let's say I told you, "Teams that score more than 40 points and commit no turnovers have a 99% chance of winning -- you'd be hard-pressed to find any controllable statistical combination that has quite the same rate of predictive success." You would probably sarcastically laugh, "No kidding." I haven't really predicted anything, I've simply told you teams that score a lot of points and don't turn the ball over win games. We all know that. Billick is essentially saying the same thing - get turnovers and then score (explosive plays). In the end it's not telling us anything that we don't already know.
The key word here is "controllable." Can you really control and predict turnovers for a game? For a month? For half a season? Seattle led the league in turnovers last year, this year they are struggling to stay in the black. Our 2011 Bills stormed to a 5-2 start primarily based on turnovers. When the turnovers dried up, well...you know the rest.
I think you can win the turnover battle consistently if you have the elitest of the elite QBs - a Rogers, Manning, or Brady. Is that really telling us anything? Get a top 5 QB and you will have success? Not exactly a revelation.
For the record I predict we will have a negative toxic differential for the month of December. Any guesses why?
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.''
The Willing Abdication of My Happiness
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
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.