hondo in seattle

As I recall, the Cowboys didn't have impressive wins in the regular season the first year they faced us in the Super Bowl. They squeaked by some weak opponents while we rolled over people. They still spanked us in XXVII. Good teams find ways to win. The Saints have been doing it consistently. We have not. Advantage: Saints. But, brother, this would be an awesome win for the team if Marrone and guys could pull it out.

Growing up in Cheektowaga, my best friend was a huge Lamonica fan. So much so that he became a Raiders fan when Lamonica was traded. To this day, he still follows the Raiders more than he follows the Bills. He considers the Lamonica trade the biggest blunder the Bills FO ever made. It seems like Lamonica is a sweetheart of a man who's sincerely grateful for the good things that have come his way. Ken - thanks for the link and excellent article. Nice work.

You can look at pretty much any game this year and say if just one play was different, the outcome would be different. We were perilously close to losing all three of our wins; and perilously close to winning all four of our losses. I'm hoping we become so good some day that we can win games without any one play being decisive.

So King didn't want KSK posting pics of his daughter? What father would? I think his overall body of work is pretty solid. He's both interesting and reasonably informed. Maybe it's a matter of expectation. I don't expect national media types to be experts in all 32 teams. They'll typically study the winning teams the most and develop a cursory familiarity with the rest of the NFL. King is no worse than his media brethren in that regard. But he's better connected than most sportswriters. When a story starts to break, he'll often get on the phone and talk to someone with firsthand knowledge of the situation. I don't agree with all his opinions but I think he's good at what he does.

And didn't it make you 'feel good'? Regardless of the author, it seems the Bills players sense a difference. So even though the Bills are only 3-4 in close games this year (or 3-3, depending how you keep count), I thought the article was encouraging. At the same time, I worry about falling to 3-6 with two very tough games in front of us. What will locker room morale be like then? On the other hand, if we're 5-4 a couple weeks from now, those guys will believe in each other and their coaches like never before.

Yep. Every game has been interesting down to the final 2 minutes. I guess that means we're a profoundly mediocre team. Not good enough to crush opponents. Not bad enough to get crushed. So we should be either 4-3 or 3-4. But now what? With NO and KC looming, are we going to fall to 3-6? I'll be real excited about the potential of this team if we can go 1-1 in our next two games.

Memory is a funny thing but what I remember is that he developed some kind of rare eye or brain problem that caused him to lose his peripheral vision. He still had his athleticism but couldn't find holes or see pursuing tacklers like before. And yep, he looked great his rookie season. While the Bills have been historically bad at QB, we've been awfully good at RB. It seemed like Miller was going to advance that tradition.

I agree with the Big Cat. Given the talent on the team, the Bills produced. Maybe over-produced. With Bobby April handling Special Teams and Fewell helping DJ on Defense, we had a good coaching staff. What DJ was lacking was (1) an OC, and (2) players. While his it's-hard-to-win-in-the-NFL public persona seemed uninspiring, the players seemed to lay it on the field for him.

Aren't the Eagles 3-4, same as the Bills?

I got on this bus after the Browns game. He should have never been hired in the first place. Just looked up the stats... We're 28th best in kick return average. 12th best in punt return average. 7th best in kick return coverage. 28th best in punt return coverage. Our average ranking for these ST units is about 19 of 32. We're a bit below league average but not as much as I had guessed. http://espn.go.com/nfl/statistics/team/_/stat/returning/sort/yardsPerPuntReturn/position/defense/order/false

Azucho, you keep referencing this. Obviously, no one is persuaded by this observation. I think it's time to let it go. Anyone can cherry pick stats to make virtually any player look good or bad. Here's the most important stat of all: 10 sacks in the first 7 games. Bruce never did that. I don't think anyone is saying Mario is the 2nd coming of Bruce but arguing that Mario hasn't been impressive so far this year is lunacy. And he's getting these sacks despite frequent double-teams. On a side note, he beat Tyson Clabo twice in the 4th quarter for his sacks. Didn't we all want to sign Clabo a couple years ago?

Tuel is the only fully healthy QB on the team and you think it's stupid the Bills are bringing in an experienced backup?

Levitre is good; certainly much better than his replacement. But, at the price, I don't mind the FO letting him. I just wish they found somebody better than Brown to replace him with.

I had disc fusion surgery in my lower back yet never had hammy problems, despite running a lot on mountain trails. Not sure about any connection between backs and hammies.

Hackett says Lewis learned a lot by helping him out in the booth during games. I wonder if EJ will be up with Hackett, picking his brain, watching defenses from a different perspective. Hanging out with Hackett could be instructional for EJ.

Too quick? They've had 5 weeks to evaluate Lewis. More to evaluate Tuel. That's plenty of time. Marrone explained that the only reason Lewis was on the practice squad is that they felt it was less of a gamble to PS him than Tuel. And at that time, they still didn't know what they had in Lewis. Since then, however, Marrone hinted that the coaches started to develop more confidence in Lewis. They couldn't use him in the last game because they had left him on the PS. Listening to Marrone talk about this, I'm left with the feeling that in the minds of the coaches, Lewis had already passed Tuel on the unofficial depth chart before last week's game. Tuel's performance backing up EJ did nothing to change their minds. Since, in limited action, Lewis has better NFL regular season stats than Tuel, I'm assuming you're basing your opinion on your extensive study of their respective preseason games and other off-season experience. And since you apparently know more about these two QBs than even Coach Marrone (how else could you so decisively identify Marrone's error?), please share with us your evaluations on our two QB options.

Starting for an injured Mark Brunell in 1997, Rob Johnson led the Jags to a win, going 20-24 for 294 yards and 2 TDs. So we traded a 1st and 4th round draft pick for him. I wouldn't evaluate a guy based on one game. On the other hand, I'm optimistic about the Cinci game. We've been banged up this season but getting a lot of people back. Outside the QB position, this is the healthiest we've been all year. And, as the OP opines, Thad might do as well as EJ - who was playing like the rookie that he is. I'm not sure how big the drop off is right now from Manuel to Lewis but hopefully it's not much if anything.

A couple thoughts... (1) PF sucks. I was running 40-50 miles per week training for an ultramarathon when I got PF. Didn't seem like a huge deal at first. But I limped when I walked and couldn't run. My doc said I needed to rest. Not content with that I started looking for treatments online. I started wearing a Strassburg sock when I slept and doing special stretching exercise when awake. The date of the ultra came and went and I was still limping around. I couldn't run for 7 or 8 months. Another runner told me they missed an entire year because of PF. It can linger for long periods, sometimes years. (2) PF can easily be faked. There aren't any visible symptoms as far as I know. I guess your opinion of Byrd's injury depends a lot on your opinion of Byrd's character and human nature. Having no way of knowing if he's faking or not, I'm inclined to give Byrd the benefit of the doubt. Especially when he wanted to play last week. It was Marrone - under the advice of doctors and trainers - that kept Byrd off the field.

Freddy looked better in 2011 than he does now. But that I mean, numbers aside, he had more impressive runs in 2011. In fact, he looked freaking amazing two years ago - one of the very best backs in the league. I'm not sure he hasn't lost a step but - obviously - he's still a good back today.

At least half of 1st round QBs don't become franchise QBs. I like EJ. I like his attitude. I like his potential. But he hasn't proven yet that he will be our franchise QB for the next 8+ years. So if a hot QB prospect is available when we're picking, I say take him. But, like others, I don't think Doug will.

We should have kept TJax. I was hoping for a .500 season but with EJ out up to 8 weeks, I'm not feeling very confident about our chances when our QB options are so unspectacular. The shame of it is, our defense will finally be healthy next week. In fact, other than EJ and Kolb, the team will be mostly healthy against Cinci.

The Bills played tough despite all the injuries. The secondary was populated with 2nd stringers (okay, A. Williams is a starter - but not at CB). Both our star running backs were dinged up. Our star WR was out and we had 2nd and 3rd string WRs in the game. Our undrafted FA 3rd string QB (Kolb was our 2nd stringer) was in there at the end. And yet the game was still undecided at the 2 minute warning. Under the circumstances, it's hard to complain about our OC or DC. Our STC, however, lost the game for us - and injuries didn't factor there.

This is the one coaching hire I really didn't like.

Sadly, CJ and Freddy are the only two RBs in the NFL who have already fumbled three times. Fortunately, we've lost only one of those. Freddy is my favorite player on the Bills but at this point concerns about ball security are valid. Since CJ and Freddy are both having problems, I wonder if there's something lacking in the coaching and drills done by the Bills. Wheatley needs to be addressing this. http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/stats/byposition?pos=RB&conference=NFL&year=season_2013&sort=47&timeframe=September

Bill Nelson was the starting QB for the Browns in the late 60s, early 70s. Made the Pro Bowl one year. He's a bit old to replace Geno.