simpleman

Goodwin has the speed, the hands, the talent to be good. He has the right attitude and works hard. Unfortunately his body just can not handle the abuse required to play in the NFL as a full time WR, or even special teams. He is too "fragile" for the NFL. There is nothing he can do to change that. I would like to have him around next year with another OC and HC to see if he could shine in a limited situational role, if he had the coaches who could find the right way to use his talents. But I'm not sure if this team can afford to do so with it's current leneup and so many other pressing needs. If not, I hope he lands somewhere with the right situation where he could make signifigent contributions to a winning team.

“In 2004, Arlington voters approved a 30-year, $325 million bond package to help build the $1.15 billion stadium.The bonds are being repaid with a half-cent sales tax, a 2 percent hotel occupancy tax and a 5 percent car rental tax.”Just because you read an old report of a politician trying to appease the voters about the cost of the stadium by saying that tax revenues were “greater than originally projected” after years that events included a non-recurring Sweet 16 booking and a SB does not mean the stadium is an economic engine of growth in Texas. Tourism is actually down in city. The city still has many serious problems like lack of public transit and higher end hotels, travel infrastructure. A couple of early good years of beating tax revenue projections out of 30 years does not make it a boon, anymore than a couple of great early starts the Bills had in a few recent seasons, followed by a number of bad games, did not still end in losing seasons. You need to have consistently good results over the long haul, not just an early start "that beat your previous expectations". Kool-Aide tastes great!

ATT is your success story WOW! Cost in 2014 Dollars – 1.43 Billion. Talk about setting the bar low. First 6 months of next year. Remember it is the deep south and it is warm in the winter, so they are a good destination that time of year since they have a weather advantage in the winter.January 2015 Booked 2 days February 2015 Booked 2 days March 2015 Booked 2 days April 2015 Non Local Events booked - one day May 2015 0 events June 2015 0 events

A boon? To exactly whom? Other than the stimulus of the original construction. The construction trade people building it. Property owners selling their land for it? Parking garage owners? Fans who live closer / in the city who don't have to drive as far? Check reality. Building stadiums does not mean real income from other events from groups coming to the area. Name a place where income from outside events exceeded the cost of building and maintaining the stadium? Even with a state of the art covered stadium, what else are you going to offer to bring additional people/groups to Buffalo for their events that other areas don't have? Especially from September to May?

A RB up the middle for 2 yards

+1

I have always wondered why there are not more specialists/consultants in the coaching staffs of NFL teams. With investments in player contracts of millions a year for even mid level players, short term consultants that work with exclusively with an individual player to attempt to maximize his performance and attempt to overcome his weaknesses would make sense. And specialists that assist the coaches at game time like you suggest make so much sense. Considering how much money there is in the NFL, I can't believe their salaries would hurt the bottom line. I don't think they would make big bucks. There is no cap on coaching costs. And just getting the team into the wild-cards would cover the cost of the additional salaries. Is it the egos of the HCs that are being protected?

I rarely yell at the TV on non Bills/ playoff games but I too was yelling at that, if that wasn't IG ,I'm not sure what is.

When discussing Head Coaches people keep confusing the skill set required to be an OC or a DC with the skill set required to be a head coach. Schwartz for instance, may be a good DC, but it does not necessarily mean he has the other required skills or temperament to be a good HC. In a company, you can have a sales manager who is incredible at creating sales, or a financial guy who is a wiz at finance. But that does not mean they have the skills to coordinate all those from other fields they are less familiar with and get all those aces working together as a finely tuned machine as the company's CEO. A head coach has to bring all the specialists together in coaching, training, conditioning, scouting and elsewhere and get them all working toward the same goals. He needs to be the one that provides common directions and goals. He needs to gain their respect and their faith in his ability to do so. He has to be the one who provides discipline and motivation. He needs to be the buffer between the coaches / players and the business / management side of the organization, whom often have very different backgrounds, missions and often-conflicting goals. He needs to be comfortable being the one ultimately responsible for overall success. He needs to be highly flexible and innovative while not allowing his own personal goals, ego and biases to get in the way of the ultimate needs and goals of the team itself. He needs to be able to work hand in hand with the GM to achieve those goals. He needs to be a good communicator and be good at creating compromises among the various factions which don't negatively affect the team's success at achieving their overall goals. You can be a great OC or DC and not have those qualities. Those are the qualities we need in our next HC. We can a hire quality OC to fix the offense, or a DC that can keep the defense at the high level it is now if we need one. The HC should not be hired to personally solve the offense or the defense, that is the job of the coordinators. His responsibility is to hire the right coordinators to do so.

I realize Pegula's heart is in the right place and he is a great guy who saved the Bills from leaving Buffalo, but if you look at the performance of the Sabres under his ownership, do you want the Bills to be where the Sabres are 3 years from now? His record at delivering a competitive and exciting professional sports team is as bad as Hackett's at delivering a innovative and winning offense. Past performance is usually a pretty good indicator of future performance.

We have a winner!!

To those that saw a lot of practices during training camp, how did MW look in training camp? Do you remember seeing him limping or looking slow when running?

By canonize him do you mean to shoot him out of a canon and back to college ball where he belongs?

So you don't think teams who believe they are just a player or two from winning and are in the "Win Now" mode would never want a one season hired gun? A team like a Denver with a Manning who won't be there very much longer, would not spend on a hired gun before their "win it all window" is passed?Do you really think that the first year or two after Manning retires that Denver will still be at the top challenging for the Super Bowl and an expensive FA contract will still make sense for them, for example? And do you think that when Denver signed Manning, they were thinking he would be there 4 or 5 years later. He was signed to immediately "win now", not to build for the future.

If you are in a win now mode and looking for a hired gun who you believe can put you over the top and get you a win that year, you do. And Byrd had that potential for the right team. If a team is in the win now mode, rather than the building for the future mode, he would have been a great choice.

Exactly. Like Lev, letting him go was the right move. But not tagging and trading him and not getting ANYTHING in return was the problem. With Lev, it was not going out and getting a viable replacement. It is not just about letting expensive FAs go, but the details.

I like to dream, but I don't see us in the playoffs, unless 9-7 gets us in. And that would mean other division, conference teams helping us in by their losses. We needed to find a fix for the OL, but did not. But, I didn't see us as better than 8-8 at the start of the season, so it would not be devastating missing out this year unless we missed out by a horrible collapse in a game. I keep thinking of the Houston game and what it might have cost us. If Orton does not falter down the stretch I do expect to see the playoffs next year with an improvement at OL and TE through FA and/or the draft.

I don't know who is responsible, the GM or the HC, but look at the serious effort the team made this year to draft, develop existing players, trade and bring in FAs to stock the team with the talent specifically for special teams. Those efforts paid off. Was it really Crossman getting better at coaching, or was the talent level just so good they had to get better in spite of the coaching? Did Marrone go along with the high priority on special teams play and make a special effort to hold back his ego to save his crony Crossman? I don't know the answer, but I do think it is the overwhelming improvement in the effort by the team to stock special teams, and the quality of the talent they accumulated, rather than improved coaching. I think any decent special teams coach brought in will do fine as long as the talent stays in place

Has anyone reviewed the game to see if Mike Williams was in the game all those times the team was in the red zone and came up empty? Is he just not getting open, or is he not even being given an opportunity to be on the field during those plays? I find it strange that a player who is considered a great red zone target is not someone I'm noticing in those situations. Is it him not playing well, or is he not even being given an opportunity?

I think we saw a different Jets game. I saw repeated 1st down run, 2nd down run, then 3rd and long obvious pass situations caused by horrible OC play calling. The defense knew it was 3rd and long and he had to pass so they were prepared for the pass over the run on 3rd down, since we just could not run well enough to pick up 3rd and long. I saw 2 of those 10 passes were perfect bombs to Watkins that should have been TDs. How do you hold Orton responsible for the design and play calling or the inability of the line to run block or the RBs to find the holes. He did his job while being handcuffed by a horrible O Line and a terrible OC. Not saying he is close to a Brady or a Payton, but he gets the job done. He is not a glaring weakness on this team, but a positive.

We need fan sponsored billboards outside of Pegula's office that just say "Free the Bills Fire Hackett"

Ohh, that must have hurt,lol!

Ohh, that must have hurt,lol!

How can you be so bad at your job week after week and still keep your job. Fire Hackett already, run,run, and pass when everyone knows your QB has to pass and he has a crap O line to protect him. Brilliant! Oh, an it was all Spiller's fault why the run game kept sputting.

Come on, 4 turnovers and Hackett keeps trying to run it up the middle 1st two downs, just like the whole season. Then finally a 3rd and long obvious pass. Against a team stout against the run, and questionable against the pass. Hackett has to go. Pegula grow a pair and get rid of the weakest link, the OC. If we loose it is all on Hackett.