eball
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Posts posted by eball
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Such preseason anxiety!
It's been this way since the Juggernaut days of the Kelly era vanished into the sunset.
TD has been rapidly (OK, OK the Civil War only lasted 4 years, but rebuilding a contending NFL team is much more complicated than that) working his butt off getting our Bills into a team that can play with the best of them in the AFC North division.
What we're left with in terms of offense is a pop-gun like Rachel Ray - not a juggernaut but "Jugs-'O-Naught!"
unfortunately, the bills play in the east. maybe that's the problem.
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20-28 vs 17-31 would be a better comparison.
Williams also led his team to a better record (8-8) in one of his first three seasons than Belichek ever did.
You can spin stats anyway you like, but you have no way to know whether he's going to do well as a HC in the future or not, simply based on his three years in Buffalo.
CW
so fez, do you wish the bills had kept GW?
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what is so hard to understand? the bills are not going to talk about injuries to the media. they'll put out an injury report on wednesday per league mandate, but that is all. enough with the whining!
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DeeRay, many of us feel the way you do about this team this year. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens this year. I'm going to try and hold off on pissing in the corn flakes until week 4 or so. You are not the only one that can see major flaws in the way Tom Donahoe builds a football team. I just don't understand why you can't call a spade a spade on this board without someone getting mad? I see a lot of broken hearts around her this season. I hope this team gels but from the looks of preseason, it's a mess.
define "mess," frez.
here's the issue i see with bills' fans. particularly on the offensive side of the ball, there is a great deal of uncertainty as we head into the season. will the OL be adequate? can JP play mistake-free football? can lindell provide any consistency?
while none of us know right now how those questions will be answered, there are some rather vocal pessimists on this board who refuse to believe that anything will go well for the bills. personally, i think that is a pretty crappy and unfulfilling way to support one's team.
"uncertain" does not equal "destined for failure" -- a notion lost on the negative ninnies around here.
you say that nobody can "call a spade a spade" on this board -- well, that's exactly how the optimistic among us feel. when we talk about being excited for the season, we're described as rose-colored-glasses-wearing-koolaid-drinking idiots who are being taken for a ride by "teflon" donahoe, the ego-maniac who doesn't know how to build a team and needs to be run out of town on a rail.
anyway, i'm off the soapbox for a while. it's a beautiful 85 degree day in north carolina and i need to get outside.
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geezuz LA... My aim was not to pi$$ in your corn flakes. I'm sorry if I offended you, but you So. Cal. types really need to get some thicker skin. All I speak is the truth...
The bottom line is "W"s and Teflon is below .500 after 4 years. He's border line adequate.
Trust me LA... I'm not the villain here. I'm just a fan that expects better reults than we've been getting. I don't control the moves the Bills organization make. You must not think we deserve better.
You may not be one of the folks that are becoming impatient with Teflon. Teflon has basically received a free pass. I think that is just about expired unless the fans start seeing results. Teflon has never had to endure the media onslaught he is about to experience... The local media is beginning to get a little testy and with WGR bringing back Dickerson, believe me, if things don't turn around, and rather quickly... it's gonna get ugly.
So, please don't villify me... I'm just the messenger... and all I brought was reality. I know the sun always shines in So. Cal... but it doesn't here.
LO friggin' L. "i'm not the villain here. i'm just the messenger." please, i'm trying not to spit my coffee out.
yep, deeray -- you're a huge fan. can you find a way to work in a few more "teflon" references in your posts? what a hoot.
i hear that ralph actually has a "fan hotline" so he can decide when to push the button on firing donahoe.
have fun calling "the coach" during the season, dee...the two of you can yuck it up while you dish out "the truth."
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interesting analysis, mark. it makes sense, particularly since there's no "true" backup FB on the roster. we know joe burns is on the team almost exclusively b/c of ST play.
i agree with you that we'll see a lot of spread formations that will give JP many options and open running lanes for willis. opposing defenses can't "load the box" with eight defenders if the bills are showing three (or four) WR sets consistently. i like our chances w/ willis going one-on-one against just about anybody.
i hope the bills don't become a "pass first" team just because they show these formations, however. i'd really like to see something similar to how the bills ran the ball w/ thurman during the hey days of the K-gun.
i also hope they mix in a number of formations that include shelton but are pass plays. we don't want the appearance of shelton in the lineup to be an immediate trigger to the defense that a running play is coming. at this point, the bills have certainly not shown that they can "tell you what's coming" and still beat you.
as i sit typing this, it hit me that exactly one week from now i'll be tailgating at the ralph, getting ready to enjoy a new season of bills' football -- how friggin' awesome is this time of year!! screw the negative ninnies who want to bash donahoe and predict gloom and doom. whether we go 10-6 or 6-10, it's going to be a fun ride.
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gray was just one in a long line of pre-season fan favorites. to my surprise, the knee-jerk sit-on-their-asses football analysts at home didn't show a better ability to analyze talent than the NFL GMs, as to my knowledge gray is not currently on an NFL roster.
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It is not the W/L at the end of the game that matters. It is the W/L after the 1st stringers are benched. The problem with the analysis is that many teams (good ones) do not play their starters more than a quarter. When Marv was here, the Bills starters played a few series and it was done. He used the preseason to assess talent for cuts, NOT to get the starters into a groove. Good crisp practice works well to keep the starters sharp.
This is the biggest difference in the TD era of the Bills. His coaches (GW and MM) both play their starters too long in the preseason. How it translates to Wins/Losses during the season is to be seen. But I can say that I am not a GW fan, but I would take him back after he spent a few years with Gibbs. I think he had learned alot about how to coach football players.
anyone who thinks buffalo played their 1st string offense the entire first half last night needs to go back and look at the tape. by the 2nd series, i believe, the OL was being substituted regularly. there were constantly different WRs and TEs in there. this was NOT the bills' first string offense for the first half. the 1st string defense played two series at most.
mularkey isn't playing his starters too long. he's just trying to get JP more in-game action. trying to draw conclusions from these results is just not logical.
note: i'm not saying that losman is going to light things up once the regular season starts. i'm only saying that predictions of failure are just as ridiculous.
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I don't believe anyone should expect miracles from JP and thus am willing to be patient, near term, with him. However, I find his post-game quote that "Things never go as planned" disturbing.
Is JP's attitude that the whole game should be improvisational because the game plan will most likely not work? Is the game plan thus a secondary consideration? I hope that's not where he is coming from. That's more the way you play the game in high school or earlier. JP's mindset and commitment should clearly be to do everything possible to ensure that the game plan is carried out and works. When all else fails, improvise. Hopefully, the comment is grounded on JP's experiences at Tulane, where he had an awful OL and improvisation was therefore a must, and that the Bills OL will (pray) afford JP the opportunity to settle down and settle in
That's not to say that improvising cannot be effective; watch your Steve Young or even Flutie videos. But it should obviously not be your first priority. If it is and remains to be for JP, we are, and JP is, in big trouble.
jiminy christmas, we need the regular season to get here. when folks begin over-analyzing a simple comment such as "things never go as planned" it is clear that we're doing too much thinking about the subject.
a "robotic" view towards the gameplan is not what is needed. the best teams, coaches, and players adapt to changing circumstances. what JP is saying is "schitt happens" and the good players and teams adapt. he said that he learned something from trying to "baby" a pass into the wind. i don't know why anyone would take issue with his post game comments.
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Well...I've always had the suspicion that in general better teams do worse in the preseason. I can't prove it, but my justification of the theory is that the better teams go into preseason with their starters pretty much set, so can afford to play their backups and camp fodder more, whereas the worse teams actually need to give their starters the practice (either because they've changed their lineups in the off-season...or they're frankly just that bad). Ergo, you have a good team's backups playing a bad team's starters...and generally even bad starters will beat good backups (unless it's Buffalo playing Pittsburgh in the last game of the regular season
). Thus, worse teams have better preseason records. It's probably BS...but at least it sounds pretty good.
didn't rich kotite's jets go 5-0 in the preseason before a 1-15 regular season back in the late 80s? you may be on to something there.
of course, i'm sure you already knew that my question was a loaded one. while your theory makes some sense, i don't think there is any way to go back through NFL history and accurately predict regular season records based upon the preseason. still, the fans seem to live and die with these meaningless results.
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seriously...i'm still waiting to see the statistical model that will correlate preseason stats and W-L record with regular season performance.
anybody???
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Please please please stop with the "TD ego" thing. This is the second time someone has said it in this thread and the nth time people have said it here, and it has no basis in fact.
TD had no problem cutting Drew when it served, nor did he resist firing GW when it was clear he did not work out. He has not shown any reluctance to cut other picks and signings when it served. I agree that Lindell must go, but to attribute this to TD's ego is old and tired and flat wrong.
Go Bills!
THANK YOU.
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i knew after watching the first half tonight that this board would be a mess. you guys are unbelievable.
did losman look like a star tonight? no. the INT returned for a TD was a bad throw. he had another sure INT dropped. he missed some throws.
but did he look like a scrub or 3rd stringer? also no. he made some VERY nice throws and good decisions. the 2nd INT was his receiver's (aiken) fault.
the bottom line is this -- preseason doesn't mean crap. case in point: the colts went 0-5 and were shellacked by cinci tonight.
i said earlier in the week that the ONLY "must" in this game was to come out of it healthy. despite some scares (clements, peters) it appears that this was accomplished. i don't care about getting the offense some "confidence" going into the season. ask the players if it matters.
finally, i'm looking forward to a real game plan and 60 minutes of meaningful football. with all due respect to the great fans who frequent this board, if any of you think you can predict the bills' (and losman's) success or failure this season based upon this (or any) preseason game, you are sadly mistaken.
go ahead with your gloom and doom projections and calls for holcomb to start. understand this -- mularkey doesn't want the bills to lose. if losman is performing in such a manner that he's hurting buffalo's chances to win, mularkey will make a change. to suggest otherwise is pure folly.
see you in orchard park next sunday.
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ok, you guys are right. because of one typo schein is a dumbass moron who doesn't know schitt.
christ, get over yourselves.
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You know what must really suck? Smelling your nasty, sweating body odor over the cubicle wall all day.
You bikers are so !@#$ing holier-than-thou it's !@#$ing pathetic.
Last company I worked at, the owner would ride 25 miles every day after work. He's an old, crotchety dude who at least has a good sense of humor. One day he comes outside where a few of us are smoking, and he starts in on us as he typically liked to do. He finally says to me, "I'm going to do something tonight you won't possibly be able to do. I'm going to ride my bike 25 miles tonight. You could never do that."
My response...with God as my witness..."And I'm going to do something tonight you could never do. I'm going to grab a pack of smokes, bottle of tequila, case of beer, and I'm inviting an old girlfriend over to my house so we can sit around and get drunk while we have freaky sex in every room in the house."
Bikers. Get over yourselves. You're like second from the bottom of the tree huggers evolution map...somewhere between people who ride Harleys and people who ride Segways.
And stay on the freakin' sidewalk, wouldcha? And if you're gonna drive on the freakin' street, obey the freakin' rules.
thanks for that, LA. -
by the way, this guy is on "the afternoon blitz" on sirius NFL radio and is, IMO, very knowledgeable.
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for those who don't like to click away from this page:
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5. The Bills will play the second weekend in January
I love this defense.
You can even make the case that the combination of Takeo Spikes, London Fletcher and Jeff Posey make up the best linebacker core in the NFL.
Nate Clements changes the game at the cover corner position.
Lawyer Milloy and Troy Vincent bring experience and attitude at the safety position.
Sam Adams, Chris Kelsay and Aaron Schobel are beasts up front.
Jerry Gray is a great defensive coordinator and deserves to be a head coach.
Willis McGahee is a star.
And enough with this talk about the opposition stacking the box with JP Losman at quarterback. Did teams fear Drew Bledsoe last year?
Losman is fearless and smart. He's a tremendous athlete who can escape from potential tacklers, just like Big Ben in Pittsburgh last year. And coach Mike Mularkey can run his entire playbook, filled with rollouts, something he couldn't so with the backfield statue that was Bledsoe last year.
Eric Moulds and Lee Evans make for an explosive pair at wide receiver.
And I loved how this team came from the dead last year.
They will finally reach the playoffs in the Tom Donohue reign in lovely Western New York.
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your math is off. moulds + evans + roscoe = 3. that means out of reed, aiken, smith, wilson, and haddad, TWO will be gone.
my guess -- see ya, fast freddy. have a nice life, mr. wilson.
aiken is valuable on ST and is the best backup for moulds' position. haddad has earned his stripes as a slot receiver and punt returner. reed is still the best blocking WR the bills have and can be a contributor in the slot.
opening line...
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
thoughts? seems a bit high for my liking; i'll stay away from betting this one. i certainly think buffalo can win by double digits if the defense is in regular season form -- i'm just a little too unsure about the offense until i see how losman and the OL perform utilizing a "real" scheme and gameplan.
right now, i like the bills to win, 17-13. i predict an "ugly" game (except for the bills' unis, which will be sweet!), but a nice W to get the season off on the right foot.