Mickey

That line needs more than a tweak like signing a FA lineman unless that guy is a stud. Most of our line is made up of crappy FA's as it is. MW and Jonas are the only O-line starters we drafted. By the way, Losman was no escape artist in college. Point is, he will basically be not much more experienced than a rookie next year and as with any draft pick, success is not guaranteed. Be careful what you wish for.

We don't have a frist round pick next year, duh. Tell us, who would you draft? Another QB, a RB, a WR? Its all Drew, not the O-line so I know you don't want to waste a pick on the line, right? Our line is great, we would be undefeated if not for Drew so we don't have to invest in any new lineman at all. Wow, that was easy. Instant solution, blame the QB. Why the front office of the Bills hasn't snapped you up with that kind of brilliant analysis is beyond me. Who would have thought? Bledsoe stinks? Tell me, how did you think of it, how? Thank goodness you are around to share your insight. Talk about a unique take on the situation. We never would have guessed it was Bledsoe all along.

Would you have preferred that he fumble or throw a pick like Pennington did trying to avoid a sack earlier? What they should have done was call a timeout after the sack or after Shaw got the first down. We ended up using that TO for no reason at all when there was 2 second left and the clock was stopped anyway as the preceding pass was an incompletion. All the good it did us was give us more time to think about how to run the hail mary on the last play. If we used it after the sack or after Shaw's catch, we would have had 30 or 40 seconds left with a first down at midfield needing only one decent completion of 15-20 yars to have a shot. Everyone is all over Drew for that sack and how many posts have you seen regarding this terrible mistake in clock management? This board is obsessed with blaming everything on Bledsoe, everything. Drew wanted to get that ball away but he didn't even have a chance to rooster his arm, the rush was there in a heartbeat and there was no place to step up. It was a sack or lose the ball while trying to unload it in traffic. He took that sack with over 40 seconds left, if they call timeout after that or after the Shaw catch they were still in the hunt for a FG.

Yeah, that's our problem, not enough emotion. Not the dumb penalties, the missed blocks, the bumbles at key junctures of the game. Lack of emotion, that's what it is.

It doesn't matter what we need. He is the QB, we have no other option but Matthews and Drew is gone at the end of this year even if he makes the pro bowl. We can't just toss up our hands now and say "shucks, he is not the right guy". He is the guy and there is no other choice. That is what kills me the most about this debate. We are having a QB controversey and we only have one QB. Week in and week out, carp, carp, carp about Bledsoe. Why? I don't want to hear from people that he is not mobile (duh) anymore. I want to hear them make a credible argument that Shane freaking Matthews should be the starting QB for this football team. Tell me about the great decision making skills he has or how he has a rep. for evading a fire alarm blitz and making the big play. All I have heard on that score is "he couldn't be worse". You and I know that is total BS, he not only could be worse, he is worse. He is no mystery like Brady was, he is a known commodity. He has been around for a long time and the jury reached its verdict on him a long, long time ago. He stinks. Look at all the starting QB's in this league. How many of them are Houdini's enough to evade the kind of rush that snagged Drew on Sunday? Two, three, maybe four tops? Well, we don't have one of those guys and chances are, even a healthy Losman is not one of those kinds of guys either. Check JP's college stats, he wasn't exactly known as Fran Tarkenton re-born. I think there are probably a lot more lineman out there who could improve this team than there are QB's that could regularly make plays behind a line as bad as ours is now. The Drew Bledsoe bus left the station a long time ago and none of us are going to be able to get a refund. He is the QB this season and that is that. We won't have him to kick around anymore as the board's favorite scapegoat next year no matter what happens. If we don't change that line, Losman will spend his first year as a starter running for his life. The best thing about next year is that we won't have a first round pick for TD to get cute with and do something clever like drafting a RB we don't need while the O-line disintegrates into dust. Picking high in the second is the perfect spot to get a good lineman.

Wes Clark or Edwards would certainly have a shot. Hillary would not have a prayer. The only people who seriously think Hil has a shot are republicans who would love to run against her.

For a QB to be able to sidestep a blitzer to buy a second or two and make a play, he has to have somewhere to go. Drew isn't facing one guy getting through, it is a lot worse than that. Take the sack on the last drive. He had no place to go, nowhere. That pocket collapsed from the left, right and in the middle and so fast that he couldn't even get his arm cocked to throw it away. Further, he was between the tackles so even if he could, he likely would have ended up with a grounding call. The first time Jonas got burned by Abrahams, Ellis also beat MW on the right side. Abrahams just got their first. Drew had only one place he could go, further backwards for an even deeper loss. Yes, Drew is not very mobile. People around her seize on that one issue and then blame everything on it and tend to imagine that if only he were a little more nimble, everything would be okay. It isn't so. Watch him, Drew mostly takes a step forward to try and evade outside rushes. That is what they all do from Brady to McNabb. The problem is, our interior guys get pushed back literally every play. They don't always lose their guy but they do have to backpedal which leaves Drew no place to go when he steps up to avoid the guys coming around the edge. How many times have you seen Drew just disappear in a sea of jerseys? See, he doesn't take too many blind side hits from the edge rusher where you see the whole gory misadventure. Usually what you see is him stepping up into a pile of humanity and just vanishing. Drew is bound and determined not to have a lot of fumbles this year so he is taking care of the football, taking the sack and avoiding the turnover. Pennington let us back in the game by trying to get rid of the ball as he was going down and threw a pick instead. When the bodies get close, Drew is pulling it in rather than teeing it up to try and throw it away. If he were to get hit in the middle of that, he would risk a pick or a fumble. BB is right, our line is horsesh*t. Drew makes some mistakes and no, he is not mobile but if we gave him even a little space, he would do just fine. McNabb was sacked just about as much as Drew was last year (43 for McNabb, 49 for Drew). Is McNabb just not mobile enough? Drew even had a higher completion percentage and the rest of their numbers really were not all that different. This year he has a better QB rating than Michael Vick, Jake DelHomme, Jake Plummer, Trent Green, Vinny T. and Steve McNair to name a few. Think about it, if Nate bats down that ball against J'ville and the refs don't screw up the call on that nonTD by Travis in the Oakland game, if the D stops the Jets on that last drive and Travis doesn't fall down on that 3rd and 2 run agianst the PATs, aren't we here talking about what a great season Drew is having and how he is cutting down on the turnovers? We can win with Drew, we can't win with that line and it won't matter who are QB is if we don't fix that problem.

That is why they have to go max protect and probably throw on first down a little more when it is not expected so we aren't facing an all out blitz. The Jets sent 6 on the pass to Evans and we kept in both backs and the TE, thats 8 blockers for 6 guys. It was just enough. Had that been third down, there would have been more than 6. Oakland and NE were sending 8. Obviously, taking a long shot more often exposes us to more risk but you know, its not like they aren't sacking Drew all over the place anyway. The only difference this years offense has made is to reduce turnovers by the QB. That's great but it isn't translating to wins, just closer games. I am not advocating going nuts here, just reading the defense and go after them if they are loading up on the run or blitzing like mad.

We are not getting the big runs and it is not just because we have been behind. All the games have been close and we haven't had to abandon the run until our last drive or two. We have been running the ball late in the fourth quarter and it has simply not yielded results. Even if it did, I am not sure it is worth being virtually shut out for the first three quarters. The idea that a defense gets "worn out", I think, is kind of overblown. They don't expend anymore energy defending a running play in the first quarter than they do a pass. Arguably, they spend more energy on passes because they are doing a lot of chasing. When a defense tires out at the end of the game, it is because it is the end of the game. How tired they are depends on their conditioning and the number of plays they have endured out on the field. That is when the run can start hurting them but the path to exhaustion, what gets them there, can be done with runs or passes or both. You just have to do it successfully so that you keep them on the field. Three and out on the ground will never tire a defense out.

That first one that Jonas gave up, Ellis was steaming in on the other side as MW totally missed him. Abrahams beat Ellis by a step into the backfield so he got the sack. Otherwise, MW would have looked almost as bad as Jonas did.

Really, we are 0-4, what exactly do we have to lose? Let Drew go down swinging instead of dumping it off for 2 yards.

That problem is about 9 or 10 games away at this point. I haven't thrown in the towel on those yet. At that point, if things have gone that bad, I really won't give a damn if we start you at QB or JP or Dennis Shaw. For what it is worth though, I think the coach should start whoever he thinks gives us the best chance to win those games rather than using it as a training ground for Losman. Any coach that would have any goal besides winning every game shouldn't be coaching. How do you turn to Eric Moulds and tell him to go all out, risking injury in a cause so lost that you are using it to see if an injured rookie can ride without training wheels? Pride matters. I don't care if we are 0-15, I still want to see this team spit in the eye of their opponent and give their all for a win in the last game. If that means starting Losman because he is our best chance to win that game, fine, otherwise, I don't want to see him on the field.

The numbers on run vs. pass, down by down are pretty revealing for this team. The conclusion forced by these numbers are not what the "run the ball no matter what" crowd are going to want to hear but just the same, here they are: We run the ball like crazy on first down, 60 times versus only 43 passes. The number for passes is a little inflated as we have had to throw on every down at the end of a few games. To me, gaining 4 yards or more is a successful run as it gives you the freedom to run or pass on second down. Anything less makes it hard to run much on second. That makes it easy on defenses because they don't have to guess much. Of those 60 runs, we have gained 4 or more yards only 27 times, failing to do so 33 times. That is a failure rate on first down runs of over 50%. Of the 5 touchdowns scored by the offense, 4 have come on first down passes. We have not scored a rushing touchdown yet on any down. Not getting the TD when we started off with a first and goal inside the 5 against J'ville, not punching it in on 4th and one against Oakland and not getting that first on third and two (Travis fell) against the PATs on the critical drive are some of the more notable failures on the ground. The only other TD we have was also a pass but on second down instead of first. The TD's were from 41, 16, 46, 5 and 17 yards out. We are averaging only 3.3 yards per first down run but we are averaging 8.2 yards per first down pass. We have only been sacked 4 times all year on first down passes losing 21 yards which sounds bad until you look at the numbers on second and third down. The lack of success on first down runs leads to a reversal of the run/pass numbers on later downs. We have run 31 times on second versus 42 passes. We are still averaging only 3.3 yards per run. We are only 19 of 42 on passes on second. We have 15 incompletions with 6 sacks and two turnovers. Second down passes are a disaster for this team basically. Third down is little better. We have not had many third and short yardage situations due to our lack of success on first and second. We have only run the ball 16 times on third down compared to 35 passes. Many of those were draws to set up a punt so as not to risk a turnover on third and forever. Otherwise we would have even fewer runs. We average only 3.9 on those runs. We are 17-35 on the passes: 7 sacks and 11 incompletions. Bonus stat: We have had third and long (10 yards or more) 23 times this year and converted only 5 of them. At some point, you have to start taking your shots downfield. We are not running the ball well, there is no doubt about that. When we had to have a yard or two and ran the ball, it didn't work. Face facts, we are not a power running team. That should be no surprise given our lack of committment to improving the o-line. What we have that works is a QB that can still throw the long ball on the money and two receives who scare the bejeezus out of most defenses. That means that providing we take some shots, we will hit on a few long ones every game. Rather than trying to make Drew be what he is not and leaving his best cards unplayed, we need to turn him loose. Rather than pretending we have a bunch of road graders up front rather than what we really have: unmotivated, unskilled, flab-meisters, we need to face the facts, our best chance of scoring is to get lucky deep. Given the lack of protection, we have to play max protect and hope that Evans and Moulds can get free even with only a few WR's in the pattern. Can we officially declare an end to the debate about whether hiring McNally was all that was needed to get this line to produce? Clearly, it was not. Even a good coach like him needs more talent than we have right now.

I would throw the ball down field more and take my chances dealing with the lack of protection. I would use a lot of max protect schemes and hope Evans and Moulds can beat the coverage. Bledsoe is a long ball QB, we need to stop trying to make him into something he is not. He is not Trent Dilfer or Vinny or Chad Pennington. He isn't going to dink and dunk his way down the field and not necessarily because he can't but because this offense can't avoid drive killing mistakes for long. The dink and dunk approach means you have to nudge the ball forward in small increments so the drives typically involve more plays. Each play is another opportunity for us to miss a block or get hit with a penalty be it a personal foul or a hold. With this line, we are not able to overcome those kinds of setbacks. Better to try and hit some long balls on first down. They don't have to be 50 yarders every time but we do need to start stretching the defense. I know, I know, the line stinks and we will probably give up lots of sacks but heck, playing the power game with short passes has led to plenty of sacks anyway. That style has probably kept these games close, allowing the defense to play its game by avoiding turnovers that give up the short field. The problem is though that we just aren't scoring. Sure the game is close but we are losing just the same. We need to stop playing scared and let Drew try and do what he is best at, going long. You would be amazed at how much the run game will open up a little if you start hitting a few 15 and 20 yard tosses early in the game. Lee Evans and Eric Moulds could be one scary pair for a defense to have to deal with. Lets use them for goodness sakes. I think the Bledsoe critics may be the authors of their own doom. By complaining about his shortcomings so much, we have robbed him and the team of what he does well. We have the guy playing scared, throwing only when there is no choice and everybody, including the defense, knows it. No defense in this league is so bad that you can basically tell them you are running or passing ahead of time and expect that they will not be able to stop you. Let Drew crank it. How much more evidence do we need that he can still drop the ball on a dime from 50 yards? That is why we brought him in to town, because of that great long ball arm of his, not to have him imitate Trent Dilfer.

The press has already vetted this, Kerry was right. This is really kind of a silly debate. The issue should be whether Kerry is right as far as the number of small businesses effected by his plan. The Wall Street Journal, not exactly a pro-left rag, sided with Kerry on this. There is plenty to legitimately complain about when it comes to both candidates. I don't know why they each seem to think it is necessary to inflate and exagerate so much.

....screw the "power running game" and start tossing that thing around. We have some talent at wideout and the bottom line is this offense is not good enough to nudge it down the field 4 yards at a time, they make too many mistakes. This team is better off going for the long ball. We might be able to go 4 or 5 plays without a disaster but that is it. We can't sustain a long drive given our error prone ways. Given enough plays on a long drive we will blow a block, get hit with a hold or PF or take a bad sack sooner or later that leads to a punt. What we can do is get down field, Drew still has the arm and we have some speed and size at WR, lets cut out the dives for -2 yards on first down. A few stats to ponder: We ran the ball on first down 12 times for a lousy 34 yards, less than 3 per carry. We threw the ball on first down 13 times prior to the very last drive and completed 11 for 138 yards and two TD's plus, Drew pulled one down and started to run and ended up pitching to Henry for 13 yards. Add that in and we had 151 yards when we called a pass play on first down. Both TD passes were on first down. Drew was essentially 11 for 12 on first down passes for 138 and 2 TD's. Maybe we should stop trying to turn Drew into Vinny Testaverde, throwing rarely and only when we have to and the whole stadium knows it and instead let him do what he does best, throw that sucker down the field. Yeah, I know, the "wisdom" here is that Drew stinks and everything that goes on with this team is his fault. Of course, that kind of crap is hard to sell after a game like that. You can't pin much on Drew on this one. This guy throws the long ball as good or better than any QB in this league. We all know he isn't very reliable on the short stuff. Why then are we not playing to his strengths instead of his weaknesses? And don't give me that Gilbride crap where he was trying to turn Drew into Warren Moon tossing 2 yarders in the run and shoot. I am all for running the ball when we are moving it on the ground but when it is clear the other team is risking getting burned in the air to try and stop Henry, we need to let Drew air it out instead of waiting until we are down 13 in the fourth. As soon as Mularkey took the shackles off the offense and started slinging it, we lit it up. Problem was, it was too late. Like it or not, Drew is our QB this year, there is no other viable choice so why not let him try to do his stuff? Give him a chance to answer his critics by showing that he still has the gun for any WR that can get open deep and any offense that give him just enough time to launch it. What the !#$!@#$ did we draft Lee Evans for and why do we pay Drew and Moulds that kind of jack if all we are going to do is dive left and right with Henry? How many losses do we have to pile up running the ball into the dirt before maybe, just maybe we try something different?

He didn't answer the question anyway so why are you whining? Fact is, both of them pretty much ignored the question they were asked and just answered the one they wish the were asked. And you know whose fault that is? Ours. You see, if they actually had a frank discussion, we would make them pay for it by using every word we possibly could to hang them for daring to say anything besides their stump speech.

No that is not the question and that is not what Kerry implied. Do you think he was trying to score some point over the bare fact that he owned a timber company? Of course not. What would be gained by that? The issue being debated was how Kerry's economic plan would effect small businesses. The Bushies claim it would raise taxes on X amount of small businesses but that depends on how you define "small businesses". Kerry was pointing out that the way they define it, Bush himself is a "small business" because he owned a small piece of a timber company. That artificially and misleadingly inflates the numbers used by the President. Ironically, the joke the President was trying to make, that having a such a small piece of a timber company hardly means he owns the company, was exactly Kerry's point. Owning such a small piece of a company doesn't make him a small business owner but that is the only way you get the ridiculous numbers Bush is using. Even the Wall Street Journal is on record that the Bush numbers on this issue are bogus. Lies, damn lies and statistics.

They do want us out but that is not their ultimate goal, it is a step on the way. The thing is, neither Kerry nor Bush nor any other American President is going to completely pack up and leave the middle east. We are not just talking about Iraq here. Do you think that they think that simply by Kerry taking office the US is going to abandon Israel or Saudi Arabia or even Kuwait? These people are not idiots and they are not crazy. We can't and won't leave the middle east because of the oil. As for Israel, based on moral and political grounds, we are never going to up and leave them high and dry and it doesn't matter who is in the White House. Your argument, as I understand it, is basically that they want us out and they think Kerry will leave so therefore they want Kerry. I disagree with the second assumption that they think Kerry will leave. I know the right in this country thinks that or at least pushes that idea as part of their campaign against Kerry. Fact is though, that is seriously flawed thinking unless you seriously think that Kerry would abandon Israel and allow the most important commodity in the world and the largest deposits of that commodity to fall into the hands of terrorists. Seriously, do you think that is what is in Kerry's plan?!?!?! Its ridiculous. Not your argument but the assumption that Kerry would really be any less dedicated to protecting the world's largest known deposits of oil and Israel than any other President. OBL wants us out but he knows that is not going to happen based on an election result. To make that happen he has to leave us no choice and the only way to do that is to kill us, and kill us, and kill us, and kill us some more. To do that, he needs resources: soldiers, weapons and cash. He needs suicide troops by the boatloads. To get what he needs, he has to unite as many muslims as he can. At this point, Bush is probably the most hated man on the planet by muslims in the middle east. He is a great catalyst for them. That fact that his father already made war on Islam is perfect for their propaganda. To paint us convincingly as the great enemy of all Islam, he has to isolate us from the rest of the world so that we become a singularity, an anomaly of anti-muslim evil. That easily explains the concentration of attacks on our allies. He is exploiting the weak bonds holding this coalition, such as it is, together. None of us know what OBL is thinking. Also, he is not the only terrorist in the world. There is no reason to suspect that all terrorists hold the same opinion on who they would like to see win this election. I think the idea that the terrorists would want one or the other to win is campaign rhetoric of the worst kind that exploits the tragedy of terrorism and our fears of the future. I have never pushed an argument on this board that Bush is the favorite candidate among the world's miscreants. I have only responded with an argument that in fact that could be so, in response to others trying to tar Kerry with those feathers. I don't care if they want Bush or if they want Kerry. We will decide what is in our best interests and vote accordingly and as for what terrorists think, lets all give them a collective :I starred in Brokeback Mountain: by not falling in to this kind of discussion.

I do not beleive we have not had an attack on American soil because we have prevented them, I think they have chosen, for now, not to attack us here. They have been very, very active elsewhere. I posted a long list not so long ago of all the AQ attacks since 9/11. They have been frightfully effective since 9/11. I do not at all believe for a moment that they have been serioulsy weakened.

Actually OG, the point was to mock the whole idea of characterizing either candidate as being "tougher" than the other. "Debonair"? "Delusional maybe but not "debonair". Seriously, I hear a lot about how "tough" Bush is. That rich wuss wouldn't have lasted a minute in my neighborhood.

Why do you think the terrorists don't want Bush to remain president? I think a compelling argument could be made that the very opposite is true. If they are worried about there being a "tough" President, then they might consider that the frat brat, cheer leader who got a cushie stateside gig to stay out of Viet Nam is maybe not as tough as the hockey playing, top student who volunteered to serve and actually saw combat in Viet Nam. Just a thought. If your goal is to unite all Arabs in one jihadist movement you need to have someone who is so hated through out the middle east that all Arabs will put aside their differences and unite to fight that foe. Who do you think is more hated in the middle east right now, Bush or Kerry? Has the average Iraqi even heard of Kerry? Bin Laden will have a lot easier time convincing the Arab world that America is on a crusade against Islam if Bush is elected. The propaganda value to him of the fact that Bush's father already ran one war "against Islam" before the son started a second one is priceless. I don't deny that a compelling argument could be made the other way as well. I just think that folks on the right think that Bush would be more effective in fighting the war on terror and assume that the terrorists agree with them. There are those that believe that Kerry would be much more effective in the war on terror and so think the opposite. Both are making assumptions that only make sense if you accept their premise that their candidate is the better one to fight terror. Of course, that premise is a bias, not a fact.

What are you talking about? Are you talking about civil or criminal lawyers? If civil, are you just upset about plaintiff's counsel considering race when selecting a jury or defense counsel as well? If criminal, are you talking about jury selection and if so, are you just as concerned with the prosecutor using race as an indicator of bias? If not jury selection, how are lawyers using "predatory racial...bias[?!]" whatever that is? What are you talking about when you refer to "educational bias"?

If not for us scum suckers they would be riding to work in a Pinto with no seat belts and giving birth to babies deformed by thalidomide. It is like it is with cops, they don't like ya 'till they need ya.

I hope you are wrong but given what they did in Madrid, I am not very confident. There are some things that might argue against an attack. OBL believes that we are responsible for what our government does since we are a democracy. This is our first chance to change our government since 9/11 so he might be waiting to see what we do and if there is a change, see what the new President does in the middle east. Also, he seemingly is concentrating on separating us from our allies hence the attack on Spain that caused them to withdraw. He is smart enough to know that an "ally" who only sends a handful of non-military advisors or troops, is not really all that enthusiastic about being there. Those allies can be convinced to leave by an attack since they aren't all that interested in being there to begin with. Again, that made the attack on Spain all that much more logical. He is hitting us where we are soft which is the weak bonds holding the coalition, such as it is, together. Attacking civilians is still a problem for AQ in selling their crap to fellow muslims. They can kill Americans easily enough now that we are in Iraq so there is no need to go after civilian targets in the US. There are plenty of Americans close by in Iraq. I think there is reason to believe that they aren't all that certain what the reaction of the voters in the US would be to another attack on US soil. Not knowing how we would react, any attack they did could backfire on them. It could have the opposite effect they intend. They may know a lot of things but one thing I am sure they don't really understand is how Americans think and react to things. People thinking for themselves in a democracy is just not something they have any experience with. If that is true, it would make more sense for them to just not get involved with the US election. They might have concluded that since anything they do might backfire, better to do nothing in the US until after the election. Just as compelling an argument could be made for them to attack before November 2, I know. I am arguing the other way because it will make it easier for me to sleep.