Grant

Why do you think they call them beat reporters? Anyway, it always intrigues me that those who praise the Bills are respected jouranlists and those who criticize the Bills are hacks. Without fail.

Williams' time was up here. I'm not saying it wasn't. Firing (well, "not renewing") him was the right move. By his final year here, he had completely lost the team. But it's still going to suck when he's able to be successful elsewhere. We're Buffalo Bills: Training Ground for Coaches-to-Be.

The line was one of our biggest problems when Donahoe took over. It's one of our biggest problems now. When was he going to take care of it?!

It's gonna be pretty embarassing if Williams goes on to be a successful head coach with some other team.

I bet the Pats beat the Colts, should they play. But we'll see.

Would this be a "black list"?

Let's play the Donahoe Limbo! How far backwards will you have to bend to portray his work here positively? I find this to be a rather dubious claim. I don't think the Bills have been the worst in the Draft over Donahoe's reign, but they absolutely haven't been in the top 10 - much less the top 5, are you crazy? We had a good 2001 draft (picks: 12 / current starters: 2 / starting-worthy: 4), an embarassingly abysmal 2002 draft (picks: 10 / current starters 0 /starting-worthy: 1), a decent 2003 draft (picks: 8 / starters: 4 / starting-worthy: 4) and it's too early to judge with 04 and 05 although things, at this point, look iffy. All of those starters or players that could start were taken in the first 3 rounds, except Terrence McGee who was a fourth-rounder. The markings of a "good" draft is the ability to find diamonds-in-the-rough in the later rounds. A general manager should be able to find starters in the first three rounds; that's not praise-worthy. Next, you add in some good moves from Donahoe's term. I'll only bring up what I find questionable. These acquisitions are certainly worthy of praise. Although, a cynic could argue that these moves were made necessary by poor drafting. But I'll give it to you. Wait, I thought we were blaming the offensive line for our troubles this year. Gandy, Teague, Villarial were good moves? Maybe your point is that since we were able to get them cheap and they started, that's good value. This is iffy. We certainly didn't steal McGahee as he was picked in the late first round where he was expected to go and at the time running back was not a concern. We had a solid, if unspectactular, back in Henry and glaring offensive line concerns. G Eric Steinbach went shortly after in the beginning of the 2nd round and has been quite good for them. This must be one of those "potential" upgrades because so far Losman hasn't even been as competent as Rob Johnson. And Holcomb has certainly been no Flutie. Settle down, you dirty player you. I don't know how you typed this one out without snickering. Even forgetting that Mike Williams went 4th overall, he isn't starting on our team anymore. He lost his spot to an undrafted tight end. How embarassing is that? Not to mention he can't stay healthy for more than three minutes. I've seen the counter-argument that Williams should be ignored from Donahoe's resume because "everyone" thought Williams was a good pick at number four, and besides, who else would we have taken? Well, I think that's a stupid argument. For one, we should expect our General Manager to be a little more competent than Peter King of Sports Illustrated, okay? That's why he gets the big bucks. Secondly, if Donahoe wasn't convinced that Williams would be a good player, you need to trade down. Maybe he wouldn't have found a trading partner, but as far as we know he didn't even try. And that means it was a bad move because there were questions pre-draft about his motivation and health but we took him anyway at number four and gave him a huge contract. Suffering through 3 years (oh, sorry, there were only 2 according to your "non-spin" version) of stupid game day decisions seems like a harm and a foul to me. 28-36 is a nice spin. "Not good, not horrible" is another friendly phrase. It makes it sound like we saw some progress. What a fuzzy thought. "Cap hell" is an excuse, as is "league's toughest division." After 5 years, it's ridiculous to need to have to bend so far backwards to make that time not seem unbearable. And your wheel has been nice and quiet!

Would this pounding be HAMMER07-TIME?

When they're here, they're awesome! When they leave, they're stupid bastards!

Rarrr! Ex-Bill! We hate! Rarrr!

We are at his mercy!

One thing is for sure. With Marv at the top, the Bills suddenly regained some class.

I blame bad jokes.

The fact that we're having this discussion isn't a plus for Losman. And we're not talking about one article or one instance. We've heard some negative rumblings about Losman's attitude before the draft, then after he was drafted from some ex-team mates, and last year with the leg incident and then this year with Moulds' unhappiness and some other anonymous sources citing discontent with Losman. I don't think sports writers are just making this up. I don't think everyone is misunderstanding one another. And I don't think the comments are as innocent as Kelly the Dog is portraying them as. Pro athletes are taught every year not to ever publicly reveal what they're really thinking. You have to read between the lines. I can't believe that when players are saying that "no one thinks Losman is ready" that they mean it in an "aw, shucks" kind of way. Otherwise it would have been phrased different - more positively or optimistically. But really, we can't really know what's going on. Everyone treats the NFL and especially this organization like it's more important than it is. It's a football team. A football team. A football team. I guess we'll find out sooner or later whether or not Losman's "cockiness" is more like Jim Kelly or Jim McMahon, though.

I think we ought to just blow the whole damn thing up. Really. We don't have many players or coaches on the current roster that I'd miss that much. Let's replace them with no-names and junkies and washed-up all-pro's. It would be a hell of a lot more fun than this season!

I say it's okay to be happy abut the firing. I also say it's okay to treat Donahoe's dismissal the same way we treated Rob Johnson's dismissal. I mean, why not? The "business side" of NFL football is as much of a game as what's on the field.

A candidate with any head coaching experience would be grand. And if we're going to go with someone green, can we at least make sure they've had some degree of success as a coordinator? I think we chose Mularkey just so the press could come up with (not-so)clever headlines.

My thinking is that this is less of a coaching issue and more of a testament to Willis' dedication. Which he hasn't shown much of, from my viewing. I wrote the following in a McGahee/Henry comparison thread, and rather than re-hash it, I'll simply repost it. It still applies.

Poor Jerry Gray. He really wants to be a head coach and certainly has the ambition but he seems to lack the flexibility (judging by how rarely we adjust well in the second half, defensively) to be an effective one. And he'll continue to be interviewed forever, but like Ted Cottrell, it will be mainly to fulfill league interviewing requirements.

We should just replace the team with those big blocky robots from 50's movies. Then we wouldn't have to worry about pesky things like human emotions such as anger and frustration.

I wonder how much spite it will take for TSW to just explode into a vat of hate. Let's find out!

Hey, alright. The only thing more popular than a thread with silly suggestions is the thread with silly condescension.

I'd be happy to help him FedEx his belongings to a new place, but he told me to save the postage.

I'm not someone who's going to pretend to be an expert on the Xs and Os. I can only tell you what I think from what I've seen on my TV and the few games I could attend in person. And that is that it seems like Travis Henry ran hard on every down. In our 3-13 season when he was a rookie, I remember being quite impressed in how he was one of the few players out there still giving it his all even though the team had nothing to play for. Willis McGahee, on the other hand, looks to me like he isn't always running as hard as he can. Maybe it's the injury, maybe it's because he doesn't like the cold, I don't know. I'm not going to pretend I know why he does things, I can only observe what he's done, okay? And to say that the offensive line for Henry was better than McGahee is absurd. Both have run behind poor lines and we all know this. Here's the bottom line (always have to include this on TSW ). You can say Henry wasn't worthy because of his off field problems or because he wasn't a good blocker or whatever else. Henry wasn't the second-coming of Thurman. But at this point Willis McGahee hasn't shown me to be an upgrade over Henry. Henry played with heart and I'll always respect a player that does that more than someone who supposedly has more talent but rarely shows it.

Damn him for contributing to a successful team, that m-f'er.