Brandon

If they're lucky.

Big shocker there. Thank you, Ralph, for making it quite obvious that you don't give a damn about winning games for the fans of this football team. As long as ticket sales are good, all is right with the world, apparently. I hate this team's front office.

For my part, I was *extremely* annoyed that the Bills didn't draft one of the better TE prospects last year. Bennett would have been a good selection for them, too. Hopefully they won't make that same mistake again this year with another fairly good crop of players at the position. I'm not getting my hopes up, however.

I agree. People got WAY too caught up with height last year, including the front office, and it was pretty obvious early on that the Bills wouldn't even consider anyone under 6ft tall. All that really matters is if a WR is actually *good*. I thought that they should've drafted Sweed once Thomas was off the board last year, and neither one has done anything, but a player I really liked was Donnie Avery. I knew they would have no interest in drafting him due to his height, however (of course, the Rams picked him before the Bills were on the board in R2 anyway).

Absolutely. Defensive backs in a glorified prevent scheme win championships, baby! Almost everyone knows this and thankfully, its something that the great Jauron understands as well.

That draft sucks. Everyone knows that the Bills aren't going to take a CB in R1. They're going to do that in R2. At 11, they're obviously going take a safety. You can never have enough good defensive backs, afterall.

No, I'm simply pointing out the reality that faces the Bills' front office if they choose to dump this coaching staff. They have an aging defense line (and all three of the DEs may well be washed up) and they need at least some help at LB and in the secondary. The results that they're getting from this group aren't spectacular, either. They're quite ordinary. If there's a coaching change, the Bills are going to have to decide whether its in their best long term interests to maintain the current defensive schemes or not. That's not to say that they should *definitely* make the switch, but its something they need to consider.

LMFAO. He's 149-90 in the regular season, has won 9 division championships, one Super Bowl and has a 12-9 playoff record. Underachieving teams my ass. I wish the Bills would underachieve like that for about the next 20 years.

I don't know how much it really sets them back. They're going to need a major DL overhaul in a year or two, anyway. Schobel and Denney will both be 32 next year, Stroud 31, and Kelsay 30. Stroud may be around for a while, but the three DEs look like they're just about done. They need another LB if Crowell isn't retained. The defensive backfield may or may not be in decent shape. How many more good seasons does McGee have left in him? Is Whitner the answer at SS? Do the Bills have a FS on the roster? Given all of that, I think the Bills need to seriously question whether their current defensive schemes are worth maintaining or whether they need to consider making major changes to how they play on that side of the ball.

Forget winning in the playoffs, at least for now. This team needs to worry more about actually being decent for a change. Consider that he's 65 years old. He's probably not going to be with the Bills for more than 5 or 6 seasons even if by some chance he does become their next coach. Given that, he would be one of the better choices out there to right the ship and help turn this team back into a winner during the regular season and into a playoff contender. By the time this team has stabilized, Marty will probably be looking to retire and the Bills will have the opportunity to roll the dice on a new head coach if they're not satisfied with Marty's ability to produce playoff wins.

For my part, I'd like to see the 4-3 scrapped altogether and the Bills go back to using the 3-4 as their base defense. Sure, they'd need to overhaul their DL, but guess what? We already need to do that. There'd be no better opportunity to make the switch than we have right now.

I'd have to disagree with your disagreement. If you look at Elway's career, it wasn't until Denver brought in Mike Shanahan that he realized his potential. Prior to that, he was still a good QB, but there were also plenty of instances where he stunk up the field for the first 50 minutes of the game (although the donks won a lot of those games due to his last minute heroics). If you look at the season before Shanahan arrived, for example, Elway threw 10 TDs and 17 INTs (his 10th year in the league). To that point, he'd only broken the 20 TD pass mark once and had thrown as many INTs as TDs for his career. The reason that the Bills don't have consistent QBing is because they're poorly coached offensively and have a lack of talent in certain areas of their offense. I'm not saying that Edwards is a great QB, but he (and the rest of the QBs of the last 10 years) would look a hell of a lot better if they'd give them more help.

The last thing this team needs to do is make another big investment at QB. They've ruined about 10 of them since Kelly retired. The problems with this offense are the lack of quality coaching, a poor interior OL, and the lack of a quality 2nd WR and TE. Those are the same problems this team has had for a decade. If the Bills would work on solving those problems once in a while, their QBs might actually look halfway decent. As it stands, you could put John Elway back there and he'd play like sh**.

Unless there are major, positive changes to this team, particularly on offense, I'd put them at about 4-12 against that schedule. They should beat KC and Cleveland and will probably steal 2-3 more wins against teams such as the Jets, Jaguars, Falcons, Bucs, Saints and Panthers. I'm not convinced that some of those teams are really as good as they've looked this season. Then again, I know the Bills aren't very good, either.

Its not so much a theory of what does or does not make a good head coach, but merely what I expect the Bills to do if Jauron is fired. I think its very likely that they'll bring in someone with a background on offense to replace him.

If I had to guess, the Bills' next head coach will have a background on offense, not defense, assuming that Jauron is fired. They've been too terrible for too long on that side of the ball and with all of the talk centering on replacing Schonert, it seems pretty clear that indeed, that's the side that the front office is most unhappy with right now.

It did, but the improvement was from miserable to merely bad. That's like saying that Robert Royal is an improvement over Lonnie Johnson. Technically, its true, but its still pretty awful. They still haven't finished better than 25th in total offense for the last six seasons in a row, and they've been 30th, 30th and 25th in the last three under Jauron.

25th in the NFL on offense is a bad showing? Hell, not according to Dick. That's the 3rd best season in his 8 year head coaching career and only slightly behind his 2nd best showing of 23rd. This offense will not get better with a new OC. The problem starts at the top with the ultra-conservative head coach.

Chase Coffman probably won't go until R3, so I think you have little to fear if he's the player they want at the position. As far as taking a TE high, it always depends upon the player in question and the other players available. Looking back on the 1997 draft, I imagine that most of the 12 teams drafting ahead of the Chiefs that year wished they'd picked Tony Gonzales instead.

That's more or less how I see it. I'm not going to complain much if they take one at 11, but I'm not really sold on this year's DE class, either. That's not to say that I'm definitely going to be upset if they pick one, but I don't think *any* of them will make much of an immediate impact and I don't think any of them will be truly great. Ideally, I'd like to see them dump Jauron and bring in a coach who will install the 3-4 so we don't feel compelled to draft one of these guys. I think we'd be better off on all counts, anyway. On the other hand, like you, I think Jermaine Gresham is going to be an elite player in the NFL and even though it would cause mass whining amongst the fanbase, I'd be very, very happy if they picked him at 11.

Not really. The Bills have been 7-9 for three straight seasons. On that basis alone, Jauron deserves to lose his job. Add in the strengthening of this division, a tougher schedule, and Jauron's 2-8 finish this year, it seems to me that a 3-4 win season is hardly out of the question for this team in '09.

Possibly. Lets not forget that the Lions were 7-9 last season. Things can go south for a poorly coached team with talent issues in a hurry. I doubt the Bills are going to go 0-16 next year, but I can see them going 3-13 or 4-12 with a poor offseason this year rather easily.

Myself, I would very reluctantly look to the DE position and if I were picking, it would probably be Everette Brown or possibly Greg Hardy. I like to see at least two strong seasons back to back of 10+ sacks for a DE, and neither of them have that. In the absence of that, Brown has had the better 2008 season, so I'd lean towards him. Orakpo? I'm going to have to watch his bowl game, but a senior DE with 23 career sacks doesn't immediately impress me a heck of a lot. Admittedly, I've watched far less college football this season than I usually do, and I'm basing that largely on the numbers, but still. In any event, the DE position is one of the riskiest to draft high, IMO, probably second only to QB, and the Bills had better put in extra homework on the guy they select (and I'm all but certain they're going to pick a 1st round DE).

Add up the records of the opponents that the Bills and 49ers played. The 49ers did indeed have a weaker schedule. They draft 10th, the Bills 11th.

If he's back, I doubt I'll bother with them anymore. As I've said before, I do not mind a losing team as long as they're making real attempts to improve. That said, if a career loser coach like Jauron stays, I think its a clear sign that the front office and ownership has things on its mind besides winning, and I'm not going to waste my time with that. I've been a diehard Bills fan for 20 years, but the last couple of years, this team has ruined football season for me. Its almost to the point where they're turning me off to the sport completely, so yes, I'm very much at my breaking point with them.