AKC

Whatever their feelings today might be, taking the pressure of the undefeated season away- and the ability to rest players from this point forward, bodes in a most positive way towards their chances of success in the post season. This flies directly in the face of the reason the Patsy Trollscum who started this string hoped this would open up some opportunity for him to once again, as he has in 2/3rds of his 7000 posts, tell us how much better his QB is than Manning. Once again a bottom feeder sucks a just little too hard ;-)

Exposed as the lying sack of crap Troll you are- just in time for Christmas!

There's the old Duck adage that applies- If you've made thousands of negative posts, with 65% of them making some reference to former Bill's QBs, you're likely to be a troll. And if you've done the above PLUS not a single poster here can verify that you've ever hooked up with anyone from the board, be it at a game or a bar or some other get together, the likelihood of you being a troll have just reached terminal velocity. Rico=Pats Troll

OK, you acknowledge that you've never been to a TSW tailgate before; have you ever attended a Bill's game with any regular of TSW or even watched a game in a sports bar with anyone who is known to actually be a Bill's fan from this forum?

Crickets...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Alger Hiss. And he insists no one with the thousands of posts that you have deriding our team could be anything but a troll. Entertain Mr. Hiss for a moment- have you ever been to a TSW tailgate?

Of course, as a Pats troll's second mate you'd have to "select" some negative BS since you aren't a Bill's fan at all, merely a troll with an alias. Of all the awesome options in the great history of the Bills, you not only open the post but come up with some inconsequential negative BS with no value in the history of our franchise- Go figure ;-)

How's Oregon using him? While we obvioulsy need another starting quality gap-splitting DT if Adams moves on and we assume Edwards is capable of spelling a starter on passing downs, our greatest need remains for a 2 gap guy to hold the point of attack. The Gray defense excels with two DTs of contrary disciplines, you could argue Edwards could play the 1 gap role but it still leaves us without the rock to his side.

With the coverage and awards he picked up this season he almost surely made the correct decision in declaring early for the draft, but the thing to consider is just how fast his star has risen.. I have no doubt that our management team realizes the catastrophic misjudgements they made in the past offseason at DT, and if there's anyone worthy of tour 1st round pick at the position it'll be automatic that he'll be drafted by us. The question of whether it's the youngster from Oregon will make interesting conjecture leading up to the draft. If his speed lives up to its hype at the Combine he could very well be a top 3 or 4 pick since he's ineligible for the Senior Bowl and he consequently can't be graded in that setting, instead he'll probably end up at the East West Shrine. The good news about the situation regarding him is that if it develops as outlined above it might very well lead to the best NFL prospect in the draft being available to the 2nd or maybe even 3rd team drafting a DT this off-season. Even though the Pac 10 has some mighty talent these days it's important to remember they've also given us fast rising draft hypes like Ryan Leaf. I'm making no supposition about the kid's talent because I haven't seen him play, but his rise could lead to making some team very lucky in where he ends up being picked.

Excuse me Mr. Polian, have you heard the one about the.................

I think that's fair- over time there are enough stories to assume Ralph is less hands off than is assumed by the general fan populace. Ralph has been good keeping his "CEO Syndrome" from spilling out into the media too often, but there is enough of a body of instances to conclude it's going on.

No doubt, after assembling a corps of selfless and sure-handed WRs he's probaby itching to bring in an overrated has-been with inconsistent hands!

Why speak of the best football player on our roster when it's so much more fun to debate our loyalty to those far better compensated?

Perhaps it's no "coincidence" that mas Lee Evans and no mas Eric Moulds gets it's first full-time look at home, against a wounded divisional secondary. A win by the young'uns might go far in creating a postive outlook for the offensive unit going into the 2006 season.

There are 147 Wideouts in the NFL with a better Yards Per Catch average than Eric Moulds, yet he's the 4th highest paid Wide Receiver in football. Nostaligia is the single biggest cap killer, even surpassing poor draft and FA decisions.

You might chase Danny Duckhorn's former winemaker Tom Rinaldi over to the new Provenance property in Rutherford- you'll find he's got an especially great touch with Rhone varietals.

The only stat in which Moulds breaks into the top 5 anymore is his annual salary and amortized bonus. He right now is among Moss, Owens and Harrison as a top 4 WR in the league- in salary only of course. If we were talking about the top 35 money you suggest by the players on your list this discussion could be substantially different.

I don't necessarily see it as dark as this- Eric Moulds has at his very best been an "inconsistent" top receiver in the NFL. These days he's clearly fallen from the "top" category yet he remains the same old inconsistent Eric Moulds we've paid out the type of money earned by the consistent WRs around the league. Take his draft-mate Marvin Harrison. Harrison has built a career on making the tough grabs we know Eric makes on many occasions but Marvin also has long spans over which he also catches EVERY ball thrown his way he's supposed to catch. I can't think of as much as a 6 game span over Eric's career wherein he's caught "every ball" he should have come up with; Harrison on the other hand goes stretches like 30-40 games. Eric has both won and lost games as a WR, Marvin Harrison has really only been on the "W" side of that equation. All the things Eric has been able to bring over the years have always been balanced by his attention lapses, and I believe in the NFL of the new millenium the simple difference between the good offenses and the bad ones is which offenses can take advantage of more opportunites. Teams who have brought in RELIABLE hands guys are winning more often than the Superstar Wideout teams like the Raiders. We suffer from two "unrealiable" hands guys in Moulds and Reed, and this in my mind has had as much to do with our O struggles this year as any other dynamic save our "learnin'" period for our new QB. I'm thankful we have Lee Evans, a guy who appears to have VERY reliable hands, and if ever there could be a case of addtion by subtraction it might be this off-season with a good complement being added on the other side of Lee and one very substantial cap hit being softened with a trade of our "superstar" WR.

While I'm no fan of the inmates running the asylum, to be fair to Sam Adams he has been asked to do things that don't fit his talent set perfectly, mainly looking for him to be a line anchor when he's not good at it and sacrificing his exceptional one-gap skills as a result. Sam is one of the best penetrators in the middle in the game but that skill in our D is ony valuable in our basic running D if you have a complementary 2-gap lineman to play to his side, and without rotational help to spell him int he run D his pass down efectiveness is subject to the fatigue of playing every down. Adams might be fighting a losing battle, but the cause was the team foolishly entering the season shy at the very minimum one more quality DT and considering the limitation of Ron Edwards more realistically shy 2 DTs. I'm going to hold back from laying all the blame on Big Sam when #1 he's the ONLY starting quality DT on our roster and the warning signs going into the season were so evident yet Donahoe wildly misjudged the talent- or perhaps lack of talent- he had signed up at the position.

As awful a taste as '05 will leave in my mouth due to the defensive personnel misteps, we can remedy our ills very quickly with attention to our trouble spots. There's as much talent on this team as there is on most of the contenders this year, it's simply the distribution of that talent that has hurt us along with poor coaching on the sidelines. Both of these can be corrected in a hurry, if Ralph insists in it.

When was the last time you enjoyed a Salt Lick? Dickel is on the menu. Labatt's Blue buckets are a good deal.

This Sunday a contingent of TSW rivaling any table at the Mos Eisley Cantina will assemble for the NE game at Del's Saloon in West Los Angeles at 9:00 a.m. to commiserate our collective hangovers, both football and Christmas Party induced. Western New York "treats" are in transit. First place door prize will include the privilege of starting the Jet's game at Left Offensive Guard. Mapquest the location at: 12238 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025, it's a block west of Bundy. Call me if you have any questions- (310) 963-7640

Peters had a better game when facing Jason Taylor than a lot of "real" OTs around the league, and Gandy is one of the best cost/performance ratio LTs in the league. To me it makes no football sense in the Cap era to replace Gandy when we have true weaknesses elsewhere; Gandy is arguably a major strength considering he uses minimal cap space. Williams is the opposite end of that argument and no bench warmer can eat ths space he would consume next year so he should expect a big Sayonara. The caveat to this though is that I expect he'll end up somewhere on a productive line for many years to come and become one of those "we should have never let him..." names, but the reality is we MUST let him move on. Benny stinks and will be joining Big Mike in the Bon Voyage party. Conjures up images of those two in a canoe ;-) That leaves us with a OG spot to fill (once again!) AFAIC. Conditioning could be some factor in the offensive ineptitude, but it doesn't answer the question of the fast drop-off after the first quarter. Even a slob on an OLineman (see Benny Anderson) can get 2 quarters our of his carcass. Our team fades after the first 15 minutes. It's coaching, coaching, coaching. We can script a great opening quarter but when asked to actually COACH as the game unfolds we're getting beat. No matter if some small percentage is conditioning and some other small percentage is talent, the reality is borne out by the performance drop every 15 minutes- the VAST majority of the offensive problem on this team is the offensive coaching. The most objective measure we have is "how does our team do when measured exactly in point production against the other teams in the league?" We have only 6 teams better then us after 15 minutes, but 21 better during the second 30 minutes, and 29 better in the third quarter- we fall to dead last in the league for the 15 minutes prior to the final whistle. This isn't a rating system, it's not a subjective and elusive number with a million variables- it is the absolutely objective measure of what our team does in direct, head to head comparisons with the other 31 teams in the NFL.

If you look at rosters like Indy, there are 5 guys in their DT rotation, any of whom would be an instant starter on our team. We have lesser talent at the top of the depth chart and laughable talent on the bottom. The best personnel staffs around the league have built large, high quality rotations in their interior- the Bill's have neglected one of the absolute key positions in the modern game. It's time to change this.

I'm not sure Anderson and Bannon would crack the USC starting lineup.