AKC

I heard the same thing from the game crew but I got different numbers from this source: Stats I haven't analyzed their acuracy but the detail seems consistent.

There are a number of objective assumptions that can be reached from our rank among NFL teams in performance by quarter. Patterns tell us much about the team we’re fielding and the conclusions IMO are clear. Here’s some critical patterns from the 2005 Buffalo Bills: Our defense has opened games allowing the 2nd least number of points in the league during the first quarter. We drop precipitously from there to 22nd in the second quarter before getting a halftime breather and rising to 14th in the third before falling all the way to 26th in the 4th quarter. Offensively we open up the first quarter as the 7th best scoring offense and then fall to 22nd, 30th and then last in fourth quarter scoring. The defensive numbers are an easy read- we open each half well and quickly fade. The rank of 2nd overall holding our opponents in the first quarter suggests good preparation during the week and a well designed strategy entering the game. The fall in the second quarter and fourth quarters is the classic symptom of personnel issues along the defensive line. The graph clearly supports the supposition that we simply don’t have the horses in the middle to carry a defense. And when you get tired in the middle it’s really of little consequence the quality of the balance of players in a defense, you will fail. See: Sunday. Offensively there’s an inverse outcome to having a poor middle- you’ll simply be a poor starting team out of the chute. Based upon all the squawking about our offensive line you’d expect our offense to be poor initially and throughout the game, the classic symptoms of a weak OLine. But that’s simply not what is happening to the 2005 Buffalo Bills. Our offense has come out after the Pledge of Allegience and scored more points than all but 6 other teams in the league during the first quarter. The reality is you simply don’t do this with a poor offensive line. There is much to learn about our offense in studying the scoring trends by quarter and seeing the steady plummeting from a top ten offense right down to last in the league by the fourth. Here’s some fair assumptions we can make based upon our offensive scoring graph: A) It tells us the background staff who handles “quality control” for the Bills are doing their jobs effectively. It also tells us the offensive coaching staff- under the approval of the head coach- are doing a good job in preparation. They’re devising strong opening game plans and getting the offensive players ready to play leading up to the game. B) Most importantly it tells us our offensive coaching and those they answer to are failing dreadfully on the sidelines on Sundays. They have the talent necessary to outperform 25 other offenses league-wide when having the advantage of all their research, film study and preparation; yet in real time their strategies each week are uncovered in our opening drives and opposing coaching staffs very simply are beating us mentally as they adjust to our game plan. We’re good enough physically to score with regularity, and this is proven by our rank as the 7th BEST OFFENSE IN THE NFL during the first quarter. Where we fail is when we have to do it over the course of the game. Fans will be begging for Tight Ends and OTs and other players on the offensive side of the ball this coming off-season, even though this would directly contradict the greatest needs of this team based upon our performance throughout games this season. If the team is to find any level of improvement in 2006 the focus on off-season personnel acquisitions must HEAVILY favor the defensive side of the ball. At the same time it will matter little if it is the same decision-makers on the sidelines and in the box calling the game- our offensive coaching is unquestionably failing us every week. Whether heads must roll is the biggest question, IMO at least one head must be sacrificed and responsibility for failing us should end up at the feet of the OC. Most good OC’s with a top 10 first quarter offense will end up with an even better rating by the 4th quarter, ours instead falls to the bottom of the league. The bodies are there- sure we can add some wrinkles and depth, but it’s the decisionmakers doing the substantial damage to this offense at this time. The stats simply show that we have a good enough OLine and balance of our O to compete- yet our coaches are failing us all over the course of the games on Sunday. New OC + big time defensive personnel additons= a better 2006.

It seems the other members of your little "Mensian" group here who insisted all would be well with our franchise the day we dumped Bledsoe have learned that once it has become absolutely crystal clear that you've wedged your foot 4 feet up your colon the most prudent reversal begins by hiding somewhere very dark while strategizing the removal of the foot. It's interersting that instead you've chosen a Darwinian strategy by continuing to publicly display your continued effort to see that foot reappear first through your oral cavity.

The old "Drew effect" that has his current team in first place in their very competitive football division, while we are chaffe in the weakest division in the league? Yeah, we wouldn't want any of THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went to a game there in maybe 2000 and we were among maybe 10 to 12 Bill's fans who showed up, in fact the bar was pretty much empty except for another 4 or 5 cheering other teams. No food available or any suggestions about where to snag a plate of wings, etc. It's possible the week was an organized "away' game or something but from all appearances it looked like a regular Sunday back then. From what is going on now it's safe to say there's been a dramatic improvement from the "old days".

It's dramatically better now than in the past.

The place you want to go is called "Blind Melons" and it's in Pacific Beach on the northwest side of San Diego. Tell Jimbo you're a Two Bills Drive contributor.

If you're talking about the second play of our last drive, IMO you're absolutely correct. In 4 of our previous drives on the day he had met similar situations the same way he had been before the benching by sliding sideways when the line was doing a decent job and he had a pocket to move into. Bailing on the pocket is this kid's (initial) Achille's heel- and it comes with a debilitating effect on your linemen if the slide out results in a poor outcome. But FINALLY after all this time I've been waiting for it to happen, and literally moments after I had just explained to J.P.'s biggest fan that the benching was due to the team hoping he would learn to step into the pocket- VIOLA!- there it was, J.P. looking like a veteran NFL QB by making a good if not spectacular play as a result of moving up into a protected pocket and in this case checking down a read. His big supporter turned to me and yelled "JUST LIKE THAT?", followed by my own "Just like that". Now if he can be convinced to show us the same thing 6 or 7 times every Sunday, the road ahead may begin to look a lot more favorable. Well, for our offense anyway ;-)

But isn't accuracy better represented in completion % rather than in skewing the marks for a passer by crediting him for the good feet and blocking of his receiving corps and the quality and philosophy of his OC and the level of defensive talent they face?

You've expanded from the simpler "passer rating" to offer an overall "quarterback rating" and your findings are interesting. I can see my original primary concern regarding uncontested passes behind the Line Of Scrimmage is in a very small way addressed, but I'd think the results would be far more accurate on the passing side if there was more weight given to the opportunity for a pass to be defensed in any of the ways it might be as the difficulty of the pass/time to develop increases. As it is, a few QBs are throwing 10%+ of their passes behind the line with absolutely no chance of the pass being defensed. To allow these as whole "completions", or in other words to suggest they are in any way equal to a 45 yard pass completion skews the results DRAMATICALLY in favor of the few QBs in the league who play in the behind the line type of passing attacks. For instance a guy who throws a lot of downfield balls yet is only putting 2 or 3% of his passes up in the indefensible areas behind the LOS suffers mightily in the ratings versus a Tom Brady type who is throwing 10% of his behind the line. You point out that simply removing RAC yardage from Brady's stats drops him well down the QB rating ladder, if you additionally eliminate or reduce the factor for all the indefensible passes he throws behind the line he ends up in the bottom half of the league among all starting QBs at about 18th or 19th in the NFL. And to be fair to a typically very good game manager like Brady, that intangible would allow him to gain 4 or 5 spots in the ratings against the whole of the league and put him at about 14th league-wide, probably a fair spot for a guy whose team has been hovering around .500 all season.

Were you but one the smell would remain, alas there is no truth to your words. Odd- no; pathetic- of course.

Your ecdysis in these wee hours compels me to ask whether you will now continue only under your Troll name of Hollywood Donahoe or whether your alternative "Rico" moniker still have breath of its own?

Liars are the prey of the scavenger- please try to recover some semblance of dignity before retiring at least one of your screen names.

How about in 1200 of the garbage posts you've put up on this board insisting Brady produces your household wine from his own urine! 4 picks- nice day of work for "the best ever"! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Things "slow" over on the Pat's board? GET USED TO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But leave your other posting name "Rico" here when you linevitably leave with your tail between your legs- we'll enjoy whipping you under either name!

"Saved" a franchise- BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So based upon your this idiocy post you and your alter ego Hollywood Donahoe are posting here tonight, you accept "passing yards" as a measure of productivity? I approve! Where we differ is doing it for one season versus doing it over a career- but flushing your dual identities out has been a real vomit festival :-p

There is only one thing more pathetic than a Pat's fan who has 1200 posts on a Bill's board prostelyzing the divinity of Tom Brady; Any "NFL" QB throwing 4 INTs in a game. Hey Bollywood- Perhaps you'd like to tell us all when the last time it was that the "horribly disgusting" Drew Bledsoe threw 4 INTs in a game? The clock is ticking..........................................................................

You can't possibly still be clinging to that same invisible kite of BledsoeHate that doesn't allow you to recognize that Bledsoe has better overall talents as they relate the the NFL game than the circus act? Last check between the two is that one has led one team to the Super Bowl and earned a Super Bowl ring with another by supporting the other guys on his team while the bloody knife of.......- yeah, none of that makes any difference to the deluded. The flaws in Bledsoe's game are very clear- but they are virtually invisible when measured against the flaws in the little guy's game. Do you refuse to acknowledge that there are only 7 QBs in NFL HISTORY who have more productive arms than Bledsoe's? At some point it'd be best to stop embarrasing the balance of your family even if your own BledsoeHate obsession has taken on Taxi-Driveresque proportions. But hey, I'm merely offering my own opinion- you should feel free to continue supporting the argument for extending euthanasia to include our underachieving youth !

The last time the NFL revised their QB rating formula was in 1972, long before the advent of the West Coast offense and its offspring. Under the current system a player like Mark Brunnell is rated higher over his career than Jim Kelly as a passer. I can't hide my bias in JK's favor, but please folks, is there ANYONE objective who thinks Mark Brunnell is a passer deserving of mention in the same breath with Jim Kelly? The two great flaws in the system as I see it are the reliance on pass attempts as the fundamental statistic upon which all the other indicators are measured, with the only weighting of those attempts being done on a yards gained basis. Ignoring the obvious flaw in yards gained versus yards thrown weighting, there is an even greater problem in ignoring defensible passes versus indefensible passes. We've watched more and more as big passer ratings have been built upon little backfield passes, in fact some of the top rated QBs of the modern era play in systems where they are throwing 5-10% of their passes behind the LOS. Throwing most behind the LOS passes offers the extreme and unfair advantage that that type of pass that has little or no chance of being defensed or interrupted in any way by the defense such as by interception, with pressure, lane interference or being tipped. The very first measure the NFL should undertake in revising passer ratings is removing those types of passes from the general passer rating and possibly creating a seperate category for behind the LOS passes so as to cease penalizing the QBs in the league who play in traditional downfield offenses. The second flaw is adding the Run After Catch yardage and crediting this in full measure for the QB, when the measure is supposed to be for passing. It's not like there's any mystery about the depth of passes today, there are plenty of services that measure this every week. When we're creating a measure for "passing", it seems disingenuous to convolute those numbers with the variables of whether a team has very good receivers at running after the catch or not. I can recognize that some QBs are better than others at delivering the ball to spots that allow for more RAC, but to credit the QB with the ensuing yardage gained on the ground is overall unfair to those with less swift receiving corps, etc. The bottom line is we're supposed to be rating the passer's ability, not the abilities of the WRs or the lack of quality of the defenses faced, and certainly not the passer's ability to throw uncontested passes in their own backfield. The measures that would result from adopting these revisions would never end the disagreements on the play of Quarterbacks, but it would go far in offering a more accurate measure of actual "passing" ability. In the quest for establishing a "passer rating" the league should take measures to stop diluting their formula with elements that offer major advantages to many lesser passers.

To be fair- these ARE the top 5 Quarterbacks in the NFL today based upon the rating system adopted by the league in 1973, which makes the order the Official NFL Rank of the League's Quarterbacks- in other words the NFL recognizes these 5 as the best at their position in the league this year ;-) And BTW- I've always hated the rating system because it is so generous to any quiche eater who leads the league in passes attempted behind the Line Of Scrimmage. For the long ball guys to get into the top 5 they have to be playing far better than their dink and dunk counterparts, all of whom have elevated ratings as a result of the sytems they play in.

Not to mention the name on your jersey ;-)

It's a league-wide phenomenon with roots in a couple of things, one being the thug mentality some owners have adopted after the success of the Raiders in exploiting two fans bases and unbelievably coming away stronger (from a merchandising standpoint) for it. Another thing is that disposable fan income is so much higher than in the early days of the franchise- you can ask the old-timers here about their first years after hitting 18 years old and the "game budget" that back them might have allowed for a third beer- if you were giving up something else during the week. These are not items that are likely to be fully correctable but there could be some measures taken to reduce their frequency.

You've been around here long enough to know TIP (time in pocket) has NO bearing on a QB's reputation ;-)

What makes it ironic is the fact that the media "darling" in NE only lost one player from his 2005 offensive Super Bowl roster during the off-season. But... but... but... or maybe more appropriately Butt.......Butt......Butt ;-) Where's old Bollywood Donahoe with his 1200 plus posts here demanding Bill's fans worship at the altar of the Piper's Son?

Since we're not including our own QB who rated a 62 yesterday, it's hard to add some shlub who left the field with a QB rating of 42. Odd what a little pressure does to guys without a top defense giving them extra offensive series!

These are the 5 top-rated Quarterbacks in the NFL this season, which one is the best?