AKC

Here's how you do it- add the final rankings based upon the established statistical measures used by the NFL of our opponents O's and D's and match the numbers against each other. You'll probably want a little help with the math though ;-)

Actually you're completely wrong. I opened with the fact that fans were ignoring the official stats that proved our offense faced a tougher year in '04 than our defense. There's zero weighting of the stats to that position.

The level of competition our offense faced was 29% more difficult based upon the statistical strength of our opponents using the factual and unmanipulated measures of total offense and defense as measured by the NFL. If you don't like it maybe Coach Tuesday can find you your own manipulated stats- just be careful because based on his Eric Moulds is gone next year.

Everything I said in that post is an absolute fact- what is it about facts that you find troublesome other than the fact that they don't support your flawed theory? Oh, and thanks for the admission!

You require manipulated stats to support your faulty conclusion at the onset- and now you desperately try to hide it behind false representations of my original post such as: "YOU are the one who insists that the D got a "free pass," Show me where at any time I said it or suggested it. Anything short of that will be an admission that you are willing to admit falsehoods to support your flawed argment.

And at what point in your life did it become absolutely clear that "my brain is bigger than yours" was an obvious disqualifier for your participation?

"Weighted" means manipulated, the stats from the NFL are pure listings of exactly where O's and D's ended up. Why can't you debate with unmanipulated facts?

Your perspective from the seats is far superior to what I can get from network coverage- mostly the short WR coverages. Moulds will get attention from his rep and there are games where he definitely was smothered, giving ops to Evans that Evans took advantage of. The thing that kills me about Eric is simply his dropping easy catches, and I believe it's infinitely fair to bring that flaw to the top since we're discussing flaws on the team. And I haven't said I want to dump Moulds, I've exclusively said that if you talk objectively about dumping the QB for the reasons obssessively given you MUST also consider whether the dollars/performance ratio of Moulds make him exactly the same type of liability.

I'd hardly call the official NFL stats "bogus", but coming from a guy who enlists stats that directly contradict all his positions maybe it should be no surprise! Here's the best defenses in the league-but I should inform you that they are the, "ahem"- bogus official NFL Stats! Official NFL Stats- Total Defense And for the bogus NFL Offensive stats: Official NFL Stats- Total Offense

Actually it made me recognize that the good teams have at least 2 good ones. I like Campbell a lot, but we fall off a precipice after that and obviously have no depth.

I'll be reprising the TBD Tijuana excursion on the Friday before the game. If you like cheap 3rd world strippers, cheap Tequila and cheap Mexican beer this might just be the one for you. BTW- this venture was hardly just a "singles" trip last time- in fact I'd say the Buffalo wives were the most generous tippers of the female entertainment!

Doesn't the fact that we have to carry 6 WRs and we use 2-5 at any time on any play support the notion that this is the biggest piece of dead weight on our roster?Since we both realize "restructuring" means he won't take a paycut, doesn't his falling value (45th league-wide) mean we should probably be discussing him as the starting point for improving our salary/performance ratio before we ever get to the QB?

Open competition in Pre-season is good for any team. Prima-Donnas are rarely good leaders. Aiken got their attention right now and due to his good work in other areas I'd expect to seen his continued increased time with our primary schemes on offense. He had one credited drop but a decent ratio of caught targets. One more off-season might be the breakout for him- he looks like a guy that might catch on with that additional time in offense and become a bigger contributor than anyone suspects. I think the TE situation is paramount to becomeing a good team. Campbell has become a very good player in our scheme but he'd be best sharing time with another good blocker who is a superior receiver. I haven;'t seen anything from Euhus that makes me believe he'll ever fit that role in the immediate future- he plays small and looks small, not good for this O and our reliance on the run. I agree Smith just doesn't have the feet to play the way they want our guys moving around, and Tucker is very marginal in the same area. I won't be surprised at all if we see some movement there in FA. Edwards was an enigman until this season, where Krumrie seemed to get in his head and raise his adrenaline level. He's not as sure a tackler as our straters and he still gets a little high sometimes, but he clearly can split gaps and beat doubles in the middle and there's not a lot of reserves who can do the same. The question is whether he can play a full time role and what effect that will have on our run stopping, plus the Tim Anderson question, a possibly promising rookie who saw almost no playing time this year.

Using your selected measure of the "Football Outsiders" analysis you'd play the #45 WR in the league but bench the #21 QB? Help me out here- do you believe in their stats or not, and if you don't why in the world are you quoting them?

Of course I agree our defense is a much better unit. And consistently I'm sure you'd agree that if you face a team like Pitt, with the #1 D in the league while having an offense in the middle of the field, it's likely your Defense walks off the field with an inordinate advantage in "how they looked" over your Offense that faced the best in the league. And the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from that is that if you face more good D's than O's (like we did in '04), your defense is liekly to appear better than it actually is while your offense is likely to appear not as good as it is, both on the field and in the books.

I think its pretty easy to make the more generic "It's is common knowledge throughout the league that if you get into the face OF ANY QUARTERBACK and shake him up a bit, his mechanics tend to go south.He starts throwing off his back foot, he loses his accuracy and his pocket presence. I saw it happen big time to Tom Brady against the hapless Fish when they played earlier in week 16. I saw it happen big time to Peyton Manning last year against the Pats when they got pressure on him. My own observation is that there's no QB who can play with constant, immediate pressure. The fact is that defense will apply [ressure to any QB if they believe the opposing line will give up the pressure. Our line in '03 was very accomodating to opposing defenses, while in '04 we became less generous, which arguably is the single thing that most led to our improvement in record. Now if we can continue to improve, especially to the point of a team like Indy- who regularly provide 4.5-5.5 second pockets for their starter, it really won't matter too much who we've got playing QB for us because there's many, (including one of the top 10 most productive passers in the history of the NFL), who would be capable of making us one very dangerous football offense. Any team can have an occasional breakdown. We've unfortunately had as many over the past two years as probably the top 5 offenses had combined over the same period. That's no decree in favor of Bledsoe, it's just a simple truth in the NFL that no QB can play effectively under the type of pressure we gave up in '03. As far as '04, there's more teams in the NFL than not who would have liked to have been as effective as we were on offense.

And of course it doesn't matter that the level of competition faced by the offense was far better than the same seen by the defense! I provide facts, you provide prose. Funny how that works!

Would you like me to turn the pages for you too?

Actually I've decided to take '05 off by just watching the ball so I can get better understanding of the concept of one player having some mystical and inordinate effect on a game being played by 11 guys on each side. I mean, why even bother wasting salary on these other unimportant guys where we could just have true QB challenges, with maybe 5 QBs going against 5 other QBs to find out who the best "most important" players are? And no- Moulds really pissed me off early this season with his continued loss of concentration on third downs, killing drives that were otherwise engineered and executed as they were drawn up. Statistically the best WRs in the game don't drop the number of balls Eric drops. We've seen Evans and it's clear for me that he already is a better "receiver" than Eric in the area of concentration. If we're talking about improving our team I believe Eric Moulds based upon his salary and status as the #1 WR, has got to be a primary topic of conversation when we talk about "flaws" with our money players. He might crest into my top 20- more likely he's a top 25-30 if I gave it a lot of thought.

The question of his improvement this past season is fundamental to evaluating any justification for carrying him again this coming season. And in doing that it raises this question for me- was his improvement due predominantly to some changes in coaching adn scheme- or was it due predominantly to our line getting a little bit better and him having a more equal stage to exhibit his talents in comparison to other QBs around the league? If I'm reading you correctly you fall in line with the former while I'm favoring the latter. I still look at the succesful guys with Drew's vertical assets around the league and it's impossible for me to ignore that they all have reliable TE targets- Manning has 2, Favre has a very good one, etc. I watched when we actually offered him a pocket this season (versus last) and he seems to make good use of it if it's there. He ran. He rolled out. Was it coaching and scheme? To some degree no doubt. But he also hasn't tossed for all these historical yards without some desirable talent, and at least this season some of that was evident. Is he the guy for us? That's the multi-million dollar question. Alternatives are the key- what we've seen of Losman makes it hard to imagine this kid has any chance of being prepared to lead ANY team to a serious playoff run next year. Matthews- the lost dimension of the big toss could diminish the one thing that's drawing all extra attention to Lee Evans. Is there a chance to bring someone else in? That's the only question in my mind. And while we're talking about personell I firmly believe that there are other high profile players who SHOULD be talked about the same way Drew is- somebody around the league will pay Jennings top 8 money- is he worth it to us or has he been a disappointment in the running game? Does Moulds restructuring make up for his lack of reliability or could the money he's scheduled to receive be used better? Is Ron Edwards ready to assume a full time roll, allowing Pat Williams to go elsewhere for premium money? We've both seen it happen over and over again in the NFL- fans and GMs putting an inordinate amount of faith in QB changes that leave the team no better or worse off than they were before- is it REALLY the big "problem" on a 9-7 team who are arguably improving going into '05? I just reread a pre-season pub from the '04 off-season that had us winning 4 games. I'd say somewhere between 4 and 7 was the going number on us. We did better than that even with a rough start. If we showed a like improvement just by keeping this corps together we'd end up probably 11-5 next year. We'd both like to end up 11-5 next year. For me the question is do you start over at the QB spot on a improving team that looks playoff bound next season or tinker with the QB spot to try and make a theoretical improvement? I'm not unsupportive of making a move from away from our current roster- but it would have to make a lot of sense.

You bring in a statistical entity like Football Insiders and lay zealous praise to their methodology. The methodology that ranks Eric Moulds as the 45th best WR in the NFL. The same methodology that ranks Drew Bledsoe as the 21st best QB in the NFL. Eric Moulds, according to YOUR OWN chosen statistical service, is slated to make MORE MONEY IN 2005 while being worse than 44 other players at his position while Drew Bledsoe will make less than Moulds while being better than all by 20 of the players at his position. It's time for you to end your hypocrisy. Based upon the analysis YOU INSIST UPON there is no justification for keeping Moulds on the roster if in fact you are also calling for the head of a much more effective player at his position who makes less money.

I just drove by the Wilshire Country Club in Beverly Hills and sure enough there were 3 jackasses out there pulling bags. It would improve the acuracy of this sighting though I knew how to say jackass in Japanese.

And I've just posted factual statistics that irrefutably show a number of posters here to either be unbelievably misinformed or just plain Stojaned. But I'm waiting patiently for the first refutation of the FACT that our D skated almost the whole season while our O played the far tougher schedule- know anyone who might make the mistake of engaging me? ;-)

I haven't seen you yet on the comedy circuit- could you post a schedule up? We'll do some serious recruiting for someone as funny as you!

I applaud your consistency. Eric was just as por a performer overall in '04 as Bledsoe, and is easily as responsible for the same number of losses. Two high paid players who can't win the big one.