AKC

Within the mix of a football team, or for this discussion the 11 players on offense, there is no one position that is more important than the other 10. There are surely quality differences between the players at the 11 spots on any team, but each team is different, for instance the Jets highest quality player this year all season has been Kevin Mawae, who has been the most impactive player and more responsible for their success than anyone they've had him snap the ball to. In Indy you can certainly make the argument that Manning happens to be the most impactive player, I wouldn't dispute it because I don't watch much of their regular season work- but that's an exclusive situation that exists within the talent on their team. It might also be the best example to exhibit why QB obsessed fans couldn't possibly manage a football team- remember that by the standard our whining ninnies have set, if you struggle in big games you're scrap heap material. Witness Mr. Manning, who has yet to win a single big game if we use the same standard set for Bledsoe. Manning has been made to look like Art Schlichter in big games, much like John Elway looked during the bulk of his career based on that standard. But back to the original question- entering any game or any season there are 11 guys on that offense, any one of which may have the most impact, either postive or negative in affecting a game's outcome. It's absolutely inpossible for instance to ignore the poor ball Moulds played this season on crucial downs without recognizing that he easily lost 2 games by not playing anywhere near his salary level. Does that mean we cut him? That's the standard the ninnnies have set for Bledsoe- if you want to be consistent you MUST apply the same standard to other "stars" on the team. On our offense, who was the most impactive player in this overall '04 campaign- I'd make a pretty good argument for Chris Villarial being our offensive MVP. We all saw what happened to our run game on Sunday when he was left the field. I've seen past Bill's offenses where the play at FB or RT was the single most critical to our winning- do they get recognition by ball-watching fans or the media? Hell no-casual fans and the media are looking for sizzle, not steak. They need someone that handles the ball to be more important because it makes for better pictures, and anyway linemen and TEs are ugly and dirty and in many cases difficult to understand. Like the media, casual fans want to pet the pretty QB or WR who dances better than them, or the RB who looks so much like the Heisman Trophy with that damn ball in his hands. But the game of football is won many times where the eyes of the fans and media are not paying attention. Let me use Pitt for example. They sat some "skill" players on Sunday against us. But make no mistake about it, their best players were on the field. Their starting offensive line has made, for at least the immediate time, a rookie QB a star and propelled them into the favored AFC team for the prize. Will a single one of them even get their own team's Offensive MVP? Hell no- but it doesn't mean they're not the reason Pitt is in the postion they're in. And did Dipstick Randy Cross even mention it? Was it a major point of discussion in the media? Hell no again. What I'm trying to provoke you into contemplating is not another season under Bledsoe- I'm asking you to be consistent with your argument about big games and high salaries and the measures you'd use to decide whether a high paid player should be given another chance next year- using the standard you apply to insist Bledsoe must be gone it's nearly impossible not to reach the same conclusion with Moulds. Eric has come up short in every big game op since he arrived. He'll be paid more than Bledsoe next year and yet he's never won us a big game, again by the standards Bledsoe is held to. And be very careful about why you might justify Moulds sticking our next roster- anything you say can and will be considered "apoligizing" for his play- based upon the standards being used to measure Bledsoe.

If you and these "logical and smart" fans owned a team the roster would include 14 QBs, all of whom would rotate for playing time because not a single one of the owners would understand the game of football well enough to grasp that the QB is no more important a player on the field than the other 10 guys who play with him on offense at any time. Maybe I can't use that- chances are your team would regularly try to field 12 and 13 guys to line up on offense! (and considering your obsession with the position probably two of them would be QBs!) I'm still waiting for your "logical and smart" answer to my incredibly simple question- if you think high priced offensive stars who have never won a big game have no place on our roster, how do you dispose of Eric Moulds this offseason, the highest paid underperformer on our offense in 2004 slated to earn over 8 million in '05?

The moment I saw Old Man Bush and Clinton flanking the President and heard they were asked to "CoChair" a fundraising effort for Tsunami victims I realized someone at the WH was having a very good day- look at the win-win situation brought about by this simple, yet absolutely brilliant, idea: A) Take two split groups of "funders", who to some degree despise the other side, and put them in competition with each other B) Sweeten the pot by putting two former Presidents in charge of the competing camps to goad on the richest and most infuential prospects C) Raise HUGE sums of money for the victims of the disaster D) Highlight the superiority of our capitalistic system by showing the power of personal donations versus government It doesn't matter who you vote for every 4th November, if you're a decent and objective American you have to be able to recognize the genius of this strategy.

Or the one's of the old man screaming "WE LET LAMONICA GO FOR THIS?!"

It's quite simple really. You B word and whine all season long that our QB disappears in big games and makes too much money for someone who has never, and in your opinion will never, win a big game. If you're genuine about that opinion, and not merely obsessed with the QB position, you'd HAVE to apply the same reasoning to our highly paid #1 WR who has never won a big game, is slated to make 8 mill next year, and who can easily be attributed a minimum of two of our losses this season by his continued problems catching the football- especially in big games. What is it- do you fail to grasp that this is an 11 man game at any time on the field by obsessing about the quarterback or do you apply your hatred and vitriol to all underperfoming highly paid players?

Wow! I can see taking issue with underperformers like Eric Moulds with his fat paycheck but a football player like Fletcher? OK, the Singletary comparison might offer some easy argument about their playing styles, but Fletcher plays football in the middle of the field like some of the great underrated Linebackers of the contemporary game- guys like Chris Spielman and Jesse Tuggle, guys who get their noses dirty every play, every game, every year. I can't see taking any of this out on a guy who does some of the best, albeit unheralded, work on our team, .

It's no coincidence that we all of a sudden appeared to have 2 legitimate return threats in McGee and Smith- the upswing in the return game was built upon superior blocking during the season until we met up with Pitt who counteracted it by running linemen into the middle of our blocking scheme this past Sunday. After the past few seasons of watching our return guys running up the backs of our blockers April came in and established excellent timing on our returns, leading to one of the best return units in the league. We added superior athletes to the coverage units and they responded with far more succesful play than we saw in the recent past also.

Would you stop being reasonable? Someone must pay for the Bill's failures and the QB is the one fans see with the ball the most- so it must be the QB who caused such a mess! I believe you're absolutely correct in your assessment of Bledsoe as you were in your assessment of Coy Wire. The QB is the lightning rod of most fans and apparently we're simply going to continue hearing the false characterizations of his skill set until the same set of fans gets to see JP Losman and learn about HIS faults before they inevitably call for HIS head. The frightening thing about Losman is that the worst fault in Drew's game- accuracy- is the same major concern regarding Mr. Losman according to a majority of the pre-draft analysis.

Brad Johnson. Trent Dilfer. Kurt Warner. Mark Rypien. Doug Williams. Yeah, no doubt there's ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that one of the top 10 most productive QBs All-Time in League History could EVER win a Super Bowl!

Thats' not my recollection of his Raider years and I didn't watch him in college- I remember him playing in a pretty pure pocket passing offense in Oakland. Here's a take from Dan Pastorini about Plunkett's style among other things: Dan Pastorini

At least some things are constant! If I understand your position that underachieving high paid offensive players should be scrapped, especially ones who don't pick up the team in big games and instead underperform, you are all for dumping Eric Moulds also?

The water torture that is our playoff history- drip... drip... drip...

I missed your posts yesterday- Moulds is the interesting study for one very big reason- he's the kind of guy who would NOT be returning next season to a team like the Pats based upon his pay/performance. The same team that moved Drew for similar, although not exactly the same, reasons. How Moulds is handled might say a lot about how much attention TD is paying to the best roster managers in the league right now.

I'm very interested to learn in which "Big Games" during his pro career has Eric "won the game" for us?

Before we went to Cincinnati it was acknowledged as a Big Game. It was only afterwards that to fit their arguments some have tried to downplay the game. We played 6 elimination games in a row, failing in the 7th. How does the math come out if you apply the "big game" measure to Jim Kelly? More importantly, how does Eric Moulds stack up to the "big game" measure? After all- he will make far more money than Bledsoe next year ;-)

Of course Bledsoe has a career of poor accuracy, especially in the short game, but I'd recommend you go back and watch the tape because Moulds inexcusable choke on Sunday did equal damage to our chances as the poor play at QB. Two "stars", two choke performances, two players making too much money for what they give us on the field.

Absolutely. If we're talking about a highly paid star who has NEVER come up in the big game- we can just as easily be talking about Eric Moulds as Drew Bledsoe. The standard some fans have set for Bledsoe is "what big game has he ever won for his team". Moulds is paid even more money than Bledsoe- how does Eric stack up to the same question?

They both played poorly, and considering next season Moulds is scheduled to make a lot more money than Bledsoe it seems only fair to consider that if we're cleaning house of overpaid and underperforming offensive stars the first order of business is deciding where we're shipping Mr. Moulds to.

It's never been about liking Bledsoe, it's always been about the alternatives. I'm astounded that our fan base is putting the dreadful O on Sunday fully on Bledsoe instead of rightfully sharing the blame between the two high paid "stars" of our O in Bledsoe and Moulds. Moulds was awful, dropping any chance we had on plays that Beldsoe executed properly. Moulds is AT LEAST as responsible for what happened to us Sunday but reading this board you'd think our "go to" receiver was just another victim of a Barney Fife performance at QB. Let Bledsoe go- he's likely to end up at another stop like Oakland, a team that took another prior #1 draft pick of the Pats, a guy who was out of the league because he was "stationary", "got sacked too often" and "had no pocket presence" but just happened to return to a team that lived on the long ball and that good fit earned Jim Plunkett and those Raider teams two Super Bowl rings.

The only true losers among Bill's fans are those who constantly wail on about the quarterback position while ignoring our problems at other positions, such as the major failures of Eric Moulds this season both early on and in the Steeler game. To denigrate other fans because they actually understand the game is not won at any single position shows a complete lack of class and manners- but then we knew that about you before now, didn't we?

It would be astounding were it not predictable that our two high paid offensive "stars", Bledsoe and Moulds, had awful games and yet there's barely a murmer about Moulds choking in the big game while the obsessives still rail on about the quarterback position. Moulds finished the season the same way he opened it, literally allowing our chances at victory to slip through his hands. How such a large portion of the fan base can't see the shared responsibility for these losses between our two offensive "stars" paints a disappointing picture of a fan base recognized in the past for possessing a solid grasp of the fundamentals of the game of football.

None other than- "dancing" with the apparently quite nimble in loafers Tom Brady. Speaking of QB controversies ;-)

Do you mean to tell me that just because we went from averaging 9 YPC when Villarial left the game to about 1.8 YPC that an Offensive Lineman could have that kind of impact on a game of football? Why, he's not a running back or receiver or for Heaven's sake a Quarterback- how could he POSSIBLY make such a difference in the potency of our rushing offense?

Yeah but if Bledsoe hadn't muffed that punt return or missed the Field Goal attempt, or maybe if he'd simply picked up those blitzes himself............. Poor quarterback play during a poor team performance- with special goat awards to the offense and to some degree the offensive play calling.

A team loss no doubt, much in the same fashion as our team wins along the way. That sadi, the most disappointing thing was waiting for one of the high-priced/high-profile players on offense to come up with a big play, yet on the overall they failed. Moulds was awful; a team isn't going to win with their "go to" WR dropping 2 or 3 balls in the "big game". Bledsoe's continued lack of accuracy in the short game creates difficulty that's merely exacerbated by the poor hands he's throwing to on many occasions. I suspect if Burns simply makes the easy play and picks up the blind side rusher the Steelers pay big for that blitz and it slows everything else down for the balance of the game. In fact just the opposite happened.