PlayoffsPlease

Are you one of those people that think your personal opinion and what you post on message boards actually effects the performance of the team?

It should be pointed out that Minnesota, Tampa Bay, Buffalo and Jacksonville have been the epitome of "patience" with Ponder, Freemen, Fitzgerald and Gabbert. And as we all know patience is the most important thing in developing a QB. Tampa Bay broke the cycle this year with the switch to McCown after only one year of Glennon (a guy most think played a tiny bit better than Manuel during the 2013 season). It will be interesting to see the price Tampa Bay pays for their impatience.

If I get to pick from any QB in the NFL for just this season, I pick EJ Manuel as back up and Tom Brady as starter, this would leap frog us up and over the Patriots.

My expectation is that the Bills will win. A loss is failure for Whaley/Marrone and all of the players. I will not be looking for "bright spots" or "moral victories" within a loss. If the Bills win, I will be happy with EJ's performance even if he is 0 for 20 with 5 ints. Very binary for me Win=happy with all the Bills Loss=annoyed with all of the Bills.

Did Sam outperform a guy like Landon Cohen in preseason? Its tough to make an NFL squad. Its a performance business. If Jeff Fisher thought he would win more games with Sam, he would have kept him. Players bounce around all the time. If he has the talent he will land some where.

Bills Fan instruction manual: Place blinders on, ignore what your lying eyes are telling you Ignore independent non-fan sources - they are all hater with an agenda Put on headphones and listen to music when watching ESPN - all commentators are Bills haters with an anti-EJ agenda In a quiet place go read Chris Brown's objective reports on BuffaloBills.com and repeat to yourself Goosfraba Following this steps will bring a sense of "I did good" confidence and calm to you. This steps will generally get you through to November. 5.) Start watching a lot of college ball to prepare for arguments about why taking a QB in the 2015 draft would be foolhardy.

http://www.nfl.com/n...ould-be-worried The good news is that it doesn't mention that any Bills fans need to worry.

I want EJ to improve and to become a legitimate top 10 QB by all measures. He certainly has this year and probably next year to demonstrate if he is on that trajectory or not. But in his last post game press conference of his 3 for 7 performance, he took the position "I did good, but the receivers dropped the ball". Regardless of whether or not that is true, it sure isn't going to win many votes for captain from the offense. Leadership involves personal accountability. And their is a general perception, fostered by the Bills management actions and words, that EJ is somewhat coddled. All of the players do this for a living. When the head coach says "everyone is competing for a job" and its patently obvious to everyone that everybody excludes EJ, that doesn't win him many votes either. He is young and hopefully it all falls together for him. For what its worth, the Jets solved this problem by eliminating having captains a couple of years ago.

One of the themes around the off season was to give EJ "weapons". A second theme was beefing up the o line. Most expensive free agent pick up was Chris Williams a guard, and three draft picks were used the offensive line. The team has performed poorly in preseason ( I am not talking wins and losses which don't matter, but simple failure to execute which does matter). There are a range of explanations for this all of which could be true, most of which are not mutually exclusive: EJ simply isn't a good QB at this point and it doesn't matter what weapons he has or how the offensive line plays Whaley isn't as good a judge of talent as people think and Chris Williams, Cyril Richardson and Kuondjo were not good pickups and won't be able to help the team much. Coaching isn't adequate Bills are playing some version of possum by giving up sacks, putting up a weak completion percentage and all the while not throwing the ball downfield much. Fans need to have another dose of patience. The o line picks and trade up for Sammy Watkins are expected to pay dividends further down the road, not 2014.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11377732/2014-nfl-season-preview-analysis-game-game-predictions-more-every-team#!bears ESPN is part of the international conspiracy of hating on the Bills.

Right, and people putting money up represent a much more objective and better researched audience than the biased perceptions of a die hard fan base. Best 16-0. Super Bowl victory Worst 0-16, heroes to the Cleveland Browns Most Likely, 8-8 you win some, you lose some.

Yes, Marrone is covering for him in that instance. OBD suggest that fans shouldn't believe their own lying eyes quite frequently.

http://jay.cutler.me...ocation=Chicago I may have been duped, this good be a fraud.

What you say here is true. But what drives the "I told you soers" is knee jerk defenses of any EJ performance no matter how bad it is. If people would just be objective and accept that 2 for 7 with 3 tipped passes is a bad performance for example, there would be a lot less back and forth.

The Bills have a real dilemma with Spiller. The production gap between Spiller and the 20th best RB in the NFL is really pretty small, even smaller if you take into account injuries and his seeming inability over 4 seasons to carry a heavy work load. When Spiller becomes a free agent, unless the Bills think he is more valuable than 31 other teams, someone is going to offer him more money than the Bills. If the Bills start out 2-0, it would be nuts to trade him, but if the Bills start out 0-2 it is very likely that this will not be a playoff year, and the Bills have to think hard about whether or not Spiller can realistically be extended.

In the entire Nix/Whaley era only two draft picks play better than what one would expect from their draft position. Cordy Glenn, and Kiko Alonso. That is it. People over rate Whaley because their benchmark is the NFL's worst front office from 1999 to 2010, OBD. Until the Bills win a playoff game Whaley is at best unproven. Edited to add: to be fair, S. Henderson should probably be added to this list.

EJ throws interceptions on the first two series. According to message board fans neither are his fault. Defense holds, Marrone Switches to Orton. Orton has a career game, throws four TD passes and 350 yards. Cutler fires back and leads the Bears to an exciting (for them) 31-28 Victory. After the game, EJ tells the press he thinks he did pretty good. Marrone assures the fans that EJ is the unquestioned starter, but had to sit him do to a blister on his left pinky finger. Says he is still disappointed in the back up QB situation, as he needs to have a guy who can come in and win.

This may save Kozel over on BBMB

What is the all-time record for cutting QBs one week before the season? I am guessing the Bills have just set a record with four.

So you are saying it makes more sense to draft QBs then WRs. I agree.

He was a third round pick. Since you don't have basic facts correct, I don't care about your opinion. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. We used a third on TJ Graham and got um nothing for him. That a boy Dougie and Buddy.

Mallet is going to be a good player. Patriots wouldn't have been able to afford to pay him after this season. Savage and Mallet. This is a good example of filling a pipeline with legitimate hopefuls (you know not second stringers from Washington st. and undertalented guys like thad lewis and dixon)

It is easy to see how all of the top organizations bring in a new QB coach, and then cut 4 QBs right before the season begins (Palmer, Dixon, Tuel and Lewis), and then spend $5 million per on a guy who has hardly thrown a pass for three seasons, who is deemed to somehow be the savior of the franchise as a back up QB. Russ Brandon is a miracle worker to keep so much of the fanbase in a constant state of delusion. Kudos to Russ.

There is faith based hope, and fact based hope. There is no reason whatsoever to lose your faith based hope. There are several reasons to have fact based hope: The Bills play in a weak division. QBs matter, and the division only has one standout QB (feel sorry for a team like the Buc's who have Drew Brees, Matt Ryan and Cam Newton in their division) Only team with three pro bowlers on the defensive line. Experience Cornerback tandem ranked in the top half of the league Rushing attack which is only behind Vikings, Chiefs, Eagles and Seahawks in terms of talent. If Watkins stays healthy, a solid set of wide outs Dan Carpenter There are some hope bubble bursters to worry about though: unproven head coach unproven offensive coordinator defensive coordinator who has not demonstrated success independent of his time with Jeff Fisher deneral reconstruction of the powerful lions coaching staff with Schwartz, Crossman and QB regression supervisor Downing. This is however offset by the teaming up with the former pinstripe bowl championship coaching team unproven QB medicore OL medicore TE punter of the week syndrome looming. (how far away can open tryouts in the Ralph parking lot be?)

Every year fans talk about "improved" depth. I can't remember a single year in the last 10 years that I heard anyone say "our depth is down this year". I personally can't tell you the difference in talent level between a Stefan Charles and a Landon Cohen. Depth heroes from yesterday year like Alan Branch (demoted to "bum"), Alex Carrington (demoted to bum) or Searcy (now promoted to replace a pro bowl safety) are now replaced by this years depth heroes like Stefan Charles and Duke Williams. Seems to be that teams that win playoff games have certifiable stars, and good starters in many positions. Other than the Green Bay team that rode Aaron Rodgers to Super Bowl victory a few years ago, I can't think of any time a teams "depth" actually made as big of a difference as everyone wants to believe. Does anyone else think "depth" is something fans agonize over unnecessarily? Does it really matter if we have an extra kicker rather than a roster spot for Landon Cohen for example?