SoTier

Good lord, the 2018 draft better be the best damned college draft ever, so overloaded with talent in every round that Bills can build their entire Super Bowl team just on the players they take with their 50 picks in the first three rounds from trading away every single current player with even a flicker of talent.

I hope you like crow, cuz you're dead wrong about Peters. In his 13+ year career, Peters potentially could have played in 214 games. He played in 175 games, starting 165. The last time I looked, he played in 81.8% of the games he could have played in. 2004 5 games 1 start 2005 16 games 10 starts 2006 16 games 16 starts 2007 15 games 15 starts 2008 13 games 13 starts 2009 15 games 15 starts 2010 13 games 13 starts 2011 14 games 14 starts 2012 Missed entire season because of Achilles injury 2013 16 games 16 starts 2014 16 games 16 starts 2015 14 games 14 starts 2016 16 games 16 starts 2017 6 games 6 starts Jason Peters came into the league in 2004 as an UDFA TE. Since 2007, he's been a Pro Bowler 9 times, every season he's played, and he's been first team All Pro for Philly twice, 2011 and 2013. His ticket for Canton is already punched. He might just be one of the NFL's all time great OLers ... AND THE STUPID ARSED BILLS LET HIM GO FOR A LATE FIRST ROUND PICK AFTER HE'D PROVEN HIMSELF.

Well, whoopty-doo. It's not like the Bills haven't started other seasons with winning records .... The 2016 Bills started 4-2. Finished 7-9. The 2015 Bills started 3-2. Finished 8-8. The 2014 Bills started 3-2. Finished 9-7 but no playoffs. The 2011 Bills started 5-2. Finished 6-10. The 2008 Bills started 5-2. Finished 7-9. The 2003 Bills started 3-2. Finished 6-10. The 2002 Bills started 5-3. Finished 8-8. OLers frequently play into their mid/late 30s, and Glenn is only 28. Furthermore, his foot injury is his first significant injury in his career, and those injuries take some time to heal. Getting rid of him is absolutely the stupidest move the Bills could make ... but it is likely what they'll do. If the Bills get a 2nd or 3rd, it'll probably be a 2019 pick .... teams know damn well when the Bills are in fire sale mode, they'll take just about anything ... like they did for Peters and Lynch.

The Broncos want to win football games ... not sometime in the future but right now. They understand the importance of having a solid LT protecting their QB even if he's only a low draft pick and likely a fill-in for their first round "franchise QB of the future" who is riding the pine. The Broncos are also the same outfit that are running the same defensive scheme (not necessarily the same defense) under their new HC and DC as last year because they've got the players, including Von Miller, who fit the old scheme.

Because the Bills don't want to pay him when they have Dawkins who has filled in "adequately" ... if you like your offense boring, mind-numbing, and ineffectual. Your opinion. IMO, the situations are linked by the fact that 1) both players are among the highest paid on the Bills current roster; 2) both haven't played all that much; and 3)that rumors have been circulating for weeks that the Bills coaches aren't happy with both because of #1 and #2. This is pretty much the SOP the Bills use when they're preparing to dump players: 1) they are highly paid or are expecting a big pay day 2) they have some "issue" that prevents them from playing 3) rumors start circulating about them. It fits how the Bills treated Sammy Watkins. It also fit how they treated both Marshawn Lynch and Jason Peters before they traded them as well. You can take the manure the Bills organization shovels at face value if you want, but after 17 years of seeing them shovel the ****, I'm skeptical of every excuse they make for themselves. I have to wonder how all the true believers figure that the Bills will ever be able to afford a real franchise QB when they draft him in 2018 ... along with the rest of their Super Bowl winning team. I guess they're figuring the Bills will take all their studs in 2018 and win the SB by 2022 before they let them all walk at the conclusion of their rookie contracts. Glenn has proven his ability. Dawkins has played 5 games. Since Glenn hasn't been able to play, Dawkins has been needed at LT. How could he also play RT at the same time? It takes time to adjust to playing any new position, especially when a player flips sides because everything is reversed. Try driving a car in a country where they drive on the left side of the road ... and see how much trouble that causes you.

Apparently, part of the new Bills "process" is to trade players who get injured as soon as they show they're recovered. Glenn is injured He had a foot injury during the preseason, and then injured his ankle in a game. The delusional Bills HC thinks that the Bills have 5 "quality" OTs on the roster, so why spend $$$ paying the most expensive one when he can be turned into another draft pick.

Exactly. They want Cordy's salary gone ASAP, and as the trade deadline approaches, they'll probably be willing to take a fourth rounder for him ... like they did for Marshawn. They're probably stuck with Dareus, though, because they've made their desperation to unload his $$$ so obvious, no other NFL team will ante up a pick for him when they know he'll be available on waivers in the off season.

Well, Shady will probably get impaled regularly, too. Vlad ain't exactly DY-NO-MITE in the run game, either. No, the Bills have a plan. We poor ignorant fans just don't "understand" what it is ... at least according to some Bills stalwarts. They may even be right ... if Vlad Ducasse is part of McDermott's plan to build a Super Bowl team by surrounding a franchise QB to be named later with JAGs, ST refugees, and failed high draft picks who work hard and play for cheap. Understand, I'm not saying it will work (it hasn't over the previous 17 years), but I think that might be the plan.

I understand EXACTLY what game the Bills are and have been playing under Brandon. It's "money ball". Money had everything to do with the Watkins trade. Being a selfish primadonna is part and parcel of being a talented young WR in the NFL. If they stick around long enough, they usually mellow out, but early in their careers, just about any WR taken in the first round is going to be a PITA, and some of them never get over it. Furthermore, since Watkins was injured for much of the last year, using his supposed lack of production is simply an excuse ... and it plays into the prejudices of Bills fans against players who make big $$$, something that's been carefully cultivated by OBD and it's constant whining about the "salary cap". Part of the morning sports headline is that Cordy Glenn's future with the Bills is "iffy" because he has a big contract and isn't "performing" up to that contract. Translated that means it's all right to keep a turnstile OG like Vlad Ducasse because he signed for cheap but it's time to send the high-priced LT Glenn packing because the Bills don't think he's worth what they're paying him because he's been hurt, even though this is the first significant time he's missed in his pro career. If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck, it's a duck not a swan.

Glenn is 28 IIRC, which is hardly "old" for an OLer since good ones frequently play into well into their thirties. It looks like the Bills just want to shed salary, and they don't much care how much talent they dump in the process. If the Bills were truly interested in winning football games, instead of trading away their best OT to save $$$, they would use a day 1 or day 2 draft pick on an eventual replacement for Incognito who's 34 and, if it's a draft deep in OL prospects, maybe on one for Wood, too, who's 30 or 31. However, the Bills being the Bills, they'll trade Glenn for practically nothing, ignore the OL positions that should be priorities, and fill their OL spots with ST refugees and UDFA signees whom they'lll claim are "just as good" as the players they've traded, let walk in FA, retired, etc.

Mea culpa. I thought you were one of those railing to have Groy play guard ...

Well said, sir!!! Ducasse has NEVER excelled on an NFL playing field except at getting his QB hit and his RB stood up at the LOS. If Ducasse is better in this blocking scheme than Mills -- "excels" -- then it's the scheme that's wrong. Glenn, Incognito, Wood, and Mills all played their OL positions decently in the past as evidenced by the Bills excellent running game the last two years and decent passing production. Now, they're all being forced into a scheme that they're struggling to adjust to, especially Mills, just to fit the OC's "system".

The only place the Bills have "5 quality OTs" is in McDermott's dreams, certainly not on the team any time in this century. Glenn is the best of them. Dawkins is probably next, and he's probably going to be moved to RT ... provided that the Bills don't do exactly what you think they might do, which is entirely possible because, like good WRs, DBs, and RBs, good LTs are "a dime a dozen". NO. Players are not robots. You can't just plug one in where ever you have a need like a lamp. Groy came into the league as a LG, and he failed. The Bills tried him at C, and he seems better there, so why try to flip him to the right side where he'd have to learn everything in reverse, which doesn't signal anything but disaster in the short term. That's not just the verdict of the current coaching staff but the previous one as well.

What exactly is all this "evidence otherwise"? I agree that the Pegulas are willing to spend money, but after they got conned by Ryan they seem to have stepped back and turned the running of the team over to "the football people" which would be a good move if Brandon and his "football people" were actually "football people" who knew something about football rather than bean counters dedicated to increasing profitabillity. Beane has no player personnel expertise, so basically, the only "football guy" is their rookie HC, Sean McDermott, who certainly has a much more modest resume than Dick Jauron, Chan Gailey or Doug Marrone, since all of them had head coaching experience in college or the NFL. How is letting Gilmore, Goodwin, and Woods in FA and then using 2017 first and second round draft picks on a DB and WR to replace them any different than all the other times over the last 20 years that the Bills have shed their best DBs and WRs and used draft picks on their replacements? Trading Watkins had nothing to do with his attitude but with the fact that the Bills were never going to offer him market value, even before he made his comments about WRs being paid more in general. If the Bills had been interested in signing him at all, they would have picked up his option; they just waitied until he demonstrated he was healthy to pull the trigger on the trade. I expect that the Watkins trade may very well join the other two great trades the Bills pulled off under Brandon's watch: All Pro LT Jason Peters to Philadelphia and All Pro RB Marshawn Lynch to Seattle. Basically, the team is doing exactly the same manure under the new ownership that it did under the old ownership. The names and faces of the lower echelon people -- where "the football people" are -- have changed but higher up the food chain -- the guys who make the real decisions -- haven't changed at all.

That's about par for the course with PFF's judgement of OLers ... I think their algorithm for rating OLers has a few logic errors. They once rated All Pro Jason Peters as "the worst LT in the league" when he was a Bill. I guess that's why the Bills traded him to Philly where he's only made All Pro a couple more times despite a serious Achilles injury a few years ago.

I agree with many of your sentiments, including your view of Ralph Wilson. I differ with you on your view of the Pegulas ... I think that after their brief fling with Ryan, they've surrendered to the "money ball" philosophy that has permeated the Bills organization since Russ Brandon, current President of both the Bills and the Sabres, joined the organization more than a decade ago, so I'm not sure that they're dedicated to winning any more than Ralph was. I keep hoping that they got burned with Ryan and turned to Brandon because of it. I keep hoping they wise up and can Brandon and his minions because otherwise the last 17 years of rearranging of the deck chairs on Titanic are going to continue. IMO, Beane and McDermott aren't all that different than Levy and Jauron. I don't know how long my Bills fandom will last. It's seriously declined, and especially this season, I can feel myself detaching. I gave up my seasons after the 2008 season when they rehired Jauron (probably the Bills HC I hated the most), but I would go to a couple of games a year. This year, I haven't attended one, primarily because I felt that the FO was doing the same thing it's always done: shedding talented players to save $$$ and trying to pawn off JAGs and ST refugees as "just as good". Well, they aren't ... as the performance of so many ex-Bills playing well for good teams like the Patriots, Eagles, and Chiefs proves. I watch Bills games sporadically, usually channel hopping to other games. I feel like I'm seriously contemplating divorce, this time from a team rather than from a spouse. Like a divorce, even after the marriage ends, you don't stop caring, you just stop subjecting yourself to all the anger and heartache.

I totally agree. The call in the Jests game on the field was TD, and there didn't seem to be clear enough evidence to the contrary. Belichick and Vlad Ducasse apparently know where the right bodies are buried. Rodgers landed wrong on his shoulder. Manure happens.

Ah, the proverbial "wait until next year!" only in the Bills' case, it's not about winning next year, it's getting ready to win next year. Of course, "next year" never comes because the Bills change coaching regimes about twice a presidential election cycle. Not quite. They replaced two good starting WRs with a JAG and a rookie, and the results have certainly not been "on par." Robert Woods has 22 catches and 0 TDs for 322 yards while Sammy Watkins has 15 receptions and 2 TDs for 222 yards. That's 37 catches, 544 yards and 2 TDs combined. Jordan Matthews has 10 catches for 1 TD and 162 yards while Zay Jones has 5 catches and 66 yards. That's 15 catches, 228 yards, and 1 TD combined. Dude, Peterman is NOT superman, although you keep politicking for him to be annointed SAVIOR . He probably needs an even better OL than Taylor. The Bills have an OL that is still struggling to adapt to a new blocking scheme. With Matthews and Clay injured, the Bills don't have a single NFL caliber receiver, and the running game is anemic for several reasons besides the poor OL play. With Vlad Ducasse still on the roster and Tolbert and Banyard as McCoy's backups, playing Russian roulette is McDermott's and Dennison's game. Lack of talent is going to bite this team in the arse big time as the season goes on ... Great/good coaches figure out how to maximize the talent they have; they're adaptable. Crappy coaches can only see one way to win games, and they have to have "their guys" to do it (at least according to them). I'll say it again: IMO McDermott seem to bears depressing resemblance to Dick Jauron, which doesn't bode well for the Bills ending the drought any time soon.

Nonsense. HCs, OCs, and DCs are NOT responsible for "teaching principles". They are designing strategies to beat opponents, and they are creating the offensive and defensive plays. Coaches who can only design strategies and plays they've personally experienced aren't really good candidates for HC, OC or DC jobs. It takes more than rote learning. It takes imagination. The problem for this constant flip flopping with offensive and defensive structures and styles with every coaching change rests squarely on the suits in OBD. Why are they hiring a rookie HC and giving him carte blanche to hire whomever he wants? Why is it that they can't insist that the new HC adhere to something like this: "hey, we've got a decent offense[defense], so bring in an OC[DC] who can/will improve on what we have"? Or, maybe, we'd like whomever you hire as DC (OC) to work with most of the starters we have now since they're really good." The last time I looked, the people doing the hiring are in charge, not the job applicants. Not all teams have these problems, either. The Broncos' first year HC Vance Joseph had his DC, Joe Woods, keep the same alignment (3-4 I believe) as the Broncos had used under Wade Phillips because the Ponies already had a great D with some great players, starting with Von Miller, rather than go with the defensive structure that he was most used to. The Denver new OC, Mike McCoy, has designed an offense that fits the players he's got, too, not tossing away the team's talent to get "his guys".

I think SaviorEdwards one of his, too ... with a very similar avatar.

No, in order to be a playoff team, the Bills need to have more wins than or own the tie breakers against 10 other AFC teams at the end of the season. Since they've failed to do that 17 straight times in this century, I'm not getting excited until they do that ... and it's unlikely they do it any time in the foreseeable future.

Especially for a team that hasn't made the playoffs in 17 years and doesn't have a 21st century offense?

And Matthews isn't?

I never thought to compare them since they play on different sides of the ball and they were shown the door at different times. Since I think Sammy is a world-class talent, I suspect that he'll do better than Gilmore over the long haul. His problem in LA has been that Goff doesn't have the same confidence level in him that he has in Kupp and Woods, but that will change as the season goes on, and especially next season if he re-signs with LA. What I find funny is the silence from all the Bills fans who justified trading Watkins because they claimed Watkins couldn't stay healthy. Now that Matthews, the supposedly always healthy WR who replaced Watkins, has struggled to stay healthy enough to play, you hear nothing but crickets.

Well, OP, speak for yourself when you say "everyone on this board would take McD over Lynn at the helm" because it sure doesn't apply to me. I've been skeptical of McDermott from the beginning, primarily because his philosophy and attitudes seem to bear too strong a resemblance to those of Dick Jauron. Additionally, the Bills FO, along with Beane and McDermott, stripped the team of much of its talent, especially on offense. Except for McCoy, the Bills no longer have a single game breaker. Aside from Taylor, Glenn, Charles Clay, Incognito, and Wood, the rest of their offensive players are, at best, JAGs, and most aren't even that good. I do not want a team full of choirboys lacking in NFL caliber talent who are JAGs and STers at best. I want a team full of smart, talented players who regularly win football games, and if they have opinions about stuff or they want to join in a protest or they complain about targets, I don't really care unless it affects their performance. Dennison has insisted on a blocking system that doesn't fit the OLers he's got, which has resulted in emasculating the Bills running game. That the Bills have only Tobert and Banyard behind McCoy means the Bills are finished if Shady gets hurt. Of course, I suppose it doesn't matter to the Bills OC who envisions the passing game opening up the running game ... despite the fact that except for the injured Matthews, the Bills don't have a single NFL caliber WR. I want an OC and DC who adapt their "systems" to fit the talent they have, not throw away talent to bring in "their guys". I especially don't want to play not to lose, and I get a sense that that's how McDermott plays the game. He does gamble on the rare occasion but the offense that Dennison's put together is designed to nibble defenses to death rather than just stick a fork in them (as NE does). It's a prescription for losing.