Wraith

WTF?! How is this even an issue?! Losman completed 22 of 38 pass attempts for 328 yards, 1 interception, 1 passing touchdown, and 1 rushing touchdown. Losman's error's came on unblocked safety blitzes. What on earth does that have to do with locking on to receivers? This is like being critical of the paint job on the Titantic (IT AIN'T THE ISSUE).

You are not qualified to know what his level of play is mentally.

You've been repeating this in multiple threads, so I feel justified in calling you on it. On both plays, the strong safety, Kerry Rhodes, blitzes untouched. That means the quarterback had however long it takes for a safety to run 15 yards in a straight line. Maybe 20 yards on the second play because the safety came from the outside. Either way, holding on too long was absolutely not the issue. In addition, attempting to throw the ball away, as you suggest, is the root cause of the first fumble. The only question I would have for Losman if I were the coaches would be to ask if he had done everything reasonable to protect the ball. You are making it seem like the offensive line all held their blocks for 5 seconds or that he got hit by an unblocked 400 lb. defensive tackle moving at a sloth's pace. That was clearly not the case here, and I think you are misrepresenting the facts.

Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen. At the time, many of us were ecstatic at that block. Then on the VERY NEXT PLAY he wiffs and Losman gets blindsided.

Don't try and tell you what I thought? Who the hell are you? Ya know what, I didn't think the Bills had a chance to win, I KNEW they were going to win until that downpour. How are you going to argue against that? You're entire argument is setting ludicrously high standards based on what you "know" in your odd little mind, and then sitting back thinking you've proved your point when when he meets almost everyone one of your standards and falls just shy of the last one. Fault Losman for some of the fumbles, or for the interception, or whatever, but trying to prove anything off the last drive is idiotic.

So what you're really saying is you won't be sold on Losman until he leads the Bills on not one but TWO touchdown scoring drives with under 3:00 minutes to go in the 4th Quarter in the pouring rain and into 30 mph winds. You can't disparage his passing attempts on the last drive without also acknowledging that they would not have been in that position had he not done what he did on the previous drive. What you SHOULD be saying is that the jury is still out. Only an idiot would say otherwise and think they've made their point.

Dude, take a look around, there are at least two lengthy threads with this debate going on. The point is people are getting all over Losman for that fumble but McGahee is at least as equally to blame. Get a clue.

How much time do you think he had on those plays to get rid of the ball? I could not see what was happening down field (i.e., whether the receivers were not open), but it did seem that he had plenty of time to get rid the of the ball to avoid a mistake. On at least one of those plays, the play clock counted down four seconds. JP did not have one of his better outings. His mistakes were determinative. Nevertheless, I still think that he needs more time -- both to gain experience and for the coaching staff (and the rest of us) to see whether he will learn from his mistakes. 784803[/snapback] On the first fumble, he had no time. The safety came untouched up the middle. The second fumble, the safety went around the outside and took longer to get there, but got there just as Losman's was unloading deep. Neither one was really a matter of taking too much time with the ball. It's hard to tell whether Losman was aware of the blitzer on the first fumble, but if he was, his only mistake was trying to throw the ball away instead of taking the sack.

Don't get me started on Clements. On the 3rd and 6 pass to Coles that led to the 4th and 1 on the Jet's last drive, he gave Coles a 10 yard cushion. Why on earth are we giving a guy with a bum hamstring a ten yard cushion on 3rd and 6 with Chad Pennington at QB who can't complete a thing down field but is the king of the 5 yard pass route? Did we not think they'd go for it on 4th and 1?

...and that one sack came after Pennington was allowed to run around for 15 seconds and even then Kelsay just nicked him. That play was so close to a disaster.

Of course not. That would require Randy Cross to pull his head out of Dick Enberg's a**.

??? Too hard? Too high? Yes. But too hard? As my sister's boyfriend the Giants fan put it, "That was an incredibly poorly timed jump by McGahee," so much so that he was already on his way down when the ball got there. That doesn't sound like it was thrown too hard to me. They were all too high though.

Not you. Sorry I didn't make that clear. That was aimed at the general population of this thread.

Well said. The other head scratching play call was the naked bootleg on 3rd and 1 on the 1. WTF was that?!

You are absolutely correct. It would be better if he had not fumbled. I think the point people here need to realize is that Tom Brady, 3 time Super Bowl champ, has done the EXACT same thing TWICE in the last two weeks. Should he be yanked, too?

In case you missed it, Losman was our entire offense today. McGahee ran up a ton of yards between the 20s but was nonexistant when we needed him (of course I'm loathe to put much blame on him because the playcalling was horrendous).

You are insane. McGahee ran for 150 freakin' yards and we don' t give him the ball on 3rd and 1 on the 1?!?!? Blame the play calling. Do we also forget that Holcomb through 4 Interceptions against this defense at the end of last year?

Except you ignore the drive right before it in which he went 70 through the air and rain in the crucial touchdown on 4th and long to give the Bills a chance.

You're blaming Jauron for passing on 2 and 3 and 3 and 3? Fairchild calls the play, not Jauron. Furthermore, if you can't pass on 2nd and 3 when the hell can you? Blame him for the fake FG, not those other plays.

How the hell do you know if thought about it or not?

Do you really want me to drag out Matt Hasselbeck's third year numbers? Or even the first half of his fourth year? Eh, he's a bad example anyway, he only started in last years Superbowl.

Not to mention I have yet to hear him offer any way to MEASURE whether Losman is making quick decisions or not. Because without a good measure, how do the hell do we really know what he's capable of? Anecdotal evidence is useless clearly, or else I could make the argument that Losman's short third down passing attempts against Miami were the result of reading the biltz and hitting the hot receiver who would attempt to break a tackle for the first down. Those sure SEEM to be quick, intelligent decisions. But how can I really know? If I could rewatch every one of Losman's games again and break them down AND I knew what the play was that was called and what the reads were supposed to be, I might attempt that analysis. But I don't have the Bills playbook so I'm just going to have to rely on the Bills coaching staff for that.

No, not really. The changes from the end of last season to the beginning of this season represent a large "process change," thus what is considered normal this year will probably be different from what we considered normal last year. My point, which you still seemed to have missed, is that it is entirely too early to make judgements of any kind (good OR bad). Noticed I used the word "probably" in the paragraph above. Two data points is still not nearly enough. If it were, I would be shouting from the nearest mountain that Losman's completion percentage has jumped nearly 15 points this year. But I'm not. Yet. If you react to limited data, you are "chasing" the process, adding variation and inconsistency, and destroying any possiblity of gaging what the process is actually capable of. Mike Mularkey was incredibly guilty of this, managers and process operators world wide are guilty of this, and so are you. And why on earth would I want to compare one performance by Losman to the average performance of Roethlisberger or Dilfer? There is no basis for comparison (mean to mean would be better, but still misleading). That would be like comparing Roethlisberger's ~100 yard performance last night to Losmans ~140 yard average and saying Big Ben is no J.P. Losman. What's the point?

Holcomb's Arm: You claim to rely on statistical analysis so much, but you are breaking the cardinal rule of data analysis: PLOT DATA! And the corrollary: Do NOT (under any circumstances) react to single data points. Without historical data there is NO way to PROVE whether one performance is exceptionally bad, exceptionally good, getting worse, getting better, or "normal." Without historical data to establish what is normal behavior, you could just as easily be reacting to noise as to an actual signal. Simply put, historical data establishes CONTEXT. Without CONTEXT, attempting to prove any kind of change or trend is useless. A note to the rest of you: DO NOT believe it. You are taking Sunday's low yardage performance and using it alone to try to convince us of a point that you have no historical evidence to support. In fact, historical data shows us Losman's strong suit is yardage. The mean YPG (Yards Per Game) for Losman's career is 144.27 yards/game. The last seven samples (since the last "process change" when Losman resumed playing in the KC game in November) are 137, 168, 197, 224, 181, 164, and 83 yards. Obviously, no downward or negative trend exists. If the string of low yardage continues (and we start LOSING THE DAMN game), then we can talk. And not a second earlier.

Check again. Parrish caught the ball behind Mike Gandy, of all people, who decked his guy perfectly on the swing pass. Reed was a good 5 yards ahead of and to the outside of Parrish.