silvermike

I hope Shula bullies Wayne H. into hiring him as their coach. I miss beating him twice per year...not too many of those 300 wins came against Marv.

With RBs, you can get a lot of performance from a rookie. As such, I wouldn't be compelled to draft one in the first two rounds until we actually had a gaping hole at the position. You can learn on the job. THis isn't to say that you can plug in any old RB, but you can get away with a rookie far better.

Miami would have to give up cash and picks to get him from the Rooneys, who might refuse just about any offer since Cowher is 'retiring'.

It depends what "Most Valuable Player" means. Take him away and the team suffers the most? I mean, let's say I got signed by the Browns to back up Charlie Frye. Wouldn't that make him the most valuable player in the league? I don't think we can reasonably consider the relative values of Jamie Martin and Michael Turner in determining the most valuable player - you need a generic, replacement-kind of QB and RB. Then there's the sort of weirdness about the value of the supporting cast. In some ways, this makes sense - if Tomlinson has a superb offensive line (he does), then you have to consider the fact that while a generic RB couldn't score 31 TDs, he might be able to run well enough to get you a playoff berth. Note that Brees had really excellent receivers, too. Then, of course, there's the breakdown between total skill and net effort - would you really take Brees over Manning? If you swap them, are the Saints improved?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2720242

The truth is, I have no freaking idea what trade values are in the NFL. Deion Branch is worth a #1 pick. Peerless Price is worth a #1 pick. Nobody would offer a 2nd rounder for Shaun Alexander or Edgerrin James, but Lamar Gordon was a 3rd round pick, though that was Miami. Drew Bledsoe was a first rounder, AJ Feeley was a 2nd rounder, Ricky Williams was 2 firsts. Nothing makes any sense!

Defensive Ends can't blitz. Neither can defensive tackles. Blitzing is adding rushers to the defensive line.

The advantage to Robinson would be that if we claimed him now, we'd only have to pay him one game-salary for the Baltimore game, and then we'd have him under contract for 2007 - but if we cut him in camp, it'd be completely free. Basically it's about as low-risk a situation as you can get, unless he takes out Nate's knees in practice.

I think our defense is still to vulnerable to blitz. You've gotta make tackles if you can start gambling, and we showed that we don't do it. Even without blitzing, we get gashed on scrambles, draws, counters, and screens - imagine if there were even fewer guys in the middle of the field.

Well, at a bare minimum, all local games will be televised on broadcast TV. So if there's a Bills Thursday night game, it will probably be on Channel 7 or something. Home or away. That's, at least, a relief. But I wouldn't be shocked if the NFL Network experiment isn't back next year.

They love them some TD over at ESPN.

If anything, it makes it marginally easier to bring them back. The agent can't point and say "Pro Bowler".

He also complains that Miami didn't go for it on 4th down enough.

Not that Mularkey's any good, but Chambers is full of it. He was targetted ten times in the game and didn't come up with a single catch. Sure, a ton of that is Joey and a bunch is Nate, but zero catches on ten attempts? Lame. Look at this cut from the gamebook: 2-2-BUF2 (:15) (Shotgun) C.Lemon pass incomplete short right to C.Chambers. Underthrown, receiver in front right corner of end zone. 3-2-BUF2 (:11) (Shotgun) C.Lemon pass incomplete short left to C.Chambers. Dropped, receiver 8 yds. into end zone, along sideline. 4-2-BUF2 (:06) (Shotgun) C.Lemon pass incomplete short middle to C.Chambers (R.Denney). Pass tipped at line. PENALTY on BUF-T.McGee, Defensive Holding, 1 yard, enforced at BUF 2 - No Play. Penalty results in untimed down. 1-1-BUF1 (:00) Untimed play. (Shotgun) C.Lemon pass incomplete to C.Chambers (R.Denney). Pass batted at Yes, Virginia, that's four passes in a row thrown at Chambers.

I'm not sure if that's a sensible metaphorical use of 'circle jerk'. I'd say that's more when everybody is focusing on the same newsbit and trying to come up with the most sensational spin.

Building the stadium on the far side of the border would create a traffic nightmare before and after the games - 70,000 fans clearing customs? While I think marketing the team to Toronto and Hamilton is going to be important to the long-term viability of the franchise, it's never going to make up the support of Buffalo/Rochester. We should play and annual preseason game in Toronto and another one at the Carrier Dome. That'd save the season ticket holders money and expand the regional.

Price has $6.4 million in cash left on his contract. He was paid $800,000 this year, bringing the total to $7.2 million, leaving a $2.8 million dollar signing bonus, of which they'd have to eat 3/4 if they cut him after this year. So they'd take a $2.1 million dollar hit for cutting him, less the $1.6 million they'd not have to pay him, so the total cap cost of cutting Price after the season is $500,000. Unless he's cut after June 1st. Then they'd save $550,000 this year and have about a million in dead cap in 2008.

...Kellen Clemens... Can't take it away from him though - the man makes plays.

It's a slow curve for DTs - there's not a reason to think that a slow freshman campaign is going to spell doom. McCargo had 4 tackles before the game he was injured in, and Ngata had 4 in those four games as well. Ngata has been playing a full season and picked it up. McCargo's been hurt. There's nothing meaningful you can say about McCargo's career to date, other than saying he's on IR.

If you think of it as two meals, it's like having bacon and eggs for breakfast and a hot dog and a cheeseburger for lunch.

It's fine that we prefer to run behind Peters than anyone else, but that doesn't mean we can get away with ONLY running to one side of the offense. Eventually, that weakness will get exploited. It's possible that Pennington will come around and negate the need, but as it stands now, we simply are unwilling to run to the right. And this doesn't excuse the guard spot.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/6242424 The power rankings are somewhat interesting in and of themselves, but if you scroll down to the Bills, you get this interesting fact: Ouch. Top priority for 2007: Right Tackle. #2: Right Guard. And it looks like Marv knows it.

The problem with the math is that we don't know whether cover 2 is successful, in and of itself, or if say, cover 2 was an effective way of using great talent. The Bears and the Bucs unquestionably had great talent. The Bills don't. Compare it to the 46 defense. Roughly speaking, it's been used three times: the 85 Bears, the 00 Titans, and the 01 Bills. 2/3 teams in the Super Bowl - pretty good, right? The problem is that it requires profound talent to work properly. When we ran it, it was horrible. It has specific flaws that were exploited against the Bills, and faded when we ran a more conservative, 4-3 defense in 2003. It's far too early to say anything useful about the Cover 2's success rates right now. We do know that it is effective with great personnel, and even though the Colts are struggling now, they had some decent years with it with relatively marginal talent. Their current defense is a failure because they have virtually no good players on defense besides Dwight Freeney. Like anything else, it's a case-by-case basis.

Well, let's see about those Saints: They went from having one of the worst QBs in the league (Aaron Brooks) to one of the best. They went from having a terrible coach to a successful one. They added the most touted rookie running back in the past decade They got freakishly lucky with Marques Colston, who is playing like a top wide receiver. 8-4 is only three more wins than the Bills have anyway, and if we played Tampa twice instead of New England twice, we'd be most of the way there. Also factor in a substandard Carolina team, a struggling Falcons, and there's no conspiracy here. Maybe you can make a case that the NFL persuaded the Texans to pass on Bush. Maybe.

Can he play wide receiver? Fewer touches, fewer hits, but a lot of utility.