Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

As someone else pointed out a few weeks back, our ability to run the ball ended when he got hurt. So maybe not as bad as seemed. Put one of the top FA on one side, Williams the other guard, with Henderson and Glenn outside could be a big improvement., though do think Williams was much better at run blocking than pass blocking If they feel either Richardson or Kojo made big improvements as the season went on and could play well next season, then you have some depth. If not, sign a lower tier FA as backup in case of injury.

Still not sure they would have won the game either way as from what I recall they were doing nothing offensively. That may have been one of EJ's better passes in the game, just to the wrong team.

Let me guess you don't like Russ B very much?? Considering where things were with respect to Bills long term ownership at the time of Marrone's signing, it sounds like a reasonable thing to request and agree to. A 3 day window doesn't give much time for someone to do anything within, so would have to be a really bad situation for him to take the plunge. While you're on a roll, why not blame Russ for the 7 foot snowstorm that hit Buffalo too. Somehow he must be responsible for that too based on your line of thinking. Actually that probably has more credibility than your thoughts!

We don't know this for a fact, we assume it to be true based on everything TP has stated, but things haven't exactly worked out great for the Sabres either. Granted, I'd suspect we'd have much less trouble getting a good coach now, but would be interesting to see. I do agree with some of the comments that Atlanta and SF would be good landing spots with a decent QB in place. I suppose thinking about it some more with the alleged friction between him and Whaley, maybe it could be true. We can only hope that part of the opt out clause requires him to take his OC with him!!

You are correct, you did say trade, but still just as unlikely to happen as no new coach would ever trade a good QB for whatever we or likely any team could offer. (unless a team offers Arron Rodgers for Ryan). My response was whether you trade him or cut him you're still getting rid of him and thta never happens when the team has a good QB in place. Of all the HC openings Atlanta may be the most appealing only because they have an above average QB on the roster. Harbaugh got rid of Smith two seasons later so if the new coach in Atlanta follows your idea as you say "to the tee" how would that help Buffalo this off-season so I don't see how this is the same either, plus Smith was no where near a franchise level QB. Some could argue that neither is Ryan, but he's very close to that level, and would be a huge upgrade in Buffalo. I'd love it to happen, but it's not going to, at least not for the reasons you state.

I'm mis-worded?? How about you?? Your post was based on the premise that the new coach in Atlanta is going to dump Ryan to bring in his own guy and we can get Ryan this off-season. Then you argue how Harbaugh did that, yes as you said two years later after he felt he had a better replacement in house. So maybe two years from now, we can hope the new coach in Atlanta dumps Ryan just like Harbaugh did. Maybe if Atlanta could get a QB in the next two months better than Ryan, they may decide to dump him, but considering he's probably in the top dozen or so rated QB's, where is that guy coming from? What team in the league would give up a top ten QB? Any BTW, there's a huge difference in the abilities and ranking of Alex Smith Vs Matt Ryan. At the time it was about 50/50 on whether the 49er's made the right move to dump Smith as he had one (plus the half when he got hurt) very good season. Now it looks like it may have been a mistake, but at that time dumping Smith wasn't going out on much more of a limb than us dumping Fitz.

Neither Harbaugh or Rex meet your concept of the coach getting rid of the QB to bring in "his guy" as the coach was there at least a year prior to them cutting the QB, Ryan had like what three years under his belt with Sanchez before parting ways. And in the Bill's case the team was getting rid of him because they felt he wasn't very good and was overpaid. Kind of supports my comment that the reason a new coach gets rid of the old QB was because he wasn't very good, and that was why the coach got fired to begin with, the team was bad due to bad QB play. So of your four examples only one of them supports your initial augment and that was Manning. But even there was a rather unique situation in that they planned to draft Luck, plus no one knew if Manning was ever even going to play again. So I'll ask again give me examples where a brand new coach got rid of a good QB (that wasn't injured) It doesn't happen!!

Can you give me even three examples of that when the team had a good QB, even with a bad QB?? Think you have things mixed up a bit. HC and GM's bring in their own guys as in their own coaches, but that's about as far as I've ever seen it go. Coaches of winning teams rarely get fired, it's usually losing teams which often is the result of bad QB play, so often when a team goes to a new HC, they will get rid of the old QB because he sucked and they may even bring in a QB from the coaches former team. Seen that happen, but never a new coach get rid of an above average QB.

Since.... Orton retired!

If the Bills had won the Oakland and KC games, then could see him getting interest from others. 6-10 and 9-7 isn't likely enough to land another HC job or even a high profile college HC job, which unless he knows he can walk into one of them can't see him leaving just to test the waters.

There's a revolving door at QB for around 20 teams in the league. They try a guy, he doesn't work out, so you bring in a new one. If he gets it wrong about ten times in a row, which would probably make him slightly worse than average in the league, then you may have a valid point. Everyone keeps saying we need to bring in Bill Pollian, he knows how to find a QB. Then why would he have brought in Painter to be the backup to Manning on a Super Bowl caliper team. You're ripping Whaley for having Tuel and Lewis, well there wasn't a huge drop off between them and EJ. But Pollian is so much smarter?? Really can't fault Whaley for expecting those two guys to show some improvement also from last season, when they realized it didn't happen they made a move. You can say that about every QB for every team in the league and look real smart as there are many more failures than successes. So if you say they all suck you'll be right most of the time. Maybe EJ is one of them, maybe not, what I do know is no one has seen enough of him to know for certain, even a genius like yourself. But the odds are in your favor that you're correct just simply because there are so many more failures out there.

Totally disagree! Playing EJ likely would have proved little, backup QB's get like what 5 snaps a week with the first team. EJ has had little practice time with these guys since Sept. A guy who's been in the league for maybe 10 years, like an Orton, can make up for rustiness be improvising. EJ doesn't have that experience yet to do that. Likely he would have struggled which then all the haters would have jumped on it even more to cut the guy and would have been all over the Bills if they brought him back. Not that caring what we think means anything to the Bill's, but it also could have more shaken his own confidence. Maybe he has improved maybe he hasn't. maybe he has shown some improvement in practice even if with the second team that he will be back next year and compete for the starting role, but whether he had played yesterday or not wouldn't have changed anything for the Bill's. Likely he will be back next year and unless they sign a legit starter like a Cutler or Bradford, he will be given the opportunity to compete for and win the starting job. I'd suspect they will at least bring in an Orton like guy to compete for the job, unless they do really feel EJ is terrible and has no future, then he may be cut. Assuming he's learned something from Orton, he'll be given a shot at the job next season, but I do believe they will have a better plan B in place if it doesn't work out. Either way though I think playing him yesterday would have learned little if anything.

I believe the "no class" comment was more directed towards the bottom two posters and other similar ones which I'm sure will surface.

So basically that boils down to could have been Beckham and the 19th pick vs. Watkins. While Beckham certainly outplayed Watkins this season, not so sure the results wouldn't have looked much different if you also swapped QB's too The 19th pick isn't projected to be a future hall of famer where as the #4 overall is and Watkins does appear to be capable of becoming that guy from what we've seen so far.

Why? There's always someone at the top making the decisions. Yeah you could bring someone in now to tell Whaley this isn't working and replace these guys. But in three years who's going to tell the new guy that some of his decisions also didn't work out. Is the new guy going to make similar mistakes, likely yes, no one is perfect. He's not really tied to either Pears and Ubrik so if he feels they should be replaced likely they will. I think he's shown the ability to move on from his mistakes so am really not all that concerned that he'll refuse to make changes. It's also possible the two rookie linemen may show a large improvement by their second year. I'm not in anyway thrilled with Chris Williams performance, but as someone here pointed out a couple weeks back, when he got hurt was when the running game went down the tubes. So maybe he isn't as bad as people make him out to be or a mistake in signing him. Williams on one side if healthy and sign one top level FA guard and you may be all set at line. Maybe you flip Glenn and Henderson, though remains seen if Glenn's absence from training camp has something to do with his regression in play this season.

There are alot of reasons to not like Marrone, but this is not one of them them. Lots of irony in someone making a post like this and calling someone a moron. Post speaks volumes!

What we saw of him today means nothing. The fact that there are about two failures for every success doesn't speak well for him. New QB's often look good until teams get film on the guy, then they look not so good. i.e. RG3, Foles, to name a couple BTW we also saw the Pats QB of the future about five years ago when Matt Cassell played an entire season at a very high level which was much more impressive than what we saw today. How exactly did that turn out?

What exactly did Polian do to help find a QB previously? He signed Kelly once the USFL had folded and he had no other options, but he was a player who was drafted by someone else, not Polian. Can give him some credit for selecting Manning over Leaf, but in hindsight doesn'ty look like that was such a tough thing to figure out. I guess he deserves credit for making sure that a team that was 10-6 the year prior and lost the wild card,and the same team who one year prior lost the Super Bowl, had pretty much no backup in place so once Manning got hurt they ended up wit ha 2-14 record and giving his successor the option to draft Andrew Luck. I guess Polian deserves credit for knowing when to suck. There are over 20 teams in the league that all could use help finding a QB. Whaley doesn't need help to find a QB, he just needs luck, just like every other team.

Even then alot of luck involved. After going 2-14 the "franchise QB" that year could be the next Ryan Leaf. Tampa likely will go 2-14, what are the odds they will become great drafting either Winston or the guy from Oregon? If you think you're going to do it in 2016, you're really puishing it with one of them. Many years there are no Andrew Lucks out there, many RGIII's who will look great for a year or two. Then you may be starting over again. Which brings up the point of faulting Whaley for not drafting a franchise QB is laughable. If it were that easy there wouldn't be over 20 teams without one.

And one of the things he got ripped for was not having a backup QB in place when Manning got hurt. Now people here want him as GM, but yet he left the Colts bare at QB just like many here fault Whaley for, If you're going to bring him in fora one year consultant job great, but anything more particularly when he starts bringing his son anywhere near the team, get rid of him fast. If Russ B goes I think it will be more a mutually agreed upon thing, that his job here is done, he's not getting fired though. Next stop for Russ will be the NFL office. Wouldn't be shocked within 10 to 15 years he's the new commissioner! Or maybe 10 to 15 days/months depending how things good for Roger.

Spot on!! when he was the defacto "GM", I doubt he was much more than a sounding board for DJ and Nix. If them two would disagree, he may after listening to both sides be the tie breaker vote. That's why he he likely removed himself from that position. There's going to be alot of very disappointed people on this board next week as likely the only change that may occur is the replacing of Hackert and the offensive staff. Likely Whaley and RB will be back and I'd be very disappointed if they canned Whaley as they'd be hard pressed to find a better replacement and please don't suggest 70 year old Bill Pollian.

If your argument for Harbaugh is for strong defense and running game, we already got one without him. As to the running game, you need players both at RB and O-line. Not that I think Marrone is a better coach, but based on your reasoning, leaves little reason to make a change as Marrone gave you one of two and second one isn't on him as much as on players

You can only afford so much money for one position. Signing Darius to a new contract is likely going to cost big $$, so unless they plan to let Mario W walk, I think you let Hughes go unless you can sign him for a reasonable amount of money. They also have two or three other guys for depth or find and sign a much cheaper version of Hughes

Franchise tags only apply to fre agents which he is not, so that does no good here. I suppose the other option for the Bears would be work out a trade, the get Cutler to agree to redo the contract to convert say $10 mil of the $15 mil into a signing bonus. Chicago would have a $1o mil salary cap hit, but the new team would only cost them $5mil in salary. Maybe as part of the contract redo, he reduces his 2016 salary. What's in it for Cutler, $10 mil upfront and still gets $5 mil in salary Though I thought there's something out there that prevents a team from re-doing a contract after only one season??

Could it be he just isn't as good as he thinks he is. I recall back in training camp, there were some reports he may not make the team. Maybe it's some lingering small injury that he can play through fine, but makes him lose a step or even just a 1/4 or a step, but in the NFL even a 1/4 step is enough to make a guy like Chris Hogan look better than he is. NFL players have high egos, he also doesn't strike me as exactly the sharpest guy and he can't see thatimself. He thinks he's at the top of his game, but he's really not. The other thing could be he just doesn't practice that hard and that caused him to fall ot of favor with Orton. If Orton doesn't feel confident ot pass him the ball why play him. Or could be some slight injury is causing him to not practice that hard.