Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

If TD is replaced which all indications are he will be, the new GM will then decide on the head coach. There's a chance the new guy may decide that all the Bills problems were due to lack of talent and not coaching and decide to keep MM, but I'd give that about a 25% chance. Unless Ralph promotes TM, then there may be a 70% chance MM stays. I'm not too in favor of that though as it's likely that TM was the one picking the players we have, unless TD was over ruling him all the time. I doubt that though as why then would TM have liked working with TD?? Could Ralph tell the new GM that he wants him to keep MM for another year? Sure, but I duubt any decent GM would ever take the job then. At best Ralph could ask the new GM to consider MM, but after the past two weeks, not even sure Ralph would want to do that anyway.

Yeah, but as someone else stated prior, that was more due to pettiness on Ralph's part, not him trying to be cheap. Which I agree.

We won 2 games with Holcomb against teams with an even worse reocrd than us. And if you want, you can give Holcomb credit for the KC which technically is correct, but the guy who threw the TD's was Losman. I don't recall Holcomb looking all that much better. First game he did fairly good, but each week after got a bit worse. I certainly wouldn't call it a no brainer to start Holcomb instead.

Cowlart wanted big bucks which he got from the Jets. I think TD did the right thing there. Then he got cut from the Jets and signed with Minn, not sure for how much, but willing to bet alot less than he got from the Jets.

It appeared that Mularky wanted to bring in his own guy. Was a little surpising though that it happened to a guy with the reputation that Jones had??

It's hard to be accurate when running for your life. And even with time, being accurate also is related to being calm which again is tough for someone wit has little experiecne as he's had. Yes, it's likely that the receiver is open for a split second and agreed it's the QB's job to find that split second. Certainly for a near rookie QB, that's tougher to do. But yes, you'd like him to be able to do that. But again when you factor in the line and the play calling, the odds of him doing that drop quite a bit. As was pointed out 2 of every 3 first round QB's flop, so the odds are in your favor of being correct. But based on the amount of time that he's played and when factoring in the team around him, I don't see how anyone can judge him to be a failure other than based on the fact that odd are in his favor of failing. Unless you have better ability than everyone else to evaluate talent, but if you did, you'd likely be working in the NFL already. You may be right, he may fail, but it will likely take at least two more years to find out, and thats assuming the fix the mess of a line around him. He commented often about the weak line he had at Tulane. It may be worse here!

I watch very little FOX programming, but it seems that they will just cut maybe one half hour show out of the schedule for the night to get back on track.

I really don't understand CBS. There's never a football game that ends by 7:00, particually when they have the double header game. Why advertise that 60 Minutes is starting at 7:00 and piss off everyone. The people who hate football and turn the TV on at 7:00 have to be upset every week as they never know when the show will be starting. Everything else then for the rest of the night is messed up as it's delayed. I just added an hour of recording time to my DVR. Why not just start 60 minutes at 7:30 so at least most weeks it's on time!

Wasn't TM the GM in Phil?? Not that I'm really crazy about him being GM as I have to think many of our picks were endorsed by TM

Yeah, I wondered about that too. Either he requested they take it out, or they just edited it out. Didn't think they re-recorded it?

On the radio when they do their thing to introduce themselves. Nate Clements introduced himself as "cCrner" The Ohio State. He's no longer the "Lockdown Corner" Now that's a shock! (A shock that he figured that out)

I kind of thought the same thing. However if I'm EM I'd be bit upset that I'm going to lose a games pay casue I'm not ready to play when it was the coaches choice to not allow me to practice all week. Persoanlly I think EM will appeal through the NFLPA, and maybe win as it seems the Bills are on much thinner ground than the Eagles were. Any maybe Ralph knows that but just went along with MM today as he really didn't have much choice other than to fire MM instead.

I have less problem with the coaching moves than the overall talent. Or lack there of. As far a strong candidates, who's to say that Fox or Lewis would have done any better with the talent they had here. Most likely if they had been hired five years back, they would have been fired a year ago.

I thought it was OK t oown teams in different sports if in the same city. So Golisano would be OK, Jacobs NG!

I don't totally blame TD for most of the situations you listed below. I also don't blame him for not signing PhatPat last year either as I think it would have been a risk at his age. Yeah, he's having a good year in Minn, but lets see where he is in two years when they're still paying for him. I also agreed with his decision to sign Bledsoe at the time, and still think overall more good came from it than bad. I've defended TD for the most part up until about a month ago. The overall problems with the lines related to talent, makes me agree he needs to go. TD's problem may be he truely isn't a football guy. He's from the business side which not surprisedly just happens to be an area where the Bills are doing well. But ultimately you need to also be superior on the football side of things too. Maybe because he doesn't have that deep football background makes him want to more pick up the glamour players, WR RB, etc and ignore the lines. I don't know what the problem is but after 5 years we're almost back to square one There are many teams in many sports who just kind of wallow around in the middle to lower end of the pack for years. They start to get better, get peoples hopes up only to falter again. The GM fires the coach, brings in new players, and the cycle starts all over again. Right now the Lions are a great example. Finally someone figures out the problem all along was the GM and if they get lucky and get a good one, the problems go away. The NY Giants in the early 80s were there until they hired George Young. The Mets were terrible till they hired Frank Cashen in the early 80's. From the 50's till the 90's the Detroit Red Wings did nothing. The Baltimore O's were a great team till Angelos came in and screwed things up. It happened right here in Buffalo when the Sabres brought in Bowman. He was a great coach in Montreal, but didn't do much here in Buffalo except cycle the roster over a couple times. So fire TD, and who ever comes in can decide what to do with MM I have very mixed feeling if they fire TD whether to turn to TM as he was the guy who scouted most of the players we signed. If as you suggested the problem isn't TD, but who is giving him advice, as the GM he needs to know that and get rid of the problem. But again he's failed there too. The job of the GM in most cases is way under rated. He will make or break things. Who knows with a good roster in front of him, MM maye be looking like the coach of the year. But right now, we'll never know!

Interesting things you find out in the Boston papers! Now why didn't any of our local reporters now about his injury?? They must be too busy calling in to TD's radio shows. Losman started the season, then got hurt, and had trouble getting his job back until Kelly Holcomb was also injured

I can't help but wonder how Lewis or Fox would have done here in Buffalo with our personal. It may have been as someone suggested, they would have clashed with TD over this issue. But neither of them were the established coaches that BC was in Pitt to get away with that. By the time their power struggle took place BC had been coach for a good 5 or 6 years. Lewis had a bit of a reputation behind him that might have allowed him to get away with it. But Fox was just like MM or GW in that he's a head coach in his first job without a big reputation. It's very likely by now Fox would have been fired after four years of not winning.

Sprinkling in a few guys over 30 is OK. Provided you're strong every where else. If the Bills had a good offense that could move the ball and score, your defense looks much better in a hurry. But a weak offense with an aging defense spells disaster. I don't think you can afford 22 players in their prime, so you have to mix in the old with the young to get a good return on value. But again that only works for a short term when rest of team is solid.

I think even if Williams had come back, our defense was in trouble as it aged big time over one year. We needed more than Williams!

So then how come we have such poor lines? Is TD just over-riding TM's recommendations? I doubt it as if that were true, why would TM still be here? He's had chances to go elsewhere lately but supposedly turned them down to continue working for TD. I'm, a bit skeptical of TM right now considering the personal issues we have. Modrak is regarded in NFL circles as one of the most astute evaluators of football talent. He has served as Donahoe’s right-hand man when it comes to college talent, stacking the team’s draft board (one of the most important roles for any GM), while traveling the country to evaluate talent.

I think the past few years, there was hope. Plus for every poster here bashing TD, someone would defend him. I was one of the defenders. There are very few posters left defending him, and even the ones not calling for his ouster are basically suggesting he return only cause we may not get any better choices. there are very few left defending him. So I think if he is somehow rertained, there WILL be a large drop off in season tickets next year. And I think RW has also figured that out too.

I think the offensive line is more than one player away from being good. I think you need to make more changes there. You're also making a big assumption that Spikes comes back close to 100% from his injury. On the other hand his situation is different from Cowart in that he's already under contract. Unless he's due a big signing bonus, I'd be willing to stick with him for one more year anyway and see how much speed he gets back.

AJ also was part of the reason we were in salary cap trouble. Maybe it was more JB's doing and Alex tried to steer JB away from over paying, but you don't know. They were connected at the hip.

God, I hope not! Nothing agaisnt Modrek, but I have to believe many of the suspect personal moves were made at Modrek's recommendations. TM seems to like working for TD, so I highly doubt that TD is over-riding TM's recommendations. If anything maybe that's TD's problem? Maybe that's why TM likes him so much as he goes along with every move TM wants. Who knows if that's true, but I doubt TD is over-riding TM's choices mnay times.

If you bring 10 out of 11 players back on a unit that was rated #2, it's totally reasonable that you'd expect good things the following year. In todays age of free agency only losing one starter is almost unheard of. While it would have been nice to have Williams back on the D line, I can't hold that move responsiple for the Bill's D going in the toilet. I think TD made the right move in letting him go. Whats killed the D this year I think were a couple of injuries, though even before the players got hurt, they got real old real fast in 3 or 4 spots on D. Adams, Milloy, Vincent, Posey, and a little bit of Fletcher. Should TD have anticipated that? Maybe, but when you look around there doesn't seem to be many teams good at predicting when that will happen until it's too late. I think it was reasonble to think you could squeeze another year out of them, and with some improvment on offense, be in the playoffs. Where TD should have known better was on the O-line