Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

What movie was that in? I remember seeing it??

If he were fired by the Jets, at the least the price for him would have gone up due to the competition. And he may have instead signed with another team.

I agree, I'm almost positive what you are saying is correct. NO still is on the hook for the difference.

I doubt any of the prior head coaches will take a coordinators job till all head coaching jobs are gone. They likely are hoping to land one of them instead.

Well more than likely, this will mean waiting a couple weeks until all the head coach spots are filled. No one like a Capers, Hasslett, Fassell, etc would be willing to take a coordinators job until they are certain they are not in line for any head coach positions.

But how much of that was due to TD basically taking him to the woodshed every time he did or said anything that TD didn't like. After awhile you figure out what to say and do to keep TD happy. I think it' more than a coincidence that many people this season were saying that MM was begining to sound like GW. Maybe that was cause the same guy was moving their strings. And if they tried to break free, they'd get wacked upside the head qucikly. Td developed robots!

The one thing that I worry a bit about Marv is he was always a "player coach" Will he be too easy in contract talks and before you know it we're in salary cap hell due to overpaying?? I think that was Butler's fault too. He liked all the players too much. Why keep Mularky? Well he did win 9 games last year. Everyone expected more this season, and felt the one off-season thing we needed to do was improve the O-line, but in reality, the line got worse. On the defensive side, we aged very quickly. Are either of those things the coaches fault? On the surface you'd look to the GM to take care of that, although we'll never know if either TD or MM wanted to make changes, but either convinced the other changes weren't needed. Even this year when all was said and done, the players did still seem to like him with a couple of exceptions. As was said, sometimes it's just not your year. That doesn't explain a drop from 9 to 5 wins, but when coupled with the talent getting worse not better, four less wins isn't so shocking. I'd like to see MM coach with decent talent. I'm not totally convinced that will happen, getting better talent, but that's not MM's job to get the talent. But I'm willing to give him another year to find out.

What you say when not employed by the team doesn't mean a whole lot. Remember TD the year prior to working for the Bill's. On ESPN he stated, Flutue would be the starter over Johnson.. And once he was hired, he did the opposite. Based on what's now been seen of Holcomb, it also isn't a stretch to decide that while Holcomb may be a little better, he's not the answer. So it's not such an easy thing to decide. Plus Losman will have another year under his belt too by next summer as opposed to where he was in October.

That's what I'm getting too. Notice the last words is "mularky.rma" Assume it's about him??

There's a link on bullfaobills.com to the live feed starting at 5:15 according to website.

Well if he goes to Buffalo he'd still get $3mil as whatever Ralph pays him, New Orleans pays for $3 mil minus that amount. Say Ralph pays him $300,000 New Orleans pays him $2.7mil. The advantage of coming here (or anywhere) is he keeps his head in the game. If the Bills defense became good, he's likely get another shot like Gregg Williams was being talked about. Or if MM does terrible next year, he could become the next head coach here. You sit out, you beome a Jim Fassell type that no one talks about anymore.

That is likely what's going to happen and have no problem with the Brandon part. My only concern is Modrek certainly had a big hand in putting the Bills roster together, so will there be an improvement? Granted he did do pretty well in Phil, but then again TD did well in Pitt too.

Some of these guys like Feeney are playing on good teams which means they have their team has the lead more often, and the other team is forced to pass. This increases their sack count too I'm sure. For Shobel to have done as well as he has on a team with as poor a record makes him more impressive. Is he the best in the league? No, but as someone else said, he's probably somewhere between the 5th and 10 best end, which is about where he's being paid too.

Thats true, but the Bill's also have Russ Brandon to take care of that. 6 or 7 weeks ago, I would have tended to agree, but now I think TD is gone!

Not to defend MM here but, I can't help but wonder if MM's thinking was that this team is such a mess, playing him now may hurt his confidence more than he is going to learn by playing anyway at this point, so just let him sit to next year when he has time in the off-season to go slowly. I do feel there is a point where playing in a total mess can hurt more than watching and I also think the Bill's were very close to that point if not beyond.

Well that also makes him the best coach in our division as the next closest team is about 250 miles away!!

Interesting how he mentioned he was going to talk with MM, but didn't mention anything about TD. My only fear is the only was MM stays for certain is to promote from within, which means Modrek, and he's responsiple for scouting of most of the players on the team.

Holcomb probably would be ok with a good online that can run the ball and gain 3 or 4 yards at a shot. Then you often have 3rd and 3's and his dump offs would work. But not on a team that often has 3rd and long. The last interception was a good indicator of his arm strength. He's completed some long passes early in games when the D isn't necessarily looking for it. But when the D know's he has to go long, he doesn't stand a chance with his arm.

I'm not at all convinced that if the Bills had signed Lewis, he would have done any better than GW with the personal he had here. More than likely by now Lewis would have been fired as the Bills would have done just as bad. I also don't think he should have signed JJ for the $$ he wanted, and can't fault him for letting one player out of 11 on defense leave. With free agency today, I doubt there's any teams out there bringing back all 11 players from year to next on either side of ball. I also agree with you that signing M Williams seemed like a good move at the time and people who suggested we should have traded down, well you need someone to trade with. Where I think TD has done a terrible job is signing players for the line. He seems more intent on signing name "position" players than the guys in the trenches. Where it appears he failed on the defense is recognizing that the D was getting to old. That is what the problem is there, not losing one player. You can certainly argue that if TD is being paid what he is, that he needs to be able to see that that before it's too late. Whether that's fair or not, don't know as I'm not sure that is something that can be anticipated. If anything, that may fall more on the ocaches to see that. Maybe they did and warned TD, but he didn't do anything about it? We'll never know. I've come to the conclusion that I think the Bill's would be better off without TD, but when I look at your list, I really can't blame him for many of the things you listed. The only real gripe I have, which is a big one, is not putting an O-line together.

I think what likely would happen is assuming RW fires TD, he starts talking with other GM candates, once there's a mutual attraction betwen Ralph and someone, Ralph asks, what does he think of MM as a coach? If the GM candate tells Ralph, I can live with him, great, if not all of a sudden Ralph fires MM, just like he did before TD came along. Season ended, WP was still the coach. A couple weeks goes by, and all of a sudden Wade gets fired, and within a week TD is hired. The other problem too is for example with hiring the personal guy from NE, we'd have to wait till they are out of the playoffs which could be late January. Then for a new GM to only start looking for a coach, you'd be really scraping the bottom of the barrell. I feel that was part of the problem when Gregg Williams was hired, not alot of other choices left. So maybe the new GM keeps MM for another year, figures lets see how he does as by then no other good coaches left ot pick from? If he comes to conclusion that with better personal, he'd do OK, maybe it works out, if not he dumps him next year.

Thats a good thing to do, only if you feel that he will be there for the the length of the restructure. You can cut his salary down to guard money, but we have no idea at this point IF he can play guard. So doing that is taking a big risk in that a year from now, you may want to cut him anyway, and now with a re-structured, likely extended, higher signing bonus contract. (likely would happen as salary would be converted to bonus $$) Now we'd be eating an even larger bonus in 07. Pure speculation here (which equals about 99% of everything written on this site) but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the reason the Bill's didn't re-structure MW last year was cause they knew if they did, they'd be re-structuring someone who has played well for about a half of year out of the first three. Would he continue to improve? My guess is the Bill's felt, lets see him show the same improvement, next year again in 05, then we'll talk a major re-structure. But instead he's regressed, so why re-do a contract on someone that has so many question marks? You never want to re-do the contract of an unknown. Probably one of the smart moves TD did in not doing anything.

I'd be very surprised that it's chummy-chummy. I think TD has put the fear of God into MM, that if he even thinks about ever publicly questioning him, he'll be sleeeping with the fish. Everyone comments how MM sounds alot like GW these days. Wouldn't be surprised if its cause TD spanks him every time he speaks the truth in any way.

I thought they did a good job on the game itself, but statign that TD has the Bills going in the right direction was a pretty amazing statement.

My god, sounds like he's terminal! I want TD gone too but not dead. Sounds like that post past week about Sonny making a visit may be what Ralph has planned. I hope TD has an E-Z-Pass!

I'm not saying he is better. But at least with Losman there's hope that he may improve particually if he had a line in front of him. And at least he does have a good arm, and can run well too. With Holcomb, this likely is as good as it gets.