SoCal Pat

... one of two things: 1. Either Ralph is senile and/or close to being broke, and can't afford to swallow Jauron's contract -- never mind he could recoup that loss in a turbo second by selling the naming rights to the stadium. 2. Ralph is a genius and wants the product to tank so badly as to lessen its value on the open market, making it easier for a local investor(s) to buy the team and keep it in Buffalo. Losing to Cleveland twice like the Bills have in the last 10 or so games cannot possbily go unpunished.

... one of two things: 1. Either Ralph is senile and/or close to being broke, and can't afford to swallow Jauron's contract -- never mind he could recoup that loss in a turbo second by selling the naming rights to the stadium. 2. Ralph is a genius and wants the product to tank so badly as to lessen its value on the open market, making it easier for a local investor(s) to buy the team and keep it in Buffalo. Losing to Cleveland twice like the Bills have in the last 10 or so games cannot possbily go unpunished.

I'm along those lines of thinking. Jauron is a defensive guy, and has such a perverted mind when it comes to football, he'll do whatever he can to win 17-16 rather than 38-16. He simply is lost when it comes to offense; it's so foreign to him, he looks at it like we do the swine flu.

You know who you are. You're the one that points out the positives from last night's game -- many of them -- when I'm ready to get on with my life and do something more productive on fall Sundays. Over the last two-plus years, this team has tried my patience more than it ever has. And I have all of you to blame (along with a healthy dose of my own inbred optimism) for actually thinking about following this team over the Internet next week against Tampa Bay. See, I would normally be watching the game, but after last year, I swore of Sunday Ticket -- my first game with it was our last win against the Pats. It's been all downhill ever since. I do have three kids, you know, and as a father, it's my duty to protect my kids from mind-altering substances. And goodness knows watching the Bills makes me batshit crazy. I would be dirilect in my duties as a father to allow that crap into my home. Last night I had no choice. Unfortunately, I might be too late. My 8-year-old son is in the early stages of addiction, and will likely demand we make the 3-hour trip from Wichita to KC in December when the Bills visit. I feel like such a failure.

Poz is brittle, Mitchell's name wasn't called once all night and Ellison can't cover a TE if his life depended on it. Why test the secondary if you can get 8 yards every time with the underneath routes?

Save that "It's a 60 minute game" bullcrap. That's for high school. With three minutes to go, it was an 11-point game. With just over two minutes to go, it was a 5-point game. The offense had nothing to do with that lead disappearing. Yet you lay blame at the feet of the offense. OK. Care to remind me what we were in the red zone against New England, when you really need quality play from your offensive line? And remind me over what side of the line both of our TDs came on? Aggressive mistake? Are you related to Jauron? Fumbling is not an aggressive mistake -- it's simply weak. That it happened while McKelvin was trying to gain more yardage when we didn't need it makes it stupid. Much like your rationale.

Get off the crack. We had an 11-point lead and lost it without the offense taking the field.

You can't have your hands team out there AND tell your return man to bring the ball out of the end zone. If April did tell McKelvin to bring it out of the end zone, that's just stupid.

I've never said that about a Bills player ... not even Scott Norwood. But what McKelvin did was both stupid and weak. He put himself ahead of the team by trying to take the ball out of the end zone when he had no blockers, and then he fumbled the ball to boot. Make that fuccker walk back to Buffalo.

And for that, I will never drink anything made by Miller. Ever. I encourage you to do likewise.

I probably should've qualified mediocrity with "consistent, unparalleled, no-end-in-sight mediocrity." Sure, heading into the 2003 draft we hadn't made the playoffs in three seasons, but think about what happened in those three years. Injuries crippled us in 2000 and the bottom fell out in 2001. Everyone hits this point in the NFL. But in 2002, it appeared our time among the NFL dregs was going to be short. We went from 3-13 to 8-8, and had a couple of close losses that kept us from getting back into the playoffs. We start 2-0 that year, including a 31-0 stomping of the Pats, and we were off and running. Or so we thought. No, the 2003 draft was the crusher. Get into the playoffs in that season and who knows what it does for the franchise? We can play what-if all day with this, and I'll start it off by saying we don't trade out of the first round in 2005 to get JP Losman in the 2004 draft. Drafting the QB of the future doesn't become a pressing need if Buffalo is a playoff team in 2003.

... we drafted Willis McGahee in the first round of the 2003 draft. We were coming off an 8-8 season, we had all the tools to be a prolific offense (the 2002 version was easily the best since the Kelly/No huddle days ... and Donahoe drafts a player who wouldn't help us at all in 2003. When you're poised to take the next big step, from average team to playoff and Super Bowl contender, you don't take players who can't help you immediately. The window of opportunity in today's NFL is open far shorter than it was 10 years ago, or before free agency. If you're in the no-mans land of the NFL (7-9 through 9-7), you simply cannot be using your first-round picks on the future. We absolutely blew it with that pick.

Parcells is a freakin' genius, and anyone not willing to admit as much doesn't know a thing about football. I'd give up everything I know about the game just to take 30 minutes with Parcells for him to fill my brain back up. He's won everywhere he's gone, and only with Dallas (with the most meddlesome owner he ever had) did he not wildly exceed the lowered bar set by his predecessors.

... with each and every successive season of not making the playoffs. Instead of being optimistic over making it one more round in the playoffs or winning the division, I'm reduced to hoping we get to .500. This team appears to have so many holes in it, but the one true joy of the NFL is that rebuilding is only one draft away, one ill-thought waiver decision (See: Jets, New York; Pennington, Chad) and 1-2 dumb-luck games from turning things around. If the Bills were a college team (refrain from joking here about how they play like one), we couldn't be optimistic until 2011. But the Fins showed us that it can be an overnight transition. I suppose we should be thankful to them for showing us that. Dick Jauron absolutely has to be fired. That he's earned the "respect" of the players despite doing little of consequence is damning -- a point that seems to be lost on every mutton-minded national media member when discussing Jauron's ability as a coach. Outside of Dick Vermiel and maybe ... maybe ... Tony Dungy, I can't think of one head coach who won a Super Bowl who wasn't a ruthless bastard. And you're telling us that because the players like him, he should stay? Whatever ... Anyone who wants Trent Edwards gone either believes the next Brady, Favre or Manning grows on trees, or isn't mentally equipped to talk about football. Are you that brain dead to remember what life was like with Losman, Holcomb or Johnson? C'mon now ... QB play isn't the primary reason this team finished 7-9. I'm in favor of replacing our entire LB corps, but a healthy Schobel would help. Even then it's still a unit that can't be ranked in the top 25 in the league. Without Schobel's presence, I'm inclined to give the entire unit some forgiveness. Didn't the slide coincide with Schobel's absence anyway? Offense is much less problematic. Find a No. 2 WR, a TE and an offensive coordinator with a clue -- or keep Schonert if it really is Jauron that's responsible for all the mind-numbing, craptacular displays of play calling and clock management. It took everything in me to keep myself from going ballistic in front of my son when, with the wind and facing 3rd-and-9, we run Xavier Omon up the middle to set up a 46-yard field goal attept. What the hell was Jauron doing during pregame warmups? Does he not notice that a FG from that distance was an impossibility? Did he not learn from Cleveland? If Jauron is not fired, I will take great pleasure in seeing the nonrenewals in season tickets rise into the low five figures. If that doesn't bother Ralph Wilson, then he can go jump off a bridge and die already so the team can move and I can free up Sunday afternoons for something far less exasperating.

This is beyond pathetic. Dogcrap clock management, running with under 20 seconds left and no timeouts, playing for FGs ... Jauron is the most gutless stupid coach in the NFL