dave mcbride
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I'm inclined to think that it is no co-incidence that Moulds may have had a meltdown during the same week that it was reported somewhere that the Bills intended to release him after the season.
I think it's very possible that somebody in the Bills admin informed him or his agent that this was the Bills intention, or possibly approached him about a massive paycut. This information somehow got out and was reported by some media outlet, in the meantime Moulds stewed throughout the week when faced with the reailty of unemployment and the fact that his asking price was plummeting as he continues to work in an offense with a 1styear QB and a ravaged OLine.
It finally all came to a head on Sunday as he realized that his fate was sealed and his only involvement in teh gameplan was to draw coverages away from teh Bills future at WR; a job that does not tend to make one rich.
Another viable theory is that this all happened because I traded for Moulds in my FFL league last week so that I could sport an all-Bills roster for the final game of our FFL regular season next week. The predictable result: When I decide to start Moulds and Bledsoe over Evans and Losman this week, Lee and JP immediately go bananas while Drew puts up chokejob #287 and Moulds loses a 9year long catch streak and draws a suspension for next week.
definitely the latter. my friend and i drafted evans and started him until just before he began producing. he's been benched in every game he's produced.
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well, i am still sort of implying that about mort. re wawrow, he is a good reporter. whether he's right about this i don't know. historically, he's been pretty reliable.
like i said, though, who knows?
the one thing i do know is that eric moulds will be playing elsewhere next year, and that losman will be throwing to evans, possibly reed, parrish, and a free agent (unless aiken becomes half-decent in the next 9 months).
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Talk about wild speculation. How the hell do you know that Mort's ONLY connection with the Bills is TD. The guy is a pretty decent reporter. I am sure that he just calls up TD and just parrots everything TD says because he's his buddy. Yeah, right, sure.
Clearly, everyone is trying to do one thing: Cover their own ass. MM and EM actually seem to be doing the sensible thing in a terrible situation. They are not attacking each other in the press. They are both probably at fault. EM has a legitimate gripe and is pissed. MM has made some terrible decisions but is trying to get ahold of his faltering team.
Ultimately, however, under few situations should any player take himself out of a game without injury, and under no situations should a player refuse to go back when told to by a coach. Even if this is the very best player and the very worst coach.
i actually have no beef with mort - he's a good reporter. he is though, on record as buddies with TD. so it would seem to me that he'd deal with him or someone speaking for him as a source. there's nothing wrong with that, and for all i know his story about the no-show is right. who knows?
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I don't necessarily see it as dark as this- Eric Moulds has at his very best been an "inconsistent" top receiver in the NFL. These days he's clearly fallen from the "top" category yet he remains the same old inconsistent Eric Moulds we've paid out the type of money earned by the consistent WRs around the league. Take his draft-mate Marvin Harrison. Harrison has built a career on making the tough grabs we know Eric makes on many occasions but Marvin also has long spans over which he also catches EVERY ball thrown his way he's supposed to catch. I can't think of as much as a 6 game span over Eric's career wherein he's caught "every ball" he should have come up with; Harrison on the other hand goes stretches like 30-40 games. Eric has both won and lost games as a WR, Marvin Harrison has really only been on the "W" side of that equation.
All the things Eric has been able to bring over the years have always been balanced by his attention lapses, and I believe in the NFL of the new millenium the simple difference between the good offenses and the bad ones is which offenses can take advantage of more opportunites. Teams who have brought in RELIABLE hands guys are winning more often than the Superstar Wideout teams like the Raiders. We suffer from two "unrealiable" hands guys in Moulds and Reed, and this in my mind has had as much to do with our O struggles this year as any other dynamic save our "learnin'" period for our new QB. I'm thankful we have Lee Evans, a guy who appears to have VERY reliable hands, and if ever there could be a case of addtion by subtraction it might be this off-season with a good complement being added on the other side of Lee and one very substantial cap hit being softened with a trade of our "superstar" WR.
moulds makes fewer drops than terrell owens, yet owens is hands down (in my opinion) a better player than marvin harrison. the point is that sure, he drops some, but the drops are overrated (i can think of only 2 drops this year, in fact). the fact that you're comparing moulds to someone like harrison as opposed to, say, jake reed, eddie kennison, laverneous coles, amani toomer, etc. says something. he has definitely been better than all of those guys. finally, i agree that he's in decline, but lets not forget that his 1998 season was probably the best single season ever for a bill receiver. in the course of throwing him under the bus, lets not forget that.
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The current turmoil and veteran consternation on this team is actually going to be a blessing in the long run, much like the same problems that occurred when Kelly & Co. came aboard in '86. It's essential for the growth and maturation of the younger, key players who can't otherwise excersize their leadership in the face of the entrenched veteran leadership that doesn't want to let go.
Many may remember the mid-eighties when the veteran leadership, notably Devlin, Jones, Smerlas, etc. really butted heads with the young turks that came aboard in that era. It didn't take Marv long to realize who that was and how essential it was to rid the team of that negative influence. Many on the team thought Kelly was a cocky SOB (sound familiar) who didn't know his place i.e. show the proper respect for those that had been around awhile. It' just a natural part of a team's evolution. It's only natural for those who've been around awhile to resent new arrivals when they try to assert their leadership in the locker room. That's what's happening now. And the players who resent it the most are going to cause division in the locker room, question the coaches, and quit on the team. We saw it then and we're seeing it now.
Thanks for your service guys, but it's not your team anymore. It's simply time for you to go. Good luck to you. Here's hoping you can find new starts on other teams.
Go Bills!!!
how about all the vets eased out after chuck knox era? we did real well the next few years, as i recall. there's a wrong way to push guys out too, you know ...
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you mean the one with the 91.2 rating, the 67.7% completion rate, the 6-3 td/int ratio, and the 6.4 ypa average (as opposed to losman's 5.8)?
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dog, until the kc game, evans was having a horrible season production-wise. he's still on pace for a sub-50 catch and sub-800 yard season. i do agree with you, however, that he's a real talent -- unbelievable speed plus really soft hands. he'll be a great one. he's not there yet, though, and notwithstanding the miami game, the double coverage has generally rolled towards moulds most of the season. he also has yet to show that he can park himself in the middle and assert his will against headhunting safeties, which is what moulds, TO, keyshawn johnson, hines ward, etc. do on a consistent basis.
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Did you not watch what the game plan did? It is only when we went away from the game plan did the team start to falter. The game plan was the most explosive offense we have seen here in a long time. And Eric Moulds hasn't been the Bills best player in well over three years. Not even to be considered in that category. He is a once great player.
the game plan i watched was one that -- like all bills game plans -- worked well early but went into the tank after the opponent made the proper adjustments. it happens every game, in fact. as for moulds, he's not the player he once was, but he's still probably a better all around player than evans (who has yet to prove that he can assert his will in the middle of the field) although evans is certainly more explosive. i've said for a while that moulds has declined in recent times and isn't worth his salary, but he's declined from being (in my god's honest opinion) a top 5 receiver to just a pretty good player. also, in the past 6 weeks or so, he's put up pretty strong numbers. now is he better than mcgahee? that's a tough one -- they both run at about the same speed and both are tough to tackle. about even, i'd say.
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His team mates during these years?
WR's JD Hill, Bob Chandler, Ahmad Rashad, Frank Lewis, Jerry Butler
So he was the #2 or #3 guy and a special teamer for 9 years, in the company of some of the leagues best. These were also during the days when Joe Ferguson's role was to hand off to OJ and Ground Chuck offenses.
Memories are short indeed.
who has the short memories? j.d. hill and rashad were long gone by the time piccone joined the bills in '77, and butler and lewis joined the squad a couple of years after later. o'j.'s last decent season with the bills was '76, which is a year before piccone arrived. and the point is that he was a marginal nfl player, not a difference maker, yet he holds a place in the heart of many bills fans. he couldn't break into the starting lineup, yet so many people have extremely fond memories of his playmaking skills. he averaged 13.5 receptions and 1 td per season and played on special teams. 'nuff said.
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... or a televangelist. but he really does seem like a good football guy. he's been with winners for most of his career.
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http://www.profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm
DePAUL DeGUY IN BUFFALO?
As the rumor mill continues to churn regarding the fate of Bills G.M. Tom Donahoe, we're now hearing that assistant G.M. Tom Modrak might be bypassed completely, and that owner Ralph Wilson might go straight for Bears director of pro personnel Bobby DePaul.
Initially, the thinking was that, if Modrak got the job, he'd possibly hire DePaul. But given that Modrak fired DePaul when they both were in Philly, DePaul likely won't want to work with Modrak again.
With DePaul quietly getting plenty of credit for his role in putting together some of the pieces of the Eagles team that eventually went to four straight NFC title games, and given the success of the Bears this season, DePaul's name is getting play both in Buffalo and, possibly, elsewhere.
Back to Modrak, we got several e-mails from folks who took exception to the harsh words directed at him in this space on Tuesday. In the interests of clarity, these comments weren't ours -- they were from a league source who occupies a position of significant influence and authority with a team that has a winning record.
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no need to try again. memories are indeed short.
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Exactly.
Lewis has always been a great defensive guy, and coach.
Mularkey was a complete clown in Pittsburgh the last two years there.
He always seemed to outhink himself in Pittsburgh, and does so here.
A majority of the Pittsburgh fans wanted him fired after the 2003 season....There was no need for that though, ol whitey took care of it.
hmm. in his second last season there, mularkey did the impossible and retooled tommy maddox into a competent player as the steelers went 10-5-1 and had the 4th best offense in the nfl. don't let facts get in the way of a good screed, though ...
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I know most (and I am teetering) want to see Mike Mularkey canned right now. However, just keep one thing in mind:
Most call TD stupid for not hiring Marvin Lewis 5 years ago, instead of GW. If you go back as recently as last season, Bengals fans were calling for Lewis to be fired. Now, Bengals fans, and a lot of Bills fans are hailing him as a genious...yet the Bengals fortunes have been up and down the last 5 years...every step forward, they seemed to take a step back. Now, they are apparently ready to take that big step into the elite team category. I really think that there is something to be said for continuity....as hard as it is to patient....besides, most of us didn't really have high expectations for this team going into this season...we knew there was a very good chance this was going to be an off year...
i'm not calling for mularkey's head, but i can say for a fact that no one was calling for marvin lewis' head last year.
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no, other than the fact that a lot of people were gaga over spoon in 2001 even though he sucked and everyone loved the canadian wonder back in the short-lived todd collins era. both were try-hard guys without all the tools. there are plenty of other guys i could have chosen -- drew haddad, jamie mueller, lou piccone, etc. etc.
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who I will not name.
1. Moulds was not in the game plan period. This was established days before the game.
2. Moulds asked the coaches what the deal was. Coach said this gave them best chance to win.
3. Moulds suggested that if he is merely a decoy, he should be benched.
4. Coach got angry and benched him.
5. Moulds has since been suspended.
Perhaps this is no new information, but wanted to pass this along.
reading these responses, it makes me think more and more that buffalonians simply don't like star players who want to make plays. frankly, i think they'd prefer a team of timmy tindales and brandon spoons. the responses here are unbelievable and depressing.
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What Jamie said! The Bills could certainly use some depth, and maybe a few defensive starters are getting long in the tooth, but there is still a lot of talent on the roster...it always comes down to the lines...always has, always will.
Despite the miserable year, I still think this team is on the cusp of being very good....
every bad team in the nfl is on the cusp of being very good. like the bills, they all need improvement at 6 or 7 positions. for instance, give sf 2 good cornerbacks, a capable qb, and one good WCO receiver, and they're off to the races. give houston a cover cornerback, an elite linebacker, and 3 good offensive linemen, and you get the same result.
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Me thinks that Jamiebuf12 is right on the button with his comment! Fix BOTH lines and suddenly you are NOT minimizing the actual talent that is on-hand. Losman to Evans is going to roll off of Bills' fans tongues with the same regularity as Kelly to Reed within 2 or 3 years! Bank on it!!!!
"the lines" compose almost half the team.
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i absolutely agree with you that he'll really produce in another offense. sadly, though, i don't think he's capable of producing much in buffalo's any more and therefore his salary is way out of whack. philly would be a good landing spot, but there are many other places as well. he'll be just fine.
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interestingly, i had heard he was a real bright spot on the bears line last year before getting hurt in the latter half of the season. they had horrible talent at the skill positions last year ...
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A defense of Moulds
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
didn't andre do that? (or something approaching that?)