dave mcbride
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Posts posted by dave mcbride
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Just look at this board, as the losses pile up...there are far more posts about how TD fugged up, and how much MM sucks! I rarely see any fans spending much time talking about what a good player Crowell has turned into. If posts like that are started, they are usually sabatoged by "TD sucks" kind of stuff....Sullivan writes about the things that are "hot issues" with Buffalo area sports fans...the beat reporters are the ones who write the fluff pieces...it is just the nature of his job. If most of the material he has to write about is negative, his columns are going to be negative....everyone complains when he writes about the NBA! The Buffalo Bills are still the biggest game in town...and they are not doing so hot, if you hadn't noticed!
there's even more to it than that. beat reporters who are too harsh see their sources dry up. that doesn't happen with sullivan, who doesn't rely on them. there are, however, guys who do both -- ron borges of the globe, and national guys like don banks, len pasquarelli, and hell, even mike florio (who's a lot more widely read than jerry sullivan, by the way). but sullivan is basically lazy as far as i can tell, and has no aspirations to become a better writer by cultivating sources. as far as i can tell, he has none -- all of his pieces are more or less informed broadsides. to cultivate sources, his critiques and editorials would have to be more nuanced and measured, which he seems constitutionally incapable of. and of course, that speaks poorly of him as a newspaper writer.
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And replace them with...
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I'm waiting.
For one, Milloy was actually one of the few guys on the defense making a presence in the Panthers game. Numerous times he was there making stops that should have been made by Posey. In addition, I think you saw in a big way how important he is (and how he would be missed) on the touchdown play that came right after he exited the game.
Coy Wire is not his replacement. Who is? Leave Milloy alone.
Vincent came to Clements' rescue a few times. I'd say with a real D-line, we might not need to mess with the secondary at all.
Mario Haggan or Josh Stamer haven't been good enough to unseat the laughably bad Posey. Who is? Assuming Spikes returns (to form), maybe Crowell, but he is not much more than average, either.
We need two starting defensive tackles if we sack Adams. Who are they?
Teague, easy, we replace him with Preston, right? Hopefully.
Trey and Bennie are dead weight out there.The rest of the line: tackles might be OK with better/healthier (?) guards. Villarial might be past his peak, but serviceable if we can keep him healthy. Upgrading at RG or at the tackles is at a premium compared to getting a GOOD (really good, like, making-Mike Gandy-look-GREAT-good)LG right now, because Gandy is playing OK and Peters looks to have decent potential.
excellent post. by the way, troy vincent is quietly having a very solid year. he's hardly the problem.
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i tried the 2 famous joints (right across from each other...i forget their names...)
one was an uber liberal joint while the other was super conservative fry mumia
neither had very good cheesesteaks...my friend from california and I both agreed that we've had better cheesesteaks in other parts of the country
i was told to avoid those places (forgot their names) and stick with any ordinary place that looked decent, which is what i did. it was in the reading market and served only cheesesteaks, and it was awesome. the logic is that you really can't get a bad one there because the place couldn't stay in business. it's sort of like pizza in nyc - there are lots of average places, but i've never come across a truly subpar one. and the good places are sensational.
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If you have a choice between going to the Eagles or the Bills, where ya gonna go? Philly has cream cheese, sure. But, you can buy that crap anywhere. And I'm sure you can fine some little craft-made cheese in the state. But, these bozos use cheeze-wiz on their signature sandwhich. This is a no-brainer, cheese-wise.
i recently had a cheesesteak with wiz on it for the first time (i don't know why it took me so long). it's infinitely superior to any other sort of cheese on that particular concoction. you can knock philly for some things, but stay away from the cheesesteak - it's an awesome thing.
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i think the point is that "bills observers" equates with people who work in the organization. the way to read it is that they're laying the groundwork for either a request for a drastic cut in pay or a cut. the bills have long done this sort of thing. witness donohoe/modrak's feeding of anonymous complaints to len pasquarelli over the years (providing the stats for jay riemersma's drops in 2002 is one obvious example). prior to donohoe's arrival, butler was very tight with the now deceased joel buchsbaum of pfw.
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I suspect neither MM nor TD will last beyond this season. First and foremost TD did not see two important things...great teams are built from the trenches out, and second that if you have Drew Bledsoe you have to build a Drew Bledsoe offense. That would have meant keeping Travis Henry and using the draft choices to draft OL. McKinnie over Williams, keeping Jonas Jennings, drafting a great tight end (Jason Witten not being a bad choice) and keeping Washington or Williams even if it means letting others go. Very bad choices on TD's part. MM's play calling and coaching has been horrible for some time. There have been very good coaching recruitment coups in the last few years and we have made two bad ones.
by the way, for anyone who's paying attention, the best OLT high pick from the 02 draft has been levi jones (#10 overall), not mckinnie.
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http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/The+W...hispers2021.htm
Bills observers say that WR Eric Moulds is not getting the separation he once got from defenders and that he has clearly lost a step. That forces him to make most of his catches in traffic.
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Watching from the game it looked to me that he threw it to Moulds outside and Moulds looked inside. He was so wide open that he had time to spin around and look for the ball but not enough time to try to get it. It also looked to me that JP also wasn't looking at Moulds until just before he threw it. Not knowing the play or the defense or what was supposed to happen, I would guess it was one of those read plays where if a D player does one thing it's an out and if he does another it's an in, and JP read it wrong. Or else simply wasn''t looking to the D player until right before he threw. It did not seem as though the play was a bomb to Moulds as the first option though.
i heard jp on the radio after the game, and he said he pulled his arm in a little and rushed because he was worried about the right side of the line collapsing. he blamed himself for not believing in peters, and went on to say how great a job peters did that game.
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after the game, mularkey was questioned about adams by a reporter, who told him that he had heard adams went home before the game. mularkey was noncommital in his response.
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like i said, i'm no basher of drew and think he's better than what we have now. however, the facts are impossible to deny - he generallly tanks in the second half of seasons. "he" is 2-0 in weeks 9 & 10, but you and i both know that he should be 1-1 if not for the late mcnabb pick in the monday night game 9 days ago.
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i'm hardly a drew basher. the reason i raise it is that about, oh, 673 posters here have argued -- with the stats to back themselves up -- that the guy underperforms in the second half of seasons. overall, he's doing well for the cowboys. the reason i bring it up is that it looks like another instance where bledsoe was going to put up staggering stats and is now settling back into the mediocrity from whence he sprang. granted, mediocrity is better than what we have at the moment.
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29-47 - 61.7% (note, however, that while in week 9 he had a 70.8% completion percentage, against the woeful detroit lions at home in week 10 he completed 52.2% of his passes)
yards per pass attempt - 6.5 yards
td passes - 1 in 2 games (rate of 8 per season)
interceptions - 1 in 2 games (rate of 8 per season)
sacks - 3 (1.5 per game)
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Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk: Trailing 35-10 in the second half, the Bills faced fourth-and-13 on the San Diego 40. Boom sounds the punt, and TMQ barely had time to write the words game over in his notebook before the Chargers scored going the other way. Punting inside opposition territory when down by 25 is "coaching scared" -- Mike Mularkey seemed afraid of his own shadow. When the count was San Diego 48, Buffalo 10 at the two-minute warning and it could not possibly have made the slightest difference whether the Bills went for the first, punted or started square dancing, then Mularkey went for it on fourth-and-11. Contrast to Atlanta: Trailing 13-0, Mora the Younger had the Falcons go for it on fourth-and-8 in Tampa Bay territory. Atlanta went on to lose a nail-biter, but the bold play ignited the Falcons; from the point at which Jim Mora went for it on fourth-and-long, Atlanta rallied from 0-13 to a 27-20 lead. When a coach goes for it with his team trailing, he is challenging his players to win. When a coach shrugs and punts, he sends the message he has quit on the game; so why shouldn't his players quit, too?
As this column has documented, Buffalo has punted in opposition territory a truly shocking amount in the past five years. During that period, the Bills have been led by two gentlemen -- Mularkey and the tastefully named Gregg Williams -- who had no head coaching experience at any level before assuming the post. Both have played to avoid criticism rather than playing to win, consistently taking the timid way out and then shrugging their shoulders after defeat. Is there any mystery about why the Bills have not made the playoffs in the period during which their head coaches regularly quit on games? Is there one chance in a million Bill Belichick, trailing 35-10, punts in opposition territory?
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Hmmm, that would be interesting. But, weren't Ralph and Dwight Adams pretty bitter toward eachother when Adams left? It seems to me, if Ralph still can't bury the hatchet with Lou Saban or Chuck Knox, it would be hard to envision this. For what it is worth, I think TD and MM are back next season.
first, donohoe isn't going anywhere. re adams, you're confusing him with aj smith, who indeed had a bitter breakup with ralph. dwight stayed loyal to ralph. his problem is that closing in on 70 years old. he's got about as much chance as marv returning as head coach.
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1. let jerry gray go and bring in either capers or haslett. regardless of what one thinks of their head coaching ability, both are excellent defensive coaches, and they'll both be free. keep the rest of the staff.
2. sign kevin mawae. he's over 30 and will be coming off of a torn tricep muscle, but when he's healthy he'll still be far superior to any center the bills have had since kent hull. he's apparently done with the jets.
3. make a run at steve hutchinson if he's available. he might not even though he'll be a free agent, but if you're going to break the bank on a difference maker, it's better for the guy to be a guard. he won't be too expensive.
4. cut mike williams or force him to take a big paycut. my sense is that they'll have to cut him, and if they do, a team like the houston texans or the dallas cowboys will be thrilled to get him given their problems at the RT position. also, i hate to say this, but it's probably best to keep bennie anderson. he'll be an overpaid backup, but he at least provides depth and knows the offense.
5. franchise clements. he gives up some plays, but so does every corner in the league. he doesn't give up any more than either champ bailey or chris mcallister, by the way. with a decent front 7, his talent will shine through.
6. contemplate cutting milloy. this is a tough one. if he were willing to take a pay cut, i'd keep him around as a veteran, but he's probably too slow at this point to merit anything over $2 million. cutting him will of course save a bundle, but i worry that there will be no equal replacement. i'd definitely keep vincent, who is having a pretty good year despite the occasional slipup. he can still cover.
7. draft the best possible 2 gap dt with the first pick.
8. if need be, trade one of the two thirds we'll have and move up in the second (or into the late first if we're in the top 6-7 picks) to draft the best LT available. he can be a swingman in year one as peters improves and gandy competently plays out the string.
9. cut eric moulds if he's unwilling to be paid anything less than $2 million/year. he's been the highest paid skill player on one of the worst offenses in the league three years running, and his ypc has declined for 6 straight years. he's a possession guy, not a difference maker. others like him can be easily found for $2 million a year. trust me, there will be no dropoff in passing game production. and, given that it's already so poor, it's not as if there could be any dropoff.
10. use a third (or "the" third depending) on a promising DT with some explosiveness who has either attitude problems or is coming off of injury. detroit did it with shaun rogers, and dallas did it this year with chris canty. they can both play. heck, dallas did it with leon lett, and he wasn't a late pick because people hadn't heard of him.
11. use a 4th on a safety on a strong safety tp eventually replace milloy or sign a decent veteran safety now for no more than $2 million if you decide to cut milloy.
12. sign an aging fat guy: someone like a grady jackson who can give 15 snaps a game on first down and short yardage situations.
that leaves the bills with the following lineup:
line: gandy-hutchinson-mawae-villareal-peters (with a rookie LT swingman and bennie anderson and duke preston, who can function as a multipurpose interior reserve).
RBs: mcgahee-gates-williams
FB: shelton (or some other vet)/sub who can play special teams
qbs: losman-holcomb-rookie 4th/5th round choice
TEs: everitt/campbell/euhus
WRs: evans/parrish/aikin/moulds or his replacement/rookie
d-ends: schoebel/kelsay/denney/scrub
dts: adams/rookie dt/2nd rookie dt/anderson/aging fat guy
LBs: posey/fletcher/crowell/spikes/stamer/haggan (i'm not sure of posey's contract status - if he's still under contract, he's worth keeping because he's not abysmal, knows the defense, and comes cheap)
CBs: mcgee/clements/king/greer (and/or thomas)/rookie
safeties: vincent/milloy (or new vet or rookie)/baker/wire (good special teamer)
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Gregg Williams: we called the plays, and the players didn't execute.
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Fan: "What has caused the defense to miss tackles and assignments? Is it poor coaching or execution?"
MM: "Coaching is always a part of it. It all starts with coaching."
you didn't read that as mm throwing the defensive coaching staff under the bus? i kinda did, but perhaps i'm being to suspicious and uncharitable.
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he looked good late last year and appeared to be fine early on this season. rather than throwing him under the bus as a lousy player, wouldn't it be more appropriate to chalk this one up to an actual injury? eric moulds didn't look too good in 2003, but that was because he was hurt, not because he was bad.
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Uhhm, the whole point of supply side is to grow the economy as a whole and commensurate tax revenues. The goal is not to penalize the high earners with a progressive tax. Of course the rhetoric is turned on its head by saying that the rich get the bigger tax break, but ignoring the obvious, that they also pay the lion's share of taxes.
To say that supply siders and Keynesians promote deficit spending misses the whole point of who's better served to spend the "deficit." If Keynsians' theory that deficit spending stimulates demand, then that demand has to go through the government first. I won;t doubt that this has historically provided a short term boon. But, governments are notoriously horrific in building up long term value, and if you don't have sustained private investment, the government led short term stimulus will turn into a structural deficit.
Contrast that with supply side, which strives to stimulate demand by keeping more cash with individuals, and let capitalism take its course.
As to Dave M's point of Clinton's policies not normalizing income inequality, who should really care about income inequality? As long as overall incomes are rising above the rate of inflation, and that the infrastructure exists for people on the bottom rung to climb to the top, people shouldn't care about their neighbor's wages.
In practicality, income inequality in the US is swayed by a handfull of Bill Gateses making more money than many countries. The critics make it sound that if Bill Gates made $100Mil less this year, your income would actually rise. Right.
in the long retreat from keynesianism in the oecd beginning in the mid-1970s (the test case was Chile, which was followed by Britain and the US), wages declined in the US for something in the range of over 20 years. I know there's a lot of debate about the measure of this (especially around the rate of inflation in the 1980s), but i've read a lot on it and i'm pretty convinced that wages in fact fell. they started to rise at a very slow rate, mind you, around 1994-1996. i don't honestly know if they've risen or fallen in the last couple of years. i'd be surprised if they had risen, but again, i don't know.
as for rising inequality, bill gates making a ton of money is entirely irrelevant - we're measuring median incomes, not averaging out deciles. there has been a huge growth in the earning power of the top 20% since the early 1980s which has of course not been matched in the bottom 50%. and let's not even get into wealth as opposed to income inequality - it's gone off the chart. basically, i think rising inequality is a huge problem, and for a variety of reasons -- for one, elite institutions that reproduce privlilege in america are becoming increasingly unaffordable to lower and middle income americans while easily remaining in the grasp of the top 20-25 percent. today, social mobility into the elite is largely a function of access to elite institutions (primarily the university but other institutions as well), and my understanding (i don't have stats at hand) is that this possibility has diminished significantly in recent times. i'm not arguing that social mobility doesn't exist for people entering the work force, but it's far less than pollyannas exclaiming the benefits of an increasingly privatized economic system make it out to be. the greatest period of social mobility and declining inequality was in fact from 1945-1973, and that was a function of, well, keynesian economic policies (i.e., disguised and not so disguised income transfers). did/does keynesianism have its own built in problems? of course, but to my mind its cost/beneift ratio far outweighs that of neoliberalism.
of course, i respect your opinion about this - everyone has different ideas of what the good society is. so we can agree to disagree!
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I turned it on early in the 3rd and saw it a little different. His passprotection was all right but I didn't pay it much credence as BJohnson is good at gettting the ball out quickly and throws with good rhythm on his short drops. As a result his OLine is asked to do next to nothing for him. But in the ground game I thought he looked awful as he created no push, forcing Moore to take his runs way outside before he could turn them up. There were also several times Moore had to run through a tackle as McKinnie couldn't maintain any sort of strong, physical engagement for any period of time. He never got into the second level of his own accord and teh only times the Vikes asked him to, he ended up stumbling forward a couple steps and then standing around like he wasn't even trying to find anybody.
I thought he looked ineffective, terribly stiff and often disinterested most of the night. As for Biamila never making a play, nfl.com's gamebook has him with 3 tackles a half-sack and a forced fumble on the evening. Not a bad night's work I'd say.
Cya
mckinnie looked great in the first half.
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my feelings exactly about eric - where have you been? re this conversation, you guys are dancing around the obvious: the bills can stay in the game against bad and mediocre teams, but don't stand a chance against good teams. it's pretty simple.
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since you're resorting to the snide, all i can say is wow, anyone see our #1 draft choice from 2001 yesterday in san diego? great game, huh? every corner in the nfl -- even good ones -- gets beat badly now and then.
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Good post AKC
I noticed some DT draft talk so I thought I chime in. When Ngata goes is really up in the air right now, and while he's my first choice as of now, I will admit to only watching him in a couple games over his college career. The reason I make him my top choice is more a process of elimination.
I've watched every game Watson has played since he came to Michigan, and a good 90% of my friends are Michigan die hards. Scouting report or not Watson has played like an underachiever since he came to Michigan. He's very Sam Adams like in his motivation, and has always had weight problems. Then to top it off in an interview he gave during the Ohio State game he said the thing he loves most is food, and the thing he will miss the least when he leaves Michigan is practice. I found it funny that he publicly stated his two most obvious downfalls, food and laziness.
Some reports say Ngata has the same weight issues as Watson and at 350+ I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true. It’s said that Ngata is a very hard worker, but that he is so talented (Oregon says the top Duck recruit ever) he often tries to rely only on his talent to beat players in college. If we pick him up the big question will be whether or not he understands that nobody is talented enough in the NFL to get by without good technique.
Like I said I know Watson is like this and if Ngata also is you can cross him off my list. I just haven't seen enough of him to know for sure so that’s why I rate him ahead of Watson. One more guy that could figure into the mix is DT Rodrique Wright from Texas, he seems to be climbing up peoples boards.
you know, i've read these sorts of evals so many times that i've basically concluded that there is no fat man 2-gapper worth his salt who doesn't have motivation problems and food issues. why the hell do you think they're 6'2" and 340 pounds?!? it comes with the territory.
After reading Ralph's comments
in The Stadium Wall Archives
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to add fuel to the fire, check out the comment below from SI's don banks in his latest column. In my opinion, he's the best national writer out there (alongside dr. z), and certainly one of the most informed. He's very trustworthy.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writ...off.odds/2.html
"2. Buffalo -- Speaking of general managers who should be or are feeling the pressure, the Bills' underachievement this season has rightfully left Tom Donahoe in a very precarious position as he ends his fifth playoff-less season at the helm in Buffalo."