dave mcbride
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Posts posted by dave mcbride
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dave, it ain't happening. There's no way in hell that the bills beat the patriots next week. If they do, I'll be happy. But they won't. And if they do, which they won't, I'll be the first to provide my crow recipe and cooking instructions. But I won't have to do that, cuz there's no way in hell that we can take them, especially at home. We'll get outcoached and outplayed, and if I had access to a sports book, I'd lay an easy thousand on the Pats and walk away with a $500 take. Easiest $500 anyone can make next Sunday.
But I'd be happier to lose that $1000. But how can you have any confidence in these coaches when they haven't had a 200+ yard passing game in 13 games? How can you believe when they haven't beaten anybody of consequence in 24 games? How can you have any confidence in these coaches when they have yet to prove that they're an upgrade over gregg williams and kevin gilbride? I like Mike Mularkey and I REALLY like Sam Wyche, but so far this group is not getting it done.
The playcalling has been consistently poor and bewildering, and I don't hear any ownership from the head coach. I just listened to his Monday comments on buffalobills.com. He said "we were beat in the trenches", etc, which is true, but WHY were they beat? Were they unprepared? Have they overestimated their players? Was the scheme a problem? Was the game plan a flop? Was there a failure to adjust, or a failure in the adjustments? Surely these all played a role, and they all point to the coaching, not players.
I'd take our players with Belichick before I'd take his players with our coaches, let's put it that way.
p.s. i don't really think it's the coaching. i really think it's the talent level. the bills are a really bad pass blocking team (due an innate lack of talent, not coaches), and they don't have anything resembling a decent downfield thrower. losman is terrible right now, and holcomb, while a good short passer, doesn't have the arm strength to do it. you can't blame that on the coaches.
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dave, it ain't happening. There's no way in hell that the bills beat the patriots next week. If they do, I'll be happy. But they won't. And if they do, which they won't, I'll be the first to provide my crow recipe and cooking instructions. But I won't have to do that, cuz there's no way in hell that we can take them, especially at home. We'll get outcoached and outplayed, and if I had access to a sports book, I'd lay an easy thousand on the Pats and walk away with a $500 take. Easiest $500 anyone can make next Sunday.
But I'd be happier to lose that $1000. But how can you have any confidence in these coaches when they haven't had a 200+ yard passing game in 13 games? How can you believe when they haven't beaten anybody of consequence in 24 games? How can you have any confidence in these coaches when they have yet to prove that they're an upgrade over gregg williams and kevin gilbride? I like Mike Mularkey and I REALLY like Sam Wyche, but so far this group is not getting it done.
The playcalling has been consistently poor and bewildering, and I don't hear any ownership from the head coach. I just listened to his Monday comments on buffalobills.com. He said "we were beat in the trenches", etc, which is true, but WHY were they beat? Were they unprepared? Have they overestimated their players? Was the scheme a problem? Was the game plan a flop? Was there a failure to adjust, or a failure in the adjustments? Surely these all played a role, and they all point to the coaching, not players.
I'd take our players with Belichick before I'd take his players with our coaches, let's put it that way.
I'm not predicting a victory. all i'm saying is that it's in the realm of possibility. turnovers and special teams occasionly help weaker teams upset better teams. it happens all the time. because of some weird flukes, last year a NE team that was much better than it is now lost to an atrocious Miami team.
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IF they beat NE, they have an excellent chance to win the division as they will probably go 6-0 in the division (assuming they beat NE this week) and 8-8 suddenly becomes possible for winning the division. Unfortunately, based upon what I have seen to this point, I do not see the team beating NE.
Up until the Raiders game, I thought the team had an outside shot at a playoff birth. I thought with an injured Randy Moss, the Bills would be able to concentrate on stopping Jordan and that the Bills could win the game. I was definitely wrong about the 2nd 2, and it looks like I was wrong about the 1st one as well. The one saving grace is that up until now they haven't lost in their division.
Buffalo historically does not play well in road night games. In the rare road night game they do play well, they still usually find ways to lose (the "just give it to them game" in Foxboro being a prime example). This team has found ways to lose all 3 road games so far. I hope I am wrong (boy do I hope I am wrong), but I just simply do not see the team getting it done at Foxboro this Sunday night.
the thing to remember is that anything can happen. the bills could return the opening kick for a touchdown. brady could get knocked out with a concussion. the pats could fumble three times. the weather could be horrible, destroying each team's passing game. weird upsets happen all the time in the nfl.
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they'll be 4-4 overall, 3-0 in the division, and 4-1 in the conference. following the pats game, they've got a bye, and then they face kc at home. assuming for a second that they beat the pats, they could easily be 5-4 going into SD. i assume they'll lose that game, but then they get carolina at home in what will probably be lousy weather. win that, and they're 6-5. then they're on the road at miami, which is very tough but not impossible. then they have 2 home games - the pats and the broncos. the broncos game will be a night game, and i'm guessing the weather will be godawful. they close against cincy and the jets. they've had their way against cincy for 6 or 7 games in a row, so i do think they match up pretty well against them. they also match up decently against the jets, having dominated them 2 games in a row.
in a nutshell, if the bill beat the pats, 9-7 is definitely within the realm of possibility.
how can they beat the pats? they'll need some luck in the form of turnovers and good returns, but if there are two things this team is good it, it's those things. and lets hope they can run it down new england's throat, giving it to mcgahee 30 or so times. the one downside is that the pats are extremely susceptible deep, but holcomb can't throw it deep with any accuracy or power. in fact, these last couple of games i've really learned the value of arm strength (i sort of always took it for granted).
by the way, if mike williams is reasonably healthy by sunday night, i do like our run game chances. if we can run, we've certainly got a chance. holcomb cannot turn the ball over, however. his last game in foxborough wasn't good - he was 15-25 for 115 yards and 1 int in a 9-3 loss to NE (in mid 2003).
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The year puppet master was let go in pitts. he interviewed for the job in seattle and holmgren said he would not give up control of player decisions and signings. Ole whitey said to the pitts. media that he just didn't want to move so far from pitts area..Yea right!! After cowher showed him the door he vowed never to make that mistake again..That is all anyone needs to know and understand about this guy....And he sucks at it...Tommy the puppet master always knows more than the coaches,,,just ask him he'll tell you!!
no. donohoe was offered the seattle job in 1997.
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Pat Williams and the stout Minnesota run D are ranked 30th, one spot ahead of us.
In 6 games, they've given up 4.6 ypc (5th worst in the league), 9 runs of 20+ (second only to you-know-who), and 142 rushing yards a game (3rd worst).
Either the Minnesota D is missing Sam Adams, or we just needed an upgrade at DT, period.
wait a second - you can't just point to the vikes' run defense and say case closed and that williams wasn't worth it. there are all sorts of problems with minnesota, and like i said, a couple of weak or broken links can destroy a defense. for instance, sam adams is still a good player despite the overall performance of the defense. he just can't do it all by himself. as for pat williams, he clearly gelled with the bills defensive unit, and i suspect he would have stopped the run well enough for the bills this year if he had stayed. believe me, he's not the problem in minnesota.
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i'm very lukewarm about gray, but this is false. the bills defense was signficantly better in 04 than 03. they were ranked #2 both seasons, but they led the league in turnovers last year and were last in 03. the problem is talent -- the bills do not have a credible run defending DT (nothing even close, actually) and their most explosive player, spikes, is out for the season. you can't make silk from a sow's ear, and the talent deficiency has really caught up to the bills this year. all it takes is a couple of key losses to destroy a unit. in retrospect, not (over)paying pat williams was a real mistake, but one that was predictable. williams was a butler guy and 31 years old. donohoe probably figured he was on the downside of his career, just as he did with ted washington in 2001. i of course expect to see williams playing solidly for another 3 - 4 years ...
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gimme a break promo. the raiders have good dts and can stop the run. our running game wasn't working, and they were banged up in the secondary. our short passing game was working (19-27, no ints, 2 td passes), and if we had scored from the one we would have scored at least 21 points in that game. that usually wins for you in the nfl as long as the defense is decent. the bills defense wasn't today.
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i can't say i'm optimistic, but the pats have been brutally bad at stopping the run up the middle lately, and they can't seem to run block for shite (dillon has not looked good at all this year). plus kevin faulk, a guy who regularly murders the bills, will be out. london fletcher who has been badly burned on more than one occasion by faulk, can breathe a sigh of relief. anyway, that game isn't hopeless by any stretch. and remember the key fact - bledsoe won't be starting for the bills against a belichick defense.
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spikes in all likelihood will probably never be as good as he once was. the big problem, though, is the defensive tackles. adams is a very good player when he plays next to a space clogger (siragusa, pat williams, tez), but his shoot-the-gap style is murder (except on sporadic plays when he looks great individually) when he lines up next to a stiff, which is all the bills possess. milloy was beaten like a drum today. as well, milloy and adams are in their golden years - they're not going to get any better. they're not the worse defense in the league by a long shot, but they are mediocre and set up to slide a little next season without major roster improvements.
the offense is in ok shape, although i must confess that the card carrying pessimist in me is very worried about what i'm reading about losman in the national media (lenny p, etc.) since the preseason -- that the guy isn't any good and is not gonna be for some time if ever. now they may well be wrong, and buffalo fans like to think they know more than the national beat guys, but distance is often a blessing in evaluating a player (you don't focus too much on individual plays). as an aside, the national guys generally picked buffalo to be 7-9 or 8-8, and it looks like the bills will end up squarely in that neighborhood.
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i'm really starting to think the bills defense is pretty weak and pretty fraudulent. they simply cannot get consistent pressure with a 4 man rush.
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listening to the raiders announcers now - murph and avp are all garbled on the nfl network - they are ragging on mcgee, saying he plays off on every play and is clearly inferior to clements. not saying they're right - just reporting what they're saying ...
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http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor..._len&id=2199496
i don't have espn insider, so i don't know the details (see the grey box on the upper right side of the column). but he does say that they've done it.
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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writ...1020/index.html
best line:
I asked [Matt] Birk one last question before we ended our conversation: What did he think about the reports that exotic dancers from Miami, Atlanta, Houston and perhaps other locales had been flown in for the rookie party?
"I just think," Birk concluded, attempting to bring levity to a sorry episode, "it's a slap in the face to all the Minnesota strippers."
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well, we'd need to have a few more INTs against teams with stupid qbs trying to prove their toughness. that ain't gonna happen against collins, brady, or green in the next few weeks. too bad we don't face a j.p.-like qb any time soon ...
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this is purely a guess, but wilson did attend that pitt game last year and was disgusted. i would not be surprised at all if he was behind it. people tend to attribute everything to donohoe, but ralph has always been an involved owner and has a pretty high opinion of his own football evaluation skills.
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after the first couple of games, badolbilz said that it looked like he had lost some of his explosiveness. this would explain it, i think:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-b...ov=ap&type=lgns
He was hurt in a 24-16 loss to Atlanta on Sept. 25.
It happened when he was pressuring quarterback Michael Vick, and Spikes felt as if someone had tripped him only to discover that it was the Achilles' tendon that gave out.
As surprising as the injury was, Spikes knew it was coming. He said his right leg had been bothering him for the past year and the pain flared up during training camp in August.
Three days before the Atlanta game, Spikes said he was hurt in practice and tests revealed minor tears in the tendon. Rather than sit out an extended stretch to rest the injury or have surgery, which would've likely ended his season, Spikes decided to continue playing.
``It was like, `I want to take my chances. This is what I want to do,''' Spikes said. ``And then it just happened. I felt like it was just a matter of time.''
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Also what about this quote?
``I promise you,'' Spikes said, his voice rising with a familiar ring of intensity. ``When I come back, I'm going to be like a mad dog in a meat house.''
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Finally, why does the best Bills beat writer, John Wawrow, work for the AP and not the News?
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Does anyone know that the Bills play the Raiders this week? This whole board seems pretty worried about the Pats but we don't play them for another 2 weeks.
Kerry Collins is like a poor man's Drew Bledsoe. I say we blow out the Raiders first, and then shock the world by by beating the Pats in Foxboro!
5-3 heading into the bye, with all the momentum in the world.
here's what i'm worried about - the bills haven't won in oakland since 1966. they did win in LA in 91, but lost there in 1992. they've historically had trouble on the road against the raiders, and i tend to believe in all that historical stuff ...
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I would go with overrated in the first third of his career (JE), but as he matured and especially at the end when he only used his feet on rare occassions, I thought of him as a prototype complete QB and among the best to ever play.
If Brady gets kicked to someone like Houston and takes them to regular playoff shots I'll move him up a bit, but right now he appears to me to be the single major beneficiary of being in the Belichick magic show.
in the latter portion of his career, i would agree - he was really good.
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You listened to the radio and you're telling me who had a better day covering? And that Mcgee got beat by Chambers pretty badly for the second phish TD? That's great, Dave.
First of all, Chambers didn't score, although he did spend much of the day beating Nate, who had an interception on a pass that was five yards short and Chambers behind him. The second TD by the Fins was scored by Randy McMichael, and if you think the Bills put 5'9 Terrence McGee on him one on one, you're nuts. They were in a zone and Mcgee leaped for the ball that was well over his head. A safety should have been covering deep and/or McMichael on that play. But I guess you could tell that by noticing it was Chambers while you were watching the radio.
McGee's interception, however, was a great play, showing terrific closing speed in the end zone, and was the play of the game alongside Nate's fumble causing hit on a play he wasn't covering. I do give Nate a ton of credit on that play, it won the game. It had nothing to do with covering, however, which McGee was simply the better player that day. Watch a few more games on the radio and we can talk about who had a better game.
I do not think McGee is as good a cover corner or overall corner that Nate is. Yet. And he may never be. But he certainly forces as many turnovers and makes as many game changing plays right now.
no need to be snide - i admitted that i listened to it on the radio for god's sake. and forgive me for screwing up the receiver's name. as if that matters. jeez. my point was that the announcers said that mcgee was beaten badly on the play, and said it more than once. i like avp, and generally think he knows what he's talking about. maybe he was wrong. it's hard for me to tell. given what i had heard, though, i made a reasonable inference that he was beaten.
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Stats for QBs have improved dramatically as the reliance on the short game has become necessary due to improved athleticism across trhe LOS. And it's tiem the league recognized the farce of the "Passer rating" system that shows guys like Joe Namath down among the Brian Sipes of the league.
namath isn't a fair comparison. in the years that we're talking about, marino, montana, kelly, esiason, bernie kosar, neil lomax, and even ken o'brien consistently put up better numbers than elway. my point isn't that o'brien was a better qb than elway, but that elway was overrated, at least in the regular season. i will grant you the afc playoffs, though. he also played extremely well his final four seasons, but that was a running team first and foremost.
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I realize you don't really understand the game very well, but the answer is that the defenses fielded in NE were not nearly as good.
Here's your formula-
Good D=Good Team/ Bad D=Bad Team. The QB doesn't have an equal effect.
Oh yeah, the Pat's D- it's becoming the latter. Enjoy the tumble!
to be fair, bledsoe did play poorly in the 96 playoffs, both in the championship game against the jags and against the pack.
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Just take Elway for example. He opened up with some struggles due to his reliance on his feet (sound familiar?) but once he settled down into the pocket he became a complete QB who won it all in a big-ball play-action offense that Brady simply couldn't have survived in. On the other hand, had you given Elway the D in NE, the kicker and even used the hinky dink offense, Elway would have turned in 3 or 4 TD Super Bowl wins, probably 4 times. Unitas the same, Manning has the full toolbox, Kelly and Favre possibilities although they are/were both on the wrong side of the risk taking equation. So I'd say at least 3 of those you mention would have had BETTER results with the NE team than Mudslide has.
i'm not going to argue that elways was a bad player, but up until shanahan arrived, he was probably the most overrated qb ever. i'm basing this upon my own eyes as well as these stats, by the way.
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/ElwaJo00.htm
as for those "weak" denver defenses, you can do better than this, AKC. the years the broncos made the super bowl under reeves they were ranked 1, 7, and 15. the year they almost made it (91, when they barely lost to buffalo in the championship game), they were 3 overall.
Listening to WGR today - Incredible stat
in The Stadium Wall Archives
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indeed. a good tight end and a running back who receives well would be most welcome.