Fake-Fat Sunny

Agreed, the question is not whether his attitude will get old if we lose (it will) th question is whether his attitude and approach wil help us win. Since productive players seem to be reacting positively to playing for him (like Urlacher or Villarial playing for him back when CV was good (he is on the backside of his career and not as good anymore) I am pleased about what he has to say. Good attitude does not gurantee good play at all and it is overarching team feel that will make the marginal difference in helping/puishing players to do all they can and added into that is the good/bad breaks and how a team responds to them. I defintiely like the understated straight shooter approach Jauron has a rep for rather than the tough guy act and mercurial random performance of a guy like a Tom Coughlin. The irony is that though there may be a greater chance of immediate success with a Coughlin type, even winning gets old with a fellow like him in charge.

I do not know who Chris Russell is, but assuming that name is right he is not th son of Tim RUSSERT from Meet the Press and Buffalo fame.

The Bills have enough needs and uncertainties that it is hard to see making sense for us to trade away picks for a specific player. If we were one player away, this approach would make some sense, but we are not. There are several openings on both sides of the line, some aging players who at least need to backed up as greater likelihood injury is there for older players, and uncertainty about QB, Everett coming off of injury, etc. If a team is certain that a particular player is so great then I can see it making sense to trade resources away for him. However. D'Bricks size createa aomw uncertainty that it really takes the team being sure that he is the next Tony Boselli for it to make sense to trade up for him. Trading down and taking the risk that a player who slipped (Ngota?) will still be good eough seems to make more sense than trading up and taking the risk that the player acquired will be a football god seems to make more sense. You may lose out taking the risk of the player who slipped but even if so you have extra picks giving you players who may work. If you trade up, you are putting all your eggs in one basket so it better work as not only must this player pan out, AND avoid the unpredictable injury, but you also have given up valuable resources to get him. He looks very good and is clearly the OL class of this draft, but I simply do not see D'Brick being such a stone cold lock that we can trade up for him. I think weonly take him if he slips to #8 and also if no one is welling to trade us additional resources for the #8.

I can relate to what you are saying. If a team is getting better I definitely feel success there. However, I guess I like it when we always try to make what we can touch exceed what we can grasp and thus I like the Final Four standard. On the other hand, I really respect my father-in-law becaise h lives a life where he is good at everything he does because he only does what he is good at. This really works out well for him because he is actually good at a lot of things, but there is a certain efficiency to knowing what you don't know and staying away from being in charge of those things. Its a great way to avoid screwing up!

Thanks, what this points out for me is how relative the term "success" is, It really is skewed by the expectations which the situation or the words set (as with Jimmy Johnson coming to Miaimi after Dallas), In addition, the previous history of getting Ws for the team actually makes a big difference. Your pointing out that the Final Four standard would even bring Parcells into question is a good point. I consider Parcells work in NYJ to be phenomenal not because he immediately made them an SB team, but because he really righted the ship of state on a lousy team there. Merely making a team adequate when they were lousy before can be judged as a success IMHO. This also points out to me that how things occur is often just as important to me as what occured. For example, I think the Bills by most standards had a successful season in 2002. The team only finished 8-8, but coming off a 3-13 season and creating a lot of entertainment behind Bledsoe, Moulds and Henry earning Pro Bowl berths (heck even Mike Williams performance gave folks some legit hoped) I think it is clear that this season where th Bills were second in league history in W improvement was a successful year. However, after this success I began to call for firing of GW because it was clear to me that he did not have the "necessities" to be a quality HC in this game. So even after a successful season I think it can be legit to call for an HC;s head. Go figure.

He is not Sherman. I think Sherman is a good HC who clearly has a better record of accomplpshment than Jauron. However, the big problem I see right now for the Bills is that there are too many cooks as Ralph rules because its his money and he promises to be more active which does not bode well for this team as he clearly has made a number of big mistakes (the handshake agreement to reward Jimbo in his next contract when he clearly was on the downhill part of his game and he got knocked out of football, apparently pushing RJ playing because he hated seeing so much bonus $ siitting on the bench, and whatever role he played in our general mishandling of the QB over the past decade). In addition, the inexperienced Marv is in charge on the flow chart. The more experienced Modrak is around but apparently wants to do his job from FLA making him sort of a GM by experience level but not by inclination. I understand folks seeing inexperienced Marv needs some help here, but it is hard for me to see how it would not make this too many cooks issue even worse for us to bring in a former GM into the shop. It will be tough to make our current situation work. IMHO in order to win we must: 1. Hope that Ralph is mostly seen but not heard. Its his money so I think it is far more likely that a soft approach to this by fellow Golden Boy Marv will work much better than if the HC attempts to IMPOSE his will and vision on the team as iiots like Jerry Sullivan (who seems to care more about having a fight to cover than getting Ws). Since it is Ralph's money you cannot in the in force him to do anything, he has to be soft-talked and begged. 2. Hope that Marv supplements his inexperience by relying on Modrak who was involved in building winners in Philly and apparently has a lot of the responsiblity for some of the good moves we made. It is hard for me to see how Sherman who got canned in part in HG because he did not like losing the GM role would really just not make things incredibly bad here. Jauron has clear limitations, but if we do a good job of supplementing this with a good OC and Marv does the same job of keeping warring guys on the same page which he did with the Bickering Bills, Jauron may be a good choice for us specifically because his clear limitations will make him coach and do nothing more.

I think folks are falsely painting this as all one way or all the other way when it really is a mixed bad in terms of decisions. For example it was said up above that TD sucked in terms of personnel assessment, In some cases he did. The early decision to extend but then cut Henry Jones and go with Raion Hill was simply a bad choice. It was not that Jones was not well into the backside of his career but not only did we foolishly extend but cut him (the Holecek maneuver was the same idiocy but the Cowaet injury was not predictable so this coming back to bite us is not part of the indictment) but he hired GW who made poor safett assessment of Raion Hill and Jenkins. The poor development of Coy Wire and the sudden retirements of Cota and Battle forced to pay a ton for Milloy (who particularly given the above disasters which left us in safery need was actually a very good signing IMHO). However, along with crappy assessments like the one above, TD quite frankly pulled off some great player judgments such as: 1. Turning FA Peerless into a 1st round choice is one of the great assessment maneuvers in BFL history in my view. 2. Folks are down on McGahee after a huge tail off in the second half of the season (though his performance in the last two games should give folks some hope but fans are on the warpath). Nevertheless when most NFL gurus were running in fear of picking WM, TD trusted his docs and made an assessment which gave the Bills an RB who has rushed for 2K yards faster than Thurnman or OJ. 3. Je attracted TKO, Fletcher and Adams for a song here and those assessments were great. 4. Everyone passed on McGee on the first day of he draft and TD led a draft that snagged him. He made or hired idiots who made some assessment boners (Eddie Robinson did not have enough left to be a starter here) but he also made some the best moves ever and did a great job reading the market (stealing Denney off the phone from Pitts was a great market read whether you like Denney or not and passing on Kelsay who few would have objected if we picked him with the #23 because he saw that the run on DLs would have him be available in the 2nd round was a tremendous read that teams with his mistakes to make him a mixed bag rather than folk claiming he was all bad. Reimersma was a goner and deserved to go when he refused to take a pay cut to a level which matched his performance in his last year here. It would be disingenous if he felt ill-used by his treatment here because he took in far more money than he merited from his performance. Anyway, even if one wants to insist that the Bills screwed over player after player there is still a question of how much this is a Buffalo team or city issue and how much is viewed by players as a TD issue. I think that many players will be motivated by: 1. Jauron being viewed by the folks who played for him (Urlacher, Villarisl for example) as a good guy and players coach. 2. Marv is a HOF member and has a rep as a nice guy with Harvard smarts. 3. Its mostly about the Benjamins and if the Bills make an FA a great offer compared to the market I think this will overule any sense of past players getting screwed by TD. I do not think this is an issue beyond small market demographic issues which drag some players tobih markets like NYC. But even that is only an occaisional problem.

I think there is a general thought that what brought Wyche here was Mularkey returning the favor of Wyche being the first guy to hire MM as a coach after he retired as a player and I think was making a living selling insurance. For those who felt Wyche did a good job (and thought is divided based on the unreasonable complaint that JP has not become Tom Brady yet) there is still the question about the health issues that forced his retirement as an HC. In addition, does he feell some loyalty to MM that would make him want to follow MM to Miami if there is a job there or be uncomfortable sticking around, We'll see.

No wonder the Bears lost and he got canned because not conferring and making the guy who handles the players on the field a central part of the selection of players is a recipe for disaster. I hope the sense that he was not the top dog in charge of Chicago is not meant as some slam on Jauron for not throwing his weight around because it actually provides more of an excuse to let him off the hook for some bad Chicago results under his tenure.

Its one of the effects of living in a free-market economy. This does not make it right, but it should be expected. If folks want to reverse these effects then some thought and discussion needs to be given to America choosing to adopt different economic systems. There are no rules against doing that either.

A great post by JDG raised the question for me of how one defines success. I think folks in American society unfairly rag on the Bills for losing 4 SBs in a row and never winning the SB when in my view pulling off this fear was actually far harder to do than winning merely 1 SB. Particularly as a fan as much fun as winning is, I would take making it to 4 straight (and the great SB parties we had) and losing them all over making it to one and winning it (an experience I had being a died in the wool Bears fan for the 85 SB win until I adopted the Bills when I married a Buffalo gal and moved here to God's country in 1989). At any rate I think a key to assessing the work of HCs and the fortunes of your team is what do you define as a successful season. I added other to include any definitions I did not think of in this poll and because I think it is a fair answer for a player to consder simply making hucreds of thousands of bucks in salary (and goo gobs of free drinks, meals, and women in addition) to merely play a boys game makes every season a success regardless of results. However, as a fan W/L is the ultimate measure for me so I choose getting the playoffs Ws associated with making the conference championships to define a successful season, I\m curious what folks think and if you wish why. Thanks.

I also commend you on some great and detailed work. I plan to come back to it when I have a bit more time (my lovely wife has let me know I exhausted my TSW time on my own too lengthy work, but she is downstairs watching Friends which gives me a little time to play). My initial reaction is that one thing from them that will readjust some of my thinking likely is that some coaches I considered losers in their second time aroud were actually better statistically than I gave them credit for. Jimmy Johnson is a good example as if one asked me off hand I would declare his Miami stint a disaster. However, looking at the #s you collected, he actually had some success. It probably felt like a disaster because I allowed my standards for success to be set incredibly high for him due to his success in Dallas. This being said, I think I and we would profit from some definition of success by you. I will stick with what I have said up until now that I define a successful NFL season as one where a team makes it to the Final Four. Getting a winning record as MM HC'ed the Bills too last year was pretty good, but I would not call last year a successful season. Making the playoffs at all is also pretty good, but enough .500 or near .500 teams slime in there and with Pitts winning this year for the first time a #6 seed made it this far. In addition, I don't think anyone connected with Indy considers this a successful season for them so I am pretty confortable giving appropriate kudos for making the playoffs but for me success means going deep in the playoffs and making the Final Four seems to be a good standard. I'll take a look at this but if you have a sense off hand from working with these numbers what effect it would have on the population of your categories I'd be curious.

By popular request: Cliff notes begin: 1. The media's interest is primarily selling papers and not necessarily the Bills putting up Ws and columnists advancing themselves. Sully would seem to like the controversy caused by a collison of the competing interests of a owner who won;t live forever, a GM inexperienced at the task, and an assistant GM based in FLA as a means of selling papers. He would have loved if the Bills added a former GM who lost his job with the Packers when they stripped him of GM functions and reduced him to only HC work. Likely if we had added Sherman's considerable talents to the mix and he has IMPOSED his will and football vision on a mix where it will already be tought to converge these different visions and will, it would have made for a neat fight. 2. I believe that Marv lacks GM experience and it needs to be supplemented, however, doing this by bringing in a former GM/HC who was bruised and left due to a reduction of his GM authority is virtually guaranteeing a huge battle at OND. This is particularly true if Sherman IMPOSES his will and vision on the guy who hired him and the guy who pays his check. 3. Jauron has real limitations as shown by the losing record he had in GB. However, his 13-3 season, him getting NFL oach of the Year in 2001 creates POTENTIAL that if Marv can supplement his GM failings with Modrak's skills, Marv pulls off the same management job of diverse and sometimes fighting personalities he performed in the early 90s (doubtful as a decade has passed), Ralph does not meddle too much in the football side where he has messed up things before, and Jauron simply does the HC thang (my guess he will badly need a supplement of a good OC due to his own failings) this can work for the Bills. As tough as pulling off this trick will be, the chances are far better that it will work than thinking that adding Sherman's skills to this mix will wotk. Cliff notes end. Sorry this was so long, but i was thinking it through while I was writing. I am even more convinced after thinking about this that we are lukcy we did not get Sherman. If one thought TD and his psychoses were a soap opera think of what it would have been like while Sherman dealt with the bruises of losing his GM job while working for an inexperience GM. Yuucchh.

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said: "It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. " It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to. In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about. A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills. Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0. However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others. In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win. Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills, This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part. No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM. Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make. With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life. We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us. If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that. Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs. They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks. I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up. Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share. Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts. I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward). The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning. It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman. This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC). I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would. The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/ A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team. The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team. 1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season. Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB. 2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up. DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea. 3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle. I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling. B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM. Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job. His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents. However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active. C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD. His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants. In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails. Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen. If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have. Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy. The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than: 1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished. 2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC. He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained. I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance. it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills. Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want. However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together, Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

Its interesting that Urlacher has gone on record saying great things about Jauron's work as an HC. Os this analysis true and Urlacher is just stupid? Or did Urlacher like the fact that Jauron used him improperly early in his career. Is there some great machiavellian conspiracy where Urlacher is singing the praised of Jauron to dupe an opponent like the Bills into making him HC? What's the explanation.

I know folks are disappointed at the hiring of Jauron and given his total career losing record these fears seem legit to me. However, the thing which surprises me is the seeming wholesale embrace by many of the fantasy thought that Sherman would have been a great hire. Folks who think Sherman should have been chosen have a lot more faith in Marv making it work with this GM in waiting than I do. Folks who think Sherman would have produced a good result for the Bills have a lot more faith than I do than adding his talents to too many folks with authority over GM duties would have worked. This does not seem likely at all to me when one looks at the facts of what we have to work with here. 1. Like it or not folks, the Bills are in the era of the Golden Boys with Ralph deciding that before he leaves this planet he is going to take a more active role on this team. Its his money and this is a fact on the ground, B word mindlessly about the owner all we want, this is a given which must be taken into account as a baseline for choosing the next HC. 2. Ralph went with turning over the off-field stuff which was positively stone age (I will always remember and harken back to the tickets at the will/call window being sorted into shoeboxes from from folks closets at home in the 90s rather than being computerized) to TD and he did a good job with this stuff, but simply operated out of fear of getting Cowhered again and billoxed the on-field side. His primary motivation in on-field organization now has been to get fellow Golden Boy Levy. It is very highly questionable that he will replicate his success of the early 90s and a decade+ has happened so if he simply attempts to replicate this he will likely fail. His lack of previous GM experience with GM duties being a big part of his work is a big issue for us. However, this is simply a fact which will exist. 3. While it makes rational sense to look for an HC that might supplement the questions about Levy if he sucks at GM, it seems like a recipe for disaster to have Sherman play this role. A. Sherman had the GM/role and the HC role at GB. Do we really think that he is easily going to operate playing merely the HC role here with Marv having control of the GM duties and Sherman needing Marv;s OK and permission for whatever he wants to do. B. Marv has never done the GM thing before so it makes perfect sense to have Sherman who had done it before supplement Marv. However, in order for this to work in the real world one must have a bunch of faith in Marv that he is going to take Sherman's "advice" well. I do not have that confidence. It could work but if you believe it will you have more faith in he 9d year old no GM experience Marv than I do. 4. The situation is made even more complicated because in addition to Ralph meddling, and Marv learning, Modrak is still around operating to some degree from his home in FLA as asst. GM. Add Sherman to the mix and I simply think this is a recipe for disaster. Folks who are cheesed because Sherman ain't here have a lot more faith in Marv making this complex brew work than I do. Why are folks who advocate Sherman being the one so sure that Marv would make it work given that apparently Marv would prefer Jauron. Folks can advocate that they do not believe in Marv, but so what. No rational person advocates this Golden Boy being able to produce the Ws, but this is simply reality and whining about this was done two weeks ago when Marv was hired and can be a repeated theme. However, the question of whom to hire as HC is one I think best considered in terms of the best chance for a choice working within the limitations of reality. Adding Sherman to a mix which already has too many cooks (meddling Ralph, inexperienced Marv, kibbitzing Modrak would simply have been a likely disaster. Jauron by far is a much better choice that Sherman given the realities.

Your comparison of the team's individuals pretty much falls apart when one looks at a realistic assessment ofthe Bills. The worst of these is your description of Evans. There are few to know signs of him having questionable hands. Josh Reed had bad hands his second year and Evans is nothing like that. Moulds drops noticably drops a few passes as he often comes close on the circus catch a lesser athlete would not have even touched and some (foolishly IMHO) harp on that. Evans however has shown himself to have reliable hands and no problems running bad routees beyond the usual rookie or young WR errors. Also, Booker is not Moulds from what I have seen. Your TE indictment of the Bills crew is somewhat legit if by it you mean thay have no stars at TE, but Campbell has a pedestrian level of talent rather than no talent. We certainly need to upgrade at TE, but Jauron will have the speedy Everett so even with drafting one from the deep TE pool of adequate players in the draft I think the situation is better than no talent. WM is the fastest Bill ever to rush for 2000 yards and it seems rediculous to convert fans expectations that he has failed to become Jim Brown (yet?) after 2 years in dismissing him. I agree with you that the OL is pathetic in its performance. I don't know the Bears true QB situation at the time though the names appear dismal. Holcomb/JP can easily also prove to need to be replaced, however, they too should not be simply dismissed as a good QB coach has some potential to work with here. Holcomb is no starter talent IMHO but he is a legit level #2 which I do not think Miller/McNown ever were and I think JP is certainly failed so far but does have some upside potential which must be developed before dismissing it if he continues to fail to produce. Your read just does not seem to fit the facts on the ground.

Actually, i think the answer is guardedly optomistic. I would imagine that for any Bills player your views are a bit more grounded in reality than us crazy fans who lick up all information we hear from "inside sources" You are inside so you take all this stuff we fans love with a big boulder of salt. Being grounded in reality, my first thought is what effect does this have on me and second is where does this put the team in relation to where we were yesterday. On both these points I think you feel guardedly optomistic. First, the quotes from Bear players (and likely folks I know on the team) is that the key here is that Jauron is a former NFL player and has a ref big time player' coach. This probably pisses off a lot of fans who feel that us greedy players are overpaid fools anyway. However, top players like Urlacher speak incredibly highly of him and the word that he looks at things from a player's perspective rather than being a legend in his own mind like someone like a Tom Coughlin is great to hear. Second, as far as the team status goes, anyone who takes this seriously has some doubts about Jauron's ability to get it done. He did get canned in Chicago and coming out of Detroit and that madhouse where results were not achieved does not speak highly for him (though he got hired by Millen may be a bad mark, the fact he was passed over by Millen may in fact speak highly of him). At any rate, being grounded in reality I have to be optomisic (though guarded about this) because say what uou want about Jauron, things are clearly getting better. This says more about how bad it was with TD/Ralph and MM fighting rather than some expression of belief in Jauron. However, havng some clarity is better and helps. I have questions and just as I will have to prove myself when "voluntary" practices start, Jauron will need to prove himself to me. However, because he has a rep of fairness to his players and the team situation is much improved over the meltdown when TD got canned and MM left, I am pretty optimistic about this hire. I know some folks are upset because they compare Jauron's record to whatever fantasies they had about Sherman, Bill Parcells or Jesus Christ as our next HC. However, this is all about reality now so lets strap it on and get started.

This is not full-blown theory at all just a response to an indictment of him as being passed over by Detroit. Jauron may well suck but I certainly question the relevance of any Millen decision to showing this.

I also do not think Jauron is a likely to ho down in history as one of the great HCs or possibly even a very good one unless the Bills pull out some Ws because they operate as a TEAM (rather than Jauron personally delivering Ws as BB and Parcells seem to do). However, once Ralph made a decision to take the "Golden Boy" route being more involved himself and hiring his trusted buddy Marv, the biggest likely threat I see to the Bill putting up W's is that there may be too many cooks for them to produce a good broth. I for one am quite happy they went with Jauron over Sherman because adding a former GM to the mix may well supplement Marv's great failing as a novice GM, but if Sherman were here add yet another chef to the mix and the kitchen is getting awfully crowded. Add Modrak to the mix as our I live in FLA Asst GM and adding Sherman to the mix has all the likely potential of making the "Bickering Bills" of the past look like slumber party fun. Sure, this problem would be solved if Sherman came in and ran the shop with his vision, but I just see no way this could happen in real life. Marv's limitation of GM inexperience is still there. However, it looks like our best chance of winning is that Modrak really does get to instill a vision for this team from his remote perch through Marv. marv would need to emphasize doing what he did well in the early 90s of somehow orchestrated a very different bunch of personalities and views ranging from on field arguments between the players to his own clashes with Marchibroda into a winner. Polian clearly provided a winning vision to base it on and that is missing in Marv, but if Modrak can supply that through Marv this may work. Jauron's mission will not to be a savior (which he is not) but "merely" to be an implementer and an HC which he does have an episode of success in doing when he was NFL HC of the Year in 2001. Jauron is not a great hire, but if all things work as they potentially could his being an adequate HC will be good enough. I am particularly willing to invest some hope in this one because: 1. We have no choice since we have no say really. 2. The real world alternatives of hiring Sherman, loser Capers, or the unproven as even adequate HCs Lofton and Caldwell likley would have been worse. 3. Marv actually stated some good (they appear to me to be winning) features they were emphasizing in an HC: A. A good teacher B. Someone with a history of working well with is staff and his superiors. C. A straight-shooter. Jauron apparently has shown some ability in all three of these areas: A. He actually has a rep as someone players love with Urlacher having good things to say about him as a former player who knows the game and can download that to players. B. The chatter I here from Chicago is that Jauron has a rep of getting a long well with the front office (this will be a major issue unfortunately since Ralph is promising to meddle more) C. Having an HC who will actually say something in post game press conferences will be a welcome change for this fan from the repetive bleating of MM we need to execute more, GW walking the plank for TD, and Wade being an idiot. I agree that Jauron is not impressive, but I really breathed a sigh of relief when he got picked over Sherman.

Okay, i am now officially very impressed. The Lakers were only up by 1 in the third. The Lakers won the game going away after a three by Lamar Odom and 2 from Kobe elevated them from a 5 point margin with about 7 minutes left to play. Kobe played 42 minutes (this was not even an OT game) so he was not logging minutes and piling on points just to increase his personal total. The point total is second in league history to Wilt chucking in 100 and simply is exremely impressive.

The key question which i will now go look up is did the Lakers' win. If he got 81 and they lost who cares. If the 81 came because he refused to lose and they one that will be special.

It was even worse than that as GW not only gave Center's assurances but publicly said that Larrt Centers would remain a Bill as long as he wanted to. Within two weeks max (it might have been as short as a week) Centers was cut and Gash was signed. Either GW simply flat-out lied or he was completely out of the loop in a major personnel and offensive direction question. My sense is either way, TD slapped GW's hand when he strayed too far into GM teritory as personel acqusition was a TD decision with "consultation" with his HC. I love Gash (though I think Centers had served us well and had something left) but personnel issues aside I think this said a lot about TD's motivations and is the aggressive side of his personality which goes along with the passive side where TD publicly said as the hello MM press conference that he had advocated taking Clements as OC when Sheppard got canned (another case TD overriding GW hard early in the process) but GW got his man in hiring Kevin Killdrive. The situation was poison right from the start.

If history repeats itself and Jauron follows the Levy good enough results to get fired in KC before coming to Buffalo and the Bill Belicheck model of being good enough in Cleveland to get canned before taking over NE, then things will be fine. I also am not horribly impressed by Jauron and his getting NFL Coach of the Year honors due to his HCing the Bears to a 13-3 record in 2001. However, the thing which makes me feel this may be a good choice is that I think the vast majority of HCs are like Marv and BB that they win with good players and lose with bad players. There a a few who like Parcells can win virtually anywhere or a few like Joe Gibbs who can win it all with veru different styles of teams (the plowing Hogs or the pass-happy Smurfs teams). However, most of the "special" are actually those like a Rich Kotite who can lose anywhere. I'm glad Sherman is not here because his former GM chops and actually some success at it with Brett Favre likely would have led to a repeat of the dissension under TD here as Sherman, marv. a more active Ralph and probably Modrak as well would have dueled with each other instead of building one TEAM. I think folks are too tuned into looking for a savior or some silver bullet. If Marv still has the skillset and the personality to coordinate disparate talents coming together as he did with the "Bickering Bills" we should be fine and Jaron merely needs to be adequate which he can be thought I really doubt he can be great or much beyond adequate.