Kultarr

Loseman?

It's good to know that after all these years some ardent fascinations are still alive and well on this board. Again, I disagree completely with the basis and thus find most of the stemming hypotheses (such as Butler was a fool) to be weak. Without going down all the meandering tangents and courses of future events, the base argument was stated as: "JB signed RJ and DF to foolish contracts." If we ignore the details of the contracts and the evidence known at the time, then sure, one can go back and revise the history and claim these were foolish contracts. As Jack Nicholson said, "You want the truth?" The reality is that the contract offered to RJ was completely in line with the perceived value at the time. Professional sports teams pay up-and-coming stars a lot of money based on perceived value all the time. All one has to do is see the contracts offered to unproven draft picks to see this. It may seem "foolish"; but, it is the way the business operates. (It's more foolish to assume someone in that business can ignore and whimsically act contrarily to the way others in the business operate.) You're position on "overpaying" is well documented. We can try to conflate various issues of the perceived value of an up-and-coming star QB, with RJ's future performances, and the timing of the signing, but the truth is that the Bills had almost certainly negotiated the new contract with Rob's agent before they finalized the trade. They'd have been foolish not to have done so. The truth is that delaying the signing a few months to audition him a bit in camp (or perhaps up until his first injury?) would've been pointless -- he won the starting QB job. In short, you're suggesting that there was no due diligence before this big trade went down; a position that flies in the face of JB's track record as a GM who was very cautious and hoarded his draft picks. Again without muddling the issues, the DF contract was typical of the many hundreds of camp fodder contracts sent out to aspiring NFL players every year. The contract itself belies your argument that AJ Smith knew that DF was something special and maybe even starter material. There is a difference between giving a guy a chance and promising him a starter's job. Again, when DF was signed the Bills were talent starved at QB, and there was a strong possibility that DF would look better than Todd Collins. (It is amazing that TC is still hanging around the NFL as a 3rd string QB. Is it 12 years now? Talk about late bloomers.) Was DF lied to? DF was given his shot and made the most of it. But again, this camp fodder contract was certainly not foolish. They took a flyer on an old, weak-armed QB who had had some success north of the border in an inferior league to see if he had anything left in the tank, etc. All I see there is an attempt to bring in more competition at QB. So, upon closer inspection, neither contract was really foolish. Indeed, at the time, it seemed like the Bills had pulled off a major coup to replace a pathetic Todd Collins/Alex Van Pelt/Billy Joe Hobert train wreck and increase the talent at the QB position. There is general agreement that the RJ trade did not work out. The high-risk high-reward turned out to be a high-risk disaster. But there is no need to conflate the issues of contracts and confound the issue with assumptions, extrapolations, and conjecture with the RJ trade having been a bad decision. That's it. I'm done with this RJ and DF nonsense for at least another 5 years. PS: As far as RJ's brittleness, yes, it was a concern of mine. In fact, I wrote on the day the Bills made the RJ trade on a predecessor edition of this very Wall that my biggest concern about the trade was RJ's ability to stay healthy. Unfortunately, I was spot on with my concern.

An important point though is that Rob Johnson was the poster boy of great practice QBs. The Bills took the bait for this guy based on his practices and pre-season showings and extremely limited actual playing time. So, I don't think the Bills are any less in awe of his frozen ropes after watching him in shorts and a Bills helmet in 7 on 7's than they were when he was wearing the Jaguars helmet. The point is that the contract they offered him and that he signed was, in fact, really very reasonable. The fairy tale is that the contract offered was foolishly high for an up-and-coming star QB. That's just bunk. Rob Johnson wanted to be a starter. He wanted a long-term deal. He wanted to play in Buffalo. The Bills wanted him as their starter. They wanted to sign him and lock him up to a reasonable term. They wanted him to be happy about the trade, have the contract done, and focusing on football. They got the deal done and everyone was happy. For that fleeting moment... Up until a few years later when it became apparent that the Bills did not trade for the next Brett Favre but instead had traded for the next Heath Shuler. Add the draft classes of 2000 and 2002, featuring the drafting of the next Dimitrius Underwood and the next Tony Mandarich, and it only starts to become obvious why the Bills of today are so pathetic.

Exactly right, Arm. The Bills had just traded a 1st and 4th round pick for him, which meant they felt he was worth a pick in the top 5 of that year's draft. In other words, they were sky-high on Rob Johnson and thought he was going to be something very special. They weren't going to "audition him on the cheap" and risk him holding out or flipping them a bird at the end of the season -- that just isn't a realistic scenario. It is an argument based on two false assumptions. (1) That the Bills had reluctance, misgivings or doubts about Rob Johnson being a great QB at the time. This is clearly false because they gave up a ton just to get him. (2) That the Bills organization holds all the cards in dealing with players and agents. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are other teams out there and many of them will pay the going rate for talent, e.g., Seattle and Hasselbeck. Further, being overly miserly is not in a team's long term best interest. It's hard to attract top free agents when you justly earn a reputation for paying pennies on the dollar to your top players. The expectations were that the Bills had just traded for the next Brett Favre or Peyton Manning. Let's say this was the Favre situation and Brett Favre had been given a low-ball audition and left Green Bay to have his stellar Hall-of-Fame career somewhere else like, say, archrival Minnesota. You think Ron Wolf would be regarded as an intelligent man and great GM? Uh, no way. He'd be a marked man, a laughingstock buffoon, and/or a member of the witness protection program. With perfect hindsight, it's easy to say Flutie's contract should not have had so many performance bonuses and the Bills should've never traded for Rob Johnson or traded him to San Diego or whatever. But the thinking was that the Bills had a team and needed to find a good enough QB to get the core group (Smith, Thomas, Reed, etc.) back to the Super Bowl. If Rob Johnson had been 1/10-th the QB they thought they were getting, it would've worked and we'd all be tickled silly talking about the year we went all the way and toyed with the Rams, or whoever, in the big dance.

That was for cap relief and, not to mention, after the fact. All of that bonus money went against the cap, and Butler had to restructure it to get back under the cap. (It's not at all clear if he could've cut enough players to get back under the cap.) But that is a far cry from saying "Butler was a fool" because he should have some sort of perfect prescient knowledge of how the Bills QB situation would work out. That point is and always has been ridiculous. Butler took what he thought was a good, reasonable gamble. He lost big. It happens.

I disagree with this completely. The original contracts were not foolish. Butler/Smith gave Flutie, who was a complete long shot to even make the team, a vet. min. contract with various bonmus clauses. Few thought Flutie would make the team, let alone make every single one of his bonus clauses. The odds were something along the lines of winning Powerball with 1 ticket. Since Flutie was light-years away from a "sure thing", they went out and traded for the hottest prospect available in Rob Johnson. They signed him to a very reasonable, young starting NFL QB contract at the time. Matt Hasselbeck, the guy that just QB'd his team to the Super Bowl, was traded the next year in the same manner and signed for almost exactly the same amount of money. The Bills simply did not overpay for Rob Johnson based on the expectations of the time. Switch the players and the circumstances, and you'd be crowing about how Butler was a "damn genius" and screwed the Packers in pulling a future All-Pro QB that led the Bills to the Super Bowl for a rather modest ~$5 million a year in Hasselbeck. The brain trust overpaid for RJ only in 20/20 hindsight, because Rob Johnson turned out to be supremely brittle and a slow-minded, hesitant decision-maker on the field. But this is surely not at all what they thought they were trading so much for. In retrospect, Butler/Smith's mistake was in thinking that Rob Johnson could be a starter in the NFL. And that miscalculation has had enormous consequences rippling forward through time for the franchise. Flutie coming out of absolutely nowhere and getting on the field and having success was a total shocker and unanticipated by everyone save the rabid Flutie worshippers. If Rob Johnson was 1/10-th the QB they thought they were getting, Flutie never would've even seen the field and never makes those bonuses. It's fun to speculate that the Bills held all the cards and could've served up some "tough management" sorts of contract offers, in retrospect, but this is too fantastic. Was Rob Johnson's agent a moron? Was he going to let his client sign a low-ball offer simply because it was "the Bills"? Nope. Not a chance. The market is what it is, and the Bills (and any other team for that matter) had to pony up something in the right ballpark and zip code. Then there is the Flutie contract and his bonuses: the reason these did not count against the cap initially was that nobody, not even in the NFL office, considered these bonuses to be attainable. Again, Flutie's agent could not have gotten him a mega-deal as an NFL starter because absolutely no one in the NFL thought Flutie was a starter. Due to Johnson's amazing brittleness, Flutie fluked into making every single one of these "hard to reach" bonus clauses in his contract. It was truly incredible. All of which then, of course, broke the camel's back, divided Bills Nation, and cap-strung the team. And, in to that toxic spill, rode one Tom Donahoe on his white stallion...

And he's still better than Teague.

Wellington T. Mara, RIP.

And who would you rather have now?

That's not the issue here. The issue is that Josh Reed, Mike Williams, Coy Wire and the rest of the 2002 draft didn't work out. That smacks of incompetence. 605481[/snapback] The issue the author is raising is clearly not that the Bills woulda been better off drafting this guy or that guy. Like someone said, that's easy. "We shoulda drafted <insert name of All Pro here>." The point is that given the set of picks they made, if one evaluates the value of those picks, the Bills got really very little in return. Mike Williams is but one example in the case the author is making: precisely that, TD's draft track record in Buffalo was very poor. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Mike Williams was a great pick, sure. But then, nobody said anything otherwise. It is the author's point that someone that is in the football business (someone often afforded the term "genius" no less) needs to do their homework better than the "conventional wisdom". Just because 4 out of 5 draft pubs thought Fat Mike was going to be good does not exonerate the guy who made the decision for real and all the consequences stemming from that decision. Exactly the opposite: if there was any indication, any at all, that Fat Mike was not going to be a great OL, then TD should have sniffed it out and made a harder, but ultimately better decision. (And if you go back, there are some red flags on Williams. He was in questionable shape -- huge guy but not a weight room junky, maybe had a bad knee, some weren't sure he could really play LT -- which turned out to be true, etc.) Because it was TD's job to do exactly that. In other words, it would be better to upset Mel Kiper on draft day and be shown to be right 3 years later (go Bengals!) than to give Mel a woody on draft day and find the team bereft of talent 3 years down the pike. Having a bad mock draft is regrettable. Doing a bad job is incompetence.

You could be correct, unfortunately. There is a chance that they can get it turned around quicker than that. Salvage a couple projects, draft some studs, sign a couple average or above free agents and things might turn around fairly quickly and really start to come together in 3 years. Your point is taken about the revolving door coaching staff concept. I've wondered if Gregg Williams was shown the door prematurely and might not have become a pretty good head coach given a better chance. (The late hiring date, roster purge, some really bad assistants, lame duck contract, burning his 1st rounder on a guy that would never play for him, etc., the guy sure looked like he was completely jinxed.) I guess we'll find out when GW gets his 2nd stint someplace else...

Now, that is an excellent question. And, I would agree. Those lines were put together with an offensive system already in mind. Their lines are not made up of Pro Bowlers. They were built with guys that had the talents to do what is needed in that system. Turn back the clock and throw those same players into the wrong system or a situation of system du jour, and they most likely look like rabble. We don't really even have to look that far -- Trey Teague was a starter at LT for the Broncos before becoming the Bills C. There is no question the Bills offense will change this year after the house cleaning. It already essentially has. What will be interesting is how the Bills new brain trust addresses getting the right talent for the new systems.

That is the point. The QB debaters often say things like, "A team needs a great QB and the only way to get one is to draft one. Jay Cutler's stock went up because he practiced well before the Senior Bowl, we have to draft him!" Then the other side attacks that with "Well, what about the Ravens or Rams or Hostetler? Tom Brady wasn't a 1st rounder." It's endless. And very boring. This is a team sport and way too much emphasis is aforded the QB position in general. It's plainly obvious a team needs a QB that can manage the game and make plays rather than mistakes. A team doesn't need Dan Marino to win and win a Super Bowl. What I'm saying is you need all 3. You have to have talent first. The talent has to fit the system. The Bills have neither of these, IMO. They have a collection of bargain bin talent, rejects, and underachievers. Further these guys were brought in apparently because of their low price, which is correlated to their overall talent, and not on what they could do within "the system." Heck, the Bills under MM didn't really even have an offensive identity. Are we a vertical passing team? Smashmouth? Pulling and trapping? Zone blocking? Finesse and up tempo? Nobody knows. This is diametrically opposed to teams like New England and Denver. Once the table is set properly, then it is going to take a bit of time to get the line working as a unit. Consistency and schemes, in the absence of players with the necessary talents, just means a longer period of losing. You can assemble the greatest cast of skills players going, but if you can't get it blocked up front, you won't win. Just ask a Colts fan. (Their line has talent and is generally good, by the way. They just had a tough day against LeBeau's packages.)

There are a couple subtle problems here. Both Baltimore and Pittsburgh were QB'd by 1st round picks to their SB victories. Plummer is also a high pick taken in the 2nd round. Colts, Giants, Bears, Jags, and Bengals were other playoff teams also with 1st round QBs this year. That's (roughly - others may want to quibble about injuries or whatever) 50% of the playoff teams. BTW, the Bills have a 1st round QB on their roster. They had 2 1st rounders the year before. The Steelers were certainly not a team built around Big Ben. Like Bill said, I disagree. One cannot make chicken salad out of chicken sh--. Continuity sounds great, but it does not mean one continues to play the same sad cast of untalented players upfront while getting a parade of QBs killed behind their atrocious blocking. Again, the Steelers were not built around Big Ben. Big Ben was dropped into a team that was already there and just needed some decent play out of the QB position to get back to the winning side. The Steelers have a great line and some very special, versatile skills players. They also continue to have an excellent defense. Getting a QB that could make some positive plays and not constantly turn the ball over was the last piece of the puzzle. I believe that drafting Cutler would be a huge mistake. Did you see this guy in the Senior Bowl, btw? He was very unimpressive.

Shelton Quarles plays mike. Derrick Brooks is their will. Ryan Nece is the sam. Of course, it's understood that they'll change their coverages down to down. I was thinking about Wire too, actually, when reading your earlier post. Spikes, if he can still play at a high level, should really stay at the wil spot in this Pewter Power defense; but, if he can't run, maybe he flips over to sam. Crowell, I think, got his legs under him during the season as wil too (2nd on the team in tackles IIRC). Posey had his best year in a 3-4 defense for the Texans. He may just be better suited in that system. Yep. The Bills don't have a McFarland on the inside nor do they have a Rice and SPires on the ends. Marv and the new deputies have their work cut out for themselves.

Can we just call this a "mike cover 3" (MC3) since there are 3 deep zones and the mike is in the middle? (and, its not a rolled cover 3) In this MC3 scheme the deep zones seem to be the least of the Bills worries, no? In the under zones, it's almost all question marks: - Clements? someone else? - can Spikes come back? - can Posey cover anybody? is he gone? - McGee should be ok But the scary part is the front. How do you run a zone like this with no pass rush? For that matter who stops the run? They couldn't do it last year with 8 and 9 in the box. And, then you mention a smaller mike. Scary stuff. But, it just goes to show once again, that the Bills need to fix the mess in the trenches on both sides of the ball.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think Thurman Thomas was every bit as great a player as Barry and Emmitt. The NFL was blessed to have 3 great backs at the same time. Barry may get charity votes; Emmitt may have records and rings; but, Thurman was every bit as good. Just my opinion.

Ronnie Harmon. Just ask him.

That move coupled with building a "smashmouth" line out of RGs, a TE, and and anchored by a finesse lineman who's forte is pulling, trapping, and cut blocking. (Well, my Broncos friends tell me he wasn't really all that great at that even.)

My unstated question was more along the lines of "Who's brilliant idea was it to expect Losman to be the next Big Ben?" Big Ben won the job in Pitt. because of what he did on the field. For some reason, TD and/or MM decided JPL should jut be handed the job in Buffalo. My other unstated question is, "Do you think if Big Ben had been drafted by some other team, other than Bill Cowher's, and had success that TD's decisions on JPL and Bledsoe may have played out different?" We'll never know, of course. Again, we'll never know for sure. Whisenhunt has done a great job keeping the system going, developing Big Ben, etc. Talent has a lot to do with it. And probably Bill Cowher as well. Still, I guess I don't think of the Steelers as being a great offensive team. Better now than they were when Mularkey was there, though. I think they still take their shots, but they've stepped it down some.

Oh, I agree with you. But, the fact is the Bills are taking a lot of pot shots from the experts lately.

Nor do I, my friend, nor do I. I don't think Wilson is perfect by any stretch. I don't tend to think of him as being as meddlesome as Al Davis or Jerry Jones, the old Jerry Jones anyway. I do think it was time for TD to go. There is more to being a good GM than creating a "big buzz" on draft day with eye-candy picks or swaggering trades.

I think you are looking down on the little guy here a tad, GG. Leaving a bad job is what it is and people in all lines of work do it every day. Fry cooks, Wall St. execs, and every sort of job in between. There is little to be drawn from this other than people are not always happy with their jobs. "Infinitely more options?" There aren't infinitely many $1 million salary jobs out there, of that I am quite sure. Now in Corporate America there are more than 32 teams, and for someone to reach this level, they've obviously proven themselves a very capable person in their field. And, it's also almost certainly the case that the person we're talking about has changed jobs many times in the past. But again, this is all really just tangential generalities. My questions about the situation under discussion are: - What is the truth about Wilson's handling of his team? Is he really meddlesome? Or is there more going on there? [For instance, I've seen high level managers when they feel they've gotten a whiff of incompetence in action before. They can become rather "aggitated". The downwards pressure they apply is not merely pointless -- either the target(s) get their sh-- wired down tighter or they crack.] - Donahoe was fired, right? He didn't quit to protest "note passing". He used to speak publicly about "Mr. Wilson" and his great respect for the owner, no? Can we really say there was a voluntary mass exodus because nobody could work for Wilson in this case? Or was it Levy's doing as others have asserted? - Donahoe has been accused of micromanaging by many. Was he? Was his micromanagement for 2 years more tolerable than Wilson's for 1 week to MM? I wonder what the difference was. Or maybe it is that Levy is the micromanager. It's getting confusing. - How proven is Mike Mularkey really? He was a darkhorse choice as head coach here. Rumors are he was on the verge of being replaced in Pittsburgh. His offense bombed spectacularly in Buffalo. It's fine if he has all the confidence in the world in himself, but I mean this from the other side of the fence -- why would I hire this guy as my HC with his record if I was an owner? To his credit, Ralph seemed to think highly of him, and I'm not convinced it was 100% economic. Maybe MM is a better coach than he appeared to be and there were other problems. Who knows? To be a fly on the wall of that meeting between RW and MM... - Mularkey is a Florida guy. He returned to Florida and his "family" was given as a consideration. Never underestimate the psychological impact of family stress. In other words, it may have had a lot less to do with "note passing" and the owner being this "meddlesome retard" character and a lot more to do with a very unhappy family situation. Are we totally confident nothing like this was a factor? --- To summarize this a bit. In the 99-00 time period, the Buffalo Bills were held out there by the media as an example of an excellent, first-class, top-flight organization. Now, in 05-06, the Buffalo Bills are derided by the same media as "one of the worst run franchises I've ever seen" and a disaster, a mess, a shambles. The incongruity of these reports couldn't be more stark. It begs the question, what the &^%$ happened? Back then the front office (Pres., GM, etc.) was composed of Wilson, Butler, Smith, and Phillips. Last year, these positions were held by Donahoe, Donahoe, Modrak, and Mularkey. The transition from the Donahoe regime was going to be to Wilson, Levy, Modrak, and Mularkey. Obviously changes at the top were made and with Mularkey quitting, we end up with Wilson, Levy, Modrak, and Jauron in Buffalo. But still, why did the Bills go from being a model franchise to being the so-called most dysfunctional franchise in all of sports? Just an opinion: I suspect that Rooney knew what he was doing back then and he fired the right guy. Speaking of stark contrasts, the Steelers with their 2nd year QB and the Bills with their 2nd year QB couldn't be more contrasting than black from white at present. Cowher "let" Mularkey go but deftly kept Whisenhunt from leaving too. Just some things that make me go, "Hmm."

It probably should be.

You missed the point. The point is putting players of lesser talent in before players of greater talent because of their proximity to Super Bowl victories or whatever it is that is the new unofficial standard. Would we put Deion Branch in the HoF over Steve Largent because Branch made some plays in Super Bowls and Largent did not? Or, to use players of the moment, Tiki Barber or Eli Manning over Steve Smith because Barber played for the Giants? It's just ridiculous. Thurman Thomas belongs in the HoF and was one of the most dominant players in the history of the NFL. Whether he had played in nationally-viewed "Loservilles" like Buffalo, Arizona, or Detriot or nationally-viewed "Great Cities" like New York or Beantown. Whether he won 1 Super Bowl or lost 4. And for an encore, they'll snub Bruce Smith for "playing too long."