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MRW

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Everything posted by MRW

  1. Meh, you may be right, but I don't consider it nearly as egregious as the bungling at the end of the first half. Keeping the timeout available does give you an option to push the ball further down the middle of the field - if you use it after a 12-yard pass you really can't go over the middle again beyond 10 yards. If you don't agree that's fine, but I think contrary to the OP it is far more debatable than the way the Bills ended the first half (and to me it's really not comparable, when you get a first down at the 5 with 20 seconds left it's far different than a first down at the 45 with 45 seconds left. They would've had 2 or 3 shots at the end zone with a TO at the end of the half, while they still had time to get the yardage they needed for a FG at the end of the game).
  2. The end of the first half was absolutely terrible clock management. But you're completely wrong about the end of the game. You keep the timeout in your pocket to set up the field goal. Your offense should be able to get 10 yards given 3 downs to work with.
  3. I'd be fine with a DT pick, actually, if there aren't good trade-down opportunities. I just hope whoever is running the draft for the Bills realizes that this isn't a team that can afford to reach for players, and will pick someone worthy of the slot.
  4. Well now I feel like an ass. In that case, I'm glad to see he's recovered enough to get back to reporting. Incidentally, reading that made me think of Dr. Z. Sadly it doesn't sound like his condition has improved at all since his stroke last year...
  5. Not seeing the negativity. I think he's right, don't expect to really have any inkling what's happening until a guy actually signs on the dotted line.
  6. I think CBS is just getting really excited about that matchup and can't wait for it to arrive. And who can blame them.
  7. I gotta recommend the ignore feature if you find particular posters so annoying that you're tempted to just respond with an insult. It'll make reading the site a lot more pleasant for you, you'll just see "You have chosen to ignore..." and it won't raise your blood pressure. Trust me, I use it and it works.
  8. Honest to God, I had forgotten he existed. I don't remember reading anything by him in the last couple of years.
  9. Maybe the plan is to pool all our OTs and DTs into a single unit that will play all offensive and defensive snaps between them.
  10. Would you agree, though, that if a QB can't read a defense, can't sense when pressure is coming, and panics and runs himself into pressure, that he's going to make the line look worse than it really is? Conversely, don't you think a QB who can make quick reads and feel pressure will mask an OL's deficiencies? What PtP and bandit are saying, as I read it, is that a good QB can cover up for a mediocre O-line. Yeah, all things being equal you'd want a good O-line to go with that good QB, but if you have a QB who's not getting the job done odds are it's not just because the O-line stinks, and if you replace him with a better player you might suddenly find that your OL problems are not as bad as you thought.
  11. Sorry I was unclear, I meant "best lineman" to refer to Peters. Walker was definitely not the best player on the line, though he was better than Dockery and the one-two punch of Fowler and Preston. As I hinted at earlier, I'd consider the jury out on whether Butler or Walker is better, because even if it were clear that Butler is a better player, it's moot if he can't stay on the field.
  12. I'll buy Butler as an upgrade over Walker when he actually makes it through a complete season. He was playing well before his injury, but is he going to stay healthy? You raise some points worth considering, but I think you discount the short-term too much. The Bills may have a grand plan for the OL that really comes together in a couple of years, but I don't think it was necessary to completely blow it up to get there. The moves they made not only destroyed any continuity on the line and jettisoned its best player, they also decimated the depth on the line. Once Butler got hurt, this already young line was a complete trainwreck. Say what you will about Walker, keeping him around would have given the team options to deal with the injuries.
  13. I think we do agree on some stuff. If the Bills manage to come up with an adequate replacement for Peters at a reasonable cost, then the trade starts to look a lot better. I think the difference between us is I'm much more skeptical of the team's ability to do that. Peters can be maddeningly inconsistent, but he has a lot of talent, and I also think the price tag of a decent LT will be higher than you think.
  14. I find this completely unremarkable. Good players get their contracts renegotiated. It's the way things work in the NFL. And if someone goes from UDFA TE, to starting RT, to starting LT, to Pro Bowl LT, I think several renegotiations are in order. Peters is not the highest paid tackle in the NFL. Jake Long, before playing an NFL snap, got a contract worth $11.5 million a year. Also, the only numbers I saw for Peters' new contract were 6 years, $60 million. That's just off Wikipedia, though, because I'm not interested in digging for any kind of authoritative source. If you have other information I'd be interested to see it. At any rate, I expect that over the next couple of years you will see several LT contracts which are comparable or surpass Peters'. So, you'd go down to the Tom Brady store and get one? I think it's pretty optimistic to send Peters packing and make an assumption that you can use the money you save to get a HOF QB. By the way, I wouldn't be all that disgruntled if the Bills had taken that money and gotten a journeyman LT. Instead they chose not to make a move to replace Peters with... well, anyone, as far as I could tell. Jason Peters at 50% motivation is so much better than what the Bills have put out there at OT this year it's not even funny. Not sure what Jauron has to do with it. I hope to hell the Bills haven't been making their personnel decisions based on finding guys who can overcome his crappy coaching.
  15. Reasonable - Peters came in as an undrafted free agent, worked his way onto the line at RT, and got paid like a good RT. When he was switched over to LT and hailed as already a great player and one of the most promising young players at that position, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be paid like one. I think people are lying to themselves if they think they'd just accept a situation where they were not paid the going rate for the job they're doing. You can dislike how Peters conducted himself, but the truth is that's the only leverage he had. And he got every damn thing he wanted out of it - I guess the only question is was it the Bills or the Eagles who were played for suckers? Personally I think it's the Bills. They had an opportunity to earn his goodwill but instead chose to play hardball and burn their bridges. As far as Pro Bowls? They're not perfectly tied to performance, but I think it's more wrong to say they have nothing to do with performance than that they are solely based on performance.
  16. I basically agree with you. The one caveat I would add is that without Peters' salary on the books the team is theoretically free to pursue big-ticket free agents (DT or DE are the only two positions I could think of where there's any chance a player of comparable worth to a good LT could be found at some point) in the future, even if none are available now. So it is possible to realize some benefit from not paying Peters in the future. Without a front office change I'm not optimistic about it, but it could happen. Really I'm just trying to look on the bright side because I think the team mishandled the Peters situation from the start, and all they can do now is try to gain some benefit.
  17. One of the little known league rules is that the interview process for a team's head coaching position must include at least one former player from that team. It makes it tough on expansion teams, but rules are rules.
  18. I would say that the Peters move wouldn't be a disaster if the Bills had found even a slightly below average player to play tackle, a guy that might need some help but could at least play the position. But I see no signs that they have a guy like that on the roster, and that to me is what makes the handling of the situation inexcusable. At least then you could look at it and say well, there's a downgrade at tackle but they saved money to use at other positions and picked up a promising guard and TE. Instead the situation is some people continue to pat the FO on the back for their business savvy while the QB has to keep his head on a swivel looking out for pass rushers coming off the edges. So I largely agree with you, but I don't think the LT position needed to be BETTER, just not embarrassing. But the team failed even at that.
  19. He also can't read defenses and plays scared.
  20. "I know you think you have an impressive resume, Mr. Shanahan, but I do have to warn you that there are several promising quality control coaches we intend to interview for this position. Also, my gardener has expressed an interest."
  21. Still seems counterintuitive to me. I don't get why the NFL would care where its revenue is coming from. It would seem to me that there could be some price-point for Sunday Ticket that would offset the reduction in price for the TV contracts.
  22. I still doubt it would succeed, but I'm with you. The XFL made the silly decision to play their games right after the NFL season, when everyone had just gotten done watching the Super Bowl, and now the UFL made an even worse scheduling move. I know that I at least don't have any interest in watching more football for a while after the end of the NFL season. Right around May/June/July would seem like an ideal time to try to attract people who love football and would put up with a lower level of play just to see some.
  23. As opposed to watching Bell get blown up play after play? Yeah, I think I'd cope, especially because it's not my money. Talking about whether Peters is overpaid only makes sense to me if you think the Bills replaced him with someone who is at least ready to play LT at a basic level in the pros. They didn't, and so I would say yes, paying $10 or $11 million for a guy who is an actual NFL player would be a vast improvement. As to your second point, no one player would put this Bills team over the top. Years of poor decisions have left them thin at lots of positions, with even the starters being at best good players as opposed to difference makers. By trading Peters, the Bills created another hole they will need to fill with a high draft pick, leaving them unable to draft players to help at other positions of need like LB, DT, or QB.
  24. Good post. If Brandon hadn't set out to sour things with Peters and they'd made an actual effort to keep him on board when he held out, how different would things look now? LT Peters - LG Levitre - C Hangartner - RG Butler - RT Walker looks a lot better to me than that mess that's out there (of course, you'd have to sub in Butler's backup at guard, but even so...). So everyone can talk until they're blue in the face about how happy they are Peters is gone, but to me the bottom line is we had a line that was adequate at the tackles and weak up the middle and subbed in one that is an absolute disaster at the tackles and a work in progress in the middle.
  25. I'm sorry, did you just call McKelvin "very good" and say that McGee isn't good? What are you basing that on, because I know it's not performance. The truth is the players you listed are good players, but they are not franchise players. The Bills lack real difference makers, but you're not going to improve that situation by getting rid of those guys.
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