BuffaloBob

Even though we still have one PS game left, if I was Mularkey, I'd have left our first team in this game until they scored a damn TD. Even if it had to come against their second stringers.

ROTFLMFAO!! I am glad I didn't hear that first hand. I might have died laughing!

You know, while I think his point is a bit overstated, I do kind of understand where he's coming from. The reality is that there is very little difference between a 6-10 team and a 10-6 team these days. More than ever before, there is a level of parity in the league that makes it so hard to predict how the season will go. The Jags are actually a much improved team. I think the Raiders will be better as well. What I take from his post, and what I agree with, is that it is rare that people can watch their team and simply enjoy the competition and the product. Instead, we agonize every defeat and look for someone to blame. While I think it was clear that the offensive scheme not only sucked last year, but it was too inflexible to adapt to changing conditions (such as injuries to key players), a few less injuries and a few plays made might have had us in the playoffs. After all, there was a stretch of 4 losses in the second half of last year by a combined 11 points after Moulds had become mostly ineffective.

Yeah, welcome to the NFL. The first two preseason games he played in no doubt were against defenses doing little game planning and playing rather simple schemes. The Jets threw a lot of looks at him and confused the crap out of him. Of course, he'll learn and get better, but early preseason in the NFL is not much above scrimmages in camp. The vets are not playing as hard as they will on opening day and beyond, and coaches are far more concerned about personnel and installing schemes. Like the Edge said in that article regarding McGahee; Preseason is all well and good, but what you discover is that come opening day, the play you were involved in was not turned all the way up. Come tyhe regular season, players are hitting harder and no doubt the speed even goes up a notch. While Willis has shown that he has great potential and is getting healthier, he has still been tentative hitting the hole. It will take him this season of spot duty to get his confidence totally back and get him running the way he used to. As the Edge stated, it took him two years to come all the way back.

First, your assertion that TD should hve "corrected the problem" seems to presume that such correction would have led to a "non-tanking" of the season. Otherwise, what you say TD should have done without the benefit of hindsight would likley have led to preceisely the same result as what actually occurred, or worse. Moreover, you have not demonstrated how the corrective action you seem to propose (firing the OC) would have led to (or even increased the chances of having) a more successful season than we had. Firing Gilbride (which would have likely required at least forcing GW to fire him, if not requiring that GW be fired himself), would have been highly disruptive. Putting aside the issue of making the hiring of good coaches in the future more difficult, what have you accomplished here? You are talking about a team that has run the same offense for 1.5 years. Would we be installing a new offense in the middle of the season with a new coordinator? Not exactly the most likely course to a better season than we had. Ahhh, you say no, we'll run the same crappy offensive scheme, but we'll get somebody in there to call the plays better (i.e. always run on short yardage, etc.) Putting aside the fact that no matter who would have been calling the plays, the offensive scheme was still flawed, the fact is that even the running game wasn't all that good when it counted. And who would we have [promoted to OC? Les Steckel? It would have to be someone familiar with the offense so he could still work within it. Unless of course you decide to just let Drew take a stick to the huddle with him to draw plays out in the dirt. And if you fire Williams, too, who becomes the interim head coach to be the caretaker of this mess? Dick Lebeau? Ahh yes, he was incredibly successful with the Bungles. That most assuredly would have made the season better than it turned out....... not! And when should this no doubt disruptive corrective action have been taken, which would have done little to improve anything during the season while making a dismal mess of an already bad situation? When we were 2-0? Probably not. Things looked pretty good then. When we were 4-3, or even 4-4 after half the season? To fire an OC and possibly a HC after half of the season would have been as much a surrender as you claim not acting would have been. The reality is, once you start the season with a HC and OC, it becomes exceedingly difficult to fire them during the season unless you are intending to run up the white flag in doing so. First, how much leeway did Drew have to change the plays on the field? Do you know this? I doubt you do. Further, even if he did change runs to passes, I once again have to dispute your actual knowledge of this and whether he in fact had any leeway to do the opposite. Or are you advocating that other guy's assertion, that Drew should have just ignored his OC entirely and called his own plays? Yeah, I bet he'd have been on the field a long time doing that!

Exactly my point in my two previouos posts. While a start time should be fairly standard, especially when the routine was already performed before and given a certain start value, the fact is these start values are judged and assessed each time the routine is performed and more than likely by different judges. This is why it is considered a field of play judgment that must be protested immediately. Everyone in this business KNOWS this.

Well, let's change the hypothetical a bit. Suppose instead of an extra down, the team was given an obviously uncalled for pass interference penalty that gave them a first and goal from the one with zero time left on the clock. Do they give up the win then?? I would venture to guess the answer would be NO. You see it happen all of the time in football, baseball, etc. When errors in judgment are made, you protest immediately and hope that there is some recourse for it, such as another umpire with a better view or an instant replay, or in the case of these start values, a chance to reconsider the assessed value at the time of the routine. This start value mistake was NOT a perfunctory error such as keeping track of the number of downs, it was a mistake in judgment. While start values are somewhat standardized, they are not without judgment and these values are assessed in the judgment of the officials every time the routine is performed. The standards of difficulty MUST be applied correctly to the given list of features in the routine. That is why such a judgment and assessment must be protested immediately, within a certain amount of time. While I do not disagree that he could have made himself some kind of a hero, it would set a bad precedent that every time a gymnast or his/her team fails to lodge protests in the manner perscribed by rules that supposedly all must follow, they can simply reassess the judgment of the routines and pressure the poor bastard who won the medal to give it up anyway, outside of the rules.

I heard an interview on Sports Radio in Houston yesterday with one of the coaches of the US Olympic team. He basically said that EVERYONE knows what the rules are and how to deal with these issues. He said that this start time error thing happens all the time. He said that as coaches of the US team, they have printouts of every team member's routines and start values, and they always watch to see that the start values are correctly assessed. He said that when they are not correctly assessed, they are always right on top of it, filing a protest immediately. He said sometimes, they don't win their appeal, as even the start values, while somewhat standardized, still have some subjectivity to them insofar as how certain features of the routine are graded and categorized. Anyway, he said that everyone knows how this is done, and there is simply no excuse whatsoever that the Korean team should not have seen this and appealed or protested within the allotted time. These are field of play judgments for which there are strict rules, rules which are necessary to create finality in a sport where there is so much subjectivity involved. He said that to reverse this decision, there would have to be an outright amendment to the rules for field of play and that this would be akin to seeking an amendment to the Constitution. This is not a matter of a machine or a human not addig up the scores correctly. It was an error in assessing the start value which indicates degree of difficulty. These scores are NOT automatically provided to the judges, but they are assessed every time the gymnast is set to start a routine. It was not a matter of enetring the wrong value when they had the right one available, it wa about a judge looking at a routine and assessing that it was a 9.9 and not a 10.0 level of difficulty. The Koreans should have recognized this error in judgement and protested when they were supposed to as the rules clearly dictate. They did not. They lose. Hamm wins. He should keep his gold medal.

TB was cut last year because he broke a finger on his throwing hand in camp. The Bills IR'd him because they wanted to use the roster spot for someone else. The reached an injury settlement with him and cut him, so that he could re-sign when the injury had healed, which he did and played in the last two games. He has played much better this preseason, and actually shows a lot of mobility in the pocket. He has had to play against better players than JP this preseason as well. All of our Qbs have been going through the learning curve of a brand new offense. While I don't like the idea of having to rely on TB for too many games, I would not have wanted to with JP this year either. Drew has to stay healthy and be our QB this season. The fact that they have installed an offense and an internal clock for Drew should lessen the punishment he takes this year. I am more worried about our O-line getting healthy than I am about TB.

I Wish I was Her Teammate! Because if I was, I would KNOW what this play is without any explanation!

Where else can you watch athletic women pat each other on the ass and roll around with each other in the sand in celebration//

ROTFLMAO!

Obviously you don't do much reading either. Perhaps you ought to try a bit of that before you go establishing opinions in a vacuum that are nothing but your own fantasy! "I don't do links" .....ROTFLMAO. Sure, that might actually require you to do a little reading of the facts first. No sense in doing that!

OK, if you can believe anyone, how about those who were there? It wasn't even a live drill. There shoulder pads grazed each other, and no dubt because it was JP who was being extra aggressive. TV didn't even know JP had gone down. It was JP not TV. But while we're at it, let's all just assume that TV smacked the stevestojan out of him and string him up anyway!! Hell, we need someone to blame don't we?

Typical modis operandi on this board. As it turns out Vincent barely even brushed him. It was all JP letting up and planting his leg wrong. Thank God it was not a torn ligament or something. He'll be just fine. It's a shame, because it means he doesn't get the work for the next 2-3 months (especially the work he would have gotten over the next 2-3 weeks), but it could have been a lot worse. I also hope he learns a lesson from it as well.