Pac_Man

No problem, bro. My post about TD's Pittsburgh late round picks was indeed careless, so your original criticism was justified. I intend to make sure that magnitude of error will remain a one-time thing.

He was hospitalized for having a broken leg. I've never heard of a QB going out and playing with a broken leg. Besides that, the coaches wouldn't have let JP play with that broken leg even if he'd wanted to. You can call into question the hardness of his bones, or his ability to deal with contact without injuring himself, but to use that incident to question his mental toughness makes no sense.

I agree with you that the sentence you quoted is a mess. But to call albany's quest for a higher level of accuracy "ego-generated" does not appear to have any factual basis. I realize that I don't know albany as well as you guys might, but his original post didn't seem to be ego driven.

We could do something unusual. A lot of teams use a smaller, quicker, more athletic DE on third downs than on first and second down. So why shouldn't we do the same at LT? TT could be our third down LT, and the bigger, stronger Shelton could be our LT on first and second downs.

I'd like to see us do better than Teague at center. A good center can take on a DT one on one. Teague doesn't have the strength for this. Any time you double team a defender, it's like having one less player on your offensive line. Think about what we ask our own DTs to do: tie up the offensive linemen so that our LBs can be free to make the tackle. If two of our own offensive linemen are getting tied up with one of their DTs every play, that means that their DTs are doing their jobs. I'd rather use our first pick in the draft on a C who has Teague's athleticism, while also having the strength to deal with a DT one-on-one. A center like that would be worth one extra lineman on the field every time a DT needed to be blocked. He'd keep the other team's DTs from doing their jobs, which will allow McGahee to do his job very well.

You draw a distinction between what Karl Marx wrote in his book, and what those who called themselves Marxists did in practice. The need for such a distinction is not clear to me for two reasons: American Marxists have been a lot more vocal about, for example, the Nazi Holocaust than the much more massive Soviet or communist Chinese Holocausts. While there are a few Marxists out there who have condemned the Soviet Union for its unparalleled mass murder, these few are hated by the overwhelming Marxist majority. Most Marxists loved the Soviet Union; they loved it so much that (at least here in the U.S.) they took orders from Moscow; either directly or indirectly. As to your second point: I agree that the 95 million figure looks low to me as well. But bear in mind that it is difficult to arrive at an exact body count for the communist genocides. Consider for example Lenin's mass murder of the Soviet intelligentsia; or the Ukrainian famine, or the Soviet mass murder of the Polish, or the Soviet army's butchering of the German people during WWII, or the relocations the Soviet government imposed upon the German people after the war. With the possible exception of the mass murder of the intelligentsia, there was no list of names kept. There was just an inhuman government that unleashed the demon of mass murder without making any particular effort to quantify their policies' effects. While reasonable people will vary in their estimations of the exact scale of communist murder, no one can doubt that communism is the worst calamity ever to be unleashed upon the human race.

You have a point about the revisionist history on college campuses. I've heard it said that the source of this revisionism is Marxism and its hatred for all things Western. I've also read that communist governments have murdered 95 million innocent people: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM You'll notice that the Leftist extremists on college campuses complain about every human rights violation under the sun (whether real or imagined) but never seem to mention the largest mass murder in human history.

All right, I'm the culprit that messed up. When we first hired TD, I saw an article about how successful he'd been on the second day of the draft while in Pittsburgh. I thought I'd remembered the names correctly, but I must have been mistaken. (I guess there's always a chance the article was mistaken, but chances are the problem was me.) But a complaint about people trying to get their number of posts up is a little hard to swallow considering the accuser has over 2000 posts, and the accused has less than 50.

My bad.

Looking at our team under TD, only one second day pick/UDFA has earned a starting position: Terrence McGee. Compare that to the second day picks/UDFAs that TD found when he was with Pittsburgh: - Rod Woodson - Dermontti Dawson - Greg Lloyd - Barry Foster - Bam Morris - Others that I don't know about Rod Woodson (CB) and Dermontti Dawson (C ) are Hall of Fame players, and Greg Lloyd (LB) isn't too far from being Hall of Fame material himself. Barry Foster and Bam Morris were solid starting RBs in the Jerome Bettis mold. I've got nothing against Terrence McGee, but his value is a lot less than the players on the above list. Why isn't TD doing a better job with his second day picks and undrafted free agents?

Looks like most people are in favor of drafting for a stronger offensive line. I like that.

My vote is for Baas/Wilkerson. What this team really needs is a strong running game, and you can't have that unless you have a strong offensive line.

Most likely? Both.

I wonder what the correlation is between a player's Wonderlic Score and his chance of success in the NFL. I know the Patriots like their players smart.

Eric Green's Super Bowl dance is what lost the Steelers the AFC Championship game to the Chargers. The next year, Green moved to the Dolphins, where he was part of a team whose starters were practically all first round picks. The first Bills game I saw in person was watching the Bills demolish that team of first round picks; in what turned out to be Don Shula's last game as head coach. The last thing this team needs is the next Eric Green.

I'm still hoping that we use the second round pick to draft a center. If we trade Henry for Shelton, that should take care of the offensive line. We could then use the third round pick on a position of need--CB, DL, TE, whatever.

That nine minute drive would have been even longer had we not used our timeouts to keep the clock from moving. It reminded me of the 15 minute drive the Giants had against us in our first Super Bowl. I'd rather the defense had given up a 50 yard TD play than a game-clinching drive like that one. I don't remember a Wade Phillips defense giving up a nine-minute drive.

The problem with the above list is it lumps together bad moves (the hiring of GW), decent moves (the Lawyer Milloy signing), and outstanding moves (franchising Peerless Price, trading his rights to Atlanta, and using the resulting first round pick on McGahee). You say the common thread that binds these moves together is they are attention-getting on TD's part. I remember people had the opposite complaint about Butler--they pointed out he engaged in very few trades, and complained he wasn't taking advantage of all his options or willing to think outside the box. Now along comes a guy who's willing to be unconventional, and he gets called attention-seeking. I'm much more concerned about the results that TD produces than about haphazard guesses as to what his motives might be. Overall his results have been good.

I agree the Bills were a better team at the season's end than at its beginning. But the change in the W/L record was as much a function of strength of schedule than it was of the Bills getting better. It's a lot easier to beat Cleveland at home than it is to go on the road and beat Baltimore. The season-ending loss against the Steelers has left a bad taste in my mouth--especially that nine minute drive. An individual play like the Bledsoe fumble or the missed field goal might be a fluke; and in any case we've replaced Bledsoe. But there is no excuse for allowing a nine minute drive to a third string RB, a second-string QB, and a team which has nothing to gain from a win. Had we beaten the Steelers--as we should have--those other late-season victories would seem a lot sweeter.

I like the overall direction TD has taken this franchise. There were only a few really questionable decisions: 1. Hiring a defensively minded coach in GW. Our defensive coaching staff was already good to go with the defensive coaches Wade left behind. We should have brought in an offensive coach, as Tampa Bay did when they traded for Jon Gruden. TD came to this realization several years later with the Mularkey hiring. 2. Failure to use the draft to upgrade the offensive line. In his four Buffalo drafts, TD has used a total of two first-day picks on offensive linemen. Both picks became full-time starters; the only offensive line starters TD has found via the draft. I hope TD uses both his first-day picks on offensive linemen this coming draft. Other than these two obvious mistakes, I'm pretty much okay with the way TD has handled the team. What about the Bledsoe trade, you ask? Well, Bledsoe had a good half-season in 2002. Is it worth it to trade away a first round pick for a good half-season that doesn't get you into the playoffs? No. But that half-season DID attract quality free agents like Sam Adams and Takeo Spikes. Had TD not traded for Bledsoe, those players probably would have signed elsewhere; so I regard those defensive free agents as the real value of the Bledsoe deal.

You say that Travis gave us little to complain about, but then you seem to imply that we should expect nothing better than a 4th or 5th round pick. If Travis is so great, he's worth at least a second round pick.

The point here is that at this point, Henry's interests are different from the Bills' interests. It's in Henry's interest to make 100% sure he gets traded as quickly as possible, which is why he and his agent are pushing so hard for the Shelton trade. It's in the Bills' interests to make sure they get everything they can for him, which is why they're taking their time.

I agree that the Bills should trade Henry this offseason. Not because of any desire to "treat a player with class" but to get maximum value for someone who will walk in a year anyway. I have no problem with TD holding out for a better deal if he thinks he can get one; but ultimately Henry must be traded.

The problem with Teague is that he's one-dimensional. Sure, he's athletic, but if your line is well-suited to running the ball outside, but not between the tackles, guess what the defense is going to defend? We'd be better off with a center who combines Teague's mobility with raw power. That way we could force the defense to respect both the inside run and the outside. I don't think it would take 3 - 4 years to get a rookie center up to speed, especially not with McNally as the o-line coach. If we drafted a guy this year and started him next year, that would be okay by me.

I agree with a lot of this post, but I don't see Teague as having the physical strength to engage big and powerful DT's on an equal footing.