Pac_Man

The bottom line with Losman is he hasn't proven himself to be a success or a failure. Nor will we know a whole lot about him after his first year as starter. Peyton Manning and Terry Bradshaw didn't look that good in their rookie years. The more people build Losman up now, the more they'll attack him later when he doesn't look like Hall of Fame material from the very first snap. The Bills going with Losman over Bledsoe doesn't mean that Losman has "proven" anything. It means that the Bills were tired of Bledsoe, and wanted to see what they had or didn't have with the guy they drafted. The only way to find that out is to put him under center in games that mean something.

Well, the Titans had a really good defense. To play well against a top tier defense in a playoff game is nothing to sneeze at. Besides, Johnson had a good game against Indy the previous week.

I know I'm being nit-picky, but Drew was only lights out for the first seven games of 2002. The eighth was against the Patriots.

So George Carlin has somehow managed to convince himself the only people who molest kids are religious? Maybe he did more drugs than I realized

The best road to getting Mike Williams on the team is to trade Nate Clements. The last thing I want to see is TD pulling another Antoine Winfield--where he lets a former first round CB walk without getting compensated. CB is one of the most highly paid positions in the league, so I don't see Clements getting re-signed. I'd be in favor of trading away Clements (and if necessary throwing in Henry) for the Mike Williams pick.

Mike Vick had unprotected sex with his longtime girlfriend, knowing that he had herpes. (She didn't know.) Now they're broken up, so she's suing him for giving her the disease. "Ron Mexico" is the alias Vick used when being tested for the disease.

At the time, I remember hearing rumors that Miami was offering its first round pick for TH because the Ricky Williams retirement took them off guard. Were the rumors accurate? Who knows? But if they were, TD should defininately have done the deal.

I hate the Patriots as much as the next guy, and I'm happy to see them take a step backwards. But not like this. Of all the people on their roster, Teddy Bruschi has got to be one of the best human beings. He plays with a lot of toughness and desire, he seems like a good family guy, and he sacrificed his own financial self-interest to help his team. I'd love it if the Bills consisted of players who were just like him.

Even if the franchise number goes down a little, it'd still be a lot more than what Clements is worth.

This woman's careers have been as a receptionist, unemployed for a year with a foot injury--a foot injury!!--and a janitorial worker. She lives in a $500,000 home. It sounds like she spends a lot of time suing people, and that some of her lawsuits have been successful. The money for her home certainly didn't come from her career.

The Steelers' defense was significantly better than ours. It's one thing to compile gaudy numbers against the likes of Cleveland in terrible weather. But the real test is when it's the fourth quarter, with the game (and the season) on the line; and you're going against a good offense. Our defense choked in that exact situation, allowing a nine minute drive that all but ended the game. That wasn't the first or even second time that a late defensive collapse caused a Bills loss. Look at the Jacksonville game, or the first Jets game. Look at the way the defense collapsed in the second New England game. Our defense is good. But given a chance to trade the defense we have now for the one we had back in the days of Wade; I'd make that trade in a heartbeat.

Sullivan was right in saying that Henry should have been traded before the start of the season. It looked like Miami would have given us their first round pick for Henry. Any time you get a chance to make a one-sided trade--especially to a divisional rival--you take advantage of it. TD didn't. Belichick probably would have; just as Belichick unloaded Bledsoe on us in order to go with a younger, less proven, but ultimately superior player. TD played it safe; but playing things too safe doesn't get you a whole lot of Super Bowl rings.

lol. But keep in mind that TD has been successful thus far when drafting players by that name.

Why does the word "regional" have to mean moving things east of Buffalo? There are people who live to the west of Buffalo who support the team too. Not as many as in Rochester, but you take places like Dunkirk, Fredonia, Westfield, Jamestown, Chautauqua, etc. and there's a reasonable number of people. Moving the stadium 40 - 50 miles east makes it that much longer for people in western Western New York to get to games.

In the book Patriot Reign Belichick described Clements as a guy who thought he was a better player than he was. As BillsFanForever pointed out, there will be someone out there who will overpay him. Look at Antoine Winfield's contract. "In 2004, the top two players in the NFL (salary cap numbers) were cornerbacks -- Antoine Winfield ($12,400,000) and Ty Law ($9,601,333). These cap numbers are higher than Brett Favre ($9,533,333) and Peyton Manning ($8,301,666)." - http://www.nfl.com/draft/analysis/expert/brandt/cb That's just ridiculous. Before some team elevates Clements to that salary cap neighborhood, TD should trade him. If we use the resulting pick to take Mike Williams, we could get younger, better, and cheaper at possession WR by replacing Eric Moulds. We wouldn't get rid of Eric Moulds this year, because rookie WRs usually don't contribute much. But next year, we could take the aging Moulds off our books.

This year, we'll have a first year starter as QB. Last year, we had a guy who may as well have been. So I don't see a huge downgrade at the QB position.

True. There are several categories of people who get "bonus points" for getting in: - Children of alumni, faculty, and staff - Certain categories of minorities (blacks and Hispanics) - Star athletes - Large donors and their children, grandchildren, and other relatives It also helps if you went to a prestigious private school. I've read that if you're from a public school, and if you're not part of one of the above groups, it almost doesn't matter how good your grades are or SAT score is. You're not getting in.

I agree with the main point of the original post. If we could trade Clements and Henry to a team like Tennessee in exchange for its first round pick, we should do it. The offense could use another Mike Williams. Your points about Moulds are well taken. I'm not very interested in acquiring Shelton, because he's got a lot of limitations, and he'd eat up $3 million a year in cap room. Our offensive line needs improvement; especially at center. The anchor of the No Huddle offense was Kent Hull. Teague isn't a bad center, but he needs help dealing with big, strong DTs. If we didn't have to double team DTs any more, it'd be like having one extra lineman on the field. Drafting a player like Baas in round 2 would significantly strengthen the interior of our line; and therefore our running game. Even if we traded Clements we wouldn't need immediate help at CB. We could just move Vincent back to corner, and start Rashaad Baker at FS. Not a perfect solution, but we could do a lot worse. Our 3rd and 4th round picks should be used on a LT and a CB under this scenario.

If we could get Baas, that would be incredible. How did Denver forfeit its pick?

This one's easy. You hire a QB to get as many yards and points as possible; while keeping interceptions to a minimum. A QB rating measures this. Now, you say that there are ways a QB can affect the outcome of the game that don't get measured in his rating. - He can take a lot of sacks - He can fumble the ball in a crucial situation - He can either run for a lot of yards, or be immobile Based on how well a QB does with stuff like the above, you can adjust a QB's rating when comparing him with other QBs. It would be very hard to argue that Bledsoe is in the top half of the league when it comes to the things that don't get measured with QB rating. If you would have a hard time winning a race against the Statue of Liberty, your QB rating had better be good.

With a good (but as Alaska points out, overrated) defense, very strong special teams, an offensive line that played pretty well over the last ten games of the season, and strong skill position players (McGahee, Evans, etc.) you'd expect more than nine wins. Calling Bledsoe average to above average is really going out on a limb, because his QB rating--which measures his contribution to the team--was in or near the bottom third for starting QBs. He blamed it on bad weather; but his QB rating was low even early in the year. People dropping passes would be a better excuse; but Bledsoe himself can't say it without sounding negative about his former teammates. Moulds drops more passes than your #1 receiver should. Henry's problems with drops are well-known; and then later in the year you had the injuries at TE. But people on other teams get hurt or drop passes too; and with people like McGahee, Evans, etc. to catch throws, the dropped passes excuse only gets you so far. The QB can do something about dropped passes, like doing a better job of distributing the ball to all his receivers instead of locking in on Moulds.

Why do so many people insist on using a win/lost record to evaluate a QB? I mean, I seem to remember a stretch where Trent Dilfer went 15-1 (including playoff wins). Joe Montana might have equalled that; but I'm pretty sure he never surpassed it. Does that mean that Trent Dilfer played at an equal or higher level than Joe Montana over those 16 games? I think not. Baltimore as a team played well enough to go 15-1 over that 16 game stretch; but that record had more to do with elite performances from the defense and running game than the QB position.

"Jaynes, 30, who was considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services such as a "FedEx refund processor," prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his e-mails, and prosecutors said Jaynes' operation grossed up to $750,000 per month." Okay, so the guy is grossing $750K a month, and it sounds to me like most or all of what he's selling is fraudulent. The Enron executives were put in jail for, um, fraud. Defrauding the public to the tune of $750K a month is massive enough that he should be lumped into the Enron category. But even beyond that, spam destroys billions of dollars of productivity each year. Recipients of spam bear the cost (in terms of deleting spam, having legitimate emails get accidentally deleted as spam, etc.). If you're going to stop spam, you have to instill fear. Now, you say that spammers could just move offshore. That's true, but it adds an expense. Anything you can do to reduce the efficiency of their operations, or make it harder for them to do business, the better.

Not only for depth, but we need a guy who can replace Sam Adams once he retires.

I'm a Matt Jones fan myself. It sounds to me like he's got excellent speed, burst, 6'4" height, and great hands. He'd make an excellent WR/slash player.