Orton's Arm

Before deciding to become terrified, ask yourself what's the worst that can reasonably happen? Worse-case scenario: the Bills get blown out by the Dolphins. In the big scheme of things, how much significance would such a defeat really have? The Bills now have an owner who's very committed to winning. It appears the foundation is now in place for the Bills to build a good football team. Even if the Dolphins expose every single player on the roster as a failure, that foundation has still been laid. The quality of the current roster will determine the length of time it will take for the Bills to become a good team. But it will not necessarily change the long-term future of this team under Pegula's ownership. A long-term future which, at the moment, appears to be very bright.

There are two types of intelligence: crystalline intelligence, and fluid intelligence. The latter refers to the ability to quickly adapt to new situations; and tends to decline with age. The former represents intelligence as applied to familiar situations. With an older guy like Polian--he's 71--you're likely going to be getting more crystalline intelligence than fluid intelligence. "That's okay," you might say, "Because the skill set Polian built back in the '90s is still applicable today." But it's worth remembering that, toward the end of his career in Indy, the team Polian built was only one Peyton injury away from 2-14. Blame that on the age-related decline in fluid intelligence. Blame it on his efforts to elevate his son Chris. (Despite Chris's incompetence and penchant for making enemies of competent people within front offices.) Blame it on whatever you like; but bear in mind that the Bill Polian Colts fans received--especially recently--didn't perform at nearly the same level as the Bill Polian who built the Buffalo Bills. Instead of Bill Polian personally, Pegula should look for someone like Polian had been 20 - 30 years ago. Someone very smart, innovative, capable of thinking outside the box. Hungry.

All businesses, regardless of monopoly status, are prohibited from engaging in anti-competitive business practices. Monopolies--such as utilities--are subjected to especially heavy scrutiny in that regard; because their opportunities for anti-competitive behavior are greater. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. In practice, businesses have sometimes used successful lobbying (regulatory capture) to redefine what is or isn't considered anti-competitive. Anti-competitive behavior is a direct threat to a free market; because a free market creates economic efficiency only to the extent there is competition or threat of competition. The NFL clearly has a monopoly over professional football. The only purpose of the blackout rule is to prevent one portion of this monopoly (televised games) from competing against another portion of the monopoly (tickets). The goal is to allow NFL teams to charge higher prices for tickets than they otherwise could have, had television been allowed to fully compete with tickets. The above is blatantly anti-competitive behavior. There isn't even an attempt to pretend otherwise. As such, there is no question it should be illegal; just as all anti-competitive business practices should be illegal. This would remain true even if taxpayers were not subsidizing NFL owners and players via publicly funded stadiums.

Good point. Just to add to what you've written: the whole point of blackouts is to prevent competition between one of the NFL's offerings (football on television) and another of their offerings (tickets). The only reason for the blackout is anti-competitive; in order to allow owners to charge higher ticket prices than they otherwise could have. It's far from obvious why a monopoly should be allowed to engage in anti-competitive business practices even in the absence of taxpayer subsidies. But (as you pointed out) the idea of a taxpayer subsidized monopoly being allowed to engage in anti-competitive business practices is beyond absurd.

At first I was going to disagree with you. Granted, the Bills got nothing from the 2005 draft. But the most valuable asset from the 2005 draft--the first round pick--had already been squandered back in 2004. So you could argue that the 2005 draft was less bad than the draft of 2000; because the latter draft involved the squandering of all the picks, including the first rounder. But then it occurred to me: there's another way to look at the 2005 draft. You could argue that the Bills did have a first round pick--a pick which was used to acquire part of Losman. (With the second round pick from 2004 having been used to acquire the other part.) If you think of the first round pick from 2005 as having been used to acquire half of Losman, then the 2005 draft looks every bit as bad as the draft from 2000. And that's bad. Really bad!

You are thinking of the 2006 draft. 1 8 Donte Whitner, SS 1 26 John McCargo, DT 3 70 Ashton Youboty, CB 4 105 Ko Simpson, FS 5 134 Kyle Williams, DT 5 143 Brad Butler, T 6 178 Keith Ellison, OLB 7 216 Terrace Pennington, T 7 248, Aaron Merz, G The main benefit from that draft was Kyle Williams. He was worth much more than everything else from it put together. It's also worth noting that even though Donte Whitner didn't come close to living up to his lofty draft position, he was reasonably proficient in run stopping, and is considered a respectable starter. There is no question that (other than Kyle Williams), the 2006 draft was extremely disappointing. But this franchise has had a lot of bad drafts; some of which have been worse than 2006's.

If you pay your cheerleaders less than minimum wage, you're not necessarily going to get the best-looking women in Buffalo.

The 2002 draft also deserves to be part of this discussion 1 4 Mike Williams, OT 2 36 Josh Reed, WR 2 61 Ryan Denny, DE 3 97 Coy Wire, SS 5 139 Justin Bannan, DT 6 176 Kevin Thomas, CB 7 215 Mike Pucillo, G 7 249 Rodney Wright (no position listed) 7 251 Jarrett Ferguson (no position listed) 7 260 Dominique Stephenson (LB) Josh Reed spent about three years as a starter, and several more as a backup. So that's something from this draft. But other than him, that draft produced nothing at all. Granted, the 2000 draft didn't even give us a decent #3/4 WR like Josh Reed. However, the draft of 2000 represented the squandering of the 26th overall pick (700 points). The draft of 2002 represented the squandering of the 4th overall pick (1800 points) In terms of total value squandered, 2002 was even worse than 2000.

Even if you and I don't always have the same perspective about everything, I appreciate the clarity with which you've laid out your thoughts. I'm not here to get under anyone's skin. I come here because I like football. The thing I want most for the Bills is for them to win a Super Bowl. That objective is very unlikely to be achieved until those running the team make more intelligent decisions than most of their NFL counterparts. That isn't happening now, and hasn't happened under any post-Polian GM. As for Manuel: the two things I most value in a QB are accuracy and decision-making ability. An NFL QB should be able to process an incredible volume of spatial information in a very short amount of time. Most people--including most college quarterbacks--lack this mental bandwidth. Plenty of ex-Bills QBs are perfect examples. Rob Johnson had very good physical tools and was an accurate passer. But he couldn't process large volumes of information quickly. He focused his attention on downfield opportunities, while ignoring anything related to the pass rush. Trent Edwards made the opposite decision: he devoted his limited bandwidth to sack avoidance, not to looking for opportunities downfield. Which is why Edwards was much better than Johnson at avoiding sacks, but a lot worse at getting the ball to non-dump-off options. Losman is another example of a guy whose lack of mental tools led to a lack of success in the NFL. Given this track record, Nix/Whaley decided to draft a first round QB with almost blissful disregard for whether he'd demonstrated any sort of fast information processing ability at the college level.

This thread reminds me of .

Good post. Based on those stats, the defense wasn't perfect, but was certainly above average. Unlike the offense.

So you're saying that Schaub's poor performance put Carr in the driver's seat? Speaking of which: I'd really like to see Jeff Tuel become Carr's backup. "If our Carr ever breaks, we'll have the right Tuel to deal with the problem."

The stats you're using rely mostly on completion percentage. QBs who focus on short, high percentage passes--think Trent Edwards or Kelly Holcomb--will generally have completion percentages which make them look better than they should. Kelly Holcomb and John Elway have nearly identical career QB ratings, because QB rating takes completion percentage into account. My advice to anyone seeking to examine QB play is to simply ignore either completion percentage or stats based on completion percentage--such as quarterback rating--and focus on other, more meaningful measures instead. One measure of a QB's success is yards per attempt. In his rookie year, Manuel averaged 6.4 yards per pass attempt. That's better than the absolutely pathetic 5.1 yards per attempt Kyle Orton averaged as a rookie. But not as good as Orton's career average of 6.6 yards per attempt, or Trent Edwards' career average of 6.5 yards per attempt. Another way of statistically examining quarterback play is total quarterback rating, or QBR. QBR is a relatively new stat, and is much more indicative of actual performance than quarterback rating. There are times when yards per attempt masks weaknesses in a QB's play--weaknesses revealed by QBR. Bearing that in mind, Trent Edwards achieved a QBR of 50.0 during his best year. His career average QBR was 39.6. Kyle Orton doesn't seem to have an average QBR, but his usual QBR seems to be slightly above 50. As a rookie, EJ Manuel achieved a QBR of 42.3. Neither Trent Edwards, Kyle Orton, nor EJ Manuel have thus far achieved the kind of numbers you'd expect from a long-term answer as a starter. And to be clear: my concerns about Manuel center around his strengths and weaknesses as a college player, not his statistically lackluster rookie year. I'm sure there are examples of QBs who had rookie years equal to or worse than Manuel's, who went on to have very good careers. If I liked a particular QB as a college prospect, I wouldn't want to give up on him after a rookie year like Manuel's. The thing about Manuel is that there isn't necessarily a huge list of things he did in college, that he failed to do as an NFL rookie. His potential for growth may be more limited than a guy who was great at reading defenses and seeing multiple targets at the college level, but who initially struggled to do the same in the NFL.

You're going to be very happy with what you'll be getting from Vic. That said, Gaughan is a big loss. I wish that both writers were covering the Bills.

I'm not sure how much can be blamed on the QB coach. Before coming to Buffalo, Thad Lewis bounced around the league, unable to hold down a roster spot anywhere for more than a year or two. His story in Buffalo was no different than that. I'll grant that last season Lewis had a very good yards per attempt. But his QBR was abysmal--the kind of QBR which gets you kicked off the roster. I'm haven't yet decided whether to put more stock in yards per attempt or QBR. But for those who put their faith in the latter, the signs of failure were already there. Tuel was a longshot to amount to anything in the NFL. Last season he was weak in both yards per attempt and QBR. It's not like there was this shining success story that the QB coach went and destroyed. I think the real litmus test for this coaching staff is going to be Kyle Orton. If Orton looks significantly worse in Buffalo than he has elsewhere, it would be a strong indicator we have a coaching problem. On the other hand, if this coaching staff does the same thing for Orton that Gailey did for Fitz, it would be an indication of above-average coaching.

After Gailey was fired, I wanted Chip Kelly to become the Bills' next head coach. I was very sad when the Eagles snapped him up. That said, Kelly probably isn't the only innovative, outside-the-box, brilliant college coach out there. The description you've given fits the mold of what I'm looking for.

Maybe by the time we're halfway through the regular season, the engine will be off too.

> EJ is nowhere near stupid. He's a very smart individual. Trent Edwards is also a very smart individual. He got accepted into Stanford. Unlike most other schools, Stanford does not compromise its admissions criteria to let in athletes. Based on his Stanford pedigree and the recommendation from Bill Walsh, I thought that Trent Edwards had what it took to quickly process information on a football field. I was wrong. The reason he became known as "Captain Checkdown" was because he couldn't process information quickly enough to intelligently determine when there existed a good opportunity to throw the ball down field. After the Edwards experiment failed, I became more interested in what a college quarterback had done to demonstrate fast information processing ability on a football field than in a classroom. EJ Manuel has good social intelligence. He comes across well in interviews. All of that is well and good, and suggests he should be able to handle the leadership aspects of the quarterback position. But nothing about his career thus far--either in college or the NFL--suggests he's gifted at quickly and accurately processing spatial, football-related information.

QBR is a new stat, and should not be confused with legacy statistics such as quarterback rating. It's more complicated to calculate QBR--also known as total quarterback rating--than it is to calculate the old quarterback rating stat. Last season, Thad Lewis had a very good yards per attempt stat. Significantly better than Manuel's. The kind of yards per attempt stat where you'd say, "This guy could be a starter for a few years, and things would be okay. Not great, but okay." On the other hand, Lewis's QBR stat was abysmal. Worse than Manuel's. The kind of QBR stat which would make you think he'd be lucky to have a roster spot, even as a third stringer. I'm a big fan of both yards per attempt and QBR. I cannot think of another example in which the two stats pointed in such diametrically opposite directions as they did with Thad Lewis. I sometimes wondered, Which of these stats is telling us the true story about Thad's performance, and which is the red herring? This preseason we learned the answer. All this being said, I agree with you that Manuel is very unlikely to become any sort of long-term answer at quarterback. People greatly differ in their ability to process complex information quickly. Manuel never did anything on a college football field to suggest above-normal information processing ability. He ran a simplified college offense, and generally threw to his first read or his dump-off option. There's only so much you can do to coach information processing ability. (Just as there's a limit to the extent to which diet and exercise can alter a player's size.) His information processing ability is likely to be his Achilles Heel; though accuracy is of course a concern as well.

This preseason, Manuel has averaged 6.3 yards per attempt. That's not good--in fact it's a bit worse than Trent Edwards' career average of 6.5 yards per attempt. Unfortunately, Jeff Tuel has averaged a very underwhelming 5.2 yards per attempt this preseason. A number like that has to improve significantly for Tuel to be a long-term answer as a backup, let alone a starter. At this point, no one on the Bills roster is playing like a starting quarterback. My expectation is that the Bills will not win a Super Bowl until the owner, general manager, head coach, both coordinators, and quarterback have all been replaced.

Good post. When you think about it, this comes across as a jerk move by the Bills. Palmer gave the Bills something (the Bears' playbook). What did he get in return? Was he on the roster on opening day, so that he'd at least be guaranteed a salary for the year? No. Was he given a real chance to compete for a roster spot? Again, no. I just hope the Bills didn't use false or misleading assurances to cajole him into signing in the first place. If they were open and upfront with him from the beginning, I'd be okay with this. But I think it's more likely they over-promised and under-delivered.

Back in college, Manuel wasn't known for being a mentally fluid player, or for processing information quickly, or for having a good handle on the mental aspects of the game. He ran a simplified offense. Going into the NFL, he was considered a "raw" prospect, despite having spent four years on his college team, including two as the starter. I'm not exactly what you'd call Hackett's biggest fan. Nevertheless, I don't think he can be blamed for the fact that Manuel is showing exactly the same mental limitations in the NFL that he demonstrated in college.

Prior to the 1950s, the word gay didn't have anything to do with sexual orientation. It meant "happy, carefree, celebratory, unconcerned with others' approval." Then in the '50s, leaders of the homosexual community decided they liked that word, and wanted their group to be associated with it. They started calling themselves gay, because they thought its suggestion of innocent, carefree fun had better connotations than other words used at the time. No word can have both a sexual/scatological meaning and a non-sexual meaning. The sexual/scatological meaning always dominates, and drives out the non-sexual meaning. That's what happened to the word "gay," which is why the original meaning was lost. To the best of my knowledge, there is no word in the currently used English language which means exactly the same thing "gay" meant before it was commandeered by the homosexual community.

Very good point. I'd much rather the Bills had traded away the 2nd round pick from 2014 than the first round pick from 2015. As for Kouandijio, Bill from NYC was underwhelmed with the pick as soon as it was made. He's a big Crimson Tide fan, and pays close attention to their OL play. Based on that, he didn't think Kouandijio was worthy of a second round pick. There is also the question of quarterback. In a best-case scenario, I'll be proven wrong about EJ; and he'll go down as the second franchise quarterback in team history. (With Jim Kelly having been the first.) But Whaley has to carefully consider what happens if this best-case scenario doesn't pan out. Having traded away his first round pick in next year's draft, he hasn't left himself with a lot of good options if EJ fails. On the other hand, there are times when you're better off with one elite player than with two good players. Watkins could be that one elite player for the Bills. The Watkins trade is good in isolation. But if you look at the big picture, you have to ask yourself whether the trade cost the Bills a chance to take a franchise quarterback.

> If you can't read it, you may want reasses you're own intelligence. Um. Thank you for that. The OP makes good points. However, his frequent, unnecessary use of the return key gets in the way of his intended message. Zonabb wrote: > As for the NFL.... Cuban was right. They keep wielding the shield like dictatorial bullies and eventually their drive for unending growth will be met with collective backlash by sponsors and fans. I for one can't watch NFL football on TV anymore and it's getting worse You are 100% correct. I myself watch a lot less football than I used to. Porter's Five Forces help explain why the NFL has gone the direction it has. Bargaining power of suppliers Bargaining power of customers Threat of substitutes Threat of new entrants Intensity of industry rivalry The NFL's main supplier is its players. They are represented by one labor union (very united front), which is why most of the league's revenues go to them. On the other hand, the NFL's customers--us--have virtually no bargaining power. There are no close substitutes for NFL football, no real threat of new entrants, and very little industry rivalry. This is why the NFL's customers are being treated as we are.