Orton's Arm

I remember the AFC Championship game between the Bills and the Chiefs. Joe Montana was the Chiefs quarterback, and had done very well a week earlier against the Houston Oilers. But when he played the Bills, his supporting cast--including his OL--was dominated by the Bills' defense. Consequently, Joe Montana was unable to accomplish much. He was knocked out near the end of the first half, after having led his team to just two field goals. If you have at least a reasonably competent OL, then a Joe Montana will make a real difference to your team. But if your OL flat-out stinks, it does not matter who you have at QB. All quarterbacks look the same when lying on their backs.

This is a very solid post, and says a lot about the flaws in the Bills' drafting mistakes in the post-TD era. The TD era as well, come to think of it. That guy blew a lot of early draft picks on running backs, slot receivers, and first-contract-and-out CBs, while neglecting the offensive line and the DT position.

First, a for Jahbonas for hitting this nail smack on the head! Way to go! Second, I have mixed feelings about whether to trade up for that #1 overall pick. Any time you have an opportunity to add a potential Hall of Fame DE to your defense, you almost have to take it. However . . . we now appear to have a real GM running the show. A good GM can get better value from our draft picks than we're used to seeing from GMs like TD or Marv. Even if Suh turns out to be the next Bruce Smith--which seems quite possible--we have to bear in mind that getting the first overall pick won't come cheap. And that the draft picks/players we'd be losing might actually be more valuable to this team than a Bruce Smith would have been. A deal for Suh would be very tempting, but it would depend on the price.

He's just been hired. He wants to get his new head coach's input before committing himself to any particular course of action. He doesn't yet know who his new head coach will be. I wouldn't read anything more into the comment than that.

Agreed. Here is the better link.

If your team fails to make the playoffs for ten consecutive years, if Ryan Fitzpatrick is named your starting quarterback, and if Demetrius Bell is your starting left tackle, there's going to be criticism. And rightly so. That said, you have a point about the 2009 draft having been a very solid one, even if Maybin never amounts to anything. Guys like Byrd, Levitre, Wood, and possibly Nelson and others are very good additions to this football team.

I didn't have any objection to the Byrd pick when it was made, because an early second round pick isn't a terrible place to pick a FS. (Especially when your team needs one.) But the Whitner pick was different. I felt it was a serious mistake at the time, and I feel that way today. There's no way a team riddled with holes--as the Bills were going into the 2006 draft--should reach for a SS at 8th overall based on "need." According to the NFL draft value chart, the 8th overall pick is worth 1400 points. The 42nd overall pick (10th in the second round, where we got Byrd) is worth 480 points. I felt that Byrd had a much better chance of bringing 480 points worth of value to this team, than Whitner had of bringing 1400 points of value to us. Leodis McKelvin was chosen 11th overall, a pick worth 1250 points of value. I didn't like that pick, mostly because we could have gotten out of addressing the CB position at all by giving Jabari Greer an extension. Also, this team has traditionally had the habit of letting its first round CBs go first contract and out. First round picks should be used on guys who will spend the vast majority of their careers with your team, not on guys you plan on letting leave after their first contracts expire.

But but but . . . if we'd taken Ngata, we wouldn't have Donte Whitner! Where would the defense be without him? Granted, we'd still have a free safety who got more interceptions in his rookie season than Whitner's had in his whole career. No real dropoff from Whitner there. On the contrary. We'd have good play at the strong safety position from guys like George Wilson and Bryan Scott. No real dropoff from Whitner there either. But there has to be a dropoff from Whitner's level of play somewhere, right? I was tempted to write that there'd be a dropoff at nickle cornerback. Then I remembered that our cornerback group is so deep it's not even funny. Maybe Whitner could be converted to linebacker? . . .

Shanahan was associated with a particular GM--Allen--and made it clear he and Allen were a package deal. His talks with Buffalo occurred before Allen had signed with anyone, and may well have represented legitimate interest on his part. After Allen went to Washington, Shanahan going there too was a foregone conclusion.

A good all-round post, and I strongly agree with the bolded text. I'd have no objection to building the lines and tanking the upcoming season gets us a franchise quarterback. However, I tend to believe that Clausen is better at reading defenses, and is a better pocket passer, than Locker. If St. Louis takes Suh first overall, Clausen could fall out of the top 5. We'd still have to trade up to get him, but if it's only a few spots the price shouldn't be too exorbitant. But whether the answer is Clausen, Locker, Bradford, or some other quarterback, I agree that if the Bills do anything (in terms of spending high draft picks) it should be to get a real franchise quarterback in here. This is an all or nothing situation.

Excellent analysis. If the Bills want a quarterback, it sounds like we're best off losing to Indy, hoping that Cleveland and Seattle win their games, and that St. Louis drafts Suh instead of taking a QB. Or, as someone mentioned, the Bills could always trade up a few slots to grab the QB they want. I don't care how many holes this team has--if you don't have a quarterback, and if there's a franchise quarterback available in the draft, you pay the price you need to pay to get him. When it comes to getting your next QB, half measures are worse than useless. Half measures resulted in Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobart, Drew Bledsoe, J.P. Losman, and Trent Edwards. We need to get The Guy, and not "the best QB who happens to be conveniently/readily available without giving up too many draft picks." Is there a franchise quarterback waiting for us in this draft? I've heard very good things about Clausen, and he looked good the one time I saw him (against Stanford). It might be worthwhile to trade away our third round pick to move up to get him. Then we could take a LT in the second round. That draft wouldn't fill all our holes, but this piece of Swiss cheese of a team isn't going to have all its holes filled in one off-season no matter what it does. Getting the most important and difficult to fill position fixed would be a good first step on the road to a solid team. It could be argued that LT is also a very hard position to fill, and that a second round pick might not be The Guy at LT any more than a second round QB would turn out to be The Guy. But that's okay. If the LT turns out to be solid but unspectacular, then in the 2011 draft the Bills can take another LT in the first round. The second round LT from the 2010 draft would be moved to right tackle. Then Brad Butler could be either moved to guard or relegated to the bench. If the former, Wood would move to center.

I agree that Losman and Vick don't have the same skill set. As you pointed out, Losman can throw a great deep ball. Vick can't even do that: he's inaccurate at any distance. He has great physical attributes though.

I never liked the Hardy pick. My choice was Limas Sweed. This season, Sweed has had, um, exactly one reception, and for only five yards. But maybe that's, ah, a reception/five yards that the Steelers wouldn't have had without him? As for the other thing you mentioned: there's absolutely no shame in having wanted Oher, who I understand has been playing well. The Bills need a left tackle more than an outside linebacker (though the latter would be useful as well).

I wouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched! Before becoming interim head coach, Perry Fewell was a defensive coordinator. Before becoming defensive coordinator, he was a secondary coach. Before becoming secondary coach, he was a DB in the NFL. Just like Jauron. Jauron may be gone, but his ghost pervades One Bills Drive. The only way to exorcise that ghost, and to free this team from the curse of its over-emphasis on the secondary, is to cleanse it of nearly everyone associated with either Levy or Jauron. Including Guy, Modrak, and Fewell.

I've heard of that same correlation being thrown around. If I had to guess at an explanation, my guess would be that the teams in question tend to have new players/new coaching systems/etc., being installed, which over the first half of the season causes disruption and lost games. But then over the second half of the season, the new (often rookie) players figure out what they're doing and start playing better, the team adjusts to the new coaching system or whatever, and the wins start coming. What you want here is not the surface correlation (of winning games late in the season) but the underlying cause (good, young players who are learning their craft, and a solid coaching scheme to which players have become adjusted). Whether the Bills win or lose to the Colts has little if anything to do with any of that. The only thing that matters about that otherwise insignificant game is draft position. So we're better off losing it than winning it. But losing that game is of secondary importance to finding the right general manager and head coach!

You make an excellent point. Generally speaking, it's a mistake to reach for a player based on need. You correctly point out that it was that mentality which caused the Bills to take Losman. That line of thinking was also responsible for the Whitner, McCargo, and Lynch mistakes. The Bills already have Brohm on the roster, and he has all the tools to succeed as a QB. The main negative I've heard about him was that his college offense only required the quarterback to make one read. If that guy was covered, Brohm was supposed to check down. If that's true, it would imply that Brohm did not prove himself in a critical aspect of the game at the college level. But when the Bills pick, will they have access to a quarterback who's done significantly more at the college level than Brohm has? If there are no available quarterbacks who have proven themselves more than Brohm has, why not give Brohm a shot to prove himself? After a season of Brohm, the Bills can make a determination as to whether quarterback is still one of the team's most significant needs. In the meantime, we can address positions where we know there's a need, such as offensive line (especially LT), defensive line, and LB.

Your post is right on the money. A quarterback who hasn't been given time to learn the offense, and who doesn't have an offensive line, and who lacks NFL experience, will almost certainly look bad even if he's destined for future greatness. Under similar circumstances, a rookie Peyton Manning played poorly enough to cause Jim Mora to deliver . Anyone who expected Brohm to do significantly better than Peyton Manning had done in his rookie year was clearly guilty of unrealistic expectations. Let's give Brohm the chance to learn the offense, develop chemistry with his receivers, and play behind some semblance of an offensive line before making a determination of how well he can play.

An excellent idea. The Bills have had plenty of success with guys named Williams, most notably Mike Williams and Gregg Williams. For that matter, they've had success with guys named Trent. So if you could combine the two names into one guy . . . Okay, I'm just messing around here. I don't follow college ball well enough to know who Trent Williams is. That said, I do like the idea of taking a LT with our first or second round pick.

I wouldn't go that far. The interior of the line showed some promise, and Butler did a decent (but not spectacular) job at RT. The offensive linemen demonstrated good mobility and agility in the running game, when they ran down the field to make blocks. But pass protection was more iffy. As was the level of Bell's play. Now Butler is out on IR, Bell regressed before getting hurt, and more recently there have been other injuries like Wood's. The line's a shambles right now, but there had been some positives early on, and especially in the New England game. I'll grant that the pass protection was never all that great though.

They say that a truly elite swordsman is not focused on winning matches so much as he is on perfecting his technique. As his technique improves and is perfected, victories in matches arrive as a side effect. Conversely, a swordsman who tries to win as many matches as he can over the short-term, without perfecting his fundamentals, will (all else being equal) achieve a lower skill and success level than the guy focused on technique. Running a football team is analogous to that. If your focus is on maximizing the number of wins over the short-term--as TD's was--you'll have a few flash in the pan type successes, but ultimately won't get very far. But if you're focused on building a first-rate front office, coaching staff, and group of core players, and if you have the organizational discipline to relentlessly improve on those three things year after year, then over the long run, you'll have a very strong chance of achieving excellence. To try to achieve some kind of success without first doing those things would be pointless, and doomed to long-term failure. To give a specific example, the 2004 Bills went 9-7, and came within one game of the playoffs. But that flirtation with success was not based on a core group of good players who were either young or in their primes. It was not based on a first-rate front office or a first-rate coaching staff. As exciting as that 9-7 season may have seemed at the time, it did absolutely nothing to advance this team to a Super Bowl win. The front office was retained, which led to the disaster of the 2005 draft. That draft consisted of Roscoe Parrish, Kevin Everett, Duke Preston, Eric King, Justin Geisinger, and Lionel Gates. You can make a case for including Losman in that group as well, because the Bills' first round pick for 2005 had been traded away to acquire him. Suppose the Bills had gone 1-15 or 3-13 in 2004. TD would likely have been fired, which would have created at least the possibility of a competent front office and a successful draft for 2005. My long-term goal for this franchise is to win the Super Bowl, and that isn't going to happen unless there's a core group of good to elite young players at key positions. We don't have that now, so step 1 is to do whatever it takes to build that core. Until and unless that core is created, anything this team achieves is going to be as illusory as it had been under TD.

A good point about how our turnstile OL makes it virtually impossible for a QB to succeed or be evaluated. Take a guy like Brohm, who was basically thrust into one of the worst situations for a QB imaginable. No line, only a few practices with the starters, almost no time to learn the playbook . . . how can you evaluate whether he's the guy? However . . . had the Bills made the playoffs this year, Jauron would be the head coach going into next year. It's very doubtful we'd be looking for a new GM. The mentality throughout the organization would be, "What we're doing seems to be working, so let's keep doing it!" When the reality of the situation would be that the Bills' playoff appearance would have been based on an extremely soft schedule, and the division being the weakest it's been in quite some time. Plus, Edwards would still likely be the starting quarterback, so it's not like we'd be evaluating Brohm anyway. Long-term, I think we're better off with a 5-11 or 6-10 season than we would have been with a playoff appearance. The short-term pain we're undergoing gets us a new GM, HC, and starting QB. It also gets us a top ten draft pick. That stuff has got to be worth more than a one year mirage built on a soft schedule and guys like Dockery and Langston Walker!

I can think of someone here who's been even more loyal to Trent. One might even go so far as to describe that poster's loyalty as "dog-like."

I disagree with the above. A rebuilding team is supposed to trade away aging players for draft picks, assuming a willing trade partner is available. Consider Aaron Schobel. Let's say that he ends his career by doing the following: 2010: creates 2 additional wins. 2011: creates 2 additional wins. 2012: creates 1 additional win. 2013: retires. The 2010 Bills aren't going to do anything overly impressive. So from our perspective, the two wins of 2010 would be the difference between 5-11 and 7-9. So that value is wasted. Worse than wasted, in fact, because the 7-9 record hurts us in the draft. Suppose we trade him for a third round draft pick, who proceeds to do the following: 2010: creates 0 additional wins. 2011: creates 1 additional win. 2012: creates 1 additional win. . . . 2020: creates 1 additional win. 2021: retires. Unless 2011 is the one "big" year for this franchise over the coming decade, that third round pick will do more to push the Bills toward a Super Bowl win than Aaron Schobel would have. (Assuming the third round pick works out reasonably well, of course.) More generally, a rebuilding franchise should seek out long-term value (additional draft picks) rather than short-term value (holding onto aging veterans at the expense of potential draft picks). The short-term picture for that rebuilding franchise isn't going to look Super, either with or without those aging veterans. So you may as well build to maximize the long-term.

Your post sounds about right. But given the reasonable assumption that he does what you've described, how much would that really tell us about him going into next season? He hasn't had the chance to fully learn the offense. He'll be playing without an offensive line. This is his first week of practicing with the receivers to whom he'll be throwing. Even if he's destined to someday become a good quarterback, is it realistic to expect him to flourish under the above-mentioned conditions?

Back in the '70s, Bills fans had to go through a lot. But at least they got to put a label on their misfortunes. "0 for the '70s!" they said. "We are old, grizzled fans who have witnessed this team get literally no wins in an entire decade's worth of play against their most hated divisional rival," they have said. "The fact that we stuck with this team through that proves we're the exact opposite of bandwagon fans." Of the last 19 games between the Bills and the Patriots, the Patriots have won all those games but one. The Lawyer Milloy bowl. That fluke has denied this generation of Bills fans the chance to put a concise label on their Patriots-inflicted misfortunes, the way that Bills fans from the '70s could do with "0 for the '70s." That Lawyer Milloy bowl was clearly a fluke, a one-time event, a game which indicated literally nothing about how those two teams would fare over the course of the year. Had that game been a loss, we'd be one game away from tying the "0 for the '70s streak." As Bills fans, we naturally want to see our team win the Super Bowl. But that's obviously not going to happen any time soon. But the Lawyer Milloy bowl has robbed us even of the dubious consolation prize of being able to someday say to our kids or grandkids, "I've been through worse than you. Just look at all the consecutive losses I've witnessed!" But even with the Lawyer Milloy bowl, the Bills have still experienced 13 straight losses to the New England Patriots. There are only seven losses to go to equal 0 for the '70s. Assuming this team continues to lose to New England, how many seasons will it take us to reach those seven losses? The answer is 3.5.