Orton's Arm

Look on the bright side: the Bills helped their draft position this evening. Plus Fewell became less likely to be the next head coach. That's a good thing, for reasons I've explained elsewhere. This loss may feel lousy at the moment, but it will help this team long-term.

"If Hitler came back, I'd take him." - Art Modell, owner, Baltimore Ravens, when asked to describe the coaching style he wanted in his team's next head coach. How Hitler would run this team.

I think the Bills will win this game. Which doesn't necessarily make me happy, as long-term we're better off with a higher draft pick than with racking up a meaningless win against a lousy football team.

The bolded statement rings true. One possible explanation for the improvement we're seeing is that Jauron interfered with/harmed the offense and AVP in a misguided effort to improve things; whereas Fewell has simply decided not to mess with anything offense-related. In other words, without the weight of Jauron dragging him down, AVP is now free to rise to his natural level. Hopefully that level will turn out to be nice and high; but that remains to be seen.

An excellent point. The offense is starting to look a lot better now that AVP has been unleashed.

I disagree with the bolded statement. Look at teams with good FO's and how they act: - A while back, Bill Polian and the Colts had the first overall pick. Instead of trading down, he stayed where he was and took Peyton Manning. That one pick, alone, probably explains why Polian was able to win a Super Bowl with the Colts even though he failed to do so with the Bills or Panthers. - In a subsequent draft, Polian and the Colts had the fourth overall pick. Mike Ditka wanted Ricky Williams, and offered the Colts a king's ransom for trading down a few slots. Instead, Polian stayed where he was and took Edgerrin James. - During the 2000s, the Patriots once traded two picks in the lower first round for just one pick in the top ten. - In another draft, the Patriots traded away their first round pick, straight up, for San Francisco's first round pick the following year. Draft position matters, at least in the eyes of the best run franchises in the NFL. One could argue that a lousy GM will mess up no matter how good his draft position is. The cure for that is to a) have a good GM, and b) to give that GM the highest possible draft picks you can.

I agree that Shanahan should not have GM responsibilities for this team. That said, I think he'd be a great head coach. The argument could be made that the Bills should bring in a real GM, and let him hire his own head coach. With the possibility that he might choose Shanahan.

Players can be overly optimistic about stuff like this. If you tell a player four to six weeks, he'll hear "four weeks at the very most." While Wood's comments are encouraging, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Most of those DBs were drafted after Butler took over from Polian. Butler wasn't as good a GM as Polian. Polian's teams were strong on both sides of the ball; whereas the Butler-led Bills typically had a good defense but a mediocre offense. The offensive line was typically below par, and Butler never did find a replacement for Kelly. As for the Super Bowl appearances themselves, I think we can all agree they had more to do with guys like Jim Kelly, Kent Hull, Jim Ritcher, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, and Andre Reed, than they did with guys like James Williams. I'm not really sure what, if anything, would be gained by pointing out that we won more games the year we drafted James Williams than we did the year we drafted Bruce Smith. During the post-Polian era, the Bills developed an ugly habit of using first round picks on DBs, then letting them go first contract and out. Employing that strategy on any position would be a huge error. You don't see the Colts letting Peyton Manning go first contract and out, do you? First round picks should be used on long-term building blocks, not on quick, temporary fixes. If the Bills aren't willing to extend their first round CB success stories, they shouldn't use first round picks on them in the first place. (As an aside, McGee's extension was quite encouraging!) When you're in rebuilding mode, your bias should be for a quarterback first, your offensive and defensive lines second, most other positions third, and RBs dead last. Your rookie first round quarterback should be firmly seated on the bench--where he belongs--in part so that he doesn't get killed while you're rebuilding your offensive line. Let him take to the field his second year. The Whitner pick was a mistake on several levels. Whitner wasn't the best player available at #8; so choosing him hinted at a bias in favor of the defensive secondary. During rebuilding mode. On a team with no quarterback and gaping holes in its offensive line! Part of the blame for the Whitner pick belongs to Marv. I also suspect, but cannot prove, that Jauron wanted a good strong safety right away! for his Tampa 2 defense. More generally, I can't think of any first day draft picks during the Marv era who have lived up to the expectations associated with their draft positions.

I agree that Shanahan's decision won't be materially influenced by this signing. But if the Bills do sign Shanahan--or some other coach who transitions this team to the 3-4--it wouldn't hurt to have a 3-4 NT on the practice squad. With only six games left on the season, it's quite possible that current practice squad additions are being evaluated primarily on their potential to contribute in future years. Future years during which we may be running a 3-4.

I suggest The Botanical Gardens. You feel a little bit like you've stepped into a rain forest-style paradise.

The Bills didn't have an offensive line back in 2005. Under those circumstances, you need a guy who can dump it off quickly. If there's one thing Holcomb knew how to do, it was to dump off the football to avoid the sack!! The Bills' offense always produced at least 14 points a game when Holcomb took all the snaps; which isn't too shabby for a team that didn't have an offensive line. My hope was for the Bills to use Holcomb as their stopgap quarterback while they drafted/developed his replacement. That would have entailed giving up on JP a little earlier than most people wanted. The year before Parcells became GM, the Dolphins used a second round pick on some quarterback of the future. In the first year as head coach, Parcells signed Pennington to be his veteran/stopgap QB, and used a second round pick to take Henne. The quarterback of the future from the year before got left out in the cold. Under my plan, Holcomb would have been our Chad Pennington, the Bills' early QB pick would have been our Henne, and Losman would have been our version of whichever QB Parcells gave up on. The main difference is that I would have been willing--even eager--to use a first round pick on a QB, assuming there was a guy there worth taking when we picked.

You wrote that, "I also believe while he is not a great pocket passer, he is a great football player. " If by "great football player" you mean "good RB," then you might have a point. But to suggest that Vick is a great--or even marginally competent--quarterback would be absurd. He's not; and his name does not belong in any discussion about "solving the QB situation." Fred Jackson has at least as good a chance of solving the Bills' QB problems as does Michael Vick. There's already another Vick thread on the first page of TSW. But even just one Vick thread is one too many.

Good points. But why would we want the player Vick was four or more years earlier? That guy was an excellent runner and had a cannon for an arm. But he was an inaccurate passer. Also, he lacked pocket presence, and took a lot more sacks than you might think. If we want a guy with excellent physical gifts, mental limitations, and an inability to throw the ball accurately, we always have Losman's number. Not that Losman was as bad a pocket passer as Vick.

An excellent point. If people had the mentality of, "Let's scour the UFL and sign the best players we can," then obviously Bollinger's name would be a lot higher on that list than Losman's. The reason Losman's name gets heard more often on these boards than Bollinger's is because some of the fans here have been unable to let go of their emotional investment in Losman's success. It's this kind of emotion-driven, Losman over Bollinger approach which exemplifies why Marv felt that any coach who listened to the fans would soon be up in the stands with them.

As a former player, Fewell can relate to the players, and starts off with their respect. They're going to play harder for a guy like that. However, Fewell didn't exactly distinguish himself as a defensive coordinator. This season, his defense has faced a lot of injuries, but also a lot of offenses with lousy quarterbacks/other players. It's easy for a defense to look good when it's playing Derek Anderson. Throughout Fewell's tenure as defensive coordinator, his defense has been noted for an inability to get off the field on third down, for a tendency for DBs to play soft coverage, and for the defensive scheme to be vulnerable to throws over the middle of the field, as well as to "death by a thousand small cuts" offenses. Think of the best current or former head coaches in the NFL. All of them which come to mind had been brilliant coordinators before becoming head coaches. Bill Walsh had been a brilliant offensive coordinator for the Bengals before becoming a head coach. Bill Belichick had been a brilliant defensive coordinator. As you start throwing other names around--head coaches whose teams achieved more than their talent levels should indicate, over prolonged periods of time--you'll realize that these head coaches had almost always been very smart coordinators first. Perry Fewell was never a very smart coordinator. He's more in the Mike Ditka/Jim Haslett mold: a former player who, as a head coach, can get his team riled up/angry/intense for a few games, but who has done nothing to indicate that he can hold his own against a Bill Belichick in a mental chess match. We don't need a guy like that as our next head coach, no matter how well Fewell does at getting people riled up over the next six games.

The Buffalo area had traditionally been associated with the Puritan cultural group. (Strong middle class, solid work ethic, good moral values, etc.) The percentage of people actually descended from the Puritans has gradually declined due to immigration. I think the idiocy you see on this board is due to several factors: 1. The brain drain. With fewer opportunities available in Upstate New York than elsewhere, a lot of the smartest people have left the area. (As have some of the less smart.) 2. Gresham's Law. There's a tendency for bad content to drive out good, and for lower quality posters to drive out better posters. 3. People like getting responses to their posts. If you write something that's middle of the road, it might not cause enough of an emotional reaction for anyone to respond. Conversely, if you take a more extreme, less nuanced view, you're more likely to inspire others to respond to you (both for and against). This can cause disagreements to become amplified, and to turn into shouting matches. 4. There are some people who--with varying degrees of justification--assume they are smarter than other participants on these boards. They take that assumption one step further, and conclude that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot. This leads a portion of our board's smarter members to primarily contribute personal attack/substance free postings. While some of the people creating those postings may be intelligent, their posts do not reflect that intelligence, and add nothing to these forums. I'm sure there are other reasons why the quality of participation in this forum isn't higher. But I would caution against using what you see on these forums to draw conclusions about the average level of intelligence of people in the Buffalo area.

That's awesome! Kierkegaard was really cool!

Anyone who's read Albion's Seed is familiar with the fact that there are differing regional cultures in the U.S. In order of arrival, those cultural groups are: 1) the Puritans, 2) the Cavaliers, 3) the Quakers, and 4) the Borderers. Of the four groups, the Puritans have the best work ethic and highest education standards, the Cavaliers have the most refined/best social elite (think George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc.), the Quakers are the most industrial, materialistic, pacifistic, and feministic, and the Borderers are the toughest and most warlike. Typically, areas settled by the Borderers produce the highest number of football players on a per-capita basis. The term "Borderer" was used to describe the residents of the six northernmost counties in England, the Scotch lowlands, and northern Ireland. As well as their descendants. Examples of Borderers include John Wayne, General Patton, and people like that. Southwest Pennsylvania is Borderer territory, but so too are a lot of other places in the U.S. Borderer territory includes Appalachia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, northern Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, the Southwest, and--oddly enough--Southern California. But, as is also the case for the three other cultural groups, the Borderer culture has degenerated and declined. In some places this decline is worse than others. From a football perspective, you're most interested in toughness and other warrior virtues. I'm guessing that these traits have not decayed as much in rural or mountainous areas--such as southwest Pennsylvania--as they may have in places like Los Angeles or San Diego.

So am I. If that win were a loss, we'd be that much higher in the 2010 draft.

Alternatively, people could point out that whatever "cheating" may or may not have occurred with the Broncos does not in any way taint Bills wins.

That clinches it! The Bills need Shanahan. Let's hope this deal gets done. I just don't want to see him as GM though.

We'll feel that he must have done a good job as their defensive secondary coach!

I suspect we brought this guy in based on the possibility that Shanahan will be the head coach next year; and that we'll be switching to a 3-4. That guy seems like a much better fit as a 3-4 NT than as a Tampa 2 DT.