Orton's Arm

Normally I would not respond to your posts, as you would simply see such a response as an opportunity to continue your crusade against me. But you've brought up a point I'd like to address. Maycok's mock drafts are, to the best of my knowledge, largely based on inside knowledge of what specific teams will do on draft day, not necessarily what he thinks they should do. Maycok correctly predicted that the Bills would take Whitner at #8. But my original question asked whether any mock draft had Whitner going from picks #9 to #15. The reason I asked my question in that particular way was to see if there was even a shred of evidence suggesting that any team other than the Bills would have taken Whitner in the top 15. Thus far no one has shown me any such evidence.

That's pretty much how I feel about how you've approached this. To assume--as they did--that their plan B was a lot weaker than their plan A--was an error. You've repeatedly implied that there is this huge gap between what the people in the media are thinking, and what people in front offices are thinking. The inherent conclusion you drew from that is that mock drafts are more or less worthless as an indication of how front offices around the league see potential draft picks. I responded to that by pointing out that not everyone in the media has been created equal, and that people like Kirwan actually have front office experience. Their opinions are not meaningless, and do have a strong relationship with how players are seen amongst NFL front offices. You seem to have ignored everything I wrote about that point, and persist in thinking that you have "proved" that mock drafts can't teach us anything at all about how a player is generally perceived by NFL front offices. As I mentioned earlier, one of Kirwan's drafts had Mangold going at #15, which is where I hinted he could have been taken. If Mangold falling to the end of the first round was predictable, and if there was another trade-down offer to move from 15 to, say, 20, then obviously the Bills should have taken it. No, I persist in the concept that a front office should aspire to perfection, and should learn from its mistakes. Whoever Cleveland's GM was at the time got things right when he decided that Fowler wasn't the answer. At least prior to this season, the current regime seemed to have a lot more free agent failure stories than success stories. And--with Fowler, Royal, and others--I didn't necessarily see a sense of urgency in correcting the failure. No, but you're claiming that, based on the information the Bills had available at the time, it was a perfectly logical draft with no major mental errors. Whenever anyone suggests otherwise, you put your fingers in your ears and scream "hindsight!" Hindsight has invalidated the underlying assumptions of that draft: namely, that SS and DT should have been much higher priorities than some of the other positions we'd discussed. That's probably good. You've done a good job of expressing your own arguments, but an extremely poor job of listening to mine.

It doesn't sound like there's anything I could possibly have said or done here to avoid having you apply the "hindsight" label to everything I've written about this. I disagreed with that logic pre-draft, and I disagree with it now, for exactly the same reasons. You imply the imperfections in the Bills' approach were only evident in hindsight. They were not. I'll grant that Whitner is a solid football player, but he's a solid football player who probably would have been there at #15. I'm not aware of any mock drafts which had him going somewhere between picks 9 and 15. Are you? Other than watching it collect dust on some shelf, what would I do with a medal? What I want is for the Bills to win a Super Bowl trophy. For that to happen, the front office has to do a better job than I would have done in its place. And in fairness to it, there are a lot of times when that's happened. But I just need to see that more consistently. If a given course of action seems like an obvious mistake to me--both before and after the fact--I don't want to see them going down that road. If this was any other team, imperfections and mistakes wouldn't bother me that much. Thanks, I think. But I have to disagree with you on this. I wasn't the only one on this board who thought the Bills would have been better off trading down for someone like Mangold than they were staying put at #8 and taking Whitner. I have to believe that some of the general managers in this league would have been able to see that Fowler wasn't the answer at center, and that Mangold was. A general manager who realized both those things--as many of them probably would have--would have been much more likely to accept Denver's trade down offer. Whether he ended up by taking Whitner or Mangold at #15, he'd consider it a victory either way--plus he gets that 2nd round pick for his troubles. "This points out that not only should each fan that 'guesses' and gets it right on a draft should not feel anything more than that they had a lucky guess.....but that their prediction might have been quite irrational for the team to do at the time." In other words, you are unwilling to consider the possibility that the front office may have made errors based on the information available at the time, and that some fans might have seen those errors both at the time and in hindsight. You seem a lot more interested in analyzing my supposed egotism than you are in even considering the possibility of whether the front office made an avoidable error. And that's a problem--or would be if you worked in the front office. A truly outstanding front office will categorize nearly every error as "avoidable," thereby putting itself in a position to learn from its past mistakes. I hope--perhaps vainly--that the Bills will come to recognize that their overemphasis on the defensive secondary and underemphasis on the offensive line is mistaken. But we're talking about a team whose head coach is himself a former defensive back, and a former defensive backs coach. Our defensive coordinator is also a former defensive backs coach. They emphasize the positions with which they're most familiar (defensive backs) while de-emphasizing positions which seem more tangential to them (the offensive line, TE, etc.). This behavior is not unique to this staff in particular, or even to football. If the CEO of a company has come up through sales, his approach is likely going to be different than that of a CEO who came up through operations, or through finance, or who'd been the CTO before the CEO. In each case, each CEO is going to place a little more emphasis on whichever area of the business he's most familiar with, potentially at the expense of other areas. That's a good point. But a better front office would have signed Walker but not Fowler. More generally, this front office's attempts to fill positions via free agency have been failures more often than not. For every one Walker, there seem to be two guys like Melvin Fowler, Peerless Price, Robert Royal, or Larry Triplett. Even Dockery is looking overpaid, over-hyped, and overrated. But even if you want to argue that the Bills were justified on taking a chance on a guy who couldn't hold down the starting center position in Cleveland, how do you explain the Bills' failure to try to replace Fowler after last season--or the season before, for that matter? How many years do the Bills need to content themselves with total ineptitude at the center position, before you admit that they place a higher priority on their secondary than on the offensive line? Like I said, nobody at center. After the Dolphins' 1-15 season, they obviously had more than a few holes to fill. But Parcells used a 2nd round pick on a QB, even though the prior regime had taken a QB in the second round one year earlier. Had Parcells become the Bills' GM back in 2006, I personally believe there's an excellent chance he would have seen Losman in the same light. Show me a mock draft which has him going between #9 and #15. I've seen nothing to indicate that anyone other than the Bills considered Whitner a top 15 pick. Many or most very knowledgeable people--including Carucci and Kirwan--considered Whitner second round material. You summed it all up in that first sentence: SS and DT were considered "high importance" positions of need, so the decision was made to focus on those two positions in the first round, while essentially ignoring opportunities to upgrade at other positions of dire need. As Bill pointed out, our needs along the offensive line went well beyond just SS. But that wasn't considered a "key" position of need like SS was.

If the poll was about what the Bills should do, then I'd agree with you. This poll is about what the Bills will do with their first round pick, which is another way of asking which defensive back position they most want to fill.

You're right: I should have included OG and OT as positions of need in 2006. But that just makes the main point of that post stronger. Had I personally been the GM for the Bills in 2006, Whitner would not have been my plan A. But given that he was someone else's plan A, that someone else at least should have recognized that he had a very strong plan B (and as you seem to hint at, a very strong plan C and plan D). What I was getting at earlier was this. Suppose one was, for the sake of argument, to accept the premise that Whitner should have been our plan A. The idea that there would have been this huge drop-off from plan A to plan B was a fallacy. But because the front office had convinced itself the fallacy was true, they made the mistake of refusing Denver's trade-down offer to avoid any "risk" of experiencing that supposedly huge drop-off from plan A to plan B. I agree this would have been a much better option than taking Whitner. But at the time, you were calling for the Bills to use their best picks on defensive backs. It's only in hindsight that you realize those picks should have been used on the offensive line. . . . Just kidding, Bill. I agree that if we make the playoffs, the '07 draft will be the single biggest reason why. But the '06 draft will deserve some of the credit as well, albeit not as much as the '07 draft. The Bills clearly left money on the table in '06, but they did walk away with a better draft than many other teams had for that year.

When I call Whitner a "reach," I mean that the Bills could have traded down to #15 and probably still have gotten him. The people in the front office thought the next-best alternative to Whitner would have been a significant step down, and they were wrong. This initial fallacy then led to another mistake: the thought that the Bills absolutely had to avoid any risk at all of losing out on Whitner. So when Denver offered the Bills a 2nd round pick to move down to #15, Marv turned them down. There was an excellent chance Whitner would still have been there at #15. But he (or someone) was convinced that if Whitner hadn't been there, it would have been very bad indeed. So they turned Denver down. The situation that actually pertained was this: the Bills had gaping holes at a number of positions, including SS, C, DT, and QB. Had they traded down from #8 to #15, and had Whitner not been there, they could have filled the gaping hole at center with a better football player than the SS they grabbed at #8. The strength of this plan B (stronger, actually, than their plan A) gave them a much greater freedom of action than they realized they had. By failing to utilize that freedom of action, they squandered the second round pick they could have had by trading down.

I don't see why you feel the need to attach labels like "hindsight" and "revisionist" to my arguments, given that leading up to that particular draft, I'd called for the Bills to either stay put at #8 and take a QB, or trade down and take Mangold. I also expressed a distinct lack of excitement when Fowler was brought to the Bills--an opinion he's done absolutely nothing to change. More generally, I've noticed a tendency among many people on this board to simply disregard all criticism of the front office. It's a "they're the ones running the show and you're not, so they must be right and you must be wrong," type attitude. Before that draft, I wrote that the Bills should have taken a Qb at #8, or else trade down for Mangold. Immediately after the draft, I wrote that the Bills should have either taken a QB at #8, or should have traded down for Mangold. Three years after the fact, I feel they should have either taken a QB at #8 (there was no way for them to have known they'd be getting Edwards in the third), or they should have traded down for Mangold. My logic then and my logic now are exactly the same. I get the feeling that for you it doesn't matter, and that you're going to put negative labels like "revisionist" and "hindsight" on whatever criticism I might make of any of the front office's moves. But out of a morbid sense of curiosity, is there anything I could possibly have done differently to have avoided those two labels? One of Pat Kirwan's mock drafts had Mangold going at #15. Another of Kirwans' mock drafts had him going in the late 20s. (In case you're wondering, both drafts had Whitner going in the second round to Kansas City.) You are right to say it wasn't considered a position of need. The fact it was not was an error on the Bills' part--an avoidable error, I believe. He couldn't hold onto the starting position at Cleveland, which is why he bounced over to the Vikings as Birk's backup. The Bills should not have pretended to themselves that this player was anything more than a stopgap measure until a real center could be brought in. And nobody at center, and nobody at quarterback. There were a number of needs that could legitimately have been filled. There was no reason to be so desperate to fill the DT and Safety needs (1 reach and 1 bust) while pretending to ourselves that several other positions were not also dire needs. For crying out loud, it was year 1 of a rebuilding effort. To hone in on just two positions would have been a logical for a team that was just two good players away from being a Super Bowl contender. It would be hyperbole to state that the Bills were two good players away from having two good players. But it wouldn't be all that hyperbolic. I know he's a good chess player, but, this season, the Bills have been very poor at picking up the blitz. A lot of that has been missed blocks--including missed blocks or poor blocks from Melvin Fowler. But it's also seemed to me that the blocking scheme has often failed to account for blitzers. I've heard plenty of talk about how wonderful Fowler supposedly is with line calls. But I haven't personally seen any direct evidence to back up that claim. Have you? I disagree. You can't put Whitner one-on-one with a good TE and expect him to be okay. That keeps him out of the ranks of the elite SSs, and is likely to do so for the remainder of his career. But Mangold has already proven he belongs amongst the ranks of the very best centers in this league.

Jim Kelly once said that the key to making the K-Gun work was Kent Hull. Obviously, the Bills don't have a player in that category--or anyone close. Mangold would have filled Hull's shoes admirably, in much the same way Edwards seems to be filling Kelly's shoes. Getting a Mangold at #15 is clearly better draft day value than getting Whitner at #8. That doesn't make the Whitner pick bad--he's a good if imperfect player. That's not necessarily true. It could be that several teams had him graded higher than that, but didn't have a need at the center position. There might also have been other teams that had him graded highly, and that had a need at center. But those other teams might have had one or two other players on their boards with even higher grades at other positions of need. I partially disagree with this. Take Sebastian Janikowski, a kicker whom the Raiders drafted in the first round. I think it was reasonably obvious that no other team felt it necessary to use a first round pick on a kicker. Janikowski was therefore a reach: a player taken by the Raiders at a much higher spot than any of the league's other teams had rated him. I'd apply this same logic to all other players. If the other teams didn't have Whitner rated as a top 15 player, he was a reach. If there were a lot of teams who had him rated in the top 10, he wasn't a reach. As you point out, there is no way for us to know for sure where teams had him rated. But mock drafts can provide an estimate of how players might generally be seen. Pat Kirwan, for example, used to work for the Jets' front office, and now writes for NFL.com. In his mock draft, he had Donte Whitner being taken #54 overall, by Kansas City. Yes, it's just one man's opinion, but it's the opinion of a man with NFL front office experience and expertise. And I think that most or all other mock drafts you'll find, written by people at the Kirwan level, indicate Whitner going in latter part of the first round at the very earliest. Based on the information we have, Whitner at #8 was a reach. The Bills clearly thought Whitner was one of the eight best players in that draft. Part of the reason for that is because he was felt to be a particularly good fit for the Tampa-2 scheme. But teams which don't use the Tampa-2--i.e., most teams--almost certainly didn't see Whitner in that same light. Had the Bills wanted to trade down to #15 and take Whitner at that spot, the main potential danger would have been a team that a) ran the Tampa-2, b) needed a SS, and c) had, or could acquire, a pick between 8 and 15. And had Whitner been off the board at #15, the Bills could have taken Mangold--thereby getting a better football player than Whitner, and at a position of dire need.

Whenever a new regime replaces an older one, it's a chance to ask whether the old regime's quarterback of the future should have been drafted in the first place. Bill Parcells' role with the Dolphins is an obvious example of this: he took a QB with his 2nd round pick, just one year after the previous regime had drafted a QB in the second round. There's nothing wrong with a new regime writing off the previous regime's quarterback of the future, at least if the new regime can clearly see the flaw in the previous regime's decision to take that particular QB. That brings me to the subject of Losman. TD drafted Losman because of his physical attributes rather than anything he'd proved as a pocket passer in college. That decision was clearly an error, and some of the people on these boards recognized that error fairly early on. If a team doesn't have a quarterback--which the Bills didn't, until we drafted Edwards--you typically want to get one on the roster as quickly as possible. Quarterbacks take time to develop, so you want to get that process started quickly. Cutler's career is off to an excellent start for the Broncos. The Bills needed a guy like that a lot more than they needed a solid but unspectacular strong safety. Vic Carucci didn't have Whitner rated as a first round talent--though he was quick to point out that such ratings are subjective, and that a particular player may be rated higher or lower depending on how he fits into a specific scheme. When Whitner was taken #8 overall, I was told that I shouldn't complain, because what if he turns into the next Ronnie Lott? Well, currently he has a long way to go before he becomes the next Ed Reed. Many of those who are reading this are probably thinking that none of it matters, because in the end we got Trent Edwards in the third. And I agree that decision looks absolutely brilliant in hindsight. But Edwards was expected to have been drafted in the second round. If the Bills knew they needed a quarterback, and if they knew how good Edwards was going to be, why not trade up into the second round, instead of passively hoping he'd fall to them in the third? Supposing some other team had taken Edwards in the second--which was what was expected to have happened--how would the previous year's decision to take Whitner over Cutler have looked? And how many mock drafts had Whither going in the top 8, or even the top 15? You get mocked on these boards if you bring up the concept of draft day value in relation to Whitner. But in this case, since you're arguing that Mangold would have been a reach at #15, surely you must admit Whitner was a bit of a reach at #8. I agree that the Bills were much more worried about the DT and SS positions than about the C position. Which is odd, considering we had Matt Bowen at SS and Melvin Fowler at center. Neither player was the answer at his respective position, but either could serve as a stopgap--sort of--until the hole was filled. The fact that the Bills felt they had to fill the hole at SS--with the 8th overall pick, no less--while getting by with a Band-Aid solution at center for three straight years--demonstrates that this regime places a higher priority on defensive backs than on the offensive line.

I agree that the lack of stars is disturbing. An elite football team typically needs elite difference makers. I put them into three categories. A category 3 difference maker is not necessarily better or worse than a category 1 or 2 difference maker: 1. A guy is a difference maker if he can be productive while using up two or more of the other team's players. As you pointed out, Bruce Smith still produced even when he was getting double teamed. Guys like Michael Irvin and Jerry Rice still produced even when getting double covered. 2. A guy is a difference maker if he cancels out a category 1 difference maker. You can put a Tony Boselli one-on-one with Bruce and be just fine. You can put a Deion Sanders one-on-one with a Jerry Rice, and know that things aren't going to get out of control. These are category 2 difference makers. 3. Other. These are players who can dramatically change the outcome of the game despite not really falling into one of the two above categories. Examples include Barry Sanders and Joe Montana. Lee Evans is probably the closest thing we have to a category 1 difference maker. But he's more likely to be shut down by double coverage than you'd typically expect from a category 1 difference maker. Marcus Stroud can, at times, also look like a category 1 difference maker. Last year, Jason Peters would have been a category 2 difference maker. As he plays himself back into shape, he might become more of one this season. Other than him, we don't have too many other category 2 difference makers. Donte Whitner certainly isn't one. It's not like you can have him cover an elite TE one-on-one and expect to be okay. Nor is any other member of our secondary a category 2 difference maker. Trent Edwards our only bona fide category three difference maker. But there are other players who come close, such as Poz. I agree with you that adding a few key difference makers should be very high on the Bills' to-do list. Doing so is the only thing that should make the Bills even consider doing something other than drafting an offensive lineman with their first pick. Of course, if they got a difference maker on the offensive line with their first round pick, they'd have the best of both worlds. But it's even more important that their first round pick be a difference maker, than that he be an offensive lineman.

There's a lot of truth in what Martz is saying there. If you look at the people who are the best at something--the world's best swordsman, for example--you'll see that they are never satisfied. They never say to themselves, "I've arrived." Instead, they are convinced that there is always something more to be learned, room to get better, some flaw that needs to be corrected or some virtue that needs to be magnified. This lifelong process of learning--of mastery--becomes their central focus, even more than individual wins and losses. Getting lots of wins is merely a consequence of having partially achieved the underlying goal, which is to attain a truly elite level of performance, each and every time. Back in the days of Montana and Rice, the 49ers were an excellent example of this. Their bread and butter play was the quick slant to Jerry Rice. They practiced that play all the time because their goal was to achieve perfection in its execution. Their focus was more inward than outward. They were most concerned about achieving an elite level of performance each and every week, and that focus wasn't much affected by the identity of whichever opponent they happened to be playing that particular week.

This isn't a bad idea at all. The Bills could use Xavier Oman as Lynch's backup, with maybe Jackson getting a little time at the position as well. Or, the Bills wanted a pass catching TE, they could use Jackson to take the place of Robert Royal. Having Royal's name eliminated from the Bills' list of receiving "threats" could only be a good thing. With Jackson at TE, the Bills would then use Evans, Hardy, Parrish, and Johnson as their receivers.

While Peters has had bouts of inconsistency, he hasn't been one of the three biggest problems for this team this season. The offensive line as a whole has been very inconsistent in providing pass protection, a problem which goes well beyond just Peters. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, Fowler is not the answer at center. While he's obviously been the most glaring weakness on the line, the Bills could use upgrades at some other line positions as well. In addition to using a first or second round pick on Fowler's replacement, I wouldn't mind seeing the Bills use some of their picks in rounds 2 - 4 on potential replacements for Butler and Dockery.

Are you actually being serious here? The offensive line couldn't possibly have done a worse job of pass protection on those two plays. On the fumble in particular, the offensive line barely even slowed Joey Porter down as he ran between the tackles straight to Edwards, on a three man rush. When the defense only rushes three men, it's supposed to take the receivers longer than usual to get open, because there are more defenders than usual defending them. But because there are so few rushers, the offensive line is supposed to be able to provide more time than usual for those receivers to get open. When you accuse Trent of holding the ball "too long" you demonstrate a fundamentally different view of that kind of play. You make it sound like it was a blitz situation, in which the quarterback is expected to get rid of the ball in a hurry. But in a blitz, the quarterback usually can get rid of the ball in a hurry. All those blitzers coming to the QB mean that there's a good chance someone is open, and you just have to throw it to your hot read.

For my own part, I'm not going to assume you came across as arrogant simply because you brought up your Mensa membership in the past. I mean, yeah, if you were interacting with someone who seemed to lack confidence, then bringing up your Mensa status was probably not a good move on your part. But if the other person is self-confident, and if you get the feeling that person probably did well on his or her own standardized tests, then you're allowed. And if the other person came across as arrogant, I'd actually encourage you to bring up your Mensa membership. As for whether people care about it, some will and some won't. When Bill Gates was in college, the first question he'd always ask when on a date was, "so what was your SAT score?" He's probably become a little more tactful and socially aware since then. But if he was still single, I'm sure that would be at the top of the things he wanted to ask, even if he was better at hiding it.

Given that you saw the game in person, I'll accept your statement that Trent missed more open receivers than I'd realized, and that his performance wasn't as good as I'd thought. That said, it bugs me when people (not you) blame Edwards for things that weren't his fault. The interception was clearly, solely, and unambiguously the result of the absence of pass protection, as was that safety. Only one turnover was because of a QB mistake, while two were because of abysmal pass "protection" on those particular plays. Your statements about the drop-off in play once Fowler came in reinforce my suspicion that Preston is a significant improvement over Fowler (not that that's saying much).

What a lot of people seem to forget is that a successful offense is like a machine, and that the quarterback is only one of the parts to that machine. If other parts are broken--as was the case against the Dolphins--the machine won't work. A good example of this was the AFC Championship game: Bills against the Chiefs. The Chiefs had Joe Montana at quarterback, and he'd just led his team to victory in a shootout over the Oilers. Clearly, the quarterback position was not a problem for them. But their supporting cast got dominated by the Bills' supporting cast. Montana led the Chiefs to just two FGs before getting knocked out at the end of the first half. In passing situations, was the Dolphins' defensive dominance over the Bills' supporting cast any less complete than the Bills' dominance had been over the Chiefs? On passing downs, our offensive line looked downright awful. That level of play would have been an embarrassment to a typical high school team. Other than Evans, the Bills' receiving options were a real disappointment. Reed was out, Royal and Lynch combined for four dropped passes, and Hardy couldn't get open. Overall, Edwards' supporting cast got flat-out dominated by the Dolphins' defense. If Joe Montana was on pace for a 12 point game when his supporting cast was flat-out dominated, why do people suppose that Edwards should be able to light up the scoreboard on a day when his own supporting cast (other than Evans) had been absolutely embarrassed by the Dolphins? Do you think that Edwards should be more able to mask the weakness of his supporting cast than Montana had been? As far as Edwards "reverting" to checkdown options, what was he supposed to do on a day when the offensive line simply didn't pass protect? The one time he relied on the offensive line to provide some modicum of pass protection (against a three man rush), he ended up getting a safety.

I disagree. The offensive line wasn't just a problem "at the end." It was a problem all game long. At no point during that game did the offensive line provide even a modest amount of pass protection with any consistency. On passing downs, the line looked like it had a loooooong way to go to even be considered "average." The run game was its usual feast or famine self, albeit with a few more feasts than we're used to seeing this season. (Which isn't saying much.) The offensive line was clearly the single biggest reason for this loss, even more than McGee. You point to Trent as one of the three factors in the loss. But exactly how is a quarterback supposed to look when he isn't getting any pass protection, and he doesn't have any receiving options other than Evans? Reed was out, Royal dropped three passes, and Hardy is clearly too raw to be a consistent part of this offense. Lynch also dropped a key pass. Despite having been let down across the board by his supporting cast, Edwards still passed for 227 yards. Only one turnover was legitimately his fault. (The others were either the Royal fumble, or else directly resulted from extremely poor offensive line play.) There were some things Edwards could have done better, but overall he produced more, given the circumstances, than I would have expected from most other quarterbacks. If you're looking for the three main factors for the loss, I'd certainly cross Edwards off your list, and in his place put "injury to Reed + very poor play by the guys who should have stepped up to provide threats other than Evans."

I agree with everything you wrote here. But please make it clear that it was Billfan63, and not me, who is the source of the original "please expand these excuses" remark.

One could use a bit of game theory to look at this in more detail. First, mixing it up a bit, as you put it, is generally a better strategy than being predictable. You need to force the other team to defend all your viable options, rather than just one option in particular. The following actions are consistent with becoming unpredictable: First down: Call a healthy percentage of running plays, and a healthy percentage of passing plays. The Nash equilibrium will depend on the expected gain from a running play versus passing play. By that I mean that if one aspect of your game--for example your passing attack--works better than the other aspect, you should call a higher percentage of passing plays than running plays. However, both types of plays should be called to force the defense to respect both. Second down: Regardless of whether you called a pass or a run on first down, you should consider calling either a pass or run on second down. The alternative is to say, "every time I call a pass play on first down, I call a running play on second down to mix it up." If an offensive coordinator embraced this alternative, the other team's defensive coordinator would simply stack the box on second down whenever a pass play had been called on first down. Third down: Regardless of whatever had been called on first or second down, the offensive coordinator should still should still select between running plays and passing plays, instead of firmly committing himself to one or the other. What you want to avoid is a decision to always pass whenever you've run on first and second down, or to always run whenever you've passed on first and second down. Any kind of "always" rule makes the defensive coordinator's job a lot easier. An offensive coordinator who follows the above rules will, sometimes, call run, run, run, or pass, pass, pass. In fact, an offensive coordinator who never calls run, run, run or pass, pass, pass isn't following these rules, and is doing something to make himself predictable. However, a good offensive coordinator will recognize when one aspect of his game--either passing or running--is stronger than the other, or is working better on a particular day, and will tend to emphasize that aspect in his play calling.

Of the points I made, the one about the run/pass mix is the one about which I feel the least strongly. So I won't really try to argue in its favor very much. I guess the main thing is that I'm used to seeing a lot of first down running plays, between the tackles, that result in 1 yard gains. Against San Diego, Schonert called run, run, pass twice. IIRC, those two playcalls resulted in 3rd and 6 and 3rd and 7. Trent bailed the Bills out of both those third and long situations. If you're placing almost the entire burden of picking up first downs on the QB's shoulders, why not give him three chances to get that first down, instead of just one chance in an obvious passing situation? At least, that's how I've felt about the playcalling in past games. This time around though, the offensive line just didn't pass protect at all during the game. At least in the past it's pass protected in the fourth quarter, after nearly 3 solid quarters of total ineptitude and non-performance. In addition to the lack of pass protection, the absence of Josh Reed and the terrible performance by Royal (3 drops, 1 catch + fumble), really hurt the passing game. Maybe when Schonert called those three pass plays, he expected the offensive line to start providing pass protection late in the game, much like it had in most previous contests. Unfortunately he guessed wrong: the offensive line turned in four quarters of absolutely pathetic pass protection, instead of its usual three quarters.

If you look at the play-by-play, you'll see that the defense was responsible for allowing 20 of Miami's points, and the offense was responsible for the other 5. I believe the magnitude of our problems on offense--most notably our pass protection issues--outweighed the things that were wrong with our defense. But let's not pretend the defense had a great game yesterday. It didn't.

In claiming that these are "excuses" for Trent, it sounds to me like you're making excuses for the pathetic state of pass protection we saw yesterday. Please explain why you feel that ridiculously bad pass protection needs to be excused.

Somehow those became "Trent's" three turnovers, even though only one of them was his fault. Erasing the one turnover for which Trent could legitimately have been blamed would have helped. Erasing the two turnovers that resulted from poor or nonexistent pass protection would have helped more. Poor offensive line play, especially in pass protection, was a much bigger factor in today's loss than Trent. The defense allowed 20 points in a disappointing performance. While the absence of pass protection was the main reason for today's loss, I don't think you can hold the defense completely blameless. It was a three man rush! He got almost no pass protection! When you've got eight guys dropping back into coverage, it's typically going to take receivers a little while to get open. The offensive line has to give the QB good pass protection in a situation like that. Instead, Dockery barely even touched Porter as he ran on by. At least Peters got his hands on him, but it didn't seem to slow him down all that much. The bottom line is that, on a three man rush, the Bills' offensive line allowed a Miami defender to rush between the tackles on his way to the QB's blindside, and barely even slowed him down in the process. With all those Miami defenders back in coverage, I think it's reasonable to assume that the Bills' receivers were all covered until Porter arrived. (I invite anyone who saw the game in person to comment on this.) Trent therefore had two choices: 1) assume the offensive line will do its job, and that he'll be able to spend a reasonable amount of time waiting for someone to come open. 2) Assume the offensive line will be made to look like a bunch of practice squad rejects on that play, in which case the logical decision would have been to throw the ball away and let Moorman punt it. He chose option 1 when in hindsight he would have been better off with option 2. But I don't think you can legitimately criticize him for this. The Bills' running game typically involves long periods of famine interspersed with a few brief feasts. Most of the time when the Bills call a running play, it's just a waste of a down. During the Dolphins game, the designed running plays produced the following results (listed from worst to best): -1, -1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18. I've bolded the running plays that came on the Marshawn Lynch TD drive. As you can see from the above list of numbers, the Dolphins did a solid job of containing the Bills' running game on most plays. However, a few big running plays here and there--especially on the Lynch TD drive--helped drive up the overall average. Had Schonert called run, run, pass on the drive in question, the offense would have had only one realistic chance to get a first down (the 3rd down pass play), instead of three legitimate chances. Royal fumbled with 1:56 on the clock, with the Bills at the Miami 31. Had he not fumbled, the Bills would have had to drive those 31 yards for a TD, recover the onsides kick, and score a FG. For the Bills to have accomplished all of that would have been a long shot, but certainly not an impossibility. However, for that stuff to have become a possibility, the offensive line would have had to have provided much better pass protection in the final two minutes than it had throughout the course of the game. 5. I agree that getting rid of the offense's three fumbles would have helped the team more than getting rid of all but 50 of Ginn's 175 receiving yards. Of those three fumbles, one was on Edwards, one was on Royal, and one was on the offensive line. If I could go back and change things about how this team played, I'd do them in the following order: 1. Better pass protection from the offensive line 2. Also better pass protection from the offensive line 3. The defense should have kept Ginn from running wild 4. Royal should have had a much better game than the one he had 5. A better pass rush 6. Edwards shouldn't have fumbled after running the ball for a first down 7. Better run blocking by the offensive line To be honest, I think that if we had a healthy Josh Reed, and if the offensive line had provided pass protection, the Bills would have walked away with a win. While the Bills had problems on both sides of the ball, there was more wrong with our offense than our defense. If the Bills want to become a top-tier team, they need to come away from the first day of the 2009 draft with one or more offensive linemen.

I agree with your point, and I'd like to add to it. Even with all the people the Dolphins were dropping back into coverage they still did an excellent job of applying pressure on the QB. Edwards' second fumble resulted because the offensive line barely even made Joey Porter break stride on a three man rush. Overall, the Dolphins' defense did a very good job of making our offensive line look like a bunch of guys who should be cut in the off-season--especially when it came to pass protection. Another thing they did which worked was to attack our receivers. A lot of the times you'd see Trent put the ball right where it needed to be, only for the receiver to get nailed as the ball arrived. Or the defender would make an aggressive move to swat the ball away, preventing the catch. Overall it was a very aggressive, "don't give them a thing" approach by the Dolphins' secondary--pretty much the opposite of the philosophical approach our own secondary had in the Cardinals game.