Orton's Arm

I recently came across the following from ESPN: An illness at the position, you say? Too few good young QBs in the league? Fortunately, this doesn't seem like something Buffalo will need to worry about for a very long time! Go Trent!

The Eagles' sole loss was to the Cowboys, and the Eagles really gave them a run for their money. The Bills have two wins against teams suffering numerous injuries (Seattle and Jacksonville) as well as a last second win over the Oakland Raiders. I think this is a good Bills team, but (despite our undefeated record) I could easily see why some might think the Eagles had shown more than we have, at this point in the season. At this point, I'm focused on whether the Bills can overcome the shortcomings they exhibited in the Oakland game. Can the offensive line avoid being flat-out dominated, as it had been for most of the Oakland game? Can the offense as a whole be more productive than it was for most of that game? Are the big chunks of rushing yardage we gave up to the Raiders early on a fluke, or should we be worried about them as a sign of bad things to come? I'm not too worried about these things though. Whichever weaknesses don't get fixed during the season can always be addressed in the upcoming draft. This is a young team with a bright future. It already has a big opportunity to do good things this year, and I suspect that opportunity will only become bigger over the next 2 - 3 years.

That worked! Kudos for figuring that out. Now that I can see the picture, it looks like Schobel benefited from the OLT falling down on that particular play.

The link gave me the following error message when I tried to use it: > You don't have permission to access /servlet/Images/501532007/photos3794/2/1/55/73/94/6/694735501211_0_BG.jpg on this server.

As you pointed out, the Patriots aren't nearly as bad as they appeared to have been against the Dolphins. I expect them to bounce back with a significantly higher level of play, and to win many of their upcoming games. That said, they're clearly not the same team they were last year. They have too many old guys, and the absence of Brady doesn't help at all. I'm optimistic about the Bills, but they still have a lot to prove before they can be considered one of the powerhouses in the AFC. On the other hand, there are significant question marks about any other would-be AFC powerhouses. With Marvin "drafted the same year as Eric Moulds" Harrison getting on in years, and with its offensive line problems, Indy's offense isn't what it used to be. New England has taken a step backwards from last year. San Diego seems weaker this year than it had in times past. Jacksonville is a good team, but as we saw last week they can be beaten. Not just this division, but the entire conference seems ripe for the taking. All the Bills have to do is play their best football, and not get dominated as they did for much of the game against the Raiders.

A lot of the Raiders' success was based on the fact that their defensive players flat-out dominated the Bills' counterparts on offense for most of the game. For most of the game there was no run blocking and no pass protection, and receivers couldn't get open or catch passes. Most other teams we face are unlikely to have the same quality of defensive secondaries as Oakland's, and won't have the same kind of DL pass rush Oakland had. I also think that players like Jason Peters and Lee Evans are likely to bounce back from the poor performances they had today. That said, I agree that other teams should learn from what Oakland did today, and to try to imitate that success as much as possible. That would give them the best chance of defending against our offense.

If the Bills play their best (i.e., significantly better than what we just saw against Oakland), we can come out of Gillette Stadium with a win.

I appreciate this, HD. For years I've watched the Patriots dominate the Bills. They had the better coaching staff. The better front office. Better players. Everything, from top to bottom, seemed better run than was the case with the Bills. When I thought of the Patriots' organization, I thought of words like "intelligently-run," "disciplined," "rigor of thought." The phrases that came to mind under the TD era were, "short-sighted," "undisciplined," "lacking sight of the big picture," etc. I regarded the two games against the Patriots each year as automatic losses. But now we're in year 3 of the post-TD rebuilding era, and this organization is starting to show signs of Patriots-like competence. The drafts have been good. The coaching staff is finally good. This team is a real threat not just to go to the playoffs, but to actually do something once there. And yet the Patriots still have Bill Belicheck. You still have Scott Pioli. You still have Tom Brady, and he's probably only halfway through his career. There are too many old guys on the Patriots roster, at too many important positions, for your team to be a real Super Bowl threat for the next 2 - 3 years. But give yourself a few good drafts, plus the young or mid-career players you currently have, and the Patriots will once again become a threat to reassert their old dominance. 2 - 3 years from now the Bills should be an even stronger team than we are now. I expect the division battles between the Bills and Patriots to be fierce. If the Dolphins and Jets get their acts together (and the Dolphins seem to be working on it) the AFC East could become as strong as the NFC East was back in the early '90s.

The Patriots aren't nearly as bad as they looked against the Dolphins. That said, I completely agree with your post. There are too many old guys on that roster in too many starting positions. You could start to see cracks in their armor late last season, and those cracks seemed to get a little bigger in the Super Bowl. They're trying to rebuild on the fly with guys like Mayo. But over the next year or two, I think they'll lose a lot more talent to aging players hitting the wall than they'll gain from the draft. Meanwhile, the Bills are a young, talented team that has yet to reach its full potential. There are still some weaknesses, as we saw today. But one good draft could address a lot of those weaknesses. I think that we're looking at the potential for the changing of the guard in the AFC East, and not just for this year.

I don't know about a "higher standard." The Bills' offensive line was flat-out dominated for most of the game, in both pass protection and, as usual, run-blocking. Peters was a big part of this problem. That level of play is clearly unacceptable. I think the Peters part of that problem will solve itself as the season progresses. But if problems at other OL positions persist, the Bills should strongly consider using a high draft pick or two on the OL.

Good post Bill, and I agree with most of it. If you're using a first round pick on a QB, it should be on a guy who's known as a polished pocket passer, and not some scrambler/throwing on the run/unpolished guy with good athletic gifts. (Not that you, in particular, would ever use a first round pick on a QB, if there was even one non-Pro Bowler on your offensive line! ) You and others have made the argument Losman was mishandled. The arguments I've seen in this and other threads are as follows: 1) The decision to make Losman the starter beginning with his second year in the league. The thinking is that he would have benefited from another year on the bench, and that he should have been made the starter in his third year. 2) The decision to bench Losman due to abysmal performances in starts 2 - 4 of his career 3) The decision to put Losman in an offense that wasn't well-suited to his strengths 4) Fairchild's overall poor playcalling 5) The lack of talent around Losman 1) Losman had his whole rookie year to learn the playbook, take mental reps, watch film, etc. He also had the benefit of practicing both before his injury occurred and after he'd returned from it. This was not as useful a learning opportunity as an injury-free rookie year would have been, but it was a lot better than nothing. Going into his second year, it was reasonable for the coaching staff to have expected him to have played better than a rookie would have. 2) Given the above, you would have expected a certain minimal level of performance from Losman once he became a starter. His inability to deliver anything even close to that minimal level of performance raised serious questions about his long-term future in the NFL. One could make the argument that if you're pretty sure a guy isn't going to develop into the long-term answer at QB, why should you keep feeding him starts at the team's expense? 3) It's true that Losman was more or less forced to sink or swim as a pocket passer rather than being allowed to use roll-outs and the other kinds of plays you'd typically call for a mobile, strong-armed QB who was a poor pocket passer. I think the Bills made the right decision with this. Long-term, having a QB who isn't a good pocket passer is just too limiting. They needed to know whether Losman could develop into such a QB. If he couldn't, they needed to move on without him. 4) To a large degree the playcalling was designed to benefit Losman. In 2006 Fairchild considerably simplified the offense, thereby helping Losman achieve a productive year (especially in the second half of the season). In 2007, Fairchild also helped compensate for Losman's metal deficiencies by keeping extra guys in to block and not giving Losman very many targets on any one given passing play. That's fairly standard practice when you have a guy who isn't good at quickly processing visual information. The extra blockers help him by giving him more time to throw, and the absence of extra targets doesn't hurt him, because he wouldn't have seen them anyway. While Fairchild's overall playcalling was unimaginative and poor--especially in 2007--the Bills' QB situation made him appear worse than he really was. 5) The offensive line was a joke in 2005--no question. But it came together in 2006, especially in the second half of the season. Other than Lee Evans, Losman's receiving corps was uninspiring. But this year, Trent is making players like Josh Reed look better than they had when Losman was the QB. Doubtless there are those who would attribute this change strictly to the upgrade at offensive coordinator, but I think the upgrade at QB has at least as much to do with it. As for the other point you raised, getting rid of Bledsoe after the 2004 season was the right move. The Bills had a disaster of an offensive line in 2005. With a line like that, you need a QB who gets rid of the ball quickly--not exactly Bledsoe's forte. Say what you will about Kelly Holcomb, but at least he knew how to take what should have been a sack and turn it into a small positive gain. That ability made Holcomb a better QB for the 2005 Bills than Bledsoe would have been.

I agree. But this year's offensive system may well be capable of doing exactly that.

I'd put Reed and Royal into the same general category: below-average but still serviceable players who, this year, are being made to look better than they are due to being in the right system, and because of good quarterback play. That said, I agree that both players are useful in their respective roles. A year from now I could envision this team using a lot of 3 WR sets with Evans, Hardy, and Reed.

He's clearly off to a very solid start. His yards per attempt stat for the season is above 8--very impressive. Not only that, he's achieved that by 1) playing intelligently, 2) playing against playoff-caliber defenses with few if any injury concerns, and 3) with a receiving corps that features Josh Reed as the #2 WR and Robert Royal as the #1 TE. It's just two games, and he still has a lot to prove. But I feel very optimistic about this player, and I think he has an extremely bright future in this league. Just think of what he'll be able to do once we get a real TE, and once Hardy displaces Reed as the #2 WR!

I never wrote that I "expected" anyone to offer us that kind of deal. Frankly, I agree with you that odds are against something like that happening. I agree that Losman's new team would have to work out an extension for him, but I don't see that as the kind of deal-breaker that you appear to. I think he'd sign a 2 - 3 year extension at a reasonable rate if he knew that his new team would put him first in line to be the starter. And I don't think that parting with that reasonable level of cash would be all that big a deal for a team that thought it was getting its quarterback problem solved. The real obstacle to getting this deal done would be finding a team deluded enough or desperate enough to part with a 3rd round pick for Losman. The Vikings seem to have all the pieces in place to make a run for the SB, except for QB. So that makes them an obvious candidate for Losman's services, as long as they manage to get themselves into "see what they want to see" mode, instead of "see what's really there" mode. What are the odds of the Vikings or some other team making this kind of mistake? Slim, I'll admit, but probably more than zero.

You make a good point: there is some price above which it clearly makes sense to trade Losman. We're talking about a backup quarterback who's going to be leaving in free agency at the end of the season, for pete's sake. Hypothetically speaking, suppose a QB-needy team like the Vikings were to offer the Bills a 3rd round pick for Losman. If the Bills accepted the deal, perhaps they could offer up a 5th or 6th rounder for some aging veteran QB somewhere. Net result: the Bills still have a capable backup (the aging veteran QB), and turn a 5th or 6th round pick into a 3rd round pick. I could live with that.

Because we're 14 regular season games away from having him walk in free agency and get nothing in return. If some team like the Vikings offered us a 3rd round pick plus Frerotte, I say we pull the trigger.

Certainly that's one way to look at it. Another way is that Losman had his whole rookie year to learn the playbook, take mental reps in practice, watch game film, learn from the things Bledsoe did well or did poorly, etc. He also received practice time in his rookie year both before the injury occurred and after he'd healed. Going into his second year, the offense and playbook should have been familiar to him. And it certainly looked like all that rookie year learning had paid off when the Bills played Houston. But there's a certain minimal level of play you expect from a second year quarterback, and during the next three games Losman fell well short of that level of play. It was clear that Holcomb was the better quarterback for the short term. But one could (and many on this board have) made the argument that Losman's abysmal and embarrassing performances in games 2 - 4 of his second season raised serious questions about his long-term future in this league. Questions which, with the benefit of hindsight, appear to have been perfectly legitimate. If Mularkey and company were simply looking for a quick fix, it's hard to respect their decision to bench Losman. But if, even then, they were starting to realize he wasn't going to become the long-term answer at quarterback, their decision to bench him appears in a more reasonable light.

Excellent point. And when you look at Hall of Fame QBs, their career yards per attempt stat tends to be lower. Below is a list of the career yards per attempt stats for some current and future Hall of Fame QBs: Joe Montana: 7.5 yards per attempt John Elway: 7.1 yards per attempt Brett Favre: 7.0 yards per attempt Tom Brady: 7.1 yards per attempt Peyton Manning: 7.7 yards per attempt Jim Kelly 7.4 yards per attempt Dan Marino 7.3 yards per attempt Trent's 8.3 yards per attempt stat for the first two games of this season is just fine, thank you very much. We've seen two games of real quarterback play. If a guy kept putting up those kinds of numbers for the next 10+ years, then (at least based on his numbers) he'd be a first ballot Hall of Famer. But this isn't just about Trent's numbers, as impressive as they are. It's about how he's put up those numbers. He's taken good care of the football, with no interceptions in those two games. He's read defenses quickly, and has made intelligent decisions. He sees multiple options, and puts the ball into the hands of the right man. If a defense takes away A - D, Trent will exploit option E. This style of quarterbacking is hard to defend against because it's so hard for a defense to take away every option a quarterback might have. Also, bear in mind that Trent has put up those gaudy numbers against playoff caliber teams noted for being good on defense. He's done this with Josh Reed as his #2 WR and Robert Royal as his primary TE. Not too shabby in my book. Two games do not a career make. Trent has a lot to prove before he'll be accepted as a bona fide top-10 QB, let alone a Hall of Famer. But if he can do with consistency what he's done the past two weeks, then he's the real deal. 10+ years of the kind of quarterbacking we've seen the past two weeks would be an absolute godsend for this franchise in comparison with what we've seen since Kelly retired. And given that Trent's only 2 games into his second year, there's always room for improvement. I feel more optimistic about this team than I have in a very long time!

Good post.

Yes. That would be exactly how they would react. And as long as we're at it, we could bench Jason Peters and start Kirk Chambers in his place. Can you imagine the shocked looks on the faces of other teams' coaches if we did something like that?

True. QB draft day steals like those two don't come around very often, so you hate to hope for too much. But it's starting to become obvious that Trent was worth a lot more than the 3rd round pick we used to get him. The only question now is, how much more?

This is one of the best posts on this subject I've seen. I've read that one of the reasons for Losman's success in the second half of 2006 was that the offense had been considerably simplified for his benefit. The coaching staff did what it had to do to maximize wins over the short term, and start developing some confidence in the locker room. At the same time, they must have realized that Losman's decision-making and ability to quickly process information wouldn't necessarily ever reach the level they were hoping for. So when Edwards fell to them in the 3rd round, they took a quarterback with less physical talent than Losman, but much better mental ability. The Bills' coaching staff probably thought, if Losman significantly improves his ability to quickly process information, then we've used a 3rd round pick on a very good backup QB. And if he doesn't, then we've just drafted his replacement. And in any case, Trent looks like a much better football player than you'd expect from a 3rd round pick. During the 2007 season, Edwards looked more polished and further along in his development than Losman. At that point, the coaching staff apparently realized that Losman would probably never be more than just a journeyman, but Edwards had the potential to develop into a very good QB. Thus far this season, the coaching staff's faith in Edwards has paid big dividends. I'm really excited by the Bills' potential to have a great season this year. And with this being a young, talented team, whatever we accomplish this year isn't going to be some one-and-done deal. Expect the Bills to be good for years to come.

When I posted earlier about this, I hadn't realized how good Edwards' numbers are for the year. 9 yards per pass attempt is good. Really good. Statistically, he looked like a top-5 QB today. In terms of decision-making and on-field generalship, he played like a top-5 QB today. If he plays at exactly this level for the next 10+ years, he'll have an excellent career, with plenty of trips to Honolulu. And if we can build a team around that--as we seem to be doing--Honolulu might not be the only place Bills players travel to come February.

I can't argue with anything you've written. There were also one or two times when I felt our coverage could have been a little better. I'm not taking anything away from our current CBs, but I think that this will be a better team once Leodis McKelvin cracks the starting lineup.