Orton's Arm

I did. After having watched it, it felt as though something was really missing from the passing game. I knew Losman's opportunities were a little limited, but even given that it felt as though he should have achieved more. The yards per attempt stat I calculated later confirmed what I already knew intuitively. I'll grant your point that two of those Losman's throws helped with field goal position. I don't think many of Losman's supporters would have let Holcomb use that same excuse last year though. In fact, I feel the roles have been reversed, with Losman's supporters now arguing that it's better to get 5 yards on 3rd and 13 than it is to take the sack. You argue that on the three 3rd down plays I talked about, completing a pass short of the first down marker represented good game management. But let's look at Losman's overall record on 3rd down in that game: There were ten separate times when Losman was asked to drop back to pass on third down. Three of those times, he completed a pass short of the first down marker (the three passes I described earlier). Another three times, his pass attempt was incomplete. Then there were two times that he was sacked. There were only two times that whole game where a Losman pass converted a third down--a five yard pass, and later an eight yard pass. Some people see Losman's performance in Miami as a reason to be excited about the quarterback position for the future. We're also supposed to be excited about how well Brian Moorman did on his six punts. I am quite pleased with Moorman, I just wish he didn't spend as much time on the field.

A Losman supporter who's able to present his view with logic and reason, and without resorting to personal attacks. You're okay in my book.

It sounds like you have some serious anger management issues which you need to work through. Good luck with that. I'd tell you to lighten up a bit, and that this is just a discussion board. But I don't think that would do any good.

I may as well respond to a little of this. I gave Losman credit for avoiding any major mistakes, but blame for not having produced much. In general I think yards per attempt is a better measure of production than is quarterback rating; but I'll try to save that issue for another time. The yards per attempt for a Holcomb-like performance is 6.7 if you base it on Holcomb's whole career, or 6.6 if you base it on what he did in 2005. Either way, Losman's 4.6 yards per attempt falls well short. I know it's easy to take a rosy view of the team as a whole in light of the fact the Bills won. But the offensive line didn't play well, and there aren't many positive things you can say about Losman's performance beyond the fact he avoided mistakes.

Funny. I must have missed the part where you were elected to speak for the whole board. I'm sure you speak for yourself, and for Ramius, and a few other core Losman supporters. But there are others who partially or wholly agree with me, or else are actually capable of showing a little respect even when opinions differ.

I see you're attempting to start a flame war. I would have taken your attempt more seriously had it not been for the last sentence. "Some of you are bias, the others just plain moronic." Before you call other people moronic, you might want to start writing correctly yourself.

Look, all I was getting at was that if Losman was going to have a big play taken away from him due to a penalty, it may as well be a play which had more to do with good blocking/YAC than with good quarterbacking. I agree Losman did a better job yesterday of avoiding mistakes than what he did last year. That's the biggest difference I see between this year and last year. But in avoiding mistakes, is he also avoiding the gambles that sometimes led to big plays? Yesterday's passing game was very lackluster even by Dilfer's standards, and I hope that whichever quarterback the Bills choose to go with over the long term is able to be more productive than Losman was yesterday. That's all I was getting at. But overall, I feel this is a vastly improved team, especially on defense. The offensive line still needs work; though it did have a good first half against New England.

I was responding to the people who said Losman's performance yesterday was Roethlisberger-like or Dilfer-like. It wasn't anywhere close--at least not according to the yards per attempt stat. In any case, the Bills' defense, while vastly improved, is still nowhere nearly as good as the Ravens of 2000 defense. So the Bills will need to be better than the Ravens of 2000 in some other way--such as quarterback--if they're going to win the Super Bowl. Can Losman be better than Dilfer? Time will tell, but he certainly didn't do anything yesterday to prove he could be. That's all I was getting at.

You seem in a more logical and less emotional mood than most of Losman's supporters here, so I'll respond to you. I personally felt the pass to Evans was overthrown, but that it was within the realm of possibility that Evans could have caught it anyway. If there's even a small chance the WR could have caught it, the official has to throw the flag. But obviously, there's no way to be sure about what would have happened on that play had the defender not interfered. I'll grant Losman did the right thing on his TD pass. It was a mistake-free play, albeit an unspectacular one. You bring up the penalty on Josh Reed. Well, the other quarterbacks to whom I've compared Losman had to deal with big plays being called back due to penalties also. Yet over their careers they achieved dramatically higher yards per attempt averages than Losman had yesterday. In any case, that play to Roscoe was mostly about what Roscoe could do after the catch when the blocking was good. The quarterback puts the ball into some guy's hands when he's, say, five yards down the field, and the guy runs for another 20 - 30 yards or whatever it was. It was a good call and (other than the penalty) nicely executed, but not really something where you'd say, "Oh wow! What a blessing it's Losman back there and not some other quarterback."

Just to add to this, Roethlisberger's career average is 8.9 yards per attempt, as opposed to the 4.6 yards per attempt Losman had yesterday.

Yes, it was a win. But that win had more to do with Culpepper's implosion and Buffalo's overall performance on defense, special teams, and the running game than it did with the passing game. Losman averaged 4.6 yards per attempt yesterday, which isn't exactly what you want from your quarterback. Trent Dilfer's career average is 6.6 yards per attempt. As for Losman's pretty rating . . . last year people complained that Holcomb would inflate his rating by throwing five yard passes on 3rd and 13. Well guess what? Losman had 11 completions yesterday. Of those 11, three were 3rd down completions that were short of the first down marker. On 3rd and 12, Losman completed an 8 yard pass to Josh Reed. Later he faced 3rd and 8, and completed a 6 yard pass to McGahee. At another point he faced 3rd and 14, and completed a ten yard pass to Peerless Price. Those three plays represent 27% of his completions, and 28% of his passing yardage. Did Losman embarrass himself? No. He didn't turn the ball over or do anything to lose the game. On the other hand, he didn't do much to help win the game either. Against an imploding Culpepper, an overmatched Mularkey, and the Dolphins' horse manure offensive line, the Bills didn't really need much of a passing game to win. Not all our opponents will be this easy.

First off, let me say that I think Losman played better than his 80+ passing yards on the day would seem to indicate. Still, the pass to Evans was a little overthrown, and I didn't think he would have caught it even without the pass interference.

I had the chance to watch the Rams last year when Fairchild was calling the plays. Just based on what he achieved with the Rams, I was very happy when I heard he'd been hired by the Bills. Fairchild did a much better job of using Jackson to pound the ball than Mike Martz had done; but the Rams still had a dangerous downfield passing attack. It was a nice combination. The Rams didn't do a whole lot last year because they didn't have the horses, but I still loved Fairchild's playcalling.

Some players play better when they're mad. Even if you manage to get mad every game--a la Chuck Cecil--some days you'll be more angry than others. It doesn't mean you're dogging it the rest of the time, it means that at certain points you achieve at a higher level of performance than you knew you were capable of. Whether it's because you're mad, or the stakes are higher, or whatever, it's good enough for me.

No, but it's a good way of getting touchdowns. All you need is for two of those amazing runs to end in a TD, and the team has a chance to win that game.

I was looking at youtube, and I came across this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZhwb7H7pI&NR

That was one of the weirdest things I've ever watched.

Wow! You've crammed a lot of meaning into a relatively short post. Where we agree The league is too commercialized The quality of announcing has declined The officiating seems biased The league is indifferent or hostile to the notion of keeping the Bills in Buffalo Where we disagree You say it's time to stop watching the Bills. I suggest watching them with TiVo instead. Where your post makes me want to vomit You say it's time to start watching baseball. I suggest watching paint dry instead.

Say you were watching the Houston Texans play the Denver Broncos. Or maybe you tune into a game between the 49ers and the Seahawks. Would you want to hear about both teams equally, or would you be more interested in the stronger team?

The thing I hated most about those halftime highlights was that they took time away from football to tell us about tennis. I remember when the halftime highlights used to be my favorite part of the game. Too bad they've downgraded that segment.

In defense of Simms, maybe he felt a team that had won three of the last five Super Bowls deserved more attention and respect than a team with no playoff appearances over that same timespan. At least he was a gentleman about it, which is more than what Joe Theismann would have been. Hopefully the Bills' and Pats' roles will be reversed over the next five years, and we'll get to see if Simms pays more attention to the Bills than the Pats.

Not true. The Patriots had the ball at the end, and IIRC were in field goal range. But because they were already ahead by 2, they simply kneeled down to seal the win. Had the Bills kicked that field goal, the Patriots would have been down by a point, and therefore would have kicked the game winning field goal at the very end.

C'mon buddy. You have to admit that the refs were a lot more nit-picky with the Bills than they were with the Patriots. It's hard enough to beat your team without the refs giving your guys unfair spots, ignoring the Bills punter getting knocked down, letting Pats defenders cross the line before the snap, etc. I'll give you that the Bills accomplished almost nothing in the second half, and should have played better. But this loss was hard to take, and the officiating made it harder.

Best post I've seen in a very long time. Thanks.

I know Bill from NYC is the person at whom this pile of text was being thrown, but I want to respond to this particular point. Let's start with the facts: 1. TD was handed a roster that was almost expansion-like in terms of offensive linemen. Ruben Brown gave the Bills a few years in the TD era, but beyond him there wasn't much of anything. 2. There were, however, some valuable skill position players. Eric Moulds is the most obvious, but there was good, young talent at running back as well. 3. Over the course of his five year tenure, TD used no less than eight picks in the first two rounds on offensive skill position players. In contrast, he used just one such pick on the offensive line. You seem to blame this disparity on two factors: the best player available theory, and the idea that TD took players at positions of need. The best player available theory is one that I just don't buy. TD had shown himself more than able to trade up or down in the draft to achieve a specific purpose--getting a second round pick plus Nate Clements, getting Losman, etc. Unfortunately, none of his trades involved taking an offensive lineman. Had TD felt as strongly about an offensive linemen as he felt about, say, Coy Wire, he would have made an appropriate trade to acquire the lineman. Your second point was that TD's picks addressed positions of need. While that was sometimes true, he used two high draft picks on running backs despite Antowain Smith, an additional two on slot receivers, and yet another on a speed receiver. I admit the speed receiver pick (Lee Evans) was a need, but all that other stuff should have been done differently. The bottom line is that TD didn't make the offensive line a priority. 1. He invested 1/8th the number of high round draft picks on the line as he did on offensive skill position players. 2. When he did find a good lineman, he let him hit free agency (Jennings) or else released him outright (Tucker). 3. The free agents he signed were typically older players who would soon need to be replaced (Villarrial), or else were worthless rejects like Bennie Anderson. These three factors combined to hamstring the offensive line on a number of levels. The talent wasn't there, the heart wasn't there, and the continuity wasn't there. Maybe you'll say that it's easy to point out someone's mistakes with 20/20 hindsight. I say that his mistakes should have been obvious at the time, and they were obvious to many fans such as Bill from NYC. I'm quite sure Bill made it clear he thought TD should have been investing more heavily in a good offensive line; and that he warned TD's strategy was likely to result in a bad line. I know I was saying those things. Well, guess what? We were right. The line stank, especially in 2005.