Orton's Arm

The Bills traded away their first round pick in 2005 to obtain the Dallas pick in 2004. In addition, we gave up the 2nd and 5th round picks you mentioned. If you want to share your optimistic view about Losman, fine. But you've picked a strange point about which to quibble.

Yours is a moderate view, and your point about rules changes is well-taken. The league is a lot more passing-friendly now than it used to be.

I agree the Bills are a much worse team now than in '97. I also feel Losman has a long way to go to reach RJ's level of play; and that Flutie did more to help the team in 1998 than Holcomb did in 2005. (The two players had similar passer ratings, and similar abilities to complete short passes, but Flutie did more with his feet.) Nonetheless, there are parallels: you have a young, quarterback of the future type guy, for whom the Bills traded away a first round pick. Then you have the seasoned veteran who never could quite make it as an NFL starter prior to coming to the Bills. In both cases, the older veteran played better than expected, thereby managing to unseat the younger guy as starter. These were the factors I had in mind when I wrote about the eerie similarity between the Johnson/Flutie controversy and the Losman/Holcomb debate. I partially agree with your pessimistic view of the quarterbacks presently on the Bills' roster. There is, however, a guy who might make these reasons for pessimism Nall and void.

That's a very extreme position. As you know, passer rating is a function of TD passes, interceptions, completion percentage, and yards per attempt. Those four things are all very important for quarterbacks. Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways in which a passer rating can present a distorted view of a quarterback's acccomplishments. One is the Rob Johnson example: a guy who takes too many sacks instead of throwing the ball away; thereby raising his completion percentage. The second way--and I hate to admit this--is the Holcomb example: a guy who emphasizes short, high-percentage passes to inflate his completion percentage, and therefore his passer rating. When comparing the QB ratings of two quarterbacks, it's important to maintain an awareness of the limitations and flaws of the system, and to make allowances. I feel Bledsoe's rating somewhat overstates his value, because of his slow decision making and tendency to take sacks. RJ had the sack problem even worse, plus there was the injury issue; so his quarterback rating was an even bigger overstatement of his value to the team. The utility of quarterback rating is in the reality check it provides. Bledsoe is known as a big name passer. But his career quarterback rating is mediocre. When I watched him play for the Bills, I could see that mediocre quarterback rating was indicative of the kind of job he was doing, while that big name reputation wasn't.

Frank Reich did a much better job as the Bills' backup in playoff games than Bledsoe did as the Patriots backup. The fact that, at the age of 29, a healthy Bledsoe was sitting on the bench as the Patriots backup says a little something about whether the guy belongs in the Hall of Fame. People are fond of calling Holcomb a "backup journeyman." In 2005, Holcomb's QB rating was 85.6. Bledsoe has only beaten that QB rating twice, and has never had a QB rating higher than 87.7. Peyton Manning's highest quarterback rating is a gaudy 121.1, Brady's best is 92.6. Drew Bledsoe has posted a career passer rating of 77.3, while Rob Johnson's career passer rating is 83.6. I know Johnson's passer rating overstates his true value to the team, but to a lesser extent this is true of Bledsoe also.

This is more like it. It's more fun to argue against a worthy adversary, so I'm glad you're doing better now than you were earlier. I regard the Holcomb fumble as a consequence of inept offensive line play. If you choose not to have an offensive line--a choice TD made going into the 2005 season--sometimes your quarterback will be hit for fumbles, and sometimes those fumbles will result in points for the other team. If ever a man knew how to dump the ball off in a hurry, that man was Holcomb. So in general, whatever fumbles Holcomb does commit will have been the fault of the line. As for the point Albany raised, it was a good one. I'd forgotten about the Moulds suspension. As for the issue of playcalling, I've addressed elsewhere how Mularkey built a track record of making bad quarterbacks look good. Look at the production Mularkey got from the likes of Kordell Stewart and Tommy Maddox. Holcomb also achieved a significantly higher rating playing for Mularkey than he did in Cleveland. I suppose it's possible Mularkey was a quarterback-friendly coach for Stewart, Maddox, and Holcomb, while being a quarterback-hostile coach for Losman. But it's more likely that Losman's own limitations forced Mularkey's hand. If Losman can't complete short passes with any real consistency, Mularkey can't implement the same death-by-1000-cuts offense for Losman that he did for Holcomb. If defenses have so little respect for the Losman passing attack that they put eight or nine men in the box to stop the run, you can't expect the running game to have as much success with Losman as it did with Holcomb. Losman's two strengths were his mobility and his deep ball; and I feel the coaching staff did a reasonable job of utilizing both.

Again, you're being unconvincing. The stats say Holcomb did significantly better against the Patriots than Losman did. There's no way you're going to convince many people that the Bills' 16 points under Holcomb are the same as their seven points (net of zero) under Losman, or that Holcomb's >60% completion percentage is the same as Losman's 37%. The two points you should be raising are these: 1. The Patriots team Losman faced didn't have as many injuries on defense as the one Holcomb faced. 2. Roethlisberger looked pathetic against the Patriots in his rookie year playoff game against them, yet he's turning out to be a good quarterback. Just becaues a young, inexperienced quarterback looks terrible against a Belichick defense, doesn't mean he can't play. Either of these points would have been stronger than the one you raised. Saying that neither quarterback played well enough to win seems to place the whole responsibility for the outcome of the game on the shoulders of one player. I fought against this mistaken line of thinking back in the Johnson/Flutie debates, and I'll do the same now. I remember the Bills would win a game 10-7 or 13-10, and afterwards we'd hear how Flutie "played well enough to win." It was the defense that played well enough to win, despite not getting much help from the quarterback spot.

I feel Holcomb is a guy who works hard, makes the most of the talent he has, and gives the team respectable quarterbacking on any given Sunday. It's nice to see an underdog like him have a good season like 2005. That said, my respect for Holcomb isn't blind. I've come to be pessimistic about this team's short-term prospects. This makes the Bills a questionable fit with an older quarterback like him. I don't see Losman as the answer at quarterback. Holcomb and Nall could both go out with career-ending injuries, and that still wouldn't make him the answer. In general, I feel TD put too much emphasis on athletic ability, and not enough on other factors. While Mike Williams is the most striking example of this, I'd put Losman in that category as well. Prior to coming to the Bills, the biggest quarterback-related decision TD made was to draft Kordell Stewart, then to let Neil O'Donnell hit free agency. TD wasn't the Steelers' GM when O'Donnell was drafted though. In making the Losman pick, I feel TD once again chose a physically gifted athlete who won't be able to make it as a starting quarterback in the NFL. Others feel that I'm wrong, or at least that my conclusion is premature. Time will tell.

First you hone in on one questionable play by Holcomb--in a situation where he'd been set up to fail--while ignoring all the good he'd done against the Patriots up to that point. Then you seem to say that if two quarterbacks both led losing efforts, the performances of those two quarterbacks must be equal. You don't actually expect anyone to be persuaded by this, do you? As for your point about Holcomb as a backup, I'll agree a rebuilding team like the Bills would be better off by filling the starting QB spot with a younger player. I hope Nall's up to the task, because it would be nice to be able to focus on other needs in next year's draft.

I assume you're being sarcastic with this list. When Losman faced the Patriots later that year, he led the Bills to a sparkling seven points. On the other hand, the Patriots scored seven points by returning a Losman interception 39 yards for a touchdown. But while Losman was an equal help to both teams' scoring efforts, he did complete ten passes to the Bills, compared to just three interceptions. In other words, he was over three times more likely to complete a pass to a Bills player than to a Patriot. It was almost like he was trying to complete passes to guys on his own team! He ended the game with a stellar completion percentage of 37%. No doubt Belichick fears the greatness he sees in Losman, and is losing sleep over the possibility of facing him again! In contrast, Holcomb had 20 completions to just one interception, threw for 263 yards, completed over 60% of his passes, and led the offense to 16 points. The lone Holcomb interception didn't result in any New England points.

You're on a roll.

Everyone's so harsh towards Holcomb based on that one play. But bear in mind the following: 1. The coaching staff called a poor play that time. Roscoe "this is my first game back" Parrish was the primary target on this ill-conceived play. Eric Moulds was to be a decoy, and wasn't asked to run anywhere near the line of scrimmage. The Bills got majorly outcoached on this play. 2. More importantly, 4th and 7 should have been 1st and 10--and would have been had it not been for a questionable officiating decision. Take away the offensive pass interference penalty on Eric Moulds, and you're looking at first and 10 deep in Patriots territory, with a chance to actually win a game against that crew. 3. Yes, that 4th down play mattered. But it mattered because the Bills were still in the game, late in the 4th quarter, against the Patriots, in Gillette Stadium. Don't you think that says something positive about Holcomb? The 2005 Bills--a team with no defense, no offensive line, inconsistent receivers, an inconsistent running game, and a below-average coaching staff--nearly won a game in Gillette Stadium! The Patriots were coming off a bye, and were all pumped up by the return of Tedy Bruschi. I challenge you to name seven quarterbacks--just seven--who could have taken that pathetic 2005 Bills team into Gillette Stadium, under those circumstances, against the rested and motivated Patriots, and would have walked out with a win.

How can a team without a line expect to run the ball effectively? If you don't have an offensive line--a situation which the Bills may well be in--the best play you can choose is the short pass. Dump the ball off after two seconds, knowing the defensive linemen can get to the QB in 2 1/2 seconds. Take your five yard gain, do the same thing again next play, and move the chains. It's not an ideal offense; but it's the only kind that can be anywhere close to effective without an offensive line. Of course, this offense is the opposite of what Fairchild ran when he was calling the plays in St. Louis. Based on what I saw, his playcalling did a nice job of using Steven Jackson to pound the ball, and of using the deep pass to make the offense very dangerous. It's a good scheme, and I hope the Bills will come to have the line and the quarterback to run it effectively.

Suppose Gandy went down with a season-ending injury. To avoid a guy like Jerman starting at left taclke, the Bills would have to trade for a veteran player. A guy old enough to have experience, but young enough to have upside. You want a guy who has athletic ability, and who just needs the kind of coaching McNally can provide. In other words, the Bills would have to trade for Mike Williams!

I'm sure I'll figure out something!

Actually, LA Bills made a very good point. The Bills didn't have all the pieces in place to win a divisional playoff game back in 2004; Holcomb or no Holcomb. Getting into the playoffs, and getting knocked out in the first or second round, would in itself have been a rather hollow victory. Had it prolonged TD's tenure as GM, it certainly would have delayed the rebuilding process the Bills need to go through. One could even argue that starting Holcomb on opening day of 2005 would have delayed the painful but necessary exposure of Losman. This is a rebuilding team, and it's tough for rebuilding teams to find a place for older quarterbacks. Much as I like Holcomb, I realize the Bills would be better off having a younger player such as Nall emerge as a bona fide starter. But if you want to go on believing my conscious Holcomb worship will keep me from seeing any of this, go ahead.

It sounds like you've got a lot more personal experience with punting than me. I've noticed my shoulder starts to bother me if I throw the ball around too much, but I've never noticed anything wrong with my leg when I've punted repeatedly. But you, my friend, have apparently done a lot more punting repetitions in one session than I have; and your punts are probably a lot more consistent/better too. So I retract my earlier post, and defer to your opinion.

I'll grant that other than Ferguson, no LT deserved to go anywhere near 8th overall. However, the Bills could have chosen to address their offensive line by trading down and taking Mangold somewhere in the middle of the first round. Not that this is the only strategy they should have considered, but it was certainly a viable one. But the main thrust of your argument is that the Bills should address their biggest needs first. You seem to be implying that addressing the most urgent needs first is more important than maximizing the value of each and every draft pick. This, I believe, is our biggest area of disagreement. If I were in charge of rebuilding this team, I'd start by creating a vision of what the team should be like in 2007 or 2008. This vision wouldn't include Coy Wire starting at SS, but neither would it include Kelsay or Denny starting at DE. It probably wouldn't include Reyes, Villarrial, or Gandy as starters either. Over the course of the rebuilding project, I'd look for the most value-laden ways to replace the players that are with the players that should be. "Value-laden" doesn't always mean trading down. It does mean that if you stay where you are, or if you trade up, you'd better be getting a guy who's a real difference maker. If that's genuinely what Levy believes Whitner will be, fine. But even then, he'd have to be awfully pessimistic about the players available in the middle of the round for his refusal to trade down to make sense. Odds are you can trade down and still get Whitner. If he's not there, who's to say Mangold or some other player wouldn't have as good a career as Whitner's? Plus you've got a second round pick from Denver to upgrade another position from the way it is to the way it should be. The way I'd think about it is this: Value of Whitner: 10 Value of next-best option likely to be available at #15: 8 Value of a second-round pick: 4 Stay at #8 Value = Whitner (10) * 100% probability of getting him = 10 Trade with Denver Value = (Whitner (10) * 70% probability of getting him) + (next best option (8) * 30% probability) + value of a second round pick = 13.4

You win. Marv and his staff are the only ones with votes, so there's no point in discussing this, or any other, Levy decision. In fact, there's no point in having a discussion board at all. So your victory here means you have to stop posting now.

I had the same reaction. We already know Moorman is going to be the punter. Other teams may not know who their punters should be. Why should we help them uncover punting talent? As for Moorman's leg needing a rest, it doesn't sound logical to me. Will there really be so many punting plays in practice that Moorman won't be able to handle them all? You'd think the special teams players would get tired a lot faster than Moorman's leg would.

I'll make this a short post, because my tears are causing problems with my keyboard. This is the very first time I've heard Holcomb is too old to have much of an upside. You'd think the point would have been made somewhere in the tens of thousands of posts I've read on these boards, but no. The newness of the idea is what makes it so emotionally disturbing.

There's a lot to be said for a post like this. Holcomb's QB rating in 2005 was 85.6. Playing behind a much better line, with a better running game, Bledsoe achieved a rating of only 76.6 back in 2004. The Bills had enough close losses back in 2004 that a Holcomb-like upgrade at QB could easily have gotten them the extra win or two they needed to make the playoffs. If this team can rebuild quickly, a quarterback such as Holcomb could help do something. But if the team's a few years away anyway--as may well be the case--the Bills would be better advised to see what they have or don't have with Nall.

Based on what I've been reading, the team Mike Williams collects a paycheck from already seems to be displeased with him. So there's some truth to the initial post of this God-forsaken thread.

Why? Why? Why did the first two picks need to be a DT and a SS? Were there no needs elsewhere on this team? Say the first two picks had been used on a Phil Hansen-like DE to line up opposite Schobel, and a solid LT or OG who'd be an above-average starter for the next ten years. Would picks like those be such a tragedy? Or say those first two picks had involved an OLB who significantly upgraded the Jeff Posey spot, and a TE who'd be a notch or two below Antonio Gates. Would that be so terrible? If you accept the logic that the Bills should have locked in on those two positions--SS and DT--with their first two picks, then yes, the Whitner/McCargo selection makes sense. But I see no reason at all to buy into this inital premise. Why on earth should the Bills lock into the SS and DT positions when there's so much need to improve elsewhere? Other than Peters, who are the Bills' linemen? Who is the DE who will line up opposite Schobel? If Whitner plays at a Pro Bowl level, taking him at #8 overall makes sense. But if he merely turns out to be an average or somewhat above-average starter, then it was a mistake for the Bills or any other team to take him in the top 15. There were just too many other ways that draft pick could have been put to use for this team.

You seem to see a direct correlation between a man's optimism for his team, and his testicle size. At least you express this viewpoint in an amusing way.