Orton's Arm

Thanks for the excellent post. I'd like to add one thing, for those who ask why Nall wasn't extended. Probably Nall would have refused to sign an extension with any team that wouldn't give him a legitimate shot at being the starter. He knew he wouldn't have that in Green Bay because of Favre and the first round pick spent on Aaron Rogers. Granted, a first round pick was spent on Losman too, so Buffalo may not be a fair shake for Nall either. But the GM who drafted Losman has been let go, so probably Buffalo will be less unfair for Nall than Green Bay would have been.

I agree you want him passing down his knowledge of the game to younger players. But the whole locker room lawyer side to Vincent is a negative; and the less this rubs off on the younger guys the better. Maybe there's some other aging free safety we can sign, who can be a player coach without being a locker room lawyer.

It's a waste of a first round pick either way. Unless, of course, you consider one good year of quarterbacking to be a first round pick well spent. I like Marv's approach to rebuilding this team: sign younger players, even guys with question marks about whether they're the real thing. If a given player does prove himself here, he'll be young enough to contribute for a long time. The farther away you are from contending, the younger your roster should be.

You know, for all the complaining I've done about TD's failure to re-sign Winfield, or to at least get trade value from him, you'd think I'd have added him to this poll. Antoine Winfield, for me, belongs in a different category than the likes of Lawyer Milloy or Travis Henry or the other question mark former Bills floating around the league. So maybe it's better his name isn't in the poll, for the same reason I kept Pat Williams out of the poll.

Brady's wheels are a lot slower than Nall's, so maybe he has the least upside of the three! Or maybe upside is a broader concept than how fast a QB's legs are.

I see this differently. Nall has proven himself in the preseason and NFL Europe. It's not much, but it's more than JP's done. Playing poorly in both the preseason and the regular season--as Losman did last year--doesn't count as proving anything. I'd agree Losman has more overall physical talent than Nall. On the other hand, Akili Smith had more physical talent than Joe Montana. That doesn't mean Akili Smith was the more talented quarterback.

Yes.

Could Drew give the Cowboys another good year? Will Mike Williams trim down to a svelte 340 to help a Florida NFL franchise? How well will Eric Moulds play?

We're still recovering from the last time a Ravens offensive lineman landed in Buffalo.

I feel the banner on this site should be changed. There. That should get this thread banished to customer service. No? Let me try again. Both Bush and Kerry deserved to lose the 2004 election. That comment should get this thread banished to the PPP board. No? Let's do this one more time. . . . Who do you think's going to win the Rose Bowl this fall? Maybe now this thread will get moved to the college football section. But no. This thread is here to stay. It's like a bad weed that just can't be gotten rid of. It's like mildew in your bathtub that just won't come out. It's like some stalker chick that just won't leave you alone. Run while you still can!

Five pages--Five Pages--about whether Nance will or will not become our Ernest Wilford. I know it's the offseason, and things are slow, but man!

This article is clearly a feather in Byrne's hat.

I can live with this for the most part. They'd just need to find a replacement who can do as good a job on special teams as Aiken does.

The Bills had the best overall special teams unit in the league last year. Something tells me we didn't achieve that by embracing the attitude shown in your post. If any team's fans should know the importance of special teams, it should be Bills fans. The point was made for us--albeit very subtly--with plays such as Wide Right and the Music City Miracle. Not that Wide Right was Norwood's fault, but it did illustrate the point that the biggest game of the year can all come down to the kicker. At least, it can when your offense and defense are good enough to put you a special teams play away from winning the big one. TD's teams have been a far cry from that standard. (Sorry about this stream of consciousness, it's late and I'm tired.)

The Bills' situation is different from the Pats' situation. As you know, there are a lot of holes on this team, and the Bills have lots of salary cap space. However, the free agent market is thin, especially when it comes to guys who a) still have most of their careers in front of them, b) have proven themselves top-tier guys, and c) would actually want to play here. LeCharles Bentley is a good example: he's been in the league just four years, and he's top tier. But he's bound and determined to be in Cleveland. Most guys who have proven themselves top tier have far better options than Buffalo. The only way to attract guys like that is to throw crazy money at players--and sometimes still get turned down. The Bengals pursued this model for many years. Instead, Marv is finding young players who have question marks associated with them, but who have the potential to become solid starters. Peerless Price falls into this category, as do Robert Royal, Tuten Reyes, and Marv's other major signings. Supposing 1/3 or 1/2 of such signings work out. Now you've added young, solid starters to the team, and those guys will be locked up for a few years. Yeah you had to waste salary cap space on the failures to find the successes, but what else could the Bills have done with that salary cap space? But the Patriots are in a different situation. Their team can do something now. They're a team everyone wants to play for, so they don't need to waste salary cap space on failures to find successes. They're in a position to be more selective about whom they sign. There are two excellent reasons the Patriots should spend less in free agency than the Bills: 1) players like Tom Brady eat up a lot more salary cap space than Kelly Holcomb or Craig Nall, so the Patriots need to use more of their cap to keep their own picks. 2) The Patriots have so few holes they could realistically hope to address all of them via the draft. This lessens the need for free agents.

Shaw had 732 receiving yards for the Bills back in 2003, and would have had even more had he been the go-to guy the whole year. Moulds had 816 receiving yards for the Bills in 2005. The numbers say the comparison is there. I don't think anyone would compare Moulds in his prime to the Bobby Shaw of 2003. But Moulds isn't the same player he used to be, and he may well have as little left to offer someone today, as Bobby Shaw had at the end of 2003. Personally, I think he probably has at least one decent year left in him, maybe two. But he's nearing the end of the road, with a bad attitude to boot.

At least the Patriots showed some interest in Peerless Price. How much interest did they display in Moulds? Back in 2003, Bobby Shaw was usually the Bills' go-to receiver. In that role, he accumulated 732 receiving yards, not unlike Moulds in 2005. He was released the next year, just like Moulds. After being released by Buffalo, Shaw had 5 receptions for 59 yards for the rest of his career. At least the Bills were able to turn Moulds into a draft pick. Let's face it, the Bills are a rebuilding team, and probably won't be able to achieve anything until 2007 at the earliest. How much could Moulds really have contributed in 2007? How conducive would he have been to building a winning atmosphere in the locker room when he didn't want to be here? I think Marv made the right call on this one.

http://www.wgr550.com/bills/fullstory.php?id=1650

Believe me, I'm fully aware of the limitations last year's offense had. Any style of offense works better when you have an offensive line--including the death by a thousand small cuts offense Holcomb specializes in. Nor am I arguing the Bills should start Holcomb. A rebuilding team such as the Bills should give the benefit of the doubt to younger quarterbacks such as Nall. From what I heard, Nall was able to effectively use dump-offs to make up for terrible offensive line play in a preseason game against the Bills. But he is stronger-armed than Holcomb, giving him more big-play potential. He's also got decent mobility.

Excellent post. I'll make one modification though: there is one kind of offense the Bills can still run with their horse manure offensive line. It's where the QB takes a three step drop, and completes a quick dump-off pass for a five yard gain. Holcomb was made for this kind of offense. Even without an offensive line, the Bills' offense always produced at least 13 points in games Holcomb played start to finish. I'm not saying that I liked our offense last year, or that I'm happy about this team's lack of an offensive line, or anything like that. But if you're not going to have an offensive line anyway, a quarterback with Holcomb's dump-off ability is the way to go.

Wrong. I'd rather win with Nall or Quinn, than lose with Loss Man.

I agree with the importance of big plays. Yes, Losman has a stronger arm than Holcomb, and yes, Losman can throw a deep ball. So he's in a better position to make big plays. Nonetheless, the Bills' offense averaged seven more points per game under Holcomb than it did in Losman's second stint. Losman's severe shortcomings more than canceled out his big play ability. Ideally, you'd want a quarterback who has a strong enough arm to make big plays, but who is accurate and consistent enough to have a Holcomb-like effectiveness on the smaller plays. Nall has the arm strength for this, and based on his performance in NFL Europe, the preseason, and limited playing time during the regular season, he may well be accurate enough too. If Nall isn't the answer, I hope the Bills go 1-15 to take Brady Quinn.

I'm sorry, were you describing Craig Nall or Kurt Warner?

Nall sometimes gets off to a slow start. In his NFL Europe season, for example, he started off the year pretty badly. Then at some point something clicked, or he decided to pull himself together, or something. He ended the year with only 50 fewer passing yards than Kurt Warner had in NFL Europe, and three more TD passes than Warner had. Maybe the same will happen here; to where he'll look mediocre or worse in training camp and the first preseason game or two, only to pull himself together and play like a real QB from that point forward.

There's truth to this post. There are some parallels to 2003, when the offense collapsed due to teams blitzing up the middle and to poor interior line play. But there are differences: in 2003, teams used the blitz to stop the pass first, because they knew Gilbride called few running plays. Because teams didn't fear the Gilbride running game, Travis Henry was able to put up a pretty good average on the rare occassions the Bills did run the ball. In contrast, McGahee achieved little when Losman was on the field, arguably showing that teams were more focused on stopping the run in Losman 2005 than they had been in 2003. Even if you don't have a good offensive line, you can still beat teams that send a horde of guys at the line of scrimmage. If the other team is getting to the quarterback after 2.5 seconds, the quarterback has to get rid of the ball after two seconds. These passes will mostly be dump-offs, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with a series of five yard passes that move the chains, and keep the other team's defense on the field. But not every quarterback can read the field fast enough to execute this strategy. I've heard it said that Brady can see in two seconds what it takes Bledsoe three seconds to see. This is probably the biggest difference between the two quarterbacks, and this difference allows Brady to succeed under circumstances in which Bledsoe would fail. A quarterback who can consistently dump the ball off for five or six yards can force the defense to back off from the line of scrimmage. Once that happens, things start to open up for the running game. I don't feel Holcomb has Brady's talent or potential. However, Holcomb is Brady-like in his ability to dump the ball off quickly, thereby making the most of a bad situation. Those dump-offs help take the pressure off the running game. If you're moving the chains, you're getting more downs--some of which can be used on additional rushing attempts. The offense produced roughly seven more points per game under Holcomb than it did in Losman's second stint.