Orton's Arm

There are two possible reasons why teams are passing the ball against us more often this year than had been the case last year: 1) The run defense has gotten better, forcing teams to pass. 2) The pass defense has gotten worse, rewarding teams for passing. With the injuries to Bills' DBs, and with guys like McGee and Florence not getting any younger, this year's Bills pass defense isn't exactly keeping offensive coordinators up at night. I suspect that teams are passing more often because of both 1) and 2). I also fee that the best single measure of the Bills' run defense is yards per carry. (This is for the same reason that you evaluate a RB by his yards per carry, not by how many rushing attempts he had.) The fact that the Bills' run defense only improved by 0.3 yards per carry isn't an inditement of Darius. For one thing, Kyle Williams has been out much of the year. Also, while Donte Whitner was highly overrated and a liability in pass coverage, he was better than George Wilson at stopping the run. It's also possible that the Bills' defensive play calling has changed to increase the emphasis on pass defense while decreasing the emphasis on run defense. Finally, you have the fact that guys who have absolutely no business whatsoever playing OLB--such as Spencer Johnson--are nevertheless lined up there. Stuff like that has to take a toll on the Bills' rushing defense.

I disagree. Given their talent level, coaching, injuries, and record, the Bills had next to no chance to make this year's playoffs, and even less of actually winning a playoff game. We knew that going into today's game. Aaron Williams will hopefully be with the Bills long after this season is in the rearview mirror. The fact he's playing well means there's one less need going forward, and might also indicate positive things about the GM that drafted him. (Though I'll wait until Williams has put together a longer track record than just this before giving too many kudos to Nix for having drafted him.)

My sense is that Cynical is an INTJ. If I'm right about that, it means that he's a) intellectually rigorous, and b) typically more focused on the cerebral part of any given discussion than on the social aspect. His focus was likely not on you so much as it was on eliminating what he saw as ill-considered and inaccurate opinions. INTJs will typically praise what they feel are accurate opinions, and demonstrate the flaws of what they feel are inaccurate opinions, regardless of the source of the respective opinions. Their objective is to demolish inaccurate ways of thinking, while promoting intellectually rigorous and accurate alternatives. Don't take it personally. The best way to get along with INTJs is to do the following: 1) Try to avoid giving unsupported opinions. Explain why you believe what you believe. A good way to earn an INTJ's respect is to demonstrate an intellectually rigorous thought process. 2) Where possible, try to avoid becoming personally invested in particular opinions. If you think of something as your opinion, then an attack on that opinion will seem a lot like an attack on you. INTJs aren't shy about attacking what they see as incorrect opinions, so becoming too attached to your opinions will, sooner or later, cause you to feel personally attacked. 3) Always be ready to abandon an opinion if new evidence or a new thought process is brought to the discussion. Your reasons for being here are probably very different from Cynical's reasons. My sense is that you're here because you want to shoot the breeze, engage in friendly conversation, perhaps make a friend or two, stuff like that. Unless I'm mistaken, Cynical's reason for being here is because he sees intellectual rigor as a fun challenge and an end in itself, and sees it as a form of mental exercise akin to physical exercise. The difference is every bit as big as the difference between someone out for a casual jog and someone training for an Olympic marathon. Both you and he have perfectly legitimate reasons for being here.

I think that you and I are more or less on the same page. I'd agree that the needs you listed are more immediate than the need for an upgrade at quarterback. But--and I know I'm taking a contrarian view here--I'd argue that the time to take a quarterback is when many of your other needs aren't yet filled. That's when you'll have the highest possible draft pick, and the best possible shot at getting The Guy. If you wait until your other needs are filled first, your draft position will probably be in the late teens or early 20s by the time you get around to trying to find your quarterback. Franchise quarterbacks can be found in that area of the draft--witness Aaron Rodgers--but it's less common to see a franchise guy taken there than with a top-5 pick. As for Fitz, it's not like he's some unknown quantity who's going into his very first season in the NFL. He's been around long enough to accumulate a substantial body of work by which he can be judged. With the exception of his first few games of the season, nothing about that body of work remotely suggests he might be a franchise quarterback. Those first few games were the result of exploiting extremely poor pass defenses--defenses which hadn't yet learned to adapt to the style of offense Gailey had employed. Even in those games Fitz did not seem to have above-normal passing accuracy. The throws he was asked to make were almost always easy ones; and even then a few of them were off. What made his performance in those games special was his ability to quickly identify the right target, and to get the ball to him in a hurry. For a while, Gailey's offense with Fitz at quarterback seemed like it could produce outstanding results, even though Fitz never displayed more than run of the mill accuracy at best. But starting with the Cincinnati game, defenses learned to stymie this kind of attack. I realize that Fitz is probably a 4 out of 10 as a QB, and that it may be tempting to begin upgrades with players that are 1s and 2s. But I'd argue that upgrading a quarterback from a 4 to an 8 would have a very significant impact, especially over the long-term. If you don't have a franchise quarterback, and if there's one available to be taken, you take him. Period. Opportunities to find franchise quarterbacks are very rare. A team which squanders even one such opportunity will typically pay a high price for many years to come.

Just to add to your lack of optimism: the post to which you responded was accurate, but didn't go far enough. The Bills' biggest need isn't at any of the positions he mentioned. It's at quarterback. I'm not saying that Fitz is chopped liver: in fact he's decent. But unless your defense is as good as the Ravens of 2000's defense, "decent" at the quarterback position won't get you very many Super Bowl wins.

I've always disagreed with the phrase "defense wins championships." Why is defense so much more important than offense in winning championships? Look at the last ten Super Bowls: 2002: Patriots (Brady) over Rams (Warner) 2003: Bucs (Brad Johnson) over Raiders (Gannon) 2004: Patriots (Brady) over Panthers (Delhomme) 2005: Patriots (Brady) over Eagles (McNabb) 2006: Steelers (Roethlisberger) over Seahawks (Hasselbeck) 2007: Colts (Manning) over Bears (Grossman) 2008: Giants (Eli Manning) over Patriots (Brady) 2009: Steelers (Roethlisberger) over Cardinals (Warner) 2010: Saints (Brees) over Colts (Manning) 2011: Packers (Rodgers) over Steelers (Roethlisberger) With the exception of Brad Johnson, every quarterback on the Super Bowl winning team over the last decade has been a franchise QB. Even Brad Johnson played well enough to be selected to the Pro Bowl the year the Bucs won. If defense wins championships, then why does practically every Super Bowl winner have an elite quarterback? Why do most of the teams that lost the Super Bowl also have franchise quarterbacks? Is this just a coincidence? Or might it be that the offense also has a little something to do with whether the team wins or loses championships?

Other than Donovan McNabb, Modrak had no success stories at all in his drafts with the Eagles. McNabb was a good player--or at least he became a good player after his first several years in the league. But was he really good enough to justify Modrak's decision not to take the trade Mike Ditka had offered? (That was the Ricky Williams year.) I don't claim to have a firm answer to that question, but I figured I'd throw it out there for discussion.

I recall reading an article which indicated that the Bills' offense in the second half of 2006 was considerably dumbed down for the benefit of Losman. In addition, he did nothing in college to suggest that he had the brains to succeed at the NFL level. Quarterbacks taken for their physical gifts--as he was--often struggle with the mental aspects of the game. Your description of Losman dovetails with what I've learned elsewhere. That pick had bust written all over it from the moment it was made. If you believe he's a franchise QB, he's worth a lot more than just a first, second, and third. Would you trade CJ Spiller, Troup, and Carrington away for Aaron Rodgers? I'd make that trade in a heartbeat! For that matter, I'd throw in Dareus, Williams, and Shepherd as well. I realize Dareus is a very good player, but finding a franchise QB really is that important. The Bills haven't had a franchise QB since Kelly hung up his cleats. Coincidentally, the Bills haven't won a playoff game since Kelly hung up his cleats.

The goals you articulated in your bolded statement are more easily said than done. Currently, Gailey is being asked to design an offense for a quarterback who can't throw, an offensive line which can't block, and receivers who can't catch. I'm not sure what on earth he's supposed to do to overcome a challenge like that!

Excellent point, and a good way of putting it.

The advantage Roscoe P. Coltrane has over Roscoe Parrish is that the former would provide much better value to the Bills. Roscoe P. Coltrane would be for 50% of 50% of 50% of $1000.

No one in this thread has claimed that the Bills are a QB away from being a complete football team. Nor has anyone claimed that a hypothetical future QB could put up 50 a game--especially not with the Bills' current problems on the OL and at WR! But it is legitimate to look at the quality of a quarterback's throws and his overall play, to determine whether there is significant room for improvement at that position. Fitz has made a number of inaccurate throws these past few weeks. Those throws are his responsibility, just as other players' bad plays are the responsibility of those other players. Going into the season, Fitz was known as a QB with some strengths, but also an inability to throw the ball with consistent accuracy. During the first few games of the season he seemed to have taken his game to the next level. In hindsight, it appears that much of that early season success was based on his being the beneficiary of some extremely poor pass defenses. A QB should have a career average of 7.2 yards per attempt to be considered borderline franchise. In 2010, Fitz's average was 6.8 yards per attempt. That average represented a new high water mark for his career. During the first few games of 2011 he averaged 7.1 yards per attempt. But since then, his average for the season has fallen to 6.9 yards per attempt. With the exception of a few good games against some very bad pass defenses, there is little to suggest Fitz is the long-term answer at quarterback.

In Bill from NYC's weekly thread, someone pointed out that the Bills have no deep threat. That's partly Fitz's fault (no downfield accuracy), partly the OL's fault (too many injuries to let it block well) and partly the WRs' fault. Regardless of whose fault it is, it means that teams can (and are) stacking the line of scrimmage. That shuts down both the running game and the short passing attack, and may explain why Gailey hasn't been calling more running plays. Another reason more running plays haven't been called is because converting third downs is typically the responsibility of the passing game; and the passing game hasn't succeeded in converting many third downs lately. And as your own post indicated, Fred Jackson averaged a mere 2.5 yards per carry yesterday, so it's not like you could count on that to move the chains and compensate for a languishing passing game. Contributing factors to the poor average were injuries on the OL and the defense stacking the line of scrimmage. I agree that Thigpen didn't look good after he replaced Fitz. But when has Thigpen ever looked good? That said, by far the best ball of Thigpen's non-illustrious career came when he was playing for Gailey in Kansas City. Gailey designed KC's offense to fit Thigpen's strengths--such as they are, and what there are of them--whereas this year's Bills' offense is designed around Fitz's strengths. I agree that the poor defensive coaching is Gailey's fault, for having hired the wrong defensive coordinator. Let's hope that problem gets fixed in the offseason.

You've hit the nail on the head. Fitz's production is dwindling this season for the same reason Flutie's production dwindled in '99. When there is no reason whatever for defenses to fear anything except the short stuff, they can crowd the line of scrimmage to take away the short stuff. Next season, the return of injured offensive linemen and WRs should mitigate the problems you've described. The Bills' offense would also benefit from draft picks used on offensive linemen and receivers. But what the Bills' offense needs most of all is a franchise quarterback. I also agree with whomever said that this Bills' defense is among the worst in team history. I'm not familiar enough with that team history to know if it's the worst. But how much worse than this could any other defense in team history possibly be? Is there some random defense from the '70s or '60s that would have allowed Moore and Romo to engineer a TD literally every drive? Because that's basically what a defense would have to do (or fail to do) to be significantly worse than the one we have now.

I agree that Fitz is hampered by injuries on the OL and at WR. I also agree that there are serious flaws in the Bills' coaching staff--notably on defense. But I don't feel those coaching flaws have significantly hampered Fitz's performance. The Bills' offensive coaching staff is the best it's been in a long time. If you look around the league, you'd be hard-pressed to find an offensive coordinator who'd design an offense that was a better fit for Fitz's strengths than the one Gailey has employed. Gailey has had success at making mediocre QBs look better than they really are. Look at what he's done with guys like Thigpen in KC, Fiedler in Miami, Kordell Stewart in Pittsburgh. Fitzpatrick had spent a number of years as a career backup/stopgap starter before coming to Buffalo. He began as a backup with the Bills, and became a stopgap starter after it became clear Edwards wasn't getting the job done. Not until he started receiving Gailey's coaching did he start looking like more than a stopgap starter. He's returned to Earth over the last few weeks, but I don't see that as Gailey's fault.

You're probably right, and I appreciate the clarification. Just to add to my earlier post: I remember that, back when Jerry Gray was the Bills' defensive coordinator, we heard a lot of talk about how good the Bills' defense (supposedly) was. When you looked at the number of points the Bills' defense allowed to the Patriots per game, it didn't seem all that bad. But a big part of the reason for that was that the Bills' defense had allowed the Patriots to achieve numerous, clock-killing drives that resulted in scores. If you looked at how the Bills' defense did on a points per drive basis, you'd see that the Bills' offense would have had to have been close to perfect to have beaten the Patriots. (The offense would have required five or more points per drive, IIRC.) Put another way: the Patriots' offense scored a touchdown practically every time it touched the ball. But because it was so good at killing the clock, there weren't many drives for either team over the course of the game, which limited both teams' points and yards.

Both total points allowed and total yards allowed are a function of both your offense and defense. Suppose that Team A has an offense like the Giants of the early '90s--an offense that's very good at chewing up the clock. Team B has an offense like the one Kevin Gilbride ran with the Houston Oilers--an offense that gets on and off the field very quickly, regardless of whether it scores or goes three-and-out. Assuming that the two teams' defenses are equally good, Team A's defense will have to defend significantly fewer drives than Team B's defense. Suppose that Team A's opponents average six drives per game, whereas Team B's opponents average ten drives per game. Because the two teams' defenses are equal, this would mean that Team A's opponents would obtain 40% fewer points per game and yards per game than Team B's opponents, simply because Team A's opponents would have 40% fewer offensive drives. But if you were to evaluate both teams' defenses on the basis of points allowed per drive, the above problem would disappear. In addition, the number of points your defense allowed per drive is a good measure of the number of points your offense must produce each drive for you to win the game.

You've raised an interesting question. On the one hand, Rodgers is clearly a better QB than Roethlisberger. (Not to take anything away from Roethlisberger.) But had Rodgers' career ended prematurely due to concussions, he would not have been the right QB for the Bills. I'd argue that over the last few years, Green Bay's offensive line has typically been as bad as, or worse than, the OL the Bills have had. While both teams OLs' have generally consisted of chopped liver, Green Bay's OL was smelly chopped liver, chopped into smaller pieces than the Bills' OL. But! Rodgers spent the first few years of his career on the bench, which is a very good place to avoid concussions. Had he been a Bill, he would have become a starter in his first or second year in the league; and his head would have taken that much more of a pounding. Maybe those additional years of pounding and concussions would have ended his career prematurely, as you suggest.

Fixed.

I like the way the stadium looks. Very futuristic and graceful. Granted, it's different from the tough guy, "I eat nothing more sophisticated than beef and potatoes," NFL norm. But that's okay. I do find it ironic that it's called "Farmers Field." Since when did Los Angeles become a city of farmers?

Maybe the Bills will be twice as strong and twice as conditioned as they would have been with only one strength and conditioning coach. Which brings up the question . . . Why not hire five or even ten strength and conditioning coaches? Because . . . . . . Ralph is cheap.

I agree that the Bills' defense has been a major disappointment thus far. (Other than its slew of turnovers earlier in the year.) A few years ago, I wrote that, of the Bills' front 7, only two were building block players. (Kyle Williams and Poz.) Everyone else was either too old, not very good, or both. That assessment proved overly optimistic: Poz turned out not to be a building block player. During the first few years of the Nix regime, the Bills' defense would have required the addition of five or six starting caliber players, regardless of whatever scheme they employed. If the Bills were going to change their defensive scheme, the start of the Nix regime would be the time to do it! One of the things I like about the 3-4 is its flexibility and unpredictability. The offense knows that your three defensive linemen are rushing. They also suspect that you're probably going to be rushing at least one LB. But they won't always know which LB that's going to be. The objective is to create situations in which an OL is standing around not blocking anyone, while a defensive player rushes toward the QB without anyone trying to block him. However, Bill Belichick is much better at using the 3-4 to create this kind of confusion than is George Edwards. More generally, the 3-4 is itself not a magic wand. It is a tool, and its effectiveness is dictated by the creativity and cerebral horsepower of the coaching staff, as well as the talent of the players executing it. If Wade Phillips was the Bills' defensive coordinator, our 3-4 defense would look much better than it does! As for the Colts, I'd argue they have been much more dependent on Peyton Manning than on their defense. I'd also argue that the first half of this season bears this out. I'll grant that the Colts' defense was better a few years ago--back when they won the Super Bowl. But they really had to work hard to acquire all that player talent. I'd argue that a Wade Phillips 3-4 defense could have produced better results with less overall talent. For that kind of defense to shine, you need four very good players: a NT, a RDE, a pass rushing OLB, and a CB. If you're very strong at those four positions, and reasonably solid at the other seven, a Wade Phillips 3-4 will deliver rock solid results!

One clarification: in my earlier post, the seven positions I mentioned were positions which could each justify the use of a first round pick. Looking back, I can see how it might have been viewed as a seven round draft, but that wasn't my intention. Instead, I felt that, when deciding how to use their first round pick, the Bills should look first for a franchise QB (position number one on my list). If none are available, they should look for a pass rushing OLB worthy of their pick (position number 2 on the list). And so on. Earlier, you mentioned that in their game against the Patriots, the Steelers often rushed four and dropped seven back into coverage. That seemed to be an effective way of smothering the Patriots' passing game, and is a good example for the Bills to follow. If you're rushing four players and dropping seven back into coverage, a key factor is the time it takes for your four pass rushers to get to the quarterback. If he only has three seconds to throw, it creates a much different dynamic than if he has five or even six seconds to throw! Currently, the Bills have one pass rusher who requires a double-team (Dareus). That number would increase to two if Kyle Williams fully recovers from his injury. If you could add an elite pass rushing OLB to that mix, then suddenly three out of your four pass rushers will require double teams to be stopped! Granted, sometimes teams will have an elite OL or two--a player who can deal with an elite pass rusher one-on-one. But if you have three elite pass rushers, one can cancel out the elite OL, one can use up a double team, and the third can get to the quarterback in a hurry. I'd also like to see the Bills add a very good CB--a guy who could reliably cover the other team's best WR one-on-one, and keep him under control throughout the game. But if it was a choice between a very good CB and a very good pass rushing OLB, I'd choose the latter.

Of the things which have happened to the Bills franchise over the last ten years, that was the single most painful.

If I understand your views correctly, you envision the OL of the future as follows: LT: first or second round pick LG: Levitre C: Wood RG: Urbik RT: Hairston or Pears As Fan in Chicago pointed out, it's important that the OL be able to hold its blocks for an extended period of time. (Thereby making the offense more multi-dimensional.) The OL described above seems like it might allow for this kind of improvement without the need to use excessive draft day value. I envision the CBs of the future as follows: CB#1: draft pick CB#2: Aaron Williams Nickel back: Leodis McKelvin The above isn't set in stone. If Aaron Williams turns out to be the next Revis, he could always be bumped up to CB#1. But as Juror#8 pointed out, QBs like Brady are getting the ball out in a real hurry. You need a good defensive secondary in order to be able to put a stop to that. My overall wish list for the Bills' first round draft picks is the following (in a particular order): 1. Franchise QB 2. Pass rushing OLB 3. Antoine Winfield-caliber CB 4. LT (depending on how Bell develops) 5. ILB 6. NT (depending on how Jasper, Troup, and Heard develop) 7. A game-changing WR (depending on how the existing Bills' WR corps develops). I realize this represents a lot more wishes than the Bills will have first round picks over the next two - three years. But that's okay--whenever a team becomes locked into taking a player at one particular position, it will generally overlook better players at other positions. (As the Bills did in the 2006 draft, when they went in with the mentality that they had to take a SS and DT with their first two picks.)