Pyrite Gal

The interesting thing about this list is that we have 6 games against teams that you feel will have worse records than us and 11 games against teams you judge equal or worse than us. I think your list of worse teams is not unreasonable and figutr an upset on us but cancel that out by us upsetting or beating a good opponent once (for example an upset of the Pats in their house or a win on them in our house are not out of the question). Figure we will go either 3-2 or 2-3 against the equal teams an it means a .500 or better season for the Bills. I certainly would not disagree with the folks who rag on or think poorly of the Bills as a team this year, the question though in guessing out results is that almost all of our opponents ae eiminently beatable even by a bad team.

The betting line is not arbitrary at all. It was set based on the market of betters to encourage as much as possible 50/50 selection of action on each team. The bookies will make a profit in any case as they take a cut in the fee for booking the bets. the line is designed to have the amount of money paid out to the winners be covered by the amount paid out by the losers. if this happens, then the bookies get the total fee for booing the bets paid to them as profit. If 50/50 is not achieved, then the bookies are gambling as they will in fact hold onto more money if the favorites lose, but they will have to subsidize the amount of winnings not covered by the bets on the losing side with the money they are getting fr booking the bets. To some degree, the line does reflect the relative strengths of the teams as that is what it takes to get the action 50/50. However, pure rationality obviously does not determine the choices bettors make in aggregate. The aggregate is more rational than one individual, but in this case because the Pats have been so successful over the past 4-5 years and the Bills have sucked so badly over the last 5 years that a large point spread is necessary to make the action 50/50. Add into that the factor that the Bills team of the 06 and their team of 05 have different leadership and different schemes and that the 06 Pats are seeing a continuation of the mass migration of SB successes like Weis/Crennel/McGinest etc. and of course it simply takes a lot more points to achieve 50/50 action than can rationally be justified by a raw assessment of the teams. As far as the line setting, it is set so that the bookies are not gambling at all.

Yeah, generally you seem to get my interpretation of the situation (trading a draft pick for a QB with definite strengths and limitations that however you judge those strengths and limitations add to Bledsoe not being a long-term answer at all. I think where our perspective may differ is that : 1. You have long opposed msking the above bargain with the devil because you feel that we should have used our resources for young talented players and long term thinking and not for Bledsoe. 2. I on the other hand say, yeah you are right in a perfect world, but the problem is the world is not perfect. In hindsight the Bledsoe deal ended up being a wash for the Bills (a good 2002 and a horrible 2003. However, in the real world with its imperfect limitations, this was about the best outcome which could have been achieved given: The Bills had made a series of horrible mistakes at QB as we sought the next Jim Kelly to be our savior. These mistakes led to: A. Not moving to replace Jimbo soon enough as Ralph/Butler clearly thought as shown by the handshake deal to reward Jimbo in his next contract that he would be good enough to be the Bills QB for years. B. Overeaching for TC and rushing him along when he needed time to develop (if he ever did). C. Overeaching to acquire Hobert D. Panicking and setting up a situation where contractually they owed an enormous cap hit for the QB position to BOTH DF and RJ. E. Panicking again and resigning Bledsoe and spending resources on JP. It actually has been the Bills foolishly trying to both get an alleged savior QB for the future AND get a short-term fix AND stupidly paying through the nose for both things to the detriment of team building which has cost us. Ironically, he two moves which have worked (somewhat) in the last 6 or so years have been their investment in short-term fix QBs (DF in 98 and 99- Bledsoe in 2002). The problems are they have made stupid contract choices they did not have to make which ended up with them allocating too much money to the QB positions (allocating $ to the QB position in DF/RJ and extending Bledsoe. DF and Bledsoe are fine QBs to get as long as they are cheap for the initil cost and then you can structure a pay for play deal. If you cannot then let them go. The mistake we m,ade was allocating big bucks to get them AND big bucks to a young talented player at the same time. This attempt did not work as a personnel choice for RJ and JP thus far have not paid off. The DF deal worked as far as it went and then we cut him loose which was fine. The Bledsoe deal started off well but TD did not cut him loose when he should have. I do not think it was a bad deal tp make for eother vet as they were both relatively cheap initial acquisitions to make as DF's deal was all about pay him only if he produces and the Pats absorbed a lot of the intial cost for Bledsoe. Under these conditions both deals were good. As far as trying to get young talent, the RJ deal did not work out as he was talente but injury prone. The one thing I would not have done and spoke out against it when the deal was done was giving him the bonus before we knew for sure he could play. Some would argue he would have walked unless we did a deal upfront. I think we could have waited to see how he did for as much as half a season to see if he did well. I think we could have happily paid him more bucks if he had done well and his leverage would have been higher but more bucks would have gotten. Instead what would have happened is that his injuries would have likely occured and we eiither pay him less to keep him or cut him lose. The JP deal. we'll see but this would seem to be just the kind of investment in young talent you are endorsing.

I disagree in that the Bledsoe deal was a good one for the Bills to make at the time hich in retrospect was a wash after 2 years. The stupid thing TD did was to extend the Bledsoe deal by resigning him and creating an even bigger investment and cap hit for him. He then added insult to injury by cutting him causing maximum damage from a dumb extension. The Bledsoe deal had these benefits when it was made in 2002: 1. Like it or not we needed a starting QB after we had to make a choice forthe 2001 season of cuttinh ome of the two QB's we were paying a huge combined cap hit of over $10 million for (the combined annual cap hits of the RJ salary and distributed bonus plus the cap hit of the Flutie salary and distributed bonus after we were forced by cap limitations to extend his deal and convert base salary we owed him into bonus we could distribute_. Flutie had proved to be a better QB than RJ leading us to playoff berths in the 98 and 99 seasons, but he clearly was on the backside of his career and it was doubtful RJ could surive a season as he was injury prone, butt since the 2001 season was likely to be a lost cause anyway paying to make sure there would be no realization of the RJ upside was the smart football move. 2002 found us with confirmation of RJ's injury prone nature (yeah surprise) and we needed a starting QN or else we would have to go with AVP who proved to be a gamer when RJ went down in 2001 but as long as teams prepared for him he could be fooled by complex coverages and beaten. Our FA choices at QB were pretty much the often injured Chris Chandler and lifetime back-up Rodney Peete )or someone similar) given the quality of how was available and what we could pay in cap room. This was the context of the Bledsoe choice if you think someone else was a better choice then please name them. The Bledsoe trade did several things: 2. It gave us a player capable of starting in the NFL though due to his limitations he could not QB a team to a playoff berth except under limited specific circumstances: A. Bledsoe had definite strengths (a rocket arm, a big body which generally besides the lung collapse hit could stand up to a lot of abuse- believe me gettomg repetitively ssacked as a Bill all season was punishing buy he started every game for us while he was here getting pounded, a ton of experience from his years in the NFL) but also clear weaknesses (well into the backside of his career and he had demonstrated he could use that exerience make the SB implementing a gameplan from genius guidance if Parcells and even win a must win game in the 2001 run under the genius guidance of BB and the Pats but if he had to think and improvide beyond the programing of others he was brain dead, he could not escape sacks). Hpwever, as seen when he was programmed by Parcells, BB and even Clements Bledsoe could perform adequately at QB though he could never carry a team on his own shoulders deep into the playoffs. B. TC for example demonstrated with his handling of Bledsoe in 2004 that you could greatly decrease the number of sacks he took by being a bit more diverse than the pass-happy Kevin Kildrive in calling plays, by limiting Bledsoe;s abuility to audible out of the few runs you might call and doing things like running Bledsoe more on draw plays to force LBs and rushers from selling out to sack Bledsoe by running angles and stay at home to stop a 5-10 yard gain which Bledsoe could stumble and get if the middle of the field was abandoned. C. The D and the ST needed to carry the team along with the adequate but not outstanding and occaisionally stinky QB work of Bledsoe. All three of these units taking turns leading the way was a key to the win streak in 04. In the final game after ST screw-ups like NC fumbling and Lindell missing a chipshot and the D getting shreded by Wiilie Parker and getting scored on by Maddox, Bledsoe demonstrated he did not have the talent to carry the team with other team leaders also falling a part. However, as we see with Dallas getting a winning record with Bledsoe at QN and being talked about as a playoff likely team with Bledsoe at QB his team is capable of winning (even the 04 Bills) if Bledsoe is not required to peform at high capability all the time )he cannot do this) but if the demand is for him to simply be adequate and good a few times because the D and ST are solid a team with him at QB can win and if the oddly shaped ball bounces the right way maybe even make the playoffs. 3. The move was a very positive one in 2002 as we nearly set an NFL record with Bledsoe QBing the team to 8-8 from a 3-13 record. As said above this did not happen because he was an individual savior, but because other players were acquired like Fletcher on D and whathisname the kicker for TB who shared the improvement because Bledsoe is good enough to be a part of this but not good enough to do this on his own,, However, with BFL catching up with Killdrive's game, GW proving to have lttle game sense and a variety of other problems he was horrendous in 2003. This would have easily been a wash with one good year and one bad year with YD pulling off replacement of the draft choice given up with a pick which became WM (ome might argue that the Bills would have had two first-rounders if they had not traded for Bledsoe, who knows exactly how things would be different if they were different, but my guess is that the missing 1st was a big reason why TD took the risks of an unusal tag of Peerless and then held out for a 1st for AT rather than taking a later pick which still would have been a big win for the Bills. I think it overvalues the draft to think that the first given up for Bledsoe was a big a big cost. If the 1st was Peyton Manning yes it was, but if the first was Ryan Leaf no it was not. Good players have to come from somewhere and good players get drafted. However it is simply incorrect to automatically assign some value to a pick as though we definitiely gave up Manning to get Bledsoe. In fact the draft is simply a crapshoot and in the real world we not only got the first choice back but we got the bonus of Bledsoe's great 2002 at no cost since we gave up a future pick. 4. Though it is not on the field directly, the trade was a huge benefit for the Bills because this team was spinning down the toilet in terms of local support after the bruising DF/RJ battle and a 3-13 season. Yet the trade for Bledsoe in and of itself instantly helped the team's bottom line as over 10,000 folks turned out on a winter's day for the welcome Drew bash at the Ralph. How many 3-13 teams can get this klind of turnout and the trade was the verhicle if not the reason why hope came to ticket holders and ultimately butts in the seats. Trading for Bledsoe was a wash on the field, but bevame a killer for the Bills as TD resigned him and then cut him looking for some QN savior. To not recognize the benefits of the trade and the fact it was a wash is another symptom of the QN addiction that led from alph miscalculating how long Jimbo would last, to overeaching to draft TC and trade for Hobert, and then set up a situation where we ended up with so much cap money committed to the QB position we could not afford vets for the ST and young Porter failed to stay in his lane on the Homerun Throw up.

Despite popular opinion, KH remains #2 on the Bills depth chart. Perhaps marv is keeping him there to increase what he would get ion a trade for KH, but Nall did not show in the last pre-season game that he is ready to start 0or even do more than mop-up work as a back-up in the NFL right now. Holcomb pn the other hand did show great improvement over his horredous performance in campr and pre-season games prior to his fairly good outing against the lowly Lions last week. it really is a close judgment call which those who are focused on how they practiced and how they handle themselves in the locker room and in discussions with the coaches which really allows for good judgnebts about whether Nall was simply pressing in the last two pre-season games because he lost so much quality time to injury or whrther KH's hiorrendous performance in the first 2/3 of camp was due tp jo, hitting the wall as an older player OR instead was simply a demonstration of why he could never achieve starting QB status in his 10 year career despite some outstanding episodic performances and good accumulated stats. Potential simply means you have not done anything yet, and Holcomb is well into the backside of his career so in essence he really has no potential. If he could ever have realized it he would have done so by now. However, the judgment to be made is whether Nall has anything other than potential and if so how long would it take for it to be reaslized. I certainly do not argue that Holcomb is a QB capable of starting in the NFL. He is not. However, he has been a good back-up capable of producing in one or two games even in crunch time. I think the decision is whether one thinks he has a chance of doing this in the Fairchild O at this stage in his career OR whether the untested and unproven Nall in any real situations of greater import than mop-up time can do this. Actually, what i do argue is that our fan opinions are worth even less than they are usually worth on this point. We are all entitled as fans to believe and say what we want (within the standards of conduct decided by the moderators) what I argue is that a fan can actually judge somethings fairly well given a careers worth of data and really seeing players perform in a system or at crunch time. In this case, Nall's field time has been so limited by injury and really has been some good and some bad (very bad actually IMHO with his INTs happening on the brink of something good happening but I think he was pressing a bit more than normal because he was trying too hard to compensate for time lose to injury)that fan judments (mine included) are simply not worth very much on this question. The same is true regarding Holcomb where actually we do have a career's wprth of experience to base our judgments on. However, though his career indicates that he really cannot be the starting QB, it does indicate he is a good back-up to have. Ironically, his production in the first 2/3 of pre-season was completely counter to the good back-up performance of his career. The judgment on him is about whether the Holcomb we would see this year is the horrible in all cases one we saw the first two/thirds of pre-season or the reasonable back-up we saw in the last game. It really takes a lot of info not available to us fans to make even a half-baked guess. What i think this comes down to is what do we think the Bills will do. Again, I think many fans make a poor assessment of what Ralph and Marv want because they seem mostly interested in building a winner in the future because they are pretty sure this team will not make the playoffs this year (I think this is actually a correct judgment). However, i think the Golden Boys are simply in a different place than many fans on TSW in that they certainly want to build for the future, but as octogenarians and businessmen they put a much greater priority than many fans on TSW on winning as much as they can now even if they fail to make the playoffs. I think that the braintrust will likely want to stick with KH as a Bill until Nall shows a it more in practice. There is still to large a chance that JP will prove not worthy and that Nal would be a disaster if one depended upon him for them to simply toos KH on the asheap. KH showed enough in the last game to secure the #2 position though good practice from Nall could bounce him. They might trade Holcomb, but it would take a good deal to get them to part with him. A seond day draft choice is not a good deal IMHO. Many fans seem to put too much stock in the draft because fantasy football and ESPN wal to wall coverage have really promoted it. However, thedraft is simply a crapshoot in real life and for every McGee on the second day there are multiple more Mike Pacillo's and Jarret Fergusonss. If all the Bills get for Holcomb is a second day choice outside of the texans 4th rounder it is like giving him away and the downside appears to high for the braintrust to want to do this.

Holcomb has never performed cibsistently enough in the NFL to ever win the starters jpb in 10 years of NFL work and it really was very wisghful thinking to feel this was gonna happen with the Bills this year. However, between his accumulated stats as he backed-up, was an inconsistent producer and had a few episodes extrmely good play he has been a quality back-up and has expressed an attitude of beind content tp be a sub if the situation called for it. Even if he really does not mean it and is only saying the right thing this is valuable because we have seen how toxiic to a team a QB battle can be. Holcomb certainly sucked big time as this pre-season began. This was quite disapppointing as a St. Louis style O seems made for his strngths and weaknesses. The key to performing well in this O is an ability to make good reads and to dump-off to the safety valve quickly if the D scheme and play deny the deep route. Doing good reads and dumping off should be Holcomb's game given his consistent checking off last year some Bills fans whined about and 10 years of seeing plays. Yet his poor play seemed to indicate that he simply had trouble picking up a new offense ( a horrible read caused the INT in the first pre-season game) and he sucked most of this pre-season. Some veiwers make the mistake of assuming that because the St. L style is pass-happy that Holcomb cannot throw it deep and his make-up sucks for our style of play. Yet, they fail to recognize that the likely Bill O (nobody knows for sure until a few games occur) has seen it yet. However, the St. L O actually utilizes a lot of short passes and RAC to produce highpowered results. Holcomb finally seems to have gotten it in his last outing and if this type of play continues he is easily our best choice right now to give JP rellief if he needs it. Nall isnteresting and it was his injury which cost him a shot at the starting job and only KH's poor performance gave him a shot at the #2. However, Nall may haen oressing a bit because he knew he was behing the eight-ball having missed some essental playing time with his injury. At any rate, it looks like he did inherit Brett Favre's brain with some nifty passes and nifty escaoes from a sack. However, though he may have Favre intent he does not have the Favre skills and this led to a couple of INTs as ge tried to force the ball in a couple of situations leading to INTs. Nall should still get some serious practice reps in practice or running the scout team or other activities that do not interefere with JP developing. However until the braintrust judges Nall to be ready, Hiolcomb is fine as long as he stays on the production track he showed in the Lion game.

Thanks for your cut on things. One thing I would add to this is that I think that a key word for figuring offensive productivity is gonna be how well Fairchild draws up plays. Given the likely RAC oientation of an O built on the Martz model, the Bills using and implementing plays which allow our speedy receivers to get quick separation for the men covering them will be key. The player speed will help this alot if thst forces DBs to give them lots of space or the combination of the speed of Price and Evans )and likely Parrish which is why I think they were trying him in the slot) forces the opposing D into a zone which gives our recievers the space they want to get the ball and then make a move. Fairchild will need to be crafty in designing crosses for the receivers which allow them to set picks on opposing DBs without getting called by the refs and slant patterns that allow for quick separation. If the patterns designed and implemented allow for this separation the O likely will be great as JP will have pretty unencumbered targets to hit and if they gain separation quickly the OL will not need to hold their blocks very long. As far as JP goes, I suspect the key to his game will not be his athletic ability (if only it were that easy) but his mental ability to do good reads and analysis of the D. If he can figure out which of our speedy guys is going to be isolated man to man and audible if necessary for that pkayer to run a fly pattern, he will not even have to be that accurate and can simply loft the ball an agreed upon distance and the receiver can run underneath it as PP did on his pre-season TD. The most important read JP an make will be to see when the D is using a Cover 2, deep zone or the coverage does not allow for one of our recievers to get free and then he checksdown quickly to the safety valve receiver. Whether Fairchild draws up good routes and whether JP does good reads will go a long way toward determining our offesive productivity.

We will see and as a Bills fan I hope he stays heslthy and has a lot of competition and is surpassed as the team leader in takeaways. His injuries during the camp are certainly predictable for someone who has remained in the league and is still a starter after so long, but one of the very worrying things to me in a hopeful pre-season was the lack of any INTs taken. I think Rashad Baker letting one slip through his hands and get caught by a Lions receiver sealed his fate. I think there was no way in the world that this team would cut its leading turnover receiver/producer last year with no one showing any production in this area on the team. Its good news that Simpson looked impressive to folks and this 2nd day draft pick will have to be productive at levels generally not seen in the NFL in order to merit starting this year. My sense is that TV definitely needs to stay healthy for at least 4 games for us to have even a snowball's chance of our D not being completely overmatched in the secondary. Perhaps by this point the Whitner will have learned enough to not benefit a lot from having a seasoned vet beside him at safety and Simpson will have learned enough to not be a total embarassment at the hands of NFL vet receivers and QBs. If TV does 8 games for us, I think we will be in good shape regardless what happens with him. However, despite this fingers crossed prayerful outlook, there was simply no way in the world the Bills would even have him be a back-up much less cut him,

I think that Freakin Coy Wire staying on this team wins this poll hands down, but I am interested in folks opinions regarding other players rather than simply kicking this dead safety. I ask about the fan consensus embodied on TSW but also think that having a few loud voices call for the demise of a Bill who stayed also weighs in as being an equivalent mistake to a general consensus. With this last proviso weighing in, my vote for identifying folks predictions or hopes which were wrong, wrong, wrong is the thought that the Bills would cut Troy Vincent. This idea struck me as an odd non-football thought as it ignored the fact that by tying for the team lead in INTS and fumble recoveries last year he led this squad in takeaways (in a unit whose lack of pre-season INTs is actually a worry for me). When one adds: 1. into this that the nature of the contract he signed gives the Bills little cap advantage for cutting him, 2. our drafting of a bunch of young DBs provided a reason to keep him to show them how to be vets rather than cut him this year, and 3. the fact that our new scheme is going toward his strength as a cover guy and away from the whone about him not tackling well enough in our zone blitz scheme, even though he might hit the wall suddenly due to injury might end his usefulness and lead to his retiring, the idea of cutting him before the regular season made little football sense to me. Alot of this sentiment seemed to be motivated by an incorrect guess that the Bills sole priority is to build for the future, when yes this is a focus, but the Golden Boys have such a need to win while they are on this planet and a business need to try hard to win now to keep butts in the seats, the idea of cutting TV to let Ko Simpson learn the game by making mistakes made little sense to me. Anthony Thomas staying was a little surprise to me though I was a bit surprised to see Gates get cut rather than sticking as a back-up to our back-up RB, but the loudness of a few voices which were wrong about TV being cut in the first cap carnage and were wrong about him making this team gets my vote for the second biggest miscue by TSW partisans after the Coy Wire decision.

Hard to say for sure until we see how the Bills operate their O in real games. My assumption is that players worked on all the plays in the playbook which undoubtedly has the FB used as a lead blocker in short yardage situations, situations where they are running to burn clock, plus other formations where the team is facing an offense which is weaker against the run than the pass. The two difficulties with carrying 1 FB are: 1. If the FB gets hurt you cannot use a significant chunk of the playbook 2. When the FB comes in it tips your hand you will run. I think the Bills will deal with this in part by the fact that everyone knows you are going to run when you are burning clock or in short yardage situations and any trick plays used in this situation where you pass rather than run are actually enhanced if the opponent sells out for the run stop because your FB is in. Also, they do have an FB option in an emergency as TE Ryan Neufeld made the roster and in the past he has lined up in the backfield as an H-back. In general though it appears that the Bills are going to make a lot of use of 3 WR sets as a base offense.

Why do you view Preston as possibly a failure? He was able to fill in for starter Villarial last year and most seem to feel like that at the very least he was not a dropoff from a player many view to be getting older and inadequate due to his age. Many folks including me seem pretty sure that Preston will soon be called upon to start for Villarial and this will be an upgrade. Being better than an inadequate player is not an asserion of his being a success, but given that a second day draft choice starting in his second year exceeds the production of many second day draft choices it is hard for me to see how this canbe judged a failure. In fact. most feel it is premature to make a declaration or draw a final conclusion about any player until after we see how he does in his first three years. It seems that to judge Preston as a potential failure makes little sense as he can be as easily judged a potential success at this point and actually his play and position in the real world would seem to actually be so far so good. What do you expect from a rookie for him not top ne a failure?

Dibs may comcede to wearing rose colored glasses with his assessment of TD, but this statement offered in opposition to Dibs view looks like you are wearing dark colored glasses that obscure your view of reality. The quote itself simply states an internal contradiction that a player who you say mounted a successful comeback is also an underachiever (huh?). It also is simply a contradiction of reality. 1. The expectations of McGahee after he suffered a devastating knee injury in a Bowl game was that he likely faced ayear long if not more time comeback before he would be draftable and there was a fair chance his career was over. 2. However, McGahee worked out diligently and under the guidance of that idiot Rosenhaus actually put on a show of publicly working out that surprised many and led to the sense that though he still would need tons of rehab and time he likely would be drafted mere months after the injury. 3. The media went from generally expressing sorrow and shaking its head going tsk tsk too bad but stuff happens when he was hurt, tp being impressed by the fact he was even walking without a cane by draftime, to laughing at Rosenhaus for faking the phone call during the draft but giving McGahhe a free ride of it but being impressed that he got a 1st rpund pick. Since then, the media as usual is a mixed bag rather than having a consensus on WM. Folks seem impressed that he is the fastest Bill ever to rush for 2000 yards and he obviously commands press attention from NFL Network and other places. The baby momma comment was stupid and most of us oldsters shake our heads with disdain at this comment, but most recognize that the NFL and WM are going after a kids world and a demographic around the teen years to the mid-20s so the fact that us oldsters think what he said is stupid, that actually adds to his appeal to the youth market. If anyinw is laughing its WM all the way to the bank. At any rate, though anyone who sleeps with WM is clearly an idiot, those of us who care more about football than personalities if it does not impact the team's play are quite pleased to have an RN who finished 10th in the leafue in rushing yardage on our team and demand and reasonably expect better production from him this year when he will get his second full season starting if he is lucky enough to avoid injury. Maybe you don't like him and that is fair and I hope you do not have sex with him. However, as far as football goes I simply do not see what you are basing your WM assessment on.

Hard to say as far as Ezekial versus DiGrig to this outsider beyond a sense that both were pretty good development players who I think would be complete disasters if Fletch ever went down and we needed to start one of these two for any period of time. I think any NFL QB would look at these two starting at MLB if injury forced this and lick their chops. Thus, I think that if Fletch really was not available for more than an occaisional series, the best bet for the Bills to fill out the depth chart would be to shift Crowell from Will to Mike and then choose Ellison or Stamer to fill in for Crowell. Crowell was actually the sub for Fletch up until TKO got hurt and then he shifted, Crowell was fairly impressive as the #2 MLB in pre-season last year such that the Bills comfortably moved him to start at WLB when they needed one skipping him over Haggan who was the back-up to TKO on the depth chart.

My thought is that the King cut may simply be because the Bills view Thomas as a better player right now than King (could be but I saw no huge difference in quality between the two in play) amd/or they saw far better upside long-term in Thomas than King (could be also but I saw little development upside potential in Thomas and King had shortcomings but held his own vying with Greer last year and was a young player with some pro experience compared to Thomas who was a young player with no pro experience and not a lot of upside I saw, The other leftfield theory that gave rise to this musing was the thought that the Bills braintrust must feel somewhat secure at CB if they are willing to invest in the marginal upside potential of Thomas over the limited but better upside of King. The presence of Youbouty as the heir apparent for Clements spot provides some potential, but our inability to really work him this pre-season presents a wildcard. Potentially the Bills feel secure enough at CB to invest in a rookie over a vet who show roughly the same limited potential because they feel they are about to nail down the CB issue for years to come by signing Clements long-term to join McGee who was extended. They then would have the young Greer who was impressive (again) in pre-season at nickel and Youbouty in the wings. If I had my top 3 CBs under contract with a guy thought to be a 1st rounder who I got him when he dropped to 3 in the wings, i feel fairly secure tossing away a vet who has played nickel in favor of Thomas. If on the other hand, my starter, NC is uncertain and Youbouty looks good on paper but reality is uncertain, I am a bit more reluctant to toss my vet who played nickel with few complaints last year to invest in Thomas. A fairly refined and marginal analysus, but get 'er done marv as far as extending NC.

I think the interesting next step will be to see what effects on the team the final pre-season camp cuts will bring (though they will not be the final roster cuts as PS decision and potential pick-ups of other cut players remain to be done before the season starts). 1. The Eric King cut was a bit surprising to me, particularly with Youbouty being unavailable for the team to play and evaluate for the most part. This may simply be that Thomas impressed while King (whose man did burn him on Wed.) did not. Howebver, the interesting thing this may mean is that the Bills feel pretty set at CN as they may be close to consummating a long-term deal with Clements who looked very good to me this pre-season at CB. 2. The Greg Jerman cut was actually a welcome surprise to me because I had begun to assume we would hav to use this inadequate player as our lead back-up tackle. However, the team seems to believe in Butler and/or Pennington taking on these roles. I did not see much in pre-season games which I could notice like them pancaking opponents which indicated they were ready to contribute to this team at tackle if necessary. However, its nice to se that likely subtleties one can only divine in practice or when you know the schemes and plays called give JMacand the crew the comfort to go with these youngsters as back-ups. if they can do it this is a really good thing. 3. It will be interesting to see whether they cut of Gates came because Shaud Williams really provides such a more flexible ST option (if WM gets more use on 3rd down then Williams will need to contribute on ST). It did not surprise me at all that Thomas beat our Gates as though Gates produced more as a runner and the casual fan sees little more than this (though Gates nose for the endzone was impressive his running did not separate him enough from Thomas to overcome him showing little as a pass receiver, nor did he show the production a vet is likely to bring on blitz pick0up, blocking on end arounds or on SI) but it did sur[rise me that Gates was in more danger than Shaud of not making the roster. 4. DiGrigorio beatung out Exekial is quite interesting, but i suspect that what this means if Fletch ever needs to be replaced for more than a series is that the Bills will let Ellison or Stamer start for Crowell whom I suspect would be the choice to take the MLB jpb which he back-up for last year until TKO was injured and he moved to the Will job. I could not even see Ezekial handling the back-up duties for more than giving Fletch the occaissional blow and i am even less confident of DiGrigorio doing it (thought congrats to him for making the roster). 5. Whitner starts at SS as expected but with less pressure on him to star immediately and him paying a little price on the depth chart for holding out so long. Interesting theatics but reality is reality.

The dirty little secret here is that not only is Holcomb the second best QB on this team, but there is actually some reason in thunking he may be a good back-up for this team. He clearly demonstrated that there is no way in the world he could be an adequate starter for this team. But who out there is shocked about that. In 10 years of play he never proved to be a consistent enough player to be designated the starter for any of the teams he played with. He had inherited the starter role due to injury or failed play by the guy who beat him out and actually played quite well in a few of these episodes. However, even with these performances which raised hopes he never put it all together and everuone in the league knows this. He was #1 on our roster when camp began but mosy assumed that the job was JPs but he had to earn it with his play. Ultimately he did show enough episodically strong play and at least the ability to learn from the mistakes he made early in pre-season and though he uis still far from perfect the great episodes like the passes to Peerless and the greater command an calmness he showed later in camp compared to the occaisional panic reactions early in camp gives some legitimate hope that he may well develop into at least an adequate QB during this season. Holcomb actually was surprisingly bad in his production early in camp IMHO. I did not doubt that JP would win the starting job, but from what I saw and heard of what a Fairchild led O was likely to be it seemed to fit a lot of Holcomb's likely strengths and did not call for him to perform a lot in areas of weakest play. By this I mean that many seem to assume that because an offense which many would call Rams East eas going to call a lot of passing plays that this meant the QB would consistently need to throw deep.. I think this is a false assimption as the Bills have a bunch of speedy receivers not because they are going to run deep patterns early and often, but because a Rams style offense relies more on run after the catch. The trick for Fairchild is to design intrixate patterns with crosses and slants which allow the speedy receiver to get quick separation from the DB or pick off the DB without getting called for offensive pass interference. The primary job of the QB will be to make solid reads and identify which receivers will be isolated in one on one coverage or run a pattern which gets them quick separation and actually throws a relatively short pass to that receiver which turns into a big gain. With 10 years of seeing plays from the sideline and over the center' shoulders, KH should have been well prepared to do these reads/. In addition, the talk on TSW went so far as to label KH a ragarm. Clearly a strong arm is not one of JH's stromgest suits. No one would mistake him for having a rocket arm. However, he is an NFL QB and no one should mistake him for Billy Kilmer or a true ragarm either. I do not think that KH can throw the ball long with consistency accuracy and stremgth. However, the Bills O though probably pass-happy should not call on him to do this. Instead, the Bills O if based on a St. L model will use the long bomb occaisionally to set up the plethora of short passes which make the offense work so well. If anythinf, the key to the offense will be whether McGahee can do enough to play a reduced version of the Marshall Faulk role of being a great checkdonw guy who can perform the RAC game. Many folks hate KH because of his overreliance on the checkdown, but if our O works well, doing good reads to determine the opponents are playing centerfield so the RAC will not be there and instead throwing the ball quickly to the checkdown receiver will make our O score a bunch of points like St. L. Even better for KH if you want to insist he is a rag arm, the long passes even when thrown will not require a powerful arm. As with the TD to Peerless where JP simply arced the ball downfield instead of throwing a frozen rope and PP ran under it or Davis TD where he actully caught a relatively short pass and thne outsprinted the coverage are the type of long passes we will use to back off the opponents and force them into zones or cover 2s. Yet, I was amazed at hoe bad KH was in the intiail and ongoing practices and in the first three pre-season games. Even though the Fairchild O should have lent themselves to KH's stremgths amd weakenesses he simply sucked making hirrible reads like the one on his INT returned for a TD in the first pre-season game. Once nall got hurt and essentially missed the first couple of weeks, there wa no way he was going to seriously compete for the starting job unless JP really sucked and he still played lights ou against the scrubsin the last two pre-season games. However, JP fortunately showed enough to win the job amd KH sucked so bad that Nall has a real shot at the #2 job if he played well. However, Nall was simply inconsistent as is his good plays for TDs teamed with bad plays giveing the other team INYs. In addition, though he was quite inventive and exciting in getting the ball off when being sacked, it was like the old Brett Favre playing in the current Brett Favre body. The mind conceives of neat plays but the body and talent level is not there to always pull them off. A big part of the reason why i think KH is still #2 on the depth chart is that he finally showed play against the Lions which may well indicate he now gets it. He may not so by all means keep practicing Nall and try to see how he plays when a little calmer and not trying to do 4 games worth of productiopn in two games. However, if KH's performance against a bunch of Lion reserves is a true sign that he gets it now and can perform up a level that his eposodically good but not good enough to be a strater allows, then he actually is amd can be a fome back-up QB to have.

Yep!

In general, I like both your list and the marginally different one from Jay Rubeo which started this thread, however, I like your list a little better so I would go with it with the following small changes and observations. 1. A functional uncertainty is that I believe there are some limitation for qualifying for the PS basd on how many time you have been active as a player. I;m not sure as the CBA has been a moving target with a new one just adopted and I have yet to see how it is used over a season. In addition, the PS make-up has been changed so there now actually may be more fluidity of movement between the active roster and the PS. Yet there is a real $ difference in compensation between the PS which gives players ten of thousands of dollars to play this boys game and the NFL minimum which approaches $300K. The bottomline is that I am not even sure that Leonhard is a candidate for being on the PS. My guess is that what the Bills may do depends a lot on something none of us outside of the Bills docs and Marv knows for sure that I believe Bown is still injured and the Bills may have the ability to put him on the PUP list which would make him unavailable til after the 6th game. This would provide us with a spot to either keep Leonhard or more likely Baker (who pissed a lot of fans off by letting an INT slip through his hands for a nice Lions reception) just in case Vincent has hit the wall due to his age. 2. I like the fact that your list cuts Shelton who I can really do without as a pass catcher after a couple of drops of passes he should have caught this pre-season and an horrendous drop of a ball that hit his hands from Holcomb which became and INT last season. Yet, unfortunately, I am simply not sure enough of Ricard's physical condition as he was inactive for the last game to judge whether he can show the same talent he has shown as a blocker for the RB he showed in Balt. I think there are still options here even if Ricard cannot answer the bell if the braintrust judges that Burns provides enough ST upside and the vet skills and bulk to block at FB and i also like your list for keeping Neufeld who has a former H-back also provides another vet who can fill in at FB if we in fact cut Shelton. 3. I am torn between whether our #2 QB should be Nall or Holcomb, I'm glad that KH had a good game against Detroit because though he has never been good enought to be a consistent starter in this league his lomg career and episodes of good play should have allowed him to pick up the new offense for him quicker than he did. As best as I can guess, the Fairchild O will be relatively pass-happy but will emphsize short passes and RAC for big gains that would suit KH's experience to do good reads and throw shorter passes. I think many folks make a bad football judgementin concluding that being pass-happy means that your QB needs to make accurate deep throws all the time and that KH has never shown an ability to do that. However, I think what it really means is that the QB will need to throw deep as a change-up and the real deal is actually gonna be using a lot of relatively short passes. Even if one judges that KH has a rag arm (assessments of his arm weakness have been exagerrated on this board by repetitive insults. He does not have a strong arm at all but he is an NFL QB who can throw it long a few times a game which is all you need to make the RAC oriented O work). However, he simply did not pick up what is a new O for him well at all this pre-season and simply sucked until this last pre-season game. Nall's chances at competing with JP were ended by his early pre-season injury, but KH's bad play gave even an injured Nall a shot to take the #2 slot. Nall showed some promise, but he also showed a propensity to take some Brett Favre type risks which made for some nice throws at times, but also seemed to make for a couple of bad INTs. Its good that KH finally showed some good play, because I am quite happy to see KH be the first option we go to as a back-up but let both QBs know that their practices are important and they are still competing for a spot. i agree with Marv that if you have two starting QBs then you really have no starting QB. However, I have no problem with having 2 back-up QBs as long as I have 1 starter. Right now I give Holcomb the nod based on his final performance in pre-season but this decision may change if Nall calms down a bit and is productive in practice or KH falls apart in garbage time play which I am happy to give him if we get the chance (it is to be hoped because we are so far ahead). 4. Your OL set-up is fine by me but it shows the risk we are facing if (actually when) on of our starters goes down. I hope Butler has developed well enough that we can go with 3 T's but I doubt this has happened and the awful thing is that the inadequate to start at T and perhaps not worth much to simply give a starter a blow is the best we can do. i am looking very hard at the waiver wire and other team;s PS's for a tackle aswe need back-up T help badly or a lot of good luck. I suspect Villarial will be the starter most likely to make the injury question a when rather than an if and Preston should be fine to step in. The big problem is that Preston also appears to be our plan B at center. I am curious to see whather JMac actually sees something wrth working with from Jason Thomas who is currently a bak-up G on the deoth chart. It appears tnat original efforts which had Geisinger as the back-up C have not worked out as he is now behind Preston so I think he gets cut and or PS'ed if he is eligible for it. Upon review of the depth chart and what I could observe in the game (and i think all of our amateur OL observations though it is nice to hear what folks think I think even the fairly knowledgable sounding observations are no where near as worthwhile or as good as JMac's observations as far as the fine details. We can all see that Jerman is inadequate as a starter at any position, but this does not mean that JMac is making an unreasonable decision if he keeps this definitely inadequate player on the roster because he can give a blow or rest for several positions. My sense on the OL is we have a roster of: Gandy Reyes Fowler Villarial Peters Jerman Butler Pennington and probably some combination of Merz Geisinger Thomas on the PS and.or being inactive each game. Pennington probably makes the active roster as a drafted rookie but will be inactive for the most part. 5. I think either Powell or Sape does not make it from your DL list.. if the bills are comfortable that one of their DTs can line up at DE in a pinch I think they go with 3 DEs. If not then Powell makes it and the better player Sape goes unfortunately. I know jauron said the 53 best players make it, but if you are going to do a DL rotation we need 4 guys who can play DE so Powell may slime in. The other thing that I found interesting about the Lions game was that I noticed that Anderson was getting a lot of reps with the second team DL. Perhaps either Williams or McCargo has pushed him down the depth chart seriouly. 5. I just moticed you cut Thomas. Unless you have seen some good blitz-pickup, ST and end around blocking from Gates, i do not think his significantly better production as a runner will even allow him to beat out Thomas as a starter, much less push him off the roster. I think Shaud Williams is in greater danger of being cut than Thomas but perhaps his flexibility puts Burns in more danger or Ricard's injuries put him in more danger but I think we cut any of these 3 before we cut Thomas.

I think the Bills are clearly emphasizing a youth movement (as opposed to the extreme of Butler era where he emphasized retaining players to the extreme of overpaying a player like Fina or not moving to acquire a replacement soon enough as he did with Jimbo where he and Ralph grossly miscalculated how long he would last). However, it appears to me that while the Marv regime emphaszes youth that folks should realize that it is also an essential goal for the Golden Boys to get as many Ws as they can now. It would have been interesting if Holcomb had shown production this pre-season consistent with his career QB ranking and IF JP had shown positive signs as he has but struggled a little bit more (given JP's performance this pre-season IMHO while far from perfect he showed enough improvement to win the job over a Holcomb who had performed at his career output. However, I am pretty sure that if the Bills were given a choice between an older player they dubbed adequate and a younger player whom they thought MIGHT develop but really was a project, they would flush the youth drive and go for the Ws now given our long drought in playoff appearances and few people making bets the Golden Boys will be on this planer forever. I think choosing a balance which emphasizes youth but is not a slave to it is the correct balance to choose. I think have a primary commitment to winning now is the right way to go.

Evcellent perspective and information. Folks who draw conclusions based upon how other players have responded to similar sounding injuries are usually simply wrong in drawing conclusions rather than just taking this an indication of what is possible. There were various predictions made in posts as camp began which predicted a year and half until TKO played at anything like his past levels if that ever happened. This still may prove to be true, but predictions such as the one which state that TKO would not even play until game 3 have already been proven wrong. The simple fact is that all we really knew was that TKO had danage which was likely to be a tear of the achilles tendon when he went down and seemed to know immediately this was a big deal injury. He was placed on IR relatively quickly and his season was over. However, at that point and even up until game 3 that was really all we knew. TKO was clearly gonna go under the knife and as such IR and a season ending decision was warranted in any case. However, any assumption then and now that TKO was destined to be out a particular amount of time or that he would recover to only a specific level were simply ill-founded and even if correct it would mostly be coincidental. Not all achilles, ACL, compound or other injuries are a like. For the reasons you point out, where the tear occurs in the muscle, how severed the tear is and other factors like how clean the tear is make a big difference. Even the most knowledable Bills and the docs really had little clear idea what they were facing until the surgery began and they got a look at the injury. When one adds to that the issue of medical science advancing quickly in terms of repair and physical therapy and other rehab techniques advancing and the simple fact that different people simply heal faster, slower or differently, the predictions beyond stating a general range were little more than guesses and shots in the dark. At this point IKO's injury while clearly a severe one that mandated surgery does not look like one of the more severe ones that cost folks such as Cowart greater periods of time before they could take a hit or play the game and certainly less severe than that of achilles injuries which cost players their careers. He will not be the player he was (but what players past their peak years are) and the Bills have moved him from Will to Sam OLB with the injury limitations in mind. I think there is little good reason to not hope that YKO will resume his former levels of productivity as an OLB.. This result should not reasonably be expected or assumed, but his quicker than expected play well within a year of his injury does mean that hoping this is the case is not a silly thing to hope for. The consensus was among us outside observers and even among docs who examined him was thar WM would be lucky to play the game ever again and no one expected him to be the fastest Bill ever to rush for 2000 yards. He clearly is the exception rather than the rule but shows how bad the sideline doctor predicitions are.

IMHO what all of this means is that a game I originally have filed as a certain loss is now im play as a possible upset win. This does not mean that I think the Bills have gotten everything (or even a lot of things) all set and ready to go. It simply means that the Pats seem to have finally fallen prey to the usual effect on most SB winning teams that they are forced by the parity generating aspects of the NFL, the desire of SB winning players to collect big bucks as a priority rather than be a part of a winning TEAM, and other factors which cause them to downgrade or fall apart. For a variety of reasons the Pats won 3 SBs in 4 years which is a near dynasty like performance. I think these reasons include: 1. They did implode in the 2002 season after their first SB win as they failed to even make the playoffs. Ironically, I think a prime reason for this was Drew Bledsoe because the accelerated cap hit the Pats had from correctly choosing to trade him to the Bills reesulted in a cap situtaion which did not allow them to reload their team. I think this lost season whet the players apetite to win an SN and really helped the team. They were also helped because the 2001 win primarily happened because they were a TEAM after what tuirned out to be a quite lucky loss of Bledsoe (accompanied by a quite lucky return by him to QB the majority of a must win game). This lack of a recognized star beyond the young Brady who had a contract which was quite favirable to the team to redo all helped. 2. Belicheck is undeniably a football genius, but I am amused that he easily could be on the asheap of failed NFL HCs after his very inadequate results in Cleveland (1 more playoff in 5 years than the idiot TD- they had different jobs so I am not comparing their work merely the results achieved with them doing their own pivotal jobs). If Bledsoe had not gotten his lung collapsed I think there is little chance he would have moved to Brady that year until even making the playoffs were out of the question. The pivotal BB move for the Pats in the 2003 season was so badly butchering the negotiation with Milloy that members of the team publicly called him out. Yet, just as President Bush has now gotten both the GOP and Dems to agree that the Iraq war was a big mistake to take on, BB united the Pats players in all feeling he was an idiot in negotiations and this provided a good basis for the team becoming a TEAM which stepped up when players like Colvin got hurt and that it was us against them in terms of the season. What is in play now, is that we are now seeing significant parts of the Pats like Vinateri and McGinest head off for the big bucks with little sign that they will be replaced by better players like A0Train was with Dillon or Milloy with Harrison. The Branch debacle seems to have descended to a point where it is unclear whether it will be worse if he is forced to play for the team or if he stays away and their top two receivers from last year are gone. Given their issues at LB, their issues at WR amd the loss of one of one of the best PKs in the league, this team looks like it will be worse than previous Pats teams on O, D and ST. Also, for this games one of BBs strengths over the years was that he an his Assistant Ciacges were able to design great gameplans against the Bills. However, I think the Bills are facinh them at the right time for them as the Pats braintrust will be facing a completely new offense and new defense that has yet to develop any record of tendencies or more than a generally described style to gameplan against. While this is not guarantee at all, I'd rather face them in a guessing game with no information for them to work with than lots of information to work with. Having them really slough off this game as a certain win is also how teams lose in this league (remember them being demolished by the worse team in the league a couple of years ago). The certauin loss is now a fighting chance and we will see.

DITTO!!!

Many thanks as that is basically what I am doing. My apologies to those who do not have the personal discipline to not waste their precious time slogging through the overly verbose posts and my thank you to those who do find something of value or amusement within the muck and are nice enough to take the time to respond.

I actually think it has been the Bills weakness at the safety position rather than his ST wrk which has jept him employed by the Bills. He got his starter job at S (a position he has never played before at any level of organized ball (because GW/Hray badly miscalculated how much there old buddy Jenkins had left. We then stretched a bunch to apply the cap room necessary to lure Milloy here as TD's twp FA signing to replace Wire as starting SS, Chad Cota and Ainsely Battle both suddenly retired after reaching agreement with us. Wire was made the ST captain (his attitude and commitment to charitable acts indicative of character were pretty good) however, I think he was poorly developed as a player because he often seemed to blow plays on ST as he tried to overcompensate for losing a starter's job (such as when he took an impossible angle according to Tasker to block a punt against the Bengals his second year and roughed the kicker giving them a 1st down which led to a TD which put the game in overtime. Certainly the Bills gave him credit for good ST play I do not think he deserved, but I think think the real problem was using him as a position player at a position where he did not have the pass coverage experience and wasted his development time trying to teach him pass coverage when they actually should have tried to turn him into the next Steve Tasker right from the start IMHO.

netween himself and Thomas in the area of rushing skills to win the #2 RB job. Gates was quite impressive showing a nose for the endzone far above what was denonstrated by Thomas. Landing on his feet after getting helicoptered by a lower hit and still keeping his legs moving to back into the endzone and scrambling to successfully get a TD last week were simply great plays. As a runner though he did not show any of the breakaway ability one would expect from an RB starter, i think he clearly was a better rusher than Thomas showed this pre-season. However, though this will impress those who only think of the RB position as running for yards, it appears he did not show as much in the other essential jobs for an RB back-up and unless someone who attended more practices so they can provide info which was not apparent in the written descriptions, I will not be surprised to see Jauron opt for the vet player he knows over a talented youngster unless he demonstrated proficiency whicjh is difficult or impossble to see merely watching the pre-season games. I think Thomas showed some good production tomight as a check-dpwm option reciever getting pretty good gains on checkdown oasses from both Holcomb and JP. I think this checkdown pass will be a critical part of our offense this year as we attempt to pull off out version of the Rams style offense. On many pass plays when the QB does not get the isolation coverage he wants on our WRs so that he would be forced to throw into a cover 2 type D or when their slant or crossing patterns do not give the WRs the necessary separation, JP will be asked to turn to the RB working as a safety valve. McGahee has already sung the praises of being asked now to be more of an athlete than just a runner. Since our #2 RB will be asked to step in for WM to give him a blow or to fill in for him if he is hurt, it is going to be essemtial that our #2 RB shows the ability. Yhoufg Gates clearly was a more impressive rusher that Thomas in pre-season games, unless he showed some ability to be a big time contributor on check-downs, Jauron may well go with Thomas who demonstrated he can be a positive force on checkdowns. The other items which I found difficult to gauge from the pre-season games were: 1. How did Gates do on blitz pick-up. As a vet Thomas has demonstrated he can play this role such that he was once a quality starter. Did Gates provide ny demonstration he has mastered this job younger players usaully have difficulty getting down until they get some reps. 2. How did Gates do on ST. If we get lucky our back0up RB will only see limited time when WM is exhausted from making a long gain, This means unless the reserve RB shows good ST ability he would contribute nothing to the team. Particularly given the Bills emphasis on ST, Gates will need to show good ST ability in addition to his rushing talent to gain the #2 RB jpb or force the Bills to cut Williams instead of him. 3. The run blocking ability of the #2 RB will likely be a secondary if not a tertiary issue for the player chosen as FB runs will likely not be a big part of our offense. However. the end=a=round will apparently be a staple of our efforts to get Evans and the speedy WRs into the offense and make th DBs think and hesitate. The back-up RB will likely need to show some blocking ability or willingness and I do not know whether Gates has shown this ability. Gates seems like a better runner that Thomas right now and clearly has more long-term upside, but Gates has not shown himself to be such a great runner that Thomas may not beat him out for the #2 job unless the coaches have seen the above proficiencies in the Gates game.