Albany,n.y.

There's a good chance that the UFL will fold after this season, making 2011 moot. The UFL couldn't draw at all last year. The game I went to in Hartford had about 1,500 people in the stands, they announced over 5,000 then moved the team permanently there for 2010. The only reason the UFL has survived this long is they got a sweetheart TV deal. Unfortunately for them, it's a 2 year contract that I can't see being renewed at anywhere near the bucks the 1st one was. Last year they could afford to draw no fans & still survive, this year is the same. Next year is an entirely different financial situation. I'm predicting 2 seasons & a cloud of dust.

Because he needs to learn to respect his elders.

For the record, Matt Moore was a UFA, Tyler Thigpen was a 7th round pick and Derek Anderson was a 6th rounder. None of them made it past all 31 other teams when put on waivers as rookies. In Tom Brady's rookie year the Patriots kept 4 QBs because they didn't want to risk trying to sneak him onto the practice squad and someone claiming Brady on waivers.

That explanation of a player's floor is great! Your post should be required reading every time someone says that someone should make the roster over another because he has more upside. Until they calculate the downsides, or floors, they cannot correctly evaluate each player's value to the team. Fitzpatrick, even if he doesn't start, is one of the most important players on the team. He becomes even more valuable if Trent Edwards, with his injury history, ends up the starter. By the way, if Brohm beats out Edwards they better keep Fitzpatrick around, because Brohm wasn't exactly a Manning in terms of durability in college, tearing his ACL, thumb ligaments & having non throwing arm labrum surgery.

I don't know how good a vote of confidence is when you're 3rd on the depth chart of a team that likes to carry only 2 QBs on the 53 man roster.

The only one in the poll who ever led his team to the playoffs, has and will have the longest career of any of them is Todd Collins. He might not be much, but of this group he towers over the rest.

The Bills are not re-signing TO for one simple reason. This season is a building block for the future. So what if TO plays better than Easley, Johnson or Hardy today. When the guy who emerges from this bunch is playing on a team that is a legitimate contender, TO won't be around. It's not always about today, sometimes you form your roster with an eye on tomorrow-TO has very few tomorrows left. One of the 3 other WRs might just have a lot of tomorrows-in Buffalo.

It's good to see some sanity on this board in regards to Fitzpatrick in your post & the one above it. Those "cut him, he sucks" or "he costs too much and Ralph is cheap" posts were getting a little ridiculous considering Fitzpatrick's body of work as an NFL QB compared with the other 3 candidates on our roster. If Gailey wants to "win now" the choice of our starter is clear-Fitzpatrick, game in & game out gives us the best chance of winning each Sunday. I too think, at worst, Fitzpatrick will be #2 and has a roster spot locked up.

The GUY responsible for bringing Brohm here does not still have his job. The coaches in GB who saw Brohm every day for over a year had no fear they were making a mistake when they cut him last September. Being a former #2 pick they probably expected to lose him and didn't care, otherwise they wouldn't have waived him in the 1st place. GB has a pretty good coaching staff. Just because he's in the mix with a bunch of other losers doesn't mean anything. As I've said, he could "win" the job this year & be gone before next season.

I am deeply sorry for my comparison of Brian Brohm to Bruce Mathison. Dear Mr Mathison, If you are viewing this board I apologize to you for comparing you with Brian Brohm. Mr. Mathison, you started 7 games in the NFL & and Brian Brohm has and probably only will have 1 NFL start before he joins you in retirement as an NFL player. I will refrain from any further insults to you, Mr. Mathison by comparing you any further to a player with only one NFL start. As for rooting for the Bills to lose to get a better pick, if the Bills are 2-13 going into week 17 against the Jets and have a shot at the 1st pick with a chance of finally getting a franchise QB if they lose the game you're damn right I'm going to root for the Jets. Heck, I might just go down to the game & root in person. Anyone who would rather get win 3,4, or 5 in a totally lost season, just to say something like "Yeah, we beat the Jets" doesn't understand why we've been so bad for so long. Go ahead & trot out the Couchs, Leafs & Akili Smiths, but if a guy comparable to a Manning or Aikman is available next year & one more lousy loss assures us the rights to draft him I'll stand by my choice.

Ok, I'll expand the sample-when was the last time a 1st or 2nd round QB was cut by his draft team, on his 1st contract, and ever succeeded with another team? When a team puts that high round QB draft pick on waivers they're saying he's a lost cause, and they're always right, no matter how many more chances other teams are willing to give them. There are plenty of former 1s that failed and were waived, and none of them came back to haunt his old team. Now the key is they are so worthless that you can't even get a decent pick for them, this includes the ones who got low picks like Harrington & McNown. The only examples of guys who got traded were ones like Favre, who a year after being a 2nd rounder was traded for a 1st rounder-totally different situation than being tossed aside like trash. QB is football's premium position, when a team jettisons a high QB pick, there's a lot of thought put into it, it's not a spur of the moment decision. If another team thinks the guy has an ounce of talent they put in a waiver claim, especially if he's a high enough profile guy like Brohm. The fact that 31 other GMs let him sail through waivers says everything you need to know about Brohm.

Your post sums up the state of the Bills' QBs. Nobody on this team will win the job. The starter will be the lesser of 4 evils. Even though I have completely written off Brian Brohm's chances of ever being a successful NFL QB, if he's the least evil of our QBs, he could end up as our starter. However, if he does, his stint as the starter & as a Bills QB will eventually mirror the stint of Bruce Mathison-starter one year, waived the next.

There's a HUGE difference between undrafted QBs & a 6th round pick who got cut as a rookie flying under the radar & having a decent career and a 2nd round pick who was once projected as a 1st rounder getting cut after his 2nd preseason & flying so far under the radar that nobody even put in a waiver claim. The bottom line is that since the merger, no QB drafted as high as Brohm & cut in a relatively short time without ever playing has EVER done anything in the NFL. Contrast that to UDFAs like Romo, Delhomme, Warner, Garcia, even Matt Moore in Carolina (a waiver claim who unlike Brohm did not clear waivers when Dallas cut him); a late round pick like Hasselbeck who spent time on a practice squad; and other late rounders like Cassel and Anderson ( another waiver claim who unlike Brohm did not clear waivers when Baltimore cut him) who have had limited success all who flew under the radar & had success in the NFL. You're comparing a situation that has proven successful to one that has NEVER proven successful-big difference. I'm not only counting out Brohm, but based on history, Levi Brown has a much better shot at a successful NFL career than Brian Brohm. Brown's chance is slim, based on recent NFL history. Brohm's chance is NONE.

Reading this string is pretty depressing & really shows the sad state of affairs at the QB position in Buffalo. 1st we have the Brohm "I saw him play at Louisville & I think he should be the starter" fans who want our starter to be a guy rejected by the entire NFL last September when Green Bay waived him. They really believed John Guy & company outsmarted the whole league last November when they signed Brohm. Now we have the "Chan Gailey worked wonders with Thigpen in KC" I think if he gets waived he should be the starter fans who want Thigpen to get waived, meaning he'd have been rejected by 3 teams (Waived by Vikings; traded to Miami for a low pick; if done, waived by a division opponent with no fear of him starting against them) who may have put up some nice stats, but only put up two wins resulting in the firing of his head coach. Then the next year KC was so enamored with Gailey's work with Thigpen, that Gailey & Thigpen were gone from KC long before the end of the season, with Chan not even making it to opening day (Yeah, spare me the excuses of Haley not liking Gailey. If Gailey/Thigpen were so good together in 2008, they'd still both be in KC) Face it, our QB situation is the worst since 1985, when we traded a pick to get Vince Ferragamo then cut him thinking same season waiver pickup Bruce Mathison was better. Like 1985 any QB who is either here or picked up off the scrap heap to start this season will be gone by opening day next year, if not sooner. This facination with resurecting rejects shows that a starting NFL QB is not on this roster & one won't magically appear like a rabbit out of Chan Gailey's hat. Chan may end up being a good head coach for the Bills, but his best shot is knowing the mess he has at QB won't be fixed this year, put on a good face for the media & the overly optimistic fans & pray like hell his QB loses more games than other QB starved teams so that in the 2011 draft we can land The Franchise. Gailey will never succeed with our sorry bunch or Tyler Thigpen, but he could reach Marv Levy status or better with a Jake Locker as his QB. By the way, there was a decent NFL QB on the 1985 Bills. Unfortunately he spent a lot of his rookie year stashed on IR & didn't end up starting a game until his 5th season. If Levi Brown can have a similar career, I'd be satisfied with him, but not as our starter-ever.

In the 1986 media guide, Bill Polian's 1st year as GM, while Bullough was still head coach this is what it said in a paragraph in Polian's biography "Polian joined the Bills in August of 1984 after working for one year as player personnel director of the USFL Chicago Blitz. In Chicago, Polian was associated with head coach Marv Levy, with whom he had previously worked in both Montreal of the Canadian League, as a U.S. scout during the 1976-77 seasons, and Kansas City, as a pro scout from 1978-82." Anyone with a 1986 media guide could have told you in preseason that Marv would soon be the coach unless Bullough worked a miracle.

If they wanted to win now, they would have drafted a position which is one of their weakest, not one of their strongest. Instead they took the best player, rather than fill an immediate need. Teams trying to win now fill holes, they do not go to a position they're already 2 deep in where you only need to be 2 deep. Now they're 3 deep at RB with plenty of room for improvement at OT, WR, TE, & the position they didn't think could be filled this year-QB. Going RB would be the last thing a GM with this roster would have done if his goal was to win in 2010.

The Spiller pick was a clear signal that the team is being built for 2-3 years down the line & not this season. It had nothing to do with selling tickets this season & everything to do with selling tickets in 2012. What sells the most tickets?-Winning. Nix wants to build a Super Bowl team & knows that he has too many holes to fill. So, think about it this way. He looks at the RB spot with the best player, by far on his board, available. He thinks, can any of my current group of running backs be a major contributor on a championship team in 3 years? Jackson may be too old to be counted on in 2012, and Lynch could be in jail or suspended by the 2012 season; or leave as a free agent to a warmer climate. So it's a no brainer, he takes the player he thinks can be the featured back on a champion. The time it took to put the card in is irrelevant. When Ernie Accorsi was building a Giants Super Bowl winning team the Giants were sending their picks in almost as quickly as the previous team's selection was being announced. Few if anybody in the NY media got on his case for sending the picks in too quickly and not fielding trade offers. Accorsi knew who he wanted and Nix felt the same way as Accorsi when Spiller was available. The theory is why drag it out when you have your guy.

8 games, including the exhibition game is no bargain. If they want to make it worthwhile, they should realize many of us, especially the ones who live far away, blow off the exhibition game & give the tickets away. Make it $140 for the 7 regular season games, quit gouging on the exhibition and they might sell more.

Lynch's groomsman's gift is the Seahawks playbook so that when he gets traded Marshawn will already know Pete Carroll's offense.

Not always, you get a 2nd year bust who gets cut on & put the practice squad & he's definitely not a rookie. He's just a never will be bust, and I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.

No, he was inactive the first 15 games and dressed but did not play in the season finale per the Bills 2009 Media Guide. If you combine all the LTs & all the QBs on the roster, you can't find 1 guy who could start for any of the 31 other NFL teams.

I have to totally disagree with your premise. The way the Bills have conducted their personnel decisions are quite clear that they are willing to wait until 2012 as long as they feel they've built the team to have multiple winning seasons starting 2-3 seasons from now. They didn't fill all the holes with a bunch of veterans who might get them 1 or 2 more wins in 2010 & they're willing to build a winner their way rather than hit the Donahoe mode & sign flashy names to satisfy the fan base. For the 1st time in years, the GM is looking long range & does not appear to want to jump the gun just to make the playoffs without any chance at going for a real championship. These guys know they have garbage at QB, but also didn't like Clausen, McCoy or any other 1st, 2nd or 3rd round projected QB, so because they couldn't get McNabb, they're looking at the right way to build. We're fortunate that Nix & Gailey do not have this fan mentality, because if they do it right we'll have 12+ win seasons by 2012 or 2013 instead of treading water between 6 & 10 wins with no shot of ever going to the Super Bowl. Unless Trent Edwards picks up his play & proves to be durable, the chance of both happening being slim, there will definitely be a 1st round QB on the 2011 roster.

Brohm will be the starting QB.................. ............................................of the Hartford Colonials

Marv knew that Mangold would cause trouble, so he drafted McCargo instead. I wish we had the Jets problem of having players think they should be paid more because they are the best at their position while they're still on their 1st round rookie contracts. Instead we have former 1st rounders like Lynch, McCargo, & Whitner. There's also Maybin looking for his 1st sack. Add in Flowers, M. Williams, McGahee, Losman & the 1st rounder for Bledsoe and it's easy to see why playoffs and the Bills are only mentioned in the same sentence when it is: The Bills have not made the playoffs in over a decade.

Here's a different way to look at things: 1) Say you know the man well enough to know the man's wife is bringing him down. Instead of getting punched in the eye, when he does split with her and everyone else is telling him how sorry they feel for him, and you say how happy you are that he's finally free, he'll say to you "You're the only one who understands how happy I am that she's gone." By the way-that's a true story, although I didn't need to point out her imperfections because he would every day when she called him 10 times a day while we were trying to get our work done. It's basically the same thing with our sorry group of QBs, until we get a football divorce from Trent, Ryan & Brian the team is just going to continue to give us a lot more misery than happiness. 2) I think when we see outrageous posts that have us being contenders, it's ok to slap the poster into some reality. 3) I choose to believe the Bills will win a Super Bowl in the next 5 years, but that doesn't necessarily mean this year is not a total rebuilding year. I can be oblivious to the fact that new coaches & systems take time & think that Gailey is such a huge upgrade that they won't need the typical transition time, or I can be realistic about this year while still maintaining my long term optimism by thinking back to Joe Gibbs' 1st season as the Redskins head coach. His team started off 0-5, yet won the Super Bowl the next season. Herm Edwards had it wrong, you don't play to win the game, you play to win the Super Bowl. In the long run, whether the Bills are better this year than last year is irrelevant. It's whether the Bills are building a team that will win the Super Bowl in this decade that's more important.