Koufax

I am definitely very sorry for Jenkins, and never am happy with injuries even to opponents. I wish him a speedy recovery and hope to see him back next year instead of hanging it up after two big knee injuries. I think this certainly improves the Bills chances against the Jets, because Jenkins was a bigger problem for us than Revis, and this will change the look of their front 7 a lot. They still have a lot of talent and will remain a very tough defense, but Jenkins was a very big piece for them.

I am optimistic as pass protection starts to solidify (Bell and Wood getting their endurance, Cornell Green being replaced). Trent took two good shots down the field (not talking Lee bombs, but the medium stuff we have wanted), and both worked out (the TD on a blown coverage and the completion called back for holding). I'm not saying that he is cured, but having success with it the times he tries, and as Chan points out that he really needs to try to get them to stop having 9 guys in the box, I think he could progress on these. Sanchez was really disappointing, and I think his checkdown tendency is probably picking up steam after his interception rookie year. Probably realizing that he can't throw picks, and with the D and running game maybe he can Trent Dilfer his way to a Super Bowl if he can avoid the turnovers...but he sure looked terrible trying that. I look forward to the Jets dropping to 0-2 after facing the Pats.

Did you watch the whole game? We might not have to score an offensive TD against them...just four field goals would work

Looking at individual plays, we did not block well and they started stacking the box, not fearing our passing game. I would have liked to see a little more Marshawn between the tackles the way things developed. But what we really needed was Trent completing 10-15 yard passes and the line blocking better and opening up holes. CJ outside the tackles is too similar to Trent's check down passing game, and it seems like Miami was successfully defensing both of those. So either our linemen performing better individually against their linemen for interior running, or some medium passing making them adjust their defense.

No, I agree with the OP. Cornell Green is the one face slap on our team right now. I clearly is not part of our long term plans or someone who could surprise us with development and upside. He also would seem to be our weakest player and relatively costly for several games in a row now. I can't believe that Meredith or Wang wouldn't be better right now, but I would also put up with a little bit worse momentarily since they have the chance to grow throughout the season and be more valuable overall in 2010, as well as clearly be more valuable in future seasons (which should not be our #1 priority...right now we have to field the best football team for 2010 from our roster). If we can't find someone better on our own roster or from recent cuts by other teams, I think that is a very depressing reality. I do not expect Cornell to hold on to his position all season...it just doesn't make sense.

Nope. Six Fs out of 12 grades means you are going with emotion and not football evaluation, so I won't respond to the specifics. Unless you have some Spinal-Tap-Like "G" rating below F and this one goes to eleven, I think you would need to throw in some more D- or higher to be taken seriously. I share your disappointment with the game, know it will be a tough season. I also agree with some of your general sentiments about some of the performances. But if you want to talk about actual grades (which you do, since you started a community thread), you have to try to come up with some that are more reasonable assessments.

Following all of the local media and the Chargers hear in San Diego, McNeil is a great player, and one I was interested in for the Bills when he was drafted. But he is not a fit for the Bills right now. His cost (important picks plus big money) is greater than what he would add to this team which continues to have some big holes and being in a rebuilding year. I don't think he is as valuable to us over the next five years as the picks and money it would take to get him here. And I don't think the sacrifice for the 2010 improvement would make sense either. We need patience, and a replacement for Cornell Green for 2010. Then after the season we can make some evaluations and see what to do to improve our roster. But in-season big splashes for rebuilding teams don't seem so wise, and would make it harder rather than easier to get where we want to go.

Not the right evening for me to stick up for Trent, but our o-line was terrible today and couldn't establish the run either. I also was very happy and impressed with two of his passes downfield especially...the one called back for the hold, and the TD to Roscoe. Both of those were the midrange passes (not short, not bomb to Lee) that he has completely been lacking. So one thing to build on in a disappointing game. I am very disappointed with our offensive play today, including Trent. But I thought our line and blocking was an even bigger problem than Trent today.

Yeah, I thought Bell looked promising as a project on some plays, but really whiffed on a bunch of plays where he is blocking nobody and a guy who came right by him is tackling or sacking someone in our backfield. I don't know enough to know if that is assignments, but boy it looked terrible on some plays. Green is not an NFL caliber player, and I would like to see Meredith step in right away. Bell still has the upside, and we aren't going to get anybody better this season, so as long as he is healthy we keep our fingers crossed he progresses, but a lot of disappointing plays if you focus on the line while watching the game.

He used "needs to bottom out" in his title, and "The best thing for the Bills is to pick high in next year's draft" and "Bills management needs to be honest and admit they need to bottom out" and "what's to be gained by winning six or seven." Hmmm...I think he definitely appears to say that losing would be BETTER than winning. And he cites that "Bills management" needs to agree with this. I however think it is complete garbage. If we have a 3-13 season I will stay on the bandwagon and get ready for our 2011 bounce back. But I think that 6,7,8, or 9 wins are a lot more helpful for this team making it back to the playoffs, not a hindrance. I'll take the over Jerry...just PM me with your paypal address and wager amount. [disclaimer: Koufax does not gamble. All offers of gambling are for chest-beating and entertainment purposes only. Offer void in Upstate New York and Sunny San Diego. Gambling may resume temporarily if the Bills make it back to the Super Bowl in the future.]

I'm not a fan of the losing to help winning, land a draft pick stuff that people love to suggest since Peyton Manning was picked #1. I know many (including myself) will be happy to see us with a 9-7 playoff birth at some point in the coming years, but let's be honest. As four time AFC champs, what we are all really interested in is a Super Bowl win...not back to the playoffs and losing, so here are some details of Super Bowl teams and any bottoming out they might have done: Of the last 10 Super Bowl WINNERS: 0 in 10: NEVER did the champion have a 0-16, 1-15, or 2-14 season in the six years prior to winning. 1 in 10: ONCE (2005 Saints) did the champion have a 3 win season in the six years prior to winning. And they were not bottoming out having won 8,8, and 9 in the years before 3-13. And only five team seasons out of that group failed to win at least six games: 97 and 98 Rams (when Kurt Warner was bagging groceries), 96 Ravens, 2000 Patriots, and the above mentioned 2005 Saints. So if you look at Super Bowl champions, there is almost never a bottoming out necessary leading up to their win. Almost always it is just solid winning seasons, with a lot of missed playoffs 8-8 and 9-7 thrown in. Perhaps most interesting, but purely random and amusing, is that while there were plenty of 6,8,9 win seasons sprinkled in with the more common double digits, there was not a single time when these last ten winners went 7-9 in any of their recent seasons. But the evidence shows very little correlation between being great and having a terrible bottoming out year. The best thing we can do this year to help our future is to WIN FOOTBALL GAMES. It might happen or it might not happen, but there just simply isn't a benefit in losing games to try to get better. Go Bills! Looking for 1-0 after Sunday!

Don Banks has us at 2-14 and every other last place team prediction at at least 4 wins, so clinching the #1 pick before the last week of the regular season is even played: Predicting the 2010 NFL season And I thought the #31 in the ESPN Power Rankings was silly! I will take the over I guess. Go Bills!

"With the ninth pick, the Buffalo Bills select Jimmy Claussen, Quarterback, Notre Dame." "With the ninth pick, the Buffalo Bills select Anthony Davis, Tackle, Rutgers." As surprised as I was with the Spiller pick at the time, can you imagine trading him for anybody else they could have picked? Amazing highlights. Thanks for sharing. Can't wait until he starts his official NFL highlight reel on Sunday!

Don't you mean "He's won too soup or bowls"? And isn't it supposed to be "Leave Brittany Alone"? I don't think there is going to be too much that can be said between now and Sunday that isn't repetitive, so I am going to dedicate myself to forum literacy in the meantime.

I'm going to give you a pass on the "it's" (it is) vs "its" (belonging to it), but this sentence is substantively wrong as well. Pre-season wins and losses may be relatively unimportant, but pre-season play, development of players, etc. is important, especially for a team coming off a disaster of an off season and learning new schemes. To have the first unit as successful as they were speaks volumes about the personnel and the coach's ability to get them moving and productive. A lot of what we have seen this pre-season has been positive and indicative of good progress and a team that is more talented than people think.

1) Hmmm...I'm QB optimistic, but respect your decision not to be. But I think we got Fast Freddie past 1000 with a million line issues, no passing game, and he was coming in as a backup. Then we added the top running playmaker in the draft. I don't know how we don't have an established running game by your measure. 2) Spare parts? Is that a slight on Cornell Green (my least favorite Bill)? Or are you really thinking Eric Wood is spare parts, Levietre spare parts? Do you really think that Bell is that terrible based on what you have seen of him, what his situation is last year, his athletic ability, and what the coaching staff seems to think? He is still not a certainty, but I don't think he is a spare part and nothing more than a Cornell Green. 3) Defense might continue to have a learning curve, but I think that is a little bit of a lame excuse and I expect them to perform. We have some personnel issues we will address in time for next season, but I think these guys are going to be better than last year really quickly, and won't need the "learning new system" excuse for long. 4) Can this really be separate from the previous one? We were last against the run, than how is learning the new system going to make that worse? Or do you think our pass rush will actually be worse than last year? And do you think our secondary will somehow stumble around like they are trying to speak German as tourists? 5) I like Stevie Johnson and I like Roscoe and I like Spiller. Chan + Checkdown + Spiller + Roscoe isn't going to be a powerful weapon? I still miss the intermediate pass and am not completely sold on Stevie, but I think that Chan can get some cool offense out of two crazy quick guys and someone very accurate in short passes, while Lee keeps them honest long and Stevie tries to learn how to be a middle of the field possession receiver. Again, I think we are likely going to be drafting in the teens. I'm hoping it is #19 or so and we snuck into the playoffs, but also know it could be #13 or so. But I really have a tough time seeing the 2 or 3 win stuff so many people see. Chan is trying to win now while building, not just throwing in the towel and taking a year to get his guys and his schemes. I think this team is much better than last year's team, and the teams in the division are not as amazing as people are saying. Let's get to 1-0 against the Fish and see how things are looking from there...

But the point I bring up often when these types of arguments are made, is looking at our schedule in September gives you very little idea on the difficulty of these games in the changing NFL. Remember that in 2008 we would have been looking at Seattle and Jacksonville at the start, two playoff teams coming off 11 and 10 win seasons, and penciled in in September as super bowl contenders and losses for us. Then of course we beat both of them and they won 4 and 5 games (each a worse performance than we have had since 2001 I might add). So don't think just because our schedule looks tough based on 2009 performances that it will play out how it looks on paper or anything even close. We will face teams much stronger than we expect, and we will face teams much weaker than we expect. That shouldn't stop anybody from doing their best guess and stating their expectations, but I see presented as certainty all the "we have no chance in that game" stuff which really doesn't hold any water at all as the season plays out. EVERY season in recent years, we have beaten teams that you would have penciled in as a loss before the season started (and unfortunately lost ones you would have expected us to win). It is the nature of the NFL, and why 2-14 or 8-8 right now doesn't mean much, and also why Vegas generally ends up with different lines on week 13 games than you would pencil in today.

"With the 16th pick of the first round, the Buffalo Bills take linebacker/offensive tackle/defensive end/other best player available John Doe, university of ToBeDetermined" sounds a lot better to me than "With the 4th pick of the first round, the Buffalo Bills take Andrew Luck/Jake Locker, Quarterback Stanford/Washington" So while I am happy to hear about all sorts of top players who might be the best player available wherever we pick, I don't think the fixation on a future potential #1 pick like Brohm/Quinn/Clausen is a good thing for anything other than curiosity. I'm pretty excited to see Trent emerge with the support of Gailey, and try to get to 1-0 against the Fish! Go Bills!

+1 to the grammer police. Some typos can happen in posts, but it would be nice if new threads would avoid the top four or five grammer mixups and avoid text message shortcuts. Otherwise it might be: thyme 4 u two re-sign from hear and leave the literate wons too enjoy there piece and quiet.

Some of the shallowest analysis I have seen. Feels like Clayton. I would like to see the grades of another team by comparison, so can you give us your take on the Dolphins please? You give an F to the quarterbacks because you aren't happy with the situation or optimistic, not because you can reasonably think they are there. Otherwise why not just give them a G or an H, because this one goes to eleven: since Trent has been completing a lot of his passes, not getting sacked a lot, and hitting on the bombs, why grade would you give our guys if those things weren't happening? Or is this a grade for last season? Not clear why you think that Lee, Stevie, Roscoe are really a D? If our QBs are really Fs then the production these guys have had in the preseason would be more impressive? Or if our receivers are really D receivers then wouldn't you expect F QBs to be even less effective? Linebackers, I'm just going to skip this one. You haven't mentioned the transition to the 3-4 which is their biggest obstacle, and a D- is a pretty ridiculous grade and represents a detachment from reality. Cornerbacks at C+ is pretty cool. Giving this unit a B- would have been a gross overestimate right? It was only our B safeties fault that we were second only to Revis's Jets last year right? Your Analysis Grade: C-. I should have given you lower, but it is obvious you are new here, and so I am grading on a second grader scale, not a college level. But please do give us your grades on the Dolphins so we can cross reference a little both before and after the game.

Not a good pick overall. Going with the conventional wisdom/need instead of best player. The same that would have us picked Clausen or Bulaga at #9 this year. However swinging and missing on a high second round receiver doesn't damn the decision makers by itself...remember in addition to the #41 Hardy, we also cut #36 Chad Jackson which New England picked and it didn't work out. I was pulling for him, but was a little skeptical at his inability to get involved and make a difference. It never seemed like a Roscoe situation of being misused, just him not being a very good football player.

Uh oh...I now remember thinking Pennington was going to be a useful player...I guess in light of this I will downgrade my Bell enthusiasm until he shows something in the regular season.

Remember, the line is not what Vegas thinks the result is, but the spread Vegas thinks will get even money on both sides. And as for the comment by this genius...if I were going to give football betting advice to the public I would try to have more sources of team strength than John Clayton's "they don't have a qb or lt" blog. The Bills are not going to win it all, but we also are not one of the worst teams in football.

Maybe more than Reggie Bush and less than Chris Johnson?

Way too soon to know what these opponents are going to look like each week. The pessimists say "that team sounds pretty good and was good last year...no chance" when we don't know what injuries and the ups and downs of the NFL season will bring. And the optimists say "that team sounds pretty bad and was bad last year...we win that easy". As examples, I give you the 2008 game against the Arizona Cardinals. Penciled in as a win by EVERYBODY, especially after we started 4-0. Was an embarrassing loss at the time, but then it turned out, wait, Arizona was a Super Bowl team... And our 2008 opener against the Seahawks and Jaguars were supposed to be tough with those being 10 and 11 win teams contending for the super bowl...but then they turned out to be 4 and 5 win teams in 2008 that we beat. So don't think that because you think you know how good a team was last year or is supposed to be this year that you can read our schedule and check off "easy win" and "no chance". The NFL just doesn't work that way. You can still guess what you think the outcome is, but I've heard way too many "You are crazy if you think we have a chance to win against XYZ". Go Bills