BillsVet

Care to comment on how 5'7 165# Nickey Robey is the one draped all over 6'7 260# Jimmy Graham or 6'6 265# Rob Gronkowski?

I'm still amazed they called the QB keeper for the 2 point conversion and other designed QB runs. He's going to get hurt running into the teeth of a defense. That said, his escapability is outstanding. Now to work on the passing accuracy and OTM throws.

Glenn is being paid to play LT. No team invests 60M on someone to play RT. In fairness, Whaley took Kouandijio and Miller is 2014 and 2015 respectively. But it's a huge swing and miss to draft an OT who had medical issues and then watch him not make the starting roster.

You forgot the injury excuse. That gets Buffalo every year. Yet, at WR, Robert Woods goes for 10 and 162 and people still say the receiving group is battered. Charles Clay targeted 4 times. The Bills are what they are.

Some poster's egos are on the line and now bruised so they're forced to make excuses (injuries, coaching). Or, they flat out attack other posters when their prognostications fall woefully short. No GM since Polian has had more resources to win with and yet, the Bills routinely find themselves among the average to mediocre teams. 9 out of the last 10 seasons this team has won 6-9 games. If that ain't mediocrity I don't know what is.

Teams don't typically remain mediocre to average for 4-5 years. They either get above average or sink into being bad. Amazingly, the Bills have rode the rails of mediocrity/averge for the past 5 years (2011-2015) where they've gone 35-45. They've won between 6 and 9 games for nine out of the past ten seasons. People point to Whaley's drafting/trading/signing some solid players. While's he's made some good additions, the goal is to win games and not build individual positions. Right now, he's not done enough of that to warrant keeping his job.

If the season is divided in halves of 8 games, the Bills have recorded 5-3 results 5 times since the playoff drought began in 2000: 2002 1st half: 5-3 (finished 8-8) 2004 2nd half: 6-2 (finished 9-7) 2008 1st half: 5-3 (finished 7-9) 2011 1st half: 5-3 (finished 6-10) 2014 1st half: 5-3 (finished 9-7) Over the years we've seen a lot of changes and no results. The demoralizing aspect to this remains that changes are necessary to advance beyond mediocre to average quality of play. Right now it doesn't look like ownership is willing to be bold and find people who can develop a team identity consistent with winning in the modern NFL.

Doug Whaley saying he's "excited" is a broken record. He probably gets excited going to the dentist for a root canal.

TT was a UFA after 4 years apprenticing in Baltimore. I know Denver attempted to sign him, but he went to Buffalo to have a chance at starting. I'm not so sure he'd be in demand to start many other places save for the woeful franchises as a stop-gap option. It's 8 games into his 2nd full season of starting and his completion percentage is now beneath 60% and his yards per attempt is about 6.4. Last season at this time he was well north of a 65% completion rate and around 7.8 yards per attempt. We're getting to the point, as with every QB, when fans begin debating whether it's the QB or the scheme at fault. Something tells me it's a little of both with the QB having issues processing the speed of the game. Opposing DC's caught up to TT's tendencies and capitalized on his weaknesses.

And how many coaches do you need to develop a game plan and communicate it. Seems like there's too many chefs in the kitchen.

You can't have a QB controversy unless you actually draft QB's. Buffalo hasn't taken a QB who may have challenged the incumbent starter since Trentative in 2007. The Bills have a GM who's gathering players for a HC. Both individuals are building a roster that won't be anything better than average. And going from 8-8 to 10-6 or better is a huge leap that will be hard without a QB who can take over a game and/or make up for sub-par defense or a poor running game.

Wasn't McShay discredited long ago on TBD?

Worst receiving corps in 25 years? Now there's an exaggeration. I don't understand why, with Harvin oft-injured then retiring and Hogan leaving via UFA that they wouldn't look at the WR position this off-season. Whaley entered the the 2016 off-season with an injured Watkins and added the likes of Leonard Hankerson, Jarrett Boykin, Greg Sales, Greg Little, and Walter Powell. This, after having another injury waiting to happen in Goodwin and only Woods on the roster. His response? Draft Kolby Listenbee in the 6th round. I get that talking personnel and risk is beyond some here, but shouldn't a NFL GM anticipate that the WR corps was weak and/or banged up to begin with? And that replacing the departures with who they did probably wasn't a good solution?

It's not hard to stop TT and this offense. Load up to stop the run and force him to throw the ball. Case in point, the league's then 31st ranked run defense stopped Buffalo's running game and made TT throw the ball. When he starts making more down-field throws like he did with Goodwin, defenses will back off. But he doesn't do that enough and so you get what occurred at Miami. And I get that he's without Watkins and Woods, although Clay is used sparingly in this offense. And McCoy has only 20 catches for 97 yards in 7 games. Buffalo's passing offense is becoming more dink and dunk in order to minimize turnovers. People point to the 2 INT's he's thrown in 7 games, but there's a cost to not being aggressive. TT's yards per attempt and accuracy have both fallen dramatically from 2015.

Why are you making personal your disagreement with another poster? This is a debate and no one's attacking you personally.

Success at the QB position is quantified solely by lack of INT's? TT is what he is: a guy who won't hurt you, but won't win you games either. So much has to go right for the Bills to win with TT as their starting QB. A QB should cover up shortcomings to a certain degree when everything doesn't work. TT doesn't do that.

TT through 7 games in 2015: 124 compl. / 176 att. / 70.5% compl. % / 1436 yards passing / 8.2 yards per attempt / 11 TD passes / 4 INT TT through 7 games in 2016 (in essentially the same system): 117 compl. / 193 att. / 60.6 compl. % / 1297 yards passing / 6.7 yards per attempt / 8 TD passes / 2 INT

We're going to be seeing teams replicate what Miami did against Buffalo today. Load up against the run and force Taylor to make throws. And that's going to be difficult for TT because he doesn't read the field, has average at best pocket presence, and isn't very accurate.

Not having a franchise QB. Hard to come from behind without consistently making throws.

But why is the deep ball not there like it was in his first season? I figured over an off-season teams would try to take that away and they largely have save for the Jets game. Without an intermediate or deeper passing game, I'm not sure where the offense is headed. They're not going to be running it for 150+ a game all season. The throws I've seen him attempt are largely to the sideline (like last year) and not longer than 10 yards, including OTM. If teams gear up to stop the run, one would think In terms of experience, TT is not Wilson. The former had been in the NFL 4 seasons before taking the starting job and wasn't a rookie as Wilson was. The drop in passing yards and YPA is not good no matter how you slice it.

Tyrod's play has slipped from last season in a few key metrics, namely yards per attempt (YPA) and passing yards. He's attempting about the same number of passes per game (27) but is more than 35 passing yards per game less than 2015. As a result, his YPA is down more than a yard per attempt. That's not good. Someone will say they're working without Watkins and that's true. But this precipitous fall f rom effectively his first season starting in the NFL is concerning. At some point a defense will wise up and dare him to beat them. The run game has been very good but it won't always be this way. The often made comparison is Russell Wilson, who never experienced a big drop in passing yards or YPA from one season to the next. And now that TT has better line play in front of him he should be showing improvement, not regression. Weren't we told before the season he'd have more of the playbook open this year?

The season is a marathon and not a sprint or even a middle distance event. If success were measured by the first 5 weeks of the season, plenty of teams in the past would have made the playoffs that didn't at the end of the year. If the goal is to make the playoffs, strong defense and enough offense can work. Even Dick Jauron went 13-3 in 2001 with the Bears. But it's not a plan to be a dominant team.

TT is averaging about 180 yards passing per game, with a yards per attempt at less than 6.5. This, as opposed to his 2015 season when he was around 215 yards per game and 8 yards per attempt. That's a significant drop off. The Bills can never go down early in a game and if they do, needing TT to throw them to victory isn't a good idea.

His contract makes him all but un-tradeable. It should be disconcerting to ownership that the GM handed out the largest contract in team history to a guy who doesn't have his stuff together off the field. That said, Marcell Dareus has experienced personal tragedies far beyond what most people ever do. It sounds like his problems go deeper than ADHD.

When the Bills lose, we hear it's about the whole season and not one game. When they win (and it was an outstanding win) sometimes I think people want a ticker tape parade and toasting of everyone affiliated with the team. Whatever happened to measured happiness? Waiting and seeing is a lost art.