Cash

The point of our D (and the Colts, and Tampa's before this year) is to be filled with small, quick, finesse guys who can all fly to the ball and gang-tackle. It's a great philosophy for a dome team, because having a bunch of track stars on D can help combat high-powered offenses that are filled with their own track stars. But when the weather (and footing!) gets rough, our little guys just get shoved around.

What's really good about this is that the Bills can now open talks with Cowher, Holmgren, Shanahan, etc. That's not something you can really do while you've still got a coach under contract. But with an interim coach in place, you can be completely up front about making overtures to a new coach.

Last year's Super Bowl champs are on the line. Question mark?

San Fran owns Carolina's first round pick. They could very well be in the market for a QB, or at least more O-line help.

For the record, here are the official tiebreakers for draft position: 1. Strength of schedule 2. Coin flip Presumably they'll re-flip if the coin lands on edge. As for the draft itself, you never know for sure, but I'd guess the following teams will be looking to draft QBs: Cleveland (they hate both their current QBs) St. Louis Washington There are a few terrible teams that we probably won't have to compete with for QBs, either because they drafted one in the first round last year, or traded for one and gave him a giant contract with lots of guaranteed money: Detroit (Stafford) Kansas City (Cassel) Tampa Bay (Freeman) Then you've got the wild cards, who may or may not be looking for a QB in the first round. For these teams, it might just come down to who's there, i.e., they'll draft a QB if they think they're getting good value, but they won't reach for one: Tennessee (depends a lot on how Young finishes the season) Oakland (I think they'll pick Taylor Mays, but who knows?) San Francisco (also somewhat dependent on how Alex Smith plays the rest of the year) Also worth mentioning is Jacksonville, who'll probably pick behind us anyway, but in case they're in front of us, we should be pretty safe. They're still pretty happy with Garrard, and they drafted 2 OTs and signed 2 more last year.

It was reported as a death in the family. I haven't seen any reports of which relative.

Jauron has consistently underestimated the ability of his opponents to make field goals. There's the Dallas game on Monday night a few years ago, where we purposely avoided defending the quick out, even though Dallas had no time outs left, because Jauron didn't think they'd hit a 50+ yard field goal (wound up being 53). There's the Cleveland game from this year, where instead of letting Jamal Lewis score and having about 1:30 to score a TD to tie, Jauron kept trying to stuff Lewis, because he had some crazy notion that the Browns would mess up the snap, or that the Bills would block the kick. And then you've got this, where Jauron somehow thinks that 51 yards is "the edge" of Bironas' range, even though he's 8 of 13 from 50+ for his career, and 6 for his last 7. And a 10 second google search tells me that Bironas has hit at least one 60-yarder and at least one 56-yarder in his career, so 51 hardly seems to be the edge of his range. I don't know if Jauron doesn't look at the actual percentages before games, or if he just talks himself into ignoring them on game day, or what, but it's very frustrating when your team's game plan comes down to hoping the other guys miss, instead of trying to do something positive to prevent the kick in the first place. And all of the Jauron-logic in the first paragraph is paraphrased from his own post-game press conferences, by the way.

But he hasn't shown anything positive whatsoever. That's not a good sign.

Whitner was picked #8 overall, and despite being hurt, was still active for this game and available to play. Yet the Bills started not two but THREE safeties in front of him. That's pathetic. I really want to like the guy, but at some point, he needs to make a play on the field.

With McGee out, Johnson is significantly faster than anyone on our defense. Like, fast enough to run right by them. My prediction: Pain. No, wait, that's Clubber Lang's prediction. My prediction is at least 2 TDs where no Bills defender touches Chris Johnson.

Omon has 8 carries on the year, all in the first 3 games (that Lynch missed). The issue is that RB is easily one of the most injury-prone positions in football. Over the course of the remaining 8 games, it's almost guaranteed that at least one of our backs misses significant time (i.e., at least a quarter or so) in a given game. The chances of both going down in the same game aren't very high, but they are significant. And if it happens with no 3rd RB on the roster, our offense will be royally screwed. Of course, our offense is royally screwed no matter what, so I guess it doesn't really matter. But if we had a real offense, carrying 2 RBs could lead to a catastrophe. It's just another sign that the decision-makers are less than competent. It's a little like firing Turk right before the season: Probably didn't wind up making a difference on the field, but it's not a move that a winning organization would make. This is less significant, but the same kind of thing.

That's neither here nor there. The kids are watching, whether the NFL cares about them or not. And those kids are idolizing the players they're watching, and imitating them at every turn. So it's probably not a good thing if said idols are shilling for booze. Although at least it's a premium spiced rum. I'd feel more strongly about it if it was Wolfschmidt or something.

Excellent post. I'd add that in addition to drafting multiple OTs, I'd like to see at least 1 veteran brought in with the aim of starting. If said veteran got beat out by a rookie or one of our holdovers, great.

Well, the part where the NFL is essentially taking probably hundreds of thousands of dollars away from Gridiron Greats really sucks. But it's probably not good for our society to have children's idols shilling hard liquor during football games that children are watching. As a childless adult, I say screw the kids -- let the players strike the pose.

A lot of the problem with our run D has been overpursuit/bad angles/guys freelancing and leaving their gaps open. In theory, a smaller veteran might do a better job of shoring up those flaws than a bigger rookie. I don't buy it, but we'll see. The good news is that we probably won't lose time of possession quite so badly this week. It'll be hard for the Titans to put together any 10 play drives when Chris Johnson bursts through the line untouched on most carries. And since he's much faster than any of our linebackers (including Scott), and a fair amount faster than anyone in our secondary (unless McGee is healthy), he'll just be scoring on most of those carries. "Small, slow, and injured is no way to play defense, son."

I don't have time to look up Roscoe's details right now, but our only free agent WRs this offseason will be TO and Josh Reed. Maybe Jenkins, too, but I'm not sure about that. Evans, Hardy, Johnson, & Parrish are all signed for at least one more year.

Hmm, carrying 7 WRs, 2 RBs, and 1 FB is a rather unconventional setup. So if both of our backs get hurt on Sunday, what's the backup plan? McIntyre moves to tailback? Josh Reed (former RB) is the emergency tailback? Empty sets all day long? On the bright side, it's nice to have another big target that our QB won't be able to get the ball to.

So what's the plan then? Build up an elite line, then try to win the Super Bowl with a rookie QB? How about trying to find a QB while trying to fix the line? I think everyone understands that you need good O-line play to win in the NFL, but QB remains the most important position in football. In the NFL, you either have a quarterback or you're looking for a quarterback. We fall into the latter category. That doesn't mean we have to or should ignore the O-line.

So how would you like the QB position to be addressed?

You know, if they predicted that pick with the explanation, "The Bills are in love with drafting DBs high," I think it would be a solid mock. But when you say ridiculous things like, "(The Bills) need to upgrade at cornerback," it makes you sound stupid. The Bills have the #3 pass defense in the league right now. Also the worst run D in the league, terrible QBs, and a terrible O-line. So clearly the defensive backfield is not the problem. Try 20 minutes of research before writing the next mock draft, chief.

Nice troll. Kudos.

If I thought 10-6 or better was in any way possible, then I'd root for that. But I don't, so I'm rooting for wholesale changes. Only way to make that happen is with a bad record. During the individual games, however, I can't bring myself to root for the Bills to lose. If I'm watching them, I'm happy if they win and upset if they lose.

At this point, I'd prefer he start. If he spends the rest of the year on the bench, people might be able to convince themselves that he should be brought back next year.

Fitzpatrick >> Edwards Doesn't mean either one is starter material. From what I've seen, it looks like a bunch (but not all) of Fitzpatrick's bad throws come are caused by pressure, to the point where I think he could do a good job behind a good O-line. Trentative plays so scared that I really don't think he can ever be good, even behind the best O-line in the world. And even if he miraculously grows some balls and develops a pocket presence, there's still the problem of his arm. He doesn't have a big arm, and he's not very accurate. How often do you see him hit someone in stride? That's accuracy. Throwing the ball 4 yards to a stationary guy is not.

Video's up. Ten seconds in, seems to be the usual.