Cash

Huge game for the Birdman!!

Love the quick-hitter FB give on the goal line with the RB swinging out for a pitch. Doesn't work every time, but a solid play, and allows for the FB fake, RB toss play that was unstoppable in Tecmo Super Bowl.

FUMBLE! Way to go KW & Lawson! And a goal-line carry for Spiller.

1. TOUCHDOWN!!!!! 2. One of the ugliest long TD passes ever, but I'll take it! 3. TJ Graham made a play!! 4. TOUCHDOWN!!!!!!!!

Sneak! Looks to me like we got it, but we'll see about the spot... YES!!!!!!!!

I'd like to see a sneak or a naked bootleg here.

EJ looks SO much better today than he did last week. That quick checkdown/swing pass deal to Jackson was actually a really nice decision and a good throw. So far, he looks like a guy who plays terrible on the road and decent at home.

Worse, I think. IIRC, he's picked us to win twice -- last week against Pittsburgh, and also against Cleveland? Not sure of the earlier one, but I'm fairly confident that he's picked us to win twice, and we've lost both of those games. If I'm right, he's actually 5-5 picking us to win or lose outright. Update: couldn't find his pick for Week 8 vs. the Saints, but no one thinks he picked the Bills, right? I checked all the rest, and I was correct -- he's predicted Bills wins against PIT & CLE, and been wrong both times. 5-5 overall, 5-3 when predicting the Bills to lose. I think the Bills have a shot in this game, but it depends on what team shows up. Our two worst performances of the year, both as a team overall and EJ specifically, were the first Jets game and Pittsburgh -- both on the road. I'm hoping that the first game was more of a home/road split thing than a "Rex Ryan owns us" thing. Fingers crossed. See above -- Rodak (so far) would have been better served just going against us every week. I'm hoping that turns around, though. The Bills just need to revert back to playing the way they played against NE, Carolina, Baltimore (defense only), Cincy, Miami (again, defense only), NO, & KC. That level of play is enough to beat most of the teams in the back half of our schedule -- including Pittsburgh, but we instead played our worst game of the year and got destroyed.

The qualifier on the list the Bills put out is a minimum of 150 attempts, which seems silly and arbitrary. However, dropping the minimum attempts would also add Matt Ryan & Joe Flacco to the list, and both would slot in below EJ: http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/67012/bills-brass-comes-to-manuels-defense Honestly, I think it's pretty meaningless no matter what. There can't be much of a correlation between a guy's first 5 games and his whole career. Any five game stretch is way too small a sample to mean anything.

The post you quoted was 223 words long. (Thanks, MS Word!) If that's approaching War and Peace length for you, maybe it's time to make the switch from reading a message board to listening to talk radio? Or you could get your Bills discussion from twitter -- 140 character limit puts everything squarely in Ivanhoe territory. Yes, this has been discussed extensively in other threads (MODS PLEASE MERGE INTO 200 PAGE SUPER-THREAD), and the Cowboys are the only team that has spend consecutive first-round picks on QBs, although I still think Walsh being a supplemental pick makes it a lot different. I think we'll eventually see a team spend back-to-back #1 picks on QBs in the regular draft, but I don't know if it'll be soon. I think if this past draft had been a better one for QBs, you could have seen Cleveland make that move. Drafting a 29-year-old QB in the 20s is the kind of #1 QB pick that lends itself to drafting a QB in the top 10 the following year. Drafting a 23-year-old "raw prospect" QB at #16 is less conducive to going back to the well the following year. Now, if EJ doesn't show any progress in the final 7 games, I'd be all for drafting another QB in the first, but I still don't think it would happen. Wow, that was a very interesting an depressing article; thanks for sharing. So we're at 13 years, almost certainly 14 after this year. (Even if we won out, we'd probably get bumped by a 10-6 team.) The all-time record is 25 years without a playoff appearance, jointly held by the Arizona Cardinals and Washington Dixies. Still a ways to go before we threaten that record. Even if Marrone is a bust, we're looking at an additional 3-4 coaches to take us there.

Geno Smith's starting WRs when he lit us up in week 3 were Stephen Hill, Jeremy Kerley, and a gimpy Santonio Holmes. I don't need EJ to light it up, but he needs to play better than he did last week. No excuses.

Bingo.

That's very good to hear! Tuel is one thing, but there's no excuse for EJ to underthrow guys on a deep route. Overthrowing is generally pretty safe, and if the guy is fast enough to catch up to the throw, it can be the difference between a TD and a guy being caught while he's making the catch.

That's what I figured. Thanks!

Mine was for $17.55. Was it prorated based on how many you bought? I only buy a Madden game every 3 years or so.

Conversely, there are times when the rainbow is better served, most typically on deep bombs. EJ's long ball accuracy has not been up to snuff thus far, and one of the main reasons IMO is because he's been throwing too flat of a ball. Makes it harder for receivers to adjust. Good for him that he can throw a laser-type pass 40-50 yards, but those are less likely to connect. Tuel's weak arm requires him to step up and huck it at about a 45-degree angle to throw a bomb, which worked out in the case of the Goodwin throw. (And failed miserably on the incompletion to Graham a couple plays earlier -- that throw was probably 10 full yards underthrown and fluttered badly.) Lewis has shown a pretty good touch on deep balls so far, which I love. Overall, I'll take the strong-armed QB and try to improve his technique on the deep throws over a guy with marginal physical tools.

Very interesting point -- hadn't thought of that, or even considered if the 2 injuries were to the same knee or not.

And if TJ turns it around and starts playing well, we'll flip on him too. Gleefully! There's no vendetta, it's just that this is a mid-to-late round talent drafted (through no fault of his own) in the 3rd round ahead of Russell Wilson and T.Y. Hilton, who has now been sold to us as a playmaker/key contributor by two different coaching staffs, and who continues to disappoint over and over again.

Pretty spot on. Kiko has glamour stats that put him way above the competition, regardless of actual quality of play. The #1 glamour stat for QBs is wins, and Geno has his team 5-4. They finish 7-9 or worse, he probably has no chance. They make the playoffs, he's a mortal lock.

/thread

Sweet, that means we'll probably win. Remember, they were all hired for their ability to spout nonsense into a camera without losing self-respect, not ability to predict football games.

I didn't exactly hate the Lawson signing, but I'd say I was fairly skeptical. But he's been really good, especially against the run. I have to give the Bills credit -- he's pretty much been exactly what Buddy Nix said he would be at the time of the signing. Branch looked like a solid signing at the time, and has held up to that. He's not exactly a world-beater, but a good player, and very necessary once Carrington got hurt. I was on board with the Sheppard/Hughes trade at the time, and saw it as basically losing nothing and gaining a lottery ticket. Hughes has played pretty well and looks like a decent rotational pass rusher. This is more of a $10 win on a scratch off than a Powerball jackpot, but a win nonetheless. I was very underwhelmed by the Legursky signing at the time, and remain so. I think he's well below average, and only looks good when compared to Colin Brown. I still wish they'd done more to address this spot in the offseason. (And no, I don't mind that they let Levitre walk. My beef is just with their Plan B once his price tag got too high.) The Thad Lewis trade, in hindsight, was a gigantic steal! Reason being, they traded a special-teams LB who was going to get cut anyway, and got back a QB who doesn't suck and shows some competence as a starter. Lewis isn't very good, but he does some positive things, and he's shown that you can win a game or two with him as your QB. It's hard to ask a lot more of a backup QB, and at this point, I think I'd be fine with Lewis entering camp next year as the primary backup, or at least in competition for the backup job. I like him. Leonhard was a nice signing as a veteran who knows the defense, who can be like an extra coach on the field and in the locker room to help the young guys integrate into the system. Plus, he made a couple nice INTs while Byrd was out. Now that Byrd's getting back up to speed, I'm glad to see his PT diminish, but he remains a solid veteran presence in a very young secondary.

I just hope EJ can stay healthy this time. Good or bad, I want him to take every snap the rest of the season. Let's see what we've got and see how much he can improve over the course of half a season.

Sheldon Richardson of the Jets has arguably been better, but a D-lineman who doesn't get sacks isn't going to get this kind of award. Just like an O-lineman will probably never win any offensive awards. I think Kiko is the very clear frontrunner at this point, and on a personal level, he's been a VERY pleasant surprise to me. On the offensive side, I agree it's probably Geno at the front of the pack right now, but I don't think it's a massive lead. He's incredibly up and down, and pretty much singlehandedly cost them a couple games on the down side. If Eddie Lacy keeps up his charge, I think there's a good chance he overtakes Geno. Heck, if EJ comes back and looks good in leading us to a 6-1 record the rest of the way, I think he'll have a very realistic chance of winning it. Even though his overall stats maybe wouldn't match Geno's or Lacy's, QBs are so over-judged on their team's record that EJ would be in play with a strong 2nd half.

I can't stop watching replays of that play, and every time I watch it, it kills me how wide-open Stevie is. Any kind of throw to the middle of the endzone -- even all the way at the back of the endzone -- produces a TD. Aaagh. I don't think I've ever said anything positive about Jeff Tuel, but I don't feel any anger or hate towards him. If anything, pity. Poor Jeff Tuel. He is who he is. I don't think it's fair to ask him to be a competent NFL QB, especially as a rookie. I don't necessarily kill Hackett for calling a pass or even that play, although I will continue to endlessly kill Hackett for having ANY play, much less a critical play, where TJ Graham is the QB's first read. If it's a clutch situation, that is the last guy we should be throwing to.