Coby Fan

If you remember back to George Allen and his over the hill Redskin teams, there was doubt about the draft being upheld by the courts then. If the draft had been declared illegal, George would have looked very smart for trading so many draft picks for experienced players. Since the draft was upheld at the time, George was considered a bit of a nut case for trading away the future of the team.

If you look at the 1964 Highlights, linked to yesterday's RIP Cookie postings, you will see some great pass blocking by a running back. When done right, it is a thing of beauty.

The Ralph is cheap BS is very popular on this board, but the facts speak otherwise. If you read Steve Tasker's book, he tells how players were concerned during the early 90's about sitting out the last game or two once the Bills had captured home field status for the playoffs. The Bills agreed to pay players for any performance bonus $ they were projected to receive based on their 15 game stats.

Fred was a 10 year Bill, 5 times in pro bowl, blocked the field goal against the Jets that ended a decade of bad karma and that brought the Bills back to the playoff. We let him go in 1989, and he played for San Fran and the Pats for 3 more years. Yes, I think we let him go a couple of years too soon. After being there for the rebuilding years, it would have been nice for him to play in one of the super bowls. And don't you think our D line would have done better against OJ Anderson with Freddie in the middle? I think Fred was let go due to his big mouth not his play. And I can see why he has ill will towards the Bills to this day. Maybe we need to put the "Bermuda triangle" up on the wall of fame to set things straight, and get some of that Smerlas Karma back. I agree, Bilicheat has coach speak down to a science. Everything is calculated with this guy.

Looks like Bill thinks he has to plan for Roscoe. I don't see why the hate for Fred. If we had kept him a few more years, alongside Bruce, we might have won a superbowl.

Tough day for the Buffalo born, St. Joes grad who must be in his mid 60's by now. Maybe the network teams don't spend much time preparing for the Bills broadcast, since they know so little of the USA sees the games anyway.

While QB's, receivers,and defenders from recent years may have more skill than those from the 60's and 70's, I think the quality of running backs has declined from the past. If you are old enough to remember Jim Brown, you would have to put him first, by a long shot, above all other backs. I have never seen that pure, violent, physical power in another player, at any position, in any sport. For second best, with a great blend of power and speed you need to pick the Juice. I believe he is the fastest Bills running back ever.For years after he retired I had difficulty watching some very good Bills runners ( Thurman, Joe Cribs) without noticing how long they took to get up to full speed. With OJ, you got maximum speed from the first step. When Fergie was a rookie, the Bills faced 9 men in the box on every play, and still the Juice was making great runs. OJ may be a low life bum who should remain locked up forever, but he certainly was the most dominant player that ever suited up for the Bills.

If the Bills are picking first, I hope they find a guy with Hall of Fame potential, lineman or QB, or trade back in the 1st round for more picks. It is hard to see how 1st pick in the draft QB's are better then say a top 5 pick, and getting more picks in the early rounds may be more important. The Bills have a 50% HOF track record when picking first in the draft (Juice and Bruce both great picks, Walt Paltulski and Tom Cousineau both very bad picks). The recent #1 picks have been very underwhelming in their NFL careers ( Tim Couch, Courtny Brown, Mike Vick, David Carr, Carson Palmer, Eli Manning, Alex Smith, Mario Williams, Jamarcus Russell, Jake Long, Matt Stafford and Sam Bradford). Of course teams that pick first are often the teams with the weakest scouting and coaching, and so we should not be surprised that the first pick in the draft is a bust so often.

And whats up with the shopping carts that those guys use to collect the empty bottles with? Do they buy them or are they donated by the grocery stores?

Pittsburgh sucked in the 1960's. I think that is why , at the time of the merger, they got pushed into the AFL/AFC. No NFL fans wanted their teams going to the AFL conference. Certainly the Packers were going to stay with the senior league at that time.

I hope we can turn around our beloved Bills. Just a few young, hard working players who look like they care and want to get better will give me some hope. Give me a Talley, a Tasker, if not a Bruce and a Jimbo. I don't think this is about money or Ralph being thrifty. I am sure he wants to win a Super Bowl as much as any fan. It is about the ability to pick good scouts, coaches and players. Here the Bills and Ralph have clearly failed. All the Ralph is cheap or Ralph farts dust remarks are pretty sophomoric and don't add anything to the discussion. What makes winning in all major pro sports so tough is that drafting and free agency signing requires the team to project what a very young man will do with his life and his dedication to the game after he is given a boat load of money. Will he still play angry? Will he work out and get bigger and stronger? Will he party, have run ins with the law and get suspended for taking a short cut with anabolic steroids? So far the Bills have guessed wrong all too often. We have hung on to dead wood, when the better run teams (such as the Pats*) seem to know when to cut their losses and move on with players. The better teams also do build their core through the draft and then add the experienced free agent that fills a specific role. I like that the Bills are finally cutting and trading those players who will not contribute to the turn around. I would like to see the younger players on the roster with more playing time at QB, D line and LB to see if we have any hidden gems. It sucks for us older Bills fans that we are now seeing, for the 5th time in the last 50 years the worst team in the league wearing our uniforms. It sucks for the younger fans who have never seen the Bills beat the Pats* or in the playoffs. It sucks to be Ralph and to know that your poor choices will likely mean that the rebuilding of your team may well take longer than the time you have left on this planet.

Lets look at the Bills history of first pick in the draft success. We took OJ and Bruce with first picks ( I am old enough to remember the OJ pick was a real no-brainer but the Bruce pick was somewhat controversial for the first few years). Both are in the HOF and are truly among the best picks in Bills history. We also picked Walt Putalski and Tom Cousineau first in the draft and neither was ever an average player let alone an NFL star. So our record, with different coaches and GM's but the same owner making the final decision is 50% home run and 50% strike out. Before we think that the Bills are somehow more snake bit than other teams picking in the first spot, let review the 1999 to 2010 first picks. Some are average NFL starters but not superstars ( Mike Vick, Eli Manning, Carson Palmer) some are not even average (Courtny Brown, Tim Couch, David Carr, Alex Smith, Jamarcus Russell)and the last few are still in the too early to tell range (Sam Bradford, Matt Stafford, Jake Long). It is hard to imagine any of these players, by themselves, turning around the Bills. Other than the running ability of Mike Vick, do we need to adjust our game plan for any of these first picks( as teams had to do for Bruce and OJ)? If you can get a 50% return on a high draft pick (1st two rounds), and you can indeed trade the first pick for a first and a second, you may have a better chance of finding the difference maker the team is so lacking by trading out of first..

The issue with leaving his team to his wife is that Mary Wilson is a second wife, about the same age as Ralph's daughters, and not their mother. Think of this as a family business, where the kids come to work and expect some day to take over. Only dad dumps mom ( Ralph's divorce was the largest settlement in Michigan history at the time) and now there is a new wife who can expect to inherit the business. Ralph might have to keep his plans secrete, or live to be 200, in order to keep the women in his life from castrating him.

I don't know what evidence you guys have who keep giving Ralph the too cheep to hire a name coach label. Ralph has 3 times hired a former NFL coach of the year (1969, 1978,2006) and gotten 7-20-1 (John Rauch), 37-36 (Chuck Knox) and 7-9x3 plus this season for his efforts. Ralph has 7 times promoted one of his assistants and gotten first picks like OJ and Bruce out of those disasters with only Wade Philips (30-9) having a winning record ( Joel Collier did have one 9-4-1 season but finished 13-16-1 over 2 plus seasons). Ralph has hired up and coming assistants from other teams only twice ( Mike Mularky 14-18 and Greg Williams 17-31). Ralphs 2 successful hires were career losing coaches, fired by their teams who resurected their careers in Buffalo (Lou Sabin and Marv Levy). Based on this analysis, it is best for Ralph to avoid any successful NFL coaces, avoid any assistants, do not promote from within, but find a coach who has been fired from a team worse than ours.It may be time to bring someone fired by the Lions, Chiefs, Raiders etc.

The issue here is that RW's wife Mary is not the mother to the three daughters. Ralph can not leave the team to his daughters unless he has the cash/assets to match the team's value so he can take care of his wife. (not sure what Michigan law would require, but most states require your wife gets 1/2 of your estate) I remember years ago RW divorced wife #1 and at that time paid the largest alamony settlement in Michigan history. Mary is closer in age to RW's daughters than to wife #1. So the Bills fans are going to get screwed because when RW was having his midlife crisis he dumped his wife (and the mother of those girls) for a much younger woman. RW screwed the new wife, got screwed by the 1st wife in court, and will screw the Bills fans when dead.

This post has some great insights into what gets in your blood if you are from Buffalo, but also what breaks your heart when you return for a visit. I left Buffalo at 18 to go to college in Rochester, moved on to Richmond, Virginia, Washington DC and now 34 years later am living in the Catskills and still answer Buffalo when asked where I am from. I have listened to Sabres games late at night in my car in the garage when I happened to pick up an AM station and have had Bills seasons tickets for years despite a 5 hour drive to games. The Sabres being on MSG in recent years is great, but the Buffalo based ads makes it look like the growth industries in Buffalo are lawsuits and leg vein treatment. I notice over the years that redevelopment in Buffalo looks like a zero sum game. I came back to ride the main street train and to see the redeveloped theater district a few tears back, only to see Deleware Ave looking very run down. (As a Canisius High Alum, this was distressing). More recently, Deleware looks better but Main Street looks empty. I follow the news from Buffalo on line, and was very excited when there was a series in the News on going to a metro government. Nothing came from that as far as I can see. The Niagara River bridge debate is just silly. It don't think that business brought in from out of town with tax breaks is ever the answer. Those businesses move on when the tax breaks expire. What Buffalo needs is to help some local people grow business with Buffalo roots. Setting up low cost space for start-ups with technical help from the University community would be great. I was hopeful that Govenor Spitzer was going to put the resources into UB to make it a true flagship center for education and research in New York State. Now once again, when the polititian get caught with the hooker, it is Buffalo that gets screwed.

I remember one of my all time favorite Bills- James Lofton- being rescued from the Al Davis dog house and helping us to a few superbowls and himself to the HOF. Maybe Porter might be worth a look. I would give up any two of our wide outs except for Evans to get him.

I remember WRGB letting us vote on bills vs jets vs pats for the AFC game back in the 90's. I also remember bills fans always voting early and often and the bills being the fan's choice. We should ask the station to bring back the vote. With a game like this week's we would surely find more support for Bflo-NE since WRGB also broadcasts into Mass.

If we want to have our elected pols help us stop Daniel Snyder from killing the NFL we need to write them and demand lobbying reform. Who buys all those high price boxes that allow the Skins to lead the league in $? I would guess that they are snapped up by lawyers, consultants, lobbyists etc who are using them to influence our elected reps and senators and all the regulators and government toads who can do their clients a big favor in return for a nice day at the stadium. Washington is a one company town and so putting real regulation on the use of stadium boxes for the purpose of influencing the government would bring Danny Boy's revenue down a few million. I am thinking of starting a Bills Fans FOR John McCain in 08 group now.

Back when Madden was coaching, most fans assumed that he was only a figurehead as coach and that Al Davis was calling the shots. Today I am less sure, since with at least a dozen coaches since Madden, the Raiders have never achieved their past glory(Tom Flores era was short lived). So maybe Madden was a real coach and the legend of "Al Davis the mastermind" behind the Raiders success is just a lot of hot air that has kept Madden out of the HOF.

How can any Bills fan stop at two? OJ was the fastest player I ever saw from his 1st step,so much so that for years I thought other runners like Joe Cribs, Greg Bell, Ronnie Harmon etc were hesitating upon the hiking of the ball. Thurman was the most complete player-runner,blocker,reciever-that we ever put on the field. So as good as Willis may become, it is hard not to go for one of these two RB's. We have nobody on the line who would have started for the electric company or for the SuperBills. Kent Hull and Joe D are my favorites due to heart and ability respectively. Defense could always use an end like Bruce but Robert James was a true lockdown corner in his day.

Drew turning it around and playing better is great for anyone who wants the nice guys to win. Unfortunately the kind of guy you wouldn't mind your sister dating is not usually the most successful player or coach in the NFL. My biggest regret at our 4 superbowl losses is how our classy coach got beat by the douche bag coaches from the Giants and Cowboys- two world class examples of dysfunctional personalities making it to the top of their profession. The HOF is full players who are a**holes but who got it done on the field. Please,let us enjoy, for at least one week, the success of a player who has overcome some tough times and still is regarded as a nice guy.

Could we get a spell cheque on this board?

If we trade TH what do we have to back up Willis? TH has a low cost and will be hungry if he has to replace an injured Willis. I agree with the posters who see the Bills as holding all the cards and that having a starting capable RB on the bench as a requirement for a playoff team. Look at Bettis off the bench in Pittsburgh. Remember Kenny Davis in the greatest comeback game? Keep TH unless the Cowboys will give us back our 1st rd. pick for him.

I have noticed that Drew makes his bigest boners after he has been knocked down a few times in a game. He has looked better since our OL has been protecting his cranium a little better. I think that is why in the past two seasons he started well but went south with his play-he became punch drunk as the seasons progressed and his judgement and reaction time were slowed just enough to make a good pro QB look like a division III player. I would like to see some more blowouts so JP can come in and get some reps without heavy pressure, and our o-line can continue to improve so that next year we can have JP and Drew fight it out for the starting job behind a solid line with a probowl level back and two dangerous WR's. Drew is old for his years, having labored without a good ground game in NE and having come into the league before he started shaving. I would love to see him succeed and hold onto his job for another year so JP can be brought along slowly, but I'm not sure how many hard hits Drew has left before he starts talking and walking like Ali.