PromoTheRobot Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Michael Westbrook is allowed a "second chance" push for a TD, but when TH carries the ball in Oakland, his "forward momentum is stopped." No TD. Don't you love the NFL? PTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YOOOOOO Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Michael Westbrook is allowed a "second chance" push for a TD, but when TH carries the ball in Oakland, his "forward momentum is stopped." No TD. Don't you love the NFL? PTR 215323[/snapback] Yea but the refs, didnt say his forward progress was stopped(no whistles blew)...they said the ball never crossed the goalline(which it did)..... The Bills didnt review.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oneida Lake Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Yea but the refs, didnt say his forward progress was stopped(no whistles blew)...they said the ball never crossed the goalline(which it did)..... The Bills didnt review.... 215332[/snapback] One bad call and we might have been watching our Bills play today... Crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillsGuyInMalta Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Only if McGahee was in that game...you know its kind of sick to think about it, but if McGahee started the entire season, he might have gotten around 20 TDs on the season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thailog80 Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Michael Westbrook? He wasn't been in the league in years. It was Dorsey Levens who carried the ball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fake-Fat Sunny Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 Only if McGahee was in that game...you know its kind of sick to think about it, but if McGahee started the entire season, he might have gotten around 20 TDs on the season. 215363[/snapback] It is interesting to me that Wm\s play coincided with the word trickling (and rapidly becoming a torrent overtime) out of the Bills closed workputs that WM around the 3rd or 4th game of the season suddenly began showing an extra gear in his rushes and the word came out in media stories they plannned to give him more carries. Its hard to say which came first the chicken or the egg. Did WM really began to show some extra production in practice around week 3 or so and MM and the braintrust actually acted very quickly to get him more carries and then to install him as the starter on the depth chart by game 6 or so. Alternately, was WM ready to play and perform from the word go this season and they held him back from starting out of fear of his injury or hurting Henry's feelings and finally were forced by Henry's lack of production and our 0-4 start to platy WM despite their fears. No one can know for sure, but it actually looks to me from a look at how the players were used, their production (or lack thereof) and the injury situation as though MM/Clements did not sit on WM when he was ready to go and thus he could have scired more TDs or reversed our initial record if they had only played him. I thought WM looked very promising right out of the box, but it seemed to me his early productivity was lower because he was not ready to play and did not have the confidence in his knee to play as well as he could even if he was physically OK. These are his initial stats: Game 1- Jax 31/9 Game 2- Oak -3/2 Game 3- NE 0/0 Game 4- NYJ 42/8 Game 5- MI 111/26 Game 6- Ba 58/16 Game 7- AZ 102/30 Game 8- NYJ 132/37 Game 9- NE 37/14 Game 8- St L 100/20 Certainly one can tell a story of WM being held back and finally being let go to pick up some yards and put us in place for him cruising to an impressive 1000+ yard season in a rookie season with limited starts. However, I think a more accurate story which also fits these facts is one of WM being a less productive back initially because he has the usual learning almost all first year players need before they are the produtive vets they can become. The WM situation was worse than normal because he was re-learning his body post injury, and he and the brintrust were gaining additional confidence in what he could do. I think if you look at or remember the individual games I do not think that WM would have done any much if we went to him sooner. We probably would have lost the early games we lost and won the later games we won (unless the additional play resulted in some unfortunate injury) anywey even if we had thrown caution to the winds and pressured him to start sooner. In the first and fourth games I think WM got a chance to do as much as he could do (actually nicks or cramps to Henry forced us to use him more than MM seemed to want to) and i do not see him delivering wins to us in these games we lost even if he played more. In the 2nd and 3rd games, Henry actually produced the best yardage he produced this season and though one might blame him for falling down so the refs made what the NFL later admitted was a bad call denying him a TD that WM would have lurched into the endzone so we won that game. However, its not like WM was producing so well at that time whenever he touched the ball that he demanded it be given to him. The per carry average of these two players was not all that different at this point and though WM has become a far better RB than TH there is little that indicates to me from their play at this point that switching RBs would have made a big difference beyond the possibility of some better redzone performance (a poroblem solved by Clements with the use of Bannan and Adams on O). WM really forced the Bills through his performance in practice and due to some untimely injuries which limited TH's play to make him the starter. The irony here is that in terms of game performance WM actually was not the difference maker at that point. If the team played well as they did in games 5,7 and 8 we won, the team played well and WM played well. However, WM actually tended to pick up bigger yards later in each game as he wore down and punished the opposition amd it was not all like he singlehandedly pummeled the opposition with his production. His overall per carry yardage did not equal his production later in the season once he really got going. In the losses in games 6 and 9, the team sucked and WMs performance was not very good either, I think this is ironic in that his accomplishments are now so mythic one would think he can do no wrong, I think many partisans for example exaggerate differemces in blotz pick=up performance by WM and Henry. The blitz pick-up has never been the strongest part of the Henry game and like most youngsters he struggled with this his first year. However, overtime I remember him as getting a little better as he learned more an i was certainly not identified as a big problem for him during his second and third years. My recollection of this year is that in his brief appearance in the first four games, WN also suffered the usual rookie growing pains and was not very good at blitz pick-up either. His play in this regard did improve over the course of the season as he learned more and also as the productivity of WM. the Bills O and the ST set opponents back on their heels during the streak and there simply were not a lot of blitzes to pick-up as there are when we are forced to pass. My sense is that it is simplistic to say that the Bills output miraculous improved due to things WN brought to the game which TH did not. Instead it strikes me as a more truthful description that the offense overall got much better and WM as a better RB than TH did a better job of exploiing the good playcalling, the SE contributuionto the score and the field position wins provided by the D and the punting game. The fun good news in all of this and what should be scary for the rest of the league is that trying to analyze the individual game performance I can actually see a number of areas where WM really could improve his game. Can anyone say 2000 yards rushing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts