Jerry Sullivan made a great point in his column

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about. A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others. In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part. No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM. Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make. With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us. If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs. They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up. Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward). The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman. This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team. The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season. Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up. DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM. Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job. His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents. However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD. His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants. In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails. Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy. The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC. He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance. it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want. However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

[ajzepp]

Holy CRAP!

[Dawgg]

Dear FFS,

 

I like your posts. I find them rather insightful. However, I simply cannot devote the time to read them in full. To me, that is a shame. I would appreciate it if you could make some efforts to post in a more succinct fashion so that I can enjoy them without devoting 10 minutes to read them.

 

Sincerely,

 

Dawgg

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[The Dean]

Dear FFS,

 

I like your posts.  I find them rather insightful.  However, I simply cannot devote the time to read them in full.  To me, that is a shame.  I would appreciate it if you could make some efforts to post in a more succinct fashion so that I can enjoy them without devoting 10 minutes to read them.

 

Sincerely,

 

Dawgg

581168[/snapback]

 

 

You could always print them and then read them in the crapper later. (I'm not suggesting that FFS's posts are crap...they are NOT.) I just like a good read in the crapper...that's all.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

I've got to ask...which is longer? Sully's column, or your analysis of it?

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[Bear]

I really have nothing to say, I just wanted to reply with the full original post left in, so that this can be the longest page ever!

 

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[ajzepp]

LMFAO!!

 

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

I really have nothing to say, I just wanted to reply with the full original post left in, so that this can be the longest page ever! 

581180[/snapback]

 

 

 

Yeah, on second thought, I really didn't need to quote ALL of this:

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[Rico]

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job

581155[/snapback]

In 2006??? Which teams would that be?

[Lori]

 

Yeah, on second thought, I really didn't need to quote ALL of this:

581182[/snapback]

You turkeys are part of the reason my VZW (with MobileWeb) bill went up $20 this month. You know how long it takes to scroll through all that on a cellphone?

 

Thanks a lot.

 

[Kultarr]

I don't see that there is a contradiction.

 

He's saying that a strong head coach that is unafraid to express his opinion and challenge the rest of the brain trust is very much needed. I agree with this completely, as I think part of the problem the last 5 years has been that the show has been directed by a single person's viewpoint and agenda far, far too often. Creative tension and seeing other approaches would be grand.

 

He's also saying that the head coach should have enough chutzpah to carry out the plan on the field. That is, in his relationship with his subordinates (players and assistant coaches), he shouldn't have to take crap (players leaving the standium at kick-off), have enough authority to get rid of slackers who won't get with the program, etc. Basically, be able to say, "do it my way or you won't play," and have the ability to back it up.

 

In a word, Sully is describing the attributes of real, functional leadership. And, less subtly exposing that the regime, and particularly the head coach, last year had frighteningly little of it.

[MavBavButav]

i read it and i agree

[jester43]

Holy CRAP! 

581158[/snapback]

well said!

[stevestojan]

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

 

 

Weird, in the time it took me to read that, my second testicle finally descended. Nice!

[EndZoneCrew]

Sullivan=diarrhea of the pen

[eball]

I'm disappointed to admit that I never read FFS' posts any more. It's not that he doesn't occasionally stumble upon a good point or two...it's just that I look at TSW as a diversion, and not a way to occupy the next three hours.

[jad1]

So does this mean that Jauron is going to pass on 3rd and 1 or keep throwing while protecting a 21 point lead? Because if it does, I don't want anything to do with him!

 

In his Monday column Jerry Sullivan said:

 

"It's good for employees to be comfortable with each other, but creative tension is nice, too. At this critical stage in the Bills' history, they need a coach who can stand up to Wilson and challenge Levy, who has never been a GM in the NFL. They need a forceful leader who can impose his vision of winning football. "

 

It is totally true point that empolyees need be comfortable with each other but creative tension is nice to.

 

In fact on the good TEAMs like NE creative tension and even conflict over real issues is a real part of what it is all about.  A great example was seen in NE year before last when Boy-genius Bill Belicheck screwed up big time and oushed Lawyer Milloy to the wall over a couple a hundred thousand bucks and Milloy said see you and took the highest offer which happened to be from our Bills.

 

Talk about tension! NE players spoke clearly and loudly that BB had screwed up and misread the situation. NE ended up paying for this when the lowly Bills invigorated by the prescence of Milloy (in one of his first sessions reviewing film he called the Bills players publicly for laughing as one of their teammates on the OL got steamrolled by an opposing ruaher- that is not how champions support each other by excoriating their own) and whatever intelligence he could give to the Bills. We beat the crap out of them 31-0.

 

However, with the truth of labeling BB's stupid action as stupid, they also proved to be a TEAM and sucked it up when things did not go well for them like a series of injuries to Colvin and others.  In the end, they spoke truth about the facts (ex. BB screwed up bigtime) but they supported each other in a time of crisis and in the end it was NE who finished off the season by beating the Bills 31-0 on their road to an SB win.

 

Sully finishes off the paragraph above by claiming we need a forceful leader who can "impose" his will and vision upon the Bills,

 

This is a contradictory demonstration of clear stupidity on Sully's part.  No one IMPOSES their will or vision on a team and expects it to be a TEAM.  Like it or not, the reality is that all the NFL players are making more # per year than they could reasonably could have expected to make.  With reasonable fiscal management (ie the opposite of Travis Henry and the average length of NFL career the players are set for life.

 

We Americans generally want to do the right thing, but if anyone tells us what to do we may very well do the opposite thing even if it hurts us.  If you want to have good results you just cannot screw around and tell folks do this or do that.

 

Sully just does not seem to get it that the winning teams are actually the good TEAMs.  They have leadership that earns respect not simply by being right (or being wrong but never admitting it like some leaders) but by earning respect by being clear, honest, and straight up with folks.

 

I was not in the room so I do not know for sure what he said, but I understand that BB actually apologized to NE for misreading the Milloy situation and screwing up.  Unfortunately, many folks have not seem to realize that admiting error is actually an important part of putting error behind you and moving forward on a vision that you all share.

 

Sully lays out completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph as facts.

 

I can see why he does this, as the first statement covers his butt (it sounds like a Member of Congress who begins his statement with language about his good friend and then calls this alleged good friend a coward).  The second statement about prefering an HC who imposes his will and vision would actually have been great controversy serving his goals of selling newspapers. It just would not have served the Bills goals of winning.

 

It is from this perspective that I actually breathed a sigh of relief when the Bills chose Jauron as HC over Sherman.  This was not because Jauron appears to me to be a great HC (in fact given his lousy W/L as an HC and coming off of work with lowly Detroit he needs to produce like he did when he won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 2001 and not like he has recently when he got canned and worked in Detroit or he will not even be an adequate HC).

 

I breathed a sigh of relief because most signs point to me point to Sherman being a disaster if he came to the Bills and worked as his resume indicated he would.

 

The main problem I see with the Bills right now is that there really are too many cooks in the kitchen and unless they are all cooridnated extremely well we will end up with the kind of OBD warfare that may meet Sully's goal of covering controversy that sells newspaper and allows him to be a legend in his own mind/

 

A. It is the way things are since Ralph is the owner. America operates for good and for bad by the Golden Rule (he who has the gold rules!) so its RWS's call, but I am troubled by Ralph vowing to be more involved (I read that as meddling) with the team.  The Bills have had many problems over the last decade, and among the worst of them were caused by Ralph meddling instead of letting the football professionals run the team.

 

1. He was a big part of misassesing how long Jimbo would last and actually made a handshake agreement with him to make his "next" contract a big one because the salary cap stopped them from rewarding him until the off-season.  Kelly was on the backside of his career and Butler had already made the same mistake by failing to acquire a journeyman or a less expensive late draft pick in 1994 or even 1993 to replace him). He could no longer play pro ball a winning way and Ralph had to give him a million bucks walking away money (thank gosh cause Kelly did not have to sue Ralph in a nasty case where he proved a promise was made) but worse from as football standpoint it triggered QN insecurity for the Bills which led to us over-reaching for and rushing along TC, wasting a 3rd round pick on a trade for Billy Joe Idiot, signing RJ to a huge bonus before he proved himself and stuoidly extending the Bledsoe deal after a sucky 2003 and then cutting him and rushing JP along this year after TD reversed field a gave up on Bledsoe who improved a lot in 94 over a horrendous O3 but clearly was not good enough on the backside of his career to lead us to the SB.

 

2. He meddled in getting RJ a start in the playoff game which contained the Homerun Throw-up.  DF also was not player enough to lead us to an SB, but the switch to RJ was silly also and divided folks. Ralph played a role in the misassessment if it was not fully his idea.

 

3. His misread of Butler and Wade led to the TD debacle.

 

I think Ralph can contribute a lot as the spiritual leader of the Bill, but I wished for the good of the team he was seen and not heard and if he is going to become more active it could easily become meddling.

 

B. Fellow Golden Boy Marv is now the GM.  Its neat that an 80 year old is so smart and active that he can take on this meat grinder job.  His greatest skill when he HC;ed us to an incredibly unlikely to be repeated 4 straight (but losing) SBs was that he managed a broad, diverse and arguing group of talents.  However, time waits for no man and the NFL has changed a lifetime in the past decade. Perhaos Marv is vright enough to change with it, but he has never GM'ed before and he will be the top cook but answer to an owner who promises to be more active.

 

C. Modrak was a great keep in terms of talent for the Bills. Several teams seemed ready to give him their GM job, but now we can see that Modrak liked his current deal where he gets to play GM in many areas but live in his FLA home when he chooses and travel when he wants or needs to for a drive-in visit to OBD.  His talents will be well employed by the "new" Bills as he will get to supplement Marv's lack of GM experience but let Marv do the heavy lifting of mind-numbing travel as he wants.  In fact, under the new scenario he can try to work it so he gets to focus on what he wants as Asst. GM to Marv and get credit for what works and blame Marv for what fails.  Not bad for him but clearly he is another cook in the kitchen.

 

If we had added former GM Sherman to this mix and he actually tried to impose his will and vision on  the team (and thus supercede or defeat Wilson's meddling, Marv gaining experience, and Modrak kibbitizing it may have worked but almost certainly would not have.

 

Jauron may well not have the skills to make this work either, but by all reports he is a straight shooter and a high quality guy.  The chances of him recognizing that he needs a top nocth OC to supplement his own failings and that Modrak needs to be used to supplement Marv's lackings as a GM and all of them need to work to keep the guy who owns the theam from meddling as is his right are not high, but seems a lot more possible to me than:

 

1. Adding another cook to this mix who certainly brings valuable GM exerience to supplement Marv, but if he actually attempted to impose his vision and will over that of his GN boss and undercut Modrak, we would be right back in the same mess we just finished.

 

2. Sherman actually doing well at making up for Marv's inexperience as a GM while also doing the full time job of HC.  He would be teaching the guy who employs him. It can be done but it is a neat trick to pull this off well. As Sherman is just coming off a situation where he was stripped of his GM duties and ultimately it led to him leaving as HC, I just do not see him making this work. If someone who backs Sherman can lay out how he is going to do this I would love to see it explained.

 

I shudder to think of the controversy which likely would have come out with Sherman being added to a mix which already has too many folks (Wilson, Levy and Modrak) leading the dance.  it would have been a great story for Sullivan but my sense is very bad for the Bills.

 

Jauron does not have anywhere the skills to be the savior folks want.  However, Ws will come for this team (if they come) not from anyone being a savior but from the owner, GM, asst GM. HC. OC etc all playing well together,

 

Its going to be hard with the limitations of Marv, Jauron and Ralph, but the chances of it working to produce more Ws strikes me as far higher than  if Sherman came in and the press was whispering lets you and him fight into his ear as he attempted to supplement the experience and failings of Ralph, Marv and Modrak.

581155[/snapback]

[bluenews]

Modrak will be gone shortly after the draft. He is TD standing in front of the short and fat carnival mirror. These guys agreed on 99% of the players that were brought into Buffalo. I know they disagreed on the Peerless Price to Atlanta trade. TD won and that was one of his shining moments as GM. Modrak couldn't even figure that one out!!!!

 

Mark my words.......Modrak, Ross and the rest of the scouting department will be publishing Fanatasy Fottbal magazzines during the summer!!!!

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

By popular request:

 

Cliff notes begin:

 

1. The media's interest is primarily selling papers and not necessarily the Bills putting up Ws and columnists advancing themselves. Sully would seem to like the controversy caused by a collison of the competing interests of a owner who won;t live forever, a GM inexperienced at the task, and an assistant GM based in FLA as a means of selling papers.

 

He would have loved if the Bills added a former GM who lost his job with the Packers when they stripped him of GM functions and reduced him to only HC work. Likely if we had added Sherman's considerable talents to the mix and he has IMPOSED his will and football vision on a mix where it will already be tought to converge these different visions and will, it would have made for a neat fight.

 

2. I believe that Marv lacks GM experience and it needs to be supplemented, however, doing this by bringing in a former GM/HC who was bruised and left due to a reduction of his GM authority is virtually guaranteeing a huge battle at OND. This is particularly true if Sherman IMPOSES his will and vision on the guy who hired him and the guy who pays his check.

 

3. Jauron has real limitations as shown by the losing record he had in GB. However, his 13-3 season, him getting NFL oach of the Year in 2001 creates POTENTIAL that if Marv can supplement his GM failings with Modrak's skills, Marv pulls off the same management job of diverse and sometimes fighting personalities he performed in the early 90s (doubtful as a decade has passed), Ralph does not meddle too much in the football side where he has messed up things before, and Jauron simply does the HC thang (my guess he will badly need a supplement of a good OC due to his own failings) this can work for the Bills.

 

As tough as pulling off this trick will be, the chances are far better that it will work than thinking that adding Sherman's skills to this mix will wotk.

 

Cliff notes end.

 

Sorry this was so long, but i was thinking it through while I was writing. I am even more convinced after thinking about this that we are lukcy we did not get Sherman. If one thought TD and his psychoses were a soap opera think of what it would have been like while Sherman dealt with the bruises of losing his GM job while working for an inexperience GM. Yuucchh.

[Bear]

Modrak will be gone shortly after the draft.  He is TD standing in front of the short and fat carnival mirror.  These guys agreed on 99% of the players that were brought into Buffalo.  I know they disagreed on the Peerless Price to Atlanta trade.  TD won and that was one of his shining moments as GM.    Modrak couldn't even figure that one out!!!!

 

Mark my words.......Modrak, Ross and the rest of the scouting department will be publishing Fanatasy Fottbal magazzines during the summer!!!!

581288[/snapback]

 

FINALLY! THE SOURCE REVEALED!!!

 

Unless you are TD or TM, you have no idea what they agreed on. To say otherwise is nonsense.

But hey, just keep making stuff up to suit your needs.