Bills have one of the worst offseasons

[BlackMetalNinja]

I know Clayton takes a beating in general and isn't very well liked or respected around here, and I generally agree when it comes to "inside info" that he's a little out of touch sometimes.

However, this assessment nails exactly what my concerns are heading into this season and why I've got very low expectations.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=5200777

1. Buffalo Bills: No team had a greener offensive line last season than the Bills, who had two rookies at guard and young veteran Demetrius Bell at left tackle. (Jonathan Scott also played guard after rookie Eric Wood was placed on injured reserve.) All the Bills did to help the line was sign 33-year-old tackle Cornell Green.
The Bills averaged a horrible 16.1 points a game on offense and did nothing to upgrade a quarterback corps filled by Trent Edwards and Ryan Fitzpatrick. The receiving corps lost 82 catches by not re-signing Terrell Owens and Josh Reed. The only replacement was fourth-round choice Marcus Easley, leaving Lee Evans with little around him.
Owner Ralph Wilson was willing to pay a high salary for his new coach, and ended up with nice guy Chan Gailey, hardly a headliner. To make things even more challenging, the Bills switched to a 3-4 defense even though they didn't have a legitimate 3-4 outside linebacker or a nose tackle. They drafted nose tackle Torell Troup in the second round and hope that Broncos castoff Andra Davis and seldom-used Aaron Maybin can handle the tough outside linebacking jobs.
Making matters worse, the Bills' three division rivals -- the Patriots, Jets and Dolphins -- had three of the best five offseasons. With those odds against them, the Bills won't need luck to be in position to draft either Jake Locker or Andrew Luck next year.

I absolutely see this season as a take one step back to take two forward type of deal, especially with the new regime and a change of defensive styles... but the offense was incredibly bad last year and has really not improved at all.

[DesertFox24]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

John Clayton said something along these lines before the 2001 season.

"I would not be surprised if the New England pats go 0-16."

Thats all I am going to say about the "Professor"


Cough... my ARSE

[BlackMetalNinja]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

John Clayton said something along these lines before the 2001 season.

"I would not be surprised if the New England pats go 0-16."

Thats all I am going to say about the "Professor"


Cough... my ARSE

Ok, that's fine if you don't like him or whatever... but are you going to honestly tell me the issues he mentions aren't legit concerns?

[better days]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

Two points I disagree with. The 1st is I think Spiller will see a number of passes. the 2nd is the Pats did nothing in the offseason.

[psubills62]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

It would be easier to respect him if he knew that Andra Davis was an ILB, not an OLB.

In general, I agree with him, but how can he do an offseason review and not mention our first round draft pick?

[BlackMetalNinja]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

I think Spiller will clearly make an impact and help out the offense... I don't think he'll overcome all it's shortcomings however. Our O line is getting better with experience and hopefully health, but our QB and WR situations have only deteriorated. Eventually teams will focus on our running game and force us to throw the ball, and I have NO confidence in our ability to successfully do that at this point.

[trapezeus]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

if someone wanted a turnaround this year, this offseason would leave you perplexed. if you bought into the idea that 2-3 offseasons of solid drafting and rolling off the bad players as they come due, then this was pretty good.

no reaches, no filling needs only on a bad team. they took the best players available, in their opinion at postitions that all needed to be upgraded.

Next year, hopefully those positions are taken care of and the next set of improvements can happen.

[Saratoga Slim]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

if someone wanted a turnaround this year, this offseason would leave you perplexed. if you bought into the idea that 2-3 offseasons of solid drafting and rolling off the bad players as they come due, then this was pretty good.

no reaches, no filling needs only on a bad team. they took the best players available, in their opinion at postitions that all needed to be upgraded.

Next year, hopefully those positions are taken care of and the next set of improvements can happen.

That's exactly it. Nix's goal is to build a winning franchise. While I'm sure they'd like to win in 2010, that's secondary to the larger view of creating a stable competitor for years to come. This is year 1 of a rebuilding project.

If you look at our offseason through the limited prism of how we improved for 2010....I sorta agree with Clayton. We left question marks on the O-line and QB, and created more on defense by switching to the 3-4. The fact that he doesn't know that Andra Davis is an ILB underscores his superficial knowledge of what the Bills are trying to do, but it doesn't mean he's wrong about the 2010 outlook - there are indeed question marks around the OLB corps of Maybin/Schobel/Kelsay/Ellis/Batten etc.

I'm optimistic that the offense will perform somewhat better in 2010 simply by virtue of Gailey's offensive mind and a maturing of last year's OL rookies, but I think the defense will take a step back before moving forward. I'm expecting an offense that scores more points, but a team that loses about as many games as it did this year.

But in the long run, our offseason made me optimistic that we've finally got a GM with a good vision and that we're heading in the right direction.

[OpIv37]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

if someone wanted a turnaround this year, this offseason would leave you perplexed. if you bought into the idea that 2-3 offseasons of solid drafting and rolling off the bad players as they come due, then this was pretty good.

no reaches, no filling needs only on a bad team. they took the best players available, in their opinion at postitions that all needed to be upgraded.

Next year, hopefully those positions are taken care of and the next set of improvements can happen.

This is my whole problem with this off-season:

I view the rebuilding process as an acknowledgment that the team has more issues than can be reasonably addressed in a single off-season. So, the goal is to improve incrementally each off-season for 2-3 off seasons, which means addressing 1-2 major holes each off-season.

So, what major holes did we address this off-season? QB? No. LT? No. Pass rush? No. WR? No. NT? No. The only clear-cut improvement over last season is RB, and that was probably our second best position.

What Clayton is saying is that the Bills addressed exactly ZERO of their biggest holes. No one in their right mind expected us to improve significantly at QB, LT, WR, DE/OLB, and NT in one off-season, but to get better in NONE of those positions is simply inexcusable.

[dasaybz]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

If we get outplayed because we are giving young guys a chance, and we are not shooting ourselves in the foot, and not getting outcoached, I'm OK with that.

If we are turning the ball over left and right, taking stupid penalties, having idiotic coaching decisions, and playing veterans that are not any better than young guys, than I will be pissed off.

It's going to be very interesting seeing how this thing unfolds.

[trapezeus]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

This is my whole problem with this off-season:

I view the rebuilding process as an acknowledgment that the team has more issues than can be reasonably addressed in a single off-season. So, the goal is to improve incrementally each off-season for 2-3 off seasons, which means addressing 1-2 major holes each off-season.

So, what major holes did we address this off-season? QB? No. LT? No. Pass rush? No. WR? No. NT? No. The only clear-cut improvement over last season is RB, and that was probably our second best position.

What Clayton is saying is that the Bills addressed exactly ZERO of their biggest holes. No one in their right mind expected us to improve significantly at QB, LT, WR, DE/OLB, and NT in one off-season, but to get better in NONE of those positions is simply inexcusable.

Run and stop the run. That's what they looked at and attemped to get better at. They got a playmaking running back and they took a bunch of Defensive players to make us be able to stop stuff on the inside that gashed us alive last year.

That's a good place to start. we've begging for those two things for a long time. they'll need more help, but like you agreed, you can't fill 52 bad players in one draft. we got those 52 players over 4-8 years of pure ineptness. give it some time. The next step is for gailey to prove that he's a real NFL coach and not some clapper.

If they had a pick earlier and could have taken a OT or bradford, they would have done it, but that's not how the cards played out.

Obviously, they could hvae gotten it wrong, but i think they hit on more than they missed.

[FlyingDutchman]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

John Clayton has the worst face

[OpIv37]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

Run and stop the run. That's what they looked at and attemped to get better at. They got a playmaking running back and they took a bunch of Defensive players to make us be able to stop stuff on the inside that gashed us alive last year.

That's a good place to start. we've begging for those two things for a long time. they'll need more help, but like you agreed, you can't fill 52 bad players in one draft. we got those 52 players over 4-8 years of pure ineptness. give it some time. The next step is for gailey to prove that he's a real NFL coach and not some clapper.

If they had a pick earlier and could have taken a OT or bradford, they would have done it, but that's not how the cards played out.

Obviously, they could hvae gotten it wrong, but i think they hit on more than they missed.

We added a better RB but did nothing to fix the OL. The Bills have pulled this garbage before: they attempt to cover up a weakness in one area by making another area a strength, but it usually backfires.

As far as stopping the run, we added 2 aging 3-4 vets and a rookie NT. Combine that with the 3-4 learning curve and the fact that the rookie NT is the only true one on the roster, I really don't see how we made any gains in terms of stopping the run.

[BertSquirtgum]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

john clayton looks like a 70 year old penis

[trapezeus]

Re: Bills have one of the worst offseasons

if you didn't add that rookie NT, you'd have zero people who fit the 3-4 nose tackle description. again, we have to be patient. that's all we are given.

if we want to be truly angry, we should go back to the jauron hire. we all knew the day it was announced that he was a failure and it was an uninspired choice. we paid dearly for that choice. but what's done is done.