What is the Bills' biggest weakness going into 2003?

[Judge]

Anyone in his or her right mind knows it isn't starting QB.

What is?

I'd say it's the defensive ends and whether they can sustain a pass rush, followed by the secondary- safeties need to show they're battle-tested.

Then comes the offensive line- it's overrated in my opinion, but cohesiveness gives it a chance to turn into what many think it already is.

[Schobel94]

Why is the o-line overrated when everyone in the league says it stinks? Its underated. Mike Williams is a beast, a perrenial probowler for years to come. Sullivan might be the most athletic of the bunch, and with a year under his belt is only better. Teague made a decent transition to center, and will get better after playing the position more. Brown is solid as always (if not a bit overrated). And Jennings is solid when he's not hurt (like in the GB game where he allowed 5 sacks). With a new O-line coach and a full year playing together, they will start to push D-lineman like ragdolls.

[Judge]

Originally posted by Schobel94
Why is the o-line overrated when everyone in the league says it stinks? Its underated. Mike Williams is a beast, a perrenial probowler for years to come. Sullivan might be the most athletic of the bunch, and with a year under his belt is only better. Teague made a decent transition to center, and will get better after playing the position more. Brown is solid as always (if not a bit overrated). And Jennings is solid when he's not hurt (like in the GB game where he allowed 5 sacks). With a new O-line coach and a full year playing together, they will start to push D-lineman like ragdolls.

Who says it stinks? From what I hear on the radio and used to read on boards like this, Bills fans think pretty highly of it. I don't- I think it needs to prove it can consistently establish a running game. I hope it does, but I'm not ready to name anyone a perennial Pro Bowl guy outside of Ruben Brown just yet.

[Schobel94]

You cannot judge Big Mike after his first year, they say it takes 3 years for a good O-lineman to develop (i think for Mike itll be this year) BUT, well just have to wait for the season to find out.

[Judge]

Originally posted by Schobel94
You cannot judge Big Mike after his first year, they say it takes 3 years for a good O-lineman to develop (i think for Mike itll be this year) BUT, well just have to wait for the season to find out.

I agree.

[RUDEbyallMEANS]

DE's, WR's outside of Moulds, nickel and dime backs and safeties.. Although WYS would argue that Bledsoe is the biggest weakness

[Schobel94]

Reed is gonna be awsome, itll be great to see him go unnacounted for and pick up some major yards. Our 3rd and 4th CB's are good. Thomas showed a lot of promise as a rookie. His first start on the very first play he intercepted a Brett Farve pass and almost returned it for a TD (you should have seen him directing traffic). It wasnt a tipped ball either, hr ran up and stole that thing, excellent work.

[MDFINFAN]

Bills, a weakness, not according to this Board. LOL..

[clumping platelets]

Originally posted by MDFINFAN
Bills have no weaknesses!

Finally someone sees the light

[MDFINFAN]

Originally posted by clumping platelets



Finally someone sees the light

Only a chump, I mean Clump would do this:redgun:

[RUDEbyallMEANS]

Originally posted by Schobel94
Reed is gonna be awsome, itll be great to see him go unnacounted for and pick up some major yards. Our 3rd and 4th CB's are good. Thomas showed a lot of promise as a rookie. His first start on the very first play he intercepted a Brett Farve pass and almost returned it for a TD (you should have seen him directing traffic). It wasnt a tipped ball either, hr ran up and stole that thing, excellent work.

Whichever way you spin it.. My last post listed the positions that have question marks and therefore would be the weaknesses.. Reed going against the opponents 2nd best CB is a question mark..

[Dozerdog]

Special Teams..... DE, .....TE......

[WG]

Re: What is the Bills' biggest weakness going into 2003?

Originally posted by Judge
Anyone in his or her right mind knows it isn't starting QB.

What is?

I'd say it's the defensive ends and whether they can sustain a pass rush, followed by the secondary- safeties need to show they're battle-tested.

Then comes the offensive line- it's overrated in my opinion, but cohesiveness gives it a chance to turn into what many think it already is.

Funny, b/c the same people who rate Bledsoe amongst the top 10 are telling you that our OL is one of the better OLs in the league! What's the matter, don't believe them Judge! LOL

It may be overrated, but it's better than 25 other OLs as is right now! The problem is that it's only skin deep. For anyone who [i]really[/b] thinks Drew would be fine, the same Mr. Brick Feet Drew who took on 54 sacks last season threw a ton of key picks w/o even being under pressure, would play well w/ Pucillo, an interior lineman who's never even seen an entire NFL game, or the rookie Sobieski, who Oh, BTW, has had injury issues throughout his collegiate career, is sorely mistaken! There's no way on earth that a rookie or a 2nd year 7th round draft pick is gonna fill in for them. Tucker ain't gonna cut it either. In fact, I think I'd rather see Sobieski in there or even Pucillo.

So depth is our biggest weakness at the following positions and in order:

OL:
DL:
WR:
LB:

I mean think about it; we can't even find a DE starter and after Adams we're right down to what we had last year or even worse this year after cuts, so an injury to any DT, forbid it be PW, or one of our DEs, and we're not gonna be much better off on the DL than we were last season, perhaps worse.

Who's gonna take over for Moulds or Reed? What? Shaw? He may have started last year, but there's absolutely nothing in his dossier that screams out we'll be fine w/ him in there. Jett isn't a starting WR and hasn't been in 5 seasons! Besides, who knows if he'll be 100% and back up to his top form after a very significant injury along w/ age creeping up on him as a speed WR.

At LB, let's get real if we think the rookie Crowell is gonna fill in for Fletcher w/o losing anything. Spoon has already proven, even if he can manage to stay out the Rob Johnson ward of the lockerroom, that he can't play MLB very well. In the unlikely event that Spikes were to get hurt, we'd be screwed. We'd instantly lose 1/3 of our front 7 capability!

In recap, we have no WR capable of starting that wouldn't make Drew flounder even more. We have no OL-man w/ any experience other than Price who plays T. And we have no proven experienced LB either. Spoon is proven, but not proven at playing "well." And we may not even have a better starting DE than we had last season let alone better depth there.

If we can manage to stay healthy at those positions, we'll be fine. If not, TD didn't sign any significant depth beyond what we already had.

I think it's an enormous issue that threatens to derail this playoff bound train. I just hope it doesn't become an issue although I think we can consider ourselves very fortunate if it doesn't!

[WG]

In fact, here're our top backups at those key positions:

IOL:
Mike Pucillo, Starts: 0, Was inactive for ~ half of last season;
Ben Sobieski, Rookie, played w/ Iowa's 2nd line in '02, played 3 games in '01, medical red shirts in '00 and '99.
Ross Tucker, Starts: 7, Inactive for most of '01, Inactive for several games in '02, played for Skins early on and released by them midseason, finished the year at Dallas and was cut.

LB:
Spoon, Polk, and Crowell and Haggan who are both rookies.

WR:
Jett, a smallish WR who's status as a speed option is of concern following his injury, certainly a questionmark. Either way, has not had a good season since '98, hasn't started since '00, and hasn't played the last two seasons. Will his speed return 100% as he prepares to turn 33 this season?
Shaw, who's started only 10 games, has had only 5 games w/ 4+ catches, and a WR who's play is reportedly based on speed, yet who in those 5 games averaged only 11.6 YPC.
Aiken, a rookie

DE:
McKenzie, Jones, Denney, Kelsay, and Irons from which will emerge the starter. All of whom are questionmarks and may not prove to be better than anything we had last season, and Jones who may have terminal health/injury issues.

[The_Philster]

Originally posted by Dozerdog
Special Teams..... DE, .....TE......

Special Teams are up in the air right now as we are good at K and P and we don't know what we have at KR until they assign someone. Tony Driver did a good job returning kickoffs at Notre Dame and did all right when he got the chance here as well.
DE...couldn't agree more. We have no marquee players at the position although Aaron Schobel could work himself up to that. We don't actually need marquee players though as a solid contribution from the entire DE corps will do the job nicely.

TE...Dave Moore and Mark Campbell should do the job nicely...maybe they don't have the hands and moves of Jay Riemersma but they are both solid players at the position.

and
G and C...no one as a proven backup at either position. With Conaty gone, we'd have to rely on someone with no regular season experience if something would happen to Ruben or Marques. Odds are, following Murphy's law, we'll have to do just that.