Bills a passing fancy; expect to be bored

[LouGrant]

What Planet is this guy on? We lead the league in scoring!


Krieger: Bills a passing fancy; expect to be bored
September 19, 2002
Rocky Mountain News


Here's your exclusive scouting report on Sunday's tilt in the old Mile High Stadium parking lot, but keep it to yourself, because you know how things get out on the Internet:

Bring reading material. Maybe one of those mobile e-mail devices. Knitting, if you have some. This could take a while.

The gaudiest statistic of the young NFL season, not counting Terrell Owens' false starts, is this: The Broncos' defense ranks first in the league against the run. If this doesn't tell you what's coming, you haven't been paying attention.

Or, possibly, you sit in the club section and haven't left the bar in a while.

The last time the Buffalo Bills played a team that could stop the run - Minnesota, for example, which ranks first in the NFC for some reason - Drew Bledsoe threw the ball 49 times.

That was restrained compared with Oakland's Rich Gannon, who glanced at Pittsburgh's front seven and threw the ball 64 times, six short of the record.

I pointed this out to Broncos coach Mike Shanahan because, frankly, I didn't know what it meant, except that June Jones must be back on the mainland.

"That's an interesting observation, because very few teams have been able to win Super Bowls without having a balanced attack," Shanahan said. "Once you start playing in the bad weather and some of the defenses are a little bit better than you see during the season, you've got to be able to do both, you can't be in a one-dimensional game."

See, this is what I'm saying. ...MORE...

[casdhf]

Besides, we still call it the shotgun, don't we? Or, as they do in San Diego when Doug Flutie is in the game, the sawed-off shotgun.

[LouGrant]

Or in Tampa with RJ, a snub nosed .38

[THATHURMANATOR]

That article made absolutly no sense. It was just a bunch of babble that they cut and pasted together to make an article.

[Stewie]

duh, of course minnesota is ranked first against the run, cause buffalo chose not to run last week...

[Earthquake Enyart]

Don't you like it when writers try to be "controversial"?

[Dozerdog]

Kinda like that guy from the Boston Globe earlier in the week- Taking shots at Bledsoe and the Pats

[Herdwatcher]

The guy is full of sarcasm. his doncos have won two games and he acts like next week is the super bowl.
I bet he gets a woodie everytime he looks at his manly picture.:apu: He is in love with himself.

[MissBuffalo]

Originally posted by THATHURMANATOR
That article made absolutly no sense. It was just a bunch of babble that they cut and pasted together to make an article.

You ain't kidding there thurm!!!!!! There is no way that this man has a degree in journalism or anything for that matter. A 5 year old could make better sense than him.

[Lori]

Does that story have a point, other than the game will be long because of all the Bills TDs?


Newsflash to Kreider: Bledsoe threw 49 passes because the Vikings dared him to by stacking the line to stop the rungame. (Oh yeah, and having - for the umpteenth season in a row - perhaps the worst secondary in the league.)

If this yutz is interested in numbers, somebody should tell him to check out Travis Henry's 149 yards/3 TDs versus a more conventional defense in week 1. I like Jason Ferguson and Josh Evans more than those tubs-of-goo in Denver, yet TH went right by 'em. Message: Gilbride will take what you give him, instead of trying to force something that isn't there. Nice to have an OC that can/will do that, isn't it?

[THATHURMANATOR]

Seriously Miss B and I am not just saying that because he is ripping on the Bills(well I think he was but I couldn't really tell) but because it was just like he was making various statements that really had nothing to do with one another.

[TigerJ]

I think the writer's point, through all the gobbledygook is that Buffalo has no running game and will pay for it when conditions (either the weather or the opposing team's defense) don't allow the passing game to work. There's just one problem. He's wrong. In the Minnesota game, on which he bases his entire thesis, Minnesota made a concerted effort to stop the run. Gilbride made a strategic decision at that point not to try to run, but to pass the ball until Minnesota was able to stop that. They weren't. A football game is a game of strategy, and Gilbride is a more than competent strategist. For that matter so is Shanahan. Ray Rhodes is the DC, and he's pretty good in that capacity. I can't see Rhodes and Shanahan trying to shut down one thing to see if Buffalo can compensate. There will be more give and take in this game, and far from a boring contest, I think it's going to be a classic coaching battle.