One Fan's View: Great Effort, Same Result

by Kevin Shenoy

Jauron’s greatest strength was to take the bullet for the rest of the team. Now that he’s gone, we get to see where people are excelling and where they are failing. The defenses inspired play suggests that Fewell is pretty responsible for that unit playing well. He had some 3-4 looks, he played without Stroud, he played with Whitner. He dealt with a lot!

Whitner looked awful for the nth time in his career. He tried to pretend he made his 4th career pick, but was denied by the officials. He took poor angles, he seemed to lack speed in the secondary (more so than before), he got blocked off the ball by one of the smaller (size wise not height wise) wide receivers, and he was in prime position to pick up a fumble but literally fell on his face two yards before jumping on the ball.

Poz looks spotty. One play he’s making a great open field tackle, the next he’s biting on a play action. Poz isn’t the only answer to our LB corp. He needs to be an inside LB with talent surrounding him. If they keep relying on him like an elite, play making LB, he’s going to get run out of town. And the saddest part is that if he was used properly and paired with another LB, he’d be good.

On the offensive side of the ball, AVP opened up the playbook in the first half. He used multiple formations; he had players run in motion. Clearly he was handcuffed by Jauron’s desire to keep it simple. But he was done no favors by a wildly inaccurate Fitzpatrick. One pass would be right on the money (i.e. the 98 yard TO pass), the next was 10 feet to high. Even a jumping Hardy would have had trouble with some of the throws he was making.

AVP also didn’t seem to start the right running back. Fred Jackson is the guy. He is a playmaker. He’s playing behind with the exact same crappy OL yet he’s making due. Lynch runs to the hole like a child sent to his room. He almost seems to wait for contact before he starts trying. There were openings where he didn’t really take off. Perhaps he was playing injured prior to leaving, but he doesn’t look like the same RB of a year ago. If Lynch puts up many more of those duds, chances are he’s playing himself out of town.

To whomever makes the player personnel decisions next year, the next 6 weeks will continue to prove what talent you have and can build around and how much dead weight needs to be cut.

DVD Extras:

• Successful Season – Let’s face it, this season ended successfully last week with Dick Jauron’s firing. Very few of us had predicted better than 7-9; most of us predicted worse. Then the season got better with talk of a real coach/GM to come to Buffalo, and it was made infinitely better that other cellar dwelling teams like the Lions, Raiders, and Chiefs won sliding us up in the draft. Things aren’t as bad as they were a week ago. And somehow, they are working in our favor. Is this possibly true that fate is working to Buffalo’s advantage? One can only hope.
  
• From the School of Jauron/Fewell – Fewell parted ways with Jauron’s style of thinking by getting the ball back with 2 minutes in the first half at his own 20. With 80 yards and three timeouts, he decided to go on the march. And for approximately 1 minute and 34 seconds, he looked to have made the right call. They walked down in impressive fashion suggesting that they wanted to win this game. But with 26 seconds left from the 10 yard line, the ghost of Jauron kicked in. Following almost the exact same script as the Texans game, Fewell elected to play for the field goal. Instead of trying 2 times to the end zone, he went with a run and then a field goal. The Bills were at the 8 yard line with 56 seconds left in the Texans games and settled for a field goal. Did he not review how that ended up? The general rule for a team that struggles to put more than 10 points a game on the board. If you are in the red zone, throw for the end zone. God knows when you are getting back.
  
• Kudos to Fewell – I liked that he was goose-stepping down the sidelines after the TO 98 TD. Emotion on the sidelines was a good looking novelty.
  
• Moorman – nice day of punting for him. His average was 50+ yards on 6 kicks with one inside the 20 and no touchbacks. That kind of tells you how far back we were stalling our drives.
  
• Fitz faces adversity – Fitz seems to put bad plays behind him. After throwing his first interception, he went to work on a long field goal drive. After several bad passes, he came back with better passes. While he is a wildly inaccurate passer, he doesn’t sulk in the past. That wasn’t really a strength of Losman or Edwards. If either of them started a game like Fitz, they would have been completely flustered by the middle of the second quarter. Kudos to Fitz for being competitor.
  
• Wood injury – I was lucky enough to meet Eric Wood at a meet and greet at Mcfaddens this year. He’s a super amicable guy. So it was sad to see him get injured so gruesomely. Hopefully he can be back next year. He was one of the few bright spots in an ugly year. The Bills didn’t respond well to the Kevin Everett injury during the Broncos game, and they didn’t seem to do much better after his injury. They pretty much closed up shop after that injury. Also, I think it says a lot about the level of respect Wood has on the team when TO is the one to help you onto the cart.
  
• Florence/Corner – Drayton Florence had a spectacular game. He had the interception, he made some great open field tackles, and he broke up some passes. On the flip side of that Reggie Corner is like every other promising player the Bills have picked the last few years. Whatever attractive sheen he had last year has completely come off. He was torched for most of the game (I guess that sheen was flammable). If there was a pass, it was in Corner’s direction. Perhaps his expertise is limited to Nickel coverages only and that’s why he looked so good last year. At least we know that now.
  
• Shanahan discussions – Seems like the rest of the NFL thinks it’s not going to happen if you listen to the jerks….I mean announcers on CBS NFL pregame show and ESPN game day. Shannon Sharpe said in what came off as a veiled shot. “Shanahan needs to see a commitment to winning. Playoffs only isn’t his motto. He needs to know the team will do what it takes to win the Super Bowl.” I knew something was up because Sharpe was talking slowly and clearly for a change. The Boomer Eisason said, “He’s not going to Buffalo,” while pronouncing Buffalo as though he was throwing up mid-syllable. As for Cowher, he said, “I think Fewell really has a shot to be the next coach.” Either he is the most devious guy in football trying to throw off the scent of the hounds or he’s pretty much saying, “I’m definitely not going.” Like the hot girl who won’t say no to a date but instead suggests that her homely friend is really cool and looking for a relationship. Point taken. Cowher is off the list. I hope the Bills front office are fixing the preconception of what the Buffalo job means. The Bills can claim that this year is different, but most of the former players and coaches don’t seem to be biting. Sell harder, Brandon.
  
• Preparing for the worst – The days after the Jauron firing, I really felt relieved. I explained it as being a campaign manager who finds out his candidate won with an unexpected turning of events. “What? West Virginia is going blue? Oh my god, we’re winning this thing.” And then followed up with all the calls to friends and family who stood by you through the whole thing. As we get further away, I am now getting weary. Either Ralph Wilson has been visited by the 3 ghosts of Bills Past, Present and Future and genuinely wants to help out Tiny Tim, the proverbial Bills fan, or he hasn’t changed a bit. Which do you think is more logical? The only way a 91 year old has a dramatic change of heart is if he has been given a time frame for his life and is working off his bucket list. My worry is that he saying all the right things to assuage the fans, let these big name coaches sign elsewhere and then introduce some hack of a coach like Coach Kevin Shenoy and say, “he’s really promising and I really went after the other guys. I have full faith in him. By the way, we are a small market team and the team can’t survive.” That pretty much guarantees a crap coach (only because I can’t find a suitable pop warner team to accept me, which is fairly humiliating at this point) and continued seat sales from us worried Buffalonians. All I am saying is that it could be a rouse.
  
• Sabres post game comments – I wonder if the Sabres players could get away with just saying, “hey, we aren’t the Bills,” after each loss. It’s an ugly little stretch they are on.
  
• The Brohm pickup – I really hope he doesn’t play this season based on the state of the OL. But I’m guessing picking him up kind of speaks to the Bills lack of faith in the QB 2010 draft class. With no sure fire winners in the draft, the two year deal is perfect for the Bills. They can keep addressing the line and throw Brohm to the wolves. If he succeeds, they are hailed as geniuses. If they miss, the team blows, the line is better, and we draft a real QB with a gelled line. That QB will be given a shot to succeed. Brohm’s signing keeps the team from having to draft a QB when they have a ton of other holes and not having to sell us Edwards/Fitz for a second year.
• [b][u]Brohm Stoker – For some reason when Mark and I chatted about the pickup, Mark insisted on pronouncing it Brahm. So his nickname has become Brohm Stoker. As an attempt to gain more fame that Buffalo Elvis or the Buffalo Chefs that attend the games, we are thinking as going with Dracula teeth and blood stained Brohm Jerseys to each game. It’s always been such a fine line between brilliance and idiocy for Mark and me. And if Brohm sucks, he’ll become known as Count Blah, from Greg the Bunny. See, it’s a fine line.
  
• Life since Kelly – I’m not sure there are many more ways to pick up a QB. Since we drafted Kelly, our QB pickups have come in every fashion and they all have the same thing in common. Failure. We drafted Todd Collins to be the heir to Kelly under Kelly’s Tutelage. Fail. We picked up Flutie from the CFL. Fail. We picked up a young promising QB in RoJo due to one good game and traded our first round pick. Fail. We traded for an old, promising QB in Bledsoe and traded our first round pick. Fail. We picked a QB in the first round and traded away a first round pick and many more picks for Losman. Fail. We picked up another teams back-up who seemed like a good game manager in Holcomb and Matthews. Fail and Fail. We went mid round pick from the advice of a football legend in Edwards. Fail. We are now on picking up a practice squader and down on his luck QB in Brohm. If this was a question on the SAT, I think you’d know the answer. But since this is football, we must await the results patiently.

As always, Kevin Shenoy can be contacted at binaural02@hotmail.com. While I may not be able to respond to each email, I certainly appreciate the feedback.