Our defense is nowhere near as good as we thought it would be, at least against real teams.

Forgive me, but holding San Diego to 14 points – the Chargers are a “real team”, whatever that means – is a good performance.

You might want to say “… at least on the road.”

It seems you consider yesterday’s game as a showing of the “true face” of the Bills.
I agree we are not a top 10 team now. Most of your comments are on target – poor pass defense, no pass rush, too many drops by TEs. But they refer to a game, not to the whole season.

And it is true that we faced below-average opponents. But luckily we will continue to. We have KC, SF at home, and CLE on MNF. All manageable games. We have played 4 out of 7 away games. The schedule is still a strength for us, we only have to win our division games at home and we’re almost sure to go to the playoff. (I don’t consider having an easier schedule as a “team weakness” as some other people do).

One other thing: we DID play a sloppy, horrible game. But we don’t CONSISTENTLY play that bad, at least IMHO. Our O performed above average at times, and sometimes was even briullant. Our D did consistently stop opponents in crucial drives in some of the previous games. Is NE a mediocre team due to the horrible loss to Miami? 2 bad games are a “bad smell”, so to speak, but you can’t project it on all of our season.

Come on, the glass is still half full. Of what, it is another matter entirely :-)

We played pretty mediocre football yesterday. IMO, it was NOT the players fault. Not even McGee’s fault. Today’s (Monday) Rochester paper arrived to tell me that McGee admitted that he was not even close to 100% for the game. DUH. Now knowing that fact straight from the horses mouth, the blame rests squarely with the coaches for yesterday’s loss. IMO the players played pretty good, given the below mediocre schemes we used.
Our D schemes seem to be based on fear. We will not win consistently playing scared. Fewell (or DJ?) too many times position our troops to counterpunch the other team rather than bust their chops right away. Attitude. We need BEAST attitude in our coaching staff. We play good man to man, so line up close to the line, jam their receivers at the line and stay close. Mitchell is our best blitzer. Send him more often and move him around. McGee not at full speed? Rotate him out more and, when in, give him safety help on EVERY play. See the fins throwing short to medium passes in front of our zone all day? Change. “Dr. it hurts when I do that. Then don’t do that.”
On O, time to rethink all our run blocking schemes. IMO we pass block pretty good. No complaint from me there. If I were king, I’d watch hours of game tape featuring the best running teams and try to learn from their success. How does their run blocking schemes differ from ours? The weakness at center affects our run blocking more than we can imagine. It is the anchor position and we are sorely lacking. Brian and Geronimo keep telling us that the coaches like Melvin(That is the one factoid that baffles the crap out of me). If this is really the case, the coaching is a bit worse than I thought. Our C position is dragging down the entire offense and especially run blocking. Why run it up the gut so often knowing that you probably will not get even a mediocre push from the center? Puts a damper on sweep blocking too. The adjustment we made after Reed left to use Lee to move the chains was not a good one. We may not have a decent answer to that one, but Lee needs to go deep MUCH more often. Good coaches devise plays and schemes that fit their players strengths, not necessarily what they like. I’d run Hardy on curl ins and post slants a lot more. Inside the red zone, the fade. I would not line Reed up outside. He seems to thrive in the slot. Let him own it. I’d run Marshawn outside the guards almost all the time until C is changed. BTW, is it just my imagination or does Marshawn prefer to run right? I think he does. He seems to cut better running right, especially outside the tackle.
The players seem to have a much more aggressive attitude than the coaches. I sense they feel they can play with anybody. The coaches seem to be timid. Not nearly enough beast mode from them. Especially Fewell. The first couple of games we showed it. Winners have an attitude. Time to show more confidence in our players. Fewell should go trick or treating dressed up as King Kong. Now if I could only stop dreaming of Kent Hull.

From what I have read, most people seem to have underestimated how important the bye week was for the Bills. Not just for getting healthy, but for the coaching staff. They seem to do a good job when they have a ton of time. The less time they have, it seems their adjustments either don’t work or just plain don’t happen.

For example, seems like often their half-time adjustments work pretty well, but forget about seeing them adjust in the middle of the game, even when a particular formation or play is getting destroyed. When they have the extra bye week to prepare…awesome results. When they don’t, it seems they have often been outcoached in the initial prep for the games (one of the main reasons for several slow starting games?).

I think this issue has been only touched on, and I think the bye week was a HUGE factor in the Bills’ success against the Chargers, as well as it being a home game for the Bills.

I have never drunk the Kool Aid. And this game is why.

I hate the phrase “Kool-Aid”. I get what it means and where it comes from, but where do you see the fans on this blog going overboard? Just scrolling through the titles for all of the recents fan posts and all of Brian’s articles, I don’t see one thing that makes me roll my eyes or think that people are getting ahead of themselves. You criticize fans for “drinking the kool-aid” and then criticize us for not thinking the Bills can win a playoff game? I’m not sure what the point of this post was. I think Brian’s initial reaction was right and you are just patting yourself on the back for not believing in the team. Well congratulations, you were right, the Bills aren’t the best team in the league. Thank you for enlightening all of us to the Bills’ flaws.

- Our pass rush is one of the worst per $ in NFL history
- No legitimate #2 WR
- No TE

We all knew that already. I don’t see what the point is of bringing it up. Again, nobody is claiming that the Bills are a super bowl contender. Nobody on the blog thinks they are some virtual lock to win a playoff game.

We have far far worse problems on this team then the difference between Trent and JP, which is relatively minor

Obviously the team has plenty of weaknesses, but how many teams don’t? I also disagree that the difference between Trent and JP is minor, but that isn’t a debate worth having.

Our defense is nowhere near as good as we thought it would be, at least against real teams.

I totally disagree with this. Real teams? Which teams are real and which teams aren’t? Here are the point totals teams have scored against us from the most to the least and the amount of points they score per week:

41 – @Arizona – 28.6
25 – @Miami – 20.7
23 – Oakland – 15.3
16 – @Jacksonville – 20.1
14 – @St. Louis – 16
14 – San Diego – 28
10 – Seattle – 20.6

I don’t see any correlation between teams which are “real” and the amount of points the Bills give up. Any chance you can expand on that claim? Brian’s belief that the defense is worse on the road makes much more sense.

The fascination with the QB is completely misplaced. There are a half dozen other positions which are far bigger problems.

Actually I will go against what my head is telling me to do and bring up the Trent vs. JP thing. You are definitely right that people have overreacted to both guys records as starters. But the difference between the two guys in terms of decision making and accuracy is enormous. Trent works his progressions so much more efficiently than JP and his decisions are obviously much better. Do you really think this team would be 5-2 with JP as the starter? I’m not sure we beat Jacksonville on the road or SD at home with Losman.

To be quite honest, if I wanted to see this love the Bills after they win and the sky is falling after they lost coverage of the team, I would watch ESPN. This is just another ridiculous overreaction to one game.

Isn’t there something to be said for a young, up and coming team to have a soft schedule, one that is soft enough to at least get them into the playoffs even if they don’t deserve it, because of its effect on their future performances and mindset? Even if we don’t deserve our record because of the teams we play, I think the effect of making the playoffs on young players like Trent, Marshawn, Fred (who is young experience wise), Donte, Poz, etc is an extremely valuable asset that will make this team better in future seasons. Confidence is a big part of this game.