It certainly does, which is why you can’t take these stats at face value. Clearly, Schonert’s been bad, but we can’t make the argument that there hasn’t been improvement.

I’m saying that take out the NFC East (last year) and factor in the improved AFC East (this year) and we’re talking about the same level of competition. And we’re better.

I never said we were anything other than a mediocre offensive team, but this proves that there has been progress. If Turk ever figures out how to remove his head from his arse, we could be average!

Wasn’t trying to attack. I will admit I get a little argumentative and love a good debate. Salem is a big boy and he can handle himself (as seen below). The only time I felt like I was really attacking his statement was the thing about how we don’t have an aggressive defense and that is just because those statements drive me nuts. I guess I was pretty tough on the “we don’t put up a fight against teams that have been "predetermined” to be better" line too, but I felt like I should’ve been. I really do think that is a wild accusation and is just plain stupid.

LOL – Ben I was trying to calm down the situation. hahaha regardless good job on not standing down.

I guess the only thing that I will say is that I also would like to know what he does WELL. What are his strengths? What does he do that other coaches must take into consideration when game planning against a DJ team?

I guess everyone on the team liking him is a strength. Past that…..i’m not too sure what he brings to the table.

Again…regardless….we all want him to succeed because we’re sick losing. so heres to hoping he can fix his problems and get us all circling again

I think that what Kaiser was trying to say is that the overreaction is a little out of control. I mean some of this is going a little far.

So Jim Ringo and Harvey Johnson had worse records than Dick Jauron? So what? As all the Dick Jauron apologists continue to point out, coaches have nothing to do with a team’s record and apparently, Jauron’s mediocre record stems from nothing more than mediocre players.

When has any body ever said that Dick Jauron is a tremendous coach who is trying to do the best he can with average to poor talent? I’ve never read that. The point Kaiser was making here is that D.J. is clearly not the worst coach is Bills history as you claimed.

His comments like "we don’t match up well with the Patriots" and "we’ll just try to keep the game close against the Patriots" are wildly telling statements about Jauron’s mindset. He defers to more highly respected teams and his players seem to (naturally) follow his lead.

To think that when D.J. says that stuff, the players hear it and think “Jeez, if coach thinks we’re not going to win, we probably aren’t”, is just plain silly. You obviously have never heard a Lou Holtz press confrence. When Lou was at Notre Dame, they could be ranked in the top 10 and be playing Akron, and Lou would make it sound like his team would be lucky if they successfully kicked a field goal. I think that everyone has to trust that what D.J. tells the media and what he tells the players are two different things and that the players are smart enough to know which one to listen to.

Here we go with the “Jauron apologists” crap, just like “Losman supporters” and all that other camp crap. Can’t people just have an opinion? Do they have to be sequestered into some evil entity that must be destroyed?

I see you like how Dick Jauron runs this team.

Not really, I just don’t hate the guy. I tried to preface my last post by saying that I only defend Jauron because I think people go way too far with the overreactions. I even called the guy a below average coach. I’m only a Jauron apologist when I feel people are being unrealistically harsh and/or bash his defensive philosophies.

(which I assume you are if you’re still painstakingly analyzing this doormat of a team as we reach our 9th consecutive season without a postseason game),

haha, fair assumption.

Sireric is right, my use of Ringo and Johnson’s records were just my way of saying that Jauron is not “the most inept coach” in the history of the Bills. I’m a big fan of accuracy and I typically nitpick (sometimes even overreact myself), when I think someone exaggerates to make a point. Do you really think Jauron is worse than Mularky?

I don’t care that he didn’t draft McNown. I don’t care that he didn’t draft Losman

I think McNown would have busted for any team with any coach. He just didn’t have an NFL arm and was doomed to failure from the start. Jauron gave the starting nod to Shane Matthews and only played McNown when Matthews got hurt (which was often) and McNown struggled through a bunch of injuries himself. Jauron even had to turn to Jim Miller a bunch of times because none of his QBs could stay healthy.

Losman wasn’t only not drafted by Jauron, he spent 2 years not improving before Jauron even got here. Losman had a not terrible year as a starter under Jauron in 2006 where he averaged 1.2 more yards per pass attempt than he did in 2005. Losman’s failures are unrelated to Jauron.

It is a fair criticism to say that Trent isn’t really improving all that much under Jauron and co. If Trent doesn’t improve next year, it will time to say goodbye to both DJ and Edwards.

Poz suffered a 10+ week injury during the second week of the year. I don’t think getting 4 or 5 games out of him with one of his arm’s at 70% strength was a move that any head coach would make. Maybe that’s just me though.

Jauron is 4-14 against teams that are above .500. I agree that is pretty awful, but it isn’t like this team just rolls over and dies against strong opponents. And Jauron said we don’t match up well with the Pats, because well …. we don’t match up well with the Pats; in fact, we couldn’t have matched up any worse against them when he said it. They ran a 3-4 WR shutgun offense and the Bills had no depth in the secondary and a poor pass rush from the D-Line. They had one of the best OLs in the league blocking for the best Quarterback in the league. They run a 3-4 with one of the better NTs in the league and some great MLBs. Buffalo’s OL was strong on the outside and got weaker towards the middle. NE’s weakness, secondary depth is tough to exploit when you don’t have depth at WR or TE. We had a rookie QB going up against one of the better defensive schemers in the league. Lee Evans had never had any success against Asante Samuel. New England’s team was like the perfect storm of matchup nightmares compared to Buffalo’s team last season. So Jauron saying “we don’t match up well with New England” to the media isn’t the same thing as saying, we have predetermined that we are not going to win and are therefore not going to try to win. That is just ridiculous.

"we’ll just try to keep the game close against the Patriots"

Jauron never said that. Are you trying to remember some of his quotes about how Buffalo is going to have to play one of their best games to keep the game close? I don’t remember exactly how he was wording it, but those two quotes are entirely different.

He defers to more highly respected teams

Jauron was simply saying with those quotes about the Pats, that you have to play better to beat the good teams than you do the bad teams. What could possibly be wrong about that mindset?

How many times has Buffalo had to blow timeouts because they were late getting a play in at critical junctures in the game?

We have an offensive coordinator that isn’t decisive and regularly gets playcalls into Trent a few seconds late. Don’t pin that on Jauron.

the strange decision to pass up the field goal and instead throw a hail mary

That was a strange decision, although I was at that game and Lindell probably wasn’t going to make that kick. The screen pass against Cleveland was a play that Jauron didn’t call. The head coach has to take some responsibility about calls like that, but it is like the SF situation this year when they ran the FB dive at the goal line and Singletary threw Martz under the bus. The head coach doesn’t call the plays. I had no problem with running the ball all three times this year against Cleveland. The running game was literally more succesful (more yards per play) than the passing game was. The calls shouldn’t have been dives up the middle, but if Jauron told Turk to run the ball 3 times than I have no problem with that. The problem wasn’t that we ran it three times, it was that we only gained 2 yards. If those runs gain us 6 yards (still not exactly an optimistic guess) than it is a 43 yard FG. That wouldn’t have been considered too conservative of a strategy had the OL not completely choked. And my whole point was that you are going to waste a few timeouts every year. You are going to make some bad choices. There aren’t any coaches in the NFL who don’t get second guessed by the diehards every week.

Jauron’s preference to defer when he wins the toss speaks loudly to his character.

No it doesn’t. Bill Belichick defers every week too. It’s sound strategy and I think in a couple seasons you will see that teams who defer have more success and that most coaches will eventually defer. In college about 65% of teams defer and that percentage goes up a little every year.