FanPost

Lee Smith, The Man, The Eliminator....


For those Rumblers who always want to see Lee Smith be replaced with a super-fast scoring machine this is for you.

Whenever an offense gets in the red-zone in the NFL you can hedge that two or three TEs will be coming into the game.

While I'll admit they come in to be tall red-zone weapons, that is only half their job in the red-zone. When you hear that teams that run well are the teams that do well in red-zone, I would further that truth to say that the teams that run well in the red-zone have very good blocking TEs.

a lot of rumblers wonder why teams just don't put reserve linemen in for this purpose and then collect more atletic high-jumping TEs to score TDs catching the ball. The reason is simple. The first thing all linemen must be able to do is block and move 300# plus gentlemen in the opponents employ. When you get that big and strong it is very difficult to block LBs in space or at the edge of the line where they can slip blocks avoiding contact all together. No, you need a blocker with some athleticism to match up with swift LBs or even safties.

On our first possesion vs. the panthers we drove right down to the two yard line with a chance for a first down at the one. It's third down, run for one, easy right? Well that is what we did. On the first running play a LB bolted right past Scott Chandler and broad-sided Freddy with full force for no gain. We went for it on forth. We put Cyril Richardson in at guard and put Kraig Urbik in at on-line TE to the left. He was covered by Lee Smith. On the snap, for whatever reason Urbik and Smith reacted last. Lee was able to recover and held his ground vs, his LB. Urbik got rocked moving back and let a slew of Panthers through the gap created. We did not make it.

having TEs that can make their block most of the time are crucial in the red-zone. Lee Smith seldom misses, he eliminates his man. He is a very valuable player for the Buffalo Bills and he is here to stay.

i think Lee Smith showed a little growing last year by catching a few passes, more towards the end of the year it seemed to me. I envision Lee Smith having a Pete (the Cat) Metzalaars type season for us this year. He has good hands and all he has to do is find a hole in the zone, give EJ an easy completion, catch it, and gain some positive yards. This also forces the defense to defend him as a receiver which in turn opens things up for everybody else.

Pete Metzalaars was a pretty important Buffalo Bill in his day, cuz he could block like the dickens!

Please learn to love Lee Smith as I have for being an intregal part of our offense and especially our red-zone offense, thank you and.....

Go Bills!

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.