Teams The Eagles Don't Play: Buffalo Bills

I've always had a soft spot for the Bills, my mother's family is from Buffalo. I sat through four progressively more depressing Super Bowl parties, waiting for the Bills to pull one out. As tough as it is sometimes for Bills fans, they have to be given credit for being amoung the most diehard in the league. This year was one for optimism. An excellent defense, dynamic special teams, a stud running back, plus receiving corp. All the pieces except the big one that connects it all, QB. But the front office traded two picks to the Dallas Cowboys (those two? Julius Jones and Marcus Spears) to move up and acquire the QB of the future, right?

Four weeks into the 2005 season, the first he has started, and JP Losman is on the bench. Whose fault is that? Anyone who has seen him play would say Losman's, but this disasterous decision ultimately will fall at the feet of Mike Mularkey. And this decision has the potential to be catastrophic, with very little upside. The QB of the future, before being given a significant chance to develop, has been sat down. How's his confidence? I'm guessing low. Why would Mularkey do this? Does he actually think Kelly Holcomb is a solution? Holcomb was 5-9 as a starter for the Browns, leading them nowhere. He's 32, certainly no QB of the future. Trading a few weeks of Kelly Holcomb future for the confidence of the QB the franchise has invested so much in seems like Buffalo is ending up on the wrong end of this deal. Sad part is, it's a deal with themselves.

If Mularkey wants to blame someone for the rough start to the JP Losman era, he can look in the mirror. The formula this year was supposed to be simple: run the ball, control the clock, let the defense keep the team in games, and run the passing game through play action. Pretty familiar formula to anyone who has watched more than two games of football. Unfortunately, Mularkey has decided to pass more than run in three of the Bills first four games. Leading with the wrong foot, Mike. On paper, 103 passes to 97 runs looks like a good balance. 19 of those runs are Losman specials, though. So the play has run through the QB 122 times and Willis McGahee 79 times. That ratio isn't looking so good now.

To be fair, in game two the Bucs shut the run game down, and by the middle of the third the Bills were down 16-3 and forced to throw. The next week, however, Buffalo came out throwing, Losman dropped back on their first five first down plays. Thanks to some penalties, the Bills kicked two field goals on their first two drives. Down 14-6, Mike Mularkey finally committed to the run. Eight runs to three passes, ending in a McGahee eight yard TD run.

The next week the Bills came out running. Seven runs to three passes on the first drive, ending in a touchdown. After incompletions and an interception halted two drive, the Bills got the ball at their own thirty, down 3, with 5:30 left in the half. First down, incomplete. The Bills were bailed out on third down by a penalty. First down, pass -2 yards and a hold, total-12. A couple of successful passes later and the Bills had a first at the Saints 41. Incomplete. On those three first downs, despite having plenty of time on the clock, the Bills threw three times for -12 yards. Is it JP Losman's fault he is not being put into manageable third downs?

Down six in the fourth quarter Mularkey pulled his QB of the future for a QB who has neither past nor future. What a message to send the kid, and way to test his competitiveness, Mike. Holcomb was ineffective enough to win the starting job this week.

This kind of QB development is exactly how coaches lose jobs and franchises lose decades. If Mularkey finds the stomach to ride out the rough patches, he might find that QB of the future at the end of the rainbow. If he puts the franchises future in the hands of Kelly Holcomb, well, the end of that story is bleak. Take some antacid, Mike, run the ball, and resign yourself to the fact that kids make mistakes. You can either be coaching the Bills two years down the line, glad Losman worked those mistakes out years ago, or you can be watching Sundays on TV, wondering where the Kelly Holcomb era went wrong.