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Bills Sinking Fast
By RICK ANDERSON, MOP Squad Sports Staff Writer
Sep 21, 2004 - 7:22:00 AM

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Things were supposed to change this season. However, it was more of the same old malarkey as the Buffalo Bills lost to the Oakland Raiders 13-10 Sunday in Oakland.

The Bills right now appear to be a worse team than the 2003 version. Last year the Bills went 6-10 and there was an all-out effort to get the team back to the playoffs this season. The Bills fired head coach Gregg Williams and replaced him with Mike Mularkey and a whole new offensive staff. Unfortunately, Bills GM Tom Donahoe didn't address the offensive line and quarterback problems and Buffalo is now 0-2 and things don't get any brighter after their bye week. They host Super Bowl champion New England October 3rd and unless if there is a complete turnaround by the offense, they will be 0-3 going into New York the next week.

Down 13-3 in the last minute of play, Bledsoe finally completed a long desperation 65-yard pass to rookie receiver Lee Evans, who hauled it down deep in the Raiders zone and set up a Bledsoe-to-Eric Moulds for the Bills only touchdown. An onside kick was recovered by the Raiders and that sealed the Bills fate for the second week in a row.

There wasn’t too much good this day as mistakes wiped out most good plays. Penalties wiped out 2 long punt returns that would have given Buffalo the ball deep in Oakland territory. There was so many holding penalties and other infractions throughout the game that it is apparent the mandate issued by Mularkey to cut down on these penalties is being ignored.

SPREAD THE BLAME

Where to pass the blame? Let's see, we can start at quarterback and Drew Bledsoe who was sacked 7 times and is resembling a decaying Oak tree more each week. Or we can blame the Bills offensive line that has not been improved the past 4 years since Bills GM Tom Donahoe took over the job. Or we can blame the offense as a whole when it once again squandered a couple red zone opportunities.

Mostly, the blame has to go to Donahoe. He's the one who refused to cut the chord with Bledsoe after last season when he could and not take any salary cap hit! He's the one who signed Mularkey as new Bills head coach when he could have signed some experienced coach to run the team. He's the one who traded away a first round draft choice for Bledsoe. He's the one who traded a first round draft choice to Dallas so the Bills could draft JP Losman, only to have him break his leg in training camp. Donahoe's the one who picked Mike Williams with the #4 choice over all 3 years ago when there were much better candidates around to fill the gaps in the offensive line. Donahoe's the one who hasn't fixed the offensive line which has been woeful since he first came to the Bills.

Tom Donahoe must answer to all of this! His selections in the draft, the trading away of a first round draft choice for Drew Bledsoe, the selection of Mike Williams and his lack of fixing the offensive line are his top mistakes.

Donahoe was certainly not the best choice for Bills owner Ralph Wilson to make when he got a new GM 4 years ago. Donahoe was flopping around in Pittsburgh and had his share of mistakes there. The Steelers were smart to get rid of him. The Bills must suffer through Donahoe's mistakes and failure to acknowledge those mistakes.

It was like pulling teeth to have Donahoe admit he made a mistake in hiring Greg Williams and lashed out at the media and the community itself when he had the press conference releasing Williams. Donahoe couldn't see the writing on the wall and cut Drew Bledsoe when he had his chance after last season. The Bills had an out and Donahoe wouldn't admit to two colossal mistakes in one year. He kept Bledsoe and made a project in trying to get his career off the ground again. Instead, Bledsoe is taking the Bills down big time.

The offensive line is probably the worst in the NFL, but Donahoe has had 4 years to address and his only answer has been Mike Williams, who has probably been a worse flop than Bledsoe.

In the end, however, it is Bills owner Ralph Wilson who must take the ultimate blame here for the sorry state of the Bills these days. While the team sells out almost every game, Wilson hired Donahoe when he could have hired a much better man to lead the team. Wilson also appointed Donahoe as President of the team, which makes it even harder to get rid of the liability. Now Wilson is stuck with not only Donahoe, but Bledsoe and Mike Williams and a team that is sinking fast. Donahoe must go, but it is doubtful that the aged Wilson will ever get rid of him.

The Drew Bledsoe project is a bust. In fact, it should have never been on the boards in the first place. The old oak tree should have been chopped down and sold as fire wood a long time ago. The oak tree is obviously Bledsoe, who cannot move, cannot avoid the sack, cannot get his offense in the endzone and is ripe and ready to be put out to pasture.

It was obvious that the game passed him by last season when he was the most sacked quarterback in the league, for the second straight year. Bills GM Tom Donahoe didn't want to admit two huge mistakes at the end of the season, so he devoted the offseason to bringing in coaches who could rescue his career, change the time he releases the ball and hoped to put a big band-aid on the immobile quarterback. Well, the project is as dead as the NASA projects right now and it is too late for Donahoe to correct his mistakes and failure to swallow his pride. He's stuck with the old gray horse or dead wood oak tree.

QUOTES

The Bills now can kick their wounds for two weeks as they have a bye week coming up.

"Two weeks, that's good, said Sam Adams. "Let it burn in your soul."

"It's disappointing," said Mularkey about not getting his first NFL coaching victory. "We've got some work to do. We've got two weeks here to regroup and correct some things that I think are all very correctable."

"We can't take too much more," said a disgusted Pat Williams. "It's like a damn hill. We just can't fall over the mother, it's like something is pulling us back. I don't know what it is yet, but we've got to get it straight."

Other Bills seemed to be close to the boiling point.

"I'm frustrated, disappointed," Moulds said. "I don't think it feels like last year, but I think a lot of things we're doing are uncharacteristic of this team. Mistakes are just killing us.

"We get on the 1-yard line and two weeks in a row we don't score a touchdown,"  Moulds ranted. "We want to be a power running team, but in order to do that you need to punch it in on third-and-1. They got in third-and-1 and they got a 7-yard gain. If that's going to be our identity, we need to correct it real fast."

Then Moulds talked about the pass protection.

"If they're going to tee off on the quarterback we've got to be able to pass protect or max protect and give the receivers the chance to get downfield and try to make plays. We've got to get ourselves in second-and-short and third-and-short so we can take shots."

Bledsoe himself showed that he is starting to doubt his ability to throw.

"What this game came down to was offensively, we didn't get the job done,"  Bledsoe bemoaned. "I didn't throw it well enough, we didn't run it well enough, we didn't catch it well enough. We are a better offense than what we showed."

It was revealed that Bledsoe said to Mularkey that he was doubting his ability to hit the receivers anymore. When a quarterback tells the head coach that, it's time to send him to the bench. 


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