Perry Fewell: High as a Kite

by Ryan


The Bills, um, "situation" is not a good one. In fact, I've been avoiding any Bills post like the plague because it is downright depressing. Well, until I read what Perry Fewell has to say about the D.

"Oh, this is one of the highest challenges I've been faced with," said Fewell, in his 10th NFL season and second with Buffalo. "But I can't dwell on numbers. I'm focused on winning games. And I've got to go out and do a better job of teaching. ... And if I can do that, I don't have to worry about the numbers."

Yeah, it's really cute when coaches try to spin things to the good, but Fewell's gotta be smoking something if he thinks "teaching" is going to fix this mess.

He almost had me, too. Hargrove is coming back next week, Denney will be usable in the near future. The rallying cry had been sounded, and even with Poz and Co. out of the picture, who knows what can happen when a few healthy players get dropped into the scheme. I may have even whistled "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" once or twice.

Then a number stuck out: 458. That's how many yards our D gives up on average. Mean. Boilerplate. The norm.

Good Lord that's a ton of yards. Our opponents score on over half of their possessions, too. If I were Anthony Hargrove, I'd be looking for another cop to punch. Who really wants to be a part of this defense anymore?

Oh yeah, Leon Joe does. Do you know how irrelevant our starting linebacker is? I can't even find anything worth linking after an extensive Google search. However, safety Bryan Scott takes lovely wedding pictures.

"We've stripped it back a lot. It does concern me," Fewell said. "When you practice them, if they don't come off smooth the first or even the second day, you have to kind of take those things out and stick with something that's very base."

If the defensive playbook consists of one page that reads: "Tackle the guy with the ball", I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I would further analyze the D we may see on Sunday, but I can't find a properly updated depth chart anywhere. The Four Letter's still has Coy Wire active, and the NFL.com version still has Poz starting in the middle. Needless to say any roster that has more depth than a kiddie pool has yet to be updated.

I will say one thing, though: if we give up less than 400 yards this week, high fives all around. Perry should take the squad out for ice cream, just like the good old Pop Warner days...

***UPDATE: This depth chart from Sportsline.com looks pretty good. Well at least until one of our defensive tackles loses a limb...