April Guest Blogger -- Eric Duncan

 

Eric Duncan of E-Dunc's World

Hello Followers of The Hot and Bothered Effect:

As has been promised to you, once a month I will have a guest blogger from another blog come and post on The Hot and Bothered Effect so that you can get an appreciation for different writing styles, points of view, and blogs. It will also give other blogs operated by friends of mine a chance to get some more exposure for their blogs. This month's Guest Blogger will be my friend Eric Duncan who operates E-Dunc's World. Much of his blog involves analyzing pop culture and lamenting the utter disaster that is his beloved Buffalo Bills. But there's also some good social commentary to be had. He also has a string of posts that follow the Bills week-to-week known as "E-Dunc Misery Watch". That is what you'll see in this excerpt from E-Dunc's World:

E-Dunc Misery Watch: Day 3,917

One of the most important things in the world to me is the Buffalo Bills. This explains three things about me: where my sense of humor comes from (defense mechanism), why I'm so pessimistic, and why I'm constantly on the verge of a homicidal rampage (joking ... mostly).

Anyway, the Bills made a decision this week that perfectly sums up our front office: we cut our Week 1 starter and our 13th "Quarterback of the Future" Trent Edwards. Now, if you polled Bills fans before the season, roughly 99.9% of them would have ranked Trent's performance last year somewhere between "unbelievably terrible" and "Rob Johnson" (NOTE: for Bills fans, there is no playing worse than Rob Johnson).

Despite all of this evidence the Bills front office decided to give ol' Captain Checkdown one more shot at the start of the year. After two games of dropping back in the pocket, pissing his pants and throwing the ball to the physically closest receiver for a gain of two on 3rd-and-12, the Bills caught up with the rest of Bills fans and benched Trentative in favor of former Bengals-great and Ivy League-standout Ryan Fitzpatrick (who has the third highest Wonderlich score in Combine history, which I think we can all agree has a direct correlation to Super Bowl titles).

Fitzpatrick played well against Belichick and the Cheaters leading the Bills to a less-embarrassing-than-expected loss 38-30 this weekend. The Bills responded by cutting ol' Fraidy Cat loose on Monday because apparently you can go from starter to worthless in a week.

Finally, the Bills can get some
payback against the Jags for Rob Johnson,
seen above in his natural position, sacked.

Edwards was scooped up less than 24 hours after he was cut suggesting that there might have been some sort of trade market for him (which the Bills naturally didn't even explore). Where did he land? Jacksonville. I'm personally hoping they make him their quarterback of the future and we can finally have some karmic retribution for them hoodwinking us into trading for Rob Johnson (granted, the Bills organization isn't exactly difficult to hoodwink).

I'm just excited for by the Bills' current QB depth chart:

Ryan Fitzpatrick: 58.3 PCT, 23 TD, 29 INT, 68.6 RAT
Bryan Brohm: 58.6 PCT, 0 TD, 2 INT, 43.2 RAT
Levi Brown: 7th Round Draft pick out of Troy, cut after Training Camp

Bills Football: Feel the Excitement!

E-Dunc Misery Watch: Day 3,923

Sure, the team is better looking now,
but is it actually better without
Marshawn Lynch?

The Bills got a lot less ugly today. The Brain Trust traded away one of the few Pro Bowlers left on what is still generously being called a "professional football team." Now granted, you cannot have three high caliber running backs on your team. There just aren't enough carries to go around. So at the end of the day, somebody had to go and Lynch made himself the most expendable by his off the field indiscretions (he got caught smoking pot in an SUV he had inexplicably removed the license plates from and got arrested on gun charges).

This of course brings me back to last year's draft. On a team that had no quality offensive tackles, no starting-caliber quarterbacks, and no pass-catching tight end, the Brain Trust took a running back, something that we already had excellent depth at. Spiller is a phenomenal talent and is a big play waiting to happen, but in my opinion his ceiling is Reggie Bush: an exciting contributor who will never be able to carry a team. By trading Marshawn, we are essentially left with Fast Freddy Jackson as our only serious run threat. I hope that Spiller can break a few big runs the rest of the year, but he's shown no indications that he's ready to do that as a running back (he's showed a lot of promise coming out of the slot and on screen passes, not to mention kick returns but has been less than impressive on run plays).

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the Bills offense is going to be even more terrible down the stretch as we now lack any semblance of a power running game.

A look into the Bills draft room minutes
before the CJ Spiller pick.

"But E-Dunc," you may be saying, "you have to build for the future and I'm sure you got some good draft picks for him!" Good point, although I would hesitate to say a fourth round pick is the solution to our problem (although it's probably the best we could do). It's clear that the Bills have so many needs that we need all draft choices we can get to fill them. The problem is, given how badly the Brain Trust botched last year's draft, I'm terrified what we're going to do with them. I could see us doing something inexplicable like drafting A.J. Green and then having to trade Lee Evans for a fourth round pick (or as I call it, deja vu) while again refusing to take any tackles for the 83rd year in a row (NOTE: number of years may be an exaggeration).

So good luck in Seattle, Marshawn. If you become an All Pro again, I may have to go all Dexter on One Bills Drive.

E-Dunc Misery Watch: Day 3,950

Half way through the season, and I thought I'd give a shot at breaking down the worst season in Bills history. But first, my thoughts on the Shawne Merriman signing.

Is it worth $1.73 million to
make sure Tila Techila doesn't
set foot in Buffalo? I say yes!

Outside of ensuring that Tila Techila will be staying out of Buffalo for at least four months (a HUGE plus), this is a fairly confusing signing. This is Merriman's final year on his contract so essentially, all we are doing is renting him for the rest of the year, something that's normally reserved for teams looking for a playoff push. My guess is this is a move by a general manager to prove to a very disgruntled fan base that the franchise is in fact trying to win games (despite evidence to the contrary). At the end of the day, the Bills were going to win a game either way so this doesn't really accomplish anything unless we somehow manage to sign him to a long-term deal (which I put somewhere between impossible and Sarah Palin becoming president).

Anyway, let's get to the breakdown of the season using the best Western of all time.

The Good


Ryan Fitzpatrick
Now let me be clear. Ryan Fitzpatrick is not good enough to lead a team to a playoff victory. He's just not. He can win you between six and nine games a year but he seems to have a problem coming through with the game on the line (see: the KC game last weekend).

Having said that, I'm excited that it doesn't look like we're going to have to start our rookie QB next year. Fitzpatrick can play Kitna to our rookie's Carson Palmer (side-note, Fitzy has a similar skill set to Andrew Luck so I think he would make a good caddie for him).

2011 NFL Draft
This upcoming draft class seems to be deep at the positions we need (most notably quarterback) so if ever it was a good year to have the #1 overall pick, it's looking like 2011 is that year.

The greatest Bills player of the last 15
years? Our punter! Bills Football: Feel
the Excitement!

Brian Moorman
Moorman continues to be the lone bright spot in the utter darkness of Bills fandom. There are two reasons Bills fans get excited when the punt team is on the field: we don't have to watch our offense any more, and we get to see Brian Moorman's golden right boot kick the ball 90 yards.

The Bad


The Offense
After simply an abismal start, the offense has actually looked pretty decent the last two games. The reason it stays in the "Bad" section is because we simply don't have the horses to run the offense that Gailey wants to run. Spiller is coming along, but just isn't an asset yet (not to say he won't be). Jackson continues to play well but behind this offensive line, Barry Sanders would only look like a Pro Bowl running back instead of an Alltime Great.

The Secondary
The best unit on our defense (note that it's still in the "Bad" section, that should tell you something), the failed-wide-receiver corp still has a problem with catching the ball. Normally not something you worry about from the secondary, but with a defense this bad, you need turnovers to get them off the field as quickly as possible. The problem is, we have so many other dire problems that I don't see this being fixed any time soon.

Guards
Eric Wood and Adam Levitre are both passable NFL guards, which is the best compliment you can pay anyone on the worst offensive line in the NFL. Special kudos to Woods who is in his second year and continues to improve.

The Ugly


Offensive Tackles
There really isn't much to say. They're terrible. Awful. The worst I've ever seen and we've had a ton of bad tackles in Buffalo in the past. Maybe in the future we should steer clear of illegitimate children of NBA Hall of Famers who couldn't win titles in their sport either.

Run Defense
I could be the slowest, least athletic person who has ever attempted to play football. Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but I'm certainly in the bottom five. Anyway, I am confident that I could rush for 20 yards behind an average offensive line against the Bills.

By the way, it took me a while to figure how to adequately describe how terrible this defense is. I went with the ridiculous statement over an unbelievably complicated metaphor based loosely on the plot of Inception.

"What do you think, AJ Green? I
mean, he's an exciting playmaker!
We can't have too many of them,
right?"

Front Office
The team the Brain Trust threw out onto the field at the beginning of the year is nothing short of pathetic. The in-season moves have been just as bad, letting Trent Edwards go for absolutely nothing and allegedly jumping on the first serious offer for Marshawn Lynch without shopping him around. While I'm pumped for all these early draft picks, I'm terrified at what these bozos are going to do with them.