A lot of that was McDumbass, both playing Boy Genius (great, my teams head coach is younger than me; this will end well... ) and in terms of the rumors saying Belicheat was really high on Tebow and might take him earlier than most expected. He might have, at that, but no one takes Tebow before the third round--except McDumbass. For one thing, if he had not convinced himself he could get his mentor to do a three way trade that gave Denver Cassell (who had just had a GREAT year after Brady got hurt) AND Detroits #1 overall pick in exchange for Cutler, he had a darned good offense in place already.

Ryan Clady had just had a great rookie year at LT, Ben Hamilton was still our jack of all trades LG, Casey Wiegmann was still a great center (as he is two years later--for Division rival KC, who reacquired him after McDumbass dumped him,) Kuper was still a great RG and Erik Pears was a solid RT. Two of those guys were replaced by (really bad) guards McDumbass got in the same draft as Tebow, another is starting for the Bills, while WE have replaced him with two different rookies in as many years (though we just re-signed the other one in the wake of Kupers injury.) McDumbass DESTROYED our line, and the offense with it.

Yet he was not content to leave it at that; he also shipped Cutler out of town, and the following year he benched Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler, the only proven receivers we had, for the last game of the season, despite the fact we HAD to win to make the playoffs (instead we got demolished,) then shipped THEM out in the off season. As a result, our starting offense looks like this:

LT Ryan Clady (4)
LG Zane Beadles (2)
C J.D. Walton (2)
RG Chris Kuper (6)*
RT Orlando Franklin (R)

WR Eric Decker (2)**
WR Demaryius Thomas (2)
WR Eddie Royal (4)
TE Daniel Fells (4)

QB Tim Tebow (2)
RB Willis McGahee (9)

So we have, like, two veterans on offense; it goes to five if you consider 4 years in the League "veteran." And people wonder why our offense is so bad.





* Kuper, our only good pass blocker at G, had his foot spun around 90° in the season finale hosting KC and has been replaced by Russ Hochstein.
** Decker got a sprained ACL from (yet) a(nother) James Harrison cheap shot against Pitt and is probably done for the year unless we make the Super Bowl; that elevates Royal to the #2 slot, making Matt Willis (4) our #3 WR.