Buffalo Rising Online

Mar 27th 2007, 11:38am By Dave Staba

The Internet presences of Takeo Spikes and Darwin Walker, the two very large men the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles swapped on Monday, depict two men as different as the positions they play.

Spikes’ official site opens with a Flash sequence backed by a mid-tempo beat, with former Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey declaring, “He is everything people talk about.”

The intro lists Spikes’ measurements (6-foot-2, 242 pounds), Pro Bowl appearances and pronounces him to have “the best name in football,” since Takeo is Japanese for “great warrior,” in case you hadn’t heard that mentioned by the guys in the booth for just about every Bills game over the past four years.

Spikes even has a logo, a silhouette of the linebacker celebrating something or other over the letters “TKO,” a slight phonetic twist on the best name in football, as well as boxing shorthand for technical knockout, a violent ending that occurs when one fighter is still on his feet, but incapable of continuing.

Walker’s site also features a game shot of the 6-3, 294-pound defensive tackle, a tight picture of his face peering intently out from behind his facemask.

There’s also a bit of bravado, a link called “casualties,” where the quarterbacks he sacked during six seasons in Philadelphia are listed.

But another tab describes Walker’s business career, with pictures of him at construction sites (the Darwin Walker House, perhaps?) and wearing a hard hat. He earned a civil engineering degree from Tennessee, where he played his college football, and uses it as a vice president of Pennoni Associates in Philadelphia. He got that title when the company he founded, Progressive Engineering, merged with Pennoni.

Walker has been a solid, if unspectacular, performer for Philadelphia. A mobile inside force, he registered six sacks during the 2006 regular season (including three of the eminently dumpable Drew Bledsoe) and one in each of the Eagles’ playoff games. His addition gives the Bills a second veteran to pair inside with Larry Tripplett in a rotation that also includes 2006 draft picks John McCargo and Kyle Williams.

The departure of Spikes also removes one of the last significant vestiges of Tom Donahoe’s tenure with the Bills. Three of Donahoe’s first-round picks – Nate Clements, Mike Williams and Willis McGahee – are gone, as are his biggest veteran acquisitions – Bledsoe, London Fletcher and now, Spikes.

Spikes was Donahoe’s bold score of 2003, the defensive complement to the addition of Bledsoe a year earlier.

Spikes had a flair for big plays and reached the Pro Bowl after each of his first two seasons in Buffalo. In 2004, the defense he led keyed a late-season run against mostly inferior opposition that put the Bills one game from his first trip to the playoffs. But it wasn’t good enough to stop a Pittsburgh team with nothing to play for, even when the Steelers emptied their bench in the second half.

An Achilles tendon injury early the next year left him a different player when he returned in 2006, stripping him of the explosive speed that made him such a force in Cincinnati and during his first two years here.

Unlike McGahee, whose propensity for stupid utterances actually seemed to get worse with age (for God’s sake, Baltimore, lock up your daughters), Spikes always said the right things. It was just that the defense was never as good as it sounded like it should be.

Under Marv Levy’s direction, Buffalo’s front office has taken an abrupt turn away from splashy acquisitions and daring maneuvers that were Donahoe’s forte. The Bills drafted safety Donte Whitner and McCargo in the first round of last year’s draft. Their offseason pickups so far have been three offensive linemen and now another big body on the defensive line.

Backup quarterback Kelly Holcomb going to Philadelphia along with Spikes also carries some significance. The team’s veterans, particularly on defense, lobbied for Holcomb when J.P. Losman struggled early in 2005. Mularkey acquiesced to a group of players who had never won anything, either, stunting Losman’s progress so that the Bills could finish 5-11.

Holcomb’s departure leaves Craig Nall as the nominal No. 2 behind Losman, the only Buffalo quarterback to throw a pass during the 2006 season.

By trading away McGahee and Spikes, Levy stripped his team of much of its star power. But given the disparity between their personas and their performances, Buffalo should be a better team for it.

Both players were, indeed, “everything people talk about.” Winning, though, usually takes something more.