Archives for March 15, 2009

‘By all accounts, sales of Owens’ No. 81 jersey — Bills receiver James Hardy wore the number last year but gave it up — have been brisk.’

‘Western New York football past and present will be celebrated at the first "Football Night in Buffalo" dinner on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at Lucarelli’s Banquet Center in Lackawanna. The event is sponsored by the Buffalo Bills Alumni and the Monday Quarterback Club and will salute University at Buffalo head football coach Turner Gill and the "Buffalo Bills Pioneers" players who played for the team from its inception in 1960 through the clubs early years.’

‘”When I read that news, I said, ‘Man, Buffalo is on the way up because they’re bringing a talent to the Buffalo Bills that the Bills haven’t had-or they did have it at one time and lost-a talent comparable to Cookie Gilchrist.'”‘

‘This team has few options. It sounds as if they are about to discard the best offensive lineman they have had since their Super Bowl days, left tackle Jason Peters, whom they should have tied up for the next five or six years. They don’t have a left guard. They may or may not have a center. They don’t have a tight end. They need a pass rusher. Now they may be bidding bye-bye to Peters.’

‘The Willis McGahee Rule: First and foremost, do not diss Buffalo. The quickest way to turn new friends into foes is to say something bad about your new home. Ex-Bill McGahee earned the enduring enmity of the populace by trashing everything from our nightlife to our women on his way out the door. Granted, the Chippewa Strip is not Deep Ellum. But despite what McGahee-who apparently never got out of Orchard Park-thought, nightlife here does not end at T.G.I. Friday’s.’

‘”If (the Bills) fully intend to regionalize, the Niagara Region is right here,” Fitzgerald said. “So why not move (the team) to the Falls, it’s closer to Toronto and really regionalize it?”‘

‘”I was surprised that he would want to come to Buffalo,” Schobel said. “It’s a hard area to get [free agents]. Usually, if the money is the same, they go other places, because of the weather. But for me, I’ve enjoyed it there, and I hope he’ll enjoy it.”‘

‘OK, now I think I understand. Buffalo defines football desperate, even more so than, say, the Oakland Raiders.’

‘”When you go to speak on occasions like this, they always bring up things that you’ve done,” Reich said. “Certainly that was one of the positives. But I also hold the record for the most fumbles in a Super Bowl game. That one’s not so positive.”‘