HardyBoy

Hard to know the consistency without knowing what he was asked to do. I'm not even saying it's a situation where he does his job and someone else doesn't, it could be by design to limit the right play being called against a defense. Thinking something like he might be asked to penetrate and cause a running back to commit to a gap in a defense designed to take away a pass play the other team likes to call, in case the offense does run. The defense's play call might be something where they are conceding a five yard gain as long as Oliver forces the rb to hit that gap, but would give up a 25 yard+ run if Oliver isn't able to funnel the runner. I don't have the stats, but if you looked at % of plays where the opponent got behind the chains, Oliver would have a really large % of either being directly involved or the player closest to the offensive player when he cut and ran into the final defender.

So I largely agree with your point, but I do think there are bad gms out there who see the draft position like an I've heard of him type thing. Also, good gms might see a player and think they were playing out of scheme or were not being coached well and see the high pick physical traits and think they can get the value out of the player at a higher contract more in line with their draft position. It's not so much because of their draft position, but the traits that got them drafted that high in the first place. I know it was a trade, but kind of like Darius trade. Marone thought he could get the value from Darius at that contract...he was wrong because it sounded like Darius hit a finish line with that contract (I'm not judging him, everyone is driven by different things), but he had the ability skill wise to reach that contract, his priorities changed though.

Yes! That's the one!

I'm definitely thinking of someone else then!

Didn't he have a season with Tampa Bay where he flashed for a bit? Am I crazy for remembering that? Maybe it was a game or a few, but I thought he did well at one point for a hot minute?

Gabe Davis before Oliver I think and use the pick on a wr. I think Oliver is massively underrated though. That's why losing Hodgins was so frustrating to me at the time and now. You had at worst a 4th receiver type depth guy that was a high level red zone threat and that would not cost much to extend after next season. Could of been the bridge to your next crop of receivers at worst and it's looking a lot like he already raised the floor well above that to being a #3 at worst. I wouldn't trade Oliver for a 3rd though, they'll get that back in a couple of years with a comp pick and they should re-sign him imo. Players should be on the trading block though and they should do a mini rebuild. I think the decision at d cord will drive the decisions a lot based on scheme. What's a Milano trade look like for example and would you even consider that if they shift to more of a 4-3 base d?

When does the contract for Frazier expire? If he gets hired as a head coach, would they still get a comp pick?

Yes, those ones are my favorite!

Remember the 2nd dolphins game McDaniels when asked why they didn't keep running and he said something along the lines of you need to be careful falling into a trap of a defense getting you out of your identity by making things seem easy? Feels a bit like Allen fell into that trap yesterday. The dolphins knew the only real chance they had was blitz and not necessarily sack Allen, but hope he'd try and take deep shots and they could get lucky on a string of incompletions, which is what happened. Singletary likely has a 60 yard catch and run for a td if Allen looked off the first read there for a second.

I always say Go Bills to anyone wearing Pats gear and chuckle, going back about three years. Does that count?

I went to high school and college in Rochester. Crazy how much you don't really notice the lack of sun in high school (at least I didn't) compared to when you're on college. High school you're basically inside all day and then it's dark. College you have a bunch of free time and can just stare at how cloudy it is. Something about the structure of the days made it very different. Maybe it's that in high school there was always someone to talk to either in class or I'm the hallway or whatever. College you are alone a lot more even if you have a lot of friends. Also, if you go right by the lakes it tends to be a lot more sunny iirc. We used to go to Webster Park in Rochester a lot on Sunday mornings before Bills games to go sledding or walk on the trails/by the lake and it was always sunny and I don't think it was because we'd only go on sunny days. The warm air comes off the lake and it takes a few miles for it to cool down and turn into clouds. Anyway, I lived in Boston after college and it was pretty cloudy there too in the winter. Then I moved to Ft Lauderdale and if it was cloudy for two days straight I'd start getting depressed because that's how much sun you get there. Live in Raleigh now and it's pretty much the same...so much sunnier in the winter!

more than a few have said they wouldn’t let their kids play though.

Mounds isn’t drought era though is he?

What do you say, "get off my lawn!" probably! Now if you were commenting on people saying expecially instead of especially I'm with you. Every generation does things with pronunciations and such, you just notice it because you're not talking that way because you are no longer cool my man (don't worry, neither am I).

That's what people don't get about the Dan Le Batard show...it's a parody of basically skip bayless and way to serious sports talk by people who most likely never even watched the game they are talking about.

I think it probably was about him researching the offensive coordinator more than the fact they drafted a qb even.

The td tre gave up was scheme. He wasn't beat after the snap, they beat the entire defense before the snap. Really hard to make huge sweeping judgments on a drive and a half, especially where the defense has taken a couple drives to lock down consistently. That said, I have eyes, I see what it looks like as well. Just saying I'm sure there was a plan to scheme Tre into being effective and it certainly wasn't to have him playing with outside leverage and no inside help on that td.

Haha, it was something that was more nuanced than how I put it for sure.

That's awesome and I bet there were a bunch of people who wished that they were able to take a train to get to NYC from where they were with the southwest cluster going on! Wait, was your first show Merriweather this summer? Did you get an If I Could in each of your first two shows you lucky jerk?!?! Pretty much the only song I'm chasing (not sure why other than it's amazing) and I missed it by one night this summer (was at Raleigh the night before MPP). I've seen them I think 32 times and that was the closest I came other than when they played it in Worcester for the summer 2012 tour opener, but i had moved from Boston to Ft Lauderdale that January so wasnt there. I saw them 8 times each in 2009 and 2010 while living in boston, then only once in 2011 cause I got married that summer, and then moved to Ft Lauderdale in Jan 2012 and basically stopped seeing them for a while (dont be too sad, a lot of good live music in south Florida, especially in the winter/early spring, and there is a huge dead scene down there and a couple incredible dead tributes, but big shows don't typically make it down there too often). Live in Raleigh now though and there is so much music to go within a five hour drive, it's crazy...five hour drive from Ft Lauderdale gets you still in Florida. Forget about me, hope you had fun!!! I absolutely love TAB, so much fun (and back to me)...my first show since Feb 2022 (that was a Heavy Pets show in Boca, which if you haven't checked out The Heavy Pets, you're welcome) was TAB in Wilmington and they opened with Drifting...I am a much much better person when I have live music in my life and I definitely had some tears in that moment.

Nice!!! Did you get a chance to catch any of the other shows in the run?

You might not like the genre, which totally fine, but that band is full of extremely talented, prodigy musicians who are incredible at improvising and what they are playing is really hard. They also sell out multi-show runs at Red Rocks in minutes and have won Grammy awards (like the real musician grammy awards, not the ones awarded based mostly on overall record sales, radio play and marketing).

You're comparing Billy Strings (especially that song to yakety sax)...opinions are one thing, but that's quite a take for sure! He actually has a metal background (I'm assuming you're into death metal). All good, like what you like. I actually didn't really appreciate metal until fairly recently. They play really fast, which is cool and what I appreciate, though I personally prefer silent spaces in the rhythm and I have a really hard time finding nuance within metal, like where's the dynamics?... I'm sure it's there, but it just sounds like all 16th and 32nd notes non-stop. See, youve hurt my sense of self by what you said, so now I need to give you my arbitrary non-credential credentials! I've been to multiple hundreds of concerts big and small in my life, I love live music as much as anything, I played instruments in school from first to 9th grade, I have been playing guitar for the last almost 10 years (I'm 39), I appreciate how fun it is to play with a distortion pedal and I feel like I have a good ear for music across genre, but if I'm going to go on the heavier side of things I more prefer more musically interesting stuff (Rage is very interesting, but there are gaps in the sound vs death metal). I'm open to learning I'm wrong, but man your billy strings take is a take.

Haha, appreciate the information and definitely helpful for people! I was more poking fun at whoever it was that a few years ago was claiming it was literally better to have lost to an NFC team than to have beat them in terms of making the playoffs. He was saying the bills were better off having lost than won...funny how last season the bills had such a weak conference record against such an easy strength of schedule and it's flipped this year...one score games I guess?

I'm listening to a lot of Billy Strings these days as well. The energy that this song brings (Away From the Mire) and the lyrics about promises not coming through and still persevering. Edit: Don't be thrown off by the somewhat chilled out start and the acoustic instuements...this song doesn't have the big distortion, but it brings it once it gets going.

This has been a go to pump up song for me for a while. I love everything about this: