HardyBoy

Driving out of Fort Lauderdale to a friend's place in Huntsville Alabama, and getting to watch the Bills is a huge motivator as I drive...go Bills!

Because slapping kids, oh wait, just the boys, is a positive tradition...ironic

A song shows you are patriotic? Wow, you might feel powerful, but very clear you have given up your power to the propogandists. This country is built upon ideas, ideals, morality and the notion that one has free will to control their own selves as long as that does not impede on other's rights. Nothing else, and anyone who goes against that is unpatriotic, period. You have allowed your tv, and the people behind it, to strip you of the ability to see those incredibly powerful ideas, and have them replaced by their talking points that you parrot back like a sheep. In their place they insert a symbol, a flag or a song, that triggers their pre-conditioned response out of you. Go watch the Manchurian Candidate (the original), the anthem your Queen of Hearts.

Yes, they need to do that!!! Throw them all in a tank, and then, tank!

How much of passing lanes is game planning, oline adjustments based on that plan and audibles when faced with a defense that will make a batted ball highly likely? I get the oline on the heals thing, but my guess is most people complaining (me included) havent the foggiest idea on proper oline technique, specifically when it comes to game planning, which is not happening in the preaeason.

They are only playing like 5% of rhe offense, and without game planning. You really need to watch one on one who wins, not how the team plays together. Especially when there is a blitz and they have no hot reads installed, because again 5% of offense no game plan. What would your posts look like with only the letters [K, T, A, N] allowed...well we know for some here it wouldn't be such a huge difference.

You gameplan to create passing lanes, so yeah, that is what it means...

Only if we play Seattle, so when we lose to them, it would have two benefits. First it would help our tie breaker odds, because that's a thing. Secondly, it would lower the draft slot of Seattle's pick, which would, using the same logic, be helpful as well... Anyway, yes I would do that trade.

Absolutely, I'm all for threads getting long, no issue there and they should naturally. However, when a thread gets long it prevents people who are new to the discussion from joining in. I can't read the 90+ pages of the Watkins thread, and honestly most of it isn't interesting enough, at least based on my interest, to engage me for that long. Also, it might be a recency bias thing, because looking at the page now, the first page is all threads that had posts today. A couple months ago that was not the case. I read this board several times a day almost all year, and there are times when there is not enough new stuff to read. Could be an off season thing, or writing this, maybe a call to action to people raising similar concerns (several in this thread) to start interesting fresh conversations to change that, and I agree Blitz, of the threads I have started, they don't typically get shut down (well except for the refs are fixing games threads from a couple years ago, which looking back was a bit much ) Anyway, sorry to hijack the thread. That back shoulder throw and catch was crazy, and the throw to O'Leary on the LBs ear with anticipation and arm strength was unreal as well.

I've had an account here since 2008ish probably, lurked a year or two before that, and this board has changed in the last year or so in terms a significant decrease in the number of sub threads discussing the same topic in different ways, and in my opinion it's for the worse. I am not advocating for redundant threads or just spamming new threads on the same topic, but a single thread with over even 10 pages is inaccessible to anyone trying to get in on the conversation. By merging and closing threads at such a high rate, you are limiting this board to the people who get in on conversations first, which are likely the people who are most active on the board. It's antithetical to the goal of a message board that encourages an open discussion with many different opinions (while ensuring those opinions are within the acceptable tone and style of the board, which is totally fine).

I didn't see it yesterday, and a lot of other people didn't see it yesterday. Let conversations start over, and don't grow a single massive thread, it prevents new people from joining and sets a single narrative. This has been a major shift in the last year, and it is making this board less spontaneous, creative and interesting.

I don't know, there are a lot of people on here that know a lot about football. I think if you played, a lot of that stuff seems obvious, but if you never played organized football, it's a totally and very interesting foreign language (I played lots of sports, but never football). I think part of it is the Bills have been disappointing for so long people aren't interested in nuance at this point. Once they start winning, I bet a lot of interesting posts with nuance from some really knowledgeable people won't devolve into fire everyone/sully said anger expressions, but for now the nuance is going to live on one way media (blog posts/podcasts).

I agree with you to a point, I have no clue what is happening in football, but I find learning how and why extremely interesting and I think the growing success of Cover1 shows I am right. The future is in the data, granularity and nuance. People who love that, they will be driving advertising revenue, both within those organizations through their roles, and through their wallets, because that is the future and where the money is. People are sick of manufactured news and pre-written cliche story lines (see espn). I don't believe that espn is struggling due to people being able to access highlights instantly...I am not going to 10 different websites to watch a 30 second highlights. They are a compiler of different sources (like the tbd main page is), amd that will always be valuable. ESPN is struggling because they create fake, sensationalized stories that they talk about non-stop, and it got old, and they deliver those stories through fluff straw man manufactured outrage takes. This goes against what cord cutters want (I cut the cord in 2012, and the thought of having to pay espn for the level of quality of 85% of their non-live sport broadcasts is more than enough motivation to keep me away from cable for good). LeBetard show got where it was by being different, so will Cover1. People are sick of hot takes, we want nuance, and excellence in our niche, and that niche is large. Cover1 delivers that, and am really pumped to see them growing and gaining traction!

That's the truth!

This study has some flaws with regards to sample bias, but I think it shows a very stark reality...if you show symptoms of CTE and played football, regardless of the other confounding variables, then you very likely have CTE. That's not nothing, and should open a lot of doors for earlier access to behavioral therapies to hopefully preserve as much function as possible, for as long as possible. Symptoms don't mean you're crazy, they mean you have a diagnosable condition that would benefit from therapy. This study should help get those therapies covered by insurance using symptoms as a diagnosis criteria.

Wins definitely don't pick up in Nov/Dec...exact opposite actually...

You have an interdependence going on I think. QBs are often drafted in the first round, especially underclassmen qbs, and qb is the least important position when it comes to athleticism. I would check the correlation of combine performance on draft position for qbs compared to other positions and I bet it's significantly weaker, if not negatively correlated, since athletic freaks likely get pushed to different positions early on (that could be interesting to explore, amd might explain why freak o-linemen are so rare/valuable). What happens to your data when you exclude qbs, or at least nonfreak qbs (going on the logic that say tebow could have played TE for example)? This is really awesome though, real cool concept! What did you use to do the analysis? I've been learning/using R and it's crazy cool, and I do a lot of stuff in excel too.

I hear that, but I think that applies more to basketball than it does football. In basketball the success rate of players outside many times the top 2 or 3 in a draft is unlikely. That is especially true if you are talking super stars, which is needed if you want a chance at a title. NFL is different, and while the rookie salary slotting helped, having late first round picks seem to be more valuable. Of course that could be because having good players across a roster means you pick later in the first. Problem with tanking by gutting your roster in the nfl is average careers are so short, that you might waste much of your high draft picks' primes while rebuilding the rest, though the new economy of the nfl allows you to find cheap highly effective veterans readily available. Still, if you are tanking, I think the browns current route of trading down, stocking assets to allow huge number of picks over two or three drafts, and build an entire team that way could work...but again the bust rate is really high.

This sucks...

You're still doing it...

The irony of someone complaining about a thread's existence, and then hijacking that same thread is pretty classic.

Ha, probably explains more that I'm full of crap on this one, had zero data to back it up.

I think there can be a balance. One thread with 40+ pages with every important and different root cause mixed together makes it really difficult to discuss the various aspects fully, and is a nightmare to jump into if you are coming in after the thread reaches 10+ pages. Just my perspective and two cents. I've been on this board since 07 or 08, so not a new addition, and I feel like this thread consolidation is a fairly new development, and it is making my experience less enjoyable.

Jake Long...Parcells lost a lot of credibility after the Miami stint...the league passed him by and the new fact of nfl cap management allows you to win more by starting rookies and spending the savings elsewhere.

Here's the thing about the captain checkdown argument, I don't believe it to be accurate prior the hit. I'll try and do some analysis later, but this Trent Edward's highlight video was posted Oct 2008, which is right around the time of that Cards game I believe. I know highlights are hand picked, but these are anticipation throws on time and on target into tight windows, with the poise to let a play develop knowing there is a hit coming. https://youtu.be/sZk9bINoPG4 That is not the same player who turned into Captain Checkdownl. Also, Edwards and Peterman both do the same leg lift it looks like.