OvrOfficiousJerk

Thanks for the perspective. I remember how we were devastated by injuries on the defensive side of the ball that year (lost Webster and Simpson the first game, Poz by the end of the month, and at least 8-12 reached IR by the end), so having an underperformer starting was certainly par for the course and his mediocrity probably got lost in the shuffle. Then again the IR issues gave us a chance to uncover Jabari Greer, but plenty of those guys had no business doing anything more than ST duty. I feel a little bit better hearing that we didn't pass up on the next big thing with Leonhard, Ryan must've put some real effort in to turn him into what he became.

...Jim Leonhard's injury just got a chunk of airtime on MNF Countdown (both in the booth and in the studio), and all the adjustments the Jets would have to make as a result of losing such a key player. Seeing as how we had to spend a high draft pick on another FS the year or so after Leonhard left, I'm wondering if anyone remembers the circumstances of him leaving. Despite being an undrafted-FA, he certainly proved a better player than Ko "I'm worth millions" Simpson, so why didn't we keep him? A bit undersized, he definitely packs a punch, is a reliable kick returner and doesn't make too many costly mistakes. Instead of picking up Jairus Byrd (I was all-in on the Byrd bandwagon last year, but let's face it he hasn't come back from his groin injury this year), that 2009 second round pick could've been an LB or OT, two positions that were sorely needed. Was Leonhard a guy worth keeping in 2008, and should be filed in with current Vikings Winfield and Williams as players we should have re-upped? Or is it just that he became Rex Ryan's pet project at Baltimore/New York, and was coached from a marginal player to become a solid FS?

I've heard everything from cramped concourses, lack of amenities for fans and players, and most importantly, no club seats. Mark Gaughan took every chance to take a shot at the Metrodome during his chat yesterday. In reality, there are only a few stadia left in the NFL that truly deserve replacing (mebbe the Q in SD and Candlestick in SF as well), and this is one. Had we had a dome built back in the 70s, we'd probably going through this discussion right now, but fortunately the Ralph will be good for a decade or two more. Renovating a dome is a much more difficult proposition than what we did in '98, so a new stadium is absolutely necessary for the Vikes to stay where they are.

"So you're saying, there's a chance?" -Lloyd Christmas http://playoffstatus.com/nfl/afcstandings.html (Not yet technically eliminated, highly improbable)

"So you're telling me, there's a chance?!?!" -Lloyd Christmas http://playoffstatus.com/nfl/afcstandings.html

To defend PTR, it took an 0-8 start to bring us down from 7th in overall attendance (look for 2008, 2009 results on your Web site you mention) to 24th; we filled the stadium last year and the year before with record season ticket sales, despite not having made the playoffs since 1999. Though being much larger in market size and moving into new digs, Detroit (a similarly snake-bitten team) has had a rough time selling out for that exact reason - a terrible team. Controlling for a God-awful record, our attendance problems can be explained away this year. Had we had attendance issues with even a respectable record (like St. Louis Cincy, Tampa Bay or San Diego; some of these have been mentioned above already), then I'd listen to your argument about attendance. If anything, I agree with the "lack of a succession" plan argument.

You mean Cleveland?

Regardless of what the stadium fairies in LA say, the Ralph does not need major stadium renovations. We had them less than 15 years ago, bringing the Ralph well into the 21st century of revenue-generating stadia (ditched 7,000 general admission seats for club seating and more suites). Maybe upgrade the bathrooms to ditch the urinal troughs, but that's hardly major. The only problem is getting corporations for those suites.

If not Joe himself (something tells me he might have grown up in New England), his family definitely has ties to the Buffalo area; it's a running gag on the BS Report to rag on Joe whenever the Bills come up ("Joe Mead's Buffalo Bills").

Really? Cassey Wasserman said that? I'm glad to see someone from LA do their homework about the Bills, the guys behind the other stadium (Roski and his lapdog Semcken) were salivating over the Bills about a year ago for no good reason. My money's on Wasserman's group to get it, their proposal isn't in the middle of Death Valley and actually has many more events in mind than just ten games of football. Slightly OT, but I like Simmons too, especially as an interviewer. Aside from the occasional reality TV podcast, the BS Report is great; he knows his stuff and I'll take his columns over Peter King or Reilly any day. Additionally, when he took a shot at Buffalo as not being a viable city for the NFL, he got a mailbag full of complaints; he ate his crow like a man, corrected the mistake and went out of his way to say what good homefield advantage we have at the Ralph from then on.

Thanks! IIRC, Time Warner often buys up the remaining few thousand, as they did last year with the Colts season finale. Specifically, there were roughly 2,000 remaining according to a News article from that time. As it relates to next weeks game, then, 10,000 may be a bit steep for them to buy them all up but as long as we put a dent in that total they might do the same for the Jags. Needless to say, every time TWC buys up the tickets it softens the blow of $130 cable bills and a lack of the NFL network. More importantly though if we fail to sell out a couple games this year I hope no one points to us as having "sellout problems." We were 69 for 80 in the 2000s when we only had one winning season, though those same people probably won't bother to look that up.

Speaking of beating Miami, we beat them in 2007 wearing the throwbacks. The other game we wore them that year was the Dallas MNF game though...

Oh crap... even if we win on Sunday against the Jets I don't see us selling out that game... 10,000 tickets to sell in a week????

Nice to know that I'm the only one who googles "Bills sellouts." Sunday's game is sold out: http://blogs.buffalonews.com/billboard/ (there's a sentence about it after the Stroud story) However I too am interested in the ticket status of other four games (Detroit, Jacksonville, Cleveland, New England). Any leads would be appreciated.

Do a quick Google search on " "Scott Norwood" jersey " and on the first page there's a Giants forum that shows the aforementioned jersey in the case. I would post a link to the picture but I'm not sure about copyrights and such. It's definitely Norwood's jersey and not Simms 1) because of the piping and 2) we played in the whites in Super Bowl XXV and there's a Super Bowl patch on it. You stay classy, NYC.

+1 "If you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere..." If there's one place to set the ceiling on ticket prices and PSLs it's New York City, and obviously the Giants/Jets owners have set the bar way above it. The fact that they're having trouble getting the stadium filled is the fans saying "enough is enough," so the rest of the league better listen: gouging the normal fan to pay off a stadium isn't going to work.

Wow! Bucky Brooks, as in Bu. Brooks (the other B. Brooks of the 1994 Buffalo Bills). It's nice to know that, after a quiet career as a mediocre kick returner and reserve defensive back, NFL.com welcomes you on as a talking head!

Johnny Malloy's used to show the games in Coventry, but that has since closed. Plenty of places probably have the game on one of their many TVs but game sound might be hard to come by: the Winking Lizard out by me refused to put on game sound for the Thursday night game against the Jets last year. Heaven forbid we should interrupt their regularly scheduled soft rock and ten-year old pop music.

+1. Any fire from the coach and sense of cohesivenes whatsoever is very appreciated at this point after Jauron. Alright, I admit, I just wanted an excuse to bring up "I'm a man, I'm forty."

...anyone else think of Mike Gundy during all of this?

On that note does anyone know how ticket sales are progressing? There are already two sellouts and almost a third, but then again we're stuck with clunkers against Cleveland, Jacksonville and Detroit....

FYI, I saw that article when it first came out and tried to find the original quote from Goodell himself. Here's the closest I got to a direct quote about the Bills stadium situation... http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/7614...-as-unavoidable ...and Goodell's call for upgrade was probably in reference to the Rogers Centre. Without a direct Goodell quote from the original article I'm tempted to say it was schoolboy reporting and the reporter got his signals crossed. The Ralph was upgraded a little more than 10 years ago and it's the least of the Bills' worries, Goodell would be the first to know that.

+1, Kipers Hair. I really like how you broke down the culture of the NHL and how you don't see that in the NFL anymore. Kelsay had a quote a couple years back about how he wanted to give the blue-collar people of Buffalo a return on their investment in him, how that was a draw for him to do better, but that sort of mentality as you said has disappeared for most of the top echelon in the league. I saw this mentality in grad school, as I'm doing graduate work in Cleveland. Young people would opt to go to an inferior school in a major metropolis than go to a better school in a rust belt city where you're more likely to get a better education and save some money during your lean income-less years. The NFL just mirrors the general sentiment of our nation's overall lifestyle.

What a great showing of Buffalo's inferiority complex, when we realize we don't deserve something that's been in the fabric of our community for five decades. Instead of looking what's wrong with us, I'd say there's something wrong with the system in general. The country as a whole is quickly descending into an obese, overmedicated, triple-mortgaged, underachieving mediocrity. In this climate, I would NEVER want to "keep up with the Jones's," so to speak and build a new stadium because that's' what everyone else is doing. The last thing So Cal should be doing with a budget decifict the size of the Pacific is building a new stadium that will pour billions of dollars in something that will only get a small return for the community as a whole and continue to concentrate wealth in persons who are about as relevant as the inventor of the snuggie and the lead writer of CSI: Albequerque. With few exceptions, we're the only market in the league where a working class joe can take his kids to see the game, where kids in their late-teens/early twenties can afford to tailgate and watch the game The only reason why we're having this conversation that "we don't deserve a team? is that we don't have to take out a mortgage to buy a gallon of milk, we don't drive around in Audis, we can reasonably afford the houses we live in, we have a sustainable standard of living. Don't blame our city, blame the system.

I'm sorry to say that info is now outdated, as that Geppetto's/Johnny Malloy's was closed when I was frequenting the Coventry scene over the summer and then a couple weeks later when I went out for the MNF game. It was a great place to watch the game -- albeit with a large cinema screen with a washed out picture. At least 20-30 Bills fans guaranteed each game, with a fair number of students showing up (e.g, Case, John Carroll, etc...). It was a bummer to have seen the place locked up, especially as seeing that the other location is on the other side of town. I hope Panini's works out though!