wardigital

It doesn't look like Edwards will release. He's bailing out of the pocket BEFORE the pocket is collapsing. I have been pro-Trent, but I'm just tired. This is getting to be enough. I don't know any way else to explain it except the man is a coward. Put Fitzpatrick in there. He's got all the athletic ability of a high school sophomore, but at least he's got some balls. We'll lose the games we're going to lose anyway, but I'd rather lose trying than lose cowering and running and checking down. I'm tired of it.

They called me Mr. Glass

Have we had any word on Poz?

I don't know, guys. I really think Trent needs to get the hook. I just can't imagine doing it this soon. But I think it's already obvious this is just not going to work with him.

Love Gus, can't stand Tasker.

The people who have "had it" are gone and will stay gone until the Bills have returned to winning. You just don't stick around something you have a great disdain for, just to be mad at it, especially for this long. You can still watch the Bills and think they're going to be bad. I do. I think they're a 6 or 7 win team. But I'm not mad about it. This whole pessimism thing and being "fed up" or whatever and radio and newspaper guys barking at the organization like lives are being lost over the team's record is ridiculous and frightening to witness. It's just a mean spirited reaction to something these people love because they don't really know a more constructive way to deal with their frustration. I am totally convinced that anyone who has "had it" but sticks around a football team... a voluntary thing, a hobby, is someone who is lying to themselves about their own insanity. This isn't a marriage, you're free to go if you don't appreciate what having a football team, good or bad, means to the Buffalo community.

Brian Moorman is the only elite player the Bills have, but he is an elite player. He is one of the top punters in the history of football, certainly in the top 10 all-time, perhaps at the top end of that list. (Scifre and Lechler are in this conversation, as well as Jeff Feagles, who has been punting since dinosaurs existed.) Moorman isn't in the top aggregates of any statistical categories, and he isn't in the top for averages. But a lot of the averages are skewed because there are many punters who have been in the league 3 to 5 years and then washed out. The aggregates are skewed because there was a period in the 80s and 90s when guys who had no busy being in the league would just punt for 25 years because it wasn't a particularly valued part of the game. For the past decade, Moorman has pretty much been the best or second best punter (generally second best) with Shane Lechler every year. Moorman has twice had the longest punt of the year and once had the highest average. Lechler was also once upon a time accused of using performance enhancers -- a punter, of all people. Longevity also has to be a factor. For whatever reason, it appears from looking at the stats that there are lots of guys who can be an NFL caliber punter for 2 or 3 years, but very few who can sustain that level of performance over a longer career. Punters of old have tons of punts and yardage, but generally much lower averages. Amongst punters with both longevity and average, Moorman rates very highly. Upon further review, I would probably put Lechler and Feagles as 1 and 2 all-time, and Moorman somewhere around 6th. I think that qualifies him as an elite player.. But that's it, that's the list. Who was the last elite player besides Moorman? Moulds never reached elite status, I don't think. Smith/Reed were no longer elite caliber players in 1999. I would suppose it would probably be whoever had their peak extended the longest from the glory years. Either Thurman Thomas or Bruce Smith, then. Maybe Ruben Brown. I also considered that Steve Christie would have been in this conversation, but when I look at his percentages, I'm not even sure he'd make an NFL roster today. Because of his ability to hit kicks in the clutch, I tend to look back on his career fondly, but Christie had like a 77% accuracy rating over his career, good for something like 29th in the league today, though very high amongst his own contemporaries. It is amazing how much the kicking game has evolved in the last 15 years.

I could not find whether or not they won the game, but a little research tells me that this coach was the winningest coach in his county at the time of this video, and continued to be until 2006 when he was suspended pending a probe into financial irregularities regarding recruitment to his off-season training program for high school players. He initially contested the suspension, then just resigned. Now he coaches at another school in the same part of the country, and they pretty much win every week also. He's obviously a little bit crazy, and from what I gather he builds his teams by somehow buying these children or something, but he wins, a lot. He's sort of like an old Lane Kiffin with some talent.

I think that integral to understanding how to win is a fear that you might not, and a fear of the repercussions. It is not everything, but it is a part of the equation. I don't think Whitner has that. (Which is why he's constantly messing around with these stupid guarantees) Not only that, but I worry that he borders on the line of delusional. He sends tweet messages to celebrities who never reply, compares himself routinely with far more popular, nationally recognized athletes, and so on. Perhaps as an NFL player it's important to have an inflated self image, but this is Jane with a serious belief that she is Tarzan.

Some people don't fear violence, especially when it is accompanied by profound ignorance. If someone needs to learn a lesson by punching me in the face and paying with a great amount of their personal time and money, then that is the way they must learn. I'll still exist, with some of that person's money, all the while still believing exactly what I believed before I was hit. I don't know when and where people got about the idea that being violent toward another person would somehow prove anything, other than that person's utter inability to act like an adult. I'd say whatever I want to Donte Whitner, directly to him, through a proxy, or here. There is nothing he can do to me that would somehow make me wish I hadn't said something. But I don't understand why you'd care. He's little in the league, maybe not little compared to normal human beings. But he seems to suffer from the same Napolean complex in the league and in regards to normal human beings.

I have never come as close to hating a Buffalo Bill as I have to hating Donte Whitner. In terms of social skills, he may be the dumbest player in Bills history, and I'm talking about a team with a dude who murdered somebody.

These are the Vegas Over/Unders for total number of Regular Season Wins, pick over or under for each number! Last year I was exactly 16 for 32 on these things! Of course, depending on which place you look, these over/unders will vary a little, but will roughly be the same as the odds don't tend to vary too much between sportsbooks. Viking 9.5: OVER Saints 10.5: OVER Falcons: 8.5: OVER Bills 5.5: OVER Panthers 7.5: UNDER Bears 7.5: UNDER Bengals 8.5: OVER Browns 5.5: UNDER Broncos 7.5: UNDER Lions 5.5: UNDER Texans 8.5: UNDER Colts 10.5: OVER Jaguars 7.5: UNDER Dolphins 8.5: UNDER Patriots 9.5: OVER Giants 8.5: OVER Raiders 6.5: UNDER Steelers 8.5: OVER Bucs 5.5: UNDER Titans 8.5: OVER Cardinals 7.5: UNDER Packers 9.5: OVER Eagles 8.5: UNDER 49ers 8.5: UNDER Seahawks 7.5: UNDER Rams 5.5: UNDER Cowboys 10.5: UNDER Redskins 7.5: OVER Ravens 9.5: OVER Jets 9.5: OVER Chiefs 6.5: UNDER Chargers 10.5: UNDER

People ought to be able to wear whatever they want, this isn't the Soviet Union.

Message boards by their nature are caustic and nasty, but this has nothing to do with the Bills or whether or not they're any good. The Patriots have had a deep tissue massage by the league for a decade and their boards are still also pretty caustic and nasty. I think this speaks more to internet mentality and the temperament of football fans in general than Bills fans. And people come and go from message boards because they find other things to do. Anyone who wants to be here enough will be here. People are going to be mean. As I've mentioned, people have been, for no reason, mean to me. But so what? There is no need to take it personally.

The roads around the stadium aren't really conducive to getting out quickly, or handling the sort of gameday traffic that occurs. I would agree that the Bills have one of the worst traffic situations in the league. On the bright side, I think that the stadium being away from downtown is fantastic.

On a side note (sort of related), I agree with 1billsfan in that I don't understand M&M's appeal. I like Francesa regardless of his perceived bias or what he says about the Bills. But M&M literally cascade one cliff-hanger into the next without ever really touching on the subjects they tailed off on previously. They seriously get through every day saying only a few things that would actually classify as sports talk or even talk radio, and the rest is advertisements and questions that never get answered. It's a very frustrating program to try to listen to.

That doesn't mean mostly lose. You can be 9-7 and not make the playoffs. Not that the Bills will win 9 games, but what you're suggesting is not what Cowher said, either.

3.5 for the year, nothing on Sunday. He seems like the sort of player to me who might make plays during games we're not within distance of anymore, just to make him even more maddening to fans.

The Buffalo Sports media seems like a bit of a fraternity that I don't particularly understand, and one of the unfortunate and limiting things about Western New York is the closed way in which its creative media community seems to operate, and the way in which they seem to operate with some weird, insecure degree of self-absorption. I've mentioned in this thread too that I think posters are too vitriolic here, but I've been involved in similar creative communities in multiple bigger, better cities and I have never once witnessed the sort of ridiculous smallness that I witness when it comes to people who are blessed with recognition or even paying jobs in sports media like I have in Buffalo. I understand the desire to be frustrated with unfair and malicious posting, dumb callers on the radio, and so on, but the inability to rise above that as professionals or quasi-professionals of some sort is a staggering statement on Buffalo and one of the many reasons creative, talented people leave in droves. The "club" of entitled media people in WNY are every bit as much a reason for it as the listeners/readers/posters. They're forcing themselves to disappear up their own !@#$, so to speak.

These are typically called Survival Leagues, no? Survivor Pools. Something. Anyway, I'll take Cleveland, since this is may be the only week all year when its even remotely reasonable to take Cleveland.

I do read his Twitter. That's one of the reasons I think he is so self-absorbed. The constant bitching at the Buffalo community over his perceived slights to Bills players were routinely unfounded. He couldn't even be bothered to be professional when Richie Incognito came into this organization for a few weeks last year. I don't care what a player feels personally about another player, what he did there was particularly destructive. This is addition by subtraction in terms of football. Best wishes to Mitchell on a speedy and easy recovery, and then go the hell elsewhere.

Two separate shows on NFL Sirius Radio have called the Bills the single most outmatched team in the National Football League. Basically in order to exceed expectations this year, we only have to win 3 games. No pressure, anyway.

I am never glad that a human being is hurt, but I am glad that Mitchell won't be in a Bills uniform this season. In my opinion, he's not only a below average player, but a cocky, self-absorbed, below average human being. He never seemed to grasp the idea of the Buffalo football community, constantly preached at the fans like children, and somehow talked more than Donte Whitner while being even worse. What a waste of oxygen this guy is -- I hope this marks the end of his Bills career.

I was 11 for the 98 playoff game too. The first offensive play for the Bills was a play action bomb to Moulds that connected and he then fumbled it away, right? That game was a roller coaster.

This is such a tough question! The thing that scares me about Trent Edwards is that I worry he's a front runner. He seems to do well when things are going well. When he's not being challenged and he can relax and throw comfortably, he is amongst the top half of quarterbacks in this league. But in every instance, he has crumbled under adversity. So the big thing to look for, for me, is not whether Gailey can get him to play -- we know Edwards can play, its whether or not Gailey can get him to play when everything isn't going exactly according to plan. Good Quarterbacks adjust, and overcome adversity, both in the Super Bowl and on the way to the Super Bowl. I don't know if Edwards has it in him to do that, and I'm 50/50 as to whether or not that can be coached. That's what I'm looking for this year. When the going gets tough, does Edwards get going?