thurst44

Personally, at 4:30, I will be reading this site feverishly or closing it for 7 days.

Or maybe the offensive line had a bad game and plays better the week they pley the Chefs or Bucs. Or maybe they improve. I've mentioned this before, but we only have to look back at our team three years to find a six quarter start where the defense could not stop anyone on any drive and were by far the worst defense by any metric over that 6 qtr stretch. The remaining 58 quarters of football that season, they had the best defense in football (at least going by yardage) and wound up third overall. I'm wary of the phrase "[Team X] has no answer for [y]" because having watched football for so many years, it's clear that a team can look terrible in one aspect one week and better the next week against a team that is better at exposing that very aspect we're talking about. No team that has lost once in a 17-game season has EVER won the Super Bowl. We're doomed!

Fair enough (i did look back and notice that and the "oh my god" and "yikes"), but "bro" is another level of condescending douchebaggery. Also, how was his exactly "calm." It was obnoxiously lashing out at a team of whom he's supposedly a fan. When someone attacks the team in an unbelievably dumb fashion, OK, I might say "oh my god" or "yikes" and it's not "bursting a blood vessel" Most importantly, I was actually at least responding with an argument. He just was dismissive without offering any facts in his original post or response... just obnoxious, trollish negativity. I at least responded with examples and not BBFS nonsense. But go after the guy who's defending our team. They also lost to the then winless Jets with the season on the line and were lucky it did not knock them out of the playoffs--yet they then won in the playoffs and played the Chiefs well.

Oh, lay off with the condescending nonsense. You relax, "bro" I'm always amazed at people who will write something that's easily read as a rant and ridiculously hyperbolic and when someone responds, well, that person is unhinged. You wrote on a public board, something absolutely ridiculous, over-the-top and easy to counter and I did. calmly, I'm fine. You worry about your Cassandra self if you are going to rip a team apart after a close loss to a playoff team. The idea that "no SB team has a loss like this" is ludicrous. Arguably, every team but the 1972 Dolphins did. And you say that the other poster "watched a different game."

In 2018, the Bills defense gave up somewhere around 70 pts and the most yards by far over the first 6 quarters of the season. For the rest of the season, they had the fewest yards allowed (and wound up a close third overall)... I doubt that it was just that Vontae was that bad. Things can change in a hurry from game to game and the offensive line did not look like that last year and it was almost the same guys, so maybe it was just one bad game against possibly the best front 7 in football. Get that punt off, or run Josh up the middle on the 4th & 1, and we might be having a very different conversation today. But, ifs, buts, etc. It was a bad game but far from a hopeless game.

Oh my god, a Super Bowl team ACTUALLY had a much worse game--I know it's hard to remember because it was a whole year ago, in week 1 even, and they got blown out. The KC Chiefs were 2-4 over a stretch of games that looked a lot like this in 2019. Even the friggin' 1985 Bears had a "game like this" against Miami. We also did not get "beat bad in all aspects." Najee Harris had one long run and was otherwise completely bottled up. Singletary looked very good. It was a close game that turned on a blocked punt. A fluke? It's not like we were 3-13 and turned it suddenly around last year... we've been building a great team for years and were coming off a 10-6 playoff season. Yikes

He had 969 all purpose yards in his rookie season and even 956 total yards last year when the run game was a total mess so I don't think 1000 would be that surprising.

Yeah, it has us up against the Houston Texans, with them as a higher-rated seed which is on the surface, patently absurd. Has anyone ever met a Texans fan? However, it's the 4th biggest city in the country, so there are probably lots of people who put it reflexively on their Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook pages that they are a Texans fan in their bio without truly caring. However, being a Bills fan runs in the blood. Fox Sports could have at least matched us up with a different 3 seed as they know we are a much more frenzied and vocal fanbase (as that very Tweet makes clear) and making us an underdog to an expansion team that hasn't really found a huge footing yet is a bit insulting. Ultimately, it won't matter, because as a poster said upthread, we always wind up winning or placing in these things. It's a dumb metric though. For one things, in onboarding/unboxing, Twitter is more likely to recommend you either local teams or someone like the Dallas Cowboys or Green Bay Packers and passive fans will just say "sure". Also, it hardly measures the intensity of the fandom. I'm pretty positive if they measured it using an algorithm that took into account mentions or length of threads when teams are being talked about, we'd be higher up on the list. Just look what happens anytime anyone says a slightly bad thing about us on Twitter. Prognosticators will often apologize in advance or joke "Bills Mafia, don't come after me" when they say something slightly negative about our team. For a few years, I ran the content at a relatively short-lived social media site where you could "check-in" to things, mostly TV, and discuss them but since live sports have become one of the few major drivers of appointment television, NFL teams were a major component. It would always surprise me and depress me a bit how little chatter and how few check-ins there were on the Bills page and I would try to do what I could to juice conversation to no avail. However, I knew it had nothing to do with the ferocity of our fanbase (even if at the time we were over a decade into the drought), but had more to do with the quirks of the medium.

353 miles by the Gmaps suggested route, 5 hrs 54 mins. (Belleville, NJ).

Not that levels of suckitude really matter, but I don't think it is safe to say that. Geno 41 g, 31 st, 29/36, 57.7 completion, EJ 30 g, 18 st, 20/16, 58.1 completion. EJ might just have been wise enough to know it was time to hang it up sooner and take an announcer role (which he's really not bad at from the little i've heard). The real mistake was as the poster you're responding to said, Buddy putting himself in the situation where they had to take a QB in the worst possible QB year. Picking EJ or Geno would have been the same wrong move anyway, Geno was more of a trainwreck where EJ was just meh.

And it's a double-win, b/c if they are big contributors, that's probably not a great sign for the Raiders. I know unless something goes wrong with this team, the Raiders are not a worry to us, but I've never much cared for them nor for Gruden.

The CB depth thing seems an overreaction to me. White and T. Johnson did not play. Wallace looked excellent. Neal and Jackson had rough games, but are you really ready to replace them--perhaps our best special teamer who has looked solid in multiple seasons and a guy who looked great last season b/c of one pre-season game. It's a concern--maybe. A serious problem? That seems a stretch.

Oh, now I see... you're on a quest against Beane. You're not necessarily wrong about the DL, but maybe we should not completely judge based on the weirdest season in NFL history. I say this as someone who never liked the Butler signing particularly, was meh about Addison (seemed safe and consistent enough) and thought Jefferson was intriguing (he was the one who showed up least on rewatches.

You used stats to attempt to show Addison was better than Houston (there's no other way to read your post) and neglected to put Addison's next to them--maybe you knew they were similar, maybe you didn't. But don't lash out at me when I called you on it. I'd agree that Houston is the better player overall, and definitely so in his prime. At this point in their career, not quite as much. I'm not lobbying for either player on this team (as I said in my post). It's just that we have a tendency to go after whipping boys in a dishonest manner and it gets tiring eventually. Mario was mediocre last year. You're not going to get any argument from me, and I'm fine if they cut him. I don't want Houston at this point in his career either based on cost/benefit. Just don't use bogus "facts" that are easily countered as proof of how much better one player is than the other. If you want to go by stats from the last 4 years, as you did, well, then the 4 years of Addison before we signed him are close to the same as Houston--Addison had more sacks, Houston more tackles. I did not realize we were going by the measurable "People that know football know..."

Mario Addison's last 4 years before he got to Buffalo: 9 sacks 9.5 sacks 11.0 sacks 9.5 sacks I'm not saying Addison is on the same level, but those stats might not be the best way to prove Houston is better. I'd be fine with Addison either staying or going (last year could be fluke, leadership), but at this point I'd prefer to see Hughes, Epenesa, Rousseau, Basham, Obada.

With signings like Lamp, Hart (ew), Adams, Marquel Lee, keeping Devey, A. Smith, etc., it felt a bit like stocking up, hoping those expanded PS rules would remain in place. Beane is probably smiling from ear to ear.

Can anyone?

My favorite is he "never makes a big play." He may not rack up stats (yet), but I've re-watched games and see so many examples. He sacked a guy in the end zone for a safety. I also don't get the "lack of instincts" tag. He's captaining a lot of the defensive schemes, and led a top 3 D two years ago. Last year was ridiculous, so I'll give them a pass on the middle-of-the-league defense. Maybe when you think he's showing "bad instincts" he's actually doing what he's supposed to do?

Even if he ups his game to be in the consideration for DPoY as some experts have speculated he could?

He's been pretty close to elite to a lot of people. That said, I agree. I read your post as "sometimes you let good players go" with no caveat as to if he does have an elite season next year which there are many reasons to believe is possible. If I was wrong, I apologize. I'm just saying there's very good signs (i.e. Ravens game) that Edmunds can BE that elite LB they drafted him to be and will show that this year. If that's the case, there's no way they don't pay the man, and so far, this group of players has taken reasonable contracts to be a part of what's being built in Buffalo (to be the best version of themselves)

Yes, that's pretty close to exactly what I said (i just edited it a second ago and added two words in case i was not clear). Poster I was responding to implied that he was expendable regardless. I'm just saying that if he plays near his ceiling, that it would be ridiculous to think that Beane would let Edmunds walk. I'd argue in year two he was on the path to being worth the contract. Last year was a bit of a wash due to injury and the weirdness of the pandemic, so I believe there's a chance, especially based on the second-to-last game being the Ravens game where he took over the game and held the team to 3 pts., that he could play in year four in a manner that easily earns a second contract and while he can be polarizing, I'm not the only one who believes this.

Why wouldn't he pay him if he has a season like people expect he might. He's the captain of the defense, a leader: if he balls out and you let him walk in FA, that sets a terrible example for the rest of the team. You do have to let good players go sometimes--more likely that will be Poyer and/or Hyde as they get into their 30s, not a (then) 24 or 25-year-old, 1st round pick, head of your defense. They traded up to draft him ideally to lead their defense for the next decade. If he plays this year like he did in the Ravens game, then he'll be worth whatever the going rate is for a top 5 linebacker. If he plays closer to this year (which he was hurt often during), then maybe they let him go. At the very least, if they are dissatisfied, Beane will surely try to get something back for him.

That one did not bother me, but then he retweeted a guy who called people who believe in the science behind vaccinations nazis. My reactions to his trending on Twitter is starting to get like the guy in this series of sketches (he also plays ScarJo's publicist and Nic Cage's agent)...

Nothing's equivalent to the Buffalo, NY, State of Mind....

Bills fans regularly packed two bars which were next door to one another on 2nd Avenue & 42nd St. in NYC. Now it's a huge place called Public House that gets packed with Bills supporters every Sunday. I have Sunday Ticket now, but when I would go weekly, if you didn't get there by 12:30 or so, you were not getting into the main bar (which was fine with me, b/c it was just too crowded). Admittedly during the drought years, the crowd would dwindle as our hopes did until it could be a ghost town in December. I'm in Jersey now and have been to three different Hoboken Bills Bars, a Jersey City Bills Bar, and a Paterson Bills Bar that was at the edge of the universe. I also found a bar in DC, when we were visiting my mother-in-law, that had a pretty good crowd for that Christmas eve Miami game where Rex Ryan decided to punt with a few minutes left in OT even though there was still a faint chance of making the playoffs. On opening day in 2019, wound up scheduled to fly back from a wedding in Seattle and almost went to a Bills Bar there, but my wife drew the line there, worried we would miss our plane (I wound up watching the replay on GamePass as we waited at our gate (ffwding a lot) and I must have looked a sight as I went crazy when Allen hit Brown along the sideline to complete the comeback. There's even a tacky nightclub place a few blocks from me on the border of Bloomfield and Newark that supposedly shows the Bills games.