NewHampshireBillsFan

It is called football for a reason.

5-11 would be at least decent, after starting 0-8. This team desperately needs to establish a winning mentality under the new regime to set a foundation for a good season next year. At present they are at least proving they are not among the bottom 4-5 teams in the league, when two weeks ago most national media types thought they were perhaps the worst team.

I'm worried that Spiller will be an injury prone player because he is not that big. Look at Roscoe Parrish. He was performing great this year finally with good coaching, but he gets injured again. He had a wrist injury previously also in his time with us. I guess at this point it would be great to have a big OL, DL, or LB instead of Spiller and still have Lynch backing up Jackson. If Spiller turns out to be one of the best RBs in the league in the next few years then I'll be glad of the pick, but right now I don't see it that way. He'll be good, but not fantastic, and he may get injured fairly often. Just a hunch.

Knox was a really good coach and a winner. Levy had (to his credit) an outstanding cast of assistant coaches, especially coordinators. He was a good leader, but Knox was a shrewder coach. Saban did his best work before the merger and the team was starting to fall apart when he left the second time.

The sad thing for RW and for all of us is that RW could have with one SB win between 2000 and 2010, established himself for all time as an owner who determined to overcome all his bad and selfish decisions over the years to finally win the big one for the beloved city of Buffalo. I remember what one fan here in the Boston area said on a radio talk show after NE won its first SB. He said it erased 40 years of frustration that he had had as a Patsie* fan. How much more would we have felt a sense of relief if the Bills had finally won a SB during this decade. Instead, RW established himself as the least successful long term ON THE FIELD owner in the history of pro sports, never winning one world championship in the soon to be 50 super bowls that have been played. I tried to defend RW for many years but the cumulative effect of his bad decisions and cheapness (especially with GMs and coaches) finally became too obvious to ignore. The situation is so bad now that I think the league is getting a little nervous about the Bills basically operating below the standards of an NFL franchise. And RW is not even pretending any more to give a coherent explanation of his future plans to improve the team, just that we need a high draft pick QB.

I grew up in Buffalo and have lived in San Diego and many other places. I loved to go to the beach in San Diego but most other things Buffalo has over SD, for my taste. 1. Food--MUCH better choices of interesting food in Buffalo, only thing better in SD is Mexican and California type salad restaurants. Also, no supermarkets like Wegmans in SD, just small boring supermarkets. Fresh picked by Mexicans strawberries in California are great at roadside stands. 2. People--MUCH more substantial and interesting people in Buffalo. As a cab driver who grew up in SD told me one time when I first moved to SD. The weather is great but the people are superficial and he had lived there most of his life. People in California are very superficial. Kind of like the idiot who wrote that story. 3. Weather--When I moved to Texas I used to dream about snow, when I moved to SD I had to learn to live without any rain as well for 9 months of the year. Everything is dusty and dirty outside. Rain has a wonderful cleansing effect. San Diego is dirty and dusty outside. Also, all the people who are total wusses about weather (and therefore total wusses and complainers about everything else) move to SD. When it finally rains after 9 months they complain about the rain and run like old ladies to their cars so they won't get wet!

I was there also. What an incredible force the Bills were in those days on both offense and defense.

You don't go back to a team where you were the HC as a DC or OC, unless you are Jim Ringo. You don't think there is any other team in the league that would like Wade as a DC? Wade would have other options.

Nix and Gailey have at least 2 years, and most probably 3 years, 3 being a typical amount that RW gives to a new coach. During at least the next 2 years there is NO chance of anyone else being brought in to replace Nix or Gailey. So stop thinking about it. Of course if RW is no longer the owner, then I think everyone is probably gone before the next season. I don't think Nix would be retained and unfortunately for Gailey, I don't think he would be looked at as making the best of a bad situation from a coaching point of view.

Marchibroda firing? I thought Marchibroda left because after his fame grew with the Bills offense, the Colts wanted him back as HC and hired him as HC. I always thought he left because he got a promotion to HC.

Besides the problem with Ralph paying him last time it is an embarrassment to go back as a coordinator to the same team where you had been the HC. Just doesn't happen. OK, it did with Jim Ringo, but that was unusual. But Wade did like living in Buffalo. After he was fired he lived here for a long time afterward when he didn't have any other NFL job.

I feel bad that my kids who are 16 to 23 haven't been able to tell any of their friends here in New Hampshire, "who's your daddy now", for the last seven years with the Patsies*. At least I don't have any danger of any of my kids becoming NE* fans even though I left Buffalo before they were born. They hate the Pats* as much as I do. When you read the posts on this thread you can only say again what an amazing thing it is to be a Bills fan. It surpasses anything in pro sports (some college sports allegiances are also pretty strong). I don't worry about what these Patsie* fans think here about my Bills allegiance. I think at this point most are pretty impressed because they know, and I know, and the whole world knows, they would NEVER have the same loyalty to the Pats* under bad times. They are fair weather fans. Now with the Red Sox it is a little different.

With new ownership, there is a good chance that just about everyone is let go, including Modrak, believe it or not. Seriously, Nix and Gailey could both be gone. Look at Jerry Jones. As soon as he came in he fired Tom Landry and brought in Jimmy Johnson. Of course Landry was beyond his prime and that was probably a good time to can him.

It is not a ploy. He missed time in the preseason with a knee injury and then was taken out of the game last Sunday with an injury. They would have to be pretty clever to take someone out of a game who is uninjured and say it was injury. It would be easier to say that they needed to make a change due to the bad record of the team, etc. Most people would look at that as a positive. The thing is OL in their mid 30s tend to get injured. Look at Jason Peters, he is a lot younger but still gets injured a lot.

Lawyer was not a trade. He was cut by the Pats* and signed by us. Bledsoe was not worth a number 1 for one half good season and setting us back from getting and developing a good young QB. Peerless was good deal, they franchise tagged him, forcing Atlanta to give up a number 1 pick to get him. But there is no one we can really trade at this point and get fair value. Lynch and Spiller are a good one-two punch. Jackson is getting old and no one will give you anything for him. No one will give you much for Evans either, but all it would do if we traded him is put pressure on the Bills to use a very high draft pick next year on a WR, probably a higher pick than we would get for Evans. Most of the time a 3rd round pick doesn't even start for you and people want to give up say Lynch, who is a very good RB, for a player that won't even start next year. Look at the success of our 3rd round picks over the last 10 years.

We got rid of Perry because we wanted an offensive minded HC. Gailey fits the bill.

True. I don't see why everyone wants to trade Lynch. Jackson is clearly the odd man out, but who would want him? Lynch and Spiller make a great 1-2 punch and could be that for years. Jackson is old for a RB and NOT the workhorse RB to plan your offense around.

This is not baseball or hockey. When you are a lousy team you can't trade your few good players for draft picks to prepare for the future. Good teams don't want to give up first or second (or even third)round picks for good players. Especially during the season. They are great teams because they know how to draft so they want to hold onto their high picks. Trading a player like Evans for a 4th or lower pick just makes the Bills look like they are totally losing it as an organization (even more than they look now).

The two Harvey Johnson years were especially painful. Johnson was a personnel guy, a scout, and he didn't want to be the HC. He only did it because RW told him he needed him to step in for a season, and then another season 3 years later. So there was no sense of hope about those seasons in that you knew the guy coaching didn't even want the job and next year there would be a new coach and system, etc., and everything starting over. This year is hopefully the start of a new era with Nix/Gailey so there is a lot more hope. Still, the late 60s and early 70s there was always the hope that we would some day get to the super bowl. We were young then and it seemed like we had all the time in the world. Now we have been to 4 in a row and lost all of them and we desperately want to win at least one super bowl, but to even get back to the playoffs seems like too high a climb at this point for the immediate future. So in that sense there may be more of an accumulated despair of 11 years that is palpable. But in terms of shear misery of having a really terrible team we are not even close to the depths this franchise has plummeted to in the past.

Its not just that Fitz is starting but they also want Brohm to at least be number 2. Did you not see Gailey's press conference. He had a look of disgust at the thought of sticking TE into the role of being the scout QB, the job the #3 has. The point is it would have been extremely embarrassing for Trent, with the C on his jersey, to be running the scout team. Gailey and Nix did the right thing for TE and for the team by cutting him. I'm sure Trent is already loads happier going to Jacksonville. Even if he is #3 there he will be new on the team with nobody on the team feeling sorry for him that he was demoted so far. So could we stop the stupid talk that it was OK to bench TE but not cut him. It was NECESSARY to cut him if the thought was the new #2 should be Brohm. And I think many agree that it makes a ton more sense at this point to give Brohm a shot versus giving TE yet another shot later this year.

I think it is as simple as that. Why waste more time giving Edwards any more snaps. Chan now thinks Brohm should be number 2 and I think many of us would agree with giving him a chance, instead of keeping Edwards at 2. Edwards at 3 is ridiculous. First its extremely embarrassing for him to run the scout team after being the starter and Gailey clearly indicated that in his remarks. Second, the 3 guy (if they bring one in) should be at least a long term prospect (like a Levy Brown).

Good move. We don't need any distractions like JP was as long as he was on the roster. 1.) Jim Kelly knows QBs, at least what will work for the Bills. He gave up on TE a long time ago. 2.) Another sad mark against the Marv Levy GM era. 3.) We won't have to see TE ever again try to play in the snow and wind in Buffalo.

Bad calls happen a lot MORE to teams that play the Pats*, than to the Pats*. No one is saying that all the bad calls go one way, just that the majority go one way. Also, with the Bills being a bad team with no big name coach, they often get bad calls against them in any game. There is nothing they can do about it except get better players so that they can overcome both the other team and the officials. But the Pats* are a special case. Its almost like playing Shula's Dolphins from the 70s again. The referee body language even shows a kind of nervousness to make sure they call things in favor of the Pats*, like it was in the 70s with the Dolphins. The only reason I thought it would be nice to get a Shanahan or Cowher was the effect it could have on the refs when the Bills were playing. They might respect the coach enough to be a little nervous about his complaints with bad calls. They obviously don't worry about Gailey at all. Why should they. The NFL is a league that favors the elites and the refs know that. Unfortunately RW is getting a little too old to kick in the officials' door after the game to shout at them like he did in the 70s after an especially badly called game.

When I brought up Belicheat*'s antics to someone here (after he smirked when I told him I was a Bills fan), his attitude was cheating is part of sports, every one does it and some get caught. He mentioned that a HS soccer coach was penalized in New Hampshire for illegally videotaping some high school practice. Unlike Goodell however, the commissioner of this sport gave out a stiff penalty to this coach, apparently. So the attitude is everyone cheats in sports, even in high school, so what Belicheat* did is no big deal. I have a problem with that attitude and teaching kids that is the way sports works. To get a better idea of how the Pats* differed from other teams, check out the writings of Ross Tucker at SI.com. Tucker was an OL with the Bills, of course, but he also played on the Pats* and other NFL teams. His take is NE* always had an attitude different from the other teams he played with as far as abiding by rules. For example they had illegal players at practice and told Ross that everyone did that, but Ross says that none of the other teams he played for (incl. the Bills) flaunted rules like that. Belicheat* is a brilliant, totally amoral, type of coach. He is probably not the only one, but not everyone is like him.

I have friends here in New England who take their kids to church every week and try hard to teach their kids to be decent kids, etc. But since they are also diehard Patsie* fans they tell their kids that the whole cheating thing with Belicheat* is overblown and everybody cheats to win in sports, etc. but the Cheaters* happened to be caught, etc. All I'm saying is I'm glad I don't have to do that with my kids. I would hate to be a NE* fan if that is how I would have to raise my kids.