NewHampshireBillsFan

I went to Texas A&M for a Ph.D. and the tradition there is for the student body to stand the entire game. I could have sat in a section set up for grad students but I preferred to stand with the bulk of the students. It really helps to increase your focus and for the opposing teams it is quite intimidating.

It would be like when the Braves left. I never followed the NBA again. I would hope 90% of Bills fans would feel the same way because otherwise why should the NFL worry about leaving Buffalo if the fans will still stupidly follow the league that screwed them and our city big time. More and more, in this tough economy I'm starting to think the NFL will try not to leave Buffalo because it would cause a negative backlash against the league that would spread to other cities. The NFL has to keep up good PR because being the most powerful league it could fall a long way and lose tremendous financial value if its popularity started to wane. The Belicheat* scandal already was a big black eye to league, even though they and their media suck ups (and there is no media that sucks up to its league like the non-local media that covers the NFL) try to make it seem like it never happened. But on another note, funny as this sounds, if the NFL left guess what would make the most sense for Buffalo? No not the UFL (that will probably never be a serious league) but the CFL. Buffalo would be in close proximity to other teams in the league and the weather in Buffalo would fit the CFL schedule well. And even though Canada seems somewhat alien to people in Buffalo it is a lot less alien to Buffalo locals than it is to most Americans, trust me.

Interesting analysis! I love reading stuff like this because there are points that I didn't notice or focus on myself. I always wonder why professional sports writers do so little writing like this. Its always things like "the Bills have to find a way to stop long drives", etc. I would love to see Bell get into the permanent starting lineup sooner vs. later. He will only get better and the line stronger game by game. And then Butler could help where most needed. TO may tackle more aggressively following an int. during a regular season game that means something. Based on his regular season performance last year Fitz should look more comfortable once he has been with the team a few more games. And with Edwards some people just can't slide easily. True even in baseball where there has been more than a few injuries over the years during slides.

I think the frustration with DJ is valid based on regular season performance, but getting worked up about the first preseason game or any preseason game is not worth it. Wait until the NE* game and then we can truly judge if he and the team have anything new that can beat NE* and the officials.

Although I am excited on some level to see Wilson enter the HOF, the Pittsburgh/Buffalo comparison is always the most painful for me. Both are relatively small cities in the same region of the country. One has been spectacularly successful, the other never quite good enough in their best years with many painful years between successful runs. All three of the Bills most successful coaches were either forced out and/or wanted to get out and this was also true of Polian/Butler/Smith on the personnel side. Pittsburgh has only had 3 HC's in 40 years and all won SBs. When they had the Cowher/Donahoe spat, the Steelers made the right choice who to keep and we made the wrong choice on who to hire. The issue always has come down in Buffalo to having an owner who would rather interfere with and eventually get rid of a top quality person who was annoying to him on some level than do everything he could to win a SB. The result is we are 0 for 43.

Actually, DJ is the only one that can do something about it. I have to believe with this being his last chance he will surprise all of us for once. The team also realizes there will be a major shake-up if DJ goes and they should play as hard as they have this decade. Now if they start out 3-5 things could get really ugly for this team.

What goes around, comes around. If I was Brady I would wear the best knee braces I could find, even with the officials protecting his every move with penalties and fines. All it takes is one good hit. Revenge for Wilfork/Losman.

He won't sit out for they year, but the pressure is all on the clubs to get the top picks signed. The players and agents know that. The coaches and fans are screaming to get the top pick into camp so that they can get them caught up enough to contribute in a major way this year. If the player holds out longer he probably gets a little more money and why should he care if his role is diminished for the first year or first part of it; he has got his money. Plenty of years to get great stats for the next contract. The veteran players won't hold a grudge against the top rookie if once he comes to camp he works hard and isn't a smart aleck. The point is the player/agent holds all the cards unless the contract demand is WAY above other similar picks.

There is some logic to this for the following reasons: 1.) If only half the games are played in Toronto it wouldn't seem like the NFL was trying to destroy the Argos and the CFL. 2.) They could try to merge both the history and tradition and passion of Bills fans with a large new fan and corporate base. 3.) It worked for Green Bay and Milwaukee for quite a few years with the Packers. Problems: 1.) The players would hate not having a single home and having to travel for home games. 2.) Toronto would probably not want to play second fiddle to Buffalo and it might be hard to get fans up there to really feel like its their team. 3.) Having a team shared by cities of two different nations is difficult. 4.) The NFL doesn't usually do this kind of thing. 5.) Goodell and the NFL don't care about Buffalo as much as people think they do. A lot of teams have moved over the years in all the four sports, including our own Buffalo Braves.

I'm happy to see the Pokes and Jerry Jones struggle. The sad thing is they were able to beat the Bills twice in the SB in the early '90s. At least they had a prime, and Jones can feel some arrogance about that which Wilson cannot. I think the bad economy will hurt the big market teams more than Buffalo, because Buffalo always has a pretty bad economy by national standards anyway. As the economy and our society continue to deteriorate (and they will) big time sports will be in for a major readjustment. Look where the NBA was 20 years ago and where it is today. I think only about 11% of Americans watch the NBA finals on TV in an average year. The NFL may follow suit. The good thing about the NHL is they don't have far to fall and may be in better shape than the NFL soon.

If you had to list the top 1000 fans of NFL teams probably half of them would be Bills fans. Living all over the country after leaving Buffalo in 1982 I have never met fans like Bills fans who routinely drive 250 to 500 miles back to Buffalo for several home games a year or still follow every move the Bills make year round while living thousands of miles away. Also, every person I have ever met from Buffalo in the states where I lived still rooted for the Bills, even if they had been gone for 30 years. On the other hand I meet people here in New Hampshire that used to live in other NFL cities and they are all Pats* fans now.

An agent represents a player and is chosen by that player, in this case Maybin. The player ultimately decides whether he will hold out, or sign a specific contract, or even fire the agent. So I think the focus on agents misses the point that the player is ultimately in control, beginning with the key step of deciding which agent to hire. Supposedly Maybin has all these high character guys advising him so they must be OK with his agent choice.

Wilfork saying he didn't realize it was a late hit is the same as Belicheat*saying he didn't know that videotaping was illegal. When your coach is a pathological lier and cheater, what do you expect out of his star player? Besides, anyone watching the replay of the hit on Losman can see that Wilfork deliberately tried to whack his knee with his elbow, falling down (Wilfork falling) in a way that no person would ever do. When a person falls he always places is hands down and never tries to place his elbows down. Even if Losman would still have had the ball (and he didn't) Wilfork purposely tried to take out his knee with his elbow. Just imagine if a Bills player like Stroud would have done that to Brady and there was film of it like there is of Wilfork deliberately injuring Losman's knee. I don't want to even think what penalty Stroud would have gotten from Goodell. Its all who you are, who you know, and who you injure when Goodell rules on these things.

Just compare what Goodell did or didn't do to Belicheat* and Wilfork.

I think you have to let a coach do things the way he thinks they should be done or get another coach. I was in favor of getting another coach at the end of last year, especially after sitting in the cold at RWS on the last game of the year and seeing Belicheat* out coach DJ, esp. taking into account the weather in our own stadium. But since he was retained you have to let him do his thing at least one more year. I think one of the many mistakes Donahoe made was trying to micromanage his young coaches and screwing things up worse. For better or worse DJ's players will play hard because they like him and not because they terribly respect or fear him. If he tried to be tough the players would just think he was being a jerk and probably not play as well. Its too late for him to change.

The goal of the Bills is to win, its almost a desperate goal because in 40 years in the NFL we have never won a SB. What was needed from someone like Losman is when he lost his starting job to do everything he could to help Edwards as a backup. If he had done that he would likely have had a chance to compete for a backup job in the NFL this year. Losman didn't do that, Hamden became Edward's study partner instead. Losman also didn't prepare himself well to play a backup role and did terrible when called upon. The point is we don't need someone on the Bills being friendly with fans we need him to be friendly with his teammates, especially the starting QB. We don't need a Bills player leading a cleanup day in Buffalo we need him to study and be as prepared as possible for every game. Losman had the wrong priorities and because of that we lost games we could have won and are did worse during his era than we should have done. Who cares if he is friendly in a bar to fans. He didn't do all he could to help us win and that is why I don't wish him well. Most players who played in Buffalo and now have gone on I do wish they do well, because they did their best while here, but Losman did not.

TO can only do so much. The referees also have to call a fair game and that is not going to happen in Cheatsville* before a national audience with Brady coming back, etc. There will be two kinds of people after the Monday night game: those who claim the officials didn't cost us the game because the Bills could have always overcome penalties, etc. (DJ, media, etc.) and those who say the officials did cost us the game. Of course here in New England there will be another group, the idiots* who say what bad calls are you talking about, the officiating was not an issue, the Patsies* are just a better team. On some level I think the Bills actually do have a chance to win, but we will have to overcome biased officiating. By the way why is this big AFL celebrating MNF game in Massachusetts and not in OP? The Boston Patriots were a nobody in the AFL years and Buffalo was a 2 time champion. And half or more than half the Boston people were Giants fans in those days while nearly everyone in Buffalo was a Bills and AFL fanatic. The league doesn't have much respect for the Bills or sense of history. Just saying.

The throwbacks are great but I like the late 80's/90's uniform the best, and we had some great teams then also. From the marketing point of view, it is best to have 2 sets of uniforms like we have now because they have four jerseys instead of two to sell. And fans who have an ax to grind about the current uniforms are even more likely to buy a throwback jersey just to make a statement. So Brandon is no fool to keep the current situation going for at least a while longer. Personally, I think the current uniforms are fine also even though I like royal blue better.

In some ways you think the players' union would push for rookie salary caps since the players' union is composed of current veteran players. But the players' union realizes that high first round salaries push up salaries overall in the long run, even with a salary cap. The teams are basically FORCED to pay high amounts for first round picks because they are depending on this talent as a major talent infusion for their teams and the longer the first round picks miss TC the less they can contribute their first year. So desperate teams pay big money and this raises the overall salary structure for veterans as well. Anyway, the owners are going to have to give the union big concessions for the union to agree to some highly restrictive rookie salary caps.

Eight of the 11 teams he is not going to see are western teams where bus travel would not work easily. The three eastern teams he is snubbing are the Bills, Bengals, and Panthers. The last is probably because they are kind of out of the way of the other teams and that is somewhat true of the Bengals as well. The Bills are the only team he is not seeing even though he will not be far away because Cortland is not very far from Rochester. Also Mort says he feels bad about missing the Texans and Bengals, nothing about the Bills or Panthers. So he is a jerk towards Buffalo, probably because of the Donahoe thing. But who cares. If the Bills go to the playoffs he will look stupid for not taking us seriously at the training camp stage of things.

Well, I predicted Peters would be injury prone for the Eagles this year. Perhaps this injury is fairly minor but I think he will battle injuries, on and off, all year, and miss some playing time.

Shula in the 60's and 70's was an innovative coach, although he benefited from favorable officiating like no other coach in NFL history, even Belicheat*. Being the only coach on the rules committee all those years was very intimidating to the officials. Shula was an average coach in the early 80's and a lousy coach in the late 80's and beyond. Marv Levy routinely out coached Shula during Levy's era in Buffalo and had a nice plus record against Shula. Shula is WAY too high at number 5. Walsh was much more of a shrewd coach and several others were as well.

Best scenario for him is that he becomes a journeyman starter for the Redskins or somewhere else. He won't be an all-pro or anything because even with maturity players don't change that much. The Bills had no choice about cutting him; he wouldn't be making all this effort if the Bills and then Jacksonville had not cut him and he ended up out of the league for a while. I'm just glad we didn't cut McCargo because with the better coaching he is getting there could be real potential for him this year.

Fitz was signed based on his performance last year in regular season games for an NFL team. It makes no sense to evaluate him based based on mini camp or even training camp performance, like he was a kid invited for a tryout. If he does awful in 2 or 3 preseason games then we should start to get worried and I'm sure the FO will also become concerned. If you never liked the signing to begin with then now is the time to wait it out and see what happens. Maybe you will be proved right. But now is not the time to cut Fitzpatrick and grasp for someone else, based on bad throws in the first week of training camp!

Man, I wish Jauron could beat up Brady* like that in a game. I think Jauron's personality has changed as he got older and now looks at it like its tough to win in the NFL and why can't we all just be friends on the field. As far as PFW I like to read their columns because they aren't afraid to both be very negative and very positive about players in the league and its fun to read, even when I might have a different take on a player.