NewHampshireBillsFan

Sad, dude. I lived in Southern California for a while and its a very superficial place. I would hate to say I'm from there. I always tell people I'm originally from Buffalo. Then their next question is always "so are you a Bills fan" with a look of some astonishment. When I answer yes they always have respect for my character after that even though they might think I'm crazy.

A long time ago national media seemed to know nearly as much about our local team as we did, and also, because of their greater football expertise, had some acute observations on our team. Now the national media doesn't really know ANYTHING about our local team, like for instance that the Jets lost to the Bills last year. If you asked Ditka or any of the others to say evaluate the play of Hangartner last year, they wouldn't even know who he was or what position he played.

Please don't depress me with comparisons to 1985 and 1968. I'm starting to get more nervous about this season anyway. Unfortunately most of the Bills past is better left in the past and not revisited by comparisons to today.

All I can think about when I think of Malone is that when he was 19 he had sex with a 13 year old girl, got her pregnant, and the baby turned out to be a decent human being through the efforts of the mother's side of the family, and has a chance to even be a good NFL player. Malone is not worthy to tie the shoelace of his son Demetrius who I consider someone who deserves a lot of respect for overcoming as much as he has to still be where he is. Even to this day Malone refuses to even talk about his son in public. And yes, Malone has done nothing for his son, and told his son years ago that it was too late for him to be a father to Bell. Malone doesn't want to acknowledge his son because it would bring up his sordid past which he doesn't want people to know about.

The NFL media and to some degree the NFL itself is more show business now. They repeatedly praise the same teams and players and coaches. Teams like Buffalo do not merit any serious time for them; 32 teams are a lot to keep track of. So they parrot the old line that Buffalo is a disfunctional franchise with a really old owner and small market, etc. They don't take the team to explain what we all can see and that is the team has a new GM and coaching staff and a whole new attitude that the players are buying into and that the team is certainly headed in a much better direction than a year ago this time. In a way this is a failure for writers like Tim Graham who have greater time to follow this team and report to his masters at ESPN that the Bills are improving, but he won't do that because he doesn't think the team is going to be very good this year. He would rather report that NE is poised for yet another great year and the Jets and Dolphins are both tough. We'll see at the end of the year how right he was. I think the Bills will surprise somewhat this year and next year even ESPN will have a better viewpoint on the Bills.

Offensive players were physically afraid of Butkus when they had to play against him. He was great against the run and not that great against the pass but no receiver or RB wanted to get hit by him after a reception.

The sports media is almost like the national political media. Everybody says the same thing and the reasons are so superficial. So the Jets are anointed as some great team partly because Sanchez was such a high draft pick and therefore has to blossom into a great QB. The people in the national media evaluate the Bills saying because we didn't draft a LT in the first round and because our QB situation is uncertain we have to finish last in our division and only win a few games. Thirty years ago predictions of teams successes were pretty good by the national sports media. Now the predictions are laughable and almost never turn out to be true. Don't be surprised if the Bills finish with a better record than the Jets this year.

Don't knock Jauron's draft picks. He always made sure to draft a lot of DBs early in each draft so that if things went south in Buffalo for him (which they did) he would be praised (which he was) for at least coaching the team to have a strongly respected secondary (which we have) so that he could at least get a job as a secondary coach based on this (which he did). Got to take care of #1 which Jauron clearly did. "You can never have enough good DBs". Dick Jauron (or few enough offensive linemen) It helped him to get a job after his debacle in Buffalo.

At one time it was a cool thought to think of the Bills winning their first super bowl. They were declining when SB I happened, but then with OJ the thinking was they could win one. They only got one lost playoff game for all those years. Then the Bills probably did have the best team in the league in 1980 but winning two in a row on the road in SD proved too much, esp. with playoff road officiating. Then the late 80s, early 90s. And then a little hope in the late 90s. Nothing after that. Slowly through all those years other teams have finally won their first SBs and there are only a handful of teams left now that have not won a single one in the AFC. And now we are fighting to just become respectable again! What makes it worse is that the Sabres also have never won in 40 years. Nearly a hundred seasons of futility for the 2 Buffalo teams. In some ways I now consider it a blessing that Buffalo never got a major league baseball team. Sorry to sound so negative. I'll snap out of it by the time training camp starts.

There was some interest in Parcells around Buffalo for GM because of his escape clause in Miami with the new ownership. If you followed football in the 60s, 70s, and 80s you realize how much better a football writer and shrewder an observer of the Bills was Felser over the Tim Grahams of today. Who cares if he favored Flutie in 1985. So did a ton of other respected football people. And that type of mistake is still being made today. How many writers think we are going to be one of the worst teams in the league because we didn't draft a QB and LT in the first 2 rounds?

Totally agree. Signing the best player at his position is always a bad idea because you always overpay and chances are the player won't play quite as well or even gets hurt. The really great players like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning never seem to get to free agency because their teams find a way to retain them if they are that valuable. The kind of FAs we signed this year are the kind that can start for us and help us but are mid level in price. The superstars (like Spiller hopefully) you have to try and draft. Our biggest problem was letting very good players go due to arrogance who were quite affordable such as Ted Washington and Pat Williams, esp. Williams.

Jeff Nixon was a great player with a real nose for the ball, something like 5 interceptions in his first several games if memory serves me well. Then he got injured and was never the same after that. On another post, Perry Tuttle was a first round WR pick out of Clemson. He was meant to be a strong number 2 playing across from Jerry Butler. It was going to be Jerry and Perry according to one Buffalo newscaster. But Tuttle never became that good. The dismal drafts of the early 70's deserve strong mention. Players like DE Walt Patulski and LB Tom Ruud.

I think that is the best approach. My model is the NE game on Monday night last year. First game of the year and they had the win wrapped up on the road against a good team. Then all the injuries and inept coaching, etc. kicked in. I think Gailey will have them as ready to go as Jauron ever did and I think against Miami opening day I see us winning at home. Then we'll see what can be accomplished week by week. One thing the national media and some local fans just can't accept is that Nix and Gailey are confident they can field a good team even with Bell and co. at LT and the current QBs. Gailey says he really likes Bell and that he is very athletic. The national media can't accept that even though they haven't watched all of Bell's tape and Gailey has. The point is Nix and co. had a chance to draft QBs and LTs early in the draft or go after a FA and they didn't. They are either the total idiots the national media says they are or they actually know more about this team's personnel needs than the media does. Time will tell.

Gailey was fired as OC of the Chiefs by a new, young HC who wanted to put his stamp on the program. Last year's results show that his stamp was quite lousy. The timing of Gailey's firing was such that it was way too late for another team to bring him in and it would have been way to late for him to set up an offense on a new team. The point is you may disagree that Chan is a good choice for the Bills but to use the KC situation as a knock against him is not fair. And I hope you might agree at least that Gailey represents at least a positive new direction for offense.

From the day we hired Chan I thought it was the BEST choice. Cowher, as I keep saying, is another Mike Ditka, a tough guy kind of head coach who did well in a place where everything was set up for success and he had great coaches and a great front office around him, with great tradition in the program. Cowher will succeed about as well as Ditka did in New Orleans, and if I were Cowher I would stay retired. Shanahan never seems to figure out what to do with his defenses and although he is a great offensive coach, would he have won the big one without Elway? We learned the hard way that hiring the hottest coordinator (O or D) is a crap shoot and the guy is always learning on the job. Anyway, I would have taken Gailey over Cowher or Shanahan as the overall best HC for THIS organization at THIS time. And everything he is doing only proves that he is the best choice. I also like that Nix and co. have not panicked like the fans and national media about QB or LT and are drafting the right players such as Spiller.

The free market argument has to be handled carefully. The NFL is one entity that has a number of franchises. The individual franchises are not designed to compete economically with each other any more than two McDonald's franchises are meant to compete with each other. The whole goal of the NFL is to make as much money as possible for the owners of the franchises. The league might make more money if smaller market teams moved to bigger cities but that has nothing to do with a free market. Its like a company closing one branch office and opening a different one. But there is a potential problem for the league if say the Bills moved to LA. It makes people realize the NFL is nothing but a way to make money for the owners and tradition and fan support don't really mean anything. Once that starts to happen the overall value of all the franchises will plummet. Look at the NBA. The league and the refs try to do everything they can to make sure the Lakers make the finals most years. People can see through it at this point and its hard to take the league seriously. Of course my support ended for the NBA when the Braves left so I haven't wasted any time on the stupidity that is the NBA since then. On the Jets I'm just happy they will be forced to overpay for one position so heavily.

30th is a ridiculously low prediction. It is based on no real knowledge of our players (since many are fairly new) and mainly based on last year's production when the line was riddled with injuries. The thinking is Buffalo should be ranked at or near the bottom of the league because they didn't play very well last year. But what if we were fairly healthy this year? How do they know how we would do since they can't compare it to last year when we weren't healthy. The line played pretty well in the opening game at NE that we won except for stupidity and the players are a lot more experienced now than they were then.

1.) The video cheating was a HUGE advantage for Belichick* while it was going on. When you know the defense an opponent will run 75% of the time it gives the offense a huge advantage in the game. I wonder what cheating he is doing now that we will find out about in the future. He has no moral compass as a person. 2.) The officiating for NE* has been a big advantage over the years. Sure, there are some calls against other good teams that go against them but against lesser teams the officials really help NE* out. 3.) Brady has been a big advantage for them and the refs. protect his backside better than any stud LT. 4.) The media in NE* is goo-goo, gah-gah over Belichick. He can do not wrong and he is a genius in every sense of the word. Some ESPN and some national media also fall in that camp. 5.) Small prediction: Belicheat* will never win another SB. At least that is some small consolation. 6.) Another small prediction: Gailey will outcoach Belichick this year and if the officials are willing, we will win at least one of our games with NE*.

After the Jason Peters fiasco we need to reestablish that our GM runs the team, not disgruntled players. Its a good thing Nix and Gailey are setting the right tone. Players NEVER dictate a trade. They have to play here because they are under a contract here and they have no options other than to do that. If we got a second round pick I might trade him, but anything else is ridiculous for the amount of potential he has. You can't run a team emotionally and try to get rid of any potential unpleasantness. There will be unhappy players on every team in the league and in every league.

The most famous quote by Jauron and the only one that really matters is "its hard to win in the NFL". Which is the dumbest quote of all time by the way because 50% of teams win every single week and 50% of the time is not a low percentage. What Jauron's quote should have been is "its hard for ME to win in the NFL". On Chan, I said from day one that he was the BEST choice for coach for us. I liked him better than Cowher who is another Mike Ditka who only won because the whole franchise was solid all around him. Cowher should stay retired because he will never get another world championship anywhere else. He'll be like Ditka in New Orleans. And Shanahan is an offensive genius but not the best at running a draft and not the best at putting out a good defense. And all the hot offensive coordinators are a crap shoot as HCs. They could do well or terrible as HCs and we can't afford the time for the learning curves for them to develop. It hasn't taken Gailey long to get the whole team behind him. I could care less if the national media thinks much of him because the national media is so uninterested in this team that they know a lot less than we do about the Bills. They think because we didn't draft Clausen or an LT in the first round we will go 3-13 this year. The national media are idiots concerning the Bills and are too busy to spend any time understanding what is happening with this team.

He was signed by Arizona in August 2009 and released in September 2009 and then signed by Detroit in November 2009 and released in December 2009, so he was at least a backup for part of 2009. Actually I'm always amazed at how many Bills players that are cut make it onto other squads for at least a while, and sometimes for a several years.

Going 2-14 this year is the worse thing that could happen to this franchise. Getting a high pick doesn't justify it. We need to improve on last year at a minimum. As Coach Gaily says these players want to win. That is why they are willing to work hard. If they work hard and go 2-14 then what motivation is there for these same players to work hard again next year? The addition of one great player in the top of the first round is not enough motivation. With the new coaching and FO regime we need to start a new climate of winning THIS season. And if we went 6-10 last season with two different HCs, two OCs, a huge injury list, some of the dumbest plays of all time such as the McKelvin fumble, why in the world should we not at least get 7 or 8 wins this year? Switching to the 3-4 should at least improve our run defense a little bit even though it is a totally new defense.

I don't want any more favoritism to big market teams. You know there is no way Buffalo would ever get a SB in our city (probably even if we had a domed stadium) so why should NYC/NJ get to host a game.

I have been aware of the Bills since 1966 and I would say hopefully that Nix and Gailey represent a good turn of events. But overall, I think you are correct. And the sad thing is even the fans have a defeatist attitude that as a small market team we don't really have a chance, etc. Through at least the mid 1990's the thinking was never that we couldn't win because we can't compete against the elite teams. The truth of the matter is that Ralph Wilson has done a lousy job as the owner because he refused to take seriously the front office aspect of winning and even the importance of top quality coaching for extended periods of time. Compare us to the Steelers, the cities not that different is size during the last half century, and look at the different results, mainly because the owner hired good football people and let them do their job without interference. We have gone 45 superbowls without winning a single one. That falls on the owner and no one else. And it falls on the city, county, and state govts. that we are such a sad sack area that would have to risk losing a team to a "bigger" city or market. Why did the economy go so bad in Buffalo--because of excessive taxes that drove off companies and kept new ones from coming in, because of public service unions that run the city to ruin. In 1960 Buffalo was the 10th largest metropolitan area in the country and that didn't include the Rochester area that also supports the Bills. The state and local leaders messed up a great city. When you live in other parts of the country you see how much better govts. are run than NY state and Buffalo.

I think Aaron will likely find it difficult not to come back in the role as OLB where he can really shine. He, like any intelligent player on the team, was quite unhappy with the schemes we have used on defense the last few years. On a related note, I can't understand how people think we will only get 4 or 5 wins or less with this coaching staff and this defense. We HAVE to be improved against the run, even if it is the first year with a 3-4, and our pass defense will only get better with the young players more experienced and everyone healthy again. And the great thing is everyone in the league is totally discounting us so that we will sneak up on a lot of teams.