billsfan89

If McD goes 6-10 with a much better roster in his third year as coach then I think he is a goner. It is hard for any coach to survive 2 out of 3 seasons being losing seasons especially when the second losing season will likely come with a roster expected to contend or at least have a winning record. If this team finishes with a 5-6 win season and the defense proves to be a top 5-10 unit then I think assuming they bring in significant offensive free agents and another draft class then the expectations for 2019 will be much much higher. I think McD sold ownership on a 3 year plan to begin with and if 3 years in they are coming off of back to back losing seasons then I can't see how they are retained.

If 2019 is a losing season I think McD is gone. In 2019 they will have 3 draft classes and enough cap space to infuse the team with talent they will have no excuses to lose. The defense is already there and they have the resources to infuse the offense with significant talent. I think 2019 is make or break for McD

I think the odds of McD getting fired are slim to none. The defense should power the team to 3-4 more wins and a 5-6 win season coming off a 9-7 playoff appearance is hardly enough cause to fire someone. Even if the team goes 3-13 or 4-12 they probably won't fire McD as I think the circumstances to which the team was constructed make 2019 the season they set up to be successful. I don't see Mahomes success on a loaded offense as a reason to fire McD. Passing on Mahomes might go down as a massive mistake but you can't fire McD because a player had success on another team. That's very silly and very arbitrary. If you just look at what McD will have likely accomplished in his first 2 seasons I think McD warrants a third season as head coach and considering the moves they made (clearing all that dead cap and trading players for draft capital, making two trade ups with said capital) I think they were assured a third season by ownership.

I hate to break it to you but McD is the coach for 2019. You don't gut a lot of the players that can help you win now for picks and future cap space if your weren't promised the chance to use those picks and cap space in 2019. It's also not like McD wasn't coming off of a good season where he broke a playoff drought. You can be skeptical of McBeane to use the space and picks effectively to build an offense to go along with a good defense but make no mistake they are getting one more year. Ah my bad.

I don't see why DeFilippo is such a hot prospect, the Vikings have a good offense but they also have a lot of talent. It's also only the first year he has handled the offense. I honestly don't know much about Riley but I am always skeptical about the ability of college coaches to translate well into the NFL as head coaches. Out of that list I honestly don't know why most of them are considered by the writer to be "hot prospects." Kris Richard coordinates a Dallas passing game that isn't very good even when factoring in the lack of WR talent. A Pats LB coach isn't inspiring since defensive Billy B coaches almost never do well. The Titans offense stinks why would their coordinator be in line to be a head coach? ] The Rams coaches and Campbell from NOLA are interesting and I get why they would be considered coaching prospects.

You need talent to win, but you also need a culture and structure for that talent to fit into. Both from a general locker room perspective and from a X's and O's perspective. I think the Dead Cap and Trade ups for Allen and Edumonds made the ability to build a 2018 roster compromised. They had to go cheap at O-line and WR and the team handled the QB situation poorly (Maybe the biggest sin.) 2019 will be the season where they have no excuses. Their young cheap rookie QB is in place, they have the cap space, and they have another draft class to build the talent along the offense and patch some defense needs if they exist.

I honestly would like to see Tyrod get traded to Jacksonville. Bortles stinks and he is holding the team back with his turnovers and general bad play. Tyrod would protect the ball and make just enough plays with his legs to buy the offense some first downs. Basically Tyrod would be a cheap way to improve their QB play. Right now Bortles doesn't allow that team to play the football that makes them successful. Granted their defense hasn't been crushing it either but at least a risk averse QB with the ability to move the chains with his legs might just be "good enough" for the Jags to make a run at the playoffs if their defense can get on track.

The only issue is what if a pass rusher is by far and away the best player available and there isn't a trade down? It might be plausible that if the Bills draft in the top 3 a pass rusher might be the prospect worth taking (If you had the 4th overall pick in this years draft do you take the elite defensive prospect in Ward or Chubb or do you massively reach for a receiver?) It might be more palatable to take a pass rusher at or near the top of the draft if there is a big spending spree on the offensive side of the ball and the 2nd and 3rd round picks are invested into the offense as well. If the Bills go out and sign 2 solid veteran WR's and 2 interior O-line players it makes it easier to put a big investment into the defense like that. I do hope there is a trade down available but that might not be the case.

KB did look like our best receiver against Indy. I think if KB has a strong showing on Monday KB's stock might actually improve enough to net a pick higher than a 6th. Also factor in that KB's deal unlike Parker and Thomas (the other two primary receivers out on the trade market now that Cooper is in Dallas) expires at the end of the season whereas Parker and Thomas both have steep price tags. I think you might be able to get a team willing to kick a 5th on a short term win now rental of KB. That being said I think McD likely keeps KB seeing as the return could be as low as a 6th or 7th rounder.

He might have won the Mack trade depending on how long Mack plays at a high level and what Gruden does with those picks.

Dam that's a steep price for a good but not elite receiver. I would have thought a 2nd was a bit high but a 1st is bananas. The Raiders will have 3 first round picks in the 2019 draft. They could easily have a top 5 pick plus 2 additional picks within the top 20.

I don't know what he is thinking either. It's not like KB is a locker room saint. I think Jurrah is looking for a cheaper alternative to DT, Parker, and Amari Cooper. KB probably could be had for a 5th or 6th round pick and he is an expiring contract so there isn't any significant cap ramifications to acquiring KB where as DT, Parker,and Cooper are under contract for significant money in 2019.

I would pass on DT, he has a 17.5 million dollar cap hit for 2019. Unless you can restructure DT's deals to make it more palatable then I would outright pass. Amari Cooper I would consider for a 4th round pick and not much else. Initially I thought Cooper would need more to get it done but that was before Gruden put him out on the market which intimidately drops his value.

I would take a 6th for KB and be very happy. He isn't a positive for the team at the moment and if you can get a pick for him that's solid.

PFF and football analytics in general has its use but it also has its limitations. For example the person watching and grading the player on a particular play does not know what the assignment of the player is. Football analytics won't ever rise to the prominence that baseball analytics have. There are just too many variables and too many unknowns.

Pryor had been having a decent season before he got the injury. The Bills should be aggressive in pursuing him as he would be the teams best receiver upon debuting.

Hyde has been decent but he is only averaging 3.4 yards per carry (Granted he is a short yardage back which might be deflating his ypc) and he is only on a one year deal. Chubb is a young player getting buried behind a OK veteran RB. The Browns can sign another bruising back to backup Chubb, sure the quality won't be as good but it won't be a drastic step down. The Browns could sign Mike Gillislee, Christine Michael, or Thomas Rawls to backup Chubb in the early down role. The Jags are desperate at RB probably preferring Yeldon to be a third down back and I think that the Jags also want to send a message to the locker room by adding talent to their team. The Browns got a decent pick for a player that was a rental anyway.

Hyde wasn't exactly killing it either. He only average 3.4 yards per carry, granted he was used a lot in short yardage situations and such which will deflate ypc but Hyde is a 28 year old back on a 1 year deal playing OK. If you have a high potential young player like Chubb behind him you can definitely justify getting a pick for the veteran player.

I made no such appeal to moral relativism other than to say that you can apply the Socratic method to any appeal to religion/God as the source of morality and you can come up with a level of human subjectivity and interpretation the same as you would with empathy. Once again the underpinning and moral priori that I am appealing to is empathy. That is what makes all those things wrong by any measure of common empathy. You made a point to say that empathy was subjective and thus couldn't be the source of morality but I ask why isn't religion and God equally as subjective? There are many religions, many Gods, many interpretations of God and the holy books, and many holy books are filled with subjective teachings and contradictions? To me it seems to be equally as subjective as using empathy as a measure of reason and morality.

Unless the case is argued poorly (Which is entirely possible) I think the Civil Rights Act will uphold the right of people to access a service offered to the public. The fact that the custom service is offered to the general public sinks the case of it being a participatory artistic endeavor. A florist offering custom arrangements couldn't refuse a black or inter-faith wedding because they found it obscene under their religious beliefs. It is clearly defined that the grounds to which you can deny a service can't be solely on the fact that you find people in a protected class obscene simply for their status of being in a protected class. The religious argument will not hold water as that precedent has been set with other protected classes. I would also argue that the Supreme Court hasn't been activist in a long time. The Supreme Court has made so many pro-business pro-establishment rulings that I would not be shocked to see them side with business owners who want to use their religion as a means to discriminate. In the Hobby Lobby Case I believe it was Scalia (I think) who stated that their religious objections didn't even have to have scientific merit to be valid (Referencing the fact that the morning after pill and birth control in general is not an act of abortion but as long as the business sincerely thinks it is their claim is valid.)

Sexual Orientation is a protected class, it was added to the Civil Rights Act in 1998. So the same protections afforded to nation or origin/race are afforded to sexual orientation.

Unless the NBA team was consistently very good like the Spurs I just don't see the NBA working in Buffalo. NBA players aren't attracted to cold weather cities (Outside of NYC) and small markets like Buffalo. A Buffalo NBA team would have a very hard time being competitive on a consistent basis and for a city that might have a limited fanbase to being with it probably is hard to build if there isn't consistent success. Overall I think Seattle and International expansion are much more likely places for the NBA to go. The NBA D-League is actually expanding to be a 1 to 1 farm system for the NBA, there is already 27 teams and they are expanding to 30. I could see something like that working in Buffalo as a cheap winter sports alternative.

The Civil Rights Act says that you can't discriminate against a protected class even if it violates your closely-held religious beliefs, there was a case in the late 1960's where a southern BBQ joint tried to argue its right to be whites only based off of religious belief and they lost. So your religious beliefs even if closely and sincerely held does not get you out of the civil rights act. The nuance of participating in a ceremony isn't valid (In my opinion and based off of other cases where people tried this discrimination based on racial and religious grounds when offering custom services on the same grounds of participation) because a custom service you offer to every member of the public is a service that falls under the civil rights act. You can't withhold a service based off of finding a protected class obscene. Everything is subject to subjectivity and human interpretation if you go in deep enough. We could go really abstract and say that everything is relative to human experience and interpretation if break it down to baseline. Even if you want to bring it back to God as a starting clause God is still something that is up to human interpretation. Which God are you talking about? Which version of that God? How do you interpret the holy books? Considering that most if not all religious books are filled with many contraindications and rules that we no longer as a society follow there are many ways God can be interpreted. People tried to use the bible as a justification for slavery and segregation. Basing morality off of Empathy is as valid an underpinning for morality as God or religion, it is all based off of subjectivity and interpretation. I think we are getting lost in this conversation of wither or not the Civil Rights Act is a form of slavery. Can you please answer my baseline question of if any business that is forced to do something it doesn't want to do by law or regulation is a slave?

Did I say anything about the minimum wage? Although I will agree that it isn't a great definition since its not something that can be defined well in a soundbite without conveying the nuance of the word.

Slavery to me is at its most basic form being forced to do labor without proper compensation. It's not exactly a word that comes with one simple definition. I do believe it is wrong simply because it is a violation of human rights to compel labor without proper compensation. These are only baseline definitions as the term is loaded and ripe with many different terms forms and uses. As far as moral priority I can only reference what is right based off of empathy and human decency. I don't believe in God so I can't rightfully use God or religion as my moral arbiter (If God is good then does that mean there is a standard of good that exists above God, is that not the standard to which we should live type big questions?)