BADOLBILZ

Another win in Chicago......10-5. Now 24-8 record on the year. The shots of the crowd leaving after Donaldson homers both nights were hilarious..........they need to do that more..........as soon as a dagger HR clears the fence don't bother showing the trot just go right to the fans exiting. That's great TV.

Duel threat RB's are Bully-Ball 101.

Life support? MLB is the second highest revenue generating pro sports league on planet earth.......behind only the NFL, of course. As for the sport aging out and just being for old folks.......... while overall youth sports enrollment in the US fell from 45% to 38% from 2008-2019..........baseball was unaffected by that..........it's the organized sport a US kid is most likely to play........which is why baseball continues to have a lot of fans of all ages. We all love football.......even people like yourself who weren't athletically inclined. But unfortunately, football is the sport with a young people problem. People love to watch it........but have their kids play it? Nope. Enrollment down from 2.5M per year to 1.9M per year in that span. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/01/28/the-decline-of-football-is-real-and-its-accelerating/?sh=7f1e87ab2f37 The sport is going to have to continue to become steadily less violent to keepthe talent pipeline full and extend the careers of the limited amount of talented players coming into pro football. It will be basketball on grass............and we will retain our love for very different reasons(nostalgia and competitive balance) rather than why it was popular in the first place (a violent test of wills). MLB is horribly run but if they get the action back into the game and cut the game times........as they are working to do..........it's hard to beat the long term outlook for a game that plays every day and doesn't leave the players crippled and poisoned from pain and PE drugs.

Butch Byrd was a 3x first team All Pro and played on 2 AFL championship teams. Fred was a nice player who had a 1,000 yard rushing season once........but it is ridiculous to suggest he deserves to be honored before Byrd. Especially because Byrd has been waiting for 50 years.

15-7 win over CWS. 23-8........best record in baseball. Best offensive performance by the Yankees this season. 10 runs scored with 2 outs. Worth watching the replay tomorrow if you missed it........great base running........1-5 hitters scored 11 runs........Stanton and Judge combined for 3 HR and 10 RBI. These teams have played some entertaining slugfests since that "Field of Dreams" series. LaRussa inexplicably leaves struggling RHP Joe Kelly in to face lefty hitting Anthony Rizzo with 2 outs..........then brings in a lefty to face Giancarlo Stanton..........never thought I'd see the day when a manager took out a RHP to put in a lefty to face Stanton.

Yeah.....and I'm also sure some people immediately want to pull the race card when they hear something like this...........but it's just human nature to associate the bad deeds or chaos of family members with that name. "Sins of the father". I have an uncle who is an attorney (Notre Dame grad of course) and he and a bunch of his law school buddies stole a bunch of money from people who kinda' missed it.........and laundered it thru a bank one of them was a founding family member of. And got away with it, also of course. As a result, I had to deal with that being associated with my name and for quite a few years I had to deal with the irrational perception that I was associated with that kind of unethical behavior and it cost me some big coin and opportunities. I didn't B word about it, I just held myself to a much higher standard and restored the value of my last name. That's how you handle it. Kaiir Elam has everything in front of him.

I considered posting something like this but I figured I would let someone else take the flames for a change.........this is why I hadn't really given serious consideration to him being the Bills first round pick............I really thought his family drama was going to cause him to fall into round 2 of the draft. Kaiir really seems to have his stuff together though. Not everybody is a chip off the old block wrt behavior and priorities. I get the feeling that his old man held him to a pretty high standard and Abe himself seemed to be a quality guy and teammate once in the NFL. Bobby Bonds was a great talent in MLB who wasted HOF talent with recreational drug abuse and mercurial behavior. His son Barry was quite the opposite though........got every bit out of his potential...........and was never in trouble until he decided to join the juice parade because he wasn't getting his due.

I agree that they were often varying degrees of worse at 1 tech without him on the field........the notable exceptions being the month before Harrison Phillips tore up his knee in 2019 when it looked like he was going to become a beast.......and the second half of 2021 when Phillips finally got right again. Otherwise they were trying to give washed out street free agent Cory Liuget or reluctant and miscast 3 tech Vernon Butler those snaps. The bar was set VERY low. In 2018 and 2019 when he and the rest of the defense were generally healthy they were still just a middling ypc run defense.........he was serviceable but despite his rep he didn't draw enough double teams and impact the LOS enough to make the plan work............and was bigger and more lethargic and couldn't get off a block to at least make some plays to make up for it. He was a smaller, different and better player when he was briefly healthy in 2021........but being in a more active condition seemed to coincide with two separate leg injuries. The Bills were sorta' damned if they did and if they didn't with him..........the more available he was to make an impact the less available he was to play.

PW was good.........but no.........that would be cutting Ted Washington. Washington had long been the identity of the Bills defense, which was the side of the ball which drove their success from 1995 on. They went from nearly impossible to run on with Washington at NT...........to impossibly bad in run defense overnight. About 15 years of work building a winning culture was destroyed and the drought was immediately set in motion. Washington jumped to Chicago and just like that the 5-11 Bears of Dick Jauron then went 13-3 and earned the #1 seed in the NFC. He missed most of the next season injured and the Bears fell back to 4-12. A year later he jumped to NE and anchored a SB winning defense. Donahoe spent like crazy to try to build the run defense back up but even with PW and Sam Adams and Takeo Spikes etc............they couldn't bow up when they needed to and were instead known for lacking mental toughness/heart despite all of the high priced talent. Washington was probably the freakiest NT of all time.........a LISTED 365#.........but actually always over 400# post 1997........34.5" arms and 11" hands. The story Marcellus Wiley tells about Pat Williams pissing off Big Ted and ending up hog-tied with athletic tape on the locker room floor says it all about how physically dominant he was over everyone. PW was a really nice player.........but he was basically a larger Kyle Williams........a really good gap shooter with great, quick hands. He seemed to play consistently excellent forever in Minnesota........but then he got busted for juicing and we found out why.

I can't wait for the announcement...........if Whaley gets the Steelers GM job some heads are going to explode on TSW. Aside from a very small but vocal group of fans who absolutely hated the trade up for Watkins at the time...........Whaley could do no wrong in the eyes of most fans.........he was the boy wonder for most of his time in Buffalo. The outrage at me when I called his 2016 "off the bus starters" draft "uninspired" was quite impressive.............now the same people think he is trash and claim he always was.

"Dead Weight" McCargo. Best day as a Bill..........October 14, 2008........when traded to Colts for a 4th rounder in the 2009 draft. Worst day as a Bill........October 15, 2008.........when they sent him back and rescinded their offer.

Schobel's very premature retirement was the product of the Bills incredible dysfunction at the time. When Marv took over as GM he put on his paper hat and apron and walked around the locker room hand taking orders for which teams players wanted to be traded to and pretty soon that rat-fink agent Eugene Parker set up shop in there to cash in on their weak-willed management team. By the time Buddy Nix took over Schobel was demanding that he be able to just fly in for game days to play. Buddy was no genius but he knew sh*t was totally out of control with the players leading the organization around by the d*ck so knew he had to call Schobel's bluff. So being stubborn as a Texas mule........and sick of the losing........Schobel retired to the restaurant life. I know he considered joining the Patriots but Buddy wouldn't relinquish his rights. Probably why we will never see Schobel around again.

Nobody asked you to have the time to look up "every single stat every hour of the day"........just the one that you wanted to use as support for your take that would have taken all of 5 seconds. "Star Lotulelei + game logs + 2021" Due credit for being versed in the hilarious football excuse speak though. Media: "Sean, how do you explain your team having the worst scoring offense thru 8 games since the AFL/NFL merger?" McDermott: " Would we like to score 50 points every game? Of course, but sometimes it isn't that easy." Like I said 7-1 was just a really weird, pulled from thin-air, over-stated stat to make up about a grossly overpaid rotational role player like Lotulelei. Maybe if Tennessee hadn't trampled them or KC hadn't put up 570 yards on them in the playoffs both with Star active..........perhaps you could VERY loosely imply that he had some kind of tangible synergistic effect. 7-1 sounds A LOT better than 8-3 though........and 8-3 is a lot lower winning % than their 13-3 record in 2020..........when he was cashing opt out checks for a living. He's not the kind of player you assign win-loss records to. You know that.

Not like you to make up a BS stat like this that you could have looked up in 5 seconds.........the Bills were 8-3 in games where Lotulelei participated. And that is padded because he was a non-factor in the late season wins also. As Beane noted he was washed after he returned from becoming very ill with covid (after refusing vaccination after skipping a year etc..). And let's be honest, the mid-season losses were because the offense only scored 6, 15 and 10 points in those losses not because of missing Star Lotulelei. And yeah, "sure" they overpaid.......Beane ultimately paid Lotulelei about $43M for 43 games of exactly 47% of defensive football snaps........that's pass rusher money for a $4M aav quality player. There is overpaying and then there is awarding Star a 5 year $50M deal with half of it guaranteed............worst overpay for least return in history of Bills free agency..........and it's not even close. Some might site the $7M aav deal the Bills gave Derrick Dockery long ago.......but at least DD played every snap of every game as a Bill. Daquon Jones was another overpay........why Beane was compelled to pay him MORE than Carolina had last year is inexplicable............ but the risk is relatively modest compared to the financial nut punch that Lotulelei became. There are a lot of things to love about Beane.........but his high volume of mistakes in free agency just underscores the fact that you really don't need to have a good batting average wrt free agent decisions to win divisions and make the playoffs if you acquire an elite QB. Whether they graduate to winning a SB or can at least maintain their success given their inefficiency with $ in UFA.........that is another question.

That was just one of many common Bills joke in the mid-90's. I think that sappy show had some kind of flashback aspect so maybe they were trying to make an era relevant reference.

They didn't really let them go........they were free agents. They would be half priced vs the cap at the trade deadline and probably only worth a 7th or something like that, assuming the Texans are toast by then. It's not something the Bills have ever done that I recall..........but not unheard of. Hopefully it's not necessary to add a vet at the deadline.........they were let go in the hopes of getting better at those positions.

"Thornton Melon defensive back Grand Lakes University"

I wouldn't rule out a return of Hughes or Addison at the trade deadline if things don't go as planned with the young DE's. It's the perfect place-holder team. They are basically stashed.

Andy Dalton had taken the Bengals to the playoffs in 5 of his first 6 seasons going into the 2017 draft.........they had their sights set on winning WITH Dalton at that point. The Bills hadn't been to the playoffs in 17 years and NOBODY thought Tyrod was a long term solution..........the QB draft speculation was rampant. Especially here. It had actually been that way since spring of 2016 when people like Bandit were talking up Mahomes and @GunnerBill was adamant about Watson going to be great. As for the draft never being the "be all and end all".............like it or not, when you pass on a great QB in the draft it can cost you for a LONG time. The Bills went 10 years between passing on Drew Brees to not selecting Russell Wilson. Basically they had just 2 clear cracks at elite QB talents in the draft despite 15 long and painful years of playoff banishment. Then Mahomes and Watson fell into their laps at the same time and they passed. It is beyond lucky that they even got the shot at Allen the next year. But that rare fortune is how you can make maybe the worst decision in franchise history one year.........and survive to tell about it............by making maybe the best draft pick in franchise history the next. As for the Mahomes v Allen stuff...........I was talking up that rivalry when people here were still wondering if they hated Josh Allen or not. It was that way or bust for this regime. McBeane wouldn't even be here if it didn't turn into a rivalry. The weight of the Mahomes miss would have crushed their regime long ago. Allen saved their bacon and as I said then.......HOPEFULLY it just started out like Marino v Kelly.........initially Marino had a 50 TD pass season and went to a SB like Mahomes did and made the Bills look like fools for passing on him. But 6 years after that draft the tide turned and Kelly ended up dominating Marino for the next 8 years and going to 4 SB's etc..

Correct. Phil McGeoghan. We don't trust any of these long time scouts that put a very talented roster together.............but in Phil McGeoghan we trust.

With several years to sort it out.........its premature to assume there will even be much of a shakeup.

The cap wasn't a mess. That was just a story Beane made up to confidence man the fans into not questioning whether what they were going to do was necessary. They were actually like $32M below the cap going into the 2017 offseason with very few commitments in 2018 or 2019. In UFA Whaley was strong.........he had been the pro personnel guy before getting the GM job..........he scored some larcenous deals in UFA..........Tyrod for peanuts, Incognito, Lorax, Zach Brown. The draft picks he made were compromised by scheme/system changes.........he had 2 very different offenses and 3 different defensive systems to stock in his brief reign. If you could call it a reign..........because he had no power. That was his weakness...........he didn't know how to get clout in the organization and so he had both ownership and coaches sabotaging his endeavors from the get-go to the get-out. The situation was totally dysfunctional and he didn't have the personality/power to do anything about it.........he HAD to go. The first key thing that Beane and McDermott were able to do was take full control away from the Pegula's. The Pegula's reportedly hate that they agreed to that........but their track record with the Sabres and the Bills prior to McBeane's arrival proves that it's warranted. When you get a franchise QB and the HC and GM are working in unison and unencumbered by ownership............. you don't need much of a batting average wrt to decisions to win division titles.

Jack Easterby. My source is Jesus and the sign is that Easter be one year from today.