BADOLBILZ

IMO the primary issue on defense is that the Bills are not willing to commit to being very opponent specific. It's nice to be great at a few things. That will get you in the playoff mix. But pushing your defense to be able to do more week-in-week-out is why Spags and Belichick defense's have won so many SB's in recent times. The Bills run into too many games where their inability to make complex adjustments gets them dissected. And that makes the talent look worse than it is.

A lot of players from that era put up crazy numbers. I was always a big Thomas fan it's just too bad he fell apart after age 29. I know he's considered a non-roid guy but I always thought he was and it probably caught up to him. I support his message about not letting your T get low. Soto is amazing at the plate except for one thing. He doesn't barrel up enough pitches. He will have a count worked and be right on a pitcher and then he will miss a pitch he shouldn't and make an out on weak contact. When you watch him over 162 you see it. It's why he doesn't hit .330 ever year. Not sure that's fixable, it might just be a function of him letting the ball travel so far before deciding what to do. But if he can improve that his numbers have room to expand even in this dead ball era. I just tend to think his lack of athleticism combined with his complicated hitting style might lead to a big drop-off like Thomas had around 30.

Kyle Tucker is getting traded to the Cubs for Paredes, Wesneski and the prospect they picked in round 1 last year. Cody Bellinger should be a Yankee shortly. Hopefully Tucker won't sign an extension. He could be available at the deadline and by then the Yanks prospects will hopefully have a lot more value.

But he's getting sued about it, reportedly. https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/former-nfl-star-intentionally-gave-incurable-std-to-multiple-women-specifically-targeting-buffalo-bills-fans-lawsuit/

Palm tree protests are out. Need something simpler and more sustainable. My idea is white sunscreen on the nose and leis. Like Spicoli said "Those guys are fans!"

The teams couldn't be much more different. Bills are QB driven offensively and schemed up on D. Lions schemed up on O and all about violence on D. And Detroit the city is like Beirut compared to Buffalo. Every time I go there I am still shocked by how bad it is. Not just run down or dated.......scary. I have empathy for their economic and civic problems and the Lions organization has been gracious letting the Bills play there during snowpocalypses......but we are not that alike. It's also a true 4 pro sport town with big college allegiances. Very different than Buffalo. Buffalo has more in common with Cleveland or even Pittsburgh.

To paraphrase John Madden............if you have 2 teams you have none. Football, in particular, is a sport where you gotta' own one team because every game is largely about physically beating the opponent into submission. There are always a few deliberate attempts to injure, regardless of rhetoric to the contrary. If there aren't your team is soft.

Yeah teams just weren't sold on him 10 years ago. I'm sure the average college recruiting process has changed a bit now but it was a time when coaches saw you had the opportunity to do all this football all year round...........so if you weren't doing it it likely served as a simple way to grade out certain players.

What I don't like is that the biggest problem IS the team stuff not the glory plays. He's been bad against the run this season. That's effort and execution that he's typically able to turn into results in run D. Ed Oliver tries hard in games but that effort might not be backed up with the right strength and conditioning this year. It's my contention is that me might not have put in the work in the offseason like he should have. When you try to get in shape in season.......sometimes you get injuries early and then can never get to the baselines that made him dynamic.

Yes, but again, that's not why he was a zero star QB. We're not talking about him being 5'7" 160. There was a 5 star QB last year who was 6'1". I think people just get too caught up in the idea that he was not considered even physically capable of becoming a good college QB. Every year when the story gets told his HS self gets a little smaller though. Here is the story from 2019: "At the time, Josh was about 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds. He hadn't attended the elite quarterback camps and wasn't a widely known prospect. His high school team didn't participate in many 7-on-7 camps because Josh and many of his teammates were busy playing baseball and other sports. He was the leading scorer on his basketball team and also pitched on the baseball team, reaching 90 mph with his fastball." Like I said, Allen simply didn't follow the same path as most QB recruits do. He didn't transfer to a school where competition was better, he didn't go to all the camps and play 7 on 7 football year round etc..

The topic isn't how he went from zero star to one of the greatest NFL QB specimens ever though.........it's how was he a total zero-star non-recruit in HS. The very slightly below average height doesn't explain that. I think it's easier for Allen to always bring that size up rather than explain over and over that his father didn't think he needed to drag him to every camp and participate in 7 on 7 teams etc.. That would kinda' sounds like he's blaming his old man because other families were going to those lengths. But that extra exposure and perhaps the perceived proof of determination to succeed that playing football year round provides is very important to "earning" rank and getting recruited.

True but I think this part gets overplayed a bit. If you look at the top 80 or so QB recruits in the 2024 class 10 of them were listed at UNDER 6 feet tall. And a bunch hovering at just 6' or 6'1". These are all 3 star and up types. Not being 6'5" played a part but I think it was way more the lack of exposure and competition. Clearly he had athleticism and a strong arm from the tape we see from time to time.

Fried is an ace so it's a big "baseball" signing. I had the displeasure of watching him dismantle the Yanks in person back on June 23rd in the Bronx. And when I think of him in the playoffs I just remember him putting away the Astros to win the WS in 2021. It was, on some levels, a historically dominant performance. Fried may just seem like a random good player to the casual baseball fan but this is also another strategic move in the Yankees/Mets battle for hearts and $$$ in NYC baseball. Just in time for the holidays!

Yeah if they go 3-1 against that schedule you gotta' tip your hat. They would have earned the 2 seed.

Yeah exposure is obviously a big part of it. Spencer Brown was also a zero-star and then athletically tested like a HOF'er at the combine. In he and Allen's cases they played in small, rural communities without much exposure or a lot of high level competition.

I guess we will see. NIL extends to HS in a lot of states now and will be all states soon enough. I think you might underestimate how much of the shrink in HS sports is about kids pursuing opportunities to earn money. That's the biggest problem in a lot of areas. Everyone's hiring and kid's want money. It's not just apathy.

Well the Eagles pulled the plug on Reid after 14 seasons. Those 14 years were full of home playoff losses and frustration. That SB he lost to Belichick was like a fever dream nightmare. THEN he blew a 28 point lead in the playoffs to the Colts and lost a playoff game at home to Mike Mularkey. 😂 Even with Mahomes he blew another huge halftime lead at home to the Bengals in the AFCCG in 2022. With Belichick washing out and then being fired the bar has gotten so much lower. He was in a class by himself for a very, very long time. There aren't any Joe Gibbs versus Bill Parcells matchups. Let alone a Bill Walsh. It's the oft-failed Reid and clever schemers with sketchy, inconsistent records like McVay and Shanahan or consistent culture guys like Tomlin, the Harbaugh bros.........and McD. I'm sure there is someone out there who would be better than McD but I am even more sure there are a lot more who would be worse.

Not necessarily disagreeing with your premise but 25 four-star players would give you the #1 ranked class. Expectations would be thru the roof even without some fives. There aren't usually close to 400 of them fours so it's hard to get a full class of nothing but them. There's only 30-35 five-stars typically and we know a lot of those will be busts and Beane will pick some of them up in UDFA one day. So it's the 300-325 four stars and probably more importantly the 2,000 or so three-stars that do most of the work.

If Patrick Mahomes doesn't come along.........Andy Reid's legacy is probably as the all-time leader in games blown by bad clock management. He has been brutal throughout his career. I know we think that McD has Allen so he should be winning SB's too...........but Reid had about a 20 year head start of making mistakes and learning from them before he got his truly elite QB. The Bills are a traditionally inept organization. And let's not kid ourselves, at this point, they are 2 moves away(losing Allen and then firing McDermott) from returning there(see Sabres, Buffalo). And they certainly weren't going to get an established, high quality HC and have him acclimate for another 5-6 seasons and THEN give him that GOAT level QB like KC was able to pull off. No f#cking chance Reid was coming to work for Ralph or Terry Pegula back then. For Buffalo, this had to happen all at once with a 3rd choice level rookie HC or it wasn't happening at all. So now they have a first time HC who has outperformed his pedigree for 7+ seasons and also still have had back to back inexperienced OC's and now a young DC etc.. No rookie OC has won a SB since Mike Holmgren with SF in the 1980's and that shouldn't even count since it was on cruise control from Bill Walsh. Experience matters more often than not and the Bills often haven't had that in their coaches. So it's been a relatively sloppy process watching McD and Allen evolve simultaneously and knowing they are at a disadvantage against a seasoned combo like Reid and Spags. If the right HC who will work with Beane is out there that will almost certainly upgrade what McBeane has been.........then bring it on. But I think with each passing season that becomes less likely to find. And don't make assumptions that they will be better at game management if they are new just because they were a clever play caller. See how y'alls boy Daboll has done as a HC. Trash. Most of the OTHER best regarded HC's in the NFL would merely be lateral moves at best to an 8+ year seasoned McD. If McVay wants to move to Buffalo I'd be interested. Not happening, and you'd always have to be wondering when he'd quit for the booth if it somehow did. Shanahan is like 0-forever/whenever against Reid so pass. Sirianni? GTFOH. 😂 Who we getting that we know won't make game management mistakes but can beat Reid sometimes? Ben Johnson? We have no idea if he can handle play calling and being HC and you only want him if he's play calling. The reality is that as much of a bummer as it is to watch McD grow into the job, the AFC west would be lined up to hire McDermott because he's 5-1 against Reid in the regular season and played him close in the playoffs twice.

What you aren't mentioning is that there isn't just one portal period. The players who can command starting guarantees can transfer in January or the spring and get away with it but most players really need the offseason to get a fair shake at playing time. And that begins with getting transferred in so they can start school in January and get in the training program and go thru spring games prepared to compete. It's not fair(or logical) to the players or the teams they are leaving to not open the portal in early December to thin out the mass of talent in the portal. I very much agree with the idea of more eligibility though. Years from now we may look back and realize that a lot of rank and file type players(and some QB's) are more useful to the NFL if they come into the league at 23-24. The stars are still leaving after 3 years but more eligibility is a good thing for the rest.

Your mind is totally in the wrong place on this. At the HS level, football is a sport that's in danger. Money needed to flow down to the college players to entice more participation at the HS level. Having the carrot 7 years away was too far. Greedy pocket stuffer football factories like Alabama didn't want to share their wealth because they make exponentially more than others. So it ended up becoming an NIL game. The system is many iterations away from the profit sharing of the NFL but NIL is doing for NCAAF something similar to what free agency did for the NFL.

I mean, he made some bad decisions and throws in the second half too. It's hard for almost any other QB to play much better than he did. But.......not for him. The last time he played the Rams in LA he was absolutely surgical. But not as memorable.

Well, yeah........but it wasn't like he pitched a perfect game against a great defense and lost. He had 2 games worth of TD's but a game and half worth of bad decisions and throws too.