hondo in seattle

Do you know the waypoint names in Buffalo?

Cook isn't a top 5 back in the league. He's not a top 5 back in Bills history. But I think about this like cooking. The recipe calls for a particular ingredient. That ingredient isn't particularly rare or exotic. But the dish doesn't work as well without it. Cook is that ingredient. He works better in this O than Singletary or Moss, for example, and he'd be hard to replace.

4.56

The thing I noticed is that I have to scroll down to Tier 3 to find any AFCE QBs other than Josh who's a Tier 1 operator.

This thread is an exercise in self-flagellation.

Here you go...

If Andy Reid wanted to coach the Bills, I'd be onboard. But I tend to believe the slam dunk HC candidates are all gainfully employed already so we'd have to roll the dice on an unproven OC, DC or a college coach. Maybe they'd be great and maybe we'd waste the second half of Josh's career. Personally, I wouldn't want the risk. With 32 teams in the NFL, there's a 3% chance of any given team wins the SB. I think the McD/Josh combo elevates that to 10% or so. Nobody will ever name a trophy after McDermott but he's better than the average NFL coach. And I do believe if we give him enough shots, he'll get us a Lombardi.

Deep history: Fins More recent history: Pats Current: Chiefs Hatred poisons the soul, so I try not to hate anyone but it's frustrating to keep watching the Bills beat the Chiefs in the regular season only to lose to them in the playoffs. I don't "hate" the Chiefs per se but I don't root for them either and would be happy if they somehow missed the playoffs this season. Other teams and fanbases deserve some of their success.

Based on my background, I have a weird way of looking at things. After my stint in the army, I ended up the Director of Operations of a restaurant company with a couple of dozen locations. One of those restaurants had a crappy parking lot so I spent some money fixing the potholes, laying down some new asphalt, sealing, and striping it. The owner, peeved at the expense, calculated how many tacos we'd have to sell to cover the cost of that repair. Because margins in the restaurant industry are small, it was something like 60,000. Annoyed, he asked, "Will we sell an additional 60,000 tacos because you fixed the parking lot?" I agreed that we wouldn't. But the parking lot wasn't the only thing we were taking care of. I told him the combined effect of all our maintenance, cleaning, training, etc. will combine for far more than 100,000 additional taco sales. It's a mindset that says the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's how I see Cook. He's not elite, but I don't want to lose him. I wouldn't want to roll the dice on the next draft or Etienne or whatever. I'd pay Cook based on how valuable he is to our offense, not necessarily on how he stacks up compared to other backs. He's an important ingredient in our offensive recipe.

I find that odd, too. It reminds me of the army. During duty hours, a soldier will be called by rank and surname: "Corporal Jones." But even off-duty when hanging out with friends, he's typically called, "Jones" instead of his first name. I think this creates an emotional buffer which can be useful when soldiers are hurt or killed, but also a sense of unity, identity, and camaraderie. It's like a reminder that you aren't hanging out with your undisciplined, dope-smoking, sleep-till-noon high school or college buddies anymore. You're in a different world, now. I wonder what Josh's rationale is.

Sometimes I wonder how much of these early depth charts are real and how much is messaging. Maybe coaches bump a guy up higher than he belongs to show him that he's noticed and appreciated. Maybe sometimes they bump a guy down to send the message that he needs to put forth more effort and/or better learn the playbook.

I'm excited to see these squads out there. With 12 offensive and 12 defensive starters, we ought to dominate. 😁

Not just the speed and shimmy shakes, though both were great, but he could see the field in a way few backs can. It's like he had some innate sense of gridiron geometry and could not only see where everyone was but where they were going to be in the next few moments and optimally picked his route through all those moving pieces accordingly. And sometimes used the shoulder jukes and shimmy shakes to get a defender to move every-so-slightly out of his way. Well, not always "ever-so-slightly." I recall plays where defenders got so tangled up trying to stay with Juice's moves that they fell on their butts. Btw, you wouldn't know it looking at these highlights, but OJ frequently had a spy on him. Somehow, OJ got him out of the picture.

I watched both Brady and Brees in their prime and saw Brees make all the same reads and the same throws with the same precision. In particular seasons, Brees had better stats, but Tom had the rings. So I wonder, did Tom earn more rings than Brees because he was the better QB and leader or because he had a better supporting cast including both coaches and players? I don't have a firm answer for that but I tend to think it was the latter. And that makes me hesitate to call Tom the undisputed GOAT. In Brady's best season (2021), he threw for 5,316 yards. Incidentally, Brady only broke 5,000 twice while Brees did it an amazing five times. The next best guy in 2021 (Herbert) threw for 5,014 yards. Brady beat him by 6%. In OJ's best year (1973), he ran for 75% more yards more than the next best guy (Brockington)!!! Brady never had a season like that. Brady was very good for a very long time on a team that was very good and very well-coached. Does that make him the GOAT? I don't know. Maybe. But I've seen other players who in a given season were head-and-shoulders above their peers in ways Tom never was.

We have the same hopes!

I have mixed feelings. I was about 10 when OJ was drafted. He was my only sports hero ever, and a lesson why you shouldn't have athletes as heroes. I'm annoyed when I see lists of the greatest RBs ever and he's not #1 or at least #2 behind the great Jim Brown. OJ was otherworldly with the ball. In 1973 - back when the best athletes became RBs - OJ nearly equaled the combined output of the 2nd and 3rd best backs in the league. Imagine this year some excellent QBs throw for 4,000+ yards but Josh throws for 7,000+. It was something like that. Neither Tom Brady nor anyone else ever had a season so statistically off the charts as OJ's. In his prime, OJ may have been the best RB ever, maybe the best football player ever. He was like an Olympic god competing against mortals. And it wasn't just the numbers that tell us this. You had to watch him play to truly understand. He did things no other human could do and did it against defenses designed and manned to stop the run. Not like today's backs running against marshmallow Nickel and Dime defenses and breaking tackles by skinny coverage LBs who are more agile than they are tough instead of the monstrous brutes of OJ's day. I still feel a certain joy watching clips of OJ and marveling at the athletic beauty of it. But I hate the man for what he did later and want him off the WOF.

Not to be a Negative Nancy, but what if Tre doesn't stay healthy and/or doesn't return to pro-bowl Tre again? In that scenario, an injured or unready Max is a problem - and that's what some of us are worried about.

Is this generally true? I had a high ankle sprain when I played HS ball. I was on crutches for a while but felt great after about 2 weeks and never had a problem with my ankle again.

I watch most Bills games in the comfort of my home. But if the Bills go to the SB, I just might have to share the joy - or pain - of it by watching at a Bills Backer bar.

That's quite an accomplishment! I've run 3, all slower than a three-legged possum with asthma, but I'm hoping to win my age group someday. My family tends to be long-lived so I'm hoping to outlive the competition and be the only finisher in my age group.

Hiking/trail running in the mountains with my husky is top of the list. Also: eating at new restaurants with unfamiliar cuisines (including some very strange foods), meditating, reading (history, science, Buddhism, historical novels), traveling when I have the chance, writing, and reverse planking, which some people derogatorily refer to as sleeping.

Even though it's an unwritten requirement to hate PFF if you're in the Bills Mafia, I'll mention that PFF has Benford the #8 ranked CB going into 2025 and T. Johnson as the #19. If Tre returns to peak form, and/or Max recovers and lives up to our hopes, this will be the best secondary CB trio we've had in a long time. www.pff.com/news/nfl-cornerback-rankings-top-32-ahead-of-2025-nfl-season

If I played Madden, I suppose it would make me happy to see Allen's talents acknowledged and recognized. But I don't. In fact, I don't really care how any sportswriter or football analyst (or team of analysts) ranks or grades Allen. I know and appreciate how good he is. I don't need the opinion of others to validate my assessment. As others have said, the achievement I most want Allen to earn is a Lombardi. The rest doesn't matter.

Maddy is somebody's daughter and may be an excellent human being so I'm reluctant to criticize. I'd rather watch more insightful content, but I don't blame her for doing what her employers pay her to do.