hondo in seattle

We all knew this in the preseason. DW didn't acquire talent everywhere. He gave Rex enough defensive talent to be competitive. And Roman enough talent on offense to build a running attack. During preseason, we all acknowledged that WR depth was a problem. As a running team, it seemed the most logical place to have a problem if we had to have a problem somewhere. With Sammy and Woods missing most of the season, and playing hurt when they find the field at all, it's haunting us.

My kind of guy.... a glass-half-full kind of poster.

Shoulda lost... shoulda won... I don't count moral failures just like I don't count moral victories - because the NFL doesn't count them. When we win, it's because we played well enough to win. When we lose, it's because we didn't play well enough to win. I live a simple fan's life: I celebrate all victories and bemoan all losses. Yesterday's win kept us - barely - in the playoff picture. It was a good game.

I always thought of Patulski as a bust - even though I knew his stats showed some productivity. I guess I was influenced by Saban's public statements. Getting the other side of the story was interesting, if sad. Glad he's doing well now. Terry Miller rushed for over 1,000 yards as a rookie at 4.5 yards per pop. Then developed vision problems that ruined his career. Not a classic bust.

100% with ya.

Contradiction or not, I agree whole-heartedly. I'd rather see Tasker get selected than Brown.

If you look at their historical rankings, both Rex and Schwartz have had good and bad years. When they have the players that fit their scheme, they get into the top ten. When they don't have the right players, the bottom ten is more likely. Their overall resumes are dramatically different. Lately, however, Schwartz has been out-performing Rex. Maybe he has a better understanding of how to stop today's offenses? I'm not yet convinced.

Yeah, as much as injuries have hurt us, I'd rather pass on Romo even if he did become available. I know from personal experience that back problems aren't easily fixed. This says it all.

This is how it goes with .500 teams. They beat bad teams and lose to good teams. There are no surprises here. The Bills were in every game but one this year. They're just not good enough to close the deal against the better teams. Looks like 8-8, plus or minus one win, to me.

That's my favorite part of the scenario. Apparently, if the Jets were to cut Revis, we could sign him for the league minimum and the Jets would have to pay him the rest of the $6 million owed to him while he plays in a Bills uni. What an awesome possibility. I don't know if Revis would be a good safety but the cost of the experiment would not be high.

I like this thread. It's cool to see that Bills fans don't just live in Western New York. We're global. The other day, I was driving down a road in the state of Washington when the the guy in the car next to me started beeping his horn and yelling at me. I was thinking, "What's wrong with this lunatic?" But then he pulled in front of me and I saw the Bills stickers on the back of his car. He had noticed mine and was saying hello.

Thanks for your service! I lived in a tent in the Middle East when the Bills went to the first Super Bowl. No internet. No TV. Only shortwave radio. An army Specialist woke me up at some god awful hour to tell me he heard on the BBC that the Bills won the Super Bowl on a last minute field goal. After I quizzed him, he said there was a lot of static and it was possible he had heard wrong. After hours of frantic radio searching, I discovered the sad truth.

Silverdale, WA. Working on a retirement home in the southern Philippines. Used to live next door in San Ramon. I miss the Bay Area.

I heard second- and third- hand more than once that Flutie was a narcissistic, arrogant putz. Have no idea if that was really true. Personally, I just thought he was overrated. He would play like crap for three quarter but our great defense would keep us in the game. Then he'd score a TD in the 4th quarter and people talked about him like he was the miracle man. If he was just an average QB, we wouldn't have needed a 4th quarter score to win. Just look at his stats. He wasn't good. Though, admittedly, he could be exciting in the 4th quarter.

Not sure why you are confusing this conversation with facts, data, and common sense?

Valle, you really don't need to be part of this board if you're going to call people idiots for disagreeing with you. No matter what opinion you hold, or how valid it may seem to you, you'll find people here who vehemently disagree. Hopefully we can disagree with respect instead of name calling.

Being 57, I have a lot of favorites. But Kyle and Fred are my favorites of the past 10 years. Kyle isn't just a man on the field, but from all accounts, in the locker room too.

Exactly. Sometimes he's just too indecisive. Other times, though, he's buying time with his legs. What bugs me about this post is that most of us here on TBD were worried about RT long before the season began. Yet DW did nothing. I'm not a Doug basher and he's done good work acquiring Lorax, Z. Brown and others. But it's disappointing that he couldn't find us someone better than Mills for RT.

It was nice to watch TT have a good game especially under those conditions. The crowd was loud, the offensive line was having problems keeping him clean, and we weren't lining up our best WRs. And it was good to see Robert Woods have a good day. But these observations don't take the sting out of the loss. As much as a midseason game can be "must-win," this was a must-win game for us. 5-4 with a bye week to get healthy would have meant we were still realistically in the playoff hunt. This loss really hurts. I liked when Tyrod slammed his helmet at the end. Sometimes he seems like a passionless guy and I think players want a fiery QB-Leader. Of course, I would have rather seen him jump for joy because he'd just completed a TD throw. But I'm in the camp that this was a team loss. Even great QBs (and Tyrod is not a great QB) come up short at the end of games. Tyrod put up 25 points and led an offense that produced 400+ yards against a very stingy defense. He did his part. Others didn't.

Good post. There's no doubt that racism still exists in America in conscious and unconscious ways. But not every anti-black person statement by a white person is racist. I suspect Carp's wife would have posted the same remarks if the player who hit her husband - and then demonstrated such a nonchalant attitude about it - was white. It's reasonable to believe she's just mad her husband was hurt and his career threatened on a dirty play; and that race played no part in her tweet. She deserves the benefit of the doubt. The evolution of the word "thug" is interesting. Originally. "thugs" were members of a criminal organization in India. Members liked to win the confidence of travelers, join their caravans, then kill their target by strangulation in order to rob them. The word originally meant something like "deceiver." The term changed to describe a criminal with violent tendencies or anyone who likes to pose and posture as if the threat of violence is real. Now some are saying the term has racial overtones - and there is a real problem there - though many still use the term without any anti-black bias. Despite Sherman's Stanford education, I can see how someone would call him a thug in a colloquial way after watching that play. Given the recently-evolved racial bias of the term, I can see why others would object. I try not to use the word any more but don't damn those who do.

I suppose that's true given the low ratings. But Seattle has become, under Pete Carroll, a perennial playoff team. And Russell Wilson has some national star power. I thought Seattle had enough appeal to draw more viewers than this. I was wrong. The Seahawks - unlike the Bills but very much like Broncos or Saints, for example - are a state team. In the state of Washington you're kind of expected to be a Hawks fan. Whatever the cause, it's a shame more people didn't tune in for a great game.

Seattle - with a population of about 3.7 million - is the 15th biggest metro area in the US. How is that small market? Seattle is bigger than these NFL cities: Minneapolis, San Diego, Tampa, Denver, St. Louis, Baltimore, Charlotte, Pittsburg, Cinci, KC, Cleveland, Indy, Nashville, Jacksonville, NOLA, Buffalo, Green Bay. And Oakland if you separate Oakland and the East Bay metro area from the San Francisco/peninsula metro area which has its own team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas

I never thought I was a Kool Aid imbiber until I read this post. Even Sully is more optimistic.

It's hard to know exactly how involved Jerry is. And if he is indeed better, it's because he has years of experience. He was awful at first and eventually got better. So I guess the OP's point is that we need to leave DW in place for many years so he can gain the requisite experience to be as good as Jerry.

Simple. We need a good GM to acquire good players. And a good HC to build a good coaching staff that gets the players to play well together as a team. Right now, we probably have an average GM and an average HC giving us an average W-L record. The coach doesn't need to be a SOB. Pete Carroll is a good coach and he's not a SOB. Leadership style isn't as important as leadership ability. Marrone was more like Belichick but was mediocre. Rex is more like Carroll but has also been mediocre so far.