hondo in seattle

Weirdly, Brady reminds me of a pinball player I knew 40+ years ago. I can't sing, dance, carry or tune, or much of anything else actually. I'm a man of remarkably few talents. But in college I took to pinball like a duck takes to water. Pinball was a big thing back then and I set the campus records on several of the most popular machines. Bring on that deaf, dumb, and blind kid - I was the real wizard! But then one day, I saw a small crowd around a new player and instantly disliked him. This was the late 1970's and the kid dressed like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He played with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I was an avowed anti-smoker. He probably went disco dancing at night with girls crowded around him (besides being stylish - in a way I detested - he was good looking). I spent my nights alone in my room listening to flannel-shirt wearing Rory Gallagher play bluesy rock. We were opposites. But one by one, the freaking Disco King started breaking my records. When I watched him play, I couldn't figure out how. His slap-save was pretty good but he didn't even try to execute the fancy passes or combination back-handed shots I did. When we started playing together, he beat me 7 or 8 times out of 10 despite having no discernible skills besides keeping the ball in play. Finally, irked, I asked what his secret was. He expained that I had no rhythm. My play style was stop-and-go as I set up shots. While he didn't have my fancy shots, there was a rhythm to what he did that wasn't discernible to me at first. I couldn't compete with him until I learned that. When I finally did, it was like I was finally seeing & understanding something that had been entirely invisible to me before. And that's what I think about Brady's offense. We may not see a lot of explosive plays. We may not see lots of long passes. We may not see a lot of fancy Daboll stuff. But there's a rhythm to Brady's that includes few turnovers, good time-of-possession, some boring cloud of dust stuff, and - for all its dullness - points on the board.

I think this is probably correct. I'll add this though because of what Diggs has said about Brady without actually using Brady's name. He noted that his production went down when we switched OCs. He didn't like that. Not only did he lose faith in McD and Allen, he really didn't like the way Brady deprioritized him.

McDaniel is a bit different. I think he's good at Xs and Os even if he didn't demonstrate it last night. He's smart. And, according to reports, he's the kind of coach who demonstrates confidence in his players and builds his players up. I like that - and studies say it's the right approach. But I agree about the leader of men thing. There's just a lot of little things that make me wonder about the guy. The goofy things he says. The bad judgment and weakness of character he displayed when he tried to slyly hide his vaping on the sideline. The way last night he let his defeatism show on his face. And so on. I want a leader to have a little more gravitas and demonstrate more stregth. (PS, I had no problem with Prime during the game but had some freezing during the postgame show).

I hope we're not all in love with Ingram because of his two picks - one of which he returned for a TD. The first pick came off of a weird ricochet. Ingram wasn't particularly near the play. The second pick came off of a bad decision that led to a bad throw. It's not like Ingram was draped all over his man and took the ball away. Tua wasn't even throwing to a man. He was trying to throw out of bounds and, under duress, threw to Ingram instead. I'm happy for the young man and don't mean to be a grinch. But in both cases Ingram was accidentally in the right place at the right time.

I think McDaniels likes to have his thoughts heard. I noticed at the halftime interviews last night, McD gave predictable boilerplate answers that said absolutely nothing like he usually does. McDaniel gave his honest opinions. To answer the OPs question, I put on my 17 jersey instead of my others and personally cooked my pregame wings to give them a little extra pro-Buffalo juju.

I admit, I didn't think Cook had enough speed to take this one to house. Screaming in my living room when he happily proved me wrong.

How old are you? I'm old enough to remember when Mini Max Anderson reportedly swallowed his tongue.

Brady spent the entire offseason retooling the offense. We now have two games of data. Not even a full two games because after Tua's injury the offense was more interested in running down the clock than scoring. To me, that's just not enough information. The sample size is too small. But it's hard to be critical when the Bills have scored 65 points in two games (including a defensive score) and probably could have scored more against the Fins. If I was forced to make some general guesses how Brady will perform going forward, I think he's going to prove himself as a good run game coordinator and an average pass game coordinator. But I want to see more and look forward to the rest of the seaon with tremendous curiosity.

Fitz, Josh... all the Bills and ex-Bills who know Tua says he's a really good dude. Hope he's okay. Also hope the mafia comes through for his charity.

I think it's too early to say. This isn't figure skating. Creativity doesn't matter if we're getting points on the board and we are. Tonight, the O stopped trying in the 3rd quarter. After Tua got hurt, the primary objective was to run out the clock. I want to see more of Brady's offense before making up my mind.

Besides the drought and 13 seconds, many of us have lived through 1 win seasons, midseason collapses, the Home Run Throwback, not to mention Wide Right and 4 straight soul-crushing disappointments. I'm probably more than a little damaged.

I've done wings on Bills game days for years. Today it will be Chinese 5 spice wings with glaze. But I think I'm doing it wrong. Wings every weekend - even when changing up the recipes - gets a little old. I need to follow the example of you guys who eat the opponents' food. Seems far more interesting.

Pass at will? The Cards offense looked good in the beginning but Murray finished 21-31 for 162 yards. A mere 5.2 yards per attempt. The Bills average 10+ yards per pass attempt, nearly double the Cards. Yet I don't think it means the Bills passed at will nor Budda Baker was exposed.

The Miami coaching staff is filled with pros who know NFL X's and O's inside out. I doubt there is a lot Poyer can tell them that they haven't already seen on tape and understood. Maybe some little nuances but nothing game-changing.

I swung big last week with an unlikely choice and predicted Samuel on offense. Oops. This time I'll make safer picks... Offense: Shakir Defense: Douglas The Douglas pick is based on my optimistic nature. We won't win if our CBs don't play well - so I'm going to assume that they do.

There are some important differences. First is practicality. If the military couldn't give guns to young people, we wouldn't have many recruits for the military. Second is supervision. Cops are often out there on their own making independent decisions about the use of force. Young enlisted soldiers go into combat supervised by NCOs and officers. Third is context. Police officers are using force against American civilians. Kids in the military are shooting at enemy combatants who are trying to kill them. Soldiers need a lot of courage and discipline. But cops in violent situations require more maturity than is needed by younger enlisted soldiers.

I usually champion the expertise of GMs over the knowledge of fans like us. I think it's silly when we fans think we're smarter than professional GMs (or coaches) who dedicate years to their craft. But virtually every fan in America thought the Watson contract was whacked when it first hit the media. And we were right. Of course, we were right. Even for a team with a need for a QB, it was a giant gamble to give out a huge guaranteed contract to a guy with serious character issues as well as ongoing legal problems. Even Mahomes and Allen didn't have fully guaranteed contracts.

This is kind of like listening to the first track of an album and predicting if the rest of the album will be good. We don't know what the 2024 editions of the Bills or Fins will turn out like. But the Dolphins didn't look impressive in their debut. On the other hand, our D was horrible in the first half of the Cards game. If we play like that against the Fins, with their weapons, we'll not only lose, but we'll lose by double-digits. Earlier in the thread, I predicted a Bills victory and I'm sticking by that. But this game worries me, particularly because I don't know if our secondary can handle their receivers.

2021 Dehydration game repeat? I really hope not.

I don't entirely agree but I understand your logic and appreciate your answer. And hope you do these write-ups every week because you notice things I missed when I watched the game live.

These are all good points. College is not the ideal way to train a police officer. But imagine someone earning a 4-year degree in criminology and then going to a police academy for 6 months. It seems probable, though far from certain, that this person would be a better cop than someone who went to the academy directly after high school. And some data that says cops with college degrees indeed use force less frequently, generate fewer citizen complaints, and have enhanced critical thinking skills (though findings are inconsistent). Despite having guys like Anders Behring Breivik, I do suspect it's generally easier to be a cop in Norway than in the US when the murder rate here is something like 8x higher. www.dolanconsultinggroup.com/news/should-we-require-cops-to-have-college-degrees/ theconversation.com/5-reasons-police-officers-should-have-college-degrees-140523

Here's the thing about that. Lots of police departments have had recruiting problems ever since we started villainizing the police. So many departments have lowered their standards to meet their staffing requirements. Unintended consequences... People are angry about the racial and other biases that influence the behavior of some LEOs. But the negative media (along with the criminal prosecutions) have damaged the esteem and respect of the police which means fewer good, educated people want to be cops. So our criticisms have made policing worse rather than better. wpde.com/news/nation-world/quantity-over-quality-some-say-lowering-police-hiring-standards-could-be-deadly-choice-police-opting-for-quantity-over-quality-to-fill-ranks-some-say-its-a-deadly-choice-law-enforcement-policing-physical-fitness-police-officers-police-shortage

I don't know Hill well enough to know if he's an 'entitled pr*ck' or not. It's clear from the video, however, that he should have been much more cooperative. But I also agree with your initial assessment that the police were 'a little too eager.' Only 55 seconds elapsed from the time the first policeman knocked on the window until the time he threw him on the ground. Not even a minute! Tyreek was being a dumbsh*t in the moment but police should deescalate situations whenever possible instead of rapidly escalating them.

Good write up, Alpha. Thanks for doing this. But let me ask you about a couple of grades... RBs: A- To me, an example of an "A" game is when OJ and Braxton combined for 300+ yards against the Pats. On Sunday, our RBs had 24 rushes for 91 yards (3.8 ypc) and no TDs against the Cards. Their production was very pedestrian. While the run game looked good in the beginning, by the end of the game I would have graded it a "C." WR's: A+ On a different September morning, Eric Moulds, Josh Reed, and Peerless Price combined for 381 receiving yards. That's an A+ performance. Our wideouts combined for less than half that against Arizona: 152 yards. The yardage total is nothing to scream about but they didn't drop anything (hoorah!) and contributed 2 scores so I'd personally give them a "B."

I agree. But the cops escalated from first contact to throwing him on the ground and cuffing him in something like a minute. All because he was speeding and then slow to respond to the policeman's instructions. Tyreek was uncooperative, but he wasn't violent. The police escalated too quickly. Both sides were imperfect.