Mango

I want to second this, but am willing to take this a step further. Based on what’s going on in RF’s life, the timing of this thread is trash. Especially when you take into account the fact that Fitz has had a career 10x from Tyrod. Fitz has been since Cincy, he’s been able to unseat their starter and take over the starting postilion for multiple games. TT has been a back up in Baltimore. Started over a failed draft pick in BUF. Lasted about 8 minutes in Cleveland. Super unsure what’s happening in SD. Show some class.

Hahaha. You think that there is some corporate formula that necessitates, or even implies, the need for a President to be a Vice President? Or that this is even common. Dude, titles aren’t even linear in that way between departments in the same company, let alone enough to make this some big gotcha moment proving something.What a wild statement.

I am very unsure what you debunked here? I literally posted the archived link from a month or so ago with 3 people on the team. I guess maybe the fact that I said there was not any listed currently. Sorry, I missed that Kelly Baxter wasn't removed from the website yet. Is that the big gotcha moment again? Kelly Baxter is still listed on the Bills website after quitting? I cited that in my response: https://web.archive.org/web/20200630095801/https://www.buffalobills.com/team/front-office-roster/ One more time for the people in the back. The Buffalo Bills, and only Buffalo Bills employed marketing team was listed as 3 people one month ago on the Bills website. The list of employees you gave are PSE employees. They are also listed for the Sabres because they are PSE. What was reported by Graham is factually true. https://www.nhl.com/sabres/team/staff

Fair, the Sabres did well with TV ratings last year, which is wild. We aren't doing great with attendance, and have not been for about a decade now. Since 2010, the Sabres have not been in the top half of % capacity filled in the NHL. Worth noting that the NHL TV contract is trash compared to the NBA and NFL and does not even cover the salary cap. NHL owners live and die on attendance, not TV viewership. http://www.espn.com/nhl/attendance/_/sort/homePct

A few things. To your top point about the listed staff. It is fair, but a C- for research. About a month ago the Bills website still listed a marketing dept that was different from PSE. Your big gotcha moment is a list of the PSE employees, NOT Buffalo Bills. Because if you went with the current website, there would be none of them. Which is Grahams point. If you jump back to the website from a month ago, there would be three of them. . I don't know what the difference between the two teams are. I assume they work together in a lot of ways. The Bill staff might be high level, and PSE does the grunt work? I don't know. But those are also PSE employees you listed. Graham mentions the Bills team, not PSE. To which he would be correct. It has been noted that the Bills have largely kept the Bills and Sabres/PSE separate for whatever reason. I believe that may have even been confirmed by either Beane or McD when the "Maintain Family Lifestyle" thing broke. Maybe that is different now? They are merging with PSE? Either that or they need to replace the marketing staff. Unsure. But it is note worthy. https://web.archive.org/web/20200630095801/https://www.buffalobills.com/team/front-office-roster/ To your second point. That is incredibly disingenuous for a few reasons, one it really is not true, and two, news article paragraphs are often a sentence or two long. The article opens with a few "paragraphs" on Brown. Then spends about the same amount of space on the marketing team. Back to Brown. Mentions other firings. John Murphy's removal from One Bills Live after criticizing Pegula. Back to Brown and a transcript.

For all the people getting their pitch forks because Tim Graham is “fake news”, let’s not forget that the article posted at the start of the thread is by Matt Warren on Buffalo Rumblings. Not Graham. Tim wrote the article on Chris Brown, and briefly mentioned the marketing dept.

I think a big part of this conversation is hinted at the back end of your post with your story. It was nice of the officer to ask you to get out of your car, and it was nice of you to agree. But you also consented to the search of your vehicle, something that you absolutely did not have to do. You would have been well within your rights to say no to that. A traffic stop does not provide reasonably suspicion. So now a normal person is in a position where they have to comply with an illegal request or risk an officer getting the jitters. Especially if they "have tats" or "all kinds of exotic facial hair". See how this situation gets sticky for the average person....

How you have failed to miss @NoSaint's point entirely and still post cooperate or don't, in the context of this entire conversation is either bafflingly stupid, dangerously callous, or willfully ignorant. Comply or you might die is literally the entire problem here. It is why the US has more deaths and injuries at the hands of police officers than basically every other post industrialized nation in the world. Both by total and by per capita. I understand that is inconvenient for your insulated world view, but it does not make it any less true.

It is not good my friend. I like to say that the "Keep Buffalo a Secret" mural downtown is in reference to the huge portion of the metro area with, at best, "archaic" (I am being kind here) points of view. The region has done a good job of sweeping that under the rug, but largely it sucks, and is really very embarrassing for my home town.

I have posted this before, but Terry isn't good with the business side of geology either. He had the wherewithal to partner with somebody to manage that for him. But to your point, they just aren't good with the people management portion of managing the business. I get the sense that they have had a bit too much money for a bit too long, and have lost touch. "Maintain family lifestyle" not only got said, but made it into a ***** slide deck. They own the team, they can do what they like with it, I get it. Doesn't change the fact that they are doing a poor job with most of it. Based on 10 years of futility with the Sabres, and 2.5 years of managing the Bills, (Marrone leaving, over ruling your GM for HC hire, Bringing in Rex, Extending that GM, then firing that GM shortly after) I think McBeane are the exception not the rule to PSE, and they should pay them whatever they want until they die to run the franchise, because it could get much worse. They currently have about 12 years of bad credit and 2 years of good credit between 2 of their major sports franchises.

I am guessing it is the executive marketing team. I would assume there are some low level graphic designers, video editors, etc. Or maybe not, they could hire it to an outside firm to handle a lot of that via contract work, rather than employ a team themselves. I will say, I spoke to some people at PSE about a position a few years ago over some beers, introduced by a few mutual friends, and it does not sound like a great place to be professionally. Pay was very low and there was no room for growth. I was told I would have to probably leave to get a promotion, pay raise, etc. Sort of hear breaking. I thought it would have been so cool to work for the Bills, Sabres, Bandits, Amerks. Apparently they sell that as the "dream" and how they get around wages and promotions. Also some friends work with PSE on some joint initiatives, projects, etc. and they regularly say it is very tough there. I don't know that to be the entire truth of the org. But what keeps getting reported, plus the conversations with people I know who have first hand experience, it all seems to jive.

I agree. He was pretty detailed, but his detail was also super useless information. I live out of market now and don't listen to Chris Brown much, so I don't know how much of this has been common the last few weeks. It feels like this could have been solved by a slap on the wrist/warning first, rather than toast a guy who has been a nothing but a company man since 2006. Cody Ford might be RG or RT. If he is RG Williams will be RT if RT Winters is RG....real ground breaking stuff that no other scout in the NFL would have been able to pick up this off season. Davis and Hodgins rotate in at the bottom of the depth chart with the 1's. It would be wild if they didn't. It has been reported that Davis has been having a tremendous camp and is a lock to make the 53. Hodgins has also been great with tremendous upside and potential. More than likely to make the roster. So why wouldn't they be getting looks with the 1's? Hopefully Gregg Williams doesn't light us up after that wonderful insight. DL Rotation- This one is probably the most insightful in terms of opponent preparation. Trent Murphy getting most of the reps at LE over Mario Addison. For those who thought he might be cut to save cap space, looks like that might be wrong. Hughes was always going to be starting RE. It was already reported that Epenesa has been rotating all over the line during camp. Also McD seems to have a history of rookies having to "earn it" through their rookie years before they are in a starting role. So seeing AJE with the second team rotating through the positions is not anything crazy.

https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2020/8/27/21403772/buffalo-bills-entire-marketing-department-resigns-per-report The Pegula's are creating quite the string of bad credit in the last few years as an employer (outside of actual football ops). Saw it briefly mentioned in the Chris Brown thread. Thought it deserved its own discussing. Mods, feel free to merge.

Best case scenario, it is bad optics. But it seems that PSE has had a long string of "bad optics" lately. It is becoming a pattern. And maybe those who were complaining about the Pegulas ability to run a business rather than just be a talented geologist weren't haters or wearing tin foil hats. Maybe there is some credence to what they were saying.

I have been banned from the Ralph for something like 10 years actually.Years ago I got a few free tickets from some friends of the family in the family section for a Pats game. At half time I met a girl I was seeing in the causeway, grabbed a beer, but didn't finish it. I snuck it back into the family section. That lasted about 25 seconds, until a security guy came up asked me to follow him. Went to the security office, signed a paper, and left. I didn't think anything of it, nothing really happened. No scuffle, aggression, or argument. It was what it was. Go home with your tail between your legs. Anyways, a few weeks later I got a letter in the mail from the Bills. I was banned from the stadium until I took an NFL code of conduct course which is a couple hundred bucks and 4 hours along. Not just that, if you don't pass you have to pay again to do it all over. I called the Bills explained the situation, I even offered to volunteer with the clean up after the game or a charity event, etc.Seemed excessive given the crime. They said it was an NFL mandate, out of their hands at that point. I checked with a few friends in the DA's office, technically if I go back and get caught it is trespassing. A class C misdemeanor. About $100 dollar fine and expunged from my record in 6 months. They recommended not taking the course since 1. I have never had an issue before and I have been going to about 4 games per year for as long as I can remember. And 2. The charges for a class C misdemeanor or less of a cost and hassle than actually taking the course. I still go to 4 games per year. Long story short, Chris Brown, if you are reading this, do what I did, just keep showing up and bet on your own good behavior.

Isn't this the exact situation everybody was clamoring for when he entered the league. Don't rush him. He needs to sit back, learn, and work on fully ingraining his new mechanics. Without OTA's and the nation wide quarantine earlier in the year, all he could do was work on mechanics and footwork. Also, not playing 6 quarters over 4 pre-season games are 100% not setting Josh back at all. If it does, I think we have bigger issues.

Downturn economically during the pandemic? Sure, totally feasible. I get it. But economic feasibility is not why New Era has been trying to pull out. They are the official hat for MLB, NBA and the NFL. They have $5M for this marketing expense...if they wanted to. They just don’t want to. New Era has been pretty open over the years that they are moving away from past/traditional forms of marketing and are shifting focus to social media. They fact that they have been trying to find an out for 2 years while owning the 3 largest contracts in American sports would lend to that. Covid is a convenient out at the moment. New Era has been slowly trying to lessen its footprint in Buffalo for year and it’s not because of money. This all started because you claimed that a $1B New Era can’t afford $5M to put their name on a stadium, then $500M Barstool couldn’t either. I am saying your entire premise is wrong. New Era could do it. They don’t want to. And they have not wanted to for a long time now. Portnoy is a prick. But they’re much more than a meme page. They provide a ton of content. Podcats, sponsored events, gambling, “news”, etc.

Sorry, never meant to imply that Mark Poloncarz was responsible for the move. Rather painting the whole picture that New Era has been pulling out of Buffalo for years, and the local GOV is not happy about it. Local governments have been giving tax breaks to New Era for decades. Hence the millions of dollars. The naming rights quote I referenced was from the article you gave me. It was a stupid take and inherently incorrect. We agree here. Haha! The article doesn’t say they couldn’t afford it. It actually says they came together to figure out how to get out of the deal, not to try and make it work, but couldn’t. That’s important. “The two organizations issued a joint statement Wednesday confirming that New Era had sought to get out of the naming rights and sponsorship deals with the Bills: "The Bills and New Era are currently negotiating the details of this separation and the Bills are beginning the process of pursuing a new naming rights partner for the stadium."” The article is trying to use the laying off people and closed a plant two years ago as financial issues. I’m positing these moves were always part of the plan and that they haven’t been hurting since 2018. They’ve actually been profiting more due to slashing overhead and moving the supply chain to China. They didn’t do that because it was noble and more expensive. They did it to increase GP. Lots of large companies are trimming huge amounts of fat 20-30% at the moment and blaming the pandemic, but a lot of them are just using it as an excuse to do it all at once, rather than have to tell the state first and do it gradually.

Just bring back Empire.

“That moment was five years in the making, dating back to when the Bills and Erie County were working out a new stadium lease and the team’s founder, Ralph Wilson Jr., was still alive and owned the team. Russ Brandon, then the president of the Bills, asked Koch if he someday would be willing to put New Era’s name on the stadium, which bore Wilson’s name and was often called "The Ralph." Koch told Brandon he would be open to talking about it. The question – exploratory as it was at the time – was part of a plan aimed at keeping the team in Buffalo after Wilson’s death. Making the lucrative naming rights available would be attractive to a new owner.“ My statement was a bit hyperbolic. But yes. The author implies that naming the stadium “New Era” took 5 years. And that naming the stadium at 50% of the going rate for NFL stadiums (or $4M per year) was going to help somebody decide weather or not to make a $1B investment. Anyways. New Era has been slashing their overhead for years. Moving almost their entire supply chain to China. Increasing profit margins. Miami is only open to make theMLB hats, which are contractually obligated to be produced in the US. New Era could definitely afford to honor the duration of the contract. They just don’t want to. There is a very significant difference between the two.

Oh, please. Koch even says in the article, “We don’t do naming rights deals”. He credits the only reason for doing it is his relationship with Terry. The author also credits New Era paying for naming rights for keeping the Bills in Buffalo. Which is wild, Ralph didn’t name it after himself because he had to, he just wanted to. Also at $4M per year, it’s half the league average.

I think you’re giving New Era too much credit here. They took millions from the county to keep jobs in Buffalo. Then still cut 100+. Poloncarz publicly requested them to remove their name. Then negotiations started and the name was removed. They’ve been pretty bad stewards for the city recently. If you believe this is about them not having the money to honor the rest of the existing contract, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The community and New Era are parting ways.

It is not all that different than, “But Allen didn’t go to camps or even get recruited in HS, so give him more time”. We actually get that argument with Allen now when people go, “well if you toss out those first 4 games cause they sucked, and he only played 12 games last year, so really they’re basically part of his rookie year...”

Guys, I grabbed Ziggy in Madden on a one year deal. Really stunted my development of a guy I drafted a year before at DE. And he didn’t really do much. Wasn’t worth it. Don’t do it Beane! Just a word to the wise.

I forgot about the run on CB's and RB's forever. Ngata was obviously the better pick. Whitner gets a lot of hate. He had a nice career for himself and was a good SS. We were just a really bad team that needed a lot of help everywhere. Not his fault. I actually had some knee jerk PTSD with this FO at first. I stand by my logic for fear, but it is working out at the moment. We traded our starting LT, to draft another LT. We traded our starting CB, that we drafted in preparation to let our CB walk in FA. And that starting CB we let walk was to replace another stating CB with a ton of athleticism but terrible ball skills. We did all of this, only to draft another CB in the first after passing on 2 QB's, so that we could take those picks and draft another QB a year later. Cut Shady, draft Singletary. It was just constant flashbacks for a while there.