BisonMan

I know they sell Sahlens in NoVA locations. My Sunday lunch during Bills' games. Hopefully, I'll be able to hold them down this year.

Sorry, but this is borderline racist comment. Rogers grew up in Rome, GA. If you've ever been there or looked at a map, you'd know this is hicksville and nowhere near any ghettos. He attended two different schools in TN, both of which are no where near big cities (Knoxville and Cookeville). That being said, it appears from the outside that Rogers isn't either performing or understanding the offense. He was already called out during a game by Eric Wood for lack of effort on a play. From what I've read, I already think he's toast as a Bill. If he's on the final cut list, I doubt many teams would be interested in signing a guy with these problems. This may be the end of his NFL career unless the Bills sign him to the PS. My 2 cents.

Like everyone, I want the Bills to win. This is doubly true in Week 1 against the Patsies. The decision between Kolb and Manuel should be put into some context. First, we aren't choosing between Andrew Luck and Tom Brady. Kolb is an extremely limited talent by NFL standards. In the 5 games he was the QB of record for Arizona in 2012, he finished in the bottom 10 in Total QBR in 4 of those weeks. Fitz even outplayed him in 4 of those 5 weeks. Although the Cards beat the Pats in Week 2, his play was not good and was bailed out by their defense. I'm not a hater. I'd love Kolb to be stellar this year if he starts for the Bills but I don't think his history shows he will be. The point was made earlier that Manuel is no Luck, RGIII or Russell Wilson. I actually think Wilson is a good comparison for Bills' fans. Wilson started off the season very poorly. He was bottom 10 in the league in QBR in 4 of the first 8 games he played last season. His experience practicing with and playing against other teams' #1s helped him improve quickly. It helped that he had a great defense and a great running game to support him. If Manuel starts, like Wilson, he would have beat out a recently acquired veteran in camp (Wilson v. Flynn). Like Wilson, he brings leadership skills and smarts to the position. Like Wilson he was not that highly regarded before the draft but had high "intangibles". Unlike Wilson, Manuel brings significant physical attributes in terms of size and arm strength. The coaches will obviously make the call they think is best for week 1. I have seen enough this preseason and last year from Kolb and Manuel. IF he is healthy to practice for week 1, I think Manuel should be the starter. Things may be bumpy along the road but I get the sense that he has the mental make up to rebound from failure and grow. Hopefully, a quick-paced offense, stellar run game and an improved defense buffers him from some mistakes.

Gotta think they are going to throw one deep on this drive once they get far enough out of their end.

Worst to First: Sorry, but has happened 10 years in a row now: link. I also just saw a segment on NFLN where each host picked a team to do it this year. Favorites were NO, KC and Tampa. Nobody picked the Bills. On the fumbles point, this looks at what percentage a team recovers fumbles. The Bills recovered at one of the lowest rates in the NFL in 2012. They were high in 2011. This is generally thought to be in large part driven by luck. How many fumbles there are doesn't factor into this stat. If there are 10 fumbles and you recover 5, you're at 50%. If there are 2 fumbles and you recover 1, 50% again. It doesn't matter whether you fumbled or the other team did. It's just about recovery ratios. You had a lot of "Ifs" in that section on the Seahawks. Now, stop pissing in my Kool-Aid!

No I didn't. Check again! We'll call that the "puke factor".

Time for some Kool-Aid everyone! Turnovers – The Bills defensive scheme will create significantly more turnovers than the blasé defenses of Wanny. Attacking defensive force mistakes and the Bills will force a lot more than in past years. Turnover differential drives wins in the NFL. A Top 10 Defense – With the new scheme, the Bills’ talent will be able to shine. A defensive line that healthy in both body (Williams and Williams) and mind (Dareus) combined with aggressive blitz schemes will rocket the Bills defense up the standings. Gilmore will have Pro Bowl caliber play in his 2nd year. They’ll get burned on occasion but make up for it with numerous 3-and-outs and turnovers (see 1) Schedule is easier than we think – Each year, the quality of teams in the NFL shifts. Who picked the Seahawks to be so good with a rookie QB? Who picked the Chiefs to fall off so dramatically? Some of it is due to injuries but a there is a lot of variability in play in this league and the apparent daunting schedule will not live up to expectations. Aside from the Falcons and, perhaps, the Bengals, the Bills can beat every other team on their schedule. The Bills will go 5-1 in their division starting on week 1 – Each of the teams in the East are flawed. The Patriots are obviously a good team with Brady but they've shown they are vulnerable. Last year, the Bills almost beat them at home and the Cardinals did beat them in Foxboro. The Bills will be drastically improved on both sides of the ball while the Pats are treading water. The Dolphins, even with lots of acquisitions, are still not that good a team and Tannehill is overrated. The Jets are a butt-fumble away from firing their coach and/or QB. Worst to First Always Happens – Each year, at least one team in the NFL goes from Worst to First in their division. The Bills underachieved last year in many ways given the personnel on board. They've upgraded numerous positions, especially coaches and QB. The No-Huddle – In addition to wearing down defenses, this scheme will serve to increase needed reps for the Bills young team, especially their QB. He has all of the tools and repetition is his best prescription. The Bills speed, combined with gassed defenders will allow the Bills to score more and more quickly than they have in the past. Like the Rams of the early 2000s, they may become the greatest show on turf. Coaching – The new coaching staff has brought both professionalism and swagger to the Bills. Evident in the first pre-season games, the Bills made fewer unforced errors than in years past. Even with the no-huddle and two rookie QBs, they only had one false start the whole game. Last year, they had one on each drive. The Ball Bounces Their Way – The Bills last year had one of the lowest fumble recovery rates in the NFL. Basically, after a fumble, they recovered the ball fewer than most other teams. That is a coin-flip type of statistics that is bound to equalize over time. This year, the Bills get their fair share (see 1). Chemistry – The Bills are a young team that is growing together. Several successful drafts over the last few years have given the team a strong nucleus that has and will continue to grow together. Football is a team game and paying for a hired gun often doesn't work out. The Dolphins may experience this in 2013 with so many new players coming in. Successful teams grow from the ground up and the Bills have been doing that and are ready to shine. Top Rated Special Teams Play – The Bills special teams are shaping up to be the one of, if not the best in the NFL. The Bills have game-changing returners in both Goodwin and McKelvin. With Hopkins, the Bills will no longer punt from the opposing teams’ 30-yard-line. Other teams will also not be able to return many kickoffs unless they want to start on their own 10-yard-line like the Colts did on Sunday. Speedy backup receivers will make the Bills kick coverage better as well. How's that for optimism! EdW

Offense 1 false start (Pears) 3 holding (none by starters) Defense 1 Off-sides 1 Holding 1 Taunting (doh!) Special Teams 1 Block in the back 1 Unnecessary Roughness (Goodwin! I like him more now) Overall, 4 offensive penalties on 85 plays. Only one was by a starter. That's pretty good. Here are the stats on this: http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game It looks like 3 teams (NE, Indy and Denver) all had more than 80 plays in their last game of the season. The pop-gun Bills averaged near the bottom at 61.4 plays per game.

The Bills fast-snap offense ran 85 offensive plays according to the box score. To put this in perspective, that's ~30% more plays than the Colts. The Pats led the league last year with an average of 74.3 plays per game in 2012. Chip Kelly's fast-paced Philly offense was similar this week with 86 plays. The Pats ran 72 plays this week. What's overlooked in this on TV is the effect this many plays has on the development of young players, particularly QBs. EJ getting 30% more snaps than a QB on a typical 2012 team is important. With young receivers and a young QB, this type of offense should help them mature more quickly. Over the course of a season, that would translate to more than 4 extra games worth of experience. Thoughts? EdW

I'm already pumped to see the Bills play this weekend. In particular, I'm interested in seeing EJ Manual play. I think I already know what we have in Kolb so seeing him play a quarter of the game doesn't hold a lot of revelations. EJ is a black box at this point to me. I figure Tuel will get more reps than anyone given it's the first game. He probably plays the entire second half. Given Kolb's injury, I'm hoping EJ plays more than a quarter and starts the game against the limited time the Colts will play any first team defensive players. Let Kolb wrap up the 2nd quarter and play a couple of series. EdW

Called yesterday. Free Sunday Ticket (not max!) Free 2 months of all movie channels $15 additional off my already $10 off for 15 months 1 year agreement Not the best I've seen here but I got sick of haggling.

Exactly. The Pats are well coached and have a scheme where they can plug in various role players and be successful. Brady is a big part of that and likely adds multiple wins per season. They went undefeated (regular season) the year after they went 11-5 with Cassel. ​Brady makes his receivers look a lot better than they are. Has any receiver left the Pats and had a better year somewhere else? I can't think of any. Welker probably has a pretty good year this year but he's going from Brady to Manning. Not much drop off there. Moss, Branch and a host of lesser names did zip after they left the Pats scheme and QB. They'll be fine. I would personally like the Pats to have their full compliment of players and have the Bills beat them. I don't want to beat them because of injuries. I want to beat them straight up. That's the only way the Bills will know they are legit.

Given what happened to the Falcons and Vick's contract (they couldn't recover his signing bonus after he was convicted), I wouldn't be surprised if the Pats included a clause in AH's contract to recover funds from him if he were convicted of a felony. I'm not sure if the collective bargaining agreement would allow this but given AH's background and red flags before the draft, that's what I would do. If they can recover the bonus money, I wonder how or if this affects their cap utilization.

Even taking out the bone-headedness of including rookies, or anybody that hasn't coached for more than 3 years, the list is still screwed up. How can the two coaches that won more SuperBowls in the last 10 years be behind the Harbaughs (1 SB win) and Belichick (1 SB win). Coughlin and Tomlin should be #1 and #2 just on that. Neither had HOF QBs like Belichick and, likely, Payton. And, sorry Bills fans, both played in tougher divisions than the Pats. The Pats consistenly have the easiest schedule in the because of that. Belichick hasn't won a SB since 2004. My top 5 with guys with more than 5 years at the helm: #1 Mike Tomlin (2 SB wins from a tough division) #2 Tom Coughlin (ditto) #3 John Harbaugh (1 SB and consistently good record in a tough division) #4 John Fox (turned two teams around and even was able to win with Tebow at QB) #5 Mike Smith (5 straight winning seasons that brought the Falcons back from the dead in a tough division) Payton's suspension alone takes him off my list.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Great find. If Goodwin as another Hines Ward, as he indicated, then he'll be the steal of the draft. I like the focus on toughness and leadership that he stressed about the draft picks.

Favorite quote from this article is the Daniel Jeremiah tweet: "Prepare the ship for ludicrous speed!" (Spaceballs)

Let's suppose the Bills choose not to pick Nassib and choose another QB ahead of him while he's still on the board. If Nassib ends up succeeding and our alternative pick doesn't, does that permanently damage Marrone's reputation as a talent evaluator? After all, he should know Nassib's capabilities more than anyone and if he passes on a successful Nassib, will anyone trust his judgement going forward?

This is a very interesting topic. A few points come to mind. The "we did X as kids and nothing happened to me" argument is, IMHO, stupid. I didn't wear helmets while biking. I didn't wear seat-belts and always sat in the front seat as a kid. I cleaned the gutters on my parents house by leaning over while on the roof of a two-story home. They were all stupid things that my parents allowed me to do out of their own ignorance and/or where common practice. That doesn't mean we should follow those practices. We know better today and act differently. Most of this is codified in law to protect kids from stupid parents...who still exist. Parents are not the final arbiters of their children's health. The law often requires parents to do things (i.e. vaccines, seat-belts, etc.) for/to their kids regardless of their personal feelings because children cannot protect themselves from stupid parents. Kids are also prevented from engaging in activities that we know are harmful (i.e. smoking) regardless of what their parents think. Football, in most cases, is not a private activity. Most youth football involves the use of tax-payer funded fields and subsidies that pay for equipment, etc. and that cost is not insignificant for some areas. The public has a right to decide how public facilities should be used and funded. If there is documented evidence that football is harmful for youth players, then society has an interest in stopping that activity. This is the one point that I don't believe has been crossed definitively. However, none of us have problems with kids not being able to engage in skydiving because the stats bear out how dangerous it is. Banning football doesn't keep kids from doing other physical activity. Football is almost unseen in most of the rest of the world and yet we lead the league in childhood obesity. Equating a single sport to youth activity is not a reasonable argument. Lastly, the "slippery slope" argument. I've been involved in public policy for many years. Every action by government is a "slippery slope". Stopping people from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is an infringement on free speech that we gladly accept but can be seen as a start of censorship on the way to "speech control", blah, blah, blah. Speeding laws will lead to a ban on cars. Anti-stalking legislation leads to street checkpoints for everyone. The list goes on and on. Every law exists on a continuum. Argue the facts of the law, not where it could "lead". All laws "lead" to totalitarianism so we should have no laws? My 2 cents.

Just curious about how many of you will watch the Combine this month.

No, they hire somebody to just keep rubbing them.

Revis is on the last year of his contract. Trading a #1 for a high-priced veteran player coming off an ACL injury for just one season is nuts. First, I suspect the Jets are floating this idea as a negotiating tactic with Revis to re-up his contract while he's injured. This drives down his price and the Jets are the only ones that can negotiate with him at this point. If they know he wants to remain a Jet and if he's at all worried about his future performance coming off the injury, now is the time to negotiate with him. Of course, the same holds true for any team that would trade for Revis. You'd have to make a contract extension part of the deal and that's a real risk for any team resigning him. I could see trading a #3 with a conditional upgrade to a #2 for him (if he makes a Pro Bowl or starts all 16 games or something). Trading the most economically valuable player on a team (1st rounder with the new salary slotting) for a guaranteed expensive player with injury performance risk is not the smart play, IMO.

Once Brady hits the ground, the play is over. His kicking Reed on the play is technically no different from him sliding, getting up and attempting to kick Reed while he was on the ground. In any case, it was not determinative in the outcome of the game so I'm good with a call or no call here. More importantly, it does show the fear that Brady was feeling during that game. That bodes well for a more aggressive Bills defense that tries to pound the Patsies on every play when they play next year.

I lived in Atlanta at the time of the incident. It appears Lewis covered for some of his friends that were involved. Basically, he lied to the cops about what he knew but he was never really a suspect in the "murders". I quote "murder" because the suspects were eventually acquitted based on self-defense. Basically, it looks like a fight broke out and Lewis' friends brought knives to that fist-fight. Lewis actually testified against his friends as part of a plea deal. It is reported that Lewis broke away from his childhood friends after that incident and made friends with better people. Oddly, Lewis now gives a free physical conditioning program to local cops in Baltimore.

I see a lot of speculation around here and in the media that the Bills will select Nassib because he's familiar with Marrone's system and Marrone is familiar with him. Is that really the metrics a team should use to pick a franchise QB that they hope to have lead the team for 10+ years? Seriously, given the number of QBs available in this purported mediocre draft class, what are the odds that Nassib is the best option for this team moving forward? With 5 to 10 QBs floating around of his caliber in this draft, random odds say there is only a 10-20% chance he's the best selection. My guess is that with this draft class, only 1 or 2 QBs will actually turn out to be "franchise" QBs. Familiarity with the coaches and system may help a rookie or even a second year guy but over time, this is meaningless. We want the guy with the highest ceiling in the league and that probably (in the odds sense) isn't Nassib.