The Frankish Reich

I probably saw all but one or two Broncos games the last couple years. And here's the thing: I don't remember anything special about Sam Martin's punting. And when you're talking about a punter, that's a good thing. Boring, reliable, adequate - we didn't wind up with a punt god, but we did wind up with something a little better than Matt Haack.

$610,000 minimum in 2020. $660,000 in 2021.

Some (not all) of those panics were warranted in the bad old days when this team was not in a position to let young/projectable talent slip away just so we could keep some special teams ace. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Other rebuilding teams can and should raid us for those young projects.

Thanks. As the old saying goes: never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. There is no legal doctrine that would ever make the Bills liable for damages. None. So maybe this was an attempt to put a squeeze on the deep pocket - the Bills - since without an NFL punting job Araiza is just a 22 year old kid with no real job prospects. I guess the theory would be “you are not legally liable, but if you give us money anyway my client may sign a non disclosure agreement and you can keep the Punt God on your roster without fear of this blowing up later.” If so, the Bills made a prudent business decision and just extricated themselves from a mess that was not of their making. I can’t help but thing this poor girl is being used by an unscrupulous operator, in it for his own publicity rather than his client’s best interest. If anything, going full fiasco mode here makes a prosecution less likely, not more likely, and the poor girl is left with no one to collect damages from (a judgment against an unemployable punter?) and no criminal charges against him either.

OK, so maybe someone can help me here - I've been on vacation so I missed some of the details here. My big question: everyone is reporting that the Bills learned about the allegations in late July from the victim's attorney. Why would the (alleged) victim's attorney be contacting the (alleged) perpetrator's employer? I've never heard of that before, and I wonder whether it's even kosher under the rules of legal ethics. Sometimes an accuser will hire a lawyer to deal with expected pushback or counter-allegations from the (alleged) perpetrator, but this was different: the lawyer was playing offense, not defense. And it's a civil lawsuit seeking money damages. If you want money damages, why on earth are you trying to render the (alleged) perpetrator permanently unemployable in his potentially lucrative field of business? Look, I have no idea of what really happened or didn't happen. My hunch is that there's more than a kernal of truth here, and that we do have a young woman (more accurately: a girl) who feels traumatized and wants some consequences for the guy who caused that trauma, whether he's criminally liable or not. But the way this is unfolding is weird enough for me to be skeptical, not necessarily of the victim's motivation, but of the lawyer's motivation and tactics.

Actually, in the NFL you do go from being a starter who (very occasionally) draws double teams to being involuntarily retired over the course of a few months. See John “Smoke” Brown.

Thanks, I just saw that too. So 10K or 20K is really 10K or 20K. Which somehow makes this even worse policy.

Typically loan forgiveness = imputed income = tax liability. Not sure how this latest plan is going to treat that. $10,000 of extra "income" for someone earning $125,000 in 2022 means about $2200 extra coming back to Uncle Sam. And if you live in NY or CA .... ... so watch this one carefully, and see if they add an IRS special rule treating this forgiveness as a nontaxable event. (Yes, I hate this plan)

Under what circumstances does someone have $150K in college loans? Really easy to do if you go to graduate or professional school and don't qualify for other financial aid. If you're going into that kind of debt for film school or to get a Ph.D. in Art History, well, you're a fool. If you're going to medical school (or law/business/dentistry AND it's a top school): no problem. Really. I get tired of the whining. $150,000 loan debt if you qualify as a cardiologist (median salary: $400,000) is totally manageable. Even a family practitioner (median: $216,000) can live well after a few years of getting their feet on the ground. Totally ordinary lawyer from a totally ordinary school? Well, that gets harder (median salary: $128,000).

Good advice. There was a time I felt the same way. In my early 30s, some college loan debt, and a lot of grad school loan debt. Renting, no way to get together the down payment to buy, etc. It took time, but it all worked out. Consolidated the loans, then held onto them even when I had the money saved to pay them off because they were (at the time) at an interest rate lower than prevailing rates. It takes time, and yes, sometimes it took sticking with a job when I really would’ve rather moved on to something else.

Well, let’s think about that. A reasonable finder of fact (a jury, or two of them) could find that some of the accused had a pre-existing propensity to engage in a violent action (today’s guilty verdicts) but that others did not (the first trial acquittals). So there was a conspiracy to do grave harm to the Gov, but not all of the charged conspirators are guilty.

I guess that closes the book on the whole FEDS CONSPIRED TO IMPRISON MICHIGAN BACKWOODS LOSERS ON FAKE POLITICAL KIDNAPPING CHARGES thing?

Watching a trial means you are qualified to report on what was said, how the parties were dressed, whether the jury seemed bored or interested, etc. See Depp v Heard. It doesn’t make you qualified to opine on whether a judge’s evidentiary rulings or jury instructions are legally correct/flawed, etc. Toe.

DRG, didn’t you just say in the Fauci thread that you have training in molecular biology? So you think you may know more about COVID than, say, a proud housewife and former political consultant? It’s fine and dandy for Julie to comment on testimony at trial, etc. But evidentiary rulings and jury instructions? No. I would ask a lawyer, not a food writer (not even one that may be bankrolled by big Ag).

True. Because: I am a lawyer. I have proposed and objected to jury instructions. And I have other relevant experience. You’re welcome. (but please, keep listening to your proud housewife instead!)

I am saying that here she is clearly out of her depth. She also says she worked as a political consultant (I haven’t checked her references, but I assume she’s not making it up), so I imagine her take on campaigns, elections, etc, may be worth listening to. But jury instructions? The application of the federal rules of evidence? Umm, no.

I have wondered “who is this Julie Kelly that our Trumpy posters seem obsessed with?” So I finally took a few minutes and discovered that she is, in fact, a proud “stay at home mom” and sometime food writer. Good enough to be some people’s Svengali I guess. Now I see she’s opining on jury instructions. Should I add some fresh cracked black pepper to those instructions, Julie?

This thread didn’t age well.

Well, reading that thread was a wonderful waste of 5 minutes of my life. thanks for the bump.🙄

McRib, McSchwib. I am awaiting the return, someday, hopefully while I am still around to enjoy it, of the Halloween Whopper, the one that allegedly turned your poop purple. I waited too long to get it last time and they were all sold out. Saddest day of that year.

Well, if it turns out to be a problem during the season, I'm sure it will be addressed long before the playoffs. I know the punter always holds these days, but certainly Keenum could (I know, I know, the whole "practice with special teams" things, but we are talking about maybe half a season here), or there's probably someone else on specials who has good hands and could pick up the job pretty quickly. If Araiza wins the punting competition, well, you'd have to weigh the net benefit of Better Punter/Field Position vs. Very Slightly Increased Risk of a Missed Field Goal or Extra Point.

True. CNN in the post-Jeff Zucker world is trying to position itself in the middle. More straightforward news, less (liberal) point of view. I doubt it will work, since there seems to be little appetite for straightforward news these days. But that's the story here.

Jairus Byrd was franchise tagged in 2013. (yeah, a lot of that had to do with overall roster strategy, but still) Think about that for a minute. On second thought, don't bother. He would be a backup safety on this team. But it's not like those drought teams were without talent. James Cook dreams of having the start (but not the finish) to his NFL career that CJ Spiller had. Devin Singletary is the poor man's Fred Jackson. Dion Dawkins is good, but not prime Jason Peters good. Prime Stephon Gilmore is prime Tre White good. Hell, even rookie Kiko Alonso (before he broke down) would find plenty of snaps available somewhere on this team. By the way, amazing how many of these guys I just mentioned had their Bills careers end badly. In retrospect, was it really about those players, or was it about an inept organization frustrating the hell out of these players? Thank goodness that's all history now.

When your big position battle in preseason is Punter/FG Holder, you probably are a really good football team.

Conspiracy nuts are always interesting. This is not snark. It’s true. I find it fascinating to see how the human brain can twist an assortment of trivially connected events into a grand mega conspiracy that Explains Everything. An example of the Narrative Fallacy on steroids.