The Frankish Reich

The Andy Reid affect. Scream it out loud till your horse.

Re: 1988 Bills - I can't see that. I wish I could, but ... no. Potential franchise QB in place? No. Superb young talents like Cornelius Bennett and Thurman? No. This is much more of a patched together group of veterans in which the leading talents are in their late primes (McCoy, Hughes, Kyle, Wood, Glenn, umm, Dareus) that is poised for an infusion of new talent starting next year and beyond. Right now the only obvious keeper among the young (team controlled) talent is Tre White. Now if you'd said 1987 Bills? I hope when we look back on this season in a few years we'll be able to make that comparison ... Here's a more sobering one: 2005 Chicago Bears. Kyle Orton. Lovie Smith. #1 defense. It wasn't a dynasty in the making. But they made the Super Bowl the following year ....

I like this one!

Absolutely right. That was the single best drive EJ has put together in his NFL career! It was also the single best drive the Raiders have put together since Carr went down at the end of last season. Will it last? C'mon, we all know better than that. But he had me pulling for him, and I am a longtime Raider hater. EJ, you done Doug Whaley proud. Meanwhile: Jack Del Rio, just shut up.

That's the weirdest thing about the Cutler signing. Matt Moore is one of the better "pure backups" - not a guy ever competing for a starting job vs a healthy starter, but a guy ready to step in right away if you need him - in the NFL. I can only assume that the Dolphins grossly misread the meaning of last year's playoff team, thinking it was just the first step for an up and coming team rather than a flukey "hey, somebody's got to back into that wild card" confluence of mediocrity and luck. So somehow they talked themselves into the idea that playing Moore with the goal of fielding another 9-7 competitive that just might sneak in 2 years in a row wasn't good enough. We'll bring in Jay Cutler and raise the stakes! Oops.

Well, that's why DiMarco never ever carried the ball in Atlanta. But understanding that, I still think he had an excellent game. When the running game got going in the 2nd half, it was all Shady following DiMarco's blocks. Look, he's basically an extra blocking only TE or H back. A limited player, but he does that limited thing better than anyone else. Up until yesterday he was a mystery signing to me because they weren't utilizing him as the lead blocker. The same thing happened when Felton was here - basically not part of the game plan on offense until the second half of last year, when he became a very useful role player. Now as for Tolbert - he's fine as a Mr Inside short yardage change of pace, but Shady is gonna need a more versatile speed guy as a backup. We still don't know if Banyard and Taiwan are up to that task. I suspect the fact that they haven't played tells us that even McD and Dennison have their reservations about them.

"Yes, with some reservations." The good: he's passed the first 2 tests with flying colors. (1) excellent talent evaluator (I'm assuming he called the key draft shots even though Whaley was still nominally in charge, and that he and Beane were of the same mind on free agent acquisitions). I mean, everyone who needed to contribute has contributed, some in a major way (Poyer, Humber, Holmes, Yarbrough, Matthews, Gaines, even Tolbert and DiMarco, and I was one of the big Tolbert/DiMarco skeptics). (2) old-fashioned well-coached team. What happened to all those 12 men on the field penalties that were commonplace the last couple years? The delay of game penalties? The players ridiculously out of position plays and busted coverages? The missed tackles? I didn't realize how bad Rex was until I saw what competence means. The reservations? I'll hold off a bit because McD and Beane are getting an awful lot out of stopgap players - Poyer, Matthews, Gaines, etc. I'll need to see how they do longer term with the lower draft picks. I'll also need to see a little more innovation on offense. As many have noted, we're one Zay Jones catch away from 4-0. But we're maybe also one Von Miller penalty and one questionable Matt Ryan fumble call away from 1-3 ...

How can people seriously debate the wisdom of having Hauschka attempt that field goal vs. punting it away and sitting on a 3 point lead? You do realize that Hauschka had made 8 in a row from 50+ yards prior to that kick? So if he's got even a 75% chance of making it (maybe less, I'd need to look up the win expectancy charts), it's a no-brainer. No need for steel balls; simple common sense will do, and we're very fortunate that McD has a lot more of that than Trent Green or whomever it was that was suggesting it was a gutsy call...

Seriously, why does this not happen? If the league still isn't taking this stuff seriously (enough), the kind of self-policing that you see in MLB or the NHL is really the only deterrent.

Interesting how it looks from the non-Bills fan perspective. Former Bronco Alfred Williams (one of the better local analysts) on local Denver radio today: "The Bills seemed better prepared to take on the Broncos than the Broncos were to take on the Bills." He specifically mentioned some of the offensive strategy - slow developing plays that took advantage of Tyrod's elusiveness (often rolling him left) to allow less talented receivers to get an edge on the Broncos excellent CBs. "No one, not even Harris or Talib, can stick with a receiver crossing over from one side of the field to the other." He saw this as strategy, not just Tyrod's propensity to hold onto the ball too long, and effective strategy at that.

Exactly right from what I've seen. He seems like a really useful additional weapon as a receiver, but pretty useless as a blocking TE.

The NFL takes a lot of criticism, but it seems to me they're well on their way to cleverly co-opting the "protests" and making them part of the official show. "Please link arms" ... the protest becomes the honoring of the flag and vice versa. Brilliant.

The TD celebration is not what comes to mind first when associating OBJ and doggy style antics.

Will the Kneeling Brigade now ostracize McCoy for making a mockery of their silent protest? I'm outraged!

Other Jerry Hughes musings you might have missed: - "Why is this shaky man lighting that torch? This ain't the 1960 Olympics team anymore." (said to his childhood friends while watching the Opening Ceremony, 1996, Atlanta) - "Did I miss something? How can that guy be the Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth when some other guy beat him out for the Yankees first base job" (said as he casually walked past a TV monitor playing Ken Burns' Baseball series)

Can we agree on this one minor item that's slipped through the Trumpian crack: What the hell is Adam Gotsis, Australian citizen (and as far as I know not a naturalized U.S. citizen) doing protesting during the national anthem? https://www.foxsports.com.au/nfl/nfl-week-three-wrap-up-brad-wing-owns-loss-and-adam-gotsis-stands-by-brothers/news-story/ee0db2d83944168e228e013dd096812d I understand the solidarity thing, but dude, this is not your country. Do you kneel when they play the Aussie anthem because of their far more disturbing (than the U.S.) treatment of refugees? Or of their aboriginal population? No protesting someone else's anthem allowed.

Virgil, I thought you'd been faking the Deadhead thing (just to keep the Bill From NYC vibe), and this proves it! On Tolbert: 26 carries, 88 yards, 3.4 avg. Well, not so bad. Not so good either if he's putting up 3.5 per carry in non short yardage situations too. I'd like to see one of the fast guys get into the rotation too, but for now, I'm o.k. with the Mr. Outside, Mr. Inside thing. The puzzling one for me is DiMarco. They paid him a pretty penny, but we're barely seeing him at all.

To echo what a lot of others are saying ... I'm in Colorado and watched this one with Broncos fans all around me. The consensus: a well-coached team. And that's refreshing. They're getting great defensive play, and the additions have been uniformly good to great: the entire secondary, Humber at LB, even the emergency fill-ins on the DL have handled it well. Special teams are very solid. The offense is still figuring out how to adapt to a bit of a talent gap at the skill positions other than McCoy, but I feel pretty good about 1 or 2 guys (today: Kaelin Clay, Nick O'Leary) stepping up to become significant contributors. Getting Glenn back is essential too. But overall: no really stupid mistakes. Yes, too many penalties but not really and crushingly idiotic (read: Vonn Miller) ones. Overall, a really good sustained effort, and something that bodes well for the future. Having said that: this Broncos team is (like almost all others in the NFL this year) deeply flawed. One of the Denver Post's lead columnists picked the Bills to win at home, and pretty much had the right take on how things could/would play out. I'm afraid things won't look quite so optimistic after next week in Atlanta, but that's to be expected too.

Exactly. Until we have a large sample study (which, of course, requires a lot of non-football playing men of various ages "donating their bodies to science"), all of these shock headlines are just that: attempts to shock, not backed up by real science. It doesn't mean that we should ignore the issue - it should be studied, and we should take whatever reasonable steps we can to mitigate potential damage - but we shouldn't jump wild conclusions like this one.

Will the poop bag be tied to the leash? I mean, just in case ...

Thanks, Josh. By the way, I'm the guy who made the comment about the 19 separate Monday articles - thanks for the explanation. Right now, I'm not planning to subscribe. As I mentioned in another comment, I think I just have "subscription fatigue." I'd be much more inclined to buy coverage 1 week at a time, whenever I have time or am sufficiently interested to peruse a dozen articles. Not sure how that would work, but I think some day everyone will have a little debit card and one of those little Square card readers (or a software app version) on their phones and the pain of subscriptions will start to fade away ...

Now that you mention it ... WTF? I never trust guys who wear long sleeves in hot weather. If I see a kind of emaciated guy like that walking around downtown with a long sleeve T shirt, temp in the 80s, my immediate thought is "drug addict covering up tracks on his arms." Unless, of course, it's a really pale Irishman with skin cancer concerns. Never mind.

Thank God he had marijuana to calm those CTE-influenced violent outbursts. Otherwise someone might've died. http://nypost.com/2017/02/23/aaron-hernandez-might-use-weed-as-defense-in-double-murder-trial/

Did they get into that thing about McDermott clapping inappropriately? Because until they do that I simply cannot take them seriously as football fans.