Boatdrinks

Used to pay close to $100 a month for just mobile service that included just 90 plan minutes a month. After that you paid by the minute. Texting wasn’t included and data on a phone was a pipe dream. Now it’s unlimited data on an iPhone for $50 a month. Insane! TV you have options , but again if live sports in your living room are a huge thing for you cost cutting is tough. What we get on cell service today compared to 1994 ( that $ 100 is about $ 162 now) is just tremendous value for the money.

Media coverage these days = two things: those with “ hot takes” and those who are terrified to be wrong about anything.

I disagree. Cell phone service ( originally crazy expensive) has become very affordable. Most people , middle class or not have a smartphone. You don’t even need a contract anymore. Air transportation is pretty cheap these days ( more if you want a luxury experience), hi speed internet is ok. I’ll concur on the cable tv though. Still outrageous , but mostly due to live sports. Just about everything else, you could ditch cable/ satellite and be fine.

Mickey Washington aka “ toast”

However, the price of admission to the game is among the lowest in the league. A few extra $ for the accoutrements isn’t going to break the bank.

Well, they have played 5 concerts at Rich/ RWS/ NEF . Not many bands can say that , so I’d have to agree they are worthy of the wall. Mick’s wisecrack during the 2015 show about staying in the “ Tom Brady suite “ at a local hotel with an under inflated pillow was hysterically on point.

Yep, pretty much par for the course. Many good points raised in this thread but the bottom line is still the same : too much money to be made ( or lost) for a work stoppage in a sport with notoriously short career spans. The main issues on the players side are a bigger slice of the overall revenue, player “ safety” i.e minimal practice time and perhaps an adjustment to the preseason length, marijuana testing and Goodell ‘s power / control over discipline. As we’ve seen before, a work stoppage or lockout may happen, but it will end before any real games are played. The players will get a compromise and miss training camps which they mostly like anyway. Even a shortened season would be stunning. Revenues are too huge for either party to pass up.

Better be Blue cheese not ranch dressing.

I voted for trust the process as McBeane is a sort of truncated way to refer to the Bills HC and GM.... but can we throw in at the end of the day”, “ generational talent “ and “ with that being said “ ( personal most hated phrase used on this board) while we’re at it ?

I’d venture a player would need to have played in the league in the last couple seasons to be considered a top FA.

It certainly can be. It can also be a mistake for many to wait and take a decade or longer to make up the difference. There simply is no one size fits all answer to that question. As you point out, there are many variables involved including personal financial situation, health and family medical history. My overall point was more about the program itself . Chiefly that there isn’t much issue with the status of the program due to some folks choosing a reduced benefit beginning at their earliest eligibility. The funding issue is more a demographic one and worsened by years of “ kicking the can down the road” instead of making incremental changes earlier.

This issue has been known for some time and largely ignored through many successive Presidencies and control by each party. Since the program is so popular ( and why wouldn’t it be ? It’s your money that you paid into the system and should expect to receive. Whether you could have saved more on your own ( or if you actually would have is more likely) is irrelevant here: the program was designed to replace about 40% of your annual income while you were working. The trade off ( in theory) was it was guaranteed and not subject to the whims and vagaries of the stock market , which could cost you a big chunk of your savings if unlucky. Your personal savings would fill in the gap of what you needed to live comfortably in retirement. Anyone who says they don’t want this money is not being serious unless they are fabulously wealthy ; but this also doesn’t matter- it’s their money too. The average life expectancy in the US is under 79 years old. For comparison , it’s about 81 in the UK and 84 in Japan. If you’re lucky enough to make it to 102, good for you and enjoy collecting SS- there aren’t many like you and expectancy is actually going down. Collecting at 62 is fine; the SS payout to you will be reduced for the entire length of time you collect. However , an actuary would likely tell you that you should take it at 62 and retire if you can. The longer you work past 62 , your life expectancy will decline. The reason neither party has wanted to address the issue is simple: votes. Misinformation abounds, and whoever proposes changes ( which are needed - but the problem is fixable) will be portrayed as being against seniors - a powerful voting block. To fix the program a few important changes should be made. A combination of an increase in the age to collect based on birth year , some increase in the cap on wages subject to FICA are likely among them. Any major change to the program for the future would have to be put in place at another time. This is the system we’ve paid into and will have for the foreseeable future. Note : The US population has increased even after Roe v Wade fwiw. Since a tax cut is simply allowing citizens to keep more of their own money, it doesn’t need to be “ paid for”. Rather, our government needs to reduce spending to account for it.

Jazz fest - nice . Too bad the Stones had to cancel though. Crazy that ol’ Keef’s body is like 150 years old, but Mick’s the one who needed heart surgery... go figure!

I agree as we’ve often gotten terrible results on these plays. Makes it even more maddening when you see the Pats* WR make a 4 yard reception on 3rd and 7 , yet you just know they will pick up the first. ?

Interesting. Superdome is pretty outdated right now, so the cost is perhaps relevant to the NEF situation. Very different stadium designs though, so that would have impact on cost to renovate.

I like Andrew Brandt, and appreciate his usually solid takes. In this case, though I’m not sure it’s an indictment on the Bills own scouting. It’s fair to say it’s damning of their former GM and HC though. Lawson just hasn’tshown he’s consistent enough to be paid at that number. Smart move by the Bills FO here.

Yep. Civilian was an idiot for doing that,. Unfortunately that’s the world we live in.

Of course I do. This type of incident was unusual and not common at games. Of course the liberal rag is going to stoke the flames. Doesn’t happen on the reg, like the rowdy bizzaro drunken behavior at every single game. Get it ? That was the point Logic made and I concurred. You might be the one with a comprehension issue.

Yeah, this was a (highly publicized) one-off. Definitely not common.

I agree. If the Bills ( or any team for that matter) draft a player in round 3, they do so with the expectation of the player being a potential starter at some point. They certainly don’t move up from round 4 to round 3 to “ take a fllyer” on a TE. Knox would seem to be the prototype vision of their starting TE.

The Bills stuck to their board and didn’t want to reach. If they took a WR , it may have meant no fixing of the RT position that has long been a weakness. While I wanted a WR, I think the best fit was Nkeal Harry and he was gone. Could they have moved up for him in round one? We know the cost was high because they tried to do this for Ford, but waited. Fixing the OL isn’t as enticing as drafting a WR, but it is vital. The OL was not up to NFL standards last year, and they are following that formula of building from the inside out. There are still possibilities for a trade to upgrade the WR position, but it has been improved overall from last years group. The biggest holes on the team were OL, WR, DT and TE. They managed to address all 4 this offseason to some degree. If Allen makes big strides this season, WR is sure to be the priority position next offseason/ draft.

What NE saw? Lol that’s rich. Brady was a 6th round draft pick and I’m pretty sure the last QB taken. Pretty safe to say they didn’t see all that much ( definitely not an inkling of a HOF career) or he’d have been selected long before that. They took a 6th round flyer at the end of the draft that planned out beyond anyone’s wildest expectation. Probably figured he’d be a camp arm. Let’s not make it out to be some great visionary thing, it was a monumental fluke. That happens sometimes. Every once in awhile you get Kurt Warner instead of Curtis Painter.

Lack of talent (2018 Bills)often leads to penalties. Especially on the O line, where guys hold when they are getting physically overwhelmed , or false start trying to get into their pass set a split second too fast. I’d expect better line play this year, and less of those types of penalties. I often hear folks say penalties are on the coaching, but ex players ( such as Steve Tasker) will say it’s on the players. I’d tend to agree with Tasker there. Players are out on the field, not the coach.

Yep. There have been some memorable corruptions of commonly used expressions on this board in the past, and every so often they come up again, like in Coach Tuesday’s post lol... I’m kinda surprised not many seem to have gotten my reference to the “ particle sun” post someone made on the board a bunch of years back. When I saw him reference the “ self of steam” post it made me think of it.

They could have. Don’t know how easily, but there would have been cost involved. It probably came down to if they felt the value was there for such a move and where Metcalf was on their board. Beane mentioned they wanted to move up higher than they did for Ford, but the cost was too rich. So it’s always a matter of finding a trade partner, agreeing on compensation and paying a price they are comfortable with.