Logic

Thanks as always for your thoughts. I put some of mine in the post-game thread that echoed much of what you said. The main thing I feel after this game is ENCOURAGED. My hope for the remainder of the season and even the postseason has been re-ignited. After the first half of the season, I was feeling kind of deflated. We struggled to beat some bad teams. We lost two straight games to what I view as inferior opponents. Out defense looked completely toothless. Our quarterback looked stifled and frustrated. All of that changed yesterday. Some if it started in the Panthers game, but yesterday looked like the real turning point. Suddenly, Josh was locked in. "Slotted", as he puts it. Set a franchise record for completion percentage and played his best game of the year. Suddenly, the defense was a shutdown unit, harassing the other team's All-Pro QB (and holding him to his lowest completion percentage ever), blanketing receivers, laying bone crunching hits. The combination of night-and-day difference in our defensive performance, the return of "MVP Josh", and the exemplary performances of multiple youngsters potentially changing the short and long term outlooks on defense in a major way....all of it adds up to a lot of big reasons to feel encouraged going into the second half of the season. The AFC East crown is still there for the taking. The AFC one seed is still there for the taking. The Lombardi is still there for the taking. BIG win yesterday, for BIG reasons. Go Bills!

Hey all. I haven't been around here much lately, but this win has me pretty excited, so I thought I'd burn off some of my jubilant energy explaining why: 1. JOSH WAS JOSH! 23 of 26 for three scores and no turnovers. A franchise record 88.5 completion percentage. Poised, decisive, smart with the football, took intermediate shots when they were there, checked down when they weren't. There were lots of reasons for today's win, but Josh being Josh was certainly a huge one! 2. Bills defense held Pat Mahomes to his lowest ever completion percentage of 44! Defensive line harassed him all game long, the coverage units did their job and married well with the pass rush, and #15 never looked comfortable, and the final score and stat output showed it. This was a HOT passing offense coming in, and the Bills defense stifled it in a big way. That leads me to... 3. Pass rush! Bosa, Hoecht (yes, the injury is mega discouraging, but what a day he had), even AJ Epenesa at times. The defensive line did a fantastic job today. 4. Cole Bishop played the game of his career! He seems to be arriving. Can't help but feel like the steadying presence of Jordan Poyer is helping. Maybe it's just all the reps he's been getting. Whatever it is, he was a PLUS PLAYER for the Bills in a big way today, and was a major and direct contributor to the win! 5. Max Hairston: You just got your NFL INT wings, young man! Hanging with KC's speedy WRs downfield all day long. Gave up NO big plays that I can recall. This kid belongs, and his speed alone changes Buffalo's D. 6. Joe Brady called a good game. Used all of his tight ends, got productivity out of Shakir, stuck with the run when he should, got a bit more aggressive when he needed to. Nice day from him. 7. Offensive line: my goodness! The displacement they got on some of those run plays was downright ridiculous. Wow. Sign Aaron Kromer to a lifetime contract, please, even if you have to put in a "no beach chairs" proviso. 8. James Cook. I said not to pay him. I was wrong. WRONG wrong. The engine that makes the Bills offense go. Today's win was HUGE. Not because it was the Chiefs. We all know that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. No, today's win was huge for AFC seeding, for confidence for this young team, confidence for the fan base, and for an overall team boost heading into the second half of the season. With the Colts losing today and Daniel Jones falling back to earth a little bit, the one seed is still there for the taking. At the very least, the AFC East is still there for the taking. Big day from Joe and Josh, big day for the D, lots to be encouraged about. Was everything perfect? No. But this is the NFL. That's rarely the way of things. OUTSTANDING win! GO BILLS!!!

I just wanted to point out that evidence of non-binary people and different forms of what we now call "transgender" people have been found back as far as 3000 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. Their existence pre-dates Christianity. Non-binary people have been found across multiple continents and cultures for the past 5,000 years. Look it up some time. It's actually pretty fascinating. I think many Americans -- I dare say even the vast majority -- think of transgenderism as a new phenomenon, but it is not. At all.

Dearest @boyst, Do feel free to keep tagging me from now until the end of time whenever a new lunatic shoots at somebody. I know it was wildly upsetting to you that someone new came into your frothy-mouthed right wing echo chamber and dared to challenge your trans-hating rage party. Of note: there is still no concrete evidence that Robinson's actions were motivated by leftist ideology. Just because JD Vance and Kash Patel say it doesn't make it true. In any case, no amount of tagging me will change the fact that over the past decade, the majority of mass shootings in America are statistically, verifiably committed by cisgender white men -- not trans people. It also won't change the fact that over the past decade, right wing extremism accounts for the majority of domestic terror incidents and fatalities caused by domestic terror in the U.S. I trust this message finds you well. And by "well", I mean "hanging out in the PPP, finding new reasons to be angry at those awful Antifas and trannies, who you suspect for being the ones who put mustard on your burger yesterday even though you said 'ketchup only'". Happiest of autumns to you and yours. All my best, Logic

Me come Sunday

Me stepping into this thread to see what people are saying about Ben Johnson and seeing what it has become instead

Thanks for sharing that. This was always the most likely outcome. Why rush them back for a Thursday Nighter on four days rest when you can try to get by an inferior opponent without them and then give them 10 days to heal?

How does "crushing a division opponent at home, putting the Bills at 3-0, the Dolphins at 0-3, and going into a mini-bye week as the 1-seed in the AFC and giving big Ed and Matt Milano some time to heal up" sound to everyone else? To me, it sounds pretty ***** good.

I agree. The Dolphins know that their season is on the line, and that they can play the Bills close (because they've done it before with this QB and this coach). Thursday night games are also weird and fluky sometimes. I'm not predicting a Dolphins win, but I also don't think this game will be nearly as easy the Jets game. If the Bills DO dominate the Dolphins and make them look hapless and hopeless, it would not surprise me to see a coaching change after the game.

Where Hawes transforms the Bills offense is this: They can use him as the "6th O-lineman" in jumbo sets, but he's an actual threat to catch the ball, unlike Alec Anderson. I could be mistaken, but I don't believe I've seen the Bills roll out a 6OL package yet this season. I HAVE seen (especially against the Jets) a good amount of 12 and 13 personnel. Hawes is Lee Smith Jr. For the Bills to say he was the best blocking tight end they've EVER evaluated, and for him to already be getting this much time on the field...you know he's special as a blocker at that position. Dawson Knox is set to make $17million next year. Given the realistic constraints of the salary cap, people aren't wrong to say that long term, Hawes' presence could spell the end of Knox's Bills tenure. Going forward, a Hawes-Kincaid duo at TE could indeed be the thing. And if Hawes is able to develop the receiving part of his game? Look out, man.

Dorian Williams, Shaq Thompson, Keonta Jenkins, come on down!

No such thing.

This is exactly what I thought after watching it. I hard heard that it was from "the creators of the Office", but once I saw Mike Schur's name wasn't on it, I became less enthusiastic. Greg Daniels is funny and a great creative mind in his own right, but I think a big part of what made The Office what it was is Mike Schur. I don't associate Greg Daniels nearly as much with that brand of comedy. On the flip side, speaking of Greg Daniels... I HAVE been enjoying the King of the Hill reboot. Good stuff.

Three Pro Bowl players drafted immediately after Kaiir Elam: Tyler Smith, Tyler Linderbaum, and Jermain Johnson II, right in a row. Ouch. George Karlaftis, Kyler Gordon, Breece Hall, George Pickens, Trey McBride not long after that. Double ouch. Hindsight is 20/20, every team has misses, and the Benford pick helped. But man...imagine adding any of the above players to the current Bills? Yeesh. Ah well. Ya win some, ya lose some.

I was an enormous Office fan, and saw that this was by one of the makers of the original (Greg Daniels), and it exists in the same "universe" as the Office and has Oscar as an accountant again. I gave the first episode a shot and did not find it funny. Like...at all. I'm willing to watch another episode or two and see if it finds its footing, because I see that it's gotten good critical and audience scores and has already been renewed for season two. But so far? Yeesh.

I like how multiple the Bills offense is. Sometimes, they're a powerhouse run team. Other times, they use short, controlled passing to matriculate the ball down the field. Other times they wing it downfield. They can run, they can pass short, intermediate, and long, and Josh can run it. They're an incredibly difficult offense to stop because they can do so much well. I like that they've started with a touchdown in both games so far. Starting slow was a real problem for them in recent years, but not so this year. If they can continue to start fast AND keep doing the "gathering info on how you wanna play us defensively, then adjusting to it and beating your gameplan in the second half" thing, they'll continue to be hard to stop. If I have to pick nits, I'd say that I'd like to see a more effective marrying of play-action to their run game, and more frequent use of play-action in general. I'd also say their screen game still stinks. Overall, though, it's hard to be anything but happy with an offense that averages about 30 points a week for over a calendar year now.

Yesterday's game reminded me so much of a typical AFC East game during the Patriots dynasty years, with the Bills playing the part of the Pats. A plucky upstart team with a new head coach, coming off a big week 1 moral victory, with a new QB that has everyone hopeful that "this year might be different!". Going against the five time defending division champs, a well-oiled machine, marching in to town with their franchise QB. Just like all those Pats dynasty years, the team that runs the division put those thoughts to bed quickly. They repeatedly and methodically stamped out any hope the upstart team's fans may have had, and reminded everyone just how big the gap is between a team like the Jets and a team like the Bills. Yesterday's win reminded me of those Pats years because it was...ho-hum, in a way. It was unspectacular. The Bills simply played sound fundamental football in all three phases, allowed the other team to make mistakes, and beat them convincingly, because they're better and more disciplined at playing football. The franchise QB didn't have a particularly memorable day, there was maybe one SportsCenter worthy play all game (and it came from a running back). It was just a good old fashioned three phase, fundamental boot whoopin. During the Pats dynasty years, you had to play almost perfect football to have a shot at beating them. Nowadays, you have to play almost perfect football to beat Sean McDermott's Bills. The Jets didn't even come close to doing that yesterday, so they lost convincingly. The Bills, to me, look to be in midseason form. They just look like an operation that's been doing it for years, has certain standards and expectations, and a certain way of doing things. They look like a well-oiled machine, who can beat you on any given day with either a passing or running game, defense, special teams, or any combination of those things. With their field general star quarterback, their motley crew of "do your job" receivers, their good play in the trenches, and their (mostly) no-name, "do your job" defense, they reminded me exactly of the dynasty era Patriots. Feels much better to be on this end of things.

1. You can say "Antifa Tyler" all you want, but that doesn't make it true. I know 6th grade name calling is your favorite president's forte, but that doesn't mean its a viable strategy. 2. The fact that you're totally on board with all of the stuff shown in that Tweet kind of says it all. To recap: BEFORE anyone had been apprehended, before any killer or any motivation was proven one way or the other, the entire right wing establishment mobilized with bloodthirsty tweets, quotes, and interviews talking about declaring war on the entire left. There are tweets up there talking about rounding up leftists, bombing cities, ALL OUT WAR, etc....and no one had yet been apprehended. They IMMEDIATELY decided to use Kirk's murder as an opportunity to whip up panic and stoke the flames of divisiveness, to the extent that many are/were encouraging actual violent retribution against leftists. If you support THAT, well...it tells me all I need to know about you. And it's not the least bit surprising. Party of law and order, my ass.

Totally cool, totally sane de-escalation and normal behavior from the right displayed below. Most of this came before anyone was even apprehended, mind you. Talk about “dangerous and violent rhetoric”!

I wonder what suddenly compelled Fuentes to say this NOW. Huh.

You're being willfully and repeatedly obtuse, not to mention changing your original question to me. By all means, go on pretending that only the left takes glee in political violence, ignoring all evidence to the contrary (some of which I provided), and painting with an absurdly large brush by lumping all leftists in together as "gleefully celebrating" Kirk's death, when that is very clearly far from the truth. If you can't be intellectually honest, then I have no interest in conversing with you.

I posted a thread from Adam Cochran a while back that went into it. Because one of his 10 slides was inaccurate (the voter registration one), the rest was dismissed out of hand. In short, they both appear to be just as likely (and, I'd argue, more so) to be related to well known Groyper/4chan tropes and memes than to any kind of leftist ideology.

As if what I posted isn't DIRECTLY relevant to the point you're trying to make. Sure seems like the left isn't "exclusively" gleeful at cold blooded murder when the sitting republican president's son is joking about the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi on Twitter. Remind me, is Donald Trump Jr a leftist?

Sure. The right would never make light of political violence.

It matters only insofar as there are a ton of republican politicians pinning this on the radical left, including our president. If we all agree that "it's gotta stop", and the "it" in question is political violence, then the president going on TV and blaming "the radical left" for Kirk's shooting BEFORE ANYONE WAS EVEN APPREHENDED" doesn't seem like the best move, does it? It doesn't scream "de-escalation and lowering tensions", does it? So I agree that a sick person is a sick person regardless of his political or ideological affiliation. But if repbulicans are gonna go on TV and make frothy-mouthed claims about the evil left, then well...yes, it does seem to be important to ascertain whether that's even true.