yungmack

They shut it off in Southern Cal as well. And the Raiders are somewhat of a "home team" here. We get all their games. But I heard they shut it off in Buffalo as well (!!!) Yet another reason to despise the Pats.

Two great performances by the O-line. And no, I don't think they got any penalties.

What's really sad about those chickens is the huge farms in WNY where chicken amputees are kept. Of course, having your "tenders" removed is no day at the park either but at least those chickens can flap their wings.

I hope all the fifth graders around here who were just laughin' it up that Easley had AIDS/Syphillis/The Clap read the article. Then they can go back to laughing themselves silly when they hear someone say "poop deck."

Oh, so you're going to go with that old dodge of "making sense?" Or "using facts?" Don't you know we now live in Tea Party Nation where you make up whatever you want and then believe the hell out of it?

Great review.

Good to see grammar school is back in session in WNY.

It seems you've made PTR's point. If they're just a bunch of guys not unlike us, then WTF? Perhaps foolishly, I expect competent understanding of the subject they're covering. Seems sort of the minimal requirement for a professional, no?

I expect them to win 10 games and hope they win 12. I expect them to win 3 in the division and hope they win 5.

As long as you're going to rehash all those screw-ups out of the past, why leave out hiring Hank Bullough? The point is, we, the great unwashed masses, turn to you and your brethren, professionals with day-to-day focus on one team only, for meaningful insight. I'm sure that in the cases you listed above, that many did point out the stupidity and/or incompetence of the player(s)/coach(es)/GM(s)/FO Sachems. As many, many fans did at the time and some continue to do so to this very moment. The fans can be forgiven for continued negativity and for resisting giving in to hopefulness because, well, we're freakin' fans. We love the Bills, we hate the Bills, they're the best, they're the worst, we're can't stand to watch another game, we can't stand NOT to watch another game. The truth is, good or bad, we're hooked on them. We don't base our commitment on logic (or, as more than a few posts around here make clear, on knowledge or intelligence either), it's emotional. Many of us can't help looking at the current Bills and seeing the ghosts of the past. But that's precisely why we turn to you guys (and why PTR is correct in his critique) to give us the straight skinny, to say, "Wait a minute, these Bills under Nixley aren't those Bills who drafted those busts, made those foolish trades, screwed up the hirings, et al. Here's why these Bills are different..." And that is really the whole of the job. And that's exactly where our local guys have utterly failed. There outpouring of "insight" and "knowledge" has been on the level of your basic demoralized fan, not that of supposedly informed reporters. In other words, they are incompetent in their job. BTW, I am a fan of yours, mainly because you have written with insight and intelligence when your confreres were regurgitating the "common sense" take on the Bills. I miss your AP coverage of the team.

Tom Waddle was very strong about the Bills as well. And that was before the game.

That's it exactly. (Except that there are plenty of people who post around here who really are much more knowledgeable than the WNY media). Forget the generalists like Matthews whose job is to cover every sport at every level in WNY and to comment on the national level; they're not that focused on the details (though when it comes to the Bills they should be). However, the minimal expectations for Bills beat writers is that they understand the game, the personnel and the team that they cover everyday of the year. And that's where most of them have shown themselves woefully inadequate. They have shown themselves to be incompetent at what is the sole reason they have a job.

Why are some of you coming out with this BS that "we beat a bad team?" Up until kickoff, the Chiefs were widely regarded as one of the better up-and-coming teams in the NFL, picked to have an even better year than last which was a nice 10-6 with a playoff game. About every writer, reporter and analyst in the nation picked them to whup the Bills...and that includes most of the writers, reporters and analysts in WNY, for cryin' out loud. And probably at least half of the posters on TSW. But all of a sudden, the Bills knock the peep out of KC and suddenly they're a "bad team." No, folks, the Chiefs are not a bad team at all, they just looked like it after they got Bill-dozed.

Haven't read through the thread so maybe someone else mentioned this already but here it is. A "friend" with some good inside knowledge of Indy says there's a good chance Manning will never play again. Or to put it the way he did, it was that the Colts won't be surprised if he doesn't play again. I guess this is a lot more serious than has been let on.

Thanks for doing that. I find it interesting that Buddy was saying what most of the posters around here who I find both sane and knowledgeable have been saying.

Not that many good-sized Mexican linemen so I'd say no. Maybe the single greatest SNL skit ever. Thanks!

Your remarks are similar to many others that pop up on this or that thread in that they posit that the Bills FO is constantly cutting big payroll as part of a grand strategy to keep costs low even when it negatively impacts the on-field product. In other words, the front office (or the Detroit bean counters) makes its decisions in light of the financial aspect, quality be damned so long as it's "cheap enough." This premise, however, doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny. One example is the constantly-berated Chris Kelsay. If it was all a matter of who's less expensive, he'd be gone and any of several other players (Antonio Coleman for example) would be satisfactory in terms of saving money. They also would not have signed Brad Smith, Nick Barnett or Kirk Morrison when they had much cheaper alternatives already under contract. And was Ruvell Martin cheaper than Namaan Roosevelt? Or how about Drayton Florence's new contract? Or Merriman's fairly generous overall deal? If all that mattered was the costs and not the product, none of them would be on the roster.

And for thousands of years people said the earth was the center of the universe. Didn't make it true.

That's on the money.

I'd be the last person to pretend that there isn't a whole lotta racism still around. And plenty of it among black people (maybe more than in any other group). So it's logical that there must be some of that around this board. But let me respectfully say, you're thinking is FUBAR. It is also racist in the extreme. If the membership of TSW is reflective of the population of WNY and SoOntario, then we should expect at least 85% of those logging in to be non-black. If your ill-thought-out premise is correct, then we should see about 85% wildly backing the "fantastic" Chris Kelsay, about 85% opposing any idea of drafting Cam Newton for the -- OMG! -- reserved-for-whites QB position, about 85% supporting Pears and Urbik over, say, Bryant McKinnie, and so on. But that's not the case, is it. Not by along shot. As far as I can tell, those around here who tend to know what they're talking about, vis a vis, football, criticism tends to be about ability not a player's race. I mean, seriously, if so many of us were begging the Bills to get rid of James Hardy and give Stevie J his shot, how does that morph into racism? BTW, it's "niche" not "nitch." And WTF does Hoosiers of the Shield mean in recognizable English? Oh, and one tip-off that a white person might be a racist: they call themselves "conservatives," or "Republicans," or "Tea Partiers."

Funny, I just had a couple of beers and a chat the other day with a ethno-something or other scholar who was telling me that Columbus never thought he was in India and didn't call the natives he found "Indians." In those days, the people from what we now call India were known as Hindus (plural: Hindi). The name "India" comes from the westerners mispronunciation of "Hindi." Keeping in mind that Columbus didn't write in English, he never would have used the word "Indian." What he in fact called the natives in his reports was the Latin (or maybe it was Italian or Spanish) for "indigenous" (indigenae, indigeno, or indígena depending on your language)which clerks in Madrid then capitalized. FTR, I grew up with many Indians and still spend a fair amount of time on the western "Rezs" and everybody (except for professional "Native Americans" and professors) calls themselves "Indians," though they tend to pronounce it somewhat like "In-Deen." If I started referring to my friends as Native Americans they'd never stop busting my chops. And no one is better at busting chops the In-deens.

Doesn't Freddy make more than Fitz? More than Urbik, Pears and Chandler? And don't Spiller and Dareus make more than just about every other player on the team? When Freddy got his extension a couple of years back, he was over the moon, thrilled, satisfied. Now that other players are getting their extensions, maybe Freddy's thinking he's being disrespected (BTW, he is, but it has nothing to do with money. See the next paragraph). You can bet when he got his raise, there were teammates who said to themselves, "Hey, when do I get mine?" That's the way it is. Right now, I think the Bills have other key contract priorities including Stevie and Fitz. I don't think Freddy is pissed about his contract though, like any of us, he'd probably like to make more. I think his anger comes from constantly being disrespected by his coaches, probably all the way back to Pop Warner. No major or mini-major collegiate program wanted him so he wound up at Coe. Then he gets a "mercy" try-out with the Bills and does so good they can't cut him for fear he'll come back to haunt them. But they don't give him a real shot. He has constantly gone head-to-head with marquee running backs, first round picks, and whipped them all. Because he's been better than all of them. And here he is yet again being relegated to second string behind another marquee, first round pick who he's clearly much better than. I've got to believe any of us in a similar situation who be just as PO-ed. I mean, what more does the guy need to do to get the kind of endorsement Gailey gave Fitz? What more would it take for Chan to say, "Freddy's my starter." I think that's really what he wants more than anything. And man, he deserves it. He's the Bills best all-around back since Thurman.

There are certain basic things every QB in the NFL has to do, with the key ones being: recognition of defenses combined with making the correct calls; ability to get the ball out fast (and to your own receiver, in a way that allows him to get YAC and NOT get him killed); and, most critically, accuracy. The difference between starters and back-ups seems to come down to one of them being able to do these things better than the other. From what I've seen of Thigpen so far this pre-season, his recognition is mediocre, his reaction time is slow, and his accuracy is god-awful. If he's the Bills back-up in the regular season, we'd better pray to all the gods there are that Fitz doesn't get hurt because no amount of practice time, no amount of playing time with the first string will make up for his shortcomings in fundamentals. Right now, I'm more worried about the back-up QB position than any other on this team. And that's saying a lot.

I prefer the red helmets.

Yeah, but he was experienced-in-the-system depth, no small thing two weeks before your opener.