Shaw66

Amen, brother. I said something similar. You said it better. Coaches say you play how you practice. All the Bills players say practice is full speed, all the time. The best players are doing the best they can, every rep, and everyone else follows. They step on the field, and they just do what they did in practice. Trubisky looked like he'd been running this offense for years. Rookies all know their roles. Everyone supports each other. It's a beautiful thing. I never imagined.

Right. I'm not saying it's easy. Obviously, the guy has been coached not to hit the QB in the head, but at full speed with a mobile QB, it's not easy.

Good point. It was a really good post. Here are my pregame questions, and here are my postgame answers. And good insights, too.

Not dirty, but he had time to aim. Plenty of time. Straight run at the QB, hit in in the belly.

Gotta hit him a foot lower. Coaches don't want that penalty. Smith blew it. He'll learn.

His coverage was very good on the deep TD, and he played the ball well, too. Sometimes the other guy wins.

I agree. And Moss may be better than both. Moss punishes people. He needs a little bigger hole than Singletary, but he finishes well. And actually, Devin finishes pretty well, too. They're both good at getting the extra yard when he needs it.

Turnovers is the number one factor in NFL losses. You turn it over, you lose. Muff a punt, that's a 40-yard play for the opponent, and you put the defense back on the field. Simply can't afford it. It's one of the reasons Roberts is so good. He's really sure-handed. McKenzie never has been. McKenzie apparently spent the off-season catching punts. Looks like it didn't help.

I think it was after the game, an NFL Network announcer said Fields blew the call on the blocking assignments. He was supposed to have identified Smith as a potential rusher and adjusted the blocking. That's the kind of thing that keeps rookies on the sideline. Or gets them injured.

My biggest negative: McKenzie. Bills simply cannot afford to have a guy mishandle punts. He's been dropping them since he arrived in Buffalo. Every season he's looked better and better at receiver, and today he was solid there. Doesn't matter. Can't muff punts.

Someone said he fell in the draft because of a bad day at the combine. And I guess people weren't willing to take a chance on him because he only had one season in college. And it was hard to bet on him, because he doesn't have the raw speed of a great edge rusher or the strength of a power guy. I remember when the Bills drafted him, I kept looking at his highlights, and you could see how unusual he was. It was primarily his ability to use his arms to keep the blocker off him while he read the play, couple with the athleticism to make a move while engaged that way. The more I watched, the more intrigued I became, because he just looked like a playmaker. And lo and behold, that's what he is. He's a problem on almost every play. Once again, Beane's done his homework. Character, size, talent.

This. People really need to give McDermott and Beane credit. They've done exactly what they said they were going to, in exactly the way they said it. What I find amazing is that this the second pre-season game, and there were essentially NO preseason mistakes. Even the Smith hit was just an over-aggressive play. This team is so well organized. Everyone knows what to do, every play, and they do it. Trubisky was executing the offense like it was his team and HE was going to the Super Bowl. Defense was excellent, persistent pass rush, great pursuit, tight coverages, except when Wildgoose let James get deep. Just all around excellent play, and it was the second team! Just great.

I use Stub Hub and pick seats that are in my price range in the location I like best. I don't do this, but I've noticed that the highest concentration of Bills fans tends to be in the lower level behind the Bills bench, between the ten yard lines.

Stay safe. I've set up a spare pump in the basement.

Beast Appropos of nothing except, I think, your former avatar, what I regret most about being a casual fan in the 80s is that I never watched enough to develop an appreciation of Fred Smerlas. I missed his career, and the careers of a few other stars in the 80s.

So, I figured I'd better figure out the actual distance. I googled Highmark stadium. Did you know there's a Highmark Stadium in Pittsburgh, almost across the river from where the Steelers play? It's the home of some local soccer team. Anyway, I'm 410 miles from the Highmark that matters. Six and half hours of driving, including a stop or two. An easy commute to games.

I'm loving the responses to this thread. Yours, of course, is classic. What difference does it make exactly how far, because you're probably more or less as far away as anyone could possibly be and still be on the planet!

Although I try to avoid gender-based generalizations, I'd have to say this may be as good a take as any. As I've thought about the question, I've kept coming back to the men generally being serious about the Bills and the women being interested by not so knowledgeable. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, but I'd guess it's a relatively valid generalization. According to the Football Girl, 47% of NFL fans are women. https://thefootballgirl.com/women-now-make-up-47-of-all-nfl-fans/ That's up from 40% eight years ago. Searching Google, I found something that said the NFL has the highest percentage of women fans of any major sport. The Steelers apparently have the highest percentage of women fans among NFL teams. So, if you're 85-15 conclusion is correct, and if 47% of Bills fans are women, then out of 1000 fans, 530 are men and 450 are serious fans, and 470 are women and 70 of them are serious fans. But I'd guess that what others have said is true - that the fan base grows as the success of the team grows. The down-and-out teams have relatively smaller fan bases, and they have a higher percentage of serious fans. I'd also guess that in those down-and-out fan bases, there's a higher percentage of men in the fan bases. That is, as the team becomes successful and the fan base grows, it's because women are joining the fan base. That's why, for example, the Steelers have a lot of women - it's a long-term successful franchise, or at least has that reputation. If all of that were true, that would mean that five years ago the Bills fan base was mostly men. The women were just putting up with the fact that their husbands had the sickness. Since there were more men rooting for the Bills than average, a higher percentage of the fans overall were serious fans. It may still be true today, but I'd guess that now it's beginning to change. Now, the fan base is growing, and it's growing by adding women. It makes sense from my personal experience. I've told this story before, but it's relevant here. As the Bills were getting good in the late 80s, I kept telling my wife that the Bills were getting good. She'd say, "yeah, yeah, I've heard it before." Then, in 1990, around the middle of the season, I reminded that I'd told her if the Bills ever go to the Super Bowl, I was going. "Yeah, yeah." Every couple of weeks, I'd remind her, and every couple of weeks, "yeah, yeah." Finally, when the Bills won in week 14 to go 12-2, she said, "If you go to the Super Bowl, can I go too?" That's an average fan. Another example. My daughter grew up in a Connecticut in a Bills household in Connecticut. She knew from an early age that her father was wacko about the Bills, and her two older brothers got the sickness from their father. She wasn't an NFL fan generally, but if she was hanging with the family on Sunday afternoon and the Bills were being broadcast in Connecticut, she was watching the Bills. Fast forward to today. She lives in Boston. One of her best friends from college is from Elmira, and her friend's father always followed the Bills and bought season tickets maybe five years ago. This season, my daughter asked me to buy six tickets to the home opener so she and her friend and their boyfriends and some other couple could go to the game. She's a classic woman being drawn into the fan base. She doesn't understand the game very well, she knows maybe a half-dozen players, but she's now a fan. My 12-year-old grandson is a much more serious Bills fan than she is, and he's been serious since he was 5.

An attitude like that may get you banned here! It's downright normal.

My wife is the same. She knows five players, tops, but watches all the games to me. She wants me to take her to Boston for away games, so we can go to the Harp and watch with all the other Bills fans. That's pretty serious.

Six and a half. There is nothing like the atmosphere in a sold-out NFL game, and there's no sold-out NFL game like a sold-out Bills home game. It's a great experience, every time.

You're definitely not average!

I was in high school in Amherst the 60s, and all I knew about Iroquois was it had a great wrestling team and it was someplace south and east of Amherst. How far south and east? No idea, except I knew it wasn't as far east as Binghamton and it was so far south that it was in Pennyslvania! Everyone knew about Iroquois wrestling.

This sounds correct to me, and it's an explanation why so many people are responding that there are no average Bills fans. Well, not no, but not many. If you're a Bills fan, the experience was primarily pain for a long time, you put up with it, and you were dedicated to the team. So, you pay more attention to the team. On the other hand, the other extreme, actually, is Dodger fans. They're like "yeah, whatever" about their team, and they get excited only when the team's winning, and even then they're largely only about the stars, as you say. Obviously, these are all generalizations. But I think you're right about the Bills, if they continue to have success. The growth of the fan base will be average fans building in to enlarge the base. I assumed there were a lot of average fans, but you guys are convincing me that there are fewer than I thought.

Sorry. I always write titles in all caps when I write an essay. I will fix it.