Shaw66

Me too. I was beyond excited when the Bills traded up in the third round, because I was sure they'd take Wilson. And I was convinced Cousins was the right move. I never ran the numbers, but I think they simply concluded that they couldn't afford to bet it all on Cousins, given their cap situation. Tyrod shines this year and the Bills are on SOME logical path at QB, I'm okay even if 2018 is somewhat ugly. I've convinced myself the defense is going to be very good this season, and I'm expecting the team to be .500 or better.

I'm kind of surprised at myself, but I have supreme confidence in McB. I don't know if Daboll is the answer, but McB have a process, as we know, and we've already seen that if a guy doesn't fit the process (Dennison, Dareus, Watkins, Taylor) he gets moved quickly. So I think if Daboll isn't the answer, the answer will arrive soon enough. Yes, 3 would be hard to swallow, but would it be really that much worse than 4? McB failing would break my heart. Absent a major disaster, McB will be with the Bills another four years. I'm getting old, and the thought of starting over then with another leadership group what's tough for me to swallow. So maybe it isn't that my supreme confidence is rational; it's simply that at my age they look like the last best hope, so they'd better be the ones.

I liked Taylor but I don't mind that he's gone. Maybe his ceiling is higher than we saw, and I think it is, but I still don't mind. Why? Because I trust McDermott and Beane. They decided that Taylor didn't fit what they're trying to do, whatever that may be. Maybe he didn't fit because TT couldn't ever be better than we saw. Maybe he didn't fit for other reasons. I don't know. What I do know is that McD know what they want and Tyrod wasn't it. There are four possible outcomes: 1. McB are winners and TT is a star. .2. McB are winners and TT never emerges. 3. McB bust and TT is a star. 4. McB bust and TT never emerges. I'm great with 1 or 2.

But how could a rookie left tackle play so well if Castillo didn't know what he was doing?

If Dawkins was good as a rookie, why do people think Juan Castillo sucks? And if he sucks, why didn't McD fire him?

That's cool. Thanks. I keep saying here this game is about coaching. Notice the only guy mentioned here on Caesar's team is Marc Antony, another leader. No soldiers are named and few if any are remembered. But as fighting units they were excellently prepared, and they obviously responded as directed, over and over, as Caesar kept analyzing and reanalyzing the situation. McDermott gets his troops prepared. The big question in my mind is whether he can be the strategist Caesar was. Can he see the who has what advantage, and can he strategize to overcome his opponent's advantages and to maximize his own?

I complained to the Bills. A flag that says Beat Louder? Do they think I'd actually fly that thing?

Sorry. I may be old enough to remember Doc but not the other dude.

I can hear Doc Holiday now. One of the great American philosophers.

Two big differences between Manuel and Allen: Wonderlic score - 28 vs 37 Head coach - McDermott prepares his players to succeed.

I think it's interesting that this thread got resurrected. As I examine my own thinking on July 2, this thread demonstrates how pointless all those pre-draft discussions about qbs were. I mean, if you're a gm, you're asking those questions daily before the draft, but the questions are now completely irrelevant. If you're an owner, those questions next become relevant a year or two from now as you evaluate your gm's performance. But now it's July, training camp will start soon, and all this analysis just doesn't matter now. The Bills have a roster, they're going to camp and they'll put together the best team they can. I will watch and cheer and worry, and we will see what happens. Will I be taking a look to see how Darnold and Mayfield and Rosen are doing? Sure, especially Darnold because he's in the division. But for me, the question is how good is my team, not how good is some player that some other team got. After Mayfield and Darnold went off the board I wanted Rosen. Then when the Bills traded up and we're on the clock, literally seconds before thir pick was announced, I changed my mind. I wanted the better athlete with the better attitude. NFL-ready is a bogus concept when you're looking for a ten-year player

Thanks for the compliment, and let me give it back to you. You are dead on about this. Sports columnists used to know the stories of the athletes, the behind-the-scenes stuff, and they wrote about it. They informed us about the stories behind the events. The modern guys rarely do that. They're too busy being "experts," telling us what's wrong with how this coach did this or that player did that. And I believe in Sullivan's case, as the years went by it became more and more difficult to tell those stories, because fewer and fewer athletes and coaches would talk to him. When a new guy joins the team and is learning the ropes, you better believe that among things the vets tell him are whom you can trust and whom you can't. You could hear it in Rex's first press conferences when he became HC. He'd already had some experience with the folks who covered the Bills, and he was cautious and defensive with Sully and others from day one. If you're Kyle Williams, do you tell your story to Gaughan or Sullivan? No brainer. The tougher question is whether Sullivan even would have been interested in hearing his story. "I am RIghters" is exactly right.

I generally have disagreed with a lot of what you've posted, but your ultimate conclusion here is correct. The News could have gotten rid of Sullivan any time they wanted. The Guild wasn't going to stop them. I don't think you're correct, however, that Sullivan's columns weren't a problem before them. My guess is they WERE a problem that the editors discussed from time to time, but they weren't a problem that was big enough to cause them to move him out. That's why I said many pages ago that he's gone because of combination of factors: his columns, the unhappiness of the Bills about the coverage they were getting, and the economics of the newspaper. The News clearly was willing to put up with some of the crap that Sullivan wrote, the News was willing to push back against the Bills to some extent, and the Bills knew that Sullivan wasn't the primary reason for their declining economics. However, when the News decided it was time to ease the economic pressure they were feeling, Sullivan became a prime target because of his compensation, the attitude he displayed in his columns and the unhappiness of the Bills.

Three areas: 1. LINE 2. LINEBACKERS 3. SECONDARY Seriously. You think McD isn't telling EVERY PLAYER to improve?

Great insights. Thanks for posting it.

Thanks. That's an interesting piece. Anyone with a Catherine Zeta-Jones poster can't be all bad. I've never said I thought Sullivan's a bad guy. I think much of his writing is nasty, vindictive and reflects a deep-seated unhappiness. He calls Bruce Smith self-absorbed, and that's a word that's easily applied to him. I've known for years that Jeff Jacobs is his friend. I read the Hartford Courant every day and make a point of reading Jeff Jacobs. He's written some of the best human-interest columns about sports figures I've ever read. In all my years of reading Jeff Jacobs, he's gone off the deep-end once in anything that compares to Sullivan's antagonism toward the Bills. Jacobs got upset with Jim Calhoun, UConn's Hall of Fame head coach. It was the equivalent of being upset with Marv Levy in the midst of the Super Bowl days. Jacobs went after Calhoun about something he had done, maybe some things that got UConn into trouble or potential trouble with the NCAA. It was intense for weeks, and Calhoun, being no shrinking violet, fought back. I believe they went several years before Calhoun would talk to him again, in part because Jacobs wouldn't let it go. It was like a Bills coach not talking to the lead columnist at the News. But that's where the similarity ends. Eventually, Jacobs realized that it was time to bury the hatchet and they got together and agreed it was time to move on. I think Jacobs initiated the talks. I have no idea why that happened, but Jacobs is a smart guy, and I would guess that he understood that it was difficult to write quality columns about the biggest sports team in town if he wasn't talking to the head coach. He may also have been told the same thing by his editors. So Jim and Jeff kissed and made up, and they once again say good things about each other, as they should. There are some scars - it was nasty, but they are behaving like adults again. Jacobs has written about the experience in his columns. Unlike Jacobs, Sullivan never seemed to understand that his relationship to the players and coaches is important to his ability to do his job, so it seems he never bothered to work on the relationships. I'll note that in this article Sullivan clearly understands the newspaper business is in trouble and big changes are coming, so it seems a bit disingenuous that he reacted with such surprise and indignation when the News did exactly what he's seen other newspapers do for years. In fact, his good friend Jeff Jacobs left the Courant under similar circumstances at the end of last year - took a buyout and now still covers UConn basketball for other Connecticut outlets. Sullivan's irate reaction to his plight is a good measure of his self-absorption.

Thanks. I'll go read it. And yes, I'd guessed that the Williams comment was an after-the-fact comment. It sounded that way. But that doesn't change what I said. Do you think a Buffalo Bill who sees that comment from Sullivan, whenever he made, will be less inclined to open up to Sullivan when he's interviewed? I do. I'm a football player, and he's a football writer. Why would I want to talk to him if he's going to make gratuitous negative comments in the press about my personality?

No, he shouldn't put it in print. Why not? A couple of reasons: 1. Sullivan's job is easier if he has access to the people he's writing about. Saying in print that Williams is difficult to interview isn't likely to make Williams want to talk to him in the future. That is, saying something like that, which really doesn't have anything to do with what kind of football player Williams, is likely to limit rather than increase his access to Williams. In fact, I believe that happened to Sullivan with a lot of the Bills, particularly the coaches. When he loses access, his columns suffer. The fact that Mario was a tough interview just means that it's a little harder to write about him than to write about someone who's an easy interview. His job is to write about the Bills, sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's tougher. The correct response is NOT to complain that the guy is a tough interview. The correct response is to work a little harder at developing a relationship with the guy so that he'll open up a little more. 2. It' simple character assassination. What's the point of saying Williams was difficult? The adage is "if you don't have anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all." Now, I know that it's different for a journalist, because his job is to speak the truth about the guy, nice or not. But there are limits to that. If you don't like how he plays football, sure, say it. If you ask around and you find that he's generally a nasty guy and has no friends on the team, sure, say it. What's the point of saying the guy's a lousy interview? Or a lousy dresser? Or a lousy bowler?

This is a perfect example. Without trying to demean the guy, I thought from his early days in Buffalo that Mario is not very bright. He just isn't. He was clearly uncomfortable in press conferences, interviews, etc. because he seemed to understand that it was easy to get caught saying something foolish and he didn't want to get caught. So he was cautious, and he never seemed to figure out how to say things that were particularly interesting or insightful without sounding stupid. I always gave him credit for being cautious. Sullivan complaining that Mario was difficult to cover was typical Sullivan. If Mario is a difficult interview and you want to write about him, then how about doing a little homework? How about getting comments about him from his coaches and teammates? How about figuring out who his best friend on the team is and spend some time interviewing him? Sullivan often struck as feeling entitled to have people simply GIVE him the meat he needed for his pieces, and if other guy didn't do that there was something wrong with the other guy. Whaley didn't give him what he wanted to write, so he savaged Whaley. Mostly, I long for old-fashioned columns, the kind people don't write much any more. Oddly, one of the best I've seen lately is the piece Chris Brown did about Harrison Phillips. Brown dug out some interesting comments from Phillips and people who know him, and he put together an interesting piece about the kind of guy Phillips is. I know Chris is only going to write nice upbeat stuff that makes the guy sound like an all-star, so the piece may have been more one-sided than a more balanced look, but at least it told a story that gave me some insight into the guy. There are plenty of stories - about Kyle, about McCarron, about Hyde - they all have stories. It takes work to flesh out those stories. It's much easier just to pick on a subject that you have an opinion about and give your opinion. All you need is something to start with. Sullivan didn't like Mario because Mario never gave him anything to start with, so he criticized Mario for THAT, as though as spoon feeding material to Sullivan was part of Mario's job description. One of the problem with modern journalism, including sports journalism, is that if you aren't writing about a problem, you're viewed as uninteresting. In Sullivan's case, he seemed to look for problems that weren't even there. Sports writers are always looking for the scoop, always making predictions, always looking to second guess management. Management makes hundreds of decisions every week, and they make some of them wrong. It's in the nature of managing any business. Sportswriters are these self-appointed experts who pick on this decision or that and blast management for having made it wrong, often before it's clear whether the decision was good or bad. But that isn't the point - whether the decision is good or bad doesn't really matter. What matters is whether the sum total of the decisions management makes is good or bad.

Bitter is a word I've used often to describe. I think you're exactly right about this. And, as I've said about the guy for a long, he's a really good writer. His columns are well constructed, and his writing is clear and engaging. The problem was that, for whatever reason, his attitude was venomous. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his editors had tried to get him to adjust his attitude. Not that I'm a psychologist, but he seemed to me to have some internal anger that got the better of him.

Thurm - He was laid off in EXACTLY the same way senior writers have been laid off around the country for a couple of decades. He was told that his job description was changing dramatically in ways that made his job MUCH less attractive to him than his current job, and he was also told that a retirement package was available. He did the math, as hundreds of senior journalists have done around the country, and realized that the dollar value of the buyout offer plus what he could earn as a free-lance writer or working for another outlet was good enough to live on, so he took the buyout in order to continue to have a job that he liked. It's been happening for years all around the country. It's a simple matter of economics for the papers. The loss of the writer doesn't affect circulation nearly as much as the paper benefits from the compensation reduction, so the paper gives the writer a "choice" that really is no choice at all. I would tend to agree with you that my view might be skewed if I hadn't heard Sully discussing Terrell Owens late in his single season in Buffalo. Sullivan had been brutal to TO from the day he was signed, ripping him as a prima donna and "locker room cancer." Sullivan did it all season long, and it bothered me a lot because what he said was completely inconsistent with everything I heard and saw about TO. It was 100% made up. Terrell Owens had a press conference every week, almost all season long, and I listened to every one. He didn't have one objectionable press conference. He never threw anyone under the bus, including Trent Edwards, who didn't seem to understand that he was on the field with a Hall of Fame receiver. Sullivan and others would ask the other players to talk about TO in the locker room, and they uniformly said he was a great teammate - among the hardest workers on the team and a great guy to hang with. Notwithstanding all of that, Sullivan was all over Owens. Then, late in the season, I happened to hear him on WGR with, I think, Schoop and the Bulldog, and the discussion turned to TO. Sullivan went off on TO like TO'd been arrested for raping 13 year-old girls. The interviewers interrupted him and told him they thought his views were extreme and unsupported by the facts. That just sent Sullivan into greater, almost absurd accusations about how horrible TO was. I mean this without exaggeration - he sounded like someone who believed the Holocaust didn't happen. The interviewers kept trying to get him on track, and it became very clear that they believed they were talking to someone who, at least on this subject, had lost all connection with reality. That episode confirmed for me that Sullivan wasn't a responsible journalist; he was a man on a his own personal mission, driven by motives I didn't understand. He wasn't a well educated sports fan, watching sports and reacting to what he saw. He was a guy who for some reason lived to bash the Bills, and went out of his way to find reasons he could bash them. As I noted above, in recent press conferences it was completely clear that he would ask questions designed to create contradictions with what other representatives of the organization had said, so that then he could claim that the Bills were lying to the press. He simply was not a responsible journalist, at least not so far as the Bills were concerned.

I agree and disagree. Sure, it would be nice to have a totally free press, I suppose, but it's simply unrealistic to think that's every going to happen. You have to expect that people with power are going to exercise that power. If someone is saying bad things about me publicly and I have the power to stop it, am I going to decline to exercise that power because I want to promote the principle of a free press? Not likely. It's a give and take situation. The Pegulas stepped in not because they wanted everyone at the News to wear rose-colored glasses at Bills and Sabres games. They stepped in because some of the News writers were openly antagonistic toward the Bills, writing outrageous stuff. That is, the News had allowed its writers to go over the line to become more like the lunatic fringe than responsible journalists. When the Bills were in the process of moving away from Rex and Doug and installing McBeane as the new regime, in those four or five months, Sullivan and Gleason unjustifiably negative about the Bills, not only taking shots at what was happening but actively trying to create situations where they could bash the Bills. I heard it myself, listening to the press conferences. They already had called one of the Bills leadership, I believe it was Whaley, a "liar" in print, because they had some theory that something Whaley said was directly opposite something Anthony Lynn had said. What Lynn had said was in that Wednesday press conference before the last game. Lynn had been named interim head coach two days before, this was his first press conference, and Gleason and Sullivan literally ambushed him. It was unmerciful and inappropriate. Then, in later press conferences they repeatedly asked questions designed to generate responses that were inconsistent with things Bills' leadership had said or done in the preceding weeks or months. It was like they thought they were Woodward and Bernstein taking down the President. They behaved like they were investigative journalists on a mission. If I'm the Pegulas, I'm going to move to stop it. I'm going to begin restricting the News' access to coaches and the front office, which I believe they did. I'm going to begin giving exclusives to other outlets instead of the News, which I believe they did. Why would they give the News preferred access, just because they were the home town paper, if everything they did was going to be prejudged and attacked by the paper? So, yes, people with money are going use it to control how they're covered. It isn't the problem you suggest, however, because it's one thing to use power to try to control unfair coverage, it's another to try to use power to cover up the truth. The President of the United States doesn't have the power to hide the truth, and the Pegulas don't either. There's enough press, and there are enough people writing who can't be influenced by power (the explosion of bloggers is a great development in that regard), that the truth simply can't be hidden forever. The simple fact is that the power of the press, like everyone else's power is limited. Wealth's power is limited by the press's ability to expose wrong-doing, and the press's power is limited by the wealth that makes the press powerful in the first place. Checks and balances. The News had gone over the line, was exercising the power of the press in a way that was unfair and inappropriate, and the Pegulas helped the leadership at the News understand that. That's not a bad thing.

Although I agree that it's likely that the deal was driven by the factors you list - skill set, picks and filling the receiver hole left by Watkins and Woods, I would be amazed if Darby's involvement in this incident didn't contribute to McBeane's thinking. McBeane want guys who are focused on the right things all the time, not just during team activities, and Darby's focus on other things probably made the decision easier.

No, you don't understand. His editors had three columns a week to fill and Sullivan was the guy they had to fill those columns. When the publisher called the editor and said you have to cut costs, the editor said cut Sullivan because he is expensive. It wasn't about whether the editor liked what Sullivan wrote. And the publisher gave the editor a push by saying that Sullivan was pissing off important people.

I doubt the decision was based on the quarter. Probably based on projections.