Shaw66

I didn't understand that. Thanks. In any case, I have no doubt that the Pegulas made their feelings known to the News. They weren't going to tolerate being called a dumpster fire.

Correct. That's why I said "entitled." He's free to say and write whatever he wants, just as you and I are. That freedom, however, does not mean that he's entitled to have anyone publish it. Sullivan has complained that he was "silenced" for business reasons. I believe he's correct. He's not a stupid guy. He's worked in the newspaper business for years, and I am absolutely certain that he's understood for all that time that the publishers of newspapers respond to business realities on a daily basis. It's not news. He seems to think that he was entitled to be insulated from those realities. Sorry, Jerry, it doesn't work that way for you or anyone else. Never has, never will. If he wants a guaranteed gig, he'll have to buy his own newspaper. I never read anything other than their Bills stuff. And even Sullivan's Bills stuff was well written. The guy can write. His writing revealed some deep-seated anger he had about the Bills. He took swings at the Bills every chance he got. He was bitter. He couldn't find any joy in his experience of the Bills, and if there's no joy, what's the point?

This is well put. What bothers me most about Sully is his sense of entitlement. He thinks he's entitled to write whatever he wants and someone will publish it. I write whatever I want. But I know that the moderators here can delete it in a heartbeat. I can live with that reality. Sully apparently never understood it.

People need to recognize that economics and economics alone is BY FAR the biggest reason Sullivan is gone. WEO's explanation above is exactly correct. The News wanted to cut expenses, and they did what newspapers all over the country have done for years: Let their most expensive writers choose either a buyout or a reassignment that is unattractive to the writers professionally. It's happened for years. In Sully's case, there was a second economic reason. While the News was trying to grow revenue to improve their numbers, they discovered they were going to LOSE revenue because of Sully's ceaseless rants. For the news, it was simple math: Keep Sully, lose $250,000 a year. Lose Sully, lose what, maybe $10,000 in subscribers? That lost subscriber revenue they make up in savings by being rid of Sully's salary. It's simple economics. Sully was probably gone anyway, but being an ass in his opinions about the Bills sealed his fate. Exactly. If the News wants a guy to bash the Bills, they can hire one for half the price of Sully. And in this case they get the added benefit of keeping the Pegulas happy. Win-win. Sully's history.

That's a great report. Thanks for posting. A lot of whining from the guys who took buyouts. This sort of thing has been happening at newspapers all over the country for years, and if they were surprised, then I'd say they foolishly ignored the facts of life in the 21st Century newspaper business. The best writers have been taking buyouts from the Hartford Courant for years, and it was obvious that they took the buyouts because otherwise they would have been reassigned to positions they didn't want. They aren't buyouts, they are layoffs, and as has happened in businesses (not just newspapers) for the past 30 years, the highest paid workers are the ones most likely to get laid off. Sullivan, of course, led the parade of those who foolishly ignored reality. He has been incapable of seeing that his "opinion" is so one-sided, so contrary to simple fact, so biased that powerful people would begin to complain about it. It's one thing to be a critic, it's another to be a maniacal bomb-thrower. I've been saying for a year that the Pegulas would flex their muscles to get Sullivan to return to reasonable criticism or to be silenced altogether, so I'm not surprised to learn that in fact they did deliver the message to the News publishers. Sullivan talks about it in this piece as though he believes he was entitled to write whatever he wanted without consequences. If that's what he thought, then he's just plain stupid. If that's what he wants, then he needs to be a tenured professor somewhere, not a journalist. Do I like it? No. I'd rather have more reporting and columns about the Bills than less, even Sully's columns. Am I surprised it happened? No, and no one else should have been surprised, either.

Probably plenty of people here weren't around for the Raiders game. It wasn't just that Rashad scored a late TD and the Raiders missed a field goal on the final play. Rashad scored the go-ahead TD with under 2 minutes left. The Bills' defense held and got the ball left. The Bills just need to run out the clock. The Raiders stripped the ball from the Bills' fullback (James Braxton?) and returned it 65 yards to retake the lead. So the Bills drove AGAIN with Rashad getting his SECOND TD in the last two minutes. My wife fell asleep with ten minutes left. I couldn't sleep for two hours. Cowboys games was probably the best game I've ever seen live, and I was at Super Bowl XXV. The crowd was absolutely electric. The stadium was shaking. The Bills defense was unprepared to win the game on the final plays. They literally GAVE the Cowboys two sideline completions to set up the losing field goal. Still, the game was unbelievable.

Good point. Costs too much to unloads him in an already difficult cap year.

Quite cool. Thanks. I don't trust amateur experts like this, but his analysis is right on. It's particularly interesting that he noticed that both Gaines and White were confused on the play. Also cool that Ryan trusted the play design and believed that Hyde would run himself out of the play. He threw to th spot that Hyde shoukd have vacated. Also cool to watch 52 bite on the play fake then turn and find the guy cutting to the left sideline. Ryan was supposed to throw to that guy.

I thought so, too, but it isn't about that. I have to keep reminding myself. As I wrote in my other post, it's about effort and commitment. I think you know all you need to know when you read the the article about Phillips on BuffaloBills.com. It's linked in another thread. Or read about Trent Murphy. Or look at the article quoting McCoy about Allen and how studious he is. McB have made it totally clear in what they've said, and it's backed up completely when you look at the players they've added to the team. If you aren't driven, maniacally driven to get better every day, they just aren't interested in you.

I always say you're better off to keep talent too long than to let it go too soon. However, McB aren't about talent, at least not first. As you note, they're about effort and commitment first, and if you don't show it and show it quickly, they don't waste time on you. Every single holdover from the last regime should have gotten that message when first Watkins and then Dareus left town. The message - we don't care how talented you are, we care about your effort and your commitment to what we're doing.

I agree. I'm expecting a passing game with well-designed routes and disciplined route running, as well as a QB who knows the routes and isn't afraid to throw it. Benjamin is one of those open-when-he's-covered receivers. The QBs will always have a target.

Total rebuild. McB know exactly what kinds of players they want, and they didn't find many of them on the roster that Doug and Rex built.

That's wrong, but it sounds good. Tomlinson - 1815, 1474, 1110, 730, 914 - looks like slowing down to me Thurman Thomas - slowed down - his yards per attempt and yards per reception stayed more or less the same throughout his career, but the number of touches decline. Emmit Smith - 1397, 1203, 1021, 975, injured, 937. What cliff? Frank Gore - 1128, 1106, 967, 1025, 961 - still going after 13 seasons. Some fall off quickly, some don't.

Absolutely right. The receivers will run the routes; the QBs have to make the plays.

You know, I'm keeping my mouth shut with all my football friends in New Englandn- it's Pats and Giants territory - but I'm excited. I'm a big believer in McD, more than any coach in a long while. I talked myself into Gailey and even Rex, but McD is different. He really seems to know what he is doing. The right players are responding to him in the right ways. Kyle coming back was a sign that McD is doing the right things. The kind of guys they're signing and drafting is another sign. This team is hungry.

Hey Corner. Thanks for the link. Great article. McD wants intense. This guy is intense.

Nick O'Leary. People joke about the Bills receiving, but Clay was 14th in the league in tight end receptions and O'Leary was 36th (which means he's more or less the 4th best second tight end on any team). Tight is covered.

That it is. Bring on the real football, instead of a bunch of 28- year-old self-declared experts who write a blog.

Good points, all. I say it over and over again - it's about coaching, folks. There are about 10 or 15 receivers in the league who can get open on their own. Most who can do it with speed, quickness and moves. Benjamin is one; he does it with size. Like Gronk does. So he's a legit #1, just not a legit deep threat. The rest of the receivers in the league get open by running their routes precisely and taking advantage of mismatches in the defensive scheme. You don't have to be Sammy Watkins to do that. The Bills receiving personnel is okay, and some of the youngsters will also emerge to be okay.

Yes, I know I'm asking someone to prove something that's impossible. Not necessarily you, because you really weren't claiming that Carr would have been one thing or another. You were just saying he took a beating and that could explain a lot. I agree, it could. And I didn't say HOFer, intentionally. Oh, yes, I see that I did. But only in an assumption. Throughout what I wrote I intentional referred to franchise QB as the standard, which I think is less than a HOFer. Whatever, that isn't the point. I really wanted people to get back to the point, which is this notion that Allen shouldn't start because he needs to be protected. I don't get it. At best, people have given one example of a guy who's career MIGHT have been ruined by starting too early. As I've said, I'm not sure it's true in Carr's cased, but whether it's true or not I don't hear any other QB from the past 20 years even being nominated. That are a lot of stars who survived ugly first seasons, and there is one example - Carr - who MIGHT have been a star but for his first season. Based on that evidence, I don't see why Allen should sit if he's the best QB the Bills have.

Well put. Actually, I'm all for analytics. More data is almost always better than less data. But analytics doesn't explain why the Patriots are better than the Bills.

This is the kind of BS that so often passes as wisdom in the sports fan world. Try to follow this: 1. Who is Rich Kowalski? Does he know anything about football? Has he ever been an NFL coach? A college coach? 2. What does he actually say? He says the Eagles coach admitted that he uses analytics. He says the Patriots have an analytics coach. 3. From that, he concludes that the Bills are behind the curve because, why? Because those two teams were in the Super Bowl and the Bills weren't? 4. Did he do any investigation into the 20 teams that didn't make the playoffs in 2017? Do they use analytics? If yes, then maybe it's better not use analytics. That's as logical as saying you should use them because the two Super Bowl teams use them. How do we know the Eagles' use of analytics contributed to their success last year? The point is that if RIch Kowalski visited 32 pro football teams with the team logos masked so he couldn't tell which teams he was visiting, I doubt, I seriously doubt, that he could tell which teams are using analytics well and benefitting, which teams aren't using analytics well. Linking success of a franchise to the amorphous notion of analytics is like suggesting you can tell whether a QB is good based on how many times he throws over the middle. I'm not sure you have it right. My analytics editor has studied the data for over 40,000 uses of the word "poo," and I think my characterization of the article as BS is more accurate than calling it just poo. And nothing is more important than analytics.

Look, I'm not saying David Carr didn't take a beating. You saw it, I didn't. The question isn't whether he took a beating, the question is whether any quarterback who would have been a true franchise QB failed to become a franchise QB because he started in the NFL sooner than was good for him. There is no evidence that David Carr would have been a franchise QB. He is just another QB drafted in the first round who didn't make it. There are a lot of those guys. Now, your theory may be that he was so brutalized in his first season starting that he never recovered. Well, there's no evidence of that. What you're saying is that he was suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, that somehow his psyche was so damaged that after his first year he couldn't reach his potential. If that's true, why was he in the NFL for another TEN years. Wouldn't the coaches have given up on him sometime before then? Leinart didn't last 10 years. Vince Young didn't last 10 years. Losman didn't. Edwards didn't. The NFL doesn't keep guys around because the NFL feels sorry for them. In his rookie season, David Carr led the league in sacks. He also led the league in sacks in his third year and again in his fourth year. If he had been beaten silly in his first season, wouldn't you think by his third season he would have figured out how to throw the ball away? Or his fourth season? Or are you going to say that he was so emotionally damaged by then that he just couldn't do it? NO BILLS QB WOULD SURVIVE THIS BOARD LEADING THE LEAGUE IN SACKS THREE OUT OF FOUR SEASONS. Fine, if that's what you want to believe, but from where I sit it looks to me like David Carr is just like EJ Manuel - he couldn't figure out how to play QB in the NFL. There are dozens and dozens of guys like that. But let's assume you're correct. David Carr would have been a Hall of Fame QB but for the fact that he started as a rookie. Give us another example, a guy we all could agree was likely to be a franchise QB and had his career irrevocably derailed because he started too early. If Carr is the best example, then I see no reason to be worried that Allen will be ruined by starting as a rookie.

Thanks. I responded directly, too. I mean, maybe David Carr is the exception, but I doubt it. The guy I know is Trent Edwards. Edwards really looked like he knew what he was doing in the weeks before his concussion. After that, he was never the same. In one sense, the concussion ruined his career. But not really - Edwards simply didn't have what it takes. I've seen Jim Kelly and Matt Stafford throw game-winning touchdowns minutes after having been unconscious on the field. Their concussions didn't ruin their careers. Why not? Because those are real men, tougher than anything I can imagine. Those are guys you want beside on the battlefield when live bullets are flying. Ask Kyle Williams this question: You're in a fox hole on Guadalcanal Island, pinned down by 20,000 Japanese soldiers. Who do you want next to you? Trent Edwards or Jim Kelly? David Carr is just another first-round QB who failed, not some guy the NFL failed. The NFL tests toughness, every day, and David Carr wasn't tough enough. Does anyone believe this: Aaron Maybin would have been a star, if only he hadn't been thrust into the NFL so quickly. He's a great athlete, right, so he it must be that the NFL screwed up somehow. No, nobody believes that. Aaron Maybin wasn't tough enough. He fell about 300,000 miles short in the toughness category. The NFL is totally unforgiving. Either you measure up, or you don't. The only guys who can complain are the guys who never got a real shot to show what they can do. There aren't many of those. David Carr is certainly NOT one of those. David Carr started for five seasons and NEVER had a passer rating better than Tyrod Taylor's WORST season in BUFFALO. Don't tell me David Carr was better than Tyrod Taylor., and certainly don't tell me he would have been a franchise QB if only he hadn't had a lousy offensive line as a rookie.

Ask any NFL player this: If a guy plays in the NFL for EVEVEN seasons and never succeeds as a starter, what does it say about the guy? Every NFL player will tell you that he wasn't good enough to be a starter. What are you trying to tell us? That in FOUR seasons as a starter after taking a beating as a rookie, Carr couldn't figure out how to be an effective starter because he was still afraid of the pass rush? That may be true; maybe he never could get comfortable in the pocket. What would Rickie Incognito say about that? What would Tom Brady say about that? What would Aaron Williams say about that? What would Steve Young say about that? What would ANY NFL player say about that? Every NFL player would say "suck it up." If you don't have the guts to overcome the adversity that the NFL gives every player, every day, you aren't good enough to play in the league.