Shaw66

I didn't know you had been a mod. I can only imagine. Easy to see why you quit. I survived in the job only because I took a low-key approach. I thought of myself as a near-sighted referee who forget to bring my glasses to the game. You had to be way out of bounds before I could tell it was time to blow the whistle. Like I said, it was like the WWE.

That's interesting. I had a good time there and a lot of good discussions with people, high quality discussions. But it was chaotic. There were plenty of good threads ruined by nonstop name-calling and nastiness. I suppose if you had the capacity to ignore it, it wasn't bad. Plus, I guess I didn't like it in part because I was mod, and trying to get people to be halfway civil was an impossible task. Sometimes, I thought I was refereeing WWE matches. I guess I can see that some people liked watching that stuff.

I think you have this wrong. I was a mod on BBMB, and the Bills wouldn't give us authority to deal with the bad actors. As a result, there were days when it was pretty chaotic, and there was a lot of misbehavior. People said a lot of nasty stuff to each other. Moderating isn't easy, and the moderation here isn't perfect, but the mods here have authority and exercise it in ways that keep the place civil and keep the conversations going and on point. You can tell the moderation here is good because (1) there's active discussion and (2) people aren't leaving.

Actually, I think there was a lot of thought put into. The Bills are all about two things: winning on the football side, and making money on the business side. The Bills were making more money on social media, and they figured out that the message board wasn't doing anything for them. It wasn't driving business for them, at all. It wasn't selling advertising. Nothing. And from time to time, some poster was unhappy and complained to the Bills about what he thought was mistreatment. On top of that, they saw that if they imposed stricter rules (something the mods wanted), they would irritate more people. So, they saw no upside to maintaining the board. It also didn't make sense to announce the shutdown in advance. That would just engender a lot of complaining. So, they decided the best thing to do was simply to pull the plug without notice. One morning, it just wasn't there.

Frankly, it really was like being refugees. The culture here was different, we were greeted warmly by some and with a little hostility by a few, as if we were refugees from the Bulgarian mafia or something. But we learned the ways of our new homeland, and all is good now. It's a great place for Bills news and discussion. And the mods do a nice job keeping things in order.

Well, I guess you got your answer. A lot of BBMB refugees ended up here. I spent twelve days in an open inflatable raft to cross the ocean and get here. I was warmly greeted when I came ashore, by a lot of fat, hairy, old guys holding beer cans.

I don't know the league well enough to know that he's top 3, but it wouldn't surprise me. I thought he was very good in 2021, and he was better in 2022. But that doesn't matter. The question is where does he help the team most? The defense is driven by safety play, and the pass defense fell off this season. Yes, White was out, but it appeared to me that the problem much more was the safeties. Hamlin wasn't nearly as good as Poyer or Hyde, and J. Johnson was worse. Someone needs to anchor that position for the next several seasons, and T. Johnson is exactly the right talent. Tough, smart, solid tackler, good pass coverage guy. The Bills don't have a lot of capital to spend on free agents this season. If they move T. Johnson to safety, promote Benford to nickel (and assuming Hyde returns), they have the backfield covered without spending an additional nickel. That allows more room to sign free agents at other positions without weakening the defense.

I agree. Smart. Excellent tackler. Solid cover guy. Hr is a good chess piecce, perfect as a safety.

Hyde and Taron Johnson at safety. Bedford to slit corner.

Just gotta say that what is always said about the playoffs is that you have to learn how to play in the playoffs. Jaguars were the poster child. Playoff winning teams don't drop a half dozen passes. They don't turn it over twice in the fourth quarter. They take advantage of opportunities the opponent gives them. Jags were none of that. Given that the Jags were so mediocre, it also means the Chiefs are beatable. Chiefs had a lot of trouble scoring.

I agree. As I thought about, I've had several issues with their system. Only game in town is right.

Thanks. My paranoia is showing. I'm sure it's not easy to put together a system for selling 60,000 tickets under these circumstances.

Is there no public presale today because the Chiefs screwed up didn't get their season ticket holders information about how to buy tickets? If so, giving them extra time is unfair, both to Bills fans who wanted access to those tickets and to the general public. It's not their fault the Chiefs can't follow the instructions.

That's interesting. My first take was to think you're nuts, but your explanation makes a lot of sense. Not only in the run game, but in the passing game, as well, because he will bring a different take to the development of the offensive line. The problem is that the job for the Bills is that the OC also has to be creative in the passing game, and I'm not so sure Roman can fill that part of the job.

I think it means they know Lamar already has decided to leave, and without Lamar, Roman's offense will fail completely. I think it means they know they have to move in another direction.

I was there and rarely watched the clock. But one time the Dolphins were in the huddle and the play clock NEVER started.

I did the same, but they might be club seats.

126C row 26

Has anyone else noticed how, where the Bills sit right now, is eerily like their Super Bowl run? Who was the big team of the era, a Super Bowl power house, that never faced the Bills in the Super Bowl? San Francisco. What was odd about the Bills opponent in the four Super Bowls. Three teams from the NFC East. Who's left on the NFC side of the bracket today? San Francisco and three teams from the NFC East.

I agree. And let me add one tangential thought I had sitting in the stadium Sunday: Josh's deep ball is simply magnificent. The easy motion, the release, the arc, the flight of the ball. I've never seen anyone throw the ball like that.

That throw, and several other misfires this season, are sloppy mechanics or concentration. He'll diagnose and work on it in off-season. That's a regular off-season activity for quarterbacks.

Oh, that's the throw. Befoee the injury. He will fix it in the off season.

I heard only highlights, too, from the Pats game, and I thought it was night and day. Love Murph, but his play by play is bad. His signature call - "TOUCHDOWN!! TOUCHDOWN!!! TOUCHDOWN BUFFALO!!!" - really is just filler while he tries to figure out out who scored and why. He doesn't so much call the play as it happens as he tells us what happened after it's over. Brown calls it as it's happening, which is what a radio play-by-play guy is supposed to do.

This is an excellent point. On the bomb to Diggs, it was Cover 0 with Diggs left and Davis right. I sat in amazement as no one for the Dolphins rotated back. Josh could take his pick. The Bills' philosophy is that they are going to attack every opportunity to go deep. If they see, they'll take the shot. The INT on the throw to Brown, Shakir's drop, all of those deep throws were single coverage opportunities, and when Allen identified them, he took them. I'm sure he was doing it with Dorsey's blessing. Why did the Dolphins do that? Well, they knew they were outmatched, so they had to take some chances. Maybe as they were designing game plan on Monday and Tuesday they decided that cover zero was a good bet because maybe, just maybe, the weather would make the deep ball tough to complete. Maybe there'd be wind. Maybe snow. Maybe cold. So, they stacked the defense to stop the run and the short passing game and took their chances downfield. Thirty degrees, bright sunshine, little wind - the Dolphins were done in by the Buffalo weather.

I suspect somewhere in this thread someone has talked about this, but I thought the quality of the visual work in the Cowboys Bucs game was outstanding. Buck and Aikman were way over the top, hyping the Tom Brady story any time they weren't hyping the Jerry Jones-Cowboys story, but the images were spectacular, showing off the athleticism and power of the players.