SoTier

^^^ The Bills have lost 8 times by 20 or more points in 32 games under McDermott. That's 1 out of every 4 games or 25% of games over 2 years. 2017: Saints, 47-10 Chargers, 54-24 Pats, 23-3 Pats, 37-16 2018: Ravens, 47-3 Packers, 22-0 Colts, 37-5 Bears, 41-9 The Bills have also been uncompetitive in at least 3 games under McDermott. In 2017 the Bills lost to the Jets by 13 points, losing 34-21, but they scored 2 TDs in the last 4 minutes. In 2018, the Bills lost to the Chargers 31-20 when the Chargers coasted in the 2nd half after building a 28-6 lead at half time early in the season and in the last game of the season, the Bills lost to the Pats 24-12 but they scored their only TD in the last minute of the game. Try to spin it however you want, but the Bills have not been truly competitive in 11 of their 32 games under McDermott. That's almost 1 in 3 games. I don't think that many of the other teams that made the playoffs in the last 3 years have played so many uncompetitive games. It's not a good sign if it continues.

I like Allen better, too, but only because I have never liked Darnold. Darnold reminds me of other over-hyped USC QBs like Sanchez and Leinart. He does have better passing skills at present than Allen, so it's possible that he might put up better stats as a sophomore. Allen has a longer way to go mechanically but I think if he can learn to make better decisions, he can have a better long term NFL career. This. I have a set of criteria that I would consider indicate significant progress this season: (without significant injuries, especially to Allen) 8 wins with fewer losses by 2+ TDs (they had 5 in 2018) ; Allen showing significant improvement as a passer, especially in his decision making; the defense improving both their run and Red Zone defense. Gunner is pretty dead on about the Patriots' problems with the Fins. For whatever reason, it seems that the Patriots are most likely to have a collective brain fart and lose to the Carp, especially in Miami, than to any other team. Fifteen years ago, the Pats came storming into Miami after Wannstadt was fired and lost 29-28 on a last minute TD from AJ Feeley to Derrius Thomas. The mistake wasn't keeping Anderson, it was signing him at all -- and waiting almost a month to do it. They should have signed Barkley immediately after the season opener. They likely would have won the Houston game with Barkley but they lost all chance when Peterman threw his patented pick six.

If you want to blindly buy what Pegula, Beane, and McDermott are selling, knock yourself out excusing their moves. As I've posted several times on this board already, I'll be happy to eat crow if the Bills are successful, but I'll remain skeptical until they actually do win. ROTFLMAO. None of the 2018 first round rookie QBs has proven he's likely to be a successful NFL QB except for maybe Mayfield. Darnold, Allen, Rosen and Jackson all have to improve their games significantly just to get to be "competent NFL QBs", and there's no guarantees that any of the five will be still be NFL starting QBs in five years.

Cry me a river for the Bills cap situation in 2018. If the Bills organization -- from Pegula to Beane to McDermott -- was truly dedicated to building a winning team, they wouldn't have traded cap space for short term salary savings at the expense of wins, which is what they did in 2018. Fifty million dollars in dead cap money means millions of dollars that the Bills didn't pay in actual salaries in 2018 -- and the Bills had one of the lowest actual team salary total in the league in 2018 because they traded away/released most of their higher paid players and filled their roster with too many non-NFL caliber players, many of them on rookie contracts so they were being paid peanuts. The entire mess at QB last season was the result of the Bills trying to pinch pennies. Tyrod Taylor isn't a starting caliber QB but he's more than adequate as a backup. AJ McCarron didn't have Taylor's experience but he had shown himself decently in his limited regular season opportunities, which is much more than could ever been said for Nate Peterman. Taylor's salary for 2018 was probably about $10 million, McCarron's about $3 million, and Peterman's about $700k. The Bills took cap hits for trading away both Taylor and McCarron but saved millions in actual dollars by keeping Peterman. This team is being built to play Jauron ball or Fox ball or Fisher ball -- play not to lose football -- featuring boring offenses and non-clutch defenses. When the planets align perfectly, they have a winning season or even a playoff game but mostly they have excuses, even when they have good young QBs like Fox and Fisher had in Chicago and the Rams. Yeah, somebody obviously forgot to tell that to Howie Roseman and Les Snead. I don't expect a Super Bowl from Pegula, Beane, and McDermott at all. I'm not sure how Pegula made his billions, but it doesn't seem likely that it was because he could identify people with "the right stuff". In his 7 full years as Sabres owner, his teams have been sucked. In his 5 full years as Bills owner, his teams have sucked except for one lucky season where the Bills squeaked into the playoffs before returning to their bottom-feeder ways. Promoting Russ Brandon to head up both the Sabres and Bills sure paid off big in 2018. Beane is a refugee from the Dave Gettleman regime in Carolina. Gettleman does not seem to be a shining star among NFL GMs. He inherited a decent Carolina team that he did get to the Super Bowl, but Carolina remains a feast or famine type team. McDermott is a defensive minded HC who doesn't know/care much about the offensive side of the ball, and that style is passe in today's NFL because it's not a formula for winning consistently in today's NFL. Too many teams have high powered offenses that can score on almost any defense, and good enough defenses to easily stop mediocre offenses that aren't good in the Red Zone.

Who's fault is that???? The Bills traded away Taylor and then AJ McCarron in order to start Nate Peterman. Then they wasted a month of the regular season waiting for Anderson to finish up his golf tournament after it became clear to just about everybody but McDermott -- as early as the first half of the season opener -- that Peterman wasn't an NFL QB.

McDermott's teams haven't even been competitive with the Patriots. In 2017, they were blown out 23-3 and 37-16. In 2018 they lost the first game 25-6, and the second game, a deceiving 24-6, but NE was up 24-6 before the Bills scored a late TD with the game already decided. That's a point differential of -72 with 3 of the losses by 19, 20, and 21 points. What about this record suggests this team is likely to develop into a "Patriot killer" until Brady and Belichick ride off into the sunset?

Right-o. 0-4 against Brady and Belichick just screams 'a Patriot killer'.

I've been a Bills fan since 1963 when my dad took me to a Bills game in the Old Rockpile. I was a season ticket holder for a while --- until the Bills gave Dick Jauron an extension for 2009. Watching the team I love suck for the last twenty years while so many other teams have won big time, slid down down, and re-emerged as winners again -- sometimes doing this process more than once -- over the last twenty years has made me very skeptical of the motivation of the Bills owners and the competence of the "football people" they hire.

Oh, don't be such a hater!!! Of course the Bills are going to win 10 games ... the true Billievers on TSW guarantee it because McDermott and Beane walk on water .... and Brady and NE have to start demonstrating their incompetence some season.

As someone who loves both history and science (my careers included teaching and IT), I am in absolute awe at the accomplishment of Apollo 11. In 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first motorized air flight. In 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The technological innovations that went into going from a bi-plane to a lunar lander probably exceeded all the technological innovations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Much of the technology we take for granted today has its roots the Apollo program.

As per usual, the Bills true believers think these ratings are "trash" because they don't have the Bills ranked at the top of the heap even though the assessment snippet posted by berg1029 was pretty fair. ? There's no guarantee that Allen is going to become a successful NFL QB, although apparently many TSW posters believe differently.

Obviously, you have no concept of justice or fairness. Your view is that if somebody accuses a player of some kind of misconduct, the NFL should punish him whether he's actually committed the infraction he's accused of simply because it suspended other players for other infractions in the past. I bet you wouldn't be good with your employer fining you three or four weeks pay because your neighbor accused you of allowing your dog to poop on his lawn ... even though you don't even have a dog?

For those of you who have ROKU, they have several documentaries on Apollo 11 to stream for free in honor of the 50th anniversary. I got email on it today, so it's probably for today and tomorrow.

What's "confusing" about this? They didn't have enough evidence to prove he was guilty of hurting his son, so they couldn't discipline him any more than the police can charge him with it without evidence. Apparently, the boy's mother was uncooperative with the team/league investigation, too. Perhaps she was uncooperative with the police as well or perhaps the police found good reasons to doubt her side of the story, and they apparently don't have any physical evidence one way or the other. The Bill of Rights is longer than just the First and Second Amendments. This relationship is, as someone up thread pointed out, "toxic", and frequently in those situations, one or both parties will repeatedly goad the other party (or they goad each other) into making threats or they lie or they commit vandalism or worse. I think most people at least know of someone who has been in this nasty situation, and it's easier said than done "to just walk away" especially when children are involved. Don't underestimate what a vindictive spouse, ex-spouse, significant other, etc might do to "get back" at his/her partner/ex for real or imagined "bad acts". I don't know who's right in this matter between Hill and his girlfriend, but if the police can't charge him with a criminal act and the NFL can't sift through the conflicting stories to decide if he violated any NFL policies, then I'm okay with the league's decision.

Yes journalism was soooo much better in the "good old days" when reporters didn't report news that didn't reflect well on powerful politicians (as in it was well known among the Washington press corps that Kennedy was bringing call girls into the White House ... at the height of the Cold War no less) or national news media persistently ignored violence, including lynchings, against blacks in the South or when media empire builders like Hearst stirred up war fever against Spain in the run up to the Spanish American War. The news media has ALWAYS been about sellling newspapers or advertising space, so it has promoted some stories, suppressed others, and even made up some news as publishers deemed necessary to advance their motivations.

It was the equivalent of the Vikings crossing the North Atlantic without the compass and astrolabe, just using the stars and maybe a lodestone.

The Bills' definition of a GM was to do the bidding of the bean counters in the Bills organization dedicated to putting profits before wins. That has blatantly been the way it's been with the Bills at least since Russ Brandon took over the team, but it was always the way Ralph Wilson ran the team, too. With Brandon gone, maybe that changes under Pegula and Beane but I'll believe it when I see it. I really don't give a damn about the Bills' supposed "financial position" because It's not actually about the team's balance sheet but about the team's cap situation. Dead cap money is simply on paper, and the Bills were more than happy to trade big cap $$ for not having to pay big actual $$ since Beane became GM. Scrubs and rookies cost a whole lot less than proven veterans, and the Bills had one of the lowest, if not the lowest, actual player salary totals in the NFL in 2018 -- and they played like it. Beane has filled the 2019 roster with unproven youngsters on rookie contracts, a small handful of pricey vets, and the rest JAGs. It doesn't seem like a formula for building a perennial playoff contender much less a legitimate Super Bowl team unless lightning strikes and all those younger players on rookie contracts suddenly blossom into top notch players.

Absolutely. Moreover, I doubt that Von Braun would have been party to faking it. He was dedicated -- had been dedicated his entire life -- to space exploration. He was also an amoral individual. His v-1 and v-2 rocket programs for the Nazis furthered his research into rocketry, and actually hindered the German war effort because they diverted so many resources from designing/building better and more war planes. He was courted by both the US and the Soviets even before the fall of Germany, and he chose the US because he figured he'd be allowed to do rocket research while the Soviets would have him working on missiles. I have no doubt that he would have defected to the USSR without thinking twice if the US abandoned the manned space program and replaced it with some elaborate sham. He was available to the highest bidder and his price was space exploration.

The "more talent at O-line and WR" should make those units at least NFL-caliber in 2019. That doesn't mean they'll be good or even average, just that they won't be nearly as poor as they were last season because for the most part, the Bills didn't sign top caliber OLers or WRs. Moreover, there's no guarantee that Allen improves enough to make him a competent QB. Trent Edwards was a well spoken, respectful hard working bust. So was Nathan Peterman (which is really hard for a fifth rounder, but the Bills tried to make him into something he couldn't be and he failed, ergo, a bust). Also, don't forget that the Bills opponents also added talent to their rosters, some significantly.

Exactly this. It's the same way with the every conspiracy theory ever, most notably the 9-11 conspiracy theory that the Bush administration actually blew up the towers. Conspiracy theorists ALWAYS ignore the fact that people will talk about stuff that's supposed to be secret. Always. The reasons that they do differ, but somebody always "spills the beans" at some point.

Conspiracy theories aren't my thing. I don't believe 'em. It's not that I think people are always honest but that if more than 1 person knows a secret, it won't stay a secret for long --- and every conspiracy theory requires numerous individuals -- sometimes thousands of them -- keeping secrets forever and hiding all evidence of those secrets. I know I've never seen any movie on any faked landing of any US spacecraft any where, but I've seen reports/trailers/descriptions of such.

That's about a faked landing on Mars. I thought that there was also a movie that claimed the moon landing was faked but I didn't find anything about that, but maybe I too confused it with Capricorn 1. Maybe I was thinking of the FOX documentary on Moon landing conspiracies. For those interested in conspiracy theories about the moon landing see here: Moon Landing Conspiracies. The thing that surprised me -- or maybe it shouldo n't -- are how many come from individuals who could easily appear to be "knowledgeable" because of their educational or employment backgrounds or military service records. I guess it's a necessity for any conspiracy theory to gain hold of the public imagination to have supposed "experts" support it for whatever reasons they choose to do so. The 9/11 conspiracy theories have attracted "respected experts" like flies on excrement over the years. Two excellent movies about the Apollo missions: Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures. I found Hidden Figures to be especially interesting because it focused on how NASA personnel struggled to get the first American, Alan Shepard, into space (but not into orbit) at a time when a "computer" was actually a person -- in the case of NASA, primarily female mathematicians. There's a new documentary out on Apollo 11, too, with that title. It's apparently created using all actual audio and video from the mission.

Saturday, July 20, 2019, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The Weather Channel has been showing lots of info snippets since Tuesday, the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo launch. One of them I found interesting, having worked in IT for 30 years, is that the chips in today's musical/talking greeting cards have more power than the guidance system that took Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon and back! PBS had an American Experience episode on it, and I'm sure that there will be more programs on Saturday.

This is simply untrue since Allen, Edmunds, Oliver, and the other Beane draft picks haven't proven how good they actually are. This roster isn't even as talented as the one that McDermott inherited in 2017 and immediately started dismantling. Most of the supposed veteran talent on this team is mediocre, and the young talent is largely unproven. Only White and perhaps Milano have shown themselves above average NFL players. How come you conveniently chose "the last fifteen years"? Oh, yeah, because in the 2004 draft Tom Donahoe traded Dallas the Bills' 2005 first round pick for the Cowboys' first rounder to take JP Losman. That doesn't fit your story line, of course, because Losman busted, and you don't wish to raise that idea in your defense of this regime. As for FA signings, maybe if McDermott and Beane hadn't chosen to strip away so much talent, they wouldn't have been forced to overpay for mediocrity and could have spent their money on better FAs. If "the proof is in the pudding", what has Beane proven exactly? That he can gamble a lot of draft capital on relatively few prospects with big question marks? If Allen has a HOF type career, then Beane got him cheap. Anything less, and he paid way too much --- including Watkins. The Bills last won a playoff game in 1995, twenty five years ago. Since then the Bills have had 5 winning seasons and 3 playoff appearances. Between 1970 and 1994, twenty five seasons, the Bills had 10 winning seasons, 6 of them between 1988 and 1993 under Polian and Levy.

Yeah, they've been wrong about the Bills sooooo often ... especially when predicting the team making the playoffs.