SoTier

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.

Has he? He spent a fortune in draft picks and talent to get Allen, and if the Bills go 6-10, without serious injuries to key players then it's probably because Allen hasn't grown into a franchise QB as hoped for -- and isn't likely to develop into more than a modest mid/low level starting QB. The Bills have had several of those over the last 2 decades. He's also spent more draft capital trading up in both his drafts, so unless those picks prove out this season, then he didn't get much for the extra investment. Except for Morse, none of his FA or trade acquisitions have been impressive. Some, like Benjamin, have been terrible. He over paid for mediocre talent like Lotulelei, and we're still waiting to see if Murphy can regain his pre-injury form.

A good running game is absolutely a young QB's best friend. There's no way that Mahomes or Wentz or Goff would have been so successful so quickly without having had great running games to give them reliable options. Going back a few years, both Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson had tremendous success as rookies by relying on strong running games.

Like Coloradobills fan, I'm skeptical because if a sudden rise in sea-level destroyed these supposed civilizations, there would still be evidence of those civilizations under water. AFAIK, that evidence is missing although evidence of known civilizations or parts of known civilizations that were destroyed by earthquakes that resulted in the coastal areas where they were located sinking into the sea. More recent climate change isn't a new phenomenon in Africa, either. Within historical times, the Sahara Desert was much narrower in width and wetter, allowing for trade routes across it from the Mediterranean coast to cities in present day Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan etc. where today's desert areas had much more savannah-like climates. Keep in mind that just because some civilizations aren't very well known to the general public doesn't mean that they aren't known to archeologists.

Big backs frequently drag smaller tacklers, DBs and undersized LBs for 5 or more yards until they're gang tackled. We saw this ad nauseum when Jauron filled the defense with smaller, fast guys in an era where numerous RBs outweighed the smurf defenders on the Bills roster. This was also a reason why there were so many injuries to Bills players. I''m not saying that McDermott is going down that route, but the team has to be prepared to deal with power running backs. A better defensive line would help immensely. This is the way it always is. The NFL has often been called a copycat league. One team does X on offense and has success, and numerous other teams try to emulate that. Defenses get surprised at first but then 1 or more DCs figure out how to stop it, and the offenses find something else to try. It's an endless game of chess moves.

Except that the Bills haven't proven they can score "lots of points" against anybody under McDermott. They mostly have lots of points scored against them. It's why their points scored differentials have been massively negative in both of McDermott's first two seasons. Last season they not only couldn't score "lots of points", they gave up "lots of points", too. Hopefully experience helps Edmunds and the other young LBs improve. Unfortunately, the laws of physics are pretty immutable: when a bigger body smashes into a smaller body, it's the smaller body that gets knocked off its trajectory while the bigger body's course is frequently unaffected by a smaller body smashing into it.

Optimism without results to justify it is just fantasizing. The Bills need a lot of pieces to come together to have a successful season in 2019. They need to have a lot of young players become outstanding/elite players in the next year or so in order to become a regular playoff contender. They need their offensive coaching staff to prove they're significantly better than their predecessors. They need their HC and DC to prove their can match wits with Belichick and his staff. The Bills could put it all together. They could also fail to achieve some or all of these pieces and be just as mediocre as they been for the last twenty years. There are no guarantees.

Famous. Last. Words. A couple of other posters mentioned the Pats going run heavy last season -- and they added another RB in the off season. The Jets have added Le'Von Bell. The Ravens are apparently building a run-first offense and the Lions seem to be trying to give Matthew Stafford a running game for the first time in his career. The Seahawks have always been a run-heavy offensive team in the Pete Carroll era. Power running backs haven't become obsolete, either. Most playoff teams have one -- Todd Gurley, Mark Ingram, Ezekiel Elliott, etc.

What other true franchise QB -- somebody whom everybody agrees is an elite or first tier QB -- who didn't show much improvement as a second year starter but "got it" as a third year starter and developed into a first rate QB in the last quarter century? You might make an argument for Cam Newton but his passing is mediocre, and he's not considered "elite or first tier". He's led the Panthers to only 3 winning seasons in 8 years ... and Carolina is a very feast-or-familne team during the Rivera/Newton era: if the stars all align correctly, they have a blockbuster season but otherwise they hang out with the league's bottom feeders. That's hardly impressive.

^^^ The reality is that a QB who doesn't show significant improvement in his second year as a starter isn't likely to get significantly better later in his career. How a young QB looks at the end of his second season starter pretty much exposes his ceiling. Drew Brees is the only great QB since 2000 who had an unimpressive second year as a starter who later blossomed into more than a "decent" QB of the caliber of Tannehill or Cutler. Most who don't make significant improvement in the areas where they're weakest as sophomore starters may commonly decline. If Patrick Mahomes doesn't improve greatly in his second season as a starter, he's still going to be a good/great NFL QB because he played so spectacularly as a first year starter. Allen didn't play well for an NFL QB as a rookie. He made plays with his legs, not so much with his arm, and that needs to change if he's going to become a true franchise QB. How much he improves will be a good indicator of what kind of QB he'll become but most QBs only improve incrementally after their second season as starter. As for McDermott, if he can't produce a decent team -- minimum 8 wins without significant injuries, a positive scoring differential, half as many blowouts (losses by more than 20 or more points), an offense and defense at least in the top half of the league (16 or better) -- in his third season as HC without a team that fits his model, then he's not likely to magically turn things around in his fourth or even his fifth year.

That's not a great accomplishment unfortunately.