SoTier

That's pretty much the western Southern Tier. Between being cheek-to-jowl with Pennsylvania and Ohio, with West Virginia a few hours south, as well as having a couple of Seneca Nation of Indians reservations in Cat County, fireworks of the aerial and boom kinds are easy to obtain, and fireworks' illegality doesn't seem to enter into the minds of anybody, not even law enforcement. Maybe the local gendarmes figure better the rednecks shoot off ordinary fireworks -- as long as they don't burn anything down -- than they "improvise". I usually go with a friend to her brother's shindig in his house that overlooks Chautauqua Lake. He sinks probably $3-4 grand into his show, and his richer neighbor spends at least 2 or 3 times that. Between them, they probably put on a better show than most of the little burgs around here. Most of the folks at this party, especially the ones doing the fireworks, are at least in their thirties so there's a whole lot less alcohol involved than there were at some of my family events a few decades ago.

Was the dog sitting in his lap and hanging out the window? I see this all the time around here, and it po's me no end. It's dangerous for the driver and dangerous for the dog. I learned my lesson about having an unrestrained dog in a vehicle in an accident 30 years ago (also learned first hand about the perils of falling asleep while driving) when I nodded off on the Thruway outside Utica, woke up as I was veering off the shoulder, cranked that steering wheel hard left and rolled my ten month old Nissan pickup. Because I was wearing my seatbelt, I ended up hanging upside down for several minutes until somebody helped me down, but my dog, sleeping in the extra cab space, dashed out the broken window, and sprinted along the side of Thruway. Lucky for me and my pup, he ran along near the fence and some Thruway staff collected him and took him to a local kennel. Ever since, my dogs ride secured with dog seatbelts, even around town. My current dog, a 14 week old Aussie cattle dog mix, rides in a crate right now, but he'll graduate to a seat belt in a while. I believe 1 or 2 states now require dogs and other pets to be secured in vehicles, and I think there's been talk of NY doing the same. Great idea for both drivers and their pets.

I think that this is the crux of the problem. The NFL has to justify its disciplinary actions, both according to US law, its own rules, and probably the CBA. Individual player contracts may also make it easier to dismiss one player and not another, depending up the wording.

That's essentially my point. You make it costly for those who break the rules, you make others aware of the consequences, and you offer alternatives (like designated drivers, free taxi rides, etc.) -- and you make the penalties fit the seriousness of the offense. Mandating that all drivers re-test every so many years is not going to do anything about drunk driving. It's not going to lower the number of accidents involving texting while driving or speeding or other bad behavior. People who behave badly know their behavior is bad but they don't care. All it does is unnecessarily punish people with the threat of losing their driving privileges when they've done nothing wrong.

Hunt got in trouble 3 times for his violent behavior just in 2018. All three incidents were documented on film. My guess is that KC warned him more than once, and finally just showed him the door.

No, just pointing out that he's not infallible.

This is why I don't think mandatory re-testing is a realistic solution. It's a simplistic reaction to a complex problem that advocates can say, "see, we doing something", but it just lumps the innocent in with the guilty. Most people are not bad drivers. We don't notice them when they do the right things simply because there are so many vehicles on most roads that bad ones are easy to spot Sometimes they do stupid stuff that they know they shouldn't do. Sometimes they don't actually know the absolute letter of the law in regard to a certain situation. Sometimes they're in situations where in an instant, they make a wrong decision. Education for the general driving population and targeted punishment for rule breakers is a much more productive strategy, although it's a harder solution to implement. The dramatic decline in traffic fatalities from accidents involving alcohol demonstrates that it can be done. In the 1970s, 60% of traffic deaths were caused from alcohol related accidents. Today, only 25% of traffic fatalities stem from alcohol/drug impairment. That was accomplished by anti-drunk driving campaigns, significantly raising the penalties for drunk/impaired convictions (license suspension or revocation and even jail time), lowering the thresholds from alcohol impairment levels, and raising the drinking age in almost all states as well as a change in attitude on the part of police and the courts about the seriousness of DUI. Mandating a safe driver/defensive driving course prior to license renewal seems to me to be a sounder approach for dealing with general driver attitudes than simply requiring re-testing. It provides a vehicle (pardon the pun) for reminding/refreshing the average drivers' knowledge of the best safety practices/rules of the road without threatening those who aren't good test takers with loss of their licenses.

"Illegals" are already driving in NY and in every other state -- without licenses -- so how is being able to acquire a valid drivers license -- which means learning the basic rules of the road, having basic safety training, and proving they can safely operate a motor vehicle -- going to make them worse drivers?

What makes you think that mandatory retesting is going to do anything about these problems? In the first instance, that's one question on a written test. People study for tests, and just because people know the rules doesn't mean that they follow them. People practice for road tests, too, and are on their best behavior. Most of the problems you described have to do with attitude not with knowledge or skill.

This is an interesting development. I think that a lot of predictions about the Chiefs in 2019 were assuming that Hill would miss half or all of the season.

Cook was the 5th player taken in the 1969 draft, and he started 11 games as a rookie -- for an expansion team in its second season. He had a decent rookie season in a league that didn't have the size nor the talent pool of the NFL, but like Robert Griffin, was his career truly derailed by his injury or was he one of those numerous first round QBs who fail to live up to where they were drafted? Nobody knows. Your quote from Mike Brown was a comment from the son of the man who drafted Cook, Paul Brown. Bill Walsh thought Trent Edwards was a great prospect.

This is just nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with any "requirement" for "a good knowledge base" except for participants in a pre-1970 pro football trivia contest. Brown is a commentator on the NFL today, specifically the Bills. Why should anybody be expected to remember a QB who only started 11 games in the last year of the AFL in 1969 (40+ years ago) unless they had some kind of connection to him, such as being a long time Bengals or U of Cincinatti fan?

I did. I no longer am a season ticket holder.

If it's "fluff", how can it be "very, very depressing" -- unless you secretly fear I'm right?

Yes, all hail the supreme knowledge from a rookie HC and a rookie GM who was in charge of administrative personnel and logistics, not player personnel, from his years as an assistant GM in Carolina. I've already said it many times, if the Bills succeed I'll be glad to eat crow, but I don't think McDermott is the guy to do it. I'm not sure that Beane is either. I never said that Watkins wasn't a disappointment. They didn't have to find a replacement for Watkins after they traded him -- if somebody on the Bills had been smart enough to re-sign Robert Woods -- and don't give me the line that he wasn't interested in re-signing. For enough money, he would have re-signed. When and where have I ever complained about the Bills paying too much money to a player??? I consider Nathan Peterman a waste of a draft pick and a waste of a roster spot. Kelvin Benjamin was a waste of the third round pick and a roster spot. I've called both Vlad Ducasse and Russell Bodine bottom feeder OLers but I never begrudged them the money they're paid. I disliked the Dareus trade because I think that McDermott wanted him gone for personality differences, and Beane accomplished that without regard to his talent or the cap implications or the fact that the Bills had no one to replace him. A GM's job is to take all those things into account and do what's best for the team, and I think Beane traded Dareus because it was better for McDermott's ego rather than it being better for the team. Oh, and before all the McDermott defenders point to all their examples of how they couldn't work with players or people, etc, I'll say "suck it up". Before I changed careers, I spent 9 years teaching in Buffalo schools. Teachers don't get to pick and choose their students. They suck it up and deal with the kids they have in their classes or they do something else. One has to wonder just how you developed your expertise in identifying losers. Do you see one in the mirror every morning? BTW, Jason Peters, Marshawn Lynch, and Stephon Gilmore all say "hi" -- all "losers" with "All Pro" on their resumes and Super Bowl rings on the fingers. Snoring between the pipes. A bad signing, no, but it's a gamble because unlike many other kinds of injuries -- like Cordy Glenn's foot issues that some posters whined about -- concussions can't be "fixed". They tend to make players who have one likely to have more -- and more serious ones that take longer to heal. Morse has had 2 as a pro IIRC. He may have others in HS or in college. Ummm .... McDermott and Beane trashed the OFFENSE, dude, which was respectable if not great under Ryan. It was the DEFENSE that Ryan put on the field that sucked ... and McDermott and Beane kept more of those guys than he did on the offense. Dareus is better than Loutelei and Taylor is infinitely better than Peterman.

Well said! Unfortunately, you will be crucified here for daring to say that maybe the emperor in his new suit looks very much like a guy in a birthday suit. In the era of the salary cap, reasonable rookie salaries, and expensive veteran players, the time frame for building a team has been shortened considerably, and that means that teams have to be aces on player evaluations so that they don't let Stephon Gilmore or Robert Woods walk in FA without having youngsters already on the roster who can step in or continually waste draft picks trading up for Day 2 and Day 3 prospects. They cannot build an OL via FA nor can they afford to trade away really talented players for used athletic equipment because they're difficult to deal with. Almost all the good teams -- teams that have regularly gone to the playoffs and won there, including several of the recent Super Bowl participants and winners -- in the last two decades that had a several poor seasons and changed coaches/gms have made turnarounds within two or three seasons of bringing in the new leadership because they opted to build on their existing talent rather than start from scratch. Off hand, I can't think of any team in the last decade or two that completed a successful rebuild that took 4 or 5 years just to see positive results.

That's the Bills' specialty, junior. Reid and McVay have been a whole closer to winning championships than any of the Bills teams since the last time the Bills got routed in a Super Bowl, more than 25 years ago. The correct word is "peculiar" not "particular". Actually, it's neither peculiar nor particular, though, because you have absolutely no proof that there's any correlation between those being critical of the current Bills regime and those "making excuses" for Sammy Watkins. My objection to the Watkins trade -- and I think it's the same objection that at least a couple of other posters have voiced here -- is that it left the Bills without any viable downfield receiving threat for almost two seasons. It's still questionable if they'll have one in 2019. Excuses, excuses, excuses. You do realize that you're describing every Bills fan ever, right? The Bills have not only never won a Super Bowl, they've only had 23 winning seasons in their entire 59 years of existence (38.9%) -- and 5 of those winning seasons occurred during their ten years in the old AFL. Since 1970 -- 49 years -- the Bills have only won more games than they lost in 36.7% of their seasons.

Nothing I've seen from Pegula so far suggests that Pegula knows what he's doing. I began to suspect he wasn't the owner to bring winning football back to Buffalo when he sent most of Ralph's minions packing but not only failed to remove Russ Brandon but promoted him to head up both the Bills and Sabres organizations. How does the CEO/President/GM of an organization that had a winning percentage of less than .400 over the length of his nearly decade tenure merit being retained by new ownership -- and then given a promotion?

With Tyreek Hill's availability for 2019 in question at this time, I'm sure the Chiefs are more than happy to have Watkins available. He's not Hill (nobody is) but he ain't Kelvin Benjamin either.

This is simply untrue. The Bills were last in Red Zone defense. They were 18th in scoring defense. They were 16th in rushing defense. They were 26th in sacks. Their 2nd ranking for total yards was at least partly a result of the short fields they gave opponents. Their 1st ranking in passing yards was also slanted because opponents had short fields and didn't have to throw as much because they had big leads. The Bills defense was decent, probably somewhat above average, but it's got to get a lot better in the Red Zone and against the run to be good enough for the team to contend because they don't have enough talent on offense to win many shoot outs, especially with the top teams.

Bills 2018 season says differently. The Bills lost 47-3 to the Ravens, 22-0 to the Packers, 37-5 to the Colts, 25-6 to the Pats, and 41-9 to the Bears. That's a -149 point differential in 5 losses (-28.9/ game). The Chargers were up 28-6 at the half and coasted the rest of the game to win by "only" 11 points. The Bills were down 24-6 to the Pats in the second game when Allen threw a TD to Jones with about a minute remaining to cut the losing margin to "only" 12 points. The Bills only had 3 "close" losses in 2018: 20-13 to the Texans with Watson playing with a partially collapsed lung, and to fellow bottom feeders the Dolphins (21-17) and Jets (27-23).

I'll gladly eat my crow if that happens because I'd love nothing better than the Bills to reprise their "Glory Years". Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen, even if Allen becomes a true franchise QB, with McDermott as HC. I can see Allen becoming a QB somewhat like Matthew Stafford --- very talented but "never winning anything" simply because the coaching he gets and the team around him are never quite good enough to win a lot of games despite his individual heroics. I think that McDermott is entirely too conservative in his mind set to have sustained success as a HC in today's NFL. Defense may win championships but a team can't sniff a championship without having an offense that can run with the big dogs at least most of the time. Beane, at least so far, seems to favor the big risk, big reward scenario, taking chances on signing a FA like Morse with a history of concussions or going all in on a first round QB from a small school with tons of physical talent but in serious need of lots of molding to become a good NFL QB. If his gambles work out, he's golden, but unfortunately, individual gamblers seldom come out ahead in the long run, whether they're playing Texas Hold 'Em or betting the ponies.

You can choose to give McDermott and Beane a pass because they chose to gut a team -- couldn't find any salvageable talent on the offense -- that had gone 24-24 over the previous 3 seasons, but I'm not. It wasn't necessary as the spectacular successs of several new HCs who inherited under-achieving teams with worse records than the Bills has shown. It's just one more poor decision on the part of McDermott and/or Beane.

I didn't say first time HCs. That's your stipulation, not mine. They were new to the teams they came to and won with. Actually, Bledsoe was a pretty good QB. He was an Pro Bowler 4 times IIRC. He led NE to their lone Super Bowl appearance before the Belichick era as well as several other playoff seasons. He still holds Bills passing records from his short stint here, and he was easily the best QB to wear a Bills uni since Kelly retired. He threw for more than 44,000 yards. I think that McDermott needs to show better than he has so far if he would merit continuing as Bills HC. Regardless of his win-loss record, his team needs to at least be within spitting distance of having a positive point differential and his teams can't keep getting blown out every fourth game. That means that his team has to get better on offense in general and the defense has to significantly improve in the red zone. -105 point differential. 4 blow out losses that would have been 5 if not for the Chargers mailing it in in the second half of the second game. Failing to score as many as 10 points in 5 games. Giving up 30 or more points in a quarter of their games. That sounds like a disaster to me. The only reason to watch the Bills last season was to watch Allen's heroics but call it whatever you want. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I state my opinion, frequently in response to other fans opinions that I don't agree with. Obviously, some people here don't like to hear/see the Bills criticized in any way, shape or form -- see the knee jerk trashing of any media maven who expresses an opinion other than that the Bills are playoff bound this season -- unless they're the ones doing the criticizing. I'm sorry that my skepticism of this latest Bills regime -- owner, FO, coaches -- interferes with your fantasies for the Bills, but that's your problem not mine.

Well, lucky for the Bills Denver grabbed Mike McCoy before the Bills. IIRC, he was rumored to be McDermott's first choice for OC. And yes, McDermott pretty much ran the 2017 draft as Whaley was a lame duck who was fired immediatedly after the draft. Beane wasn't hired until May or June 2017. Furthermore, Beane doesn't come from a player-personnel (scouting) background, so if you don't believe McDermott has considerable say in who the team keeps, gets rid of, or brings in, you are lying to yourself. As I said in a previous post, McDermott and Beane have mostly hits on defense but they have had mostly misses on offense. They failed to hire an additional coach with actual experience coaching QBs despite spending a fortune in draft picks and talent to move up to grab Josh Allen. McDermott doesn't get a pass from me because his team won more games than the Cardinals and a few other bottom feeder teams in 2018. That's a pretty low bar to set for a team, not being the worst team in the league. McDermott's Bills squads were -54 in point differential in 2017 and -105 in 2018. While they were 2nd in yards given up, the Bills were 32nd in red zone defense and 18th in scoring defense. They were blown out (lost by 20 or more points) 4 times in 2017, and 4 more times in 2018, avoiding a 5th blow out lost to the Chargers when Anthony Lynn took his foot off the accelerator with his team up 28-6 at the half. McDermott took the 15-17 team he inherited to 9-7 and a wild card playoff berth in 2017 and a 6-10 disaster in 2018. Meanwhile, other new HCs in 2017 like Anthony Lynn took the formerly 9-23 Chargers to 9-7 in 2017 and 12-4 and a playoff win in 2018. Sean McVay took the formerly 11-21 Rams to 11-5 in 2017 with a wild card playoff berth and then 13-3 and a SB loss in 2018. In fact, winning early seems to be a very likely scenario if the HC has the goods -- and that's not necessarily a totally new phenomenon. While Doug Pederson won the Super Bowl with the Eagles in his second season as HC in 2017, and Matt Nagy took the 5-11 Bears from 2017 and turned them into a 12-4 playoff team in 2018, Brian Billick and Bill Belichick also won SBs in their second seasons with the Ravens and Pats in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Tom Coughlin took the 10-22 Giants to 11-5 and a playoff berth in his second season in 2005. A couple of years later, he spoiled the Pats' undefeated season.