Richard Noggin

Google would have let me down easier.

Uninformed question that Google could answer: is this Corey Dillon's kid?

Ah yes, the provocateur lies to stir up trouble. Part of the conspiratorial playbook. Could smell that from far off. Thanks for doing the legwork.

The conspiracy theorist is strong in this one. And the evidence is nonexistent, at least here.

Yeah, we've all been victimized by it. But am I being a jerk about this in some way that I'm not seeing that's causing this humorless response? I'm playing around with words here and you're defending yourself as though any of this matters. It's cool. Forget I made a joke about you criticizing someone else's "half-with" whatever.

The WGR guys fully recognize and lament the state of the Sabres. No doubt. I'm not sure where you're coming from with this. OBL is a different beast all together. Murph and Tasker are employed by the Bills directly. And broadcast on WGR. It's different than the radio hosts.

I say stupid things all the time. I'm a real Richard that way. But you gotta admit, yours was particularly ironic. Don't ya think?

I like irony.

Reasonable take. One could argue Dawson Knox appears to possess high end athleticism. "Top speed" is not a very holistic assessment of explosiveness or agility (although many of the fast guys are those things as well). But yeah, your conclusion is difficult to dispute.

No doubt Daboll is a Belichick disciple, in that he's been cross-trained on both sides of the ball, and values the schematic flexibility to attack defenses in multiple ways. I wonder if such multiplicity requires, at least for Daboll's offense, a playbook that is voluminous and intricate to a fault. Smoke Brown has admitted it's the most difficult offense he's ever learned. I'll bet other players feel similarly. Does that result in more errors on the field? More thinking and less play-making? Didn't the offense this season seem to hit its stride when they shifted mostly to one personnel package (11-personnel) and a no-huddle approach? You know, when Daboll simplified his gameplans?

My second job, at a local high-end restaurant, virtually guarantees I'm unable to watch anything on Saturdays from 4 pm to about midnight. The generationally-indelible Bengals-vs-Steelers outcome two years ago? Yep, I was working. Kind of ironic given our access to the Bills and Sabres over the years, that we'd miss such historically significant contests due to the job...but I'm mostly convinced the wildcard game will be Saturday at 4:30. Can I afford to quit? THAT'S the question...

"OCCASIONALLY BLURRING the line between fair and dirty play" (emphasis mine). Those first two words are a rhetorical effing ski jump of understatement, in light of the tapes that emerged and the penalties enacted (as mentioned, as though in passing, in the very next sentence).

Oh, to dream...

Funny. I will say that watching him make fun of Trent Richardson's bad footwork was kind of hilarious. I think we'd just signed Shady and Whaley was showing off a bit, ragging on a guy he refused to even look at in the draft and then later when he got traded to/from Indy. The particulars get hazy. Whaley took about a dozen heavy steps back and forth while pantomiming taking a hand-off.

I had some decent access to Brandon and Marrone and Whaley and Rex and that whole futile era of the team (and the corresponding Sabres personnel); McBeane runs a much tighter, less public operation. Definitely overheard some things from coaches, owners, execs, and players throughout the years. I'm hesitant to tell stories out of school, as it's part of my job to treat such high-profile clientele with discretion...