Billy Claude

I may be wrong but I believe the quote was by a former player (I am not even sure it was a Bill) about defensive coordinators in general, not Frazier in particular.

Absolutely. I firmly believe they waited until the very last minute to pick up Edmund's and Allen's options in the hopes of trading him or getting his replacement in the draft. They waited on Allen's so it wouldn't be so obvious what they were hoping to do. Give that, Edmund played a lot better this year than in 2020.

At least we won't have to worry about the "NFL is fixing games to get Brady Belichick in the Super Bowl" conspiracy theories anymore.

I do not assume someone is a hater just they say something slightly less than laudatory about the Bills (I like Chris Collinsworth). However, Nick Wright is clearly trying to be Skip Bayless Jr. He is purely an act and deserves zero respect.

I think it was mainly there was too much pushback that they were going to hire someone with no coaching experience given a lot of more qualified minority candidates. Also, they might still have been hoping that they could still get Watson back on board. There was also quite a bit of speculation that they wanted Culley to make McCown the offensive coordinator and then have Culley politely step aside in two years. Obviously, that did not happen -- I don't if that was because the stories simply not true or possibly McCown turned them down.

On the jetsnation board regarding Fitz at the game: That Fitz is a secret member of the Bills mafia explains a lot about that game in 2015.

On the Pats message board that non-call was cited as evidence that the NFL wanted the Bills were going to win the game.

I have nothing against him showing angry runs - that's fun. It's the bit where he pretends he's about to have a heart attack every week that I find extremely cringeworthy and clearly fake.

He needs to get fire his son. Has there ever been a good outcome when a coach put their kid/brother on the staff?

Absolutely agree. Obviously, I am in the minority here, but the Angry Run stuff was good for about half a year but now it's just a schtick an extremely tired schtick at that. Just because he says nice things about the Bills doesn't mean everyone has to think he is entertaining.

These stories were pretty much around during and after the hiring process. At the time, it was believed that they really wanted Josh McCown to be head coach but the bad optics of hiring their buddy with zero coaching experience over more qualified minority candidates was just too much to overcome. After that, there were stories floating they were going to force the new coach to hire McCown as their OC and then have the new coach groom McCown to take over. https://www.si.com/nfl/texans/news/texans-breaking-qb-mccown-released-is-he-houstons-next-coach

The whole concept of comp picks is one of the stupidest ideas in sports. It speaks to how short-sightedness and/or weak the NFL players union that they agreed to something like this. The only purpose is to protect strong teams and suppress free agent salaries.

I have to disagree here. If the Jets kick a field goal Brady would have probably just needed to go 70 to 75 yards to tie. I wouldn't bet against Brady to do that. If the game is tied, the chances of the Jets winning in overtime are pretty low. 100% of the time the Jets should have gone for it. It was just a bad play call and bad defense afterwards.

Wilson had tried to extend Butler during the summer of 2000 but Butler turned him down, so it was pretty clear Butler knew he was leaving and I think Erik Flowers was widely being considered a huge reach post-draft even before playing a down.

The draft was so bad that the conspiracy theory people argued that John Butler purposedly messed it up as he knew he was leaving after the season. This led to the other big reason for the crash in 2001 and the drought in general -- hiring Tom Donahoe as GM to replace Butler. But definitely the incredibly bad special teams cost them one or two games. With reasonable special teams they might have made the playoffs.

Not all revenue is shared. About 40% of it is not (based on the Packer's report from 2019). A winning teams makes more money than a losing team -- certainly much more than a change in a few percentage points in the Super Bowl ratings. Most of the owners have their wealth coming from other sources and I would guess most would gladly take $10M off their huge profits (note they would still be making a lot of money) to be able to lord it over everyone else at the owners' meeting. Otherwise why would the owners give such long guaranteed contracts to head coaches if it doesn't matter. If it was primarily about profit everyone would behave like Ralph Wilson did in his last decade and just hire cheap assistants. Nor do I think that that Chris and Woody Johnson enjoy the sell the team chants every time they stick theirs heads out at MetLife.

I wouldn't be surprised if David Tepper was behind a lot of the recent moves that the Panthers have made. He is a vulture capitalist famous for his impatience and abrasive personality. If Goldman Sachs passes someone because of their "loud and profane manner", you know the guy is pretty much of an ass.

These types of comparisons are much less meaningful in football with such a small number of games compared to baseball, basketball, and hockey. That is why analytics has not had as much success as it has in the other sports. Last year most of the front-loaded while this year it is back-loaded. That has to be accounted for in any comparison of the first 11 games this year vs. last year.

It's been four years of finishing near the top of the league in penalties so it must be something the coaching staff is doing or not doing. Some of it maybe that they are coached to be aggressive but false starts are just players not being well prepared. The surprising thing is that Bills did pretty well penalty wise under Rex Ryan -- they were 32nd in false starts in 2016 with 7 and 31st in 2017 with 9. McDermott's first year it was tied for 9th with 21 false starts while keeping 3/5th of the line (Glenn, Woods and Incognito) from the previous year.

McDermott is undoubtedly the best Bills coach since Marv Levy -- but it is concerning that the Bills have been among league leaders in penalties every year since he got here 2018 6th in number of penalties/ 5th in yards / 9th in false starts 2019 8th/14th/2nd (tie) 2020 6th/5th/4th (tie) 2021 6th/6th/2nd For someone who preaches process, you would expect penalties, especially false starts, to decrease.

What gave it away?

Marcellus Wiley was one of the biggest Flutie guys on the Bills and probably the most vocal. https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/bn-blitz-newsletter-marcellus-wiley-still-convinced-doug-flutie-wouldve-won-music-city-miracle-game/article_c994fd8f-c5fe-5539-b9c3-b5f7af3695f5.html https://twitter.com/marcelluswiley/status/522896577959309312?lang=en

I don't think you can judge Mayfield based on his recent play. He is clearly injured and aggravated his shoulder further on Sunday. The only question is why the Browns continue to play him when they have a serviceable backup in Case Keenum. You would think Keenum would give them a better chance than a injured Mayfield.

Not that I disagree with you about Nick Wright who clearly has gone to the Skip Bayless School of Broadcasting but Nick Wright works for Fox Sports not ESPN.

I can believe that there can be a subconscious bias toward star players - "DeAndre Hopkins couldn't have dropped that -- the CB must have gotten there early", home teams, and even perhaps teams that are regarded as well coached. I might even believe that particular referees may even have personal biases against particular players. However, to believe that the NFL tells officials to favor one team vs. another is to believe that either Goodell can keep this secret from 31 mostly billionaire owners or that these hyper-competitive owners get together and decide who is going to get the calls and who isn't. To me this is just completely lubricous. It is a sad statement on the critical thinking of society as a whole if many fans believe this.