Rampant Buffalo

Many people here have an all or nothing mentality. They aren't necessarily all that big on nuance. Does the preseason count in the standings? No. Can it communicate information about the state of our team, whether positive or negative? To some extent. Let's say you're driving, and your check engine light comes on. Could be nothing, could be something serious. Let's say you're watching a preseason game, and your team's OL and DL look significantly inferior to the opponent's. Okay, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Guys can have a bad day. Maybe there are guys who need more time to learn the system and to gel. On the other hand, it's possible your team's linemen just aren't as good as the opponent's. It's too early to reach any conclusions right now.

Not worth rereading.

Really? What is your basis for making this claim?

OJ Simpson murdered two people. Aaron Hernandez and Ray Lewis are also murderers. Robert Kraft had sex with an underage sex slave. Michael Vick abused dogs. Tyreek Hill is guilty of domestic abuse. What has Brady done, to put himself on the same list as guys like that?

You are getting lost in the details. Pizza and football are both things people enjoy. Neither is a necessity. That is the big picture, and is the basis for my comparison.

Years ago, Terry Pegula watched this very same video clip. As he watched, key phrases started running through his head. Defensive coach. Buffoon. Embarrassment to the Bills. Terry started nodding his head. The next day, the announcement was made. Rex Ryan hired as Bills head coach!

Imagine a city with 100 pizza places. If one raises its prices too much, or provides bad product or bad service, it will lose customers to its 99 competitors. Adam Smith's invisible hand serves to hold all 100 pizza places accountable. Now imagine a large corporation buys up all 100 pizza places. Prices go up. Quality goes down. The invisible hand no longer holds the one pizza company accountable. Pizza is not a necessity. There are plenty of other types of food people can eat instead. Does that mean the public is under some kind of moral obligation to permit this monopolistic behavior? Is the public only allowed to defend its own best interests when a monopolist seeks to control basic necessities? On another matter, you have trivialized people's concerns about increases in housing costs. From this site: "Average rent prices have increased 8.85% per year since 1980, consistently outpacing wage inflation by a significant margin." If the middle class and working class are taking it on the chin with respect to housing costs, why do you have a problem with people pointing that out?

Two points about the UFL. 1) Normally, for every 100 people who watch an NFL game, only about 5 will watch a UFL game. 2) The UFL is a spring football league. How is it "competing" with the NFL? If someone is watching an NFL game, it's literally impossible for him to change the channel to watch a UFL game instead. The games are on at different times of the year! To whatever extent the UFL is pulling viewers away from watching other professional sports, it's pulling them from spring sports such as baseball. As for revenue sharing: that's great, but is off-topic. When you have many customers dealing with one monopolist, said monopolist will always have more bargaining power. Much more. The only way customers can take any power back in that relationship is through government restrictions on the monopolist's behavior.

Because the NFL is a monopoly, and there are laws in place which make it illegal for monopolies to price gouge. In the specific case of the NFL, the money from their price gouging is used to further enrich millionaire players and billionaire owners.

Having watched my share of Manuel's college play, I would say that neither his accuracy nor his information processing were better than what I'd expect from a typical college QB. Probably below-average for a college QB, at least for information processing. So why draft him? He had good physical tools. Whaley was really excited by the commanding presence Manuel had when he entered a room. In the NFL, Manuel was the exact same guy he'd been in college. Manuel did not improve over time. He was no better in year 5 than he'd been as a rookie. Manuel's physical tools were good, but not good enough. When Rex Ryan was hired as head coach, he chose Greg Roman as his offensive coordinator. Roman's offense feeds off of a QB's running ability. Manuel (4.6 in the 40) was benched in favor of Tyrod Taylor (4.4 in the 40). That offense benefited from the extra running speed Tyrod was able to provide. If you want a passing QB, you'll get more from Kyle Orton than you'd get from Manuel. If you want a running QB, you'll get more from Tyrod than from Manuel.

Let's say you're the GM of an expansion team. You don't have a first round pick. Instead of that first round pick, you're allowed to choose one of two options. Option 1) You get a rookie age Josh Allen. Option 2) You get rookie age versions of all other Brandon Beane draft picks combined. Which of these options would you choose? For me, option 2 is tempting. I'd love to add guys like Dalton Kincaid, Shakir, Rousseau, Oliver, etc. to my football team. But at the end of the day, I know which option I'm picking. And it's not even close. Of the good that Beane has done in the draft, more than half was achieved with a single pick.

Public enemy #1 is this man:

I should have been more clear. Someone made a point about the offense being inconsistent in the postseason. I pointed out that one of the reasons for that is that the Bills have had inconsistent levels of play, in the postseason, at WR and OL. There have been postseason games when we've gotten good play out of one or both those units. Other postseason games, not so much so. The point I'm trying to make with all this is that if the Bills want consistently good offensive play in the postseason, they need OL and WRs who can be counted on to consistently play well in January.

I agree that we had the talent to get more than one 1 TD against the Texans. That was an offensive letdown, no question. As for WR: the Bills didn't have a #1 WR prior to Diggs' arrival. These last two years, he faded late in the season and in the postseason. That means Allen has had just two postseasons of maybe good play from his Z. Then you look at slot. Beasley version 1 was very good, no question. Shakir played well this past season, albeit not at Beasley's level. Other than that, the Bills haven't had much at slot. At X, Gabe Davis has had excellent games in the postseason, most notably his 200 yard performance against the Chiefs. But he's also inconsistent, and during the regular season puts up one of the NFL's lowest catch percentages for a WR. "I don't see any spot where the Bills WR during the playoffs was really bad." In this most recent playoff loss, Bills WRs had 160 yards of drops, while struggling badly to gain separation. How much more badness than that do you want to see, before this meets your definition of really bad?

So . . . you believe that even if the WR corps gets off to a rough start, it's unlikely to have a rocky landing? 😮