Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

Well typically one thing the NFL doesn't seem to do is suspend someone without giving ample warning so the team can figure out their options. So based on that he may not get suspended to next season.

So we also have from what I've read a good blocking TE. So you're saying after Clay and Gragg and the blocking TE, the rest all suck?? Do I have that right?? Um.... so first off, how many of the rest of those guys do you even think will be on the roster?? secondly, exactly how many teams have a top level 4th string TE??

Historically GM's usually survive at least two if not three coach hiring's before they figure out the GM may actually be the problem here. Whaley has sort of hired two coaches, however one of them quit which is kind of an unprecedented move in the NFL so nothing to really gauge that against, and the second one if the rumors are true was more Pegula's choice than Whaley. Supposedly Whaley wanted Hue Jackson. So maybe I'd give Whaley a total of one coach hiring for him at this point. Assuming this year is a complete disaster, if anything I could see at year end Pegula fires Rex and tells Whaley, OK, you choose the next coach and I won't get involved this time other than to talk to the guy before we sign the contract, but you pick him (or her).

They were talking about this same last week on the Mike and Mike show, how baseball was able to build up a huge war chest, but will never work in the NFL because the players careers are so short, they'd basically be striking to make sure the guys in HS won't be subject to Roger ruling on suspensions. Or they can agree to instead take an extra 5% in their pension and Roger keeps doing the same. Which will it be?? They also mentioned how 90% of the players in the NFLPA never get suspended or fined, so again why go on strike for the 10% bad apples.

The problem isn't that Wilcox is so bad, the problem is that he does the Bills games every other week or so!!

I thought his column was pretty lame. Yes what he stated is true, but every team in all sports does the same. Backups are expendable, you make examples out of them, but not starters. Plus he also conveniently forgot to mention that the Bill's have decent depth at RB. If everyone stayed healthy at RB until week #5 (which is a very big if) who should you cut to bring Karlos back? It was kind of similar to the Fred Jackson situation last season, he may only be the #4 guy.

I was kind of wondering if this was more of an audition for Gay for other teams to look at him. Maybe they've seen enough of Carpenter in camp to know he can and will handle kick offs this year. So we'll give his leg a rest tonight (though he did still kick off) and let Gay show other teams what he can do whe nwe cut him. If so, wasn't a very good audition for him.

There's about $12 million reasons why he'll be back. Well actually about 9 million reasons as he's going to lose $3 million for the 4 games he's out.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It's only pre-season, but is the defense really playing better or do the Giants just really suck? Three things I see as different. Mario Williams is gone and maybe he had even a bigger negative impact than anyone on the outside realized. Don't laugh but Rob Ryans presence may be helping in that he actually understands what rEx wants to do where as I don't think Thurman did, so Rex had to try and play DC in addition to HC. I also think Rob's presence could help in that he likely won't be at all afraid to tell Rex, your idea sucks! Players have a year of learning the D under their belt.

The success or failure this year of the team defensively was more up to the remaining players not so much Ragland and Lawson. They are both rookies. As for Karlos, I think J Williams and Bush can make up for him

I've said for many years the GM is much more important than the coach. There are many examples in many sports where the team would go through coach after coach and kept losing until they finally found and hired a good GM. While you can question some of the moves made by Whaley, I do think the team does have more talent than when he got here so he hasn't been all that bad. So if you're going to dump him, you better find someone who really is better. Teams aren't dumping good GM's I believe Matt Milan is available. You can easily find a guy on some team on a winning team who maybe was the director of player personal and bring him in here as the next GM, but maybe the reason he looked so good was because of a good GM, not because he was so good. Basically that's kind of how Whaley got here. You want to get rid of Whaley fine, just recognize there's a much better chance his replacement could be worse. It's the same with teams hiring OC and DC from winning teams and expecting them to come in and become a great HC. A few of them do, but more often they fail. I'd also add this, if the rumors are true that Whaley wasn't completly in favor of hiring Rex, but it was more of a TP move, TP doesn't strike me as a huge ego driven guy, so he may instead go to Whaley and tell him I'd made a mistake getting involved the last time. You pick the next HC, I want to talk to the guy, but the choice is completely on you this time. And he gives him another shot as he also realizes he could do much worse. And please lets not suggest Grandpa Bill Polian

She looks pretty good to me, but at my age, the eyes were the first thing to go.

Similar to what I got, $30 off per month for a year and free ST.

Hope it's not the guy in the red shorts??

So haven't seen anything official is IK done for the year with knee?? Or is this thread just saying IK sucks in general so lets replace him??

Well it took me five phone calls, but am signed up for ST for another year. First two calls were back in July, and was told to call back in August as then would be offering deals on ST I also was complaining about my overall bill as all my discounts had expired and my bill had essentially increased $23 since Jan 1st due to their yearly price increase and expired discounts. Ironically about 2 hours after I called in July, got an email from TWC offering me a pretty good deal to go with them so signed up for it and was scheduled to have them come next Saturday to tentatively install. My wife is also totally disgusted with DTV as we live in the south and so often in rain storms we lose reception so she would be very happy to see me go back to cable, but understands I want ST too. So called up yesterday and spoke with retention, initially was told they could give me $50 off per month with a 12 month commitment, but nothing available for ST, call back the end of the month. So told her well that will be too late as next Saturday I'm going with cable unless I get a good deal, she puts me on hold and comes back and offers me ST Max for $100 I should have said OK sign me up, but figured I'd make sure my wife isn't totally mad about another year of DTV. Called back two hours later, was told yes can give you the $50 off per month, but no sorry nothing on ST. At that point I said well I will be canceling. She then offered to set up to have it turned off next week which I went with so was set to have turned off next Sunday. She even flat out stated once disconnected, likely I'd be getting phone calls offering me free ST, but told her that would be too late. So decided this morning to call back and make sure I'm not set up to auto-renew as my bill comes due this Tuesday and didn't want to get charged for it, then need to wait for DTV to take a couple of months to issue me a refund. And also figured when I call they will right away ask why I'm canceling which they did. Told me my whole story, we went back and forth. Bottom line I ended up $30 off per month with a 12 month commitment and free ST (but not max) The main reason I wanted max is for mobile access when I'm traveling but understand now the regular ticket includes mobile so probably not a big deal either way. Once in awhile I'd watch Redzone, but mainly during commercials I prefer switching to the Mix channel. Basically $30 off per month puts it in alignment overall with what TWC offered me, obviously no ST from them, but other things would have been better, increased internet speed, couple of movie channels, etc. Still somewhat disappointed (though not as much as my wife is) as had a better deal yesterday, but my fault for not accepting. But at least am done with this for another year and my 12 month commitment ends in alignment with next year when I need to make the call again. Really be much happier if DTV would just come out with a decent price say $200 a season for ST, but no discounts, no negotiations for anyone and make it easier. But I suspect excluding new subscribers the total number of people getting discounts are small, maybe 10 to15% so overall charging the higher price and just dealing with the small number of people like myself nets them more money overall. But at the full price of $250 to $350, I probably wouldn't bother with it and not worth that much money to me either to have it. Admittedly do sometimes enjoy watching other out of market games when the Bills aren't on if don't like the local game. I'm in Panthers territory, so get them every week to start with.

Both DTV and the NFL are smart and the NFL continues to give them exclusive rights as DTV is offering them more more than what they'd get all together from allowing others to carry it. It's not the same in other sports because on one entity is willing to pay an obscene about of money to the league so they parcel it out. Would DTV go out of business without ST, probably not, but they'd be in a much different situation financially, and I'm sure one of the biggest reasons for ATT to buy DTV was because they could see ST is a huge money maker for them and likely will do everything they can to keep up the exclusive rights deal. I also think ATT realized that DTV was dumb to give alt these deals to people so are making it much harder to get a good discount. But they have a tough balancing act as more and more a "cutting the cord" or "smashing the dish" as the costs re getting to high so at some point it may not be worthwhile for them to offer huge piles of money to the NFL anymore. As soon as that happens ST will be available in many formats. My guess is sometime in the not too distant future the NFL will distribute the entire TV package via streaming it themselves and will cut out the middle man.

Just read about the signing tonight, read the last three pages of this thread and only one real negative poster from what I saw. Wow, that is amazing, might be a new record of some sorts! Or did a bunch of posters get banned or something?

Well reading the last page or two of posts, guess you guys got all the good deals as when I called up there was nothing left in the cookie jar to give out. They offered me $7 a month off ST, that was the best deal I got. Well actually the best they offered me was full price to ST and a free upgrade to Max so guess that would have ben a tad better. I also complained about my monthly bill going up $15 last month and $23 since the 1st of the year and I needed to reduce my cost, their remedy there was to reduce my package so I'll save $7 a month. I'll add that I'm off contract and when my bill went up this past month by $15 that was due to my last discount expiring. So at this point, have no discounts at all. I told her a $7 discount isn't even worth the time I'm spending on the phone. She also told me that discounts for ST aren't available until August which is BS, but whatever. Ironically an hour later I got an email from Time Warner with an offer for TV (currently have home phone and internet through them) So called up, package included 200 channels, plus Epix and Starz, plus upgrade to 300 MB internet speed (currently was at 50) by the time I added equipment six tuner DVR and 2nd HD receiver, total was $160 a month which saves me around $40 a month, plus other things currently not getting like the movie packages and 300 Mb speed, the one thing I'm losing is no ST but wasn't worth paying that much for it anyway. That was what I told the DTV person, if I don't get ST because it's too high, there's no need for me to stick with DTV at all. So I signed up for an install date on August 20th, that will still give me time to call DTV again and see if they will come up with anything better. If not will dump them and will due without ST. I do wonder if the tightness of discounts this year is a function of their merger with ATT. I do recall from days having DSL, they were much tighter with giving discounts. Kind of surprises me when you hear and read of so many people "cutting the cord" or in my case, smashing the dish!

So how many of those teams that did fire the coach/GM after less than 3 years actually improved when the brought the next guy in? Seems to be working great in Cleveland. I think unless the Bills completely collapse this year, he'll likely be back for another year. Having you're #1 draft pick miss potentially all or part of the season also tends to give Rex a mulligan to some level.

Things do make more sense now!

Actrually you do have the option to turn off auto renew, you need to contact them to turn it off. Am curious as to how you feel that stupid by design?? Seems pretty smart on their part if you ask me. They may be annoying by design, but not stupid!

Yeah if there was another option for ST, I'd go that way too. And before someone suggests you can order online only package I doubt they'd allow me to purchase the online only version as obviously can get DTV at my current address since I currently do have it. One of these years I'd imagine they will offer the online version only with no restrictions. But as far as I know they are not there yet.

I'm not on any contract, so can easily walk away. I have the basic around $80 per month package two DVR's, no movie packages and don't want any. My last discount just expired so bill next month will be $122, so am ready to call just about the basic cost of the service, then on top of that add in ST. I do want a good deal on top the basic rate to stay. My wife hates DTV as so often when a storm passes through it goes out and other bugs in it. Funny was sitting in a restaurant a couple weeks back and overheard people at the next table talking about the past could of days how much DTV had been out as alot of rain had been passing through. I do wonder if they know you're calling from out of the local area, like "bills_fan_in-Raleigh" I'm also in NC, so do they figure well the only way for this guy to watch out of town games is through ST, so know need to discount as much. I've had ST for about 4 years now, prior to that would watch various online streams, there used to be a guy down here in NC that would stream the games, pretty decent quality, as the game went on, the drunker he'd get and would start singing during commercials. Now that I've had ST a few years, haven't kept up with that "community" at all. While I'd never suggest anything illegal of course, are these streaming sites still somewhat plentiful if you know where to look? And where would that place to look be? On a somewhat related topic, if I were to decide top completely "Cut the cord" and go to a streaming service like Hulu or Netflix, we watch alot of prime time shows on the DVR, with a paid subscription to those services, how long after the show airs can you watch it and can you watch it commercial free? That is probably the biggest thing overall keeping me with DTV is the functions of the DVR, wouldn't want to lose that.

Don't see this posted anywhere. http://espn.go.com/tennis/story/_/id/17127986/jessica-pegula-upsets-top-seeded-sam-stosur-citi-open-quarterfinals