Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

LOL, Explain how exactly he's a baseball guy. Yes I'm aware he worked for the Red Wings and was it also the Florida Marlins. But I'd imagine by now he's spent more years in football than baseball. It's not like he played in the majors or minors, or even college baseball. Love him or hate him calling him a baseball guy is laughable but don't let facts get in the way of a good argument. And BTW I must be much more qualified to answer this question as you are as by your criteria you're talking to a newspaper guy here as my first job ever was delivering the newspaper.

Why was it all Brandon? Explain to me what evidence there is of that? Was Brandon a good GM, no but as president he's done fine. I've read comments on here that RB just hired his college buddy. Brandon went to Fisher, Marrone went to SU, but hey no reason to let facts get in the way of a good argument. Wasn't Whaley rumored to be in the running for one of the GM positions last Jan, (prior to when Buffalo named him GM) If what you're stating is true, wouldn't he at the least interviewed for some of these openings? The fact that he didn't tells me he's happy being the Buffalo GM and doubt he'd be happy if Brandon was over ruling him and really calling the shots. The comments here about how we missed on hiring Gus Bradley, he may turn out to be the better choice but looking at their bio's they both have very similar years in college, Bradley a few more, but at a smaller profile school, both were NFL position coaches and coordinators on opposite sides of the ball. Biggest difference between the two was Marrone was a college head coach for 4 years, took a morbid program and made it better than respectful. Hindsight is great, but even there, no way can argue that Bradley is a better choice based on body of work to date.

LOL. If you think that's the high road, you better find a better map.

Buddy has aged quite a bit, Not looking/sounding too well for 83 YO

The biggest problem was how much he alienated fan's, the press and others. As was mentioned no signs, his rants. Seems I recall initally he was fine but some incident happened that he took alot of heat for in the press and after that things went downhill. I seem to recall early on he even went out of his way to be well liked, had these off the record lunches with the press, he'd give his famious "stay tuned" quote and was very accessable the first couple of years. He was often seen around town, NCAA 1st round basketball at HSBC, Sabres games, etc. Around year 3 or 4 was went things went south in the area of "getting along" and communications.

CBS has the 4:25 game that week so none of the Dallas/Philly/NFC team games matter.

I'll be surprised if Hackett is let go and at least he has more of an excuse a first year guy. Wouldn't be shocked tosee ST go, though need to find someone better too.

I give up, who's the legend? The only legend I know of is Tebow

They were just mentioning in the Monday Night game officials earn between $150 to $200k per year. They could spend time training, however doing nothing for five months and getting paid $150k doesn't sound that bad for most people. They could sell lemonade and be fine. And for those would wouldn't be fine maybe they need a better occupation.

The NFL needs to go to full time officials. You're not going to get there in one year, I'd propose each year one position on the crew is converted to full time, starting with the referee position. It likely would take 7 or 8 years, but eventually they'd all be full time. I'd offer any existing officials first shot at going full time and give the msome type of incentive maybe five years of a promise not to dismiss. There's plenty of training film study etc they could do during the week. The NFL is becoming a year round sport anyway.

It's back on Direct TV

So did the entire country lose the feed? Suprosed they aren't runnign a crawler across the bottom explaining?

yes, right prior to commercial there were some issues with video so am guessing it went out??

I think this thread should be retitled to "The Bill's made a choice!"

If Mary Wilson inherits the team she certainly will pay every penny of all the taxes due. Let me get the calculator out, lets see OK, total taxes due; ZERO $$. I'm certain she does plan to pay that. Not gaming the system in any way, laws allow assets to be transferred upon death to spouse and all taxes are deferred. Granted the average person doesn't have a billion dollar asset laying around but the law's the law. Eventually the government will get their share and if the value keeps going up as I'm sure it will, the bill due will be even bigger. But nothing wrong with her saying hey I'm going to avoid this big tax bill now and keep the team in my name, let someone else run it and I'll just take a small amount out each year for my expenses. She could sell a small share off each year and just pay the taxes on the parts that's sold. She could even donate a small share of the team to a charity, who then could sell it and keep all the proceeds from the sale and MW avoids the taxes due on the portion she sold. Again imagine the NFL trying to stop that one. I don't pay taxes on the amount of money taken from my check each week that goes to United Way either and at the end of the year I do deduct the legit charitable contributions I make.

Everyone keeps talking about the team being sold at auction based o nthe comment RW made like maybe 15 years ago that his wife doesn't want to own the team. But in the past 5 to 10 years there's been no comment on that at all. Meanwhile Jim Kelly/Thurman Thomas keeps saying don't worry implying they know something that we don't. Maybe Mary Wilson doesn't want to own/run a team but if I were her, I could think of one thing much much worse than owning the team, and that's having to part with around $400 to $500 million in taxes where as if she inherits the team no taxes due now. She could be a silent partner/owner someone like a Kelly is the president, in exchange he and a group of people buy small shares each year 5 to 10% to keep the capital gain tax bill down, and this group has the right of first refusal to any eventual sale upon her death. I'll believe the team is put up for sale when I see it as there has been no comments from RW around this in years. Another option along the original lines of this thread, while the NFL prohits public ownership, what if RW left the team to a charitable foundation again run be some one like a Jim Kelly or someone else. While the NFL would hate the idea, trying to stop it would likely take years in court, and would be a very bad publicity direction to go in, stopping a gift to charity.

My beef with the chain gang is this, they stop the game and bring out othe chains to measure within inches as to whether thye got a first down or not. They have that little slide thing along the chain that they line up with a five yard marker so they know when moving the chain from sideline to the middel of the field, nothing has shifted. Great idea!! But here's the problem, on first down all they do is eye ball the starting point with the ball. They don't bring the chain out, and again align the sliding five yard marker with the nearest five yard line. So if the starting point was off by a foot or so either way, that means on the tail end in most instances the team either had to go somewhere between 9.5 to maybe 10.5 yards for a first down. Now I have no problem with that, at the end of the year it all will balance out (excluding for the Patriots of course) but why bother wasting time measuring to within an inch when you have no idea of the accuracy of your starting point!

I've only started watching this "Football Life" series this year, but looking at it's past history, kind of surprised there hasn't been an episode on either the Bill's four consecutive Super Bowls, or an individual show on either Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, or even Steve Tasker as best special teams player of all time, or even the comeback game. I know thew Bill's lost all four, but seems like they are starting to reach the bottom of the barrel for subject material, this upcoming week Dallas Cowgirls, Best O-line of all time?? seems a bit of stretch as best of all time is a long time. Did I miss a Bill's related show or have they been shut out to date??

I agree likely would not have sold out. Many people either traveling or busy kicking company out the door, cold weather, uninteresting opponent, and still a long shot at the playoffs. They only became a team even mentioned in the "playoff race" in past two weeks, not enough time to sell the tickets.

Yes but this happened in Oakland!!

Assuming they keep Byrd, I'd argue that they still need an OLB and maybe another cornerback, but overall defense looks pretty good. Not sure you're really going to get a QB in round #3 better than the current backups you have, with adding a years experience to their resume. Assuming you pick up a guard and Legursky goes oto the bench, that's decent depth there but could still use some outsdie depth on the Oline i.e. backup tackle. Maybe could fill one of these starting spots and O'line depth via free agency, then draft the other needs.

My initial thought was the same,take the TO makes no difference. But thinking some more, you only get two challenges a game, so taking one when you don't think you're going to win it probably isn't very smart as now only have one left. You likely should only throw the flag when either you think you will win the challenge, or sometimes late in a game and you're behind, you may take one just because you need something desperate to happen to get back into the game.

With regards to #10, my initial thought was throw the flag, worst case is you lose a TO, but you're going to have to take a TO anyway. Thinking some more there is a difference as wost case ins't just losing a TO since you only get two challenges a game, so yes the TO situation would have been the same, but would have only had one challenge left. So after looking at it that way, I was OK with what they did in just taking a TO.

I have no complaints about the job being done by Marrone, but would also add while the ACC isn't to be confused with the Big-10 or SEC, it's still a pretty good step up from the Big Least in football. Winning three games in the ACC is a better showing than I expected to be honest. One more win they become bowl eligible. I tried to find the game but seems I recall SU getting blown out by FSU one time before maybe 20 years ago or so. I remember the funniest thing about that was SU played FSU Saturday afternoon. Over the course of the game, you'd hear their typical "Indian chant" That night and Sunday night, the Atlanta Braves were in the playoffs and more of the same cheer. Monday night Buffalo played in KC and again more of the same. By that time my wife thought she was watching Groundhogs Day, she finally asked what the heck is going on??

Not that I'm in favor of this, but the Bills apparently were scouting him, probably so is every other team at various points, but they were one of six teams listed. http://www.foxsportssouthwest.com/fox-sports-networks/story/Report-Cowboys-Dolphins-among-6-NFL-team?blockID=961497&feedID=11407