Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

Funny you bring up Curt Flood. I went and Goggled "How many years did Curt Flood play after the court case" The first link I found was to an article titled "How Curt Flood Changed Baseball and Killed His Career in the Process" As also has been pointed out he also lost the case 5-3. You could be right, He could win and in about five years he may become eligible to play once it's finally settled likely by the Supreme Court. He could probably also sue the NFL then for lost wages all those years and win that one too then. Maybe by around 2020 you'll see him in a Bill's uniform.

I do think with smarter coaching, i.e. don't make Fitz stand back and throw every down could make him look alot better. Not trying to make excuses but his WR were also terrible, will that be improved this year, considering they cut Jones and Nelson, I have to believe they have something planed there to upgrade. So let's say you have a Greg Jennings out there, and smarter coaching, I think could make him savagable. And also a defense that constantly doesn't give up 30 points a gain would help. Expecting Fitz t ooutscore these other teams isn't realistic. As far as his contract goes, by todays standards it's not al lthat high, what did I read it's the 19th highest, I'd rank him maybe close to #25 so not all that far off.

I wonder if Buffalo's plan is to sign the guard from the Jet's who's either an UFA or rumored to be released. It may be they know what both AL and also what this guy wants. Is he as good as AL, maybe not, but they may feel the drop off in talent is low enough to be worth the tradeoff for the money saved. Kind of a moneyball type thing.

Yes, but it's a somewhat scaled dow nversion of Sunday ticket. Can't record, split screen is limited, etc.

S I just read that DTV has around 20 mil subscribers so that would mean you'd need 10% to get ST, though from everything I've read the $200 price seems high. I would have guessed the average was closer to $100, at least based on what you read here on this site.

A couple years back I had Sunday Ticket to go, worked OK, but there were things that didn't work like you couldn't watch split screen four games in full screen mode. So on like a typical 20 to 24 inch computer monitor the screen opens up to about nine inches. Then split that into fourths, you're looking at a postage stamp. You also couldn't use any DVR functions online, the buttons were there, but greyed out, then about half way through the year, the buttons disappeared. This past year I went to DTV and did get ST, unfortunately I signed up about two weeks before they were offering it for free, after much calling and complaining was able to get the price down for ST to around $90 after applying the credits they gave me. To be honest I did enjoy it much more than I expected and found myself watching more out of market games than I expected, maybe not the entire game, but jumping around,watching the ends of them etc. Whenever the Bill's game went to commercial would jump to the mix channel I had ST Max so was able to view online and it appeared the items I stated didn't work two seasons ago still didn't work, or if they do I wasn't able to figure it outk. If someone know's different about that let me know as would like to know how to view 4 games in max screen. Dish Network is surviving without ST. May be that DTV is trying to save face here too as would it would be best for NFL to offer a streaming package and keep all the $$ for themselves. It seems everything is going in that direction. Or offer it thru Amazon Prime All in all like my five tuner HD DVR much better, but definitely don't feel signal is as reliable as cable was. To me the area that makes cable so expensive compared to DTV is in the equipment costs. It would likely cost me $40 or more a month to have the ability to record five (hell even four) programs at once, whole house abilities, and 200 hours of HD storage. DTV tends to more nickel and dime you quite frankly have worse customer support than cable does when you have problems. You want someone to come visit, unless you're paying $6 per month it's like a $50 fee. Would I go back if ST was no longer an issue? Maybe!!

How's that work anyway, if a team signs a franchised player, do they lose the draft pick this coming Aprils draft or would it be for in the 2014 draft?? Just as compensitory picks are a year behind.

He'd be perfect here as our receivers have had alot of practice at this!

It's possible to that Marrone indicated to him his offense uses a tight end very little, (kind of like dJ and CG) so he wants to go where he'll be used.

And you could get a lot of debate that Ryan belongs above Eli and Big Ben purely based on abilities.

I'm not a big fan of Ryan, meaning haven't seen a whole lot of him. But based on what I've seen this would be my response to you. He's been in the league what 4 or 5 years, team has won more games than any time I can recall. Is it his fault that they gave up was it 24 second half points to lose the game? I don't see what he's done to be faulted at other than yes winning playoff games. But you also have to build the team around him, are they truely there yet? Excuding the top five QB's you mention, do you feel they would have one more play off games with someone else at QB? OK I won't say "I'd take him over RF" How about instead I'll say would the Falcons have one more games with RF, or insert any other name you'd like other than Manning, Rodgers, Brees, Brady and maybe another name or two that I'm forgetting. Last but certainly not least, how many playoff wins did Jim Kelly have before 1991? All I recall was them winning one wild card game per year, then losing. And Kelly was out of college about eight seasons by then. I wouldn't argue strongly that he absolutely is top 5 but do think he's closer to 5 than 10

Good one!!

No a few weeks ago it was titled "Why is Russ Bradnon at the Senior Bowl" If I had more time, I'd look it up but am willing to bet this post was started by the same guy! I'm just guessing here, but I don't think he likes RB too much and keeps posted these dumb threads to critizise him.

As they say, figures don't lie, but lairs figure!! Wow talk about a misleading stat. So five winning QB's weren't drafted by their current team, well how many winning QB's are out there, maybe around 15? Second if you're not still on the team that drafted you, that likely means either you really sucked and/or you've played out your first contract which means you've been around for 4 to 5 years. Well the percentage of players who are still in the league after five years and not already a star drops quite a bit, so likely you either are a star and your first team re-signed you, or you're not very good to begin with and may not even still be in the league. So no surprise the number is low. Three of those five only left their original team due to some un-common circumstances, Schaub and Brees had another QB on the roster who was even better or PM due to injury and being old. Cutler was more a head case. Which to me further proves point that good QB's never see free agency. I can't help but wonder if Rex Ryan figured this out on his own?? He probably quit after five as that's how many toes his wife has.

Yes but we also had a coach who continually would put Fitz in a position to make those terrible passes as opposed to handing the ball off more. I agree that Fitz is in no way a franchise QB, but also agree that the biggest problem with the team was giving up 30 points a game and then asking Fitz to go down the field in the last two minutes. It certainly didn't help that besides SJ, the team had weak WR overall. As to your comment abut QB competition, you list 12 teams, that's the problem in the NFL, there are 32 teams and less than 15 legit franchise QB's, so the teams without will go to greater lengths to try and find that guy. I'm sure the Bill's front office never thought that Fitz would be another Tom Brady or Rogers, but were hoping he'd be serviceable. For the most part he's been on the lower end of that. We can get rid of Fitz, bring in another retread who may look like an improvement for a year or so, or bring a rookie who may be the next Tom Brady, but much better chance he's the next Ryan Leaf. That's not a knock at the Bill's front office either, just a fact that for all teams in the league, they find more Ryan Leafs than Brady's, again goes back to the point of not enough legit QB's to go around. I've said it before and will say it again, the league needs to develop Stepford QB's.

I wonder the same thing, he's a west coast guy, may have told the Bill's over a year ago that he didn't want to re-sign here. Don't know if he's married, is she also from west coast, maybe she also wants to go back out west?? Based on the past few years the Bills likely would have signed him last year to a reasonable contract, unless he wasn't interested. At a min you would have more heard of leaks about contract talks, wasn't much of anything being said. The argument then comes, well if that's true the Bill's should have traded him last year. But unlikely you'd do that as going into the season, many people including I'm sure Bills coaches and front office expected the team had a real good shot at making playoffs. If that's the case you'd take a chance by keeping him, make a run and if you lose him so be it. In hind sight since they played poor, if that was the case that AL was planning on playing out his contract, it didn't work out too well. He also was taking a risk if were to get hurt, he'd likely be out big $$.

I think it means the opposite, Fitz wasn't willing to re-structure much if at all, so I think this says good bye Fitz, we'll go with Jackson, a fairly high round rookie (1 thru 3) and maybe either another low level vet, or maybe this guy that just signed yesterday.

It worked well for Woody Hayes!

I also thought on that 4th down play there should have been a delay of game. I was watching the clock and could swear it hit zero before ball was snapped.

I think one of the motivations for giving it to NY/NJ was becasue they built a new stadium with alot of their own money, same reason Dallas got it two years ago. So if Chicago, Phily build new stadiums, then they will also likely be in line to get one. It's a reward romthe league to help them get some $$ back for building it.

In spite of everything, at the end of the day, if he felt Buffalo gave him the best chance to play, then yes I'm sure he would sign. Unless he's dumb enough to cut his nose off to spite his face??

If by mid April after combines, senior games, etc, Nassib were to be projected as a mid- 1st rounder, would the board then explode, and if so why?? No reason then! If he's still viewed as a 3rd rounder and they draft at #8, then yes, but really doubt that's going to happen. Is he going to jump to 1st rounder, not clue at all, would be a stretch, but considering the extra value put on QB's and wouldn't shock me to see the top rated QB's, Barkley and Smith drop, could see it happening. One problem the Bill's will have is everyone is viewing the Bill's as a team likely to draft him likely at the expected level he's ranked at. If another team is also eying him, could see a number of trades to jump up over the Bill's. So if they do want him, they likely will have to select him earlier than he's viewed to go and "overpay" for him. If he's expected to go 3rd round, they may have to trade up to the bottom of round 2 to make sure they have him.

So what about RW, did he know more about football than RB? And lets assume you think he does,how did he learn it, on the job training. As far as knowledge to hire that right peopl that's the same fault RW had and whe nyou take a good look at things probably 1/2 the league is in that boat, and of the other half, a handful will get lucky once in awhile and hire the right person, kind of the way RW hired Polian. As far as the 12 years of futility, I'd attribute that more to RW than anyone else. For a 15 year period or so, they Bill's were one of the top five most talented teams in the league. Other than that period and the years they were able to live of of that run, RW did little to be happy about. By the late 90's they were going downhill and the biggest problem RB had was walked in the door at the wrong time.

In theory yes, but how would you like to be the GM who convinces his owner to take a shot on this 5'-11" guy, they use a first round pick and he's a flop. More than likely there are a number of people out there right now picked over prior years. Russell has looked great, but I'm still not convinced within a couple of years defense figure this whole read option thing and guys like that will look like a 3rd round pick. There's too many of this style QB playing now that teams can't ignore figuring out a better way to stop it. Could be the answer is you take cheap shots at him until he goes down and doesn't get up if they can't come up with a better way to stop them.

One trend it seems to be is many had a very small amount of NFL experience compared to the years they had in college. Spurrier may have been on some NFL staff years ago I believe, but then was in college for maybe close to 20 years?? Similar path for Holtz and Saban.