Ed_Formerly_of_Roch

If I were going to put money on where/what Ron will pop up with involvement in next, based on his comments yesterday, I'll bet on something political related, maybe some position in the governors office or some other state wide position.

I think that rookies not playing much may also be the result of fielding a very strong overall team. Players like White, Dawkins, Edmunds, Knox, Oliver, Singletary, Brown, Milano to a lesser degree all did play a lot as rookies. Now harder for them to find the field unless a clear opening ahead of them. Groot did play right away as there was need there. This year Torrence will be an interesting one as likely has the talent to immediately start, but does have a fairly talented player ahead of him in Bates. Even Kincaid, will he become the dominant used starter in the slot or have other good options in Shakir, Shefield.

The other thing to keep in mind with the Bengals. Once a month or so you see the joke post here on some thread "Ralph is Cheap" Well if Ralph was cheap, where does that put Mike Brown. Maybe a descendant of Scrooge himself?? Unless he's had a revaluation, things could quickly get dicey in Cinncy.

Can't see the timing work on this as whomever they cut very likely won't be cut till late August. I think it would be a real waste to spend money on Hopkins when he had no time prior to work with the offense. I'd think teams with good chance of going deep in playoffs like Bills, KC etc would give Hopkins a deadline of maybe August 1st at the latest. If you don't sign with us by then, we're out.

Well today's BN has a very similar article and lists Murray or Hines as a potential cut/trade and also Marlowe. That was written by someone with more insight and says the same thing. The BN article actually had 6 or 7 potential cuts and stated that if the team feels Hardy can be their return man then Hines could go which makes sense. The Bills have a surplus of interior lineman so could see Morse getting cut as does save money. Less likely here, but could happen.

I suspect the offer may be better than $2 mil, but agree with the premise Beane has made an offer and willing to wait him out. Will that work out, we shall see. If Hopkins were all about the money, he'd likely have already signed someplace, so do think he want's to go to a team like the Bills and both sides are playing a waiting game, maybe to meet in the middle, though likely much further from what Hop wanted and hoped to get. Maybe ends up being a contract with a bunch of incentives thrown in. Been talk too that Hopkins may wait out through training camp see if some team has a WR who gets hurt, then team may bump up offer. I do think though in the case of Bills, if he's not signed by the 1st week of training camp, he's not coming here. Doubt the Bills would sign him in late August barring a major injury. Kincaid caught balls very well in college. The Bills hope that translates well to the NFL, but we don't know yet. Stranger things have happened. Overall the Bills would be a much stronger offense with Hopkins than without. Your 12 personal description is great, as long as no one gets hurt or needs to sit out a play or two. That's where Hopkins makes the team much stronger.

Good article! Don't like the suggested price though, not sure it would make sense to go that high, then would be cheaper to keep what I have. That's their challenge will have to still make it cheap enough that keeping a cable/streaming subscription with all the additional content isn't still cheaper or close enough that not worth switching.

I have a subscription to Hulu/ESPN+, Paramount, and Peacock all with commercials. I also have a subscription to YTTV mainly for content from ESPN/ESPN2, etc. Watch a little bit of TNT, etc, but mainly have it for the sports. I have a TIVO DVR with an antenna hook up that I use to record shows on network TV. I was saying the other day, I could for likely much less money switch Hulu, Paramount, and Peacock to the commercial free version and dump YTTV. But I don't mainly so I can watch live coverage of games on ESPN. I can watch the live game via the ESPN app, but you need to list who your cable/streaming provider is to show that you have existing access to ESPN in order to watch it. So my question is why doesn't ESPN come out with it's own streaming service of all the ESPN channels. Say $20 a month gets you the 4 or 5 ESPN stations. What is legally, practically, or financially preventing them?

So how's it work on west coast for example on Oct 1st Fox has the doubleheader so there will be both an early and late Fox game. On the east coast there will also be one early game shown on CBS, of the 4 games being played, a good chance I will get to see the Bills on local TV where I live in NC at 1:00. But there is also as is every week one 4:05 start on CBS. So even if no local teams playing on 4:05 slot, does west coast still get that one late CBS game as they don't want to show their one game on TV starting at 10:00 AM? The week prior Sept 24th Fox also has doubleheader so would be one CBS game televised. The 4:05 game involves Carolina V Seattle so that will be shown by me so that week no 1:00 CBS game. Having said all this I did sign up as already a YTV subscriber so I got it at a decent price. But after schedule came out was second guessing myself a bit as likely there won't be too many weeks I need it as game will either be on coast to coast or on local station. It helps too that Carolina games being the local team, mostly are carried on Fox.

Thought I just read an article the other day, that some guy just retired who was around back then??

To create cap space for Hopkins?? Kind of risky move though as even if Hopkins does sign with them from all accounts likely will be a one year deal. And after that would still be stuck with a potential bad contract for Parker.

That damm funny business gets you every time!

We must have really been terrible last year. Well we were the 2nd worst offense in the league. Oh wait I'm reading that upside down!

Interesting as I've seen the Bills are picked 3rd, 4th 5th, maybe even lower in some polls. But somehow in the next breath, they have the most expectations on them?? Seems somewhat counter intuitive??

And how do you do that? If teams knew they'd have started doing that a long time ago. For the most part the plan is to cycle through people and hope you get lucky. Results likely need to be adjusted whether teams have franchise QB or not. I'd imagine too that the reason the time to reach a SB is so short is many coaches don't even last 4 years with a team nor less worry about making playoffs or SB. Just keep cycling so a few get lucky and make it. Sean McVay made it, then went 5-9 the following year. Pederson won a SB, and got fired was it 2 or 3 years later?

I can't answer the question as there's no way to know if the Eagles would have won a SB with Allen. Would they have been a better team, highly likely yes, but still no guarantees they'd have won it all. McNabb was better than average. While not at the level of Farve, Manning and Brady, he was likely in the next tier at that time. Personally I never really was that impressed with Warner, it took him how long to get into the NFL? One list I just found had McNabb listed 45th overall and Warner 42nd. My overall take on this subject is will the Bills win a SB with McD, who knows as in spite of what anyone feels about him as a coach, it also takes some luck and timing to be perfect to win it all. Maybe McD will never improve on some of the issues that seemed to have plagued him and they won't ever win it. Likely by 2025 if he doesn't win he stands a good chance of getting fired. McD is also tied for 6th on longest tenured coaches in the league. There's a number of teams that have fired/hired coaches that were as good maybe even better than the Bills were, but didn't win it either. Green bay had Arron Rodgers, Dallas has Dak. If it's so easy to find a great HC to win a SB, why haven't all the teams figured that out? The odds are much better at the team getting worse than better if you let go of McD just based on hoe many teams change HC due to not winning. Yes these teams didn't have a Josh Allen, but it's not all QB either. Just because the Bills have Allen doesn't mean another coach would win the SB either.

Reid had McNabb who was a very good QB, but Reid still couldn't win with him. One page I found had him ranked 26th all time. Comparing Kelly to Allen is kind of pointless as a different era. While Allen would have been bigger than any QB back then he also may not have survived as well back then due to the pounding he'd have taken and defenses didn't need to worry as much about getting flagged.

Added Reid to your list as took him 21 years to win the SB.

Agree this really means very little. So no need for anyone to go nuts. Likely they were safe for another 2 years anyway barring disaster. Most GM's to get a 2nd chance on HC so even if McD were to be let go, likely Beane would have hung on. This just means if if Pegula wants to fire them in next couple of years, he'll just need to dig another well. Is he still digging wells or did he get out of that business?

Conversely they always say wear a hat to stay warm.

Is it still possible that a player could give his signing bonus back, etc? I know I've read a number of times, admittedly not as much in past few year where a player suddenly retires/quits and the team considers going after him to return the money he was given. As best as I know it's rarely if ever successful. But could see it were to get to situation where Diggs says, "I want out, end of discussion" the Bills could say great give us back the money then we can try and make it happen. Are the team captains voted on by the players or picked by the coaches or a combination of both? If picked by the players, would the players be so bold as to not choose him this year? Seem to recall couple years back Diggs was elected by the players to be a captain??

To me the bigger surprise is how do they put Baltimore at #2, ahead of Bengals?? What have they really done to improve, other than re-sgin Jackson?

Fixed it for you. First paragraph makes sense, but then the 2nd one becomes a whole slant on his ego which none of us really have any idea of the truth.

Granted while not as likely you could still have the same concerns on defense, having to potentially replace the play caller every year. Many of the rumors, posts claim both Beane and Mcd report to Pegula directly and only he can fire either of them. Don't know if this really is the truth or not, may find out one of these years. But don't necessarily think firing McD means Beane is gone too. In most cases the GM gets at least a 2nd try at a HC hire before the team figures out he may actually be the problem and he gets let go. I think it Beanes case the roster he's put together is pretty solid so he'd get a pass.

Exactly the list of failures is much longer than the list of successes in new HC hires That may be great if we were playing tennis and only person participating. But there's 52 other who he also needs to be the perfect or at least close to it fit. You want to hire him as a QB coach great. I realize QB is the most important position far and away but hiring a HC for that reason is likely not a smart overall choice. And I'll see you're McVay and Taylor and raise you Matt Rhule and Kliff Kingsbury just to name a couple off the top of my head. And one thing I'm 100% certain of I'd have more chips to bet against you on the list of failures over successes. That's a stretch to say they have more playoff success as Sirianni and Taylor both have had limited experience, only 2 seasons. McVay has had more time and went from SB champs to 5-12 in one year. That's pretty impressive! You're right in that no one was asking the Bills to hire McD when they did, he was an unknown and has worked out very well in the overall success of the team. Just hasn't won a SB and who knows if he ever will. It took Andy Reid 21 years to win one and probably plenty of mistakes along the way before he did win. Lasted 14 years with Eagles with one SB appearance. You're right to that no one knows that replacement for McD couldn't be better. But the odds are not in the Bills favor as for every success there are probably about 3 failures. So good chance the team could be worse off. At best a new coach will bring in new schemes and have a decent amount of roster churn, salary cap hits, etc. and a maybe a down year or two.