dave mcbride

The bills d mostly stunk. It's receiving corps mostly stunk, and in the half-plus season or so when it didn't, he had a 100+ qb rating. He is not below average. He's average. Watch other teams and you'll see why. Also, the run game was above average in large part because of him. That's part of his job too.

This train of events was not predictable at all. About as unpredictable as Robby Cano's suspension.

Quick question because I don't know - does he include Taylor's rushing TDs? Because if he doesn't, the whole argument is flawed. Also, the biggest problems with sacks is that they cause a ton of fumbles by the QB. Taylor hardly ever fumbled. So the analysis is pretty shaky overall despite making a number of valid points. Mind you, I don't think Taylor is elite or the answer. He's average, but reading this tweetstorm would never lead you to believe that. Leaves out stuff that makes him look good and focuses only on the negative. When I say he's average, I mean it: the team was over .500 when he started despite fielding pretty lousy defenses most of the time he was here.

He missed six games plus all of preseason and camp. The result was that he was bad in his first season (no sugar-coating that), and the Bills lost 20-25 percent of their investment (depending on whether they pick up his fifth year option, which I think is highly unlikely at this point) right off the top. I think they knew he was hurt, but assumed it wouldn't be a problem. They were laughably wrong given how quickly they announced that he was gonna have to have surgery. A bum shoulder is not a good problem for a DE either. I do agree that with you that they didn't lie; they just completely effed up in their judgment.

Moulds was never the same player after he tore his hamstring in game 5 of the 2003 season. He was off to a blazing start that year and that injury appeared to cost him .25 seconds off his 40 time for the rest of his career.

Note that the edge is in the west!

I'm late to this. This is really crazy. Why would Graham do something like this? It's a little pathological.

That and a dollar will get a DE a cup of coffee in today's NFL. If you can't effectively rush the passer from the DE position, you are basically worthless - a low-end rotational guy who bounces from team to team over 6-7 year career.

I disagree with the first part - a great many sportswriters (especially of the ex-jock variety) are pretty clueless about matters beyond sports and the hometown they live in, and the new breed of data hounds would have subjected us to a five-part series on his accuracy throwing screens, square-ins, deep outs, and bombs. And they would have interviewed 16 QB camp coaches to reinforce whatever point they were trying to make.

I completely misread this post on page 3, not noting the date. Apologies. Perhaps it was about Vic after all.

What's the Godwin's Law equivalent for comparisons to the Kim family?

I am calling BS on your line of argument here. This is an objectively good piece by a sportswriter, one that the Sal Capaccios of the world are incapable of writing because they either don't know jack about water politics in California or aren't curious enough to connect it to the player. http://buffalonews.com/2018/05/19/you-bloom-where-youre-planted-the-cultivation-of-josh-allen-part-1/ As for their being a ton of TV shows, what's your point? Is the world somehow just as a good a place if the shows all suck? Quality is a good thing in life. Regardless, I wouldn't be surprised if these Allen pieces were an audition for a bigger and better job at an outlet that isn't currently self-imploding and in fact already went through it's personnel crisis (i.e., ESPN). It may be the case, of course, that the Carucci thing made him persona non grata there too. (And there may be a story behind that as well related to the other guys who are gone.)

I think it's very bad that the paper is destroying itself, but the timing of this and the Vic Carucci-related tweet are pretty suspicious. I mean, christ, Graham just did a huge suite of stories on Josh freaking Allen, the QB of the future, a guy who is going to be the centerpiece of Buffalo sports reporting for the next half decade. It certainly didn't look like he was being eased out. It may be the case, however, that the newsroom was poisonous (not surprising given the layoffs) and he grabbed the new ESPN gig as soon as it became available to get out. Unlike JS and BG, he may actually have chosen to leave.

Enforce a true ban on HGH and watch what happens to team injury reports. Methinks that no one will like the results.

Just speculating here, but Graham is friends with JS and BG, and given recent events there perhaps some bad blood exists there over that. Always remember that Vic did a stint at nfl.com too, and that's a place with some corporate shill-ish/propaganda-ish tendencies. Regardless, I don't dislike Carucci as a reporter and think Graham was definitely out of line. But there's a decent chance that recent workplace layoff misery has generated some backbiting and taking of names. Note also that unlike Graham, Carucci had no positive tweets about his two longtime colleagues who were forced to resign.

If you didn't watch this embedded tweet, do it now!

?? UB was a small private school until it was absorbed into the Suny system. A bunch of Sunys were private schools founded long before (eg, geneseo in 1871). Pre-suny UB was a contender in any way shape or form, and unlike UC-Berekely, it wasn't SET UP AS THE THE FRIGGIN' FLAGSHIP STATE SCHOOL FROM THE GET-GO!! Sheesh! Not "suuposedly"; actually.

Um ... UB is not "Cal" -- I mean it's not even close in virtually every category, so why bring this up? -- and most people call it UC-Berkeley or Berkeley now anyway (within both academia and the state of California, that is). Sports fans call it "Cal," I guess. More importantly , for half a century Cal was the only state public institution, created long before the second one, UCLA. Berkeley was created in 1868 and UCLA was created in the 1920s. UB and the others all came into existence as SUNY schools at exactly the same moment in the early 1960s. It's not an apt comparison.

The issue is that UB isn't any better than Stony Brook (a better run institution) at this point, and it's a worse undergraduate institution than Binghamton (I say this as a UB grad). Why should they get the claim to the NY moniker? Both Stony Brook and Binghamton are inarguably more selective now too. The basic issue is that the SUNY system was modeled on the UC system, with a bunch (4) of university centers and a larger number of colleges. In retrospect (given that NYS entered a decades-long stretch of relative decline just as the system was created), there should have been a flagship campus in the Hudson valley and a "State" campus in western NY (a la the Michigan, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, etc. systems). Water under the bridge now, of course, but UB is never going to be elite enough relative to the other two to claim the mantle of being "the" state university in NY. Indeed, UB was initially conceived of the Berkeley of the system, but it never achieved that height relative to the others (partly because of regional economic decline). Why not just be happy with what the California model SUNY follows actually does -- derive the school name from its locale (UCSD, UCLA, UCSB, etc.)?

Since it's a total rip-off of the Sixers' "Trust the Process" slogan, I'm going to treat this ridiculous move as the "Shout 2000" version of the "process" trademark wars.

See my post a few pages previously for why I really think they're out.

He wonders; that's all. He doesn't say it specifically but mentions that the paper needs new clients for its printing business. Anyway it's speculation.

Well, TP has given interviews to JW and TG. Unless I missed it, though, he hasn't given an interview in a while. Kim P spoke with Vic C in that recent piece about the stadium issue a couple of weeks ago, though.

Good stuff; thanks for posting. My big takeaway is that cutting back on, well, everything won't make the paper better. Not surprisingly, it'll make it worse. I certainly do wonder about the Pegulas' role in all of this. Say what you will about Ralph, but he regularly granted interviews to Sullivan, who was clearly a thorn in the franchise's side.