sullim4

I haven't followed the Sabres closely in years - since the original Ruff era. My general take on the team is that it very much resembles the drought-era Bills - bad culture, meddling ownership, and an uncertain future. They are a long way from building a contender and need a fixer-type coach or hockey operations guy that knows how to win and will purge the organization of its cruft. Lindy doesn't strike me as the guy that will do this. I think he will toughen up the team but I don't think he has what it takes to get them to a division title or a deep playoff run. I do, however, think there's a good chance he gets the team back in the playoffs as a lower seed. If that is the goal - and perhaps that's an appropriate one given the drought - then I think this will be a successful hire. Otherwise, if there are delusions of Ruff bringing Buffalo a Stanley Cup... prepare to be disappointed.

Again, the economic impact from these stadiums is almost exclusively generated from the hotels, restaurants, airports, and adjacent downtowns. If a new stadium is built in Kansas, visiting fans are still going to fly into and out of Missouri - they are not building a new airport in Kansas for a stadium. Those same people are going to rent cars in Missouri. They are going to stay in hotels and eat in restaurants in Missouri because there's actually stuff to do there other than the game. Players are going to continue to live in Missouri and pay income taxes to Missouri. That's where the vast majority of economic benefit from these stadiums come from. Very little is actually generated from ticket sales. I think it's actually quite shrewd if Missouri finds a way out of this and Kansas pays for these stadiums as a way to blow their own state's horn.

Strongly disagree with all of this. The Missouri side being nicer has little to nothing to do with the sports teams. It goes back to the 1800s when - quite simply - it was easier not to cross the river and the land on the Missouri side was considered better. This led to the growth of the Missouri side of the river and post war, spurred development of suburbs on the Kansas side of the river with the growth of the Interstate highway system. Even if both teams move, players will still choose to live wherever they want and generate income tax for their respective state. The airport isn't going to move to the other side of the river. The downtown isn't going anywhere. Visiting teams and tourists will continue to fly into MCI and those who want to visit the city will continue to do so. The current stadium setup - where both are literally in the middle of nowhere, have their own highway exit, and provide little in the way of economic benefit to the immediate surrounding area, creates questionable economic benefit in the first place. Why not let Kansas foot the bill for the stadiums while you can reap all the associated economic benefits?

My hope would be that these are non-divisional games between opponents that are located close to one another. Think PIT/CLE@BUF or BAL@NYJ.

Certainly seems like a trade with the unhappy face. Dead cap is $11M so a cut seems unlikely. A puzzling move if true.

New York State is a big reason. Everything - literally everything is more expensive. Labor, taxes, materials, insurance, stricter codes, more regulation, the weather - all of these things increase the cost of major construction projects in New York compared to elsewhere. Nevada is very much the polar opposite of much of that. The labor pool is much larger, the construction season doesn't have to deal with 3 foot snowstorms, and the laws there make it cheaper to build. My wife and I live outside of Seattle, not exactly a cheap place to live. I just had dinner with my parents this last weekend - they've lived out here now for a couple years after living in NYS for over 35 years. The biggest shock to them, which they still can't stop talking about - is how much cheaper it is to live out here. And like I said - Western Washington isn't particularly cheap. I will also wager to guess that yes - public funding drove up the price. You can bet that things like eco-friendly building materials, sustainable energy sources, and whatnot were part of the deal.

Tomlin doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that would put up with Russ' baggage. During the drought, this is the kind of move the Bills front office would make. I expect a similar move out of a team like Washington.

I don't think this is correct. BUF's longest runway is 8800 feet and IAG (Niagara International) has a 9,800 foot runway. Either of these could accommodate something like a 787. In fact, they flew one an A350 (Airbus' composite widebody) to London from BUF. Not to mention other team's charters have to land in Buffalo, and they typically fly widebodies. I suspect the travel rating is low because the team forces rookies and other players with less tenure to share hotel rooms.

Terry is cheap. I guess they're staying at the Red Roof Inn and flying Spirit Airlines to get a 'D+' in the travel category? That one feels like a really easy one to fix.

This I think is the right solution. Play 15 minute quarters, each team gets 2 timeouts, include a 2 minute warning, and whoever is winning at the end of the quarter is the winner. If it's still tied, add on another quarter and 2 timeouts. Every 2 quarters of overtime gets a halftime break. This amount of time almost guarantees one possession each and also forces teams to employ strategies around eating the clock. The current system is overly complex for no good reason. I wish they'd do the same thing with the 10 minute overtime periods in the regular season.

The one reason - if it goes to a third possession, it's sudden death and if you score you win. That's the only reason why I can think you'd do it.

I don't disagree with you, but having seen this story many times before as a Bills fan, I go for it on fourth down rather than kick the FG. You know Mahomes and Kelce have a greater than 50 percent chance of marching down the field and scoring the TD. A FG is as good as a punt.

As bad as the 52-17 Super Bowl was... we have worse. A lot worse. Candidates in my mind: - That 6-3 Cleveland game when Ralph decided not to accept his Hall of Fame ring in front of the fans, because he was so embarrassed about how the team performed in the first half. Think about that - the owner was so scared of facing the home fans that he refused to accept one of the highest honors in football in front of them. Even The Athletic called it the worst game in the NFL in the last 20 years: https://theathletic.com/3682851/2022/10/13/browns-bills-nfl-worst-game/ - Peterman's 5 INT in the first half against the Chargers. As bad as 13 seconds was, I think this might be McDermott's most embarrassing moment as a head coach. Peterman had no business being anywhere near the field. Tyrod was no prized calf but at least he could play the quarterback position. - The 56-10 shellacking by NE* in 2007. I was at this game. I get it, the Bills were the vastly inferior team. But this was the Bills' first appearance on NBC since they purchased the Sunday Night Football package. They were playing the train horn late in the 4th quarter on their third downs up by over 40 points... at that point, why? - Romo's 5 INT game that we managed to lose. - The 2009 opener against the Patriots, where we were wearing the AFL uniforms and McKelvin fumbled that kick return.

This is actually one of the reasons why I thought they might try Chile over Brazil. The medical care is better, it's wealthier, and the country is frankly safer than many parts of the USA. Brazil is a much bigger crapshoot on all three counts.

I will say that it is interesting that the longest dynasties have occurred post-2002, when the NFL realigned into the 4-team division setup. With smaller divisions, it is harder to overcome a single, dominant team in a division. It's harder to attract free agents, for instance, if you're playing Brady or Mahomes twice a year versus seeing them once every three or four years. I do think there is a competitive issue when the first place team in the division and the last place team in the division play identical schedules aside from three games (the two cross-division in-conference games, and the 17th cross-conference game). I wouldn't mind seeing them juggle things a bit here.

He would do a breakdown of the opponent every week for their team's youtube channel. It was fairly superficial but it was interesting to hear him break down plays. I think he would do well with this, but I agree, keep him off the pregame talk shows and out of the booth. That's not his strong suit.

Even if he made the kick, this game felt like the 2021 divisional where OT was going to end poorly. Bass was just a part of the larger picture of mistakes in this game. Allen should have taken what the defense was giving him all night, and the defense needed to make one or two stops in the first three quarters. Any one of those could have won it.

Squib kick this, please...

KIRO-TV in Seattle has been showing a Lifelock infomercial. Same on Paramount plus.

I just tuned in from the Lions game and all I see is this LifeLock commerical running for multiple minutes? There's no pregame?

Proposed rule change: Doink the ball, get 1 point. So if it's a miss, you get 1 point. If you make it, the FG is worth 4 points.

I think the question here is whether the players response was tied to the fact that he had the interim title. As we saw with the Chargers, even bad teams tend to play hard when their head coach gets fired and an interim takes over. Now that he's the full time head coach, will Pierce be able to maintain this? I honestly don't know. I do know the Raiders threw a ton of money at Josh McDaniels and so it did seem unlikely that they'd make another run at a Belichick or Harbaugh-type coach that would demand a lot of cash.

You know, that's actually not a bad idea. Quiz the driver in with a random question that only a Bills fan would know the answer to. Who was the best punter during the drought? Name one TBD whipping boy from the last five years. (I would guess this year's is Von?) Who was the K-Gun named after? Who was the linebacker on the Miami Dolphins that gave Bills fans the finger during the 90s? Did OJ really do it?

Every time I see one of these threads, it is always fun to see the number of people who call Jim Nantz "Jim Nance" and Cris Collinsworth "Collingsworth". If you're gonna criticize these guys, and I agree they often deserve it... at least bother to spell their names correctly.