Dr. Who

He's a Dawgs fan and an IU fan. Pretty nice night.

You're quite right. I apologize.

Well, I live in Georgia, so I can only suffer from a distance. Contracts are up after this year, so maybe cheapskate Terry will finally clean house. The problem is he wants to be "heard," which means the dim and arrogant owner doesn't want knowledgable hockey minds that will tell him to look in the mirror if he wants an explanation for going on 15 years now of utter embarrassment. Pegula has destroyed a generation of fandom in a city that is arguably the most avid for hockey in the country. Sabres on the Warpath; not with Captain Nemo piloting the yacht.

You're right. Redundancy to redundancy is the Beane model for building a team. (You have to do that when you favor old guys and draft injury prone young fellas.)

It's been mentioned quite a bit in the bitter thread about Darius Slay.

I think the combination of an awful WR room and some issues with the OC account for much of what's going on with Josh.

If he is available in the fifth round, the GM might consider it.

It would be nice if the OC was capable of anticipating obvious difficulties, and then building a rational game plan to counter or at least mitigate them.

Yes, well, they've had going on fifteen years now to rise to the heights of mediocrity. The eighth seed is like Mt. Everest to that bunch. They are bad. At their best, they offer the barest glimmers of hope, which they consistently dash with an execrable and embarrassing performance like tonight. And the chucklehead owner does nothing. He, and the team, are a disgrace.

Nice win tonight. Ellis looking solid. Young guys contributing. I'm a little bit hopeful. Wonder what you could get in return for UPL and Power.

Thanks. This is somewhat more hopeful than I had supposed. I had surmised that McDermott took over calling the D, and that was the main engine of any discernible improvement. It would be encouraging if development of the younger players is also part of that. They still have to limit the explosive running plays. They're making a fella like Tucker appear to be an all pro.

Are these coaching issues? Can we make technical adjustments and suddenly be a more effective defense? Some of the defensive problems persist across the years with different personnel, so I had wondered if it was a scheme issue. I recollect you have insight, so I'd appreciate it if you could briefly explain why it is not a scheme issue.

I mean, they must be heartbroken over the result in Denver. This is all just cope.

You seem to still have a high opinion of McDermott. I like him, but I am not sold on his scheme. Is it fundamentally a scheme problem (outdated and figured out) or personnel? I'd like to see larger DTs and bigger LBs, but that won't happen in this scheme. Evidently the decision has been made to sacrifice stopping the run to supposedly stop the pass, but you can't have teams consistently gashing you for very long runs.

Gutsy win for the Sabres. Don't get to say that very often.