MRM33064

This. Once these gents break into the fraternity, they're good for a career's worth of very well-paying jobs of questionable impact ... at least until some ownership group figures out that the incremental value of another "adjunct assistant running backs specialist" or the like (a/k/a "real football guys") isn't anywhere near worth the investment. That day will come, but probably not for another generation.

I would've predicted an MC Hammer soundtrack, insofar as the popular Buffalo thing to do is try to recreate 1991.

Yes! $1 hotdog night at Batavia Downs is still on ... like a mofo!

Reaching into the past to find hope for the future is a solid Buffalo tradition. If we only had Marv ... Polian ... Jimbo ... the grain elevators ...

Stupid is as stupid does.

Fitz, stick with the plan. Dorin Dickerson. It's his turn.

Fair point. Now WGR is reverting back to the original story, i.e., move anytime with $400mm penalty with a one time "get outta Buffalo free" card after 7 years.

I know ... for real? That's a little embarrassing reporting if true - yet the result is great. A 7 year locked-in-to-Buffalo is far better than I ever imagined or thought likely.

If the average NFL team is valued (Per Forbes) around $1.1B (Dallas high at $2.1B, Jacksonville low at $770mm) and the Bills are estimated at $805 mm - while, of course, they're in Buffalo - then at first glance the $400 million penalty sounds to me about what we'd think it'd be. Will someone pay a $400mm premium to pick up and move the team elsewhere to, presumably, capture the excess value for being in a different area? Who knows, but I don't think this is by any means a "well, we've got a team for 7 years" situation. Then again, going into today we weren't guaranteed anything either. EDIT: Now WGR is reporting there is NO MOVING until year 7, AFTER WHICH penalties kick in. I suppose we'll get the real story eventually ... good grief ...

.... against weak teams, so long as the game is also essentially meaningless. Under those conditions, we are money. :-)

Well said. Visions of the old Dallas MNF disaster, where a similar logic applied (and was, of course, also blown by the Bills). Of course, you'll go nowhere with logic and tactics, unless you can some how say it with a sleepy Southern drawl. You know, the kind that sounds all football-y.

Gosh, I couldn't disagree more. Like you and the others here, I love this team (or the idea of it) ... and the city (after having lived elsewhere and moved back) ... but objectively this team looks like a total disaster for the reasons I listed before. Even if we were willing to dramatically overpay, I see the realistic chances of scoring an up-and-coming GM and/or coaching star as virtually zero. There's a reason why Buffalo is rarely, if ever, touted as a prime opportunity for any great up-and-coming coaching prospect. And it's not just because everyone hates Buffalo - i.e. the perpetual mysterious anti-Buffalo conspiracy. Should we give up? Of course not, but the only chance this franchise has to turn things around (absent some grandiose, fantasy change-in-ownership scenario) is for us to accidentally stumble upon the next Tom Brady or the like. NE had a brilliant stroke of luck there, and it ultimately went a long way toward turning that entire franchise.

Nobody with a legitimately bright future in the league is coming to Buffalo (edit: or otherwise gunning to lead this franchise). The list of reasons is a mile long, but we could probably start with: the ownership situation, the lack of a franchise QB, the size of the market, no #1 overall pick, etc. It's both painfully clear and completely heartbreaking. That said, we're still an NFL franchise, and that's still enough prestige to attract plenty of candidates, just none that anyone else likely wants.

That decision to punt was a perfect metaphor for the team. The coach's primary focus was on what the other guy might be able to do if we tried and didn't succeed - even when time was literally running out on the entire season. At that precise point in the game, the clock and possession were far more important concerns than potential field position if the 4th down attempt wasn't successful. (If he thought the defense would stop them after a punt, for certain he'd have been equally confident the defense would've stopped them after a failed 4th down attempt.) It was the typical wimpy, "try not to lose it" call that we've all learned to expect.

I thought the only reason we drafted him so high at a time when we had glaring other holes was because the guy had a chance to be a "special", play-making, game-breaking star. In other words, he was thought to be a player good enough that it could possibly make sense for a consistently awful team (with tons of holes) to invest its high overall 1st pick on a running back, when it had multiple starting RBs already on the team. Finally, he starts showing flashes that indeed he might be this "special" guy and ... <drum roll> .... He's used now and then. Mixed in with the rest.

Definitely some truth in that, but what folks are saying isn't really just "fire" this guy or "sign" that guy, it's mostly a desperate, general plea for results coupled with a well-earned impatience for anything that appears to be failing again. When you watch a team do what the Bills have done over the past 2 weeks, trying hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory (succeeding once), it's hard to put the fans at the center of the hilarity target. The entire organization, all the way down to the looks on player's faces, looks like it's ready to adopt the motto: "oh no not again." All-in-all, it is pretty incredible how an NFL team can be so consistently bad-to-mediocre. It defies the odds. One would think that over the course of over a decade we'd get at least one accidental, random deviation resulting in a season ending in playoff appearance. With all the high draft picks, the big ticket free agent signings, the favorable schedules, other team's injuries ... gosh ... by accident we'd have to be successful at least 1 season out of every .. say ... 13? Yet the incompetence overpowers all.

The "Call Girl" defense. Very easy to score but very expensive.

Not sure it's Buffalo's favorite imagined quality ("intestinal fortitude") that's lacking, what's lacking is a consistently great QB. (In the case of Jimbo, a HOF one.) Consistent, high-level QB play is primarily how teams stay good in the NFL, and we'll never be there again until we get that guy. Until that day, we'll win a few - and think we have promise - and then lose a few, and feel like the sky is falling. Yesterday did a pretty good job of highlighting both sides of that QB equation, and the predictable outcome. A lot of us here remember the days before Belichick was crowned King of All Coaches, i.e., before he accidentally uncovered the greatest QB that ever played the game.

Off-topic: The 15-year experiment of "make-all-news-free-and-ad-supported" has been one of the single most destructive, damaging experiments in the recent history of journalism. That move (along with the decline of revenues from the classifieds) has led to more consolidation and cost-cutting which, in turn, has resulted in massive decline in quality - especially in local coverage. Anyone who is really interested in this topic should listen to David Simon ("The Wire") lecture on this. I'm no Mr. Burns, but a good paper - whether it's delivered online or at your door - is worth a few bucks a week. Thank goodness papers are starting to attempt to reverse this disaster.

Dear football gods, please bring us to the day when we're not even sure what the name of our punter is, let alone engage in a post-game discussion about his performance - a/k/a how well he executes the "voluntary turnover" play.

We won, I'm thrilled. But yes ... absolutely you risk the possibility of having to kneel on it at the 1 yard line versus risking having the punt fumbled, bobbled, hitting someone in the foot, etc. Only bad things can happen from calling a fair catch and then actually trying to catch it at that point in the game, at that field position. Thankfully, nothing bad happened.

I think that might've been the (scary) logic. When you're going to trot out the offense on the very next play to call the kneel down, it makes the decision to field that punt quite absurd, to put it politely. There was 1 good decision there, which was: get the heck away from it.

Well .... I did think it was particularly "Leodis-like" for the Bills to field the punt (calling a fair catch even, I believe) near the end of the first half. I believe there was about 20-30 seconds left in the half, Cleveland was punting to us, and we fielded the punt in our territory - only to run the offense out on the field to kneel on it. Thankfully nothing happened, but I'd like to understand exactly why any Buffalo Bill would've been allowed to be within a mile of that punt when it was coming down.

Decisions are tough Sanchez or Tebow, which one? Rex looks at their toes Gator prays, drops back Tebow sacked, cries: Why God, Why? Jesus loves Bills more

QB play is so disproportionately important, so ridiculously more important than virtually almost anything else, it's difficult to spell out a logical case why we wouldn't use an "extra" roster spot on getting as many looks as possible at potential QB talent. Keep doing it until we find what we want, and then if we've got 2 ... that is a high-class problem indeed. Typically we get chatter about using roster spots on extra kickers for cryin' out loud.