Ennjay

Yes, I was agreeing with you.

This thread and discussion (thanks Toledo Bill!) prompted me to check out the Bills' '73 draft: 1973 Pick Name Pos. School 1a. Paul Seymour T Michigan (7) 1b. Joe DeLamielleure G Michigan St. (26) 2. Jeff Winans DT USC (32) 3a. Joe Ferguson QB Arkansas (57) 3b. Bob Kampa DE California (77) 4a. Donnie Walker DB Central St. (87) 4b. Jeff Yeates DT Boston College (103) 5a. Wallace Francis WR Arkansas AM & N 5b. Choice to Miami 6. John Skorupan LB Penn St. (136) 7a. Brian McConnell LB Michigan St. (162) 7b. John Ford TE Henderson St. (181) 8. Lee Fobbs RB Grambling (190) 9. Mike Reppond WR Arkansas (215) 10a. Matthew Reed QB Grambling (240) 10b. John LeHeup LB S. Carolina (259) 11. Richard Earl T Tennessee (265) 12. Ron Carroll DT Sam Houston (294) 13. Choice to Denver 14. Merv Krakau LB Iowa St. (344) 15a. Joe Rizzo LB Kings Point (369) 15b. Vince O’Neil RB Kansas (379) 16. Choice to Denver 17. John Stearns DE Colorado (423) Seymour, Joe D, and Ferguson were all rookies on that team. A lot of these guys ended up with real NFL careers -- remember Merv Krakau at MLB?. And yes, that's the same John Stearns who played for the Mets.

They didn't draft Reuben Gant until 1974. But you're right anyway. (As I recall, Gant couldn't catch either. So he was the complete package.)

Sadly, they both did. Both much too young.

Seymour was a Bills first-round pick from Michigan the same year they took Joe D in the first round from Michigan State. As I recall he was supposed to be a tackle but the Bills moved him to TE because they had the need for blocking and they weren't planning to throw much anyway. Does anyone else remember his older brother Jim? Played WR for Notre Dame in the Terry Hanratty years (speaking of ex-Steelers) and later for the Rams. Big college rep but never did much as a pro.

DONNIE GREEN!!! Of course! He was House Ballard before House Ballard was House Ballard.

This is killing me. I know I know this but I'm blanking. The receivers were JD "Crackback" Hill and Bob Chandler, and the fullback was Jim Braxton, right?

Center: Mike Montler Guards: Reggie McKenzie and Joe DeLamielleure (HOF!) Tackles: Dave Foley and Paul Seymour . . . although I know Seymour started as a tight end and later moved inside.

If you have a family you'll want to live in the Burbs. You should think seriously about taking the train to work. It's a lot easier and maybe even cheaper than paying for parking. Try http://www.metrarail.com/ to check out the train routes and travel times, and then you can judge what might be a realistic place to live. The North Shore is great but pricey. A lot of people have headed to Oak Park and Naperville in recent years, so prices have probably gone up there too. But they're still nice places to live. If you're single, take a long hard look at the Lincoln Park area as a fun place to live for a few years. For what it's worth, Chicago's always felt like a bigger, more sophisticated Buffalo to me. Same ethnic groups, etc. But you can't find a decent Friday night fishfry there.

And this headline from the bottom of the link, the list of other OJ-related stories: "O.J. Simpson's Ex Isn't Missing, Knows Of Dead Cat" (I have no interest in reading further because the story couldn't possibly be as good as the headline.)

She's 19 and the link says "This photo of Sydney Simpson was taken in 1997." That's an 11- or 12-year-old?

I don't think anyone would give up a 2nd round pick for Henry with only one year left on his contract. I would expect that any taker would want to negotiate extra years before pulling the trigger on a trade, and that gives Henry some bargaining power he doesn't otherwise have. Of course, if he and his agent play hardball his alternative is to stay here, fester on the bench for a year, and gamble he can make a killing as a free agent after 2005. (I doubt we would be havng discussions about whether to franchise Travis Henry in 1/2006 if he's still here.) I don't think he wants that (he's anxious to get traded now), so I expect him to be cooperative. But I still wonder if anyone would give up a 2nd for him. I wouldn't be interested in Jurevicius. He's been injured most of the last two years, he's losing speed, and he probably makes more than Aiken or Reed. Are we ready to give up on Aiken? I'm asking because I have no idea -- we don't see too many Bills games out here in the Garden State and I know very little about him. I also think it's more important to be confident in your starting TE than in your third WR, so I could be interested in a trade for a serviceable tight end (Ken Dilger plus a 3rd? Or is Dilger too far gone?).

Two thoughts, consistenmt with what a lot of other people said: 1. You'll just have to accept that until a puppy hits about 12 weeks it really doesn't retain ANY training. Starting around 12 weeks they begin to pick up on what the trainiing is about, and they also get a little more bladder control. Don't expect more from her than she's got to give. (It's not like she's Drew Bledsoe.) 2. Crating works great, and it's also very humane. Dogs like their private, sheltered space (= den). You would put her in the crate after discipline not as a punishment, but as a place where she can pull herself back together. Puppies can be overwhelmed by what they perceive as the vastness of your house or yard. Good luck, and if this is your first dog remember: yes, it's worth it.

The thing that always gets rushed past when people talk about Henry's trade value is that the guy really isn't that good. Yeah, I know he's rushed for 1,000+ yards twice. He doesn't have breakaway speed, he doesn't have very good hands, he isn't very big, he's not exactly a phi beta kappa about the playbook, and he has questionable judgment (specifically, why did he ever throw that pass in Miami? Just because that was the play called in the huddle and he was going to throw the ball somewhere no matter what?). He is, on the positive side, a reliable, tough runner who can be productive between the tackles and has a cap-friendly contract (for one more season). He's also OK in the locker room I guess -- notwithstanding the current moves to improve his playing time, he didn't create much of a stir when Willis took over. But I think it will take some extradordinary circumstances for him ever to get near a Pro Bowl again, what with the quality backs already in the league and more coming in the near term. Three of the top four or five prospects in this year's drafts are RB's -- the two from Auburn and the one from Texas. And soon enough Reggie Bush and Adrian Peterson will be in the NFL. I think a third round pick maybe the best the Bills could get, and I would hope it's in the first half of the round.

I understand teams have to give the league a one-year notice to change uniforms but I've never heard of the five-year rule. Does anybody know a source? And what was really so bad about royal blue anyway?

Great website!

I believe it's French for lark (the songbird).

One of the great things about this show is that you can't let any detail go by, no matter how trivial. I can understand people who don't get it -- it's a cult show and someting of a mindgame -- but the rest of us are entitled to it. I think that, in true 24 spirit, the whole Defense Secretary kidnapping is a red herring. We still don't know what this season's big risk/hazard/mission. In past years we knew (or thought we knew) from the start: the Palmer assassination, the nuclear bomb, and the virus.

Hey, what's your favorite interrogation technique? I agree that Jack's yelling is way too much but I still love it.

Thanks for the responses. I'd still like to know about any franchise-and-trade deals (first round pick or any pick) other than Price, and I notice nobody has come up with one. I'm not sure you can take off the franchise tag the same year you put it on a player. In other words, if you franchise Jennings, I think, you MUST sign him to Top 5 money if he signs (vs. holding out), and I think you have to block his imputed salary against your cap even if he holds out. You can only beat it if you trade him or sign him to a contract with a lesser salary hit. One poster's reference to Spikes implicitly makes two more good points: 1. The Bengals' failure to franchise-and-trade goes back to my original question. They had their reasons, but they let him go for nothing. Again: franchise-and-trade isn't as simple as it looks. 2. Since the Bengals didn't franchise him we'll never know if the Bills thought he was worth giving up a number one. It seems ridiculous to me that they would hesitate for a heartbeat to give up anything but, say, one of the first three picks (if even) for Spikes. More likely, would anyone rather have, say the 18th pick in the draft than TKO? Nevertheless a lot of NFL teams are scared to death to give up a first-round pick in advance, even though it seems like there are more first-round busts every year, more later-round gems every year, and maybe more first-round draft-day trades every year.

A lot of people on this board are telling the Bills to franchise and trade Jennings or Williams. It looks so easy because it worked for Price. Think about it. How often does this happen in real life? The Price deal was great but it took the accident of Atlanta's owner salivating for a local guy (Price) who looked like a "perfect fit" for the other new toy in town, Michael Vick. Under the circumstances Atlanta didn't care about the draft choice or the Price contract. If it's so easy to franchise a guy and then trade him for a first-round pick, how come everybody doesn't do it? Can anyone remember a player other than Price who scored a Number One for his original team this way? And if you can name only two or three more in the last 15 years, what does that say? I'm not saying it's not worth dreaming about this -- just that it's unrealistic to think other teams are lining up to make that kind of deal, based on past history.

A lot of posters are talking about whether or not SD trades Brees. Just to be clear, his contract is up this year and they can't trade him unless they re-sign him OR use the franchise tag to retain his rights. Franchising anyone creates a risk that the player will then be untradeable because few (or no) teams will want to pay top 5 money for one year for the player in question. Who would want to rent a quarterback (that is, a key guy who doesn't know your offense) for big bucks for one season? So it only should only work for SD if Brees agrees to a multi-year deal either with the new team (as Peerless did) or with SD that's acceptable to the new team. (And if SD can work out a multi-year contract they may not need to franchise him.) This is all written with the assumption SD wants to get some value for Brees when they lose him. If they actually want to KEEP him, things are different.

Actually I think it's Mondays at 9 (Eastern), in the vacated MNF spot for us die-hards.

Terrific show. More tension, minute-to-minute, than anything else on TV. I thought it lost its way towards the end of last year (the Sherry/David Palmer storyline just got completely stupid, and what was the deal with what's-her-name and the baby and Chase?), but killing off Sherry, axing Palmer as president, and cutting off CTU suggests the producers know that and are setting up for a fresh start.

In a roundabout way that's really my point. I held on to faith in Bledsoe as long as I could, thinking it was Kilbride's fault or the line's fault or whatever, and that in the right schemes he would just have to push the right buttons and get the job done without really being a star (like, say, Trent Dilfer in Baltimore their SB year or Brad Johnson in Tampa Bay their SB year). What he showed yesterday, like he did against the Patriots in November, is that in a big game against a smart defense he bottoms out. So It looks like it's time to just go with JP, with Bledsoe on the bench. I don't know what an "open competition" accomplishes, if there really is such a thing. I was trying to say that a truly "open competition" would likely favor Bledsoe in preseason.