Taro T
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Posts posted by Taro T
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I will agree that Wade had a very strong loyalty to his friend, but there is NO WAY that guy should have been anywhere near an NFL sideline. Ronnie Jones took one of the best special teams units in the league and made it just about the worst. Wade had no problem with making DeHaven the scape goat for the home run throw forward and then replacing him with a guy with no special teams experience. He should have been willing to tell his friend, "hey, sorry, we tried. Go back to college for a few years, get some more experience and maybe I can bring you in as a quality control coach." Actually, the ST coach he should have refused to fire was DeHaven.
Didn't Wade want to move Jones to Linebackers Coach? I can just imagine how that thought process must have worked. "Well, we've got a good linebacking corp, heck they're almost as good as special teams used to be. Ronnie can't f*** that one up, can he?" Sorry Wade, I think he could have.
Overall, I think Wade did a good job. It's a d*mn shame that one more than likely illegal fluke play ended up lining up the dominoes on him.
Dave.
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There are companies who do this now. At these companies all employees HAVE to join the health insurance plan UNLESS they can demonstrate alternative coverage to the company. Lots of companies do this now without any federal bureacracy.
Possibly another way to get more companies to cover all employees would be to eliminate the federal tax deduction for employee health benefits UNLESS the company offers benefits to all employees. This would make more companies "volunteer" to cover all employees.
Might work. More likely though, it would cause the companies to only provide insurance to top executives as the added cost of insuring the "masses" would exceed the value of the deduction for the employees they were currently providing insurance.
Dave.
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I don't remember it that way at all...in fact, one thing I will give the Phillips era staff, over any in recent history (from Hank Bullough on!), is a great ability to make adjustments on the fly. Because Wade was who he is, I think he was pretty underrated as our HC! It was his clash with the owner that got him fired, not his teams lack of performance.
Agreed about making adjustments on the fly (4-3, 3-4 who do we have who's healthy? and he made it work).
The thing that doomed Wade was the Home Run Throw Forward. If that doesn't happen, Bruce DeHaven is STILL the Bills' special teams coach and idiot boy with the cones is still an assistant college coach or pool boy or whatever but not an assistant with the Bills. And Wade would never have been put in the position of defending idiot boy or keeping his job. He probably would have lost his job a couple of years later when the wheels fell off in the salary cap purge, but he wouldn't have been gone before Donahoe showed up.
It didn't help Wade with the "disciples" that he couldn't get Dickerson off his case about wearing headphones. (The funny thing about that is I was going through an old junk drawer and found the Wade Phillips tickets that the Bills gave out at the Rams game and Wade was wearing headphones on those.)
Dave.
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That sounds pretty reasonable as to why throws are going high. Any idea on how they can speed up his getting comfortable in the pocket and stepping into the throw? (I mean other than getting the O-Line to give him some time back there on a regular basis!) Would running some designed rollouts WITH the protection moving with him help?
Thanks,
Dave.
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Hey Dave, i gotta say, in my opinion, that diving throw out of the end zone should have been caught and would have made the highlights everywhere. Sheldon just plain dropped a good pass there.
From the back of the endzone camera you can see that JP is just waiting and waiting for Sheldon to get a little separation from the LB that was covering him. JP was right on the money on that play, he could see it would develop and waited for it to do so....almost at the expense of a safety mind you. But to be honest the throw was amazingly accurate for the circumstances it was thrown from. I was cursing sheldon on that one. Catch the damned ball.
You're absolutely right. Sheldon should have caught the ball on that pass. JP has made some good throws this season (the long one to Evans in the first game comes to mind immediately), it's just that he seems to be overthrowing most of his passes (it may just be the beer remembering the high throws and not the others, but I definitely have a perception that his throws tend to be higher or wider than necessary). Going back to my original post in this thread, I was wondering if there was anything the coaching staff could work with him on (if in fact he really is overthrowing a significant portion of his throws) or if it is something that he just has to work through by getting more experience on the field.
Dave.
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It's not just the long ones he seems to overthrow. Most throws - short, medium, and long, SEEM to me to be either wildly overthrow or thrown at the head of the receiver. If he could get his target lowered about 18 inches, I'd expect to see him completing more passes, especially given the way he rockets the ball.
Dave.
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It's my understanding that it is just the Sabres games and pre/post game shows that were picked up by Dish. Your best bet would be to check programming guide on Wednesday to see what channel the game will be shown on.
I'm dealing with the opposite problem currently. I have DirecTV which gets MSG, but DirecTV and MSG haven't negotiated a deal for the Sabres games back feeds. So I get MSG, but no Sabres as of yet.
Dave.
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I agree with you but that is not a reason to mourn this indictment as much as it is to mourn that there is only one.
Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to quadruple the amount of congressman and quarter their salaries. Imagine having to bribe 4 times as many congressman. Get rid of corruption by pricing it out of the market.
If you quadrupled the number of them, especially w/ reducing their salaries; law of supply and demand says it gets cheaper to bribe a congressman. Demand has remained constant; supply has increased and marginal cost of bribe the market setting bribee is willing to take has likely gone down as well.
You would get even less accomplished, and pork-laden bills just got a lot more pork in them as you now have many more congresscritters to feed at the trough.
In theory, it would make the govt. more representative and responsive as each congresscritter would now represent a smaller constituency; but reality is - the cluster f*** gets worse, not better.
I know you were just joking, but that is a horrible idea.
Dave.
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That's why I suggested above it was the "best" kind of cronyism. There's no particular reason to believe he's not picking from a pool of possibilities that he finds qualified, and not choosing the one nominee he knows best and trusts the most.
There's also no particular reason to believe he's not challenged by the crossword puzzle on the back of his Cocoa Puffs box, too. Just because he's sincerely presenting who he thinks is the best choice for the position, doesn't make it so. Technically, that, and not for the opportunites for face-time and partisan soundbytes for the senators, is why we have the Senate approval process.
Any way you slice it, though, it's an oddball choice. Offering up a judicial nominee with no judicial experience after you've been flayed in the press for having appointed a FEMA director with no emergency management experience?
Actually, what I think it is the guy showing he's a pretty good politician, democratic opinion that he's the stupidest thing this side of Jessica Simpson aside. If Miers gets confirmed, then he has someone HE knows extremely well and feels comfortable with on the Supreme Court. I have to assume that he feels very comfortable with how he expects her to rule on issues that he considers important. If she gets shot down, due most likely to her never having been a judge, then he gets to nominate someone else - quite possibly Rogers Brown who by all accounts I have read (and no I have not seen details of her decisions) is very STAUNCHLY conservative who the Democrats will now have an even harder time defeating IMHO. I think the Democrats would be extremely reluctant to filibuster or vote down 2 nominees within one year of an election for fear of being viewed as strictly obstructionist.
So do the Democrats give him a pass on a nominee that they have very little paper trail to follow, hoping she turns into another Souter; or do they fight tooth and nail with the very strong possibility that someone who is known to be more conservative is waiting in the wings? Either way, I think Bush "wins" this "fight".
Dave.
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Watching JP for the last 4 games, I've been getting just as frustrated as a lot of other posters and I'm sure the coaches as well. The thing is, it seems to me that most of JP's misses seem to be overthrows on passes to the middle of the field and too throwing too wide on sideline patterns (I know there are a few underthrows, but they seem to be in the minority.) Most of the drops and catches as well seem to be up near the target's head, not down on the numbers. The announcers have mentioned on several occasions that JP seems to have too much adrenalin or is getting too pumped up for the games.
If he is in fact overthrowing the ball predominantly, what can the coaches do to try to get him to lower the throws a little, without taking the velocity off the ball? Could the coaches get him loaded up on caffeine in the practices so he's as wired in them as he is in the games? Could they have the receivers line up on practice plays a yard or 2 short of the line of scrimmage and have them run the route as if they had lined up at the line of scrimmage, so that when they run the route in the game it ends up where JP is throwing the ball? These suggestions are more in jest than serious, but the question is serious: what can they do to change JP's preparation to reduce the overthrows, if anything? Or do they just have to let the season progress and as he gets more comfortable in there, he'll stop overthrowing?
Thanks,
Dave.
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I don't care what anybody else says, this D is pretty good probably even very good. Are they getting turnovers? No. But the problem is that the opposing team knows the best way to beat us is play is close to the vest, take some shots, grind the ball b/c our D is on the field for almost twice as long and they are wearing down.
Horrible O and very good D turns the D into only a mediocre D.
Hopefullly they can turn it arounf these next two weeks to give us some hope.
The Bills have given up 47.1% on 3rd down. That is 28th in the league and barely out of last place (worst is 50%). The Bills offense has major problems at this point in time and all the 3 and outs in the Tampa heat & humidity and other games definitely did not help the D, but the D isn't helping itself.
They have to get off the field when they put themselves in a position to do it. Currently they are not. Especially if the other team is playing it close to the vest, I'd expect their 3rd down percentages to be much better if they were a very good defense.
They still have 12 more games and the next two are very winnable. Unfortunately, until the D steps it up on 3rd down and the O finds its bearings, the Bills will have great difficulty winning any games.
Dave.
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Looks like Bush will announce tonight at 8:00 Eastern that current White House counsel Harriet Miers as nominee to fill the O'Conner vacancy.
It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. You know the cry of cronyism will be heard loud and strong. Also, I expect cries about how she isn't even a judge, even though it appears a few Senators of both parties recommended to Bush to choose someone outside the current judiciary.
Dave.
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I was pretty ticked as well when he decided to punt. The thing is, that was MM showing that he had no faith in either QB to move the ball. Even if Holcomb had made the 1st down (pretty unlikely considering what had been going on the previous couple of series), I don't think MM thought that he could get the ball moved down field in any reasonably efficient manner. Remember, Holcomb still needed to lead 2 scoring drives.
While it was an extremely long shot that the D would hold NO 3 and out, he did have 2 prayers left after Moorman made an excellent punt. The 1st was Aaron Brooks has had a tendency to play, shall we say, erratically in pressure situations in the past. If Brooks fumbles or has a mental meltdown and goes into the endzone on a sack, then the O only needs a score to either win or tie (depending upon how many points Brooks gives the Bills).
The other prayer was that, assuming the Bills held NO, Clements or Smith could run the punt back. Then, if the Bills get an onsides kick, again they only need 1 score to win.
While the likelihood of either occuring, especially with the way the D has played in the 4th quarter of the last 2 games, were extremely slim, it looks to me like MM thought they gave him a better chance than a reasonably long 4th down attempt. That MM had no faith in the O at this point of the game is roughly as troubling to me as the horrid play of the D on 3rd down and in the 4th Q.
Dave.
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I know I've mentioned it before on here somewhere, but best fight I ever saw was at the Aud when the Sabres were playing the Flyers. Huge brawl is going on, Barnaby's down in front of the net and Garth Snow (the goalie) taps him with his stick. Barnaby jumps up and beats the crap outta Snow. Then Barnaby and Brind'Amor fight for about 5 min cuz the refs are trying to break up everyone else fighting. Oh yeah Andre Trevilov (Sabres goalie) even fought with Snow and got his ass kicked I think...lol....I just remember the Aud was freakin going crazy. They had to end the period early to sort out penalty minutes.
Didn't all 3 Sabres goalies end up in a fight with the Flyers goalie that year? Or was Dom's the previous year? Shields actually won HIS fight. Dom didn't get creamed, but he never could get his blocker off.
Dave.
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Robby was definitely not a goon. I never once saw him go after someone from behind nor hit a guy while he was down. (Brad May on the other hand....)
Also, Rob could actually play on a 3rd line on occasion. I remember several games in the Aud when Rob was "checking" Jagr and Jagr was afraid to even come near the puck, because whenever he did, Rob hammered him.
Dave.
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http://www.buffalobrewpub.com/
Good food, good beer, free peanuts/popcorn... decent kids menu hot dogs, burger, mac&cheese, chickenfingers etc.
If you're looking for a more generic type menu, the Brew Pub is very good and has an excellent selection of beers (their own and others). If you are looking for more "Buffalo specific food", Schwabl's (789 Center Rd, just off Union several blocks south of the Airport) has excellent Beef on Weck. Expect to wait a fairly long time if you try to go in the evening. Duff's on Sheridan has excellent wings.
Dave.
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Justice Kennedy did nothing of the kind. This is just one of those conservative, Coluter-Limbaugh-Hannity type of sound bytes that just gets repeated and repeated and repeated until its gospel truth. The decision was made based on the US Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment. The state of the law internationally was a reference made to simply confirm what our own Constitution, in the opinion of a majority of the Justices, holds. From the syllabus:
"The overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty is not controlling here, but provides respected and significant confirmation for the Court’s determination that the penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18. See, e.g., Thompson, supra, at 830—831, and n. 31. The United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile penalty. It does not lessen fidelity to the Constitution or pride in its origins to acknowledge that the express affirmation of certain fundamental rights by other nations and peoples underscores the centrality of those same rights within our own heritage of freedom. Pp. 21—25."
The holding was really based on the Atkins case which was decided in 2002 and resulted in a ban on executing mentally retarded persons. At the time Atkins was decided, 30 states prohibited either all executions or at least executions of the mentally retarded. That evidence was critical in the Court finding that a national consensus had emerged that execution of the mentally retarded was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Similary, in the Roper case dealing with the execution of juveniles, 30 states banned such executions. Even in the 20 states with no formal ban, such executions were rare, only three of those states had executed a juvenile in the 10 years before Roper was decided.
The references in the opinion to international law are made after the holding was reached and is discussed simply in the context that the development of international standards in this area confirms the holding which is based entirely and exclusively on US law. Even without those references, the holding would remain the same. References to laws which have no value as controlling precedent is absolutely nothing new.
Believe it or not, I do not agree with the holding in Roper but agree with Justice O'Connor' opinion, who dissented from that holding, that there was nothing at all wrong or inappropriate with the majority's very limited use of international law.
The real issue that should be discussed is whether there really is some sort of national consensus which has emerged over the years in the US that executing juveniles is always cruel an unusual punishment. I don't think that is the case. In fact, if there ever was a juvenile whose execution would have been neither cruel nor unusual, it would have been the defendant in Roper.
Justice Kennedy manufactured a "national concensus" opposing the execution of 16 & 17 year olds by adding (rather arbitrarily) the 12 states that have no death penalty to the minority (18 out of 38) of states that have the death penalty for adults rather than juveniles. The majority did not consider whether the states without a death penalty treat 16 & 17 year olds as adults in criminal matters which would have been more instructive to determining whether there is a national concensus on the issue. He and the other 4 justices are making stuff up as they go along on this one.
You are correct in that Kennedy explicitly states that the majority views were based upon their own interpretation of the 8th amendment, but Kennedy does go out of his way to point out where international laws support this view. (I can't believe I actually wasted the time it took to read the decision and dissents.) Considering Kennedy invented the national concensus he is using to interpret the 8th amendments and also rambles about this country's "evolving standards of decency", I am not overly impressed with his statements that international law did not shape majority opinion but merely supports it. Neither, I might add, did 3 of the dissenters find much merit in his statements regarding international opinion.
Even if I grant you that the international opinion did not factor into the decision, I still cannot see where Scalia in the minority was not following constitutional law and the majority was (which was the original assertation in the post I was responding to).
Dave.
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It has been posted on www.senate.gov now.
If my counting is correct 22 Dems voted Yea and 22 Dems voted Nay.
I intend to write to my NY State Senators and ask them why they voted the way they did.
Let me know if you get anything back other than a form letter thanking you for your concern about the wonderful democratic process. I'd be shocked if you get any legitimate response.
Dave.
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I got this email from MSG today, in response to me asking what was up:
Good Afternoon,
Sorry for your inconvenience last night. MSG will broadcast 75 Sabre's games in the Buffalo/Rochester region this season. Direct TV and MSG are working on a deal to broadcast Sabre's games on Direct TV. We are confident Sabre's games will be broadcast on Direct TV by their season opener. If you have any questions feel free to contact us. Thanks for your inquiry.
Networks PR
Hope they get this done.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
I really don't want to go back to Time Warner.
Thanks for the update.
Dave.
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...I'll give you a hint: he sits in the owner's box. Yes, I'm saying it, Ralph must go! I mean come on, let's look at the facts:
--The team, under his watch, has a lifetime record of 322-346-8!
--Outside of the playoff runs in the '60's and late '80's/early '90's (the "Kelly Era"), the team has only made the playoffs 5 times over the last 45 years!
--The only Championships the guy has won were in an 8 team league!
--Has a losing lifetime record against every other team in the AFC East except the Jets!
--Has a losing lifetime playoff record!
--The GM's may be the ones making bad choices about draft picks/acquisitions/coaching staff, but it is Ralph who selects those GM's!
--He thought highly enough about Donahoe to give him a contract extension in the off-season! I mean, come on, the man is 27-40, and his choices for coaches are two of the sorriest rookie coaches in NFL history!
--He has yet to have a GM that has been able to both manage the salary cap and win games!
Come on, if Donahoe were to leave, what faith do you have that Ralph (the losingest owner in Bills history!) would replace him with a strong candidate, considering his track record of selecting GM's?! It's clear that we need to clean house, and it starts at the top! We need an owner with a "playoffs or bust" mentality, one that makes it clear that he is willing to replace coaches and GM's every year until we make the playoffs! We need to find such a potential owner and get a petition going to insist he make a hostile overthrow bid for the Bills. It's the only way, unless you all are happy with losing!
Counter point (by point(?))
- I remember seeing a few years back that only about 10 of the teams in league have winning all-time records, so being 1/2 game under 500 each year on average isn't that horrible.
- I could just as easily skip over the team's 1, 2, and 4 win seasons and show how the Bills actually have a great winning percentage and make the playoffs at a much better pace than once every 3 years. Removing data that doesn't support your case does not make the case stronger, it typically renders the argument kind of silly.
- I can't dispute this, but I don't fully see the point of it. Do you expect to see the Maple Leafs or Black Hawks take down their championship banners because they only came in 6 team leagues?
- Oh my gosh, he has a losing record against ALL the AFC east teams except the Jets? You mean all 2 of them? That truly is horrible, especially when you consider the Bills are a full 5 games under 500 against the Pats.
- Has a losing playoff record? 12 teams make the playoffs each year. 1 team will go 3-0 or 4-0, the rest will lose somewhere along the way. At MOST 6 teams can have a winning record in the playoffs and typically only 4 will have a winning record. By simple arithmetic, most teams will have losing playoff records.
- I will give you he has only chosen a handful of good GM's through the years, but since the mid-80's he has done better than in his 1st 20 years.
- Yeah, he gave Donahoe an extension. He failed to give Polian and Butler extensions before their final seasons in Buffalo and the Bills paid for it both times. By giving Donahoe an extension, he is minimizing the incentive to Donahoe to do things that are not necessarily in the Bills best interest.
- Not exactly true. Polian has done a great job at it (he hasn't won the Superbowl, but the Colts win games and manage their cap well), he just didn't get a chance to do it in Buffalo. Also, Donahoe is still 10-9 in the Mularky era, so given time his record may end up on the right side of 500.
- I have little faith that he will bring in a stud to replace Donahoe, that is why I think people calling for Donahoe's head should think long and hard before requesting that. If the Bills miss the playoffs again, should the Bills think about firing Donahoe? yes. Should they do it? Only if they see a candidate that is available that they believe will do better than Donahoe has done.
- If Ralph goes, I am very concerned that the Bills will too.
Apologies if your post was written in sarcasm. From reading the thread following it, I got the impression that the original post was serious.
Dave.
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You can't be serious. Scalia is a brilliant man, but he's the biggest idealogue on the Supreme Court. Oftentimes he dissents on issues based strictly on his own beliefs without any merit in constitutional law. The reason they are dissents is because the majority is usually following the constitution.
YOU can't be serious. The banning of capital punishment for people younger than 18 was based on INTERNATIONAL opinion, per Judge Kennedy; NOT on the merits of US Constitutional Law. Scalia was in the minority on that one.
Also, my comment was referring to the words and actions of the Senators from the Democratic Party. They state that they are afraid of putting a justice on the court who is an idealogue, but yet when a QUALIFIED jurist is brought before them they vote against him simply because he is not a leftist.
Roberts had 22 votes against him. That is more than twice the number of votes against Ginsberg and Breyer combined. You can't honestly tell me that Republicans were happy with either of those two. But the simple fact of the matter is that those two (although oftentimes misguided
) are qualified and were confirmed overwhelmingly. For all the bellowing from the left about how the Republicans are strictly partisan and idealogues all the while the left would simply never be partisan nor idealogues, the majority of Republicans did the right thing at the end of the day by voting yes on Ginsberg and Breyer whereas half of the democrats put partisanship first and said nay to Roberts.Dave.
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Thanks theesir!
That explains a lot.
Sorry I didn't believe you dave b, my bad dude.
Hopefully this happens before next wednesday, if not I'm going to have to eat the money i paid for Sunday ticket, and crawl back to Adelphia.
Also means, I will be waiting before ordering Center Ice. Thank god, because I almost ordered it yesterday.
The DirecTV customer service rep I spoke to is supposed to give me an update on the status on Monday. If I do hear from DirecTV, I will post what they say.
Dave.
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As I mentioned above, while MSG is currently shown on DirecTV there is currently no agreement between the 2 for MSG to provide a backfeed for people in Buffalo and Rochester. A lady with the Sabres said DirecTV and MSG are negotiating and she HOPED they would have something resolved before the season started.
I spoke with a customer service rep from DirecTV last night for a LONG time. She had no information about Sabres games becoming available in WNY, but would try to find out more information for me.
As I also mentioned in my post above, if you live in WNY and have DirecTV, CALL THEM AND LET THEM KNOW YOU WANT TO WATCH THE SABRES. If they get enough feedback I expect that they will get something done with MSG.
I currently am very nervous that although I have Center Ice I will not be able to watch the Sabres because the NHL will consider where I live to be Sabres territory and black out the game in my zip code on CI but DirecTV considers where I live to be MSG/NY territory so my MSG won't show the game.
Dave.
That call for Wade ...
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
There is no way that Ralph would ever hire Polian back, even if the Colts were dumb enough to allow him to be available. Ralph's buddy and head accountant hated Polian and vice versa (personality issues, not financial ones); Ralph sided with the accountant as Ralph didn't like Polian's attitude very much either. I would definitely like to see Polian back. Especially when you consider that Polian was instrumental in developing the Salary Cap.
Dave.