Pyrite Gal

I agree that every team must treat every game as must win. I think this shows a big difference between we fans and the players in that we can launch off into any flight of fancy and fantasy football which we choose with no cost to the team really. I guess there are little things like them being among the best athletes on the planet which explain (if not justifies) them being paid huge amounts of $ to play a boys game while we sit at home and in the office with our little computers leading a virtual life. However, as we do not get the big bucks I think we at least deserve flights of fancy and looking a little ahead (even with all the caveats in my original post which are consistent with your views) a little since this has no real impact on the game.

1. One needs to look at things one game at a time and the Bills will have an even tougher time Sunday if they worry about Game 2 versus the Fins. However, we fans are not the team and we can worry about what we want and this is the next game for the Fins so discussion is reasonable. The Bills game is essentially a must-win game (as much as any Game 2 can be) for the Fins. It is a division game which is always important and it is at home for therm. They could be lose (we will see how the Bills look on Sunday) because they have a number of clear weaknesses. and if they do at 0-2 with a loss in the division and a history besides last year of end of the season implosions the table would be set for this to be a very bad season. Ironically, even if the Bills lose to the Pats, the season would not be over (just in very bad shape) as they would be facing 2 losses to division opponents but road losses with NYJ coming to town is not desirable but not a clear sign we are doomed. I think next week will be as close to a must win for the Fish as you can get anyway you cut it. 2. Last night's game also has to give some hope to those who have concluded the Bills are gonna be bad. Both these teams, one the most recent winner of the SB and the other picked to win this year's SB by some (who are already looking like fools) showed they ae easily capable of playing badly and losing to a bad team. Perhaps the Bills are so much worse than Pitts that MI would not fall victim the way they did last night. Perhaps the Bills are so bad that Pitts would not need to be saved in the final half of the 4th quarter to win comfortably. However, I suspect that the refs can blow a call like they did last night on Miller's OB misstep and Saban can lamely and ineffectively throw the red flag against a bad team just as much as he could against a good team. Even if one is confident and even substantially right about the Bills problems, it is clear from last nights foray that on any given day anyone can lose to anyone. I think last night's foray has to give some realistic hope even to those who seem to be sure we are doomed. Our problems are clear on paper, but the game simply is not player on paper.

The public as a whole pays for it by buying products which sellers are willing to pay for advertising to send them there messages. I think one can pick and chose one particular point in the circle of commerce and claim that they are the ones paying for it and therefore they should be in control and kinda sorta justify this case. However, its really a circle of buyers, advertisers, product sellers, product makers, entertainment providers, etc who are really interdependent. Its a moving dance because there is a lot of change and right now a segment of the buying population is complaining that the balance has been lost to such an extent that some of them are going to take their eyeballs elsewhere. Nobody, the sellers, manufacturers, entertainment providers, buyers etc wants that to happen. New technology such as TIVO, DVR, etc. has allowed unprecendented control over the entertainment experience for the buyer and decisions will need to be made that are not based in simply saying that the answer to complaints is to say too bad, but to try to find a stable balance point where either everyone reaches a shared level of satisfaction or at least similar tolerable levels of dissatisfaction. I would be right now that demand for technology is going to cause production of a method of avoiding commercials pretty quickly. It actually is this attitude of there being so many commercials and the response to complaints being someone asking who pays for it and too bad which drives this technological market and ultimately will kill football as being more than an HBOesque non-commercial endeavor.

Ralph and the Bills appear to lobbying strongly and successfully for all home gaes to be at 1pm om Sunday as part of the regional marketing strategy for the Bills. When home games are in the evening (or even at 4pm on Sunday) it makes it much harder for a fan from Syracuse, Erie, Corning or even the Southern tier of Ontario given the traffic mess, to commit to 4-6 hours of roundtrip travel with a bills game in the middle of it. It struck me as odd that even the road games were not night time games (as they have been in the recent past in NE) and the left coast is always later in the afternoon) but I can potentially see the Bills lobbying to get all their games standardized for competitive reasons and also to make "destination" viewing an even easier sell to the market. I understand what you are saying regarding out of town viewing, but certainly for me as a WNY it is more convenient for me. Basically my lovely spouse comtrols the schedule of interactions with the family, and this year I could simply ask her to leave Sunday during the day free rather than negotiating whether this happened to be a night game or late game weekend (the bye week is the only coordination need). Basically, the shedule cuts different ways for different folks, but the organizing framework is the Bills regional marketing strategy and they have actively and Ralph has publicly lobbied for 1pm hom starts so that far away folks are not confronted with the choice of driving home on a school night after midnight.

Not only do the nets seem to be running more commercials, but they seem to be coordinating when they are run so that if you cable surf to other stations they are also running commericials. At first, I thought this was simply because they ran so many commericals that by pure chance I happened to hit overlapping commericals. However, there happened to be four channels I had things I wanted to see or could tolerate (The movie The Great Escape was one of them and I have watched it several hundred times and could watch it several hundred more) and the convergence appeared to be far more than chance. Sports provides some relief because they cannot dictate the commercial breaks for many sports very well as it is determined by whether the tennis games are long rallies or short works, they seem to have wrestled football to the ground with TV TOs and tons of interruptions for challenges and the like. I was interested to see someone charting the timing of commercials, has anyone taken the time or used their tsping device to determine whether the nets have generally decided to run commercials at particular times so they can coordinate generally though not perfectly when they are run?

That NHL game which was held outdoors amidst shockingly cold temeperatures was a wpmderfil thing to see. Holding it at the Ralph might lose the intimacy which was part of what made the outdoor game fun, but as a one-timer I certainly would be game. Its not like HSBC arena is all that intimate a location anyway.

As my buddy Rodney says, "Why can't we all just get along?" I am biased in this by the fact I do not have season tickets to the Bills and the great fun of tailgating before the game and the joy of sharing my team with several tens of thousands of other fanatics has dampened a bit by the driving hassle and running the ticket taking barricades which modern life adter 9/11. I only attend games on occaision these days. However, when it looked like we might lose our team current Ciy of Buffalo Development Commissioner Rich Tobe working for then County Exec Forski cut the stadium deal which still keeps the Bills here. However, I proposed at that time when the seeming alternative was losing the Bills to whomever so to have a deal with Toronto to share the Bur Tor Bills.seemed like the best we could do. We woild not want such a dea; right now so we can have 8 home dates and we can a team all to ourselves. However, such a deal offers a number of advantages such that if we get uver being selfish perhaps we should just git er done.

Be careful. Facts just get in the way of folks strongly held opinions.

I think you might be on the right track with this, Part of what I felt was a management approach that made a real difference for the Bills in 04 was the seemingly minor decision to cut Bobby Shaw round about the 5th game or so. This was a reasonable cut to make from a football sense as Shaw was the 4th or 5th WR on a team which sometimes went to 3 WR sets but only went to an empty backfield in garbage time. Shaw seemed to generally be seen as a good locker room guy who was originally signed as a #3 WR but had actually provved to be our #2 and even our #1 WR at times the year before when Moulds got hurt and Josh Reed was struggling. I believe they needed a spot because another team was sniffing around Peters on our PS, so we needed a roster spot for him. The interesting thing was that after a player has been active for a couple of games or so, the team is on the hook for his entire annual salary (this agreement makes it so the team has no interest in cutting and re-adding a player to the roster to save a nickel here or there and also make the accounting much simpler to do as there is no pro-rating of payments owed or beyond distribution of the bonus). The Bills gained nothing from choosing to cut Shaw and in fact paid out more to a player who gave them nothing than they would have if they cut a rookie who played little. He was not a locker-room cancer. However, by cuttig Shaw MM sent a message to the vets that everyone on this team needed to contribute or the risked being let go even if it cost the Bills a couple of bucks to do this. Suddenly, the team got much more productive in their play. Perhaps this was a coincidence, but I think it served as a marginal motivator. However, I think that the team can get away with motivating its workers through fear rather than mutual respect only if it pays off (and they did not make the playoffs) or with older players who have been around and do not trust the corporation anyway. It would not surprse me if what happened here was that when times got tough in 05 as the team really needed to step up to deal with having a young QB and also the injury to TKO, the team was not really a TEAM because they had motivated players through fear of losing their job. NE in 2001 and beyond was in fact a TEAM which motivated players because they depended on each other. Thus even with a young QB like brady who was great but was obviously learning the game his first year of a lot of play and even when they had sudden critical injuries they pulled for each other. I think both vets and young players respond well to leadership that inspires a sense of family rather than a sense of fear. Fear can motivate well, but you can only go to that well a few times before it dries up as people begin to worry more aboutprotecting themselves rather than protecting each other. I think this may be part of the difference in production under MM in 04 and MM in 05. The interesting abou

What do you think was the difference between the team's performance under MM in 04 and the results in 05? It interests me because of the broadbrush accusations of him being an idiot in 05 (the results were certainly those of an idiot) but if this really was the reason I suspect he was also an idiot in '04. What explains the difference between him doing HC work that fell short of where we wanted to be but did produce a winning record and the 05 team which posted a losing mark on the road to falling short. Or is there no difference between getting a wining record and gettng a losing record?

One of the things I really like about how this team is being run is that all sorts of info is being sent out of the depth chart, with rumors to the press and from official statements which is in essence contradictory. Who is the #2 WR with Evans? The website says Reed. An article in the D & C says Price. The team has only kept one FB so this likely means 3 WR sets but does this mean Parrish is the #3 since he ws working out in the slot in camp or is it one of these #2 candidates? Quite frankly I do not care. Fool me, lie to me or whatever because it is more important to give as little information as possible to the opposing HC than to satisfy my curiosity. BB is a bright boy so he probab;y will not be fooled and he will prep the same way regardless of whether re rotate the DL alot or if it really means a lot in terms of PT that 4th round draftee Williams is starting at DT rather than last year's inherited starter Anderson or first round DT draftee McCargo. Even if there is a small chance that BB will be dustracted for a moment or waste even a millisecond with uncertainty this is far more valuable to me that knowing correct info about what Jauron is going to do for sure. I'll find out soon enough when the game starts and as long as Jauron is not lying to my face in his mandatory post-game interview I appreciate if he tips nothing off to the other team with his comments and game analysis. Particularly since we are facing Bb I love it that we are hoing into this game with no tendencies yet and with the vanilla playcalling in pre-season without the real Bills D and O scheme being shown yet.

Pne hopes that BB buys this intelligence laid out by Jauron to fool BB into preparing a buncg of pass plays to pick on Wire and instead the Cover 2 is set-up to pinch a bunch o passes. You were fooling about this wern't you DJ?

Branch probasbly got the idea that he was worth more than he was being paid when he won the SB MVP. The point you raise about how sweet a gig he has with NE strikes me as at best a tertiary issue in this case. 1. The primary issue it seems to me is that a contract is a contract. If Branch signed a deal which has him playing for NE next year for "only" a million dollars, then it strikes me that Branch should honor that contract if NE insists upon it. 2. A secondary issue though is that clearly the past and usual practice in the NFL is to extend a young player's contract if he plays well (Branch's play the past couple of years and the SB MVP trophy certainly constitute excellent play). This is at the option of the team though, yet there is a lot in it for them to negotiate in good faith with a player to make such a deal. The Bills for example made such deals with Crowell, mcGee, Haggan and others. Branch probably got this "odd" idea when he noticed that such renegotiations are fairly normal practice in the NFL. They are however, at the team's option as he is under contract. It would seem wise for a team to want to lock him up given his output and the trophy he received in this form of entertainment. As in the Lawyer Milloy case, it is clear that though Belocheck is a genius on the field, he really can participate with Pioli in some bad misreads of players and unsuccessful high stake negotiating. Branch has taken the relatively unusual step of filing a grievance against the Pats for not negotiating in good faith and also specifically for lying to him about trading him for reasonable value if he negotiated a deal. The Pats are arguing that the arbitrator has no jurisdiction over deciding whether the deal offered by Seattle and NYJ is reasonable or whether the Pats demands for a 1st and a 2nd are reasonable, We'll see. Your mention of PP is interesting because it would seem that the market value for this WR who had a lot more catches the previous season than Branch did was only worth a 1st in the market. On the other hand, rights of first refusal compensation for trading RFA WRs whi were not has productive as Branch was far more than just a 1st. Draft choice value however is not a static thing (no matter what Mel Kiper says) a 1st round choice in a strong draft is worth more than a `st round choice ina weak draft and generally it seems hard to make this decision quickly or within the normal arbitration process. However, the "bad" faith claim seems a more valid issue to consider. If in fact NE exercised its option to keep Branch signed to his initial contract or exercised it by entering into negotiations with him over an extension, the system demands that the Pats enter into serious negotiations to reach a desirable outcome for the Pats AND for Branch. If he can demonstrate that the Pats never were serious about negotiations with him (for example if they turned down every proposal he made and never offered a counter proposal (or offered a serious one) I think this woukd constitute bad faith. The Pats have the option here to keep Branch under the contract he signed OR alternately to enter into serious negotiations with him. They apparently entered into negotiations with Branch and if they were simply stalling and then expected him to play for the deal they agreed to negotiate away nut really were never gonna reach agreement this is bad faith and Branch has a point. 3. All NFL players have a sweet deal because they are paid multiplrd more thsn the average person to play a boys game. Branch has a sweet deal compared to the rest of the league because NE has been more successful than any other team and though Branch is not the best WR in the NFL he is the go-to WR for NE. However, in terms of compensation what is a sweet deal can quickly become disappointment if an injury occurs. So its nice if you are lucky enough not to get hurt and is way nice compared to normal folk, but it is in both Branch's interest to negotiate while he can if the Pats agree to do so and its in the Pats interest to lock him up with a cap manageable contract if they can. My sense is that under normal circumstance the Pats have an absolute right to get play from Branch for the agreed upon amount if the choose. However, if it was the case that the Pats already entered into negotiations with Branch to make a long term deal they would be in bad faith and lose the moral high ground if they never intended to get a deal done and stalled to shine Branch on while the clock was tacjking. We will see.

Regarding your sig. Looking for starters drafted between 3-7 seems like a bit of cherry picking. I assume NE stacks up well in this regard since BB always trades for a ton of these picks, but I am curious if you have looked at how the rest of the league even merely the rest of the division is doing with this stat?

We're gonna have to mix the coverag scheme up between man-to-man and zone andto sometimes have the safett cover him and sometimes the LB. Brady is a cool customer who can figure out the coverage on each play, but can you imagine how easy it will be for him if we do not vary or try to disguise a lot of the coverage. One thing I do tend toward is having my CBs do tight press coverage on the WRs. They are not Pro Bowl caliber players and if McGee and Clements shut them down it will really reduce the options which Brady has to pick and choose among. If he tries to pick on the transition from the press coverage by CBs to the safeties playing centerfield in the Cover 2 or MLB in the Tampa 2 version, the pass rush will get a hair more time and needs to pressure Brady a lot.

I doubt they are looking past the Bills because they have enough question marks about their own team that they will not really know who they are until after the first game (likely games) this season. They always had Vinateri who was not only virtually automatic (which shortened the field considerably) but he was clutch in crunch time and that was part of their make-up and psyche and this team will not be looking past the first game in this regard. They also have questions at LB where not only is Brueschi suffering from injuries but Junior Seau crawled out of retirement to actually start. The WR spot sees not only Branch being a major issue but they will not have leading WRs Givens an Childress from last year. They WRs are such a wildcard that they will not know for sure whether Tom Brady can make these guys good until after they perform, there really is not a clear world to look beyond the Bills to. The question is not so much whether they are looking past but simply undersestimating the Bills. If so this is only true in a general way as everyone has to be pretty clear that when it comes down to specifics there is no there yet to estimate regarding the Bills, I'm sure like everyone, the players have considered the full schedule and mapped out a range of Ws they think they can achieve. I doubt many have the Pats at anything other than 2-0 after facing two division opponents in their first two games since NYJ is next. Its the making of this estimation which i think its human nature to make which may have the Pats simply waiting for Brady or someone else to win this one for them where they may be looking ahead.

We are undefeated and even though it will not happen being a fan to me is being foolish so I am rooting for and predicting we will beat NE. I will be rational on Monday morning (about everything except the Fins game).

On the contrary actually. I'm not sure where his Os that he ran for Pittsbursgh finished ranked in the NFL, but generally, I think that folks felt they were an issue which had to be planned for when you faced Pitts. Clearly, he led the charge in designig and implementing Os which saw the revival of the careers of failed QBs and its makes perfect sense that he will try to pull off the same magic with Culpepper. I was happy to see him leave here because we needed to clean house and start from a fresh slate. When things screw up you fire the boss because contractually there are too many ramifications for firing players and you cannot replace them as easily. In addition, the buck stops with the HC on the field so its appropriate that he pay the price for faiilure. However, i do not see how you fire anyone first other than TD. Fool me once and shame on you but fool me twice and shame on me. It as clear that TD blew it big time with his first HC hire and when the wheels fell off again on this team it was either TD's fault for hiring the wrong HC or TD's fault for undermining his HC if MM had the right stuff. I think he did a good job for Buffalo in 2004. The team improved from 5-10 to 9-7 and got better in the only stat that really counts. I was impressed not only with his plan for making the team a winner which suceeded even though he was not capable of making them playoff worthy. Even more impressive he stuck with his plan during the dark days of a 1-5 start and his team pulled off a great win streak (even if one wants to insist they were weak opponents the Bills beat them like a drum rather than sqeeming by them) which made for a winning season but fell short of the ultimate goal of making the playoffs. No one would mistake him for Bill Parcells or even Mike Martz but I can easily see why he was hired.

Its fun to explore the technical aspects of the game for many of us, but in the NFL teams now are pretty committed to getting the best athletes on the field. The Pats even used WRs as DBs when they needed to in a pinch. The Bills took Peters who was a TE in college and when he proved unblockable on ST, made him an RT where he just got an extension. I hsve few doubts that if McCargo had shown himself to be the second best DT on this team behind Triplett they would have slotted him in next to him at RDT or if he were better than Triplett he would be first on the depth chart at LDT.

The only way we rue the day is if Jauron turns out to be a bad HC which is quite doubtful as he has gotten the NFL Coach of the year once and this will mark the 3rd time he was hired as an HC counting his interim gig last year. I think MM actually brings a lot to the table in Miami. A consistent area of unique great production on his part has been the ability to revive failed QBs under his reign as OC and HC. Once with Kordell might be luck and twice with maddox might be coincidence, but he and Clements got far better production out of Bledsoe in 04 than his horrendous year under Kevin Killdrive and GW in 03. By limiting Bledsoe's ability to audible, diversifying the gameplan, by using his limited ability to run as best they could and by using his good ability to run fakes, they reduced his sack total and revived his game. Though I think the Fins will fall apart for multiple other reasons, i suspect and expect MM to be quite good stepping down from HC to OC. Nevertheless since I completely exoect Jauron to be a competent HC and think that Fairchild also brings a lot to the table having learned at Martz's knee, knowing the Bills by being RB coach here and having done this before as an interim oC when Martz took ill and folks moved up a notch for St. L as far as coaching responsibility I doubt we rue the day MM left.

When I first saw the schedule, as is typical of Bills fans I immediately cursed the conspiracy which had given us a sure loss in Jauron/Levy's first game. However, as time has passed, i now am feeling quite happy about the fact that one way or the other we had to go into Pats land to play and I am quite happy to see it be the first game. 1. Along with going into Indy, this looks like our toughest game on paper (though the game is not played on paper so we will see what reality brings). In almost any case, this team is going to need some time to find its legs, but even when it does this is gonna be a tough game to win in their house. I'm not sure that saving it til later would give us a much better chance of winning so getting out of the way and using it as a learning experience (whether it is learning how to win or how to lose) is gonna be good and necessary for this team. 2, It really is the best way to face BB. We saw in his first game against Bledsoe where he essentially undressed a player and team he knew well, what BB can do with a little time. he had a full off-season of time to prepare for the Bills, but to preapre for what? Not only is in quite unclear how we are going to actually run the O and D beyond the general declaration that the D is a Cover 2 and the O is St. L style, this team is pretty much a blank page. We have no tendencies yet. I think the pick-up of Fast Freddy is probably an indicator that BB wants Bills intelligence badly (as well as showing an area the Pats need some help in). Looking at our depth chart and thinking back to the usual vanilla pre-season gameplanning I am quite pleased that we are facing BB now rather than later when he could get more fully prepared. 3. This certain loss has really improved to a remotely possible win. I think one of the missing elements in the calculations of many Bills partisans who look at last year's sorry team and predict DDOOOMMM is that the other key element in predicting game outcomes is the state of our opponent. When one looks at the occurences and development of teams like GB, TN and of course our friends NYJ whom we play twice even conceding we will be bad, these teams (plus some of our other opponents) can easily be worse. On the face of it, if I ranked our opponents as to whether they got better or got worse compared to last season almost all of them have gotten worse IMHO. Among them is the Pats as best as I can tell who obviously started at a lofty height to get worse from, but between their big problems at WR, their problems at LB where getting an over the hill guy like Seau might actually improve this unit and losing the best PK in the NFL, the Pats really have gotten markedly worse on paper. Perhaps this will be a true showing of how great BB is if he can meet all these challenges, but the prediction of some Pats fans that they will win 14 games this season seem as laughable to me as predictions we will make the playoffs. It could happen but I would not bet even the neighbors ranch and dog on it.

I think one of the other factors causing this may be the fact that there is now a partnership between the team owners and players reflected in the development of the CBA (in fact it is arguable that since the NFLPA and NFL agreed to give a substantial majority of the total revenue of the NFL to the players that they are in fact the majority partner). Two side effwects of this are that: 1. The owners so thoroughly kicked the butt of the NFLPA in the mid-80s lockout that the NFLPA threatened to decertify itself which would have ended all the restraint of trade aggreements like the draft and forced owners to negotiate in a free market with individual players. Rather than operate in a true free market the owners agreed to the CBA forming the basis for this partnership. One effect i that the team owners can no longer simply tell an individual what to do. Thus negotiation and character are more important or an individual could pull a TO or an Eric Moulds and through various hissy fits simply go where they want to go. Individual propriety and character are more important because the American way has won out and owners have lost their big sticl. 2. The players are now multi-millionaires and run their own conglomerates. Thus, you have players such as Buffalo Bill and NFLPA President Troy Vincent organizing players to take MBA courses at an Ivy League school. Not only has character become more important to an owner who must negotiate, but it also has become more important individually and as a group to their fellow peer players. We are talking big bucks here and for all parties character has become more important or millions of dollars can be lost.

Just because a player is a crony does not mean he is not the better player. Gates showed more of a nose for the endzone and produced more as a runner than Thomas. However, Thomas displayed more as a receiver in an offense where the checkdown to the RN is going to be important. There was little in the pre-seaspn games to assess Gates ability on the blitz pick-up or as an occaisional blocker on the end around. Neither player showed a lot on SI. However, it is reasonable to think that the coaches saw more in practice from a vet than a younger player in these aspects of the game. Gates simply did not show enough run superiority to separate himself from Thomas and he lead guess is most likely that he was not a better player than Thomas in the total measure of an RN rather than to assume cronyism saw ehem take a much worse player. Are there objective reasons why one would make that assumption?

I think the interesting thing is regarding what this means in terms of the #3 or sot receiver. Is this Price (I think of him as more of an outside fly pattern guy) or is it Parrish (who was working out in the slot for the Bills in camp). In general my guess is that this depth chart presentation is meant more for gaming our opponents generally or for the Pats specifically. BB and Dean Pees are going to have to make choices about whether they give their CBs specific players or specific sides of the field regardless of the player match-ups. In addition, they will need to decide how they are going to run and man the nickel in 3 WR sets. The Reed/Price dichotomy presents a challenge in that if you choose to put your fastest CB on Evans the switch off for the second guy in either having to cover the theoretically good route running Reed or the speedy PP is aan interesting challenge. Likewise the 3WR set question becomes an interesting chakkenge as you decide whether you are likely to face the speedy scatback Paarish or the even speedier and rangier Price. These same issues exist regardless of where they play, but this depth chart does not give hints to the opponent which makes this easier,

I do not really care how the individual rookies do if the team got the value it wanted. The Bills needs a starting DT immediately from this draft and it looks like they got one and a DT back-up so far. It really in an inside baseball questron and an issue for fantasy league folks that the Bills got these two posiitions filled in the reverse order that Mel Kiper and friends thought it should happen, Even if you are ysing this as a gauge of how wekk Marv and the player assessment staff did their job, they blew it trading up to get McCargo (so far as this assessment really needs to wait a couple of years before it is legit) but they scired bugtume so far in getting an immediate starter at DT on the second day oof the draft.