Albany,n.y.

One of the responses to the First Bills Game thread got me thinking of this topic. I'll start: I've been to 257 Bills games, both home & road, including home playoffs & all 4 Super Bowls. Their record in those games is 152-105. In addition to Bills games I've been to 14 other NFL games including Super Bowls XLVIII (in NJ) & 50 (Santa Clara/SF). The stadiums I've been to are: Rich/Ralph/New Era in Orchard Park; Giants Stadium & Met Life in NJ, Hoosier Dome in Indy, Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Both stadiums in Foxborough, Levi's Stadium (SF/Santa Clara), Oakland Coliseum, Stub Hub (LA Chargers) Qualcomm (SD), M&T in Baltimore and the Bills 4 Super Bowl sites in Atlanta, Pasadena, Minneapolis & Tampa Bay. The only 1 left is the Rose Bowl, the other 3 have been replaced.

December 9, 1973: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/197312090buf.htm I went with a friend at Fredonia & I drove. I think we stopped off at his parents' house in West Seneca before the game. It was wet, either snowing or raining and the blanket I brought was soaked by the end of the game. When we got back to the dorm I threw it in the dryer. OJ went wild rushing for over 200 yards on his way to 2,000 that year. We sat in the endzone, my seat was Sec D, Aisle 3, Row 13 Seat 14-I still have the program and the ticket stub. The ticket cost $7 and the program was $1.

Blame the jury that acquitted him.

OP: If you want to remain free, don't open your door to anyone in a white coat.

I'm going to both games. 1st game is a bus trip mixed with Jets & Bills fans. 2nd one I'm driving down because the guy I'm going to the game with lives about 50 miles from the stadium & he's not coming up here to take a bus trip. Years ago we had a guy at work who had Jets season tickets 1 row from the top of the stadium. I'd buy 2 seats from him & go with a friend to the Bills games. The 1st time I got to the seats I noticed there was an empty space behind us that was where the Jets placed a security guard. It was the safest place in the stadium to be a fan of the Jets opponent.

I doubt it. The last printed media guide I have is from 2008. In 2009 I tried at the stadium store & couldn't find one & printed it out. I haven't seen a printed one in 10 years and only printed out the 2009 edition. The NFL must be big in saving trees, their annual publication NFL Record and Fact Book hasn't been printed & sold since 2014 and they don't like printing tickets anymore. The media guides & the Record & Fact Book are available for free at the NFL website, but I, like you would rather buy a printed version. For the record, the 2019 fact book isn't available yet. Now there might be a way to get a printed media guide: If you can find a media member who has a printed version, you can ask them to get you a copy if you're at training camp, It's a long shot, but it might be your best chance other than spending a ton of ink & paper printing out from the digital copy. Edit: When I had seasons I used to buy a program at every game. I'd go to the Bills store, buy the program & bring it back to car to keep it in pristine condition. They stopped selling programs after the 2002 season & went to the free mini programs. Now all they give out is a folded sheet with minimal gameday info & players photos. Some teams still sell the programs. My most recent full sized gameday programs were purchased at Raiders & Chargers games. I have the program from the "Nathan Peterman disaster" game at the L.A. Chargers.

Here's the problem beyond just the 3 teams (NYG, WAS, DEN) that took rookies over Rosen before pick 62: NE, who, like it or not, may be the smartest guys in the room made no attempt to deal for Rosen even after a 1st rounder was off the table. You would think picking up a QB who was a top 10 pick a year before and has 3 more years left on a pretty cheap contract would be good insurance for a 40 something Tom Brady. They passed. They later took a flyer on QB Jarrett Stidham in the 4th round (pick 133). The Raiders may or may not think Carr is their long term future, but they preferred Nate Peterman & Mike Glennon on the roster than any thoughts of trading for Rosen-NATE PETERMAN !!!! Who did the LA Chargers pick to back up Rivers? Not trading for the young prospect who was a top 10 pick who would be insurance against an aging Rivers, but Tyrod Taylor on his 3rd team in 3 seasons. They later took a flyer on QB Easton Stick in the 5th (166). That raises the number to 6 teams, including the smartest guys in the room, who saw enough to not bite on using a 2nd round pick on Rosen. 5 of those teams drafted QBs, 3 before & 2 after. Teams that also picked QBs, beside those 6 were Carolina (3, 100), Cincinnati (4, 104), Philadelphia (5, 167), Jacksonville (6, 178) & Baltimore (6, 197). All those teams thinking of backup QBs and none thought enough to outbid Miami's low offer for a former top 10 pick. Even Arizona didn't want Rosen around unlike when SD drafted Rivers (actually traded Eli at #1 for Rivers at #4 plus extra picks) and kept Drew Brees for a couple of seasons. Arizona couldn't have been more transparent unless they put the word BUST over Rosen's photo on their website prior to the trade. The Dolphins didn't outsmart anyone, no matter how incompetent the guys in Arizona are. All the guys in Arizona proved is their own incompetence as they wasted picks 15, 79 & 152 of the 2018 draft for 1 year of Rosen, pick 62 in 2019 & a 5th in 2020. I guess the way they felt about Rosen they feel lucky that they got pick 62 & next year's 5th.

http://www.nfl.com/static/content/public/static/pdf/media-guides/BUF-Media-Guide.pdf

1st round QBs, especially top 10 picks are considered gold. They don't get traded or released after 1 season. In the 50+ years since the merger, the only 1st round QB traded a year after he was picked other than Rosen was Kelly Stouffer and the only reason he was traded was because he refused to sign with the Cardinals & sat out his rookie year. Stouffer (6th overall pick of 1987 draft) was traded for a 5th in 1988 & a 1st & 5th in 1989. Rosen was traded for pick 62 of the 2019 draft & a 2020 5th, basically pennies on the dollar for the 10th pick the prior year. If Arizona thought Rosen had any long term future they 1) Wouldn't have hired a coach who wanted nothing to do with Rosen & knew he could have his pick of any QB in the 2019 draft & 2) Wouldn't have been willing to trade him for so little. Also the fact that Arizona didn't get more shows there wasn't a lot of interest in Rosen around the league. Clearly the NYG, Washington & Denver all thought that choosing a rookie QB was a better choice than a Rosen trade. Arizona may have helped devalue Rosen by tipping their hand on Murray, but most of his devaluation was caused by what the rest of the league saw on film. If Rosen pans out for Miami, what it will say is Miami outsmarted the rest of the NFL. As I've said in the past when the Bills picked up guys who if they worked out, the Bills would have outsmarted some of the best GMs in the NFL now applies to the Dolphins: They're not good enough to be considered the smartest guys in the room. At least Buddy Nix admitted as much in a press conference.

QB stats are as worthless as used toilet paper. My house is brick.

The Cardinals will be drafting their 3rd straight 1st round QB & hiring their 3rd straight new head coach in an attempt to keep their fans hoping. Stop with the low expectations, 11 wins won't get us home field through the playoffs. 14 wins or bust!

I've been to 3 games in their stadium. The 1st time I was in the upper deck, the last 2 times I got seats in the lowest level because getting to the upper deck in that stadium is the worst hike I've ever had in any stadium. I remember seeing an older overweight woman on the stairs to the upper deck and I thought she was going to die trying to get up the stairs. It's no surprise that they're having trouble unloading those upper deck seats.

He gets to throw passes to you in your back yard while Josh is playing in front of a sold out crowd at the stadium.

He's on their radar ever since the weed with Blount incident. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000381295/article/steelers-bell-blount-charged-with-pot-possession

It's original broadcasts are on each Tuesday night at 10 PM EDT on HBO. The 1st episode is August 6th.

I just checked WXXA's website & I was able to see their schedule for the next 2 weeks. The game vs Indy is ON! I think that means all preseason games will be televised in Albany, just like last year. We have a 518 lunch on the 9th & there will be no excuses for not watching the night before. ?

Nobody on WFAN combines Schopp's arrogance & ignorance, not even Francesa.

I had to turn off WGR when Schopp started with his Josh will never make it BS.

The Bills should have fired Whaley as soon as they decided he couldn't talk in public. Then they should have hired Beane and had him & McDermott run the draft together. A while ago someone suggested the reason they didn't pick a QB was because they wanted it to be the new GM's choice, that's fine if Allen becomes equal or better than Mahomes & Watson, as we all hope he will be, but if they both end up better than Allen, the Bills made a huge mistake not having the pieces in place to properly evaluate the QB class of 2017.

His employer has no use for a flaming bag of dog poop.

It goes deeper than just the wife beating. Kelly never has been arrested, Moon has. I also don't like Moon for another reason-he claims he signed with the CFL because he didn't see an opportunity for a black QB in the NFL and signed before the NFL even had their draft that year. That was the same year Doug Williams was drafted in the 1st round of the NFL draft. Moon is playing loose with the truth, otherwise Williams wouldn't have been a 1st round pick. Now there wasn't the acceptance of minority QBs when Moon came out of college like there is today, but Moon's story is an exaggeration of the situation.

There hasn't been a league that considered itself major league since the USFL. Ralph was cheap, scrimping on coaches, GMs, players and scouts. I wouldn't be surprised if he underpaid the waterboy. I don't know how old you are, but we old timers saw Ralph being cheap time after time driving away good coaches (best example Chuck Knox) and hiring inept coaches on the cheap like Kay Stephenson & Hank Bullough, and who among us old timers can forget him forcing Harvey Johnson to coach twice, the 2nd time after the John Rauch debacle in 1971 where he quit after disparaging former players on WBEN 4 days before camp opened and after Ralph said he was going public to defend the 2 former Bills (McDole & Maguire) Rauch quit 5 days after camp opened. There were many seasons where Ralph's Bills were the laughingstock of the NFL mainly due to Ralph's antics. I have no animosity towards Ralph, but he was cheap and at times a control freak whose bad decisions led to many a losing season. I remember the days when the Bills went like this. The team would be good, attendance would be good. Ralph would do something to screw it up, attendance would drop to an embarrassing level. Ralph would then spend money to get people back in the stadium. Ralph would get complacent, again do something to screw it up, and attendance would drop. Rinse & Repeat. I lived a mile & a half from the stadium in 1977. I walked to the 1st 2 games. I didn't go to another one the rest of the season. I was not alone, I would drive past the stadium on Gameday Sundays to go to a laundromat in Hamburg & there were a ton of empty seats I could see from the road as I drove by. After that year he hired Chuck Knox to get people to come back & build a winner. After he alienated Knox & he left the same nonsense happened again in the early-mid 1980s. Finally he lucked out & got a young Bill Polian who brought his mentor Marv Levy to coach & they finally had a powerful team. Eventually he fired Polian, mainly because Polian didn't want advice from Ralph's Daughter & said nasty things about her. You can't lose players to another league if there's no competition, so you have to go back 35-40 years. The CFL gave up on signing top USA college players long ago, gone are the days when they competed. Before Cousineau there was Johnny Rodgers in the early 70s, but only Cousineau was the #1 overall pick to sign with the CFL. One of the few players to jump to the CFL as a veteran was Vince Ferragamo. The CFL competing ended in the 90s with the last major signee from an American college being Rocket Ismail. By 2001 the CFL had stopped competing, so your last sentence wasn't possible anymore. A more recent example of the Bills lowballing a player and him wanting out was Jason Peters. In a league where franchise LTs are like gold, the Bills wouldn't pay him his worth and he forced a trade right when he was entering his prime.

I can think of only 2 other 1st round picks (Gary Anderson & Keith Millard) who signed with the USFL. So 3 players in 3 years the USFL existed is kind of unique. One of the reasons it was so hard to lose a 1st rounder to the USFL was because the draft was in the middle of the USFL season. Of the 3, only Anderson played the same USFL season he was drafted, and he missed half the season, the other 2 lost a full season by having to wait to play the year after they were drafted (Kelly 1983 draft, 1st USFL season 1984; Millard 1984 draft, 1st USFL season 1985)). For the most part, the big name rookies who signed with the USFL signed before the NFL draft & were not 1st round picks due to their contract status. Eventually the NFL had a supplemental draft of USFL players who had signed with the USFL & were not drafted as a result of their USFL commitment. Unfortunately it came at the wrong time for the Bills because it was held in June 1984 after the 1983 season and the Bills hadn't bottomed out, so we were 14th & ended up drafting Dwight Drane , Daryl Hart, & Don Corbin in the 3 round draft. The top 4 picks were Steve Young, Mike Rozier, Gary Zimmerman & Reggie White.

4 of the 5 are in the top 6 picks. Burns was pick 16. My guess is Burns heard they are scrimmaging against the Bills early on & doesn't want to be embarrassed and will sign as soon as the scrimmages are done. They didn't hold out, they just went to other leagues when Ralph was the owner. Cousineau is still the only #1 pick in the NFL draft to sign with the CFL & we lost Kelly for 3 NFL seasons.

Outside the stadium at Super Bowl XXVII Petrino & I met former Bill Brent Griffith who was on the 1990 AFC champ Bills & got a ring for it. We took a photo with him among the many photos we took that day. Eventually that AFC championship ring got him in a lot of trouble. He once claimed the ring was stolen & cashed a check from his insurance company. After he & his wife split up, his ex ratted him out to the authorities telling them he still had the ring. https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/4339199-ex-professional-football-player-sentenced-insurance-fraud-west-central-minnesota A former professional football player recently pleaded guilty in Swift County District Court to felony insurance fraud involving a championship ring he had allegedly reported as stolen. Brent Dwayne Griffith, 51, of Sartell, formerly of Benson, was sentenced to serve two days in the Swift County Jail, followed by five years of unsupervised probation. He also was ordered by Judge Rodney Hanson to pay $4,805 in restitution to the Swift County court administration, plus fines and fees totaling $590. The judge granted him a stay of adjudication, meaning no conviction will appear on his record if he successfully completes all the terms of his sentence. According to the criminal complaint, Griffith filed an insurance claim in 2013, alleging the theft of an AFC title ring. The ring, which he won in 1990 while playing a season as an offensive lineman with the Buffalo Bills, was covered under his homeowner's policy. The following year, after he and his then-wife had split up, his wife notified the insurer that he in fact still had the ring and that he had cashed a check for a $4,780 insurance settlement without her knowledge. At that point the case was turned over to the Minnesota Commerce Fraud Bureau for investigation, resulting in the filing of a criminal charge of insurance fraud this past summer.