Albany,n.y.

Anyone think Brady lost a bet when he flippantly said "Cut my hair? I'll cut my hair when we lose to the Buffalo Bills and not before."

Ed (PA.) Hello Mort. C'mon Mort give us your feelings towards the New Bills.Thanks Ed Chris Mortensen (11:30 AM) Ed. they're fun to watch and easy to root for. The "reject" team - few people gave Chan Gailey any respect when he has one of the most impressive coaching resumes in the NFL. Ryan Fitzpatrick and Stevie Johnson, 7th rounders. Fred Jackson, undrafted. Bunch of guys like that. The problem is sustainability and franchise stability. It's something the late great GM John Butler worried about and expressed to me when he left for San Diego. Will the Bills do what's necessary to keep the core players as they build going forward? And don't panic if things hit a few bumps. In the meantime, enjoy the moment. Lot of people around the league are rooting for them and the Lions. http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/40443/

I have a friend who, upon hearing the Southern accents of Nix & Gailey, wrote off any chance of their succeeding and immediately e-mailed me this story to back up his point. I admit, after seeing nothing like what I'm seeing now in preseason, along with last year's 4-12, I was a skeptic, but Buddy & Chan are winning me over based on results where it counts-On The Field.

One of the main problems of the 2 year Levy GM era was drafting players of questionable character on the field, off the field, or both. Look at the 1st round picks during those 2 years Donte Whitner -arrested for domestic violence & and participating in a near riot; John McCargo-a no talent underachiever; and Marshawn Lynch-rap sheet includes hit & run, illegal gun posession while smoking dope with his posse in a car & a league suspension. Now with all 3 1st round picks jettisoned along with Brandon slug 1st round pick Aaron Maybin Jet-tisoned, the team is winning. Addition by subtraction.

Geography. After the 2 NJ teams, the following teams are closer to NYC than the Bills: Eagles, Patriots, Ravens, Redskins & even the Steelers. That makes 7 teams in closer proximity to NFL fans in NYC than the Buffalo Bills. When I lived in Suffolk County, Long Island in the 1980s, I was able to go to the mall & buy Philadelphia Eagles tickets at either Ticketron or Ticketmaster. When I went to the Bills/Eagles game in 1987, I bought my ticket at a mall on LI. They were not selling tickets to Bills games.

It's not official until Thursday. How do they know someone is not going to come along & buy a block of 20,000-30,000 tickets?

He's already on the practice squad & will probably be called up at some point since the only TEs left are Chandler & Lee Smith. If they don't want to promote him, the next injury at a deeper position means either Martin returns or some other TE comes in off waiver street.

That's how I saw it, but I wasn't sure whether they were going to call pass interference & put the ball at the 1 or were just going to give the Patriots a 5 yard illegal contact penalty. Fortunately, they gave us the big one. The DB clearly got in front of Nelson & blocked his forward movement. Any way they ruled it, there was no way the interception was going to stand up.

He can't, it might hurt ticket sales in Cincinnati.

They'd already have 2 wins if Marvin knew about the light air in Denver. Marvin went for it on 4th down, with his rookie QB, late in the game when a 53 yard FG would have given the Bengals the lead. Any coach who is playing a game in Denver and doesn't adjust his kicking decisions accordingly should be fired before the team's next trip to Denver. He cost me $44 and bragging rights that week in my football pool, so I was not happy as I listened to the game that evening driving home from the Bills/Raiders game. I'm counting on the Bills to avenge my loss.

The safest picks seem to be the Bays. I'm taking Green Bay over Denver, but one could easily survive using Tampa Bay over Indianapolis. At this point of the season and only 3 teams used, there is no reason to take a road team. If the game was at the Ralph, I'd be all over the Bills, but with many teams available, I'll stick with home teams for now. However, this is the last week before byes start and reduce the games and teams available. Sooner or later I'm going to have to pick a road team. By the way, to me, week 10 looks like the toughest one this year, but key injuries could change that and that week has no byes.

You must be very young and missed Van Miller in his prime.

Anyone who saw the extra security lining up near the end of the game should realize that the Bills will never again let a mob of fans on the field after the game. When the goalposts came down, there was no danger of anyone getting on the field. I don't know why they did it, but it had nothing to do with a fear of fans running on the field to tear them down. At that point fans were either still in there seats or headed to the exits. Nobody in the stands was headed towards the field, with the possible exception of the players' kids. Back in the 1980s the team didn't seem to mind it. In fact, the fans would take part of the goalposts up to Ralph & he enjoyed it. Unfortunately, that was before the 1991 debacle of fans cutting up pieces of the turf, 9/11/01 and NFL mandates of security that were unimaginable 20-30 years ago. Even in baseball, where fans used to storm the field when their team won the pennant and/or World Series, the field has become impenetrabe for mobs of fans after the game. We live in very different times in terms of stadium security than we did in the 1980s and before then.

Channel 6 is making sure everyone knows the Bills/Bengals game is on Sunday. They led off the sports with the story after rumors started that they were showing Pittsburgh/Houston & have it on their website: http://www.cbs6albany.com/articles/sunday-1288121-game-bills.html

This week's Pro Football Weekly has Fitzpatrick taking up most of the cover titled "Comeback Kids" with a small picture of Matt Stafford that states "The surprising Bills and Lions remain undefeated after securing come-from-behind wins in week three" http://www.profootballweekly.com/pfw-online/

Different networks, so they may do it differently, but it can be changed if the Jets aren't involved that week (see below). Since WRGB committed themselves to the Jets several years ago, when they went as far as showing Jets preseason games that year, the Jets have top priority at WRGB. There's nothing we can do to change it. A couple of years ago, WRGB was going to show a game that didn't involve the Jets, Giants, Pats or Bills when a Bills game was scheduled & we complained so much, with help from a reporter at the Schenectady Gazzette, that WRGB caved & showed the Bills-so while the network does assign games, the local station is permitted to file an appeal & get the game changed. However, if they don't get the pressure, they'll just trot out the excuse-The Network made me do it. I've posted this before, but the good news is, at least this year, the schedule, thanks to Jets night games & doubleheaders, gives us a lot of games on home TV that do not conflict with the Jets, Giants, & even the Patriots, which everyone in Albany knows get the lowest priority of the 4 teams at least until the Bills season is totally down the drain & December Bills games are considered meaningless to the network suits. So here is what the rest of the season looks like on Albany TV: 10/2 @ Cincinnati: Yes! No competition 10/9 Philadelphia: No, Giants will be televised 10/16@Giants: Yes! 10/30 Washington (Toronto): Yes! No competition This game is on FOX, who only have 1 game & won't go head to head with the Giants on CBS at 1. 11/6 Jets: Yes! 11/13 @Dallas: Yes! No competition 11/20 @Miami: Yes! No competition 11/27 @ Jets: Yes! 12/4 Tenessee: No, Jets will be televised 12/11 @ San Diego: Yes! No competition 12/18 @ Miami: Yes! No competition 12/24 Denver: Maybe, only competition is NE/Mia 1/1 @ New England: No, Jets will be televised From the beginning of the season, it looks like we'll get 10 or 11 games on home TV. Better yet, if you go to the home games like I do, the only sure road game that won't be on home TV is the last game @ NE. Edit: One more thing-When WNYT & NBC had the AFC contract, the Bills were major contenders & the Jets usually stunk, but we had a secret weapon. One of the guys running things at WNYT was a Buffalo native & a Fredonia grad.

I can guarantee you, there will never be fans tearing down the goal posts again. If somehow a big enough group got on the field, they'd teargas you before you got to the goal posts, although I doubt that a large group could ever get on the field again.

Thanks, that will put us alone in 1st place after the Raiders win on Sunday. For the cover of SI: No doubt, if we win it will be Fitzpatrick.

More likely-You're not very good salesman.

Here's a ridiculous quote from Ann Coulter: Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years. Considering the number of people who have had convictions overturned by DNA evidence as the science has improved, only a complete crackpot would think that no innocent people have been executed in the past 60 years.

Why would anyone want to hike in Iraq, where they started?

Brett Favre was not a castoff. He was a highly touted QB who fell to the 2nd round because some teams were afraid of him medically due to an auto accident. He was a rookie who didn't play because his team had an established QB. Between the time he was drafted & the next draft, Ron Wolf, who when he was with the Jets ranked him as the best player in the 1991 draft and saw him picked 1 pick before the Jets 1st pick, which was in the 2nd round since they had used their #1 in the supplimental draft the year before, was hired as Green Bay's GM. With Favre not #1 on the depth chart in Atlanta, Wolf, now GM in GB, offered Atlanta Green Bay's 1st round pick and Favre was traded to GB for the 1st round pick 1 year after being selected in the 2nd round. A 2nd year player traded for a 1st round pick is not a castoff. Also, the Jets tried desperatly to trade up around the end of the 1st round to get Favre, but couldn't find anyone willing to trade with them & ended up taking Browning Nagle 1 pick after Favre.

Ok, but not great. There was a recent article on him & he still has physical effects from the injury that will never get him to 100%: http://www.buffalonews.com/spotlight/article550571.ece

Ask SD how much it hurt NE last week. Koppen got injured in the 1st game & NE didn't miss a beat that game or last week.

4-1 is always better than 3-2 after 5 games.