MattM

After the last couple of days only one thing to say---Group Hug!!!

Plus 12 to the power of infinity......

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/03/14/mario-williams-is-scheduled-to-leave-buffalo-tonight/

Maybe they did--someone in the shoutbox referenced a Bucky Gleason tweet about "watch for around 5 or 6 so they can go on the air live with the breaking news". Take it FWIW....

May mean Peyton is headed to Miami--I'd read somewhere this week that he didn't want to play with Brandon....

That's what I'm starting to think, too. Either that, or Coy needs the attention now that he's no longer in the NFL....

5 of Mincey's 8 sacks came against a bad Colts team last year if I recall correctly--not worth that dough to me....

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/02/12/remaining-2011-cap-space-by-team/ This might help us this year, should we actually have an interest in spending in FA (unlikely, but a guy can dream, can't he?).....

Some interesting thoughts. On further reflection, and factoring in time/number of plays into the equation, I back off my original conclusion slightly considering that a great pass rusher will get about a sack and a pressure or two a game on average, meaning that if a QB goes back 30 times in a game and the pass rusher plays on 20-25 of those plays he gets to the QB only about 10% to 20% of the time he's in the game vs a CB who, while he only shuts down one QB option, can do that repeatedly on a larger percentage of the opposition's passing plays....

Sorry if this idea has been posted before, but it struck me recently that despite the fact that both CB and DE/pass rushing OLB are high cost players the smart play strategy-wise is to go for the DE/OLB over the CB largely because at most a shutdown corner can only take up to 1/3rd of a QB's options out of a play on any given play while all a DE/OLB has to do is win his matchup to get to the QB. Basically, all you need is one DL or LB to beat his man and get to the QB to either force a sack or a bad throw while the best a corner can do is take away a portion of the available options for the QB to throw to. Seems like an asymmetrical payout to me. In light of that, I'm not sure why teams go CB before they go DE/OLB. As noted in the title thread that may be symptomatic of weak strategy over the years on the part of the Bills, who seem to love drafting CBs high in the draft. Thoughts?

I'd like to think I'd know if I had a brother....

That's funny, my daughter was born that same day. I watched the extra innings at home with my in-laws that night after leaving the hospital....

Go back and watch (if you still can) the HBO "Inside the Lines" on Matt Walsh. In that HBO quotes (directly) a so-called "former offensive star" on those early 2000 Pats* teams as saying "Of course it helped us, it helped us immensely. We knew what the defense was bringing about 70-80% of the time" or something very similar. Personally, I suspect said player was Antowain Smith, but could obviously be wrong. It may still be available on HBO Go! or HBO on Demand if you have it. I watched it on DVR 3-4 times to make sure I was hearing them right and to do this day, can't understand why more wasn't made of that at the time, as it struck me as a very damaging quote to all the naysayers and apologists. As I noted in another thread last night, anyone else remember the Eagles SB win and how the Pats* seemed to check down into a screen every time the Eagles brought a blitz, as if they knew the blitz was coming? Recalling that after several Eagle defenders from that team stood up during Spygate and said they believed the cheating influenced that game about cinched my views on the issue....

The Eagles ' D was swearing up and down when Spygate came out that it impacted that SB game--anyone else remember how the Pats* always called a screen at the right time in that game, almost like they knew what was coming? That's all I needed to see to determine how big a bunch of cheaters the Pats* are....

Oh, we've got the Ticket (so they can watch Daddy swear at the TV, as someone else noted above that's also an autumn Sunday ritual in our household) and I took them to the Bills-Giants game this year (which may have started the G-Men love, actually), so I'm covered there. I guess it's just a bit of a crap shoot what happens from here, eh? Amen to that, brother. They may find out what it's like to sleep outside if they want to follow either of those teams. In fact, I told my son last week that the Pats* and the Cowboys are "evil" (to him, all teams are either "evil" or "good").....

Understood, but the "problem" is that my kids are going to most likely grow up in the NYC area (I've been here off and on for over 25 years), so other than me (and their aforementioned grandfather and occasional visits to WNY) they will be "Bills starved" and "Giants/Jets fed". I can't really blame them for going in those local directions if they choose, but it is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow (although probably less bitter than the lifelong Bills fandom we all suffer from)..... Now that's funny--I was typing my prior entry before I saw yours. Many thanks for giving me some hope after all!

You know, other than the sadness of maybe not being able to share my Bills passion with the kids, I really don't mind--kind of surprised myself a bit on that one, and my wife as well. The way she was acting when she got the courage up to tell me that our daughter was becoming a Giants fan you'd have thought someone had died....

I have cousins and uncles who are diehard Giants fans from Central NY--they just didn't switch over when the AFL came along and Buffalo got a team. My cousins have followed the Giants since we were kids back in the Joe Pisarcik and Rocky Thompson era, so I have to give them props. My father was the black sheep of the family, picking the upstart Bills to root for in 1960....

Perhaps in my younger years (and I was also myself once lost as a child at a Red Wings game by my Richard Russo-character-like dad and uncle--does that count?).....

The one personal downside from yesterday's game is that I may have lost my kids to the NY Giants (or the "G-Men" as we call them around our house). We live in the NYC 'burbs and my kids are 8 and 3, so, as you may expect, they've been swept up in the Giants euphoria around here and were rooting hysterically for them last night. Oh, well, at least they're not Pats* fans or 'Pukes fans and at least they'll be spared our pain, I guess, although it makes me sad to think that we won't be sharing that pain together as they grow older. There may still be hope (or maybe the opposite of hope?) for the little guy--he told me on Saturday that he already "misses the Buffaloes" and that "they're done playing football now. Now they're playing soccer"....

Especially in a Pats* game--unless, of course, it's the Pats* doing the hitting and not being the "hitt-ee".....

And that will net the new owner what, like an extra 2-3 million a year? Chump change for an NFL team. It's all about selling luxury suites today (unshared revenue) and the Ralph ain't got them and the WNY economy couldn't support them anywhere near what Toronto or LA could. Those are just facts. The Bills best hope to stay in Buffalo is for a guy with local connections to buy the team and be willing to make less money (even a loss) to keep the team there....

And what do you expect "his" people to say with so much money on the line--that he'll never play again?

The other thing you need to remember is that if it's $3m a year on average, it may be backloaded to work out to something closer to $2m for the "real" years in the deal.....

When you combine the lowest ticket prices in the League, probably the fewest corporate sponsors/sponsorship opportunities and the fact that most of the shared revenue comes from TV and unshared revenue (which a new owner would covet) comes from said corporate sponsors/suites, unfortunately the factors you mentioned don't count for much. The team will likely only stay in Buffalo if the new owner has a tie to the region....