The Big Cat

Hmmm...debacle you say. With four games to play, he needs 344 yards to eclipse 1,000 yards (having missed one full game and the majority of two others) And he only needs about 18 carries each of the next four weeks to hit the number he had last year. And actually if he gets those carries, at his current ypc (4.8--hardly a debacle) he'll be at 1,001 yds for the season.

The mere suggestion that a $70K luxury sedan is the gift every gal [not-so] secretly wants/needs.

Remind me again who's making a legitimate push for this?

Rather than criticize how some of us have defined Stevie's behavior, why don't you offer more specific terms than 'immaturity?'

Roster space? For...?

After Brandon said this morning that the Toronto series is far from guaranteed, his floor is a B-, IMO.

Wingo time, baby!

By week 14...Wilson was throwing those deep balls. Adjusted for injury, he was by week 9 too.

It's an oddly shaped ball. You don't get all the bounces. But you get some of them. No other plausible explanation exists.

Tough to beat Macca. This one's pretty !@#$ing awful, though:

If Russ Brandon is serious about winning, he'll organize a world record breaking community spiritual cleanse. As many Bills fans as show up will form a giant ring around Ralph Wilson stadium, they'll join hands and a spiritual guide will scatter burnt offerings and lead the attendees through the incantations needed to appease the spirits upon whose burial place the stadium was built. That's right. Western New York has a rich Native American and wartime history. There are restless souls infringing on our team's ability to put together a winning season. There's no other explanation for being on the losing side of EVERY razor-thin margin these past fourteen years. Four consecutive Super Bowl losses and new, seemingly improbable ways to snatch defeat from victory each and every year--these are the works of intangible forces that no amount of analytics can ever succumb.

It rather strikes me as a fact finding mission. Is this kid full of ****? Can he be reached? I'm sure he got his answer following the conversation. I won't speculate what that answer was, nor whether the events of last evening further impacted it.

During bye week: http://blogs.buffalobills.com/2013/11/25/marrone-had-long-talk-with-stevie/

Surely I'm not the only here who thinking about the 'long' talk him and Marrone had...

I'm what the drones call a 'human.' I observe things and interpret them.

No offense taken. You're just setting a mean standards expectation with all your 'expert' talk! And of course they're tough to define. But as fans, we have a pretty substantial body of evidence to pick through and make assumptions about. It's not like we're pulling these observations out of thin air, here. Foolish. Got it. Nothing but the empirical here on this message board. How foolish.

I'm done now too. I submit. Stevie is clearly of sound mind and spirit. His mistakes and blunders are in no way related. He has a super attitude and he's the kind of guy we want leading our team. I was foolish for questioning any of these things.

'Expertly made?' I mean, I could have my wife throw some hoity toity sports psychology terminology at us all, but I'm just expressing what I see--as a fan, as an adult, as a former athlete.

That's what I was thinking. Unlike Mr. Davis, I wouldn't have much for the defender to grab onto.

I went into great detail in threads several months ago. And I'm happy to again. I'll use last night's press conference and the press conference/God Tweets following the Pittsburgh drop to illustrate my point...again: Pittsburgh drop: Stevie takes the podium and appears to be forcing tears. His comments are all about a "young kid coming up having a chance to make a great play." Nothing about how he let the team down, nothing about the consequences to the team, only how his drop impacted this nice little narrative he'd concocted about himself. Then, of course, he did the perfectly rational/mature thing: tweeted/blamed god for all the world to see. Again, no ownership of the mistake, just immature, childlike lashing out at anything but himself. For people like Chicago Fan and me, this raised a flag. As I mentioned already in this thread, you solve problems by identifying them. His inability to catch the ball was the problem. Yet, what Stevie chose to highlight was the disruption of his own narrative and that a supernatural, omniscient creature suddenly opted to deny Stevie the magical intervention he thought he deserved. For people like Chicago Fan and me, this was indicative of a poor attitude for a professional athlete to have, especially considering the nature of the drop. It wasn't a physical mistake. It was a mental one. Perfectly thrown, uncontested pass, and he just biffed it. If he was run down from behind and stopped at the two yard line, we'd say he needs to get faster by running more wind sprints. This, however, was a mental mistake, one that could be corrected by working on improving mental toughness. His post game actions not only indicated that he had a long way to go in fixing that problem, but that he's not even on track to begin the process. Fast forward three years and fails to make a mentally tough play again. In that situation YOU HAVE TO PROTECT THE FOOTBALL. He didn't. He didn't go down, he didn't secure it with both hands. Mental mistakes, given the circumstances. And again what didn't we hear during his post game press conference? Ownership. None. So, the deficiency remains, and he demonstrates to the media and to the fans zero interest in improving. MEANWHILE, he's a jokester on and off the field. He plans touch down celebrations, he acts like a clown on Twitter yadda yadda. This tells people like Chicago Fan and me that he's not completely incapable of focusing on something. But unfortunately, to our concern then, and before our eyes last night, that something doesn't appear to be the type of preparation and wherewithal needed to win football games. There are plenty of funny people on Twitter, most of them much, much funnier than Stevie. I really only care about his ability to win football games for the Buffalo Bills, and more often than not, he's incapable of doing that.

The only thing more shocking than NFL players not wearing cups is the fact that this doesn't happen more often.

I also think he's arguing just for the sake of arguing.

So you're suggesting there's one brand of character flaw and it does or doesn't impact players equally? You're also suggesting maturity, mental toughness and leadership qualities have nothing to do with one another, nor do they have any bearing on performance?

So how many more instances until you acknowledge the correlation?

What makes you think he changed his mind?