Cash

RFA. The Bills chose not to offer a tender, which was surprising to many. I am glad they let him go, though. I don't like being forced to root for dirty players.

A Bills fan ragging on another team for losing the Super Bowl? Pardon me while my head explodes.

1. Editors write headlines, because headlines have to fit the layout of the page, and editors are the ones who arrange stories on newspaper pages. Reporters hand in completed articles, but don't find out what gets edited (or what the headline is) until the articles appear in the newspaper. Even though we're reading the article on a web page, where space/layout is no longer a consideration for the headline, the same headline will typically be used for both web and print. 2. Depends on your interpretation. I interpret it as saying "the remarks were somewhat unjustified, but not totally." One could argue that the proper way to express such a statement would be "the remarks were not fully justified," but my counter to that would be that emphasis and implication matter. And by phrasing the headline in that way, the editor is emphasizing the lack of justification. In other words, starting from the assumption that most observers consider the remarks not justified, rather than starting from the opposite viewpoint. Grammatically, I have no problem with the headline, particularly since it's in sports journalism, where all style rules get relaxed to an extent. Good sports writing usually won't have as formal a tone as good political or economic writing.

Outstanding! Is there a higher-res version anywhere?

I agree with your last sentence, but not your first. Here's the quote from Gailey (via Chris Brown): “No, I’d rather [Trent] make the right read. And I have to give him enough opportunities. If he checks it down, it’s not him, it’s me. If he throws it under four yards every time, we’re not doing the right things to get people open down the field,” said Gailey. ”So I want him to make the right reads and go to the right place. And if we’re not getting people open, then we either have to get different people or we have to create better schemes to get those guys open.” “Nobody can throw it laying on their back or running around for their life back there. So our protection has to get better.” Gailey goes out of his way to deflect all blame away from Trent. I understand that he wants to give Trent every opportunity to succeed, and that means propping up his confidence, etc. I get that. But by refusing to acknowledge the very real problems with Trent's game, Gailey just keeps reinforcing them. Implying that Trent has consistently been making the right reads is just nonsense, and I hope Gailey knows it. You can't tell me that a checkdown on 3rd and 13 with no pass rush is the right read. I think Gailey's attempt to protect Trent by putting the blame on himself (and the O-line) is only going to hurt Trent even more in the long run.

Wow, I've never heard a coach express confidence in his team before. I'm sold -- playoffs here we come!

The real problem is that, under Jauron, we weren't just bad, we were MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING. The Williams and Mularkey teams were mediocre to bad, but in much more entertaining ways. We don't have a lot to go on in the Gailey era, but the early returns suggest more boredom: No downfield passing game, Captain Checkdown at QB, trying to draw the other team offsides then calling a timeout instead of going for it on 4th and inches, etc. Hopefully those early returns are wrong. The losing is bad enough without also being boring. Last year's Cleveland game was about the biggest waste of 3 hours in my life. Even worse teams, like St. Louis, were more fun to watch. So basically, until we do something interesting, I can't fault non-Bills fans for saying they don't want to watch Bills games. I wouldn't either.

Yup. Give the pollyannas their due: On this issue, they were dead on. All of us haters look foolish.

I hate it too, but the players' association likes it, because the top 5 picks wind up driving salaries higher because they set the market. Peyton Manning's new deal is going to have to be richer than Sam Bradford's.

I've yet to see anything from Maybin that suggests he'll do anything well against first-string NFL players. Plus he's not even a starter, although he probably will always be in on passing downs. The sack leader is more likely to be a 3-down player. Dwan Edwards and Chris Kelsay do seem the most likely candidates. (Remember that even 3-4 teams usually play a 4-man line in nickel & dime, so Kelsay will still play a lot of DE this year.) But plenty of people have already guessed them, so I'll go with a dark horse: Arthur Moats. Probably no chance of it unless he's moved to OLB (due to a rash of injuries, maybe), and even then, it's pretty unlikely, but not impossible. I'm thinking that the sack leader winds up with around 4.5 sacks, similar to 2 years ago.

Thank God we drafted a 3rd-string RB at #9. Now that our top 2 RBs are going to miss a game or two to start the season, we have a prime prospect to shoulder the load. Except that he'll still only play part-time because he's not built to handle more than 15 carries a game or so. So I guess the moral of the story is that we should've gone for a 4th-string RB in round 2.

That's hilarious. The "try to draw the opponent offsides, but otherwise don't snap the ball" move has worked like 4 times in NFL history. They might as well practice the Immaculate Reception.

Nice!

Good for Harris. Really liked him a lot, would've preferred he be kept instead of Ellison.

Trent sucks, but let's not get ridiculous. He needs something like 8 more failed chances to catch Jeff George.

I'm pretty sure that the only problem has been lack of continuity in terms of offensive coordinator. Give Gailey 5-6 years and Trent will be a stud, with Bell completely owning every edge rusher in the league. Anyway, our hands were tied this offseason. We had to go with 3-4 players early because most of our old players were bad fits for the new scheme. And we had no choice but to go for Spiller, because he's got game-breaking excitability. Did you see how fast he was on that 11-yard run? That was sick.

I like all of our backs, including Bell & Simpson. Definitely the strongest position on the team.

Our team would be awesome if we didn't have to play any games. Between Trent, Maybin, and Whitner, we're dominant on the interview circuit.

Well said. In order to get upset over a bad showing in a preseason game, you probably had to have some high expectations going in. Most of us have pretty low expectations for this year, so who cares about a bad preseason game? I'll admit that the first offensive drive almost got my hopes up, though. Almost.

What do we have to lose by playing ANY young player at any position? Are we worried that it might cost us a playoff spot? Let the young guys take the field, so we can truly know who's worth keeping around. Personally, I think Brohm is probably a total bust, but I would really like to have that confirmed or disproved by watching him play.

Given our personnel, we should probably run the Wing-T. Fred or Marshawn could play QB, the other would probably be a wingback, Spiller would play tailback, and Roscoe would probably be the other wingback.

I felt like the Bills did *not* come out flat. The first couple of possessions, they looked pretty sharp on both sides of the ball. Which means their total collapse afterwards is even more of a concern.

If Ralph dies before January, his family gets the team tax-free.

Great point. Wood seems like a solid starter, Lynch would be a solid starter on many teams, Whitner's at least an average starting SS, Evans is probably a better than average starting WR, and that's all fine. But you'd think a team would be able to find an impact player in the first round over the last 10 years or so. Especially since we haven't made the playoffs in that stretch, and thus have been generally picking pretty high.

Most of the major publications are going to be comically off with their Chargers picks this year. Norv Turner is still the coach, their best WR is holding out, their LT is holding out, their best pass rusher is holding out (and may not even be effective if he comes back, since he's off the juice), and they just gave a whopping contract to Antonio Gates, which makes the holdouts more likely to dig in their heels. There's a decent chance that 2010 Ryan Mathews will be an upgrade over 2009 LT/Sproles combo, but even if that's the case, I don't see it being enough for the Chargers. We'll see who's right, but I feel a lot of times these teams get picked by major publications because it's wishful thinking on the part of the reporters -- they're really hoping San Diego/Miami/Arizona, etc. will be good, so that they'll be sent there on assignment.