Cash

Plus, once a new thread gets merged into the 20-pager, all of the "go to first unread post" links stop working, meaning everyone who has been following the thread has to spend 10 minutes find their place again.

Agreed. If Brees throws a pick there, you chalk it up to a 1 in 1,000 shot and move on.

This multipost works well with your avatar, Dr. Manhattan.

Guys, every time you pay attention to Skip Bayless, he wins. His job is to get you to pay attention. He will say or do anything he can to get that to happen.

Oh come on guys. You never seen a corny pun before? I enjoyed the first and third ones.

Not sure how you missed the "29" next to the Bills in the quote the OP posted, but they're 29.

I'm not even sure there's more now. During the Gailey/Nix years, it seemed like the Bills signed or cut a practice squad guy almost every week. If there is an increase this year, it's not a huge one.

I'm pretty sure that the issue is that Brad Smith started 5 games at WR due to injury, but the Bills never stopped officially listing him as a QB on their roster. So it screwed up Pro Football Reference and they list 2 starting QBs for those 5 games. Deadspin got confused because Smith is listed *above* Fitzy in 3 of the 5. I was going to post this in the comment thread below to help clear things up, but didn't want to sign up for a Kinja account. http://regressing.deadspin.com/im-confused-by-brad-smith-having-a-1-2-record-as-a-star-1468430597 They have a basic handle on it, but I think they're still missing the piece that the Bills listed Smith as a QB on their roster even though he was starting at WR. Also I think the author doesn't want to take the time to update his fancy graphic, hahaha.

I think that was Marrone, regarding the Unga signing. Could be mistaken, though. In any case, you are correct that it's an almost verbatim Buddy Nix quote as well.

Yeah, this doesn't seem at all different from in-season roster management under Nix. Remember Scott Chandler, Kraig Urbik, and Erik Pears?

Money quote (emphasis mine): “We sat down and watched a lot of the quarterbacks across the league, the great ones, like Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers. Why are those guys so good? When you put on their tape they’re truly throwing the ball before the guy is open. They’re trusting their team. They’re just dropping back, they see it and they know and throw an accurate pass and let their guys make a play." This couldn't be more true. If your QB is only willing to throw to guys after they've beaten the D, you're in bad shape. First off, those opportunities don't come around often. Second, your QB will either take a lot of sacks while waiting for guys to get open (Hi Rob!) or check down all the time because no one's open yet (Hi Trent!). Third, if your QB waits till the WR is open to throw, there's a good chance the WR will no longer be open by the time the ball gets there. I think it's important for us fans to remember this, and not get too down on EJ when some of those "I trust my guy to make a play" balls get picked off. Graham did a nice job playing the ball in the air last week, but we can't expect that to happen every time. And if the WR misplays the ball, or just gets beat by the DB, that's not EJ's fault. The fair criticism is when he gives his guy no chance to make a play, like in the first Jets or Steelers games.

I don't remember any problems with Andre that game. Wasn't that the one where Bruce was out with the flu and the Steelers just ran away from Bryce Paup every down? Was that also the game where Kelly got hurt and Van Pelt came in for a series or two?

I wouldn't think of disparaging your knowledge of track. You make some good points there -- for example, that there's more to long jump than just speed. I'm disparaging your knowledge of physics. A couple of points: 1.) Given the same jump, the faster you're moving at the start of the jump, the father the long jump will go. This is true as long as Newton's First Law holds, and it's been holding steady for a while. Obviously a lot of the distance is determined by the jump itself, and that's why not all good sprinters are good long-jumpers and vice versa. 2.) I have no idea what definitions you were using for speed and velocity up top, but they definitely aren't the accepted ones. All right, enough off-topic posting from me. Sorry for the tangent.

Yes, with the ball on the 34, going into the wind. I can't imagine the Bills would have attempted a FG if the pass had dropped incomplete.

Someone needs to re-take physics.

Nice little piece; thanks for posting! I love Stevie and everything about him.

Totally agree. I'm not sure how much of the throw hanging up there was due to the wind and how much due to him being hit right as he threw, but it was a fine (and quick!) decision by EJ. Barring a totally blown coverage or DB falling down, there's never going to be a deep bomb where the receiver is open when the ball is thrown. All the QB can really do is recognize single coverage with no help (check), and huck it up in a way that gives his guy a chance to win the 1-on-1 matchup. With our guys, that'll usually mean throwing it really far and hoping our WR outruns the DB, but in this case, we got lucky with a way underthrown ball. But even if we didn't get lucky, I still like the decision. Worst case is an INT that's basically a punt. That's fine. Much more likely is an incomplete pass, which is still way better than the sack he would've taken if he didn't make that throw. Remember, it was an all-out blitz and Manuel was hit on a 3-step drop. Remember also, it was 3rd and 12. If our receivers can't consistently win those 1-on-1 matchups, then we need to get better receivers. As long as the QB is giving them a fair chance (which he didn't do in the first Jets game), that's all you can ask for. Flatulence is the key to EJ's good play? That's weird and gross, but if it works, I'm fine with it. I just feel bad for the poor bastards whose lockers are next to EJ's.

I personally love Dareus, so this is just a guess, but I think a lot of it might be due to the successes of guys drafted after him, especially JJ Watt. Plus, a lot of fans tend to get hung up on sacks as the only metric for D-linemen, and maybe don't necessarily understand that 5+ sacks a year is excellent for a DT or 3-4 DE.

If your team's success happened while you were not actively a fan of that team (i.e., too young to remember, weren't born yet, bandwagon jumper, etc.), it's pretty bush league to crow about it. I mean, it's great that the Bills won AFL championships in the 60s, but I feel no connection to it because it happened well before my time. I would probably still take Nelson over Graham, but neither is any great shakes. Graham did have one of his better games today, going 2 for 3 on catchable deep balls. His adjustment on the TD was very impressive.

Nice! This reminds me of my completely rational and justified hatred of Dick Jauron's coaching style. He would famously ALWAYS practice indoors unless the weather was ideal. When he talked about that policy, his rationale was basically along the lines of, "the poor weather will prevent us from effectively working on what we need to work on." But, as most of us fans pointed out at the time, if you can't practice it in bad weather, how will you be able to execute it during a game in bad weather? In other words, what's the point of crisp, clean practices if you know the game will be played under harsh conditions? Much better to practice in those same conditions and find out exactly what you can and can't do. Maybe even -- gasp -- adjust to those conditions? The worst of it was, Jauron always seemed stunned when the wind/rain/snow screwed up the offense. Quotes along the lines of, "we had a great week of practice, but we couldn't really move the ball through the air in this weather." So frustrating. Sorry for the rant, but I still haven't gotten over it. I don't know if Marrone is the guy yet, but at the very least, he seems to get basic concepts like this and learn from his mistakes, which Jauron never did.

Might as well do it now. One more loss probably eliminates us mathematically, or at least comes very close. It seems unlikely that we would win the tiebreakers even if we won out, but obviously that scenario is still in play. Might as well hope for the best as long as it's a possibility. For the record, I won't be disappointed in the slightest if we don't make the playoffs; never expected it and don't think it's reasonable to ask, particularly in light of the QB injuries. But I do want us to stay "in the hunt" as long as possible, and need to see us win several more games. At least 2 out of the Tampa/Jax/ATL murderer's row, and take care of business at home against Miami. Do that and we legitimately look like a decent young team on the rise, who can go as far as our QB's development takes us.

Apparently Marrone said in the post-game presser that Hackett will be on the sidelines the rest of the way.

David Nelson with a big revenge catch there.

Bad drop by McKelvin, but at least the win is pretty secure. He drops that on in a close game, it's hard to get over it.

Hahaha. Meanwhile, Goodwin continues to be fast.