Cash

Fair point. However, SU's special teams were typically quite poor under Marrone, and appeared to be very low on the practice totem pole. I don't recall if he ever had a coach on staff whose sole job was special teams, but if he did, it was only 1 year, maybe 2 at the most. I know Marrone coached special teams himself one year, and I believe the D-coordinator coached them another year. I think another year, special teams were divided among 3 different assistant coaches. In other words, I am expecting some BAD special teams from the Bills this year. Depending on who returns kicks, that could still be exciting though. I don't know how much a coach can screw up a dynamic kick returner.

Don't need to start their own league; they already have those. Just need to start their own basketball tournament. The NIT has been a post-season tournament for ages, and used to be roughly on par with the NCAA tournament. Hypothetically speaking, if the Pac-16, Big 16 "Ten", 16-member SEC, and maybe a 16-member ACC? decided to stage a b-ball tournament to compete with the NCAA, it would be a huge draw, and could very conceivably beat the NCAA Tournament in the ratings. You are correct that the current football system gives tremendous profits to the schools/conferences, and they have no incentive to blow it up. Just minor tweaks like expanding conferences to add major media markets for their terrible cable networks. However, the current basketball system is comparatively very low-revenue, because the NCAA pockets the TV rights for its tournament, and that alone is most of the TV money for the entire basketball season. We know that the major conferences are extremely profit-focused these days. I wouldn't be surprised to see them make a move to take that tournament money for themselves. Possibly a compromise, wherein the NCAA heavily shares the tournament proceeds with the major conferences in return for a commitment to not start a rival tournament. As to your guess: The NCAA only has power or authority when things happen 1 school at a time. The only reason playing NCAA-sanctioned athletics means anything at all is because nearly every school has signed on to the NCAA. But if all the major conferences walked together, who cares if the NCAA dropped all of their football programs? They'd just continue playing each other in non-NCAA games. The BCS was formed by the (then) six major conferences working together -- not by the NCAA. They've shown that they're willing and able to handle their own business when it comes to monetizing college football's postseason. Now, how likely is my scenario? Right now, extremely unlikely. But if, in a couple years, we move to 4 superconferences with very few mid-majors left, I think it's pretty feasible. Especially if the NCAA loses a lawsuit in the interim. I really think that if the major conferences detect weakness in the NCAA, they will strike.

Ah, but you're forgetting about college FAs from past years. Freddie, Garrison Sanborn, David Snow, and Shawn Powell are all pretty likely to make the final roster, so we're looking at more like a half dozen UDFAs if your guess is correct about the rookies.

I disagree. Something subtle like 2 stripes on the sleeve instead of 3, or a ridge of red & blue around the collar instead of just white, sure. (Or the differences between official jerseys and DHGate knockoffs.) But I don't think it's possible to look at someone wearing the Nike jerseys and not see that collar. It's a major prominent feature right beneath the person's face. I feel like to not notice it, you would have to be unable to tell the difference between a t-shirt and a polo shirt.

December 21st, 1941: I just heard about a Japanese sneak attack! I despise the Axis powers! We need to do something about this!

Wow, very interesting. If true, it's hard to imagine jersey sales being very brisk once the season starts. Who wants to buy a non-throwback jersey that doesn't match what you see on the field every week?

Nice. Wish the Bills would follow suit. Or Nike would just get over its stupid plastic collar that does nothing and make a regular collar.

It's a decent piece, but the big point the author leaves out is that he's comparing the best 4 years of Fitzpatrick's career, by far, to 4 typical Cutler years. Actually, you could argue that both his full years starting in Denver (with a good O-line and real receivers) were better than his average season in Chicago. I honestly don't feel like Cutler is overrated at all. Does anyone think he's a top 5 QB? I've never seen anyone say that. I doubt anyone besides Chicago homers would put him in the top 10, either. Fitz was about the 20th-best starter over the last 4 years, Cutler's probably something like 12th or 13th. The differences are: 1.) Cutler had no O-line, whereas Fitz had at least a decent one, possibly really good. (We'll see how much of the O-line's success was due to Chan's scheme.) 2.) Cutler isn't a limited player -- he can make all the throws, and has shown in individual games that he can win a game almost singlehandedly. He's not consistent enough to do it regularly, but Fitz was always a limited guy who needed a scheme to get guys open for him. Once defenses figured out how to play against that scheme, Fitz was pretty much toast.

Hahaha, that's wonderful! You know an argument has gone on too long and everyone's out of something to say when someone pulls the old, "you don't complain when you unfairly benefit" canard. Well done. So this thread is over now, but it was fun while it lasted. Kudos to SJBF for the post of the thread -- wonderful Q&A, really got to the heart of it. Kudos to everyone else for participating, and best wishes to everyone.

Haha, true! In fact, I would have to keep shooting myself in the foot every year. But in my defense, some rich guy is paying me a lot of money every time I shoot myself in the foot. I'm not sure I follow. One issue is that the Bills want home games front-loaded in the schedule because it's tough to sell December games. That will be heavily affected by improving the team, yes. But that's not what I mean by "the issue", because to me, that's a totally independent issue than the one the Bills are complaining about, which is that they play 6 teams coming off extra rest this year, whereas 3 teams play zero, including a team in their division. This is not a problem that could be solved by improving the on-field product. In fact, it would be a much bigger problem if the team was better. Playing 6 rested teams instead of 2 or 3 might cost any team a win or two. If that's the difference between 8-8 and 6-10, I don't really care. If that's the difference between 10-6 and 9-7, I care a lot. No one has bothered to actually spell out how front-loading home games means that your opponents have to be coming off bye weeks or Thursday night games. Thank you. Obviously I care more because the Bills got the short end of the stick this year, but it would still be unfair if the Bills played 0 rested teams and the Patriots played 6. Don't get me wrong, I'd be very pleased with that specific unfairness, but it would still be unfair. Right. Last year, the Bills played 4 teams coming off byes or Thursday games, including Houston after the Bills' own bye. But they didn't get that front-loaded home schedule they want. So what was the NFL's excuse last year? Not really. The Toronto people want it to occur after the CFL season ends (around Thanksgiving-ish). The Bills, after getting pasted by divisional foes the first 2 years in Toronto, now request that the Toronto game be an NFC opponent. Since there are only 2 NFC opponents that come to Buffalo, and only about 5-6 weeks in which the game can be scheduled, the options are somewhat limited. The NFL can't just make up the whole schedule, then decide on which of the two NFC @ Buffalo games moves to Toronto, because both could easily wind up during the CFL season. Nor can they make up the schedule, then pick any home date post-Thanksgiving to switch to Toronto, because that might leave them with only divisional opponents. Now, that constraint shouldn't translate to "play 6 teams coming off extra rest" (or even 4 or 5), but it is a real constraint that other teams don't have. Rogers buys all the tickets from the Bills as part of their deal, then resells them at a price of Rogers' choosing. But the more money the Bills get for the series, the higher the price Rogers must charge to break even. So the Bills definitely do impact the price.

That's a fair point to make, but I still disagree. We all understand why the Bills are doing the Toronto series, and I think we all agree that from a competitive standpoint, it is a huge detriment and very stupid. But I don't think that doing one stupid thing disqualifies you from complaining if something unfair happens to you. To make an analogy, if I shot myself in the foot, that would be really stupid, hurt me a lot, and 100% my fault. But if someone then stomps on that foot (or even the other foot), don't I still have the right to complain? EDIT: Having said that, I should make it clear that the Toronto series does seem to be a legitimate hamper to the schedule-maker, since the Toronto people want the game to always occur after the CFL season ends, and the Bills want the game to be an NFC opponent. I still don't think we can throw up our hands and say that it's inevitable or fair that the Bills would play 6 teams coming off byes or Thursday games, while 3 teams play none. Or that the Falcons should play 4 or 5 teams coming off byes or Thursday games while 3 teams play none.

Do you mean the late-season home game scheduling issue? If so, then you are correct, but that has very little to do with the discussion at hand. MattM was talking about the issue being discussed in this thread, which is that there is a large disparity between how many rested opponents some teams play and how many rested opponents some other teams play. That issue would be much more important if the Bills did field a competitive team. Last year's team might have picked up a win or two if none of their opponents had been coming off a Thursday game or bye week, but that still would leave them well outside the playoffs.

It's a nice start, but I still don't think it's really relevant. Yeah, the Bills suck. What's that got to do with their schedule? The Bills had a favorable schedule in terms of rest in 2009 and went 6-10. Maybe if they'd had the same home/road opponents, but this year's unfavorable scheduling in terms of rest, they'd have gone 4-12. Maybe this year's team has the talent of a 8-8 team, but playing those teams coming off byes will cost them a win or two? A good second step would be to compare preseason over/under lines to actual performance. My guess is that you'd see a small but barely significant factor that suggests that playing a lot of rested teams hurts your win total. I think it's pretty complicated though, because some evidence suggests that playing a road game after a bye is a big boost, but playing a home game after a bye might not be any better than a regular home game. Also, the NFL schedule is so short, it's hard to get enough of a sample to really draw any conclusions. Not to mention the fact that over/unders and point spreads sometimes take things like bye weeks into account, and are sometimes adjusted to account for public tendencies (example: the Cowboys over/under always runs high, because there are a ton of Cowboys fans and they like to be on their team to win). What is really nice about this piece is that it pretty conclusively proves that there is no anti-Bills scheduling conspiracy. These are pretty random results. The Bills' schedule luck was very middle-of-the-road in 2011 & 2010. They got lucky in 2009, and unlucky in 2012 & 2013.

I disagree. Chris Brown's actual complaint boils down to: 1.) The schedule this year is unfair because some teams face a lot more rested opponents than others. 2.) Measures should be taken in future years to lessen that disparity. 3.) Extra attention should be paid to divisional games, and those should never have 1 team rested while the other isn't. I don't really buy the divisional stuff, but I do agree with the first two parts (and did back when the schedule first came out and we had a long thread about it on here). No one really seems to be disputing the first part, just what the cause of it is. But my point is that it doesn't matter if it's just coincidence or if it's a massive league-wide conspiracy or anything in between. The point Brown is making isn't how this unfairness came to be, just that it exists. I personally tend to think that playing opponents off bye weeks is pretty random, because I doubt that the schedule maker looks at that aspect of it. But I don't know. Given some of the NFL's past scheduling shenanigans, I wouldn't be shocked if certain teams were protected and everything else was random. I would be shocked if the NFL was actually screwing the Bills over on purpose. What's the point? What's the motive? Doesn't make any sense. As for Chris Brown's second point, that this issue should be corrected going forward, there seems to be a significant body of contrarians (led by JW and Tim Graham) who think that it shouldn't or can't be corrected, because they insist that it's extremely hard or impossible to build an NFL schedule without such drastic imbalances. I haven't yet seen any actual evidence offered up for this, just an a priori assertion that it can't be done. I don't buy it. Nor do I buy the counter-argument that since the Bills have specific scheduling requests that were met, it must then follow that they play 6 teams coming off rest, while the Patriots (and others) don't play any. Or that front-loading the Bills' schedule with home games necessitates playing teams coming off byes and Thursday night games. I don't see a connection there. If the Rogers Centre has limited availability, then maybe that's a real factor in terms of hamstringing the Bills' schedule, since the NFL is sorta-limited to only 2 potential opponents for that game. But I haven't seen anything suggesting that the Rogers Centre has limited availability. If this complaint of the Bills' is so off-base and outrageous, how about proving it? Go through past schedules and find evidence that playing a bunch of rested teams is not a disadvantage. Or that 2013 is a massive anomaly and typically schedules are more balanced in this regard. (That one's hard to do, because we only have 2 years of consistent Thursday night games.) Or the media-types who are ripping the Bills could call up the NFL office and see what their response is. Maybe the problem is really that there's a ton of "blackout" dates at various stadiums because of concerts, etc., and this is really the best they can do. Again, I think it's just that no one in the scheduling office cares enough either to look at games against bye teams, or to change things if they do notice a disparity. If they did care, I'm pretty confident they could build a balanced schedule without jeopardizing any higher priorities.

Re: the bolded -- I expect that for the most part, they do let him decide on his own angles and content. But they don't need to tell him what to write or, more importantly, what not to write. He knows who pays his salary. How often do you publicly bash your boss or your company? If you answered anything other than "never", you are in a tiny minority. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Chris Brown isn't going to be distributing any content that puts the Bills in a negative light. Maybe if there was a legitimate news story that was negative -- a Bill getting arrested, e.g. -- he might cover it, but he's never going to write a general coverage article that's impartial. Similar thing with the NFL Network. I've heard Rich Eisen say that he's never gotten anything from the NFL in terms of what they can and can't say, and I believe him. But I've also never seen anything but positive coverage on the NFL Network, because no one who works there is stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them.

For someone imperiously telling others to keep up, you didn't exhibit much comprehension of my post. I was going to spell out an explanation like you did above, but then I realized you probably wouldn't read it anyway, so I'll just call you a doody-head and move on with my life.

Last year, I got paid significantly less than several co-workers for doing the same job. I complained to management, and my salary was brought in line with the norm this year. But my vacation was reduced by a week, and now most of my co-workers have a week more than I do. Am I wrong to complain again? JW - I think I get your point, but then again I don't get your point. Are you expecting unbiased journalism from a team employee writing an article on the team's website? It might be a nice world if people or corporations were willing to acknowledge the flip side of the coin when advocating for themselves, but when does that actually happen? I don't expect a district attorney to talk about evidence for the defense in his opening statement. Maybe you're worried that the average reader sees "journalist" next to Chris Brown's name and thinks he's an actual journalist instead of a team employee? I can't vouch for anyone else, but I know that's not an issue in my case. I do think it would be remiss of an actual journalist such as yourself to write a schedule article without acknowledging both that the Bills did well in terms of early home games and that they got screwed in terms of playing rested opponents. The travel issue is interesting, but not really relevant. All of the home and road opponents are pre-determined before the schedule is made up. There's no way for the NFL schedule-makers to favor or screw over a team in that regard, short of fundamentally changing the way opponents are determined. All in all, I'm glad the Bills are complaining about this, because it is a competitive disadvantage. Maybe it's a small one, but you shouldn't take anything lying down. There are two possible reasons why the Bills got screwed: 1.) The NFL doesn't look at or care about playing rested teams when making the schedule, and it's just random that the Bills have gotten the short end of the stick a few times in a short span, or 2.) The NFL actively favors some teams (common candidates would be the Giants and Patriots) and gives them beneficial schedules as a result. This means that in order for the schedule to work, other teams will need to have extra-bad schedules. (Even in this scenario, I can't believe that the NFL has a specific axe to grind against the Bills or Falcons or anyone. I just don't buy it.) The nature of fandom lends itself to believing that (2) is the case, but it could easily be (1). Either way, if disadvantaged teams start (and keep) complaining about it, eyes will start to be on it, and things will likely change. If the NFL just hasn't cared to this point, but start caring going forward, problem solved. If the NFL is doing shady things with the schedule, there's a good chance they'd stop once people start to notice. Then again, the NFL is long on arrogance and stubbornness and short on common sense, so you never know.

Good read, thanks for posting!

The very last sentence of the piece: "A seven-win season in 2013 for the Bills would be their first in five years." Wow, that is depressing. Remember when Dick Jauron was a bum because he went 7-9 every year? It's been five years since we hit those lofty heights. (To clarify, Jauron really was a bum. Going 7-9 in 3 straight seasons is bad and should not be defended, plus he was a bad in-game coach and headed the most boring, lackluster, unexciting Bills teams I've ever seen.)

I also see what you're saying, and in most other threads, I would agree. But in the specific case of comparing the Cowboys' draft board/ratings to the Bills actual picks, one can't dismiss the Cowboys' opinions as worthless (implicitly validating the Bills' differing opinions) without considering that by that same logic, the Bills' draft opinions must be considered even worse. The Bills think Kiko Alonso was a 2nd-round prospect at worst. The Cowboys think he was a 4th-round prospect. How can we dismissively say that the Bills are right and the Cowboys are wrong without looking at their respective track records? Even if we just took the Bills out of it, the Cowboys have been a moderately successful team in recent history. Hardly infallible on draft day, but not hopeless or incompetent. If this was the draft board of a perennial doormat or famously poor drafting team, I'd gladly dismiss it out of hand as well. But unfortunately, most non-Bills fans would probably classify us as a perennial doormat or famously poor drafting team, so I don't think it's fair to so that our team's opinion is automatically better than anyone else's. For the record, I wasn't enthused to see that the Cowboys had such lower grades on most of our high picks (Alonso was probably the most concerning to me, but mostly because I was already skeptical of the pick), but it doesn't mean much to me. Different schemes, different needs, etc., not to mention that for all their hype, the Cowboys aren't near the top tier of the NFL. Now, if the Ravens' board got leaked with similar results, that would really worry me.

I love how many posters in this thread seem to be 100% certain that they know more about the attitudes of guys in the locker room than one of the players in that locker room. "He's just a punter, not really on the team." But isn't a fan even LESS on the team? I mean, a punter can still look at guys and overhear their conversations from his locker room stall, right? But no worries, I'll just take your word over his, because you're such a superfan that you can telepathically understand what every Bill is thinking at all times.

I don't buy it. The Cowboys come up with a dummy board that's different from their real board, allow it to be filmed/photographed on draft day, and hope a zealous Cowboys blog analyzes the footage/photos and posts the board online? What do they gain from this? "Exposure!" Jerry Jones doesn't need ridiculously circuitous plans to get his team media coverage. If this was a "leading up to the draft" special, there might be some incentive to have a dummy board photographed in the hopes that other teams might be fooled into thinking you don't like a prospect that you really do like. But what's the point of having a fake board set up in the real war room on draft day? Especially since their actual picks fit their ratings on the leaked board pretty well. So it's a fake board, except for all of the players that Dallas ended up drafting, who were slotted at their real positions? That doesn't make sense to me.

Of course not. But that's not how this got started. The post(s) you were responding to were not out-of-nowhere exclamations of Dallas' superiority to our team. They were responses to many other posters' initial reaction to the thread, which was roughly, "The fact that Dallas had our draftees rated lower than where we drafted them is either irrelevant or good, because Dallas/Jerry Jones is terrible at drafting." In other words, Dallas' opinion can be completely discounted because they are incompetent. It's completely reasonable to respond to that sentiment with a comparison of Dallas & Buffalo's recent track records of success, not to say that Dallas is perfect or immune to criticism, but just to point out the fallacy of that logic. If Jerry Jones is so incompetent that his draft board is worthless, that means that Russ Brandon/Buddy Nix's draft board must be worthless as well, because the Bills under Russ Brandon/Buddy Nix have been less successful than the Cowboys under Jerry Jones in that same timeframe. Frankly, the whole "Jerrah is stupid" reaction strikes me as an overreaction borne out of insecurity. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to doubt the Bills' 2013 draft class. (Also reasons to be hopeful about them, and one can even feel both ways, like I do.) The Cowboys' board doesn't add much to my doubt about the Bills' draft, but I don't think it should be dismissed either. There's no reason why Dallas' 2013 draft board has to be better (or worse) than Buffalo's, but it's certainly interesting to see how wildly the teams differed in player evaluations. We've long heard "insider" comments that teams have very different ratings on a given player, but I don't recall ever seeing proof before. The other interesting thing, which doesn't concern us a ton as Bills fans, is that with the Cowboys' board leaked the past 2 years, fans will be able to have an unprecedented ability to evaluate the Cowboys' scouting efficacy in a few years. Obviously huge allowances will have to be made for players who wouldn't have fit the Cowboys' scheme, but if they consistently have the stars of 2012/2013 rated low and busts rated high (or the reverse), that will tell us a lot more about their scouting abilities than just the success of the guys they picked.

Always thought Kamar Aiken looked great in preseason. Would've loved to see him get a shot in the regular season.

Rule is that in the last (2 minutes?) of the half or game, a fumble can only be advanced by the guy who fumbled it (or the other team, naturally). The reason it exists is to prevent exactly the type of play you embedded -- i.e., a guy is getting tackled, so just fumbles it on purpose, possibly forward. It is kind of arbitrary/no fun, because if you intentionally pitch the ball backwards, but it isn't caught & hits the turf, your teammate is still allowed to pick it up & advance it. The only decent argument for the rule is to prevent intentional forward fumbles being used as illegal forward passes. Overall, I think we'd be fine without the rule.