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Who Were The Leaks at One Bills Drive during 2013-2016?


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9 minutes ago, Sherlock Holmes said:

Should have been trying to trade up for Kuechly

As it turned out the Bills ended up with a guy that became DPOY and were frustrated that they couldn’t land a guy who isn’t on a roster. Sometimes the best deals are the ones that you couldn’t get done.
 

That ended up being a really good draft that produced a few potential HOFers (Keuchley, Gilmore, Chandler Jones, Andrew Luck, Fletcher Cox, Bobby Wagner, Kelechi Osemele, and Russell Wilson). Imagine looking back if we ended up with Barron after giving up whatever the cost would have been? Gross

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46 minutes ago, thebandit27 said:


Admittedly I’m reading the tea leaves here, but the sense that I got was that there’s an air of “we’re not the same old Bills. Players want to come here now. More than they want to go elsewhere. We don’t have to play coy to get our guys anymore.”

 

Like I said earlier, in my experience, when a decision is institutionally more open with information it is normally an organisational decision. That chimes with your feeling about a Bills front office feeling emboldened to be more open and transparent now because they are less self conscious. 

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1 hour ago, thebandit27 said:


FA was even more “leaky” than the draft this year FWIW.

 

Addison, Diggs, and the E. Sanders pursuits were out there really early. 
 

 


How much of this really was leaked info?  We didn’t know the Bills were in talks for Diggs.  If you believe Beane, it happened very quickly.  There was nothing in the news to suggest that this info was leaked.

 

Same thing with Sanders.  He was the one who went to the press and said he was talking with Buffalo.  Again, there wasn’t anything they linked them together.

 

In regard to Addison, I feel that this was a lot of speculation and connecting the dots.  On paper he was the perfect addition, had a past with McDermott/Washington, and wasn’t going to command to crazy contract.  The move made sense and many beat reporters speculated Addison as a FA target.

 

The means I’m referring to are stories that make their way to the press BEFORE something happens.  Like the situations I described above

Edited by Phil The Thrill
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It was either Ridgewaycinic, Scottlaw, or Gunnerbill, outside chance it’s Hapless... 

 

 

?

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3 minutes ago, Phil The Thrill said:


How much of this really was leaked info?  We didn’t know the Bills were in talks for Diggs.  If you believe Beane, it happened very quickly.  There was nothing in the news to suggest that this info was leaked.

 

Same thing with Sanders.  He was the one who went to the press and said he was talking with Buffalo.  Again, there wasn’t anything they linked them together.

 

In regard to Addison, I feel that this was a lot of speculation and connecting the dots.  On paper he was the perfect addition, had a past with McDermott/Washington, and wasn’t going to command to crazy contract.  The move made sense and many beat reporters speculated Addison as a FA target.

 

The means I’m referring to are stories that make their way to the press BEFORE something happens.  Like the situations I described above

I know that both Bandit and I (and others here) heard some things this year that were true that weren’t being reported. I’m referring mostly to the draft though. The Bills tried to trade up for Devin Duvernay. The Bills were taking Dugger if he was available. Those are real “leaks” that in the past few years wouldn’t have gotten as widespread as they were. Both of those things are true. 
 

I didn’t hear much in FA outside of the stuff you are mentioning. That was as much connecting dots though as info. That doesn’t mean that people here weren’t hearing it though. If Bandit says that he was hearing that we should 100% believe it because it’s true. 

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54 minutes ago, Phil The Thrill said:


How much of this really was leaked info?  We didn’t know the Bills were in talks for Diggs.  If you believe Beane, it happened very quickly.  There was nothing in the news to suggest that this info was leaked.

 

Same thing with Sanders.  He was the one who went to the press and said he was talking with Buffalo.  Again, there wasn’t anything they linked them together.

 

In regard to Addison, I feel that this was a lot of speculation and connecting the dots.  On paper he was the perfect addition, had a past with McDermott/Washington, and wasn’t going to command to crazy contract.  The move made sense and many beat reporters speculated Addison as a FA target.

 

The means I’m referring to are stories that make their way to the press BEFORE something happens.  Like the situations I described above

 

The Diggs stuff wasn't leaked this spring so much but the fact that the Bills had enquired back before the trade deadline was out there. As it was that they had interest then in Sanders and in AJ Green.

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4 hours ago, Kirby Jackson said:

As it turned out the Bills ended up with a guy that became DPOY and were frustrated that they couldn’t land a guy who isn’t on a roster. Sometimes the best deals are the ones that you couldn’t get done.
 

That ended up being a really good draft that produced a few potential HOFers (Keuchley, Gilmore, Chandler Jones, Andrew Luck, Fletcher Cox, Bobby Wagner, Kelechi Osemele, and Russell Wilson). Imagine looking back if we ended up with Barron after giving up whatever the cost would have been? Gross

Mark Barron?

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18 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

Hmm. So I have been following the Bills since 2002 and they have basically always been leaky until McDermott arrived and as Kirby said this year around the draft a fair bit got out.  

 

The way it works is if I am the media relations guy I make it my job to know things. If I sense there is tension between Whaley and Marrone for example, I play both sides. There is a story out there from one of the old BN guys that when Marrone was having a spat with the media Berchtold played both sides of that too. Told the media Marrone was a jerk, told Marrone the media were #######s. That is the job. You have to be capable of being duplicitous. I did it for about 2 years in Government before I moved into policy and I know some ***** on people that was in the "to be deployed only if..." file. Media relations guys (if they are doing their job well) do a lot more than organise press conferences and make the tea. There shouldn't be a single story a reporter can uncover that you are not already totally aware of. 

 

 

I've followed them since 1964 and I don't think they've always been leaky, not even since 2002. On and off, IMO, but not all the way through. There have been plenty of years when we found out quite a bit later about various problems like the fact that the players were into drag racing in the Fred Jackson Marcell Dareus years, which didn't come out till Dareus had an accident with a tree and if I remember correctly left the scene. That had been going on for at least a year or two, it came out.  It never came out that Sammy was out drinking every night his rookie year, till the last week or so.  Was Donahoe behind the firing of Wade Phillips? Had he told Ralph he wanted to hire his own coach? Or did Ralph really fire him because Wade refused to fire his special teams coach? I don't think that's ever been clear, though it's a pretty big deal. Chris Berman obviously had a pipeline into the Bills front office for a while, and it was just as obvious that with the new front office one year, his pipeline had disappeared. Joe B's pre-draft prediction the year they traded up for Sammy was outright uncanny, and he was never all that close again afterwards. 

 

Agreed that around the draft this year a fair bit got out, though some of that may just be that these days everyone knows about your visits and the Bills frequent visits to Lenoir-Rhyne weren't difficult to understand. But there were a few apparent leaks beyond that. Hard to tell what's a leak and what's a rumor sometimes these days.

 

Obviously you know far more about what the job entails than I do. Interesting stuff about Berchtold playing both sides. 

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I feel like I remember seeing that Pettine was one to talk during Marrone's first year. I still recall Tim Graham's story in early 2014 about how Marrone basically tried to intimidate him before they left for an away game. Marrone's a weird dude. Long after his walkout from here, he talked to SI (I think?) and was apparently good with what the reporter was going to write about. But then a few hours after the interview, Marrone called the reporter and wanted to recant whatever he said. I think the reporter told him he'd already turned in some stuff to his editor. Marrone hung up...only to call again a short while after to say he spoke with his wife and now feels like the interview is fine. Whackadoodle. 

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On 5/20/2020 at 6:47 PM, MJS said:

They also replaced all of the scouts, so it could have been a scout who worked under Whaley just spreading things he saw and heard about to a media member.

They actually didn't replace all the scouts. They were all originally fired but they did bring back about 3 out of the 7 regional scouts

Edited by Buffalo716
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