Grumpy about our Press Corps

[Thurman#1]

 

 

I'm not sure I agree with the premise. I didn't listen much this week, so maybe you're right that the grandma stuff is overdone, but I felt the 2016 received tough coverage for very good reason. Or tough coverage for Buffalo, anyway. Compared to what most big city teams get, Sully and Bucky were straightforward, demanding but still polite. They were fine.

 

If things have gotten mushier, IMO it's much about the 2016 team continuing a long period of bad to mediocre football and this team having a history of going through a rebuild and since then improving consistently. When you're not a good team you get more pointed questions, and that's as it should be.

 

 

[Shaw66]

10 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

So 4 years ago, it was painful to watch press conferences because from some, there was this unrelenting negativity and criticism.  Yes criticism has its place, but positive moves and outcomes also deserve some notice.  Gradually under Beane and McDermott, this improved. 

 

Until now...at times it's gone overboard in the direction of Sweetness and Light.  This week with I guess the huge "human interest" story of Josh's grandma's death and the spontaneous Oishei donation campaign, it Jumped the Shark for me.   I just listened to press conferences with Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, and Cole Beasley and I thought I was having flashbacks to reading People magazine or something.  It was just all about feelings - Josh's feelings, Josh's teammates feelings about Josh, Cole's feelings about Diggs, and then good grief, the last straw - fashions!  Is this football coverage, or Extra Edition?

 

Kudos to Stefon Diggs for turning the topic back to football and taking the opportunity to throw props to his teammate Cole Beasley.

 

Is this a side-effect of this year's Zoom meeting format?    Are guys who ask tougher questions getting edited out, or afraid that they won't be called on?

 

There are some legit questions there to be asked, which are not intrinsically rude or negative. 

-Injury Questions, such as questions about Josh's shoulder - how much did it affect him during the first several games after the injury?  About running - is he consciously trying to run less now that he has more "mouths to feed" on offense?

-General Performance questions - Cole Beasley is quietly rocking not only his career best YPG, but his career best catch percentage, 81.5%.  That's 18.3% better than last year with much lower drops.  What's driving that?  What's behind it - watching him, he is hauling in a lot of high degree of difficulty, contested catches.  Have the routes he's being asked to run changed? Have Josh's throws changed, and become easier to handle?

I could go on.
-Specific play questions - to Josh or to Stefon, what happened on that route against NE where there was an interception?  To Poyer, he blitzed on the long completion to Moore - what happened there?  To McD or Daboll, Why wasn't the Gabe Davis sideline completion that was really a TD challenged?

 

Please, ladies and gentlemen - a tad less feel-good and fluffy, and a tad more informative!

 

 

I agree with you.   

 

I think the Zoom environment is a large part of it, or rather the isolation.   In the COVID era, there are no casual, off-the-record conversations between journalists and players or coaches where the journalist gets a better understanding of what's really going on.   Sure, the players and coaches all have adopted the stonewalling benefits of saying it's all about the process, staying focused, one day at time, just doing my job and all of that, but that's always been true to some extent.   Players and coaches stopped calling out their teammates decades ago.  But the off-the-record conversations that could happen at the end of practice or in the locker room an hour after the game, those things are gone. 

 

Plus, I think two things about the Bills press corps.  One is that after the drought, it's just so much fun to have a good team that the press is just having a lot of fun enjoying the moment.   It's exciting, it feels good.  It happens to the writers just like it happens to us.   After they've had some more sustained winning, they'll get back to thinking and talking about flaws more.

 

Second, I am certain that the Pegulas came down hard on the media, the Buffalo News particularly, at the low point - Rex failing, resigning before the last game, then the press going after Anthony Lynn after his very first press conference, all the dumpster fire reporting.   I'm sure the Pegulas told the News that was going to stop, or the News's access and advertising revenue was going to be reduced.   I think that action had something of a chilling effect on the "investigative" side of sports journalism, so far as the Bills were concerned.   When McDermott came in, and then Beane, you could see that both sides were trying to build a better, more respectful relationship, but part of that relationship was premised on the understanding that the press wouldn't rip the Bills relentlessly.   I think the press has been cautious ever since.  

 

The result of all of this, including Zoom, is that we're not getting very insightful stuff out of the Bills.   We aren't getting interesting stuff about what it is that Daboll thinks about, for example.   He was asked this week about why they passed so much, and all we got were really generic answers.  No one pressed him by saying "yeah, we get that it's week to week and all that, but tell us SOMETHING about what you saw that made you decide to go so heavily to the passing game."

 

That being said, the coverage is the least of my worries.  

 

 

[Jerome007]

10 hours ago, The Wiz said:

Hate to break it to you, you're going to get the same BS answers as the last 8 weeks.

 

Film to watch

hungry and humble

showed his character

waiting for his opportunity

has been developing nicely

just needed to give him a shot 

 

....... the list goes on.  

Exactly but... what are they supposed to say?

 

For example, it might be Josh's hurt left shoulder that tuned down his play the last few games. Maybe, maybe not, but why would they tell the world? They shouldn't share secrets anyway. As fans, of course we'll like to know some inner details, we have this deluded fantasy of being part of the team ha ha. But if they told the media, they'd tell it to the whole league too.

 

One thing I do like from many of the interviews, is you can sense the camaraderie, how tight the team is, that they think like winners, and they give tons of props to teammates. As in anything repetitive or mundane, we have to discard the 95% stuff to find the 5% of gems. Some guys like Hughes are ferociously loyal to teammates to a caricatural point that is fun to see.

 

 

 

[Buftex]

9 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

 

 

The result of all of this, including Zoom, is that we're not getting very insightful stuff out of the Bills.   We aren't getting interesting stuff about what it is that Daboll thinks about, for example.   He was asked this week about why they passed so much, and all we got were really generic answers.  No one pressed him by saying "yeah, we get that it's week to week and all that, but tell us SOMETHING about what you saw that made you decide to go so heavily to the passing game."

 

That being said, the coverage is the least of my worries.  

 

 

Hasn't it always been pretty much that way?  Players and coaches do the interviews because they are pretty much contractually obligated to do them.  The mission, for most of them, is to get through it without revealing too much about how they think, how they operate, what they think of an opponent... the only time the interviews are truly interesting is when they don't do that.  It almost never happens...and when it does, it is usually negative...which is why they avoid it.  Be bland, be generic with the media...that is part of the process.  It really has always been this way.  We are just exposed to so much more of it now.  Personally, I don't think much has really changed, other than the volume of coverage.  

Edited November 12, 2020 by Buftex

[Jauronimo]

MY favorite thing about Bills press day is the reporter monologues.

 

Reporter:  "Coach, your bond with Allen is a love story for the ages, and we all know that the relationship between a QB and his offensive coordinator is not unlike the pure bond between a young boy and his dog in the way that it is unsullied by the outside world.  Its more than just a business relationship, its a tale fit for novels or the big screen.  Something that should be memorialized in a monument to be appreciated and celebrated for the ages, and I'm sure you feel that too as we all feel it remotely this year.  I guess my question is about the play call on 3rd and 4 in the 4th quarter?"

 

Daboll: "It was a half back dive up the middle for 2 yards"

 

Reporter: "Thank you" 

 

Most of these hacks has a flowery 2 minute rambling speech full of leading statements followed by an oh ***** moment of "I guess my question is...".  Its painful at times.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

8 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

I agree with you.   

 

I think the Zoom environment is a large part of it, or rather the isolation.   In the COVID era, there are no casual, off-the-record conversations between journalists and players or coaches where the journalist gets a better understanding of what's really going on.   Sure, the players and coaches all have adopted the stonewalling benefits of saying it's all about the process, staying focused, one day at time, just doing my job and all of that, but that's always been true to some extent.   Players and coaches stopped calling out their teammates decades ago.  But the off-the-record conversations that could happen at the end of practice or in the locker room an hour after the game, those things are gone. 

 

Plus, I think two things about the Bills press corps.  One is that after the drought, it's just so much fun to have a good team that the press is just having a lot of fun enjoying the moment.   It's exciting, it feels good.  It happens to the writers just like it happens to us.   After they've had some more sustained winning, they'll get back to thinking and talking about flaws more.

 

Second, I am certain that the Pegulas came down hard on the media, the Buffalo News particularly, at the low point - Rex failing, resigning before the last game, then the press going after Anthony Lynn after his very first press conference, all the dumpster fire reporting.   I'm sure the Pegulas told the News that was going to stop, or the News's access and advertising revenue was going to be reduced.   I think that action had something of a chilling effect on the "investigative" side of sports journalism, so far as the Bills were concerned.   When McDermott came in, and then Beane, you could see that both sides were trying to build a better, more respectful relationship, but part of that relationship was premised on the understanding that the press wouldn't rip the Bills relentlessly.   I think the press has been cautious ever since.  

 

The result of all of this, including Zoom, is that we're not getting very insightful stuff out of the Bills.   We aren't getting interesting stuff about what it is that Daboll thinks about, for example.   He was asked this week about why they passed so much, and all we got were really generic answers.  No one pressed him by saying "yeah, we get that it's week to week and all that, but tell us SOMETHING about what you saw that made you decide to go so heavily to the passing game."

 

That being said, the coverage is the least of my worries. 

 

I think this is highly insightful.  Thank you.  Yes, watching pressers of the Bills vs other teams, there was definitely an adversarial tone initially where McDermott and Frazier and Daboll were expected to answer for the last 17 years instead of just what they set out to do and had done.  And there was some crap puffed up in the media that was unreasonable - puffing it into a big story that Taylor had surgery for a known injury likely to require surgery, or wasn't played hurt in a meaningless last game to risk worse injury when actually it made sense from a roster viewpoint and the Bills knew he was having surgery, surgery being the surest path for the quickest recovery.

 

So OK, two things: one is, the writers are also fans.  They are absolutely enjoying the moment, and for those who've been covering the Bills for 20 lean years, Bless Their Hearts, why shouldn't they?   I dunno about the lost income - there were stories about program printing that were debunked - but certainly I can see where the Zoom format makes it trivial to limit access or to exclude people who aren't following the desired path, since there's a Bills PR guy literally sitting there calling on people in turn.  On the other hand, organizations like the Ravens and I think the Pats have used the format of having a PR person control the mob and call on different reporters in turn, for in person pressers, for years.
 

I wonder if the Zoom format makes it harder for them to focus as well.  For example, if @john wawrow isn't attending press conferences in his undershirt and bathrobe, he is giving every appearance of attending press conferences in his undershirt and bathrobe.  It's to the point where I wanna take up a collection to send him an Eddie Bauer shirt and a pair of Duluth Trading pants purchased for $8 at a Church Rummage.  The standard advice to people working from home has always been to dress professionally (even before the videoconference) as it is said to come through in voice and attitude.  Even for those who are calling in with their clothes on, a lot of the reporters appear to be calling in from cars instead of from a desk with notes about questions they wish to follow up on.  And all the reporters seem to be quite discursive and philosophical before they get around to actually asking a question, which of course in a fixed time frame limits the questions that can be asked.  If you're #12 in line and three previous reporters go into a several minute ramble and the interview cuts off after #10, Oh Well.  I suppose after an in-person presser the guys who are cut-off could make their case to the ramblers "hey, look, I didn't get to ask my question because some of you were rambling instead of getting down to it, Be Better"

Daboll actually gives the most insight in his pressers which I recognize is not saying too much.  I sometimes think he's using his pressers as a season long coaching philosophy interview, because that's where he seems to go on almost every question.  But again, there were a couple of tough questions about Josh which he deferred to Josh - and instead of being asked, those questions got dropped.

 

Anyway, thanks for the insightful discussion.

 

 

[Kwai San]

3 hours ago, Buftex said:

Yep...I watched/listened to some Bills clip on youtube.  I was making dinner, and it just kept going to the next clip.  I wasn't really paying attention, and suddenly I hear the unmistakable voice of Maddy Glaub, talking with Kim.  Turns out there is something called the "pod squad", hosted by Maddy and Kim.  I think it is geared to females...it is part of the Bills web-site... but you can also listen to it in podcast form.  Not a knock on Kim or Maddy (I like them both, and I think the concept is kind of cool)...but it is mind-blowing how much stuff there is out there...you could literally listen to new Bills content 15 hours a day, every day....we've come a long way baby!  Or maybe we've gone too far?

 

 

 

Uhhhhhh - perhaps too far.  But hey to each their own!