8-8 Forever?

Glenn will leave in free agency when his rookie deal is up. Bet on it. This is the Bills we are talking about here.

Hoyer's a good player. Johnny probably sits in 2014. NFL Network will be devastated.

No. Preseason is a waste. Gilmore is a beast.

why in heavens name would you show your red zone stuff to regular season opponents during a freakin public exhibition? why would you show much at all? that 's why they don't . preseason games are just plain vanilla offense/defense tryouts against another team for the bottom 50% of your roster. I hate preseason games. Just have two of them and then get on with the season. this is stupid. thank goodness we haven't gotten any IR injuries yet in these stupid things. guarantee you they are working the h-ll out of red zone/goal line in practice

every team has this issue. not a big deal. top guys, especially those handled by Eugene Parker, will not stay in and will be encouraged to leave this franchise. worked for Whitner, Williams and a host of others. The Bills get7th rounders like Fitz and Stevie, nice guys decent talents who worked the process for big bucks they could not have gotten elsewhere. Bills are not a franchise you want to be with if you have other options for equal or more money. Bills are a fringe franchise in the NFL, top young guys looking at their second and maybe last contract want to be in the mainstream NFL where the best coaching management, facilities and city scene are. to get to the playoffs. to compete for the title while they are healthy. Bills haven't offered any of that in the past 20 years and show few signs of turning it around in the near term.. so if you are a hot young player or an ambitious agent looking to make waves, you push your top clients to the Bills?? um.. no . Just is what it is until the team starts producing on the field.

No way you see the real red zone stuff in pre season. Forget it. Preseason games are tryouts for guys running certains routes, lineman being put in situations to see how they do, etc. Garbage time. the score is meaningless. I wish the preseason would just go away.

Yep. I hope the Bills do with EJ what Steelers did with Ben in his first full year. run the ball , throw it 15 - 20 times and play great defense and special teams. This is what Bills need to do this year. I think they will. Win ugly.

This is a meaningless thread. The NFLs poorest franchise in the NFLs poorest city does not get to pick and choose amongst available personnel. You simply get what you can from the "B Lo/WNY connection" and family types attracted to laid back places (Brandon, Marrone, Jackson) . The top guys ain't comin' to the B Lo., be they players (unless you trap them for 4-5 years via the draft), coaches or management. People forget the immortal Jim Kelly "cried" when the Bills drafted him. Cried. We all know better (?), but Regrettably, that is to a large extent what top talent thinks when "the Bills" come calling. then they go elsewhere ASAP. Money they can get anywhere. The franchise is probably going to sell for well under a Billion for a reason, my friends. Plus we probably get Ralph Wilson 2.0 for an owner -- no pop, no sizzle for management/coaching elite to get excited about. What has Pegs done to lift the worst in league Sabres? zippo. They are "promising" and they staying in town but at the end of the day bottom dwellers. The Bills need to catch lightning in a bottle for a few years somehow. Cannot build it for the long term, the pieces fall off as soon as they can (Byrd, Levitre, LeBeau the list goes on and on (how do Saints keep Brees/Graham/Byrd and we can't ? --how does that happen) etc etc etc). If EJ plays top 15 QB level and they stay healthy, they could win 9 or 10 this year, most of them home games, making for a fan friendly and successful season. Take what you can get. This franchise exists on the fringes of the NFL. Ain't going anywhere fast. Ralph successfully trapped the team in WNY, so enjoy it in all it's "8 & 8 Forever" relative mediocrity. There are a lot of other US and Global cities that would love to have them. But the tailgates are the best in the league. and we have the drunkest fans in the league. Great. That'll bring the best and brightest in there.....right

Yep. His NFL days are over. Way too much baggage comes with him.

Nope. EJ is it this season. You are in the 3rd week of August. Its over. EJ is all you are going to have this year. Period. This ain't fantasy football. He'll be fine. Needs lots and lots of reps that one. And he will get them. The weeklong beatdown in Pittsburgh was exactly what this team needed. Now back to work.

The regular season is all that matters. This is a team and a QB who need as many reps as they can get in the preseason. the media make it look like the sky is falling based on a few drives against a defense that totally know what is coming. half of these players will not see the field in the regular season. preseason games are great for the coaches, terrible and misleading for the fans and the media. bottom line is if EJ plays reasonably well and the team stays reasonably healthy, they should be very competitive this year and certainly thereafter, plus a new owner will help attract top management and coaching talent based on stable ownership and franchise location.

in red zone , your first read is pretty much your only read. come on. play mostly breaks down after that

Correct. I do this stuff for a living and when you consider the terminal value of the team will be north of $2B in, say, 15 years when is it sold again, assuming the NFL simply grows modestly going forward , $30 million annual cash flow for each of 15 years growing , say 5% per year, plus $2B at the end is a good deal on $1B. This thing is not a toy at $1b, it is a reasonably safe investment, as they, as in real estate, "ain't makin' any more of it"

Probably both. Long time club seaters dump their tickets at face value or below and stay home and watch on TV while late comers pay up to get tickets anywhere they can . Something like that. Especially in bad weather. If the blackout policy is eliminated, there will be a lot of empty seats in the Ralph. And the league wants a new stadium? who is going to pay for it? Are NYS and Erie county paying $1b for a stadium while half the fans stay home and sit in bars watching on TV? Plus RWS ticket prices probably increase 50-100% once a new owner is done paying $1b for the team. This stadium demand is the 800 lb elephant in the room, IMHO. Could take a long time, but I cannot find a party for whom is makes sense to invest that kind of $$ in that market for 10 -15 events per year... but in L.A....

We shall see. Bills have institutionalized themselves as perennial league doormat. Until they start winning, opponents will be putting a Bills game in the "W" column every time. I guarantee most all opponents media and fans have their Bills game as a W.

gotta find one. NFL is a QB league. They make all the difference. turnovers and injuries force you to have a great QB to compensate, if you want to win consistently. unfortunate, but true.

Lack of a new stadium would do the trick in 5 or 6 years. This moving the team thing will hang over the franchise until the state buys a new stadium for the Bills. The new owner would be a fool to piss away $1b on a stadium serving WNY. The government has to be the fool. Not sure they will do it. but maybe they will.

I'm shocked...

B Lo has been in a tough spot for a long time. But it looks like someone is likely to pay $800-900m and keep the team there, at least for 5 or 6 years and probably longer.... as from an economic perspective, State and County would be insane to build a $1B stadium for 10 games per year, but they probably will. The reality is WNY is a AAA town trying to keep a Major league franchise. With the revenue sharing from the TV deals, gate receipt sharing from the other 31 stadiums who charge double the Bills ticket price, plus otherwise well-meaning government liberals who have no concept of working within a budget, it looks like the Bills will be staying for a long time as the the NFL's "charity case". Hey, any port in a storm, as they say.

Man the Skyway is ugly.

\Loved Tavern on the Tracks. Good beer, dogs, week. Good game too. Go Bills.

Ok will be at Tavern on the Tracks later today. Crossing the NC state line now.... 6'4" balding gray haired thin 50-something guy that's me. Will be with my wife and a couple NC friends...

Ok , driving through Roanoke, Va. now.. will be in Charlotte in a few hours. Tavern on the Tracks it is !! Hooligans after ! Tall old guy that's me. Will be with two women... we can talk some Bills and some B Lo.

KirbyJackson said this was over weeks ago. I'm headed to NC tonight for the game tomorrow. Go bills.

My bounce on this is very simple: Ralph wanted an auction process for the team, however he did an awesome job of setting things up where the team could not be moved from WNY. The league is on board with this idea, all they want is a new stadium from the state/county and higher ticket prices and therefore revenue sharing for visiting teams that comes with it. This has resulted in a dramatic lowering of interest and the shortage of interested bidders likely reflects this. When it comes to the Bills, potential owners are like top free agent players and coaches: they are not super interested in running their franchise, both for personal and financial reasons inWNY unless they are from there or have some ties to the area. So the good news is the team stays, but the franchise value, like the roster, coaches and front office , are "middle of the road", not title contender material , as always. On balance, I guess that's as good as it can get: "a .500 record" or otherwise stated in terms of win/lost record: 8&8 Forever.