San Jose Bills Fan

This is something that an analytics department could get involved in. Have one of the analytics people available for consulting on decisions where down and distance, time remaining in quarter/game, score, and other variables are factored into some sort of decision-making algorithm. The coach doesn't have to abide by it but at least he'd have some dispassionate, coldly rational data to consider.

For obvious reasons, many of us don't read the News as much as we used to. Thanks for mentioning that. As I said, it's hard to believe that the team was unaware of these impending births.

Ted Knight, and Ed Asner have moved on. Betty White, Gavin McCleod, Cloris Leachman and Georgia Engel (Ted's girlfriend Georgette) are still with us.

Yep. https://gamerewind.nfl.com/nflgr/secure/packages?ttv=2

TCali acknowledged that players are bigger. And he and Fig Newton opined that players are not faster than they used to be. You might disagree but you aren't being trolled. Spend some time getting to know the personalities here…

This goes back to my earlier question about whether either or both players mentioned their wives pregnancies to the Bills at the time of their signings. Lawson signed with the Bills on March 13th. Branch signed with the Bills on April 2nd. Assuming the children were born 3 weeks ago, Lawson's wife was over 7 months pregnant and Branch's wife was 8 months pregnant at the time their husband signed with the team. It's hard for me to believe that the pregnancies and their effect on OTA participation was not a part of the conversation when the players signed with the Bills but who really knows?

To your first point, you're ignoring the difference between getting coaching during CBA defined work environments as opposed to the QB coaching that many players now voluntarily seek when they're away from their employer. To your second point, Captain Hindsight said "Fitz has a better chance to make money not playing football than most" so you're going off on a tangent with that. Actually Tiger has always had a swing coach. During the years 1993 to 2004, Tiger's swing coach was Butch Harmon. After that he spent nearly seven years with Hank Haney and for the last 3 years Tiger's been working with Sean Foley.

Garranimal, while you argue the minutiae of the discussion, the larger point is that Tebow has never consistently proven he can play quarterback competently in the NFL. Like transient and others have pointed out, his good games have been the anomalies, the outlyers. As transient pointed out, numerous QBs have had very short term success but short term success means nothing in the NFL. For god's sake, Kelly Holcomb threw for 430 yards and 3 TDs against the Steelers in a playoff game. Tebow has proved nothing so far in the NFL. This is not hate. It's a cold, hard fact.

The judge overreacted regardless of the charges that were brought against him. But you like several others can't separate their negative feelings towards Johnson when viewing the butt slapping and the ensuing reaction by the judge. The top law enforcement officer in The State of Florida agrees that the judge overreacted. Her statement is almost verbatim of what several of us have been saying here. Also virtually every legal opinion about this occurrence agrees that the judge overreacted: “Although we never condone domestic violence, this event seems to question judicial temperament, not the subject matter before the court,” Bondi said. Many believe Johnson is behind bars for domestic violence. He’s not. He was thrown in the hoosegow specifically for the quick smack to the rear end of his lawyer, after Judge McHugh told Johnson he should be grateful for the lawyer’s efforts. Without the smack in the butt, Johnson would be free. While the dissenters in this thread will continue to disagree, It's pretty clear whose opinions are more correct here.

Walk you in the Sunshine…

Good, reasonable post. As I said earlier, I envision the Cheatriots*** giving him a limited package of (quarterback) plays and going from there. But I don't see them taking snaps away from Brady. On some level Tebow could be viewed as a developmental QB but I'm still not quite understanding how he fits.

Amen.

I wish he'd re-sign with the Niners or someone who has a chance of at least making the playoffs. I'd love to see Takeo win a Super Bowl but I'd settle for him playing in the post season for the first time in his career. All the best to The Great Warrior. I'll never forget how excited he was to come to Buffalo… largely because of the fans here.

Agree and agree. Many people in many professions do professional development. Amazing that Fitz felt he was above it… even when guys like Brady and Manning were spending a few weeks each offseason with their gurus.

As WEO pointed out, there's a long list of Hall of Famers who were thrown into the fire. And as you pointed out, there are guys like Aaron Rodgers who were brought along slowly. Each individual is different. Some can hop right in. :lol: If it's a mistake, it's a very minor mistake. Well in the last few months he made a half mil from the Bills so you're right, clipboard holder in the NFL is a great job if you can get it. As for the discussion of who held the most power in the draft, I think Nix and Whaley tried supplying Marrone with players he liked just as they did with Gailey. However I'll agree that Marrone probably had more involvement in the draft than Gailey. Part of that might have been by design (part of his job demands) and part by just the personality dynamics of the organization (Gailey being possibly more deferential to Nix). As was suggested upthread, I'm agree that Marrone had tons of input into the quarterback decision.

Thanks 26CornerBlitz!!! Much appreciated!

Yep. And all these class action lawsuits (I'm a class in several right now) are not really for the benefit of the consumers although some will try selling you on that belief. If you follow the money it's clear what's going on.

Outside linebacker Manny Lawson, the Buffalo Bills' first free-agent signing, was on the second-team defense today. He missed 10 voluntary workouts and must climb the depth chart. Free-agent defensive tackle Alan Branch also missed voluntary workouts. He was on the third unit today. "It's definitely not a position I want to be in," Lawson said after the opening of mandatory minicamp. "Anybody that's competitive, you don't want to be on the second team. You want to be a starter. That's what I'm going to strive for, getting that starting position back." What you should know about Lawson and Branch's absences is that they came with coach Doug Marrone's blessing. Lawson and Branch were with their wives, who delivered babies. Lawson's son was his first child. Branch's daughter was his second. It's interesting. On one hand, their absences came with "Marrone's blessings" and certainly the birth of a child is a pretty legit reason for skipping workouts. On the other hand, they've been (at least ceremonially) buried on the depth chart and will have to fight their way back up again. I wonder how much if any, these scenarios were discussed at the time of their signings?

You're right. Lorenzo Neal went to 4 straight Pro Bowls and was First Team All-Pro for two consecutive years before he became a free agent… and basically no one wanted him. Aging fullbacks no matter how good, are just not valued commodities. CMac was one of the best special teamers in the league and no one is interested in signing him. The devaluing of fullbacks is kind of amazing. Agreed. Blocking fullback or not, hopefully the Bills retain a power running back on the roster this year.

Ali in his prime? Hard to say because he didn't box during 3 years of his prime however I can imagine a 15 round fight where Tyson fails to land even a single solid blow. Ali would be dancing and jabbing and Tyson would be lunging and missing. Of course there would be the rope-a-dopes when Ali would stop dancing.

Well you can't be right all the time. Again I don't think he was being playful. More than likely this is the way Chad always acts. I think it's obvious that he wasn't treating it like a game. Chad doesn't know what appropriate behavior is and apparently the judge hasn't met anyone like Chad before. You're letting your feelings about the big picture color your perception of this little picture which is the discussion of how the judge reacted to Johnson's behavior. The people who are saying the judge overreacted are not making any value judgements about Johnson's guilt or innocence, or how much time he should serve. They're saying that the judge overreacted.

July 15th is the last day that the player and team can work out a multi-year deal. If no deal is done by then Byrd can only play under the terms of the one-year franchise tag. So we're 34 days away from that deadline… closer to 33 days really.

There's the videotape which I haven't yet watched… and then there's what happened before what happened on the videotape. We don't know who initiated what, who said what, etc. I'm not expecting to find anything on the videotape which would condemn or absolve Jones because it's a small video component of a much larger unknown situation. I will say that the fact that he's in a nightclub taking a swing at a woman shows on some level that he's still a moron.

See, I don't think you watched the video. As others have stated, it's hard to draw the conclusion above if you see the video.

edit: (for reporting factual information) http://sports.yahoo....-145252244.html A week later, the Broncos played against the New England Patriots, a team that was almost comically bad on defense at the time. Instead, the Patriots made Tebow look like he needed to go back to Nease High in Jacksonville for remedial work. The Patriots played the simplest two-deep zone that you could imagine, refusing to blitz him until he broke the pocket. The result was a 9-of-26, 136-yard passing performance along with only 13 yards rushing on five carries. This was the kind of game where even an average NFL quarterback would have thrown for 300 yards, as one AFC coach said a month later. Granted, that quarterback still would have lost to the Patriots and Tom Brady, but that's not the point. This was yet another illustration that Tebow isn't ready to play conventional NFL football and he's not quick enough to play read-option all the time. Tebow can't read defenses. He can't explain the differences between two-deep, three-deep and zero coverage, much less see them. He was never trained to do that at Florida by Urban Meyer (not that it was Meyer's responsibility to teach him; it was Meyer's responsibility to win). Blame that reality on whatever you want. It could be the fact that Tebow is dyslexic. Coaches and players who were with him in Denver say that Tebow would get to the line and immediately lose track of the play call from the huddle in the jumble of what he was told and what he saw across the line. It could be that he played in funky offenses in high school and college that didn't teach him. He was almost never under center at either level and his high school offense featured him lining up almost in punt formation on each play, giving him an unreal amount of time to read the defense.