San Jose Bills Fan

Instant replay or jean shorts?

This is a business deal so hopefully neither side will let emotion enter into their actions. Both sides have been very professional so far so I don't think anything crazy will happen.

Johnson still was complicit in making that O-line look bad. He was jittery and lacked composure, held the ball too long and on top of that he alienated his linemen every time he ran out of bounds for a loss (costing them a sack) instead of throwing the ball away for no gain (costing him an incompletion). That self-centeredness in RJ valuing his statistics more than their statistics along with his complete lack of pocket instincts were a much larger factor in he becoming the most-sacked QB of all time (a statistical fact) than how good the Bills O-line was or wasn't.

Danke!

This is true to a very large extent. Bad QBs definitely make their O-lines look worse that they are just as good QBs do the opposite. One of the elements of this dynamic is that the O-line subconsciously doesn't want to fight as hard for their QB. And every time I hear people explain Kolb's shaky performances it makes me think of Rob Johnson and how good he was at making his O-line look bad.

Thanks Brawndo. I miss them. The summers out here are endless but I miss the value we placed on each and every day back home.

Not sure what you're talking about but I noticed that all your boys went out and bought new cars… and furs for their wives.

The difference is that these aren't malapropisms. They're expressions. People around here like to say ala instead of a la (as in a la carte).

To cut to the chase, this goes hand in hand with another NFL player tweeting (in amusement) that Hernandez' entourage had turned over on him. There is a widespread culture that you don't rat on your friends and in that culture of codes, ratting is one of the worst things a person can do, regardless of the circumstances. So the question then becomes, how does everyone feel about being the ringleader of a murder and having your closest friends (who were involved) turn over on you? Of course none of us would be in this position so that being the case the question becomes, how would you feel about conspiring with friends on any hypothetical felony and then having law enforcement pressure your friends into turning over on you?

Yeah and I put almost no value in that reporting either. Maybe we'll see but it's funny how these guys have a pipeline to negotiations that Schefter, et al don't have. Sounds too much like throwing plausible ideas around and passing it off as insider knowledge in order to drive up traffic/followers.

If in fact these are Stevie's quotes, the larger point (clearly made) is that the meting of justice is uneven in its practice. The punishment often does not fit the crime. While it may not be fixable, I think few would dispute this point.

No matter what others may say, the summers are short and fly by. And the time between the opening of training camp and the season opener accelerates late summer into autumn in a blur.

To the bolded. I believe you are wrong. I think the fans would have accepted Fitz as a bridge QB/mentor/placeholder. But the even before the Nix-Dominick phone call, Fitz had said that he was "a starter in the NFL" and it became clear he wasn't going to remain with the Bills if the club viewed him as a stopgap. I think the decision was Fitz' more than anyone else's.

The one thing I'd say to that Promo is that the Bills fans were pretty spoiled at that point and took a lot for granted. I'm not disputing you but I believe that there might be an increased awareness in the community that the Bills time in WNY could be short and that the imperative of buying tickets might be stronger now than it was then, as people consider the Bills in a historical context.

Chronology of a Bills fan's summer: Unofficial first day of summer: Memorial Day, late May. Italian Festival, Greek Festival. Official first day of summer: June 21st First day that the weather seems like it's in summer mode: Sometime between Memorial Day and July 1st depending on the year. July 4th: It's summer. Allentown Art Festival, Taste of Buffalo, Old Home Days, Canal Fest, etc. Bills training camp opens: Late July. August: The mad blur of preseason games, getting ready to get the kids back in school, and squeezing the last of summer (Eden Corn Festival, Langford Tractor Pull) into the time before Labor Day. Labor Day weekend: Fantasy football drafts and the unofficial end to summer (even though it feels official). September 8th: Bills season begins. September 21st: Summer "officially" ends. Live it full, brothers and sisters.

Well we're all agreed that a front loaded salary might be a solution but the cash flow aspect is interesting. I remember reading that some of the league's cash poor teams have had to take out loans in order to pay signing bonuses. This was a few years ago before the league presumably became more prosperous so I don't know if this practice still exists. It seems instinctively that it would be hard to be a cash poor team in a time like this.

Yes. FWIW (and it might not be a whole lot), none of the QB criticisms have mentioned Kolb by name. This at least has to be mentioned.

Hopefully it was photoshopped but the Pounceys are/were reportedly close with Hernandez. At least back when they were all in Gainesville.

A comment and a thought: What is the signing bonus in your contract scenario? My thought is one I haven't seen expressed anywhere and it seems to be a plausible part of the solution to a contract impasse: give Byrd a commensurate (even small) signing bonus AND a front-loaded contract with the first one or two years of salary guaranteed. This way he still gets a big chunk of guaranteed money but the cap hit with the smaller signing bonus proration allows the Bills to keep plenty of space for when other contracts come up. I believe that in their free agent frenzy, the Dolphins did exactly this so that they didn't hamstring their salary cap beyond this year. This would allow the Bills to take advantage of their existing salary cap surplus without getting themselves into later trouble.

Regarding the tweets from NFL players I've seen reported by the media, there's a fine line between being well-advised and poorly-advised to publicly express oneself. And there's a range of acceptable and understandable opinions, even ones we don't necessarily agree with. I haven't seen anything crazy yet. Even Marcus Vick's tweets are representative of a large percentage of people. And then you get gems from people like Torrey Smith who is outspoken but usually dead-on: Ravens receiver Torrey Smith, who lost a brother last year under far different but no less tragic circumstances, realizes that eye-for-an-eye revenge shouldn’t happen. ”Also as mad as a lot of people are over the verdict…trying to take out Zimmerman isn’t the answer neither,” Smith said. So you take the good with the bad and most of it is indifferent and the way it's gonna be from now on.

Finally one other paragraph which grabbed me (again you guys have to read this, there is tons of good research by Gaughan). Marrone talks about being the Saints OC and being on the Superdome sidelines before the first game after Hurricane Katrina: “The buildup in the city on that first game back was unbelievable,” Marrone said. “We were getting ready to kick off, and it was so loud. I turned around to look at the stands, which is something I wouldn’t normally do, and people were literally crying. What it told me was you can influence a region. You can make people’s lives better by the sport we play. You can rejuvenate a community. It’s just not about what’s on the field.” I think the Bills finally got the HC hire right and I'm gonna predict that on the late afternoon of September 8th, there will be lots of Bills fans crying. Tears of joy.

This is a must read for serious Bills fans.Good research by Mark Gaughan and the piece is filled with so much info that many of the paragraphs are short and the narrative a bit choppy because he had to report so much information. It reads a bit like a timeline but has tons of really good info. The article could actually have run as a two-parter on Saturday and Sunday.The people who give Marrone short-shrift for the job he did at Syracuse ought to read this. That program was near the very bottom of Division I when he took over. By casual football fans he doesn't get near the credit he deserves for the job he did at Cuse. Marrone was a hot coaching prospect and it's to the Bills credit that they got him: Even in 2007 and 2008, Marrone was on the NFL radar as a head-coaching candidate. He was interviewed by an executive search firm the NFL hires each year to identify “high-potential” assistants. About 10 aides are picked each year, and the one-hour interviews are sent to all 32 clubs.But Syracuse came calling before any NFL team, and Marrone jumped at the chance in 2009 to become his alma mater’s head coach. One of numerous interesting facts about Marrone in Gaughan's piece: Marrone took a non-paid position as a volunteer tight ends coach at Cortland State instead of position as a graduate assistant at USC because he would have more responsibility and would learn more. That led to a job as offensive line aide at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, coached by Bill Schmitz, who had coached with the Monarchs. “He offered me the job, and it might have been $7,000 a year,” Marrone said. “I took it. He was shocked. He made me sign a napkin. That was my first coaching contract, on a napkin at some restaurant in New London, Conn.” He also was mentored by former NFL Head Coach Homer Rice who tried to put him on a career track as a Division I Athletic Director, a path Rice would help pave for him. Marrone turned away from the generous offer and chose the more difficult route of becoming an NFL head coach. This is no surprise though because he was admitted to law schools but chose to pursue a coaching career.

Thank you.

NFL draft bites? https://twitter.com/NFLDraftBites Have they ever made a credible report? Just asking. And doubting.

Thanks for posting and welcome to the board. The link you posted is interesting in that it breaks down the rosters of all NFL teams, thus providing context and giving meaning to the Bills roster breakdown.