thebandit27

Indeed they are good...I'm not surprised that you'd gloss over literally everything that I said just to get to what we'd already established. Nice work taking exception to a comment and then refusing to acknowledge the counterpoint. Not really sure why you'd even bother showing up if your whole agenda was to establish that NE is good. Thanks for the update, go ahead and show yourself out if you've nothing further to add.

Apparently, for you, it's quite difficult. Go ahead and show me where I said anything about that being why the Bills have lost all but 3 of their last 30 games against NE...I'll wait. Until then, go back, read without emotion, make an honest assessment of the team you cheer for, and then come back and we can have an adult discussion. Or not. Your choice.

As I said, there are very few players in the league whose injury would cause me to smile. This guy's one of them. Why, you ask (or didn't ask)? Because he's a jerk. He talks trash non-stop. He can't take a hit without jawing at someone. Years back, when he played defense, he was constantly spearing people. He still takes cheap shots at defenders now: http://milehighsports.com/watch-julian-edelman-takes-a-cheap-shot-at-t-j-wards-knees/ He's a jerk. i don't like jerks. As to the Patriots, well, yes, they cheat. They have a culture of cheating. Here's a not-so-little account of a decade-plus of cheating by them: http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart And you know what? I could get by it all if they'd simply own their crap. Yeah, we did it. We knew not to video other team's sidelines, but we didn't think the NFL would come down on us, so we did it. They can't even do that. Instead, Belichick has to insult everyone's intelligence and tell us that he--the master of the rulebook that can find legal loopholes with the best of them--didn't understand the league's memo that explicitly stated that videotaping of other team's sidelines--in any fashion--is illegal. What a pompous, arrogant jerk. Then we have the deflation stuff. Should've been able to sweep that under the rug by owning up to not controlling the handling of the footballs and firing the lackeys, but they couldn't let it die at that, could they? Instead, they let the whole thing get out of control, which results in court hearing after court hearing. In the end, here's what we're left with: A guy that voluntarily calls himself "the deflator" takes the game balls alone to the football field (which is not permitted), but stops to take them into a bathroom, supposedly because he has to "use the urinal"--or at least that's what he told investigators. Of course, there was no urinal in that bathroom, so why would he go in there? http://www.newsweek.com/how-tom-bradys-deflate-gate-conspiracy-blew-soft-balls-and-damning-texts-329419 According to McNally, whom the NFL interviewed for its report on four occasions, he was headed out to the field with the footballs alone, which is against protocol, when he decided to use a bathroom at the end of the tunnel (a bathroom that he told officials he had used many times before). McNally told officials that he dropped the bag of balls to his left and then used a urinal to his right. That is when the officials told McNally there are no urinals in that bathroom. So why go in there? To do whatever it is that Tom Brady "didn't do himself" according to Jastremski: Jastremski: “FYI…Dave [schoenfeld, the team’s equipment manager] will be picking your brain later about it. He’s not accusing me, or anyone...trying to get to bottom of it. He knows it’s unrealistic you did it yourself.” Now of course, I suppose it's possible that all of the accounts of cheating are simply wrong. It's also possible that I could get hit by an asteroid today; it's just freakin' unlikely. They cheat, and folks know it. I could get over it if they'd admit it and move on, but they deny deny deny, and for who knows why? All this, and we haven't even gotten to Rodney Harrison's involvement in an internet distribution ring for HGH and other performance enhancing drugs back in 2007. Clued in yet?

I like the sound of this: Corbin Bryant got some starter reps at left defensive end in place ofAdolphus Washington alongside Marcell Dareus and Kyle Williams. Washington eventually rotated in and pushed Bryant to the nose while Dareus moved to end with Williams rotating out.

It was a really simple question: why are you confused about the process here? Had MRI. Got diagnosed. Need to confirm once swelling subsides. Learn to read so that we don't have to spell things out for you

Grow up. You have a diagnosis: partial ACL tear. Why is there confusion as to the next step? Wait for the swelling to subside, re-test to confirm, go from there.

An example from Rex's playbook:

There are very few players in the league whose injury would cause me to smile...this guy's one of them. Now I'll go ahead and say that I hope it's nothing that will affect his life outside of football long-term.

I think it's more about knowing what you're talking about...it's really hard to say that the team's medical staff is sub-par when they're named tops in the league a little over a year ago: http://bills.buffalonews.com/2015/02/04/bills-trainers-named-top-staff-in-nfl/

Nope--the chart is shown as they'd line up; Darby is the RCB and Gilmore is the LCB. Nothing to see here.

Good enough to win the division? Yes. Good enough to win in the playoffs? Not if they face a team with a great front-7.

True--get him in the old hyperbaric chamber and heal him up. Or a very, very basic passing game. The biggest issue will be whether or not he can pull when he's asked to--that worries me. Now that's nice to hear.

Fine--just get him on the field for week 1, and in the meantime the combatants for the swing OT spot can duke it out at the all-important LT position.

To be fair, isn't he simply opting to have say in where the money goes, as opposed to letting the government choose for him? Besides, the overarching point I'm making is that the donation does the same amount of good regardless of the intention

Appears so! Well then the team is being ridiculous in not simply caving on the offset--it's a no-brainer since the cash is the bigger issue. See above Sorry, but I don't agree at all. Tell the recipients of the money that it's only being provided for tax benefits--they don't care one iota. As to the comparative amounts (your 10% vs someone else's), yes, every little bit matters. The reason that his 10% is more noteworthy is obvious to both you and me: it goes further.

I understand that--as I said in my post, I think the team is being unnecessarily frugal. He is not, however, going to make less money overall. He's going to make less money this year. He's going to make more money than Jalen Ramsey from their respective first contracts. IMO offset language is a stupid fight for both teams--to me, it's like the team saying they think they could've made a mistake, and the player saying that he thinks he may not play well enough to get his 5th year option. If I'm the team, and I'm looking to make a concession, I'd give in and say "okay, no offsets". That way, you get the contract done and you probably get the player to defer at least a portion of his upfront cash.

No, he's slated to make less money immediately. The entire contract is guaranteed; it's all about when he gets the money. His camp is saying that they want a greater portion of the cash flow now, so that he can start earning interest that will help him carry the burden of the state tax he has to pay on his income. Now I believe that the team is being unnecessarily frugal here--they're the ones that picked him No. 3 overall. That said, both sides are being silly. There are two issues at play: offsets and cash flow. Each side compromise on one and let's move on. ^ You could practically craft the guy's biography from cradle-to-grave based on that--good point

I think Salas makes the team for 3 reasons: 1) Roman likes versatility in terms of his personnel groupings, and Salas is the easy choice for a dependable 1st-down conversion guy out of the crop competing for the No. 3 job. 2) The team ran 11 personnel almost half the time in 2015. Even if that drops by a whopping 10%, that's still over 1/3 of their plays going from that personnel grouping, which means they'll want a guy that's the possession-style IMO. 3) Special teams--though I hate thinking about it, the fact that Salas can play that roles is a big deal. Now, to me, I'm of the opinion that I want to be able to move guys around in my 11 personnel. I want Woods to play the slot sometimes (Sammy too). I want to be able to throw a burner like Listenbee out there on the boundary and make teams plan for that 5-7 times per game. I'm not sure if Roman thinks the same way (I suspect he does), and I'm also not convinced that there isn't a guy that can be both a conversion/possession guy and a deep threat.

I most certainly don't think that Rex is better than Bowles; I just meant that if a guy can't beat Rex head-to-head on a short week at home or when his team needs the game to make the playoffs, then it's unlikely he's any better. Which is surprising to me, since I campaigned for Bowles here; I liked the work he did in Arizona quite a bit.

Of course, but that wasn't really my point. If we're going to call a guy greedy, it's worth knowing about him, and the philanthropic efforts of the Spanos family across all of North America are quite substantial

Bowles made at least as many bad coaching decisions last year as Rex. His time management at the end of the 1st half in Week 17--a game that the team had to have to make the playoffs--was abominable. He let 90 seconds of clock run between the Bills' 2nd-and-goal and 3rd-and-goal attempts (both of which came from outside the 10 yard line); this while knowing that Buffalo got the ball to start the 2nd half. You may not like Rex, and that's fine. Let's not pretend that the Jets are a well-oiled machine coaching-wise. Bowles was in over his head against Rex both times, and it showed.

That's not possible. I read on this very board, just a day or two ago, that Sammy was probably going to miss most of the year.

As opposed to before?

That's some nice sensationalism there...how about this link where you can read every single exchange that the two of them had over a two-year period: http://thebiglead.com/2014/02/03/here-are-over-1000-text-messages-that-richie-incognito-and-jonathan-martin-allegedly-exchanged/ ...including the one where Martin tells Incognito that "I will murder your whole !@#$ing family" and "I'm gonna give McDonald bath salts and lock him in your house with a tranquilizer gun and a box of sandpaper condoms"

Well, you may not agree with him on this particular issue, but read his book--you couldn't be more wrong about his persona.