Hapless Bills Fan

Can we kind of ease her into things?

Here's the full Injury Report. In addition to the above, Harrison Phillips is Questionable. Antonio Williams, questionable and so is Isaiah Hodgins. (click to embiggen)

https://www.buffalobills.com/news/3-things-to-watch-for-in-bills-vs-packers-preseason-week-3

Anything is possible, but I think we're putting the carts ahead of the hosses.

This is a GREAT find, Thank you! While speculative, Banged-up's stuff is often on-point

There was an opt-out deadline in July but with no payment this time unless documented elevated risk. That ship has Sailed. Yes. People, we are twice around the track while the Hosses are still in the barn and the jockeys are snoozing. NFL proposed it. It might happen, but the NFLPA fought against it before and will fight against it again (IMO) unless they are offered GIANT concessions otherwise. The current NFL protocols with testing vaccinated players every 14 days are probably NOT sufficient for the current situation. The NFL did a great job of adaptive change last season (IMO) - adding a gameday test, restricting coaches in booths and requiring masks and barriers, etc. So I am cautiously optimistic that they will adapt this year as well, just not sure they'll do it before there are actual problems. NFLPA wants daily testing for all. NFL has countered 1x/week. Is that enough? I don't know. Maybe they'll meet at 2x/week.

Published, peer-reviewed study of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine safety from Israel. Hot off the press (August 25, 2021) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475 This is the first country-wide, same population same time study of vaccination side effects vs. Covid-19 disease side effects. The study matched 880,000 unvaccinated patients infected with Sars-CoV2 and 880,000 patients vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, which is the only vaccine used in Israel. Everyone in the vaccine arm of the study was vaccinated before May 24, 2021. This graph is pretty compelling: Seems clear and compelling that the rates of kidney injury, cardiac arrhythmias, blood clots (deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism), myocarditis, and pericardits are much higher in the unvaccinated group. The two principle higher risks of the vaccinated group were lympadenopathy, which means temporary swollen lymph glands (a common side effect of many vaccinations; for example, women in US have been advised to delay their mammograms for a month after receiving a covid-19 vaccine to avoid false positive results, but after a month, it's fine and in the meantime, they go about their normal lives) and...... herpes zoster infection - I did NOT see that one coming. The risk was 16 per 100,000 (0.016%). For some context, the risk of injury from skydiving is estimated at 0.3% to 0.7%, so you're about 18x more likely to get hurt skydiving (mostly ankles) than to get The risk of pericarditis and myocarditis is 5.5x higher from a natural covid-19 vaccination than from the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine - despite the fact that the latter has been getting all the press. The risk from vaccination was an excess 3 per 100,000 or 0.003%

No, they're not suggesting the Bills would or should move to St Louis. The point of the article was that St Louis "fleecing" by the Rams/Kroenke/NFL may have lessons for Buffalo with regard to the Bills. I summarize the article's point as: "Give less weight to positive words from Goodell, and more weight to what the NFL's lawyers argued in Oakland and are arguing in St Louis. In particular, Do Not give much weight to the NFL's Relocation Guidelines, because the NFL's lawyers are arguing in court that those guidelines are not a contract and have no legally enforceable standing."

In the article he has Hollister being re-signed while McKenzie goes to IR. I don’t see either. I think there has to be more track record/trust/depth at positionto do the cut/resign thing And unless they’re fibbing about McK, he’s not an IR candidate

I had missed that aspect. On the surface, it sounds like a point but what do the endorsements involve? If it’s like signings or appearances at public events, I can see it tracking with reduced risk, but my take is NONE of the players, vaxxed or not, should be “pressing palms” with the public during the season right now

AND on the trading block/cutting floor if not traded Correct NFL = Not For Long It seems he was a guy who felt entitled when he got drafted, busted his hump in a contract year, then "retired in place" a bit when he got paid. I was disappointed when we didn't re-sign him, and various people expressed the above view. In hindsight, they had a point.

March, for LB Bendardrick McKinney and a late round pick swap https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/dolphins-trade-shaq-lawson-to-texans-for-benardrick-mckinney/ar-BB1eA1mF And I can't tell you how good it feels to be able to answer a straightforward football Q

We'll see on Jordan Phillips. He was injured last year. But some here feel he overachieved here in a contract year (and similar for Shaq) 'Zona for reals hasn't gotten what they paid for with Phillips yet. I do. Nope.

The problem with comparing last season vs this season is that the viral strain is different, its infectiousness is different, and the NFL protocols are different. My personal perspective is that the NFL protocols need to be revised for the regular season, but I don't think getting 10% or even 30% more players vaccinated is the most effective change. If a player walks away and refuses to comply with NFL rules, my understanding is there are levels of penalties/loss of game checks and game-check amortized signing bonus) but eventually they forfeit their guarantees (like AB with Oakland). That would be any NFL rules. This isn't the place to discuss Supreme Court rulings and mandatory vaccine law. We're also not discussing children here, we're discussing the NFL employer-employee relationship and potential employer rules, complicated by union representation and a CBA.

Why does it have to stop it? What if it "just" reduces the chance of a player getting Covid or even spreading it? Let's reframe as hypothetical Football question on a different topic. Suppose there's a treatment that doesn't eliminate the risk of knee injury but reduces it, thus reducing the risk of missing multiple games or even a season. Would the players want it? Suppose it reduces the risk 100 fold. My guess is they'd line up en masse. A mandate wouldn't matter. Side effects at the 10 per 100,000 wouldn't matter. Now make that hypothetical treatment 10 fold, or 5 fold, or only 3 fold reduction of risk. At what point do you think the players would stop wanting this hypothetical "knee injury reduction treatment"? I dunno. I tend to think even at 3 fold reduction of risk for missing games or losing a season due to a knee injury, the players would be like "*****, yeah, why wouldn't I?". Because there's such a quagmire of misinformation and news without context around Covid, it's become a huge challenge for player to strip off the noise and really get down to facts and logic to make a decision (and despite what people think, I believe most NFL players are quite intelligent. Not well educated, sometimes; make poor choices, sometimes; but modern NFL football is a complicated game. I don't think you can master a modern NFL playbook if you're a dummy.) Plus, because their bodies are their money-makers, the players understandably want to choose what goes in their bodies and not have it forced on them.

I See No Lies.

This is incorrect. Dawkins stated that he was "a few days" (I recall 1.5 weeks) past the 2nd shot when he DEVELOPED SYMPTOMS. Since the incubation period is 5 to 14 days, the chances are that Dawkins was infected either a bit before he received his second shot up to about a week afterwards.

I agree that playing in the NFL is a privilege, but there is a valid point that the problem at this point is not any of the Bills players sent home behaving unethically or immorally towards his peers. They weren't sent home for protocol violations, nor did any protocol violations cause problems to date. The problem is under the current protocols where they are tested every 2 weeks, a vaccinated asymptomatic or presymptomatic person can be in the facility interacting, unmasked, with players and staff, and will not be detected before they have had (what are defined as) close contacts with vaccinated players who are then sent home (even though they have not behaved unethically or immorally).

I can go with "significantly influenced by perception", most business decisions are. My point is that the policies (including the carrots and the sticks) were likely not divorced from medical/scientific "best practice" according to the NFL's medical officers and scientific consultants at the time they were drawn up. This isn't the place to discuss but there are some studies and calculations on the Covid Facts Thread in OTW. I do think the "carrots and the sticks" approach has backfired somewhat for the NFL now. For example, it led to a situation where a player who called the league office with questions about the basis for the protocols was given one set of information, then given the name of some NFL experts to call for further discussion and what the expert (referred by the NFL) told them differed. (Believe me or don't, I heard this from a source I won't name but who is close to the player in question and on the same team). I understand how it happened - the NFL-provided info was the original info underlying the protocols, and the expert given info was revised based on what the expert was currently seeing in practice - but it led to a huge loss of trust.

Or at least, many players, including those who are vaccinated, may sincerely believe that vaccination should be a personal choice.

We're not talking about changine the policy, right? We're talking about imposing a new policy. A player being vaccinated himself, and a player being willing to sign off on a mandate that all players should be vaccinated or retire/be terminated are two different things. Someone elsewhere asked why the mandate wouldn't work. Think about how far into the season the timeline for being considered fully vaccinated would take us. Then add in weeks for discussion/debate before hypothetical NFLPA approval. Then add in weeks for a possible court challenge, since a number of states have enacted laws that prohibit mandates, including in places that receive state monies (like some stadiums?). So even if vaccinating every player is actually an effective strategy for completing a season (which I personally question) we'd be halfway through the season by then.

Yes.

So let's step back a minute. Let's hypothesize that the NFL's goal is to "protect their product" by not only carrying out all of the games, but having them involve starters and be of a high quality. A lot of viewers and ticketholders were not happy about the ridiculousness of a game where the Denver Broncos being forced to play without a QB, and the NFL quickly changed their policies to prevent that happening again. So if they mandate vaccination at this time, when NFL rosters are almost set, guys have learnt the playbook and how to play effectively together, and a bunch of teams don't have the cap space to make significant moves - if a bunch of veterans retire at this point, will that improve/maintain the quality of the product, or will it degrade it? The NFLPA is a balancing act for the NFL, I think. One guy stated it doesn't have a lot of power, and I think that's true. But the NFL has maintained a not-very-effective-or-powerful union by balancing getting what they want, with enough accomodations that the membership doesn't decertify the NFLPA. If it's true (as various sportswriters and agents have said) that a lot of the rank-and-file players did not want to be vaccinated but went along because they didn't want to hinder their careers, pushing through a vaccine mandate that actually might not be the most effective way to maintaining quality product on the field, could cause decertification of the NFLPA and formation of a new union that would be harder for the NFL to deal with.

I can't blame them, but they need to look carefully at the actual situation in the country and decide whether trying to mandate vaccines is the best way to accomplish that at this point.

That's a valid point, and maybe the NFL will My perspective is looking at potential impacts of the Bills season - which depends largely on the 53 man roster.