thurst44

Ha, see, I'm the opposite here. This feels like one hell of a way to start the season. My only worry is that they are both home openers, so being semi-employed plus freelance right now, this might price them way out of my range (well, more incentive to get back to full-time).

As someone who lives about 5 miles from MetLife, my eyes are WIDE open.

As weird as it seems to say this given how their games have been excruciatingly bad enough to build national stories around, I'm kind of surprised this is not a night game with the storyline of star-crossed football teams with high-ceiling Year 2 QBs.

This ^^ It's not my favorite choice as it seems like a reach, and I love Beane's stated mission of freeing himself to take the BPA which would make me think defense (and there's some nice last pieces of the defense that have a decent chance of being available at 9), but it could also be Beane's top player on the board, and if so, I trust his judgment.

Ha, when I saw this header, I thought it might be you. Personally, I love all your posts and the cross-fandom bonhomie (but I've also always had a soft-spot for the Packers), and was absolutely baffled and embarrassed by all the hostility from posters in your thread from a couple days ago. You have no reason to apologize, and I, for one, hope you continue to post. Either way, hope you are enjoying your off-season, otherwise.

I getcha, but given the last two years, I think that picking at 9 is the LEAST likely scenario... which also makes it the... most likely? Ok, I'm just gonna tune in in 12 days and find out

Ha, that's the thing tho. QBs are almost never going to be the BPA at any point since, due to the position's value, they will necessarily be overdrafted.

Exactly, it's not necessarily the right plan, but to argue there's no plan is strange. This off-season is one of the most obviously planned ones (and a pretty clever one at that) i've ever seen. You have a young QB who in his rookie year proved he's worth giving a real shot, so you get a bunch of experienced linemen, all of whom have been better pass-blockers than run-blockers, and sign them to contracts you can escape from within a year so you can do your due diligence and find the best five starters and three backups to give Allen the best chance to succeed, plus you also get fast, deep threat receivers since your QB has one of the stronger arms in history. They still have the sixth most salary cap space in the league and top ten next year (and many ways to free up money if some of these guys don't work). Will it work? We'll see. But it's about as definitive a plan as I've seen from this team in my lifetime -- or at least since the 80s when I was first starting to follow them.

9 wins sounds like the median to me, Vegas be damned, but feels like with Allen it could break either way. If Allen is for real, then he should have much more time and more weapons to succeed, so with this defense, the ridiculous 14-2 above is not impossible. Nor is a disastrous 3-13 season if his inaccuracy is chronic and unfixable. That Allen went 5-5 in full games with so little help makes me hopeful. That his misses were often shorter passes makes me wonder if there's a chance he could be prone to yips. Either way, the Bills are one of the most objectively interesting teams in the league (signing six offensive linemen with significant starting experience when you have a second year potential franchise QB is kind of a baller move)

Yep. I called The Coach's show on the day Flutie was signed b/c it annoyed me that he was attacking a guy so mean-spiritedly before he even got there -- mostly because, if memory serves, he had another player on and was trying to get him to say bad things about Flutie. I started to say something silly about how anyone with a ruler can see how tall he is, what matters is he's won games in the NFL and maybe should not be run out of football." -- but he hung up on me pretty fast. At the time I was working at a record store on Main St. while in college, but within weeks would be out of Buffalo.

If I don't have a hot take in that thread it was because I was too furious to post at the time. By the time they traded up for Edmunds, I was OK with it (i.e. well, we got another first round pick anyway). It was less than a week later that I admitted there's a good chance I was very wrong about Allen. And it wasn't just rationalization or rallying around our guy. I liked his interviews, that he had the highest Wonderlic, heard that he was the leader of the QBs at the combine. By training camp, I wanted him to start this year. Now, I'm tentatively giddy. It's not a definite, but he's an exciting player, and his ceiling is remarkable.

I hear your logic on this, but there's a value to continuity, something McDermott asserted yesterday. Undervaluing the importance of Poyer in this defense would go against "the process" as far as I interpret it. Part of "the process" is building a family that pushes each other to another level.

There's a very clear problem with this theory. He went to the Raiders: 1). Who have been an even worse team 2). There isn't even an official QB for the Raiders right now, as most seem to feel that Carr is a goner. Is the possibility of Kyler Murray -- or another one of a QB class that's got a reputation for being mediocre at best -- really that much better than a rookie QB who went 5-5 in full games with an awful surrounding cast? Or even if you think Carr is staying, while granted his rep is surely better than Allen for most experts around the league, is he really an attraction for a WR? (honestly, the impression of Allen's rep would seem to more be polarizing than bad -- which does not disprove your theory) I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just saying while you suggest you KNOW what's going through AB's mind, you really don't. You may have intuited correctly, but we can never truly know. It still doesn't explain why he's pathologically attacking the team waaaaay after the fact. Yes, who cares, but it's still pretty messed up.

This is a bit of a straw man as I don't know that anyone is arguing whether he has the right to not go to Buffalo. Personally, I lived in Buffalo and left -- and for most of the time, if I had a choice of a job in my field (not that i really have a "field" per se) in NYC or Buffalo, I'd choose NYC. Lately, we've talked about moving to WNY, but that's mostly b/c I've been doing part-time, we're not really taking advantage of NYC anyway, and prices here are exhausting. If I were a football player, I'd like to think I'd pick Buffalo b/c of the community vibe and adulation of fans, but who knows, and unless I stumble upon a reverse Zoltar machine, I'm pretty sure that will never be a scenario :). The issue in this thread is his incessant need to rag on the town, team, and fanbase -- all this after he pretty much won and got all he wanted -- the team, the contract, and everything. It's bizarre, and while we should have a thick skin, it's just plain dumb.

If he doesn't, it will change in a year.

Ha, cool. I rarely have seen people on highway. Once was cut off by a guy on the approach to the GW Bridge and road raged for a second, then saw the Bills flag and immediately cooled down. In the last couple weeks, have had two interactions. Saw a guy in Bills jacket and hat walking into a Bloomfield 7-Eleven and yelled "Go Bills!" at him and he smiled. A couple days ago, I was leaving the building where I work at a University in Jersey City, and saw a Bills vest under the guy's jacket and I pavlovianly (rudely) pointed "Hey Bills"...he bemusedly smiled. Weirdest place I ever saw Bills gear was on a 20-something blonde woman in Arizona. I went up to pay with my then fiancee and looked over and saw Bills shirt. It got a bit misconstrued and for a few miles I got the silent treatment from fiancee (she knew I'm a huge Bills fan -- in the years since she's even ordered gear for our dog). I mean, c'mon, what are the odds?!?!

Don't think it necessarily means that. In the current passing league, it's wise to have as many stout CBs as possible; the third and fourth (and even fifth) CBs will play an integral part in the team's success. This secondary is likely to be pretty fearsome this year (and it was already the top secondary in football last year).

He's clearly a miserable human being to pile on. Or maybe he means it as a friendly joke. In any case, while it could work out if they keep Carr and draft well, it looks more like a train wreck to me. He's gonna need luck, and, frankly, I don't wish him it. Also, he's making his choice to drag one of the best fanbases in the NFL online while going to a team that is deserting its own hometown for a city that might not even care.

I would not be very upset with it, but the best I would say about it is it's "fine"

I was essentially born into Bills fandom, but in New York City. My whole family was from Buffalo area: my dad in Lockport, my mom in Kenmore. My dad, uncle, and aunt were all fans going back to 1960, and all moved to NYC at some point in the 1970s. In 1980, at 7 years old, I remember being in a car and the Bills were on, and I asked my aunt (who I idolized) a bunch of questions about them and got excited and then and there decided I was Bills for life, to the point when I was lost in the woods at age 12 in Western New Jersey (at the sort of camp who would lose kids in the woods) and all I cared about was that I heard Kelly was going to sign and hoping my Walkman's batteries would survive just long enough so I could hear it (they did, I did). If there was any doubt of permanence, I wound up going to UB and my first game was 51-3. My aunt sadly never got to see them win (but she did get, against all odds, to see the Red Sox win, staying lucid long enough -- by one day -- to see their 2013 victory), my uncle and dad still have a chance (although my dad is half-hearted). I have missed very few games since coming back to NYC area in 1998, going to Bills bars and in the last years having DirecTV Sunday Ticket. My wife has got into them, not to a superfan level, but enough that she has bought multiple jerseys for our dog.

If you don't remember history, you are ... something something something.

Darius Philon intrigues me, run-stuffer with 4 sacks last year, still just 25, might not be too expensive and would add to nice rotation (which could get even better with Oliver or other top draftee).

Sorry if this posted earlier, but was right underneath a 5 hour old tweet that definitively said he was going to Jets for precise amount of money, and it made me laugh.

Fair enough, but if our fans can't convince them and that's their determining factor, not sure I want them in Buffalo anyway (and i gotta get back to eating these deliciously sour apples :))

They do realize that if you sign with a team, you don't use the "visitors locker room," right?