Mr. WEO

rust belt is cheap. go figure.

the new mens rooms should be christened with a solid upper decker (bowl form irrelevant).

Duke Williams. That's where he was working when Beane felt he was perfect for the Bills WR as he understood it...

1. worst case scenario is that the Bills are eliminated in the playoffs by the Chiefs. That has happened 3 of the past 4 seasons. 2. the Bills have not suffered those losses for lack of a "competent punter". Their Punter last year was completely adequate. 3. if your fanbase is reduced to pining for Punting highlights, your Offense has very big problems. posters who endlessly weep over this guy getting let go by the Bills are not making football arguments with their posts. Again, had he been drafted by the Chiefs, these same posters would have been savaging the Chiefs for picking him. And they know this---yet they pretend it isn't true.

lol yes...YES!! THIS is how the Chiefs are going to make the Bills look like fools. lol---I love this place!

Well...we'll always have this! lol you mean jumping on a pile and wrapping a guy up after 1st down yardage achieved...

MVP with 46% passing for under 100 yards---and it's still a blowout---in the championship game. good stuff...

Does your search engine go back 2 years? Anyway, Punter is no team's position of need (unless you are a very bad Offensive team. The Bills haven't suffered these past 2 post seasons for lack of a better Punter. The Chiefs aren't better with a better Punter.

That was good! Much of journalism (investigative in particular) involves anonymous sourcing, as you know. The fact that we don't know who he spoke to in particular has nothing to do with speculating that he only sought out quotes that supported his theory. They were "vetted" by the guy who wrote the article--he obviously knows who they are and what positions they held in the organization. Simply saying he left out quotes or made up quotes or only sought out disgruntled former employees to prop up his hate for McD is your opinion (and that of the other I was responding to), speculation without any offered proof--only a stated distaste for the author and his attack on the HC. That's not very persuasive..... If your TED Talk included such claims, with no evidence to back up such an attack on the piece, then I don't imagine you would have many paying attendees.

I have to say, that made me chuckle, so thank you for that. But anyway, my surprise is your fabrication. He had a great season, for a Punter. I compared him to another guy who is actually the NCAA career yards per leader and who had similar metrics to Araiza, other than Araiza's team's Offense was based on Punting it seems, so he got far more reps than any other Punter. Had Stonehouse kicked 21 more punts, Araiza by comparison may not have stood out, in the same year, as much. You missed that or just left it out. As a prospect, the league passed on him until the the 6th. SD State was so impressed that they made him their placekicker, not Punter, for 2 his first 2 seasons. Big leg though... Can you image this place if the Chiefs had drafted him initially? The glee and derision would be off the charts. No one would have been towing the "innocent until proven guilty line". Now that their folk hero, who they have wept for while holding a torch for him for 2 years is gone to the team of "criminals" (as they love to point out). This does not compute!!!!!----Watching their collective heads explode over this turn of events has been a delight.

myself and others have already mentioned/discussed that they were former employees and players. Scroll up, catch up and move on. But, to help you further: Since Beane has always churned the staff in that building, obviously it’s in his best interest to try and shape the narrative of the next wave who will be gone a year from now. It should seem obvious to you that this is in fact the ONLY reason a guy in Beanes position would even bother to reach out to this one column writer. If he wasn’t worried about a “hit piece” that was essentially dead and forgotten or that his former employees are eager to spill about McD out the door….then he would never bother with Dunne again. He would just keep ignore and move on. Suggesting otherwise makes absolutely no sense. Clearly, Beane does NOT want to read another article like this again. this is easy

fixed

I'm ready to agree with you, again, if you could offer anything at all to back your claim as fact that his sources were not "reliable". Or that he only sought out comments from those who left under bad circumstances. Or that he specifically left out any comments/quotes that were contrary to his "agenda". Point to anyone who said they were misquoted. Or left out of the article. You are trying to convince me of something you simply want me to agree is true because you say it is. They "evidence" we all have is the published article, with quotes, itself. The content wasn't expressly or in detail disputed by Beane and McD at the time. So yeah, that's what I got. I'll ask again, what do you have, other than your own bias that you don't want any of this to be true. Tepid calls of "hit piece" by current players (who?) doesn't help you. The fact that both McD and Beane came to Dunne separately, after the season, instead of just letting an old story pass without further comment, argues against your claim. Dunne's just one guy writing articles behind a paywall---why would they go to him and essentially bring that article back to life if it was all complete nonsense? That wouldn't be very bright, would it? That has been taken into account repeatedly.

in his life, he was a punter for one season. had some long punts on a team with a pretty mediocre Offense that had more punts than all but 2 other teams. broke some college records. yeah, big leg. so what? the previous Punt God from only 3 years previous (Brandon Mann) was also unanimous All American, Ray Guy winner who had the average yards per punt record which Araiza beat by 8 inches. yet Araiza was inexplicably the 3rd Punter drafted. Mike Stonehouse, career leader in NCAA yards per punt, may have had similar long punt #'s had he punted even close to as many times as Araiza.

Fake news!!!!

Bills didn't want him anymore.

Not even as awesome as Nate Peterman! I am familiar with the offseason championship--is there a Pre Season HOF?

Who is QB for Birmingham? A day after they benched Martinez for being awful (and winning without him), he was named MVP. lol.

you keep repeating this (bolded) as fact, yet you offer nothing at all to support that conclusion. Why would you think any current player is going to bad mouth his coach while he's still on the roster? That's your argument? Are you saying the guys who spoke at length with him to describe what their experience was in Buffalo are lying? Because they are "disgruntled"? They could have simply said nothing or "I have nothing but good memories of my time spent in buffalo"....rather than 25 of them individually painting a similar picture.

wow--after 1 season as a college Punter, he's "arguably" the best Punting talent.....ever? lol this puts a bow on the irrational fixation that too many here have for a Punter prospect. will he have to stay 500 feet away from the schools in KC?

wow current coaching staff and players won't speak up about McD to Dunne??? that's really a wild discovery. Why do you assume former staff (of which the Bills constantly churn) should have their opinions discounted? If you were fired from a very well known corporation and someone asked you what it was like at your former job, would you say "don't mind me, I'm just disgruntled"? nope. As you say, the NFL is transient for staff---but how many other longform pieces about other teams such as this one have you seen published? of course Dunne's premise is that McD is the problem (read the title). It's something that posters here have been saying for years. It's really not a controversial position to take. So if his premise is that, then his goal would be to interview those who would speak---these are obviously those who no longer work there. Some corroborated his premise. Some did not. I don't see anywhere where anyone can reasonably claim he simply made up quotes or events described in his article. do you think he went to each of the 25 and said, just for kicks, "tell me how awful McD is"?. Nor did the organization push back with much energy on their HC's behalf. Instead, McD and Beane were eager to reach out to Dunne for "private conversations" after another bad playoff exit...followed now by a published one (Dunne/Beane). come on. people believe what they want--recall the endless talk/threads/posts about the preseason drama between McD and Diggs? the vast majority here called it "fake news", or "stupid national media"....yet it was obviously true, as we all learned. Bills were willing to give up their WR1, eat a huge cap hit just to get him out of the building.

the rate of growth of the revenue and therefore the cap makes much of this discussion moot. sure it's a lot of money....but there's a lot money for it. This thread can and will be posted every time a QB gets a "massive contract", that, 2 years later, is looked upon as no big deal.

JP Losman Rex The Skipper/Mongolian Buffet Drag Racer EJ Edwards Orton and Flutie get a pass because they QB'd the Bills to their only winning seasons for 20 years. Plus lots of posters seem to forget the "Flutiemania" that helped Ol' Ralphie squeeze more money (another 65-125 million) out of the county for renovations for more luxury suites.

I can certainly see why it would rankle him, and why he would be hurt by it. Doesn't mean that was it's purpose. It's contents are there to read. McD didn't claim otherwise, neither did Beane at the time.

Sure...if any of that happened. Where is the evidence he did all that in his long form article? He interviewed 25 including coaching staff, players, other staff. Much of his quoting of players was complimentary of McD. As for McD calling it a "hit piece"--I could find that he did comment publicly that he felt it was an attack on his character" and "hurtful", because....what else is he going to say? And yet, his buddy Beane by the end of the season is reaching out to Dunne to hang out and offers himself for an interview with this "hit man". Anything and everything in the original article could have been disputed by Beane. It wasn't. it's because he understood that people in his organization are willing to speak up as sources and he wanted to get control of the narrative. Smart move.