SouthGeorgiaBillsFan

http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/columns/s...patriots/090925 I've been saying essentially the same things since the 07/08 SB loss by the Pats. Then I read this article and it wasn't so much the content that reinforced my belief as it was the fact that Bill Simmons, the mother of all biased journalists, actually posted what appears to be a completely objective article regarding the state of the Patriots franchise. I just felt like the way the 07 season unfolded and the failure of that team to produce a championship heralded the beginning of the end. The first game last year proved that football karma can strike even the mighty Patriots. And now the organization is in apparent disarray. Am I saying I believe the Patriots don't have a good team and won't make the playoffs? Well I'm not willing to count them or BB out just yet. However, they are unquestionably on the decline, and I won't be at all surprised if they fail to make the playoffs. And then I look at our team, and I see many of the same ingredients that the Patriots had when they first won the SB and their dynasty was born. We have lots of youthful talent. We have a cerebral QB who makes good decisions and few mistakes. We have a talented and balanced offense and an opportunist and hard nosed defense. We have players who look hungry. Granted, as far as the evolution of a successful dynasty goes, we are still in the primordial goo era. However, we have life, and it is evolving. We have a young line that seems to be more talented that I could have ever believed possible. All of a sudden we have an evolving defense with an attitude and the ability to make plays. We have a rising star at QB. We have talent all over the field. And we are playing well. I know there are many naysayers out there, and the Bills certainly haven't done much to mitigate the pessimism in recent years. But the simple truth is that we have good players and are playing good football right now. We also have youth and every reason to expect improvement at every phase of the game. And even though some of us don't believe the onus for failed seasons should fall to DJ, I think everyone has been fairly satisfied with what they have seen this year so far. Is it possible that I'm stuck in a hopeless pipe dream that will never see fruition? Certainly. But remember that nobody expected the 2001 Patriots to win a playoff game, much less the SB. So for the first time in a long time I feel we have a legitimate reason to hope. And remember, nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills.

I never said Trent doesn't have room for improvement. I merely suggested that a QB whose rating is over 100 should not have fanboys walking around pretending like they know what he needs to do better.

And I suppose that explains how Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, and Matt Ryan are the only QBs in the league with a higher rating too. Actually his yards per attempt has a bearing on his rating, so even when checking down he is making good reads, apparently. And we saw what happens when a QB tries to force a down field throw that isn't there: i.e. interception vs Bucs. And I'm quite certain Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have made a living by taking what the defense offers, not by forcing ill advised down field throws. Also, the Bucs game was an exception to what we have seen in the past in that we had open down field receivers. I think it is pretty absurd to assume Trent would prefer throwing a hot route to a RB over a 40 yard strike down field. He does a good job of not forcing throws that aren't good throws.

News flash: we play zone.

There isn't really much point in second guessing a QB whose rating is over 100 on the season.

The Falcons have been my pre-season favorite to represent the NFC at the SB, and with good reason. The Pats are still a good team, even if on the decline, but the Falcons are a complete championship caliber team with no real weaknesses. I foresee a 1-2 start for the Pats this year.

The Patriots hung 25 on us, 7 of which were gifted to them and never should have happened. I'm not ready to call the Saints better than the Pats just yet (call me crazy - does thinking you are the last sane man on this forum make you crazy??). They will not put 30 on the Bills. If I'm wrong about that, I will delete my account here and you will never hear from me again.

Which is utterly irrelevant because the Saints are still a bad football team. By the time the season is half way over, everyone *else* will be convinced of that. It's the Saints people...the same ones from last year too. Takes more than a few fortuitous wins against teams they *should* beat (only saying they should beat the Eagles without McNabb of course) to convince me otherwise. It's still the Saints. They still suck.

How about the incredibly more dynamic and threatening Patriots offense? Saints don't scare me. Go sit on a rusty pineapple.

Nobody has stated that Brees isn't good. It's all the other Saints players that aren't very good.

I just want to point out that we finished the game against the Bucs with more TOP than the Bucs. It was only lopsided against Brady and company due to the a) heavy-footed 455 kicking they were receiving, and b) the fact that Tom Brady could not really get anything deep and had to dink and dunk all the way down the field.

Exactly. Ahem. He won't get enough points to win.

Look I'm not overly impressed with the Saints. Frankly I find it insulting to even compare them to the 2007 Patriots. I'm sure Fewell is more than happy to oblige the Saints offense worshiping that is going on so that when the Bills smack them down it just makes us look that much better. Seriously Wawrow I hope this is your mentality too because I find it hard to believe that a !@#$ could look at the Saints and not think we have at least a 50% chance of exposing them as non-contenders. How could anyone buy into the freaking Saints to the extent necessary to pick them over your own favorite team? I mean at least with the Patriots it used to be reasonable....but I think I'll make the Saints beat me before I accept that they are one of the elite contenders in the league. Wow they funky symboled the phrase <B><I><L><L><S> <I><N><S><I><D><E><R>??? unbelievable. Wawrow that funky symbol word was not any expletive.

Yea I like this idea: Move Aaron Maybin to MLB.

For one thing, every one of those TDs has been targeted at our back up MLB. That is no coincidence. I do not see many realistic options other than find a better linebacker. Might just have to be a weakness for now. Upon reading a few more posts, I actually am partial to the Nic Harris idea. Hey it worked pretty well for Urlacher. Upon a few seconds of thought, it occurred to me: maybe Maybin?

To further illustrate my point, let us observe the example of poker: It is a raging argument whether it is more effective in poker to "play the odds" or "play by feel." The truly successful poker players all have one thing in common: they incorporate both. It is absolutely necessary to know the odds of a given scenario (in the case of hand odds we don't have to even worry about unaccounted for dynamics, since we are talking about a simple system of cards being dealt from a limited deck), but ANY good poker player knows that you cannot merely bet the odds. The reason for this is because anyone ELSE who is familiar with how odds work know how to easily manipulate your odds. In a poker game, there are 2 important types of odds. You have the pot odds, and you have the hand odds. The pot odds represent the percentage of all times at which you must win the given pot in order to break even on those pots. The hand odds represent your chance of drawing the winning hand. The argument exists in the idea that as long as you only bet when your hand odds are better than the pot odds, the laws of probability dictate that you should always come out ahead. This seems logically sound at first glance. But there are several unaccounted dynamics that debunk this belief. If the opposing player knows you are betting odds, he can bluff you. Typically betting a pot sized bet completely throws of the logic of the system, as the guy believes he is betting much worse pot odds than he actually is. Therefore, the logic dictates that he must fold. Most good players cannot be easily bluffed this way consistently, and therefore we know that the ones who truly understand how the odds work in poker realize that there is a time to throw the odds out the window and bet your gut. The point being that any idiot can manipulate statistics to make them tell a story according to his design, and thus they have little actual validity in any argument regarding situational football theory.

In my first post in this thread, I actually stated that I would have gone for it. I cited my belief that only the Bills could actually squander a 10 point lead in that situation. Already, my path to the same conclusion was different from yours, but immediately that ruled out your theory of "Actually, part of what makes it interesting to really study these issues is the vitriol it elicits when the numbers show something contrary to what some think is "football sense,"' at least in regards to me. What you failed to recognize was that I was merely calling into question the validity of statistics based arguments in regards to situational football theory. I was doing this, not according to your presumptive reasoning of "Actually, part of what makes it interesting to really study these issues is the vitriol it elicits when the numbers show something contrary to what some think is "football sense,"' but rather because the entire logical premise upon which you are making your argument is fundamentally flawed. Observe: 1. Your "probabilities" supposedly reflect the odds at which a possible outcome will occur. Because those odds are fundamentally based on what has already happened, they do not reflect the odds of the situation that has yet to happen. For example, unless you have included the number of times that an untied shoelace has contributed to a complete pass, then your probabilities by default have a margin of error equal to the proportion of the times an untied shoelace actually caused a change of outcome in the play versus the number of plays from which the probabilities are derived. Since you are not including probabilities of every possible dynamic that could affect the outcome of the game, they are not an accurate reflection of the odds that a situation will occur in that game. 2. How can you feel comfortable basing your entire decision making logical model on these probabilities when you know that there is at least some discrepancy (and quite possibly large discrepancies, and you know it) in your stated probabilities and what the actual odds are? That is a logical fallacy, plain and simple. Conveniently for the likes of you who perpetuate these kinds of flawed arguments, numbers and logic intimidate most people, and they are quite happy to just regurgitate your entirely fabricated BS without question, thinking that they sound smarter and more educated in the process. But there will always be someone like me, waiting to poke holes in every theory, and ready to pick apart such baseless and insulting conclusions.

If you just post the bottom line without indicating the analysis and calculations that allowed you to arrive at that conclusion, aren't your really just offering up a meaningless set of numbers with no bearing on reality? Never mind the fact that it is beyond absurd to assign probabilities to a game with an infinite number of dynamics that affect each play. The fallacy of that line of thinking is so obvious that it really disturbs me that people consider this a sound supportive argument to begin with. Nevertheless, even if you choose to buy into this flawed logic, you should at least be willing to show the calculations that allowed you to arrive at that conclusion. Otherwise, you are just some dude spouting off some numbers that have no meaning. A true expert in probabilities and statistics would be able to recognize the fallacy in this kind of argument pretty much immediately. What these people who make these kinds of arguments are doing is betting on the fact that the general populous will be too ignorant and/or lazy to research the numbers in a way that will allow for a meaningful rebuttal. And so they believe they will get people to buy into their flawed and biased arguments simply because it is the easiest thing to do. This type of argument is both deliberate and flagrantly offensive to integrity and intelligence, and as such it carries no weight with me or anyone else with half a brain.

Catching a winning pass vs Texas does not make you a great talent. Not sure where all the praise for a guy who is slower than the average NFL WR and smaller than the average NFL WR comes from. I just laugh at this situation.

Bucs Saints Jets Fins Browns Panthers Texans Maybe it's just me but I think I'd rather drink the Bills kool-aid than the Jets or Texans kool-aid. That is being a realist. I mean I look at all of the teams above and am thoroughly unimpressed. The Jets are probably the best looking team out of them, but seriously, when I look at our roster and our performance in the first two games, it is hard for me to see a team with a rookie starting QB who has not done anything special by any stretch of the imagination and who has absolutely zero weapons to throw to and have quivers of fear running down my spine. Granted the Jets shut down the TEXANS and a listless Pats team with a rusty QB and no Wes Welker. I am thoroughly unimpressed. No team the Jets have faced are anywhere close to as dynamic on offense as the Bills. And I am quite confident that if NE can hold the Jets to a meager 16 points with their sickly looking defense, they are going to have trouble doing anything against us. Their greatest offensive strength is their running game, which happens to be our greatest defensive strength. So does anyone really believe Mark Sanchez and the talentless Jets passing game is going to beat us? I am a realist, and I will not be tasting any of that Kool Aid.

No Dean. The only two sacks that really matter occurred on the final drive against the Patriots, and Demetrius Bell was burnt like toast both times. Trent did not even have time to finish his drop before he was clobbered from the back side. I'm not complaining about the blocking at all, and other than that series everything has been so far beyond expectations as to have me and many others here thrilled for sure. But on those two plays, when it really mattered, the onus was squarely on Bell, who was beaten badly.

As long as Lee and TO are in the game, I think it is irrelevant who is in the slot. Yea I'd like to see Josh Reed there because he is a sure handed possession guy, but we could line up Brad Butler in the slot and he is going to get open looks

I haven't entirely bought into this idea of a "diminished" TO. He drops passes. He always has. He still commands double coverage by virtually every team that lines up across from him, and he still puts up impressive numbers in virtually every statistical category. At no point was Andre Reed ever better than TO, even this late in TO's career (Andre Reed is also my favorite player from the 90s teams, so it isn't bias). And James Lofton was as long in the tooth then as TO is now, so yea, I think I still go with TO over either of those two. Lee Evans on the other hand wouldn't stand a prayer. In every dynamic in which Evans is strong, Lofton was superior. And Reed was able to dominate over the middle and against smaller DBs, where Evans is substantially weaker, as well as being a legitimate deep threat. When considering the dynamics of Evans game, it is hard to even say with certainty that he would be superior to Don Beebe. So at best Evans gets into the games in the slot, and he quite possibly has games that he never steps foot on the field (How many times did we ever see an empty backfield during the Thurman Thomas era?).

The problem with this type of statistical analysis is that it doesn't allow for chaos. There are entirely too many dynamics affecting the outcome of the game to be able to generalize the probabilities of certain outcomes coming to pass. Therefore you logic based on that analysis is already flawed before you even crunch your first number. The conservative approach here is the best option for mitigating the worst case scenario, which is why it is the best decision. The odds of missing the FG are substantially lower than the odds of not making the first down, just as the odds of a turnover during a FG attempt are substantially lower than the odds of a turnover during a regular play. Thus, you are more likely to arrive at the same worst case scenario by going for it and failing than you are by attempting the FG, and thus, statistically speaking it can be argued that the best possible coarse is to kick the FG.

Yea...six points is a pretty large spread. I don't consider that to be respect at all, considering we are the home team. It's more like a slap in the face IMO.