hondo in seattle

According to different sources, Howard adopted the charging bison logo only in 2002. Before that, according to a fan comment on another site: "They used to have a great logo, which was a blue buffalo head dressed in cavalry gear." (http://www.sportslog...logos/view/6899) My guess is that the article cited in the first place is correct and that some guy from CA designed the charging buffalo for us back in 1974. Then Howard, already nicknamed the Bisons, decided to copy the design to update their old logo.

The Howard logo was designed in 2002. http://www.sportslog...1/Howard_Bison/ http://www.sportslogos.net/logos/view/6899 Not sure what it looked like before that.

I'll let someone else look up the stats but here's my recollection. At first, I viewed him as a good caretaker QB who was eminently qualified to hand the ball to OJ. But as Fergy's skills matured over the years, he became an above-average QB who could win a game or two with his arm.

If Kolb is made of glass, TJax will come in and we'll be no worse than when Fitz was here. This is assuming we keep 3 QBs (Kolb, Jackson, Rookie). I'm not expecting miracles from Kolb - Philly and Arizona expected great things from him only to be disappointed. But I am happier with our QBs this year than last. Fitz doomed us to mediocrity. At least now there's some hope.

I think this is good, not bad for Buffalo. Only one university in the state will be named for the state - New York University. And it won't be in New York City or anywhere else. It will be in Buffalo. Seems to me like a coup for Buffalo.

I'm feeling a lot better about our QB situation than I did when we cut Fitz and had zero QBs on the roster! Jackson's stat line isn't great but some people say he was much better in Seattle than in Minnesota but was hurt much of the season. The implication is that if he's healthy, we'll see a different Jackson that the one who was so profoundly mediocre for the Vikes. And Andy Reid and the Eagles at one time seemed to think Kolb would be their new franchise QB of the future. They traded McNabb away to give the starting job to Kolb. Between the two of them, it seems a fair bet that one of them will finally live up to their potential. Then you add a rookie to the mix and I think the Bills are better at QB than we were last year. Or, at least, we have the potential to be better. We saw enough of Fitz to know clearly what his strengths and limitations were. I prefer the unknown of Kolb, TJax and a future rookie to the known of Fitz.

I read somewhere that Kiper gets the first 16 picks right about 46% of the time. So there's less than a coin flip's chance he's right about this pick. His accuracy drops dramatically after the 1st half of the 1st round.

Just out of curiosity, why did anyone vote for Corp? Given his unspectacular college career, it's hard to imagine Aaron beating out Kolb, Jackson, and a drafted rookie. Maybe somebody sees or knows something the rest of us don't. Or maybe somebody's just being contrary. Personally, I think Jackson will give Kolb a run for his money but Kolb will prevail in the end - if he stays healthy. Though I wouldn't be completely shocked, given what happened last year in the NFL, if Marrone gambled with a rookie under center.

That's a harder question. First of all, Kolb seems to be fragile. Secondly, the Bills will draft a rookie. If they draft the right one, he'll be our eventual starter.

Kolb was once groomed to be McNabb's successor at Philly. Some of the players in Seattle say TJax played really well when you considered he was injured much of his season as the starter there. Corp was once listed ahead of Matt Barkley on the USC depth chart. And OBD has interviewed and worked out several of the top QBs coming out, leading us to expect them to grab one high in this year's draft. So who will start on opening day?

It used to be that we could say certain jokes & comments in private and different (pc) things in public. Social media changes that in a sense because people often treat social media as if it's private and all too often what's said there becomes public. Social media by its very nature is more intimate, more "real," than a press conference. If we're sitting with a group of guys at a restaurant and one of them made the 'Nuke Foxboro' comment, it would be no big deal. We'd understand he was joking. Even if we didn't appreciate the humor, I don't think we'd condemn the guy. I don't think we should condemn Stevie for this. He's just having fun being Stevie.

Yeah, like calling a tackle a guard! And you could be right about the Bills as the source of the negative (and apparently false) Geno stuff. I was once an army officer where I learned the Honor Code: "An officer will not lie, cheat or steal; nor tolerate those who do." The army took honor & integrity seriously. But it didn't apply to the enemy. A typical Operations Order included a "Deception Plan" - our attempt to mislead the enemy so they wouldn't guess our true intentions. Nix may operate under a similar ethic and false comments about Glenn and Geno might be part of his "Deception Plan."

Mike Mayock swears Nawrocki is a stand-up guy but hints that maybe he was misled about Geno by a scout. A lot of these draft gurus talk to scouts to get their info. But scouts aren't necessarily motivated to speak the truth. If your team wants a guy, it's to your advantage to spread bad information about him. It's crappy and unethical, but it happens. Mayock's comments are here: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000156971/article/mike-mayock-defends-writer-of-geno-smith-critique

Good research. The Nawrocki comments deserved a response.

6 picks with positive grades. 6 with negative grades. The rest received a neutral grade. Seems like the success rate of the FO is mediocre - not great, not terrible.

We started the year with nada. Then we signed two of the better, most experienced FA QBs available (not wasting draft picks in a bad trade). Presumably we'll now draft one of the better college QBs available. When it's all said and done, we still may have nothing. But at least OBD is making a concerted effort. I voted "yes."

At one point earlier this year we had ZERO QBs under contract. That was scary. Now we have two former NFL starters as well as Aaron Corp. Jackson was signed for one year and Kolb for two. Clearly Buddy is looking for band aids to get us through the next year or so while he searches for a franchise QB in the draft. Kolb and Jackson are not great but none of our options were. Altogether, I'm much happier with our QB situation than I was a couple months ago. Kolb + Jackson + Rookie... it could have been much worse. Arguably, it was worse last year.

+1 Starting the season with Jackson and Corp would be frightening. Adding a rookie to the mix is still very concerning. Bringing Kolb in to battle it out with TJax in case the rookie is slow to adapt to the NFL (if he ever does) makes sense to me. Seattle last year signed Flynn but still drafted Wilson. When you are in dire need of a QB, you look high and low.

Great post: intelligently speculative rather than screamingly idiotically dogmatic. It would be interesting to hang out with Pettine and his assistants to see how they're planning to use Scott, Andersen, Williams, etc. He has some tweeners and versatile players he can move around. Not knowing his plans - but expecting he'll do a better job of putting guys in a position to make plays than Wanny - I'm also not convinced we're as weak at LB as some others. Time will tell.

According to NFL.com, a former NFL scout named Daniel Jeremiah tweeted this: "Here are the QB matches I hear most often from NFL sources: Bills-Geno, AZ-Glennon, JAX-Nassib, PHI-Manuel…for what it's worth. Jeremiah also said he'd be "surprised" if Matt Scott escapes the third round. Several teams are buzzing around the Arizona prospect." http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000154843/article/jeremiah-eagles-focused-on-florida-qb-ej-manuel?campaign=Twitter_atl

We as fans will always second guess our GMs and coaches. It's part of the fun of being of being a fan. But the idea that we have posters who could be better GMs than Buddy is amusingly ridiculous. Lots & lots of jobs appear easy when looking in from the outside. But even guys who devote countless hours to this stuff like Kiper and McShay are not being offered GM jobs. Matt Millen, who seemed to know a lot about football, was a far worse GM than Nix. If the average fan was made GM, chaos would ensue. Scouts and other staff would quit because they'd rather go work for someone competent. Draft boards would be a joke. Other GMs would be calling to make poor-value offers to see if we were gullible enough to make the deal. And sometimes we would. I'm not a Buddy apologist. I see no evidence so far to suggest that Buddy is above-average NFL GM. But I think some people here are overestimating their own abilities or underestimating the professional expertize involved in the NFL personnel field. If we fired Nix to replace him with a better GM, I'd be thrilled. If we fired Nix to replace him with someone on this board, I'd be suicidally despondent. I'm sure we're all good in our own fields of expertise. Football personnel is Buddy's field of professional expertise, not ours. He's not an idiot. He's just not as smart as many other NFL GMs.

There isn't any guarantees that the QB we hypothetically take at #8 will be an NFL star either. But where are the odds better? At the QB position or some other? First round QBs only become good starters about half the time. Other positions are safer bets in the first round. It's easier to project how a guard, for example, will play in the NFL than a QB. Making this draft more problematic for the Bills, it's widely considered to be a weak QB class. Maybe none of the top QBs deserve to go in the 1 round (though some will). And maybe none of these QBs turn out to be solid starters. While I understand the sense of urgency many feel regarding the QB position, I'm not convinced it's a good move to roll the dice with a QB at #8. I understand why the OP suggest that it might be better to wait for our 2nd pick. The QBs available there might be as likely to succeed in the NFL as any available at #8.

Nix is definitely not an idiot, nor are our regional scouts. Any personnel man at OBD knows far, far more about player evaluation than 99.99% of the people posting here. Saying "Nix is an idiot" might make the ego feel good. But the truth is that the people making such assertions are more idiotic about the NFL than Nix. Nix, Whaley and our scouts are experts at their jobs. However, the issue isn't whether Nix is an idiot or not. The real issue is whether or not he's more competent than 31 other GM's. Or even better than half of them. And, so far, there are valid reasons to questions this. Let's see if better coaching makes our draft picks and FA acquisitions look better.

Even 1st round QBs have a fairly low probability of success in the NFL - in the neighborhood of 50%. I'm all in favor of tilting the odds in our favor by taking two.

Meaningless article. As fans, we only have to learn a few new names each year. Marrone has to learn literally hundreds: all the players, everyone else that works on OBD, not to mention all the college kids the scouts are talking about. I'm sure this isn't the first time he screwed up a name. Means nothing.