Stranded in Boston

Hey Kirby, I like Knox a lot, but that kid Gesicki for Miami is really tough. Hopefully Dawson catches up to him soon!

"Thanks" for the memories Chander#81! I forgot about that Playgirl gig, LOL. But what a great player. Folks might forget that there were a few *especially* grim years in Bills history (76-77) -- truly the dark ages -- when we found out, for example, why Gary Marangi was a *backup* QB. Bobby Chandler was practically the Bills entire offense those seasons. He could be double, tripled covered and come up with the ball. Such precise route running, and those incredible hands.

LOL ... right on. I remember one game when Ken Jones was a rookie (against Jets?) where he had three holding calls. The next day the Buffalo Evening News Sports Page had a little picture of Jones with the caption "the goat". But he ended up having a solid 10+ year career with the Bills. Also, did you also catch the Offside call on Fred Smerlas at the end of the first half? At least he jumped off on that play. Usually he'd get the "lined up in the neutral zone" call -- while lined up directly over the center! It used to drive me and my brothers crazy. And then he'd just stand there with that dumb look on his face, pointing that big ol' grizzly bear arm of his towards the offensive line, waiting for the refs to sort it out ... Good times, man. edit: Smerlas jumped Offside TWICE in that same drive! ?

Yeah, Butler was just fantastic -- smooth, fast, strong, crafty and great hands. With him and Cribbs, we thought the Bills were set on offense for years to come. Then Butler blew out his knee, and Cribbs flew the coop. ?

What a game ... But that Bobby Humphrey was a real mystery. The Bills had no answer for him . He looked like a future Hall of Famer his first couple seasons, but then maybe he held out(?), and after just sort of disappeared. But I also recall he was on the Bills preseason roster some seasons later.

I've read Shaughnessy's stuff for 35 years since I moved from Buffalo to Boston. He's a decent baseball writer, but doesn't know jack about football. I think he must have been drinking when he wrote that. For what it's worth, I've been wearing my Bills hat for my daily quarantine walks here -- along with my amazing new Bills Zubaz mask that an old friend from back home just sewed for me! -- and if the locals comment at all, they're saying, "Bills are looking good this year"; "Bills are going to win AFC East with Brady gone", etc. The tide is turning ...

Call me a homer, but my all-time favorite juke move was by Jerry Butler against the Colts back in 1981. Chandler#81 posted this video a few weeks ago (thanks Chief!), and I saw the play again for the first time since, well, 1981, I imagine! Check out around the 5:00 mark. Such a shame Butler blew out his knee so early in his career... what a receiver.

I just watched a Dane Jackson highlight reel. I don't think it included a single PD -- but man, can this kid tackle, or what! OK, it was highlights, but every tackle in the reel was picture-perfect, wrapping up legs, even in open field. Reminds me of Antoine Winfield in that respect. He should make a good special teams cover guy, if nothing else.

Just woke up, saw this pick, and checked out his highlight video. Wow, the kid is a bowling ball. It's gonna be a fun 1-2 next year with Motor. And as an older fan, I do appreciate Moss' Thurmon-Thomas-style, been-there-before, just-flip-the-damn-ball-to-the-ref whenever he he scores a TD ...

Wow, Donald Wilson ... I almost forgot about that guy. He may have been the hardest-hitting defender I've ever seen on the Bills (with Lucius Sanford a close second -- mind you, I wasn't quite old enough to see Mike Stratton play in his prime). Didn't Wilson break his face-mask on a hit in '84 or '85? I dimly recall that he and his receiver victim were both knocked out cold on that play (yeah -- not so cool anymore). ah, and a Rod Kush sighting. Another big hitter.

Ah, thanks for that, Chandler! As a young Bills fan who suffered through the grim 1970s, those two seasons were electrifying! That team was set up by Stew Barber & Chuck Knox's spectacular 1979 draft, maybe the team's best ever. #1 pick Tom (%$#@) Cousineau jumped ship (although ultimately yielded the draft pick that netted Jim Kelly) -- but the next THREE guys chosen -- Jerry Butler, Fred Smerlas and Jim Haslett -- were pro bowlers. The Bills also nabbed free safety Jeff Nixon in the 4th round, who was an interception machine until he blew out his knee. The next year they picked up two more pro-bowlers, Jim Ritcher and Joe Cribbs. Ritcher was a stud for years, and Cribbs was the arguably the league's best offensive dual-threat for a few years. Good times, man! ?

Good point, Stank. I think people forget that when your team is good (like we finally are!), lower-round players have much less impact, and even have difficulty making the team. Case in point: I can't remember a lot of 5th/6th round players making much impact on the great early-1990s Bills teams. If a team is generally set at most positions, low-round picks just don't factor as much. And if Diggs pays off this year, that 4th rounder next years will also look trivial ...

Well, not to get all lawyerly on you, but the 75% figure is justified under my phrasing "led to" HOFers. ? But even 50% is good: I just reviewed a history of the draft, and only 12 first-overall picks have become HOFers since *1936*, more than 80 drafts (that's <15% HOF rate -- but check my math ?). So the Bills have been good/lucky with their first overalls. (And yes, if you're wondering, I am getting a little bored confined to home in Boston ...)

SoTier, your post made me realize that the Bills have actually done pretty well when they've had the top pick. To start, both OJ and Bruce are Hall of Famers -- and could be argued to be the best ever at their positions. The Cousineau business was frustrating, but trading him to Cleveland did net the #14 pick in the '83 draft, which produced Jim Kelly, another HOFer. So one could argue that 75% (3/4) of the Bills first-overall picks led to HOFers (I wonder what the overall % is for first picks among all drafts?)

Ah, all this Bob McAdoo chatter really warms my heart! To the youngins' out there, in the mid-70s Big Mac averaged 30+ points and ~15 rebounds per game for 3 straight seasons ... I tell my NBA-crazed teen boys all the time that McAdoo was Giannis before there was Giannis. And I loved the bent-knee jumper pic -- with Ernie D lurking in the background!

The other thing that's odd is that the back judge in the end zone clearly was aware of the wording of the touchback rule: he did not blow his whistle or signal, and he jumped aside when the returner flipped the ball to him. If the back judge knew the explicit rule, why the hell did he let himself be overruled by the sideline officials, who evidently did NOT know the wording of the rule?

Indeed, I checked the wording of the touchback rule after the game, and JF is dead right: if the the returner catches the ball he must either lie down or take a knee for a touchback. The rule book says nothing about extending your arms for a touchback. Of course, nobody would argue with the "common sense" interpretation that the return man "intended" a touchback (and maybe they'll update the touchback rules in response to this incident). But if the officials can apply common sense to interpret intent as they wish, shouldn't they likewise exercise common sense in interpreting Cody Ford's wholly benign "crack-back" block in OT? The crack-back rule was intended to prevent injurious blindside hits on defensive players; Ford barely knocked the guy off stride. Sorry, but if the officials insist on following the exact letter of the rule against Ford, they must follow the exact letter of the touchback rule as well. The rule is not ambiguous.

Don't hold your breath for Brown to be suspended if the Saints sign him. For example, could someone please explain to me why Patrick Chung -- indicted on a felony charge of cocaine possession last summer -- has not been suspended, or at least placed on the commissioner's exempt list? I pointed this out to my wife last Saturday during the game, and she thought it was just more of my "F everything about the Patriots" rhetoric ...

Definitely The Harp -- and don't worry, dude: WNY will own the place today. ? The Harp is across the street from TD Banknorth Arena, just steps from the North Station T stop (don't try to park downtown if you're driving). The WNYer college kids are home for Xmas break, so it'll probably be easier to get a table today. But there should still be a good crowd. I used to bring my twin boys with me when they were little (in their little Fred Jackson jerseys), and they got pretty upset at all the screaming -- mostly from me.

I watched that Pittsburgh game at the old Bills fan club at The Fours Bar in Boston, across from the old Boston Garden. The place was absolutely packed with Bills fans; it would violate fire codes nowadays. I was crammed up against the front plate glass window. When Beebe scored one of his touchdowns, we screamed so loud I swear the glass buckled; I thought I was going to end up bleeding on the sidewalk on Canal Street ... good times!

I don't believe in conspiracies or rigged games, and I think the refs are doing the best job they can do as humans observing a very fast, chaotic game. But there is *implicit* bias in sensory perception (it's my line of work -- don't ask!). Lots of experimental evidence suggests that our perceptual interpretations are influenced not only by the objective sensory information entering our brains (visual, auditory, etc.), but also by our *expectation* of what should happen/usually happens. For any experts out there, this falls under the rubric of Bayesian inference, in which the perceptual decision -- the "posterior probability" -- is a computed (according to Bayes' theorem) from incoming information AND a "prior probability" encapsulating bias, expectation, etc. Just like us fans, refs undoubtedly have priors about which teams are "better", "more disciplined", etc., that tip the balance in interpreting virtually identical plays. Unfortunately, the Bills have a reputation of being a mediocre, undisciplined team for some 20 years, which impacts referees' decisions on a moment-by-moment basis. Stephon Gilmore is a good example: you can see how confidently he interferes with receivers now, since he left the Bills for the Pats (I've heard claims that he is flagged as much in NE as he is with the Bills, but to my eye he also engages in much more contact with receivers.) Another example is the Cowboys only getting a sideline warning for spearing Josh on his slide rather than a flag (see the Cowboys' mic'd up highlights), whereas the current Bills would be penalized 100% for that infraction. I also remember the Bills getting away with a lot of calls in the early 90s, when they were usually considered the more "disciplined" team on the field. Implicit bias is a tough problem in refereeing, but what to do about it? I imagine that refs discuss this a lot in training, but it's pretty hard to resist something that's been burned into our brain circuits over eons of evolution! Maybe we'll have real-time machine-vision/AI solutions in the future. I have colleagues working on this now, LOL.

I think we're seeing a bit of generation divide here. To you young guys -- everybody in Bills-land loves Singletary; he could really develop into a special back. But Joe Cribbs was absolute dynamite. To my mind, he was the original dual-threat running back, presaging by a decade the Thurmon Thomas/Marshall Faulk hybrid backs. Cribbs was a shifty-smooth-strong runner with amazing hands and superb route-running skills. If a defense was foolish enough to try to cover him with a linebacker, Cribbs would absolutely kill them. The Bills had a lot of great offensive weapons in the early 80s, but Cribbs was the original "motor". That said, keep it rolling, Devin!! ? Quick edit -- lest anybody think I was shortchanging Singletary -- check highlights for his fantastic blitz-pickup block on Josh's TD pass to Cole Beasley last Sunday. Singletary totally stones the full-tilt linebacker to give Josh the clean pocket; a real veteran-looking play there.

What a great game that was! I dimly recalled that OJ was out injured that day, and "Bubby" Braxton carried the load, but OJ apparently did play (thanks for setting that straight, PUNT750). But I remember clear as day the headline of the Buffalo Evening News sports page the next day -- "Bills Dine on Red Birds". ?

You young guys out there might not realize that we lost 21 games straight to Miami -- the entire 1970s. You know how much you hate NE? That's how we felt about Miami; maybe even worse. We still owe those SOBs bigtime. So as for today, all I can say is ... NO MERCY. ?

Thanks for the careful write-up, JohnnyG -- but did the Titans really play a THAT much (much) better of a game? I was (ahem) a little older than you at the time, and I remember the game differently. Certainly the numbers don't lie: Notwithstanding the Offside calls, the Bills D completely stifled Tennessee's prolific O that day, holding them to <200 total yards while toying with McNair and limiting star Eddie George to a pedestrian 3.5 yards/carry. Those stats alone negate the "much" better game argument, IMO. But I agree about Rob Johnson; my god, he was terrible -- and terrified. Tennessee had a great pass rush, and Johnson acted like a frozen deer in the headlights. What an amazingly stupid decision to start Johnson over Flutie under those conditions; for sure Flutie would have taken better advantage of Tenn's overly aggressive edge rushers, with his ability to make plays on the run. Also the Bills criminally underused Antowain Smith, who I always thought was underrated. Smith only had 14 carries in that game (at almost 6 yards a pop!), but ripped off some big runs, and got stronger as the game wore on. But in the end the only difference that mattered was that %$#@ forward lateral. Whatever one thinks of that play, the simple truth is this -- if the Bills had been at home, they would have gotten that call!