DJasper Probincrux III

Not to put too fine a point on it, we set a team record for sacks, drafted no worse than the 2nd best rookie in the draft, signed the best UDFA, and had the #2 running game in the league. And we won exactly the same number of games as the year before when we had none of those things. And the same as the year before that. The Bills have had one winning record since their last playoff appearance, not coincidentally that is also the only year of those that they outscored their opponents over the course of the season. Our defenses have gone up and down in quality, we've had a quality running back or backs the ENTIRE 14 years. We've had decent WRs most of the time. What we've lacked and continue to lack is a QB. Fix that problem and everything can change, until then it's shuffling the deck chairs.

I completely agree the league has made it impossible to win without solid QB play. There is simply no point in drafting anything else UNTIL you have the guy you can build around for 15 years as your centerpiece.

Delete Georgia insert Tennessee and you've got the criticism of Peyton Manning coming out. Murray's not Manning but someone is going to get a massive bargain because he's smaller than people would like and coming off the knee. Watch Hoody snag him.

I fought it for a long time but there's something fun about writing a good or clever Tweet and then having it retweeted by someone fairly important with alot of followers. Not to LAMP but I've been RT by Rich Eisen, Thurman Thomas, Jim Rome amongst others. Not often mind you but it's cool when it happens. I find the #BillsMafia people to be very cool. I'm an English teacher (cue snarky posts about my lack of proofreading and poor sentence structure) so I assure you that I lament the demise of the language as much as you do and I agree that it's nice to have a venue to craft an actual piece of written expression. So long as you realize that it's only us fairly old guys who pine for that it's cool.

On a more practical note, I think some of the utility of the site has diminished over the years. There are several reasons for this IMO. When I first started coming here in the late 90's I had no access to local news on the Bills. The internet was a completely different place and TBD served as my home page for many years. One reason my click count has dropped is Twitter. I used to come here to catch the breaking news and good gossipy scuttlebutt. Now Twitter does all of that and though it also has it's share of crap I get my fix quickly and can fire off responses just as quickly that I know people see even if they don't answer. The second reason for my decrease in visits frankly is the decline in local reporting. I can't remember the last story that any of the local media broke. EVERYTHING has come out first through other, national, sources that I can follow on Twitter easily. The local reporting has devolved into something much more akin to blogs; opinion and snarkiness particularly from Sullivan. There is a place for that type of content but honestly it's not what I want out of my news reporters. If I want that content there are a myriad of other places I can go to get it without submitting to a paywall or clearing my cache weekly. I've made a specific effort NOT to read Sullivan and Graham this year and I've blocked them on my Twitter so they can't pollute my timelines. I feel like I've missed out on absolutely nothing by taking that step. Not one thing. That content, which is now lacking, used to be the lifeblood of site traffic. Now it's gone and TBD doesn't have to be my homepage anymore. With regards to the level of discourse here, that too has been negatively impacted by Twitter. It used to be that people would write well thought out posts with decent facts and research and stimulate actual discussion. That takes time and effort and it's very frustrating when people take your effort and only contribute to throw feces either at it or you. Don't get me wrong, I get that on Twitter as well at times. This week I had a guy make up a couple of accounts and make it his mission to tell me in repeated fashions that he wanted to rape me in front if my kids in response to some tweets I had written that were critical and questioning of EJ Manuel. The difference for me is that I didn't think twice about repeatedly blocking the guy and going about my business whereas here I felt more personal attachment to and it was more frustrating to have nonsensical personal attacks on completely reasonable posts. Given the effort that I used to put into some of those posts it stopped being worth it. The people I wanted to talk to were drowned out by the morons. The Shoutbox is such a mixed blessing. I really enjoy the instant feedback but it too has become dominated by a few people who it seems have made it their mission to own the Shoutbox. I liken it to the old IRC chat room days where you'd have people who's only interest was dominating the chat room, not actually contributing anything. Like I said, I've been here in some form for a really long time and I've had a couple thousand posts over that time. I've had Twitter less than a year and I've already got as many tweets as I have total posts here in 14-15 years. Sadly I think TBD is a buggy whip factory. It's a really good buggy whip factory so it's lasting longer than the other inferior ones but in the end it's getting swallowed by other formats.

Given who they hired he was right to be pissed.

I see what you did there.

Yeah.

Myself. I used to come here a lot to read, post, whatever over a number of different logins over time as I'd forget the passwords or kill email addresses. Now? Not so much. There are several other people who I miss reading here as well. Lori mostly.

Or Shamarko Thomas' concussion history.

At some point the blame shifts from the shyster to the suckers who keep buying the products. I think we're well past that. Russ comes out and says words to the effect of we want to get out of Toronto deal but you guys need to buy more tickets then they throw up that disgusting bag of vomit on Sunday. If you felt even remotely encouraged by Russ this week you are a fool and should feel as such. They'll pass out paddle balls instead...in lieu of other things...

The corndogs are the perfect Bills promotion. They'd never have to actually pay out.

Today was a perfect illustration for me. All of my fantasy football teams had a bye and the Bills game was over by 1:30. Without the Bills to watch I didn't watch anything else and frankly didn't miss it. That wouldn't have happened even 5 years ago. The NFL sucks right now and it's just going to get worse.

We'd also have swept them head-to-head which is the first tie breaker. It's not too far fetched to come up with a scenario where the Bills can clinch a spot after week 16 with the NE game becoming moot. Cincy over SD is critical this weekend, Indy over TN is also up there based on remaining schedule. TN with only 7 losses is a problem since they'd have a tie breaker over us. TN with 8 losses makes a lot of 3 way tie scenarios that we lose. Basically, all 3 and 4 way tie situations are bad for us. TN, OAK, SD, Miami, NYJ, Baltimore, and PIT can all make them for us - we want ALL of them to end up with 9 losses or more. We are big Miami fans right now. We strongly want them to win on Sunday and then again next week vs. Pittsburgh.

I look at this game as the sort of game where the Bills just curl up and die. Ugly weather, physical team, key players out, bye week next week. Crazy as it sounds they aren't quite dead yet for the playoffs - a win this week gets them within 2 of the Jets with a completely feasible path to 8-7 in front of them (with a 4-6 conference record and tie breakers over at least miami, baltimore, and probably the jets by that point if it shakes out that way). The other teams ahead of them who might have a shot at a WC have at least 3 or 4 conference losses as well and all of them have very difficult schedules ahead and/or play each other multiple times. Basically, if the Bills win Sunday and hold serve in the games they should win after the bye the field will come back to them. If they lose this week it's virtually impossible for them to pass the Jets and get enough conference wins to have a half a chance in a tie breaker against anyone else so they'd be done, not officially yet, but the math would get truly ridiculous. Unfortunately, the Bills are 0-799 in these "If they can win this week they have a shot" games, including the last 2 weeks.

Contacting them now is just to put them on notice that "Hey, we're paying attention now fellas" As for Toronto being held against us, the LEAGUE loves that we're playing there, at least they should, so holding that as a negative in scheduling would be silly. I don't care for the timing of the communication either but this has gone on for so long that I agree there is no way it's accidental. The schedule is supposed to be developed to give poor teams the easiest schedules - that's why bottom teams play other bottom teams, but when you manipulate the dates that way it completely undoes that competitive balance that was supposed to be established.

That game was over as soon as they decided to have a rookie QB who hadn't played in a month throw horizontally repeatedly in important down and distances on a windy day against a team who prides itself on running confusing fire zone defenses...so basically Wednesday.

unless you're someone who doesnt run around a lot...like a field goal kicker. Not to mention you'd want to play into the perception of unpleasantness as much as possible. I'm quite sure that if the press box was on the other side we'd hear half as much crap about it being cold.

To me he looked tentative out there, like he wasn't sure of what he was seeing. His delivery was very slow, slower than I recall seeing. He LOOKED like he was trying to be careful. Honestly, except for the 1 disastrous throw, the kid had a pretty good day. He's not the next coming or anything but I've seen teams #4 QBs look a lot worse. I know he threw the ball and that SJ was open but to ask the kid to make that play in that spot was pretty foolish. The play calling in that whole goalline sequence was marginal at best. Pretty unimaginative. Wasn't a fan of the 4th down pass call either and again Graham was open. In that spot I'm either kicking the long FG or playing field position knowing my defense was playing well. I see where Hackett was coming from wanting to be aggressive but I felt it was a poorly chosen time for it.

In his statistically best season, 1990, Bruce had 19 sacks. 4 of them came against playoff teams. 2 against Houston (9-7 WC) and 2 against Philadelphia (10-6 WC). The rest came against Indianapolis (7-9), NY Jets (6-10), Denver (5-11), Phoenix (5-11), and New England (1-15).

And again, the sample sizes aren't even close to equal. But Smith averaged .788 sacks per game as a Bill. Williams is averaging .891 FWIW - Smith didn't have a sack vs. Miami (hence Marino, primary nemesis of the day) in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, or 1995. He had a total of 15 against Miami in his career, less than any other team in the AFC East by a lot. I don't recall hearing him skewered over that really ever.

I'm not comparing the two because one is a HoFer and one is still playing but I really don't remember people dissecting Bruce Smith's games this way. I really don't. He wasn't lights out every week. Far from it.

Underrated part of the strip sack. Jerry Hughes absolutely destroyed Daniel Thomas on that play. Got him up in the air and basically threw him into Tannehill's lap so he had no escape route. I know the Bills only had 2 sacks today but they did and EXCELLENT job of keeping Tannehill contained so he couldn't hurt them with his legs.

How many pages can we get into about pom poms??? WOOO!

this is the kind of stuff where the local "journalists" piss me off. Who are we bringing in? Got a source with the team? Anyone? Didn't think so. Go back to jerking each other off on twitter.