NJBuffFan

I was hoping Fletcher would be out for this game, but it doesn't look that way. In most cases I would feel good about so many other no-name replacements filling in, but it always seems someone has a breakout game against the Bills. I still think we win it. 24-17.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/sports/No-Staycation-for-the-Jets-This-Year-132728868.html When the Jets returned from the bye week this year, they talked a lot about how rested and ready they were for a date with the Packers. Then they went out and played one of their worst games in the Rex Ryan era in a 9-0 loss to the Packers. That made it two straight post-bye losses for Ryan after a 24-22 loss to a mediocre Jags team in his first season that helped push the Jets to 4-6 and the brink of irrelevancy. The common thread between those two losses, besides the Jets playing pretty poorly each time, is that the Jets took a six-day vacation during the bye week each time. The new CBA requires four days off for every team this year, but the Jets, uncowed by history, are going the extra mile and giving the team six days off once again. They are also uncowed by the evidence that more time off isn't working out for anyone this season. Teams are 3-9 coming off the bye thus far and a good number of those teams have looked rustier than a broken-down Chrysler in their first week back in action. Last year, the loss, while painful, knocked the Jets down to 5-2 and did little to hurt their chances of making the playoffs. This year, though, the Jets return with a trip to Buffalo in a game that will likely go a long way toward deciding which of those teams makes it to the postseason later this year. That's why it feels like an unnecessary risk to throw caution to the wind and give the Jets even more time off as they prepare to play a Bills team that should be 5-2 when gametime rolls around. If that's the case and if the Jets lose, they will find themselves two games behind one of the teams they will have to beat out in order to make it to the playoffs as a Wild Card. Two games in two years with two different rosters hardly makes for an ironclad case study about the demerits of taking six days off during a bye week. It just seems that for a team with as many issues and problems as the Jets have experienced so far this season, it would make sense to spend as much time as possible addressing them now so that they won't hinder you nearly as much over the final nine weeks of the season. Beating the Chargers was a great step forward, but it hardly threw a blanket over all of the things that contributed to the three-game losing streak. Missing the opportunity to drill that into players' heads could well prove to be the reason why the Jets can't use that game as a foundation to building themselves some breathing room with the stretch approaching. Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk. Copyright NBC Local Media

I hate when they call it on one person (Quentin Jammer) and not on the other (Darrelle Revis) on very, very similar plays.

I like the sound of this. I made the mistake of perusing a Jets board yesterday and it made me angry. If the Bills need any motivation, they should just visit that site.

Well, I don't think our defense could get any worse. Next up! Let's see what they can do.

Did anyone really say that about the Giants?

Very interesting perspective. I hadn't thought of it that way. I just graduated from j-school three years ago so I'm well removed from that era of journalism.

Yes, but typically the headline writer reads the first paragraph or two so he/she would see Fitzpatrick right there. Plus, a copy editor should review the whole thing, headline and all, before it's published. I don't care if it's a bum on the street interviewed for some random story or one of this season's most productive QBs, getting someone's name right should be an absolute given. With all these mistakes, I feel like there's some internet joke that I'm not aware of.

I don't understand how, in many of these cases, they get it right in story but screw up the headline.

Can't answer that. I'm just happy it's televised down in the NYC area. Since I was at the Giants game, this is the first I'll be able to watch without going to a bar this season.

One of these things is not like the others...

The Jets very much benefited from ridiculous PI calls and an idiotic opposing coach/QB.

I had a great time at the game (minus the outcome, of course). No issues with fans except an old guy sitting behind us who was upset with the fact that I stood up during Roosevelt's TD. No Giants fans could raise too much hell or they'd have to deal with lots of Bills. I was shocked by how many of us were there.

Detroit.

These are some of the things that I miss most about Western New York.

October 14, 2011 Buffalo’s Harvard Man Posted by Reeves Wiedeman There is only one professional football team that plays home games in the state of New York, but Buffalo, and its Bills, are seven hours away from New York City by car. Buffalo natives are manically defensive of their town, and their team—but to downstaters, content to cheer the dual circus shows put on by the Jets and Giants in New Jersey, Buffalo might as well be Boise. The city doesn’t have much going for it. America’s post-industrial economy has not been kind—and the winters never are. It’s the second smallest city to maintain an N.F.L. franchise, after Green Bay—Buffalo’s population declined by ten per cent in the last decade—and the football franchise has offered mostly heartbreak. The Bills have never won a Super Bowl, and rather famously lost four in a row back in the nineties. Who could possibly save this hardscrabble outpost? A Harvard man, of course. “Can Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Brain Save Buffalo?” ESPN’s new Web site, Grantland, asked last month. Fitzpatrick is the team’s serviceable quarterback distinct for going to college not at an S.E.C. or Big Ten institution, but at a certain university just north of the Charles River. (No word on which dorm—forgive me, house—he lived in.) Since Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers were drafted, few articles have made much of the fact that the N.F.L.’s two best quarterbacks went to two of America’s finest public universities (Michigan and the California-Berkeley). But few reporters have written about the 2011 Bills without mentioning Fitzpatrick’s undergraduate education. “Harvard man Ryan Fitzpatrick has all the answers” —NBC Sports “Harvard’s Ryan Fitzpatrick gets passing grades” —USA Today “Smart choice was made; Harvard’s Fitzpatrick fits the bill in Buffalo” —The Boston Globe We get it: he’s a smart guy, with a 1350 on the S.A.T. and a forty-eight out of fifty on the Wonderlic football I.Q. test. (Cam Newton, this year’s No. 1 pick, scored a twenty-one.) Boastfulness is not limited to Cambridge, however, and the Boston College graduate in me feels the need to note that former Eagles linebacker Mike Mamula scored a forty-nine. The only perfect score did, admittedly, go to Pat McInally, a Harvard grad, but let the record show: he was a punter. More importantly, Fitzpatrick has been a pretty good quarterback, leading the Bills to a 4-1 start, though its unclear what role the Harvard faculty played in developing his quick release. (Malcolm Gladwell has written about the difficulty of predicting a quarterback’s success in pro football.) He has helped make the Bills not only an uplifting underdog story, but a particularly entertaining one. Their defense has been terrible—worse than all but two N.F.L. teams—but the offense has been prolific—better, again, than all but two. Only the Patriots, worst and second-best in those categories, have had more disparate levels of success on each side of the ball. On Sunday, Fitzpatrick will bring his economics degree south to MetLife Stadium to face Eli Manning (Ole Miss, marketing, 3.44 G.P.A.). The Giants are favored by three. The over/under figure on how many times the announcers mention Fitzpatrick’s undergraduate institution is considerably higher. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/10/ryan-fitzpatrick-buffalo-bills.html#ixzz1amaQTCH6

Our injuries are troubling, but the Giants are pretty banged up too.

I haven't really looked at the board - just in the thread that I pulled that quote from. I've been checking out http://boards.giants.com/forums/4/ShowForum.aspx and http://corner.bigblueinteractive.com/index.php

Maybe we're looking at different sites because I have not seen many that are in awe of the Bills.

I hope we kill them. "The Bills are a media myth right now. Were the Bills and Lions to play the score would be 44-10. The Lions have a real defense the Lions have a real QB, The Lions have a great receiver and all the Bills have is a good coach. " the Bills play with intensity " think how silly that sounds, if I dressed you up in football gear and threw you out the tunnel in Orchturd park with those rabid starved fans you'd be intense too."

Hoping for a big win; thinking we can pull off something close. Maybe 31-27. Living in Giants country, I'm sick of what I've heard over the past couple days: - The (league-leading) INTs found the Bills more than the Bills found the ball - Fitzpatrick is a VERY average QB who can't sustain winning - Someone even said they watched the Patriots game were in no way "impressed with the Bills play" (Right, because every team picks off one of the game's greatest QBs four times.)

It's a quick train ride from Hoboken, and the majority of people out that early on a Sunday morning in Hoboken are headed to the game. Look forward to seeing some Bills fans mixed in that crowd!

I don't think they have much of a running game especially without Jacobs. Not sure if he's playing or not. Over 5 games they're averaging 83.8 rushing yards which is 27th is the league. Against Seattle, they averaged 2.8 yards per run.

I'll be there (my first game away from RWS)! Really, really hoping for a win especially since I'll be with Giants fans who have been talking crap all season.

They're going to lose, that's to be expected. I just hope one of those losses isn't against the Giants. That will be my first Bills game outside RWS. I'm tailgating with all Giants fans, many of whom have talked a big game even as the past few weeks have progressed. I would love to crush them.