Mickey

Exactly. But here we go, getting all steamed up about that immature, greedy football player just because he is doing what anyone else would do in managing their own business affairs.

Yeah, he should be proud to play for less than he is worth on the free market because that is the way everyone else does it. That's why Wegmans lets me pay 20% below market value on Oreos and the good folks at Honda knocked a couple grand off the price of my brand new Honda Fit, you know, just to be nice. Wealthy businesses are like that, its not about money, they just want to help. But people are always getting all greedy on them. It's a shame.

I know, freedom, it sucks doesn't it?

To this day I think there was some sort of back room thing happening that led to Gary Anderson going to Pittsburgh. I watched him play at SU and the guy was a machine, he just didn't miss. When we drafted him, it was well known that there was going to be a strike that year. That put some pressure on rookies to sign their contracts in a hurry or they would have to wait until after the strike to get paid. Anderson's negotiation was reported at the time to have embittered him as he felt the Bills were using the possibility of a strike unfairly. He finally did sign, late, and then came into camp and proceeded to miss every kick he took, even the short ones. He was just awful. The Bills gave up on him and cut him and Pittsburgh couldn't sign him fast enough. He started for them immediately and miraculously recovered his skills. I think his agent worked out something with the Steelers and all Anderson had to do was to make sure the Bills cut him. I'll never believe that a kicker that good could suffer such a convenient and short term loss of ability nor that a team would sigh a rookie kicker who had been a disaster in camp to be their starter so quickly and with no back up plan if his skills didn't miraculously return.

Are the Titans looking to lead the league in fumbles and incompletions?

I have been laughing all day at this but the truth is, I'd much rather we played the Jets with Gino at QB than just about any other QB in the league. An injury to Gino is the best thing that could have happened to them.

You have to ask yourself, would a just God, an omniscient, omnipotent God allow the Patriots to win so many championships?

"Il ne faut pas vendre la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tue." "Don't sell the bearskin before they've killed the bear."

I think of it more as the Fox News of football analysis but to each his own.

As the report concludes, Brady's story is just not plausible. He told the NFL he didn't know who McNally was, yet the guy has been working for the Pats for 32 years, his nick name is "the deflator" and Brady gave him lots of swag. He also told the NFL he wasn't familiar with the rule regarding footballs yet he was part of the group that lobbied for the rule change to let teams prepare their own balls, has been a QB in this league forever and admittedly requested that his footballs be inflated at the lowest allowable pressure. Further, the notion that a couple of locker room yahoos would, entirely on their own, decide to mess with the tools of St. Tom's trade is ludicrous. No way in hell they do this on their own. The reason they deflated the balls was because someone wanted them to deflate the balls. And who could that someone be? The one person for whom inflation of the balls matters most, the QB.

"great player"?! "franchise quality"?! He has had 3 years to earn some snaps on a team desperate for a QB and hasn't managed to get it done. He will probably be in camp this year which means he will get one more chance to show he can play. At this point in his career, that is as much as he can ask for.

Harvey Johnson 2-23-1. The man was a legend, the patron saint of incompetence.

Accuracy is the big one. If a QB can't do that, no matter how good his other skills might be, he won't succeed. Though optimistic, I have a wait and see attitude about how we are going to be successful running the ball and throwing screens and slants all day. An argument can be made that the biggest problem this offense has had is the inability to stretch the field. Runs and short passes leave your offense easier to defend because it is one dimensional. That kind of game plan relies heavily on the line's ability to open holes in the run game even against defenses geared to stop the run. That is difficult to do with a top notch line and however our line might improve, I have my doubts that we are going to go from the bottom of the league in run blocking to the top due to Richie Incognito, the only real change to last year's line made so far. With Rex and the aggressive offseason we have had, its hard not to be optimistic. The offseason isn't over, the draft is still ahead of us and we do have some young talent on the line with potential. Never mind for now the old saw about how "potential will get you fired". The offensive talent may simply have reached a critical mass of talent. Mediocrity at one or two line positions might not mean all that much with all the talent at the skill positions. Its not as if every decent OL in the league has all stars at every position.

My understanding is that they are going to use the game to experiment with the "open bar concept" instead of the usual concession stands. It will be a real treat for the fans and make marketing the tickets so much easier.

EJ's problem is that he simply is not accurate. Especially on deep routes. Time after time he throws passes that aren't even close enough for the WR to make a circus catch. We are not going to be able to run the ball no matter who is on the line and regardless of who our running back is if the defense can ignore the deep third of the field. There is no point in having the best WR's in the league if the passes are 10 yards out of bounds or 5 yards behind them. It doesn't matter what other skills a QB has if he can't be consistently accurate. I'll take a short guy, an average armed guy, a slow footed guy, any QB as long as he is accurate beyond 15 yards and is at least average at reading defenses.

How dare you point out that the OL is a potential problem if they don't vastly improve? You are scaring the unicorns.

I would love to believe we are going to shock the entire league. But if we do, it will be because of our defense and not because our offense is some sort of mesmerizing, record setting scoring machine that absolutely can not, will not, be stopped. I don't know many examples of offenses that set the league on fire with an offensive line as shaky as ours and a quarterback with a 48-43 life time record. And given our 9-7 finish last year, I don't expect to be able to be sneaking up on anyone this year. The post asked how it is this offense would be defended. Apparently, any answer other than "it can't" means you are a cloud of negativity ruining everyone's party.

Yeah, exactly. They will concentrate on shutting down the run, screens, short crossers etc. and make the offense beat them deep banking on the OL not being able to provide that much time and the QB's not being able to hit targets beyond 15-20 yards with any consistency.

Exactly, people are making way too much of that phrase. What Rex said at his introductory presser was: "Are we going to do ground and pound? Yeah. You're darn right we are. Are we going to throw it? Yeah, we got Sammy Watkins outside, why wouldn't we throw it?" Now you can add: "Yeah, we got Sammy Watkins, Percy Harvin and Charles Clay, why wouldn't we throw it?" We aren't going to run or throw with any success if we don't fix the OL. Fortunately that should be easier to do than finding a franchise QB.

You can't play design your way out of the need for blocking. They tried to sign Bulaga which is encouraging and hopefully they are not done.

Of course he can't hit the broadside of a barn but the problem isn't his arm, the damn barn is too small.

Henderson rated out as one of the worst tackles in the league, 54th out of 56. Glenn finished at 24th and Wood, 17th out of 29 rated centers. Grading the Bills: Offensive Line. The guards were even worse.

I don't know that I would consider either of them an upgrade but at the same time, given the new scheme Rex and Roman are likely to use for this offense, Chandler's skills are not as valuable as they would be in a different scheme and his shortcomings are all the more glaring. He is not a good run blocker and draws way too many holding flags. An offense planning to hand the ball off to Shady McCoy for 2/3's of the game and that has plenty of OL trouble already, just can't afford to have a TE who can't run block without drawing a holding flag.

I totally agree that Sharpe deserves to be in the HOF. However, your concern about Sharpe doesn't really impact the questions being asked as to whether Willis deserves consideration for the HOF. It is a valid issue as to when Willis deserves consideration but not as to whether he deserves consideration at all. The only relevant question about the HOF as between Willis and Sharpe is which one deserves to get in the HOF first? As for the specific question regarding Willis and his "short" career, I think that he deserves to make it at some point. I may be a bit biased though as he was my hope for our first round pick in 2007. I still remember pacing around my living room as our pick came closer and closer and he was still on the board. The 'Niners had the last pick before the Bills and sure enough, they took him. We took Lynch and then traded up in the second round to take Poz. I have always believed that we would have taken Willis instead of Lynch if he had been available given that we traded up for much less talented LB in the very next round. It was one of those near misses with long term consequences that you look back on and just shake your head. Both Lynch and Poz were soon playing for someone else while Willis has been a beast for 8 years.

I think he has a skill set that is uniquely suited to the modern game. A LB that is disruptive against the run, has the coverage skills of a strong safety and a penchant for violence is a perfect match for the way the game is played. McCoy is special and if we can get a good line in front of him, he will get the job done and the trade will end up being a win-win situation. I have been watching the tape on all of McCoy's carries on game-rewind and he is amazing to watch. He also has had some really nice holes to run through and one of the few mediocre seasons he has had was when there were injuries to the offensive line. In 2012, they lost four out of five starters on the line and McCoy ran for only 840 yard on the season. Not bad given that he missed 4 games due to a concussion but still, for him, it was a bad year. I realize its not exactly breaking news to suggest that no matter how good he is, not even a runner as talented as McCoy can make plays behind a weak OL. I gotta believe that as active as the Bills have been this offseason that they are going to address the OL situation beyond the addition of Incognito.