BarleyNY

Wow! Thanks for posting. That was the best sports article I've read in a very long time. I honestly didn't think SI was capable of a story like this. It's good to know that the NFL's influence still has its limits.

Agreed. During the whole brawl mess the smartest thing Shady did was keep his mouth shut.

Speaking of which - I thought the Jags gig was supposed to be for just the one season. Seems like maybe the market for his Head Coaching services was a tad weaker than he expected.

The NFL changed the Designated To Return rules for this season. Teams no longer need to make the designation at the time they place the player on IR. They still can only bring back only one player, but now they can wait until they are ready to bring someone back before stating who it will be. So Bell could still play this season.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/06/02/fitzpatrick-impasse-is-a-matter-of-perspective/ This is surprisingly good rationale of the current impasse from PFT. In short,

These points are exactly correct - and the most relevant. I was excited to see Rex hired because I thought he'd keep the defense rolling. He didn't. Regardless of the reasons, those were the results and they weren't acceptable. He's lost my confidence and its in him to earn it back. He's got a plan to do that, which is a lot better than planning on doing the same thing. The plan is to run "his defense" entirely this year. That's not what I'd like to hear. Visions of a lot of square pegs and round holes immediately pop into my head. What I'd liked to have heard was that he was going to tailor his defense to the talent available. The best coaches are good enough to do that. But it's on him to improve the defense and to chose the path to do so. It's certainly conceivable that Ryan's defense is comprehensive enough to effectively utilize the talent on the roster. But the defense that he chose to run last season was a significant regression from prior seasons under Schwartz. That doesn't make me hopeful, but bringing up the number of zone blitzes and speculating on the number next season is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It's just a tiny piece of the puzzle and it might not stand alone well. The defense's performance showed us that he didn't utilize the talent nearly as well as it had been utilized. He got his Mulligan. The honeymoon is over. His bravado is looking more and more hollow without results to back it up. He's got this season and next - at most - to do what he's told us over and over he can do. I'm definitely in "show me" mode now though.

RIP, "bad" man. I remember a reporter recounting what happened after he won the world championship for the first time. He said that Ali was standing by himself on a dock looking out at the water. The journalists did not approach him, but just let him have his moment alone - something the reporter noted would never happen today. After a little while Ali came over to the reporters and simply said, "You have no idea what this means to me."

I guess you could give Elway credit for building the team in Denver and making it a place Peyton wanted to come and play. He's done a great job of putting together a quality roster - and that isn't easy. That's a big difference between the Broncos and Colts. The Colts were smart in tanking the season that gave them Luck, but they haven't been any good at building the team around him.

Always remember the Manning Rule: Mannings play where Mannings want to play.

Yeah, it seems like the two sides are tracking to a 3 year deal with 2 voidable years at about $12M for the one season.

http://buffalofambase.org/2016/02/16/jerry-hughes/ This is definitely worth the read. It's a pretty good breakdown of Hughes' last season and some differences from 2014. After reading this it's awfully difficult to blame any defensive setbacks last year on him. Other than too many penalties he did have an excellent season.

Exactly! Outstanding!

Dammit. Was hoping Costco was moving forward with their Buffalo store. WTF is taking that so long?

Agreed. Dalton at 13 over Flacco at 15? Also ridiculous. Some other pretty bad errors too.

You know who gets labeled "injury prone"? Guys who try to come back from injury too quickly and keep getting hurt. Take your time and get right, Sammy.

That true, but much like the government it's often a lot nicer to have them around to complain about (even with their myriad faults) than not around at all. I hate what ESPN has become, but they pay the NFL a lot of money. Here is a couple articles worth reading: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-27/why-espn-pays-four-times-more-for-nfl-games-than-nbc-cbs-and-fox http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/12/17/billions-of-dollars-through-tv-deals-coupled-with-cba-means-huge-windfall-for-nfl-players/#c34f1a0224d7 So here is the basic issue: - ESPN's (stupid) contract with the NFL pays an average of $1.9B per season. - The CBA guarantees the players 55% of national TV revenues (maybe their only concession this time around). - That works out to about $32.6M per team per season on average toward the salary cap. That's for the length of the contract. - ESPN pays over 4 times what other networks pay per viewer for NFL games. If they paid the going rate, each team's salary cap would be reduced by over $24M per season (on average). I don't see ESPN folding, but I could see them filing Chapter 11 at some point to get out of this and other deals. The NFL could sell those rights to some other network, but probably at a much lower price. The NFL has been growing at an amazing pace. The salary cap was growing by 8% on average - and that was before this year's big jump. I just don't think that kind of growth is sustainable under current operating practices. The NFL isn't going to want to see a shockwave of a cap (and profit) reduction come through and they'd definitely try to stave that off, but I'd wonder how. International games or teams are very possible. So is an extended season. Pay per view maybe, but that has to coexist withor replace DirectTV's deal. Heck, they could put advertising on jerseys. I don't know, but I do expect to see them get creative in regards to increasing revenue. Thank you. If I watch ESPN it's to catch a game or highlights usually. If I'm driving I'll listen to Mike and Mike or whatever is on sometimes. Or more often the NFLN station. I have Sirius. I'm thinking that NFL Replay might be the way to go. I didn't get it last year cause they really raised the price. But I can watch replays of every game, including the ones where all the filler between snaps is cut out. Plus All 22s are available.

Exactly! And don't forget Women's Beach Volleyball!

When ESPN started they used to broadcast stuff like Australian Rules Football late at night. That was a blast to watch. They'd be way better if they'd go back to that kind of thing rather than doubling down on Hot Takes!

I posted this as a reply in another thread but thought it'd be worth discussing separately. I read an article about ESPN's problems almost a year ago. By the end of last year Disney (ESPN's parent company) was one of the most shorted stocks on the NYSE. It is all due to ESPN dragging it down as the Disney business is doing very well. It is why ESPN nixed their new, big, expensive NYC studio and office project. It is also why they've been letting their expensive personalities walk. Cost cutting is severe and ongoing. The situation is basically this: - ESPN has spent a lot of money on long term sporting event contracts. That includes dramatically overpaying for their NFL contract and several expensive college contracts. The strategy was to make ESPN indispensable to sports fans. - ESPN has used this leverage to charge quite a lot for their channels. That's not just profit as the above has driven their expenses through the roof. The flagship station is the most expensive non-premium station on cable/dish. Collectively their stations are a disproportionately huge part of your cable/dish bill. - In 2014 ESPN cost cable providers (not customers) $6.04/month. The median price of a station was 14¢. 2018 estimates are that ESPN will cost $8.37/month. http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/how-much-cable-subscribers-pay-per-channel-1626/ - The expense is pretty reasonable if you love sports, but sucks if you don't. And most people don't. Many of those people - along with those who can't afford the ever growing cable bills - are cutting the cord. - ESPN is retaining most of the people who love sports, but they've lost some of them along with a lot of casual viewers - Fewer cable subscribers sends less direct revenue to ESPN and fewer viewers equates to less advertising revenue. The cycle of revenue loss leading to cost cutting is continuing as more and more people cut the cord. But those expensive long-term contracts ESPN signed are still in place and they are dragging the network under. Soon there won't be much more to cut. ESPN is already becoming the network of "hot takes" because they've cut out so much of their more expensive good programming. As a sports lover I can say honestly that the only reason I haven't cut the cord is sports, but I really only care about games - college football and the NFL primarily. Something major is going to happen with ESPN and how sports programming reaches viewers in the coming few years. This could go a number of ways, but it has to change. I'm sitting here wondering how this is affecting everyone else and how you are all reacting. Personally, if I could get NFL Sunday ticket a la carte I'd probably cut the cord. I might soon anyway. We pretty much just watch sports (80-90% football), FoodNetwork, HGTV, Comedy Central and regular network programming (ABC/NBC/CBS). We have Netflix and Prime and use those sometimes.

That's correct. I read an article about this almost a year ago. By the end of last year Disney (ESPN's parent company) was one of the most shorted stocks on the NYSE. It is all due to ESPN dragging it down as the Disney business is doing very well. It is why ESPN nixed their new, big, expensive NYC studio and office project. It is also why they've been letting their expensive personalities walk. Cost cutting is severe and ongoing. The situation is basically this: - ESPN has spent a lot of money on long term sporting event contracts. That includes dramatically overpaying for their NFL contract and several expensive college contracts. The strategy was to make ESPN indispensable to sports fans. - ESPN has used this leverage to charge quite a lot for their channels. That's not just profit as the above has driven their expenses through the roof. The flagship station is the most expensive non-premium station on cable/dish. Collectively their stations are a disproportionately huge part of your cable/dish bill. - The expense is pretty reasonable if you love sports, but sucks if you don't. And most people don't. Many of those people - along with those who can't afford the ever growing cable bills - are cutting the cord. - ESPN is retaining most of the people who love sports, but they've lost some of them along with a lot of casual viewers - Fewer cable subscribers sends less direct revenue to ESPN and fewer viewers equates to less advertising revenue. The cycle of revenue loss leading to cost cutting is continuing as more and more people cut the cord. But those expensive long-term contracts ESPN signed are still in place and they are dragging the network under. Soon there won't be much more to cut. ESPN is already becoming the network of "hot takes" because they've cut out so much of their more expensive good programming. As a sports lover I can say honestly that the only reason I haven't cut the cord is sports, but I really only care about games - college football and the NFL primarily. Something major is going to happen with ESPN and how sports programming reaches viewers in the coming few years. This could go a number of ways, but it has to change.

This. A coach has to think he has a reasonable opportunity to win.m Buffalo can offer a better opportunity than some other teams. There aren't a lot of HC openings on stocked teams that just went 12-4.

I am very surprised that Carolina didn't keep him under the tag - or at least have his agent look to negotiate a trade and contract with another team. Carolina did make a big mistake here. You can't lose a player like Norman and come away with nothing.

LMAO! Outstanding.

There was speculation, but nothing concrete on that. I would never have expected Schwartz to take the DC spot under Ryan - or any other defensive minded HC. That's why I specified a quality offensive minded HC. Seeing as how he took a job as DC under an offensive HC in Philly I think it's certainly probable he'd have stayed in Buffalo under Gase or Jackson. Also there were reports that the Bills were planning on retaining Schwartz, but that plan went out the window with the hire of Rex. An OC moving up to HC fits nicely with that.

That's doubly disturbing. First, they're still playing a Pro Bowl. Second, it's in Orlando.