The Frankish Reich

The emotional lottery ticket is a feature, not a bug! It's entertainment, not life! There's no good reason why I commit to spending 3.5 hours every Sunday to watch a bunch of guys who have little or no connection to the city of my birth tug on a uniform with a stylized bison on it and pretend to be playing for the honor of Buffalo and all of Western New York. There's more reason for me to go to my kids' high school games - I actually know these kids and their families and enjoy seeing them do well. And I know they're really good kids and families, whereas if I'm a Raiders fan I might spend my time hoping that a moral abomination like Henry Ruggs succeeds on the field of play. It's a game, it's a contrived emotional connection that works for me even though I know deep down it's not exactly the most important thing to spend my time thinking about. I remember (kind of) the Dolphins' 1972 perfect season. It was kind of a boring team, and if the fans of that team are honest, they'd have told you there wasn't much excitement in watching that season unfold. Super Bowl parades are kind of fun, but really, not as fun as people make them out to be (I went to a couple when I lived in other cities that actually won Super Bowls.) You stand around in the cold and get a glimpse of some guys on a truck waving. Super Bowl parades are not what makes being a fan fun. Not knowing what's going to happen week by week is what makes being a fan fun.

Of course it all depends on what salary commitment you’d be taking on, but … … at some point, good teams (the Bills) need to get used to doing what good teams do, and that sometimes means taking a flyer on a very talented malcontent. The Pats did it many times (Moss at the time, a short lived experiment with AB, etc), the Bucs are doing it now, etc, etc. When that winning character is established you can afford to take the occasional chance on a guy like Beckham. And you need to take a few chances to get that little extra that may just mean the difference in the playoffs. In other words, I’d love to see him come to Buffalo.

Re: "turnover worthy throws" Yes, measures like this are imprecise. Someone needs to watch video and make a judgement call. But ... that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. The new age of defensive stats in baseball caused a sea change in how the game is played and how rosters are constructed. The best measures (we don't have many baseball fans here; those that are can check fangraphs for a player and scroll down to "advanced defensive stats") divide the field into zones and determine which fielders turn more (or less) batted balls into outs than others. Crude old defensive stats like fielding percentage include a huge element of luck - the same kind of luck that results in a poorly thrown football NOT being intercepted, or a well thrown pass bouncing off a receiver's hands and turning into an interception. You better believe all good NFL teams analyze these things in house and coaches rely on them in player evaluation.

Fair enough. I think maybe you misunderstood the focus of my comment. It was more intended to point out how perceptions change. The Bills of 2018 were generally regarded as a team that was doing a rebuild all wrong. They wouldn't even call it a rebuild; it was a "process." They didn't follow what was becoming the model: tear it down completely, bottom out, go 2-14 or something, get the first pick (and tons of other picks), then wait 3 years for all that new talent to gel. The Houston Astros, the Cleveland Browns, etc. But it worked. I'm just surprised at how quickly Bills fans are ready to ridicule, say, the Jags (we'll see that a lot this weekend) when the rest of the NFL thought the same of us after Week 1 just 3 years ago.

Yep. With the value of hindsight, it's all so obvious. We got the right Josh, and the right guy. Good scouting, good player development, patience ... it all paid off. But let's be honest: there's an element of luck there too ...

Well, no, not right away. It's easy to forget how dysfunctional things were at the start of the McBeane regime. A quick reminder: Pulling Tyrod to start Peterman (5 INTs!) even though the team was ostensibly in the playoff hunt at the time. Getting stuck with no veteran backup when Tyrod got hurt and having to start Peterman again (snow game, incredibly a 100 passer rating - maybe he needs snow to shine! - then coming up lame), then getting stuck with punt returner "package guy" Joe Webb as the emergency QB forced into action when we were ostensibly still in the playoff hunt. And then the next year, not carrying any veteran QB after McCarron was nearly killed behind what was the worst offensive line unit I have ever seen. Starting Peterman again, again, this time by choice, not by necessity (0.00 passer rating, 5 for 18, 24 yards, 2 picks, 3 sacks). Rushing Josh into action - remember, it'll ruin him! Vontae Davis walking out of the locker room and straight into his car at halftime. Trading away bad contracts (a sensible plan) and then trading FOR Kelvin Benjamin (what?). Getting stuck with no veteran backup and having to play Peterman YET AGAIN (6 for 12, 61 yards, 2 INTs) when Allen got hurt. Then having to sign Derek Anderson off the street (disaster). Then having to sign Matt Barkley off the street (actually worked ... Jets). It was ... a dumpster fire. A train wreck. They were in over their heads. They had a mysterious "process" that somehow involved acquiring fat gimpy WRs and repeatedly playing the worst rated QB in NFL history. And then suddenly it all worked out ...

Well said. It really is amazing - historically awful when he played, but that somehow, paradoxically, seemed like a selling point for him. And I kind of hope he gets picked up by another NFL team. Don't let the dream die!

And the Carlyle Group M&A guy with the Harvard MBA and a net worth of $440 million is our newest populist anti-elitist leader in the clubhouse!

You will be eating crow when I zoom you from my first class bullet train seat whisking me from historic Bakersfield, home of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, to Merced, home of the forgotten boondoggle UC Campus that that 1020 SAT got you into, all in just over an hour and a half. Zoom will still be a thing in 2035, right?

Sorry, you just don't understand what's going on in my state. The governor wasn't "withholding a treatment method." He is stepping in to try to ensure distribution of that treatment method as Colorado - out of sync with much of the country - is seeing rising COVID cases. I didn't like Polis as a congressman, and I'm not thrilled overall with him as a governor. But in general we've hit a pretty solid middle ground here between COVID restrictions and an attempt to maintain normal life, and I have to give him a fair degree of credit for that.

True. Sometimes you do need to hit bottom to start clawing your way back up ....

Reasons I voted for Joe Biden: 1. He is not Donald Trump. 1A. He is not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. 1 still applies. 1A is questionable. He should pay attention.

Amen. I don't live in Virginia, so I'm not sure how I would have voted if their gubernatorial election directly impacted me. But ... sometimes it takes a good whipping for the party in power to be dragged back toward the middle. I happen to believe that the post-1994 Bill Clinton administration came closest to hitting the spot where most Americans live. Maybe we can see something like that happen again?

By “Trump on the ticket” do you mean a Trump-JFK Jr ticket? Or will it be JFK Jr on top? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/11/02/qanon-supporters-gather-in-downtown-dallas-expecting-jfk-jr-to-reappear/%3FoutputType%3Damp hey, has anyone spotted a Deranged Rhino in Dallas lately?

https://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/32528020/bettor-wins-125k-mike-white-career-week OK, which TBD poster mysteriously started posting from the Lanai Four Seasons today??

You’ve hit on something that’s always bothered me in the law. We like to think we are punishing behavior: driving 90 mph in a 55 zone while drunk at the same day/night shouldn’t be treated differently just because a car happens to change lanes in front of Drunk A but not in front of Drunk B. That’s equal parts punishing bad acts and bad luck. Of course, that doesn’t mean Drunk A shouldn’t do serious time; to me it means that we treat lucky Drunk B far too leniently.

It’s essential now. No one drinks more than the British yet they have a drunk driving rate that is negligible compared to us. Why? The penalties are severe. We’ve made strides in the USA, but it’s still not enough.

Unfortunately for someone who spends way, way too much on a tricked out green corvette, driving it - whether drunk or sober, and typically too fast - is the whole point. In the RB trade thread the name of Melvin Gordon came up. He signed a $16 million contract (almost all guaranteed) last year and then picked up a DUI pretty close to my home. If I had a spare 5 million or so you better believe I’d have a personal driver on call 24/7. But that’s not how young athletes think. It’s time they started.

There’s a saying in politics, but it’s true in sports too: “The party (team) in power is always smug and arrogant; the party (team) not in power is always insane.” Let’s be honest: the Pats did cheat a little, but their dominance over us (and the rest of the NFL) did make us all a little nuts. Everything was unfair, a cheat, rigged by the NFL. and we hated their arrogance. Just say the names: Brady. Welker. Gronk. Edelman. Haha. The shoe’s on the other foot now, so let’s enjoy the kicking we give the rest of the league. Nicely done as always, Virgil. Enjoy the Taming of the Jaguars! Just don’t be (too) smug ….

I've seen a lot of Gordon this year, and he does have plenty left in the tank. He's not a speedburner but he's got more speed to get outside than either Singletary or Moss, and he's also more skilled in the passing game than either of them. And the Broncos really should be willing to take whatever they can get for him at this point. Not a thrilling acquisition, but an upgrade is an upgrade.

I forgot about that. Mike White >> Patrick Mahomes!

Apple iOS is kind of creepy like that. I was gonna guess that you were in medicine. But ENT or urology, that one had me stumped ...

Broncos! They finally say it's time to tank, trade Vonn Miller, and then inexplicably catch fire. Just like in the Year of Tebow.

Duke. Definitely Duke.

I have never heard the term before, but it is going straight into my vocabulary now.