maryland-bills-fan

I had business to do and missed seeing the game. I do hear that the Bills ran quite a bit up the gut, without a lot of success, even though the passing game was working. A question: if the Bills were running a lot up the middle (they don't have the shifty/fast guy right now), might that be to make the Jests pretty good defensive line play run first and pass second? If they are working on filling gaps to prevent (successfully) the 4-8 yard run per attempt, doesn't that mean that any time we want, that Orton and our struggling o-line provide enough time to throw?

Look at what north carolina has been getting away with for years!! And that is even in a competitive area where NC state, wake forest, and duke are in the same state and probably people there had to know as well. Ouch.

It is Bush's fault

We send down a big plate of hot chicken wings. He demands wings before and after every practice, they get sick of his bitching and release him and we pick him up for the league minimum. (plus all the wings he can eat). Actually, I wan't aware at the time that they had so many RB's go down.

drafted running backs 2014 http://insider.espn....4/running-backs Bishop Sankey RB Washington 2 22(54) Tennessee Jeremy Hill RB LSU 2 23(55) Cincinnati Carlos Hyde RB Ohio State 2 25(57) San Francisco Charles Sims RB West Virginia 3 5(69) Tampa Bay Tre Mason RB Auburn 3 11(75) St. Louis Terrance West RB Towson 3 30(94) Cleveland Jerick McKinnon RB Georgia Southern 3 32(96) Minnesota Dri Archer RB Kent State 3 33(97) Pittsburgh Devonta Freeman RB Florida State 4 3(103) Atlanta Andre Williams RB Boston College 4 13(113) NY Giants Ka'Deem Carey RB Arizona 4 17(117) Chicago De'Anthony Thomas RB Oregon 4 24(124) Kansas City James White RB Wisconsin 4 30(130) New England Lorenzo Taliaferro RB Coastal Carolina 4 38(138) Baltimore Alfred Blue RB LSU 6 5(181) Houston Lache Seastrunk RB Baylor 6 10(186) Washington Marion Grice RB Arizona State 6 25(201) San Diego Tyler Gaffney RB Stanford 6 28(204) Carolina Jay Prosch FB Auburn 6 35(211) Houston Storm Johnson RB UCF 7 7(222) Jacksonville Kiero Small FB Arkansas 7 12(227) Seattle Trey Millard FB Oklahoma 7 30(245) San Francisco I'll go with Storm Johnson, just on the basis of the name.

Branden Oliver RB, 23, 5-7 208 from the University of Buffalo and the SD Chargers?

I'm guessing Spiller is out for the season and Jackson is out for 2-4 games. We have 2 running backs on the entire roster, include the practice squad. We probably should have 4 on the active roster. A couple of questions for discussion. Do we raid some teams practice squad for a backup running back and who might that be? What sort of draft pick might we trade for some other team's backup running back? And who might that be? Are there any street free agents out there that somebody is in love with?

I think that Fredie had a wide lane to run through in his overtime run.

The rot has set in in Boston.

Any day the Cheatniks lose is a good day. Any day the Bills win is a better day.

....but the world ended when my-footsies-hurt, left.

wide right

Well one thing to say about him is that when he was with the Bills, we never had to worry about whether we were going to lose or not.

We have good problems here.

Its the first game of preseason. It is time to churn the bottom of the depth chart. It is time to check out the backup QB situation. Chill.

This is a whole lot better problem to have then trying to remember which street free agent of the week is playing on the o-line.

So the % running plays has varied from 43 to 47 %. Big f'ing deal, 80 passes 53 runs. 6% of 153 is 8 plays difference. Change 4 plays from pass to run and that covers it. Big f'ing deal. Two or three big score losses suffered by a pass-happy team could control this stat for the entire season. What would be more interesting would be to see what the percent of run & pass is as a function of the game score at the time. I would expect that a team that was behind would increase the pass %, and the team that was ahead would increase the run %. Also interesting is to profile the different teams by this comparison- some might deviate from the typical performance. Isn't that what the stat boys do in predicting what plays the opponent is likely to run during the course of the game?

can is trust RG? NO

Welcome to part of the cat-and-mouse game. Deciding how to husband your endurance is part of the strategy of the game. Playing a ball control game and making the other team chase, is part of the strategy of the game. Having the guts to tough it out when your body hurts from fatigue is part of the game (and not a part of some other games). Picking on an opponent who looks tired- that's part of the game. Testing the speed of the defense, once they are tired (not only when they are fresh) is part of the game. Taking care of your substitutions to put in fresh players (at what position?) is part of the strategy of the game. There aspects is why you don't see the big fat boys out there or even bigger players. It also gives a role for smaller guys with good endurance. It is not a soccer game if you take that rule out. You would probably have one attacking player always standing on the goal line and two standing just wide of the goal to tap in the ball. (cherry picking). The game would become: get the ball at midfield and kick long high balls into the goal area. It would be a different game. Sorta like baseball if you made the distance from home to first base 100 feet or 80 feet. You would upset the balance between how fast the baseball is hit and thrown and the chances of getting the batter-runner out at first base. It would become a different game that you would not recognize.

B word slap da boss and spit on his wife. You shouldn't be working there.

Most football players are too heavy to play soccer. There is no place for a 300 pound lineman type, and no place for the 230- 250 pound linebacker, because carrying that extra weight around and the lack of agility means they can't hack it at any advance level. Most people are not that heavy (if they are in any shape) so that is no loss to soccer. Guys who play QB, WR, DB and the smaller RB are candidates for becoming soccer players. Most of the world population is a size that will fit in someplace on a soccer team. Frankly, no real disrespect, but most football players (especially linemen) are sort of physical freaks. How many people do you know that are 280 to 350 pounds (if in shape)? As to the physical staminia aspect,,,,, do you really think that an NFL lineman could really run 2-3 miles in a game? Does the nfl combine measure speed and endurance at distances beyond 60 yards? It's apples to oranges.

Oh please! The players themselves are bored stiff during the required TV commercial break between plays.

"As a spectator sport....." I don't know for sure, but you might think about this for a while. I live in Maryland. There are 24 counties in Maryland. Just for grins, I looked up Charles county (a semi-rural county stuck out at the lower end of the state) for its county soccer program. There are 6 youth soccer associations and each has maybe 700 players. Thats around 4,000 players. They probably play about 20 games a year (counting spring and fall season). So that is 4000 players x 20 games = 80,000 player-games a year. If each kid has 1.5 parents there watching, you are talking about ?? ~ a tenth of a million spectators at games a year. That is not counting high school games, adult leagues travel teams (which have a lot of teams but around here is regional with DC and Virginia) and FIFFA adult leagues. So you are talking about 0.15 million spectators a year from that one medium sized county. Maybe 1.5 to 4 million spectators a year from one state. The Ravens have 71K seats in M&T stadium and play no more than (dig intended) 8 home games a year. With sell-outs that's about half a million spectators a year. You seem to be forgetting that soccer pulls from the entire population and not just from the football fans that you hang around with. You might also consider that the demographics of the country are changing and ~17% is Hispanic, where soccer is very popular.

The first one was pretty clear and should have been called. I wonder where the linesman was- his flag should have been spinning around in a circle like mad. A problem that goes along with the game is that the ref only has one set of eyes and his eyes on a corner kick are looking at all the hand fighting, pushing, punches and tripping going on in front of the goal. Other things that soccer moms don't realize is that the ref is often screened by players (there are 22 on the field and often at least 3-4 in the way), or even one player (if the issue is on the other side of a player's body) and that the ref is moving. Every time you run a step, the shock of your foot hitting the ground is transmitted up you body to your eyes and jarrs your vision. Your brain sort of intergrates the images it sees and presents the data to the brain as a smooth film clip, but information is missing. Also your eyes (like a camera) have a limited depth of focus, and when you refocus to examine what is happening at a different distance, you lose information for a split second as well. There might be a 270 degree wide arc that the ref has to keep track of- you can not see Sally suddenly decide to swoon to the ground behind your back nor can you see somebody cold-cocking a opponent on the other side of the field. I used to play fullback and had a lot of tricks on high balls to make up for being short and for jumping like a boat anchor. Most were based upon denying the opponent the chance to play the ball in his perfered way. One trick is to realize that the ref isn't looking at our shoes and the opponent can not jump very high if I am standing on his foot. OR give the back of his knee a nudge with my knee just before he gets set to jump. OR am holding onto his shirt on the other side of the ref, when he jumps (don't hold the pants- he'll jump out of them). OR get to his launch spot before he does (or get in the way of his moving to that spot) and make him jump over you for the ball (his foul). Elbows to the solar plexis away from the ref works as does a punch to the kidney. Straightening out your forearm to give a punch to the groin, or grabbing works, but expect to get a punch to the face. Not that I would do any of these things, but it might give you an idea what the ref was looking for. As for the second goal, that was a borderline case and might have been called. The player was jumping away from the ball and trying to get his back in the way of a shot. He did not move his hand (arm) into the way of the ball because he did not see the ball, he didn't have time to get his hand from a natural position to out of the way and his hand was in a natural position for the jump that he did. If a player IS moving away with his back to where the ball is, then he is responsible for NOT making his body bigger by extending his arms or waving them around. It didn't look like that was the case and the ref let them play on (or didn't see it). It is not in the spirit of the game to give a PK (an almost sure goal at this level) for a fairly dubious hand ball, so I think it would be 20:80 whether a handled ball would be called or not.

Does the ball play the hand or the hand play the ball? Could he(she) have gotten their hand out of the way? Was the hand in a natural position? That's it.