Buffalo86

You have to admit, it's pretty comical to hear "Russ Brandon will no longer be involved in football decisions." Every. Single. Year.

Damn, isn't anyone going to mention George & Katherine Calder-Young Papadapolis? I mean, come on!

I'm tempted to report you for having a Roddy Piper sig & shying away from a discussion like this.

Yesterday's news, so my apologies if this was already discussed & merged into another thread. I did use the search function, but didn't find anything. Buffalo Bills president and managing partner Russ Brandon gets a lot of flack from fans as one of the only employees who has been with the organization’s front office throughout the entire 17-year playoff drought. Don’t look now, but team owner Terry Pegula says Brandon - who he calls “Russ”, just to avoid confusion with “Brandon” Beane - was involved in the general manager search, too. "When we started this process, we -- Kim, myself, Russ was involved, and others -- we put together four or five lists of potential candidates, cross-referenced them, and, you know, Sean was one of the individuals [involved in our search]," Pegula said. "Brandon's name showed up on most of the lists, if not all of them. So from that, and from discussions with people outside the organization, we picked the candidates we wanted to interview. But Sean's involvement was no more than writing a name on a piece of paper, which he wrote seven or eight names." While Brandon was the nominal general manager for a brief time, it was as a go-between for owner Ralph Wilson and the football decision makers at the time, led by head coach Dick Jauron. This is likely as close to a “football decision” that Brandon will get under the Pegulas. His duties now includes President of the Buffalo Sabres as well as other sports interests under the Pegula Sports Entertainment umbrella. http://www.buffalorumblings.com/2017/5/17/15651810/buffalo-bills-general-manager-search-russ-brandon-involved-brandon-beane-sean-mcdermott

Totally respect wanting to wait & see, but when was the last time we had anything close to regime change? You have to go back 10+ years, as Levy, Brandon, Nix, & Whaley were all inside hires (and terrible ones, at that). I don't think firing someone & replacing them with their pupil qualifies. This time actually feels different to me.

I guess this is better than when Stevie Johnson declared that he was going to start working out.

We might have to wait another year to see the results. I'm not usually one for preaching patience, but IMO it applies this time. Unfortunately, Whaley left us with a lot of roster spots to fill & not much cap space to fill them. I think we made the best of a bad situation, and we'll benefit from no longer having one of the worst GM/HC combos in the league.

This is their best offseason in ages. The only questionable move was not putting a 2nd-round tender on Mike G, but not doing so may have been Whaley's final decision as GM. It's about time we looked outside the organization, for guys who haven't learned from the guys who wrote the book on playoff droughts. I think we got 3-4 future contributors in this draft, with an extra 1st next year to boot. We might not make the playoffs this season, but I think the moves they've made are setting us up nicely for the future.

I have a feeling Jonathan Williams makes us forget Touchdown Mike AND Fat Karlos. And who, Ryan Mathews? I forgot him already.

I miss it too, but I'm not sure I'd have as much fun with it anymore. Without Rex & his family yucking it up on the sidelines + Whaley playing fantasy GM & trying to will EJ to be a franchise QB, I'm out of things to B word about. My current stance is that we're finally on the right track & will make the playoffs in 2018, but that doesn't inspire very spirited discussion. But whatever. Let's see what happens come training camp. I think the bbmb sucked this time of year, anyway.

I thought you were being a bit over the top with the blind hate label. I was trying to illustrate that, but clearly missed the mark. My bad.

What could I do? I had to up the ante once you brought blindly hateful into the mix.

If you're going to think of yourself as one of the reasonable people, you should consider someone's entire post instead of bolding the last few words & taking them out of context.

I think Whaley empowered Brandon & Overdorf more than a competent GM would. I don't expect them to do us much harm anymore.

Totally agree. I loved it at the time, because I hoped it might work toward embarrassing the Pegulas into making a change. It's like the Jauron billboard: we'll never know how much of an effect it had (if any), but it doesn't appear to have hurt.

Blindly hateful? OK, well thanks for not calling it racist, too. 17 years is a reality. You can decide for yourself when your clock starts, but not everyone else is going to follow your timeline. Personally, I can't remember the last time I felt this optimistic about the direction of our team, but I can't fault others for, after 17 years, wanting to see some results first. For me, up until the moment they fired Whaley, negative & pessimistic was realistic.

It seems as though the Buffalo media wasn't actually being overly negative of OBD over the past year. It was just the right amount.

He should see next to no double-teams if the rest of our D-line stays healthy. In that scenario, I'd consider anything less than 8 sacks to be a disappointment.

At some point during the course of a 17 year playoff drought, wouldn't it be fair to consider negative and pessimistic to be realistic?

Hey, I won the "Best post Bill_with_it has read on here" award fair & square. Don't be such a sore loser.

Mildly optimistic that we make the playoffs this year; extremely optimistic that we make the playoffs next year & many years to follow. That's about the most optimistic I've felt about this team since the drought began.

The NFL allows teams to dress 46 players for a game, but I think I've found a loophole in that the rule doesn't specifically address undressed players. Sending Kouandjio out there as an undressed 47th would be a nice secret weapon, as very few teams would have gameplanned for that. I thought the same thing: Wet

I heard Cyrus was just looking for a swimming hole & he forgot his bathing suit. Nevertheless, we should probably trade him for a couple of firsts before he gets in any more trouble & devalues himself any further. Get it done, OBD!

Man, the Bills really wasted a good D when we had it. It's a damn shame.

Now I remember: it was something more ike sassy4eva&eva. Was that twss too?