BillsFan4

Yeah, for sure. He’s definitely a specific scheme fit type of player.

Reggie seems like a great kid. I hope he has a successful career in K.C. Yes, I do think that was a major part of it - recovering an asset for a player who didn’t fit the scheme. But I also think that they wanted to give this kid a real chance at having a successful NFL career somewhere that he is a fit, maybe in part because of what a high character guy he is. IIRC Beane may have mentioned something along those lines in an interview. I don’t remember the exact quote, and I don’t know if it was in reference to the Ragland trade, but he said something about how sometimes a trade is also about giving that player a chance to be successful too.

lol I guess you is just so much smart compared me. Not that it matters, but I actually thought I originally typed ‘stuff he wrote’. I didn’t realize that I (or my auto-correct) added the ‘apostrophe s’ to he. So in that case, it should have been ‘the stuff he’s written’ (which is probably what I should have just originally typed). Will these corrections boost my grade on the pop quiz? lol

Wow. Great hire. I’ve read a lot of stuff he’s wrote for ‘The Tennessean’ and USA Today. He does excellent work.

The Office was one of the best shows ever. I still watch it on Netflix. It was never the same after Steve Carrell left though.

One thing you you have to say about this staff is that they are extremely detailed, methodical and thorough. It is something that I have been very impressed by. It definitely sounds like they went above and beyond doing their due diligence on Allen, and this entire QB class. Reading this actually makes me feel much better about the process that led to selecting Josh Allen. I feel very comfortable that they weren’t just wowed by his big arm & his ideal “prototype QB” measurables (as some draft pundits have suggested). There was a whole lot more to it than that. I also like that they didn’t just lazily rely on his listed stats, or any college QB’s for that matter. They looked multiple times at every throw he (and the others) made, using as much information on each throw as they could, and decided for themselves how the numbers stacked up.

I took what he said as a joke. As as in craft beer service... maybe I misinterpreted though.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/07/12/lesean-mccoy-allegations-home-invasion-domestic-violence-what-we-know Im assuming this article has probably already been posted. I didn’t notice much info I didn’t already know. Except the above quote. I didn’t realize the eviction case was due to be heard in court the same day she was robbed. Im guessing it was just coincidence, but I still couldn’t help but take note of that little detail.

Wow, your daughter has a great singing voice oldmanfan.

Reinhart’s the only one left now to sign (iirc). His is is the most important of the RFA deals. Very curious to see what he gets. Botterill has has been pretty risk averse with most of his signings so far (outside of Eichel’s deal, I guess). He’s kept thr term pretty short and the dollars pretty low. I wonder if Henrique signing for $5.8M x 5yrs and Lindholm signing for $4.8M x 6yrs will have any impact on the Reinhart negotiations. Henrique is a bit older (28?). Lindholm is a recent top 5 pick. Both player C. And both have had somewhat comparable production to Sam. In any case, I’d say that at the least, both deals didn’t do anything to hurt Buffalo’s negotiations with Reinhart (like those damn Draisaitl & McDavid deals did with Eichel). If anything, they may have helped. I do think that Reinhart has a higher ceiling than both though, IMO, and is probably already the better player at a younger age than both (as long as 2nd half of the season Reinhart shows up, and not 1st half...). Without knowing if Buffalo is looking for a shorter or longer term deal, it’s hard to even guess where Reinhart’s AAV will fall. Im hoping for something around the mid $6’s on a longer term, or around $4M-ish shorter term.

Him and Bailey, too. Neither are waiver exempt anymore. So it might be Buffalo or traded/lost on waivers.

I really like the athletic so far. They’ve done a good job of putting out original content. Theyre offering a nice mix of analysis, opinion, inside access and breaking news. But the true test will be when the Bills/Sabres training camp and regular season start. I actually ended up signing up for 1 year of the Buffalo News Blitz, as well. I realized that I was holding onto my past opinion of, and bias against them, and wasn’t giving them a true chance in the present. And when I went back and looked through their more recent stuff, they’re actually doing a much better job than I’ve been giving them credit for. They've made a lot of changes (many for the better IMO) and I feel like I owe them a chance. I give that Josh Barnett a lot of credit, too. He has been active in engaging the fan base and actually listening to their feedback. That alone earns the Buffalo news a chance in my book. Plus, we as a fan base have nothing to gain if we lost the Buffalo news coverage.

Both are 2 way contracts. I don’t know that Baptiste would make it through waivers though, and I’d sure hate to see another team snatch him up after all the years of development the Sabres have put in. Speed is a popular trait right now.

Bummer. That was one of the sites I checked on a daily basis (especially once training camp and the regular season start). Thanks for everything Steve!

https://buffalonews.com/2018/07/14/why-are-big-names-signing-with-the-buffalo-beauts-its-all-about-professionalism/ Excellent article by Amy Moritz on the Buffalo beauts and why big name players are signing there. I went to a few Beauts games last year and I really enjoyed it and plan to go to more this season. I’d guess that as of now they have to be the favorites to win the Isobel cup this year.

Interesting. I did not know the details of his failed test. No wonder that Alex Guerrero immediately put out a statement saying he had nothing to do with it.... ? lol

And some people were asking why McCoy would hire a lawyer (especially if he didn’t do it). This is why.

Very Nice hire. He’s been a good defensive coach. As the Sabres press release states, cadolina’s defense has allowed the 2nd fewest shots per game over his tenure there, and iirc their penalty kill was also one of the better in the league during his time there. Hes helped develope some some pretty good defenseman in Carolina, too. Guys like Pesce and Slavin, who were mid round picks, have developed into very good top 4 defenseman under his watch. He and Phil Housley actually played together in Calgary for 3 years, too. Interesting story on Steve Smith - He was always thought of as a very mentally tough player after (and because of) this. I guess it really did have a huge impact on his career and what he went on to become.

I am just joining in this discussion now (and have no interest in trying to look back through this 100+ page thread) so I don’t know what has been said and what hasn’t. But I, for one, am going to take a total wait and see approach, and let all of the information come out. Time me will tell what truly happened. I really hope that girl is ok, and I hope that shady had zero involvement with this. But I am not going to make any claims either way on anyone’s guilt or innocence in this whole situation until this process plays out more.

Wow, nice signing. And a lower cap hit than Eichel... but they do live in a tax free state, which makes the take him pay at $9.5M higher than Eichel at $10M. Yzerman has has really used that to his advantage when signing his big name guys (Stamkos, Hedman, Kucherov etc)

Sounds like this new Bills staff might be doing a pretty good job in the way they are handling him so far.

I either want a 2-3 yr bridge deal (I’d kind of prefer 2, as a 3yr deal takes him 1yr from UFA and he could decide to go to arbitration and sign a 1yr deal if he wanted to force his way out). Or I want to go longer term (6+). If if they give him a 4yr deal that takes him right to UFA the very first year he’s eligible for it, I’ll be upset. I’m thinking a bridge deal makes the most sense. See if he’s 1st half of the season Reinhart, or 2nd half of the season Reinhart. Unless he’s willing to sign longer term at something reasonable ($6M ish, which is unlikely). Just my opinion, anyway...

100% agree. This is is a player issue, not a coaching one. It drives me nuts the fans that were/are already screaming for Housley to be fired.... because they are are saying the exact same things we heard them saying about Bylsma. Its his system. He lost the room. Guys won’t follow housley. It’s his player usage. It’s his line combinations etc etc etc. At what point does the blame get put on the players? How can you blame a coach when he has a large group of players on the team who simply refuse to follow his system + game plans? I get get having those questions the first time around under Bylsma. We legit didn’t know if it was the players or coach (or both). But now that all the same stuff is happening under a completely different coaching staff, that tells me that it’s a player issue. So, you have to get rid of these players who refused to listen and set an example. I remember back to when Ryan Miller was the Olympic darling of the US and face of the Sabres franchise. It was after a game and Lindy kind of threw him under the bus. well, Miller refused to speak a single bad word about Lindy. A reporter asked him why and he said “that’s the guy who decides if I play or not”. They knew new who was in charge back then. If you didn’t listen, you were gone. Hopefully Botterill moving out Kane, Lehner and ROR helped set that precedent again.

Good post. I agree with a lot of it. Just so I am clear, I was never arguing that things were all peachy-keen under previous administrations and that no changes needed to be made. There were obviously a lot of issues with the way immigration is handled, and immigration law, some of which you did a great job of laying out. just a couple things - 1) agreed, and I realize that. But I was just talking about how it was the zero tolerance policy as originally issued, and them choosing to prosecute every immigrant they could without exception, that led to all of these children being separated from their parents at the border. It was that zero tolerance policy that gave the direction to prosecute every immigrant they possibly could with pretty much no exceptions - whether they’re alone or with families, first time offenders with no criminal history etc. No extenuating circumstances would be taken into account like with previous administrations. The Trump administration choosing to prosecute every family they could, without exception, is what led to them having to detain the parents and seperate them from their kids. It wasn’t something that the Trump administration was helpless to prevent as they claim. If Trump hated seeing these kids taken from their families so much, he could have done something about it long before all the public outcry forced him to. In fact, he could have chose not to handle this situation in such a manner in the first place and he wouldn’t have even had to sign some bogus executive order to bail himself out. Basically, the way I see it, Trump chose to apply the law as harshly as he possibly could. Obama did not. 2) agreed. My point there was that, again, it was a trump policy, and not the Flores agreement, that made these family separations such a wide spread occurrence. The way I see it They basically used the Flores agreement to issue a policy that would seperate kids from their parents as a deterrent to entering the US. And that children were being detained, in part, to try and get rid of the Flores agreement (which republicans proposed) and by extension (depending on what they replaced it with) the law stopping them from detaining these immigrants for more than 20 days. As well as the requirements for what conditions these children must be held in BTW I didn’t agree with it when Obama used the Flores agreement to detain whole families as a deterrent either. 3) agreed again. It’s been a cluster **** for a long time, and I’m sure unscrupulous things have been happening for just as long. But there is a change in the way this administration is directing them to act on the laws. Agree with your note, too. That was part of my point. They are doing this purposely, as a deterrent. They don’t Have To do this. They are doing it to try and put pressure on Congress to implement Trump’s immigration law changes. I completely disagree with it. IMO Children should not be used in this fashion. It’s wrong, no matter who does it, Democrat, republican or other. I don’t agree with some of the things that happened under Obama either, as far as immigration goes. There were advocacy groups that came after him too. He tried to toughen immigration stance, and ram cases through with an expedited legal process, and it was a disaster. It made it very hard for some immigrants to get their due process for asylum claims. Just because I said that there were key differences in the way things are being handled doesn’t mean I agree with everything done by previous administrations. There are are key differences though. Obama absolutely did not go out of his way to seperate as many families crossing the border as he could. Or so strongly try to deter, and in some cases outright refuse, no matter the circumstance, those seeking legal asylum. Obama didn’t ban entire nations from entering the US, either. I mean, When have 2000+ children been separated from their families at the border in a 6 week time span before? When have we seen these mass trials of immigrants becoming a normal occurrence like we are seeing in places like McAllen, Texas? Btw, I’d be interested to read any links you have, or numbers or whatever, on immigrant children being saved from trafficking by this new policy. If thats true, that is definitely nice to hear. I was under the impression that adults who crossed illegally had to prove their identity and the identity of anyone with them (children, etc) through things like fingerprinting, a checklist of documentation, and/or contact with family members in cases (etc) before being released to await their court date? And i I thought that under previous administrations, children were already separated from those they suspected of being traffickers? Maybe I am remembering incorrectly though... If separating all these children saved more from traffickers, it would be a bit of a silver lining (and a happy coincidence). But I don’t buy for a minute that it had anything to do with the motive behind this (not saying that’s what you implied).