BullBuchanan

it's not likely that people think we are cursed because of Hamlin, no. The Bills have a track record of negative highly impactful variance going back quite some time - colloquially referred to as luck. Taken together one could think that this string of events will keep occurring. It doesn't have to mean that any of it's related for it to exist.

Why?

Another word for it would be curse., or perhaps stormcloud.

Yup. I bet the Chargers thought they had time too in 2007 when they had Rivers, Tomlinson, Gates, Turner, Vincent Jackson, merriman, Phillips, Cromartie, Florence, castillo, etc. They lost in the AFC championship game and that was the last time they were a serious contender for anything.

This season was already in rough shape and injuries to key players like Hyde and Miller, the Miami game heat fiasco, the blizzard, combined with Josh's own injuries and struggles have had me feeling uneasy most of the season. I went into the year hyped for a SB run and then it just started to seem less and less likely as the season went on, despite us winning so many games. I don't want to count them out, but I'd honestly be floored if they have what it takes to go the distance at this point. I really hope they can find a way, because these opportunities don't just come around every year, but I'm not betting on it.

I consider most to be 50.1%, but I also believe they are equal to better than us at most positions. If I'm thinking about positions on the team we have a decent edge on them, I have LB, K, P and maybe TE and CB. If our safeties were healthy they'd be there too, but they aren't. They demolish us at WR and we do no better than push with them elsewhere on the offense outside of TE where we may have a slight edge. On Defense they're mostly on par though Hendrickson + Hubbard ar ebetter than Groot + [whoever] and Milano is better than any of their LBs. While I do think our special teams is better, they also have talent there.

By all accounts McDermott is a very good guy and a solid coach. I don't think he's a great coach, and he's given us plenty of examples why on Sundays. I'm not sure if that's critical to being able to win a championship at some point in the future, but it may have cost us one or two cracks at it already. Having a coach like McD will always ensure you're in a place to compete and that's not a bad spot to be. It's fair to wonder though if he has what it takes to close, or if we'll just be an annual 12 win team that never wins it all.

That would be the first time in 5 years that they have.

Given that you don't seem to appreciate the talent Cincinnati has on their football team (the reigning AFC Champions), I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that you think 8 plays in a football game at the highest level is inconsequential. it's ~ 12-15% of a game and enough to put 2 touchdowns on the board. Unless you were sleeping when 13 seconds happened, I'd like to think you have first hand experience to understand how critical each play of a game is.

And there would be thousands of players lining up to take their place. It's a bummer, but it's life. ***** happens.

Not many people who have the talent and drive to become 1st round picks have this kind of thinking. They are at the pinnacle of their profession and will never do anything else to this high of a level again. They worked their entire lives for this moment. Maybe if you're a 6th rounder like Myron Rolle who has an M.D. to fall back on, sure. There are no guarantees in this world. ~8,000 people die a day in this country. Some of them are old people who die of natural causes, others like Ronnie Hillman die at 31 from renal cancer and plenty more don't make it nearly that far. You've gotta live your best life, and for guys like NFL players that isn't sitting on the couch waiting to die of old age.

That wasn't the same issue, and wasn't after a hit - at least not shortly after. On his final play he was a decoy and wasn't contacted. The cause of his incident was a blocked artery. Completely different set of circumstances. With modern testing they likely would have known about that.

Because it was a Bills player that prevented the game from being played. At the time of stoppage the Bengals were in the lead. I understand that it was very early in the game, but forfeits typically happen under extenuating circumstances. This game has implications to the 1,2,3,5 and 6 seeds int he AFC. Changes to the playoff scheduling would have impacts to whichever AFC team goes to the Super Bowl or would otherwise require rescheduling of the Super Bowl which I don't feel is realistic or warranted in this circumstance.

I think you're misreading my point. .Going forward, it's objectively unfair to the rest of the league to not have one team get a loss and one team get a win for this game prior to the conclusion of week 18.

It's not about the Bengals wanting to continue or not, but if you do anything that hands the Bills a W or prevents the Bengals from getting a W, then you screw over their playoff seeding that could have a material impact on their ability to win a Super Bowl. This isn't their problem.

And the Bills should return the classy move presented by Cinci and forfeit the game if they're unable to resume it without negatively impacting the rest of the league. It's ultimately the Bills who caused the game to be stopped.

How do you punish Cinci for the Bills being unable to continue a game in which Cinci were winning?

If your gameplan was to have Cinci lay down to us later in the game, ok. My opinion is from the perspective that when they are playing at their best, which it looks like they were, they outclass us in most positions on the field.

I don't see how there's any scenario in which the league gives the Bills an advantage here. It's completely unfair to all of the other teams in the league to change the playoff scheduling and it's unfair to the rest of the AFC do mess at all with the seeding. The most reasonable thing to do for the Bills is to forfeit the Bengals game and perhaps the Patriots game if they aren't up for it (which of course would be unfair to all other Wild Card aspiring teams, but it is what it is) and then get ready for the Wild Card round in the playoffs.

I wouldn't go that far, but Josh hasn't looked like the Josh of pre-season MVP discussion since the KC game. Once again he looked just a little off - as evidenced by his misses to McKenzie and Beasley. Cinci on the other hand looked dominant. I don't see our defense being able to keep up with them. their top 2 WRs are leagues better than what we can offer on defense right now. It looked like the beginning of a blowout to me.

What testing would have prevented this? As far as we know he was healthy. Mike Utley, Kevin Everett, Ryan Shazier, all had catastrophic injuries on the field and football has never been more popular than it is today after all of them went down over the last 30 years. I understand what you're saying, and emotions are high right now, but long term there's not much evidence to back up your argument.

Never said there was "no chance". It's ignorant to post that i did.

Sure didn't look that way.

I really hope not. 1 out of 26,000+ is not exactly a statistically significant sample size. They also still haven't said what caused it. Everything to this point is conjecture.

Life carries with it a 100% guarantee of death. Billionaires and the destitute meet the same fate in the end. I've had 2 co-workers die on the job, but no it didn't make our office any more threatening. Of course we aren't doing full contact software development. Catastrophic sudden injury in football at the professional level is pretty rare, and again there's nothing to say this couldn't have happened at home. This is clearly a pretty tough time for a lot of people including players around the league, but I don't see there being sweeping changes to the desire to play football over the long term following this. The biggest changes I expect are updated medical protocols and perhaps a review of equipment depending on the rootcause of his diagnosis. Why? What about what happened yesterday was in any way specific to the sport of football that couldn't have happened in any other athletic or leisure activity?