Rochesterfan

First - Negative test has nothing to do with immunity - so it is not an immunity test. Having a negative test is a viable option at some places, but more and more places are not considering it viable. Having a fully vaccinated groups makes it easy to set and enforce the rules as the entire stadium is on equal footing. They can then set masking rules and be consistent. An unvaccinated person with a negative test - still would be required to mask-up when inside any parts of the stadium and that becomes unenforceable - you wouldn’t know the status - so how do you enforce the rules. You act like they are excluding a specific group, but the truth is - they gave a mix vaccinated crowd a chance last week and found it impossible. This change allows them based upon State vaccine rules to treat everyone the same and not have to guess is this person unvaccinated and a negative test and must be masked or a vaccinated person that can be unmasked. It is really simple and it makes 100% sense and I applaud them for making this a simple and enforceable fix.

Why would you think this at all? It is illogical as NYS has an already much higher vaccinated rate than many states that have football teams. The top states are mostly in the NE and cover a limited number of teams (although Maryland is right there). Why would other teams fans be more vaccinated and ready to travel without complaining with their vaccine cards than Bills fans? My guess is it has little impact and if it does come down to a huge influx of vaccinated opposing fans coming in - we’ll good for them for getting vaccinated and wanting to travel and following the rules.

You have been flamed because of your take on the subject and it being a problem. He has been consistent that it takes him a few throws and maybe a hit to get settled down. You have constantly acted like this impacts for the entire game and seasons. It is just beyond stupid.

It is a non issue. He talked about this 2 years ago and making changes. Will he be over excited- probably, but it means nothing and people that keep acting like it is an issue are just looking for something to complain about. I recommend just letting it go, but you do you.

Good Lord dude - give it a rest. He has talked about this many times in the past. It does not mean anything. Dumb.

Not to question, but when you say he will be gone in a year - a year from when? He is under contract this year and next year already - so are you saying he will be gone in one year from today - prior to 2022 season? Are you saying he will be gone after next years season - so a year and a half - end of the 2022 season? Are you suggesting he will be traded? I understand people wanting to move on - I do not understand the time frame you are looking at - since his contract runs through the 2022 season and the coaching staff likes him - I am going out on a limb to say he will be on the Bills this year and next year. Then there is the possibility that the Bills give him a contract extension- so it could be longer - so minimally I see 2 years and potentially more. Not sure I only see him lasting this year and then the Bills moving - so I think I disagree with your original timeline.

This ⬆️. I think you could even push top-5 pick to top-20 pick. There are just so very few that make a second contract worth it and even the 5th year option is to much money for that position. There are some great RBs that are elite, but so few actually are difference makers and he best in Henry was a 2nd round pick.

Another RB and Peters both with Potential ACL tears back to back. Unbelievable! That is all 3 RBs and a CB gone before game 1. I hope Jackson has been practicing.

I think the ownership has a lot to do with the issues Flores has right now - I totally agree. I am not sure that Tua is who they wanted to draft at 5, but I know that is who they deconstructed their team the year before to get. It just happened after the season and injury he was no longer the best QB in the draft. I think Flores would of preferred to ride with Fitz last year as he was Fitzmagic and held Tua until you started to see Fitztragic. Instead - I think ownership pushed him and the GM to start him before they were ready and hence the poor job at managing him and what seemed to be a lack of faith. Then I think the owner also is pushing the Watson issue - which further undermines the Tua relationship, but then I think Flores and Grier mishandled the talking points around this. In general the owner is self sabotaging the QB/coach relationship, but they have also done a poor job in handling everything.

Hard to say, but they signed some big type FA last year to multi-year deals and then in one off season started cutting them during this off season. That in and off itself is not an issue, but several players seemed to balk at several of the cuts and trades and talked about losing major locker room leadership and vocal guys. Then you have the issue with their top CB not dealing with his contract dispute in house, but using the media - again showing a lack of respect and then winning and getting his demands - makes you question how things are done. Tua though is the biggest issue. They started him last year, but it was obvious that the coaching staff was not comfortable with the decision because every chance things went a touch sour - they pulled him for Fitz. Then tried to smooth things out by going back to him. Then this off-season which should be huge for Tua - they begin looking at Watson as a trade at QB. Again showing a lack in confidence at the most important position. Then you follow that up with another interview where the HC instead of putting the flames out - fans the flames by beating around the bush. Then he meets with the team to give the “full backing of the team” speech, but at the same time denies that he needed to do that and then poorly navigates that interaction as the rumors come out that the owner wants Watson to join the team. The final straw to me in the lost of respectability is the way some of his players talk about Tua on national broadcasts - there isn’t this talk of leadership and growth - it is very muted. I think the players don’t believe he is the long term answer and that the team is trying to get someone else in place and they don’t want to say something and have it contradicted or have the team make them look bad. I think you are right the sign of a leader is how they handle adversity- see McD with the Peterman choice in SD. That decision could of cost him a locker room, but he talked with the team leadership and they navigated it and still made the playoffs. Conversely- Flores poorly handled the Tua situation last year and really poorly handled the decisions and choices as if it was out of his hands. Then he moved on from respected leadership within the locker room that many players questioned and now he has poorly handled the Watson rumors. I think all 3 show a muted lack of leadership by the HC.

He doesn’t seem real bright - so probably not. If he thought he was underutilized on the Chiefs active roster - on the PS should have him really complaining shortly.

If you felt that the protocols in place are sound and you didn’t think the additional testing adds anything - why spend the additional 100 million? Their doctors and infection prevention team put together a plan that got them through last season without cancellation - so I would image they are listening to them and going based on heir models and if based upon what you hear coming out is true - they NFL team felt the additional testing added little value. The NFL gave some limited reasons why they felt the testing added little value and why even adjusting to weekly testing was probably not needed. Now whether that is fully true or not will be seen, but if I asked you to just throw in additional money for what is deemed limited value - I would assume you would have to think about it and may not want to provide the money. What we don’t know is if and when and what data their planning was done. The one thing I suspect is that the NFL will adjust this policy as needed - just as they did last year to ensure games were played.

Excellent questions Hap. I started with costs based on a tweet before last season from Pellisaro I believe that stated $125 a test, but because most testing has gone cheaper - It could be cheaper, but again that did not necessarily include everything in the pricing. I would imagine they have switched to saliva for general screening as that is how most large places have gone - schools, colleges, etc. it can be less expensive, but we found it did not pool as well with the assays we had - we lost significant sensitivity. Therefore for our hospital system we returned to nasal swabbing because we could pool the expected negative population into groups of 5 and/or 10 depending upon the assay. Much beyond 10 patients pooled you again started to see sensitivity decrease and the increased risk of missing a positive. I know our sister lab has been trying several assays to find a saliva assay that pools in acceptable ways as not to lose the sensitivity - so I would assume some places have it available. I am sure they have a volume discount applied to their work, but for us the assay cost went down with pooling, but the manual labor piece to actually pool the sample and move them into proper tubes and then result them because that process could not be automated was significantly higher - so the cost to private clients didn’t really change - it just allowed us to hit throughput margins we needed. I know that on the morning drive on NFL Radio last week - the team was discussing it and cost seemed to be what they pointed at as the biggest reason the NFL was maintaining the less frequent testing (and based upon available data at the time seemed and adequate and safe mix). It was speculation, but the owners ate the cost and with the already decreased revenue last year and the agreed to limits - there was a significant shortfall for some owners. I think many owners were hoping that with the way things looked in the spring that they could claw back a little money and have full stadiums again and all would be right in the world, but we have all seen that change - we will see how long before the owners acknowledge that point and move back to follow all of last year’s protocols - I expect it will happen at some point due to a break-out, but I think they are being a little short sighted right now.

The NFL is against it because the cost. They are alone absorbing the cost and last year the daily testing cost them close to 100 million dollars. By setting it 2 weeks originally for vaxxed players/staff (let’s say 80% of players and all staff) during the season that equates to over 37,500 less tests performed every 2 weeks - at $125 a test - over 4.5 million in savings every 2 weeks or about 43 million in savings for the season. At 1 time a week testing you cut that saving in half down to about 20 million in savings. Daily testing goes back to the owners paying an additional 100+ million out of their profits. Plus I think the idea was to have incentives to get vaccinated, but the money is the driver.

Let’s look at point differential and the impact of a single game and once again why I think it is somewhat meaningless. Going into week 17 (16th game) - both Buffalo and Miami had a point differential of 96 points +6.4 per game. Yet at that point Buffalo had locked in a top 3 seed and a home game and Miami was still out of the playoffs. The Miami point differential of +6.4 had them better than the eventual AFC champs in point differential, but they were 4 games worse in the record column. The Bills won that game by 30 causing a 60 point shift in point differential between the 2 teams. The Bills went from +96 to +126 and the Dolphins dropped from +96 to +66. Going into the game it was a net 0 between the 2 and coming out the Bills are +60. How can something be real meaningful if 1 game can have that kind of impact. The sample size is just to small to be meaningful. For point differential to be truly meaningful- we need trending over 70-100 or even 162 games - then these single game anomalies start to smooth out. The issue is teams change to much season to season - so it is meaningless over a long term and can be overwhelmed in the short term by one game or even 1-2 late game plays. The Dolphins going into the last game were +6.4 point per game and were tied with the Bills as the 2nd best AFC team in point differential. They came out of the game at a season average of +4.1 per game. Still very impressive and top 5 in the AFC worthy, but that last game cost them the playoffs and 2.3 points per game in point differential for the season. One game knocked nearly a field goal off their per game win margin. That is a small sample size impact. All NFL metrics have some of that sample size issue - part of what makes it great. Things like DVOA really begin to give nice metrics as the season wears on and provides some meaningful data. Sometimes that data along with Win/Loss data mirrors point differential- see TB and sometimes it doesn’t- see Miami.

This is excellent and much more meaningful information in my mind. 👍

The Steelers point differential was +5.5 right there with KC - not sure what that was indicative of. They got blown out in the playoffs by at team that had a point Differential of -0.3. The team with a -0.3 point differential went just as far in the playoffs as the AFC team with the top point differential of + 8.8 in Baltimore. To me it does not indicate anything other than the fact that Cleveland won games close and Baltimore blew people out. They both made the playoffs as wildcards. They both won in the first round and lost the following week and yet had a difference of 9.1 between their point differentials. Miami at +4.1 for the season with a 30 point loss to close it out - missed out on the playoffs all together - yet 2 teams with fairly significantly worse point differentials in the AFC made it in. The point differential means almost nothing - the fact that teams that win by definition must score more points impacts that. A team like Baltimore dominated teams in wins and lost close games, but that had no impact on where they were seeded or how far they went. They went just as far as Cleveland a team that got absolutely hammered several times during the season and when they won - they would squeak it out. Point differential is also greatly impacted by garbage time play. NFL by its rules and nature tend to produce games that get tighter near the end. If you are a team with a HC that plays a conservative keep the play in front of you - you might give up late meaningless drives when you are up by multiple scores. It impacts point differential, but not you record or seeding.

Agreed thought it went very well - we will see as they get going and have to cover the same topics over and over if it gets stale, but I enjoyed it.

Yet Cleveland was even worse in the point differential and played KC down to the wire. I anticipate the Browns will struggle in the point differential again this year as a run first team, but they are getting a lot of play as SB contender. I think in Football point Differential is the least helpful metric to looking at teams. The sample size is small and with certain match-ups things can skew very quickly. Miami was a strong positive point differential team last year - especially early as the defense dominated and created points and turnovers, but the they didn’t even make the playoffs and one game at the end completely flipped their entire point differential by getting absolutely crushed. I won’t say it can’t be meaningful, but in the NFL there are many significantly more important metrics.

I actually think since Sneaky Joe does the locked on Sabres podcast - that his 2 hours with Sal will have a nice mix of Bills and Sabres, but will be better than the instigators talk - which sometimes is terrible to listen to.

It is not even Mike’s take with Sal that bother me because I agree he balances it out. It is how in the middle suddenly he will flip to fantasy football topic when Sal is talking about Bills DBs or some other inane non-football question in the middle of the training camp report. If he wants to talk baseball or fantasy draft with Sal great - put it in a different segment. The fact that Sal gets a 15 minute training camp section in the afternoon and nearly always 10+ minutes is wasted with a super long winded question that has no point or a fantasy/betting question that is non Bills related or an instant trivia thing that takes up 2/3rd the segment. The Beane interview was facepalm worthy and it was to bad because Beane provided great insight into the cut down process and Mike just kept taking the interview off the rails.

Wish 3pm was to late - he really ruins the station listening to him talk to people like Sal. I wanted to hear training camp news and Mike just jabbers on and on. The interview he had with Beane was a 100% embarrassment. Asking Beane about do they bet on other teams cuts when their scouts go over that team. 🤦‍♂️

Hoping Sal’s show is as good as on victory Monday. Worried about the time that Sal has to be out at the stadium. Wish they put the instigators on at 10 and then 4 straight hours of Bills talk with Sal and OBL. We will see how this goes.

100% agree - the argument around Tyrod was never a question of his hard work, his desire to win, his leadership, his competitiveness, or his desire to start and lead a team. The issue with Tyrod was could he learn to throw with anticipation or was he going to continue to only throw to wide open receivers that have turned to face him. Many fans both on this board and others really only wanted the best for the Bills and the hope that Tyrod could bring that about. What we saw was that in a limited role on a team with a strong defense - that was possible, but we could only go so far. I feel for Tyrod because every place he has gone he has fought to get the starting role and things have conspired to hold him back (some of that being his own play), but he once again finds himself in a no win role on a team with their QB of the past and present stuck behind him and no real future. I hope for his sake he finds some wins on a bad roster because I think this might end up being his last rodeo.

I don’t think they expected Nate Becker to get any calls to join other PS. Much like when they bring guys in for tryouts - I would expect that if something significant happens to Sweeney - they could call someone up and Nate will be available to go to the PS and/or eventually land on the team - if that blocking role is needed. He already knows the playbook from multiple seasons, but is not a guy you are going to continue to put a lot of long term development into. He becomes one of those guys that gets future contracts and sticks around the Periphery and is available, but just can’t take the next step.