SoTier

Except that the Bills haven't proven they can score "lots of points" against anybody under McDermott. They mostly have lots of points scored against them. It's why their points scored differentials have been massively negative in both of McDermott's first two seasons. Last season they not only couldn't score "lots of points", they gave up "lots of points", too. Hopefully experience helps Edmunds and the other young LBs improve. Unfortunately, the laws of physics are pretty immutable: when a bigger body smashes into a smaller body, it's the smaller body that gets knocked off its trajectory while the bigger body's course is frequently unaffected by a smaller body smashing into it.

Optimism without results to justify it is just fantasizing. The Bills need a lot of pieces to come together to have a successful season in 2019. They need to have a lot of young players become outstanding/elite players in the next year or so in order to become a regular playoff contender. They need their offensive coaching staff to prove they're significantly better than their predecessors. They need their HC and DC to prove their can match wits with Belichick and his staff. The Bills could put it all together. They could also fail to achieve some or all of these pieces and be just as mediocre as they been for the last twenty years. There are no guarantees.

Famous. Last. Words. A couple of other posters mentioned the Pats going run heavy last season -- and they added another RB in the off season. The Jets have added Le'Von Bell. The Ravens are apparently building a run-first offense and the Lions seem to be trying to give Matthew Stafford a running game for the first time in his career. The Seahawks have always been a run-heavy offensive team in the Pete Carroll era. Power running backs haven't become obsolete, either. Most playoff teams have one -- Todd Gurley, Mark Ingram, Ezekiel Elliott, etc.

What other true franchise QB -- somebody whom everybody agrees is an elite or first tier QB -- who didn't show much improvement as a second year starter but "got it" as a third year starter and developed into a first rate QB in the last quarter century? You might make an argument for Cam Newton but his passing is mediocre, and he's not considered "elite or first tier". He's led the Panthers to only 3 winning seasons in 8 years ... and Carolina is a very feast-or-familne team during the Rivera/Newton era: if the stars all align correctly, they have a blockbuster season but otherwise they hang out with the league's bottom feeders. That's hardly impressive.

^^^ The reality is that a QB who doesn't show significant improvement in his second year as a starter isn't likely to get significantly better later in his career. How a young QB looks at the end of his second season starter pretty much exposes his ceiling. Drew Brees is the only great QB since 2000 who had an unimpressive second year as a starter who later blossomed into more than a "decent" QB of the caliber of Tannehill or Cutler. Most who don't make significant improvement in the areas where they're weakest as sophomore starters may commonly decline. If Patrick Mahomes doesn't improve greatly in his second season as a starter, he's still going to be a good/great NFL QB because he played so spectacularly as a first year starter. Allen didn't play well for an NFL QB as a rookie. He made plays with his legs, not so much with his arm, and that needs to change if he's going to become a true franchise QB. How much he improves will be a good indicator of what kind of QB he'll become but most QBs only improve incrementally after their second season as starter. As for McDermott, if he can't produce a decent team -- minimum 8 wins without significant injuries, a positive scoring differential, half as many blowouts (losses by more than 20 or more points), an offense and defense at least in the top half of the league (16 or better) -- in his third season as HC without a team that fits his model, then he's not likely to magically turn things around in his fourth or even his fifth year.

That's not a great accomplishment unfortunately.

I disagree. I had Directtv for about 7 years but I went back to Spectrum (cable) because it had gotten so expensive. I was paying as much just for Directtv (with 4 tvs) as I now pay for tv and internet plus HBO and Showtime. I only have to pay for 1 tv because I use basic ROKUs to stream from the Spectrum app for the other three -- and I don't have to go out in the cold to clean snow off the satellite dish after a snowstorm. I can also add more tvs simply by purchasing more ROKU units.

Is this Curtis Rush guy the same guy who advocated a few months ago that regularly letting proven franchise QBs walk in FA rather than paying them and replacing them with a rookie was a viable strategy for NFL teams? IIRC, that article was from Forbes also. It was a great justification for teams putting profitability ahead of winning, and this article on the importance of having a top WR (or in Rush's case, not having one) seems to be in the vein. It works if $$$ is more important to a team than winning lots of games. Teams have #1 WRs because they're weapons, which teams need to have if they're interested in winning a lot of games in the modern NFL. You can make all the excuses you want for the Bills not having a top flight WR but don't pretend that it's "better" for the Bills chances to win games to not have a WR of the caliber of Beckham, Bryant, Cooper, etc. on the team.

My first two cars not only didn't have AC, they only had AM radios. I have central air in my current home. I put it in 16 years ago when I had the furnace replaced. I replaced the furnace two years ago, but I use the AC infrequently (less than 2 weeks a year on average), so it probably has been used about as much as a 2-year-old unit in other parts of the country.

I don't think you're alone in that assessment of the Bears. I've seen several media types question how good they are. I guess part of that comes from whether Trubisky will continue to develop from "decent" to good, but part of that also comes from the belief that the other NFCN teams all took steps to get better. BTW, Miami had a worst-to-first rise, albeit briefly, a decade ago: the Carp went 1-15 in 2007, changed regimes, and went 11-5 and won the division in 2008 (the year that Brady missed virtually the entire season). It was a mirage ... they soon returned to mediocrity.

I think this is a myth. What teams in the last decade or so have done this and had long term (ie, mutliple year) success as measured by playoff appearances and wins? Lots of people talk about this but the examples they give aren't very recent, so they aren't good models for the current NFL. The teams that have made sudden turn-arounds in recent years like Philly, the Rams, the Chargers and Chicago all built around the talent already on those teams, even when the team as a whole was underperforming.

Actually, there's been considerable positive buzz about Flores on the NFL Network and other shows. It's more than just his cred from being a Pats assistant. Apparently, he's brought an entirely new mindset to the Carp. The one I really don't get is San Francisco because Garoppolo has done squat in his five year career except ride the pine and collect checks either because he was a backup or he was hurt. He's had 10 starts total going into his 6th NFL season.

Thank you for posting this. A related issue to mental illness and CTE is PTSD. All of these conditions can radically change the behavior of people but they have different manifestations in different people -- and as you note, you don't know if one of these conditions actually caused a specific action.

I think that you are being totally unrealistic. It's easy to say "stay out of bars for the next 8 years" but what should a young rich guy with his pockets full of money do for entertainment then? "Going out" to bars, dance halls, and honkytonks to drink and have a good time has been part of American culture since Prohibition, especially for young guys in their 20s, and that's a prescription for trouble and always has been. How many "respectable citizens" today were hell raisers in their twenties? I think that Hunt's best course is to work with a counselor/coach/advisor to control his alcohol consumption and develop strategies for dealing with confrontation/provocation without resorting to violence (anger management) since becoming a monk or hermit until he grows up probably isn't in the cards.

I agree. The reality is that the NFL and/or the NFLPA getting involved in stadium issues opens that nasty can of worms called "violation of anti-trust statutes". Unlike MLB, the other professional sports teams aren't protected from anti-trust scrutiny by the federal government. If an individual team wants to threaten relocation to pressure local or state taxpayers to ante up for a new stadium, that's an "individual action". If the league or the NFLPA tries to do the same, the federal courts could very well consider that an action "in furtherance of a monopoly". Congress could hold hearings and possibly compel NFL teams to open their books to public scrutiny (which as privately held businesses they aren't currently forced to do). It could get nasty.

The opposite of models who have to starve themselves.

Priceless!

Tell me they couldn't be twins!!!!

Especially the hair cut ... he looks like the guard from the old tv comedy "Night Court".

That's pretty much the western Southern Tier. Between being cheek-to-jowl with Pennsylvania and Ohio, with West Virginia a few hours south, as well as having a couple of Seneca Nation of Indians reservations in Cat County, fireworks of the aerial and boom kinds are easy to obtain, and fireworks' illegality doesn't seem to enter into the minds of anybody, not even law enforcement. Maybe the local gendarmes figure better the rednecks shoot off ordinary fireworks -- as long as they don't burn anything down -- than they "improvise". I usually go with a friend to her brother's shindig in his house that overlooks Chautauqua Lake. He sinks probably $3-4 grand into his show, and his richer neighbor spends at least 2 or 3 times that. Between them, they probably put on a better show than most of the little burgs around here. Most of the folks at this party, especially the ones doing the fireworks, are at least in their thirties so there's a whole lot less alcohol involved than there were at some of my family events a few decades ago.

Was the dog sitting in his lap and hanging out the window? I see this all the time around here, and it po's me no end. It's dangerous for the driver and dangerous for the dog. I learned my lesson about having an unrestrained dog in a vehicle in an accident 30 years ago (also learned first hand about the perils of falling asleep while driving) when I nodded off on the Thruway outside Utica, woke up as I was veering off the shoulder, cranked that steering wheel hard left and rolled my ten month old Nissan pickup. Because I was wearing my seatbelt, I ended up hanging upside down for several minutes until somebody helped me down, but my dog, sleeping in the extra cab space, dashed out the broken window, and sprinted along the side of Thruway. Lucky for me and my pup, he ran along near the fence and some Thruway staff collected him and took him to a local kennel. Ever since, my dogs ride secured with dog seatbelts, even around town. My current dog, a 14 week old Aussie cattle dog mix, rides in a crate right now, but he'll graduate to a seat belt in a while. I believe 1 or 2 states now require dogs and other pets to be secured in vehicles, and I think there's been talk of NY doing the same. Great idea for both drivers and their pets.

I think that this is the crux of the problem. The NFL has to justify its disciplinary actions, both according to US law, its own rules, and probably the CBA. Individual player contracts may also make it easier to dismiss one player and not another, depending up the wording.

That's essentially my point. You make it costly for those who break the rules, you make others aware of the consequences, and you offer alternatives (like designated drivers, free taxi rides, etc.) -- and you make the penalties fit the seriousness of the offense. Mandating that all drivers re-test every so many years is not going to do anything about drunk driving. It's not going to lower the number of accidents involving texting while driving or speeding or other bad behavior. People who behave badly know their behavior is bad but they don't care. All it does is unnecessarily punish people with the threat of losing their driving privileges when they've done nothing wrong.

Hunt got in trouble 3 times for his violent behavior just in 2018. All three incidents were documented on film. My guess is that KC warned him more than once, and finally just showed him the door.

No, just pointing out that he's not infallible.