SoTier

The early part of the Drought wasn't on Brandon. I think he joined the Bills about 2005 after overseeing the dismantling of the Florida Marlilns after they won the 2003 World Series (which resulted in the Marlins significantly increasing their profits). He was put in charge of the Bills after the firing of Tom Donahoe IIRC when Marv Levy was named as a figurehead GM while Brandon held the purse strings and Jauron ran the team on the field.

Don't worry, It's not going to happen at 2:22 pm either. That's 14:22 on the 24 hour clock.

I guess your view of Brandon depends upon what you consider "good intentions". His "good intentions" meant maximizing profits while doing just enough to keep butts in the seats ... like conning fans into believing the Bills were actually trying to improve the team on the field. Two best examples -- signing FA Mario Williams and Terrell Owens to "star" on teams that were filled with JAGs, especially at skill positions, and coached by bottom feeder coaches. Excuse me, but we do know what kind of person he was. He sexually harassed female employees and he then lied to his employers about it. Sexual harassment means that he used his powerful position within the Bills/Sabres organization to impose himself on women who worked for the Bills and/or Sabres. It's NOT the same thing as having a consensual relationship with a co-worker because it's based on coercion. It was a tough situation for female employees who worked for the Bills and/or Sabres, especially the ones who attracted Brandon's unwanted attentions, but Brandon got what he deserved for both the sexual harassment and his lies to the Pegulas.

Crime is crime, sweetpea. Penalties are different for different types and severity of crimes but they're all crimes. Moreover, Flores didn't just overhear a conversation but was propositioned to take part in a crime. As for supposedly "private texts", nothing committed to any media is truly private. That was true even when the only media was paper. At least back in the "old days", you could burn embarrassing notes and letters. Today, if you put something out on the web, you have to assume it's permanent. If you're stupid enough to commit to any kind of media something you wouldn't want the entire world to read/see, then you deserve whatever consequences come from that being publicly exposed.

Darnold is a terrible QB who's not worth wasting a roster spot on. If he wasn't a top 5 draft pick, he wouldn't have been on any team's active roster last season. I'd look for a younger backup QB who's showed some promise like Kyle Allen or Gardner Minshew or Tyler Huntley. I don't know if any of these are FAs but these would be the type I'd like the Bills to look at: guys who can be at least competent starters for a few games.

Generally, people who want to bribe somebody else to do something illegal do so privately, including people who plan robberies, murders, terrorist acts etc. I guess you're good with that.

The Bills weren't a crappy team for so long because they weren't bad enough to get top five draft picks. They were crappy for so long because of the way the team was run. That was on Ralph Wilson who hired Russ Brandon to maximize profits at the expense of winning football games. The Bills found plenty of talent in the draft and in FA but they seldom retained their top young talent beyond their rookie contracts. Under Brandon, the Bills developed 3 players who became All Pros -- Jason Peters, Marshawn Lynch, and Stephon Gilmore -- and let all of them leave, 2 by trade and 1 by FA. They also made questionable HC hiring choices (Jauron, Marrone) while hiring low end assistant coaches. Pegula's early attempt to hire his own HC resulted in the Rex Ryan disaster, which is why Pegula ceded control of the team over to Russ Brandon. The Bills' rut of mediocrity was only broken in 2018 when the Pegulas finally sent Russ Brandon packing (for non-football issues) and turned the running of the team over to Brandon Beane. The next season, Beane and McDermott sent all of the offensive assistants except OC Daboll packing and hired better ones. This is when they actually hired an experienced QB coach to mentor Josh Allen. Under Beane, the Bills have retained most of the top young talent that they've drafted rather than sending them on to help other teams make playoff runs. Teams like the Jags, Jests, and Giants have been drafting in the top 5 and top 10 for most of this past decade but they are just as far from being contenders for anything but more top 5 draft picks as they ever were. It's unlikely that they are going to improve significantly unless something changes in the way the teams are run.

Disappointed fans like to find scapegoats. We've seen the same BS here vis-a-vis blaming Leslie Frazier for the Bills loss to KC. Some people simply don't "get it" that getting to the Super Bowl, much less winning it, has a lot to do with luck. Sometimes that's flukey plays, sometimes key injuries, sometimes mistakes, and sometimes it's just somebody coming up with a perfect game plan or a perfect play that's executed perfectly (ie, the Philly Special).

You not only can't do math, you ignore facts to build your negative narrative. The Bills have had double digit win seasons the last three years. They have made the playoffs 4 times in the last 5 seasons. They just missed the playoffs in 2014 with Kyle Orton as their QB. In the 8 full years that the Pegulas have owned the Bills, the Bills have averaged 9.1 wins per season with only 2 losing seasons. I'm going on sixty years as a Bills fan, so I'm not only old, I know what hopeless looks like in regards to the Bills. I remember when the Bills were non-competitives with the rest of the NFL for about a decade. I remember going zero-for-the-Seventies to Miami. I remember Dick "Play Not to Lose by Too Much" Jauron's joyless gems like losing to Cleveland 6-3. I lived through Wide Right, the Music City Miracle and the Drought. I'm not going to keep whining about the current Bills losing in OT in one of the greatest playoff games ever. It happened. Move on ... and be happy that the future for the Bills is a whole lot brighter than it is for most of the rest of the NFL.

I was actually more surprised by how bad the bottom feeders were than I was by the Bills being in the top half of the league. The bottom feeders, with the exception of the Browns and Bucs, have basically shown no signs of improvement for a decade: Jags averaged 4.2 wins, the Jests 5.5 wins, and the Giants 6.1 wins. These 3 teams had only 2 playoff appearances (1 for the Giants, 1 for the Jags) in the last 10 years. None of them had more than 1 season with a winning record. IMO, the only thing that changes the scenario for these teams is regime change, which usually means ownership change. When you look at the list, the Bills are sandwiched between two Super Bowl winners (Eagles and Rams). There are numerous other teams that have made the playoffs multiple times (including a couple of SB losers -- Falcons and Bengals) in the 75-90 win range with the Bills, and the Bills are in a really good spot with Allen on the roster.

Nope. It's not an accident that the sportsbooks have made the two teams with the best QBs in the NFL as Super Bowl favorites. Allen and Mahomes put the Bills and Chiefs half way up the mountain even compared to good teams without proven top QBs such as the Bucs, Saints, and Steelers.

I agree with you about the Roman Catholic Church and science ... I taught biology, physics, and earth science in Catholic schools many, many years ago. The RCC formally accepted the theory of evolution more than 70 years ago. Most mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc) have also made their peace with modern scientific theories. The conservative Christian denominations that insist on literal interpretation of the Bible are the religious groups that don't accept modern science.

The Bills added the biggest piece of building a Super Bowl contender via the draft: an elite QB. The Rams had to trade for a better QB because the QB they traded up to get in the draft turned out to be not good enough. All teams have misses with draft picks, with FAs, and with trades. No player comes with a guarantee to be a superstar.

Last year, Tampa Bay went "all in" to sign Tom Brady and it paid off. This year, the Rams went "all in" to trade for Matthew Stafford. Both teams had solid pieces behind them and then added some extra talent, most notably the Rams. I think that's the lesson here: if you have a good team, going all in for a top QB is worth it. I think that this pattern wouldn't be possible for most NFL teams to follow for a number of reasons. Some teams already have top QBs. Some teams in need of a top QB don't have the cap room to acquire one. Bottom feeder teams lack too many supporting pieces for a top QB to help them become SB contenders. Mostly though, the biggest impediment for following the pattern that the Bucs and Rams used to succeed is that truly top QBs seldom become available. The only truly top level QB available at present is DeShaun Watson. Maybe Aaron Rodgers or Russell Wilson might become available at some point, but that's iffy. Most off seasons, there are no truly top level QBs available in FA or for trade.

Not weird, just a product of boredom creating the need to create a LAMP thread to gain attention.

Congratulations!!!!! You have proven that the world cannot end on February 22, 2022 or even February 22, 2222 because time never lines up ... 2:22 AM is actually 02:22 using the 24 hour clock 2:22 PM is actually 14:22 using the 24 hour clock 22:22 on the 24 hour clock is 10:22 PM using the 12 hour clock

One of the giants of human history, born today 458 years ago. A brief summary of his life and work from Wikipedia ...

Ignorance is bliss. Success is NOT a black/white scenario where a team either wins the Super Bowl or fails. In order to create that black/white scenario, you rank team building philosophy as an overriding factor, and then, you cherry picked teams and time period to fit your scenario, which in your ignorance, you think represent the far ends of the team building philosophical spectrum but really don't.

What a whiney, bitter take on one of the greatest playoff seasons in NFL history. The "any given Saturday/Sunday" mantra of NFL parity in which any team can beat any other in any particular game came to fore during the playoffs in both the AFC and the NFC ... and even in the Super Bowl itself. I'm sure there's a black rain cloud perpetually following you everywhere you go.

Ahem. You conveniently ignored the KC Chiefs to create a false dichotomy that's reminiscent of arguments from back in the early 2000s when conventional "wisdom" claimed that the salary cap would prevent the development of dynasties. In the last 10 years (2012-2021), the Chiefs have had 8 double digit win seasons, 8 playoff appearances, 4 conference championship appearances, 2 Super Bowl appearances, a Super Bowl win ... and they are still loaded to be a force in the AFC. Over the last decade, the Chiefs not only "built for the future" but they've strategically employed the "win now" concept, too. It's the same strategy that the Pats employed to dominate the AFC and the NFL for 2 decades.

There would be much less violent crime if so many Americans and their elected representatives didn't subscribe to the "every nut deserves to have his own private arsenal" mantra and oppose any and all measures to limit guns getting into the hands of people who shouldn't have them. There would be even much less violent crime if so many individual Americans who appear to be law abiding citizens didn't aid and abet criminals and mentally unstable people from obtaining guns because they dislike the gun laws that are in place. There would be so much less violent crime if so many Americans got their heads out of their butts and didn't consider hand guns as a first resort rather than the very last resort in confrontations. It's much easier to blame somebody else than looking in a mirror. Actually, mental problems and drugs/alcohol abuse frequently go hand-in-hand because many mentally ill individuals self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Many of the individuals who come to mind when we think of "the homeless" -- bearded alcoholics living in boxes -- are mentally ill individuals. Many meds used to treat mental issues have significant side-effects that discourage patients who suffer from those side effect from taking those meds. They then self-medicate to mitigate their mental issues.

Excellent post. I think that the Bills have drafted pretty well in the McDermott/Beane era. I think that Ford is the only one of their high picks who's definitely been a big disappointment. Maybe Moss as well. The Bills have been drafting in the bottom half of each round since 2019 which means that they are likely to get prospects who are less polished and probably need more time to develop than players taken in the top half of the same round.

Actually, the last time the Bills traded up for a generational talent, they got Josh Allen ....

Drafting a franchise QB is the be all and end all when it comes to evaluating a team's draft expertise. The Bills gave up a ton of draft capital in order to get Allen. They also gave up a first rounder to acquire Diggs. I doubt that they could have drafted a more impactful player than Diggs with that 2020 first rounder.

NO, no, no. To paraphrase a previous poster, "you only trade up for one position and it's not DE". Teams rarely get the opportunity to draft a great QB, so if they think that there's one in the draft, you go for it. Otherwise, stay put or possibly trade back for the right deal. The Bills have big needs at CB and interior OL, which the #25 pick could enable them to fill one with an elite talent while keeping Rousseau and that second rounder. I'd prefer the Bills to acquire an edge rusher to help them now through either FA or trade.