SoTier

I can only speak about Buffalo's housing market west of Main Street because that's the area I know best. In that area, Buffalo's real estate market has been booming for more than a decade, especially west of Main Street. The prices in the most desirable West Side neighborhoods -- Allentown, Richmond Ave, Elmwood Village, Delaware District -- have skyrocketed, and that's meant an overflow of gentrification into parts of the Lower West Side, Black Rock, Connecticut Street, etc. North Buffalo has also been a desirable area going back to the 1980s, and its become even more so. Most of single family homes in these neighborhoods as well as many of the two family homes are owned by people who live in them. All these neighborhoods have lots of single family homes with some decent/interest architecture that appeal to modern buyers. Many of the grand old mansions and classic Victorians in the Delaware District have also been condos into pricey condos. Even lower end neighborhoods west of Main Street filled utilitarian two families like Grant Amherst and Grant Ferry have seen significant price increases. These homes are being bought up by younger buyers looking to build nest eggs with fixer uppers or as well as by investors.

That's just the nature of upscale urban living, in Buffalo or Boston or Chicago or Omaha or anywhere in the US. If this condo was in Allentown or the Delaware District or within walking distance of the Elmwood Strip, it would probably bring more than list price because of bidding wars. Those neighborhoods have "urban ambiance" that attract wealthy people who reject the suburban life-style found in Clarence or Orchard Park. Waterfront Village is more like a suburban condo/townhouse development close to downtown.

The problem I have with the general recommendation to remove feeders at this time of year is that food sources for all wild birds, especially migrants, are limited because so many have been depleted over the winter. The recommendation to plant native plants is great for the future but for this spring, it's nonsensical. Furthermore, since poultry and waterfowl are the types of birds impacted by this flu, the recommendation ought to be targeted to people living in proximity to poultry flocks, wetlands, rivers, lakes, etc. On a better note, today I took my dog to a local park that is mostly woods with a creek running through it. While sitting in a chair by the shelter house, I saw a pileated woodpecker fly past (I could see the white bars on his/her black wings). Later I heard their distinctive call and heard drumming. As New York developed and forests were replaced with cities, towns, and farms, pileateds became very rare outside of the State Forest Preserves in the Adirondaks and Catskills, but as upstate New York's rural areas, especially in the Southern Tier, reverted from mostly agricultural land to forest land since WW II, pileated populations in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus Counties have grown significantly. While not common in back yards or at feeders, pileateds are frequently seen or heard in state forests, other forested public lands, and private woodlots.

Absolutely true. Many kids who come from money can't handle their wealth when they do get their share of the family wealth and run through millions. I think that recently the NFLPA has taken some steps to provide young players with financial mentoring because many players come from poor backgrounds, but even kids from middle class families can be overwhelmed by NFL salaries. Marshawn Lynch has really been outspoken about younger players taking care of their financial situations as have other current and former players recently.

Maybe the reason that Hughes is gone is because the Bills feel that Basham and/or AJE are capable of replacing him. Totally agree. QB isn't the only position where young players frequently step up big in their second or third seasons. A lot of college players made their draft slots based on their superior physical talent. In the pros, they not only have to learn new/better techniques and get their bodies into NFL playing shape, but they have to learn the way their opponents play the game to figure out how to be really effective, and they only gain that knowledge with experience, not only on the field but also in analyzing film. It takes a while.

I think that a lot of posters have unrealistic expectations of the Bills recent young DLers. These aren't top ten or top fifteen draft picks who realistically can replace entrenched starters but late first or late second round picks. They have some flaws that need to be fixed or overcome. It's not realistic to expect these young players to dislodge established starters as rookies or even as sophomores, especially because NFL defenses are much more sophisticated than most college defenses. There's a learning curve for all NFL newcomers, and some youngsters have more to learn than others. For the Bills and other outstanding teams' young defenders, it's even harder for them to break into starting lineups because the guys in front of them are better than the starters on many other teams. It's a lot easier for a young defender to have an impact on a 3 win team with a poor defense than on a 11 or 12 win team with a highly rated defense. IOW, show these young guys some patience. Did you do your best your job/career in your first couple of years on the job or after you've mastered all the nuances?

They planned on heading to Canada, but the woman who was supposed to help them chickened out at the last minute. Most believe that decision saved her life since the two cons she was going to help were both murderers.

RIP, Bob. I was a senior in HS when the Bonnies (they were the Brown Indians back then) went to the Final Four. It made me a college basketball fan for life, especially the NCAA Tournament.

That's a possibility. Sarcasm doesn't always come across via the printed word.

Your claim isn't supported by actual facts. Ralph Wilson was the reason the Bills sucked for most of years that he owned the team between 1970 and 2013, a total of 44 years. Between 1970 and 1987, the Bills had 12 losing seasons, 5 winning seasons, and 1 8-8 season. They made the playoffs 3 times and had 0 playoff wins. Between 1988 and 1999 the Bills reeled off 10 winning seasons and 2 losing seasons, made playoffs 10 times and went to the Super Bowl 4 times. From 2000 through 2013, the Bills had 11 losing seasons, 1 winning season, and 2 8-8 tied seasons. That's 25 losses, 16 winning seasons, and 3 tie seasons. Russ Brandon was hired by the Bills in 2004 or 2005 IIRC during which time he became Ralph Wilson's right-had man. He was promoted to GM in 2006. Ralph Wilson effectively stop actively participating in running the team during the 2009 season, so Brandon was effectively in total charge of the team until after the 2013 season. Brandon remained Bills president under Pegula until May, 2018. Under Brandon, 2006-2018, the Bills had 10 losing seasons, 2 winning seasons, and 1 8-8 seasons. Doug Whaley was Bills assistant GM between 2010 and 2013. He was named GM after the 2013 draft, and was fired after the 2017 draft. You might try to make a case for Brandon being responsible for much of losing between 2000 and 2018, but Whaley's tenure was simply too short. He essentially ran 3 drafts -- 2014, 2015, and 2016. The buck always stops at the top, and Wilson was the man in charge for 44 years since 1970 and hired/promoted Brandon. Since Pegula purchased the team, 2014-2021, the Bills have 5 winning seasons, 2 losing seasons, and 1 8-8 season, making the playoffs 4 times.

I think that all three of the above posts are valid observations, but keep in mind that Whaley didn't have as much power as most GMs have since Russ Brandon ran the Bills with the aim of maximizing profits. Consequently, not only were player personnel decisions made primarily to improve the bottom line, but this also applied to support staff like scouts and player evaluators. IIRC, Tom Modrak was still running player evaluations remotely from Philly when Beane was hired and cleaned out the administration. I think Whaley did a decent job within the limitations put on him by the Bills. I think he might be a good pick for the Stillers GM.

I'm not surprised. IIRC, Whaley was in the Steelers' organization before he came to the Bills.

Brees is an excellent example, especially because he shares some physical limitations with Mayfield, primarily height and arm strength. I think that the Yankees are the favorite baseball team of the majority baseball fans in every county in New York State from Queens to Erie.

When I had season tix, I got to be friends with the couple sitting next to me (I had sesats on the aisle). I sold the tix to them a couple of times when none of the family wanted to go.

I bolded the biggest problem with Mayfield that I see. Essentially, he made the same mistakes in 2021 that he was making in 2019 and 2020. Cleveland didn't decide to move on from Mayfield because his physical play suffered from his injury but he was still making the same kind of stupid decisions as a fourth year QB he was making as a sophomore. I'm not sure that he's put in enough time/effort into understanding the mental nuances of playing QB in the NFL. He obviously doesn't learn from his mistakes because he keeps making the same ones again and again. Mayfield also doesn't take responsibility for his own mistakes but blames others, which is simply unacceptable in an NFL QB. He's done it repeatedly, and it's likely why he's doesn't get support from his teammates. IOW, he not only has progressed enough to become a top QB, he doesn't seem to have the personality to be one, either.

The market for $1million+ condos in downtown Buffalo is probably much smaller than the market for $250K condos, and certainly much smaller than $1 million+ single family homes in the city and suburbs.

Neither Cleveland nor the Browns fans deserve this plague. Maybe Pats fans deserve Brandon but not Browns fans. Hell, even Jests fans don't deserve him.

You sound like one of those fools who don't wear seat belts because he/she doesn't personally know anybody who was saved from serious injury or death because he/she was wearing one. You do realize that a week out from landfall, the exact path of any hurricane is still too subject to a variety of atmospheric steering forces for anyone to predict with high accuracy for any specific location, right? It's hardly "bad faith" to warn people of the possibility of dangerous weather. Prior to Katrina, Louisianans and other Gulf Coast residents held "hurricane parties" as they waited for big storms to come ashore rather than evacuate. They don't do that much any more.

I would take "noodle arm" with good "other desirable QB traits" over "non-noodle arm" with mediocre/poor "other desirable QB traits". The question for the AFCE QBs not named Allen is, do they get better in their second and third seasons, and if they do, how big are their step ups? I expect that Mac Jones will improve because he reminds me of Tom Brady in 2001/2002. We tend to forget that Brady wasn't always the Tom Brady of 2007. Early in his career, he was considered a "system QB" with modest talent by many, especially football message board gurus who were fans of other AFCE teams. I think that Zach Wilson has to improve significantly as a sophomore or the Jests will be QB hunting again in 2023. I don't think that Tua changes much. He was a dink and dunker in college, and he's still a dink and dunker in the pros. I don't know if he can really get the most out of Hill and Waddle with his style but it might be enough for the Fins to make a WC spot. There's also a new coaching staff in Miami which might or might not be an improvement over the previous regime, which did get a lot out of the talent it had. I voted for the Pats being a push and the Jests and Fins being improved.

Thank you for setting the record straight. Compared to the manure show that were the Bills drafts under Russ Brandon/Dick Jauron (2006-2009), Nix was a breath of fresh air. One of the things to keep in mind about the Bills GMs from January, 2006 through May, 2018 (when Russ Brandon was fired), GMs had very limited power. Essentially, Brandon and his bean counters controlled budgets, especially coaching staff budgets, and frequently decided which players to acquire or keep based primarily on financial considerations. Russ Brandon operated on the principle of maximizing profits with little concern for fielding a winning team. Before joining the Bills in the early 2000s, he had infamously sold off most of the talent from the 1997 World Series Champion Florida Marlins in the 1998 MLB off-season, resulting in the Marlins finishing with the worst record ever for any MLB team that won the World Series the year before. The Marlins payroll went from the near the top of the league to bottom feeder territory but their profitability improved significantly. The Bills GMs during Brandon's regime were: 2006 - 2007: Marv Levy was a figurehead. I think it was Wilson's way of helping Levy financially. 2008 - 2009: No formal GM. Brandon ran the show financially. Jauron selected the talent. 2010 - 2013: Buddy Nix was primarily a talent evaluator. He resigned as GM in May, 2013. 2013 - 2017: Doug Whaley was again another a talent evaluator. He was fired immediately after the 2017 draft. 2017 - present: Brandon Beane was hired with a lot of support from Sean McDermott. Like his predecessors he didn't have full control over the team. When Russ Brandon was fired in May, 2018, Pegula gave Beane full control of the team. After the end of the 2018 season, the Bills fired the entire offensive coaching staff except for Brian Daboll. They not only replaced all of the fired coaches, but also hired a bonafide QB coach to mentor Josh Allen ... and as the pundits say, "the rest is history".

I think I've likely been a Bills fan longer than you've been alive since my fandom began in 1963, so if I wanted to be snooty about bandwagon fans, I could diss anybody who became a Bills fan during the Glory Years, especially somebody pretending that he/she knows what "a real fan of the Buffalo Bills would enjoy". FTR, this real Bills fan of 59 years loved it.

Yes, they did. I think at about the same time, too. They can't fire the college scouting staff before the draft because they know the collegiate players. I think Modrak and the other management guys got the boot first, and then some/many of the scouts were let go. IIRC, the Bills added additional scouts.

Thank you very much! It's an awesome site. I was checking what birds were migrating at night through my county and the rose breasted grosbeak was the third one on their list. Yesterday afternoon, I happened to look out my kitchen windows at the bird feeders and there's a brightly colored male rose breasted grosbeak (and likely his more drably colored girlfriends) at my sunflower feeder.

On May 2, 1982, The Weather Channel debuted! It made a weather junkie out of me! I wake up with TWC every morning.

One draft doesn't make a trend but only 1 QB was taken in the first round in 2022, and that at 20th, and none were taken in the second round. That's the first time that's happened since 2000. One of the big arguments for the rookie salary scale was that first rounders, especially QBs taken high in the first round, were getting astronomical salaries before they took a snap. One of the results of the rookie salary scale was that it set salary ranges for rookies by draft position. It made taking a QB high in the first round relatively "cheap", especially when teams could get an extra year at a reasonable price by exercising the fifth year option. This led to what appeared to be QBs being "overdrafted", ie teams in need of starting QBs taking QBs that maybe they didn't really love or weren't really first rounders just to make sure they got one. Is this really the beginning of the end of QBs being "overdrafted" or is it just a fluke? For a decade or so, it seemed to work really well. It became fairly common for 3 or more QBs to be taken in the first round. Between 2011, the first year of the rookie salary scale, and 2020, the last draft that teams have to decide whether to exercise their fifth year options on their first rounders, there were 28 QBs taken in the first round. Only 6 of those QBs became bonafide franchise QBs, at least for several years: Newton (2011), Luck (2012), Mahomes (2017), Watson (2017), Allen (2018), and Jackson (2018) which is only about 21% success rate. Another 6 -- Tannehill, Winston, Goff, Wentz, Mayfield, and Murray -- have been at least decent starting NFL QBs but certainly not nearly as good as the first six. I believe that all of the teams that drafted these 12 QBs exercised their fifth year options on them. Deciding to exercise the fifth year option on a first round QB is easy when a young QB shows to be a stud early on but with some that don’t continue to develop or regresses, the decision to exercise the fifth year option is a lot harder. Moreover, it can be a very expensive mistake as Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold from the 2018 draft demonstrate. Meanwhile, between 2011 and 2019, other NFL teams drafted QBs after the first round and also found bonafide franchise QBs or decent starting NFL QBs. Russell Wilson (2012 3rd round) and Dak Prescott (2016 4th round) are bonafide franchise QBs. Kirk Cousins (2012 4th round) might also be one, too. Andy Dalton (2011 2nd rounder), Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo (both 2014 2nd rounders) have all been decent NFL starters, and probably better QBs than at least some of the second group of first rounders. In fact, between 2011 and 2016, the third and fourth rounds produced as many franchise QBs as the first rounds, and Wilson has had a significantly better career than either Newton or Luck, and Prescott also appears likely to have a better career too. These results and the astronomical rise in QB salaries may have made at least some NFL teams reconsider “overdrafting” QBs since they’ve become quite expensive, and are only “bargains” if they actually develop into top tier franchise QBs, which only about 1 in 5 QBs drafted high actually do. The #1 pick in the 2022 draft will probably get a first contract of about $41 million dollars, much of it guaranteed. Pick #33, the first in the second round, will cost slightly under $10 million without most of it guaranteed. QBs taken in the third round will generally make less than $1 million a year.