SoTier

The ironic part of this is that the commentators on NFLN were just talking about how the Rams were probably going to re-sign Von Miller ... and then the news just exploded! Woohoo!

HOLY CRAP!!!!

My point is simply that there haven't been any QBs who improved significantly because they were put in a better scheme -- or even on a better team. QBs show what they can do early on, and where they are 3 or 4 years into their starting careers is about where their ceiling is. The best ones may get better because they get smarter with experience, but I don't buy the idea that 5 or 6 years into a career some QB who's been only decent is suddenly going to emerge as an elite talent as a signal caller. Mayfield hasn't shown a lot of growth as a quarterback or as a leader in his four seasons in Cleveland, especially compared to how much Allen and Jackson have improved since they were all drafted in 2018.

I disagree. I can't think of a single QB in this century who went from decent to great because of a scheme or team change. Matthew Stafford was great in Detroit but was dismissed by many because of the crappy franchise he played for but he was also great with the Rams, only with a good enough team around him to make him a winner. Both Alex Smith and Kirk Cousins have been well above average QBs throughout their careers. They were both better when they were on teams that suited them better scheme and talent wise, but they weren't trash even when they were on lesser teams. In Mayfield's case, as the #1 pick in his draft class, if he's not an elite QB then he's going to be a disappointment. I think that it's obvious that he isn't going to be elite, and maybe he's not ever going to be better than a Alex Smith or Kirk Cousins level QB, a very good starting NFL QB but not a true franchise QB even as good as Stafford or Ryan or Roethlisberger in their primes.

The Saints, Eagles or Panthers work for me. Actually, just about any NFC team except the Cowboys works for me. Just as long as he's out of the AFC.

Apparently some ham sandwiches aren't quite as indictable as others.

Deny it all you want, but Upstate New York would be an economic basket case without New York City and its environs. New York City and its suburbs have about 64% of the State's population. New York City area residents and out-of-state residents who work in New York City produce about 82% of the state's income tax revenue. New York State contains the headquarters of 54 Fortune 500 companies, and 42 of those are headquartered in New York City. All but 2 of the other 12 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in New York State -- Eastman Kodak and Corning -- are headquartered in the New York City suburbs.

Farmers, villages, factories used to dump their sewage and other waste into any convenient river or creek -- and that continued into the not so distant past, like the 1970s. I grew up in Gowanda where the former Moench Tanning Company and the Peter Cooper Glue Factory used to dump their waste into the Cattaraugus Creek upstream from the village. The odor of decomposing animal parts and the chemicals used to process them into leather and glue permeated village, especially in the summer. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland famously caught on fire in 1969. It's likely that the highly polluted Buffalo River could have also caught fire. That happened all over the country until the Clear Water Act of 1972 started the long fight to clean up waters in the US, which is still going on. Decomposing organic matter, like carcasses and sewage produce methane, which can bubble up through water. I'm sure that millions of Downstate residents are crying in their beers over your protest. Without the New York City metro, the rest of the state would be on a par with Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia in most metrics. New York isn't alone in this situation. States from Massachusetts to Colorado to Washington to Arizona would all be backwaters if not for their dominant major metros. Why would anybody ever go to Nevada if not for Las Vegas?

^^^ This isn't rocket science, folks. "Downstate" and "Upstate" are terms that have traditionally been used to differentiate NYC and its suburbs, including Long Island, from the rest of New York State. Essentially, any part of New York State north of NYC was considered "Upstate". As NYC's suburbs expanded northward into Orange and Putnam Counties, more and more people began to think of these as part of Downstate. Terms like "Western New York" or "Central New York" or the "Finger Lakes" or the "Southern Tier" or "the Adirondaks" were traditional terms that the local inhabitants, media, businesses, government officials, etc used to describe their local areas of New York, primarily in "Upstate". Because these weren't official, different local people/organizations defined themselves differently, frequently overlapping some other areas. Even using "Upstate" to refer to a specific area north of the NYC metro is simply a local convention. None of these self-assigned descriptions are "written in stone". At some point, New York State officially defined Upstate and Downstate for administrative purposes. The Department of Economic Develop later (late 1970s or early 1980s) divided New York State into smaller regions like the Capital District, the North Country, Hudson Valley, Allegany, Leatherstocking, etc. This was for economic development and promoting tourism. Those are "official" in the sense that NYS created and continues to use them, but some other NYS agencies like ENCON or Department of Mental Hygiene have their own designations . They don't necessarily conform to what local people consider their area. I live in Chautauqua County. My area is part of "Western New York" and the "Southern Tier" as well as the official "Chautauqua Allegany" region for tourism and economic development. The Genesee Valley can be considered part of "Central New York" or the "Finger Lakes". It might also be considered part of "Western New York" by some local people. Both are part of "Upstate New York", but some people might quibble about that, depending upon their perspective. It's essentially TOE-may-doe versus to TOE-mah-toe.

I'm sure there are people in Buffalo who don't think Josh Allen is a great QB, either. People are entitled to their opinions. When the Texans had a competitive team around him, Watson played well enough to go head to head with Mahomes (2019), and he was better than Allen at that point. In 2020, Watson was the only reason that the Texans were even competitive after Bill O'Brien sent most of their best players elsewhere. I like Tyrod Taylor, but neither he nor Davis Mills are in the same universe, talent-wise, as DeShaun Watson. You can dislike Watson for his off-field behavior but don't denigrate his on-field talent because of it. Talent in some endeavor and morality/decency/honesty/etc in private life are not related. Some of our greatest heroes, in sports and in other spheres, were disgusting human beings outside of the spotlight. BTW, people used to say that Matthew Stafford couldn't win "the big game" ... until he had the opportunity to play for a good team. I don't care whether you're talking Brady or Rodgers or Mahomes or Allen, every QB needs support from his team. Watson didn't have that in 2020 in Houston. I can't seem him getting that in Seattle, either, unless the Seahawks clean out the FO and coaching staff. Pete Carroll needs to retire IMO.

The Seahawks FO built a SB team but never figured out how to sustain it when they had to pay an elite QB. For whatever reason, they figured that Wilson was so good he didn't need protection (ie, OL) and nor a lot of weapons, and they sank too many resources into the defense like the Jamal Adams trade. They seem to be clueless about how to manage the salary cap. Russell Wilson is my second favorite QB behind guess who. I'm glad he's escaped the hot mess that the Seahawks have become. I have and will continue to always root for Russ except when he plays the Bills.

That's a possibility. Somebody on NFL Now suggested that if they don't want to wait on seeing how Garoppalo comes out of his surgery. The idea is that with their OL and running game, all they need is a game manager, and Trubisky is available.

The evidence in criminal proceedings is considerably higher than in civil proceedings, and these cases are notably difficult to prosecute because it's generally "he said/she said". Cuomo faced criminal charges in two or three counties, but I think that all of those were dropped before they ever got to the grand jury stage because the DAs didn't think they could get the grand juries to return criminal charges. The idea is that this is good for the Bills because it evens up the AFCW so that those teams are likely to beat each other up, knocking all of them out of the running for the #1 seed. The Bills, OTOH, have an easy road to the #1 seed because they easily dominate the AFCE.

Actually, it's the official designation from New York State. Everything north of the NYC metro (ie, north of Westchester and Rockland Counties) are part of Upstate New York. That's from somebody who worked for New York State for more than a decade, including a stint with the old Department of Economic Development (it has a new name these days) that included the "I Love NY" tourism program.

At least it's not Try-POLE-eye like WNYers butcher Napoli (Na-POL-eye).

I think that it's a bit early to declare Herbert and Burrow as elite, but they seem the most likely to join the club. I think that DeShaun Watson might possibly be elite but he may have derailed his career with his off-field behavior. I just don't see Murray and Jackson being elite in the same way as Mahomes and Allen. I'm not saying they aren't franchise quality QBs but they're more limited than Mahomes and Allen, especially in the passing game. Sometimes great QBs come in clusters ... think of the 1983 draft that produced Elway, Kelly, and Marino. The 6 drafts between 2000 and 2005 produced Brady (2000), Brees (2001), Palmer (2003), E Manning (2004), Rivers (2004), Roethlisberger (2004), and Rodgers (2005), all but Palmer likely HOFers. In the 6 drafts between 2006 and 2011, the best QBs were Cutler (2006), Ryan (2008), Flacco (2008), Stafford (2009), Cam Newton (2011) and Andy Dalton (2011), none of whom are likely HOF candidates except perhaps Stafford now that he's with the Rams.

I think that used to be a common local pronunciation of Arkansas in the Midwest when I lived there. I don't know if that's still the case. Some Midwesterners and Westerners change the endings of place names when the names end in vowels: the Absaroka Range in Montana/Wyoming often becomes AB-sa-ro-key while the last syllable in Missouri becomes "uh" instead of "ee".

That's the way it has always been: far more duds than studs. Most QB classes produce 1 or fewer franchise QBs, and truly elite QBs like Mahomes and Allen come along even more infrequently. Most stadiums built since 2000 have capacities around 70k or less. Stadium Capacities

My guess is that this is likely to happen to the Bills if they start losing again. IIRC, by the late 1970s, there were regularly less than 30k fans in the then named Rich Stadium which had a capacity of 80k then. That's what finally drove Ralph Wilson to make an attempt to make the team competitive. He started by hiring Chuck Knox as HC.

Nobody in WNY lives in Java but in JAY-va. I always thought that Long Islanders pronounced their area as Lon-GUY-land. Point Gratiot in Dunkirk is pronounced locally as "GRAT-IT". I think the correct French pronunciation is GRAT-oh. Au Sable, NY -- the Chasm, Forks, and the village/town -- is pronounced locally as oh-SAY-bull. It should be oh-SAHB-luh. Skaneateles and Scajacquada are some of those place names that only locals can say. I've always put Snowqualmie in that same group.

Is the "n" silent or pronounced? I think Americans in general call places named "Versailles" as ver-SAILS unless they're located in France.

Some place names have unusual spellings or are foreign words, so people naturally struggle with saying them. OTOH, there lots of fairly straight forwardly spelled names that just have unique local/regional pronunciations. Yesterday the Weather Channel asked viewers to send them the names places that aren't pronounced locally the way most people would think they would be said. They got lots of replies, so I thought it would be interesting to do our own list of places that aren't pronounced locally the way most people would expect them to be. Here are some of my candidates: For New York, I nominate the strangest pronunciation for any place name in the US, IMO: Coxsackie, NY which is pronounced "COOK-sock-ee". Also in New York's Hudson Valley is the town and hamlet of Coeymans, which is pronounced "KWEE-mans". If you speak Dutch, you probably didn't need the phonetic spelling. In WNY, the little hamlet of Napoli, is pronounced "Na-POL-eye" and Charlotte, a town in Chautauqua County, is pronounce "Shar-LOT". Real Pennsyltuckians know that Kinzua as in Kinzua Dam and Kinzua Valley is pronounced "KIN-zoo". In Nebraska, the little town of Beatrice is pronounced "Bee-AH-triss". Norfolk, NB, the birthplace of the late great Johnny Carson, is pronounced "NOR-fork". Anybody got any other interesting ones?

I'm not less emotionally invested now that the team is elite, it's just that I find a whole lot less to criticize/complain about now. I can't be too critical of whatever decisions were made or not made in the last 13 seconds of regulation in the OT loss to KC because I sat through the last game of the 2004 season when the Bills missed the playoffs because they didn't show up against the Steelers' second teamers.

Another BBMB refugee here.

Most Thoroughbred trainers who get caught in doping scandals tend to be trainers with cheap horses that struggle to bring back checks in the lowest claiming ranks of whatever track/tracks they race. These horses tend to be older and slower and often have chronic injuries. A lot of these trainers are struggling to keep themselves afloat financially and so try to use various drugs to improve their horses' performances. Bob Baffert doesn't have to drug horses in order to stay in business. He gets more than his share of the very best Thoroughbred race horses in the world. He simply believes that the end justifies the means. His record of doping incidents, especially with his very best runners in big races, is significantly higher than other premier American Thoroughbred trainers like Steve Asmussen, Todd Pletcher, and Chad Brown, all of whom have large strings of horses running all around the country under the supervision of assistant trainers just like Baffert. Baffert needs to stop making excuses and blaming everybody else but the man in charge, ie Bob Baffert. As Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here".