SoTier

The NFL didn't "leak" the emails. Two newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, reported the content of the emails.

That's a very simplistic view. These emails are part of the larger investigation of Snyder and the WFT by the FBI and DEA, which suggests a criminal investigation. Documents related to an ongoing criminal investigation aren't going to be released until/unless the prosecutors have enough evidence to indict somebody, likely Snyder. Gruden wasn't being investigated, so his emails were tangential and wouldn't have been protected from FOIL requests. Then there's the real possibility that Snyder wasn't party to the Gruden emails since they were sent to somebody else in the Washington organization, which would have made them even more tangential.

Excellent post! Back in the Stone Age when I was in junior high (I graduated from college almost 50 years ago ), the general rule was to never commit to paper what you wouldn't want your mother to read. In the modern world with emails and social media tweets and posts stored out in the ether, that rule is a thousand times more important. What you put out there, even if it's "personal", never disappears even after you hit the delete button ... and the more incriminating it is, the more likely it is that somebody will save it/forward it/publish it somewhere and that at some point in the future it will come back around and bite the originator in arse. Ask all the teenagers who have had their sexting material become public. People have always been held accountable for their opinions, including opinions that were once acceptable/popular that are no longer respectable. During the Great Depression, thousands of intellectuals and disillusioned young people joined socialist or Communist organizations. In the 1950s, many of those older and wiser people found themselves out of their jobs and unable to get new ones. Finally, there is no excuse for bigotry. It is hateful whether it's based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or place of origin. Most of us struggle with aspects of it because we live in a diverse, rapidly changing world in which what decent people of our parents' generation believed/accepted/tolerated isn't what decent people of our own age believe/accept/tolerate or what decent people today want their children to believe/accept/tolerate. Individuals frequently embrace bigotry in order to have somebody to blame for their own personal failures and insecurities. Bigotry certainly is not a political belief although some unscrupulous politicians and political talking heads use it to further their agendas.

Andrew Luck will be eligible for the HOF in 2024. In his first three seasons, he looked like a "lock for the HOF": he made the Pro Bowl every one of those first three seasons. He led the Colts to the playoffs in each of those seasons. He threw 83 TDs in his first three seasons, including 40 to lead the league in 2014. Then the injuries started, and limited his effectiveness. He played only 7 games in 2015, struggled in 2016 while playing hurt, and missed the entire 2017 season. He came back in 2018 to play a full season, take the Colts to the playoffs, and make another Pro-Bowl, but he retired before the start of the 2019 season. Will Andrew Luck ever be inducted into the HOF? He sure looked like he would be but manure happens. Nobody knows the future.

Maybe he is ... but maybe Spencer Brown is better.

OP, find something else to complain about. To anybody who remembers even a small part of the zero-for-the-seventies, squishing the fish always is reason to celebrate. Butt stomping them 35-0 in their own house ... worth a trip to the airport. 👍

The Labrador Retriever Club apparently thinks that somebody slipped in a mixed bred puppy or puppies into the registry but they couldn't prove it in the 1980s, so they had to register the dogs. It might not have even been the first breeder to have a silver lab puppy but somebody who registered a mixed bred ancestor. It's also possible that the dilute gene that causes the "silver" color was just a random mutation. Prior to DNA testing, registering non-purebreds as purebreds if they looked like purebreds was uncommon but not as rare we'd like to think. This was always done for economic gain: a purebred animal, ie, registered animal, has much more monetary potential than a non-registered one. The purpose of registering animals is to record their lineage, and the purpose of breed competitions in conformation or performance is to improve the breed. Silver labs can't be shown in AKC conformation classes, so breeders who deliberately breed them aren't interested in improving their dogs, but putting money in their pockets. This kind of unscrupulous behavior in slipping non-purebreds into registries with false parentage happened frequently not only in dog breeding but also in horse breeding, especially in breeds like Quarter Horses where excessive body white or Appaloosa coloring weren't allowed. DNA testing can weed out puppies or foals with a non-purebred parent but it can't point to which ancestor was non-purebred. If the parents are the parents, then the puppy or foal has to be registered. The breed club/registry doesn't have to allowed that animal to compete in any or all breed events, however. That's the status of silver labs.

Silver labs aren't considered legitimate Labrador Retrievers. They can be registered and compete in AKC events like obedience or field trials but they can't be shown in the breeding conformation classes. They were only allowed to be registered as chocolate labs because the earliest dogs with this color were presented for registration with the AKC before the advent of DNA parentage testing, so there was no proof that the dogs weren't purebred. See the statement from the Labrador Retriever Club here: Silver Labs. Josh Allen went to Wyoming not Montana.

There is no such thing as a "silver backed" Lab. It looks like a Weimaraner puppy (they come in tan and silvery gray commonly called "blue"), hence the name "Sky" I would assume. Many breed characteristics aren't well defined in young puppies, so you often go by color especially when the color is unique to only certain breeds. The vet identified my cattledog (Blue Heeler)/Aussie shepherd mix as an Aussie shepherd at 8 weeks old because of his blue merle coloring. As he grew, his cattledog characteristics emerged. His size, color, and hair are about the only Aussie Shepherd traits. Otherwise he looks and acts like a large cattledog.

Logan Thomas was a fourth round pick by the Cardinals. He was active for 2 games as a rookie in 2014, and then didn't play in another NFL game until 2017 with the Bills at a time when the Bills didn't really have an NFL-caliber offense, both players and coaches. Daboll was a new hire in 2018 and was the only offensive hold-over among the offensive coaches going into 2019 IIRC. Josh Allen was a rookie QB who was more notable for his running and "hero ball" play rather than his his passing skills. Thomas then went on to Detroit where he didn't light up the league, either. Finally, in his seventh season as a pro, Thomas had a decent season with Washington. That's 1 decent season in a 7 year career with 4 different teams in which he started all of 23 games, 15 just last season. How, exactly, can anybody consider Thomas "a miss" by the Bills ... or the Cards or the Lions???

I'm not going to pretend to have a crystal ball with these QBs, especially Wentz. I think that a significant amount of any QB's success stems from his situation, which is why I picked Stafford, Wentz, and Fitzpatrick. They are all in situations where they're set up for success with quality teams around them, but Wentz is the one with the big question marks. If he can't return to recover his early career form on a talented team with a quality coaching staff like Indy, then there's no excuses for him. Indy is a good QB away from being a serious SB contender.

/thread over

How is this all that different from all the fan comments and op-ed pieces on Bills fan sites and in the Buffalo media trashing former Bills players who were traded/cut/not-resigned during the last decade of Ralph Wilson's ownership, especially when Russ Brandon ran the team? Between 2001 and 2018, under GMs Tom Donahoe and Russ Brandon, the Bills regularly shed of most of the good/excellent players they developed early in their careers, generally by letting them walk in FA but sometimes by trades. Bills fans generally turned their anger towards the players who were gone, not at the team that got rid of them. During that period, the Bills only made the playoff once (2017) and only had winning seasons twice (2004 and 2017) but they traded away 2 future All Pro (Jason Peters and Marshawn Lynch) and let another future All Pro (Stephon Gilmore) walk in FA. Peters, Lynch, and Gilmore as well as some others, notably Willis McGahey, were all vilified by Bills fans on this site and others as well as sometimes in the Buffalo media. It's tough for fans to see good/great players go elsewhere and shine while their own team treads water and struggles to win enough games to make the playoffs. defending the Bills

I didn't vote because I wasn't comfortable with the choices. I'm not worried about either QB much but I'm not willing to predict that both will bust. From past drafts, I expect that 1 QB from the 5 who were drafted in the first round will turn out to be a franchise QB for most of his career. I think that probably another 1 or 2 others will become competent NFL QBs for at least part of their careers. It's likely 2 or 3 will be, at best, disappointments if not outright busts. As Bills fans, I think we can see first hand that sometimes the QB who looks like the least likely to succeed can turn out to be the best of his draft class while the most highly touted QBs in a draft class can crash and burn even before the end of their rookie contracts.

I guess you're butt hurt because he didn't just call you a plain old ordinary racist, which would have been accurate. FTR, when asked in an interview recently if he thought America was a racist country, he said he didn't. The story has been on national and local news media since late last week. Maybe you should get your news from an actual news source rather than wacky right wing propagandists.

👍 +10

I think that the future oriented aspect of the draft is the most impressive part. It's easy to improve a poor team through the draft with competent talent evaluation. It's a whole lot harder to maintain, much less improve, a very successful team over the long term. That's what separates teams that are almost always "in the hunt" like NE, KC, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Seattle, etc from most other franchises that look great for a season or two and then disintegrate. I think that Atlanta and Philly are perhaps the best and most recent examples. This is why I'm not all that dismayed that the Bills didn't take any CBs. Teams regularly find decent CBs among UDFAs than decent edge rushers or OLers. Without the Combine, there are a lot of unknowns among the late round prospects this year, especially those who attended schools that didn't hold pro days.

Your concern for the super wealthy is soooooo heart wrenching. Let's do some math ... the current estate tax exclusion is almost $23 million. Somebody who leaves and estate of $50 million would owe tax on $27 million, which at 40% would be $10.8 million, leaving the heirs $39.2 million. If the estate exclusion was lowered to $10 million, the tax on $ 40 million would be $16 million, leaving the heirs a paltry $34 million. If the estate exclusion was lowered to $3 million, the tax on $47 million would be $18.8 million, leaving the heirs in poverty since they would only get $31.2 million. Cry me a river. You wouldn't have money to save if the government didn't provide an environment where business and commerce flourish, not the least of which is a stable government itself.

That's what estate planning is for. If the children are "deeply involved in that business", then why don't they have ownership stakes?

The average net worth of the top 1% of Americans is $10.8 million. The average net worth of the top 2% of Americans is only $2.4 million. I think excluding the first $10 million is ok. I don't think it's fair since the median net worth of American households is $121,700, but I would be ok with it because it would put the exclusion just below what it was before before Trump doubled it in 2018.

Less than the $22.36 million it currently is.

Cry me a river for the .1% of Americans who are rich enough to have their estates subject to estate taxes.

I know that, but RochesterRob claimed otherwise so I pointed out two infamous examples that cost people their lives. Coming from you, that's a compliment. Thank you. We're talking examples of quality. You claimed that quality in the past was better than today using Levis as an example even though you don't have first any first hand knowledge of that because you "stopped buying Levi's many years ago" . I disputed your assertion with two infamous examples from the past. My two examples were not only pulled from the market but the manufacturers were held liable for damages.

The old "everything was soooooo much better a few decades ago because it was made in the US" line. It wasn't. Among the most egregious examples of the quality of American made products include the Chevrolet Corvair and the Ford Pinto.