BuffaloRush

LOL very cool when I read about athletes taking a few minutes to make a young fan’s day.

This Andy Provin character is the best. Love his Youtube channel

Bucky Brooks....second round draft pick. Played 3 games! 3 GAMES!!!!! James Hardy gets a runner up

One of the most interesting rivalries in Buffalo sports has nothing to do with any event on the football field or ice rink. It has more to do with the organizations covering Buffalo sports - namely The Buffalo News versus The Athletic. Matt Warren of Buffalo Rumblings details the entire situation in a must-read article that you can below: https://www.buffalorumblings.com/2018/6/22/17488972/what-really-happened-buffalo-news-sports-2018-tim-graham-jerry-sullivan-bucky-gleason-john-vogl What the article doesn't state is that since the launch of The Athletic Buffalo, the response has been so good that the editors decided to expand by adding additional writers including Joe Yerdon, Lindsay D'Archangelo (likely recommended by Tim Graham), and John Ramsey (aka Yards Per Pass) Basically, it seems to me that The Athletic executed the intended business model of the BN Blitz - they just flat out did it better by offering solid local reporting with familiar names such as Graham, Fairburn, and Vogl, as well as including bloggers like Kris Baker, Yards Per Pass, and Erik "I'll block you if you disagree with me" Turner. Plus coverage for the Bills and Sabres, additional coverage from other markets available through The Athletic, and potentially expanding into college sports. The question is, if you are the Buffalo News how do you respond against a brand new entity in the local market that has already likely eclipsed your subscriptions? Should the BN try to stand up and fight back or ditch the BN Blitz and take on a new strategy? Also, as a fan which side do you support? Will you subscribe to one service over the other? Both services? Or none at all? Full disclosure - I'm not an Athletic of BN Blitz subscriber and am largely against the idea of paying for premium news sites. I am thinking about signing up for the 7 day trial to see whether the Athletic is worth it.

My thoughts exactly

Yes he is. Grew up in the Ellicotville area. I believe Salamanca, NY

There have been? I’ve never seen a Buffalo Bills convention before.

There doesn’t necessarily have to be an endorsement. You could call it BuffaloCon, and never mention Amy trademarks. Ideally though, it would be good if the team was cool with it. I’ve never seen the Bills organization hold anything like this before - outside of training camp at SJFC. But you opportunities to interact with players is pretty limited only because of practice.

Last month, I spent a weekend downtown for a wedding which also happened to be the same weekend of the Nickel City Comic-Con. Many of the attendees were staying at the same hotel as I was, and I surprised to see the huge line outside the Convention Center at 8 AM before the doors opened. You can see the website below to get a flavor of the celebrities and vendors who were attending. From what I understand the event was a big success. http://www.nickelcitycon.com/ It made me wonder why no one has put together a Bills related Comic-Con type event. As evidenced here on this message board, there are Buffalo Bills fans both locally and all over the world. If a promoter put together a lineup to bring together all of the Bills legends from different era's and schedule autographs signings, Q & A's, and different type of events. IMO this is the perfect time to do a roast of someone like Marv Levy etc. Or have a Bills Super Bowl Panel where Kelly, Thurman, Bruce, Andre Reed and whoever else rewatch game and provide commentary. Or how about Frank Reich, Pete Metzelaars, and Andre talking about the Comeback game versus Houston? I'm sure there's other ideas that people would come up with as well. I think there's different ways that you can bring in media personalities to take part as well, and perhaps some members of the national media. It would be a chance for Bills fans to interact and meet their favorite players, get some merchandise signed, and relive some of the great moments in team history. Not to mention there are numerous sports memorabilia dealers or other companies who could serve as vendors. Is it just me or do you think that an event like this could work? The Bills fan base is unique and I really think an event like this would go over huge. If the Bills organization themselves were the ones putting this together - it would be huge!!!

I was pumped when we signed Rex Ryan and thought he was going to turn the franchise around in 2015....Little did I know.

The problem is, if they are thinking about trading Shaq, he probably will have higher value this off-season that he would after another subpar year. So I think you might be able to trade him for a 4th round pick this year, next year it would be hard to get more than a 6th rounder for a 4th string DE. I think the preseason is really going to dictate Shaq’s future. With a good showing he can start to climb the depth chart and get more reps or potentially finding a new opportunity on another team.

I don’t think so. I do remember when the oldd admininstraion picked Darby, Vic Carucci and Jay Skurski did mention a potential character issue but I don’t think it had much effect on his draft stock. It seems he fell to the 2nd round because of size and the fact that there were questions about his ball skills. At the time of the trade last summer Winston was starting to rebuild his image. The controversy that surrounded him around the time of the draft had pretty much died down, to where he was being regarded as a good leader (especially his positive portrayal in Hard Knocks). It is somewhat odd that he’s with Winston again when something is alleged to down.

Bills fans are awesome! I was surprised that there weren’t any Bills players (past or present) that contributed to the site. I did see Irv Weinstein though!

If you look at the depth chart at OTA’s Shaq is probably the 4th DE on the roster behind Hughes, Murphy and Yarborough. He’s really going to have to work his way on the field. I can see a Reggie Ragland type trade unless Shaq has a big preseason.

Lets lighten the mood here. I can’t help of thinking about John Murphy’s great joke about Fitz at the Fred Jackson Roast. This quote is not exact this was the gist: “Fred Jackson punished defenders with his rough style of running, while Fitz paid them back with gift wrapped interceptions.”

If this happened in March 2016, why did it take 2+ years to finally hand him the suspension?

Agree to an extent. There certainly were barriers in Buffalo which made his job difficult. But you can also argue that Whaley didn’t really do enough to earn a “fair shot” at being GM. I would argue his drafting has been slightly “below average,” as Whaley had never drafted a Pro Bowl player in the 3 drafts that he was responsible for. I would say he excelled at FA acquisitions. There’s several situations where he overspent for players in FA that really never panned out like Charles Clay or Percy Harvin. He was good at finding Under the radar type FA’s. According to Tim Graham, the Pegulas wanted to clean house after the 2014 season. It seemed like despite giving him an extension, The Pegulas never had 100% confidence in Whaley, and like I said, it’s hard to fault them as his performance as GM was suspect. Unfortunately, Terry made the same mistake with the Bills as he had with the Sabres. He empowered the wrong people for way longer than he should have.

Well said! Though many in here will disagree. They feel Whaley drafted well! LOL

Clue me in on this...

Never said a bad word about him publicly

Not a fan of Sammy but I don’t think he said anything out of line.

Interesting... I can see where Tim’s responses on Twitter could make him and the BN look bad. I remember when he was “feuding” with poor Matthew Collier who was at WGR at the time. Collier tweeted something about playing college baseball. Tim said he played a charity softball event with Collier, and doubted him. Collier was adimate that he did play. Rather than laughing it off or making a wise ass comment, Tim actually spent the time checking the baseball rosters of his college and even called the Sports Information Director to ask if he played. It just seemed like he went out far out of his way to call out a meaningless exaggeration that a lowly producer made on Twitter. On the other hand everyone who knows Tim in the media, seems to love him. At least, the ones who publicly speak about him. Haven’t heard much negative on him.

What topic were you talking about?

No he will not. He was dead wrong about Peterman being a better option than Tyrod. After the 5 INTs and he pretended like he never said anything

Yeah very true. I have concerns about David Culley who seems to have no track record of developing QB’s and hasn’t been a QB coach for years. But I really get the impression that Allen is Daboll’s pet project and that he likely lobbied for him in the draft. That’s definitey a lot of question marks with Daboll. He’s had limited success in his other stunts as OC, yet he’s highly regarded in NFL circles. I think that that the Bills upgrade position players next season. We should see several WR’s and RB’s both in FA and the draft