Billy Claude

This is clearly wrong. The Bills were up at halftime against the Titans and were up in the 4th quarter against the Steelers. They were even up early against the Jaguars.

Do people not read beyond the headline? Rugg's attorneys argued that the police did not have probable cause to test him. As noted in the article, linked helpfully above by Limeaid, the argument got laughed out of court.

This has nothing to do with attracting more fans to the game -- most of the students will already will be NFL fans as you said. That is not the point of putting it into a college campus. The point is to create a spectacle that will make the game different. That is what can be promoted.

Obviously it won't work if you have a lot of games at colleges but you can make an event out of it if it is one game a year. Call it the campus classic or something like. Make it a big deal about what college will host it that year. There is a lot of games on TV right now and ratings for Monday /Thursday night football are okay but could use a boost. Anything you can do to differentiate a unimportant mid season game would help. You don't think ESPN wouldn't promote the hell out of a game at South Bend? It is probably all you would hear about for two weeks. You would have the students going crazy. People would watch it as long as it is only one (maybe two) game a year, similar to the Winter Classic in hockey.

I agree with the rest but if you limit these college site games to one or two a year on a Monday or Thursday, you would absolutely get increased ratings. People will tune in to watch a game in Bryant-Denny or Beaver Stadium for the spectacle as long as you don't do it very often. Have all the overseas games be in the same division and use college site games if you don't have enough oversea games for the division. That way, everybody in the division has a neutral site game.

Well, there were some stories even before they got Watson, for example, the mess with OBJ, and the adult in the room comment. Duke Johnson also doesn't seem to think much of Baker.

So it was based on Watkin's production or lack there of, which in turn is based partly on his attitude. My only argument is that if Watkins had the same production and a better attitude, the Bills would have still not picked up the extension and would have still tried to trade him. Obviously this a hypothetical and just my opinion. Again, I have a lot of respect for what Beane has accomplished, However, Beane did not really contribute to the Bills making the playoffs in 2017. Many of the things Beane did made the team worse for that year not better (in hope of future pay off)-- it wasn't just to get rid of malcontents. I also believe that they expected the team to do badly, and then had to scramble to keep the team in the hunt. That was the way I felt at the time and it is still my opinion now.

I am not arguing that Watkins did not have issues. He clearly did. Just that Watkin's issues was not the main reason he was traded. The main reason he was traded was his contract was expiring and the front office really did not expect the Bills to be any good so they got what they could get. If it was all about culture, why did they bring in Benjamin has much less talent but is just as bad culturally (something Beane must surely should have known about). Tanking in this case, is not coaching to lose individual games since I don't believe McDermott would every do that. Tanking in this case is setting up your roster to fail. I don't think there is any doubt that F.O. expected the Bills record to be much worse that year and then had to scramble when the Bills were still in the playoff picture late in the season. I think going into the season Beane was expecting a 6 to 7 win team. As it was, the team really was not very good but was extremely lucky and I am not talking about Andy Dalton. Hauschka probably hit all his important field goals that season, including some very long ones. There were also a lot of questionable calls that went the Bills way, the Von Miller taunting call on Tyrod being the most obvious. Finally, as someone mentioned earlier, that team had a historically bad worse point differential for a playoff team. Nothing wrong with taking advantage of being lucky as long as you don't base your future plans on it (as the Bills definitely did not do). Given all that, Beane did a masterful job responding to the unexpected situation and moving up to snag Allen. However, I don't think he felt he would need to give up as much as he eventually did, the expectation was probably that the Bills would have a much earlier draft slot than 21.

I have no problem with giving Beane credit for the moves he made to get Allen or with the excellent job he has done as GM overall. I just think that the idea that he had to get rid of Watkins due to a bad culture fit is way overblown. I personally think that they got rid of Watkins because they were tanking (even though they will never admit it).

This idea is the only one that has a real chance of being implemented.. You couldn't do it for all the 17th games but perhaps just for one division (which effectively is two divisions when you include the opponent). If you don't have enough international games having one in a place like Beaver Stadium would be a great idea. There's a lot of advantages to the NFL. First, it would be a spectacle so if there are only one or two of these games a year, it would generate big ratings just because it is different. Secondly, the big universities have a lot of international students, so it would increase the NFL's global reach when the students go back home. Lastly, though I am sure the NFL doesn't care, it would be more fair to the teams in those divisions.

I would add replacing Sammy Watkins "culture" by Kelvin Benjamin "culture" is hardly a slam dunk win for Beane and he doesn't even have the excuse that he didn't know Benjamin well. Beane is a excellent GM but let's not pretend he didn't make a lot of mistakes in his first year. The top four players in his first free agent class by contract value were Murphy, Star, McCarron and Vontae Davis, three busts and one ok but way overpaid player. Luckily he hit it big on his first draft and has clearly learned along the way.

Exactly, Buffalo is the smallest TV market in the NFL, even if you include Niagara County Ontario, it would just get Buffalo past New Orleans. There's a lot of much bigger markets without NFL teams.

I was going to say that a big jump in women's tennis at an older age probably seems to be very rare because most people , including me, only know the winners of the grand slam tournaments who typically good at a very young age. However, clearly you know a lot about women's tennis.

So I looked at the top 20 in the WTA rankings this weekend to find the age that they finished in the top 30 the WTA year end rankings. It appears that a jump like Jessica Pegula's in women's tennis is unusual but not unique. Age: Player 28: Collins 27: Pegula, Jabeur 26: Krejcikova 24: Badosa, Sakkari, Kerber 23: Kontaveit 22 Pliskova, Helep 21: Muguruza 20: Sabalenka, Ostapenko 19: Swiatek, Raducanu, Kasatkin, Fernandez 18: Bencic, Azarenka 17: Gauff So there are at least 3 other players that broke the top 30 at about the same age as Jessica Pegula. Danielle Collins, rank 8th, is the only one older than Pegula when she broke the top 30 but Collins had three years in the top 50 before that.

October 22, 1978 -- Bills 5 Bengals 0. This game made those Bills-Browns 6-3 games in the late 2000's look exciting. Safety happened when the Bengals tried to take a punt out of the end zone. I could have sworn the stadium was 25% full but official attendance turns out was 45K.

It is Nick Wright following the Skip Bayless model -- not the other way around. At 8M per year, he is not an idiot. He is lacking in any integrity but he knows exactly what he is doing.

It works for him. He reportedly signed a 4 year $32M contract renewal in 2021.

Nice story but not true. Lawrence had an endorsement deal with a crypto app. The signing bonus for the endorsement deal was in crypto. All Lawrence's money from the Jaguars (and probably most of the money from the endorsement) were in USD.

I am surprised about Marino's take on the o-line unless he was comparing it to the start of last season. Ford, Feliciano, Morse, Williams and covid Dawkins is a pretty low bar to clear. If he was comparing it the oline at the end of last year, the only change to the lineup will be Saffold replacing Williams. From what everybody says Saffold should improve the run blocking but not super impressive at pass blocking. He is also 35 years old, and has to take plays off if he gets hit a certain way. As for Quessenberry, I guess he will add flexibility but he will be a improvement as a backup compared to Feliciano? Perhaps Marino is assuming that Spencer Brown and Tommy Doyle making major improvements? Certainly one would expect 2nd year players to get better but it is also risky to assume big jumps. We are also hoping that Bates six games is the real Bates. So I don't see where one can be that confident that the oline will be much better. Perhaps Marino's opinion is based on Kroemer being hired?

When its listed like this, it is really not very much -- especially compared to the effort made to improve the defense. McKenzie, Bates -- I know that they are expected to have a bigger role this season but it is hard to argue you've made your team better by resigning your own guys. Crowder -- a wash or slight improvement over Beasley. OJ Howard -- they say he looks pretty bad right now but hard to not be an improvement on TE2 considering the Bills TE2 situation last year. Safford -- probably a wash compared with Daryl Williams Austin -- 50/50 that he makes the 53. Johnson -- a little extra depth a RB -- most likely will be T.J. Yeldon this year . Shakir -- you are in trouble if you are relying on a 5th rounder to contribute in their rookie year. Cook -- only real improvement that one should have confidence in. Compare this to defense where you signed Von Miller, Settle, Jones, Lawson, Phillips and a first round draft choice it is clear that Beane has been focused on defense this season.

Amazing misuse of statistics to conclude who is "best" at something based on categories with 5 (Davis Mills vs. red-2) and 7 passes (Tua vs. goal-line).

He was definitely pretty bad with the Jets last year. Their OL got a lot better after he got benched after the first Bills' game. Also raised a bit of a stink when he said that Zach Wilson needed to get the ball out quicker. Certainly hope he contributes more than Long, Winters, and Ducasse.

It was not a bad Jets team. The Jets had finished 9-5 in 2008 with Nick Mangini-- exactly the same record as Rex's first year. Mangold was fired because the team went 1-4 over the last five games mainly due to Favre being horrible at the end of the season. They had a great offensive line, Alan Faneca, Nic Mangold Damien Woody and D'Brickshaw Ferguson, Thomas Jones had just finished his 3rd consecutive 1000 yard season and they also had a decent defense in place with Darelle Revis and nose tackle Kris Jenkins. Though certainly Rex got more out of that defense than Mangini did. Rex Ryan got way too much credit for the team Mangini built and for being able to frustrate Belichick for a couple of games.

I would guess that NDAs are pretty common when celebrities celebrities hire people so I really don't think one can make a big deal about it. I don't understand the hotel business though.

I don't think its the people at the bottom who are sleeping in the offices. The Bills have 26 people on their coaching staff this year (21 if you don't coach the strength and conditioning coaches). That's most likely double what it was 30 years ago and I bet the number of head coaches sleeping in the office has changed much.