Billy Claude

According to the website above, Edmunds was only on the top 100 TFL list in 2019 (ties for 12th among linebackers) and was not in the top 37 LBs in 2018 nor the top 38 LBS in 2020. Its hard to believe that adds up to 2nd in TFL or no gain over 3 years unless he had an unrealistic number of tackles for no gain. So did BruceExclusive just make up that stat about Edmunds being 2nd in tackle for losses over 3 years?

The mistakes were signing Tyler Kroft and, especially, Spencer Long who was absolutely horrible for the Jets in 2018. Giving Long a 3 year 12.6M contract (though only one year guaranteed) was not a good decision. The Jets fans were laughing about that signing. They also laughed about the Brian Winters signing. Once those signings were made there was no room for Thomas and Teller. Thomas was 28 years old at the time and choosing Kroft over him was understandable. Teller, on the other hand, had started 7 games for the Bills his rookie year and showed promise which was why the Bills were able to get a 5th and a 6th for him. They took Long because they needed a backup center but I think Long was so bad that by the end of the season someone else (Feliciano?) was taking the center snaps when Morse couldn't play. I am appreciative of the job Beane has done but lets not try to claim he did not make mistakes. His 2018 free agent class was bad (Trent Murphy, Star, Vontae Davis, ..). His 2019 free agent class was better (Morse, Brown, Beasley) but folks were pretty puzzled by the Kroft and Long signings at the time. Luckily he seems to be learning from his mistakes and getting better each year.

The press probably also appreciates that he is a straight shooter and doesn't purposely mislead people. For example, the draft, philosophically he did pretty much what he said he was going to do.

I didn't know that but It must be confusing if one is not sure if when someone says a billion whether they meant a billion or a trillion.

In British English (and Spanish) a billion is a million million, i.e., 1 Billion British = 1 trillion in American. The article is slightly misleading --NFL is the richest league in the world but the revenue from the four richest European soccer leageues adds up to more than 13B (at least before the pandemic).

Watched the beginning and then skipped to the end. Exciting game at the end but the play was awful. The first three (four?) drives ended in turnovers. There were a lot more dropped passes than you would expect now. The linemen looked like normal, albeit, large people instead of sumo wrestlers. There was a whole lot of run it into the line for 3 or 4 yards. 13 turnovers total -- 9 interceptions (5 for Fergy, 2 for Griese, 2 for Strock) and 4 lost (8 total) fumbles. Bob Griese wearing glasses? Commentary was pure gold: The rule changes have made it impossible for the defense. Nobody runs it on 3rd and two anymore. Here comes the shotgun! Why don't more teams use the shotgun? Not everybody has a Staubach or a Ferguson. It's hard to find centers who can make that snap consistently. You're telling teams that they don't have to worry about the run. Amazing how conservative NFL coaches were (are?) -- it appears that even in 1980 only a few teams were running the shotgun even though the Cowboys had been having success with it for at least for half a decade.

I think these type of interviews are more of an indication he has given up on getting an NFL job. Throwing your old boss under the bus in public is not going to look good to a perspective employer. One thing that always seem strange to me was how quickly his relations with Marrone, Rex, and McDermott went sour. We know Marrone was against the Watkins trade but he bented over backwards to draft Rex's guys. The hostility with Marrone and Rex seem more personal then professional. Did they think he was source of the leaks that were occurring regularly during this time?

People seem to be taking a little bit of skepticism about Dawkins comments as being negative on Epenesa. I don't think anybody is giving up on Epenesa, simply that some nice comments during the OTAs are not very meaningful one way or the other. We have heard it all before, though it is better than the alternative, i.e., player A (Robert Foster?) needs to put in a lot of work before training camp.

The drives that are most impressive to me are not the ones where someone makes a great play but the ones that seems like there is no chance that it could be stopped. There were a bunch of drives like that during the 49er game. That was the game where a 49er defense said they knew what plays the Bills were doing but just had no idea how to stop them. To choose one, the 3rd TD drive was 11 plays, only one third down right at the beginning of the drive. Even when they had a 2nd and 18, it felt like it was just a formality until they got the TD.

Nagy and Pace are in a do or die season. Any draft choices they get in a trade will be made by another GM/coach without Mack.

The article also says he purchased a 6.5M condo on the Gold Coast in March. Since this is a Chicago paper I assume they mean Chicago`s Gold Coast and most likely Mack would just rather live in the city than the suburbs.

Definitely, the Browns do have a record about as bad as the Bills and Jets. You can put down the whole 6-3 Browns Bills game as an embarrassment for both sides. One special feature of the Butt Fumble was it was from a meaningless game between a 6-7 and 10-3 team (albeit Thanksgiving). The other plays with nicknames such as Wide Right, Home Run Throwback, The Fumble and the Immaculate Reception were all crucial plays that decided playoff games. The other one other named play that I can think of was the "Just Give It to Them" game between the Bills and the Patriots though I don't know if anyone but Bills fans would recognize the name while pretty much any NFL fan would recognize Butt-Fumble.

The Jets would definitely give the Bills a run for the money. The butt fumble has its own Wikipedia page.

I don't think Shady would have said anything. Didn't they release him rather than trying to trade him as sort of a favor so he could sign with anyone he wanted? Of course, it was not clear that they could have gotten anything for him. I seem to remember Watkins or perhaps Dareus throwing some very slight shade about how great it was to play somewhere with a chance to win but those were first year. In any case, its been pretty remarkable how positive ex-Bills have been about McDermott and Beane after the stuff some of the players said about Rex, Whaley, and Doug Marrone.

Has any ex-Bills had negative comments about McDermott/Beane? There might have been a few during the first year but after that? Maybe Quinton Spain said something?

How hard can it be? Kelvin Benjamin and Tim Tebow are expected to pick it up immediately with zero experience! Kidding -- he did play better towards the end of last year.

Absolutely. The Browns were one of the teams that voted not to attend OTAs. Also I believe the rookies are still attending.

Went over my head originally.

Trapasso is not clear what is meant by "redshirt" and I think his definition for qbs is different than for other positions, but why spent all that time talking about what the Bills did with Epenesa if that is not the model? One thing for sure is that he definitely did not mean the pre-2018 NCAA definition of zero snaps.

What I don't understand about Christian Wade is, why would he want to be back? I understand his pay is similar to what he got as a star in professional rugby. Why would he want to waste another year of his athletic prime sitting on the bench without even a chance of a call-up? I wouldn't be surprise if he goes thru training camp and goes back to rugby if the Bills try to put him into the exempt practice squad position again.

If you read the article, what Trapasso meant by a redshirt year for Rousseau is a year similar to what Epenesa had, i.e., very limited playing time at the beginning of the season and maybe only a couple of games where he plays 30 snaps at the end of the season. I hope he plays a bigger role than that, but nothing to be outraged about.

I agree with you but some of the Flutie fan reactions were pretty over the top.in any case, one thing for sure is that Flut8e would've have been sacked 6 times in the Titans game.

I always felt some of the hatred was a reaction to overzealous newbie Canadian fans who flet that Flutie could do no wrong.

I would also like to ask Kyle Williams his honest opinion of all the Bills head coaches he played for. It would be interesting to know if it was the same from the inside as it looked to the fans on the outside.

I believe there was a quote from Flutie when he left that said essentially something like I might not be the best QB in the NFL but you can't tell me I'm not better than that guy. I would like to ask Eric Moulds what what he thought of Johnson vs. Flutie.