silvermike

Um, okay. I think somebody needs to get the University of Arkansas a copy of the rule "Correlation does not imply causation." It looks like they just sent an e-mail around and did some numbers on the results. Never mind that there is likely some selection bias, but how much of this can be explained by the fact that the sports fans were usually men and the non-fans usually women? Also, this was conducted of almost all students, who aren't necessarily representative of a larger population. Especially at a big sports school like Arkansas, isn't it pretty likely that people will be sports fans of the Razorbacks and otherwise generally follow a collegiate lifestyle of skipping breakfast, drinking, junk food, and no greens? If you're there and you don't give a crap about sports, you're probably at least slightly out of the mainstream of campus life.

Before the Rooney Rule came into effect, the NFL had an image problem. Whether or not there really was any bias in hiring coaches is still up for debate, but it was clear in a league that had a majority of black players, there were very few black coaches. The Fritz Pollard Alliance - an organization of black NFL staffers - commissioned a report and found that there was some evidence saying black coaches weren't getting a fair shake. It's available here (http://web2.customwebexpress.com/meska/sub/b-coaches.jsp) and it stated basically that black coaches got fired quicker than white coaches and hired later. When the report got presented to the NFL, Tagliabue put Dan Rooney in charge of a committee to resolve the issue, and the Rooney Rule is what came out of it. There hasn't been a study showing whether or not the rule has changed the underlying issues, but it certainly got the league a wave of good press, and with black coaching hires on the rise, some results to trumpet.

It's the same reason that the Seahawks didn't have to interview anyone when they hired Whitey Mora Jr.

Great news for him. Maybe he'll be able to come to Buffalo one day to coach.

If Derek Fine is a stud, that Freddie Jackson is a Hall of Famer.

Just here's the question: Are we closer to a playoff-caliber defense by adding players to our current 4-3/Cover-2 scheme, or by adding players and changing schemes to a standard 3-4?

The Bills are in a strange place at WR, because they're fine in terms of depth and lacking only at the top. Reed-Parrish-Johnson are great options at 3-4-5, and any one who came in would distinctly have to be an upgrade at the #2 spot, and the guys out there seem mostly to be #3 roleplayer types. TJ Houshmandzadeh is an obvious exception, if he'd come to town, but otherwise, I dunno.

So what happened exactly? Did he just start taking plays off and give up those sacks? Were they all in his first three games back? Is sacks allowed even an official statistic?

The 3-4 defense isn't some holy talisman to defensive glory. It's a scheme that happens to be run very well by several very good defensive coordinators with excellent talent. Some great coordinators run the Cover 2 to perfection with great talent, and others run a 4-3 to the top of the league's rankings with a good front 7 and a strong secondary. Switching to a 3-4 won't make us any more like the Ravens' D this year than would changing our colors to black and purple. Get talent, get coaching. No more assumptions that a scheme change is going to solve all of our problems.

Reports of the demise of the New England Patriots have been greatly exaggerated.

'Twas a fine run for Coach Dungy. Now we'll get to have the question answered "Can everybody win with Peyton Manning as QB?"

Poor David Kelsay. That's gotta be a tough life.

I think this is good news. Belichick disciples have a bad track record, and my hunch is that McDaniels won't be ready to take on the load of being a head coach. However, it can't hurt to have Belichick lose one more solid member of his coaching staff. If Pioli goes too, it'll be a one man show next year. That one man might have enough, though.

The Bills are irrelevant. That's the issue. They're not a laughingstock, they're just totally off the radar. A team that never breaks out of that 6-10 to 9-7 morass of nonplayoff teams. They've had no notable players, no notable coaches. But then, at the same time, they're not laughable. They play most teams close, and have only one truly terrible season in the past 20 years. This manages to exclude them from "Who will go in the top 5?" conversations, and nobody's ever watching us to see if we go 0-16 or break the record for points allowed, or anything like that. We have this terrifyingly long playoffless streak, but I bet outside of Buffalo, nobody's heard of it.

Nobody seriously cares if we have a white defensive end who has 15 sacks in a season or a black defensive end with 15 sacks in a season. Or anything else about race. It's just been frustrating when it seemed like we kept drafting the same guy and it became a joke.

Kerry Collins had a good year on a team that required him to do very little. In Buffalo, without a best-in-the-league defense to back him up, he'd look like another bum. Edwards matched him in terms of yards, in fact, he had slightly more in fewer games. Edwards' completion percentage was seven points higher, and he averaged more yards per attempt, with a virtually identical yards-per-completion number. I'm not certain that this all adds up to Edwards being superior, but I don't think that Collins is such a clear better choice that we should bench Trent and pray that Kerry's 37-year-old body has another season in it. If he was interested in being a backup, well, that's another story.

I'd happily take him as a backup. I really don't see any better options out there who would come in and play a backup role.

You're thinking of the Sabres, who drafted Keith Gretzky and Wayne Primeau. Really: http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=2034 http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=11363 The Bills would pass on Marvin Harrison and instead sign nobody.

The trade market is so stupid. I really have lost all track of what a player is worth. Shockey went for a 2nd and a 5th, so that's probably the ceiling for Winslow. The floor - I dunno, what did we get for Euhus?

I'd be willing to part with a mid-round pick for him. It's worth a shot, anyway. How accurate is Mike Lombardi? He's not just some internet hack, of course, he's worked for the Raiders. So he probably knows less than some internet hack.

Harvin is going to be a wide receiver in the NFL, not a running back. If we take him at #11, it means we think he could supplant Lee Evans as our #1, not Fred Jackson as our backup RB. Who is a restricted free agent and very likely to be retained.

I've totally lost track of how good Johnson is. He wasn't a starter for the Cowboys, but he was out-of-system. Maybe he'd turn it back on in a Cover-2?

Well, bear in mind that the Bills did okay in 1991, and then Polian was fired before the 1993 draft. It's Butler's draft prowess that's the most greatly exaggerated, I think. Again, he was better than anyone we've had since, but it doesn't mean he was doing a great job.

It's worth something that after Polian built the core by 1990, the Bills added virtually no talent for five years. The team was in shambles and held together by Bruce, Thurman, and Andre as late as 1999. The Bills landed Beebe - a steal in the third round - in 1989, but virtually nobody else. The 1990 draft was headlined by James Williams and Glenn Parker. They struck gold with Phil Hansen in 1991, but after him, the next impact player taken after the first round was Marcellus Wiley in 1997.

Are you nuts? There's no assumption that a first round pick should be a pro bowler, otherwise we'd have the entire pro bowl roster turning over every other year. Top five pick should be perennial pro bowlers, maybe even top 10, but 32 new pro bowlers every season or else somebody f'ed up? Really? You look at the pick a team made, and then look if there was another reasonable option that would be better. That's your success rate.