Lori

http://www.twobillsdrive.com/buffalo-bills/game-day/1149/

Our tech writer swears by her home-built Hack (instead of swearing AT it, which would be a different thing entirely, of course).

Patriots twice in a row? So the haters were right all along! Kidding aside, you've already seen the Bills more than any of your other teams this season, haven't you? (Including the 6-3 instant classic against Cleveland. Lucky you.) That's the way it seems, anyway ...

Indestructible... When a Macbook owned by a mutual friend (think you know who I'm referring to, JW) bounced off his dashboard during an auto accident, I believe the LCD screen was the only part that suffered any damage. He ended up with a new 'puter, but only because it made more sense to go that route than to fix the nine-year-old one. Still and all, I can't complain about my PC-based products, either. Got four years out of the first one (which still runs) before upgrading, six out of the second (which still runs, albeit after an HD replacement). My only issue? Wearing the letters off the keyboards. Neither of my brothers can use the one I'm typing on right now without referring to the keyboard hooked up to the ancient, dust-gathering desktop at my right elbow...

Personal preferences aside (I've owned nothing but PCs, because I learned to loathe the Apple II at a young and impressionable age), most of the design people I know are strongly in the Mac camp -- I gather from them that both Quark and InDesign (which is what our shop uses) tend to bog down on a Windows platform. I mostly use mine for a word processor, though, so that doesn't concern me. Can't tell you the last time this Vista rig locked up, and I only reboot it when I absolutely have to (installing updates). 17" widescreen monitor, multiple USB ports, and all the memory I need, for well under the price of even a basic Apple laptop. As for the GUI, I was using a drag-and-drop interface on a C64 in the mid-eighties. GEOS, anyone?

A follow-up: http://espn.go.com/blog/afceast/post/_/id/...e-words-on-byrd Quality stuff, Tim. I'm guessing you're at Fins-Jets this weekend?

He already answered that: merely to annoy you. Looks like it's working, too.

I'd agree with that, but personally, I'm happy Toronto didn't get our lone home Legacy Game. (And maybe Canada wouldn't have let those Titans unis across the border anyway.)

As I posted the last time this came up: the league wanted to make the Legacy Games something special, and they felt that going to the throwbacks for EVERY AFL matchup would diminish that.

When a Bills player developed a medical condition with which some people here have personal experience.

Nope. From the Texans release:

No. Home throwbacks are Nov. 29 vs. Miami.

Post-concussion? Post-Ted Johnson? Absolutely.

You weren't around then, of course. But back in the day, the Bills sent out mass e-mails on behalf of Sam Cowart's Pro Bowl campaign -- even one from his mother. Linked directly to the ballot, the whole thing. Worked, too.

If you hadn't noticed, this board is for NFL-related topics, and this particular post was about the Redskins. There's a whole sub-board just for politics at the link I posted.

If you didn't get my earlier message: POLITICS IS FOR THE POLITICS BOARD. Thank you. --the management

A few things: Politics is for the politics board. For ongoing coverage of the Burgundy Revolution, head over to the SportsBog, Dan Steinberg's WaPo blog: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/ Add: you can also follow Redskins HOF RB John Riggins, who has been absolutely vicious toward Synder, on Twitter and YouTube: http://twitter.com/riggo44 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cx0Ee7BjOY And Joe, what Synder is doing right now goes FAR beyond the crackdown Donahoe pulled at the '05 home finale (which was, in fact, part of the reason RCW fired him.) As long as they're not profane, I haven't heard too much about sign-confiscating and such since then.

As Tim noted in the pinned thread, those ballots were probably put together before Byrd ever started his first game. Easy answer: write him in, and vote early and often.

The title of that BillBoard post: "RCW at half. Really." Nicely played, Mark.

Not sure either of those meet the "sarcastic response" criteria...

I'd argue that one can begin to see some trends after eight quarters with Fitzpatrick, but I'll allow that there's room for discussion on that. Here's one utterly inescapable trend which Mr. Fitzpatrick needs to change, though, and soon: 44.7%. This isn't the Kemp-era AFL, when a QB could get away with completing fewer than half his passes.

If you think his way of comparison is more accurate, using whatever the guy writing the PBP deems to be "deep" as opposed to the actual yardage, then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I'm not the one who decided to compare the numbers from week to week. You'll need to take that up with Simon. That said, the "five deep balls" he cited in Week 1 traveled 19, 16, 13, 19, and 18 yards past the LOS (unless he's counting the 19-yarder nullified by penalty instead of the 13-yarder, which is OK by me). The "six deep balls" from Week 7 traveled 20, 42, 21, 40, 27, and 44 yards past the LOS. (They apparently didn't list an 18-yarder as such.) Okay, so that makes the cutoff somewhere around 15 yards. In the Jets game, one of seven Edwards passes -- the incomplete 30-yarder to Owens, nullified by the penalty on Revis -- traveled 15 or more yards past the LOS. Same criteria for Fitzpatrick: 6-for-25 (17, 15, 17, 27, 16, 29). The 37-yard TD to Evans doesn't count as it was caught at the NYJ 30, thus only traveling 7 yards past the LOS in the air. I should probably also note that the bombs-per-game numbers do not take into account the total number of passing attempts: 25, 31, 35, 26, and 31 in Edwards' five complete games, versus Fitzpatrick's 25 (in roughly a game's worth of work against the Jets) and 22. I'm not about to use those numbers to prop up Fitzgerald as a better option, but I will argue that the difference is not statistically insignificant -- which I thought was the entire point of my friend Simon's post.

I don't have time to do 'em all, because I'm already late on deadline because of the road trip, but... Week 1, Edwards @NE: passes - to 0 yds: 4-6 1-5: 4-7 6-10: 4-7 11-15: 1-1 16-20: 2-4 21+: 0-0 Total: 4 of 25 attempts 16+ yards beyond the LOS. Week 7, Fitzpatrick @CAR: <=0: 3-5 1-5: 4-5 6-10: 1-2 11-15: 1-3 16-20: 1-2 21+: 1-5 Total: 7 of 22 attempts 16+ yards beyond the LOS. Those yardages are for pass length ONLY, no RAC. As you can see, Edwards never threw a pass over 20 yards vs. NE -- in fact, discounting the 19-yard completion to Josh Reed that was called back by penalty, he never completed a pass more than 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage (and attempted only three) until making throws of 19 and 18 yards on the final drive. Against Carolina, Fitzpatrick attempted passes that traveled 42, 21, 40, 27, and 44 yards in the air beyond the line of scrimmage, with the final one being the 50-yard completion to Evans. Source: NFL GSIS. Don't know if these links are password-protected, but... NE game CAR game In sum, based on that admittedly limited data sample, it is neither an assumption nor inaccurate to say that Fitzpatrick throws more "deep" balls than Edwards.

I was the one wearing the Two Bills Drive hat.