Rampant Buffalo

An Olympic gold medalist signed to play defensive line? I'd like to hear @mrags thoughts on how Stevenson's 40 time compares to Coleman's.

I agree with the vast majority of what you've written. But let's say a QB just doesn't have it, and it's clear from the tape he doesn't have it. At that point, it's an error and a failure of discipline to waste significant resources acquiring that QB. When I watched Manuel's college highlights, I saw nothing special. His highlight throws were throws I'd expect any average starting college QB to make. There is no reason to throw a first round pick at a guy like that, regardless of circumstances. In general, you'll get farther by seeing things as they are, rather than as you would wish them to be. That's also why I give zero credit to the Broncos for having traded away major resources for Russell Wilson. He'd been washed up for a few years prior to that trade, and the tape made that clear. Another example of wishful thinking was the Losman pick. Like Manuel, Losman had great physical tools. Other than those tools, there really wasn't a reason to pick him before round 5. Let's say Tom Donahoe had been a little less wishful in his analysis of Losman. That would potentially have pushed him in one of two directions. 1) He trades up for Roethlisberger, even if he's not happy about Houston's asking price for the pick. 2) He waits a year, and drafts Aaron Rodgers in 2005. Granted, he would have had other options for the QB position, beyond just those two things. If he hadn't drafted Losman, maybe he would have found some other way to mess up the QB position instead. While an accurate evaluation of Losman wouldn't have guaranteed success, at least it would have moved him a big step closer.

Did I say that I personally was affected by the Chiefs' criminality? No. It's not as though any of their criminal activity has been directed against me. I wrote that my feelings about the Chiefs were driven in large part by their criminality. You don't get to "agree to disagree" about that. You can't see inside my head, and therefore have no evidence, no valid basis, to support a contrary opinion here.

My specific concern with Gabe Davis is his low catch %. Davis isn't getting the same kind of deal from me, that he'd get from a team like Jacksonville. So I'd take option B. Let's use a different example. Option A is to give a good extension to Shakir, and option B is draft his replacement. In that scenario, I'm looking long and hard at option A. There are two key reasons why comparing WRs to RBs doesn't work. One of those key reasons is this. By the time a RB reaches the end of his rookie deal, usually he has maybe 1 - 2 years of tread left on his tires. For example, a RB is a free agent, and he's going into year 5 of his career. If a GM throws big money at a guy like that, what will happen? A couple years into this new deal, the GM will say, "Whoops! This RB is now past his prime. That big contract was boneheaded on my part!" A good WR will generally have a lot more longevity than a typical RB. If a GM gives a good contract to a good WR going into year 5, that GM is unlikely to encounter a "Whoops! Boneheaded" scenario.

In no way, shape, or form do I see a valid comparison between WRs and RBs. Will the middle market guys suffer five years down the line? I guess we'll have to wait five years to see! As for Gabe Davis himself: he just made bank, and is now significantly overpaid.

Think about dynasty teams. Teams which won at least three Super Bowls, with at least some player overlap. In the '70s it was the Steelers. '80s 49ers. '90s Dallas Cowboys. 2001 - 2020 Patriots. 2021 - present Chiefs. What do all those teams have in common? Elite pass catchers. The Steelers had two Hall of Fame WRs. During the second half of their dynasty the 49ers had Jerry Rice. The Cowboys had Michael Irvin (almost as good as Rice) and Novacek (Pro Bowl TE). The Patriots had Gronkowski (a top 3 all time TE) and Edelman (a very good WR) for a large chunk of their dynasty. The Chiefs have Kelce (another top 3 all time TE) and have had elite (Tyreek Hill) or good (Rashee Rice) play from their #1 WR. So yeah, it absolutely makes sense to pay good money for an elite WR and/or TE. But you know what else all those dynasty teams have had? A franchise QB. The Dolphins don't have that.

I can respect this.

For me, I'd need to know a lot more about this, before deciding how I want this to play out. Is McManus the kind of guy who'd knowingly inflict emotional trauma on a woman, for his own sexual gratification? If he is, he needs to go. If however he legitimately believed the women weren't that bothered by his actions, I'd need to see three things happen. 1) Punishment. This means suspension for several games. 2) Restitution. This means money out of his bank account. Some of the money goes to the plaintiffs. Some goes toward the charitable cause of helping victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault. 3) Reeducation. The goal here is for McManus to better understand the reason why he is being punished. This means listening to the stories of women who have been victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault. If he isn't the type to knowingly harm others for his own gratification, and if he pays the price of 1) - 3), I'm okay with him continuing his career in the NFL.

Nope. Not what happened. In your earlier post, you engaged in mind reading. You ignored or dismissed my stated reasons for hating the Chiefs, and instead explained why I actually hate them. Your foray into the realm of mind reading failed, as I demonstrated in my response. If you'd done something difficult, such as admit you were wrong, I would have had a lot of respect for that. Instead you took the easy way out, and changed the subject in a transparent effort to deflect blame. It is what it is, but maybe try to be better than this next time around.

Nice try. But you're wrong. The NY Giants beat the Bills in the Super Bowl, by a score of 20-19. That loss was the most painful I've ever experienced in my time as a Bills fan. But it didn't cause me to bear ill will towards the Giants, or to Bill Parcells. Bill Belichick engineered the defensive game plan for the Giants. Later, when he was Cleveland's head coach, I rooted for him to do well. I was happy when his team won games at the expense of the Steelers. That Super Bowl was a clear and obvious case of someone beating us when it mattered most. But the Giants won that game cleanly, fairly, without the refs taking their side. That Giants team seemed like normal football players. Not criminals or people who'd done permanent brain damage to five year old children.

Suppose that, tomorrow morning, Roger Goodell announces, "In order to better serve our fans, the Buffalo Bills franchise is dissolved. Going forward the NFL will have 31 teams." In that scenario, I'd still root against the Chiefs. There's something about that franchise which rubs me the wrong way. I feel more negativity about the Chiefs, than I did about Tom Brady and the Patriots. If it's a playoff game between the Chiefs and the Bengals, I root for the Bengals. If it's a Super Bowl between the Chiefs and 49ers, I root for the 49ers. Why do I feel this way? Some of it's the criminality of some of their players. Some of it is my annoyance at how one-sided the officiating has often been, in the playoff games between the Chiefs and the Bills.

I don't think it's that simple. I'd argue that the Bills' playoff losses were caused by two things. 1) Failure of defensive coaching. 2) Some of our players failing to live up to expectations. You look at the defensive coordinators who did a good job in the playoffs against the Chiefs. It's not as though those coordinators are currently being hunted down by the police. Then you look at Beane's draft day mistakes, and at some of the players he could have drafted in place of those mistakes. For the most part, the "could have drafted" guys haven't made the headlines for the wrong reasons. Let's say Beane woke up tomorrow morning and said, "I no longer care about character. I'd be perfectly happy to turn this team into a bunch of thugs!" My response to that wouldn't be, "Super Bowl victory, here we come!" The thug approach isn't going to push the Bills' defensive coaching staff away from the soft zone/prevent defense approach that's failed so badly against the Chiefs. Nor is it going to make Beane better at evaluating talent. Bill Belichick has spoken about having learned from the mistakes he made in Cleveland. If Beane and McDermott take that same approach, I believe they can increase their level of competence.

If I was the one running the Dolphins, I'd ask: what kind of play are we getting from Tua? What kind of play could we get from the QB position, if we drafted Tua's replacement? If you don't think you could get someone as good as Tua, then you obviously have to extend him, and deal with the ugly salary cap implications as best you can. But to my eyes, Tua isn't that special. A good QB draft prospect could be better. If the Dolphins go that road, they potentially upgrade their QB position, while also improving their salary cap.

When Tom Brady went down with an injury, the Patriots went 11-5 with Matt Cassel as their QB. Now look at the Packers. The year before Rodgers' injury, they'd had double digit wins, and were a playoff team. In the games leading up to his injury, the Packers had a winning record, and seemed like they were headed for another playoff berth. Then Rodgers got injured, and the Packers went 2-5-1 in his absence. Next year, with Rodgers back at the helm, the Packers were again a double digit win team, and a playoff team. Rodgers was good enough to take what would otherwise have been a 5 win team, and get them to 10+ wins. No player in NFL history could have taken a 5 win team, and turned it into a Super Bowl champion. That's why Rodgers only has one ring. Josh Allen's defense has yet to generate more than two defensive stops, in a playoff game against the Chiefs or the Bengals. In this most recent playoff loss, Bills WRs had 160 yards of drops. If Allen is collecting Super Bowl rings at an Aaron Rodgers pace, rather than a Tom Brady pace, it's because the Bills have been very Packers-like in their failure to surround Allen with a good team. With a new defensive coordinator and some new faces at WR, maybe that changes.

I give you credit, for identifying the weakest part of my argument. Nonetheless, there are a number of examples where groups or organizations have received negative judgements, due to the actions of a relatively small percentage of their members. Actions which others in the group or organization didn't condone, and in many cases weren't even aware of. Perhaps we should be more just and fair in our thinking, and rise above the type of thought process which condemns an entire group or organization, due to the actions of a few. If you've adopted that type of thinking across the board, then that's a good thing.

I will give you an example. Let's start by thinking of something which pretty much all of us can agree is wrong. Pretty much everyone would agree it is wrong to abuse dogs. So then you go to the discussion board of some random sports team, and you find a lot of their fans are arguing that abusing dogs is no big deal. In a situation like this, would you form a negative opinion of their fan base? You may be thinking that my example is a poor one, because abusing dogs is way worse than expressing indifference to the injury of a player. But, you'd be wrong to think that. If someone deliberately broke a dog's leg, is that abuse? Obviously it is. Gungy wrote, "So [Aaron Rodgers'] entire leg could disintegrate while he’s hugging his parents and I wouldn’t shed a tear." What if he had written, "A dog's entire leg could disintegrate while his owner was hugging him, and I wouldn't shed a tear" ? Would that be okay? If something is abuse when done to a dog, it's abuse when done to a human too. It's no more okay to abuse a human, than it is to abuse a dog.

Great. Now I feel sooooo much better! 🙂👍

Okay. You have a point. I want Bills fans to uphold the same level of classiness I saw from Frank Reich, Marv Levy, and many others. If I can rely on other Bills fans for that, it makes me feel better about my own decision to be a Bills fan. If however I see Bills fans falling short of that standard, I feel that it's a reflection on me. Why? Because I chose to be a Bills fan. If I choose to be part of a group which isn't associated with high standards, then that absolutely, 100%, reflects negatively on my own character. If Eagles fans were rooting for a player to get injured--or, to be more accurate, were expressing zero remorse for a player injury--then that wouldn't bother me much. That's exactly what I'd expect from Eagles fans. But when Bills fans do the same, it makes me feel disillusioned. Like the group I thought I was signing up for wasn't the same as the group I was actually joining.

I read it once, and it disgusted me enough.

If Jets fans wanted to, they could throw a lot of this same mud at Josh Allen. Allen gets a lot of attention, ergo he's an attention-seeker. Want to portray Allen as someone who treats others poorly? Maybe they'd examine his breakup with Brittany Williams, through the lens of a strong anti-Allen bias. Obviously you don't want fans of opposing teams acting that way, because it's completely classless. Speaking of completely classless: wishing an injury on a football player is not okay. Are there exceptions? Yeah. If a player drags his pregnant ex-girlfriend down three flights of stairs, that's a valid reason for wishing an injury on that player. But the fact a player believes the world works differently than how you think it works? That's a completely unacceptable reason for wishing injury on a player. Be better.

I see it differently. Aaron Rodgers is one of the greatest QBs ever to play the game. His yards per attempt is 7.7 vs. 7.4 for Tom Brady. Rodgers' INT percentage is 1.4, compared to 1.8 for Brady. There are areas where Brady's numbers are better than Rodgers, such as career passing yards and number of Super Bowl rings. But there's no denying that Rodgers is a great player. He comes across well in his press conferences. Like a laid back regular guy, who sometimes demonstrates a good sense of humor. If you wanted to point out negatives about him, the most obvious is that he plays for a division rival. He's exerted too much influence over coaching (Nate Hackett) and personnel decisions. But you look at a lot of other guys in the NFL, and they're being arrested or sued for cruelty to dogs, or breaking boys' legs, or beating up women, or grinding on flight attendants without consent. If injuries must happen, I'd rather they happen to guys like those, as opposed to someone like Rodgers.

Buggs shouldn't count his chickens before they're hatched. If his agent's comments are accurate, and if he's an innocent man being targeted due to the whole hookah thing, that could actually hurt his position with the Chiefs. They have a reputation to uphold.

Fixed.

Others have said Elam may be better-suited to some other team, than he is to the Bills. Perhaps they're right. Put him in a Chiefs uniform, and the penalties you're describing instantly vanish.

As men, we're not going to be all that disturbed by female sexual energy directed our way. Even if we're not attracted to the woman, it's not a terrible thing for a woman to show she's sexually interested in you. These women's allegations are not the same as a girl at work grinding herself into you. A better metaphor would be this. Imagine you have a job as a waiter. You're a waiter for a group of ridiculously big, muscular gay guys. The kind of guys who could easily take you in a fight. One or two of those guys start grinding on you. You can't fight them physically, at least not with any hope of success. Your employer values them way more than you. If you feel their behavior crosses a line, your only real chance to gain power in this situation is to file a lawsuit. So that's the pro-plaintiff argument. The anti-plaintiff argument is that the women filing the lawsuit have a strong financial incentive to lie. Moreover, you obviously don't want people filing lawsuits over every little thing. Whose side should I take? I'd need to learn a lot more about this lawsuit before answering that question.