DonInBuffalo

There's nothing wrong with my feed. It's the OTA HD from WIVB. I went back and watched it one more time, and saw the same thing. Wilson's initial contact with Edwards was helmet to chest, just next to his armpit. Edwards entire right arm is clearly visible above Wilson's helmet when this contact occurs. Wilson's momentum causes his helmet to slide/bounce up off of Edwards chin/helmet. I'm no doctor, but common sense tells me a deflecting blow does much less damage than an initial blow.

Parrish had surgery and will be out 4-6 weeks. If my math is correct, that means he'll miss San Diego and maybe 1-2 more weeks. I expect Edwards to play against San Diego. If he doesn't, we should all be concerned, as it might be an indicator that he is particularly prone to concussions and possibly not the long term answer at QB. If there was even an outside chance of McGee playing this week, which I believe there was, he will be back against San Diego. Not sure about Simpson without knowing further details beyond some sort of hamstring injury. He apparently got injured on the play before the Cardinals first TD, but presumably walked off the field without any assistance. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't miss any practice/playing time other than the bye week.

As I stated in the other thread that's discussing this same subject, I've reviewed the HD of this frame by frame multiple times. Wilson hit Edwards roughly 1/5 second after the ball left his hand. His helmet struck Edwards close to his armpit, while both players still had their feet on the ground. The force of the collision caused both players feet to come off the ground, and Wilson's momentum caused his helmet to slide or bounce up off of Edwards chin and helmet. There was no direct blow to the head. I seriously doubt there will be a fine, and wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Bills didn't even ask the NFL to review the play. It was a hard, but completely clean hit.

In the slow motion replay, Wilson hits him maybe 1 second after the ball was released. I went back and reviewed the HD frame by frame. Looks to be about 30 frames a second, with the initial contact coming roughly 3-6 frames after the ball was released. IOW, somewhere between 1/10 and 1/5 of a second after Edwards released the ball. Wilson only left his feet after he made contact with Edwards. There's a big difference between finishing a tackle and purposely driving a player into the ground. IMO this falls into the former category.

I captured the game in HD onto my hard drive, and went back and took a close look. Wilson did not leave his feet. When he first makes contact with Edwards, his helmet is entirely underneath Edwards right arm. He hit him basically right next to his armpit, and his momentum caused his helmet to slide or bounce up and off Edwards chin/helmet. I would be surprised if he gets fined.

Jauron said Edwards was responsive, or responding, something like that. Edwards got the concussion when his head hit the ground. The Arizona player never struck him in the head; it was a perfectly legal hit. Any time a defensive player strikes the QB above the shoulder with an arm or helmet, they're supposed to throw a flag. Mitchell might get fined for his hit on Warner that cut his chin, but I would be very surprised if that results in a suspension.

I know I'm greatly oversimplifying things here, and I also recognize the overall issue is much more complex. However, often something that is purportedly very complex turns out to be relatively simple, after you strip away all the smoke and mirrors. As I see it: - WIVB has a broadcasting license from the FCC. That entitles them to certain benefits. One of those benefits is legal restrictions on companies like TW to prevent them from undercutting their business by pulling in feeds of competing stations. - However, WIVB also has a monopoly on the CBS local feed. As such, there should be restrictions in place to prevent them from exploiting that monopoly status. What LIN is essentially doing is attempting to force TW to pay for their feed, which will be passed along to their customers. Call it a "royalty", whatever, I don't care. The bottom line is what really matters. LIN charges TW, who charges me. It's an indirect charge to the customer, for a free OTA feed. LIN wants to make me pay them money for the privilege of having cable TV. I don't get any benefit from my indirect payment to them, as I can watch WIVB any time I want without cable. So why should I have to pay them?

It's easy to be critical when you don't have all the facts. I certainly don't have all of them, but have heard enough to have a different opinion than you. The NFL Network insisted on Time Warner putting the channel on the "basic tier", that all customers received. Time Warner wanted to put it in a "sports tier"; some sort of add-on that customers could optionally purchase. From my perspective, Time Warner was right and the NFL Network was wrong. You can't go around bullying people into running their business they way you want them to.

From my perspective, unless someone explains what I'm missing, LIN is in the wrong here: WIVB is required by law to provide a free OTA broadcast signal to consumers. Since Time Warner is a business, not a consumer, they can charge Time Warner a fee for that signal. (which Time Warner will no doubt pass along to consumers) WIVB incurs no expense to provide the service to Time Warner; the cable company is simply picking up the OTA signal and rebroadcasting it to their customers. So, when you break it all down, LIN is indirectly charging consumers for the right to view free broadcasts. There is no tangible additional business expense to them for providing this; the cable company is doing all the work. They're just collecting money for doing nothing because legally they found a way to get away with it. That's just not right.

If I understand this situation correctly, I don't see Time Warner as the bad guy here. LIN negotiates deals with Dish network, DirecTV, Time Warner, everybody, for the rights to carry their signal. Now apparently they want to charge Time Warner considerably more than they had in the past. Are they providing anything more for this additional fee? No, they're just greedy corporate bastards that will grub money any/every way they can. Does it bother them that this fee will be indirectly passed on to cable subscribers, essentially forcing them to pay for a service that the TV station is required by law to provide for free OTA? No, (see previous answer)

WIVB broadcasts in HD. I happen to live about a mile from their studios, but that isn't where their HD transmitters are. http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx That site lists HD stations relative to the location you enter. (presumably where you live) Most of the local stations here have their transmitters somewhere near East Aurora. I can pick up the signals most of the time with the cheapest pair of rabbit ears I could find at Target, less than $20.

Vic Carucci has the Bills at #4: http://www.nfl.com/news/story;jsessionid=5...mp;confirm=true

You'll probably need to invent a word. For example, David Letterman did a top 10 list recently on words invented in the last year. My favorite was "Spitzwhore". How about "UnBillevable" ?

Tim, thanks for following up with all the additional information. To clarify, my previous post was critical of your article for this specific reason: IMO an article of that length should have at least mentioned Jauron's explanation to the media for why they put Crowell on IR. Of course in an op-ed piece it's typical to disagree with someone else's opinion, but to not even have it there for others to consider? As far as other roster options, you haven't come close to convincing me yet either: - Gilbran Hamdan? get real. During the first two regular season games, Losman has been standing on the sidelines not talking to anyone during the entire game. Hamdan has been wearing the headset and interacting with other coaches/players. - Xavier Oman? are you kidding me? What if either Lynch or Jackson got hurt? The Bills would be totally screwed.

I was less than impressed with the "journalism" in that article. Graham leaps to some conclusions that don't have any factual support, and avoids mentioning some other key issues. Did Peters' holdout affect this decision by the Bills? Yes, but not in the way that he implies. They didn't put Crowell on IR because they were "fuming" about Peters. They did it because they were thin on roster spots. Crowell was essentially the victim of a numbers game. Just take a close look at the actives/inactives for the first two games. You honestly believe it wouldn't have hurt the Bills to carry Crowell as an inactive and have one player who wound up participating in the game inactive? Jauron when asked said basically what I'm saying here. They put Crowell on IR because they needed the roster spot for a backup LB who plays ST.

That's totally unrealistic. You expect some team to offer us a veteran QB and a mid/high round draft pick for Losman, who got benched in favor of an unknown rookie last season? They would need to like him enough to sign him upfront to a long term deal, otherwise it makes absolutely no sense. But who would sign him to a long term deal weeks before he learns the playbook well enough to even step on the field? That's crazy.

From what I could see watching on TV, it looked like it went past the 40, and Wendling tried to field it, but it bounced off of him back across the 40, where a Jags player recovered. So Wendling dropped the ball. (literally, not figuratively) He recognized the play, and had the best chance of anyone on the field to recover the ball, but simply failed to hold onto the ball.

Peters practiced with the starters all week. I expect him to start and play the entire game. Those who expect otherwise forgot to take their reality pill this morning.

After seeing Furlong's followup email, it's even more obvious that he's just a tool doing what he's told. Why didn't he recognize the fans who called/emailed? Because they didn't make any difference, at least not to him. Somebody at corporate told him they decided to air the Bills-Jags.

My admittedly somewhat cynical take on all of this: Part of Furlong's job is to "appease" like this. Corporate told him what game to air, and that's the game they're going to air. The email response was just a facade to create the impression that he actually cared and what you told him actually influenced his decision. In theory, it's his decision, but a few, or even a few dozen, emails/phone calls wouldn't be anywhere close enough for him to consider bucking corporate on this. His job, the receptionist's job, pretty much anyone you contact there has the same job: Be polite, appease, hang up the phone, and continue to do what corporate told you to do. To get them to do something, it would have to be much more tangible, such as people picketing outside the station (which would embarrass them because other local stations would cover it) or companies such as M&T who advertise on their site threatening to pull their ads. Any email/phone effort would need easily hundreds if not over 1000 people to have any chance of succeeding.

Indy Minnesota is the "big game" for CBS because of casual fan name recognition of Manning but possibly even more so Adrian Peterson. When a NFC team with a recognizable name hosts an AFC team, it's not uncommon for CBS to feature that game. I looked over the web site. It's not quite as bad a joke as WUTV, which among other things doesn't have the name of a single person who works at the station listed anywhere on their website. I did notice that the station is owned by a company called Freedom Communications. It's quite possible nobody who actually works at the station has the authority to petition to get the game changed without first getting corporate approval. I also noticed several M&T Bank ads on their site. One featured Moorman, and all of them listed M&T as "the official bank of the Buffalo Bills". Maybe if someone knows somebody who works at M&T, they can get them to find someone who works in Sales/Marketing to contact the station.

Put simply, he's a "macho" shortsighted idiot. He and his teammates believe they're legitimate Super Bowl contenders, which may be true. I'm sure the local media isn't doing anything to refute that. He feels he would be "letting his teammates down" if he didn't "tough it out and play." I'll never claim to be an orthopedic surgeon, but I do have at least a modest amount of common sense. When five doctors have the same opinion, that's not a coincidence. A friend of mine damaged (probably tore) a knee ligament playing recreational soccer. He also enjoys recreational golf. His doctor told him that if he wanted to play soccer again, he would require surgery, but with no surgery, he could walk/golf no problem. My friend chose to never have surgery, and just quit his soccer league. Obviously that's quite a different situation than Merriman's but there are enough similarities to make it worth mentioning. Apparently Merriman's agent and entire family are mute sheep, refusing to tell him what a complete fool he is by doing this.

I mentioned in another thread that I expect McKelvin to return kickoffs since those tend to happen after the defense has been on the field for an entire series. The "both back" is entirely inconsistent with how Bobby April has coached the kickoff returns since he's been here. They've always lined up 5 along the line, (in part to prevent onside kicks) one more player in the middle of the field about 10 yards back - that player is the Tasker/Wire/clone ST "ace", four players in a diamond setup around the 10-20, and the returner. The "bottom of the diamond" is expected to make the key block at the point of attack to spring the return, with the other three+"ace" forming the wedge just in front of them. Barnes apparently has the "bottom" job this season. If you put two KRs back, there's one less blocker and you have to design an entirely different return scheme.

IMO Hardy won't start week 1 but will see plenty of playing time and earn the starting job within a few weeks. From a coaching/team standpoint, they might be sending the wrong message if he starts opening day. When he started preseason weeks 1-2 because Josh Reed was hurt, he in many ways looked like a green rookie who wasn't quite ready yet. When he started in week 4, it was because all the starters sat. That being said, I was impressed with his week 4 performance and would not be particularly surprised if he does wind up starting. Based on preseason playing time at DT, it looks like the coaching staff still considers Kyle Williams to be the starter, with Johnson outplaying McCargo to earn the #3 spot. I agree McKelvin will probably be the regular KR as most of those are after the defense has been on the field for an entire series. McKelvin "earned" his way out of a chance to return punts on Thursday with those two bonehead catches on the 5 yard line. You might be able to get away with that crap in college, but Bobby April certainly won't tolerate it. IMO Youboty earned the nickel job with his preseason performance.

From what I've read, every doctor Merriman has been to told him he could play on the knee. But all of them also recommended that he instead have surgery. This situation is in some ways analogous to Favre. If Merriman decides he wants to play, shows up to camp and passes his physical, the Chargers don't have many choices. They either have to put in on their roster, or release/trade him.