DonInBuffalo

Since I think Tsaikotic pretty much got it right, I'll only mention what I think might be different. I'll go out on a limb and assume he knows how to count to 53. TE: If Schouman is healthy enough to play opening day or week 2/3 at the latest, I agree. If not, they probably have to put Fine on IR and keep another TE. Denney is probably the emergency TE, but there's only so long you can go stretched that thin. (you must have two people who can line up at TE for short yardage) With the injury problems at OT, there really isn't any backup there available to play TE if needed, except possibly Preston. OL: Whittle hasn't played very much and shown me nothing this preseason. He probably hasn't fully recovered from last season's injury. Cut Whittle, keep Estes, and find somebody off the waiver wire to replace Estes. Assuming Peters reports, request a roster exemption for him for a few weeks, and when you add him to the active roster, move Bell to PS. DL: I would keep Bryan and cut Jefferson. DB: this camp was George Wilson's chance to show that after a season/offseason playing safety, he was ready to move up a notch and at the very least be a capable backup, or possibly even compete for a starting job. He failed the test. If anything he has regressed since last season. Will James was the only player to get reps at nickel with the first unit in any of the preseason games. He's in; Wilson's out. Youboty earns the nickel job over James because of his preseason performance, with James being the backup FS and emergency CB.

The Bills aren't going to show Peters a dime until he shows up and takes a physical. For all they know, he weighs about 450, walks with a limp, and would miss the entire 2008 season just getting himself back into shape.

This rumor has no credibility for several reasons. If Peters showed up tomorrow, Jauron and the rest of the staff have no idea if he's even healthy enough to practice, much less in game shape. They essentially haven't talked to him since last season. So obviously they haven't decided anything about whether or not he would play. Brandon has said that they would be willing to discuss an extension with Peters if he reports, but there would be no new money in 2008, it would be in future years. They're trying to make it very clear to Peters and his agent that there is no financial incentive in holding out, unless you're willing to wait over a year to see any of that money.

I didn't see any direct quotes other than mentioning he was "dazed". Apparently he just got hit in the helmet with a knee and is going to be fine.

I think they modified it by adding the "and he safety is in jeopardy" part. The ref blew it dead because the defender was going to slam Hamden to the ground.

It was probably the right call. http://members.tripod.com/refereestats/rules.htm

Looks like on offense they started numerous bubble players. Defense appears to be all 2nd stringers except Ko Simpson.

It's pretty obvious to even a casual observer that the Bills top 5 on the depth chart are Evans, Reed, Parrish, Hardy, and Jenkins. To bump one of those 5, or for them to consider carrying 6 WRs, someone would either need to outperform one of those top 4 enough to take playing time away from them, or be good enough on ST to take playing time away from someone else there. According to the Gamebooks at nfl.com, he was inactive for the first preseason game (implying he had some sort of injury) and played in the last two. His playing time might have been limited to ST coverage units. By releasing him now as opposed to next week, the Bills are doing him a big favor; giving him a much better chance to possibly land on another roster this season.

The local media outlets have game coverage that is at best marginally adequate. What makes you believe they'll be willing to spend very substantial amounts of money to do something like this?

I was thinking long before training camp started, that if Peters didn't have a new deal in place by the time camp starts, he should fire his agent, show up to camp, and tell his new agent to get a new deal done before the start of the season or else. Rumor was one of the reasons Peters didn't get drafted is because he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. His recent conduct isn't doing anything to dispute that possibility. First of all, a player that misses the last game of the regular season and the Pro Bowl due to injury should never not show up for offseason conditioning/minicamps much less refuse to make any effort to keep in contact with the team. That's being grossly irresponsible and unprofessional. The Bills organization decided right then and there to not budge until he shows up, and I don't blame them one bit. Skip a mandatory minicamp to "make a statement" and pay a modest fine? I can deal with that. But not showing up to camp demonstrates that he's not just being stubborn, he's being stupid. Skipping regular season games, forfeiting major salary in the process, is even more stupid. He's essentially gambling that the Bills will suffer an outrageous rash of injuries at OT, (as in Walker and Chambers and Bell) making them so desperate for an OT they'll cave and give him whatever he wants. In the movie "The Sting", Hooker put down $3000 on Red, and of course lost. Peters is playing I.M. Dumb roulette, putting down hundreds of thousands on #71, and of course will lose too.

Tim, I was very surprised and disappointed when I went to TBD earlier today expecting to find an update on L. Walker's injury. Nothing. I had to hunt through the Bills official site to find any information at all. It wasn't really all that long ago that Bills fans had media coverage that pretty much anyone would envy. Adelphia Cable had a channel it called Empire Sports Network, a "regional sports channel". From the first day of training camp to the last day of the season, ESN had Bills coverage from 4:30-6:00 each afternoon, including but not limited to highlights from training camp, player/coach interviews, and the like. They also had a great postgame show that ran from as soon as the network stopped their telecast until 6:00 for typical 1:00 games. On top of that, Adelphia owned an FM sports radio channel, competing with WGR, in many ways "keeping them honest". Unfortunately, John Rigas was a crook and Adelphia went bankrupt. Time Warner purchased the local Adelphia cable, and ESN shut down. The company that owns WGR purchased Adelphia's FM sports station and changed it's format. All of the local sports coverage went way, way, downhill. WGR doesn't even have local sports until 3:00 in the afternoon, and most of their 3-6 show, with supposedly their "best" broadcast team, (I call them Schmuck and The BullFrog) contains so little legitimate sports talk it's not worth the bother of listening to for any length of time. Local TV isn't much better. WKBW, "The Official Bills Station", is owned by a company trying to break the union. Pretty much every legitimate sportscaster left that station, with them hiring nobodies with very limited experience in small town markets as replacements. The other local channels aren't much better. The Buffalo News? It's owned by Warren Buffett, who I understand is a very rich (and cheap) man. It was one of the last newspapers in the country to even offer any news at all on it's website. He couldn't give a rat's ass about what people here think about the sports coverage or lack thereof. Sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of historical perspective. Locals now generally expect the local media coverage to be so pathetic that they'll have to go to national outlets more often than not to get pertinent information.

This is all negotiated in the CBA. The players have their rights, and the teams have theirs. Of course it isn't a perfect fit for every situation, but it's a good start. If a player under contract doesn't report, the options available to the team are spelled out quite specifically. I read elsewhere that per the current CBA the Bills may be able to go after a portion of Peters' signing bonus if he doesn't report for the regular season. I'm not in the mood right now to sift through the CBA text to determine if that's accurate.

When I used to work downtown about 20 years ago, there was a bar across the street I routinely went to on Fridays. Rick Azar occasionally frequented the bar to throw darts. We had some interesting sports conversations while he was waiting his turn. http://7newsunfair.com/demands.htm WKBW has gone in the toilet because the station is owned by a conglomerate that is trying to break the union. Doing a little research, the guy who was doing the postgame show is Shawn Stepner. According to his bio on the site, this is his second gig. The first was as the sports director for a station in Hagerstown, MD, population about 36K. (i.e barely big enough to even have a TV station)

WKBW is pathetic. During their postgame show, the only news they had on Walker was repeating what Adam Schefler reported during the game.

Probably a combination of reasons. Of course the only reason Fitzpatrick is even on the roster is to prevent Moorman from overworking his leg in preseason. The coaching staff had probably planed for this to be Moorman's week off. Some other starters didn't get much work either, even though this is the week that they generally play the most. I believe Lynch was only in for one series. It's also possible that they plan on releasing Fitzpatrick on Tuesday, so they wanted to give him some action to give him a better chance of hooking on with somebody else.

Why wasn't there a penalty on that WR screen? Mayle was downfield blocking before Jenkins even caught the ball.

It looks like they have Corto playing WLB. I'm pretty sure he got reps there last game too.

Apparently the regular announcing crew is Collingsworth, Faulk, and Sanders. Collingsworth is covering the Olympics for NBC. I'm not sure who is subbing for him. I saw the three announcers before the game started. Recognized him along with Faulk and Sanders, but don't recall who he is. My initial thought when I saw them was "this must be the studio coverage, there's no way they would have these clowns calling a game."

Evans and Reed started. When they put in a 3rd WR, most of the time Reed moved into the slot and Jenkins lined up wide.

The game is being telecast on the NFL Network. I checked the online TV listings a few days ago, and didn't see it on WKBW. I just finishing transferring the Steelers game to DVD, and noticed them listing there toward the very end of the broadcast, the next broadcast is "WBKW in Buffalo" referring to the Colts game. I went back and re-checked the TV listings, and now the game is listed as being on WKBW here in Buffalo. However, when I checked the Rochester listings, I didn't see it shown there. It's possible the NFL rule requiring games shown on cable to be also shown locally only applies to the immediate city, not the entire blackout zone. For example, any time the Bills have had a regular season game on ESPN, it's always also shown on a local broadcast channel here. If you live in Rochester, and those ESPN games weren't also shown on a local broadcast channel, I suspect you won't get Sunday's game. (unless you have NFL Network, or access to WKBW's feed. Of course sports bars might have the NFL Network, or possibly might have a decent enough antenna to pick up WKBW's OTA HD feed. Their tower is over 20 miles away from me, near East Aurora, and I get the feed most of the time with a pair of rabbit ears I bought at Target for $10.)

I don't think I'm confusing anything. The "equity" of a draft pick is it's relative value compared to other things. When comparing just draft picks to other draft picks, their "equity" is their value in relation to those other picks. There is no "positional value" of a pick separate from that pick's value in relation to other picks. More precisely, the "positional value" as you describe it bears no direct relation to the actual value, or equity of the pick, (other than lower picks obviously being worth more) , so that number is essentially meaningless in any discussion of that pick's value in relation to other draft picks. As I stated in my previous post, all NFL teams use charts similar to that when negotiating trades of draft picks with other teams. There aren't "wild deviations with no explanation"; it's an exponential scale with some of the numbers rounded off for convenience: http://72.228.166.24:81/DraftChart.xls

The point I was trying to make is that by limiting the study to the first two rounds, you are greatly limiting what conclusions that can be drawn from it. Many outstanding players weren't taken in the those rounds. By "arbitrary" I meant that you chose it simply because you thought it to be a reasonable model, with nothing outside of your opinion/experience to guide you. I pointed out a very obvious flaw: With your system, the 63rd pick is worth twice as much as the 64th, the 62nd pick is worth 3 times as much as the 64th, etc. That just doesn't pass the common sense test. By comparison, the chart I linked to is similar to the ones that pretty much every NFL team uses. It isn't a strict linear scale; it's much closer to exponential - reflecting the obvious fact that there's a much bigger difference between draft picks 1 vs. 10 than there is 41 vs. 50. If you look at trades made during the draft that strictly involved draft choices, most of them will very strongly correlate with that chart or others which are similar to it on other websites.

19 Celsius = 66 Fahrenheit

On the first play I entirely disagree with you. Edwards had to throw the ball away because Hardy didn't pick up the hot read. He had to throw the ball away (more/less to where Hardy should've been) or he would've been sacked long before Hardy had crossed the goal line and turned around to look for the ball. Lee Evans slapped Hardy on the helmet "reminding" him that he made a mistake. I've never played any organized football, but have watched enough to have a pretty good feel for the game in general. On the play in question, it was a "hot read". Lynch had gone in motion, so it was an empty backfield. The "hot read" for Hardy was to recognize that the LBs were blitzing, meaning he and Evans were left 1-1 on the two DBs on that side. Hardy should've recognized the blitz and broken off his route to more/less where Edwards threw the ball. With 6 people rushing against 5, there's no way to complete the type of endzone pass you describe. Any QB would get sacked long before that happened. As for the drop, I don't consider it to be a big deal. One factor that might not have been mentioned is that Losman probably had more zip on that ball compared to Edwards, who Hardy has probably spent most of his time practicing with.

Thank you for the link. No reason to comment further on the "three plays" discussion, other than to concur that something was obviously really messed up on that 2nd down play; i.e at least one person wasn't doing what the "play call" called for. "Stunt" was the wrong term. Even if McGargo was doing what the play call was, it would've been more of a weird zone blitz with a LB filling his gap. I don't mean in any way to discount the effort you put into your study, but just at a quick glance, it contains some obvious flaws. 1) Obviously the higher round picks are better, but to use the first two rounds only and totally disregard the rest is flawed. 2) Arbitrarily "budgeting" 64-1 is a totally invalid statistical assumption. For example, you're assuming the 63rd pick is worth twice as much as the 64th pick. A much more valid approach would've been to use some sort of draft value chart, such as this: http://www.nfldraftcountdown.com/features/valuechart.html 3) see above 4) While making a roster and staying on it is important, production from high round picks is even more important. Your study doesn't appear to consider that in any way. Of course, players already on the roster, and players acquired through free agency affect what positions teams take in the draft. Nice effort, but in the end, the numbers really don't mean/prove anything.