DonInBuffalo

As others have already mentioned, 90%+ of the reason this guy was signed is to prevent Moorman's leg from getting burned out in camp. For example, they might dedicate several hours of a practice to ST, where everyone other than QBs and a few others will be required to field and/or return punts. With 80 players in camp, that works out to 3-4 units of players doing each. If you only had one punter, just a few practices like that could burn out his leg. The -10% of the reason is to evaluate someone in camp just in case Moorman happens to get hurt. If they haven't already done so, the Bills will also sign at PK for training camp for the same reasons. It doesn't take all that much to burn out a kicking leg. Moorman kicked off his first season here, but had to drop those duties in subsequent seasons because his leg burned out toward the end of the season.

Or even more specifically, maybe Marv and/or other staff members gave him the professional courtesy of telling him not to bother to show up, because they had decided to release him.

WGR reported it's a "day two pick". So it's either 4th or 5th. The Bills are expected to make an official announcement shortly, which will hopefully contain the details.

Deal sounds like a total crock to me, as in the Packers really doing a job on the Bills. They take the same cap hit whether they trade or release Moulds, so it really comes down to this: Given the choice between doing nothing, or trading away a 3rd rd pick in 2006 and a 4th rd pick in 2007 for a 5th rd pick in 2006, for someone who is in the final year of his contract, hasn't stepped on a practice field since blowing out his knee, and has a reputation of having attitude problems. Hmm, seems like a pretty easy choice to me.

Here are the basic numbers: http://www.forbes.com/2004/09/01/04nfland.html "Operating Income" would be what most people consider what the owners make. Most of the teams were in the 20-40 million range.

IMO switching to a 3-4 would require too much revamping of the personnel, in particular the DL. In a 3-4, your DE's have to relatively big by DE standards, and very good run-stuffers. Schobel, Kelsay, and Denney certainly don't fit that general description. Of course, there are "different flavors" of the 3-4. The Bills current personnel is particularly misfit for the style of defense the Bills ran with Phillips/Cottrell, where all of the DL generally had two-gap responsiblity on almost every down. I believe the schemes that the Steelers run are quite a bit different, and the Bills personnel might be a little better suited to that sort of style of 3-4.

FYI, Marv does have GM experience, just not at the NFL level. He was the GM while working for both Montreal of the CFL and Chicago of the WFL.

I used to play amateur indoor soccer, so getting kicked in the shin was obviously a rather common occurence. When I first started playing, I had shin pads that were just foam rubber inside a cloth casing. Those protected some, but weren't really good enough. I took a direct kick to the shin, and had a nasty bone bruise that lasted for probably about a month. Per another player's recommendation, I got the better hard shin pads, more of a plastic type material, with just enough "play" in them to bend to fit around your shin when you strap them on. They are light enough they don't really hinder running, and should easily fit underneath the socks on a typical football uniform. The pads I used were roughly six inches high by 4 inches wide. You should be able to find pads like that in any sporting goods store that sells soccer supplies.

http://users.adelphia.net/~DonC411/fish.JPG Happened to notice this while I was transferring my VHS tape of the game to DVD. I'm assuming any/all real Bills fans will be able to spot what's wrong.

Essentially, OJ was found "not guilty" because the LAPD and DA's office proved they were totally inept. Virtually every piece of major evidence was tainted in some way. The most important pieces of evidences were mostly compromised even worse, for example: - Detectives on the scene not only didn't rope off the white Bronco with crime tape, they actually put their coffee cups on it, leaving rim marks. - One of the lead decectives took OJ's shoes home with him, and had them booked the next day, as opposed to taking them to the lab, in direct violation of department policy. - The lead criminoligist, Fun, or whatever his name was, couldn't even remember what he did with OJ's blood sample after taking it, when asked to testify about the chain of custody. Judge Ito had to point out to him, watching a video, that he might have been carrying it with him in a plastic bag. - Furman was very obviously a liar. It's a virtual certainty he planted the glove. None of the glove testimony, or his on that issue, added up. He found the glove back there, but there were no broken branches in the trees to synch up with Kato's testimony about hearing a "thump". Furman also testifiied that he stood at a streetcorner for over an hour doing nothing, several hours earlier, after being informed that lead detectives had taken over juristiction from him. He testified quite specifically that once given a directive such as that, he wouldn't "take the lead" without informing his superiors; that's why he was just standing around doing nothing. Yet, he later testified that he walked right by these same superiors in OJ's living room, without saying a word, out the door to conduct an independent investiation in which he found the glove. - The most critcial piece of evidence, the Bronco with DNA samples of OJ and both victims, was kept completely unsecured. Several people testified that they "sight-see'd" the vehicle, and one person even said on the stand that he took some paperwork out of the car as a keepsake. IMO the jury did their job. You can't convict somebody if there isn't credible evidence to support the verdict. OJ's team did their job, exposing the ineptness of the LAPD and the prosecutor's office. Like most/all posters in this thread, I believe OJ committed that crime. If I happend to ever see him in person, I probably won't say anything. He's a lot bigger than me, and I'm not nearly as fast a runner as I used to be.

Maybe he had a particularly bad practice, and one of the coaches punched him really hard in the gut.

Williams was active today, and played on the PAT and FG units. He also would have been in for one play on offense when Mike Gandy came out, but the playclock had gotten low and the Bills had to burn a timeout, which allowed Gandy to come back in. I assume absent some sort of setback, Williams will be starting next week. Also, Villarrial was inactive today. I didn't hear his name mentioned in the postgame, and didn't see him on the injury report.

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/buf/digital/010afm.htm Party cloudy, 10% chance of rain, high in the mid 50s.

I'm curious as to why someone (apparently a Moderator) found it necessary to edit my post and change the topic title. As a mod in another forum, I consider editing someone else's post to be a means of absolute last resort.

I posted this over at KFFL: http://www.kffl.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143706 It's silly to re-post all of that here, since anyone can read threads there without registering. Either the coaches had "dumbed down" the offense to the point where they weren't asking JP to make a basic read, or he just plain "wanted to be a hero" and made a very stupid decision. I'm guessing the later. The coaches have decided (and upon reflection I agree) that JP just needs to sit down, calm down, and get things in perspective for a while. It might be a week, a few weeks, or maybe even the rest of the season. IMO Holcomb will probably start the next 4 weeks, and the coaches will re-evaluate the QB situation during the bye week and decide what to do then, based on the totality of the circumstances at that time.

Followup: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor..._len&id=2182225 Apparently this is much more than speculation on by Pasquarelli. He is reporting that "ESPN has confirmed" the decision. Either he has reliable information or he will look like a fool on Sunday. I'll guess the former, but of course either possibility is a viable one, considering the source.

On top of that, on the majority of his carries he gained 2 yards or less. He gained the bulk of his yardage on 3 long runs, which makes his average per carry a very misleading figure. Mularkey was asked on Monday why Willis didn't get the ball more. He pointed out the obvious, namely the lack of plays for the offense in general. Heck, they had more running plays than passing plays, even though their last 5 plays were all passing plays due to them being behind.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor...greg&id=2180680 IMO Pasquarelli is apparently speculating based solely on Donahoe's very non-commital remarks.

I'll have to give Ryan (KFFL admin) the business about that one. Normally they limit the HOTW section to hard news. This is mere speculation, with no substance. On top of that, I searched the Buffalo News site and couldn't find a single article where they even speculate that Holcomb will be the starter.

My observations and review of the stat sheets aren't quite in synch with the previous comments. In spite of being down late in the game and having to pass on pretty much every down during that portion, the Bills still ran the ball more times than they threw today. (yesterday, whatever) McGahee had 4 carries in the first series, and gained more than 2 yards on only 1 of them. The Bills had poor field position in each of their next two drives, which went 3&out, and McGahee had one carry on each of those, for a combined total of 5 yards. The next possession was the INT, which was IMO the turning point of the game. Moulds was bracketed by a pair of defenders. That ball never should have even been thrown. If your primary receiver is double-covered, somebody (or everybody) else is either single covered or open, so you should check down. Somehow, Don Criqui knew the Bills were going to go long on that play well before the players even broke the huddle. Maybe Wyche tipped him off with some sort of signal. BTW, the announcers were brutal. Criqui should have retired years ago, and Gannon is even worse than Tasker, if you can believe that's possible. The Bills had one more drive late in the 1st half, but most of it was in no-huddle types of formations. McGahee opened the 3rd qtr. with another nice 14 yard gain, but the Bills were placed into a long yardage situation when Losman got sacked on the next play. On the next series, McGahee managed a few nice gains of 7 and 5 yards, but the Bills offense once again stalled after getting only one 1st down. Losman was pulled after this series. At this point in the game, if I added correctly, the Bills had 21 rushes and 14 passes. What do you want them to do, run on every single down? As far as communication goes, just from what I saw watching on TV, they showed Losman sitting on the bench quite a few times, often reviewing pictures with Clements, and other times talking to Moulds or others. While the offense has been less than adequate, I have to chime in and say that the defense hasn't been holding up their end of the bargain either. A very big part of the reason they have been on the field so long is their inability to shut the opponent down on 3rd down. During these 3 losses, they have allowed more than 50% of 3rd down conversions. That ranks them at or near the bottom of that category in the entire league. Obviously, that's just not good enough for a team that expects it's defense to carry them more often than not.

Looking carefully over the Gamebook/statistics, I can pick out a few key reasons why the Bills lost today. - The offense was horrendous on 1st down. If you take out runs of 25 and 14 by McGahee (which obviously generated 1st downs) they averaged less than a yard on all their other 1st downs. That's what caused the offense to sputter. They weren't able to get managable down and distance. They did maintain a reasonable balance between running and passing plays, both on 1st down and overall. For the game, they had 23 running plays and 21 passing plays. When you consider that the last 5 plays were all passes, clearly they wanted to run the ball to take pressure off Losman and keep the defense off the field, but generally weren't effective at any of that. Out of their 11 possessions, they got more than one 1st down on only two of them. By comparison, the Saints had 3 or more 1st downs on 6 of their 11 possessions. - The defense gave up 7-15 on 3rd down. That's why the defense couldn't get off the field. Looking at the 3rd down distances, the Saints also did a better job of managing that. Out of 15 3rd downs, they had 7 or more to go only 6 times, 40%. By comparison, the Bills had 7 or more to go 6 out off their 11 times, about 55%. What's the answer? Other than stating the obvious, I don't know. The Bills need to do a better job of gaining positive yards on 1st and 2nd down (especially 1st) and the defense needs to do a better job of getting off the field on 3rd down. FYI, other than a few long runs, McGahee was not particularly effective today. Here are his runs: 25, -5, 2, 1, 1(TD), 2, 3, 1, 14, 3, 7, 5, 0, 40(-penalty), 0, -2 So, other than the 3 long runs, he gained 18 yards on 13 carries, if I added right.

Google Map Here's the route I recommend: Get off the Thruway at the Camp Rd. (Route 75) exit. Take that approximately 1 mile to Southwestern Blvd. (Route 20) Take Southwestern Blvd. to the 7 corners intersection. There will be quite a bit of traffic here, (you'll probably have to wait at least 2 lights to get through the intersection) but it's the last real traffic you'll hit before getting right on top of the stadium. At this intersection you have a choice, depending on where you want to park. If you want to park in the Hammer's Lot, or in Lot 2, which is generally the last stadium lot to completely fill up, turn right on Big Tree Rd. and take that up to Abbott and turn left. Coming from this direction, once you get turned onto Abbott, there basically isn't any traffic at all. It's all coming from the other direction. If you want to park on the other side of the stadium, from the 7 corners intersection, continue straight on Southwestern up toward the Abbott intersection.

Peters is fine. He played the entire 2nd half of the game. Clements is apparently also fine. The Bills obviously would have kept another CB on the final 53 if he wasn't, as otherwise they wouldn't even have enough CBs to use dime allignments against multiple WR sets. Per NFL rules, the Bills aren't required to report injury status during the preseason. Based on everything I've read, Parrish is expected to miss something like 2-4 games of the regular season.

I saw this mentioned earlier elsewhere and did a little research on him. He was a holdout his rookie season, didn't sign until week 2, missed at least the first 4 games that season as a result. Had a decent second season, missed a few games due to an ankle injury or something like that. Put up pretty good numbers, something like 30 tackles and 4 sacks, don't remember the exact details. Got a DWI over the summer following that season. This wasn't a "ticky-tack" DWI. He was sited for having a BCA of over .10, going 45 in a 25 zone, and running red light. Missed the first 4 games of last season due to resulting suspension. Was only active for 4 games last season, had no more than a handful of tackles. Inactive for all of the last 4 games. Salary cap wasn't the reason he was cut. I looked him up at NFLPA; his base pay for this season is only something like $455K. He may have lots of raw talent, but apparently isn't motivated enough to perform at the level required to be an NFL starter.

Here in Buffalo, it's "Marineland". They saturate all the channels here with the same stupid commercial with the same stupid song, every year, all summer long. I usually watch channel 7 news while I'm making eating my dinner. The commercial is on like clockwork every 1/2 hour. Once between 5:00-5:30, again between 5:30-6:00, and again between 6:00-6:30. If I leave the TV on to watch ABC Evening news, it's on once there, and once again during Wheel of Fortune, and once again during Jeopardy. I normally watch channel 2 news at 11:00, in part because I like to watch Jay Leno afterwords, and the same commercial is on, normally right before the sports report. I was flipping channels the other day, and the same commercial was even on PBS, which I thought didn't show any commercials. I collect Star Trek episodes, and I have tapes that are 5 or possibly even 10 or more years old, with the same stupid commercial, like clockwork, twice during each hour-long episode. That commercial is primarily responsible for the mute button wearing out on my universal remote, forcing me to buy a new one.