BuffaloWings

Agreed. I hate it to be the Bills, but it's about frikkin' time that an organization stood their ground to a greedy agent and their brainwashed player. I want Peters back, also....but good for Russ.

" They were the division's second-best team and should be better. If they can make amends with holdout LT Jason Peters, their playoff hopes improve." Yet he picks them to finish 3rd. I love how "experts" leapfrog a team over 4 or 5 others just because they have a QB whose name they know. All we need to do is look at the Superbowl predictions from 2006, when everyone thought Miami was the best because they had Culpepper. This is what's happening ion the AFC East thanks to Favre & Pennington.

I guess I can understand that, too, but it doesn't make sense to me that a player of LT's caliber doesn't play a down in the preseason. To me, that's a lot of talent....not playing at game speed until the opening week and he still runs over, through, and by everyone. I agree that the preseason is all about the money and the owners getting every dollar they can get (heck, if the players' salaries keep skyrocketing, I can understand the owners trying to generate more revenue). I just don't want to see the starters lose anything because they sit out an extra week.

This is the problem with professional athletes and organizations these days....you play pre-season games to get sharp for the regular season, have the players understand and get comfortable with the systems, and get familiar with each other and the opposing teams. The only reason that starters should sit is to let others trying to make the team show what they've got. I hate how people suggest that the starters sit just so they can avoid an injury. I understand that they are a huge investment by the organization and an injury can severely hamper the team's chances at winning. But I don't agree with sitting them just to avoid injury. This is like playing not to lose instead of playing to win. I'd rather see the starters play into the 3rd quarter of the final preseason game to keep themselves sharp and get ready for the games that count. Injuries are part of the game. To me, as long as they are conditioned and physically ready to play, then playing in a preseason game should not affect them. Yes, a WR or a lineman can get caught up with someone else and twist a knee, but that's part of the game and is less likely to happen than pulling or straining something.

Let's not all get ahead of ourselves. We don't even know what we have yet. Not that I'm not excited about things, also, but let's not start talking about 5-0 when we're only halfway through the preseason schedule.

Don't know about Brady getting hurt, but Belicheat will probably realize that everyone else will employ the same strategy the Giants did and already have a counter-move for it. That said, why do you think we have Marcus Stroud? What got to Brady was pressure up the middle plus he got hit harder than he did during the regular season. The mere fact that he got hit like a normal QB threw him off his game.

The kicker in all of this is that he'd probably get more money if he just gets his arse into camp. The biggest problem to me is that he cuts off all contact. Behaving like a spoiled brat in that sense wouldn't exactly inspire me to make him the highest-paid lineman in the league. Isn't his agent the same guy that's telling Stephen Jackson to hold out the same way?

Bingo...once stuff like that becomes public, it's open season, IMO. Though I'm sure he would have done that no matter who he was playing.

Why....because we see him twice a year? Favre is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, yes. But he's not the same as he was 10 years ago. There's something to be said about doing too much to keep a play alive and hurting your own team....his improvisation style caught some magic last year, but I don't see that working well all the time. The QB is a huge part of the team, but it's not the entire team.

I see the Jets with more wins, but not quite playoff material. An 8-8 record is my bet for them. Favre probably gives them 2-3 more wins than with Pennington/Clemens.

Hammer, meet head of the nail. The Jets have a rookie DE and a decent LB corps, their WRs don't exactly scare anyone, and I'll take Lynch/Jackson over Thomas Jones any day. Their OL will tell the story.....it's gotten better as Ferguson & Mangold have more playing time, but they will determine whether or not Favre has a good season. This does give the Jets a better QB this year and (maybe) next, but now they're saddled with the distractions and wondering during the offseason about whether or not he'll actually play next year. You just don't know if he'll pull the same "I'm retired, now I'm not" crap again. The media frenzy will be a distraction during the first week he's in camp and the first couple weeks of the regular season (and whenever they play the Cheatriots*), but there will be a constant buzz about how great the Jets are now with him.

It really has come to the point of being utterly nauseating....but there is big $$$ involved. E$PN has dedicated a full two hours to a fantasy football preview show at the beginning of the season for the past couple of years. I'm sure the companies/sites that run the fantasy football games are in cahoots with ESPN and use them for advertising, etc.

Again, all of this could have been avoided if Favre could have made up his mind one way or the other.

This is usually what happens. Someone close to the player or their agent convinces him that he's worth more than what he's getting, so hold out for more. Wasn't Peters the same unselfish player who gave every indication that he'll be a TE, play special teams, and move to RT because the team needed it? Yeah...someone definitely got to him.

Then he shouldn't have retired to begin with. I would have bought your argument back in February, but since he changed his mind and is acting like a spoiled brat with the Packers, I don't think it's as much about playing the game anymore. It's as if he's holding out for respect when he never needed to.

This is precisely my argument when we have this debate. I think she just relates professional athletes to the common working man much more than possible.

You know that & I know that, but I'll give you $100 if you can convince her of that....

Couldn't agree more. My wife keeps saying that if she was the owner of the team with a high-profile guy that was holding out, she'd fire his arse and find someone else to do the job. Isn't that what they do with the ordinary Joes like all of us?

I had adopted the Packers as my 2nd favorite team because of this guy. I respected what he stood for, his work ethic, his play on the field, and his seemingly blue-collar attitude off the field. Most of that respect is now gone, unfortunately. I was hoping to see that Brett Favre would have been a man that stuck to his word and when he announced his retirement, that was truly the end of an illustrious, HoF career. Now he's just like Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens (who also has his own ESPN bottom-line scroll category), and every other almost-40-year-old athlete that can't make up his mind. C'mon, Brett...you're better than this. Part of me wants him to call off this whole charade and stay retired, but I know that won't happen, so the rest of me just wants this stuff to stop.

More likely back to Saratoga....the meet started this past week.

1990 season: Bills 17, Giants 13 - they went into New Jersey and beat a Giants team that everyone gushed over. To me, this was the game that showed everyone that the Bills had arrived as an elite team. Only to be topped by: Bills 24, Dolphins 14, one week later. With Jim Kelly injured, Frank Reich leads the Bills to the division title and clinches the Bills' first-ever #1 seed in the AFC playoffs.

I didn't try to make a federal case out of it....I just expressed my displeasure with the system that ST holders can get tickets for any other game, which can easily shut out people like me who only go once a year. The ticket rep seemed to be understanding, but still gave me the company line. I figured it was good customer service of him to take my name & number. When he actually called me, I was almost beside myself. Apparently, all I had to do was complain a little.

OK....I must have missed that part. I didn't know the policy was already interpreted that way, so I assumed the Lions knew that Campbell couldn't play right away. I agree that the players should serve first, but if the Lions were told the wrong thing or somehow misled, they got the shaft.

This situation isn't much different from that of David Robinson. The Spurs drafted him, knowing full well that he had to complete his service in the Navy before playing in the NBA full-time. I believe he did his two years of service, then left the Navy to play in the NBA. IMO, this is what Campbell signed up for and it's not a new policy. Had he been able to serve as a recruiter and not in the military, it would have likely been via special permission. I know we all would have liked to see him in the league this year, but his service should come first.

Very true, but I was impressed with the fact that I got a call back. I rarely see something like this happen these days.