dave mcbride

Played A & A 1942 this past Saturday, actually! It's pretty "light," but it's a really fun game. For the really serious, there is World in Flames: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_in_Flames. It's a great game, but incredibly complex and a real time commitment. Check out the rule book! https://gamers-hq.de/media/pdf/4a/f9/7c/WiF_CE_RulesBook_8th_Feb_WEB.pdf

Camp, but he was not going to start. It was always Bledsoe's job that year. That was never in doubt.

Losman wasn't handed the job. Bledsoe played all season that year and it wasn't a competition beforehand.

Among other things, I’m a long time Diplomacy player, and that’s a game built upon screwing people over after allying with them. It is truly brutal with the right players.

Settlers first appeared in 1995! It's not as good as Pathfinder!

Agreed about Hayes. But there are others too -- Clay Matthews, Cliff Branch, Ken Riley, Darren Woodson, Joe Jacoby, Jim Marshall -- who absolutely warrant entry given some of the people who have been voted in. I mean, if Lynn Swann is in, how is it that Cliff Branch, a better player, isn't in? People talk about Swann in the postseason, but Branch had 73 catches for 1289 yards in the postseason and has three SB rings. I'm also kinda shocked that Hines Ward isn't in yet. Otis Taylor probably deserves it too, as does Boselli.

Yeah, fair enough, but regardless, Howard was in fact pretty great last season. He not only led the league in INTs, but in passes defensed as well. And PFR evaluated him as having a sky-high approximate value of 19: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HowaXa00.htm. (Josh Allen was tied with Aaron Donald for the highest AV in the league with 22.)

Oh, well I completely missed that. Apologies!

I thought you were laughing at the poster for saying that the restructuring of Howard's contract made sense. Howard is a really good player at a key position!

Good post. @Beast, you really should justify your sneering response. CBs are arguably more valuable than DEs in Today’s NFL (at least according to most analytics). Arguably one of the best CBs in the league last season. What’s your empirical argument? https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-cornerback-rankings-the-32-best-outside-cornerbacks-entering-the-2021-nfl-season

Agreed. Bear in mind that it is called the hall of FAME, not the hall of great. Eli’s two comebacks against the Pats in the SB are justly among the most famous events in the annals of NFL history.

He didn't lead the league in Y/R reception last year; he led all rookies. He finished fourth overall behind Valdez-Scantling, Agholor, and DJ Moore: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2020/receiving.htm. One other thing to factor in, and I don't mean to denigrate him: he had 2 catches for 107 yards from Matt Barkley in the deepest depths of garbage time in the season finale vs. Miami. He had his first catch in that game when it was 35-13 in the 4th quarter. He was averaging 14.9 ypr going into that game, which is still good. That said, the fourth quarter of the finale skewed his stats a bit.

Exactly. Has anyone in the media mentioned the fact that the Sabres will never be able to function in Buffalo again if the Bills move? There is NO chance that a Pegula-owned Sabres team could ever survive if the Bills move, and the Pegulas are not moving the Sabres. This is such a non-story.

Cam is looking shaky: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/07/31/cam-newton-works-to-speed-up-his-decision-making-in-the-new-england-offense/

The Cowboys were a LOT better, especially in 1993. That team from 1992-1995 is one of the better ones in league history. The Bills were better than the Giants, and they were outcoached. The Redskins blew them out because they were that much better. They also blew out the Bills in the final game of the 1990 season, and while the stars mostly rested for the Bills, the matchup problems were on display in that game too.

Disagree to an extent about the final one. The Cowboys were FAR superior talent wise to that 1993 Bills team, which wasn't all that great and feasted on a huge turnover differential plus the benefit of absolutely brutal weather at Rich in their two playoff games. Kelly was never the same physically after rupturing his bursar sac in the second half of the 1992 season, and the production numbers bear that out. The Bills, despite being worse, outplayed the Cowboys in the first half and had a better game plan. They collapsed not because of coaching, but because the players played terribly and made mistake after mistake in the second half. Marv didn't miss that block on Leon Lett that led to the crucial fumble, Walt Corey didn't miss what should have been an easy tackle in the backfield on Emmitt Smith on 3rd down from the 15 with the score tied 13-13, and Jim Shofner didn't throw a really bad pick into double coverage (to James Washington, who Kelly should have known to avoid by that point) when the game was still within reach (still 20-13). That's ALL on the players. To be fair to the players, they were an inferior unit to the Cowboys. But the coaches did what they had to do that game. Talent won out in the end. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpC8Z-oGd4c

This isn't really true. He posted some of the fastest on field times in the league in recent years. https://247sports.com/nfl/minnesota-vikings/Article/Stefon-Diggs-fastest-player-in-NFL-Minnesota-Vikings-48715901/. Disregard his 40 time at the combine - he was coming off an injury and played for a very bad program. He was a 5-star recruit coming out of high school, largely because of his speed and explosiveness. Agreed, but again, he went to a bad program and had injuries in college. I'm sure he got faster once he got better training. As I say above, speed was why he was a five-star recruit.

They ran away from Smith all second half. On the decisive drive that made it 20-13, they ran behind Eric Williams right at Phil Hansen 6 plays in a row. On the crucial third down inside the red zone, Wright broke through the line and had Smith for a loss, but Smith broke the tackle and rumbled in 15 yards for a score. Should have been 4th and 5 from about the 17. But with regard to that game, this is all missing the big picture. After the Bills started the second half with a run of 6 yards and a pass to Brooks for 9 yards, Kent Hull got beaten badly by Leon Lett, who punched the ball out, after which the ball went into the middle of the freaking LOS area. Yet despite being surrounded by a sea of humanity, the ball was not only picked up by James Washington; he ran it in for a score from near midfield. How often does that happen??? After that, the wheels came off on the offense. Kelly played terribly after a mostly crisp first half (in which the Bills had a pretty good game plan against an uber-fast defense) and the line got beaten on play after play after winning at the LOS in the first half (and of course the first two plays of the second half). The offense cost them that game with the turnovers and complete lack of production in the second half. My advice: Watch the first half of that game, declare victory, and get the hell out. That's been my modus operandi regarding that game for 27 years. It works.

I don't think there is a player I find more painful to watch in baseball than Giancarlo Stanton. On the surface, his numbers are OK (but terrible for a guy making $30 million a year), but watching him repeatedly wave feebly at sliders WAY off the plate is almost like an anti-sporting event. When Judge strikes out, it's usually a competitive at bat. When Stanton strikes out, not so much.

Gallo is one of those super boring players to watch on offense — the epitome of a 3-true-outcomes player. But the Yankees need a lefty who can hit home runs, so I get it. But … if you click through to the players the Yankees are giving up, every last one of them is performing well this season: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/07/yankees-to-acquire-joey-gallo.html. Pereira and Vasquez look like they’re staying.

But what about the Bosa precedent? Offset language and bonus payout seem to be the issues that can cause impasses: https://www.sbnation.com/2016/8/8/12402198/joey-bosa-contract-holdout-san-diego-chargers-why . I'm not saying this won't work itself out quickly. Given that he's a qb, he really needs to be at camp, and the Jets need a qb. It doesn't make sense to drag out.

The deed had been done by the time the BOR actually passed, and it was used by minorities all of the time going forward to secure their rights. Suggestion for you: read the Constitution of 1787 and then assume that the BoR never got appended. Seriously. Not sure you know this, but Tretter is from Buffalo and went to the Industrial and Labor Relations school at Cornell (one of the state funded schools at Cornell and where my son Sam is a rising senior). Plus he interned during his summers at one of the best economic development non-profits in Buffalo (my wife Leah runs an economic development nonprofit in Brooklyn and knows about the one he worked at; she’s from Buffalo). Anyway, Tretter is really, really smart and on the ball. It pains me that he’s not on the Bills!

Thank you! That is really informative, and the reason I said what I said is because of Beasley’s tweet in which he basically said “What about God?” (Plus the guy is from kinda hardcore Texas and went to SMU.) Maybe he should be more clear in his stance and less cryptic (can’t believe I’m saying this!). The Constitution is about race in fundamentally bad ways. But the Bill of Rights? No, not really, except for maybe the 10th amendment (in a real stretch) and more plausibly the second amendment (but again, very debatable). https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/bill-of-rights. The other 8 aren’t about race at all.

I have been very critical of Beasley, but I take issue with your argument here. In the US, the terms "majority" and "minority" are not always tied to race. In fact, nearly the entire Bill of Rights is about protecting minority rights from majorities--in ways not really related to race at all. It's a discourse that runs deep in American politics, and people who are very religious (and Beasley seems to be very religious) are very invested in protecting minority religious rights and talk about it all of the time. Not surprisingly, the issue of majorities vs. minorities distinct from race is one of the dominant themes in US constitutional law. Beasley may have had race in mind when he wrote this, but it's just as plausible that he was thinking about the concept in its Bill-of-Rights sense. And seeing "minorities" and "majorities" in this way is hardly rare or obscure in American life. It literally comes up all of the time in law and politics. Whole American colonies were started by religious minorities fleeing majorities.

Not sure if it's a "bad" rule so much as an unsolvable problem. It seems to me that the real issue with the rule is that it's one in which the proverbial unstoppable force and the unmovable object collide: preserving the integrity of the game and preserving the health of the labor force that makes the game so popular. The purpose of the rule really amounts to one of the league's prime directives: keep gambling from unduly influencing the sport as much as humanly possible in order to maintain the integrity of the game. However, another prime directive is to keep players healthy as much as possible in the most violent team sport around and which is filled with a lot of violent people with bad intentions. There is no doubt in my mind that broadcasting every injury would result in more targeting. There is a reason Gregg Williams was able to hang around for as long as he did after what happened in NO.