Fake-Fat Sunny

For the past few years for animal cruelty reasons and an aversion to factory farming issues my wife has been a vegetarian for the most part (a good hot dog can cen certainly get her to fall off the wagon. The hardest part for her of pursuing a vegetarian lifestyle is that it has meant giving up hot dogs which she loves. When I moved to Buffalo she regaled me with stories of Teds and a place in Niagara Falls called Page's which I'm not sure is still there that offered up something called The Whistle Pig which I think is a hot dog somehow bathed in cheese (Is Page's still in existence?) At any rate a great boon for my wife's vegetarian ways was to discover that a hot dog shack on the Niagara River in Tonawanda offers up a vegetarian hot dog it calls the Bunny Dog. As best I can tell the Bunny Dog is a grilled carrot. There are three keys to it: 1. It is grilled which gives it that charcoal taste and feel. 2. It has the same spices which give the taste to hot dogs (this actually isn't difficult to do since hot dogs are merely mystery meat which is spiced so quite frankly one could make an old shoe taste just like a hot dog. 3. However, the real key seems to be that they marinate the carrot in just the right amount of and combinations for just the right amount of time so that the grilled output not only has the taste of a good dog but also the consistency of a good tube steak (as we used to call them growing up in Wrigley Field in Chicago). In addition to her vegetarian ways my wife still considers herself a conniseur of the hot dog. She lives vicariously by questioning folks closely on what is their favorite dog and insists that having the right texture abd mouth feel is the true test of a quality dog. Generally she accepts no imitation (she has tried an rejected a zillion veggie hotdogs. Yet, she holds a special place in her heart for the SmartLife veggie dog which is the only model she grills at home and the Bunny Dog at Old Man River as the best hotdog shack veggie dog. My wife went to Old Man River this past weekend and reported with reget that they had trashed the hulk of a ship you could sit in near the parking lot, However, on the upside the Bunny Dog is selling well enough that they put out a sign on the steet advertising it to passers by. Its certainly good news since if one partner is a vegetarian, but like me if you are still on the meat wagon (I am getting better after years of being in the clean plate club and eating everything put in front of me whether I want it or its good for me or not), Old Man River lets you have a pretty good grilled Italian Sausage (my personal favorite tube steak) and also offers the customers who want it a Bunny Dog. Viva la difference!

If Lindell is released after June 1st makes a marginal difference than if he is released before June 1st. 475k becones deadspace allocated to the Bills 2005 salary cao whether he is released or not. He has already been paid a bonus which was prorated over the full length of his contract which ends this year. Add this amount to the vet minimum contract of his replacement and that is how much we are allocating to the kicker position this year

I guess this confusion is typical. It is amusing to me (ya have to laugh or you cry a lot) that I surmised on TSW that this whole story seemed odd to me and more of a creation of our US minds because I doubted that Al Quadea was even intially organized in a western hierarchical manner where there was a #4, #1 or whatever that we can wrap our minds around and put on a deck of cards. I thought this hierarchal description was even less accurate since the US had kicked Al-Quaeda and the Taliban's butts out of the country they took over in Afghanistan which forced them into a more traditional structure. Wiser heads who said they know A-Q through all their study (dubious souces such as the Internet no doubt) pooh-poohed my pooh-poohing of the President hailing this catch as being motivated by it being beneficial to his popularity. Who knows what the heck is happening. I think the bottomline for us in the US is that we have failed to exact any accountability on the folks in charge for their errors. Perhaps we have good reason for sticking our heads in the sands because we do not want to do anything but support our boys and girls who are honoring us all by going into harm's way to follow our C-n-C's orders. I love our troops and honor their sacrifice for my and our benefit. However, I really am getting quite sick of our leaders mess up intelligence call after intelligence call and then hide behind the sacrifice our troops are making when someone call for accountability and responsibility for intelligence errors. The idea that we would give the Medal of Freedom to the idiot who said our Iraqi intelliegence was a slam dunk is simply silly and is a disservice to the country and our brave troops.

It certainly would have been a great marketing move greeted by us Bills faithful with a degree of excitement not unlike when Drew came to town promising a reversal of a 3-13 season. My guess is that it would have turned out like a reversal of the drew situation with Nugent going through the usual rookie struggles of learning the pro game but getting better with experience. Nugent sounds like a real guy rather than the quirkyness you usually get with even the best pro kicker. The test for Nugent here would have been how he dealt with the media and some fans turning on him as soon as he missed a critical kick (which virtually all kickers do) or he struggled a bit learning the winds of the Ralph on kickoffs. If he survives the post Norwood hopes many folks would put in him and the inevitable comparisons when a miss came along. He would have done fine. The first year would have been rough though at some point.

I'm pretty sure he is camp fodder. As much as fans do not like Lindell, and it is quite obvious the Bills were displeased (to day the least) he missed a chip shot against Pitts, he is still by far it seems to be me a better shot than Rheem of contributing to this team. 1. Though FGs are the highest profile job of the PK, the job he will definitely have to do and do well game-in and game out is kickoff. AS MUCH AS FOLKS HATE TO ADMIT IT LINDELL WAS OUTSTANDING AT THIS FACET OF THE GAME LAST YEAR. Folks may moon over the thought of Nugent or Janikowski booming them for touchbacks and lament Lindell has not shown the leg strength he was advertised to have but the statistical indication of his effectiveness is that there were kicks returned for TDs against the Bills last year and very few substantial returns. A big part of this was strong tackling by the ST, but its impossible that part of this also was not Lindell getting Moorman like hang time on his kickoffs and Lindell kicking them when and where the return team expected him to kick it. If Lindell was told by April to do a shorter kickoff to the left because the return guy tended to line up deeper and to the right, that is where the kick went (not a bad trick in the winds of the Ralph) and Lindell was simply a great part of a successful coverage effort. I doubt any rookie is going to equal his performance, 2. The biggest downside of Lindell's game is that MM seems to have no confidence in him beyond 40 yards. This actually worked out fine last year as even when the Bills took 3 points off the board when they TO'ed a 40+ kick Lindell made, they translated the 4th and 1 into aq 40+ yard run for a TD by WN after a great fake of the QB sneak by Bledsoe. The Bills are going to simply demand of Lindell that he improve and while this is not for sure (or maybe even likely) it is not outrageous: A. Lindell has had good years statistically before with SEA and that is why TD over-reached to sign him in the first place. B. Lindell was far better statistically in FGs made last year than in 2003. Part of this is because he went from horrendous as a PK in 1003 to merely inadequate in 2004 but at least his overall game is moving in the right direction. C. He got no official credit for them because of some TO calls by the Bills, but he actually did hit two 40+ FGs which were called back last year. We did not get 3 so he correctly gets no credit on his record. However, one cannot totally ignore the reality of these kicks. 3. In addition to the most important part of his game which is FGs, and the most substantial part of his game which is kickoffs. another important part is onside kicks. Its tough to measure because when you resort to them usually your back is against the wall and chances of success are small, but a team is going to have to do it 1 or 2 times a season and the game will be on the line. Lindell had 3 shots at onside last year and did well in two of them. He did a masterful kick after halftime of one game (a time where our back was not against the wall) and Lindell not only joined the ST in not tipping the opponents off, but he kicked it with the perfect speed and pace to assure it traveled the required 10 yards before any Bill hit an opponent and he made the recovery himself. He made a nice kick in one of out losses, but actually Rashad Baker missed his chance to make a nice recovery of a well kickedball that took the required hop to give us a shot. The third kick was not executed well and the opponents recovered. So I agree with you that it would be nice to have Nugent (though actually I think our kick coverage would have went backwards until he learned to be a vet) but I (and I think the Bills braintrust) have not given up on him yet and actually think he is our best and there is even a reasonable chance he will become the kicker we want. Actually, it does not matter anyway, since i doubt the Bills cut him and carry 500+ cut deadspace for doing this and TD could have to admit his error in asserting that good kickers are a dime a dozen when he cut Christie.

He may be a good pick-up in terms of future use, but fans place far too much value on draft picks or rookies to provde immediate benefit to a team. TD is on record stating that only about 50% of first round choices do not disappoint and this rule of thumb has not been proven wrong by any statistical analysis that I have seen and it would be fairly easy to calculate how many 1st round choices became 1st year starters (though even this number will overstate he value of first round picks since it is possible to start and be disappointing in your development). thus the suggestion in the subject of this thread that Wright will be a replacement for our immediate needs of a replacement for Phat Pat are just simply quite unlikely unless you know something about Wright none of the NFL professionals know. I think trading a future draft pick for immediate help or training is generally a good idea (even the Bledsoe deal was a good deal to make initally as he provided great value to the Bills in 2002 while the 2003 draft pick traded for him provided zero value in 2002. it defined getting something for nothing initially). However, the value of getting Wright in a supplemental is more likely to be the delayed value of getting JP in 2004 for a 2005 pick that provided no value last year. JP did nothing on the field for the Bills in 2004, but the trainging time he got as a mop up QB and the invaluable opportunity to learn from Sam Wyche made this a good deal. When you add to that the sense that if JP had stayed in, he may well have been the 1st QB taken trading nothing in 2004 for something even if it was merely training was a great move.

Actuslly,, I wish it were all about money, because if it were we would not be having these problems. Owners unfortunately get caught up in the game of not making bucks but trying to show they have bigger cojones than the players and fail to be motivated by trying to make money. In 1985 they used replacement players to prove they were better businessmen than the players (why proving you are a better businessman than a bunch of Travis Henry's means you are cool is beyond me) and actually they ended up getting dragged kicking and screaming into the CBA rather than face a free-market because they needed an operating NFLPA in order to restrain trade. As it turned out, the NFL owners had to agree with the players to give them what now amounts to 65% of the designated gross when the old NFLPA demand that they beat badly in 1985 was for only 52% of the gross. As it turns our by cooperatively reaching agreement on what is designated gross, they got labor cooperation and peace that has allowed the networks to give the NFL and NFLPA bucks which makes even the new designated gross far larger than the old straignt gross revenues. If it simply was a matter of money, then the owners would agree to a common position that reflects the big market teams agreeing with Ralphie that they make more money as a group of owners with shared communal interests than they do as individuals showing off their cojones. It may be more communistic than free-market oriented, but the NFL owners will make a lot more money by cooperating with each other and the players than they will be fighting for their individual freedom and rights.

Many thanks Greg! This article is a fascinating summary for anyone who cares about this game beyond living in the pretend world of wanting owners to be real men who beat up the evil overpaid players (the players are certainly overpaid but are really no more evil than the rest of the world trying to make a buck- some are stupider than the norm and say silly things like accusations of people taking food from the mouths of their obese children but they are not generally more evil than the rest). I see two real threats for the game we love embodied in one line of this article: > Before the players and owners can strike a labor accord, the owners themselves have to agree on how to share revenue. That's the problem. < 1. The owners have to realize that the free market is the enemy in terms of them making beaucoup bucks. There is a real threat that the recent owners who do not have the experiences that Ralph relates about the the strikes of the 70s and 80s will need go through a similar experience today in order to realize that the NFL is so glorious because of non-free market restraint of trade and cooperation with the NFLPA rather than simply bludgeoning them as was done with the replacement players in 1985. The NFLPA can be simply beaten because the players are greedy, but beating them is not victory. Victory is actually cooperating with them to produce an NFL product which allows all of them to make bucks hand over fist. The potential need for the new generation to relearn this lesson through a stupid face-off and eventual defeat of the NFLPA is a threat. 2. However, the big threat is that the owners will waste so much time dealing with re-learning this lesson as the big market and small market teams duel with each other, they will not have the time before the CBA expires to cut a deal with the NFLPA. We are already seeing many signs of high profile players like Terrell Owens and the cadre that has Drew Rosenhaus as their hired boy launch holdouts while they are under contract. The owners cannot effectively deal with these holdouts and with the NFLPA until they get their act together. This may take to long and create a free-market in the pro football which will not allow a good product to be created.

The Peters question simply strikes me as one of the great oddities in football this season. I am one who agrees with JMac that he is not a miracle worker and folks should not expect that of him. However, my sense is that if he can actually turn Peters into our starting LT for this season then miracle worker he certainly is. The notion which makes this even possible is that idea that Peters is such a phenomenal athlete that he can master this position which is critically important as it guards the QB blindside. Yet, if this were to happen then: 1. Peters will have overcome the fact that he was such a non-blocker as a TE that he was only able to make the PS despite having some tremendous suze, speed and soft hands as a pass catching threat. Why did Peters have such trouble blocking as a TE and suddenly (within roughly a year) can be trusted to guard the QB's blindside? 2. Peters will have overcome a series of brain cramps that resulted in a historically low Wonderlic score and a difficulty grasping changing line calls. This has led to him making simplistic mistakes such as him checking into a game last year at TE with an OL number and not telling the refs he was eligible. The Wonderlic is no all telling panacea, but expect him to blow some plays due to confusion. The downsides of him messing up a play guarding the QB backside seem pretty huge to me given the investment in JP, I do not expect LT pefection in blocking, but I want a guy who can decide to take the penalty and tackle the rusher if necessary or at least has the smarts to yell JP look out when he gets beat. 3. The Bills will have effectively neutralized Peters' phenomenal athleticism as a TD maker by taking the ball out of his hand by making him an ineligible receiver by making him an LT and also having him concetrate on being a starting LT rather than an ST player. I know we have a huge need at LT and this is an important position, but he is such a TE pass catching threat he made the PS purely on pass catching ability and forced the Bills to activate him because he was going to be poached off our PS by another team interested in his TE skills if we didn't. He quickly proved he was unblockable on ST and not only blocked a punt, but had the athleticism and soft hands to recover and take the ball for a TD. Is it a good judgment for the Bills to neutalize his TD scoring skills by making him an LT and can he possibly be trusted to guard the QBs blindside this year even if he is such a phenomenal athlete? I think not. If he is in fact such a phenomenal athlete then let him score TDs for us as a TE or by focusing on ST. If we do see him as an answer at LT I really do hope JMac is a miracle worker cause that is what it will take.

In today's NFL injuries and the need for substitution seem more necessary than ever before. It's an odd collision of two factors. One is that as players get bigger and faster the chance for traumatic injury seems higher than ever before (both from hits and players doing insane cuts as speeds their tender joints can't handle). However, on the good side medical science has advanced to a level where a players who season or career might have been over can now do advanced rehab work and with the help of a fill-in players like Terrell Owens actually come back to play and produce. One of the great things which I loved about the Bills of the early 90s was that if Thurman went down, got nicked or simply needed a blow I felt fine about Plan B Kenny Davis coming in for him. The Bills teams proved deep enough (even Kelly was well replaced by Frank Reich who was the QB for the greatest game ever played with the comeback against Houston and also filled in for a critical 3 game piece during one of our SB runs) that they had great Plan Bs at each position with the back-up being able to enter the game with little drop-off in the short-term and at least some possibilities over the longer term. One of the reasons the Bills 4 SBs in a row is not likely to be matched is under the salary cap and the CBA, its difficult if not impossible to assemble the depth we had. Teams like NE found a replacement for this by having lowly thought of players step up to even be great when needed (Tom Brady for Bledsoe is the prime example) and also by emphasizing the need for their best athletes to be good football players regardless of position. However, I like what the Bills are doing in terms of their Plan Bs if the starter is unable to perform for some reason on offense, but prayer for health across the board on the D seems to be the thing to do. This is my cut: Offense- QB: Holcomb is a solid back-up for JP RB: Uncertainty here due to TH situation, but if he recognizes reality and that he is forced to play and play hard if he wants a big FA payday, i love the fact we might have a former Pro Bowler as a reserve. FB: Questions here with Burns as the lead back-up for a spot we visualize as being for a player at the level of a Sam Gash or Larry Centers. I acutally feel better about this spot being used as an H-back with Neufeld if Shelton goes down. TE: We may already be at the Plan B stage where 3 players deemed potenial starter quality all have ACL issues, but there are 2 players (Neufeld/Trafford) with NFL experience, 1 guy tearing up NFLE with superior TE play (Gomez) and a reputed phenomenal athlete who actually made his bones so far in the NF: as a TE and ST ballhawk rather the non ball touching position of LT he is slated to play. Its confused but I do like the depth. WR: Our two starters look like world class and there are 3 candidates for the slot receiver position (Reed did it well as a rookie but has disappointed trying to make him a #2, Aiken is regarded well and will need to prove it, Parrish is our first pick in this draft). Add to this that we might actually keep 6 as Fast Freddy scored a TD on ST last year and I feel good about our ability to identify 5 or 6 WRs from the 12 WRs on our roster. G: I see 4 keepers between Villarial, Anderson, Tucker and Geisinger when 3 players are essential at this spot. C: I see 3 keepers between Teague, Tucker and Preston when 2 players are essential at this spot. T: This is the problem area as we are actually lacking a Plan A at LT unless someone steps up. If the Bills can acquire someone capable of manning this job from the bunch we have or can pick up a cap casualty the problem really becomes who do we cut rather than searching for someone to take the job. We'll see. Defense- I think here we are going to have depend on a versatile scheme if someone goes down rather than player quality. DE: 3 is the bare minimum essential for the DE position and three is the number we got. I actually feel far better about Denny than many posters on TSW as the fact is simply that the Bills had an incredibly productive D last year with only 3 DEs on the roster as Ritzmann went on the IR. Denney proved to have the flexibility to fill in at either E spot and used his huge wingspan to play well in the short zone on the run blitz and used his run stopping ability to make-up for the fact he is no sack artists. Anyone who wants to claim he is loser simply has to explain how the Bills performed well statiscally on D last year if the oft used Denny was such a stiff. He was not. DT: Plan A here is uncertain as Phat Pat is gone. However, Anderson and Edwards (due to him finally playing well last year as a sub) have some possibility here. However, here is where I think we lack even a credible hope as plan B. OLB: Our ST guys showed production on ST but this is way different than showing potential as plan B, we are left hoping for health here. MLB: Both Crowell and Haggan impressed on ST but the same deal as we hope forFletcher's health. CBs: It does amuse me that folks have their panties all in a wad over Clements entering his FA year. This strikes me as a great thing in terms of performance as producing will bring him great rewards. In addition, if he does produce I say fine as we should be able to increase his salary comfortably given the likelihood the salary cap will go way up when the new TC contracts are done. Finally, even if he walks or is hurt, we are two deep for nickel candidates, we drafted a 4 year cover guy and that isn't even counting that we now have a proven CB playing safety in Vincent. I see no problems which cannot be dealt with at CB. S: Baker needs to make the same showing as a sophmore he produced as a freshman, Wire gets one more chance to learn the position after we destroyed his development as a player by rushing him along in a position he never played before.

I think Josh Reed's rookie season as our #3 slot receiver represents about the maximum we will get out of a rookie in that position. A key to some very good production from Trrd that year (37 or so catches for 500+ yards) was that he had the athletic Moulds and the speedy Peerless as our #1 and #2 WRs. That combo allowed Reed to feast on LBs and #4 or #5 DBs. He did so to the tune that we were comfortable letting Peerless go and moving Reed to the #2 slot where the pressure and responsibility seemed to lead to a bad case of the droppsies on his part. Even if one judges Parrish to be a better player than Reed, the first choice for JP/TC by far is going to be Moulds and the second choice by far is going to be Evans and the Parrish numbers are going to be held down to picking up the leftovers.

I think the preaching started not with the responses but with the initial post by Afro and even in the subject line where he posed this as a question of good/evil. I think much of the "preaching" in this thread stems from folks who reject a depiction of this situation as one between good (Afro) and evil (Erie County). As Afro passingly seems to acknowledge while he is not evil he certainly triggered this chain of events which he judges resulted in evil with the kind donation of his sperm (a couple of times). I think there are a couple of items which seem fairly true to me: 1. It seems inaccurate to describe the Erie County monolith as evil or good because it is the individuals which make good/evil choices and not what he perceives as a monolith. Almost all (in fact all) individuals are both good and evil and no one makes choices with the same result or the same intent all the time. As inaccurate as it is to describe even an individual as good or evil it is pretty silly to describe an entity consisting of thousands of individuals who make variable choices as flat out good or flat out evil. Sure one can make a summation that it 60/40, 40/60 or 51/49 one way or the other, but the perspective shared here driven by Afros anger or frustration does not seem to do justice to a reasonable summation that individual choices or even the perceived monlith as a whole has some good parts and some evil parts associated with it. 2. Afro never loses his right/ability/whatever to have an opinion and those of us he has been nice enough to share his views with actually pay him an odd tribute by replying with our two cents. However, though Afro certainly does not give up his right to have an opinion by the outcomes which stem from his Johnson, he actually has ceded any reasonable right to be pissed about this circumstance. Not ending up with a life partner with the woman he brought a child into this world with once can certainly just be bad luck. Twice can even be a coincidence. However, the third time he has finally found (thank gosh) a life partner is a trend of the poster serially bringing children into this world and him not being there for them as close to 100% of the time as he can manage. If I'm willing to condemn the Erie County folks as being evil for how they deal with paying a subsidy with our tax dollars for these kids, then actually I think I am even more willing to declare Afro evil for not exercising control of his johnson. Fortunately (for me actually because I think it speaks to how a reader views life) I do not think Afro is evil at all because he unintendly brought a couple of kids in this world and he has been unable to be there for them anywhere close to the 100% that kids deserve from their parents. However, while I do not think at all that Afro is evil, I think that because he unintentionally brought kids into this world and has not been able to exercise enough control over their life situation to keep them off the public dole that he has pretty much given up the right to be pissed about how government deals with this situation. Kids are critically important so by all means if government is screwing with them then protect them, but Afro has so much made this bed that to read his whining about it is simply bbblllllaaaggghhh. Is Erie County evil as Afro asks? Nope, I don't even think he is evil and since he and the Mom started this they are even better candidates for this designation than the County folks.

I think it keeps getting better and betterbecause it has degraded into an argument over principles, so at best the actual occurences are being presented in a way that support a particular principle or at worst thye facts are being manufactured by an individual trying to support a particular principle. In general, I think my principle is to not take what a bureaucrat or what a kid says is the gospel truth in terms of the actual events. After reading the back and forth between AD and Exiled, it seems to me that the situation is in the same place roughly I originally saw it with not much more than fine tuning adjustments as additional factoids become clear: 1. The kid seems to have violated a zero tolerance policy (zt is a silly political thang which our society has adopted to try politically to show toughness but as always tolerance is generally set by the golden rule- he who has the most gold rules) byusing his cellphone during school hours. Further, there are accusations shockingly that this juvenile acted like a juvenile and cursed (this us understandable but not condonable). 2. The school execised ita in loco parentis authority and dinged the kid, but due to the mitigating circumstance that he did not initiate the cell phone use and the call came from his Mom who is a trooper in a world away timezone, the punishment was reduced to time served which at worse means he gets to go right back to school with no lost time. I see no problem with the outcome, though clearly the details could have been handled far more artfully by a child if he did not act like a child and by those acting in place of his parents if they had actually been his parents and given him the benefit of the doubt which unconditional love brings. I see little argument here in this tempest in a teapot unless folks choose to dance on the head of pin looking for details they disagree about and pretent to portray these details as the whole story of one sides motivations. Both the kid deserves to be cut some slack for acting like a kid and the school needs to be cut some slack for doing the sometimes impossible job of acting in the place of parents when you are not the parent.

Exactomundo! I agree wholeheartedly for both reasons particularly #1.

He also had an offer to be HC of some college program. I was pleased for Ralph and our sake that the took an NFL job because I believe that the rules under the CBA are that we owe Killdrive for years's contract that we fired him with him still having it left, but believe if he gets another NFL job we merely have to pay him the amount above what he gets from NYC for his QB coach work. We are still meeting our agreement and thus paying KG OC money to do QB coach work, but I believe if he left the league we would have to pay him in full for the OC job while he took down college HC money.

First off. your subject title gets the facts wrong. There was no call "to" Mom, his Mom called him. This is important because it would have been a clearer violation of the rules if he had initiated the call and had no good reason to wait until later when it would not havw been a violation of the rules to call his Mom. Tour subject line makes it appear he did something he did not do. Second, since the rule does not allow any cellphone calls during school hours he did violate the rules by taking a call and talking on the phone in school. This strikes me as a case where he was guilty of violating a rule (and thus should have been found guilty and given a punishment for violation), however, he seemed to potentially have good reason for violating the rule if he could tell from the phone call that a call was coming in from his Mother in a warzone. The actions of the school seem quite reasonable to me. 1. He was found guilty of violating a rule which is important to have in a school as cellphones have become ubiquitous and their use can interfere with what school is about. 2. He had good reason for answering the call as it came from the adult in charge of him and she was in a warzone and the call may be as important as life and death. It seems quite reasonable to me to find him guilty of violating the rule and may be potentially useful to set an example by giving him a harsh punishment for the violation. However, upon hearing his appeal and the wailings of others, they lessened the punishment to essentially a time-served punishment by lessening it so he can return to school on Monday. Fortunately, it does not appear that his Mom was physically harmed in Iraq. Yet finding him guilty of violating the rule (which he did) but letting him off due to the real extenuating circumstances seems reasonable to me. It appears the same outcome might have been achieved more gracefully than this sequence of events, but unless I misunderstand the situation, they appear to have in the end gotten it right.

I agree with you that the certainty expressed by the poster is not a good thing to do as there are simply no stone cold locks that an NFL athlete who makes the team will or will not produce at a certain level. However, I think though the certainty JG won't make it is unwarranted, the certainty you seem to express that he will start by midseason is even more unwarranted. While i would love it if JG stepped up to take the LT or any starting slot (or proved to be the invetor of a substance which simultaneously could be a floor wax or a desert topping) it just seems wildly outrageous this could happen regardless of his Senior Bowl play. The difference between the best college athletes (present at the Senior Bowl) and even the roster filling pro athletes is significant. It does seem to be the real world occurence that estimates from experts such as TD that even 1st round choices are about 50/50 as who is going to be a player and who is going to be a big disappointment or simply a bust is true. Geisinger will certainly make the roster but seems like a development prospect at best.

My sense is that he comes with the June 1st cuts. Since we are depending on actions by others, nothing can be counted upon for sure. However, if this is the plan to take advantage of options which emerge and to have Gandy. Teague and Peters (though this strikes as wishful thinking near fantasy that he will be trusted to protect the QBs blindside in 05) are good enough plan Bs. I actually still like the idea of picking up Shelton with what I know as this point (which is not much in terms of his medical condiditon, if the ankle injury has robbed him of an ability to play at the level which got him a bid FA contract we should stay far away). Shelton (assuming he is healthy enough) is not perfect as an LT. However, from what folks say about his strengths and weaknesses, I think they really fit out capabilities well. At his best, he has been a roadgrader who is stronger at the run game than in passpro. As we are going to run WM and then run him again, this fits well. He also apparently has shown great upper body strength and once he locks up with an opposing DL player, the opponent is done as a run stopping or sacking force. The downsides of Shelton are apparently a lack of athleticism which makes for a real problem when he is going one on one in space with a speedy rushing LDE like a Jason Taylor and creates some fear when he is taking responsibility for the QB blindside. However, i would be much more worried about this with Bledsoe than I am with the fleet-footed and good pocket awareness shown by Losman. If Shelton has the ability to judiciously take a penalty when he gets beat or to simply warn Losman by loudly yelling whoops..darn when he gets beat we can be fine with this limitation. If not Shelton then someone else. it sounds like there will be a couple of LT cap casualtieslike Shelton or Whtifield on June 1st.

This thread which basically is about parenting and the idiocy that happens when the government ends up acting in the roles of parents in some way. First, my own bias is that I describe myself and my lovely wife as decidely childless. I count my lucky stars that within a few months of beginning our relationship, my wife to be (we were about a decade away from deciding to get married actually) and I were shooting the breeze and one of us (we think it was me) remarked that I fully expected to have kids when I was married, but basically because it would be a wonderful thing to share with my wife. However, left to my own devices I really had no desire to raise kids. The other person said, yeah they felt the same way, fully expected to have kids but really had no personal drive to do so. End of that part of the convesation as it moved on to discussion of schoolwork (we were in college at the time), some party planned for that weekend, the weather or some other critical topic. Fast forward to roughly seven years later and my lovely wife to be raised the issue again. She asked if I remembered a conversation we had way back when that included both of us having no overwhelming desire to raise kids. I said yeah, sure do! By that time we obviously were headed toward a life together and though I did not remember the details, I sure remembered that neither of us were overwhelmingly invested in parenting. She asked if I still felt the same way. I said yeah, sure do! End of conversation but I realized at that point what a gift our earlier conversation had been. I have a few friends who desperately want or wanted to conceive their own child with their life partner, but due to genetics and/or the toxic soup our society creates for us to live in, it ain't happenin. It really is an incredibly tough thing to want kids with you life partner and to be not able to successfully conceive. However, as tough and horrible as this twist of fate is, it is a real tragedy beyond this horror for a kid to be born who is unwanted by the parents or when the parents cannot really care for and nurture the child. Folks seem to be generally biased toward life, but i know I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I choose life for me and I think life is great and beats the alternatives by a longshot. However, i am under no illusion that life is just a bowl of cherries and feel that choosing life also means choosing certain obligations which go along with this choice. It's fine with me if folks are of the opinon that we should always choose life. However, I am not of the mind that life begins at conception but ends at birth. If one chooses life, then one chooses a whole bunch of obligations which come along with it from pre-natal care, to childbirth support, to schooling, parental support, etcetra. I think to the extent folks are pro-choice and leave it up to the individual to choose whether to bring a life into this world, then fine, they are taking on an obligation to care for, protect and raise this kid until the kid can protect themselves. If we as a society choose to not have government suport these activities of schooling, parentingsupport, etcetera then we darn well better not have government insert themselves into the decision about whether to carry forward the pregnancy or not. However, I think it is fine if we choose as a body politic to have government insert its iron hand into the birth process and demand that all conceptions be carried through to birth. However, if we make this choice, we have taken on an obligation to choose life that only ends when life ends. The logical and human thing to me is that if one chooses to be what is called by many Pro-Life, you also are choosing to support governmental activities (government is how we play well together as a country and municipalities as though religious institutions often provide great care, our society is not based on endorsement of any one religion, so religious institutions cannot be the centerpiece of guranteeing equal care for all children, it clearly has a role but is simply not the centerpiece) to support life because there is life after birth. This also relates to the specific question which started this thread. Government and Erie County are clearly idiots when it comes to raising kids (anyone who wants to claim they havethis child raising thing down pat and there are never moments of idiocy involved with their parenting please raise your hands). However, there is a simple solution for the guy who started this thread. If you don't want Erie County involved then do not go to Erie County for support of any type. If the mother of your children chose to belly up to the government bar to get support that she needed while she continued her education, while she was laid low by illness, or simply so she would not throw her kid out the window at some point (a feeling which I perceive from afar is something all parents -even good people- feel at some point but fortunately most do not act on this feeling) i support this. I think that we as a society have an obligation not toward these parents who are on welfare or cannot control their johnson, but for the kids. I'd much rather have Mom get governmental support, spiritual institution support, not-for-profit support for their parenting rather than see their kid tortured. However, if a parent feels that the government folks are idiots. THEN DO NOT BELLY UP TO THE GOVERNMENT TROUGH. I must admit I have little sympathy for the guy who started this thread because the mother of his child and he should never have gone to the government for support and have an expectation that its all going to be smooth and without idiocy. This does not excuse their idiocy and the system needs advocacy and correcting, I am with you on that and will support you as a taxpayer. HOWEVER, I THINK IT IS FLAT OUT STUPID FOR YOU TO GET INCENSED OR ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY ABOUT THIS. You did not give up your right to ask (or even demand but the requirement for you to be sensitive, detailed and rational goes up when you demand) that it work well or at least better. However, what you gave up when you and the mother had the kid and went to the government is your right to be pissed about it. There are a lot of other issues for example the mother having a greater right than the Dad over these issues because there is that little difference that you gave sperm in pleasure and she has to carry around the kid inside of her for months. However, the fact you never formed a life bond with the Mother (s) of you child (ren) further diminishes the legitimacy of you being pissed about anything. One of the main gifts I have gotten from being decidely childless is that I take childraising seriously but from a disttance. My sense is that I wholeheatedly agree with you that Erie County government folks and the beaureauacy are idiots whne if come to parenting. However, it strikes me that as a non-present parent who brought a child into the world you have ZERO you can be legitimately pissed about.

I'm pretty confident that if WM's running ability forces a D into taking some exteme measure like putting 8 in the box, that TC and the boys will make them pay. A lot of the good work that they did with the scheme, play calling and Bledsoe seemed to get lost in the various tirades of folks who wanted to claim Bledsoe was horrible and could do nothing right, but the great thing about the O last season was the way in which Bledsoe's productivity improved by a whole bunch in 2004 0ver his goshawful production in 2003. Many folks were so deadset against Bledsoe that they refuse to acknowledge reality, but I thibk you have to give TC/MM a lot of credit for a number of specific things they did which improved Bledsoe's production: 1. There use in practice of an alarm clock set to go off 4 seconds after the ball was snapped to remind Bledsoe not to go into his all to familiar pat really seemed to do the same job Parcells did when he coached Bledsoe an SB berth through his constant yelling of throw the damn ball when Bledsoe held onto it to long. Scouting reports that indicate JP may fall victim sometimes to the tapping illness means it may not be time to retire the alarm clock simply because Bledsoe is gonr. 2. The team took advantage of Bledsoe being a 10 year vet who knew how to play fake. The handoff to WM followed by a pitch back to Bledsoe who hit a streaking Evans and the fake QB sneak and turn and pitch to WM who ran for a 40 yard TD was a great call, I did notice in mop-up duty last year that JP showed nice form by continuing to play and thus fake after he had already done the handoff. While I do not expect JP to be as good as Bledsoe in running play fakes and flea flickers, it already lookes like Wyche, TC and MM are schooling him to work on this part of the game where 1st year QBs simply do not implement as well as vets. 3. I had bought the PR and conventional wisdom that Bledsoe was incapable of running at all. However, TC and the braintrust reminded me that while it is absolutely true that Bledsoe is not a run threat, it is simply false to claim he cannot be used as a runner at all. In fact intelligent strategy mandates that you use him as a runner a significant number of times , or else the fate which befell the predictable Kevin Killdrive nonffense will occur and opposing players will completely sell out to run the pass rush. By successfully running the QB draw for Bledsoe successfully several times last year, this combined with the heightened outside threat of WM to reduce the pass rush or oppnents selling out completely to do their rushing. I think JP and Bledsoe are totally different QBss, but ironically for the Bills the summary of the vastly differing pluses and minuses of each player will produce roughly the same statistical rating and similar levels of production. However, I am confident that our braintrust will call a game that emphasizes his pluses and maximizes JPs play.

Also thanks. I think this cut which sounds accurate to me underscores the importance of the Bills focusing on the team winning first and hoping that JP helps of win second and demanding that JP help us win little or not at all. To me the mantra for correctly developing JP while fortunately at the same time giving us a better chance to win is "doing more with less." To the extent the offense and the playcalls are set up and implemented in a way that uses or demands of JP that he be Jim Kelly, he will first, make more mistakes which cost us Ws as he forces the ball downfield or makes bad decisions because he is a youngster and even worse, he my get himself hurt as he takes a big hit for a couple of meaningless yards. TC/MM will profit most in terms of moving the ball and giving JP some valuable reps by running WM the first play and then running him again on the second play. Obviouls we will need to vary this mantra a little or the opponent will simply line up 7 or 8 in the box, but like Bledsoe last year, the key to getting Ws will be to use the QB's arm as a change-up rather than our primary method of moving the all. One big improvement over last year with Bledsoe is that we will also have the ability to use the QBs legs and running ability as part of the chang-up. If undofortunately the the Bills fall in love with JPs abilities and start to use them as our first choice, the game will begin to look a lot like our lost to Pitts where WM gained 50 yards on an early scoring drive and then TC went away from the run or like Pitts in the playoffs where they relied on the rookie RoboQB to beat NE and they took the rookie QB to the clearners.

The amusing thing is he seems to be losing badly.

My answers to your questions are: 1. I don't know but I hope someone who watches NE games more regularly or follows the team will add some fact-based opinions about Traylor. 2. I know he was good but from what I've heard he is in decline (how much and how fast is the question I hope responses on your first question would reveal things. 3. I have some real answers to your questions #3: A. Good players do get cut with regularity due to the cap. Players seem to be negotiating for escalators turning their base pay into lump sum payments which force a team to make a fish or cut bait decision on them prior to the cap casualty deadline. Fir example, he was getting older, but given the OL problems we had last year we easily could have kept Reuben Brown. However, he had a cap escalator which forced the issue and given there was a new OL coach coming in (there will be a new DC in NE, it became time for us to make a move. i do not know if Traylor had an escalator which forced the question, but he could still have something left and be cut. B. We are heavily into use of a rotation on the DL and depth is more important than usual when a rotation is used. Even though Traylor is not the answer to the starter question the loss of Phat Pat brings us, he might be helpful in rotation, 3. We are not 3-13 but we do have to keep reloading to stay as productive on DL as we were. As bith TD and MM have emphasized, competition is good. As long as we keep the pipeline filled with players in development like Anderson at DT, McGee, and to some extent Haggan and Crowell at LB, I have no problem with us bringing in a seasoned vet for them to compete with. As long as we fearlessly cut them when a younger player responds to the challenge as we did with a Pitts FA we paid a small bonus to to sign, I have no problem signing these folks to competefor a position. Just because they are signed does not necessarily mean that we have given up on the players we have.

I'd to this "groundswell" of thought that Preston might be a first year starter that the "experts" considered this one of the deepest drafts for centers in years even while they moaned about the overall depth of this draft. Foe Bills partisans in particular, when the first day ended and folks interviewed TD about the draft, one of the remarks he made was that there was still talent out there for the second day and he mentioned center in particular as one of those positions with quality players. I take this to mean that the Bills had their eye on Preston even at this point and TD felt comfortable enough about the depth available at the position and the needs of other teams to reveal the Bills interest in a particular position at that point, so there was certainly more than one centRe the Bills had their eye on. I take it from all of this and the record of centRes from last year's draft starting that while I would agree that it is quite possible he could start, it still strikes me as incredibly unlikely. Preston is almost certainly a good player, but the Bills likely had their eye on him and another (or several other) equivalent talents and he likely is a development project. The main thing he will need to show to be truly ov value to the Bills will be the flexibility to also handle the guard spot.

Does someone have or have a link to how many players ended up on the opening day roster at each position? For example, the decision about whether to keep 6 WR or 5 WRs will make a huge difference in who gets visited by the Turk and this decision will greatly influenced by the ST contribution of that 5th or 6th WR.