sullim4

Throw my hands up in disgust and SHOUT!

I know this is from last month, but I just don't see the NFL passing up $1.5 billion per year from AT&T. AT&T uses it as a loss leader to keep customers in their ecosystem, any other bidder would likely have to do the same. Amazon's Prime retention rate is super-high, even at $119, so I just don't see them as needing the NFL. Any other tech company (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) would have to use targeted advertising or data mining to make up the difference between subscriber fees and the rights fees, and that's largely not an option since CBS and FOX still get to air their ads during the games. Hulu might be an interesting option. Comcast/NBC, Disney, and FOX (all NFL broadcast partners) own 33% stakes in the company, and they have the infrastructure to stream. They have been pushing their Live TV product and could use Sunday Ticket as a way to increase prices and make that product profitable. Direct to consumer is an option, as the other three leagues do this with their streaming packages, but again, there's no way the NFL makes $1.5B annually in subscriber fees from end user subscriptions. Although I'd love to see a more competent company take over for AT&T, I just don't see it happening with the current contract.

Worse than Peterman? Peterman's track record in regular season games was abysmal. I think you had to keep McCarron until Peterman proved that he could go a quarter without throwing an interception.

Keep McCarron or get a veteran after training camp. Peterman was way too risky to keep with Allen as the two quarterbacks on the roster.

Say what you want about clearing cap space, trusting "the process", tanking and rebuilding, etc... I'm not sure how this position could be more mismanaged or get any worse than it is right now. This cannot reflect well on McDermott at all.

I'm genuinely curious here, and I know many of you are stat freaks. Any insights into how badly the offense is playing, relative to historically bad teams like the 1976 Bucs?

They may not have a choice if Anderson got a concussion or some such on that last play.

Cleveland is on its way to a championship!

Absolutely. No one is calling for him to be the #1, but he is an excellent teammate who would be an ideal mentor for Allen, and could easily win a few games in situations like this where Allen gets injured. He'd be a great pickup in the offseason if they could make it happen.

Honestly, he'd be ideal for the Bills right now. He's not a threat to Allen's job, he'd be a good influence on him, he'd be able to hold down the fort for a few games, etc.

Fitz is awesome... I wouldn't want him as a starter but in this situation he is perfect.

You know, I thought Buffalo Bills Battered Fan Syndrome was a thing of the past for me after the playoff berth last year. It's definitely not. I have a feeling of doom over this game. Pats* + Monday Night + Number Retirement Ceremony = looming disaster.

34-0 at the half. The Pats will intentionally miss a PAT just to twist the knife a little bit.

I haven't, but some of the NFL's renovation jobs (Soldier Field and Joe Robbie/Hard Rock for instance), are essentially new stadiums. I could see them doing that if it were a cheaper alternative to a new stadium.

I agree, and they will need to sign a third quarterback. Allen could easily aggravate or get re-injured, and 35 year old Derek Anderson isn't exactly built like a tank, either.

Move them back to San Diego and have private investors build a stadium or completely gut and renovate Qualcomm. Why is this so hard to figure out?

Part of "The Process" is eliminating any players that don't fit the McDermott scheme. I personally don't care for coaching staffs that have this philosophy, I think the best ones (NE*, for instance) tend to fit their schemes to their player's skills. It really restricts the pool of available players that they can sign. It is one of McD's weaknesses, for sure.

I work at Microsoft - although Gates gets a lot of credit as the Founder, Allen was right there with him in the beginning. He is going to leave a big void in the Seattle community. In addition to the Seahawks and Trailblazers, he owned Vulcan (which controls a lot of real estate out here). Also runs a few museums (SciFi, Experience Music Project, Living Computer Museum) and did a ton of philanthropic work in the region. He was one of the good guys.

I will give McDermott credit - I railed against the defense after the first two games and called for his head if this continued over the course of a 16 game season. Now they are playing like they did last year. They are playoff caliber. This is arguably Jerry Hughes at the best that he's been at with the Bills - he made the plays today without the boneheaded personal foul penalties. My reaction to Peterman's performance was so conflicted. On the one hand, I fully expected him to throw a pick six to lose the game. On the other hand, I can't believe it's happened AGAIN. I wish the kid well, but he needs to be let go on Monday. A random UDFA has to be better than this, right? I wasn't worried about Josh Allen until after this game. It's not that I haven't seen improvement, it's that it appears he's regressed. He lacks any sort of pocket presence, his footwork is all over the place, he takes a lot of bad sacks and makes poor throws, his accuracy is wildly inconsistent, etc. I can't pick anything out of his game that seems to have improved. I was 100% behind keeping him in there and letting him learn on the job. But, he has to be learning on the job, and I'm not seeing that - he's not even staying the same, he seems to be getting worse. I think he needs more time in the film room with someone who knows what they are doing, whether that's Daboll, Palmer, Anderson, whomever. He needs to get the fundamentals down and a shot of confidence before they put him back out there. I have wondered for some time if the Bills' whiffs on draft picks was due to poor scouting, or the lack of a competent coaching staff to develop these players. As the years go by, I'm thinking it's more often the later rather than the former. I am worried that Allen's support system is inadequate and that his talent is going to be wasted due to Daboll and company's incompetence.

I think you and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of what's been happening. Daboll is nothing short of a disaster and it worries me because this is now McD's second whiff on installing adequate leadership on the offensive side of the football. I scratched my head when he was hired and I am still doing it 5 games into the season. I don't agree with you on Allen. He looks like he has the talent of an NFL-caliber quarterback unlike Losman, Edwards, EJ, Tyrod, etc. However, he is in desperate need of a quarterbacks coach that can sit with him, break down his mechanics and his reads, and point out what's happening and what needs to be fixed. We should be seeing shots of the sidelines with him talking to the coaching staff and I haven't seen a lot of that yet this season. I think Allen can successfully develop if they get the right staff in there to develop him properly. Otherwise yes, I fear that his talent will be wasted. TL/DR: We need an offensive coaching staff that can use the talent they have to its maximum potential. Daboll and company seem woefully inadequate at this task.

Am I the only one who gets a kick out of seeing the chargers referred to as “San Diego”? They shouldn’t have moved...

I agree, McDermott is a good motivator and I think he's a good defensive coach. His players work their tails off for him. My main criticism of him is that he's a "system" guy that will get rid of perfectly good talent just because they do not fit his scheme. He'd rather have inferior talent that fits his playbook as opposed to modifying "the process" to put players of superior talent in a position to succeed. I also wonder about his ability to oversee the offensive side of the ball... Dennison was a terrible hire and Daboll hasn't exactly been inspiring so far. I wasn't a big Chan Gailey fan but the one thing he did a great job of was identifying the strengths of his players and getting them to exceed expectations. Fitz was a great example of this.

I don't understand the hostility some have for the Pegulas around here. They've made their fair share of poor decisions. Hiring Rex and retaining Russ were big ones. But the team broke the playoff drought under their watch. Money is no longer an issue... "Ralph/Terry is cheap" isn't something you hear anymore. They don't seem to meddle in the day-to-day affairs of the football operation, leaving it to the team they hired. Most importantly, they are committed to keeping the team in Buffalo. Criticism is certainly fair game, but I think they are a significant improvement over Ralph and are better than a good number of other NFL owners.

In all of the major cities, you will find one or two pubs with the European equivalent of Sunday ticket. We just got back from Rome yesterday - the Irish pubs geared towards tourists all advertised it and highlighted a few games. Other games were available, you just needed to talk to the bartender. Same deal in Venice. I would guess it's similar in Paris.

I have only wagered once on a Bills game - last year's Saints game. I bet on the Saints and went out for a nice steak dinner to dull the pain of the Bills losing.