BuffOrange

I want to say I'm surprised but I'm really not. The same fans that are obsessively whining about espn/media talking heads are also brainwashed by many of their garbage cliches. "Experience! Players won't respect him! Playing %'s means punting even though it rarely does!" Blah blah. Plus there is a defense mechanism. Like "[girl I have no shot with] isn't that hot anyway."

Sorry, you don't get to bring up the lone bright spot from last year & brag about how he closes seasons when they lost their last umpteen games after the WVU game last yr.

I was thinking the same thing....for a crowd that loves to gripe about espn, there is a smarter world out there.

Not sure what reason Brandon has to go public with this, but I'm glad to hear it nevertheless. As a proud member of the "numbers guy" club I can't help but shake my head at a lot of the skepticism. "Football isn't as easy quantifiable as baseball" - I don't think anyone on the planet including guys like Aaron Schatz or Bill Barnwell who write about it (football analytics) for a living would argue with this. That doesn't mean it can't be a useful tool. "Who has done this that's been really successful?" If you lose $100 playing blackjack using basic strategy when you otherwise would've lost $500 playing on "gut feel" does that mean using basic strategy was a failure? Obviously talent & QB are more important than everything else as it relates to football games. That doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to give yourself any little edge you can...especially when you're the Bills & don't have many edges. This, exactly. Which makes it a bit hard to believe that we're interviewing Doug Marrone, who punts from the opponent's 35 with the best of 'em.

They were 9-7 and lucky enough to host 2 playoff games because they played in a garbage division. Yawn.

Following Greg Robinson is like following Hank Bullough. I thought at the time 'Cuse was an underrated job because it's a good tradition with nowhere to go but up. Marrone getting interviews after a couple Pinstripe Bowls and losing to inferior teams this year pretty much confirms that. Oh and he also punts from the other team's 35.

A lot of their offensive rebounds were long bounces to the FT line; I don't know how much big bodies help you there.

That's easy - Fair & Keita had career games and Coleman just isn't very good right now. I guess Grant could've logged some of Southerland's minutes but that's about it.

Seriously, it's funny how quality of coaching jobs fluctuate so wildly depending on the last 5 years. People wondered why he'd leave Miami for Alabama which at the time was a program of the past. Around that same time people were arguing Florida was a better basketball job than Kentucky and that Billy Donovan would be nuts to leave. He's done all there is to do in Alabama, will never surpass Bear Bryant in status there, recruiting is a major pain, and he has a massive ego that may want to prove something in the pros. Why wouldn't he leave?

Autodraft guy in our league outscored everyone by 200pts. He had like 3 TE's but Brees/Peterson/Martin was a beastly trio. When I see him I'm always like "good job cbs sportsline". I still don't believe the year Peterson is having (though people putting him ahead of Manning/Brady on their "real life mvp" ballots is absurd).

Sort by rings ---> become expert.

It's totally feasible to have that roster in a 12team league. RG3/Martin/Morris/Wayne/VJax/Gonzo were all bargain mid-late round picks. Hard to even tell who the 1st rounder was; Newton or Richardson I guess.

I would probably go with Jones. Stevie might be the safest play if his status gets upgraded later in the week.

Ya gotta go Brown & Bengals. Definitely roll with Atlanta over Baltimore but I'd rather have most of those waiver options over either; starting with Cleveland. I don't think there was any reason not to drop the Ravens a month ago unless you knew Ben was going to get hurt. They're just not that good and they don't have a good playoff schedule.

Must say I'm guilty of "just sayin". One of our managers runs it into the ground though. Plus "TGI_" where _ = whatever day it is. You can imagine how lame that sounds. I have to nominate "sick". Not totally sure if this is constricted to the poker world still or if it's made it's way into the mainstream, but I always want to punch somebody in the face when they say this. Yes it's "so sick" that your overpair didn't hold up (often needing to dodge half the deck). Make sure to tell everyone how unlucky you are. Meanwhile the same thing likely happened to me within the last 1/2 hour and I didn't say a word.

You're kinda all over the place there but if you're trying to say the QB matters 1,000x more than the coach I am literally the last guy on the planet you should want to argue with; not sure why you're quoting me. The first few pages of this thread said the players look lost in the 2 minutes & said that's on the coach. I don't know, when did John Fox become a 2minute guru and what is the great Jim Caldwell up to these days who everyone was outraged wasn't getting more Coach of the Year support in 2009? I know, it's not fair to compare our guy to Peyton. But it's not like there's only 2 great QB's in the league now. There's closer to a dozen. Finding one of them is 1) easier, 2) more realistic and 3) makes long-term success more sustainable than this pipe dream of relying on our inept FO to build this phenominally dominant team around the QB. That is all.

I've always wanted to see Pass Interference #'s on the teams that are winning vs losing. Seems like you're 10x more likely to get a call when you're losing. I swear the PI that ended the Indy game never gets called against the team that's trying to get the ball back. Now if they were trying to tie the game or something I'd expect it 100%.

Ya it's obviously a cost benefit analysis depending on your preferences. I'm sure you realize you're pretty lucky to be able to walk to work. If your round trip commute were 2hrs as it is for a lot of people around there, that's like, a huge bummer on your quality of life, particularly if you have a family & maybe cool bars wouldn't be enough to offset that. Also the Metro blows away most cities' transit systems. I always get a kick out of the traffic report on the radio when I'm visting home. "What traffic?!"

All these SF comparisons make my eyes bleed. Take the sickest front 7 the league has seen since arguably the 2000 Ravens, an elite OL, an elite coach (note the difficulty of attaining all of these things is why they're an exception to the rule that you need a good QB to win) and Fitz would only be a little bit of a downgrade vs Alex Smith who is average. Great. How much of a ringing endorsement is this? And will the 49ers still have all of these near perfect pieces in place 3 years from now or will they be the Jets 2.0 who had a lot of these same pieces 2-3 yrs ago with a QB who wasn't very good? I don't know but I know the Packers will still be good.

That's cool and all, but how often do you actually visit the Washington monument when you live there? I know I never call up my friends and say "yo lets check out the Liberty Bell today". Well said Gordio.

Weird, I thought he looked the opposite of scared, like he's trying too hard to bust out of a slump. Maybe he'll play a bit more naturally now after making a few shots.

I don't know if you really need a strong post game to win in college b'ball anymore. If you can drive, shoot, rebound & play defense you can go a long ways with no great teams out there. This team can clearly do 3 of those things, I think. I'm a little worried about the "shoot" part, Southerland's insane game notwithstanding (which without, we probably lose as JB said). As good as MCW looks I don't know if our backcourt is really a big strength until Cooney shows he's as good as advertised. Triche is a little up&down to be relied on for 32+ minutes against good teams & frankly played terrible in Arkansas outside of that 2minute spurt. I don't really know yet on Coleman. Dude needs a little Rick Jackson finnesse in his game; like someone tell him it's ok to pass the ball once in a while.

All of this. "Oh no at 4-8 I'm starting to think this team sucks; what a disastrous outcome!".

You were reading what you wanted to read just to argue then. Nobody was saying MM brought the very best out of Drew; there just isn't any basis to the idea that the coach was the reason he had a subpar year. I'm not sure what you're arguing about if you agree it's obvious he sucked in those years.

Seems more like selective endpoints than "fair" if you're also not including 2000 or 2006 when he lost his job but even so... Dallas lost 17-10 and 35-7 games to the Giants/Redskins with the playoffs on the line late in the '05 season (with Sean Payton on the staff) and I'm sure I don't have to tell you about his "2011 Fitzpatrick-like" stark 1st/2nd half split from 2002. Any way you want to slice it the first half of '02 & the 4-5 good games he had in Dallas were clearly the outlier at that stage of his career, not '04 under Mularkey.