BuffOrange

This is a joke right?

Yeah I think I would go with Dalton. I think the Dallas defense is pretty good. They're not bad vs the run. The #31 ranking I assume is fantasy Defense #'s? That's because they don't have a lot of sacks (which is surprising w/ Ware but 5 games is a small sample) or takeaways. Plus the two pick 6's vs the Bears counts against them. Disclaimer: I thought Newton (along with Stafford) was grossly overrated in the preseason so I would never own him. I'm sure he is the higher upside play.

C'mon, really? You left out this part: "It didn't work so I guess it was a bad call" is what every coach says when they want to move on to the next question. It's basically code for "fans/media are too elementary and stupid to separate process from outcome" when evaluating a call. Frankly that's true for a lot of people based on the ridiculous criticism of a 25 yard pass to an open Stevie Johnson late in the Giants game last year. But for those of us reasonable people who defended that call, it is a little insulting when coaches talk like that (Gailey is certainly not the only one). Did you read every article about the game from the Arizona Republic? I didn't and I still heard what you didn't.

Even though I never thought the Hawks were going to win that game as I was watching it, I couldn't help but be a little jealous that their defense was hitting the crap out of the Patriots more times in a half than the Bills have in a decade.

I don't like that the Ravens racked up more injuries because I thought they were overrated before then & was enjoying betting against them. It's still going to be tough for the Bills to get to 10 wins. The "get to 4-5 & pound on the soft part of the schedule" thought proccess sorta assumed we'd sweep Miami. It's more likely we split. Seattle & Indy look like toss-up games as well. It'd be better if Jacksonville was the Toronto game instead of Seattle.

This guy is unreal. He's made Brandon Stokely relevant again. Who is next, Marcus Pollard?

Bud Grant? I don't want a replay of a far too long Marty debate I had last month, but I would say him fairly easily.

I think he's been an excellent personnel guy for the most part. Like the Steelers always seem to do, he has done a good job of determining which guys are overvalued/expendable and when to cut bait with them, and then replacing them. But yah as a gameday coach he's about as bad as it gets. Though I wouldn't put too much stock into what Eagle fans say, who just 2yrs ago thought Vick was the mvp.

You may not realize it but color commentators have a huge impact on how people perceive the game. One time there were 100 experts here talking about how much Levitre sucks because the analyst pointed out how he missed a block & showed the replay.

Not that amazing given said brutal schedule. Luckiest 8-8 team ever last yr. They're a significantly better team this year.

They can also watch their team miss the playoffs for 12 straight years like nobody else. It's almost as if there's a correlation! Nah.

Well the point was more about if you took two 8-8 teams, the team with +50 is more likely to be successful the following year than the -50 team. In any case, was record any better of a predictor in those postseasons? The Giants also had a vastly inferior record to most of their postseason opponents in those years they won it all, as the Colts did in '06. So that doesn't exactly disprove the point. Green Bay was a whole different animal than the other wildcard teams who have won it all. All six games they lost went down to the wire (many vs good teams on the road) - all of the metrics indicated they were much better than your average 10-6 team, which is why unlike the Giants, they were actually favored in 3 of their 4 playoff games despite being on the road (and only a tiny underdog @13-3 Atlanta). The opposite of the 2010 Packers would be a team with a sparkling record & relatively mediocre PD - the 2008 12-4 Colts who lost to the 8-8 Chargers are a good example of that. I don't know when the last time a team of that ilk won it all - I would guess the '01 Patriots since that was the luckiest team in the history of sports.

I am not being negative I am just debunking one of the garbage cliches that announcers & espn brainwash everyone with. If you weren't such a sensitive Sally you would recognize that's what I was calling stupid - not you. Point differential is a better indicator of future performance than record - that is a fact. It explain a lot of the "parity" in the league from year to year that seems to mystify everyone.

Been here 8 years so good chance I will. You'll have to tell me which forum you're posting in or what name you're posting under then though.

And that saying was/is kinda stupid. We've won more close games than you probably think. You just remember the losses more. Good teams blow out their opponents more often than they get blown out. What is the Bills record in blowouts the last 10 years? I bet it's worse than their record in close games. The Cardinals hot streak at the end of last year & early this year is a ton of close games. That's probably going to flip; it probably already started to yesterday.

You tend to "run for your life" more when you don't throw the ball.

There have been some embarrassingly bad pass inteference calls the last few weeks - in the Chargers/Saints & Lions/Eagles games to name a couple. They're ruining the integrity of the game!

Int's can be like shanked punts if they're 25 yards downfield. When does he ever throw that far? And should we be holding our CB's to a higher standard than fans of other teams because we generally had good players at that position from 2003-2010?

Great, if that happens then have fun with your "where are the Haters" thread then. Not after one game. We had a "where is everyone who said we'd miss Pat Williams" thread after one game against Houston's terrible offense in 2005. Then the Bucs in week 2 and every decent team thereafter ran down our throats the rest of the year while fat Pat & his Vikings stuffed every running game for the next five years. This is just one example but there have been a lot of these pointless threads in the last 10 years. Just don't be that guy.

You guys who only want to talk about things that fans can change - good luck with that. I'm sure that'd make for some really interesting discussion. "Yo I was thinking about boycotting beer until they lower the price to $6, sound good"?

Including the disclaimer doesn't mean we have to get past it or pretend like this thread is warranted. This is not hindsight. Everyone from Aaron Schatz to John Clayton said we're in big trouble if we can't pressure that OL, the worst protection team in the league. It was basically Spurrier's Redskins from 2003. Or heck the Redskins game last year. We didn't need $100mill to pressure those teams. We need it for the Jets & Pats (oops).

So you agree he's not good enough to go anywhere. But hey he's better than Losman...great! Get out of the Buffalo bubble man. Where he ranks in the league as a starting qb in 2012 is just more relevant than how much Bills QBs have sucked the last 15 years. Nobody is saying he's the worst we've had.

Yeah, pretty lame rationalizations here because they ultimately won. Everyone needs to google Brian Burke and probabilities. It's not remotely close.

Probably your best post imo. Of all the countless 13-10 games he won, the last drive always mattered more than his stat line for the cult. But somehow for the Miami playoff game it's "oh, well, not his fault he had good stats". At least pretend to hide the gross hypocrisy? The Bills offense exceeded 17 points in 2 of 8 road games in 1999. And yet in toughest road game of all against the best defense we played by a mile, 16 points was a surprising outlier that would've been easily surpassed by the other guy playing. Yah, sure.

The problem with that argument imo is the sample size on him is more than 2+ years, it's 8+ years. 2010 sure looks like more of an outlier than the last 1+ season, despite his fans' best efforts of insisting he was a different QB/person in 2010 who just started to watch film.