SectionC3

I agree - great post, great bet, great passion for the Bills, but take the guaranteed money and pay part of the mortgage -

FWIW, I suspect that one, if not both, of Catalana's sources are players.

I did a little digging. Peters appears to be in the area. No idea what the reporting/contract status may be.

I heard the call, as I had GR on for a few minutes while Shredd & Ragan were in a break. Rarely do I listen to PM drive on GR, and the treatment of your call (and the Bledsoe call that occurred right around the time you were on) is a big reason why. One of the hosts thinks he's smarter than he really is, the other is horribly miscast as a radio personality and utterly unlistenable.

Maybe somebody else, perhaps Bill in NYC, can back me up on this but . . . when Eric King was here, that guy was an automatic first down every time he stepped on the field. Sitting in the stands provides a little bit of a different perspective than what you see on TV, and I swear every time I saw King come off of the sideline (I think he wore #29), I'd joke with my dad that we knew where the ball was going and by and large, we were right.

Maybe they just messed up. Kind of like with Mike Williams. They did, however, get it right when they re-upped with Peters a few years ago.

If this is true, and it may well be, one of two things happened: (1) Parker dropped the ball on behalf of Peters and should be fired; or (2) Peters knowingly signed a contract that he knew any move to left tackle would render unfavorable. If Peters is unhappy with the escalator and either he or his agent "knew" Peters would be moved to left tackle during the life of that agreement, one of only Peters or Parker is to blame. The reality of the situation is that Peters traded additional years on a contract (this one) for a greater immediate payment than his prior agreement would have provided. Had he "played out" his original contract, he'd be much closer to earning the extraordinary contract he desires. This was part of the risk in taking the additional "up front" money in this contract, and now he has to take his medicine. Too bad.

I think I posted this somewhere on the board before, but . . . Back in the day (approx. 1990-ish), one of the local media outlets did a study that found that Buffalo/Niagara would be a top-10 market if the Golden Horseshoe was included in market population totals. Canadian audiences aren't "rated," so all of the folks in Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Hamilton, etc. aren't included in the measure of Buffalo's market size. Combine the 1 million or so people in Erie and Niagara Counties with the roughly 1 million or so people in Monroe and Ontario Counties and those in the Horseshoe on this side of Hamilton and you're approaching a fairly substantial population total. The folks on the Canadian side can probably tweak the numbers, but my understanding is that Hamilton has a population of 600,000+, Niagara Falls is around 100,000, and St. Catharines is in the neighborhood of 100,000. Once TO is added to the mix, the Buffalo/Niagara market becomes, even 15 years after the study I mentioned, huge - but not necessarily for American TV purposes.

Sort of. The guilty plea can and will be used against him in the civil case; here, he wants to avoid any admission as to intoxication so he doesn't imperil his insurance coverage. This isn't a huge case since the extent of P's injuries (at least at this juncture) appear to be limited to 7 stitches in her leg. So, she'll have a scar, meet threshold and after some posturing and bluster settle the case. I don't think this case is worth very much - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though, and since many potential jurors post on the board, I'm interested to hear what a scar of at most five inches on a fat, single, 20-something female's leg is worth. (Before anyone jumps all over me for the fat comment, scars are worth more on attractive females - it's a fact of life).

the title says it all

What I think you're saying is that he has no obligation to speak and it's in his best interests to keep his yap shut.

Your little birdie has no idea what he's talking about. Don't get your hopes up. This isn't happening.

Absolutely. The same logic is somewhat relevant to any conversation involving a national sales tax. One of the Steve Forbes plans that was floated some years back was a flat tax with no deductions. Not a very good idea for, say, middle class homeowners, people with kids, those in their mid-20s with student loans (who make less than $62,000), etc. Even if certain deductions under a flat tax are available, the critical question is where the threshold lies. In other words, if the flat tax threshold is 20%, it's possible that the federal tax liability for some working class could actually increase. (I'll plead a little ignorance here - I don't know what the current low brackets are.) Truly problematic, though, is the reduction for those on the higher end of the scale. If your income is sufficient to allow you to reach one of the graduated steps where you're paying in the vicinity of 30%, you're getting a huge reduction and reaping a huge benefit if your liability for monies at what are now higher graduated steps is reduced to 20%. How is that lost tax revenue made up? Possibly through taxpayers in the lower to mid brackets who lose some deduction benefits. Or, if you're George W. Bush, you just borrow more money from China. In other words, typical of other Republican red herrings (let's talk about gay marriage instead of addressing important national security issues, like where is Osama bin Laden, or why did we start a war with a country that faked having chemical weapons to keep the real tyrant [iran] at bay and therefore allow that tyrant to bluster about nuclear weapons, send shivers through traders of a certain dinosaur-based speculative commodity and wreak havoc with our economy!!), the flat tax is, plain and simple, just another ill-conceived idea.

Because a flat tax benefits those like Ralph and screws what I suspect is the majority of the people who read this board. All of this moving talk is misguided. If the Bills are going anywhere, it's Toronto. It's a rich, rabid and virgin market. LA has had several teams (Rams, Chargers and Raiders) and lost them all. People in LA don't care about the NFL - there's too much else to do. The most likely team to move to LA is the Raiders. Toronto, by virtue of the "series" is Bills territory. No team is going there except the Bills, and if the Bills go anywhere it will be Toronto.

There have been more incidents that those referenced in the PFW article. In other totally unrelated news, we sure have a lot of cornerbacks on the roster now.

"Its" and "interpretation" are my words of the day. Not that anyone should be busting your *ss given that it IS exam time in law school. (Which begs the question: why are you fooling around on twobillsdrive? But, I digress . . . . ) From one young punk hustling a paycheck in the legal system to another hoping to do the same, my advice is to take it easy on dispensing the legal knowledge for a couple of years. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. I did the law review, high honors, published, clerkship thing and and sometimes wonder how I faked my way through it (and continue to fake my way through it five years later). The lesson I learned (more often than not the hard way) was to keep my mouth shut unless absolutely necessary.

I have no idea who Connor Byrne is. I have no idea what you are speaking of relative to any admission. I believe the original statement I made was something to the effect of "It is my understanding that Ashton Youbouty has disappointed us." Cryptic, indeed.

All in all has Youbouty shown enough to indicate he probably will be a starter one day? Nope not yet. However, has he disappointed so much that he clearly should not let the door hit him on the way out? No to this uninformed view as well. The Bills are too shallow in depth at CB to throw anyone off the bus. Further, what the hard-hearted or vacuous among us might dismiss simply as excuses, rather than excuses there are legit reasons for his play which while they do not forgive him, one would be silly to ignore them. Further, though he has not won a position at all with his play, he has shown some good things in episodes that also make it premature for us to panic and dismiss him. I believe I am rather informed.

It is my understanding that Ashton Youbouty has disappointed us. Any chance this guy sees the door sometime soon?

St. Kitts is like Batavia. When you're in Batavia, you're not in Buffalo OR Rochester. Nothing against Batavia, b/c it is a nice town, and a very livable place.

If they "fudged" that kick on a 6 yard spot the placement actually would have been moved from 7 3/4 yards behind the LOS to 6 yards. In the event shenanigans like this were attempted, there would have been two problems. First, the ball is typically placed at about 7 3/4 yards because the snap, if exectued properly, will often result in the holder catching the ball with the laces facing forward and therefore allow the holder to avoid spinning the ball after placement to ensure proper lace direction. I have no idea if a 6 yard placement would provide that advantage. Second, with the 6 yard placement, the ball would have had to have been kicked at a higher than normal trajectory to clear the LOS. That trajectory, assuming the kick wasn't batted back at Lindell, would have caused the ball to hang in the air longer and created a greater opportunity for the wind to impact the kick. Given the conditions on Sunday, a higher trajectory would have been quite unfavorable. That said, I totaly agree the game managment left a little bit to be desired on the last series, and particularly on the last offensive play. Too much confusion prior to the last play - hate to see the season decided on a chaotic series like that.

I think Lindell and Moorman stepped in the direction of Jauron to determine whether Jauron wanted to attempt the field goal. I do hear the point that if the 25 yard line is the absolute furthest field position from which a field goal would be attempted, there shouldn't have been a question whether to attempt the field goal when the ball was spotted at the 28. I suppose the question has to be asked, but it probably would have been better served to get Lindell's opinion as to the viability of a 46 yard kick before third down, or at least immediately after the end of the third down play, so that the confusion, which was the real problem with the fourth down, didn't ensue

No, I'm not. Today I sat, depending on one's viewpoint with the curviture of the stadium, between the goal line and the five yard line at that end of the stadium on the bills' sideline and was approximately 15 rows up. the wind wasn't as stiff as it had been at certain points in the game, but was blowing enough that it would have impacted the kick. Don't judge the wind only by the flags on top of the goalposts - there are plenty of times where those flags are relatively still and the "helmet" flags, as well as the US flags outside the stadium are stiff. This was one of those days. (For what it's worth, the Bills' color analyst agreed that the kick was unmakeable.) What is amusing about this debate is that similar conditions have existed at the stadium for the past four or so games. It's no secret that the wind has been particularly troublesome in that endzone this year, and that the line of demarcation for field goal range is roughly the 25 yard stripe. As an aside, too, one thing people haven't made too much of yet is the long-snapping today. I couldn't see a few snaps closer to the tunnel end zone, but I don't know that there was one good snap on either side today. Hentrich made a few outstanding holds on some of the Titans' kicks, and a pretty good grab on one of the punts that he ended up banging out of bounds for a 20 yard-ish change of field position. I'm not saying that the conditions precluded taking a whack at the kick for reasons pertaining to the snap, but the snap and hold were not "gimmies" in that situation. As a further aside, fans who sit in this end might remember these two occurrences: First, there was a game this year where the wind actually knocked that crossbar out of alignment and required the grounds crew to bring a stepladder and a level out to fix it after the first quarter. I've been going to games for a long time and had never seen anything like that. I guess, by way of example, that goes to show how unpredictable that end zone is. Second, there was a similar kick to that of Bironas (sp?) this year where the ball basically died over the crossbar and looked like it was almost blew back out. I can't remember the game - it obvioulsy wasn't Miami and was not Jacksonville - but that kick, too, was from slightly over 40 yards.

Right on. I got a kick out of the guy who used "so called expert" and "ton of distance" in this thread. Nobody here is saying anything like "Vince Young really killed us on the misdirections because the ends didn't rush straight up the field and the spy [Fletcher] was too slow to keep up with Young." Rather, people (like me) who were at the game are commenting on a simple, observable fact: the cigar-shaped, leather ball used by Rian Lindell and many other participants in the contest between the Bills and the Titans did not pass through the goalposts at a position above the crossbar at the end of the stadium closest to the scoreboard when kicked in that direction today. In fact, we are applying a simple syllogism: Neither Lindell nor the Titans' kicker made field goals exceeding 43 yards to the scoreboard end of the stadium during warm-ups. The field goal that was not attempted would have exceeded 43 yards. Therefore, Lindell was not likely to make the subject field goal. Obviously, the syllogism assumes that the conditions were the same during warm-ups and at the time of the non-field goal. As one of the "so called expert(s)," I can state that the breeze was stiff at the time od the non-kick. I submit, too, that the players and coaches who work at the facility every day know a great deal more than the out-of-towners who hate the fourth down call, and even the season-ticket holders who sit at that end of the stadium. Once again, this is a stupid thread. The proper call was made.

The flags at the top of the stadium look a lot different than the flags on the goalposts. What you see on top of the goalposts is not indicative of what the conditions are like even a few feet above that level.