finknottle

Yeah, the whole Kelly era was a huge downer and a collossal waste of time. When all is said and done, they accomplished NOTHING. What a collection of losers!

It's not just the standard they are holding Fitz to. Nor that they seem oblivious the fact that the best quarterbacks in the game don't even meet their standard. To me the most absurd thing is that they seem to believe there are "can't miss" guys in the draft who will.

I agree with the sentiment, especially the bit about 3 division games in a row. How have we done against these division opponents in the past decade? Fitz could be a bona fide 'franchise qb' (like Bledsoe was!) and still look completely inneffectual against them. All 3 teams will be playing for the postseason. I say he's ok as long as he lays a complete egg no more than once.

I think your ire is misdirected at the Fox piece. Fox isn't claiming costs are doubling, it is saying that the GAO report say's so.

I'm in the DC area too. In recent years there have been several threads about Bill's fans losing interest in their team... I have to admit that I fall in that category. (Tho this season is rekindling the excitement!) I get more pleasure watching the Redskins fail as a franchise, and listening to the recriminations on talk radio midway through the season, than I generally do following a Bills win... and every few years I wait with fingers crossed and baited breath to see if the latest coach will work out, hoping it is merely the latest chapter in dysfunctionality. The interesting thing is that this is not uncommon in DC, with so many transplants from other areas of the country. The nonstop blather in the local media about Redskin tradition really gets on our nerves.

Is it any sadder than the millions of children who train and work hard, and yet fail to grow up to be professional athletes? Or musicians? Or film stars? Are they being deprived of their dreams? Btw, the intergenerational statistics are shocking: children whose relatives are professional athletes, musicians, or film stars are more likely to have careers in those fields than children without that good fortune. Perhaps the government should set up some kind of tennis camp for disadvantaged youths, and offer subsidized cosmetic surgery. And some luck. That's why it is called the American Dream, not the American Entitlement. Like sports and life in general, it's about working hard and staying prepared so that you can take advantage if luck comes your way. And if luck doesn't come? You won't reach the Dream, but you'll do all right.

These are not CBO numbers. They are factual numbers taken from IRS returns, from a 96,700 sample of those who filed at both ends of the time interval. With respect to the transition matrix provided, there is no methodology to dispute. People earned what they earned. The only room to quibble lies with what relation filers have to society as a whole (since there are filers dropping in and out); and how you define mobility and what you conclude about it from the numbers. Your "Krugman debunk" link doesn't work. He can rant all he likes, but it doesn't change the numbers in Treasury's transition matrix.

I'll spoil the party by introducing some facts for consideration. The Dept of Treasury measures income mobility every ten years, most recently 1996-2005, by tracking income tax returns. The sample size here was 96,700. They used three measurement criteria, which all produced essentially the same results. The most recent study found that the median income change was +24% after inflation, with two thirds of all households showing a real increase. (The median inflation-adjusted income of the lower groups rose faster than the higher groups, and the median inome of the highest earners actually fell over the period.) More than 55% of households moved to a different income quintile, most moving up. The composition of the top changed most dramatically, with only 40% of the top 1% remaining there, and 25% of the to 1/100 of a percent remaining. Income mobility is essentially unchanged from 86-95. Here is a usefull chart. The column is income quintile of households in 1996. Each row shows the distribution of those filers in 2005. The three rightmost colums elaborate on each row, showing what percentage of that income group would up in the listed percentile (ie 5% means top 5%, not 5-2%). xx-xx 00-19 20-39 40-59 60-79 80-00 Tot 10% 5% 1% 00-19 42.4 28.6 13.9 9.0 5.3 100 2.3 1.3 0.2 20-39 17.0 33.6 26.7 15.1 7.9 100 3.0 1.2 0.1 40-59 7.1 17.5 33.6 29.6 12.5 100 4.2 1.4 0.3 60-79 4.1 7.3 18.3 40.2 30.2 100 8.6 2.7 0.3 80-00 2.6 3.2 7.1 17.8 69.4 100 43.4 22.5 4.4 10% 2.6 2.2 4.9 11.8 78.6 100 61.1 37.6 8.3 5% 2.6 1.8 3.9 8.6 83.1 100 71.6 54.4 15.2 1% 3.2 1.3 2.2 4.9 88.4 100 82.7 75.0 42.5 So what does this show? Churn, generally upwards, against a backdrop of overall rising incomes. And those at the very top tend not to stay there over time. One in 8 average-income filers in 1996 (median $31,875 in '85) were in the top quintile by 2005, and 1 in 300 had joined the top 1% (>$464k inome in '05). One in 500 of the lowest earners in '85 (<$15k) managed to do it! I would call this a more than realistic chance.

Ok, I'll bite - name 10 great quarterbacks picked at the top since Brady.

I think you missed a congressional censure somewhere.

Based on your explanation of the wisdom, why does the Rooney Rule not apply to other under-represented groups? Should each NFL team be required to also interview and give serious consideration to an Asian candidate for their head coach hirings? What about women and the disabled?

And if a winning lottery ticket is there, you buy it. i mean cmon mannnnn

Maybe he was craftier than we think. A new team, new systems, question marks all over the offence, no help from the defense... this team had an abysmal start written all over it. What happens if Fitz wins the starting job in preseason and the Bills go 0-4, as they probably would have anyway? How long would Chan be able to resist public pressure to dump his preferred guy in favor of a dud? Maybe he realized that the best way to end the quarterback controversy was to let the incumbant get run out of town, reducing pressure and expectations on the guy he ultimately wanted to develop. Tricky, tricky Chan.

Desirable? Let's not kid ourselves. But at least they'll take our calls. We'll start to get a fair shot at convincing them that we may be a team on the rise, and land a few who are not the dregs of the league.

This was the first time I've seen the Bills win by delivering a back-breaker (as opposed to simply hanging on) in years.

Kiss the #1 pick goodbye. If the Bills had that pick it would certainly be a QB. Who may or may not be the answer (and the numbers say not), but either way would command a huge amount of money and at least a 4 year trial. There is a reason teams at the bottom stay at the bottom. Kiss the #1 pick goodbye, and be gratefull.

Change QB to RB, and you have made an elequent argument for drafting a shiny new runningback with our first pick. From The Amazing Carnac: What are - Franchise QB - Beast - Stud - Freak - Road Grader Terms that tell you a poster has nothing meaningfull to say.

I know. I was simply putting forward a general thesis: that housing is an example of a market where, when all is said and done, the subsidy actually goes into the pocket of the seller. A buyer buys to fit his budget. But a house is not sold to fit the sellers investment needs, or based on the cost of production. Sellers who need to sell do not have the luxury of holding out indefinately for what they think they need or deserve. Rather, the price is based on what the market will pay. Subsidize home buyers across the board, and average listing prices go up. Remove the subsidies entirely, and prices will fall. In fact, we often see this phenomona with interest rates. Listing prices move to meet what people can pay, and when rates drop the prices go up.

I think it is quite simple. People approach buying a house different than other purchases. The decide to buy, figure out what they can pay (hence the proliferation of monthly payment calculators), and - factoring in that deduction - figure out a house price they can afford, and then go shopping. Remove the deduction, and you lower the house price they are targeting. So if you are a house seller and there is no deduction, you will need to adjust your selling price if you want it to move. In other words, I contend that interest deduction inflates the the cost of housing. It does not effect the number of people who buy, but simply the selling price that people name. Removing it will result in a lower priced market, with housing offering slower appreciation as an investment.

Funny, you stick Edwards on a Dick Jauron-coached Buffalo Bills team and he is 7-9. Are you saying the Bills have been better than the Colts and Pats the last few years? Or would Edwards have actually led the Colts and Pats to winning records or - dare I say it - the playoffs?

Starting QB's 2000-2009 seasons: Rob Johnson, Bledsoe. Losman, Holcomb, Edwards... Maybe a case can be made, in hindsight, that he *was* the best Bills QB of that decade.

I only caught the second half, but I noticed the more compressed-but-intact pockets too. The key thing was that Fitz seemed unfazed and was able to operate quickly and effectively under those circumstances.

For those whimsically contemplating a helmet-less NFL, here is the #1 reason why it will never happen: What is the single most powerfull advertising icon for the NFL? The team logo. The logo *is* the team. And where is the logo? On the helmet. Take away the helmet, and you can no longer identify the uniform in many cases. The NFL helmet logo is a powerfull advertising asset unlike anything else in professional sports. It will never go away.

The decline of tackling might not be due to stupidity - it may be a conscious tradeoff. I believe the thinking among coaches is that while big hits will result in more missed tackles and extra yardage than sure tackling, the yardage given up is more than offset by the occasional forced turnover.

That's the point: tackling in the NFL has evolved to where it is today (good at intimidation, abysmal at open-space tackling) precisely because the helmet and the equipment have turned defenders into fearless projectile weapons. Take off the helmet and the pads, and see how many safeties are going to launch themselves headfirst into the pumping legs of a charging runningback. You will pretty quickly see defenders changing their technique. Those who don't will be injured pretty quickly. Which brings us back to the central question. What do we want out of this debate? Less injuries, sure. But do we want defenders who make tackles, or who deliver hits? For over 20 years now the NFL has been drifting in the direction of jarring hits (riskier defensively, but a better chance of a turnover) over simply bringing the guy down, and I don't see why it is neccessarily a good thing for the game. People think equipment is to protect the offensive player. For the most part, it isn't. It is to protect the guy making the tackle. Think about it: shoulder pads are to protect your shoulder when you are initiating contact while leading with your shoulder, not to protect your shoulder when somebody is hitting you. So change the protection to the tackler, and the tacklers technique will adjust accordingly.