Casey D

OK, fair enough. Do we have a bet?

You wrote "any amount? how much do you have?" Now you say you bet only $1? Don't bait people with rhetoric when you don't mean it. Since you prefer to bet for small stakes, we'll go for bragging rights. The bet is that SF is the OC for the Bills next year, unless he gets an equivalent or better position elsewhere, or he expires or something. But if he is fired or otherwise pressured to leave, u win. Merry Christmas...CD

I want in on this bet too. No way Fairchild leaves unless it is a promotion or he dies or something. I'll even give you odds. I'll put up $1,000 to your $500 that Fairchild is not fired. I'll go more if you like at 2-1--we just need a neutral stakeholder and an escrow account...CD

If you compare yourself to a future hall of fame coach, you usually will come up short. In the big scheme of things, the current group is light years ahead of the previous regime. The game today could have gone either way, we just came up short. It is not the result of collosal bungling, it was a series of things that if done better could have gone the other way. As much as it hurts, sometimes you lose a close one when you have two even teams..CD

Given how bad this team was last year, it is hard to fix everything. Losing McCargo did not help. The guys running this team are not stupid, but they can't do everything all at once...CD

There was, it was the 25, both Jauron and Lindell said so after the game. They flirted with trying from the 28. Running on third could have been an option, but anything that would have gotten a first down was sensible. No obvious call, it seems to me...CD

This was a great game today against two hot teams. We just came up short. It would have been nice to keep the playoff dream alive one more week, but this is not a contending team, YET. But we've come a long way in a year. The playoffs are wholly realistic next year, with more progress in the off season...CD

You are incorrect. The team that loses the toss gets the option to start the second half to receive the ball or pick direction. Titans elected to receive, Bills choose the wind...CD

The Bills were trailing 20-19 at halftime, and had to kickoff to start the half. The right call was to kick with the wind, and use the wind to get the lead. They did that, and led by 9 going into the 4th. We did not hold on--you can't have everything...CD

You sir, appropriately could be called an a-hole of bibilical proportions. But it is Christmas, so Merry Christmas and may the Lord be with you..CD

For God's sake relax. This is being blown out of proportion. It is all political posturing. Ralph has not yet got the revenue sharing he wants. As you all know, he has been working every pol he can find, including Schumer and Clinton. This latest rant is his way of saying that the NFL can get other stuff done--like funding a new stadium for the Giants and Jets--but has not yet addressed the revenue sharing problem. Ralph is just keeping the heat on. Everything he is complaining about today on the new stadium in NYC is the same thing he has been harping on since the new CBA was agreed to. Until the final revenue sharing plan is worked out, Ralph will keep this up. But there will be added revenue sharing, and if it addresses Ralph's needs(and other small market teams), everything will be fine. The 30-2 vote on the NYC deal is evidence that other small market owners think they will be taken care of, and they choose not to be front and center like Ralph. each approach has its merits. At this point, Goddell is an advocate for the small market teams. And even the big guys like Jones and Snyder don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. While there are no guarantees in life, I am fairly confident that there will be ample revenue sharing to protect teams like Buffalo, Green Bay, Indy, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Tampa, New Orleans, etc, that the league will be fine, including our home team. So go back to watching the games, and chill about this stuff. I don't mean to sound pedantic, but everyone is really overreacting...CD

Good post. I don't think it will take years anymore to get to the playoffs though. With a good off-season, I think we have a decent shot next year.

Jerry Sullivan's article today is right on the money. The Bills are 5-7. going 3-2 since the break with close losses to the two best teams in football. Of the 7 losses thus far, 5 have come from teams with 9 or more wins and one with 7(Jets). The only bad loss was against Detroit. So Levy/Jauron are on track in turning things around. Losman is making progress, the O-line is better though only average(which is better than well below average as it has been for years) and the D-line still needs a stud tackle. But the team is young, and these needs and some other lesser ones manageably can be addressed in the off-season. If the Bills can win 2 of the final 4, they would go 7-9. Given a year with the new regime under our belts, a solid off-season acquisition-wise, and a little luck, 10 wins next year might be doable. That would be an excellent turnaround after 5 years of gross mismanagement. I at last have some hope for the future--a precious commodity indeed as a Bills fan...CD

Agree. I just was hoping the hole was not as deep as it is...CD

The overall lack of talent after 5 years with TD at the helm is amazing. The new group had to rework the D in the off-season, and even though it has weaknesses, it seems to be going in the right direction and is young and should get better. Because no team has unlimited resources, little was done to the offense in the off-season, under the concept that a better defense can keep you in games(a concept I agree with). But the talent on offense is horrendous. The O-line is putrid after years of neglect, and only an undrafted player, Peters, is any better than average. Most of the line is well below average. Lee Evans is a stud, but what else is at the skill positions. Everett is nothing at TE, Parrish is mostly invisible, McGahee is an OK back, but nothing more than that and certainly not a superstar. Losman is horrid, perhaps in large part due to the line but he certainly in not making "something out of nothing" as you would hope if he had above average potential. 5 years of utter incompetence is what you have to conclude we got from TD given the talent level on this team. And it's tough on Levy/Jauron because everyone is tired of this being a horrible team, and yet it is hard to fix this quickly. I mean TD seems like a pretty bright guy and well regarded, how did this get so screwed up as compared to Polian and Butler? It seems unreal to me how far this franchise was allowed to sink...CD

Stepping back from the week to week ups and downs of a football season, particularly if you are a Bills fan, where do we stand at the halfway mark given what we thought we had in July? Well obviously we are 3-5, which is about all you could hope for with a team with so many off-season changes in the front office, coaching and turnover in personnel. When you consider there were 3 games against Chicago and NE in there--two top 5 teams for sure-- the 3-2 record against the others is OK, if not great. Next, the Bills spent most of their off-season resources trying to shore up the defense. Overall, given all the rookies playing, this unit has improved, and is young enough to keep getting better. Still could use a killer DT, but overall the foundation has been laid for this unit to get better next year, with a little tweaking. Next issue going into the season--can Losman be the guy? I'd say the jury is still out on that one. September looked like he was turning the corner. October he regressed. Yesterday, in my view, was somewhere in between. It was clear to me at the game that the Bills were playing not to lose when they went up 10-0. Three game losing streaks make the coller tight. They only let JP throw 15 times, they asked him not to lose the game. And he didn't. The second half should continue to provide feedback on this. I would note that on at least on a couple of sacks, when JP had some time, no one was open and a throw might well have been a pick. I can't blame the line for some of his weaknesses though--one major one is that he has trouble scanning the field and so he locks on one guy compunding his problems. Hopefully this improves with more playing time. The O-line has been neglected for years, and once again we are putting band-aids on massive wounds. If Peters can play left tackle--and the Bills ran well all day to the left, we have one guy who can play. I think Fowler could be a B+ center if he had at least one stud guard to help him. Right tackle, who knows? What we do know, is that Marv needs to put lots of resources into the O-line, if this team is to move forward next year. Hopefully they will do this. The O skill positions are adequate, and we might have a star or two if the line play and QB play stabalize. So what should we look/hope for in the second half. Continued improvement from the D, development from JP, and finding out how many O lineman can be counted on for next year. As to Ws and Ls, I would submit we should shoot for--realistically-- 4-4, giving us a 7-9 record overall. If we are improving over the course of the season, wins at home against Miami and Tennessee are musts, as is a win on the road against Houston. That leaves 4 tough games, Indy, Jax, SD and Baltimore, and one middling game at the Jets. An improving team should be able to steal one of these 5. That would be progress, get us to 7-9, and give us a base to go forward in 2007 in the second year of Levy/Jauron. Anything more would be gravy, anything less would be disappointing...CD

My day job is to keep large multi-national corporations and their money safe from other large corporations, the government and regular people in court. At night, I take the various resources I have obtained from that endeavor and try and help get moderate Democrats elected to Congress, and hopefully the White House in 2008, so I can pay more in taxes to help balance the budget, keep the environment safe, and try and avoid unnecessary wars and keep the military strong on a go-forward basis, to leave a better future for our kids. Just a day's work from a confused Polish guy from Buffalo, living in the nation's capital. But the Board is a good place to hang out when Bills induced depression sets in on a Monday.

Well I guess it is to be expected that the "everything sucks" crowd would come out today. But that is to be expected when you lose to an 0-5 team, and are really outplayed by more than the score indicates. But we need to go back to before the season started, even back to last January, to assess where we really are, not just reacting to yesterday's game. I wrote before, and still believe, that the new administration Levy/Jauron, is a much needed breath of fresh air, both in terms of intelligence and integrity. They faced the difficult task of fixing 5 years of ineptitude, and that cannot be done in a few months. To a large extent, they are now a victim of the first 4 weeks of the season, where the team played very well each week, and was 2-2. The bar was raised, and the fans were excited. Now, with the inevitable backslide of any young and rebuilding team, the Malthusian projections are downward and all is lost. The reality is the Bills are not, and never were, a playoff team this year. They need to be watched for development-- i.e., are they getting better at year's end? And getting better does not mean a linear path upward, it does not work that way. One step forward, one back. Two forward, one back. Three forward, two back. You get the point. It's too early to tell where this team will be at year's end. I thought they would go 2-6, maybe 3-5 in the first half, and I hoped for 5-3 or 4-4 in the second half for 7-9, seeing improvement and identifying areas of weakness where we would devote resources next year, and maybe get to the 10-6 level. So far, I have not been disappointed. Although his last two games have been a step back, I can see Losman will be a solid, perhaps a top 7 or so, starting QB with some time. QB is mostly about brains and understanding the game, and for the first time this year I can see JP gets it. He'll continue to have rough patches, but he's going to be fine--that's a big plus. Clearly the lines need more work. But that's 10-15 guys, and Rome was not built in a day. I think more resources will be poured into the lines next year, and let's hope for good decisions. I think the team will be 3-5 at the half way point, which is OK. If they can go 4-4 in the second half, especially given some of the teams they have to play(Indy, SD, Jax and Baltimore) and we see continued progress as an overall proposition, this season will still be a success to me, and hopefully set the stage for next year, after the new regime has a full year under its belt... CD

I don't know how the Bills will do under the Levy/Jauron regime, but it's a lot more fun following the team with these guys running the show. They tell the truth as best as I can determine, no secret stuff or double talk as with Donahoe/Mularkey. Like with Losman--they say he's done some good stuff, he's done some horrible stuff. No trying to explain why the turnovers were somehow OK. It just seems they call a spade a spade, and are trying to make things better without a lot of hype or false bravado--they seem to be willing to let the play talk, good or bad. And although I expect the first half of this season to be pretty brutal, I am hoping by December we will see their work starting to pay off, and have hope again for the playoffs maybe as soon as next year. Anyway, just my two cents that it is nice to be dealing with good people again who you can really get behind and hope they succeed, after 5 years of almost total BS... CD

I don't know. Perhaps they think the ultimate revenue sharing will be fair, or enough to meet the cap. Perhaps they are planning on building new stadiums to raise revenue. Or perhaps they are simply embarassed because they were had, and their egos are too big to admit it. But the system is out of whack right now the way it is set up, and will only get worse as local unshared revenues keep pushing up the cap, and many teams unable to keep up the pace.

That sounds right, but revenues are expected to be over $2.1 billion, so I think that is where the higher actual cap figure comes from that I heard Regier discuss...CD

I got that figure from an interview with Regier between periods of a game on CBC , when it was discussed that the cap this year actually was $42M, and was expected to go to $45-6, and Regier said that the team was at $28-29M, and would go no higher than $30-31M next year. But that was about 3 weeks ago and I could have misunderstood or misheard ...CD

It's $42M this year, and projected to go to $45-6M next year...CD

First, if you are against revenue sharing, then why is cost sharing OK. When the cap goes up for everyone when Washington and Dallas takes in a dollar, that is cost sharing. You are wrong about the cap keeping teams competitive without revenue sharing. Say the salary cap is $150m, pushed to that level by 10 high revenue teams. Say Indianapolis and Buffalo only have total revenue of $150m, they simply can't spend to the cap given other expenses. As to a cap that all can afford, the players don't want that. That was the old system where the cap was based only on shared revenues--they wanted and got access to non-shared revenues as well, because there are more $$$ there. So to deal with the players, they share all revenue with them at the tune of 59.5% In short, unless all teams have enough revenue to fund up to the cap, the cap will not prevent an unfair playing field, because many teams will have to spend well below the cap. You see that in hockey right now--the Sabres only have a $29m payroll(the minimum) with a cap of $42m. Next year the cap will go to $46m, but the Sabres have no where near enough money to take on that payroll. When there young players move to free agency, most of them will go, because the Sabres can't afford them in a league with little revenue sharing.

If you think about it , the new CBA is nothing but a subsidy of the bigger revenue teams by the lower revenue teams. By essentially changing the cap from being 65% of shared revenues under the old, to 59.5% of all revenues, for every non-shared $$$ a Washington or Dallas takes in, it automatically adds 59.5 cents to the cap, and hence the expenses of all teams, including the lower revenue teams. So while the big guys have 40.5 cents left over after taking in the $ and paying the 59.5 cents to the players, the small revenue teams are just 59.5 cents worse off. The fairest system would be for every team to kick in 59.5% of ALL revenues into a common pot, then divide the pot by 32, and distribute that amount back equally. That would put everyone in the same boat salary cap wise, and still leave incentives to all teams to generate more revenue, because they still get to keep 40.5% of every non-shared $ they earn. The notion that currently is on the table, that the big teams will give money to the small teams to "subsidize" them is really a misconception. Since the big teams already are adding costs to the smaller teams as they make more money, the "subsidy" is nothing more than picking up a small portion of the costs they already have pushed on to the smaller teams. Basically what we have now is that all costs are shared, at least vis the 59.5% of player costs, but not all revenues. This is regressive, and just another example of the little guy being screwed, while being made to come off as a whiner. But you got to give it to Jones and Snyder, they eat other people's lunches and have the press acting like they are philanthropists when they throw back a potato chip to the guys they stole from. CD