The Avenger

Just some discussion about this a few days ago.... http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/index.php?...7&hl=family

Agreed, but I think the Bills might argue that they're not going to pay a guy to be a workhorse if they don't see him being that workhorse. I can also see them trying to make the case that in today's NFL the single workhorse RB is going the way of the dinosaur - seems like a lot of teams are going to a multi-back, RBBC approach.

A couple of things have me less than optimistic that Spiller simply falls in with the slotting and gets signed soon: - As already stated, he was the first RB taken - he's going to argue that because he plays a different position the strict slotting shouldn't apply - You've got to believe Spiller and his agent are going to demand to be paid as if he's the clear-cut #1 RB on the team and the workhorse back who will see 25+ carries a game and the Bills know this won't be his role. Big difference in how you place a value on a guy - how much do you actually need/expect him to do for you - be a role player or carry the team.

Yeah, it bills itself as a "Sports Simulation Site" which I read to be a guy in his parent's basement with an X-box and some games like Madden from EA Sports. I'm glad it makes Bills fans feel better about our team, but its hardly the word of God....

Happy Birthday! Hope all is well!

It seems so obvious to me that Schobel wants to play this year but really doesn't want to play in Buffalo - change of position, far from his family, team years away from being decent. I think he knows he has years left on his contract and that the Bills and the fans have been good to him so he doesn't want to outright demand a trade or use retirement as an ultimatum. I think he's probably trying to work with the team behind the scenes to work a trade so everyone comes out a winner, but I don't know if that's going to happen. At some point its got to come to some sort of resolution and it will, I just think at this point he doesn't want to get into an ugly situation....

Some other variables that need to be factored in (even though there is no way to scientifically say we are better/worse and how many wins this will translate into): 1. Playing time at positions - you may deem a given player "better" at a position, but if he's a rookie or new to the position we have no idea whether this pereceived increase in actual talent means anything 2. New schemes - like #1 above, but even if you have played a given spot before, what happens when the whole scheme changes, like going from a 4-3 to a 3-4? Remember what happened to Warren Sapp when they changed schemes? He went from a monster to a nobody. 3. Schedule - if Buffalo was the only one making any roster changes and we played the exact same opponents as we did last year we might be able to gauge whether they would win more or less games than they did last year by looking only at the Bills, but the Bills are only half of the equation. Unfortunately, I think the schedule got tougher and the teams in our division got stronger.

Let's wait a few years to pass before we decide it was a good draft. I'd like to be optimistic, but Wood is coming off a terrible injury, Nelson has done very little (although probably not his fault), Byrd had agreat year but can he do it again?. Remember - Marshawn had a very solid rookie year and here we are a few years later praying someone would part with a 4th round pick for him in a trade.....

I started reading that and realized he could have said the same thing about winning Powerball: #1 - Pick a number between 1 and 60 - it could happen, right? #2 - Pick a number between 1 and 60 - really - there's a chance it could happen #3 - Pick a number....... Know what almost always happens? You get 1, maybe 2 numbers and that gets you (drumroll pleae)....a big steaming bowl of SQUAT..........

Depends on when (or even if) this organization gets on the right track. We all would like to think that Chan is going to be a great coach who will get the most out of his players - remember the hope we had when Gregg, Mularkey and Jauron were stepping into the job? What if Chan is just another in that line of guys in over their head? We would all like to think that we are drafting good players and making good player acquisitions - remember how hopeful we were when we drafted Willis McGahee, John McCargo, James Hardy, Aaron Maybin and brought in Langston Walker and Dockery and T.O.? What happens if this year's class resembles any of the past 10 classes? What happens if the veteran talent we bring in doesn't pan out? We have a ton of holes to fill, but I think 3-5 years is a reasonable timeframe IF we get on the right track, and when that happens is anyone's guess. Frankly, I am stunned at how many people are convinced that we are finally moving in the right direction with Buddy and Chan even though they haven't shown anything yet.....

Don't let any misinterpretation of this actual non-event disturb the outrage....... Snopes Debunks Bo Story

I always thought Tom Brady did a halfway decent job filling in for Drew Bledsoe when he got that chest injury.....

http://www.isnickelbacktheworstbandever.com/

Ronnie James Dio - best metal front man of all time - been listening to his Rainbow/Sabbath/Dio material straight sice hd died and rediscovering just how great it is. Rainbow in the Dark is possibly my favorite song of all time, and Sign of the Southern Cross amazes me - damn that's good stuff.....

The Tax Foundation had a much better analysis of this that takes into account the so-called Jock Tax - the tax pro athletes have to pay to states they play games in outside of their own state. If you take into account that Cleveland could have paid Lebron more than Miami due to NBA rules but then do the taxes and calculate the Jock Tax, Miami still comes out ahead but not by a rediculous margin (not that anyone probably did a huge tax analysis for him prior to making his decsion - it's still chump change when you're talking about that scale of money). Tax Foundation Analysis

The Green Monster seats have a little table ledge in front of them - a place for your beer/food and are also pretty high - you'd really have to climb up and over to go over the wall (then again, if you build a better barrier they'll build a better drunken idiot so I could see someone going over the wall at some point).

Wow - how did Germany not win this game and come away with a paltry 5 shots when they looked like word beaters in absolutely destroying England and Argentina? I know Spain is a good team, but I really expected to see more from Germany.

I honestly think age has some factor in all of this. If you've been following this team long enough to have been a serious football fan when this team was very good some 20 years ago and not just a little kid who kind of remembers it or went to a game or two back then youunderstand just how far this organization has fallen. You also understand that while other organizations have risen and fallen in most cases many times during that period, Buffalo never seems to have been able to rebuild. I'm not saying that it's easy to get to a level of the Super Bowl Bills in the era of free agency, but to come nowhere close for such a long time really wears you down. To flip it around, I'd ask the optimists what makes them think that any of the changes we've seen this year make you believe the team is finally on the right track? New coach? Been there - before they were run out of town people felt Wade/Greggo/Mularkey/Jauron was the fresh faced guy who could get the most out of the talent and pull something together. Excuse me if I'm not buying it with Chan until I actually see it. Front Office changes? Been there - remember when Ralph finally gave in and gave controll to Tom Donahoe and everyone thought we would soon be back on top because he was a real GM who could evaluate talent - how'd that work out? Excuse me if I don't give Buddy Nix a pass until he shows me something. Young players with potential? Seen plenty of these over the years, too - from consensus picks at positions of great need (Mike Williams) down to talented guys at positions where we seemed to be OK (McGahee) to guys who we seemed to value more than other organizations (Losman, McCargo, Whitner) - how'd that work out? How many Pro Bowlers have we drafted in the past decade vs. how many guys when cut from the Bills can barely scrape a roster spot from another team in the league? You'll have to excuse me if I want Spiller to show me something before I'm ready to call it a great pick. Point is, every year I see the same thing - optimists go around and slam people for being pessimistic while they tout all the reasons why "this year it's going to be different - we're going to surprise". Their reasons are straight of ouf a Mad Libs fill in the blank sheet. Then the Bills actually start playing games and get overmatched by stronger organizations and they slowly progress from cheeleaders to suicide hotline callers and end up being some of the most miserable amongst use when the team loses to Cleveland in a 6-3 home game stinker. When the season ends, the only game the Bills are playing in January is golf and people are screaming that we need a new coach/GM and more talent on the team. In the offseason we'll make some moves - maybe replace the coach, maybe bring in a free agent who has nowhere else to go, draft some new kids with potential and it starts all over again - the circle of life is complete for Bills fans. Personally I've learned that it's better to be a realist (you call it a pessimist) as I take another ride of this same damn broken merry-go-round and understand that when the season's over I'm pretty sure I'm going to get off the ride just about where I got on it rather than think it was actually going to take me Pasadena/Miami or where the Super Bowl was held. I still enjoy riding every Sunday and cheering for the team but I have my expectations in order that that makes the experience better overall. I'd love for things to get better and to change my approach as a fan, but at this point I'm not going to do that based on the promise of change or potential - somebody's actually got to SHOW ME SOMETHING. I'd also kindly ask all the optimists to quit questioning whether realist/pessimists are "true fans" - nothing worse than a punk who was in diapers in 1990 questioning the 40 years I have invested in this team because he feels it appropriate to appoint himself some sort of Bills Taliban because he's a "diehard fan", but that's a whole separate rant....

You're assuming that the functionality of the software used would allow this type of targeted privilige which it probably does not. If it doesn't, deciding who can post a picture and when would be completely manual and even if Scott and the mods loved the idea I doubt anyone is going to take on that sort of manual management. Simply put, I think the idea is impractical as suggested.

Sadly, this is also the highlight of our offseason so far - nobody got cuffed..... Perhaps as we approach the first regular season game we can all celebrate no players dying to give us something to be happy about (fingers crossed....)

You rang? As The TBD resident beekeeper I'll give you my $.02 - that study is crap. CCD is a big problem and millions of dollars have been spent on trying to find a root cause by the USDA among others. Nobody has ever linked cell phones to CCD with the exception of some non-scientific experiemnet conducted in Germany a few years back that was widely discredited (they put multiple cell phones into a hive - gee, wonder why that hive didn't do well). The facts are that CCD is most commonly seen in colonies that are under a good deal of environmental and non-environmental stress and almost never seen in colonies that are not under stress. What puts a colony under stress? Being trucked around from crop to crop for polization, singe crop environment, being fed HFCS (high fructose corn syrup - the same stuff they put in junk food), verroa mites infestation, trachael mite infestation, and diseases like foulbrood and dysentary - all things you find with big commercial migratory polination operations. The big migratory guys are getting killed by CCD - 60-85% losses year over year. For guys like me who don't move their hives, provide a variety of local vegitation and have time to adequately treat for mites and disease CCD is almost never seen. So the search right now is to find the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back - what is the factor pushing stressed colonies over the edge? I personally think it has to do with lack of genetic diversity in bee breeding as well as exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides, but I'm not a scientist. I can guarantee that it's not cell phones - that just makes no sense. There is absolutely NO data that correlates exposure to cell phones to CCD - none. Look at the bees that are being impacted - they are on trucks and working the almond crops - nowhere near any exposure to cell phones.

So let me get this straight - I get hassled if I try and bring more than 3oz. of shampoo in my bag when I travel but somebody's allowed to pack up severed human heads and mislabel them and there's nothing wrong with that unless someone open up the boxes?

I was at the Soundgarden show in NYC at the Lexington Ave. armory - about 115 degrees in there that night with no AC and the accoustics were TERRIBLE (the NY Times review of the show was "Soundgarden Seen, But Not Heard at Armory"). At one point Chris Cornell came out and said that OJ was leading police on some sort of wild chase, but I didn't get to see anything until I got home after the show - it was weird.

Wow - this is ugly when you look at it - it's kind of like asking which brand of dog food you'd prefer to eat.

Well, I do feel better about what it might cost me when I need to go that route (like I said, I know the day will come when something breaks and that will trigger the first domino), but until that comes I'll have a very hard time justifying the outlay and I'd have to fight the wife every step on the way. Now if it meant the difference between not being able to watch the TV vs. having great TV that would be one thing, but when it' watching TV vs. watching to really nice and clear TV the cost/benefit anaysis fails the test at this point in time...