dorquemada

I agree with this - There's no way that Tryhard is a legit franchise QB. We're pretty sure that EJ isn't either, but if caretaker .500 QB is all we have right now then let's not pay TT all that money. I'm p.sure EJ can keep us at .500 for another year or two and let us draft QBs, and develop Caradalle, until we have a legit QB. I really wanted TT to be the man, but it seems like he's another in a long line of guys that wont get us any better than 9-7 and can't beat winning teams

Yeah that looks like a guy interested in playing professional football

It's true. I haven't watched a game for 3 weeks, or anything more than highlights the 2 before that, because I've had other things to do. Last Monday I was in vegas, so, easy, forget football. The week before was a wedding that was a good time, the week before that I was at the gun range. I'm not sure it's worth trying to work my schedule around the Bills any longer as they don't seem to have it in them to put forth a consistent effort, as individuals, or as a franchise. Maybe ignore the season and watch the highlights on youtube in February.

Is that some sort of shot at his intelligence?

Agree with this take 100%. Jones is a baller. They're doing with they should with him, and since we know the Bills are going nowhere fast this year, let the coaches take their time with him and do it right. I'd even keep him on the sideline next year - give him some preseason reps with the 2nd and maybe first team, but have whatever meatsack is ahead of him play the regular season. If the coaches think he's made enough progress, maybe start to play him late next year after the inevitable october swoon.

the original Tivo box for directv was great for this because for each bump of the fast forward button, it would jump 30 seconds. hit it 4 times, and back to the game

I think College football is already doing digital ads on the field. Watch Alabama/LSU this week, adn you'll see "New York Life" like it's painted on teh field, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that there aint no New York nothing on the field at Bryant Denny Stadium. It's not actually that intrusive because it looks like it's painted on the field. I mean, I'd prefer a little more of that if we could get rid of some of the commercials. Because of the decreasing quality of the product, and the general over-lawyered officiating that NFL games have become, they arent getting 3.5 hours out of me any more.

your third bullet really is the historical norm, though it seems like the current regime is really married to rex and tryhard, so who knows, maybe we don't replace anyone and go on and lose out

was that guy Bill Bellichek?

No, no, he's perfect, he'll fit right in, Whaley, get on the horn

Consistency hasn't been one of the defining attributes of our Buffalo Bills. We're going to get Schizophrenic the rest of the year

If the queen had a pair of balls, she'd be king 10 is less likely than the democrats taking the House of Representatives

It's really going to depend on how we do between now and that game. It could, from where we stand now, very well be a run for the busses game. If we're 5-9 or 6-8, It'll be an ugly game with Miami running for another 1500 yards or whatever they did last week. If we're at least 7-7 or maybe 8-6 (lol) then I think the bills show and make a game of it

Or, conversely, if we lose by 20 (seems unlikely give the state of the Seattle O, but let's not sell our Bills short!), we'll get posts about how great Colton Schmidt played, or that the left side of the OL was quite remarkable, as the boxscore clearly shows! In other words, desperate rationalization trying to ignore the fact that this squad is about the same as the last 16 in the ways that winning is traditionally measured.

I don't give us much chance at Seattle and Cinci - they're both just better teams in almost any sense than the Bills, but the Jax game is the measure of this Bills team. If the bills deliver a steaming turd at home against a JV team like Jax, then seriously, the whole team needs to be blown up from the janitor to the GM. Given our collective Stockholm Syndrome, does anyone here think that the Bills stomp on Jax? they're beat up and not playing great but they have a winning culture there. Add that to the fact it's at home, and primetime, and this is the exact game that the Bills havent been able to win for... 16 years

Cleveland is a terrible, terrible team, but they aren't suffering the weight of expectations. This bills team has the fortitude of a stage 4 cancer patient on life support, and if anyone is going to give the Browns some confidence to build on, there's no other team left on their schedule quiet as adept at doing that sort of thing as the Bills, especially in their current formation

There's tons more choices too, everything from Netflix to Youtube, and im sure a bunch of stuff I'm not even aware of. The NFL's model of selling commercials to a captive audience is out of date, and the way the league is run, they're built to stay that way. They're blockbuster video a couple years after people started to get on the internet, which is to say, still making money hand over fist, but the seeds of their destruction are already here. My kids, scions to 2 families heavily into football, will never sit through a game, or even if they're sitting there with me, they're on their phones or pads, not paying any attention whatsoever. When you look at the future, people aren't going to sit willingly and be advertised to, and the NFL model of 3 minutes of commercial for every minute of gameplay doesn't stand a chance with that group

Our Buffalo Bills will pull one upset, either Pitt or Cinci, then lose to Cleveland. Mark my words

and how parts of the team really played well. fantasy football has ruined people's ability to understand that w/l is the only meaningful metric

"schadenfreude" is the word you're looking for

everyone's getting punchy again

I agree with your first sentence 100%. I've had to have hard conversations with direct reports on this very thing. I'm not asking, though, if it's right or wrong, I'm asking if it's happening, and if it's effecting the performance of the D. Different question, and in my mind one worth trying to figure out, but not enough data yet as we all realize that Tom Brady is a literal God King in his utter dominance of whatever D the Bills put out there against him

So maybe this is the point I was getting at but didn't make clear. MD may himself play great. He has, does, and will. Do the players around him, some of whom (thinking about guys like Lorax and the other parts bins players) are making not much over league vet minimum, feel as motivated as they did before? You would hope they do, and are all still playing to their peak potential, but as someone who manages a team of professionals, I can tell you for cold hard fact that when I bring someone new onto the team, if the others find out that person is making more then them, it's always the same reaction, and their expectation of that new person is always in excess of what is reasonable to ask, and they'll fold their arms and put their feet up, metaphorically. This is a big reason why salary discussions are 100% verboten, and a fire-able offense. I realize pro sports aren't the same as corporate office drones, but human emotions exist in both places and people can be super petty

You are correct in a sense. There's truth in that apparently Tom Brady can neutralize a good front 7. My original question was about the D's performance holistically, with MD in there versus when he isn't. I'll wait for more data, then look at it again. On that note, I'll be in Vegas for a work thing next week, love seeing monday night football at 530, and the election returns at a less crazy hour

When you build a statistical model, which is what I'm talking about, it's important to have meaningful metrics. When I built a tool (this was like 20 years ago using SPSS) to predict games, the first thing I did was load a bunch of high level historical data... wins/losses, yards for and against, turnovers, time of possession, and a few others. Then I had to do some modelling to see which of those variables had the highest correlation to wins. With that information, I could weight certain variables, and proceed with the predictive model. That's a long way to say... in effect, that the proof is in the pudding. The DL may have had a good statistical performance, but as part of a system, they failed. Whatever they did do, they didn't, as a system, prevent the pats from scoring. Now, it's been stated above, and we all know it to be true, that the Bills simply don't measure up to the Pats, which is why I said we need to look holistically at the season and the next few weeks, but it will be interesting to parse the data later to see if the D performed better overall with MD in there, versus not, with "performed better" being measured by how many points they allow