Albany,n.y.

You may be right. Everyone who is all upset over Thigpen's preseason needs to remember that he had no pre-preseason with the Bills due to the lockout. He's only been with the team a few weeks. Also, they should go back to the late 1980s before Frank Reich played in a real game. He looked horrible in preseason & was so bad the Bills left him unprotected in Plan B free agency before the 1989 season & nobody wanted to sign him. Until the backup QB plays with & against starters, his performance in preseason games can't properly be evaluated by fans. Fortunately, the coaches see these guys every day and have a lot more information in evaluating players. That's one reason that you can't use preseason performances to latch onto a guy or write him off because there's so much more going on that we never will see.

When was the last time the Bills cut anybody who did anything significant in the league? Parella? The only guys who left the Bills who did anything in recent years were unrestricted free agents who left on their own accord. Every year someone is afraid of cutting the wrong guy, but on a team whose 53 man roster will have about 10 guys nobody else would want, there is no danger of the Bills ever cutting a guy who will become a star on another team.

Jasper looks like an over-stuffed blue perogi when he's on the field. In that medium you'll be emulating him.

Considering I analyzed the entire schedule for conflicts when the schedule came out, I know I'm correct. Here's my analysis & I guarantee its accuracy: 9/11 @Kansas City: Yes! No competition 9/18 Oakland: No, Jets will be televised 9/25 New England: No, Ch 6 has 1 game & they'll take the Jets @4:05 10/2 @ Cincinnati: Yes! No competition 10/9 Philadelphia: No, Giants will be televised 10/16@Giants: Yes! 10/30 Washington (Toronto): Yes! No competition 11/6 Jets: Yes! 11/13 @Dallas: Yes! No competition 11/20 @Miami: Yes! No competition 11/27 @ Jets: Yes! 12/4 Tenessee: No, Jets will be televised 12/11 @ San Diego: Yes! No competition 12/18 @ Miami: Yes! No competition 12/24 Denver: Maybe, only competition is NE/Mia 1/1 @ New England: No, Jets will be televised

Fitzpatrick has no beard. The upper deck looks pretty empty, especially at the ends.

That would make more sense if Trent & the Oakland Raiders were in Buffalo instead of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The Bills should be on home TV 10 or 11 games this season, including all road games except the season finale at New England. I wouldn't call that limited coverage. I'll only have to go to a local place that has Sunday Ticket once this whole season.

I checked the website & they have only 4 teams this year: Las Vegas, Omaha, Sacramento & Virginia. Gone are Florida & Hartford. Click on Hartford & it says suspended operation. http://www.ufl-football.com/

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2011/08/25/2011-08-25_yankees_captain_derek_jeter_charlies_angels_star_minka_kelly_split_after_three_y.html

We're losing too many players to injury because Ralph is too cheap to buy good bandages, braces and tape.

0-17-The NFL hates Buffalo & will tack on another loss for spite.

No they won't. When the Bills 1st started here on the radio, they were a team that was contending for championships. In the past few years we've seen them dropped by the most powerful (in terms of distance from the area you could hear it) radio station in the area, demoted from AM to FM, and now dropped entirely. We also lost the pre and post game shows in recent seasons. It was as if they were just going through the motions broadcasting Bills games the past couple of seasons. I think there's a reason many have overlooked. Obviously, we've lost the bandwagon fans of the 1990s, but there's another factor-the availibility of Bills games on TV. A diehard fan can go in 2 directions-1)Get Direct TV and Sunday Ticket, assuring one of seeing all the Bills games at home; 2)Just about anyone who lives in the urban or suburban parts of the area can find a place that has the Sunday Ticket within a mile or 2 from where they live. Since the ability for anyone beyond a casual fan is there to see the games easily enough, the only void left is the person driving around, who won't listen to the entire game anyway.

Yes they are. If the game isn't sold out, then the people in Buffalo get to watch it on tape delay. In prior 2 preseason game seasons, the kids' day game sold out & there was no blackout, while the game that wasn't sold out was shown a day or 2 later on WKBW. The 1 game preseasons usually sell out because of kids' day & there is no blackout.

26 years ago, 1985, the 2nd season of back to back 2-14 seasons, the Bills were in similar shape. What was worse was in the prior 6 years they had lost 2 of their 1st round picks to other leagues. In 1979 Cousineau became the only player in NFL history to be the top pick in the draft & sign with the CFL and in 1983 Kelly signed with the USFL and we lost Cribbs to the USFL in 1984. The redeeming factors were we had drafted Bruce Smith in 1985 and maintained the rights to Kelly, who arrived a year later.

Another reason to doubt Nix. I doubt Ralph would ever do it again after the Donahoe disaster, but our tpo football guy has to have complete control over all personnel decisions. If Buddy isn't up to the job, it's time for him to retire again.

Here are my thoughts on this thread's topics. 1) I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. The team has very little talent on offense, especially the O-line, and it's defense will be relying on 2 LBs who haven't shown recently that they can play anything near a full season. Anyone who sees more than 5 or 6 wins isn't an optimist, they are delusional. 2) I believe in the good of the team long term, not game by game. If they're bad enough to be a 10 or 11 loss team, then I hope they're bad enough to be worse & get the top pick in the draft. I'm not talking tanking games, I just think if they're that bad, why not be the worst and get something out of it. One more bad year, which is going to happen anyway, may as well be really bad so we can get the impact QB who can win for us for the next decade. As a ticket buying fan, I have the right to root for anything I want to. I'm not rooting for them to lose from opening day, but if they're 2-10, I'd rather lose out and go 2-14 than see 2 meaningless December wins that cost us an impact franchise changing player. If you have any doubts how meaningless wins by a bad team hurts the long term health of the franchise look at the most recent drafts. Darius, a no-brainer at 3 looks like a can't miss. When they won a couple of more meaningless games & drafted out of the top 10, they ended up with Maybin & McKelvin. Even at 8, they selected Whitner. The higher the pick, the less room for error. Even in the Big Mike draft, once they got below Peppers, they were in crap shoot territory because that year class was so bad. 3) Ralph is not cheap. Look at him over the years. He spent with Polian. He jammed up the cap with Butler & spent in the early Donahoe years. Again-he's not cheap-he just doesn't like throwing good money after bad. As a result, Ralph opens his wallet when he feels he has the QB to win with & build around, but closes his wallet when he has no faith in the QB. Based on his actions, he does not have any faith in the current QBs to open up the wallet. That will only solve itself with a franchise QB to get Ralph excited again. 4) I hate to say this, but I have no faith in the Nix/Gailey duo. One was taken off the retirement scrap heap & the other off the coaching scrap heap after getting fired as an offensive coordinator. If this year gets bad enough to shake things up enough to get rid of both of them, I'm more than willing to watch 1 more year of bad football and have Ralph bring in the equivalent of what he did in 1978 when he brough in Chuck Knox.

He's just another draft choice who got beaten out by a guy another team waived and we picked up off the street. We're either getting some gems as street free agents, or we really stink.

I was sitting at my computer & my house started shaking. At first I didn't know if it was me or if it was an earthquake. It took about 5 minutes later for me to hear anything about it on the news.

Playoffs? I was making Super Bowl plans. That was the last time this team provided us with any hope. By the end of the season, we were just waiting for the day Jauron got fired.

If they let him play against guys who will be bartending in another month again, he might get another sack. Now other than guys who left on their own as unrestricted free agents that we couldn't stop from leaving, name me one player besides John Parella (and that was 17 years ago) we gave up on too early who went on to have a productive career-and don't say Todd Collins.

Because McDaniels wanted Tebow & McDaniels is gone. It was as bad a draft choice by a coach in his last year as Jauron wanting Maybin.

Favre ain't coming back for 2 weeks & then a backup role behind Manning. I'm surprised they haven't signed Jim Sorgi.

The last thing we need is bringing in possibly the dumbest thing Denver ever did in the 1st round. If he goes to the Rams, good, as long as he stays out of Buffalo.

Assuming Ralph lives a few more years, Doug Whaley will be the GM in a couple of years when Nix retires again. If the team is really bad this year, it could be as soon as 2012. If that's the case, I'd give Gailey 50-50 at best of hanging around as coach. I don't know if Whaley is a chan fan or whether he has a short list in the back of his mind of someone else to bring in. Russ Grimm used to be in Pittsburgh when Whaley was there & would want to fix the O-line ASAP. All Nix has to do is retire and at the press conference say "I'm too old for this s**t".

I laughed before I cried, then I laughed again.