Albany,n.y.

I wrote this back in April. Since I don't think there's any chance we'll catch Carolina, I have mixed emotions. But I was pretty accurate in my assessment of our team approaching next Sunday: http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/111851-next-december-12th/page__p__1827396__fromsearch__1#entry1827396 Posted 20 April 2010 - 06:39 PM On Thursday we will be drafting our 1st round pick. By the time we pick, the best players at our biggest positions of need, LT, QB & NT will be off the board. We'll have to settle for a 1st round talent who is not likely to be the impact player we need. Now, lets remember those meaningless games that we won late in the season-for all those who felt so good when we won them, now enjoy watching the best players go off the board by pick nine. My point is that this team sucks & when you suck it's better to lose those games in November & December if you have any hope of getting the type of player that can finally end the years of losing. Do you think we get all of those 4 AFC championships without Bruce Smith? Now let's fast forward to next December. Odds are pretty good we're not going to be in the playoff hunt. In fact odds are pretty good we'll be in position for a top 5 pick in the draft. When the home game against the Browns on December 12th is here, try to remember that empty feeling we're having this Thursday as Okung, Bradford, Suh, and the guys rated 2nd best at LT & DL go flying off the board long before pick 9. Now some of you will be rooting hard for win #3, 4 or 5 of the season, but please, don't get on the cases of the people like me who will be remembering this Thursday & would rather not experience the "good feeling" of seeing the Bills win their 4th game at the expense of losing out on a player who could be instrumental in turning this franchise around for the next decade.

Is that a knock on Fitzpatrick?

See what happens when the NFL blacks out games

He was better after he left the Bills, signing with SD as a plan B free agent. He became one of the leagues most feared receiving RBs with SD. Here's his career stats: http://www.nfl.com/players/ronnieharmon/profile?id=HAR215150

I was in the other endzone. As soon as the ball hit his hands I lowered my binoculars & jumped up cheering. Then I went to high five the fans around me and the guy sitting behind me told me he dropped the ball. I couldn't believe it, I saw the ball go in his hands & I thought the game was over.

I think he's just yanking the chains of the members of the grammar & spelling police. What's your badge number?

They were originally the Los Angeles Chargers.

The schedule looks as tough, if not tougher than this year. We have the NFC East and an improving AFC West as the variable divisions we play. 9-7 may be a dream.

I'll take it that you're joking.

If God was a Steelers' fan, they would have covered the spread.

Jay Leno & Jimmy Kimmel were making jokes about Johnson & the Bills last night in their monologues. Here's what I was able to find: Leno: "How about the Buffalo Bills? Just minutes after Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson dropped the game winning pass in the end zone, he went on Twitter and blamed God. … Hey, he thought God made him drop the pass. The Buffalo Bills are 2-9. God gave up on the Bills a long time ago." Kimmel: "The Bills lost to the Steelers in overtime thanks primarily to a pass wide receiver Steve Johnson dropped in the end zone. … After the game, he lashed out on Twitter at who? At God. That's right. He said, 'I praise you 24/7!!!!!! And this how you do me!!!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How???!!! I'll never forget this!! Ever!!! Thx tho…' God tweeted back, 'LOL' and 'It's all good.' I got news for you: God doesn't tweet. God's thumbs are too big to tweet. By the way, if God cared about you at all, he wouldn't have you playing for the Bills."

Only if it doesn't conflict with the Giants. The NY teams don't usually get flexed to 4:15 because the other team has already been scheduled at that time. So unless the other team is scheduled or gets flexed to night, flexing a 1:00 game to 4:15 doesn't happen to the Jets or Giants.

They're going to flex the Browns game to Sunday night.

The OJ version of Jingle Bells, recounting his career with the Bills up to the murders: Dashing through the snow In a one-horse open slay O'er the fields we go Laughing all the way Bells on bobtails ringa Making spirits bright What fun it is to laugh and sing A slaying song tonight!

I thought it was around 50-50% Bills/Steelers fans. I took it as a total insult to the Bills players & fans that there were that many Steelers fans there & I wish management felt the same way. I think the team needs to re-think the order they sell the group tickets and give people in Buffalo a shot at the individual games before the group sales sell all those tickets to fans from the opposing city.

That would mean a new CBA and an uninterrupted season.

If you think 2010's schedule is tough, take a look at next year's. AFC west with away games in KC (again) & SD, NFC East and of course, 2 games against the rest of the AFC East. It may be too early to tell, but 8-8 or 9-9 looks like it would be an accomplishment.

If comparing a player with a guy who helped his team make the playoffs & won a division title is a trashing, we have very different viewpoints on how to trash a player. If you want to see my definition of trashing a player, read some of the posts before Fitzpatrick was named the starter by other posters. I'm not trashing Fitzpatrick, I'm just keeping it real. It's amazing how Fitz has gone from a guy 1/4 of this board wanted cut to someone who now can be entrusted to lead this team to the promised land. The guy still has the same limitations. I've been realistic about Fitzpatrick all along while others have had so many mood swings on the guy, they'd qualify for a Prozac prescription. The guy is a great backup who can be a decent starter, but never an impact player. That's reality. If proper evaluation of a player's talents is your decription of a trashing, because you disagree with my assessment, which in the 2 years he's been here has been more spot on than most, so be it.

Here's why. I'm not a stat boy, I think QB stats are among the most misleading statistics in all of sports. Especially the QB rating which rewards QBs who have a better TE than RB in the red zone. What difference does it make among QBs who drive the team all the way down the field if with 1st & goal at the 3, one QB hands it off to his RB for a TD & one throws it to his 6'6" TE in the endzone. They both drove for TDs but the one with the big target in the end zone will look better on paper. Let's not even get into sack prone guys like RJ who had inflated QB stats from completion % to QB rating, or Trent Edwards who is too afraid to throw the ball into tight coverages, but can look better on paper than on the field. So any statistical comparison between the 2 is irrelevant to me. Now that my rant on QB stats is over, here are the similarities. Both are smart guys who were disregarded by the NFL. Fitz a 7th rounder, Fiedler a UFA. Both bounced from team to team early in their careers. Both were given a chance by proving themselves on the field after being thought of as nothing more than a smart career backup. Both are guys who can win in the right situation, but will never carry a team on their backs. Both always have to fight year to year to retain their starting job. Both are viewed as a caretaker QB who their team will always be looking to upgrade from. Both are overachievers who will battle to stay in their jobs. Both (Fiedler for sure)can lead a team to the playoffs, but are unlikely to go all the way. I don't understand why some people feel I trashed Fitzpatrick by the comparison. Fiedler, at this point put up a lot more Ws and if the 2011 Bills were to hit 10 wins, like Fiedler did with the Dolphins, most fans around here would be ectatic. I still judge QBs by Ws & not stats & Fitz has the potential to get the Bills Ws, like Fiedler did with the Dolphins, and keep the starter's job a few seasons. However, I don't feel Fitzpatrick is the guy to lead the Bills to the Super Bowl. By the way, before this season started, the cut Fitz crowd was really on my case because I thought they were way off base thinking Fitz was going to be cut. If you think I bashed Fitz, go back to all the April-September posts where I defended the guy, including the one where I had him as the QB with the surest spot on the 53 man roster.

I'll take a stab at it. 1st off you've included too many guys who, no matter what their skin color, wouldn't have lasted long. Stewart, Lucas & King didn't have the talent to last a long time. Carter's career was destroyed by drugs similar to Todd Marinovich's. Culpepper & Cunningham had injuries that affected their careers-plenty of white QBs get injured a lot too (RJ & TE in Buffalo), although some black QBs have come from QB running offenses growing up and are more likely to take off & run-more running plays by a QB will result in more injuries. Vick's case is unique due to the dog fighting. Young is a head case, he almost had a nervous breakdown earlier in his career. I don't know if he's that different than a white bust headcase like Ryan Leaf, but so far he's had more success. McNabb has had a long, productive career, he's just not a HOFer, similar to Phil Simms with the NYG. Finally, there's still too small a sample to draw any real conclusions, why that is is another issue.

If you're looking at a parallel career, look no further than Jay Fiedler, another smart, overachieving Ivy Leaguer who managed to start for a few winning seasons with the Dolphins in the early 2000s. Fiedler was able to lead the Dolphins to 3 double digit winning seasons, but was never looked at as a guy who could lead a team to a championship. So the long term question is would you have been satisfied having Jay Fiedler as our QB in his prime? If the answer is yes, Fitz is your QB the next few years. If the answer is no, we have to search for someone better, but maybe not this year. Now that we have virtually no chance at the #1 pick, I wouldn't spend our top pick on a QB. I think only Luck was worth unseating Fitzpatrick next year this early into our rebuild. We also cannot afford to take a shot on Mallet or any other 1st round QB when we have so many other needs and each of the other QBs have question marks. So let's keep searching for the franchise QB to replace Fitzpatrick, but let's not reach in the 1st round this year with Luck out of the equation.

Anyone who has ever parked in a stadium lot at Foxboro has to know if they're not the worst, they're pretty darn close to the worst. How many other stadiums have parking lots that are so bad getting out of that the private lots surrounding the stadium get to charge more than the team's lots? After getting stuck deep in the lot a couple of times, even when I arrived early hoping to avoid it & they still sent me to the back of the lot, I will never park in a Gillette Stadium lot again. If he was really that smart, he'd have figured out a way to make it so that parking in the stadium lot at least as valuable as parking in a private lot. The fact that the market dictates that the private ones can charge more indicates he's doing something wrong when it comes to parking at Gillette Stadium.

One thing she definitely does is overrate Campbell. By doing so, it makes me question her knowledge of the NFL in general. Doesn't she understand that any former 1st rounder who is traded for a 4th rounder is considered a throwaway player by the team trading him away? Doesn't she understand that when a team trades a 4th rounder for a veteran QB, that they realize that if he had any real value as a starter, they could have never have obtained him so cheaply? It's amazing how people look at QBs obtained on the cheap as the answer, when if they had more ability, they'd have more value than what they were obtained for. QB is the most valued position on the field & nobody just gives a starting QB away. Just to put the Campbell trade in perspective, the Bills took a 4th rounder for a guy drafted at a similar spot as Campbell in the draft. The guy failed his physical & got returned, but Bill Polian was willing to give a 4th for John McCargo. That should tell anyone how little value a guy has who is traded for a 4th round pick. Of course he'd be on a short leash when occupying the most important position on the field.

Thanks for all the info. I saw a bad review of the Mercedes' handling, but your drive sounds like it handles up to my expectations. I live right down the road from Slingerlands & go to the Price Chopper there.

Once real free agency started, those of us who were around then knew we would never see as talented a Bills team as the 4 time Super Bowl teams ever again. In this era you can't keep all those Hall of Famers & borderline HOFers together that Polian put on one team. Now someday we might win a Super Bowl, but the team won't have all that talent as long as those Super Bowl era Bills teams had. I remember going to the AFC Championship gave vs KC and thinking I better cherish every moment because it will probably be the last one of that era.