Rubes

I respectfully disagree. That's not the point, and it's not a stupid one. But whatever.

Another thing to consider: as bad as the New England defense is, that was the most anyone has scored against them this season. (Tied with the Ravens.) And we were 15 yards away from 7 more.

I think so. I think Nix has always talked about the importance of re-signing your own FAs. I think it's clear our O-line is one of the (few) strengths of this team, and keeping that continuity is of extreme importance.

I'm not saying they are the same. I'm saying that helps to make my point. To put it briefly, consider: the difference for us between first place and last place is two teeny plays among thousands. With those two plays in our favor, we're in first place. It doesn't make us that much better of a team—a bit more clutch, perhaps, but still monumentally, historically bad on defense—but instead of being an afterthought in the league, people would be talking about us as a big factor in the playoff picture with a real chance of breaking through and winning the AFC East as we now become a divisional power. We wouldn't really be a "better" team. We'd just be "considered" a better team. Just with two little plays going differently. That's all it takes.

...which actually helps to make my point.

There certainly are such things as bad doctors. There are also such things as doctors who don't know the answer to every question. The good ones either know the answer, know how to find the answer, or know when to send you to someone else who does. If your doctor doesn't know what's going on, and doesn't seem to be offering any further help or advice, then that's probably a good time to look for (or ask to see) a different doctor.

*sigh* Okay, thanks. At least it's pretty cool that I could actually ask that of someone in the media and get an honest response.

Well, that's a refreshing perspective.

I don't recall what the original debate was about, but yes, he did run it more against the Pats* than against the Texans. But I think it's considerably more complicated to explain why he did than to just say he made more of a commitment to the running game. There are too many factors to count. Things like injuries (who's currently injured for us, who for them), matchups (how do our guys match up man-for-man against their guys, are there particular advantages or disadvantages against each team), defensive styles, and so on, that influence the guy's decision on how much to run. It may have been that he felt Cordy was struggling early against the pass rush, so throw a few more running plays in there to get his confidence and game feet back. Maybe same with Urbik. Maybe Wilfork was causing too much trouble with the pass rush, so he tried to run it a little more to keep him honest. I have no idea. Whatever it was, the circumstances made Chan believe he would be better off running more against the Pats* than against the Texans. That doesn't necessarily mean if we ran more against the Texans that we would have done better. But again, I have completely lost what the debate was about here, so I may just be making your point.

You disappoint me, Chris.

Did you mean 25 rushing plays? Fred had 16 and CJ had 9. But perhaps it's not the raw number but the actual percentage. With 40 passes against the Pats* (I'll make it 43 since there were 3 'rushes' by Fitz which were undoubtedly pass calls), we had a run-pass split of 37% (run) to 63% (pass). Against the Texans, it was 13 rushes (official count is 15 due to two Fitz 'runs') to 40 passes, for a 25%-75% split. So Chan certainly seemed to run less against the Texans, a better team against the run, but not by that much. The Texans are #3 against the run, the Pats* are #9 against the run. I'm not sure I would say that running a bit more against the Pats* proves anything, given that we obviously passed a lot more than ran against both teams. Of note, the Texans are also #3 against the pass, while the Pats* are #29 against the pass.

True. The Pats* defense had been allowing less than 100 yards rushing per game. We thrashed them for 165.

I certainly would agree that newspapers and journalism aren't what they used to be. Still, expecting that they just give away their content online for free is just nonsense. Many people don't realize this but the BN has been one of the few papers in the country that has been in the black for many years now. They are a very well run paper. If you don't like the journalists, think the content is poorly written, or you don't like supporting the paper or their journalists, by all means, don't read it anymore.

Eh, nevermind. 'MikeBillsFan' is obviously just coming on here to push his web site. He has three posts and they all say the same thing, directing people to his site. Ignore him.

Cool, thanks.

Not sure what on earth you're talking about. There was the fumble by Fitz, of course. But besides that, here are the other starting points for the rest of the Pats* drives: NE 27 NE 17 NE 18 NE 20 NE 20 BUF 39 (idiotic special teams penalty on Brooks, not the offense's fault) NE 20 NE 1 NE 32 NE 20

True, imagine how many more yards passing he would have had yesterday if he only threw the ball on target to his receivers.

Here's a toast to CodeMonkey being right. Hell I'd probably pay for another dinner for him if we run the table. (For the record, I had us at 3-6 and running the table as well. I just mixed up the ARI and TEN games.)

That's not the point. Here, I'll type it out. The point is this: Every NFL game consists of scores of plays. Take the game yesterday -- there were about 140 offensive plays by each team, and throw a dozen more or so in there for special teams plays. Some games have less, but not by that much. In general, there are somewhere around 125-150 plays per game. If you take the low end (125), and we've now played 9 games, that's around 1125 plays so far this year. Over one thousand plays during the season so far, and if just two—two!—had turned out just a wee bit different, that would be the difference right now between first place and last place. Despite the fact that our defense has been historically bad, despite all the hand-wringing and whining about the play calling, despite all of the injuries, bad bounces, and !@#$ing Bryan Scott having all day to himself to try and catch a ball dropping right into his hands. No matter how good or bad we have been, or have looked, of all the hundreds of plays that I've wanted to punch my hand through a wall (like every time a defensive end drops into coverage), it's still just amazing to me that altering two tiny little plays at the end of two games could have such a significant and dramatic impact on how we perceive things. Even for a team as ****ty as this one. (And note that these are plays at the end of games, not at the beginning, and thus they wouldn't have had any real downstream impact on the game -- in the game against TEN, stopping the fourth down play wins the game; against the Pats*, getting the touchdown wins the game. The Bryan Scott INT, had he not dropped it, would have changed the outcome of the game in ways that we could not possibly know.) Yes, it's entirely valid to say that one or two plays would have the exact opposite effect—Carrington's block against ARI, for instance, or the two plays you mentioned for NE making them 8-1. People who say "So what? It can happen to anybody, not just us" are missing the point. In a season of thousands and thousands of plays, it's just amazing to me how the way things are perceived can change in dramatic ways just by changing the outcome of one or two. Even though we suck—and we do suck—we are only two tiny little plays away form being tied for first place. Instead, we are mired in the cellar, as usual. That's all. You may all now return to your regularly scheduled team and media bashing.

Seriously, if we had a defense that was even middle of the road, completely average...we'd probably be sitting in first place and everybody would be singing Chan's praises, particularly for the offense. I don't think it really sinks in for some people how historically bad this defense has been.

I like the stationary/standby generator idea, never really knew anything about them. We have a fairly small house (about 2500 sq ft total), but I know next to nothing about the load of the things we use. I don't know if we'd need to run the AC off of the generator, but it would be good to be able to run the furnace (along with the rest). I have no idea how to calculate the amps/watts needed.

Read the post again. The point is there. In fact, you just made the same point.

I would just like one person from the media to ask the question, "Is Kirk Morrison really so bad that he is inactive every week?" Seriously, the guy had a pretty decent career up to the time he was picked up by Buffalo, and he's been on the shelf ever since. Given how God awful our LBs are, is he really worse than what we're putting out there? I feel bad for the guy, his career is going down the drain sitting on this Bills roster. I just want to know if he's really that bad, or if he just slept with somebody's wife. Wawrow, can you toss us a bone here?

I've been thinking of investing in a small generator for a while now, but I never really went beyond that. Now that we just had a crazy three-day snowstorm here in Salt Lake, it got me thinking again. I'm only looking for one to help keep the fridge going, and maybe a couple of lights and a space heater. The power goes out here maybe once a year at most, for a day or two, so it's primarily just a convenience thing, although it would be nice to have if it ever gets worse than that. The one thing that has always held me back, and I know this is kind of silly, but I have no idea what to do with them when they're not being used, which obviously can be for many months or longer. Since they have gas and oil in them, I assume it's not good to leave them for long periods of time like that, but what else do you do? Drain them? Run them periodically? How often? Thanks from a real n00b.