MattM

I could be wrong, but I recall reading that your sleep two nights before an athletic event is more important than your sleep the night before.....

Totally agree—that’s the awesome part of the Pegulas owning the team. I was doing cartwheels when they bought the Bills. I grew up in East Rochester (Fairport’s rival back in the day, perhaps hard to believe now considering they’re 6 times ER’s size), and was lucky enough to sit for a game in one of the Bills’ boxes due to a friend’s connections. I got to meet her and she was quite gracious and down to earth—we compared notes on growing up in ER and Fairport back then (I’m just a few years older than she is) and what we still loved about the area (for both of us that included Abbott’s on Fairport Rd!)— and she is indeed a fan, which is great to see. She and her husband have taken a bit of flack from time to time on their running of their teams, but it’s not for lack of trying or caring.

Neither of my kids were born (and onevis a mid-teenager)...,,

....

I thought in the compromise bill, the $10k is either property taxes or other state taxes (i.e. Income taxes) as a nod to to NJ/NY/CA Republicans. http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/20/pf/salt-deductions-new-tax-plan/index.html I live downstate and many, many people here (if not most) are screwed by the new tax plan.

I think you knew what he meant--SALT used to be fully deductible (with possible fade outs for high earners), but now it's capped at $10k, which is a pittance when talking about salaries in the multiple hundred of thousands or more. Trump did indeed %*^# just about everyone in NY on that.....

Add to that the second crap replay overturning of the spot and it very well may have been a different game. Better yet, how about if on top of that, we got one or two garbage calls in our favor like they do and it could have been quite different.

I've asked that to Pats* fans for years and have yet to get a reasonable response other than "....sore losers...grumble, grumble....". Funny how there are so many data points in the other direction (I can honestly list over ten games over the years where the officials shafted a Pats opponent), yet there are very few game changing calls that have gone against them (the Panthers game a couple years back being one of the very few exceptions). If these things are truly random or near random, it should even out over time, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Not even close. It's to the point here where we all know it's coming when we play them. You have to then ask yourself why and go from there. One fairly plausible explanation under this season's circumstances of centralized replay playing a hand in at least 4 of their wins is that there's a problem with said centralized replay. Add in their reputation for skirting rules and their past convictions for cheating to the mix and it becomes even more plausible. Under the current rules all it really takes is getting to Al Riveron, either positively ($, drugs, women, etc) or negatively (learn (or create) dirt and blackmail him with that). In a world where men are human and where officials in major sports leagues have been bribed (in addition to Donaghy you have the Serie A scandal in Italian soccer, points shaving scandals in college b-ball, Lenny Dykstra bribing or blackmailing umps for a smaller strike zone, etc) it's really not that hard to believe possible. It kind of reminds me of when a certain QB petitioned the league to allow away teams to use their own balls.....

They wouldn't, but Kraft certainly would. Here we are again, WEO, as predicted. Same team with something sketchy about them, over and over and over. If the three games with obviously garbage game changing calls (jets, Texans, Steelers) were called correctly (not to mention Bills and Charger games) they'd be fighting to make the playoffs last week, not sitting at 1 overall. All called by the same one replay official. Sure sounds to me like the potential for corruption got a lot easier in going to centralized replay. I wonder if Kraft was for or against that? Hey, how's that Alfonzo Dennard suspension coming?

You must have obviously missed some choice Belicheat moments like sending Devon McCourty out to face the media in his place after a tough playoff loss, or his running off the field to cry rather than shake Tom Coughlin's hand after "18 and D'oh" SB loss. Those were just a couple of his amazingly classless moves. To be hating on Mike Tomlin when you love a classless jerk like Belicheat is amazing to me...... PS. Let me know when Tomlin gets accused in court of banging someone else's wife. https://deadspin.com/188681/men-keep-your-wives-from-bill-belichick And compared to Kraft, who within about 6 months of his wife's death was dating a blond floozy young enough to be his granddaughter, Beli gets points for going semi-age appropriate with his mistress.....

Not sure if it's been mentioned above, but the other benefit of Cousins is it allows us to use all 4 of our top picks in the first and second round next year on other positions of need. That will also help our cap by hopefully providing 4 relatively cheap starters for the next 4-5 years. Compare that to the other option of packaging 2-4 of those picks to move up to get a rookie who may be great, but who may not,

Personally, I'm kind of shocked that more people haven't picked up on the fact that Tony Corrente, tonight's ref, just so happened to be the same ref who robbed the Jets of a game-winning TD vs the Pats* a couple months back. What a coincidence......

Looking at the low low post count, I might guess a Pats* troll is more likely.

I was actually at that game, too, with a grade school friend of mine--we were so wrapped up in snowmobile suits that we looked like Ralphie's brother on "A Christmas Story". How we got to pee that day without it taking a full quarter to take it all off and put it all on, I'll never know. My actual first game, however, was during the last year at the Rockpile. We saw Johnny U stomp us 17-0, the same score of my second game against Miami the following year. It was only at my 3rd game one further year later (one game a year--our big annual father-son Bills game trip) that I actually saw them score. A 16-7 or so victory over the Dick Butkus-led Bears. Our seats for my first game were in the very top row of War Memorial Stadium--I could literally look over the back to the street below. Other than the losing, good times, man, good times.....

Unfortunately, last time I looked, I didn't see too many difference makers in FA this year. Maybe we make a run at Lotuleilei due to the McDermott connection and our glaring DT need.

This is why we can't have nice things.....

That should be worth at least a game off.

Fins win

On the play before the TD Gronk obviously pushed off--no call, of course. It's like the WWF sometimes where NE* is concerned.....

Utter garbage PI call on that TD drive. Par for the course when you play the Cheats*....

And probably against a better D, too (I say that based solely on recruiting potential, as I'm not too up on the Cougars).

The bar really was pretty low last year, wasn't it?

Link to your second point? Is that in absolute numbers terms presumably? If so, it doesn't take into effect the fact that there are 6-7 times more whites than blacks in this country (making blacks 3x more likely than whites to face this). The relevant statistic would take that disparity in population size into account.

Too bad that there are about 7 times as many whites in the US (maybe more).......

Or when he and his father were sued by Nixon's DOJ for not renting to blacks, or when he told a subordinate in the '90's that he didn't want any black accountants, only Jewish ones, or his not wanting to see black dealers at his casinos, or when he pretended not to know who David Duke was last year so as to not have to disavow him (which he eventually did under more pressure), or his full-page ad against the Central Park Five (later exonerated by DNA evidence). That's just off the top of my head. You could almost literally go on all day. I'd forgotten what a cesspool this forum was. Now I remember why I rarely visit it......