MattM

My bad--just saw the other thread. Never mind.....

The $80 million man isn't even good enough to start in SF apparently. Wow--I didn't see that coming. I thought he'd played pretty well for the 9ers...... http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/...rback-clements/

I went as well with my dad and we had a great time. Went to the Epicenter for dinner a couple nights and Ratcliffe on the Green another (too rich for our palates!) and tailgated at a Bills-Panthers tailgate we read about on another board--felt like I was about 15 years too old and I'm not all that old, but we had a good time! Nice stadium, friendly fans and folks in the city. Everything was amazingly convenient since the stadium's in the city. Good overall experience.....

Alllrrriiigghhttt, we're the tops of the bottom!!!!

With that payroll it's more of a shock when they don't win the World Series than when they do. When you spend three times what the average team spends how do you lose a single game, much less a championship? MLB and the Yankees are the exact opposite of what Bills fans should want. If those same standards apply to the NFL (I'm talking to you, Jones, Kraft and Snyder), the best the Bills could hope be would be the Montreal Expos of the NFL--a decent farm team for the big money teams who steal their players as soon as their rookie deals are up......

You beat me to it....

John, I thought I noticed in the AP story last night posted by ESPN that they referenced his first concussion as being something like "against Arizona on Oct. 5" (ie., they didn't mention that it was last year), which struck me as odd at the time. I bet that's the culprit here. I suspect that they misedited your story, which I strongly suspect (knowing you) had the right year date on it originally. Just a hunch....

That's too bad--from what I've read about him he actually sounds like a very nice guy off the field. The "gentle giant" type with a wide variety of interests beyond football. I never root for injuries to opponents, although it's too bad the same thing hasn't happened to someone more deserving instead like, say, Vince Wilfork (and not just 'cause he's a Pat*, but more due to his style of play)......

Fouts mentioned that as well on the broadcast yesterday--I guess if you're not Tom Brady or Peyton Manning they don't throw the flag. What a joke....

Not a chance--they'd never have the class to show back up here. Hats off to our Jet friend......

Yeah, baby!!! About time!!!

I've been here screaming at my TV--"We need 5 more yards to make this a makeable FG in this wind!" and instead Dick just lets the clock run out after running a wide sweep play instead of just running up the gut twice to get those 4-5 yards. Incredible, just incredible.....

Nice call--so, tell me, do we win this game?

Joe Cribbs

Plus 1..........

Agreed, but it seems to be a given that ANY new owner of the Bills, in Buffalo or elsewhere, is going to have the debt to finance, so the question becomes where is it easier to finance the debt? Unfortunately, I'd say the answer is likely to be outside Buffalo--a shrinking population, little to no corporate HQs, an average income per resident that is less than most other parts of the country, etc. Realistically, I think the best Bills fans can hope for after RW's passing is that the team is sold to someone who will keep the team in the region--ie., the Niagara Frontier Bills, playing some games in Toronto and some in Buffalo. A sad state some may say, but much preferable to the other option of moving to a place like LA.....

I think Rodney passed that info on to Junior and some of the other guys over at Gillette--you know the team full of "over the hill vets" who just seem to crank it up a notch after arriving in Cheatsville. The only reason Rodney was caught was he was dumb enough to use his own name and address when ordering the stuff. How many of his old teammates were smart enough not to do that--I'm wagering a whole bunch of them myself.....

I lived in Japan for a year in the early 90s and missed all those games (including the Oilers comeback game) other than the Super Bowl when Dallas blew us out, which I got to watch early in the morning before work.....

Muchas gracias for the reply, but to me it's as much about the timing of the penalties and whether they were valid or not that causes suspicion. Simply because the Pats get flagged on average as much as the next team or approx. so doesn't really disprove my point. Many of the things that seem to get called against Pats opponents don't seem to be valid to many fans watching around the League or are at the least "extremely rarely" called (witness the Carr PI and the Harbaugh penalty last week for one of each there) and/or seem to come at crucial spots in a game when the Pats need a break to either come back from being down (that Ravens game two years ago I literally turned to my wife and said right before their last drive that the Pats would drive the field and score and if they seemed to get stopped the hankies would fly) or keep their opponent who's rallying down (like, for ex., the multiple ticky tack calls against the Bills in the 4th quarter of the 2006 opener). All that said, I myself was a bit shocked yesterday that Merriweather actually got flagged for taunting, as that's usually the kind of thing that the Pats get on someone else, so who knows, maybe someone's outbid them this year for the refs' services As noted originally, I'm not at the point where I actually think there's a conspiracy a la the Serie A, but still would not be surprised if we later found out that there indeed was something untoward going on the last few years there.....

+2, and before watching this game I really didn't like McDaniel, but I do now.....

Of course--do you expect anything less by now? How many data points do folks need to see that something is really funny about the the officiating in their games.....

At least there's a pretty good chance that this gets Dick fired (or at least it should) due to the penalties and errors that basically cost us this game. This one's on the O and special teams--an undermanned D did its job.....

A little early to be running for the bus, but I suspect our "rash of injuries" may continue as the team circles the drain.....

Hey, Tim, I recall a discussion in the offseason re: the New England Patriots and biased officiating (and being called a conspiracy theorist, but I can forgive and forget on that). Anyone else find it somewhat funny and ironic that here we are with the first real set of controversies around officiating and lo and behold, golly gee, it's another set of charges that the refs are favoring, drum roll please, none other than the Pats. How many data points do folks need before coming to the conclusion that something is indeed weird with them and the officials? I mean we've already got the Tuck Rule, the Colts AFCCG, the 2007 Ravens game, several games against the Bills (the worst probably being the 2006 opener-I've got that one TIVOed and some of those calls and no calls never cease to amaze me), an OT game against the Texans a few years back in which a very late PI way away from the play saved the game by taking away a Brady pick, etc. I also found it interesting that the media seemed to sanitize this story somewhat in terms of making it be about the RTP calls, as I recall reading initial quotes from Ravens players likening the whole game to the 2007 joke of a game against the Pats, which to me points to the much bigger, more general issue with New England and not just whether RTP calls protect QBs. Those quotes seemed to disappear from later articles on the story (perhaps after the NFL spinmeisters got through with the stories). I watched a good bit of the game (but admittedly not all of it) myself and found the PI or whatever it was on Carr, followed shortly thereafter by a bizarre call on Harbaugh for another 15, just plain ridiculous, as well as the spots and that fake field goal play, so to me it wasn't just the RTPs as a story as it's now being portrayed in the media. Someone really needs to look at this in a serious way for, as Ray Lewis would say, "the integrity of the game." Call me a conspiracy theorist again all you want, but I just know what my eyes see and from that angle it doesn't seem at all fair the way their games are called. I'm not saying that I can explain why it's happening and I agree with you that a large conspiracy is very tough to pull off, but it has been done before, and recently, in a major sport (look no further than the Italian soccer scandal two or three years ago, involving multiple teams and multiple refs). Money is a powerful motivator and can come from any number of sources (team ownership or a rogue employee with a slush fund within an organization, the League, a ratings driven TV network, gamblers, etc.), so who knows. I'm not to the point of believing necessarily that there is such a conspiracy, but I am at the point where it wouldn't really surprise me at all if we found out that such a conspiracy existed..... All that said, hope you've been well and are happy with the move to Buffalo, PS From someone else's thread--looks like at least the Onion is taking it seriously: http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print...early_receiving

Kraft and Jones did well, but if I recall the "Law of 72" correctly, Snyder's annual return comes out to about 7%, not sparkling by any means in a normal investment market.....