MattM

That's good to hear--too often it's mainly the negative stories that you see, a la Vick and Stallworth, these days. My wife and I got to meet Eric Wood at a Bills Backers event in NYC last month and I agree that he seemed like a good guy, very earnest and seemed to be very glad to be both in the League and playing for the Bills. Let's hope he and Levitre both have long and productive careers in the Red, White and Blue!

Congrats! I did the same thing with my kids when they were born--their hospital pictures are of them wearing a little Bills cap (a bit unusual in Connecticut!)

Here are some public company comparables, as they say in the biz, for pulp and paper companies: Abitibibowater--went into bankruptcy in April http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aRwUKRRNEkI4 Weyerhauser--Lost over 60% of its value in the last two years: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=WY#char...ource=undefined Kraft's company is private, so it doesn't need to publicly publish its results, but I'd take an educated guess that they're not doing too much (if any) better than their brethren. If you go onto their website, you'll see that the other parts of their business being touted are "real estate" and "private equity", neither of which is exactly burning it up right now, either. I point this out since some Pats* fans seem to think that Kraft if just made of money and the Pats* will be one of the teams that dominate if the League goes uncapped. I'd have thought that myself 12-18 months ago, but now I'm not so sure. While it's obvious that many businesses are worth significantly less than they were a year ago, pulp, paper, real estate (especially commercial) and PE are all leading laggards as you might say, faring even more poorly than the average businesses it appears.....

Yeah, it does actually. What they all did was downplay the seriousness of the offense "for the good of the League", which doesn't mean that they all approved of what the Pats* and Belicheat did, of course. Remember, they are all owners of the "NFL Franchise" and any tarnishing of the franchise hurts all of them in the pocketbook. If it were to come out that one of the most successful teams in the League had been cheating for years, wouldn't that undermine the legitimacy of the entire League and turn off fans? To turn one back on you, how else do you explain things like the NFL initially implying that the cheating was a recent development when announcing the punishment in the fall (and after they'd destroyed what they thought was all the evidence), but only when faced with additional evidence in the form of Walsh that February admitted that it had gone back several years? What they tried to do, and were largely successful at doing, was sweep all of this under the rug and try to get back to business as usual before the fans realized how deep the cheating went. On the CBA, what I personally suspect is that certain owners really didn't want a salary cap and thought that this option might be a way to get rid of it. I also suspect that some of those same owners (read Kraft and Jones, among others) may be rethinking that in light of the current economic situation, which has shown that sports don't have the pricing power with fans that they based a lot of their projections on. They're watching an empty Yankee Stadium with horror, no doubt, and are also following the Jets and Giants difficulties with PSLs, both in the richest city in the country (albeit one where the financial sector is very large.) When you're levered 3 or 4 to one (and that's a conservative estimate) on some of these stadium (like "Jerry Jones" stadium) and real estate deals (like Patriot* Place) and your cost of funding goes up 2-3 % (again, being conservative, considering how much spreads have blown out in the last two years) from your projections, that can really hurt. Some simple math here--for a billion dollar stadium at 4-1, that's $800 million--paying 2% more for that money means you've got $16 million less per year than your original projections. That's a big chunk of change for teams that have net income of $30-40 million in total (and those are the high earners in the League if they're to be believed, like the 'Pokes at $30 million and the Pats* at $40m). Good thing the Pats* have the highest ticket prices in the League to service that debt, since I thought I'd read that neither they nor the 'Pokes have secured long-term financing on those palaces, meaning they're subject to the debt markets' vagaries described above. Wonder how Krafts' other business is doing? Paper must be a really lucrative business in the new media age, right?

Many thanks, Lori. Wasn't Peters replaced at LT in some of those early games by Walker or Chambers, however? I could have sworn that Walker played a good bit of LT early in the year, but maybe I'm getting myself confused with the prior year when Chambers/Walker covered for Peters when he was hurt at year end.

Peters has talent--I don't think there's a question of that. He just didn't seem to play that well last year, probably in large part due to his lack of TC and conditioning issues early in the year. I also thought that he really didn't play (or at least start) in the first two or three games of the year--i.e., the wins against Oakland and Jacksonville, for ex.--but could be wrong about that. Anyone have that info handy? To me, if he didn't play in those games (i.e., wins, albeit against weaker opponents) that also bolsters the argument that he wasn't as vital a cog as some national media folks think.....

Actually, there were a number of stories during Spygate that stated or implied that players and coaches at least were pretty much told to say nothing negative about Spygate in terms of what they really felt. One I recall in particular was written by someone on SI.com (either King or Z) at the combine that year and was quoting folks in attendance (mainly coaches, but some players) anonymously and "off the record" for that reason and guess what, those folks were ripschitt mad at Belicheat and the Pats*, but were pretty much told to gag it officially. Folks closing ranks for their overall long-term mutual benefit happens all the time, even when some individuals in the group find it very distasteful to do so. Why do you find that so hard to believe, especially when applied to the NFL, which is run notoriously well (read disciplined) among sports leagues. Why, just look at the united front the owners are putting up in their dealings over the CBA recently, for example. I'm sure that there are differing opinions there (must be, since some, like your owner were among the architects of the original deal they're now trying to break--funny how "business geniuses" like Kraft and Jones seem to get let off the hook for that one, yet guys like Wilson and Brown who voted against it were so chastised as dottering old fools at the time), but we don't really see them, least of all in the press.

Likely written by someone who has about 1/12th the knowledge of the Bills that the avg poster here has. It's amazing that some of these folks have jobs in sports journalism......

From me as well--good article.

Again, it's not straight up--it's Josh Reed plus a 2. Sounds close to right to me.....

But that's why we'd be giving them a decent player (remember, most of Reed's catches were for first downs, he's a great blocker in the running game and if he'd stayed healthy he was on pace for 70 catches in a "run first" offense) and a 2. This isn't a "straight up" trade. The 2 is the problem to me. If we could do this for Josh Reed and a 3, I'd be all over it, especially considering this is Josh's last year under contract I believe (but could be wrong). I like Josh, but the opportunity to get a 26 year old Pro Bowl DT is too good to pass up.

There were rumors earlier in the offseason that the Pats* wanted him, since they need a pass rusher, with the potential that he move to OLB. May still be some life to that, since if you look at their roster, they really are pretty thin at LB generally. If something were to happen to Mayo or Thomas (their only two decent LBs, and one of them being 32 years old), their D could really reek this year, considering the state of their secondary behind those LBs. Their D-line is solid, but there are definitely chinks in the rest of the armor.....

Would have been even more interesting had Goodell not destroyed the evidence and followed up on some of the other accusations that were leveled against the Pats* at around the same time (headsets going out in Gillette at weird times (two head coaches--Marinelli and Del Rio--each brought that up separately), bugging defensive players to pick up audibles and the like) instead of just sweeping it all under the rug in the name of protecting the sport (and, more importantly, one of his main benefactors and the man who helped him get his job).....

I was thinking the exact same thing. I'm incredibly glad that he's off the show (and suspect that was the "idea" all along).....

As I said, I hope it's just a snafu on their side, but I also strongly suspect that they, like all similar organizations, do have someone who reads those kinds of requests when they come in (and not weeks or months later). If so, I think that we can all pretty much guess what that letter said based on the article. The person for the Pats* who read that article must really not be the sharpest knife in the drawer to not immediately elevate something like that up the right flagpole pretty quickly. If they did not do so, then there's your answer--an incompetent junior person, no big shock. If, however, that person did run things up the flagpole and there was still no response (or at least not a timely one, and from that article it sounds like months went by after the request without a response), then that's just weird, as I originally noted, especially for a team that's supposed to be the end all, be all in sports and just all around swell guys (if you don't believe me, just ask them and their fans, who, BTW, are themselves disappointed in the lack of a response as per the Pats* message board that I found this story on). Don't get me wrong--I'm smart enough to realize that just because someone plays for a football team I don't happen to like doesn't mean they're a total D-Bag. Look, even Vince Wilfork and yes, the much-maligned Tedy Bruschi, do some great charitable works (for ex., that great story where the Pats* brought in a young boy with cancer to get a private tour of their facility at Gillette, including his own jersey and name on the scoreboard, and Bruschi imploring him to go ahead and touch the Lombardi Trophy--very good stuff and you really got the impression that Bruschi had put some thought into the visit, all to his credit). I just think it's odd that a team that gets so much positive press and is held up as the role model for all other teams in all things somehow just completely missed the boat on this one.....

I'd like to think that if it was the Bills, the school would have the jersey (and it wouldn't surprise me if Wilson himself would do something special for the school, but that's just my opinion). Just very strange--I'd also like to think that it was just a snafu on the New England side, but who knows. Maybe the all-mighty, media-loved Pats* just ain't all that when the spotlight's off them--as I've always said, character is most revealed by the actions you take when no one is watching (or you think that no one is watching perhaps in this case).....

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/...m?storyid=91679 An incredible tragedy, no doubt at all about that. It's just downright weird that the Pats* didn't respond to the school's request for a jersey..... :"The kids all knew what a New England Patriots fan David was," Julie Amegashie said Wednesday. Her son, Adrian, is one of the magnet students who helped establish Forever in Our Heart. The students tried to get a jersey from the NFL but didn't get a response. "We wrote a letter to the Patriots asking for a jersey," Adrian Amegashie said Thursday. "I was a little disappointed we didn't hear back.""

He ain't saying that we'll beat them--he's just saying that they're not as good as the hype. I agree with him. I think that it's the very rare sportswriter who can actually look at a team, the changes that have been made to that team (whether it be actual player changes or just the passage of time) and the other teams in the League and take a well-informed judgment about that team's prospects for the upcoming season. Way too many of these guys go with the "Let me see how good they were last year" and tweak it very slightly approach.....

Congrats (and way to support the team staying in WNY)!

No one's mentioned that we won't have Marshawn for that game--advantage Pats*. I knew that we'd open with them as soon as I heard about his suspension--funny how that works. Kind of like the 4 years in a row they got to play us after a bye, many of those years we were considered their closest competition (such as it was) for the title. Funny how we NEVER got to play them after the bye during that period. This year, guess who New England* gets after the bye--Miami. The more things change, you can always count on the NFL front office looking out for certain teams.....

And the alternative is not buying tickets and the team moving, which I suspect it may still do even if we do buy tickets. If you want to find a villain in all of this, I'd suggest looking no further than the current "new breed" of NFL owners who are seeking ways to enhance the revenue of their own (largely big market) teams over the League's old more equal revenue sharing model (you know, the model that made it the most successful sport in America). It's honestly not Ralph's and Brandon's fault that the Western NY area has few high paying jobs, is bleeding people yearly and has few major corporations to support luxury boxes (read "unshared revenue"). Them's just the facts. Under those conditions, it will become increasingly harder to compete for FA talent, so you'd better hope they scout really well out of college. In a kind of ironic way, the current economic downturn might be good for teams like the Bills--watching Jerry Jones not get naming rights deals and having trouble selling tickets and watching Kraft's Patriots* Place (you know, the joint venture he did with CBS, one of the League's networks--no conflict there) flop, may put a little humbleness into those blowhards who have been among the most intent on changing the old model.....

Me neither, especially since you consider that our 3rd wideout had 56 catches last year in 12 1/2 games (or about 70 plus in 16 in a run first offense), two youngsters in SJ and Hardy and the underused Roscoe Parrish. This team is stacked at WR. I had a flight for work yesterday and I read some of this on the flight (after paying a ridiculous $14 for it) and thought that a lot of the rankings were garbage--based more on either name recognition or how popular (ie., big market) the team the player played for was on. For ex., no way is Stroud the 21st ranked DT in the League. I also thought Marshawn was ranked way too low as well as our CBs (for ex., McGee, who is at this stage of his career better than McKelvin, not even being mentioned).

There were a ton of questionable calls in that game, from the no offsides called on the play before JP got sacked in the end zone (when the Pats* defender was two steps into our backfield at the snap--I've got TIVO and watched that one over and over) to the "inadvertent whistle" when Clements was heading to the end zone a pick of Brady. That was one of the "worst" (and I use that pejoratively, because I personally suspect that it may have been more than "poor" officiating) officiated games I've ever seen.....

It's good seeing these guys doing something for charity like that. Seems like most of the site is devoted to his charity work. No problem at all with that to me.....

My wife and I did head into the city and checked this out. It was an interesting event--there was a $25 cover charge (but wings and free beer went with that) and by the time we got there at 6:20 there were about 15-20 people maybe attending. We got to talk to Eric for a bit and take a picture with him. Seemed like a very nice guy, very happy to be in the League and with the Bills. He was very friendly and was talking to all of the fans there. It was funny, but someone asked him who he grew up rooting for as a kid and it was the Bengals. Fair enough, IMHO, considering where he grew up. He also told us that he wasn't being paid for attending, but that he and his girlfriend got free air fare and a hotel for the weekend and it sounded like a good opportunity to him to check out NY and to get to meet some fans of his new team. All in all, a very worthwhile event. The team (and/or McFadden's) ought to consider more fan-friendly events like this. My wife and I will root a little harder for #70 after tonight, for example......