OCinBuffalo

While we are at it, I'd take the fly half too and give him a shot at backing up Chandler.

Exactly. Rex Ryan probably has this quote painted above his bed, in his car, and carved into his desk. The trouble with using the media for shameless self-promotion is that there's always a potential for backlash. As far as ButtFumble is concerned? F him. I have been saying he is a phony QB, was manufactured by ESPN, and whose #s are inflated by his defense and running game, for 3 years now. Yes, that was right after the famous "back to back AFC Championship games"(about to become a cliche): http://forums.twobil...hez +romo +espn The man can't play the position, period. He makes you think he can, because he has the physical talent, but, mentally he is simply not suited for it. You want to do stats? Jim Kelly's Bills D wasn't even close to as good as the Jets has been for Sanchez. IN FACT the Jets D in terms of yards allowed, is far and away superior to the SB Bills Defenses. See for yourself: http://www.pro-footb....com/teams/buf/ The only time they were top 5 is in 1993: #5 in points allowed. But, 2 times the Bills D was #27 in yards allowed. That's not even close. Pettine's Defenses used to constantly give Sanchez the ball. Their D was the opposite Buttfumble: they always showed up in the big game. But, you won't find me telling anybody other than Bills fans that he sucks. By all means: I want the Jets to start ButtFumble as many times as possible. I'd much rather have the idiot that I know, than the potential idiot that I don't know, and who could suddenly be good, in Geno Smith.

Old draft reality: You have to start with the lines, because we are going to play the West Coast or power running game, and so are they. We'll pass with 1-2 TEs in the game, and we have a FB as well. New draft reality: The lines are still important, but nowhere near as important as they once were, with the rise of mobile QBs, and spread offenses that get the ball out in 3 seconds or less. This means that the run is now the change up that the pass used to be. Old draft reality: You only need 1 good CB, in case the other team has Jerry Rice, as you can largely scheme away any weaknesses you have. As long as your D line is dominant, and your LBs can cover/can rush, you can live off of having a so-so secondary(see: the Dallas Cowboy defense of the 90s under Dave Wannstedt) New draft reality: 1. There aren't enough players playing CB in the entire country right now. Most of the guys who used to play that position are playing: basketball. Thus, because there are less quality players at CB, you are going to bust more often than not when you pick one. 2. Meanwhile, 3 WR sets are the BASE offense. That means the starting D has 3 CBs on it. It ain't enough to have a good #1 and a decent #2 anymore. You need 3 decent ones. 3. The number of CB busts means you have to devote more resources to the position than you want to, and they have to be higher resources. You add 1-3 and you get: If you have a chance to draft a sure thing at CB by taking one in the 1st? You do it, every single time. If you can't do that, you draft multiple DBs in the lower rounds, because maybe, just maybe, you get what you MUST HAVE. Old Draft Reality: The Pittsburgh Steeler/New England Patriots LBs are the class of the league, that's why they win, and that's why they keep drafting them. New Draft Reality: You need 1-2 good LBs, not 3-4. You can afford to use specialists, you only need 1-2 of them to be 3 down players. Same old Same old: You have to have a good D line, because not only do teams still run the ball, they also run the wildcat, the spread, the read option...the..... Inescapable Conclusion: If we are taking draft resources from anywhere, to deal with the CB problem, and to a lesser degree S problem, it should be the LB position. The need for O line hasn't changed much. The need for WRs has gone down, because now you are attacking with 3+ of them, but only 1 needs to be open. It's like the terror thing: the offense only needs to be right in one place, while the CBs need to be right everywhere. The need for a old school, dual role TE is practically gone. You can specialize. The need for QB has gone up, even higher than it was. But above all: you have to have a pass rush. The difference between playoffs and not is best defined by pass rush or not.

Wow. ESPN is not trying to spin. Jaworski is laying into them. He says they aren't going to come out smoking, and that it's gonna take some time. Jaws is gonna get banned for 7 days. "They could have blown em out in the 1st quarter". Nothing explains away this performance. Nothing. Spare me the preseason excuse. They don't look like the Pats we know. Brady looked like he was 60% of himself, which, make no mistake, is still good. His 60% is better than ~half the QBs in the league. But, that's never, ever going to be good enough to overcome what I saw from the Patriot D. Absolutely. Somehow, I screwed up and the last 2 sentences of my post got cut off. This is a fine replacement. EDIT: I bolded that because I had to. This is a weakness we damn well better exploit. Especially in the screen game. My O lineman shouldn't be faster than your LBs, and beating them to spots over and over.

Which line? I'm watching delayed...they just showed a graphic of the three guys that are no longer on the team from last year. 2 starters from what I can tell. Not the line that went to the playoffs 2 years ago. Perhaps this one is better? I don't know. But, man for man? Pats O line doesn't look good at all. They look lost on some plays. They've done a good job of picking up press, and Brady has made them pay on a few, but, Detroit hasn't blitzed really. They've only pressed, with LBs standing still for reasons passing understanding. If they were blitzing in the first half? Brady would be in even bigger trouble than he has been.

What does that have to do with the fact that the Pats have 32 yards on 18 carries for a whopping 1.8(I rounded up from 1.77) Ypc? Please. Get a grip. Their run game against a good D line is utter crap....and I write this, as Brady got sacked...again.

Pats run game is awful. They are lucky the score isn't 21-3. The Lions undisciplined play is why it isn't. Pats have no answer for Lions quickness on O.

We may not want to sleep in that bed, once Whaley has made it. That's a sticky situation. We have to extend lots of guys, very shortly. Wood has been injured a lot. So it's probably best to see if Wood is healthy, before extending him. The last thing we want is to be stuck in that bed, with all of us feeling salty.

Yes, as an exec, that's what I want. What does that prove? Assume ESPN has none of the issues I've stated, and there was no opportunity for FOX. Wouldn't Fox execs still want real bottom line revenue with positive growth? No, I haven't. In fact I've said the opposite: they are a behemoth. When their valuation was $30 billion, they had no competition. Same at $20B, same at $10B. I would have said they were a smart buy for anybody, in 1988. I looked it up: ABC bought the controlling interest in 1984. I was in middle school, so they were just a little ahead of me back then. But even as a middle schooler, I would have made that deal, because I watched ESPN every day. Again, talking about history is pointless. We are talking about now. Now is when real competition enters this market. The only thing that is different from 1988 until today: ESPN now has real competition. Every time I say: competition, or, crap product, you keep telling me about valuation. Since when does valuation = quality or ability to adapt and compete? Or, do you know who this guy http://en.wikipedia...._Edwards_Deming is, and do you want to talk about GM's valuation in the early 1970s? I don't think that you do, but, don't let me stop you. This presumes that FOX cannot have affiliates? Or, that FOX cannot steal ESPN's affiliates? Or, create their own affiliates down market who can compete with ESPN's. I am a good listener. A soon to be retired Exec VP once told me: "Never let what your main line go south. Ever. It doesn't matter if it merely breaks even or loses some. Your main line will always be who you are." Now, you're telling me that the main line, ESPN cable channel, losing eyeballs is no big deal? I am thinking he is probably right.

Dude, the whole thing remains to be seen. FOX/NBC could be as wrong as Trump was about the USFL. The question is: why is FOX/NBC doing this now? Affiliates are going to do whatever makes them the most $, and have 0 loyalty beyond that. Was the internet invented yesterday? Was cable TV? All of this has been around for years, and so has ESPN's market share and profitability. ESPN has been absolutely huge since the early 90s, even before Disney. Your link attempts to gloss over the real problems ESPN faces with their potential over-extension in live commitments, in the face of finally facing real competition, by devoting a single sentence to it? Your link talks about history. I want to know about now. What has changed? The only thing I see is: brand loyalty, for the first time ever, is weakening. I see the same pattern as CNN. Crap agenda driving customers elsewhere, over time, once that elsewhere exists. Please understand, this comes from a guy who has spent 20 years watching Berman every Sunday night during football, and Sportscenter 3 times a week minimum. I've been as loyal as the next sports fan, but, if something better comes along: I'm gone.

Oh really? Well then you are going to love this(quoted from Kelly the Dog's Link): (hehehehehe....apparently Kelly forgot who he was talking to. "The answer is in the link..." Yeah it sure is, Kelly) The writer of the link has missed it completely. Talk about Fox Butterfield. http://online.wsj.co...4228137272.html Yeah, we are much better off with Jets fan bois writing and producing ESPN's work. (There is your inexplicable reason why ESPN still devotes most of its time to Buttfumble vs. Geno, and much less on EJ vs. Kolb.) Yeah, the in-studio suckiness has nothing to do with the fan boi office culture, and the on-site quality is merely coincidence. Yeah, people who never spend any time watching the games, at the games, are much better suited to tell us what is happening in sports. Yeah, there's no chance for an agenda to be formulated by fan bois in an office, who never actually have to go and see the games for themselves. Besides, who wants to go watch camp at St. John Fischer anyway? Let's just write what we wrote last year, and then hit the bar! Yeah, this TMZ fan boi culture, in Connecticut, has nothing to do with Yankees/Redsox overexposure, or the fact that I even know who Skip Bayless is.

You really don't get what I'm saying, do you? Burger King was made because the market would support it, and the market hadn't even begun to grow, hence Wendy's, Taco Bell, Subway. The sports entertainment market today != the fast food market in the 1960s. No. Both markets of today are actually: the same. Ask Quiznos about whether there's enough growth for another fast food chain. Ask Dominoes if there's enough growth to support crappy food and service, and what happened to their market share. This analogy is therefore false. Here's a better one: ESPN is "thriving" the same way CNN was. Lack of real competition, just like it ALWAYS does, means laziness, disrespect of the customer, and hubris. Again, in order: 1. Laziness: how often have we commented on a piece of work from ESPN, that talks about players that aren't on our team anymore? How often has it been clear that the person who produced the work hasn't seen any more of our team than we have. Is this even uncommon anymore? 2. Disrespect of the Customer: The Dallas Cowboys have been much less relevant than the Indianapolis Colts, for decades, yet who is always getting 3-5x more coverage? They do this because it makes them $. They think the customer is a moron, who will keep paying them regardless. 3. Hubris: ESPN believes that no one can touch them. Everything in your article suggests this is so. It's not that ESPN can be beaten, no, they have a constant "internal struggle" to decide if they should put their business interest ahead of that of their customer, and no outside force will ever affect that higher decision-making. Hubris. The hugeness of the existing market is irrelevant if the only player in it has been weakened by lack of competition. In fact, that just makes it easier for the new players to gain a beachhead and start driving in-land.

Yes, and I wish I could link to FOX's marketing data cubes. Then we'd see the real answer. But I can't. All I can do is ask: what is truly different about now, vs. 5 years, 10 years, 15 years ago? Was ESPN doing well financially/growing in each of those timeframes? Yes. Yes. and Yes. Thus: not different. You don't move into a business sector that is dominated by a competitor unless you either have a disruptively superior product, or, you think the market is going to grow so much larger that there will be space for you, or, that competitor is weak. In order: 1. Is FOX/NBC going to do something that is so much better/innovative than ESPN? Doubtful. The last time around all FOX did was counter a stupid agenda by bringing in proven ratings getters, and turning them loose on that stupid agenda. 2. You are talking to me on a Bills message board. The market for sports info/content is inundated. Where is the growth going to come from? There is always some growth, but, enough to support 2 other ESPN-type products? No way. That leaves: 3. The competitor is weak. FOX/NBC thinks they can take market share, and, enough of it to make their investment worth the risk. Risk is what this is about. The risk has come down, so, the shot is worth taking.

Then why did they lay off 400 people due to their live programming tanking? I'm not saying that their "divided and conquer" approach didn't have short term upside. The short term is over. In the long run, the direction ESPN is going is clear: they've destroyed their own credibility for far too many people, just like CNN did. In doing so they've opened the door. If this opportunity existed at any point in the past, FOX would have been all over it. Come on, are you trying to say they didn't have the $/motivation? This is about tensile strength/brand loyalty. FOX has now seen enough weakness in both to make the marketing #s match the $s. It's the same pattern. I am sure that the execs at CNN had plenty of financial statements to back up their failed agenda, and probably kept referring to them when FOX started as well. This isn't going to happen in 6 months. However, whistling past the graveyard that is making Skip Bayless and Steven A Smith get more air time than John Clayton and Ron Jaworski? Telling more than half the country that their teams don't matter? Living in this magical thinking world that says the only thing that matters is the East/West coast, and believing that the best sports consumers live there? We've seen all of this before. In the end, the agenda people always lose. Or: It's been 19 years since LA has had an NFL team.

When Buftex and I agree on anything? The space/time continuum pauses, and real truth is born. Perhaps ESPN should ask CNN or MSNBC what happens when FOX sees weakness? (There ends the agreement with Buftex. Come on...I had to do it, we are talking about the space/time continuum here. That's serious stuff! ) It's "By whom?". Just to dot the "i" on making sure that Buftex and I remain in disagreement. All is back to normal. Hilarious that Kelly the Dog(who used to be called something else in his days on another board here) would show up.... So, same question: What happened to CNN the last time FOX saw weakness? I'm not saying anything other than: does anybody deny FOX's ability to win? You want to talk about success stories? Is there a more unlikely story than FOX, beginning with taking the NFL from CBS? If that can happen, why can't they beat ESPN?

Cowherd is merely a symptom, and so is Bayless. Neither is the disease. Feeling has nothing to do with this. This is about thinking. Specifically, it's about marketing thinking. I know bad marketing when I see it. The worst is that ESPN has screwed themselves with this approach, and you can bet that they know it. You know who else knows it: FOX and NBC. That's why they are now putting their 24/7 sports channels forward. The ONLY reason that the NFL hasn't suffered the same fate as MLB and NBA? ESPN doesn't have the same level of control over the NFL. The most ironic thing: Reporters in Boston are writing articles about why Dallas and the Jets are getting so much attention even though both teams suck. http://bostinno.stre...-team-receives/ They don't realize that they will be in the exact same place as Dallas and the Jets, after Brady leaves(and Belechick right after).

Hehehe....I kept telling BillNYC that Donte Whitner was a good draft pick, but did he listen? Oh no. Any opportunity to bash ESPN will be taken by me until they go back to being the quality brand they once were. No people in history talk about their "brand" more, while simultaneously being more blind to the fact that their brand is crap. Yes, let's have some more Skip Bayless. Let's have some more Colin Cowherd. I'd much rather listen to Andrew Peters stutter and burp his way through 2 hours, than ever have to listen to Cowherd say "I'm not a company man", and then spend his next two hours talking about why hockey sucks. How embarrassing for him. How embarrassing for the ESPN execs to have their agenda made so transparent. Andrew Peters is interesting, because for all his insecure goofiness, he is: SINCERE. And, this isn't over. ESPN is going to have some real competition very soon. We'll see if they can continue to get away with their horrible "divide and conquer" marketing strategy, which has taken the air out of both Baseball AND the NBA. Look at it: ESPN covering the big markets, and belittling the small, has destroyed people's interest in both sports. Ratings are down, and ESPN is laying people off because they've destroyed their own market interest in live programming. That's what happens when you divide and conquer: everybody stops caring. "Divide and Conquer" is the ONLY reason that Donte Whitner is even on that list at all.

Dammit...beat me to it. Yes. While we are at it, let's re-convict Donahoe. I was thinking the other day: we can trace so many problems, that aren't problems now, or, are at the very least on their way to not being problems now, back to bad Donahoe decisions. So, in that light, yes, we are still suffering from many of those decisions, and yes, our 13 year bad run will always be ~75% due to him. However, pretending like this FO = that FO, is patently retarded.

Didn't I specifically say that some of this violates the 4th amendment(depending on how you organize the data layer) and that some of this violates HIPAA? But, Pam Bondi is still an idiot. This is what happens when you send a lawyer to do a consultant's job. This navigator background check thing is real, but is it nowhere near issue #1. The real issue is: architecture has to be built that supports all of this, and thus far, they've left most of the decision making to amateur government employees, many of whom haven't even been hired yet, and many who've never acted as the client-side sponsor of a project in their lives. With this being one the greatest integration projects of all time? That's completely unacceptable. They are incompetent before they even start. You don't "learn on the job" with something of this scale. Not the leadership, no way. These people are almost certainly going to turn to contractors. Yes, Snowden was a contractor. So there you go. You cannot guarantee my private info, because you cannot guarantee the "chain of custody". Who are the contractors? How did they get hired? What's their background? IF you can't answer any of those questions 100% of the time, in real time, then you have violated the 4th amendment, and, HIPPA. The only reason I bring up the 4th? Good luck hauling anybody into court for an Obamacare scam: they can claim their data was tampered with, and you can't prove otherwise. A good lawyer, doing his job and not mine, gets whatever you've found, based on the data, thrown out of court. See, the stated FTEs in this thing are way less important, because at least there are proscribed standards for them. It's the unplanned work, done by the unplanned help, that is the real problem. Other than a flimsy piece of paper that any criminal will sign in a heartbeat, under an alias = "business associate agreement", there is no protection, or standards for the contractors they are certain to hire. It's chaos on a grand scale. Hence, Bondi is a dope, Obamacare supporters are dopes, and the people who get hired to do this are already set up to be morons, that get villified in the media, and they don't even know it yet.

Until they were busted repeatedly = paying 0 taxes, doing exactly that. Then, MSNBC went from asset to liability. We know what happens to people/products/business lines that do that. Or, at least you and I know. In this case, MSNBC was sold for cheap to Comcast both to clear GE's books, and their name. And, Immelt went elsewhere as well. As far as he is concerned, the man oversaw a significant decrease in GE stock price during his tenure. IIRC, the largest in the history of the company. I don't see how any of this = good. In the final analysis: No. MSNBC was not a good investment, and ended up costing NBC--->GE much more than it was worth.

The rationale is simple: at some point somebody is going to come along and take the office of POTUS from the gutter it is in today. That person, be they R or D, is going ot have to try and get things done in that office. The more we denigrate the person holding the office the more difficult for the next guy to excute the duties of the office. IF this keeps happening, then we de-value the office and defeat our purpose as a nation. That is the rationale. (And, if any think the sub-reference to the office/gutter is there by mistake, think again. I will leave you all to ponder it's significance) However, IMHO, it has been misapplied as an excuse for bad/no leadership. It comes from the military. But, it is there for a specific purpose: combat effectiveness. IF we didn't follow the orders of some officer, because we didn't know him well enough to decide if he is worth listening to, then right there we cease to have an Army. Now we have a horde. And yes, respect is a two way street in a free society. IF the POTUS disrespects the office himself, then that same office cannot provide protection from criticism. This is perhaps the biggest reason that GW BUsh got into trouble. He didn't respect the office enough to hold himself accountable to make the big decisions. Instead he turned many of them over to advisers.

The KFC...D? Never mind. Pettine Zoo has to be it, doesn't it? San Jose? You can forget about your IP claim: http://boards.buffalobills.com/showthread.php?450240-Report-Pettine-free-to-interview-with-Bills&p=6598565#post6598565 And to think, the Jets had Coach Pettine for 4 years, playoffs etc, and couldn't get this one figured out? Well, the Jets fans did get close, but, in typical Jest fan style, they reversed the thing: http://www.jetsinsider.com/forums/threads/252174-Mike-Pettine-wont-return-next-year?p=4737149&viewfull=1#post4737149 Hehe..that's 2 for the price of 1. Oh...that's right...they also had Rex Ryan. I imagine some Jets marketing guy came up with "Pettine Zoo"...but...he's probably "somewhere in the swamps of Jersey". Ryan would never allow that kind of attention to be focused anywhere but him.

Gentlemen: the opposing teams will be having this debate on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this season, when they are putting in their gameplan. We don't need to be having it. All we have to do, and I know this is really strange for us, but really, all we have to do is sit back and enjoy. They have to struggle, they have to deal with the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Not us. CJ has been given the ball over and over when he has been in. They gave it to him 4 times in a row to start this past game. What else do you need? As I said: sit back and enjoy. Fred will get it plenty. Morever, we will constantly be screwing with them in terms of whether Fred or CJ is rushing, blocking, running patterns out of the backfield, or splitting out before the snap. Given what I've seen from Hackett so far? It's more than likely you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of Fred/CJ and how they will be used. Revel in that.

Get off my lawn! Look, Belechick is right based on knowing who made a mistake, sorta. I do not believe this is an "all or nothing" situation. You don't necessarily have to know every detail of a play to make an informed assessment about whether a WR beat a CB in man coverage. He is definitely wrong in terms of knowing who won vs who lost in obvious 1v1 situations. Example: Did Matt Kalil make a mistake against Jerry Hughes? No. That was his guy, he is a good LT, and he got soundly beaten. The play was not schemed for him to have help. The help was moved to the other side of the line. I'm assuming you've all seen this enough times. We can get into "yeah but, what if the QB/C had the wrong protection called"...all day. Excuses are like.... Another thing he is wrong about: Scouts don't know the play either. Sure, they can call and ask about a guy or a play, but, if we hold them to the standard Belechick uses: "know the playbook well enough to know everybody's assignment"? Pro scouts know nothing at all, and college scouts know very little. Does this mean every scout in the country is useless? Well, if you've been paying attention to Belechick's recent drafts, you'd get the impression that he believes precisely that. And finally, the usefulness of things like PFF, or ANY analytical approach(that is properly executed, there are many examples of when it isn't), improve as you gain scale: ALWAYS. Sure, it may look as if a guy missed his assignment, or got whipped. When in fact, per the play call/design, he didn't do anything wrong. The question is: how often does that happen? vs. how often do you get it right?. If you evaluated every single play a player is in for, and make that mistake 1 out of 50 times? Belechick's point is completely irrelevant. If you do it 1 out of 10 times? Belechick's point still succumbs to the overwhelming weight of the data as it piles up, it just takes longer. Unless we believe that there is going to be inconsistent, and unpredictable error in evaluating plays, that cannot be accounted for, regression towards reality is the result. Right now Cordy Glenn's PFF #1 rating doesn't mean that much. It beats the hell out of being at the bottom though. Let's see where he is after 8 games, and whether that matches our personal observations.

Well...there goes that idea for a thread. Nice work fellas. What else can we say other than: This is a rare instance in the recent history of the Bills, where 2 players are going against each other and winning/losing every day in camp, due to an epic battle of skill, and not due to an awful lack of it. I don't think Hughes beats Kalil as easily without practicing against Glenn. And, raise your hand if you thought Glenn would have the highest PFF grade, after everything you read prior to the games. ............. Also, I guess I make the 4th vote that says Kolb will do better against the Skins. I don't think Kolb, personally, can do much worse than he did Friday. He is a better QB than he showed. I do think that perhaps some of the "feeling pressure that isn't there" can be attributed to practicing against our D every day. I think that is more likely to affect a vet than a rookie. A rookie doesn't have a frame of reference. But, please understand: EJ is the starter.