The Big Cat

Or because his visit started today? Officially?

No nickname worthy enough. Although nowadays, the idea of a guy having a firearm on his jersey...

If Wanny would have had Dansby, all would have been different, completely different.

London Fletcher 2.0?

He's definitely better than what we have now. But since he's 31, I'm not doing any back flips if we sign him.

Gabbert he is not. Jones threw 10,000 more yards than Gabbert, three-times as many touchdowns and won more than twice as many games as Gabbert started. Gabbert was truly a draft anomaly. I remember scratching my head two years ago wonder wtf anyone was thinking saying he was worthy of a top-10 pick having done virtually nothing of note in college. Jones as won three bowl games. You might not like him, but the comparison to Gabbert is exceedingly unfair.

I understand, but is 4-5% statistically relevant over 6 occurrences, i.e. the 2013 bye/Thurs opponents?

LOLZ Premise: shot In 2012 Teams coming off Thurs games were 16-18 Teams coming off byes were 15-15-2 Soooooooooooooooo... :-)

Determining that information will have to wait another 8.5 months. EDIT: never mind, I've got some time this morning at work, let me see how things shaped up in 2012...

Taken another way: teams get a +1 coming off a bye, -1 when they play a team coming off a bye, .5 coming off Thur and -.5 when their opponent is, the league shapes up thusly: NE 1.5 BAL 1.5 SF 1.5 MIA 1 JAC 1 DET 0.5 MIN 0.5 GB 0.5 PIT 0.5 DEN 0.5 DAL 0.5 WAS 0.5 NO 0.5 TEN 0.5 NYJ 0 CIN 0 SEA 0 STL 0 KC 0 NYG 0 IND 0 CLE -0.5 SD -0.5 OAK -0.5 PHI -0.5 TB -0.5 ARI -1 ATL -1 CHI -1.5 CAR -1.5 HOU -1.5 BUF -4.5 Again...it's not even CLOSE Also, is it Thursday yet!?

In addition to SJ's response above, I'd like to also add that in this case, good teams don't have anything to complain about. The Patriots and Niners play against a total of ZERO teams coming off byes or Thurs games.

Everybody gets one... :-)

Okay. Now I'm confused because I was counting Atlanta...? Ha, thanks. Visuals make things so much easier!!

Should be 3 & 3

Pretty sure Atlanta makes six...

The atlanta game came out f'd it's supposed to be green/orange striped all striped games cells came up wonky there, i just got a higher res version up...

LOL, it's not even close:

I'm crunching the numbers right now, and thus far it looks abnormally, and unquestionably high.

I was curious, so I looked at New England, Chicago (who always gets lots of Prime Times), San Fran (who's a league darling now), and Cleveland, who gets **** on just like us. Give me more time, and I'll do the entire league:

LOL, brace yourselves. The Bills have 6 opponents this year coming off bye weeks or off Thursday night games, including one Thurs that cuts into the advantage of their bye week. The number of opponents New England faces that are coming off their bye weeks or Thursday night games: ZERO.

i just had sticker shock looking at those a little it ago. former erieite here...all home friends are stiller fans...thought i'd round up the posse..ouch

The knock on Matt Ryan prior to the draft was his questionable arm strength, and even now he doesn't zip it around the field.

I re-watched the Tennessee game last weekend, and JESUS, watching Hasselbeck, on EVERY crucial third or fourth down play just stand in the pocket, and take four to five seconds to find a guy running wild 12 yards down field, was absolutely INFURIATING. And THAT kind of horse **** broke our backs last year way more so than all the technical (though no doubt accurate) mumbo jumbo K-9 alluded to. And that's entirely to do with schemes, not hiding jack ****, not blitzing...EVER...and doing virtually nothing to upset the flow of our opponent's offense. Please please please, if you haven't already, watch the post-practice interview with Mario from yesterday.

This is just another in a series of misconceptions about conditioning on this board. One need not bulk up to get arm strength. It could be a matter of strengthing his core and his legs. I didn't mean to suggest he has to up his bench to get more zip, that's not the way it works. Also, I think the comparisons to Pennington are unfair. Pennington--particularly in his later years--struggled to throw the ball 15 yards. Just as Brady adding velocity over his career is an "aberration" so was Pennington's ability to subsist in the NFL with the weakest arm of the last three decades. Barkley's arm is unquestionably stronger than Pennington's.

And as I've said before, the kid is still young, and velocity can be made with conditioning and mechanics as one's career progresses--accuracy, timing and ball placement, not so much...it's surely possible, but Barkley's is a much better base to start from than a guy who can throw it through the moon. Plus, the throws I highlighted show that he can hit a receiver, in stride, down the field...imagine what THAT layer would have done for last year's offense...