DanInUticaTampa

It has been the pats* for awhile, but I have to say the jests the last few years have been the most annoying. I was so happy last year when their team fell apart

Anyone see this vj Coleman play?

Hahahahahaha Yes, when you compare it to the really great receivers that revis limits to 1-2 catches for 10-20, Stevie looks great. Revis shuts down most receivers and it is impressive to get 5 catches when he covers you.

Good call

I really hope the extension doesn't turn out to be a problem. It would really sour what so far is a good offseason. I do fear that when the bills make a proposal, that Fred will feel offended and then just bad things happen. I am hoping this whole thing works out for the better, both sides are happy, and Fred has his whole career as a bill

Those are the only two reasonable options.

Naw. There were other questions I wish I asked( like maybe the schobol tweet), but I was pretty quiet for the most part. I am still kind of surprised that this dinner happened, since it was pretty random and last minute. but a lot of interesting things got passed around. The first thing people asked of course was how excited he was about Mario, and he was just pumped and want the season to start the next day. The draft came up, but drayton didn't say much about it. Someone mention Floyd might be a good pick, and Cleo asked "do you think he can be that guy that lines up opposite stevie" and we shook our heads yes. The only other thing about the draft that came up was that they were at the combine, and they were super impressed with RGIII. I mean, their faces just lit up and they looked at eachother remembering what they saw and nodded that they agreed the guy just wowed them. And of course, since we were eating, we talked about food, and Drayton said how he loves the food in buffalo and lots of good places to eat there, and he threw out some names. And someone joked that Tempo seems to be the hotspot now. Drayton kind of brushed it off, and said it is ok, but he thinks they picked it more for its location. He said if it were HIM trying to woo a free agent, he would take them somewhere else (forgive me, since I am not from buffalo, but CNY), and I cant remember the name of it, but it has this cheeseburger soup he likes. So I thought that was interesting. And he was commenting on the shirts people were wearing. Someone had Barnett's shirt, a dareus jersey, and another one had a "fitzmagic shirt." He was pointing them out to cleo, but he especially loved the Fitzmagic one it seemed. Like, he pointed it out several times, and always with a smile. Just an observation, but it seemed like he had a lot of respect for fitz from the way he would talk up the shirt. And he gave a lot of props to the tailgaters, that no one does it like buffalo. Cleo then chimmed in and said when he was with the phins, and had his first game at the ralph, and the players warned him "this is nothing you have ever seen before, they (the bills fans) will dispise you and everything you stand for. You are the worst thing to them, and you are trespassing on their turf." And cleo said he brushed it off, because when he was with the chargers, he would go to the raiders stadium, which was bad, and those teams hate eachother. But he said he never saw more passionate fans when he visted the ralph for the first time. it was "0 degrees" and there was just an army of fans out there and they were there standing up for their team. His eyes got big when he described all the fans he saw. Then the Ralph started to get talked about in general, and cleo made an interesting comment I haven't heard before. I might be something others have said, but I don't think recall hearing it. He first mentioned we need a new stadium or major improvements, and what he really didn't like were the tunnels. He said that the way the tunnels are set up, on very windy days, wind will blow through the tunnels onto the field and it will be blowing in a direction that is different than what is showing on those little flags (or the direction the wind is really blowing). I am not sure how true that is, but I thought that was interesting. Drayton than jokingly said "that is what I love about the ralph" and he laughed. Obviously a DB would love that and a QB would hate it. not sure how true that is, but it was an interesting point about the ralph I don't recall hearing about. When he talked about when he was going back to buffalo, he said he was going to go back after his finals for school. So I thought that was cool, especially when so many players like to get into trouble in the offseason, he is working toward school. So props to him for that. There was a lot of him asking us questions, like where we were from, what games we went to, how is the fan base down here, what we do, things like that. One fan with us looked a little bit like bradley cooper from the hangover, and he kept joking about that and we talked about movies. He loved the hangover movies and he recently took his daughter to see the Lolax, and someone suggested he should see 21 jump street and he hasn't seen it yet, but def wants to. a lot of that chit chat went on. There was some random talk about cell phones, a little history of the area, and differenct things that were going on. He didn't really talk much about gailey, but he did buy us 3 rounds of patron shots. And the 3rd one was a toast to Buddy Nix which he spoke highly of. People around the table said how they like his plan and where he is taking the team. At the end of the night, people started chanting "speech, speech" and he kind of shrugged his shoulders haha. about 15 minutes eariler a fan gave a small speech just wishing him and the team the best of luck. Drayton made a smaller speech, just saying to have a great 2012 season, and then in 2013 "playoffs.... that is all I am going to say. If I say more than playoffs it will jinx it." If anyone is curious, I think he ordered the Snapper, I had the grouper, and most people seemed to have ordered somekind of fish or sea food, and there were a couple steak type entrees. if anyone is curious, here is the menu: http://www.columbiarestaurant.com/pdfs/menu_dinner.pdf Nice place. Really, the night was perfect. The only downfall was that he was an hour late, but I don't think he realized how far away he was, so not really his fault. Technically, he was in the "tampa bay area," but he was a good 60+ mins away from the restaurant. but we all waited pretty paitently and it was well worth the wait. I was thinking that if he did show up, he would come in, shake some hands, and then wave goodbye saying he already paid for the bill. But we all hung out for a good couple hours. And while we were waiting, some idiot (hope he was a tourist) was confused why a bunch of people were wearing bills attire outside a nice place. It was explained that a player from the team said he would meet us there and he was going to buy us dinner. Then he said "you flew all the way from BUFFALO to have dinner with a player?!" and of course it is like...... no, we live here...but 10 mins later before he left he said "go bills" which made up for it. And everyone that showed up were all pleasent, and all the fans were good people. No one oboxious or anything. There were no autographs or pictures being, the whole thing felt like a group of friends hanging out. Drayton did some people watching and commented that a table near us looked like they were having a bachelor party, and really just stuff you would talk about when you are out with your friends. Really down to earth stuff. Still surprised by the whole thing I see players doing things all the time on twitter, but not being in buffalo I never get to go to the autograph sessions or any of the things they do when they are up there. So this was really exciting for me. But the way he talks about buffalo, nix, and just how he had his own view on how he would get players to come to buffalo, I truly felt that he actually likes buffalo. And even though paying for dinner was a drop in the bucket for him, it isn't something a lot of athletes do, and I thought it was just a nice gesture. I get that he drew some bad pass interferance penalties. but the guy is a solid player, and I am sure the guys on the team love him. People have talked smack about him here, but Out of all our corners, he seems to be the most reliable. Mckelvin is too inconsistan, mcgee can't stay healthy, and Williams is still learning, plus he had a nasty injury too that slowed his development. Him not being on the team would make the secondary very suspect, imo. And I thought Lemon talking about the passionate fans when he first came to the ralph, were very genuine comments as well. He really talked in detail about it. I am probably forgetting a lot. a lot was talked about, but half of it was just shooting the breeze type stuff that is hard to remember. especially after 3 patron shots! Oh, I was going to take my a couple friends (not bills fans) but they thought it was a wild goose chase. So I ended up calling my mom up to go with me, and I had to drive out to the next county to pick her up haha. And drayton and cleo were great sports about her being there. She is a lightweight, and barley had one of the patron shots. They joked about it with her, and talked to her a lot too, and she drank a few glasses of sangria. But I was glad my friends decided not to come, because if they did, they really would have pushed to go somewhere else when he was like 30 mins late. This place was in ybor(busy nightlife area), and just in the next block there are a few dozen bars/clubs to hit up, and they probably would have convinced me eventually. so glad I stayed. And of course I had to be at work early the next day and be up by 6 am... but I was still in a good mood all day. But if I have to say the most interesting thing I got from the night, it would be the talk about the tunnels. Not sure how true it is, but it did seem interesting and made me reflect on a lot of games where I remember the wind being strong. If anyone has any recolection of this ever being mentioned before, I would love to hear some more insight on it.

Agreed. Total class act and he is very much behind the front office, and he loves western ny. Only 9 of us showed up, but k-gun said, it just made it better for us. I can post more later, leaving for work now. But few quick hits, drayton is actually taking some college classes right now, after his toast to buddy he mentioned he loves jauron and still talks to him, it was a Spanish menu, nice place, and we ordered whatever we wanted. And he got 3 rounds of patron shots for us. He said when Mario got signed he wanted the season to start the next day. He made a lot of tom Brady type jokes that we are not playing around this year. He asked us a lot about ourselves too. Seemed very genuine. And he loves the cheeseburger soup in buffalo, and none of us had it before, and he couldn't stop talking about it for awhile haha.

So what are these so called picks that you would have made in the last 2 drafts using the big board of people in the media? I want to see these so called draft picks that the media people would have picked instead of the players nix picked. otherwise, you are really just blowing smoke. especially if you use kipers big board for nix's first draft (and his first pick) then you would have taken clausen over spiller. the spiller pick might not be grand, but it is way better than drafting clausen. The media folks are nowhere near as good as the real scouts/GMs for the most part. The only reason the media looked so savy compared to us before is because levy/don made too many silly picks. but saying you can use the big board from the media types as enough info to make better draft picks than nix is just silly. Especially when the media folks disagree so much. The only thing they agree on is that andrew luck is the best prospect since elway, but other than that, they all disgree on everything else. So saying you can collectivly use contradicting reports to pinpoint a draft pick, and have better luck than someone who has seen hours of tape on these players, is bogus. complete bogus. And do you know that most of these magazine/website types had Peterson rated higher than Dareus? It is true. So you using your big board plan, you would have taken peterson over dareus. how splendid is that? That would have just been terrible.

But that has nothing to do with what the thread is about. Like, nothing. Nix has only had two drafts, anything else than his two drafts have no place with the topic at hand. This thread wasn't titled "can you scout better than the guys we fired."

Hahaha, I think that every year when bpa is brotught up. If we did draft Richardson, the board would just go nuts

Total waste. They got their priorities out of whack.

Haha

So if we went by your strategy, and the bills grabbed espn magazine, followed kiper's big board, instead of drafting spiller, we would have drafted..... Clausen! Oh yes, WAY more talent if the nix stopped scouting and just followed the big board from a magazine

Well, I think bringing up the last 15 years is a little off topic. I think Kelly meant to discuss who can scout/evaluate better than nix (not so much making draft picks, but scouting).

Naw, merriman might get on the pup, but no IR until week 3 of the regular season at the earlyest. Guy can't be that fragile.

Thanks. I am going to show up either way. It is only ten minutes from my place. It can't hurt by showing up. Worst.thing he flakes out or too many people show up. I like my odds though.

So I guess it is first come first serve? Not seeing much else on his twitter. I am just going to show up. Worst thing is it doesn't happen. Feel like I have to sign up or something. Way he is talking the 50 people have already been selected

I'm so going! Thanks for the notice. If I get there ill take some pics

That can't be right at all. We will have a number of them, but not 31. We got byrd, levitre, Freddie, chandler, and I guess merriman.... Wood might be there. If there are 31, most of them probably aren't important

Naw, he would get picked up by a 4-3 team. He is decent in a 4-3, but worthless in a 3-4

Yeah, unfortunately that only goes for a small part of the roster. That d line being the only part I think that will happen. I think all of the positions on offense won't have any surprise cuts. The positions there just don't have much competition

The players they are losing didn't play much last year, which is why they feel they don't need them. The texans caught the injury bug last year just like the bills, but they were able to overcome it. They are still a top ten team imo.

Agreed, I liked him better than troupe. This year there are going to be some really tough decisions in training camp with that d line. I am expecting some real surprise cuts.

Haha, I completey forgot about him. He must still be there. He hasn't been released.