Dr. K

Thanks for posting this rational analysis. I really don't understand how so many here are dazzled by Beane's moves and talent evaluation. I just do not see the evidence. In my mind he gave away tons of talent for the right to take a flyer on a dicey QB. I hope it works, but so far I have not seen any vast improvements to the roster.

I was at that game.

They were shut out four times that 1971 season out of 14 games, lost their first ten games, and scored only 21 touchdowns in the entire season, the worst in their history. I looked it up. I remember James Harris playing QB for them in that game.

I stayed for the whole thing. I seem to recall it being played in a blizzard, but that seems unlikely on October 10. They played the Colts again in December that season and lost 24-0. Maybe that was the blizzard game. So for that season the Colts beat them by a total of 67-0. Why do I follow this team? Over fifty years. It's like a disease.

October 10, 1971, against the Baltimore Colts. Bills lost at home, in the Rockpile, 43-0. The won only one game that season.

But let's crucify Doug Whaley again.

I liked "Buffalo 66." Christina Ricci has said that she was messed up during the filming of that movie, and that was a rough period of her life. I've met her--she was in the Amazon TV series "Z" about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, based on a novel by my wife Therese Anne Fowler, so we got to visit the filming several times and met her on the set and elsewhere. Ricci struck me as a very intelligent woman who was pretty wild in her youth but has gained some hard-won wisdom. She seemed like a very nice person. Here's an article in which she talks about working with Gallo: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/christina-ricci-vincent-gallo-buffalo-66_n_6957472.html

1.) McCoy's production drops drastically whether or not he gets injured. 2.) The defense plays better but the offense struggles even to move the ball, let alone score. 3.) All three of the quarterbacks will play significant time.

Maybe so the players could get it down to second nature and perform it flawlessly. An O-line has to function as a precision unit. If you could just mix and match at will, more teams would do it.

I believe Kemp never completed 50% of his passes in a season.

I understand the first amendment. I don't question the right of the owners to make this demand of their employees. They would win in court. That does not make it justified, or smart, or right, or an example of patriotism.

I remember this play. It was astonishing, but in classic Bills fashion, it was the end of the half and the clock ran out.

This is the logical fallacy called, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Correlation is not causation.

When did the national anthem get identified with our military and its members? It did not used to represent that, or only that. The whole forced patriotism thing sickens me. The people who are most vociferously "patriotic" in public are often the ones who least understand U.S. history, and the founders, and the Constitution. Patriotism has become a business and a club to beat the people who disagree with the policies pursued by politicians. Forced public displays of patriotism are like public displays of religion: the louder and more insistent they are, the hollower they sound.

The "spitting on returning vets" story is a MYTH trumpeted by the right wing to discredit opponents of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image

Making the national anthem at sports events into a holy ceremony, unfurling huge American flags, and having the military at every game, with fighter jets doing flyovers, is something that was not done before the last forty years, post-Vietnam. It makes the U.S. look like a militaristic state. I'm happy to have the anthem before the games, but the glorification of the flag reminds me of the Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s.

0-4 or maybe 1-3

Bless your optimistic heart; your sunny disposition must make the world a nicer place for you. This is the forecast for the Bills in Oz, where nobody ever ages and a bucket of water will melt the Wicked Witch. Just one example, your running back analysis: "The running back situation is outstanding, McCoy is still pro bowl caliber and is an outstanding receiver out of the backfield, Ivory greatly improves the running back depth and will get quality touches, lover Caderet as a 3rd down back and DiMarco is an outstanding blocker." McCoy was the best player on the team last season and the season before, but he will be thirty on opening day and last year he had the lowest yards per carry of his entire career, down to 4.0 from the previous year's 5.4. He is at the age when even great running backs (cf.Thurman Thomas) fall off a cliff. Ivory is also 30 and last year his YPC was a miserable 3.4, ALSO the lowest of his career. Travaris Cadet (I think that's who you must mean by "Caderet") is 29 years old and in HIS ENTIRE CAREER of nine years has gained--wait for it--180 yards. His longest gain for his career is 16 yards. Patrick DiMarco will not carry the ball at all, and he is ALSO 29 years old. The entire running back position should be on Social Security. Now maybe we can cross our fingers and hope McCoy won't get hurt and has got another decent season in him, but I will go on record that in no way will he carry the ball the 287 time he did last season, or reach the 1138 yards he gained. And if he gets hurt it's not even the JV squad behind him. I've been a Bills fan since the 1960s. I want them to do well. I think, depending on whether Allen pans out, the draft looked pretty good. I think McDermott got more out of the less-than-mediocre roster he had last season after the fire sale than anybody could reasonably have expected, but if he does it again this season he deserves the Nobel Prize for hand clapping. But I've seen too many mediocre rosters touted as competitive over the last five decades to buy into the idea that this is a strong team on paper. It's simply not. Maybe everything will come up roses and nobody will get hurt and all the draft choices will start and play at a high level, but the odds are against it. At best this is a rebuilding season, IMHO. Go Bills.

1-3 at best.

No prejudice against you, and not assuming you would align with it, but this website expresses the is the kind of views that I oppose strongly. They absolutely want to force the entire country to live by their distorted vision of American history and founding principles: https://www.usa.church/usa-christian-republic/

So you do agree that proselytization is fundamental to evangelical Christianity after all. When the Girl Scouts or Apple run for Congress saying that only people who like Peanut Butter cookies should make EPA policy or that no Android phone users should be appointed judges, then I'll get worried. Go Bills!

I think this conversation is veering way off track, but I'll just quote this (from Wikipedia, though I could cite it from many other sources, including evangelical church publications) and do my best to retire from the field of play: "Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or the "born again" experience in receiving salvation, in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and in spreading the Christian message."

I cannot tolerate it in someone who is trying to abridge my freedom and force their religious views into civil society. McDermott seems to me to be pretty harmless, though he clearly is an evangelical who believes the hand of God is everywhere present in his life.

There are more people who are insisting that the U.S. is a "Christian republic," the kind of people who inserted the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and "In God We Trust" on currency in 1956, who think that an atheist cannot be a good citizen and who maintained in the face of all evidence that Barack Obama was a Muslim (as if that would somehow disqualify him to be president). The founding fathers went out of their way to keep any reference to God out of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Did you miss the part where I said "I can tolerate it in someone like McDermott"? I agree that tolerance is absolutely essential to civil society. But in fact the thing that I disliked about the FCA was that they DID "follow you about pressuring you to join them." That's what "evangelical" means. You'll just have to tolerate that this kind of ever-present public profession of Christian faith, in areas that have nothing to do with religion, bothers me. I think that having faith in something is indeed a powerful force in human affairs. But Jesus said (Matthew 6:5), "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." I do not begrudge anyone their sources of inspiration and faith. I just wish the proselytizers would respect the right of the rest of us to find our way with fewer public professions. And to the degree that they let their religion determine their choices in non-religious areas, I feel I have the right to question it.