Dr. K

Do you really think that the Bills would have beaten the Chargers in that road game with Tyrod at QB? After the completely embarrassing performance by him in the New Orleans game at home, where when he left the field the Bills were behind 47-3? Yes, the Peterman meltdown was an embarrassment, but that was only after the previous embarrassment of Tyrod's miserable play against New Orleans.

Precisely.

And yet guys like you insist you are not racist. I was born and bred in Buffalo and this kind of common coin racist bilge was so prevalent among the people I grew up with that it sickens me. Kaepernick has never "played the race card" in his football career. I live in the South now and have for almost forty years, but the racism was as common in Buffalo as it is here, and in many contexts more common. My high school graduating class had over five hundred students in it, and NOT ONE was black. It was common to hear racist jokes. That was fifty years ago, and maybe it was understandable at that time since a lot of people were not educated about racial issues then. But it depresses me that this same BS is still current today. I know, I should take it to the politics board. Bad enough that the team is so crappy, but to hear this stuff from Bills fans nauseates me.

You're right, your ethnic background is irrelevant. So is Castillo's.

This really is classic racist stereotyping. I don't know your ethnic heritage but if you were, say, of Jewish descent, would you like someone describing you as having a hooked nose and kidnapping Christian babies for your blood rituals and cheating on business deals? I'm sure you are not racist in your personal life but this is not funny even though it used to be such ethnic jokes were common (if rude). And yes, the o-line's performance has been atrocious and the coach should be held accountable.

Yes. Plus, and this is not the reason I said yes, I like his politics.

I supported them starting Peterman after the preseason but forget that. The one game has shown that it is not going to work. Allen may not be ready, but they have to start him to have any chance of winning any games.

Yep. Only Beane could come in, get rid of all the young talent on the team, keep the guys nearing or at the end of their careers (the team has gotten OLDER under him), replace Watkins with Matthews, Dareus with Louteleli, acquire Bodine and Newhouse to fill gaping holes in the o-line (in part created by his trading away a pro bowl LT in Glen) and somehow convince so many here that knows what he is doing.

Beane, in his short tenure, has been a disaster. How shipping off Dareus and replacing him with Star (talk about a misleading name), or replacing Watkins with Matthews or Benjamin counts as improving the roster is beyond comprehension. In a league where every team is dying to have strong starting offensive tackles, he gets rid of Cordy Glenn when he could have kept him and had bookend tackles in Glenn and Dawkins on which to build a killer o-line. The only hope I see for Beane is if he hit a home run with Allen, although with this supporting cast, it's going to be hard for Allen to show us much. I thought they would be lucky to win five games this season. Make that three.

Me too.

Why anybody thinks Beane is a good evaluator of talent it beyond me. Doug Whaley must be having a good laugh right about now.

Until now thought the Bills could maybe keep this game close. I'm not feeling that anymore. The Bills have too many weaknesses. And I think the Ravens will be motivated to beat up on the Bills in reaction to losing that playoff spot to them last year. They've got something to prove, and they have a better roster. I think it will be a beating in all phases, something like 34-10 Ravens over Bills.

I was pessimistic before pre-season. Right now I am still skeptical that they can win more than 6 or 7 games, tops, but also strangely optimistic about the team's chance to grow over the course of the season. The talent level overall seems low, with some big weaknesses, but I want to see how it plays out.

Blah blah blah

17 passes thrown, 142 completions for eleventy-seven yards. 14 interceptions, 16 touchdowns passing, three running in a close loss, 172-169. This could be the dumbest thread ever posted. Why not just ask, "How much do you like Nathan Peterman?"

You are tying yourself into knots for no reason whatsoever. Take a deep breath.

24-13 Ravens

And why, do you think, they will call an out pattern? Do you think they are idiots?

Got to give major props to BurpleBill. Congrats. I hope NP plays well and wins some games.

The glee of some of you on this board is ugly. He will end up on another NFL roster.

McDermott and Beane have made it completely their team. They have given away a lot of good players in favor of getting a potentially excellent QB. I don't see much talent on this roster; I suggested they would win 5-6 games before training camp and I'm still thinking that's the range. This is my take on the team, too. I really don't think Beane has shown himself to be much of an evaluator of talent.

Was there are game happening anytime during their kaffeeklatsch? Was there another team on the field besides the Bears? You would not have known it while they were asking each other, "Who on the Bears would you say has the most colorful underwear?" "Who was the greatest Bear ever at spelling?"

Very few people around here are willing to give Whaley credit for the talented players he acquired. All they want to talk about are EJ Manuel and Sammy Watkins. They act as if all the players Beane has gotten rid of were trash when two of them started on a Super Bowl winning defense and many others are starting and playing well on other teams right now. I saw an article that everybody praised on the board yesterday that crowed about how "only five players from the previoius regime" were still on the Bills. Well, I think the team's talent level now would be higher if players like Robert Woods and Nigel Bradham and Preston Brown and Marcel Dareus and Ron Darby and Cordy Glenn were still on the squad, to say nothing of the street free agents and players Whaley plucked from other teams' backups who proved to be quality players. You can argue and maybe the point should be made that Beane has cleaned up the cap situation and dumped all those players so that he could draft a long-time solution at QB, which the Bills have been looking for for two decades, and if he hits on that the losses are justified. You could argue that some of these players had attitude and consistency and injury issues. But you can't deny that a lot of starting-quality, even pro bowl level talent, went out the door since Beane came in it. I guess it's water under the bridge to talk about this stuff now. The Bills are committed to a plan and "The Process" (cue choir of heavenly angels) and for better or worse we will see what happens. Allen looks like he may pan out, and that will make a huge difference. Like it or not we're in the middle of a rebuild. It may pay off and I will be as happy and excited as anyone when it does. But I wish people could avoid the Whaley bashing, or at least acknowledge that he was a decent GM and might have been a better one if he had been able to choose his own head coaches. I expect this with be the beginning of a series of responses bashing Whaley. Whatever.

I still have not been convinced by Beane's personnel moves that he consistently knows what he is doing. I admit he has a plan and sticks to it but I'm not convinced it's a good plan. We've essentially switched out Dareus for Louteleli and Watkins for Benjamin, for instance. Did this improve the team? Was it smart to expect Murphy to be the answer at defensive end? Was letting Brown and Ragland go really the best way to improve the linebacking? As you say, how Allen pans out will be huge in determining whether Beane is a success.

This was the other point I was trying to make in the OP--that he was being urged to take risks and the coaches should have realized this was not the right situation. I will say that I never saw the Bills offense look worse than it did in the previous game, at home, against the Saints, when Tyrod was the definition of ineffectual--unless it was in the later playoff game against the Jags.