Dr. K

Thanks for putting Thurman Thomas, my favorite Bills player ever, up there. I still remember the many clutch runs, catches, and picked up blitzes he gave us. He left it all on the field. I think one reason I like him so much is that he seems to me to be a man who, despite his great accomplishments, has struggled against self doubt his entire life. I think a lot of us can relate to that. I know I can. I would be very pleased if you kept him up on hte banner indefinitely. It's great to see him honored.

I don't bet. It was looking like a pretty good call at the half. I am overjoyed to be proved wrong. What a game!

People misunderstand this up every year. The reason the Pats' schedule is less difficult than the Bills' schedule next year is that they play each other. That means that the Pats have two games next season against a 7-9 team (the Bills), where the Bills in those same slots have two games against a 12-4 team (the Pats). Therefore, the Bills schedule is much harder. It's really not htat hard to figure out.

Great post. You convince me that this is a likely analysis.

Nothing would please me more than to be wrong about this, and to see the Colts absolutely humiliate the Pats this weekend. From your lips to heaven's ear.

The way I feel about this game is the way I felt about the SuperBowl between Tampa Bay and Oakland a few years back. I jsut felt that the Raiders were going to come completely unglued in the game. I hope I am wrong. I am really really sick of the Pats, though I give them their due as a remarkable team. The only way they lose is if Manning and the Colt somehow keep their heads together and make no mistakes. I'm not expecting that.

Works for me!

I don't see the Colts beating them next week. And neither the Bears nor the Saints are going to beat them either. Makes me sick.

6"5", 210 pounds Very slow wide receiver. Very bad quarterback.

Geez, WM, wear a condom!

I like all of your picks. I would also call the Patriots over the Jet a lock. Plus, I give the Patriots the best chance to come out of the AFC for the Super Bowl, the Ravens second, the Chargers third, the Colts fourth.

Take out that unfortunate incident with his wife and OJ is a sterling citizen. Take out that one time that Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic and he's a nobody. etc.

I agree with you strongly. I think people are too ready to throw a player overboard if he isn't perfect. I have some problems with Willis's play, but replacing him with a player who won't have equivalent problems (if not necessarily the same ones) is by no means guaranteed. This same syndrome of "throw the bum out" was heard with Antowain Smith and Travis Henry. Neither of them is a great back, but both of them were very good backs when we dumped them. I remember us drafting guys like Sammy Morris and Shawn Bryson and expecting them to be Thurman Thomas--well, they weren't. Running back is definitely a position where you can find a gem after the frist two rounds, but coming up with a 1200-1400 year-per-year back is not as easy as people seem to think. I say draft a RB somewhere in the Spring, because Willis may not be here after next season. But don't trade Willis yet.

Absolutely.

My number one priority for thye off-season: Figuring out how to stop the run. We are terrible at stopping the run. We cannot get better until we do. It cost us most of our losses this year.

Though the very end was hard, we lost because the defense could not stop Young when the play broke down and he ijmprovised, or stop Henry consistently when he ran between the tackles. Bothe of the frirst two touchdowns were when the play broke down, the first one where Young looked to run then found a wide open receiver for the TD, the second at the end of the half when he scrambled for a 39 yard TD. I put this one squarely on the defense. The offense did more than enough to win in bad weather conditions. I knew that Young would give them fits. The Bills never play well against this kind of QB.

I also liked this piece a lot. Interesting to see what might go in in the mind of an NFL lineman. I had not thought to apply it to the Bills' situation. I was most interested in the comments on racial issues on teams. I wonder how the Bills rate for racial comity on the squad? Is there a sense that players can trust each other, and the coaches and management, over racial lines? Who are the lockerroom leaders? Are they different for white and black players?

I'm worried not only about Henry gashing us on the run, but the QB Vince Young taking advantage of our pass rush to find running lanes. We've been getting hurt real bad on draw plays, and a runnign QB like Young could make us look real bad. We need to force turnovers and cover Pacman on punts and kickoffs.

I gave two predictions, worst case and best case. They were: Worst case: 6-10 Best Case: 11-5 That second one might seem silly, but give the Bills a few breaks in the close games and it was a possibility.

I prefer it this way. The Chargers should be heavily favored. I don't care about "respect." Let them beat the Chargers, and keep winning, and the respect will take care of itself. This is just another golden oppoprtunity for the Bills to prove themselves.

I think he threatened to taze the next guy who dropped a pass.

"It was an all go route where we had four verticals going up the seam," said Price. "And J.P. in the huddle before the play said, 'I'm not throwing the freaking check down this time. I've got to take a shot in the end zone so guys get open.' I was running the route and the guy covering the slot backed up and sat down and I wrapped around behind him and J.P. threw a great ball and I did a good job of getting my feet down."

Fair enough. The Iranian kid did not give them much help, I'll admit. But cops are always going to be in situations where people are not giving them much help. I just think, given the preponderance of the evidence, the cops behaved very poorly, almost indefensively poorly, in this case. You see it differently. Let's leave it at that. Peace, Dr. K

The question you asked me was this: "Why do you think they did it? What are you suggesting? Seriously, why do you think they did it? What should they have done and how long should they have done it for before tazing was the best choice available or at least a reasonable choice?" Therefore, my response focused specifically on some of the reasons I could think of why the police would have tased the guy repeatedly and let this situation get so crazy. Your question was about the cops' motives, and I presented reasons why they might have acted that way. You're right in that we don't know the exact situation when the kid was first asked for his ID. I bet he was hypersensitive to this situation and reacted badly because of it. It was up to the authorities, in my opinion, to act more rationally than he did. I am a college teacher. I deal with young people all the time. Lots of the young men are angry, lots of the women are confused. I have to try to be an adult when they are not acting like adults. I don't think this Iranian kid was crazy, but I think it would have gone better if the cops could have tried to understand what was going on from his point of view. Once I had a student have a schizophrenic breakdown in the middle of my class. She was incoherent and deeply paranoid. It took me a while to figure out that her erratic behavior was not just an attempt to disrupt things, and that she had a problem. I had to call off the class in the middle, reassure her that no one was trying to hurt her, and gently persuade her to walk with me across campus to the psych center, when at every minute she was ready to get hysterical and bolt. She thought the stoplights were sending her signals. She told me she thought Connie Chung was trying to send her messages over the TV. She thought I was trying to pull a trick on her when we had to walk through a pedestrian tunnel under some railroad tracks that run through the center of campus. I had to reassure her that it was all right to do so, that nothing bad would happen to us. If I had tried to muscle her at any point, it would have been a mess, maybe even a violent one, and she would not have gotten to the center any faster, and in much worse shape. I guess I knew that she would not kill me at any point, so obviously the cop's job is harder. But I think a cop needs to be a good psychologist, not just a guy with a list of rules and a weapon. That's where I'm coming from.

I did not say that his race was the only reason that this happened, and the fact that you immediately jump to that conclusion shows that you are making assumptions about me that are unwarranted. That said, I do think that it is likely that race played a part in this getting out of hand. I think that, if he were white and not or Iranian descent, it is likely that he would not have been carded so readily. Even if he had been, he would not as likely have reacted so negatively to it. I also feel that it is a strong passibility that the cops' recognition of his race played a role in how much of a threat that they perceived him. Not that in my list of reasons this was far from being the only reason. If you take the word "brown" out of my last post, all of the reasons I listed still apply. I am NOT SAYING THAT THIS WAS SOLELY A RACIAL INCIDENT. That is a conclusion that you have jumped to. But can yo honestly say to me that, in the U.S. in 2006, the fact tht the kid was Iranian had NOTHING to do with the police reaction to his being obstreperous? I think you have more intellect than that. As for how they should have reacted, I think that, at the very least, after they tazed him the first time, and the kid is lying on the floor shouting "I am not fighting you" and "I am going." the rational thing to do would be to calm him down, reassure him that you are not going to hurt him further, and wait until he can stand up. GO SLOW! Tell him to lie there calmly. Don'tmake any aggressive actions. Ask him if he can stand. If he says yes, tell him to stand. Escort him out of the library.