Clown Show in Buffalo

A few free minutes to entertain you with a Bills rant:

Last Thursday, EJ Manuel, the Bills valuable starting QB, didn't slide at the end of a run for some inexplicable reason and suffers a sprained knee. So what does the team do? They decide to promote a QB from their practice squad and name him the starter against an extremely tough Bengals defense. So wait. If Thaddeus Lewis was good enough to be a potential starter, then why hasn't he been the backup quarterback all of this time? What about our current backup - Jeff Tuel? Keep in mind this is a team who only keeps two QBs on the roster - if they didn't think "Tuel Time" was going to be the man, why not put him on the practice squad? I'm not really buying the explanation.

If that's not enough for you, last year, the Bills cut one of their most popular players - Brian Moorman, their long-time punter - in favor of a young guy. (That's right, the Bills have been so bad, many of the jerseys you see in the stands is of their PUNTER.) The only problem being that Shawn Powell sucked. So after an historically bad special teams day against Cleveland last week, they dump him and sign - wait for it - Moorman! Who is still a decent punter, despite being out of the league this year. But how is signing a 36 year old punter supposed to prepare the team for the mythical future in which the Bills actually are competitive?

And just so you don't forget, Jarius Byrd, our all-pro safety franchise player who has been quarreling with the team all season over his contract while showing up with plantar fasciitis in BOTH feet. He's been out all season. But just as he's getting healthy enough to play, all of a sudden NOW we're open to trading him?

I love the Bills but it does seem at times that it's being run by a bunch of clowns. In the meantime, our odds of having a winning season, much less making the playoffs, are getting dimmer and dimmer.

Modern Offense and the Buffalo Bills

As I've gotten older, the amount of time I spend on football has diminished. There’s a number of factors for this – decreased free time due to the kids, ambivalence about the sport due to the increased knowledge of how much damage the participants are doing to themselves, the dire state of the Buffalo Bills – but for  visceral excitement its hard to match watching a good NFL game.

I say this because Joe Buscaglia’s article for WGR 550 is one of the best things I've read about football in a long time. Going beyond a simple reaction to how the Buffalo Bills offense looks after the 2013 draft, he details how he feels a modern offense operates in today’s NFL and how the Bills are matching up. In short, he posits that once you have a good QB (the essential player in the NFL, and why the Bills have been bad for so long), you surround him with skill players in a spread offense, which diminishes the importance of the offensive line (since they no longer need to block for as long). It’s a fascinating read, and one that actually gets me interested in both football and the Bills again. After all, it is the offseason - the best time for a Bills fan, since our hopes have not - yet - been cruelly crushed under the merciless heel of fate.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Buscaglia has to say about the defense!

Speak So Loudly

“What you do should speak so loudly that no one will hear what you say.”

- Marv Levy

Bringing Back What Was Washed Out

Looks like the Bills really are desperate.

Short story: regardless of who they sign, until they find a real quarterback (Sorry Fitz, you're a backup and always have been), the Bills are doomed to be no better than .500. (Need proof, see "The Bad" section here.)

Yesterday's Debacle, Explained

"The Pats ran against what can effectively be described as a 4-1-6 alignment for most of the game, [and] ...the Pats' ground game, which picked up 6.2 yards per rush."

From an accurate write-up by Buffalo Rumblings, the premiere Bills blog out there.

6.2 yards per run! No wonder the Bills got their asses handed to them. Despite all of the money laid out on defensive players this off season, the Bills still have the same old question marks. And I have no faith that they'll be able to address them anytime soon.

The only good news? Brady will be retired in a few years.

Football Hindsight

So Jabari Greer had two playoff interceptions for the Saints last night. Why can't the Bills get players like tha... Oh. Wait. Never mind. I forgot that the Bills have become a farm team for the rest of the league.

NFL Rant

The Situation: Bills vs. Raiders, this past Sunday. Buffalo has the ball with ~14 seconds left on the clock, fourth-and-1 from the Oakland 6. Ryan Fitzpatrick goes back to pass and... the network pulls away from the game. To show the Pats/Chargers game. But that game hadn't yet started, so TV viewers on the edge of their seat, watching arguably the most exciting game of the young season, were subjected to 5 minutes of ads before being sent to the pregame - the pregame! - of the local game.

What did we miss? Only a 6 yard pass to David Nelson to put the Bills up three points. Oh, and a Da'Norris Searcy interception in the Bills end zone that ended the game

The NFL: Spending millions of millions of dollars to put out a top-notch product, but making it as hard as possible for the average fan to watch the games that they want to watch.

Journalistic Hyperbole

Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run is a fun, fast paced, dramatic story about a lost tribe of super runners. It’s incredibly entertaining and thought provoking, but has been criticized by many people for including too much “gonzo” journalism, for letting exuberance overwhelm the facts, as seen by Ed Ayres detailed criticism, summarized as “The first [of the book’s] two stories are somewhat misguided and misinformed, though entertaining.  The third is well researched and, I think, profoundly important. I don't know if I have ever before read a book that is so wrong and so right between the same two covers.”

Peter Richmond’s article on Ryan Fitzpatrick is similar. An interesting portrait of a thoughtful man, it nonetheless includes such pronouncements such at this: “It kind of makes you wonder if, in a graphic-novel alternate universe, Fitzpatrick has been predestined to visit failing American post-industrial towns until one of them recognizes his mission as Savior and anoints him.” The Goose’s Roost – a thinking man’s Buffalo Sports blog – takes him down by pointing out the ambiguities behind the hyperbole.

These two writings shine a light on an interesting question: What exactly should be the relationship between telling an entertaining story and being faithful to the facts? I don’t have the answer, but like everything, the answer falls somewhere in between. On one side, you have someone that tells a story with no regard for the truth, aiming for nothing more that entertainment. On the other hand, you have someone who strives for the most accurate representation of reality as possible with no regard for storytelling. (This along with incomprehensible jargon is why so many academic papers are so unreadably bad – they have no concern with telling a story.)

Personally, I find the prevalence of hyperbole these days to be mildly disturbing, simply because we negate the power of words if we don’t use them for their intended purpose. For example: it’s entertaining to use the word “epic” as a synonym for “great” (as in “That was an epic game, man!”) but what it means is that you now don’t have a word to use when you want to say something was truly epic (by definition “heroic; majestic; impressively great”) I’m as guilty as the next person of doing this, BTW, and I’m not sure it’s going to go away anytime soon .

As for representing nothing but the truth in text, well, the truth is always more complex than any narrative you can create. The mere tactic of picking and choosing facts and presenting them in a certain order by definition leaves things out and thus doesn't paint a complete picture of a thing. It’s like the old story about the only accurate map having a 1:1 scale that includes everything you could ever want – like something out of a Borges tale. So if you accept this fact, why not make your story entertaining? Why not stay as accurate to the truth as you can, but have some fun along the way?

And so in the end, I fall on the side of the entertainers, with the caveat that a little bit of hyperbole can go a long way. What do you think?

Football

The NFL season started tonight. I'm finding it hard to get excited about this season because once again my team is going to be below par.

I predict a 6-10 season for the Buffalo Bills. I can't even muster the energy to give an analysis about the season. I'll say this: Stevie Johnson will not match his season from last year, DE Marcell Dareus will be a beast if he can stay healthy but the defense will still be poor, and the Bills will be competitive in many games but will lose most of them.

The Buffalo Bills: the team that redefined mediocrity!

Lee Evans to the Ravens

Take a first round pick and get a fourth round pick in return. ...and that's why they're the Bills.

You cant even say they were trying to save money 'cause they just paid Evans a roster bonus of 1.5 million at the start of the month.

Just doesn't make any sense. And Brian Galliford at Buffalo Rumblings explains why.

It was 20 years ago today

Wide right.

Biking to Work

I love this article about Bills Safety Byron Scott biking to work every day. It's fun and enlightening but also disturbing in how his mode of transportation is viewed with ridicule by his teammates. But its in actions like his that changes are made: in small but steady individual voices are opinions changed.

Late Update: Forgot to include the link to the article!

State of the Bills

This.
Money quote:

Even when they're logical, they're illogical. Ladies and gentlemen: the Buffalo Bills.

Adding: Also this. Chris Kelsay is an average OLB, at best, and constantly being beat by Tight Ends. And now he's one of the highest paid members of the team. Sigh.

Just Saying...

Is it too early to start thinking about the number one pick in the 2011 NFL draft? 'cause the Bills will badly need it.
Update: And the panicking begins, right on que.

Nothing to See Here...

I haven’t written much about the Bills recently, and frankly that’s mainly because I find the state of the team extremely depressing. They haven’t been to the playoffs in over a decade, their last game being the ridiculously painful “music city miracle.” (the last game that the great Bruce Smith ever played in a Bills uniform.) The last few years have been a typical Buffalo study in modest expectations been a study in mediocrity and injuries. The highlight of the last few seasons (Byrd’s interceptions a notable exception) is Special Teams. Brian Moorman - the punter! - has been their MVP. The Patriots have beaten us 13 in a row. After sacking the GM and entire coaching staff, an entirely new crew’s running the show. The team is transitioning a fine defense from a 4-3 to a 3-4 without the personnel to support it. Ralph Wilson, the owner, is 92 and rumors abound about his meddling and where the team will move upon his death. There’s not much to get excited about.

Having said this, there are minor signs of hope. Trent Edwards is playing solid, confident football, like he does every year before his porous line allows a few crushing hits on him and his football instincts take back seat to his survival. (Just like Bledsoe.) The defense is still bending and not breaking (too much, yet). CJ Spiller seems like an exciting running back. Points are being scored!

But the disappointments pile up. Last years first round pick, Aaron Maybin,
can’t break it open despite moving him to his supposedly “natural” position of OLB. Everyone keeps getting injured. The special teams and defense have been horrible in pre-season. Aaron Schoebel retired rather then put up with yet another rebuilding season. And the end result is that I just can't get excited to watch the Bills this season. Don't get me wrong - when the powers that be deem to put them on my TV set, i'll tune in, but I'm holding out hope for anything better then a 6-10 season. Wait 'till next year.

Goodbye Aaron

I'm not surprised by Aaron Schobel's stated intention to retire from the Buffalo Bills, but the way he phrases it sounds like a passive-aggressive request for a trade. Either way, it's a sad way for an excellent player to go out. He could have been a first rate player on a better franchise, but instead he got stuck in the sea of mediocrity that's been the Bills for the last decade.

Is This Supposed To Be Funny?

Running Back? Really? With all the holes the Bills have to fill? Who's going to block for him?
What a stupid pick. RBs are a dine a dozen these days. We needed a lineman or a linebacker. Sigh. Going to be another long year...

Update: Jerry Sullivan agrees with me:

You do need big plays to be a playoff team in today's NFL. But if there's one thing we've learned since the millennium began, it's that small, skilled football players are only useful if you surround them with big guys who wear down the opposing team.
That's why I expected the Bills to go with a defensive player. They're going to a 3-4 defense, and they need athletes. They haven't added an impact player to their defensive front seven with a first-round pick since taking Shane Conlan in 1987.

File Under Dumb

For the last few years, the Buffalo Bills have lost huge numbers of players to injury. Not being one to believe in curses, I suspected that the problem had something to do with how the players were being conditioned. And sure enough, as The Buffalo News' Bob DiCesare reports, that was indeed the case:

From what the players are saying, offseason workouts under [Dick] Jauron were akin to pulling up a stool in a sports bar. Twelve televisions adorned the walls in the fieldhouse training facility. Individuals were entrusted to perform their lifting and stretching but there was no real sense of accountability, no singleness of purpose. Some of the injuries that ravaged the Bills last season might be blamed on bad luck, but the extent of the decimation suggests a deficiency in offseason preparation.

If you're investing millions of dollars in a bunch of football players, wouldn't you want to ensure that they were in the best shape they could be in? It's amazing that this wasn't emphasized before.

Shuffle off to Buffalo

Typically, Buffalo only makes the news when it gets one of its infamous lake effect snowstorms that can dump up to three feet of snow at a time. But what most people don't know is that the city, while economically depressed, does have some very nice qualities, as the Dish points out:

Buffalo has elements of beauty dear to a few doughty hearts. These include Olmsted-designed boulevards radiating from an Olmsted central park (Delaware Park); a number of early twentieth-century architectural icons; lots of big, boxy beautiful Victorian houses that can be had for a relative song; a handful of long, graceful commercial and residential avenues that make a vital urban enclave; a surprisingly vibrant arts community; and prices that make it almost like living in another country.

I might add an old school NFL stadium where the tailgates are incredible and you can actually afford seats close to the field. (The quality of the team is another thing these days.)

Mediocrity Defined

Shorter Buffalo Bills 2009 season:
What's the hardest and most obscure way to get to 7-9?