Randall Flagg

As long as he can stay healthy, which seems to be a valid concern, I am convinced that he is elite or close to it

I love the Sabres probably more than 99.5% of Bills fans and the Sabres leaving would just give me a bigger budget to spend on the Bills

My Gretzky-UPL team mogs your team

I highly doubt that would happen

The two worst positions on the team last year were guard and they brought in two brand new Guards, who have both had outstanding camps and preseason games "People like you" "Ignoring what you don't want to hear " Why can't you ever just have a discussion with someone and assume they are talking and thinking in good faith

InfamousSnivelingBobcat-mobile.mp4

Spencer had a few excellent pass block reps against TJ Watt. I only saw him cleanly lose one rep when I was looking in real time Erik Turner of Cover 1 mentioned that they ran way more 5-7 step dropbacks than they ever do in normal games, which is of course not part of any sensible gameplan against a front like this. Which is why they did it - put guys through the fire when it doesn't matter and see how they respond. The Dawkins play I've seen fans angry about the most on twitter was blocked just fine, but Allen dropped back about 9 steps. You are asking for tackles to fail when that happens The coaches look for different things in these games than the fans do, and the fan reaction to this game on One Bills Drive and Twitter is completely embarrassing Everything I"m reading confirms what I hoped I was seeing from Torrence - it sounds like that guy is going to be a PLAYER.

That is not my reaction lol I didn't like seeing Allen run around either, but again, they used vanilla blocking schemes, everyone was 1v1 each snap. Doing that against Watt and Heyward and Highsmith is something that no coach would be comfortable with in any real game because they would win those battles 90% of the time against any line in the NFL I actually saw some good things in those battles. The Bills were running long-developing routes and had they called quicker throws, we would have seen a lot of NFL-clean pockets. Allen bailed out of a couple good ones too. It is what it is, they weren't focused on that kind of stuff because they'd be tipping their hands The Steelers make every team change it up in the regular season, that's the ebb and flow of football. In 2020, Buffalo faced the 11-1 Steelers and only scored 3 points in the first half, struggling to handle these guys. They put the game away in the second half after figuring something out with scheming that they are explicitly not going to do in the preseason. That's football. That's why these games don't mean anything outside of the injury report, the defining element of the game is completely absent. I'm happy to talk about worries and flaws, the Bills have them, and they have more than the Chiefs, the Eagles and maybe the Bengals (though I am NOT convinced at all about that one). Marino did a good episode talking about the comparison of these flaws last week, if you like Locked on Bills. But the bottom line is inescapable, the Bills are an excellent football team, they've been a whisker away from where they want to be, and they've added more than they've lost yet again despite entering the offseason 18mil over the cap. People call me a pessimist about hockey and an optimist about football, but I just call what I see, and I see a top notch organization taking another big swing at glory in Orchard Park, and I'm excited as hell to watch it

One of those PFF style organizations did a deep-dive ranking of team drafts over a 3 or 5 year span, a couple of years ago. The Bills ranked in first place at the time Every team has misses they hate, and there are some things I wish we did differently in that department in two particular draft years, but overall you can add things up basically any way you want over the last 3-4 years and they will always show that there are two teams at the top and then a gap to the rest of the field, and those teams are always the Bills and Chiefs. Track record means something. People will be as bullish on the Sabres as they are down on the Bills and it blows my mind This team wins a *****-ton of games, has a *****-ton of talent, and whether or not they drafted "better" within reason, they will need a reset soon as any team would. Just gotta hope they have enough juice to get across the finish line before they have to do that. Oh and when you have Josh Allen, the reset doesn't have to be painful. The Chiefs resetted their way to a super bowl win last year

I literally don't want Dorsey scheming anything. If there's a particular chipping technique or block formation they have for elite lines like Pittsburgh's, I do NOT want them running it in this game. They never would, because that would be a ridiculous thing to do You use these games to get guys feeling what it feels like to be hit again, to go through game mechanics in at game speed etc. so that week 1 isn't so jarring. Whether you get yards or lose yards or anything else, it doesn't matter, and of course, any sort of analysis confirms this The only thing that bugged me was the pre-snap penalties, but seeing them now has no correlation with whether or not we see them in 3 weeks

Why even ask?

The Bills have steamrolled the preseason since Allen got here. This will be the second preseason game they've lost since 2018, going 10-1 in that span. That didn't matter for anything, but when they have a ***** half against a team showing out at home, their preseason performance magically means something about the team again I'm mostly talking about the game thread cesspool on TBD and fans on twitter, it's not bad in here. It's just funny What matters in preseason is staying healthy, and seeing how particular individuals play in particular situations, and those particular players are generally not the important ones The 3 or 4 particular players I had interest in watching actually looked really good today

The Bills have an elite, lasting offense that historically struggled at guard and in the slot The best starters I saw on the field for them were Torrence, McGovern and Kincaid

No

Somehow Kevyn Adams has taken this team from the pits to 91 points and I've been mildly annoyed by every single move along the way

Oh yeah I forgot about Johnson This is probably just clearing the deck with the guy who wants more ice time for sure

This is the only BUF OTT Game 1 2006 video I can find with RJ

This makes sense playing a numbers game if handedness is important, and considering that he was vocal about wanting more ice time LD RD 23 26 25 33? (Clifton) 61 10/46/6 But they tend to stress it's not as important as getting the best 6 out there. I know they just acquired Johnson, I'm not at all convinced he's better than Boosh, though he is of the same mold Regardless, the move is slightly odd given that Kevyn talked multiple times about how defensive depth issues are the main thing that sunk us. Having Boosh and Stillman as 7/8 is a lot better than having Stillman and Bryson. There will be a lot of injuries, and what the hell is after Bryson? I liked Boosh. Considering all of these angles, I would not at all be surprised if this is a sort of precursor move for something else. But every time I've thought that with Kevyn it hasn't been true

Went skating downtown by the waterfront tonight. Went by the arena to see what was there, if anything. Those are cookies on top of the "R" yes :)

I wish I had the full list of all the guests they've had on today. Doc Emrick is on right now.

My favorite big call: BLOWWWWS IT BY LUNDQVIST The whole game sticks out. I was freshly 12 years old and beyond frustrated that my team had faced adversity for pretty much the first time since I started watching. They hadn't solved Lundqvist in damn near 2 games, and were 15 seconds from heading back to MSG down 3 games to 2. I stormed into the kitchen during the final commercial break of the 3rd period and wrote "1 - 0 L" on the schedule. (I hoped I could find it, but apparently I didn't start saving them until 2007-08.) I came back out to the living room, and remember Lorentz pondering the Rangers' faceoff decision before Rick reminded him that it was an icing. Rick asked us "Who else?? Who else??" I called my gramma during the intermission and told her what i did and how i need to cross out what i wrote. She scolded me to never do that again, to never lose hope that something amazing can happen. I haven't done it since. We talked about RJ on that phone call. There were a million moments like this in my life and one of the amazing things about Rick is that for each moment he narrated, 100,000 different meaningful interactions like this took place across the homes of Sabres fans. He was and endless presence. Mom doesn't care a lick about sports, but the number of hours she chose to read in the same room we watched the game versus somewhere else just because Rick made her laugh... she was the first one to message me yesterday We were radio only most of the time in 05-06, and drove down to Cuba NY for the weekend during game 1 vs OTT. Reception went in and out along the way and every time we were able to grasp at Rick's voice between the static, the score had changed by 2 goals. We sat down inside just in time for the start of overtime. Will never forget that one either. It's hard to find good video of that game with Rick on the call.

I am a little surprised that pain is such a sharp emotion among the many I am feeling. I am realizing it is because I had been entirely convinced that I hadn't heard Rick's last call, that we would get playoff games from him in the near future. Getting RJ night right was one of the most important things this franchise did and it was one of the nights that convinced me we were starting to straighten things out.

GR is knocking it out of the park

Love my sabres family, each and every one of you. Rick showed me how The last thing he said to me and you, "I love you"

I probably won't get that game from our split seasons, I will have to sell another game because I"m not missing this one