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musichunch

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Posts posted by musichunch

  1. Yup. He's gotta do a better job of just moving the puck down behind the net if there's no where to shoot from and no pass to the middle. 

     

    I get the sense Eichel is playing lazy out there. I feel an "I'm so good I'm not going to try that hard" attitude from him the last few games. Maybe it just seems that way but I watch ROR and I think about what Eichel could do if he tried half as hard. 

  2. The question is "Why?" 

     

    Why would the NFL or the officials target the Bills? As mentioned, they are one of the least relevant teams in the league, why expend the effort? Is the league afraid the Bills are going to overtake the Patriots? The league hates the Patriots, wouldn't the "enemies of my enemies are my allies" apply? If you want to believe in conspiracies, wouldn't the logical one be that the NFL would help the other three teams in the division? Is the league out to get Rex Ryan? Why? Does the league want to get Terry Pegula? Why? 

     

    Seriously, for anyone out there who thinks the league is out to get the Bills, please give an answer that isn't easily debunked.  

     

    Well the Bills sell out most games year after year even if we miss the playoffs. Unlike say, the Jags. The NFL knows that no matter what Bills fans are going to spend money on the team. Ralph knew this as well. 

     

    I don't think they're afraid of the Bills as much as they would rather have other teams going to the playoffs or playing in primetime games. 

     

    There's not a lot of financial downside to the Bills missing the playoffs again. And the upside is not as high as the upside for say, the Giants making the playoffs. 

  3. Blaming Lehner's conditioning for him catching a rut and spraining an ankle is like blaming a person's weight as the reason they got hit by a bus.

     

     

     

    You know.. if you get close enough to Van Gogh's paintings you can critique every stroke he every made.  You also won't appreciate his painting.

     

    I like that. Puts our day to day and week to week whining in perspective. 

  4. I said a few days ago that the Jags are not the pushover that people made them out to be. We should beat them, but if we come out flat we can lose.

     

    Well we had a pretty flat 2nd quarter to say the least. On the fumble return McCoy didn't know the blocking scheme and you can see him asking EJ what it was. This is the moment that EJ needs to realize his RB does not know who to block. Instead EJ is aloof, glancing at his wrist, and in his head about whatever. Sure enough McCoy needs to run across the center to get to the blitz and boom fumble. Yeah McCoy screwed up, but a 3rd year QB needs to recognize what was going on. 

     

    Tough game. Bad sequence of events. Good comeback. Lots of plays that went against us (McCoy fumble). Some classic NFL game fixing with the PI flag (they love to keep games exciting for the advertisers). 

     

    Hey, we almost pulled it off and the narrative and mood would've been totally different. I don't like the job Rex is doing, but this team should be 5-2 if the NFL/refs didn't get involved with their WWE antics. 

  5. I'm fine with the team this year.

     

    We're coming off two historically bad seasons. Now we have an abundance of major offensive talent that's flying all over the ice, but hasn't been able to cash in yet. Defense is so-so and goaltending has been below average. 

     

    This is what successful rebuilds look like folks:

    1. Horrible seasons

    2. Inconsistent losing seasons with flashes of greatness

    3. More consistent winning seasons/low-mid playoff berths

    4. Breakout year/top playoff seed/long playoff run

    5. Long-term elite team/dynasty

  6. I think the Lightning are stacked with young talent and could contend for several years with or without Stamkos. Stamkos is also signed with Terry Pegula's former sports agency (Newport Sports Agency) which also represents Ryan O'Reilly and Evander Kane so that could sway things slightly towards the Sabres. 

     

    Interesting. 

  7. I love when sh*t hits the fan and the truth comes out. Turns out Percy has had this problem going back to the 2009 combine. 

     

    Six years of having to deal with the same injury, sapping away elite abilities. That sucks. But at least he got one more pay day. 

  8. DVOA isn't based on video analysis though, it's an event-based metric with data pulled from the NFL's digital play-by-play system. So I really have no idea why you think All-22 versus TV cameras is even relevant.

     

    TBH, in that case, I respect it even less. 

  9. PFF QB grading is kind of a mess, sure. But what does that have to do with FO team/unit ranking? Did I miss something?

     

    I used to be a big FO guy. 

     

    Then I realized that they had access to the same information we did. Meaning no All-22. I just don't believe any truly meaningful observational analysis can be done with the TV camera view, even with lineman.

     

    Since All-22 came available I'm not sure if they've changed their methods, but I still doubt them. 

  10. On a different note, I've heard from a friend of mine that Kane was rather fond of smoking weed (my friend played hockey in NA etc,.). I don't know if this is still true since it was a long time ago and it could be blasphamy for all I know. But it fits Kanes profile of being wild. Perhaps it isn't such big of a deal either, I don't know if weed hampers your ability to play hockey.

    rather prematurely yes, I've already gotten a mancrush on him.

     

    He fits the coke crowd too. Especially, with his L.A./TMZ friends. 

     

    Plenty of people here know I question his character, but I don't think recreational drug use is anything to worry about. 

  11. For all the bitching about the defense, it's still 10th in DVOA. It's not bad, it's not below average, it's top-10. Disappointing? Sure, since I think we were all mostly expecting top-5 or better. We were expecting dominant and what we've gotten is very good. But it's hardly a disaster.

     

    After the Aaron Rodgers debacle I don't put too much faith into FO or PFF. 

  12. Jaguars are not an awful team. People are going to hate this, but in the Dolphins game I watched on All-22, they seemed like a fundamentally sound football team in the trenches. Marrone has helped.

     

    Bortles has an arm. His receivers have been going off. They're good enough to beat us if we play poorly. 

     

    Like I said previously, let's see how Rex adjusts. It's a real ego-check. 

  13. Looking over some random numbers, the Sabres are a significantly improved team through their first 5 games. Corsi is way up, time of possession is way up, and shots against are way way way down. Statistically speaking we are under producing according to what should be our baseline. I would expect that we see a return to what we actually are sometime in the next couple weeks. The team will finally build chemistry and players will start to slide into their long term roles. The return on investment is coming.

     

    The eye test from the Lightning game looked good. If we play like that most nights and start putting the puck in the net, I'd say we're solidly a playoff team already. But of course consistency is key. 

  14. You know it's funny, after Week 2 I got a 10 day trial of NFL Gameday and wrote a long breakdown of what I believe happened during the Patriots game. Just a long-time NFL fan with no more than HS freshman football experience.

     

    Biggest problems on defense were:

    1. We refuse to jam receivers at the line which allows the short timed passing attack to kill us.

    2. We get too cute with coverages and blitzes. Example was having Kyle Williams cover Dion Lewis 1 on 1 across the field on a play that led to a Pats touchdown. 

     

    Since my trial expired, I see Rex hasn't bothered to fix any of these main points. Eli kicked our ass with short slants, just like Brady. Now Dalton manages to play 60 minutes while getting hit only once. 

     

    I get that the NFL coaching game is enormously complex. I get that things go on that 99.9% of fans don't understand, unless you're Chris Brown from Smart Football. I get that most NFL players and coaches roll their eyes at fan opinion. I get it, I would too.

     

    But at some point, it is what it is. What you have is not working and all it takes is a casual fan to recognize the problem. Look, I like Rex. I think he fosters a very open environment and he knows the risks involved with it and is cool with that. He knows that players are going to start talking. 

     

    What we have here is a big watershed moment. I would never agree with Jerry Sullivan about anything, but he wasn't too far off by saying Rex is in a "crisis", although that's way too strong a word in my opinion. But I do think he's at a crossroads where what made him great is no longer working anymore. Now he needs to adjust on the fly, like all the greats do. Is he going to face the problem and find a way around, over, or under the brick wall, or is he going to keep banging his head against it?

     

    Now we shall see what Rex is made of. 

  15. A large part of me understands the distrust of a large institution run by a state that willing harbored a pedophile for decades. Then all of a sudden a payment of an extraordinary amount of money is paid to that institution by a person may make one think that person could be involved.

     

    But no, the two are completely separate.

     

    I will guarantee you a good portion of Pegulas' generosity was born for tax purposes. The timing, and length of payout to Penn State after he just sold East Resources has everything to do with it and not a birdie. The fact that the scandal was unraveling  in the mist of one of the best and most generous offers the school has ever had was not planned. Well maybe it was, we have all witnessed the PR department of the Sabres at work ( weak joke I know, but hey...)

     

    If you want the latest crazy shiny hat theory google the Pennsylvania Attorney General. I have been told it's the beginning of the Sandusky political cleanse. Not much bad happened to a lot of bad people in positions of authority that had the power ( state appointed) to get Sandusky many years before. 

     

    And if it's not, it's just karma restoring it's self.

     

    Belief #1 - Pegula has been a secret Sabres fan his whole life, made his billions in oil, and when the Sabres came on the market he swooped in and got his toy. Now Pegula and his plucky wife are trying to turn the city of Buffalo around!

     

    Belief #2 - Pegula has been a casual fan most of his life. He made his billions in a industry that requires millions of dollars of lobbying just to keep regulations at bay, and is at risk of a bombshell environmental health disaster report to be unleashed any given year. His trusted associates advise him to diversify his assets. He makes a large donation to Penn State and then hears word that a massive child sex scandal is about to break out. It would be tough to romance politicians when you're even five degrees from a pedophilia case. Someone alerts him that the nearby Sabres have been secretly shopped around since 2008 or 2009 and they see an opportunity to gain the good graces of the state and local community, while getting a bargain. Pegula buys the Sabres and is seen as a savior. He then purchases the Americans, Bills, and starts the Harbor Center project. He is primed to expand and monetize his One Buffalo brand with a terrific PR reputation.

     

    Guys, I'm not Drane obviously, I don't think I'm funny enough to pretend to be. He alludes to Pegula and Benson somehow being involved and trying to cover up the scandal. Maybe there's some truth to that, who knows, but I'm not going that far. 

     

    However, in my eyes, I think Pegula saw Buffalo and the Sabres as a lifeboat, rather than a dream team. I know people don't want to hear it and want their Santa Claus, but to my dying day I'll never believe that a billionaire fracker has nothing but love in his heart for a city and their sports teams, and is willing to throw his money into the wind. I just have a feeling we're going to see everything differently in 5-10 years.

     

    I make plenty of assumptions in my post above, but that's what I believe based on the information I have. Sorry if it offends people. 

  16. You are far from the only one doing this, but there is a real vibe here of looking a gift horse in the mouth. 

     

    TP isn't doing what he's doing in Buffalo to make money.  There are plenty of good investment opportunities out there for him, and Buffalo isn't one of them.

     

    IMHO, the Pegulas are a gift from heaven -- both for local sports fans and for the local population as a whole.  Generations of WNYers have grown old, moved away or left the coil entirely waiting for an economic revitalization.  We finally have wealthy private individuals determined to help make it happen without profit as the primary motive -- and many people react with suspicion, like he's trying to steal our treasures.

     

    Maybe he and his wife want to use their wealth to make a real difference in her hometown (and his adopted one).

     

    On the surface it's a great stroke of luck.

     

    But I just still don't really know who he is. He came out of nowhere. A billionaire Sabres fan nobody heard of. Who made his money in a questionable industry. Who bought the team right before the sh*t hit the fan at Penn State. And now he's pretty much the owner of the city of Buffalo. 

     

    Maybe it's nothing, but something in my gut is telling me to be cautious. 

  17. Brady believes himself to be proactively defending himself from concussions with a health drink from an unbelievably questionable source that has been proven false in court by the FTC for false claims concerning curing cancer.

    http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/10/12/tom-brady-alex-guerrero-response/

     

    I mean, what does curing cancer claims have to do with concussions?

     

    I know how negative a word "quackery" is, but I find it's thrown around automatically nowadays when anybody introduces a product that western medicine or science doesn't agree with. Maybe it's bunk, but I'm not going to call him a quack just because the FTC doesn't like it and Brady supports him. 

  18. I wouldn't trust what Benson says too much. The only thing we've heard from him and Pegula are nothing but altruistic motives, and nobody's that perfect.

     

    I think Pegula is trying to diversify his fracking money since you never know what regulations and environmental concerns are going to come up in that industry, and he chose to do it in an inexpensive city with room for growth. 

  19. I can't believe the local media are still harping on Whaley for getting rid of Cassell. He's the third string QB! Whaley can snap his fingers and ten agents will appear trying to get him to sign their guy for league minimum who is also capable of handing the ball off and throwing checkdowns like Cassell. 

     

    It's just their chance to make up for their horrible analysis during training camp and preseason. Haters always wait around....just waiting for someone to screw up.

  20. Yeichel sounds like a Yiddish word. Then that yeichel tried to cut in line at the deli.

     

    This is my first post on the new gizmo. And my first from the Queen City. I'm at the VA Hospital and I'm pretty sure the WWII vet next to me could have typed this faster!

     

    Was thinking the same thing. Like RJ was going for some sort of Yiddish joke that nobody got. Old people humor I guess. 

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