That Aud Smell

And as a fan of the Bills and, ugh, of the NFL, I’m a party to it. It’s essentially a blood sport. And I’m there in the coliseum.

The NFL’s concussion protocol has long struck me as a joke and a sham — Tua’s situation being an extreme example. It is SOP for a concussed player to be discussed as being in a race of sorts to play the following week. In the NFL, recovery from a concussion is uniformly treated as something that occurs in a matter of days. It’s a farce. But the NFL is such a juggernaut of a business that no one, afaik, is saying the emperor has no clothes (or that he still has headaches). OTOH, there’s a slight possibility that NFL players are in such phenomenal shape and get such phenomenal care (like, drugs normies can’t get) that they routinely bounce back from concussions in a few days. E.g., Ryan Bates this week. But colour me skeptical. NFL players typically return to normal football activities 2-3 days after being concussed. In settings where there aren’t billions of dollars at stake, players are generally held out of competitive play for at least a week after having been concussed. As Roger Ebert said with his dying words: It’s all an elaborate hoax.

Stellar was probably too strong. OTOH: Eh.

It's all that other window dressing that seemed to suggest (imply) McDaniel would be different when it came that sort of stuff.

In his short and so far stellar career as an NFL HC, Mike McDaniel seemed to be blazing a brand new trail -- he's quirky, weirdly funny, candid in a rare and peculiar way, intensely brilliant, a vanguard of analytics. And then, with his role in this Tua concussion debacle, he reveals himself to be of a piece with the oldest of old school dinosaurs - ready and willing to treat his players like livestock.

I swear I've seen that movie 10+ times - but I do not remember that scene. And yikes - the "outcast" section of the party is a bit that ... did not age particularly well? Or maybe it can be spun in such a way that the butt of the joke is Marmalard and Omega, not the ethnic minorities and the disabled guy. Anyway. Most comedy - even a lot of great comedy - has a shelf life.

Case in point as to why this board is capable of providing better analysis than most media outlets that cover the team.

It seems like you're likening the two announcers based on more than the fact that they both have/had straightforward approaches to calling the action. I can't get down with that. Ted was iconic. He's in the HHOF. Dan thus far has been serviceable.

I appreciate PA’s kindness toward Dan, but let’s pump the brakes on the Ted Darling comparisons. Unless the only point is that neither Ted nor Dan are standalone entertainers, which, fine. That’s true. Also, as for trademark calls, the joke in middle school was that the best Sabres player was some guy named Shootsie — seemed like he was always scoring.

It's not true, imo. It's truthy, maybe. I find it misleading. "Narrative" is suffering from overuse. But it's often the best word for the job.

in a venue that has the capacity to substantially control its climate. We may presume they did. There's more to preparing for those conditions than just hydrating, though. I hope the team did all it could.

Maybe there was nothing to do. I'm just wondering generally: The Bills often go to Miami in September and win. Maybe yesterday's conditions were just unusual. Hear, hear. I ain't got time for the "Bills don't win close games" narrative.

OTOH, I recall the Bills having throttled the Dolphins in September in recent memory - presumably when it was a billion degrees. So ... what was up yesterday? Given how many players failed from the heat and humidity, I am wondering why the Bills supporting staff isn't being scrutinized. Whose job is that? Nutritionists? Strength and conditioning? The players themselves, sure. But there have to be coaches/assistants whose job it was to get them ready for a heat game. The acclimating is a huge issue. Even for players who are from the south, but play up north. It made sense to me given that there was no Morse, there was a botched snap to gift Miami its first score, and, at the very end, there was a P-squad guy at centre.

So I looked. It was definitely Tommy Doyle, the 5th round draft pick out of Miami OH in 2021, who played guard. TE Tommy Sweeney was inactive.

I believe that was reserve OT Tommy Doyle ...? He would have been out of position at OG. But I can't be sure. No team should be permitted to roster players whose names are Tommy Doyle and Tommy Sweeney. I am forever confusing them. Even as I type this, I'm not sure which is the TE and which is the OT.

TBN did a feature on Dahlin's emergence as a player and as a person. I'm thinking the guy will wear the C after Okposo retires. Speaking of Dahlin's emergence as a person: That narrative dove tails with something that Adams said in his presser that I found unusual and interesting. He talked about how all of the players need that freedom and latitude to be themselves. I inferred that he wasn't talking about them as hockey players at all, really. Just that they need the freedom to be who they are. And that success will often follow that. Dahlin is testament to that, I think.

Huh. I'd been given to understand that lede was an auld alternative spelling of lead (harkening to those Old English Shakespeare days when ordinary words were spelled in unfamiliar ways) that journos clung to for their own reasons. Turns out they sorta just invented it?

Interesting. Maybe I’m just too trepid? I’m still lost.

You’re inscrutable.

Found a link to the presser (below). The guy whose Tweet I posted had things twisted. I'll know to take his content with a grain of salt going forward. The questions come, in essence: (1) Does your extension reflect that your duties have temporarily expanded to include Kim's duties as President of the Sabres and relatedly (2) has Matthew Pegula been elevated to "any official role" especially given what we saw in the embed-videos at the draft? (Hat tip to the poster who pointed that out to me.) Adams responds first re Matthew substantially as follows: Matthew's a great kid. It's amazing to see him now given how young he was when the Pegulas bought the team. I've told Matt and all the Pegula kids: My door is always open. Come see me. You can be with me whenever you want - practice, games, road trips. Sabres FO transparency with the entire Pegula family is important - "they" own the team and hopefully they're excited to be involved with us and the team. ... So, "nothing's changed" with Matthew. He spends time with Brandon Beane as well.

You wanted me to employ an incorrect usage? It's archaic, but the term in journalism is mos def lede not lead. https://grammarist.com/usage/lead-lede/

This is helpful - appreciate that. He's not a kid anymore. He's probably in his mid-20s by now. I'm not sure what the family's succession plan is (and whether Kim's health has accelerated it), but it stands to reason that he'd be mentored to act in an ownership capacity.

I mean - that Tweet buried the mufuggin' lede. He has a role? Did anyone listen to the press conference and get more context? Long may it last. Let's just hope he doesn't propose something on par with his *****-themed baseball hats.