Buffalo Bills Review
I checked my countdown calendar widget today and folks, believe it or not, there are only THIRTY SEVEN DAYS until NFL football begins with the Hall of Fame (pre-season) game!!! 37!!! Whoopeee!! Seriously. Can’t wait.
And the best part? I think my Bills have a very solid team to begin the year! Lots of optimism here in Western New York. Check out what I have been writing in the off-season at our Buffalo Bills Review Articles page.
Bring on NFL football!!!
Now, I’m not one to make light of others’ misfortunes (usually) but I have to share a funny line regarding Bills RB Marshawn Lynch and his alleged involvement in a recent hit-and-run accident resulting in a minor injury of a pedestrian:
“All his life, he was taught to hit people and keep running. Now it gets him into trouble.”
Thanks, Chi. 🙂
Been writing about the Bills this week. A two part, detailed preview of the 2008 team. Most of it is now in place after the draft, they even had Rookie mini camp last week. If you’re interested in such things, check out our Buffalo Bills Review: Articles page.
Title of the articles, “The Team The Bills Will Field”
If you are an NFL fan, you know that the annual college draft took place this past weekend… and perhaps you are happy (or unhappy) with your team’s picks. Well, the Bills used all TEN of their picks and have some pretty great new players. If you are interested in seeing what I wrote about the new guys, you can read my article here, or you can just head over to the articles page and browse the many videos and links I posted yesterday. Oh yeah… maybe even more fun… we also did a show last night, with four of the possible five BBR Guys in attendance! Fun stuff. Enjoy 🙂
It’s that time of year again, in fact this year it’s one week of craziness in my two favorite sports.
On the one hand, the NHL has set tomorrow at 3pm as the deadline to deal players. A couple trades have already occurred, more will come tomorrow. The NHL is pretty good at keeping things fresh, to be sure. People get caught up in the frenzy of the deadline as Sabres’ GM Darcy Regier says above.
The main name on the board for the Sabres is all-star defenseman Brian Campbell. (Note: had my sister have been a boy, that would have been her name!) Campbell is fantastic, and could be a foundational piece for the Sabres for years to come, but for some reason, they have not come to terms on an extension. He’s set to be a free agent come July 1st of this year, so the Sabres are certainly considering a trade in order to get something out of losing him (if he were to choose to leave).
On Friday, we have the other side of things. Free agency begins Friday Feb 29th for the NFL. That means players whose contracts have expired can shop around to the highest bidder. Last season the Bills knew exactly who they wanted, and they got them within half a day of the free agency period starting gun! Will that happen again? Not sure. We had some big name guys who were set to leave last year, not so much this year. And there aren’t a lot of big name players on the market who have generated the press you might expect leading up to such a deadline.
One deadline ends with a frenzy, the other begins with a frenzy. And all in one week!
So, stay tuned, I’ll probably have a report here, and definitely on my Buffalo Bills site.
For those of you who do not regularly follow along at my Buffalo Bills podcast website… I posted a few things there this week and just thought I’d link to them here. First I wrote an article responding to all the speculation about the Bills moving to Toronto. Then we did a special edition of the BBR where we talked about that and more.
Check it out if you are so inclined…
At least, not to me. And, I actually mean that more as a compliment than a slam. Let me explain.
When it comes to the playoffs, and especially the finals of most sports there is an intensity like no other time during the season. The players step it up, the fans step it up… the atmosphere and the play on the field, court, ice are electric. There’s a big difference for example between a regular season hockey game and a playoff hockey game of any level, let alone the Stanley Cup Finals or especially a Game Seven of the finals!
Other sports are the same way. Looks at the fantastic athletic event that is March Madness in college basketball. Play in the regular season may be exciting for die-hards, but come March, tiny schools who weren’t even on the national fan or media’s radar are suddenly playing like – and becoming? – champions.
There’s just a different level to the playoffs in most sports.
Except the NFL.
I don’t mean that as a knock on the NFL players, coaches, fans or anything. Again, it’s really more of a compliment. I don’t know if it’s because there are fewer games, or because of the sheer intensity of the sport, but I believe every NFL game offers the same level of competition, energy, atmosphere, and fun for the fan. Now, there are some that are a small step up. The Bills hosted their first Monday night game in over a decade this past season and their stadium was rockin’! Fans were totally pumped up. The team played out of their minds. But what for? Just a regular game.
This is my point. The NFL has the best overall product because every game can be – and usually is – as intense as if it were for the ultimate championship.
But then we have the Super (Hype) Bowl. Two weeks of incessant media hype, covering every story from every possible angle ad nauseam. We don’t watch much TV around here lately, so actually I haven’t been bombarded as much this year as past years. But it’s still there. I’ve caught the fringe stuff. And tonight there will be all the flashiness that the NFL wants to bring to their “showcase event”.
Does that make it better? Does that make it a more competitive game? Do we really need all that stuff?
In the end, I’ve already seen all the best games this season. (I could be surprised, but usually the Super Bowl does not live up to its hype…) The Patriots vs Dallas, Indy, and even Jacksonville in the playoffs. All the Bills games… 😉 And a handful of other very exciting competitions. Probably were better games than tonight’s game will be. At least they were better than some other Super Bowls I have seen.
So, I’ll stick with my vote for the NHL playoffs, March Madness, and maybe even a few others as being a bigger step up in the post season than the NFL offers. I’d rather watch most any NHL playoff series than the Super Bowl most year.
(Of course, it would help if my team was in the Super Bowl… then I might be saying, “This is going to be the best game EVER!!) 😉
Nah. Gimme some NHL playoffs and March Madness. I’m good to go.
Today was the coldest day of the winter so far here in Western New York. How did we spend it? Well, in the morning, we toyed with the idea of playing outside under the beautiful, clear, sunny skies… but eventually thought better of it. But later in the day, following the pregnant urges of my wife, I put on the parka and fired up the grill on our deck for the first time in a couple months! I was grilling hamburgers at temps in the low double digits!
Only in upstate New York, folks.
Speaking of NY… it is a complete shock to me that the Giants are in the Super Bowl. Complete. I mean, with each game I thought, “You know… they have a chance to win!” but really, in the end, no one thought they would be in the Super Bowl this year! And, even though I really don’t like the Giants, I will be rooting for them to finish what they started in week 17 and put the perfect exclamation point on the year for the Patriots and for them. They will be 12-1 on the road this year (winning 11 straight) and the Pats will go 18-0 … only to LOSE THE SUPER BOWL.
Man that would be awesome. And I don’t even like the Giants! 🙂
So, from the Frozen North.. here’s hopin’ the Giants can pull off one more major upset in the Super Bowl.
(Did I just say that????!!)
As many of you know, I am a sports fan. Many sports, but not all sports. (You won’t find any baseball, golf, auto-racing, or gymnastics being discussed here…) Well, there’s a good deal going on with all of my favorite teams, so I thought I’d give a brief update to those who might be interested (or wonder what sorts of things I and the Campbell fam are doing these days…)
Buffalo Bills
Obviously I am following this team the closest, as I still have the number one Buffalo Bills show on the internet! 🙂 The Bills are also making it fun! Two weeks ago they benched last year’s starter – for good – and brought in the first year guy Trent Edwards, who after a 4-touchdown game last week is now 5-1 as a starter! That’s fairly amazing for a rookie, but when you factor in the unprecedented amount of injuries this team has suffered, and the already “green” talent that he has to work with anyway… that’s almost impossible!
Believe it or not, the talk around Bills country is that this team of injury replacements actually has a very good shot at making the playoffs! If they win their last three games, they will finish 10-6, and the best the other two teams they are contending with can do is 10-6. Now, if they all finish with that record it’s bad – crazy tie-breaking procedures – but, if just one other team is tied with them… the Bills will go to the playoffs. (I know… ridiculously hard to understand, but I do think I finally get it.) Basically, if we win all our games, and Tennessee loses just one… we’ll go to the playoffs for the FIRST TIME since 1999! Wow!
So, we’re pretty excited here, and had one of our most fun shows last night. If you’ve never checked out our Buffalo Bills show, click the link and check it out. You might like it even if you’re not a Bills fan. 🙂
Buffalo Sabres
I got to see a Sabres game last night – which is rare these days, since we’re not paying the outrageous price for cable just to get the channel that carries their games! – and it was … not so good. Strange, really. The Sabres (if you’ll recall) were the President Trophy winners last season. That means they finished the season with the most points and the best record. Of all the teams… they were the best.
BUT, this year has been very different. They are near the bottom. Were AT the bottom at one point. Bad bounces, players lost in the off-season, injuries, strange bad luck. I saw more of it last night. They outshot the other team more than 2-1, but only scored one goal! Goal posts, great saves, missing the net, more great saves… it was crazy. And so, they are 13-14-1. I don’t think they had 14 losses till March last year! 🙂
Michigan State Football
Yes, my Spartans are in a Bowl Game! December 28th at 5:00pm you can catch the Spartans and the Boston College Eagles on some channel somewhere. 🙂 They have a pretty good team this year. Some stars on both sides of the ball… lost a lot of close games in a very tough conference. They hung with the #2 team in the country, Ohio State. (Or are they #1? I forget…) They are all a bunch of young guys, too… so expect to see them near the top of the Big Ten next season!
That’s a pretty good update for now. There might be more, but I need to get back to working on websites 🙂
Go Bills, Sabres and Spartans!
There are just some teams that I never like to see win. I know, I should root for a team instead of against the other one, but … that’s just the way it is.
Tonight I am rooting for probably my second favorite team, the Cincinnati Bengals, but it’s not looking good for them. The Steelers (one of those teams I never want to see win…) are getting lots of “homer” calls, and it’s pretty annoying. Probably wouldn’t be as annoying if I didn’t like the Bengals and so strongly dislike the Steelers…
Just so it’s in writing, here are the teams I always root against (and if they are both playing, I usually just don’t even watch the game!) 🙂 Steelers, Cowboys, Patriots, Giants, Eagles, and Ravens. So yeah, remember those two Super Bowls that featured Giants vs Ravens and Eagles vs Patriots? Didn’t see ’em. 🙂
There are some other teams in other sports, but since it’s primarily football season, I’ll leave it at that.
On a more positive note… my Bills did pull out a last-second, one-point victory today! Nice job, Bills!