Buffalo Bills Review
I just posted an article on this to my Buffalo Bills blog, but wanted to also post here…
Brett Favre is a NY Jet!
Holy cow. That’s crazy. I won’t elaborate here (as I already did there) but suffice it to say, our division (the AFC East) has gotten significantly more interesting.
Bills first pre-season game in two days! Whooohoo! 🙂
OK, once again I’m a little slow on the draw here, but it’s been to crazy around here! AND, I actually do most of my NFL-related writing for our Buffalo Bills site (which we have beefed up a bit this year… if you haven’t been over there in a while, check it out! The articles page has a pretty decent list of contributers, and we’re going to be doing a lot of special/bonus shows this summer leading up to the regular season in just a MONTH!!)
We watched the official 2008 season opener this past Sunday… the Hall of Fame game. Sometimes this pre-season kick-off game is a joke, but honestly, this was a GREAT game! The ‘Skins and the Colts should both be pretty good this year. (I know… it’s only pre-season, but really… they both looked quite talented, and deep. Maybe especially the Redskins.) It was super fun to see football on our TV again!
The Bills play both of those teams this pre-season. First against Washington this Saturday (can’t wait!) Washington has a rookie QB from the University of Hawaii that set all kinds of records during his time there… and looks like he might do the same in the NFL! He’s got a crazy release… but it worked! He came in as the third QB of the game, and threw the tying and winning TDs! And I think he was something like 9 for 10 or so. Watch for Colt Brennan in the years to come. Should have a pretty decent NFL career! (If you can predict such things…)
So, if you’re into football… the wait is finally over. First official weekend of pre-season is this coming weekend, and we’re only a month away from the real deal! Whoohooo!
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!!!
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 🙂
The NFL has announced that the 2008 schedule will be released today at 2pm. The NFL Network will be doing a special show coinciding with the release. It’s a fun time of year when you get to see how the next season will unfold. Bills fans are hoping for a prime time game or two. I know I am going to look for the game against Cleveland and circle it on my calendar! That will likely be the “Buffalo Bills Review Game of the Year” where we all attend and invite any listeners to join us before and after the game for some Buffalo Bills fun!
For more details, see this page at ESPN.com.
Go Bills!
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…
I’m a little late to the party here, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts on the “cheating” scandal(s) that surround the New England Patriots.
News has surfaced that the Patriots may have video taped the St. Louis Rams’ walk-through practice the day before the Super Bowl in 2002. That was the one where the Pats managed to somehow upset the heavily favored Rams. The Rams offense was just sensational that season, and somehow, the Pats had the answer – enough to have a 14-3 halftime lead! It ended with the Pats kicking a FG to win it, and stun the world. Of course, then they went on to win two Super Bowls in the next three seasons.
But all this talk – and hard evidence – of the Patriots finding unethical, against-the-rules ways to get these wins, made me notice a couple things.
First, the Pats were 11-5 in that first Super Bowl season, finishing 14-5 with the stunning Super Bowl victory. Then, for some reason, they didn’t even make the playoffs the next year. They finished 9-7, in a three-way tie with the Jets and Dolphins. (Poor Bills…) 🙁 By a tie-breaker, they were excluded from the playoffs.
Perhaps they were trying to do it “by the book”? Well, that didn’t work.
So here are the following seasons’ results. (I’ll include those first two as well.)
Those are impressive win/loss totals. 100-29. Four Super Bowls. (But they did not win them all…) 😉 Could they all need to be followed with an asterisk? Should it read 100-29*?
Not sure yet. There is talk that a more thorough investigation could be coming. One run by the US and various state governments.
What will the NFL and the Patriots do then? The games have been played. Is an asterisk enough? Can they take the Lombardi Trophies away from the Pats? Can they give them to their unethically-beaten opponents? Do they want them? Then they would have a championship with an asterisk.
Not sure if fines, suspensions, or even jail time will befall the New England Patriots, but it could get pretty ugly over this off-season.
The last minute blemish to their perfect season (and the shenanigans that followed by Belichick, Brady, and Moss) might be only the very start of a long, dark off-season for the Patriots.
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.