The Barrister et al.


Hey all. It's the day before Thanksgiving, we're all trying to concentrate on work while day dreaming about all the scotch we're going to drink tomorrow, and sports? Well, sports are sports which means they're terrible and awesome and disheartening and inspiring and all of it.

We did this last year - with some reasonable success, I guess? - and when I emailed the crew yesterday to gather the things for which our dreadful lot are thankful this year, well, I feared the thing I always fear when I ask for things from the rest of the guys... no response whatsoever. That these assholes responded at all is a pretty amazing thing, and I thank them for it. Thanks, given.

From The Scizz, our resident disproportionate responder:

This year I'm thankful for many things, but that doesn't seem very DGWU, so here is everything I hate. 

I hate James Dolan. I hate him so much it hurts. This arrogant cock had the nerve to say in an interview that it doesn't pay to be impatient in the NBA, meanwhile he has a constant revolving door of players, coaches, and front office staff because he cares more about his ego and his shitty blues band than he does actual success. Fuck him and his 70's porn bush beard.

I hate Darcy Regier. So in a way, I'm thankful he is gone I suppose. But mostly I want to focus on how much I hate his face and the fact that he made Ville Leino and Steve Ott a thing I have to deal with. Also, if you were against his firing I hate you too. And your family. I hate your family.

I hate anybody who still thinks Stevie Johnson is a #1 receiver in the NFL. He isn't and he won't be. He is a solid player who has the ability to put up big numbers, but lacks any kind of consistency. This is called a #2 receiver. Go Bob Woods.

I hate every single American who still watches American Idol, America's Got Talent, X-Factor, or The Voice. Bring back Perfect Strangers and Dinosaurs.

I hate Obese people on the subway. No, I will not scootch over for you to sit down. You obviously had seven Whoppers this morning for breakfast and deserve nothing but the inevitable heart attack headed your way.

I hate seriousness on Twitter. As much as I'd love to see 14 straight tweets about your thoughts on somehow still defending Obamacare or gun rights, I'd rather you go post on a yahoo message board with the rest of the lonely people who have nobody to talk to in real life.

Now that you probably all hate me, Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for being shitfaced by 2pm and wolfing down a turkey sandwich with Wasabi mayo before passing out on the floor.


From The Outlander, who can basically fuck himself until the end of all creation for this:

For the second year in a row I'm the only one here who had a team win a championship. Now I would trade them back in a second for a championship we could all dance and shotgun beers over, but unfortunately it doesn't work like that so I'll have to enjoy it largely alone. I'm thankful for the 2013 Boston Red Sox.

Thanks to modern technology and the fact that my Center Ice package turned into two months of free extra innings, I was able to follow this team closer than I had followed them in previous seasons. There's no need to dissect what made the team successful, which signings were the most important, how big a difference a new manager can provide, that's the dry analysis that makes reading Jonah Keri feel like chewing on wet cardboard. What makes me so thankful for this Red Sox team is that they were able to wake me from the stupor of ambivalence and detached incredulity that watching my favorite two teams had become. Outside of a couple weeks in 2010 and 2011, that passion had disappeared; the moments where you watch with your chin buried in your hands, your fingers over your mouth, your heart pounding against your rib cage as if you just ran a 5k when in reality you haven't gotten up from your seat since you took a piss after the sixth inning. The moments where the unthinkable happens, where your heart leaps into your throat and you find yourself standing and screaming without remembering consciously leaving your seat. Think about when you last felt that way. Was it Drury's goal in 2007? Pominville's the year before? For all of us it has been too long, and in baseball, where the only percentages that define success are ones that always come with a majority of failure, those moments- when the ball flies off the bat toward Citgo sign, or the right field bullpen, or when the most feared hitter in baseball swings through a sinker with the tying run on third in the eighth inning- feel all that more unexpected. Add to the fact that no matter where our baseball, basketball, soccer and college teams call home, we will always find ourselves expecting the worst because we're from Buffalo and dammit that's just how it goes. 

Except when it doesn't.

This team was supposed to finish at the bottom of their division, not win it going away. It was predicted from August on that midnight was about to arrive, whether in a series at the Dodgers, a series at Yankee stadium, a series against the Tigers, and then later in the playoffs, certainly there. The prognosticators kept waiting, and even as a fan so did I, right up until they beat Scherzer, Verlander and Sanchez and found themselves returning to Fenway a game away from the World Series, that's when I finally new.

I was at a wedding North of Boston for that game, at some retreat in the woods outside Glochester. The type of retreat where the "couples" bedrooms had separate twin beds and three dozen flies on the inside of the windows. After drinking a remarkable amount of whiskey and ciders at the reception, followed by a considerable amount of craft beer at the afterparty bonfire, I found myself in that lovely area between half and fully in the bag. A bunch of us- some still clad in their suits, some hurriedly changed into hoodies and jeans- found ourselves in a small dining area watching the game on an old 16 inch screen. The Red Sox trailed 2-1 with two outs in the seventh, the bases loaded and one of the MANY guys underachieving in the series, Shane Victorino up. He had hit a huge grand slam in the 2008 NLCS for the Phillies; my friend who had just gotten married had the call as his ringtone our entire 3L year at Penn State. Now it was my time to watch the unthinkable.

I don't know why, maybe it was the location, being somewhere different, surrounded by friends, drunk as all hell, celebrating the feeling of something finally coming together, that YES, this WAS our year, but it reminded me of this.

Someday, my friends. We'll all suddenly remember what that feels like. And we'll dance, and all of us at the Deeg will be stuck being thankful for the same goddamn thing. I don't think we'll mind.



Awww, that's nice, buddy. But still, fuck you forever. Go Mets.


And now from The Wild Card, the new guy who is generally letting law school deny you all from his hot fire takes:

I'm thankful for an awful lot you guys. An AWFUL lot. An AWFUL LOT of Sabres players that miiiight just, fate permitting, be awful to get a #1 pick... but remember it's a fucking lottery now so even if we're the worst in history it's still pretty likely that the native Americans buried in the soil beneath the city of Buffalo who cursed our existence in exchange for a horrific genocide despite the initial warmth and caring they showed our forefathers in the fabled original Thanksgiving will prevent us from receiving that #1. 

Full circle guys. See how I did that?

Mmmm. Airport coffee. Mmmm. This girl next to me at the JetBlue hotspot. She seems really cute and nice. But her hair is covering most of her face from this angle. That must be why I think she's cute and nice. Either way, I'm thankful for her too, and the fact that she hasn't given me the stinkeye even though I took off my shoes to cool off my rancid feet. 100+ minutes on the train with a suitcase takes its toll folks. 

I'm thankful for the fact that I'm at JFK and not in any real danger of missing my flight. FACT: this is the first time that's happened since I moved to NYC.

I'm thankful for Geno Smith too. I don't care that he's looked good in a couple games. The NFL is about consistency. He hasn't shown it. Ton of talent/physical skills. Bad attitude. He's the perfect successor to Mark Sanchez. Though I doubt he'll ever buttfumble. Oh, I'm thankful for him and that too. Like, VERY thankful.

I'm thankful (I guess?) for this weather which convinced JetBlue to waive change fees for all flights today. Their generosity gave me about 3 hours extra sleep. 

I'm thankful for the ESPN Playoff Doo-Hickey (sp?) and for the word of the day: "permutation" because when you put them together you get: excitement; a headache; about 100 different ways for the Steelers to make the playoffs; and the Bills beating the Pats in week 17 cuz... ha, you know.

I'm thankful that my girlfriend got that job and has to stay home so I get to go to Buffalo myself and deal with my family's disappointment because they like her way better than me.

Oh, and naps. Naps on my grandmaw couch >> Turkey >> Cran sauce >> fresh Cran sauce >> my aunt making fun of my dad >> stuffing ... yeah it's way better than all that shit. No blankets grandma, please. What am I 4?


From the Apologist:

I'm thankful for Miley Cyrus and camels.

Welp. That got weird real fast. Thanks, Aps.

Let's all forget this happened... From The Commander:

Asking a Buffalo sports fan what they’re thankful for right now is a daunting task. Most of the stuff in my life that I’m thankful for has very little to do with sports right now, I have a decent job, a cool as fuck girlfriend, I don’t ever have to see snow or freezing temperatures, I can talk to my Xbox One and make it do shit, we have rad cats and dogs...my life is pretty fucking awesome! Which is why I can continue to tolerate Buffalo sports. If I didn’t have a bunch of other cool shit going on, I’d have slit my wrists or overdosed on pills for sure.

It’s been really fucking difficult as of late to be thankful about ANYTHING Sabres related. We were sold a promise of youth and watching kids learn at the NHL level, and now that’s pretty much up in smoke with most of the “blueprint” being sent back to the minor leagues. So let’s just scratch all Sabres shit from my list.

I’m pretty thankful for the Bills. I realize they don’t have a winning record and probably won’t make the playoffs again, but they’re selling me on the promise of their youth successfully. Plus the team itself is very likable. This is the first time I can remember being this invested in them as December rolls in. Usually by now my routine was to play hockey in the morning on Sundays, come home, shower, and pass out sleeping by the end of the first half. So let’s run the fucking table and get there already. I’m on board, I’m not going anywhere…let’s do this shit.  

That’s really it for me, I don’t do soccer, I’ve just started to get into the NBA (where my team, the Sacramento Kings, may as well be from Buffalo too), and baseball is for 75 year old white men.

However, I’m thankful that I have an outlet to express my fucking misery with a good group of assholes like myself here…as well as the other snarky motherfuckers on the Twitter. We’ll all get through this together. 

Enjoy your turkey or ham, enjoy spending time with your families and friends, enjoy massive amounts of booze, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!


From the long-silent Yachtsman!! ... 

I'm thankful for Matt Harvey electing to have Tommy John Surgery, Rye Whiskey, portable Marijuana vaporizers, Marcel Dareus' abuse of Geno Smith, and key bumps.


Par for the course, you handsome sonofabitch.

And finally, my thanks:

I am thankful for Kiko Alonso being amazing and always looking high. For the renewed chance that Jairus might stay in Buffalo after all.  For Patty Lafontaine investing himself in our city again. For Ralph Wilson being one more year closer to dying. For EJ Manuel for looking like the goods. For Doug Marrone for being a boost to this team, for being honest about his work, and for bringing in a defensive coordinator who has his squad playing like fucking beasts.  For the hope that persists in my heart as I watch my squads keep failing to get their shit together.  For the hope that sustains me and keeps this fun.

And, yeah, I am thankful for this place at this URL and the people who have made it great and written things here that have been simply amazing.  Holy shit, this website is a hilarious piece of my life. I started here two and a half years ago, have largely taken the reigns of keeping at least some trickle of content going while the OGs deal with the big shit going on in their lives, and have seen the Dear God Why Us? #becauseitsbuffalo theme get traction with all you dear readers who inexplicably come here to debrief the fun and misery of watching our teams.  We won a kind of nice award from a website we kind of hate, we've seen our traffic steadily increase since rebooting in 20011 and we've been lucky enough to have some of you say kind things and some really mean things about what we do here.

It is really goddamned great.

And now I've moved to the suburbs and I have a kid and I don't see the other guys listed as contributors very much anymore. But this is the thing I do to try and keep myself close to them; to pretend for a few moments when I can that we're sitting at a bar, talking our asses off about the teams we love and hate.  Let's get drunk and bro hug soon.

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving.

The Barrister

In the wake of such a joyous victory, it’s probably no surprise that it’s taken a little longer to get a recap up.  Words are simply insufficient to express the happiness with which I take every step throughout the Tri-State knowing that my beloved squad has vanquished such an annoying and petulant team from the nether regions of Douchebagistan, New Jersey.

Either that, or the Apologist offered to do the recap and then got burnt out by over-thinking it and now I am diligently picking up his fucking predictable slack.

Hashtag friendship.

That really was a great game. The first of its kind this year:  a convincing win by the Bills; the result never really in doubt beyond half time. Sure, many fans, including a few in my living room, expected the game to fall apart when the Jets finally put a touchdown on the board, but those efforts by Gangrene, excuse me Gang_Green, were woefully insufficient compared to the kind of day Buffalo was having. Fucking unreal, totally unexpected, and still has me tingling from head to toe a day and half later.

Bullet points await!!

I really didn't know when I was going to write another post here. The Red Sox season- while for me magical and enthralling- has been described in many different publications and blogs by many different writers than myself in much more satisfying ways. Not to mention our readership's approval rating of the Red Sox has got to be hovering in the same ballpark as Congress' and I don't need to put something out exhalting my joy just for all you to shit all over it. 

You're not my real dad dammit.

As for our local teams, up until about 9:15 this morning, what could really be said? Our Bills weekly previews and reviews capture this season's varying degrees of optimism and hopelessness, especially now that we just got clocked with the 2x4 of reality watching the Pittsburgh game. The best Sabres forward of the past fifteen years got traded and the team has embarked on a journey that many fan bases have endured but virtually no one who has ever watched this team has had to witness: the laughingstock year. The year of catching shit from every friend or coworker who roots for other teams or generally enjoys the despair of others; the season of watching them in numb resignation, too indifferent to yell at the television, not because the team didn't look terrible but because you knew that they simply couldn't do any better. They're a cast of guys who may be perfectly likable and able to contribute to the right team (except Stafford, fuck him), but to watch them skate around for two and a half hours chasing their own tail just simply wasn't a good use of our time. 

The constant theme to make us want to tear our hair out- those of you with any considerable remaining scraps anyways- was the decision-making of the coach regarding lines, scratches and ice time, really the only things that a coach does that are pretty easy and straightforward. A coach watches the players and puts the best ones on the ice, with the most offensively skilled players matching up with others of their like. It's literally the only thing that someone playing NHL '14 can do as well as a real coach. And somehow, someway, this team managed to place a man in this position who could not even be passable at this task. These are not mistakes - as Doug Marrone, for instance, freely admits to making when they appear - it was a failure of philosophy; a flaw in Ron Rolston's hockey DNA that poisoned the entire franchise in a matter of months and has at the very least set back the development of young talent and possibly derailed it permanently. It's easy to not care about who wears the "C" when they're in the rightfully earned position for their skill set. It is much harder to ignore when that same player is being double shifted in the third period of a game you're being outshot by thirty.

So where did this get us, or me more specifically? I was offered tickets to last night's game and had not even the slightest bit of interest because there was a UB FOOTBALL game on television. Tickets were hovering in the low teens and I didn't even consider heading down to the FNC to take in the carnage. The overhead of attending a game (traffic, new security measures, parking, a late bedtime on a weeknight) had become too much to see what has been my favorite local team since well before I was a teenager. I've spent thirty bucks on weeknights just to yell at Patrick Lalime about how much he sucks, but I could no longer be bothered. A 3-7 Bills team appeared light years ahead of their NHL counterpart and it wasn't close. Any optimism for the future, be it trades, draft picks or free agents could be dismissed simply by mentioning those who were in charge of acquiring talent and developing talent. I am confident in saying there has not been as dark a time regarding the cumulative future of our professional teams, and while the Bills have had bright spots in the midst of an objectively dismal record, what did we have to look forward to regarding the hockey team? The jersey retirement of a guy who hasn't played for them in a dozen years? The failure of the young kids to ultimately develop and trigger the long overdue firing of Rolston some three years down the road? The hope that maybe the third time the seemingly immovable General Manager failed at rebuilding a team from the ground up, it would be his curtain call? 

Over six years removed from their last playoff series victory that distant hope for the future was too far off for many, including myself.

The Deeg


News happened yesterday. We blew the conch, gathered, and produced this. Enjoy.


Music by, well, I won't ruin the surprise. You're welcome.

Download here or here. Stream below. Subscribe via iTunes below or RSS here. 

By Peter Berkes

I’m going to try to keep this brief. Last year, they lost me.

Fresh on the heels of another mediocre season and a prolonged, acrimonious, and completely avoidable lockout, the Buffalo Sabres started out the 2012-13 season like dog mess stuck to a boot. At that point, my frustration with the franchise reached critical mass, and I cashed out. I think I actually said to a TV, “Look, call me when you’re interested in being good again, because this shit is not working for me.”

That was somewhere between games five and ten last year, and since then, I haven’t watched more than a stray minute or two of the Sabres. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t missed them. Sure, I stayed up to date with what was happening on twitter since there’s no way I could unfollow everyone in Buffalo twitter, but I was pretty much completely disengaged from the team.

It’s a really and truly weird thing to actively dislike your favorite team. Sure, we all have that on some level with the Bills, but it was different for me with the Sabres. And it all came back to God damn Darcy Regier.

I can handle failure. I mean, Jesus, I’m a Buffalo sports fan. Failure happens, but this franchise has been a walking, shambling corpse. It felt like Terry Pegula, the man we all thought was going to spend this team to a championship in short order, was nothing more than some stammering Whiner Line regular who was still stuck in the 90s. But after finally pulling the plug on Regier and Ron Rolston, it feels like there may actually be something good that comes from all this.

The thought of Regier attempting to rebuild this franchise after he personally steered it into the ditch was, for the lack of a better term, completely fucked. We don’t know if Pat LaFontaine and whoever he hires to be general manager will be any better, but it’s different, and that’s enough to get my attention. Yes, that’s pretty sad, but that’s where we are. This is Progress. Capital P. I don’t really care about Ted Nolan. He’s not going to be around next year anyway, so just play the kids a lot every night and get the team working hard and I’ll consider his return a success.

There have been a lot of people that think this move is just more bullshit from the Sabres because they brought back two guys with ties to the team. It’s certainly possible. LaFontaine doesn’t have any real experience as an executive, but he at least realizes it. He seems smart enough to hire someone who has done this before. But the larger point is this: Just because someone has ties to the organization doesn’t mean they’re clueless. It makes for an easy joke because hurr durr Buffalo, but anyone who says so is more interested in humping away at narrative than assessing the situation honestly. I want the best possible people to be the coach and GM of the Sabres, and I don’t care where they’re from. Hopefully Pat can put those people in place. If not, hopefully it doesn’t take a billion years for him and everyone else to be replaced.

So am I back in? I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that they have my attention. Let’s go.

The first of many takes on this news... Guest contributor, former full-timer...


The Defenseman


This is all very odd. It probably has something to do with my fever-ridden brain, but all of this feels as if it may vanish next morning. Am I going to wake up in bed with Susane Pleshette? Is Patrick Duffy going to be in the shower? Am I a kid with autism staring at a snow globe?

Terry Pegula finally took full ownership of the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night when he relieved General Manager Darcy Regier and Head Coach Ron Rolston on their posts. Regier had been GM for the Sabres for 16 years, winning no championships. In their places: Pat LaFontaine as President of Hockey Operations and Ted Nolan - TED NOLAN WHAT THE FUCK - as interim Head Coach. Now the last vestiges of Golisano and Rigas are gone. This is the real Pegula Day.

I've always kind of wondered about Pegula and his level control with this team. He took charge in a bath of glory from a desperate fanbase and then immediately proclaimed that nothing would change. There was no new vision. There was no grand strategic plan. It was the men he retained, finally being free of inept management. Pegula found out, brutally, that the ineptness resided within the room. 

It could not be easy for the man. He showed deep emotional committment to Lindy Ruff and Regier on the day he took full vestment. He had to believe deep down in their abilities. To come to the realization that maybe your heroes cant save the world is, to borrow from Ruff's dialog, a tough one. But controlling a sports team means, quite often, having to dispense with the people you love and respect most in order to maintain peak performance. Pegula's sentimentality got the better of him. We should hope its a mistake he never makes again.

The Sabres have maybe acquired something they haven't had since the lockout of 2004, and that is vision. The infusion of LaFontaine may bring that grand plan the team had desperately been lacking for so long. Since Pegula bought the team they have wandered from one half-assed strategy to the next. They thought they could turn it around right when he bought the team in 2011, but couldn't quite make it work. No one could agree as to whether they were rebuilding or not after that. Did they start rebuilding last year? When they fired Ruff? When they hired Rolston? When they traded Pominville? The ship was without a captain. 

Regier was always good at holding a thing together, but it felt like he was taking direction from elsewhere. He did well when someone else wrote the rules of engagement. Both Rigas and Golisano set financial goals for the franchise and had direct impact on personnel decisions made by the team. Pegula was adamant that wouldn't happen again, but assumed that the man taking orders was being restrained by the financial constraints as opposed to fulfilling the job at which he was his best. Pegula got a chance to see Regier's style of management for himself, free of interference, and saw a void. "Fuck. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just wanted to believe in this guy." 

Hey man, you always said you were a fan first. Well this is a first rate fan fuck up. We do this shit all the time. 

The blessings of unimaginable personal wealth is that you can fuck up without any personal risk. Saying Pegula is getting a second chance at this isn't quite phrasing right, because the guy never really took the helm, nor does he necessarily have a finite number of chances to take. This is where the guy is giving it a shot. This is where his mark is to be made. The fact that LaFontaine and Nolan both have been with this franchise before and worked together on Long Island in a similar capacity should not be mistaken for another bout of crippling sentimentality (although there is a great risk of it being just that). The two of them bring definitiveness.

No one would ever accuse Ted Nolan of being ambiguous. His goal and ambitions are clear to the point of friction. He causes intense heat in organizations. Lucky for him he joins a franchise where all the boilers are out. There maybe isn't a greater myth, in the classic sense of the word, in Buffalo sports than that of Nolan's ability to draw blood from stone and passion from the uninspired. His team was The Hardest Working Team In The NHL. They may not be good, but at least they will beat the shit out of somebody. Plenty of the old schoolers will be out in force clamoring for the days of the mid-90s. They'll march down Washington Street carrying signs that read "Corsi Who?" and "Math Can't Win In The Streets." They will be put to bed by a lullaby of Bob Boughner and Brad May, sleeping to dream of an end to analytics. 

Seeing this element pop up makes me uneasy. I could hold my breath comfortably within the time one of these 90s hockey-worshiping mastodons calls an opposing player a faggot. Not the classiest brigade in the order of battle. Perhaps though, this is part of the myth building. Nolan's last gig was Head Coach of the Latvian national team. International hockey is not the best arena for rock'em sock'em hockey, yet Nolan got his squad into the Olympics. Maybe the man has more than just a bag of hammers in his toolbox, even if that's not what many Sabres fans care about right now.

LaFontaine got fired from the Islanders for telling them what he thought. That act should shine as an act of bureaucratic valor unparalleled in hockey. He is now on the outs on the Island. Their loss. I don't quite know what his game plan is. He never got a chance to put it into effect with the Islanders, but whatever it was it pissed off Charles Wang to the point of termination. Tell me more, Mr. LaFontaine.

We are in a position of potential energy maybe unseen in Buffalo sports. U.B. football is on the rise and Bulls hoops has a new lead. The Bills have completely turned over, Ralph Wilson is incapable of fucking it up, and just maybe they have a quarterback. And now the Sabres have finally, mercifully done what they should have done three years ago in releasing Regier. 


Happy Pegula Day.

The Barrister


Finding it hard to give a shit today because, well, I don't. It was bad. Really fucking bad. Everyone, get better, be less awful, and win us a goddamned football game next week. Take your fucking mulligan. You don't deserve it for that steaming pile of useless football yesterday, but we're giving it to you because we're both loyal and gigantic suckers. 

Fuck you for ruining my Sunday, you underachieving pieces of garbage -- that's right. UNDERachieving. We all know that was far from your best effort. My balls ache with the Buffalo-Bills-ian blue balls you gave me yesterday. A missed fucking opportunity for a team working to establish an identity that doesn't make us weep at night.

Doug... DOUG. You and your staff watched that happen and did nothing to stop it. I don't know what you're up to, but fucking quit it. You are not powerless to stop a game from getting out of hand, but punting it from the Steelers fucking 36 yard line sure suggests that you think you are. 

For the first time all season, a distinct turnaround from how I thought of them not even one day ago, I think of this squad - coaches and players alike - as cowardly. A team full of beasts, of hard-workers and guys who've simply given their best, reduced to a sniveling mound of unprepared and lackluster pussies. This could be an overreaction, but we all saw what went down yesterday. And no part of it looked like the team that has shown up every game to do work. The team that we've been willing to fall in love with.

Fuck this.

Get it right or get bent. 

The Apologist

I can’t help thinking this is the most confident Bills fans have been with a losing record since #12 lined up under center. We’re all leery about feeling this way, but the fact of the matter is, against all logic and evidence, this season truly does feel different.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the entire league feels different. Peyton Manning & Wes Welker are teammates… in Denver. Rex Ryan has turned a buttfumble into a contract extension. The Patriots are beatable. The Chiefs are undefeated. The Raiders have a better record than the Giants AND the Steelers. And, hey, wait a second. So do we!

The Bills have remained competitive and even exciting with a depleted secondary, their best offensive weapon slowed by injury, and three different starting quarterbacks in the last five games. You have to tip your hat to Doug Marrone and his coaching staff. Sure, there have been questionable decisions made and somehow, 9 games in, he’s yet to win a challenge. But the attitude on the field feels different. Take the pick-6 on the goalline from last weekend. I’m not going to excuse it, but I will say that I love the guts of telling your untested, undrafted quarterback to make a hard throw in that situation. Sure, it walks the fine line between brave and foolish, but let’s be honest with each other. It was easier to get over a gutsy call on the 3rd & goal, than it would’ve been to watch another “try not to lose” approach we’ve seen over the last decade (3 straight runs for no gain and a field goal = Dick Jauron’s wet dream). And more importantly than all that is that he’s got the players believing in his plan. All you have to do is look at that same play. Tuel & Graham chased Sean Smith the entire length of the field knowing full well neither would catch him and all they were really accomplishing was tiring themselves out for the ensuing drive. But they weren’t going to give up on the play. No excuses. No quit. That’s the attitude Marrone has instilled so far. (His reaction to the play: “Situationally do you question the play call? No … Do you question the execution of it? Yes.”)

It’s far too soon to say whether or not this will translate to future success, but you can’t help feeling like little by little, the culture and expectation of failure that has been the foundation of this franchise for almost two decades is finally being chipped away and a new one is being built.

Monsieur Shorts de Bonaire - @Boner_Shorts - Deeg Guest Contributor


Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to The Sports Hub in MA wanting to hear more about the Richie Incognito fiasco taking place in Miami.  I tuned in to the Gresh and Zo show, featuring Andy Gresh and Scott Zolak.  Andy Gresh’s name probably doesn’t ring a bell, but those of us who would choose Backup Quarterbacks in the NFL During the 90s as a category on Jeopardy might recognize Scott Zolak’s name.  He played most notably for New England and Miami.  Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, but he does a passable job of waving the pom poms during lunch for Boston sports on the radio.  Gresh is a big fat guy who played D1A football in Rhode Island somewhere.

So, given this pedigree, I thought it would be an interesting take on this locker room situation.  Both of the hosts know first hand what it’s like to be in a football locker room.  They of course started with the “using racial slurs is crossing the line” tack, which really isn’t that hard to take.  So they certainly set up Incognito as the one clearly at fault here.  He’s the bad guy.  But then something interesting started happening: a not so subtle start to discredit, and borderline assign BLAME to Jonathan Martin in all of this.  It first began with Zolak asking the question, “Does Martin want to play football?  We always talk about how Belichick only gets guys who have football as their first priority (ahem… well, besides murdering people). If he can’t handle this stuff, is he really putting football as something important to him?”  And then?  They start in on his education and his parents.  “He went to Stanford.  Both of his parents are lawyers.  He’s got other options in life, he was just given a gift of size so he decided to play football.”  

Later in the day, I see Bert Breer tweet out the lawyer parent thing as well.  Why tweet out their professions?  What bearing does that have in this case and how is that information being used by readers beyond what appears to be a subtle attempt to suggest that his parents’ careers somehow reveal a character flaw of Martin’s?  Where is the tweet informing us all of Incognito’s parents’ careers? (fwiw, his dad's a mason and if I wanted I could make all sorts of baseless insinuations about that if I wanted to be an asshole).  It’s almost to say that “pfft… Martin’s parents are lawyers… it figures that a little pussy like that couldn’t stand up for himself. He can do the white collar thing like his parents, he's just quitting because that other stuff is easier. He obviously doesn't want it enough.”

The Barrister


Goddammit. This may be a ruse, again. It may be the same old Bills sent to Orchard Park to fool us into some unsettled sense of optimism, who am I to predict the future, but, fuck. This team of ours is really enjoyable. Even when losing.

Yesterday went exactly how I sort of dreamed it would, to the extent my dreams are always, when no one's looking, tempered by a solemn acceptance that sports are simply sad. The Bills played out of their minds, kept an undefeated team in check, and ultimately lost because, well, just because. The lingering legacy of a snake bitten franchise appeared on the field yesterday and it meant a loss. Predictably, I suppose.

But this team, as shackled by apparent fate as it is, and as injured and beat up as it is, plays unbelievably fucking hard. They come prepared, they play balls out and it's a joy to watch. CJ Spiller was playing on one good leg and still broke defenders' ankles throughout the game. Fred Jackson remained a work horse and constantly broke tackles against a highly rated defense. Marquise Goodwin amazed us with his speed, again, as he continues to creep up the depth chart. The defense was as sturdy as they've been all season, arguably. And Jeff Tuel, well... he was ok.

And that's where the season remains an overwhelming positive, while at the same time requiring overwhelming patience from a fan base jumping out of its shoes with excitement at the prospect of cheering for a winner once again. 

Jeff Tuel, of whom we all expected so little, played well. He was a disaster on the pick 6, and was pretty bad at other times with overthrown balls and missed open targets, but he was ok. More to the point, he was exceedingly better than advertised and feared. Playing within an offensive system built to move the ball by runs and passes, while giving the quarterback the option to make reads at the line and exploit defensive schemes, Jeff Tuel was pretty successful and, even accounting for the two interceptions, outplayed Alex Smith on the other side of the ball. Tuel has been getting a lot of shit from fans over the past 22 hours, and most of it is deserved, but to lose sight of the good things he did is to lose sight of the complete disaster that reasonable thinking fans were expecting from him. 

Tuel's game yesterday, mistakes included, was the kind of surprise we've gotten used to with this season's Bills team. Players generally playing above our expectations, sometimes exceeding even the most homer of Bills fans' hopes for their play. Mario Williams. Leodis. Robey. Lawson. Aaron Williams. Bobby Woods. Kiko. Goodwin. Choice. Marcus Easley. FRANK FUCKING SUMMERS. CJ and Freddie. Even TJ Graham sometimes (but not really, let's be honest). This is a team of overachievers - players who've been representing the franchise well on the field, working hard for a full 60 minutes, and putting together a Buffalo Bills product that is remarkable. 

And that's why we love them after Week 9 - after the sixth loss of the year - because they're showing us something to remark upon; something we haven't seen in a long fucking while. Sure, they're losing just as "same old Bills" have lost year after year, but we can see and know and love the difference, right? 

I'm still all in, bitches. Go Bills.