TO ALL MY DIE HARD READERS,

I know the blog has been down for a while, but that is because we are moving on to bigger and better things.

Go to wnywatercooler.blogspot.com

Bills Season, Feb. - April

The Bills made strides last season. Jauron and Levy brought some stability to the franchise compared to the dissaray it was in under the regime. The offense came together towards the end of the season as Losman proved he is an NFL quarterback and Evans proved he is a top 5 NFL wide reciever. Despite the improvements, the Bills still have many needs.

Many Bills fans try and rationalize that the team needs a new running back. Let's put this ridiculous notion to rest. The Bills would be stupid to trade McGahee. He is the only player on this team that most people outside of the WNY have even heard of or care about. He is better than any 2nd round draft pick we would get for him or any free agent running back on the market. He is a good running back who didn't have that great of a year because of injury and missing games and the lack of a threat of a passing game for the first 75% of the season. So to all you McGahee haters, GIVE IT UP!!

Now to the needs:

• The Bills need help on the offensive line. Mike Gandy is a free agent and Buffalo should try and upgrade that position. Chris Villarial is getting old and who knows if Duke Preston is the answer there. If anything, Buffalo needs to build depth through free agency and/or the draft.
• London Fletcher is a free agent and hopefully will be gone. This little runt has been running around the Bills defensive backfields for the past 5 years making a plethora of tackles. Unfortunately, he has had more tackles 10 yards down field than in the backfield. London isn't very good against the run and it showed last season. He does make some big plays but often has a tendency to make a stupid play. London will be gone which will open the door for Crowell to play in the middle. Who will replace Crowell then outside? Well, with the rumors of the franchising of Lance Briggs and Adalius Thomas, all signs right now point to Patrick Willis with the 12th pick in the draft. I would take any of these 3 guys. Thomas and Briggs are beasts and Willis has tons of upside. Also, give Spikes another year, he is still coming back from an achilles injury. That injury doesn't take only one season to come back from.
• Nate Clements will also be gone come March 1. Who will replace him at cornerback? This is something that I don't want to think about. The only other top echelon corner in free agency is Asante Samuel and he will cost even more than Clements probably. Buffalo may have to hope that Ashton Youboty turns out to be a great player but more than likely will need another corner via the draft to add some depth. I really think that Buffalo with their 30 million in cap space needs to resign Nate because if they don't, cornerback becomes a pressing need.
• The Bills do not have a number 2 receiver. Peerless Price averaged 25 yards a game last year. That is pathetic. Peerless probably won't be on the team next year. Someone that stands out is Dante Stallworth. He showed some really big play ability in Philadelphia acting as their number 1 receiver. If Buffalo somehow can land Briggs or Thomas via free agency, I would love to see Levy take Dwayne Jarrett or Ted Ginn with the 12 pick.
• Chris Kelsay is a free agent. Even if the Bills resign him they will still need D end help. The Bills D ends are white, and are bad against the run. Aaron Schobel is a solid player but Denney and Kelsay are not legitimate NFL starters.
• The Bills do not have a tight end. Robert Royal is still on the roster somehow, it boggles my mind.
• Finally, the D Tackle Position. Some of my colleagues and fellow bloggers try and convince me that we are fine at D tackle. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!?!?!?!? Let me run these stats by you: Kyle Williams had 53 tackles which might be decent for a rookie lineman BUT HE HAD 0 SACKs. Larry Tripplett, the big free agent signing from last year, HAD 33 Tackles, only 19 of which were solo. Tim Anderson had 32 tackles. The 3 of them had a combined 2.5 sacks (all by Tripplett). Furthermore, the Bills defense was anything but stout against the run. We need to upgrade this position. McCargo should help but he isn't Tommie Harris, face it.

As more Bills news comes available about offseason moves, it will be posted.

Super Bowl Extra Large + 1

I seriously thought about this football game yesterday for the first time and I came to the rather obvious conclusion. The Chicago Bears and Rex Grossman are going to win the Super Bowl. This game is actually a betters dream. The Bears are 7 point underdogs...but why? They went 13-3, were tied with the Indianapolis Colts, 2nd in the NFL in point per game. They were also 3rd in the NFL in ppg allowed while the Colts were 23rd. This odds makers and the rest of the US are ubsessed with Manning and are making them huge favorites because of Peyton Manning. Well, Kelly and Marino don't have any rings and it took John Elway 4 trips before he won one. I had the privledge of watching both of these teams play home games against the Buffalo Bills. The Bills went into Chicago with some confidence after a surprising 2-2 start. The Bears scored the first 41 points in the game and it was just ugly. The Bills went into the 8-0 Indianaplis Colts Dome and controlled the clock and if it wasn't for a Lindell missed kick, could have came out of there with a win. The Bears looked better. I don't know what that means but the Bears looked like the more complete team. All I keep hearing is how bad the Bears are and I thought they sucked too until I realized that they don't. Their offense can put up points (averaging over 30 in the playoffs) and their defense, although not as dominating as it was earlier in the year, is still better than the Colts. They essentially shut down arguably the NFL's best offense a week ago.

If you look at Super Bowl trends, since super Bowl 20, the team that has allowed fewer points per game has won 18 of the 21 Super Bowls. The only teams that won with the worse defense had quarterbacks with the names Montana and Elway. Both of their defenses were in the top 10 however, not 23rd. Also, the Colts have the worst ranked defense of any super bowl team of the past 21 years. The Patriots a week ago walked up and down the field on them.

I don't like Rex Grossman, and I want to see Manning win a super bowl. If you look at the numbers and the trends, it doesn't look good for Indianapolis. The Colts aren't playing this football game in a dome which hurts them. Also, the Colts GM is Bill Polian who built a staggeringly similar team in Buffalo in the early 90s. This team lost both games he was GM for and the other 2 with his team.

The Bears are going to win 20-16. I don't want it to happen, but it is going to. Noone, including myself, has given the bears any credit at all.

Random Shit That Noone Probably Cares About

So I was reading in the library today and this fat ugly chick's phone rings. This is the first thing that pissed me off. I was in the quiet section of the library so it was rude for her to even have her phone on in the first place. So I was thinking, alright, turn off the ringer and walk downstairs. But no, to my astonishment, she answers. She wasn't whispering either. This chick was straight up talking loud in the God Damn quiet section. Not only did she answer, not whisper, but she carried on a fucking conversation. I was reading primary texts from the 18th century or less, so if you ever read these books, you know as well as I do that it needs your undivided attention. How am I supposed to concentrate with some fat chick carrying on a loud conversation for like 5 minutes. Unbelievable. Furthermore, why can't people turn off their cell phones before class. I admit, it has happened to me twice in my college career so I am part of these stupid people. But seriously, how hard is it to press a button before going to class so that your cell phone doesn't ring? It just doesn't make sense.

So there is a football game Sunday. The Colts will win, everyone knows it. Vinatieri is going to hit a game winning field goal probably since his percentage of hitting game winning field goals in super bowls is 66.67%. Therefore the Bears will cover. Also, 48 points is a lot, so according to my friend who needs to win a bet for 1800 bones, take the under. I quote "BEARS, LOVIE SMITH, TONY DUNGI, DEFENSIVE BATTLE BABY." Those were his words advising me about the game. Last time Bill Polian was favored in a super bowl, his team got brutally out coached. Could this happen again? Probably. Especially if the Colts are anything like Polian's last team to play in the super bowl. These guys, called the Bills, went out and got hammered all week. No wonder their defense got so warn down in Super Bowl XXV. They were dehydrated from drinking too much alcohol. Maybe if Bruce wasn't seeing two Jeff Hostettler's in the end zone he could have stripped the ball. He probably couldn't clearly make out his arm/football so he just brought him down. If Manning doesn't win this game, he will still have a monkey on his back. Going to the bowl doesn't mean shit, ask a Bills fan.

Other news noone cares about, FSU is for real and has a huge game Sunday at Duke. Al Thornton is the best player in the conference.

The Sabres won again. Great, they won 2 games against the worst team in the division and still had a below .500 record in January.

According to a reliable source, Mike Schopp and the "Bulldog" were ripping up the new scoreboard at the Ralph. How can you possibly rip up a stadium renovation such as a HD screen on a scoreboard. It is assenine. These idiots would do anything to try and put down the bills. If Losman throws for 35 and 8 next year and a 120 rating, these guys will start making fun of his voice or facial hair or something.

Tiger Woods v. Roger Federer: Who is more dominant?

After their most recent accomplishments, the very difficult question of who is more dominant, Tiger or Roger, has been posed. Woods capped off his 7th consecutive PGA tour win, the longest streak in 61 years and the 2nd longest of all time. Federer won his 10th grand slam in record fashion, by winning all 21 sets in the tournament.

So who is more dominant?

The answer, in my opinion, is obvious. It has to be Tiger Woods for many reasons.

1. Reger Federer only needed to beat 7 guys individually, one guy at a time. In the first 4 rounds of the tournament, he played relative no names. He can put it on cruise control and win those matches. Therefore, he only needs to really play well for 3 matches. You can also argue that his opponents in these final 3 rounds weren't all that special either. Let's face it, Andy Roddick is tennis' best example of Phil Mickelson. Roddick is 1-12 verse Federer and really has no chance of beating him. On the contrary, Tiger Woods needs to defeat some 153 other players and needs to play well on 4 consecutive days. People say well Tiger only beat rookies this weekend at the Buick. That isn't entirely true. The field included the 2nd and 3rd ranked players in the world in Mickelson and Singh. Tiger beat them by over 10 strokes. Also, all these golfers are very good and are capable of playing the round of their life or the tournament of their life on any given week and posting a ridiculous 61. In tennis though, when you are better than someone, you are just better, and unless you pull a hammy, you will beat them 99% of the time.
2. Federer hasn't even won all of his sports major tournaments. The French Open, tennis' equivalent of golf's British Open, has illuded Federer for 8 years. Tiger has won every major in his sport twice at least. If you are going to be the most dominant man in sports, you need to win every major tournament in your sport. Federer isn't the best player on clay, so he doesn't completely dominate his sport.
3. People say well Tiger is older and has been pro much longer. Federer turned pro in 1998, only 2 years after Tiger Woods has turned pro, in 1996. Since Federer turned pro, Tiger has the edge in majors, 11-10. Tiger has also won more tournaments in that span.
4. Federer has no competition. You can say he is just that good and that much better than everyone but in reality, the guy has noone that poses a serious threat to him on any surface other than clay. He beat Roddick 6-2 6-0 6-2. That is similar to Eldrick beating Ames 9 and 8. This guy is supposed to be a rival to the world's number 1 and he wins 4 games in 3 sets. That isn't a rival. Roddick is merely a blip on Federer's radar. The same argument can be made about Woods, that he doesn't have a true rival, like Jack and Arnie. Well, it may be true that noone matches up to Tiger individually. But in a field of over 150 people, there will be one player that has the week of his life that week. So in each tournament, for the most part, Tiger will have someone that challenges him. That is, until Sunday when he is paired up with Tiger and his week of his life turns into disaster. Tiger played with 2 players, one on Saturday and one on Sunday this week who entered the round in contention. They fired an 80 and 76 respectively and fell off the 2nd page of the leaderboard.
5. Tiger's intimidation factor isn't matched in sports. People seem to fold by the mere sight of his name on the leaderboard on the final round. He has yet to be challenged in a major by one of the sports better golfers. The only time Tiger has been challenged was by relative no names Bob May and Rich Beem who didn't know where they were or what they were doing. A perfect example is the '99 PGA when Mike Weir was having the tournament of his life, firing 3 rounds in the 60's to get into the final group with Tiger. Weir followed that up with a final round 80.
6. People say that tennis takes more athletic ability than golf. I agree, but golf takes more skill and more patience. Anyone who has played golf can agree that it is the hardest sport to play. Mastering golf seems to be impossible even for the best players in the world.

Federer is dominant, but not as dominant as Tiger. Winning 7 straight matches in straight sets is impressive, but not as impressive as winning 7 straight starts on tour. Tiger has had to be consistent for 28 consecutive rounds over a span of months, not 14 days like Federer. Tiger has defeated a grand total of 1050 players in these 7 tournaments. In 7 tournaments Federer needs to beat 49 at most. I don't think the conversation of who is more dominant can even be had until Federer wins a French Open. This could never happen since Nadal seems to have his number. At least he will have some competition for that tournament.

McGahee and the Sabres

It has been a while since I have published a post but after some recent happenings in the Buffalo area, it seemed like a good time to return to the journalism portion of my life.

First of all, a certain Buffalo bar is asking for McGahee jerseys to use as bar rags. This add was actually published in a magazine called "Artvoice" (if you would like to see the add, go to buffalosportsdude.blogspot.com). This is a perfect example of why I am beginning to hate Buffalo sports fans. This is one of the most ridiculous, wait...this is THE MOST ridiuclous thing I have ever seen in this area in my life. I would be willing to bet that bars in downtown Dallas aren't even begging for Owens jerseys to use to wipe tables. This is unbelievable. Yeah, Willis ripped up Buffalo in Penthouse, but Buffalo is declining so that comment really wasn't bad. The move Buffalo to Toronto comment which according to McGahee (Rosenhaus) was taken out of context really could have been. How do we know? This is a porn magazine we are talking about so I am sure they don't have the top of the line journalists. Also, Willis said good things about how Buffalo had the best fans in the league. Most people didn't hear about that because the media didn't feel like talking about that aspect (except channel 2, who was probably fined for mentioning it by somebody). Further, Willis (Drew R.) wants a contract extension. Let's face the facts, Willis hasn't been making ANY noise about a new contract this offseason thus far. The only time I have heard anything about an alleged extension was in a newspaper article after the season ended. Of course, the media like WGR made a huge deal about it saying that McGahee was making "noise" and didn't deserve an extension and that he is terrible and unproductive, etc. I haven't heard a single peep out of Willis so far and he seems content to play out his current deal with the Bills. In my expert (or lost [to some people]) opinion, Willis has done enough to be given a new contract as long as he doesn't want LT money. McGahee is going to have a break out year this year. No new system, no Mike Mularkey...I would be surprised if he doesn't run for 1500 yards.

This just in...The Sabres are average. I have been saying it since October when they were winning half their games via shootout and they depended on scoring 4 or 5 goals a game to do so. Well reality is setting in. Buffalo has only won 4 games in their past 11 including a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, one of the worst teams in the West, last night. Their lead over New Jersey has crept down to 5 points, and the way the two teams are going, that lead could be erased within the next 10 days. The Sabres are under .500 in their division and can't beat Ottawa. It seems to me that Buffalo is a very flawed hockey team. They are way undersized so it is easy for teams to out physical them. Secondly, their special teams leaves a lot to be desired. Their power play and penalty killing are both below average. Finally, their goaltending is average at best. I thought it was ridiculous that Miller started the all star game. It seems like he gives up 3 goals every game lately including a minimum of 1 goal every single 3rd period. People around here are starting to worry. Yeah, I hope the Sabres bounce back, but I think people are getting what they asked for by turning their backs on the most important part of our city, the Bills.

The blog is back...look for new posts at least once every 2 days.

Day 2 of the Divisional Round

Let me just first sat that I made a 10 dollar triple parlay that paid out 310. All I needed was the Colts, Patriots, and Seahawks to win. That takes me to the first game on Sunday at Soldier FIeld.

Seahawks @ Bears

Once again, the NFL proves to me that it's coaches are completely clueless. This is why betting on the NFL is hard to do. You can't depend on an NFL coach to make a rather arbitrary coaching decision. In the waining minutes of the 4th quarter in a tie game at 24, the Seahawks faced a 4th and 1 around the Bear 45. In a tie game of this magnitude with this much time left against a very good defense, what would make a coach decide to go for it. I give coaches a lot of heat for not going for it in certain situations but this is NOT one of them. Punt the football, pin the bears deep. You are punting the football to Rex Grossman. If the Bears go 3 and out you will get the ball back around the 45 yard line anyways to give youself a chance to win. Also, with Rexy, there is always a chance to turn it over. Instead the Hawks went for it, got stuffed and gave the Bears the ball at the 45 to try and win the game. Thank god for the Hawks, Grossman is a bum and Chicago went 3 and out. The Seahawks still cost themselves 40 yards of field position and untimately, im my opinion, the game and my $310.

Patriots @ Chargers

Who didn't see this coming. It seems as if the most devastating playoff losses have all been suffered by Marty Shottenheimer. The drive and the fumble in the 90's. Len Elliott's 3 missed field goals in a 10-7 loss in the mid 90's. And now, Marty has suffered the fumble part II. Up 21-13 with about 7 minutes left, the Patriots faced a 4th down. Brady's pass was intercepted by Marlon McCree who rather than just going down, decided to try and gain an extra 5 yards for whatever reason while holding the ball like a loaf of bread. Troy Brown forced the fumbled, New England recovered and then drove down and scored a TD and a 2 point conversion. At this point, the whole world knew the ballgame was over. Brady, who can play like Jim Kelly circa Super Bowl 27 for 3 quarters, always morphs into Joe Montana of the 80's in the 4th quarter. Also, LT proved he is a sore loser in my opinion. Just because his team choked big time in the 4th doesn't mean he needs to take cracks at the best coach in the NFL, as much as I hate Belichick. Everyone secretly wanted to see a Colts Patriots battle next Sunday, as long as the Colts absolutely roll New England. I can't stand to see them win another super bowl.