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Completely revamping the offense to tailor it to Tebow in the middle of last year and then changing it again to fit Manning deserves a lot of respect. His playcalling to utilize his personnel has been fantastic. I think he deserves a lot of the credit.
That must have been tough.
LOL - and the offense was not good under Tebow. Not necessarily his fault, but I'm not impressed.
of course it's about the money. who is saying otherwise?no way they ditch that game anytime soon.
Does the Toronto game actually make money on net, when you factor in the degree to which it pisses off actual fans of the franchise? Keep in mind that I live in the upper midwest so my only "inside" knowlede of the franchise comes from what I read on TBD. But it sounds like they don't sell a gargantuan number of tickets, and most people on both sides of the border accurately view this game as a sham.
I don't think ticket sales have been as strong as they hoped, primarily because the Bills suck and the support in Toronto is lukewarm at best.But they recently renewed the deal (didn't they?). So, I can't see any way that it's not making them a ton of money given the negative PR they take from it and the fact it hurts them competitively by playing 9 road games/year.
It is about the money.
Of course it is. I'm just pointing out it's one area Brandon can put the money where his mouth is.It is about the money.
People on both sides of the border view it as a sham. There is an ok-sized fanbase in southern Ontario - it is considered the Bills TV market and the Bills estimate somewhere in the 16-19% range (can't recall the exact number) of fans at the Ralph on any given Sunday are Canadian. The problem is that the Bills Toronto series doesn't really appeal to those fans. Tickets to any sporting event in Toronto are absurdly expensive - hockey, soccer, basketball, whatever. Many of the tickets are bought by corporate boosters and not by the Joe Schmoe Bills fans. The "true Bills fans" (for lack of a better term) in St. Catharines and Fort Erie aren't going to pay through-the-roof prices to see the Bills play at the Rogers Centre when they can go to the Ralph for $50-60 USD and cheap parking.As a result, you get a lackluster crowd of a mishmash of fans, many of whom don't really care about the Bills. There's no atmosphere; it's mostly just a bunch of rich corporate dudes taking clients out to a novelty game (for example), from what I hear. I've heard the same complaints about Leafs games, and that's why so many Canadians come to the US for Sabres games. Used to be that you could buy Sabres season tickets (41 games, 3-4 against Toronto) and recoup nearly your entire 41 game outlay if you sold the 3-4 Toronto games. The difference in cost-of-living between the two cities is astronomical. Of course, the Bills get paid by Rogers either way, so I don't know if they really care.From a hometown fan standpoint, yeah it sucks but it's not going to cause me to alter my Bills fandom. It won't cause me to change the amount I'm spending/not spending on the Bills. It just....is what it is.
Does McCoy have head coaching experience anywhere? (I don't know much about him.)Personally, I'd rather hire someone with success at a lower level (NCAA) at the head position, as opposed to success at a lower (and very different) position in the NFL. I'm not saying McCoy is not HC worthy, but how many times have the Bills hired in a OC/DC with little or no HC experience since Marv left? Close to a half dozen... Aside from that, the Lovie Smith talk intrigues me a bit, and the Wisenhunt talk disgusts me.It should be an interesting off season...
It sucks but it is a money maker. What I have heard on the radio, they make twice the profit from that game as a regular sellout. As I understand, Rogers in Toronto buys all of the tickets at a premium with rights to resell them. So the size of the crowd doesnt matter from a money perspective. Thus far they have not been able to use that money to improve the quality on the field, but that is their goal.
The problem, at this point IMO, with the Toronto series is that it has become a short term winner but long term loser financially. Yeah, they get the nice $7-10M a year, but I would wager they have a net loss of long term fans because of it. The team is a loser and adding in one more away game each year contributes to that losing. Local fans care less about the team and younger kids aren't even becoming fans anymore. And I don't think they're offsetting that with new fans in Toronto. In addition, current fans are justified in being less loyal since the team is willing to sell off their games to watch as well as demonstrate that the team has interests or not. Whether it's true/fair or not, the average fan sees that as a precursor to moving the team. Hard to keep passionately rooting for a team when you think they could leave at any time.
I don't really think that local fans care less about the team because of the Toronto series. At least, that's not the impression I've got. We all think it's a joke, but I don't know anyone who has markedly changed their fandom because of the Toronto games. When I gave up my season tickets a few years ago, it was because the Bills suck and I didn't want to spend my money on them anymore (among other reasons), not because they were playing 1 of the 8 games in Toronto.I agree with you that I don't think it's really doing anything to bring in new fans in Toronto.Your second paragraph is a double-edged sword, I think. For a number of years, the mentality here was "even though the team keeps losing, we need to keep spending money on them because they're going to move if we don't, and I'd rather have a losing team than no team at all". I have noticed a marked change in this over the past few years. People are slowly, reluctantly starting to move on.I've also noticed that among people my age (25) and younger, a lot more people tend to be Sabres fans rather than Bills fans. I don't remember the first two Super Bowls, and only vaguely the other two. The Bills haven't been in the playoffs since I was 13, and haven't won a playoff game since I was 8. While the Sabres haven't been fantastic during most of that time, they've won 3 division titles, been to the conference finals 4 times, been to the Cup once, and have just been better. That's going to be a test for the Bills, I think...their fanbase consists mostly of older (meaning like 35+ aged) people who can recall the glory days, the younger fans are a lot more ambivalent. And it's even worse for the younger kids. My buddy's twin brothers are in 8th grade now, and the Bills have never been in the playoffs during their lifetime. Who wants to be a fan of that?Regardless though, I think the negative reaction to the Toronto series is overstated. The fanbase is stagnant and people care less and less because the team sucks, flat out. If the Bills strung together a bunch of 10-6 seasons and lost every Toronto game by 40, the fan support would still explode.
Great post, and I'm about the same age as you -- after living through the SB years, it's pretty much impossible to just "quit" this team. Still, it pisses me off tremendously that my son was only months old for Homerun Throwup and the team has sucked ever since. Basically an entire generation of fans has grown up with the Bills being the Browns with different uniforms.
According to TBD, we interviewed Whisenhunt today.
Ugh. That would be the one hire that would make me quit the Bills.I'd rather have a different Cards coach: Horton. I like what I've heard about him. The one huge negative would be he's a 3-4 defense guy. I don't know if I can stand another transition between the 4-3 and 3-4 defense.
Funny, I think this thread is sorta a microcosm of the Bills fanbase. A bunch of middle-aged guys who became fans of the team when they were younger and the Bills were good and fell in love - "can't quit the team". If you look at the people posting in here - based on the little I know about you guys individually, and your "location" on the sidebar - very few of the people are actually from Buffalo. There is no strong younger generation of homegrown Bills fans - there are people like me, but I'm a through-and-through football diehard; I love the game itself and will always be a fan of the sport.Buffalo used to be a football town, and I like to think it still is, but I'm really not sure anymore. When the Bills are good (their strong starts in 2008 and 2011 come to mind), the town has a certain buzz about it. But there are always bound to be fairweather fans, and it fades quickly. I work with 15-20 people in the ~23-30 age group, and I can tell you that the Bills were very rarely discussed at work among the younger crowd this fall - but the NHL lockout and the Sabres prospects/players playing overseas were daily conversations.I seriously think that the if the Bills don't really turn it around in the next 5 years or so, like you said above, there will be an entire generation of fans lost. Those people will have kids and it will trickle down. I even see it now with my dad - growing up, we always watched the games together. Now he runs errands and mows the lawn during games....if the game is still close when he gets home, he turns it on, but otherwise he can't even bear to watch them play anymore. He's still a lifelong fan, but he can't stand to watch them anymore, it makes him so upset. If I were a 10 year old now, I probably wouldn't even be a Bills fan.
Whoa. I don't feel this way at all. I love the city even though I no longer live there and I'm sure losing the Bills would be a huge blow to the area. The Sabres are a treasure and all but the NFL is king and the Bills still keep the city on the national map. Losing the franchise would be devastating and I hope it never happens. Still rather watch these Bills than see them move someplace else. It's not like they can't compete, but playing in the same division as Brady and Belichick certainly makes things a lot tougher than they are for most teams out there.
I don't mean to make it sound like no one cares about the team; I just wanted to stress that the fanbase seems to be aging (again, a relative term) and that the younger up-and-coming generation just doesn't seem as devoted to the Bills as the older (35-ish+) fanbase is.The Bills are a huge source of civic pride, and even the people who don't really care about the Bills would be devastated if the Bills were to leave. They are truly one of the few things keeping the city in the national spotlight. My girlfriend can probably name less than 5 Bills players and didn't watch a single game this year, yet she'd be devastated if they left. It'd be another gutpunch to a city that has taken plenty of those in the past 40 years.
the person posting those views (Tasker) lives IN Buffalo.I don't get the sense that love for the Bills is dying either, but I'm mostly in contact with friends and family who have been fans forever. I can't speak to people in the area who are in their teens and 20s, but I'm pretty sure they'd all become Bills fans quickly with a more competitive team to support.
I think you guys are taking my comments the wrong way. The Bills fanbase is not dying. People here do care about the team, and those who don't actually care about the results on the field (as I referenced earlier) still care a ton about having the Bills here as a source of civic pride and national relevance. I don't really know anyone who actively dislikes the Bills, but I just don't see the same diehard fervor among the younger people. I didn't really see it when I was in college (2004-2009) and I don't really see it now.There will always be a certain measure of fair-weather fandom. If/when the team gets good again, people will go crazy, just like it always has. I just have a sense that a lot of the people who were diehards have begun trending to fair-weather territory. A lot of people (like my father, referenced above) seemingly don't make it a point to watch the Bills as "appointment-viewing" anymore. A friend told me a few weeks ago that he just didn't feel like watching the Bills this year. Even when he lived in Cleveland for college, he used to watch the games on TV, at a bar, online, etc. Now, he just "doesn't feel like it anymore". I'm sure he'll be back when the Bills are good again. I get a lot of this sense from a lot of my friends who are/were casual fans. They've got better things to do than watch this team. That's just my perception.Yes, I live in Buffalo.
I'm thinking of starting a "Kelly signs with Bills" thread with the OP being about how awesome it was when Jim Kelly left the USFL for Buffalo, but I'm pretty sure I would get banned.
Go for it. Don't worry bro, I got your back.
After reading that Lovie is close with Hue Jackson, I'd be real happy with that pairing. Bills need serious help on D and as a Raider fan (also) I appreciate how Jackson had Raiders going in right direction with a strong D, average QB ( Jason Campbell), stud RB, inexperienced WRs and avg at best O line. Now Hue screwed up with the Palmer trade & got bit power hungry but I liked what he had started there. I'd be on board for this duo.
I don't know, there are quite a few coordinators I'd be fine with: Ray Horton, Mike McCoy, Mike Zimmer and Kyle Shannahan. I think all those guys could be excellent head coaches. They're all much more of an unknown, but I think therr are plenty of questions as to whether Chip Kelly's offense can translate to the NFL and whether Lovie Smith can put a half decent offense out there at all (and whether his Cover-2 works anymore). Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be opposed to Smith or Kelly, but I think there are some great coordinators out there that could turn out to be great head coaches.The only two I would be really disappointed with are Wisenhunt and Marronne.
Marrone is an interesting prospect. He really has helped revive the stagnant Syracuse program (25-25 in 4 seasons under Marrone, with 2 bowl wins, 10-37 in the previous 4 years) and he does have 8 years of NFL coaching experience - including being the OC for those solid Saints offenses before they won the Super Bowl.That said, I don't really see much about him that I LOVE. He seems like an above-average yet kinda bland college coach to me.
I like Levitre, but Byrd is the better player and would be harder to replace. I don't know that they can afford to keep both. I hate to say it, but they not only need to cut Kelsay ASAP, they need to either restructure or cut Kyle Williams. This is the second year in a row that his play has greatly suffered from an achilles injury and will need his second achilles surgery now. Yeah, it's a different foot, but that's concerning to me that this problem has cropped up again. Seems like something that could very well affect him again in the future. They can't afford to keep paying him good money for the production he's given them the last two years and the risk he presents going forward. McGee will be off the cap this year. Merriman's silly contract is gone. Not sure how it would affect the cap, but Mark Anderson should either be cut or re-negotiated too. 2 knee surgeries in year 1 with the team is no good at all. Anyone know what their cap number possibly looks like? Seems like they could open up enough room for both Levitre and Bird if they make a few of those moves.
I need to see more (I really haven't watched him until tonight.) to be convinced, but your implication is right that they are likely not going to get the QB situation solved this year.I can't imagine them getting the top pick next year, though. This team still has a lot of talent, and winning less than 4-6 games seems pretty much impossible. I suppose they could hire some crusty head coach, that nobody wants to play for, though.
Then they need to do whatever they can now to get the ammo to trade up next year. Trade some guys, trade away this year's #1 pick, trade down, whatever it takes.
And then what happens when he decides to stay for his Jr year?
That's fine. There should be a few good QBs next year.
Chip Kelly is the new Chuck Norris, or the new honey badger, or ....something.Chip Kelly don't translate, he adapts
when reading this the first time, I thought you were a little nuts. now I know I wasn't alone:https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2013/01/08/2012-pff-all-afc-east-team/
From the same link:
They pretty much have to franchise Byrd if they can't get him signed.On offense, Spiller, Stevie Johnson, and Levitre all got recognition. McKelvin was a clear choice at returner.
