OBL 5/18: Game 7 Vs. One And Done Playoff Format; Eric Wood On New Radio Broadcast Partner
Chris Brown and Steve Tasker reunite as the team kicks off OTAs. They also shared their excitement for tonight's Canadiens-Sabres Game 7 matchup downtown. The two asked the listeners where does a Game 7 rank in comparison to a one and done playoff format? Then then went around the NFL to discuss the latest news and notes from the league. Bills radio color analyst and former Pro Bowl center Eric Wood joined the show to discuss the team's new radio partnership with Cumulus Media. They talked about the excitement in returning to the airwaves for the 2026 season, the opening of Highmark Stadium, and the schedule as a whole.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Speaker 1: Look you boys today.
Speaker 2: He is a feast for a Capitol fiend. The cook
Speaker 2: is in the kitchen, looks down the sideline. He's got
Speaker 2: kick Kade for a twenty three yard.
Speaker 3: Touchdown and it's intercepted.
Speaker 1: Jumping up in the air is bad curtain. This these
Speaker 1: One Bill's Live, all right, welcome in another week of
Speaker 1: One Bill's Live. Here at the Bill's Store, Chris Brown,
Speaker 1: Steve Tasker back from vacation. Welcome back, Steve.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having.
Speaker 1: Me as uh you've you've been gone for a week
Speaker 1: and here just sitting across from the stadium. Day by day,
Speaker 1: we've seen some interesting progress. The Bill's logo is now
Speaker 1: up on the Abbot Road of the stadium.
Speaker 3: Let's go.
Speaker 1: I took a photo on the way in because last
Speaker 1: week the logo was not up. Now it is up
Speaker 1: in all its glory, full color, red, white and blue.
Speaker 1: And there it is there it is. Look at that beautiful.
Speaker 3: I noticed you they've got a lot more concrete laid
Speaker 3: the outside that these guys are today. Yeah, the landscaping
Speaker 3: is in, you know, a lot more. The landscaping is
Speaker 3: in the fences around the perimeter that there's a fence
Speaker 3: all the way down along Abbot. There's only a there's
Speaker 3: restricted traffic flow across on Abbot. Yeah, because they're working
Speaker 3: on the curbs and all that. When they it's uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be good. It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: So the progress, so we were We had John Polka
Speaker 1: on the show late last week, right and this go
Speaker 1: under the high mark sign. It's fifty feet wide thirty feet.
Speaker 3: High right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you're standing here on the street, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look that big. But then you go and look at it.
Speaker 1: It's big and you hear what the dimensions are. It's
Speaker 1: like fifty by thirty end. It illuminates at night.
Speaker 3: Oh does it? Oh?
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 3: Let's go baby.
Speaker 1: Like the Batsignal. It's gonna be like the Batsignal.
Speaker 3: Everything, everything, you know, managed to keep rolling while I
Speaker 3: was gone. I'm kind of disappointed. It just collapsed without me.
Speaker 1: Nothing fell apart.
Speaker 3: We managed.
Speaker 1: But there is there is much bigger news here in
Speaker 1: Buffalo today, and that is the fact that there is
Speaker 1: a game, a game seven tonight.
Speaker 3: Sabers Canadian ends. They flashed the bill schedule up for
Speaker 3: a hot minute. They got ahead of us.
Speaker 1: Game says tonight, and.
Speaker 3: I'll be there, man, I'm gonna be there, be there,
Speaker 3: be there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of one of those quintessential moments
Speaker 1: in sports, and it's gonna our show topic kind of
Speaker 1: deals with this also, so stay tuned for that. In
Speaker 1: just a second. Have you being in west in Kansas.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think if there are instances where you
Speaker 1: grew up experiencing a Game seven scenario. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: being at one in person, but I'm saying experiencing a
Speaker 1: Game seven as a childhood fan, or do any stand
Speaker 1: out to you? Do any in memory come to you,
Speaker 1: come to your mind?
Speaker 3: No, there was nothing like this. That's what I was
Speaker 3: worried about. No, I mean we, I mean I I
Speaker 3: was part of a state championship team, but it was
Speaker 3: a track and field team. It wasn't like the big
Speaker 3: moments having you know, they runs their events and we
Speaker 3: entirely up the score. It wasn't like that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: nothing happened to me like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as I would say, as a childhood fan of
Speaker 1: any in all sports growing up in the New York
Speaker 1: metropolitan area, game seven's, with the exception of the Islanders
Speaker 1: Cup runs in the early eighties, did not end well
Speaker 1: for me to put some bad juju on tonight. And
Speaker 1: this is a separate city anyway, so I don't really
Speaker 1: think it counts or applies. But like Game sevens, you
Speaker 1: are biting your nails from the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: contest to the bitter end. And I realize Yankees fans
Speaker 1: are terribly spoiled. But the two thousand and one World
Speaker 1: Series when Luis Gonzalez snaps his bat on a Mariano
Speaker 1: Rivera cut fastball and fists it past a drawn in
Speaker 1: infield for the game winning run and the World Series title, Like,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty cheap way to win a World Series.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm never gonna be satisfied with how that
Speaker 1: one ended. Game seven fisted broken bat, dribbler up the
Speaker 1: middle on a drawn in infield. If it's a regular
Speaker 1: depth infield, it's an out and the game, you know,
Speaker 1: keeps going.
Speaker 3: Maybe he just count as payback for Bucky dense cork
Speaker 3: bat over the Green Monster.
Speaker 1: It wasn't his bat, it was Mickey Rivers bat, so
Speaker 1: you can't blame Bucket courked. Maybe it was who knows,
Speaker 1: It was never proven.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The other Game seven is ninety four NBA finals.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait, you just I
Speaker 3: can't believe I pulled out that restaurant reference that was
Speaker 3: Was it good?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Nineteen seventy eight one game playoff Yankees Red Sox. Yeah, Buck,
Speaker 1: Yankees walked down the Red Sox fourteen games back in August,
Speaker 1: walked him down, tied him on the last day of
Speaker 1: the season. One game playoff for the American League title
Speaker 1: in the division. And let's go. I was six when
Speaker 1: that happened, and I got home. I ran home from
Speaker 1: school because that was an afternoon game. I ran home
Speaker 1: from school to see the end of that game.
Speaker 3: That was amazing.
Speaker 1: Game seven, nineteen ninety four NBA Finals, Jordan retired, the
Speaker 1: first retirement, so he's out of the league. Nicks win
Speaker 1: the East playing Keem Elijah on in the Rockets.
Speaker 3: Oh that's bad Blue.
Speaker 1: Game six John Starks two of eighteen from the field
Speaker 1: and he just kept shooting. No one knows why. And
Speaker 1: then Game seven was a walk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Rockets pulled away and the Knicks lost again. Although
Speaker 1: I'm bullish on my Knicks now, Steve. They got to
Speaker 1: play the Caves here in the Eastern Conference finals.
Speaker 3: That you start talking about that and it is really interesting.
Speaker 3: You're everybody's experience was with Game Seven's like we're in
Speaker 3: the midst of tonight. Like tonight, I mean, like I'm
Speaker 3: sitting here, We're doing the show, and I think most
Speaker 3: of my friends know what I do for a living.
Speaker 3: That I'm on the radio from one to three.
Speaker 1: I would like to thank your friends. Know what you do?
Speaker 3: Let alone, Let alone my family. Yeah, my phone is
Speaker 3: absolutely blowing up because it's Game seven Monday. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean everybody's because they know I'm going We're gonna be
Speaker 3: my son and I are gonna be down there, and
Speaker 3: I just I mean, it's there's all kinds of stuff
Speaker 3: going on right now. I just got back from a vacation,
Speaker 3: so I got this big belly flop of a welcome home. Uh.
Speaker 3: We got home Lea yesterday afternoon. All that's going on.
Speaker 3: I got this. I was doing watch parties on the
Speaker 3: cruise with with with Sal Capaccio, Doug Flutie, Freddie Jackson,
Speaker 3: and Thurman and a bunch of Bills fans plus three
Speaker 3: super fans Pinto ron T Forton Barnes, the Water Buffalo's
Speaker 3: hats and Dell shirt. Delle Reid from twenty six shirts.
Speaker 3: So all of us are on the ship watching these
Speaker 3: Sabers games. As they go down, we say about it.
Speaker 3: We all come home and now I got this game
Speaker 3: seven tonight. I'm a mess. I am an absolute mess.
Speaker 1: Well, you're gonna have to go on fumes and adrenaline
Speaker 1: and maybe a few extra.
Speaker 3: Some red bulls or something. Yeah, caffeine be So I
Speaker 3: told you I was late to work today because we
Speaker 3: had a ca There's two stories in one, right, So
Speaker 3: you have always had people living at my house. I
Speaker 3: got people living at my house while we're out of
Speaker 3: town for the vacations and kick my so I don't
Speaker 3: have to kndle my dogs. They can take care of
Speaker 3: the how you know, you got alarm system all that,
Speaker 3: but it's better to have somebody living there taking care
Speaker 3: of keeping her eye out and you know the whole thing.
Speaker 3: My neighbors, everybody. So we get a call or a
Speaker 3: text from our from one of the house sitters said, hey,
Speaker 3: just so you I don't want you to freak out.
Speaker 3: There seems to be a little garter snake out. You're
Speaker 3: out on your side porch because we have some landscaping
Speaker 3: out there with some stacked stone and stuff, and they
Speaker 3: find their way. You know, it's kind of perfect place
Speaker 3: for them to height. She goes, I don't want you
Speaker 3: to freak out because of this little garter snake. I'm like, yeah, fine, whatever.
Speaker 1: People react to seeing snakes differently, so I would understand
Speaker 1: why these provided.
Speaker 3: My wife, you know, it's it's it's up there, it's
Speaker 3: rattling around. So she knows about the you know, so
Speaker 3: she's like, all I. So she goes out and she
Speaker 3: saw the snake this morning, and she and it crawls
Speaker 3: in under the You we've got a big, huge, concrete
Speaker 3: you know, concrete porch, you know, so is a.
Speaker 1: Sure it might be there's some visible angst.
Speaker 3: It would be somehow, some way. I don't know if
Speaker 3: the snake can't get in that. And I know myself
Speaker 3: sitting here talking, there is no way that that snake
Speaker 3: couldn't get in that house with a jackhammer, right, well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because first of all, they don't have any arms
Speaker 1: or legs exactly, hold said jack.
Speaker 3: Plus it's a six inch seamless wall of concrete. Al right.
Speaker 3: So but my wife is I'm gonna go down. She
Speaker 3: she's gonna go down inside the house. Foundation, go down
Speaker 3: there and look check for any possible entry, because if
Speaker 3: she doesn't, there's always that chance that the snake make
Speaker 3: its way in end up on the kitchen counter right
Speaker 3: while she's making or stepping into the shower, and the
Speaker 3: snake's in the show the whole thing, right, it's gonna happen, right,
Speaker 3: So she's going down there to check and see if
Speaker 3: there's a hole in my foundation, which is seamless, six
Speaker 3: inches of concrete, eight inches of concrete. It's huge, it's big,
Speaker 3: it's right. So she goes down. I'm she comes up,
Speaker 3: she goes she you got to get down here, yuh,
Speaker 3: and listen. This is a story not about the snake.
Speaker 3: The snake is meaningless. Now you can forget the snake.
Speaker 3: I go down there and she she saw a small
Speaker 3: trickle just over a droplet of water, making its way
Speaker 3: towards the sump.
Speaker 1: Pit, some pump. Okay, just like a.
Speaker 3: Trickle, not even a trickle, it's just like there.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, a little didn't take very long before we got
Speaker 3: we got a busted hot water pipe, and we're it's
Speaker 3: it's it's a pinhole leak that's spraying and has been
Speaker 3: spraying for quite some time. BEU pinhole leak. You couldn't
Speaker 3: see it, could I? It took me forever to find
Speaker 3: it after we had.
Speaker 1: Do you have stuff back there that's soaked there?
Speaker 3: You don't want to hear about it? Man, boy, you
Speaker 3: gotta hear. It's stuff. It's it's the kind of stuff
Speaker 3: everybody has. It could have been stolen out of my
Speaker 3: house and I would never have missed it.
Speaker 1: But for all that's the kind of stuff to lose.
Speaker 1: But from my wife.
Speaker 3: But there's some divorce issues in there. If I was
Speaker 3: to break it. Oh, I would be crippled. Well, be thankful.
Speaker 3: It's that kind of stuff. It's it's everything from my
Speaker 3: wife would absolutely beat me with a ball bat over
Speaker 3: and that I would never have missed had I not
Speaker 3: seen it ever again, that kind of stuff. We've all
Speaker 3: been there. So I'm we'm and we got box boxes
Speaker 3: are diss their cardboard boxes just dissolve, disintegrated and everything
Speaker 3: in them, just like, are you kidding me? So that
Speaker 3: water has been running, so we say, probably needless. I
Speaker 3: could not possibly care less about that snake right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the snake in the end was a blessing
Speaker 1: because it's the only thing that drove your wife to
Speaker 1: the basement. Otherwise, who knows how much longer that thing
Speaker 1: would have been going.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't have bothered me on my game seven day,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: Okay, we saw we all have to make sacrifice, and.
Speaker 3: I thought I was gonna have to like defer my Yeah,
Speaker 3: like I can't go.
Speaker 1: I have a little leak myself in my basement foundation wall.
Speaker 1: There's like a little crack there and it's just seeping
Speaker 1: through at a very slow drip rate, like you know
Speaker 1: when you cut your finger and the blood doesn't start
Speaker 1: coming out right away. It takes like three or four
Speaker 1: seconds to get to drop. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 3: So I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: My wife's like, see if you can fix it with
Speaker 1: some fle seal. I was like, we can.
Speaker 3: Try better that than the shovel, and yes, so we're.
Speaker 1: Gonna hope a small fix takes care of it. But
Speaker 1: fortunately it's warm and hot today, so I'm hoping it
Speaker 1: dries out the ground so there's no more water in
Speaker 1: the ground to leak through. I need like three or
Speaker 1: four dry days and then when the surface is dry
Speaker 1: then I can really hit it and.
Speaker 3: Hope I stop it a right, they don't want to
Speaker 3: hear me. That's better than your water pipe. It's a
Speaker 3: much better situation. So wait, so what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: You go into the game tonight?
Speaker 1: Yes, it looks like I have found a way to
Speaker 1: do so.
Speaker 3: I am gonna be there and I'm I'm in fact,
Speaker 3: I might leave halfway through the show just to go
Speaker 3: down and be there. Oh really, maybe need a break. Maybe,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't want to jump in with
Speaker 3: both feet right. I want to ease my way back
Speaker 3: into the job. Let me tell you half a show.
Speaker 1: You just told me you were exhausted and wiped out
Speaker 1: from this morning. Now I was, I'm gonna go party early.
Speaker 3: When the adrenaline kicks in for Game seven, I'll be up.
Speaker 3: I will be up all night. I will be wreck tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Let's we warn you right now. I will be an
Speaker 3: absolute wreck tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Game Game sevens are nerve wracking. We'll get to our
Speaker 1: topic of discussion regarding game sevens in just a second. First,
Speaker 1: we have to get you some bills notes here because
Speaker 1: Ota practices have begun today. They actually just got started
Speaker 1: at one o'clock, so they're on the practice field on
Speaker 1: the grass field as we speak. These are voluntary no
Speaker 1: media access to practice here on Monday, but they will
Speaker 1: be open for a period of time on Tuesday. Head
Speaker 1: coach Joe Brady also scheduled to address the media, so
Speaker 1: we'll have coverage of that tomorrow on the show. But
Speaker 1: let's go around the NFL. NFL owners are expected to
Speaker 1: vote during this week's league meeting on Nashville hosting the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. This would be sixty four in twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: and this would be the first time the music city
Speaker 1: would host the Super Bowl. It would be in their
Speaker 1: brand new Titan Stadium, which is expected to open next year,
Speaker 1: so in time for the Titan season. Next season, Nashville
Speaker 1: will follow Englewood, California, Sofi Stadium, Atlanta Mercedes Benz Stadium,
Speaker 1: and Las Vegas Allegiance Stadium. They have the next three
Speaker 1: Super Bowls. Nashville would come after them, so another stadium
Speaker 1: to the rotation. Yeah, so think that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: There is also an ESPN report that at the NFL
Speaker 1: League meeting in Orlando tomorrow there will be a special
Speaker 1: briefing on the Bears Stadium club and league staff will
Speaker 1: update the thirty two clubs on the progress on the
Speaker 1: only two viable stadium solutions left. That's in Arlington Heights
Speaker 1: where the Bears bought Land and Hammond, Indiana, Northwest Indiana.
Speaker 1: That site got thrown out there, Bears fans, we're grabbing
Speaker 1: the pitchforks and the torches.
Speaker 3: They can do that all they want. They can do
Speaker 3: that all they want.
Speaker 1: They Bears can't move to Indiana.
Speaker 3: Me. Yeah, Bears can do whatever they want. We've seen
Speaker 3: it if you can, you know, I mean the Colts
Speaker 3: left in the middle of the night from Baltimore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that was a different RAIDI but Raiders left
Speaker 3: and came back twice from Oakland. Don't get me started, right,
Speaker 3: we've seen relocations before. Houston up and left for Tennessee
Speaker 3: played their first year. And don't get this is this
Speaker 3: is about the same distance from Chicago to Orchard Park,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe twice as far right, but it's it's like forty.
Speaker 1: Miles not ham in Indiana. Yeah, it's not even Arlington
Speaker 1: Heights is closer Arling and.
Speaker 3: Arlington Heights maybe harder to get to than Hammond, Indiana.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you've ever been like a first ring suburb, right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a first or second ring.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like a fifth ring, fifth.
Speaker 1: Ring, because I know you went.
Speaker 3: Steve went to Northwest, evenso has glen Coe. There's a yeah,
Speaker 3: too many to name.
Speaker 1: Because their practice facility is up in lake Forest, which
Speaker 1: is further north. Arlington Heights would be kind of halfway
Speaker 1: between Pallas Hall in lake Forest and it's the current
Speaker 1: Soldier field down.
Speaker 3: Arlington Heights is a good spot for him, no question
Speaker 3: about it. And I'm not I don't have any skin.
Speaker 1: In they bought that racetrack property.
Speaker 3: Yet that's right, and it'll be big enough and the
Speaker 3: infrastructure will be a thing. But you know, getting out
Speaker 3: of Chicago, it's a.
Speaker 1: Traffics are a bear.
Speaker 3: The politics are impossible. Traffic is rough downtown, although they
Speaker 3: do get a lot of people walking in. People come
Speaker 3: down for the weekends, stay in the hotels in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Train systems decent, right the L, doesn't you know, if
Speaker 3: you take the L, it's still a two mile walk.
Speaker 3: I mean the l's waving.
Speaker 1: So there's no stop here.
Speaker 3: And you got and there's only some arteries where you
Speaker 3: have to walk away. Everything they've got like nine highways.
Speaker 3: It's like Cleveland down there.
Speaker 1: With the between Oh okay, you.
Speaker 3: Know, with they got highways between the stadium and the downtown.
Speaker 3: Even though it's like three hundred yards away, it's three
Speaker 3: hundred yards of highways wide, you know, kind of that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. So in Chicago you can weave your
Speaker 3: way down through there.
Speaker 1: I'm curious that is how that as to how that's
Speaker 1: going to shake out. I mean, logic would say, the
Speaker 1: Bears already owned the land in Arlington Heights, so why
Speaker 1: not build there. You've got greater control, you don't have
Speaker 1: a middleman for ordinances and all the other stuff that
Speaker 1: you got, all the other red tape that you got
Speaker 1: to deal with. That just seems to me to be
Speaker 1: the easy answer. I just almost feel like they're using Hammond,
Speaker 1: Indiana as a means to pit one against the other
Speaker 1: and get a better deal from you know, government, local, county, state.
Speaker 1: That whole thing's we'll see how it turns out. But
Speaker 1: they're gonna the owners are gonna get an update tomorrow
Speaker 1: at their meeting.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the Bill's had to do this
Speaker 3: exact same thing with the owners.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, Aaron Rodgers reported for his first
Speaker 1: day of OTA practices in Pittsburgh after he reached an
Speaker 1: agreement on a one year deal worth twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 1: Rogers reunites with Mike McCarthy is head coach in Green Bay.
Speaker 1: I thought this was an interesting note. Steve Rogers McCarthy
Speaker 1: have won one hundred and seven games together, including the playoffs.
Speaker 1: It's the ninth most by any head coach starting quarterback
Speaker 1: duo in the Super Bowl era. It is one shy
Speaker 1: of Marv Levy and Jim Kelly, who are in eighth
Speaker 1: on that list with one hundred and eight victories together.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Are you surprised that he went back.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not either. I think he turns forty three
Speaker 1: during the season. He's forty two right now. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: got a better receiving corps. I'll tell you that he's
Speaker 1: got DK Metcalf Michael Pittman like, and I'll say that
Speaker 1: they drafted somebody too.
Speaker 3: McCarthy's a thrower man. He wants to throw the football.
Speaker 3: He was criticized at the end of his tenure in
Speaker 3: Green Bay for being a little bit unimaginative, and they
Speaker 3: were running the same places they had always run. So
Speaker 3: teams really teams who met them a lot, saw them
Speaker 3: a lot, got a real handle on what they were doing.
Speaker 3: There was nothing new, and he took criticism that way. Now,
Speaker 3: maybe learned something in Dallas. Don't know, maybe none of
Speaker 3: that was true anyway, how do I know, But that's
Speaker 3: what he You know, You know how it is when
Speaker 3: a guy leaves, everybody kind of poop poos. The relationship
Speaker 3: and the way it was.
Speaker 1: They had to say that wasn't as.
Speaker 3: Here's why it was wrong, here's what was wrong, here's
Speaker 3: what you know, and everything gets exaggerated because you're right.
Speaker 3: They want a ton of games together. So they were
Speaker 3: doing something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we shall see. Oh, Jeremy Bernard was the
Speaker 1: kid they drafted second round pick out Alabama, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he'll probably be like their slot guy and their number
Speaker 1: three receiver. We told you last week on the heels
Speaker 1: of the schedule release that the Bills have a plus
Speaker 1: fourteen day rest advantage against their opponents on their twenty
Speaker 1: twenty sixth schedule, second only to the Bears of the
Speaker 1: plus fifteen day rest advantage. On the other end of
Speaker 1: that spectrum are the Eagles and Chargers, who each faced
Speaker 1: four opponents coming off their bye weeks and the Rams
Speaker 1: and Raiders each phase three teams coming off their bye weeks.
Speaker 1: The NFL, when asked about this discrepancy, apparently told a
Speaker 1: Boston Globe reporter they don't believe in rest disparity being
Speaker 1: a competitive advantage. What do you say, as a former
Speaker 1: player to.
Speaker 3: That, Yeah, no, it's an advantage. Height right, I disagree.
Speaker 3: I'll say this to Brownie. You're the first guy whoever
Speaker 3: I ever saw in the media said hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, ma.
Speaker 1: That Bill's schedule in twenty fourteen insanity.
Speaker 3: You were the first one whoever said, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: what about this?
Speaker 1: And Bill's had six games?
Speaker 3: Six games they had, And you were the first guy
Speaker 3: who went back and looked and it was like.
Speaker 1: I did the whole league by hand. Yeah, bro, that
Speaker 1: took me a long.
Speaker 3: Time, couldn't Now. You used to like get like, you know, hey, Siri,
Speaker 3: would you fix this for me? But that's You're the
Speaker 3: first guy who ever thought about And when you said it,
Speaker 3: when he brought it up, I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know what, He's right, because even if it's only
Speaker 3: on an anecdotal basis, you're gonna have guys who are
Speaker 3: gonna play better, particularly if they're veteran guys with more
Speaker 3: rest healthier during the regular season, wherein otherwise they would
Speaker 3: have been grinding and out and they wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: as effected. You know, I've been there. I've been one
Speaker 3: of those old veteran players who needed a couple of
Speaker 3: extra days and it made a difference. It doesn't mean
Speaker 3: systematically that every time a team plays on rest they're
Speaker 3: gonna play better in it, but it does mean this,
Speaker 3: if you've got old guys, there's every chance, given the
Speaker 3: percentage of guys who get hurt in this league, you're
Speaker 3: gonna have a percentage of guys who are significantly feeling
Speaker 3: better on that game day because they have extra time
Speaker 3: off before it. And if you're the team that has
Speaker 3: to play him, I mean it's obvious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And for me, and look, I'm not an athletic trainer
Speaker 1: expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it has
Speaker 1: been proven scientifically that fatigued muscles are more susceptible to injury.
Speaker 1: That's why they monitor everything these guys do in the
Speaker 1: practice setting, because if they yeah, that's what load management is.
Speaker 1: If a guy has been operating in practice at a
Speaker 1: high exertion level for an extended period of time and
Speaker 1: he ventures into the red on their scale of green, yellow, red,
Speaker 1: they get them off the practice field because he is
Speaker 1: more susceptible to injury. Well, a similar thing applies when
Speaker 1: you're going from a Sunday to a Thursday in week
Speaker 1: sixteen and the other team's been off for a week
Speaker 1: and a half. Right, The cumulative effects of those things
Speaker 1: can bite you.
Speaker 3: In the dairy air.
Speaker 1: And so I think it is an advantage.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm I don't want to get distracted from the show.
Speaker 3: But whoever wins this series between Montreal and Buffalo is
Speaker 3: gonna have to play, Yeah, Thursday, Yeah, thirday, Thursday, Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Two days rest as opposed to fourteen days rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think somebody I heard somebody say that that
Speaker 1: Carolina had twelve days since their last game.
Speaker 3: It will have had twelve days, or have had I
Speaker 3: think will have had a night game, will have had
Speaker 3: or Yeah, that's maybe I heard it.
Speaker 1: You might be right.
Speaker 3: I don't either, but yeah, it's a long time.
Speaker 1: Two weeks to two days, that's a big difference. Now,
Speaker 1: it's never that extreme in the NFL. It's maximums ten days.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, if a team plays on Thursday night
Speaker 1: and then has a bye and then plays their next day,
Speaker 1: that would probably be the maximum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or if you played Sunday Sunday, Sunday
Speaker 3: Sunday and you got a team that took two weeks off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some interesting details. Steve trickling out twenty two
Speaker 1: years later the two thousand and four NFL Draft, in
Speaker 1: which Eli Manning was the first pick by the ch
Speaker 1: Argers but made it clear he never wanted to play
Speaker 1: for the franchise. Subsequently traded to the Giants on draft night,
Speaker 1: who had the fourth pick, and took Philip Rivers. They
Speaker 1: swapped players. On the Buzzing with the Boys podcast, Eli
Speaker 1: Manning detailed his reasoning for not wanting to play in
Speaker 1: San Diego, noting a disconnect between the team, brass and ownership.
Speaker 1: Here is a direct quote from Eli. I just didn't
Speaker 1: feel like they were the most committed team to winning
Speaker 1: at the time, Manning said. Marty Schottenheimer was the head coach.
Speaker 1: He was awesome, had great respect for him. But they
Speaker 1: came to work me out in New Orleans. I went
Speaker 1: to dinner and there was just friction between the head coach,
Speaker 1: the general manager A. J. Smith, the late A J. Smith,
Speaker 1: and the owners, the Spanos family. They're all yelling fighting.
Speaker 1: He said, we're at a Marriott restaurant. Schottenheimer's already mad
Speaker 1: because he's like, we're in New Orleans and we're eating
Speaker 1: at a Marriott, so he's ticked. They're kind of big.
Speaker 1: It just didn't seem like there was a whole lot
Speaker 1: of agreement on things, and they were committed to building
Speaker 1: a great, winning franchise at that moment. Now, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, the first thing I thought of when I'm
Speaker 1: reading this is NFL draft prospects are one of the
Speaker 1: few people in the world who are vetting a potential
Speaker 1: employer in an interview setting when it's the exact opposite
Speaker 1: for all of us regular joes. We're the people that
Speaker 1: have to impress them to get hired. And here the
Speaker 1: Chargers failed miserably. They're fighting with each other over the
Speaker 1: choice of the restaurants, among other things. Yeah, bickering back
Speaker 1: and forth in front of the kid that they want
Speaker 1: to draft first.
Speaker 3: Overall, it was an Eli, to his credit, was smart
Speaker 3: enough and emotionally mature enough to go, Man, this is this.
Speaker 1: Is a disaster, right, but he didn't never publicly threw
Speaker 1: the team under the bus.
Speaker 3: He did not, but it did come out and said, hey,
Speaker 3: and his he said, he told him, don't draft me.
Speaker 3: But his dad, Archie took the bullets. Archie came, I said,
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't want. I don't, he said, I
Speaker 3: don't want. Well, you and Eli remember Archie's career, right.
Speaker 1: He got drafted first over all by the New Orleans
Speaker 1: Saints and he never won a dang thing because that Saint,
Speaker 1: that Saints franchise at that time was a wayward franchise.
Speaker 3: Of course. And so Archie took did the media run
Speaker 3: that and saved Eli the trouble, and he took the bullets. Said,
Speaker 3: I said, put it on himself. And that's what he like,
Speaker 3: knowledge said, my dad did a lot of these hits,
Speaker 3: and he kind of took the bullets where I was
Speaker 3: where I could have had to. And Archie said, now
Speaker 3: I'll do it, you know, And he said, Noah, the
Speaker 3: charges are a mess. I don't want my kid playing
Speaker 3: for him. And he was right, he was right, He
Speaker 3: was absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Eli probably doesn't win two Super Bowls.
Speaker 3: The Giants don't.
Speaker 1: The Giants don't. But the Giants probably put him in
Speaker 1: a better position to win Super Bowl the Giants.
Speaker 3: One would the Giants have won the Super Bowl Philip
Speaker 3: Rivers because that's who they picked. Maybe you think about it,
Speaker 3: Maybe would Philip Rivers have meshed with Tom Coughlin?
Speaker 1: I think so. I think Philip Rivers is an ardent
Speaker 1: preparer and all of that stuff. He loves ball.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe Giants win five? You know, yeah, who knows?
Speaker 3: But all what you don't get. And I'm kind of
Speaker 3: this is what strikes me about all this because I
Speaker 3: was kind of one of those guys on the on
Speaker 3: the player side of it. What happens to your life?
Speaker 3: If one guy says, eh, like what happened to me?
Speaker 3: I said this, I I told the story on the
Speaker 3: on the Legends cruise this last week. What happens if
Speaker 3: Marv if Joe Farraghelly walk walks up Margot's Hey, Marv,
Speaker 3: you said you want to make some changes on special teams.
Speaker 3: This kid played for me if the Oilers last year,
Speaker 3: it's a pretty good special teams player. You want to
Speaker 3: pick him up? If Marv right then and there goes
Speaker 3: Now we'll go with the guys. We got.
Speaker 1: Or you're in Houston for who knows that right.
Speaker 3: Or he says what he said, he trugs his shoulders
Speaker 3: and says, pick him up. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so pretty pivotal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you say what you want and I get it.
Speaker 3: You go back in time in this revision is history.
Speaker 3: You can do all of that stuff. But man, oh man,
Speaker 3: I'm sensitive to that kind of stuff. And Eli going
Speaker 3: back in time finally like twenty years twenty five years
Speaker 3: later saying yeah, my dad, I didn't want to and
Speaker 3: he Schottenheimer wasn't getting along with AJ and the owner
Speaker 3: was there. It's like one thing after and he's like, man,
Speaker 3: these guys are a mess yep.
Speaker 1: Last note here. Pro Football Talk is reporting that the
Speaker 1: NFL is likely to award the twenty twenty eight draft
Speaker 1: to Minnesota at the owners meeting tomorrow. We know that
Speaker 1: the Bills have talked about having an interest in hosting
Speaker 1: the NFL draft some of the years that have been
Speaker 1: floated out there, twenty eight, twenty nine, maybe even twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: But it looks like Minnesota's going to get the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight NFL Draft. Topic of discussion for you today,
Speaker 1: where does a game seven rank in comparison to a
Speaker 1: one and done playoff format that we see in the NFL.
Speaker 1: For example, tell us why where does a game seven
Speaker 1: rank in comparison to the one and done playoff formats?
Speaker 1: And tell us why you think it's better, worse, equal?
Speaker 1: What have you add? One Bills Live is how you
Speaker 1: jump on and comment on this show. We also have
Speaker 1: the open mic here at the Bills store. So if
Speaker 1: you're in the neighborhood and you want to stop buying,
Speaker 1: way in, not for this is your chance.
Speaker 3: Not for nothing. A habs fans just came in.
Speaker 1: Oh boys, do we boo?
Speaker 3: What do we do?
Speaker 1: Take a break, We'll let you know what we do.
Speaker 1: Back here on One Bills Live, Chris Brown Steve Tasker
Speaker 1: on a Monday, And we didn't mention this earlier, Steve,
Speaker 1: but we probably should since you're now back in the saddle.
Speaker 1: We announced a new partnership with Cumulus Media. That's right,
Speaker 1: that will make ninety seven Rock WGRFFM the official flagship
Speaker 1: station for the Buffalo Bills broadcasts. We also announced that
Speaker 1: a Syracuse station will be one of our affiliates. WSKO
Speaker 1: The Score twelve sixty will be the Syracuse affiliate. There'll
Speaker 1: be more stations announced soon about joining the network, including
Speaker 1: in Rochester and southern Ontario. So we look forward to
Speaker 1: those announcements, and eventually our location on the radio dial
Speaker 1: will be announced. In the not too distant future. I
Speaker 1: would imagine we're back on the radio before training camp.
Speaker 1: Cross your fingers, cross your fingers and toes on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we have that information, we'll be sure to
Speaker 1: pass it along to you because the best news about
Speaker 1: that is we'll be able to take phone calls again. Right,
Speaker 1: It will be nice because we love hearing from our listeners.
Speaker 1: But topic of discussion for you today, where does a
Speaker 1: game seven rank in comparison to the one and done
Speaker 1: playoff format? And why? Obviously in the NFL, you win,
Speaker 1: you go home one or the other, there are no series,
Speaker 1: shall we say NBA obviously, Major League Baseball and hockey
Speaker 1: all have best of seven series.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's like different in others in the sports
Speaker 3: other than football, you know, there's these series are awesome
Speaker 3: and they culminate in this game seven, like we're going
Speaker 3: to see tonight here in Buffalo against Montreal. And in football,
Speaker 3: it's automatic game seven, right, it's automatic like you won
Speaker 3: and done. It's a little different. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: I think part of the allure of this Game seven
Speaker 3: is the fact that you've got six other games to
Speaker 3: look at and you're sitting there going, I mean, Sabers
Speaker 3: fans are looking at the Montreal fans kind of knowing
Speaker 3: them as like they do the Sabs right, kind of
Speaker 3: you know those guys. It's it's a different animal, man.
Speaker 3: It's it's really exciting and it's really cool. It's really
Speaker 3: cool to see. I don't know, I'm just I'm really
Speaker 3: I'm really excited about it. This may be I'm trying
Speaker 3: to remember. I don't know that I ever went to
Speaker 3: one of the Game sevens back in the day. I
Speaker 3: don't think I went to the one in Boston, the
Speaker 3: Boston Game seven ninety nine. I don't think I was
Speaker 3: there for that. Yeah, so this may be my first
Speaker 3: Game seven ever tonight.
Speaker 1: I have never been to a Game seven in person,
Speaker 1: but I am going so very excited about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the and the Savers have only had one Game
Speaker 1: seven victory.
Speaker 3: That was a bit against Boston. The one that I
Speaker 3: saw it was Ottawa, right, Ottawa. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: Ottawa Game seven, Derek plays, Oh, I'm sorry, Boston was
Speaker 3: a game six. Yeah, yeah, that's uh yeah. I mean
Speaker 3: they're they're hard to they're hard to get to, let
Speaker 3: alone hard to win.
Speaker 1: They are. But I see, here's the thing, because in
Speaker 1: the one and done playoff format, every game is like
Speaker 1: a game seven.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 1: And I think there are people who would argue that
Speaker 1: that playoff. And here's the thing. In the one and
Speaker 1: done playoff format, after you win that game, it's another
Speaker 1: game seven again. You gotta win that one or you
Speaker 1: go home. So the one and done playoff format, I
Speaker 1: would argue, is game seven intensity, over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. In the NFL, like you see, you see
Speaker 1: Bills fans wringing their hands, biting their fingernails. They can't
Speaker 1: even watch. I know people in my neighborhood that have
Speaker 1: to leave their house and go for a walk and
Speaker 1: miss like five minutes of the game because they can't
Speaker 1: handle it. And that's and that's gonna be people tonight.
Speaker 3: I've been there.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be people tonight. So I think it's on
Speaker 1: a I think it's it's on a par with that.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if the one and done playoff format
Speaker 1: of the NFL, sue if it if it trumps that
Speaker 1: because it's game seven this week, you win, you go
Speaker 1: to the divisional round, it's game seven again. You win
Speaker 1: the divisional round, AFC championship game, it's game seven again.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yes? But it also the game seven as opposed to
Speaker 3: one and done the game seven, you are more likely
Speaker 3: to get the better team to advance in games in
Speaker 3: one and done playoffs like in the In the NFL,
Speaker 3: it doesn't always happen that way. You can either benefit
Speaker 3: by that or be destroyed by it. That's that's the
Speaker 3: difference in in the NHL. You gotta be better in
Speaker 3: a lot of areas in that team because they're gonna
Speaker 3: change their game plan. You got to change again. You
Speaker 3: got the same you're playing the same guys. They're playing
Speaker 3: the same guys. You've got to find a way to
Speaker 3: outsmart them and out execute them to win. In football,
Speaker 3: as we've seen Lucky bounce, bad spot, go home, drop ball.
Speaker 3: See you these last four months, you've been you know,
Speaker 3: busting a gut for Yeah, it's all for nothing. Thanks, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean that's that's what you look at when you've
Speaker 3: got a one and done, it doesn't always take the
Speaker 3: best team. It takes the best team. That may be
Speaker 3: a lucky break, yeah, or a bad team with a
Speaker 3: lucky break.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the tweet sheet to see what you
Speaker 1: have to say about where a game seven ranks in
Speaker 1: comparison to a one and done playoff format. Cole says
Speaker 1: one and done has the stress of being one and done.
Speaker 1: Game seven is one and done plus all the emotions
Speaker 1: in bad blood of the six previous games, culmenting in
Speaker 1: that one moment. I will say Cole has a point there,
Speaker 1: because if you're gonna argue on that side of it,
Speaker 1: you have all of the build up and the highs
Speaker 1: and the lows of the previous six games rolled into
Speaker 1: the game seven. You played another team for six games.
Speaker 1: A fan has a real opportunity to develop a bitter
Speaker 1: and deep seated hatred for that opponent.
Speaker 3: And also everybody. And this has happens in football too,
Speaker 3: But in hockey, you're sitting there watching and even a
Speaker 3: jamoke like me, there are things you watch in hockey
Speaker 3: in these game sevens where you've seen the first six
Speaker 3: games and you think, man, I hope this doesn't happen again,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I mean you can see
Speaker 3: the personality of each game be played out. And like
Speaker 3: the Sabs in the first game against Boston, they're down
Speaker 3: two nothing going with eight minutes to go, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden they win the thing. What was it
Speaker 3: three to two or four to two or something. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's unbelievable. And then in this last game, the Game six,
Speaker 3: they're down three to one ten minutes in and then
Speaker 3: end up blowing them out at eight three. So you
Speaker 3: have all that knowledge and all that anticipation, and every
Speaker 3: individual viewer looks for their own cues about what it means,
Speaker 3: and you attach your own baggage to all the good
Speaker 3: things and bad things that have happened throughout the series.
Speaker 3: And I mean we're all saying, you can't, you can't
Speaker 3: even you can't sit still.
Speaker 1: No, So I think there's arguments to be made here
Speaker 1: on both sides. Because here here's the other thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: those previous six games, you can develop a bitter and
Speaker 1: deep seated hatred for the oppon on it because of
Speaker 1: all the highs and lows, and maybe somebody has done
Speaker 1: something nefarious in game two and you hate that guy
Speaker 1: for the rest of the series. That kind of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: think about the Bills and Chiefs over the last few years.
Speaker 1: You face that same team the next year and you
Speaker 1: don't get by him again.
Speaker 3: Oh now it's a thing. Yeah yeah. And then there's
Speaker 3: all the anciliary things like it's now that and with
Speaker 3: this game attached to it, it's a home game instead
Speaker 3: of an away game, and the officiating and somebody's gonna
Speaker 3: bang the drum, and you know, the whole thing. You've
Speaker 3: got all that superstitious stuff that fans cling to for
Speaker 3: emotional support, right man. Just it just adds all this
Speaker 3: layer after layer of complexity to how you feel and
Speaker 3: when what you feel like when you're going through this,
Speaker 3: you know, and you're you're feeling incredibly confident and positive
Speaker 3: in the midst of despair and hopelessness. Just it's a
Speaker 3: tough place to live.
Speaker 1: We got to take a break here because we're up
Speaker 1: against the clock. But at One Bill's Live is where
Speaker 1: you weigh in on this discussion. How does a game
Speaker 1: seven compare to the one and done playoff format? Better
Speaker 1: worse about the same? Tell us why at One Bill's
Speaker 1: Live is how you participate on this show. Or if
Speaker 1: you're on aviad road you want to pop in the
Speaker 1: Bills store, hop on our live mic and let us
Speaker 1: know live on the show. Chris Brown, Steve Tasker with
Speaker 1: you here on One Bill's Live. We're back in a flash,
Speaker 1: all right back here on one Bill's Live. Chris Brown,
Speaker 1: Steve Tasker. Happy to have you with us here on
Speaker 1: a Monday where it is Game seven for the Sabers
Speaker 1: tonight against the Canadians and you today. Where does a
Speaker 1: game seven rank in comparison to a one and done
Speaker 1: playoff format? Better or worse about the same? Let us
Speaker 1: know why. At one Bills Live. We're gonna go right
Speaker 1: back to the tweetsheet here where Tailgate Beer says Game
Speaker 1: seven's one hundred percent better. You have the scars and
Speaker 1: emotions of six straight games versus the same opponent leading
Speaker 1: up to it, and I guess you're not guaranteed that
Speaker 1: year over year in the NFL in a one and
Speaker 1: done playoff format, although the Bills for a stretch there
Speaker 1: were running into the Chiefs year after year after year,
Speaker 1: and it built up the similar kind of hatred that
Speaker 1: you know fans have when they're playing one team, and
Speaker 1: it goes seven games.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you've got you've taken it on the chin
Speaker 3: just as many times as you've won, and yeah, I
Speaker 3: get it. It's Uh.
Speaker 1: Are those scars a good thing though for people's nerves.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they are.
Speaker 3: Well, it's part of what makes the sport.
Speaker 1: The finality of it is much more long and drawn out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a seven, when.
Speaker 3: You weigh the catastrophic nature of the ending is just
Speaker 3: like a one and done. On a game seven, of course,
Speaker 3: the ending is the same, but you don't get the
Speaker 3: positive side. You don't get your hopes built up. Their
Speaker 3: hopes are whatever they are opening games.
Speaker 1: It's encapsulated in one game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all encapsulated, so you don't have any ammunition
Speaker 3: positive or negative going into a one and done.
Speaker 1: We've got another tweeter and this is an interesting take,
Speaker 1: And forgive me if I don't pronounce this correctly, but
Speaker 1: this is from Tawiscaro, who says game seven is greater
Speaker 1: than a one and done. Seven games greatly reduces the
Speaker 1: overall variance and impact refs have on the outcome. Aimen
Speaker 1: to that, brother and Bill's fans can speak to that directly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want to get into that. I don't
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 1: If you get hosed in game one, you're still alive.
Speaker 1: You a one and done. You get hosed in the
Speaker 1: game on a ref call, thanks for coming. Enjoy your
Speaker 1: off season.
Speaker 3: And if you get hosed in four out of the
Speaker 3: seven games.
Speaker 1: How likely is that?
Speaker 3: Well, this is the NHL. I mean, it's arbitrary, AirFest biased,
Speaker 3: it's biased at the best. It's arbitrary. I mean, come on, yes,
Speaker 3: they it's the only professional sport that trumpets the I've
Speaker 3: said this a million times. It's the only trump professional
Speaker 3: sport that actually let it let it be known that
Speaker 3: their officials manage games. They manage the game. There. Well,
Speaker 3: the guy comes over on a hot mic. He's Mike.
Speaker 3: The official has micd up himself, and he comes over
Speaker 3: and says, listen, I just wanted to call one to
Speaker 3: make a little bit of a statement here, like forget
Speaker 3: about the rules, forget about you know, right, wrong, fair, indifferent.
Speaker 3: I just didn't want I didn't want to. I don't
Speaker 3: want to deal with the rampifications of me doing my job,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to make a statement. So why don't
Speaker 3: tell my job the rest of the thing. And by the way,
Speaker 3: when when overtime comes, I'm going to go home and
Speaker 3: watch it on TV because I'm not gonna not gonna
Speaker 3: fall anything. So there you go.
Speaker 1: So let's just I get where you're coming. I get
Speaker 1: where you're coming from.
Speaker 3: Don't get me started game seven days. It's not fair.
Speaker 1: I get where you're coming from. And far be it
Speaker 1: from me to defend officials. But I will say further
Speaker 1: from me. Yeah, but I will say this, and I
Speaker 1: think this is lost sometimes on people that just get
Speaker 1: annoyed by officials. There's two jobs for officials. The first
Speaker 1: job is to know the rules and apply them to
Speaker 1: the contest involved, and the second one is to control
Speaker 1: the tenor of the game by using those rules like
Speaker 1: letting how much are we letting go?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 1: Are we calling it tight? Are we call it like?
Speaker 3: Those are the things I would say a little differently,
Speaker 3: and maybe in my know the rules enforce the rules.
Speaker 3: Other thing in two words, be consistent from the opening
Speaker 3: whistle to the final whistle. Be consistent. That's it, because
Speaker 3: I be consistent, and get the get out of the.
Speaker 1: Way, because I know what you have said many times.
Speaker 1: As long as you call it consistently, whether you call
Speaker 1: it tight, or whether you call it loose. Players can
Speaker 1: adjust to that as long as it stays that, oh
Speaker 1: we're calling it tight tonight, okay.
Speaker 3: As you call it the same all the time, that's
Speaker 3: what you gotta do, and that's it. You know the rules,
Speaker 3: enforce them consistently, do it the same all the time.
Speaker 3: That means through the third overtime, just like the first
Speaker 3: period of the first game, the third overtime in game
Speaker 3: seven is exactly the same. And they they is in
Speaker 3: as humans do have trouble doing, they are in capable
Speaker 3: of it. They're incapable of it. They in fact, they
Speaker 3: stop trying to do it. They just let it be known.
Speaker 3: Whoever cheats the most in overtime is going to win.
Speaker 3: And that's that's kind of the attitude, right So you
Speaker 3: if they know that, the player's got to know it,
Speaker 3: and then it is it's who's going to really try
Speaker 3: to win by going outside the rules that have been
Speaker 3: been called and getting away with it, and that's who wins.
Speaker 3: Forget about the six games that came before it. This
Speaker 3: is all something new. Now it's game seven and and
Speaker 3: it's third overtime. This isn't Game one of the first
Speaker 3: period of the game one. So that's what drives me
Speaker 3: crazy right there. That's what drives me created. Then it's
Speaker 3: just whoever wants to say, well, I don't care anymore.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do what I want and they win.
Speaker 1: But I do agree with Tabascaro because he said seven
Speaker 1: games greatly reduces the overall variance and impact refs have
Speaker 1: on the outcome. Just more chances to come back from
Speaker 1: the more chances to come back from a bad call.
Speaker 1: I cannot argue with that, and so that's one reason
Speaker 1: why a seven games at least affords you more margin
Speaker 1: for error, not only on your part but on the
Speaker 1: part of the officials.
Speaker 3: Let the Yeah, they're so they're so afraid of having
Speaker 3: to call somebody who took an absolutely horrifically stupid penalty.
Speaker 1: It was funny, I said, don't call it.
Speaker 3: So the guy gets away with a horrific penalty and
Speaker 3: they win because of it because they the officials are
Speaker 3: just they they can't they can't do their job. They
Speaker 3: just don't want to be the guy to have to
Speaker 3: make that call. Oh my gosh, I'm doing my job. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Somebody actually brought up on social media the Darius Casparitis
Speaker 1: throw the puck over the board.
Speaker 3: Catches it, pulls it down and throws it like no call.
Speaker 3: Sixty seconds later he scores the winning goal.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: So there you go. There's come back from that. Come
Speaker 3: back from that.
Speaker 1: See, it's not too hard to get Steven a lather
Speaker 1: over this. Uh. We got to take a break. But
Speaker 1: when we come back, our broadcast partner on the Bills
Speaker 1: Radio Network is going to be joining us this one,
Speaker 1: Eric Wood. When we come back from break, we'll be
Speaker 1: joining us. Is talk about our new broadcast team here,
Speaker 1: which now includes Steve down on the sidelines. We'll catch
Speaker 1: up with Eric next here all one Bill's Live look
Speaker 1: up boards.
Speaker 3: Well what today?
Speaker 2: He is a feast for the Capitol fime. The cook
Speaker 2: is in the kitchen, looks.
Speaker 3: Down the sideline.
Speaker 2: He's got kickade for a twenty three yard touchdown and
Speaker 2: it's intercepted.
Speaker 1: Jumping up with the air is.
Speaker 3: Bad for.
Speaker 1: This The One Bill's Live All Right Hour number two
Speaker 1: Here on a Monday, Chris Brown, Steve Tasker with you
Speaker 1: and happy to welcome in my broadcast partner on the
Speaker 1: Bill's Radio Network. Steve Tasker will be able to say
Speaker 1: the same. It's Eric Wood joining us on the heels
Speaker 1: of the announcement that our new radio partner is Cumulus
Speaker 1: Media and our new flagship station for Bill's broadcasts will
Speaker 1: be ninety seven Rock Eric. How are we doing? Good
Speaker 1: to see you.
Speaker 4: I'm doing great, great seeing you guys. And yeah, you
Speaker 4: could say our broadcast partner. Now it'll be a different
Speaker 4: intra on one Bill's Live this year, and we'll certainly
Speaker 4: miss Sal but looking forward to having some fun with
Speaker 4: Steve this season.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I was with Sal on a cruise
Speaker 3: this whole last week, and of course, you know how
Speaker 3: this is. This is this is above our this is
Speaker 3: above our pay grade. It's like, Salain, I do look
Speaker 3: like people think Salain I made this decision on our own.
Speaker 3: It's like, it's not the way it works. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we remain good. I mean, it's not like we all
Speaker 3: of a sudden now I can't talk to us out.
Speaker 3: We had we had a blast this last week, him
Speaker 3: and his family. It was great. But you know, that's
Speaker 3: the business. It's the business. And we knew when the
Speaker 3: contracts ran out and all this and they were going
Speaker 3: to negotiate all this, that this all might happen. So
Speaker 3: I was very aware of it. As well, and so
Speaker 3: we just kind of had to sit here and like
Speaker 3: we waited for the announcement like everybody else. So here
Speaker 3: we go, and it's gonna be fun. I mean, I
Speaker 3: I I remember I did the sideline stuff for a
Speaker 3: long time for CBS, and you know me, it's not
Speaker 3: like you just stand there and watch the game. So
Speaker 3: I'm I'm I got to start working out, I guess
Speaker 3: is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 4: Well, this time you won't be on TV at least
Speaker 4: quite as much, although i'd imagine, uh, CBS will pay
Speaker 4: homage to you at times when they have our games,
Speaker 4: being you were there for I believe about twenty years,
Speaker 4: almost twenty years, and so I bring a lot of
Speaker 4: experience to it. And luckily with the wind confusion and
Speaker 4: maybe protecting you from some of the elements in the
Speaker 4: new stadium, it won't be quite as bad. But we
Speaker 4: had a lot of fun. We had a lot of
Speaker 4: fun with spell on the sideline when which our booth's
Speaker 4: open too. It's not like we're sitting up there and
Speaker 4: it's completely cushy, but a little better for us not
Speaker 4: getting rain and sleet and snow and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty crazy to think, Eric, the last time
Speaker 1: that the Bills were on ninety seven Rock, your career
Speaker 1: was just beginning. You were a young player for the
Speaker 1: Bills at that point in time. I was doing pregame
Speaker 1: with some people, and then you know, we made the
Speaker 1: switch and now we're back, So it's kind of cool
Speaker 1: to you know, you can go home again, I guess
Speaker 1: is probably the best way to put it, because I
Speaker 1: know you, as a player were kind of interacting with
Speaker 1: some of the on air personalities over there at the time. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. As soon as I got drafted, I was in
Speaker 4: Buffalo the next day to get my jersey and the
Speaker 4: tour and all that. My first ever appearances on Buffalo
Speaker 4: Radio were at their studios on a hopping around from
Speaker 4: show to show and doing all that. I did a
Speaker 4: show with Jickster for a little while, and uh, we
Speaker 4: always had some fun together the day after the games,
Speaker 4: and so very familiar with that whole crew, and you
Speaker 4: know that that that provides some comfort with the switch.
Speaker 3: I'll say, Well, and I don't know if you've talked
Speaker 3: to these since the announcement dropper of the schedule dropped.
Speaker 3: What were your thoughts on what it looks like, I mean,
Speaker 3: you knew it was gonna be tough. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be a gauntlet of a schedule. So the teams
Speaker 3: are gonna be tough, but what about the schedule itself?
Speaker 3: Win and where these guys are playing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the first thing that stands out to me is
Speaker 4: that Fits got his wish. He was on his podcast
Speaker 4: politicking like crazy. The Bills uh opener in the stadium
Speaker 4: would be Thursday Ight football. The only chance that could
Speaker 4: happen is if it was Week two, and so it was.
Speaker 4: It was interesting that Fits got his wish. So we'll
Speaker 4: open up the new stadium on Thursday football. A tough
Speaker 4: test down in Houston seems to be a bugaboo for
Speaker 4: us going down there. So we go down there. Tough
Speaker 4: first test, and you know, string of one o'clock home
Speaker 4: games in a row, you get those in September and
Speaker 4: early October. Sorry, I mean the first one's Thursday Night football,
Speaker 4: and then you get to one o'clock games in a row,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's it is what it is. You know,
Speaker 4: each and every year. And the Bills actually finished second
Speaker 4: last year. But when you look at some of the
Speaker 4: opponents that they're gonna have to face. You're gonna have
Speaker 4: some good ones, you know. Uh, you know, selfishly, as
Speaker 4: a dad of an eight and a ten year old,
Speaker 4: you know, I hope that you're always home for you.
Speaker 4: It's easy for me to miss Thanksgiving, Christmas. And then
Speaker 4: Denver is an even tougher commute where you know, if
Speaker 4: it's a night game in Buffalo, even if I had
Speaker 4: to drive, I could maybe make it in time to
Speaker 4: do early presents. But Denver's a different animal. Will be uh,
Speaker 4: we we might all be celebrating Christmas morning together. We'll
Speaker 4: do it. We'll do a gift exchange and all that,
Speaker 4: and I guess I'll FaceTime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one, that one was That one was tough.
Speaker 4: And then miss But it's part of the gig. And
Speaker 4: you know that in sports, and my wife's used to
Speaker 4: that from me playing nine years in the league. You know,
Speaker 4: it's just the holidays that happened during the season can
Speaker 4: be very interrupted, and you pivot and you make it
Speaker 4: work and you make the best of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you celebrate Christmas a little early. You do it
Speaker 1: the week before because the Bills are playing when you
Speaker 1: need to. Yeah, the week before they're playing early.
Speaker 4: So what about Santa. Can you like write to Santa
Speaker 4: Claus to see if he can come early? Is that possible?
Speaker 1: I think anything is possible. I mean, as long as
Speaker 1: you got you know, shipping services available. I'm sure Santa
Speaker 1: uses those as much as the next person. So he's
Speaker 1: made exceptions before, so I have I have faith that
Speaker 1: he'll he'll do it for your family, But.
Speaker 3: It is kind of polarizing. One of the aspects of
Speaker 3: this having a Thanksgiving game and a Christmas game. It's
Speaker 3: one thing to as a one off where it's like
Speaker 3: comes out of the blue. It's like, oh and you
Speaker 3: got and it's a crusher because you were gonna you know,
Speaker 3: everybody starts playing this stuff in advance and then now
Speaker 3: you've got a Bills game. But it's different for like
Speaker 3: a Detroit team who always plays on that game. Your
Speaker 3: family can grow up with the tradition, they grow up
Speaker 3: the Bill you work around. Addition, you grow up with
Speaker 3: what you're going to do on that day. No Bills
Speaker 3: fans don't know this, and nobody does. Christmas I believe
Speaker 3: falls on a Friday, yes this year, so you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do a late Christmas instead of early.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one off, the one off game on Christmas
Speaker 3: is kind of worse than having it there every year
Speaker 3: in some ways.
Speaker 1: Yes, and now we were kind of handicapping, handicapping the
Speaker 1: schedule a little bit. And once we knew that the
Speaker 1: Bills weren't going to be a part of the international
Speaker 1: schedule for a third straight year, I felt like that
Speaker 1: dramatically increased the chances of the Bills being on a
Speaker 1: holiday game. I just didn't think they'd paid on both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that that's that's that's a very valid point.
Speaker 4: And you know, to me, you know, as a player,
Speaker 4: you know as a broadcaster, you know, I'll say this
Speaker 4: from a player's perspective, Yeah, you're irked by that, but
Speaker 4: you understand that, you know, these new streaming services that
Speaker 4: they're selling these Black Friday games to these Christmas games too,
Speaker 4: they bring in big time revenue for the league. And
Speaker 4: as a player, your salary cap is based off a
Speaker 4: percentage of league revenue. So the more they can do
Speaker 4: the drive it up, the better.
Speaker 3: So you get that.
Speaker 4: I mean, heck, last night we tuned into the ACMs
Speaker 4: to watch Fitzpatrick and Whitworth give out their deal that
Speaker 4: was on Prime Video, and then I go over to
Speaker 4: flip my over to watch my former Louisville Cardinal Donovan
Speaker 4: Mitchell playing a game seven and I'm looking forward on TNT.
Speaker 4: It's also on Prime Videos. So those streaming services are
Speaker 4: shelling it out and a lot of times they're going
Speaker 4: to hit some different windows just based upon Box and
Speaker 4: CBS and ESPN and known the rights to you know,
Speaker 4: the Sunday Monday games.
Speaker 3: This is a generation though, in these last handful of
Speaker 3: years and now going forward from here, we're really transitioning
Speaker 3: from from legacy broadcast media's ABC, NBC, CBS and you
Speaker 3: can got to count ESPN. Is that right now? It's
Speaker 3: going you know Amazon, Yeah, there's Peacock, Paramount, the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's YouTube. It's changing, and we're like right in the
Speaker 3: middle of it, right, I mean, what do you think
Speaker 3: it's going to look like in ten years? What's going
Speaker 3: to happen.
Speaker 4: I think there's gonna be a whole bunch of one offs.
Speaker 4: And I anticipated this coming, just understanding that they could,
Speaker 4: you know, sell these one off games and make a
Speaker 4: big nut off of it, and so yeah, you just
Speaker 4: have to assume it's coming. I know that there's a
Speaker 4: lot of people, you know, I think of my parents
Speaker 4: in this situation and you know, struggling to figure out
Speaker 4: what streaming service it's.
Speaker 3: On and how you get it on.
Speaker 4: And you know, today was Wolford's sixty second birthday. Thurman
Speaker 4: Thomas just turned sixty. The I was gonna ask you, Steve,
Speaker 4: how you're handling this. I couldn't believe they're that old.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Thurman looks like he's forty five. And will Is
Speaker 4: one of my close friends, lives up the road from
Speaker 4: me in Louisville. I couldn't believe today he turned sixty two.
Speaker 4: But you know, as long as they don't alienate people
Speaker 4: through this process, which you know, people are gonna find
Speaker 4: a way to find, you know, the teams they want
Speaker 4: to watch, and you know in nationally they're gonna they're
Speaker 4: gonna figure out a way to get it done. And
Speaker 4: so I think it only increases from here. You know,
Speaker 4: whether it's Apple TV, YouTube TV getting exclusive rights to
Speaker 4: some games, or YouTube in general, it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1: So Eric, Steve and I had an opportunity a little
Speaker 1: over a week ago to take a tour of the
Speaker 1: new stadium because the broadcast level is pretty much done,
Speaker 1: and happy to report that the site lines are outstanding.
Speaker 1: We're approximately on the forty five yard line. You knew
Speaker 1: as well as I do we were going to be
Speaker 1: higher than former high Mark Stadium, and we are, but
Speaker 1: it's not extraordinarily high. And the window does open, So
Speaker 1: that's good because you know, it's kind of a personal
Speaker 1: point of pride on our part, but we're probably right
Speaker 1: or on the forty five yard line, so we couldn't
Speaker 1: have asked for anything better. And you know, just talking
Speaker 1: to Todd Gracie who took us through, who works directly
Speaker 1: under John Polka, the guy who's kind of the point
Speaker 1: man on this whole thing, he said, we made sure
Speaker 1: to be in touch with every department in our building
Speaker 1: to make sure we knew everybody's needs and incorporated them
Speaker 1: into you know, what the site lines are so among
Speaker 1: every you know, among other things, but for us, sitelines
Speaker 1: are pretty important. So it was pretty it was pretty
Speaker 1: refreshing to see that they had taken all those things
Speaker 1: into account. But it's going to be spectacular.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good, and I'm glad to hear you say
Speaker 4: the window is going to be open. Because although we
Speaker 4: can get called at times or your paperwork might blow
Speaker 4: around in the old stadium, when you call a game,
Speaker 4: let's say Kansas City, you don't even feel like you're
Speaker 4: a part of it. And you know, you can hear
Speaker 4: the crowd noise from our parabolic mics, but you just
Speaker 4: really don't feel like you're a part of it. And
Speaker 4: then you know, I feel like a lot of these
Speaker 4: newer stadiums are given the radio guys worse, the worst
Speaker 4: sidelines because they can sell off your areas to a
Speaker 4: suite holder or you know, some type of luxury seating.
Speaker 4: So good up taking care of us. For those watching
Speaker 4: on the app, we got to see the viewpoint from
Speaker 4: your guys. Has how's the space in there, because our
Speaker 4: old booth was extremely spacious too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as many rows. It's basically one row
Speaker 1: down in front for us and then one row higher
Speaker 1: and behind us, similar to a lot of other road
Speaker 1: stadiums we've been to, you know, where our engineers and
Speaker 1: sound people are. So it's lower row and then one
Speaker 1: row up significantly higher. So yeah, I wish a little different.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a window to open in my
Speaker 1: new gig. Now I'm gonna Brownie and I bran and
Speaker 1: I went aroll. We want to make sure we were
Speaker 1: under the under the canopy, under the drip line, making
Speaker 1: sure we're gonna stay dry with the seats for our families.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of good that did me. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be like right out in it under an umbrella or something.
Speaker 4: Is there a room for people to congregate in the back,
Speaker 4: because you know, it's always fun when.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little a little bit, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's comparable. I don't think it's I
Speaker 1: think actually about the same.
Speaker 3: I think that it's a little about the same, but
Speaker 3: I think there's a little actually a little more room
Speaker 3: to congregate behind the bent less seating though, but less seating, Yeah,
Speaker 3: less seating, but more room to you know, more of
Speaker 3: a lobby type space back there. So yeah, because the
Speaker 3: concourses are are absolutely gigantic everywhere from from the press
Speaker 3: level all the way down to the to the field level.
Speaker 3: The concourse is outside. The bulls are just gargantuan. It's
Speaker 3: really cool.
Speaker 1: Last one before we let you go, Eric, we haven't
Speaker 1: talked to you since the draft. What was your biggest
Speaker 1: takeaway from you know, the Bills twenty twenty six draft class.
Speaker 4: You know, there's you know, you switch a defensive style
Speaker 4: and a lot of turnover, good on Brandon Bean, trading back,
Speaker 4: accumulating more picks. I thought, you know, they found some
Speaker 4: really good value at times. And you know, I thought,
Speaker 4: you know, as shocked as I maybe was that we
Speaker 4: took a cornerback second and igb, you know, the reasoning
Speaker 4: behind it made complete sense to me. And I'm excited
Speaker 4: to see these guys and look at you know, we can.
Speaker 4: I saw a bunch of grades that had the bills
Speaker 4: you know with you know, an a draft grade. And
Speaker 4: I always say give it a year or two, you know,
Speaker 4: at least a year or two, uh, to figure it
Speaker 4: out and to truly these classes. But it seems like
Speaker 4: they were able to address a lot of whether it's
Speaker 4: even if it's just depth, to be able to bring
Speaker 4: in a lot of guys that should be able to
Speaker 4: make this team and support this team on a run
Speaker 4: to go win the Super Bowl. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 4: the goal each and every year now in Buffalo. And
Speaker 4: so I'm excited about this group. And you know, I
Speaker 4: just I feel like the further I get removed from
Speaker 4: college and not calling college football games anymore, the more
Speaker 4: I have to just trust that these guys work a
Speaker 4: lot harder than me. They know a lot more than
Speaker 4: I do. And you know, the track record of this
Speaker 4: front office that we have is excellent, and so I
Speaker 4: get I don't necessarily watch each pick from a bill's
Speaker 4: perspective with an eye of critique. It's more excitement and
Speaker 4: it's more just anticipating who we might take and all
Speaker 4: of that. Obviously, you know, you hear different names and whatnot.
Speaker 4: But I didn't spend the last couple of years working
Speaker 4: on scouting this class. So I'll say I'm excited about it,
Speaker 4: and I'll say I'm more excited the fact that we're
Speaker 4: able to get ten draft picks. When you traded away
Speaker 4: your second rounder for DJ Moore, you almost can add
Speaker 4: him into this mix. So I thought it was a
Speaker 4: really good job. And being never ceases to amaze me.
Speaker 4: Of Hey, we're going to shorten the windows this year
Speaker 4: when you can make draft picks and we're still gonna
Speaker 4: do all those trades. Those guys, those guys are working
Speaker 4: their tail off draft weekend.
Speaker 3: Oah, yeah, they are. Eric Us.
Speaker 1: Glad to catch up with you, and we'll see you
Speaker 1: up here in the not too distant future. Uh, something
Speaker 1: tells me this offseason is going to be a blink
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be in that new place. It'll be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Yep, sounds great. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 1: All right, that's Eric Wood joining us part of the
Speaker 1: new broadcast triumvirate of myself, Eric and Steve Tasker and
Speaker 1: on the sidelines. Not really coming season.
Speaker 3: I really knew maybe different, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, well yeah, I mean you've you've done that for
Speaker 1: twenty years, Like it's like getting on back on a bicycle.
Speaker 3: Well hoefully, I'm excited about being in the new stadium.
Speaker 3: And uh yeah, like I said, when we when this
Speaker 3: came down, you know, and obviously everybody, I mean, you'd
Speaker 3: be hard pressed find somebody who doesn't like Sal because
Speaker 3: I did. I you know, we all well you didn't
Speaker 3: have a choice. He was on the crew with you.
Speaker 3: I mean we we sat in the back listening to
Speaker 3: the broadcast, so and for he's been there for twelve years.
Speaker 3: So we're all gonna miss Sal, I you know, and
Speaker 3: uh yeah, I just it's the way that this is
Speaker 3: the way the way it goes. They the club came
Speaker 3: to me, I said, and I when we found out
Speaker 3: Sal wasn't gonna be a part of the mix because
Speaker 3: of the contracts, and he's you know, he's a different
Speaker 3: a different station, and they said we can't, well, you
Speaker 3: can't use once he's off the menu. Was like, I
Speaker 3: started looking around, who are they gonna get?
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, oh.
Speaker 3: Gosh, So you could kind of see.
Speaker 1: We're very happy they chose you.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm listen. It's it's great and I like doing
Speaker 3: it as much as Sally liked doing it. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be fun. You know, you and I have been friends
Speaker 3: now for quite some time, and so yeah, I'm I
Speaker 3: will do my best to help you guys out and.
Speaker 1: Be prepared for a lot of questions early on the
Speaker 1: field surface, because this is the first time since what
Speaker 1: the rock Pile that they're playing on grass right home games,
Speaker 1: So that's a big deal. And this is a state
Speaker 1: of the art surface, and you need to be gathering
Speaker 1: any and all information on that so we know every
Speaker 1: little nook and cranny of what this new surface is about,
Speaker 1: which is climate controlled from the from beneath with a
Speaker 1: heated system underneath it so the ground never freezes and
Speaker 1: the grass keeps growing all through the winter, so there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot I think of intrigue with respect
Speaker 1: to the grass surface. It's going to be a completely
Speaker 1: new kind of play. You know, guys wearing full blown
Speaker 1: pleats here.
Speaker 3: Right, and it's and we've seen it now. The problem is,
Speaker 3: and we show up when we show up against the
Speaker 3: Detroit Lions on Thursday night football, the place it's going
Speaker 3: to be immaculate. The surface will be absolutely perfect, it'll
Speaker 3: be the problem is what's going to happen in December eighteenth,
Speaker 3: you know, when you're in there and it's cold and
Speaker 3: all of that, and its snow and actively snow or
Speaker 3: it's been snowing all week, you know, and they got
Speaker 3: to have the field ready. We'll see how that then
Speaker 3: is going to be the right.
Speaker 1: That's when the performance of the tech really shows up.
Speaker 3: That's when it's really going to be different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are up against the break here. We will
Speaker 1: step aside. We're gonna get back to your comments on
Speaker 1: the tweets, sheeet, because we are asking you today where
Speaker 1: does a game seven rank in comparison to the one
Speaker 1: and done playoff formats like the NFL, and tell us
Speaker 1: which one you think is better and why? Back to
Speaker 1: your tweets. Next here on one Bill's Live. All right
Speaker 1: back here on a Monday edition of One Bill's Live,
Speaker 1: Chris Brown Steve Tasker with you and asking you, how
Speaker 1: does a game seven compare to a one and done
Speaker 1: format like the NFL? Is it better, worse? Equal? Tell
Speaker 1: us why we're gonna go right back to the tweeteet
Speaker 1: where Rob says I can't believe it and give you
Speaker 1: the day off sabers game seven? Does anything else really
Speaker 1: matter today? That's right, I gotta mow my lawn. Hoe,
Speaker 1: I get to the game done.
Speaker 3: Totally with you. I did too. I had mind last
Speaker 3: time when I got home.
Speaker 1: I gotta do it today. It's a mess.
Speaker 3: Let's go.
Speaker 1: H Penalty box poet says, it's the battle of attrition.
Speaker 1: A war isn't one in one game. It's consistent effort, strategy, hustle.
Speaker 1: So better than one and done. So he likes the
Speaker 1: investment in a seven game series because you have to
Speaker 1: bring it on more than just one day.
Speaker 3: Yes, it takes more to win a game seven, just
Speaker 3: because you've got to get there, and certainly there's the
Speaker 3: same you know, build up to a one and done
Speaker 3: playoff thing through the regular season and all that, but
Speaker 3: you're game seven. A lot of it's dictated by the
Speaker 3: punches you've already landed in games one through six, and
Speaker 3: they're just they're just you know, they're beaten up. You're
Speaker 3: beaten up. Yeah, could you beat them up more than
Speaker 3: they beat you up so that you have more to
Speaker 3: give in game seven. The kind of thing is your
Speaker 3: depth is tested. Every part of your roster has tested everything.
Speaker 3: It's it's something because.
Speaker 1: In seven games you have greater chances of losing people
Speaker 1: to injury than you do over the course of one game.
Speaker 3: So there is that to contres and there's gamesmanship that
Speaker 3: is available for a seven game series that there's not.
Speaker 3: I mean you you know, you can't switch goalies, like
Speaker 3: if you're a team like Buffalo, you can't switch goalies
Speaker 3: during the game and have it go well. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean it did the other night, but yeah,
Speaker 3: you got they gotta you gotta get run before you
Speaker 3: can make it.
Speaker 1: It hasn't gone well if you're doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now you know in a in a So if
Speaker 3: you do that in the games in one and done,
Speaker 3: I mean, what are you doing? You know?
Speaker 1: You like Andrew says, Game seven has more of momentum
Speaker 1: and a build up because you know the team you're
Speaker 1: playing and the ups and downs. One and done is
Speaker 1: who brings their best game and plays. I think that's
Speaker 1: also true in a seven game series, because look, there
Speaker 1: are nights in the regular season and weeks in the
Speaker 1: NFL in the regular season where you may not play
Speaker 1: your best and you can still win a game. In
Speaker 1: the playoffs, that doesn't really happen.
Speaker 3: Like, well, in a seven game series, it doesn't happen
Speaker 3: more once and then you can always recover. Yeah, Like, you.
Speaker 1: Gotta be playing top shelf level play if you're gonna
Speaker 1: beat a playoff team in a one and done game,
Speaker 1: like he says, you got to play well on that day.
Speaker 1: In a one and done playoff format, that is unquestionably true.
Speaker 1: But in a seven game series, like just think about
Speaker 1: this seven game series with Montreal, Sabers weren't at their
Speaker 1: best in every one of those games.
Speaker 3: They got out play not at all. They they were
Speaker 3: two and two, and Montreal had outplayed him in three
Speaker 3: of those four games. But yeay were they were two
Speaker 3: and two? Yeah, So now the momentum seems to have
Speaker 3: swung back the other way. Certainly, Montreal had it in
Speaker 3: Game five. I mean, they came out and gave it
Speaker 3: to the Sabs good, but man oh man, and it
Speaker 3: looked like it carried over into Game six. It was
Speaker 3: gonna get closed out and all of a sudden. And
Speaker 3: we've said this about this Sabers team before. They've got
Speaker 3: a gear I have not seen other teams be able
Speaker 3: to match They've got to five on five. They have
Speaker 3: got a gear nobody else can match. But they have
Speaker 3: a hard time tapping into it consistently. And but when they.
Speaker 1: Think that might be because of their youth a little bit, or.
Speaker 3: Maybe or maybe it's just too hard to do it,
Speaker 3: and then, you know, you never play in a vacuum.
Speaker 3: Montreal is a really good hockey team, and you're not
Speaker 3: gonna be able to do it like you could against
Speaker 3: you know, the Sisters of the Poor. You know, I'm right,
Speaker 3: you don't get you don't get those you know, bad
Speaker 3: hockey teams in the playoffs. They're all salty. So maybe
Speaker 3: that's why the Sabers can't tap into that gear they've
Speaker 3: got that nobody else can touch. I mean, I saw it,
Speaker 3: you know, we saw it all the way from mid
Speaker 3: December when they started on this streak and then when
Speaker 3: it got too late in the regular season and Tampa
Speaker 3: Bay rolls into town and it's that eight to seven game,
Speaker 3: and just look like both teams had all the gas
Speaker 3: pedal they needed right so that they can stay up
Speaker 3: with a team like that. I think the way to
Speaker 3: play this Sabers team is the way you saw Montreal
Speaker 3: do it and the way you saw Boston do it
Speaker 3: a little bit too. You got to just put the
Speaker 3: brakes on and just limit their shots if you can.
Speaker 3: I guess what do I know? But man that when
Speaker 3: the when the Sabs play, and I guess you could
Speaker 3: say it about any team, but I've seen this team
Speaker 3: have that gear that nobody can match. If you've got
Speaker 3: that gear, give me a one and done game. And
Speaker 3: that's what Lindy like that one and done. The game
Speaker 3: six was a one and done if you don't win it, Well,
Speaker 3: that's true, and it said, you know this JFG for
Speaker 3: one team anyway. Yeah, this JFG thing they've got going,
Speaker 3: I think is the exact right mindset you need. For me,
Speaker 3: a guy who never won a Super Bowl, the four
Speaker 3: that we played in straight, the one mindset we had
Speaker 3: trouble getting into was let me forget it. Let's just
Speaker 3: go for it. You know, we we were tight. We
Speaker 3: were you know, we're questioning ourselves. We were you know,
Speaker 3: we were always you know, we never played it loose
Speaker 3: like you know, there was no tomorrow. You always played
Speaker 3: it like there were consequences, right, And I think that's
Speaker 3: the wrong way to headspace. Yea, I think it's a
Speaker 3: bad way. I think you just need that JFG thing
Speaker 3: that Lindy Adams said, man, because you gotta know, you
Speaker 3: guys played like one hundred games. Yeah, turn them loose.
Speaker 3: They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yep. Johnny. On the tweets, she says game sevens are
Speaker 1: bigger compared to NFL one and done until the conference
Speaker 1: championship or the super Bowl. Those are bigger games, but
Speaker 1: Game sevens are pretty awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, I don't think anybody's arguing that game
Speaker 1: sevens aren't awesome. They're unbelievable. But it's an interesting dynamic
Speaker 1: at play here with the two different playoff formats, which
Speaker 1: is why I thought this was such a good topic,
Speaker 1: because I think you can make an argument on both
Speaker 1: sides of this. Just with the immediate finality of a
Speaker 1: one and done playoff format as opposed to the marathon
Speaker 1: of a playoff format that seven game series are and
Speaker 1: both have and harbor their own angst and anxiety and
Speaker 1: nerves and you know, suspense. They both have it, but
Speaker 1: I think it affects fans differently. I'm not sure exactly how,
Speaker 1: but Game seven and the path to get there is
Speaker 1: very different from the path to the playoffs in the NFL,
Speaker 1: and I think that kind of changes the dynamic of
Speaker 1: the nerves and the anxiety and the tension.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think there are I think a Game seven
Speaker 3: has way more layers to that onion than a one
Speaker 3: and done does because of the build up. Game seven's
Speaker 3: have to be more complex animals than just a one
Speaker 3: and done because the one and done you go out
Speaker 3: there and you roll it out, you take it hit,
Speaker 3: let's go, let's go, and it's done. In Game seven,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, I know if I do this, they're
Speaker 3: going to do this, and they did this to us.
Speaker 3: We can't let them do that. So we got to
Speaker 3: stop them from doing that by about still trying to
Speaker 3: do And then for the fans, even there's so much
Speaker 3: about it, it's like the cues I saw I said
Speaker 3: earlier in the show, like every fan's gonna be watching
Speaker 3: for their own little cues about how this game's really
Speaker 3: gonna go in their own mind. They bring their own
Speaker 3: baggage and their own emotional scar tissue to it. And
Speaker 3: then there's all and then you get to the place
Speaker 3: where you it's the last chant after all the smack.
Speaker 3: There's seven. There's been six games and Sabers fans Montreal
Speaker 3: fans have been going back and forth, and it's been
Speaker 3: three times when the Montreal fans were handing it to
Speaker 3: the Sabs Sabers fans and the same thing in reverse.
Speaker 3: It's the it's the Sabers fans handed back to Montreal.
Speaker 3: Let's go. So you've got all that, and this is it.
Speaker 3: Loser gets the winner gets bragging rights. That's it. Winner
Speaker 3: gets bragging rights. And you've got to sit there and
Speaker 3: if you're the losing fans, you got to say, all right,
Speaker 3: we lost.
Speaker 1: And that's what Craig says on the tweet. She game
Speaker 1: sevens are better and it's not even close. The teams
Speaker 1: and fans have spent two weeks building calluses of hate
Speaker 1: for one another that builds to a crescendo that equals
Speaker 1: a one and done with malicious intent. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: think there could be malicious intent in one and done
Speaker 1: playoff format, especially if you see a team again.
Speaker 3: Forgiven you before, like a division opponent too, right, if
Speaker 3: you like we played, except the stakes are higher. We
Speaker 3: played the Dolphins in an AFC championship game. Yea third
Speaker 3: time of the season. Yeah, that's pretty intense and pretty
Speaker 3: militial something something in there. Yeah, yeah, so I get that.
Speaker 3: I get that. It's the malicious intent, is it. It's
Speaker 3: like having a good buddy who you're going at it
Speaker 3: with it and it's been tough, and here we go
Speaker 3: winning like that because the familiarity of it, right, uh,
Speaker 3: and knowing that it you know you're gonna come back
Speaker 3: next year and do it again. But it's been a
Speaker 3: long road to this, and now even the last two
Speaker 3: weeks seems like an odyssey. Forget about the eighty two
Speaker 3: game regular season. Now you've got this two week history
Speaker 3: that you got to deal with. Oh I like this game, so,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's it's packed full of stuff.
Speaker 1: Christopher on the tweets, she says, Game seven stink. If
Speaker 1: you're a fan, the anxiety is maxed out. I don't
Speaker 1: debate the anxiety for a second, But tell me how
Speaker 1: it's how it's any different in terms of level of
Speaker 1: anxiety for a one and done playoff game for the Bills.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? To me, I think you're
Speaker 1: you're at the very same place, you just got there
Speaker 1: via a different pathway. To me, the one and done
Speaker 1: playoff format is very nerve wracking. Just because the finality
Speaker 1: is so sudden, It doesn't mean that the suffering is
Speaker 1: any more painful than a seven game series. I just
Speaker 1: just observing Bills fans over the last several years in
Speaker 1: the playoffs and all the disappointments. You can't tell me
Speaker 1: that anxiety and that disappointment hits any less hard than
Speaker 1: what a seven game series do to you. And and
Speaker 1: the anxiety in a game seven, yeah, it's yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's similar, bit different.
Speaker 3: It's similar. Yeah, there's there's a lot in it, though,
Speaker 3: there's a lot in it. These game sevens, you walk
Speaker 3: in with so much knowledge about how this is going
Speaker 3: to go. You walk in and still not knowing right.
Speaker 3: And each series has its own personality because all the
Speaker 3: teams have their own personality, and and there are some
Speaker 3: game sevens who are better than other Game sevens. Right,
Speaker 3: But oh my goodness, I'm I'm with you on the
Speaker 3: build up being much much more deep in a Game
Speaker 3: seven than it isn't a one and one, one and done.
Speaker 3: It's so much. You feel this series so deeply because
Speaker 3: now even fans have to be more invested into it.
Speaker 3: You can't just show up one day a Game seven.
Speaker 3: For somebody who's just shown up, it's nothing, Yeah, it's nothing.
Speaker 3: They all the fans, for both people who.
Speaker 1: Will be at Game seven, this is not their first
Speaker 1: game of the series. It's your point exactly, And I
Speaker 1: would venture to guess eighty percent of them have seen
Speaker 1: every single game, if not ninety percent of them.
Speaker 3: It's the investment is deeper for a Game seven for fans,
Speaker 3: and I think that's what makes it a lot different
Speaker 3: for in whatever way each individual person you know, homogenizes
Speaker 3: that in their own brain, it's different because, man, you've
Speaker 3: invested your time and your effort, your anxiety, and now
Speaker 3: you've now it's the last chance in this series. Yea
Speaker 3: from some and the crazy go ahead, go ahead. The
Speaker 3: crazy part of it is say say the save, Just
Speaker 3: say the Sames wine in seven days we're gonna be
Speaker 3: three games into the next series, and it's only like
Speaker 3: who cares.
Speaker 1: Well and you gotta do it all over it? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do it all all over.
Speaker 3: It's like just just throwing. It's like throwing a bucket
Speaker 3: of water on a pile of sugar. It just dissolves.
Speaker 3: It's gone.
Speaker 1: Let's go on to the next from someday in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: Game seven is above one and done. You have played
Speaker 1: a long series and it builds up to game seven.
Speaker 1: Just want to know who is drinking a beer saber
Speaker 1: out of you two?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not. I'm not banging the drum tonight, but
Speaker 3: I think if I bang the drum, you'd have to.
Speaker 1: Have a spear saving you probably would and get you know,
Speaker 1: do the I may have to get my hands on
Speaker 1: one of those because I haven't had one yet.
Speaker 3: I haven't either, and I am Look, I am not
Speaker 3: a big drinker, so I may have to share that
Speaker 3: I am a lightweight. I'm not a big drinker either.
Speaker 3: The the I don't I can't drink it sabs games
Speaker 3: because now it's the thing. I drive my son and
Speaker 3: I go down. We got I don't drive, I don't drink.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, that we'll I'll have one weet down there,
Speaker 3: and then I don't have them throughout the game. So
Speaker 3: it's are they tricky the Sabers. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't Oh you haven't done it now.
Speaker 3: But they brought them. They brought they brought back the
Speaker 3: beer saber right. Yes, you couldn't get one. They only
Speaker 3: brought in like five thousand of them, and they were like, gone, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, I would venture to guess you have to get
Speaker 1: down there early again tonight to get one.
Speaker 3: Dude. They're twenty seven dollars. And people were walking up
Speaker 3: and going, I'll give you fifty bucks for that beer.
Speaker 4: Save.
Speaker 3: Right, they're gonna make more dollars for that beer, and
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, no, I need it.
Speaker 1: People are going online and selling them on that.
Speaker 3: That was the empty one forget the beer in it.
Speaker 3: Get they come with fifty bucks for that beer. Save,
Speaker 3: where's the.
Speaker 1: Beer that was in it?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I drank that, but I washed it out in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: I want it.
Speaker 3: Those things were everywhere and you go up and they
Speaker 3: say we're out, we're out.
Speaker 1: Well they've got some tonight. But I would say it's
Speaker 1: probably advisable that if you want to get your hands
Speaker 1: on one. You should probably get in the building to.
Speaker 3: Be better, be in lined than get in the building
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: Now I start there, Carol says, I love, love, love
Speaker 1: my football, but in my sixty seven years on this earth,
Speaker 1: I have never felt the anxiety at the level I'm
Speaker 1: at right now with Sabers hockey. I have to turn
Speaker 1: the channel for a few minutes. I find I'm not breathing. Carol,
Speaker 1: Please take a breath.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: You kind of have to do that to get through
Speaker 1: the game. You can't hold your breath for that long.
Speaker 1: I'm a dangerous fink.
Speaker 3: I was on that cruise ship in the Caribbean with
Speaker 3: all these Bills fans slash Sabers fans were at a
Speaker 3: huge watch part. We're watching up on out in the
Speaker 3: out in the warm weather, and this on this big
Speaker 3: movie screen the size of this window, and we're all watching,
Speaker 3: and you just just get up and leave and go
Speaker 3: to just go to the bar, just just turn your
Speaker 3: back on it for a hot minute.
Speaker 1: That must be nice. You know, I'm watching a Sabers
Speaker 1: game and I need a break. Let me walk up
Speaker 1: to the bar on the after the bar on the aft.
Speaker 1: You got a tough there and first world problems, I think,
Speaker 1: and for the rich and famous.
Speaker 3: Tell them my room number, and they just handed bring
Speaker 3: me a drink this. There's no transaction there, just so
Speaker 3: here you go, take it and leave. You know. That's
Speaker 3: how it's.
Speaker 1: That's tough.
Speaker 3: That's how it's.
Speaker 1: That's anxiety people, Right's Hey.
Speaker 3: When you're anxiety, there's nothing there's nothing like having somebody
Speaker 3: just hand your free beer. You blue that anxiety. That's
Speaker 3: the only way I might you know, I recommend that highly.
Speaker 1: Carol says she's never felt the anxiety at the level
Speaker 1: she is at right now, which is so interesting to
Speaker 1: me because she she said she loves her football. Like
Speaker 1: think about like the fourth time the Bills played the
Speaker 1: Chiefs in the playoffs, She's Carol argues that game seven
Speaker 1: has more anxiety than that.
Speaker 3: Look, we've all been on this fourteen year or seventeen
Speaker 3: years or what was that fourteen year drought.
Speaker 1: For the Sabers.
Speaker 3: It was fourteen So you got a fourteen year drought
Speaker 3: of not getting in the playoffs, finally getting in and
Speaker 3: not only getting in, but when you know, being the
Speaker 3: division winner, being the top of the Atlantic, just and
Speaker 3: it's like You've you've invested fourteen years into this and
Speaker 3: now this season has captured us again. And now you've
Speaker 3: got that series win against Boston in six, which is great.
Speaker 3: And now when you beat Boston in six, it's like
Speaker 3: everybody's like pumping the tires. Man, we're gonna we got
Speaker 3: a chance. We got a chance at this thing. We
Speaker 3: got a chance at this thing. You got people thinking
Speaker 3: like me. Me. We were taking the tour of the
Speaker 3: new stadium and I was thinking, what's it gonna be
Speaker 3: like when Rasmus Dallen is in Thursday Night Football holding
Speaker 3: the Cup up for a pregame for the Detroit Lions.
Speaker 3: What's that gonna be like? Tell tell me, tell me
Speaker 3: there's a season ticket holder alive who would sell that
Speaker 3: ticket to some scalp or secondhand. Man, you can't get
Speaker 3: a ticket. If they're gonna have the Stanley Cup. You
Speaker 3: know they will if they if they win the Cup,
Speaker 3: they're gonna have on the on their whatever that deck is.
Speaker 3: They call it that the Legends, the Legends deck. They're
Speaker 3: gonna have on the Legends deck with the cup.
Speaker 1: Le Go, Steve, you might lose my sideline reporter for
Speaker 1: a little minute after that I'll.
Speaker 3: Breaking out of the thing, be able to get into
Speaker 3: Erie County much less the new high Mark. Wow, okay,
Speaker 3: you can't even get in the get They're gonna suspend flights. No,
Speaker 3: we can't have any more.
Speaker 1: But no, we got too many people.
Speaker 3: People will this place will be You'll have Bill's film,
Speaker 3: many people. You'll have bills fans coming from Pakistan to
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 1: Are there bills fans in Pakistan?
Speaker 3: I don't know. You get the guy from Paraguay will
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. Yeah, we get a tweeter from Paraguay.
Speaker 1: He tweets us all the time.
Speaker 3: He'll show up, He'll come out of the witness protection program. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm telling you think about that. So, yeah, we've got
Speaker 3: this fourteen. You were all invested in this, so yeah,
Speaker 3: Game seven. Yeah, I'm with her. It sh I'm a
Speaker 3: little I'm a little anxious.
Speaker 1: Break time for us here while Steve cools his jets,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back with some final comments, all the
Speaker 1: sweetsheet and an interesting note from the NFL for the
Speaker 1: owners meeting tomorrow. We'll share that next here on One
Speaker 1: Bill's Live All Right final segment here on a Monday
Speaker 1: edition of One Bill's Live, Chris Brown, Steve Tasker with you,
Speaker 1: and I've been asking you all day. How does a
Speaker 1: game seven compare to the one and done playoff? For
Speaker 1: better or worse? Equal? Why? Pete says a seven game
Speaker 1: series somewhat spreads the anxiety over seven games, whereas a
Speaker 1: one and done packs all the anxiety into one game.
Speaker 1: Too bad, there can't be a best of three for
Speaker 1: the super Bowl.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I'd make it. Yeah, two
Speaker 3: of three for the super Bowl? Holy crow. Don't know
Speaker 3: that it spreads it out. I think it crescendos, you know,
Speaker 3: it pours it all. All the six other games are
Speaker 3: now poured into.
Speaker 1: There's definitely more of a build up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that that.
Speaker 1: I will give the game seven.
Speaker 3: This isn't This is not one seventh of the anxiety.
Speaker 3: It's seven and one, right.
Speaker 1: Or seven out of seven. I mean, you can come
Speaker 1: up with any kind of fractional debate you want, but
Speaker 1: I just yeah, yeah, I was not good at fractions.
Speaker 1: I just I thought it was an interesting topic today.
Speaker 1: So thanks to everybody for kind of debating both sides
Speaker 1: of it, because I think there's an argument to be
Speaker 1: made on both sides unquestionably. We mentioned that there's going
Speaker 1: to be an owner's meeting tomorrow in Orlando, and there
Speaker 1: is another item on the agenda, Steve, concerning the international slate.
Speaker 1: It looks like the owners are going to vote to
Speaker 1: increase the number of league run international games from eight
Speaker 1: up to ten. So as we know that number is
Speaker 1: only going to continue to increase because we've heard they
Speaker 1: plan to have at least each team in the league
Speaker 1: play one international game every year. That means there's going
Speaker 1: to be sixteen international games. If you play every team's
Speaker 1: playing at least one. Yeah, you're gonna have sixteen international games,
Speaker 1: which means one game for every team every year is
Speaker 1: gonna be overseas in some capacity. Pretty crazy. Enjoy Game
Speaker 1: seven and night. Everybody will see it tomorrow, hopefully we're
Speaker 1: celebrating the victory to see it.
Speaker 3: Keeping