Bills, sox and other thoughts

An excellent sports Sunday. Let's take 'em one at a time.

1. The Bills. Solid 17-14 win over the Jets. There was a little bit of nervousness at the beginning (shades of the season opener against the Broncos), but they pulled it out thanks to Pennington's second INT of the day (very nice to see Terence McGee back in there). A few things to note:

-- The game ball goes to Trent Edwards. I don't know if, or why the playcalling was different today than in the first three games, but Edwards took advantage. There were more 10-20 yard pass plays today than the first 3 weeks combined. He was well protected so had time to check down when necessary. He needs to manage the pocket better (he got sacked in the first half simply because he held on to the ball too long), but he seemed even to do that better by the second half. An auspicious start.

-- Jabari Greer is growing up right before our eyes. Pressed into starting duty, he was solid, breaking up a couple of sure Jets completions. I did not see him get burnt all day.

-- Nice of Lee Evans to show up, but, again, who knows how much of that is playcalling.

-- Evans and the other WRs bailed out Edwards on a few occasions, making circus catches.

-- The Jets running offense and pass defense are awful. Run D is less awful, but still failed when needed most (Lynch's only real impressive run of the day - the first Bills TD).

Next week, Dallas at home on Monday night. GO BILLS.

None of Blfo Blog, Buffalo Rumblings or Buffalodown have the game stories up yet, but check them out later tonight.

2. The Sox. I haven't blogged about them (or anything) this past week, but they obvously were able to hang on and take the division. Everyone is healthy, Schill, Dice-K and Pap have momentum going into the postseason. Beckett too, the last start notwithstanding. First round matchup is the Angels. As of today, I don't know if the Sox will be playing the series with the extra day, but I like the matchups overall. Presumably, it will be Beckett-Lackey, Schilling-Escobar, Dice-K-Weaver, and then, if necessary, Wakefield-Colon or Santana. I like every one of those matchups for the Sox.

The on-field celebration Friday night was tremendous. Fans were in Fenway watching the end of the Orioles come from behind 11-10 win over the Yanks and once that was complete, the celebration commenced. Papelbon is a nut. I haven't found great isolated video of Papelbon doing the G.O.B. dance from Arrested Development, but once I do, I will post it. In the meantime, I have this:



go to about 2:39 to see Pap walking around like an idiot and 3:25 to see Ortiz, ahem, "giving it" to Pap with a bottle of champagne.

And then here:



At 1:34, you can see the Bud Light helmet, at 6:35 giving a beer shower to Katharyn Tappen. Oh, and at 3:50, you see Varitek actually acting like a human being.

3. Taxes. Via the Tax Profs Blog, is this story about a new bill introduced by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), that would limit the tax deduction for stock option compensation to the amount reported to investors for financial reporting purposes. Of course, the amount reported for financial reporting purposes is the fair value at grant, while the tax aspect is the spread at exercise. We'll see what happens, but there is parity in the tax law already on this - a firm deducts only the amount already included in an employee's income.

More on dad later.