From Queens to The Box: Marv or Lindy?
Joe: Welcome back to From Queens to the Box! It is still a working title, as Chris has not given me any possible options yet. Chris, it is spring in the air and the Sabres season has ended. [Sad trombone] When the season ended, I went on Twitter to say something nice about Lindy and in my tweet, I said that he was the best coach in Buffalo sports history. A few mentions didn’t agree with me and brought up Marv Levy as the best coach in Buffalo sports history. I don’t have an issue with anyone disagreeing with me, but I definitely wanted to flush it out with you. With that said, and before I go over the protocol for this, can we agree that these are the two best coaches in Buffalo sports history, or did I need to include Jack Ramsay or Terry Collins or whoever that famous lacrosse player is?
Chris: I think it’s fair to say it’s Marv, Lindy, and then the field. We can save John Tavares for the Buffalo sports Mount Rushmore. How does that sound?
Joe: Good. First thing we can agree on. So the categories I want to do are as follows:
Popularity amongst fans
Win/loss records
Xs and Os/coaching
Talent they had
Let’s start with popularity. Both Marv and Lindy are very witty when it came to quotes and would tell you what was on their mind. Lindy Ruff has been a part of the Sabres organization for the better part of five decades. He feels like an institution to me where boomers or Gen Z can tell you stories about him. For fans, I always felt his popularity honestly made Darcy Regier an unpopular figure because he seemed colder and would get the blame for roster construction.
As for Marv… He does have a lot of sayings like “Where else would you rather be?” to go along with his war quotes. What may hurt him is that the popularity of the Bills players he coached is much bigger than the popularity of the Sabres players Lindy coached.
Chris: Marv doesn’t surpass the Big Four from that era, but I’d argue he’s the fifth most popular figure from the Super Bowl teams. Lindy probably has more popularity in the market than any of the players he had aside from Hasek and maybe Miller, but I don’t know if he’s as iconic as Marv is relative to the team.
Joe:I also feel fans probably blame Marv more for the Bills not winning the Super Bowl than Lindy Ruff for not winning a Stanley Cup.
Chris:Yeah, but I also think the Super Bowls make Marv more popular to Buffalo fans.
The only way to settle this is to set them up at an autograph booth and see which line is longer. I bet they’d love that.
Joe: Does Lindy do autographs? I feel like I’ve never seen him do anything like that. I also decided to try and find a Lindy Ruff jersey and there was just one on eBay that was from Fanatics. I feel Lindy is an untapped market for clothing success if you just go by his playing years, as everything is branded around his coaching years.
Well, that’s a shock to me you think Marv is more popular. I just think the longevity of someone’s tenure made him more popular here. I just don’t recall that many people calling for Lindy to get canned while I do remember people being done with Marv by 1997 with the Collins and Van Pelt fiasco.
I don’t get how you can think that, TBH. Maybe my dad brain is getting to me.
I guess for me…the players get more of the love for the Bills’ 90s success, while the Sabres’ success I always felt was geared more toward Lindy.
Chris:I think it comes down to the love for the two teams. I think the Bills and NFL have that slightly stronger hold on the collective WNY fanbase and that gives Marv and the Super Bowl teams a leg up.
Maybe that will change a bit in the coming years as newer fans come into the fold. Kids who have no memory of or much interest in the Super Bowl teams. But Lindy isn’t going to be around that much longer either. So this is also really a big focus on fans around our age or older.
Lindy wasn’t very popular in the later years either. Well, the later years before he got fired the first time. Don’t overlook that.
Joe: That’s fair. You are leaning more toward the Bills being more popular and that’s understandable. I still think Darcy got way more bullets toward those final Lindy years, but that’s just me.
But so far for popularity amongst fans: it’s Lindy 1 and Marv 1.
What about on-field success? I view this as longevity vs. peak impact. Marv coached the Bills from 1986–1997. Lindy has coached the Sabres from 1997–2013 and then the last two seasons. Marv has four Super Bowl appearances and six division titles vs. Lindy’s one Stanley Cup Final appearance and just three division titles.
Lindy is top five in wins all-time in the NHL, so you can’t ignore that either. What say you?
Chris: Lindy won’t get enough love to be considered a truly all-time great NHL coach like Bowman or Arbour, but he’s going to be in that stratosphere. If he gets a Cup, obviously that changes. But he’s going to be on track for 2,000 games coached and 1,000 wins. That’s wild stuff. He also kept his job — and we can debate some of Golisano’s motivations over the years — for so long. Back in the mid-2000s, coaches weren’t fired quite as quickly as they are today, but they didn’t have a super long shelf life either. For him to last 17 years the first time around was truly astonishing. Having guys like Hasek and Miller in net definitely helps. But his coaching record is really among the best of all time.
Marv has the four straight AFC titles. Lindy only has one conference win. So maybe you have to weigh that more heavily in favor of Marv. My hottest take would be that Marv rode Marchibroda’s genius to AFC dominance but wasn’t a good enough tactician (nor did he have a good enough defense) to get his team over the top. I’ll probably catch some grief for that, but I’ll take Lindy’s longevity over Marv here.
Joe: Interesting…we disagree again. I just think Marv’s accomplishments are things that I don’t think will be broken. No team will go to four straight Super Bowls again. I also think because they got rid of ties after the 2005 lockout, Lindy will probably fall more out of that top five for wins.
So it’s 2 to 2 right now between both.
OK, you mentioned Xs and Os/coaching, and this I have a hard time with. Marv Levy was a special teams lifer, so it hurts him that he doesn’t have his fingerprints on either side of the ball. Obviously the Bills special teams were great with Steve Tasker/Mark Pike/Bruce DeHaven, but — and call this a hot take — if the Bills special teams were mid, they are probably still going to four Super Bowls.
Now there’s the coaching part and player relationships…it seems more obvious for Marv that the players really loved him. No one has ever said a bad thing about him and he’s someone who has inducted a few of those players into the Hall of Fame.
Lindy, to me, is a better Xs and Os coach, but I don’t think he had a great relationship with his players. He always seemed to rule by fear. Maybe that’s good? I don’t really know. Because you can say that Marv needed to crack the whip more on the 90s Bills, as they were kind of too loose.
But I would probably give Lindy the nod based on Xs and Os, while communication skills with players will always be chicken and egg.
Chris: It’s also hard to pin down their relationships since we’re only hearing about them secondhand. There’s the famous instance where Ruff was screaming at Dmitri Kalinin to “play with some fucking passion,” and I think he definitely had a reputation as a bit of a hard-ass earlier in his career. But more recently, it sounds like he’s softened.
But I also don’t know much about how those 90s teams felt about Marv. My assumption was there was a great deal of respect for him and I’ve never really found anything to suggest otherwise. So I’d definitely say Marv gets the win on relationships.
The Xs and Os point you make is a good one. I said above that I think Marchibroda and the K-Gun had more to do with their dominance than anything else. I don’t have any reason to change my view on that.
Joe: So you are giving the nod in coaching to…Lindy?
Chris: Yeah, I think so.
Joe: I agree.
So right now it’s:
Lindy: 4
Levy: 2
Let’s go now to talent. You can make the case you are only as good as your talent, and I feel this is a landslide for Levy. He had five Hall of Famers in their prime (Kelly, Thurman, Bruce, Reed, Lofton) and even a Hall of Fame GM in Polian. Lindy had Hasek…and…you can take it from here since you are the hockey king…
Chris: That’s an easy one. Marv wins in a landslide. Hasek is obviously an all-time talent, but other than that, he had a lot of really good players. He didn’t have a pile of Hall of Fame-level players like Marv did, and he certainly didn’t have them all at the same time.
Joe: OK. So the score as of now between us is as follows:
Lindy 4
Marv 4
Popularity
Joe — Lindy
Chris — Marv
Win/loss records
Joe — Marv
Chris — Lindy
Xs and Os
Joe — Lindy
Chris — Lindy
Talent
Joe — Marv
Chris — Marv
So we are at a stalemate when it comes to my breakdown. So we go to a shootout…where are you? Best coach in Buffalo history is…
Chris: Let’s give Levy the nod for now because he’s in the Hall of Fame. We’ll have to wait and see if/when Lindy earns that distinction.
Joe: I have to assume he’s getting in. Ken Hitchcock got in and he has fewer wins than Lindy, and the Stars cheated to win the Cup. Crazy enough, I just Googled to see which coaches are in the Hall of Fame, and it’s not a lot in comparison to the NFL. I mean, Jimmy Johnson is in and he coached like seven years.
I’m going with Lindy. I think he’s an institution here. I also think he’s Buffalo hockey if you wanted me to do a Mount Rushmore. Furthermore, I don’t really blame him for playoff failures like I did for Marv. I still can’t get over Marv NOT telling Jim Kelly to call running plays in Super Bowl XXV. To be honest, the Habs/Sabres series is the first time I can sit here and question Lindy’s coaching tactics with waiting too long to change lineups.
Chris: My thinking on this is rooted in our prior conversation about what title would mean more. I think the Bills hold a different place in the hearts of WNY sports fans and the connection they feel to the Bills, and their icons, is far stronger than the Sabres. So I personally feel that Marv is looked at in higher esteem than Lindy is overall. You can go in circles on their records and their hardware, but I think if you surveyed people heading into the arena or stadium, Marv would get the majority of the vote.
The Ultimate Buffalo Sports Heel Turns
Who is ready for Hurricanes vs. Golden Knights?! FFS, could the hockey gods give us a more awful Buffalo-flavored Finals? We are basically comparing Hitler to Stalin with this matchup. Our former franchise savior Jack Eichel has a chance to become a two-time Stanley Cup champion. Nobody wants this. Even if you’re a Jack Eichel fan and blame the Sabres for everything that went into one of the worst eras in franchise history, this feels like watching your ex hook up with your celebrity crush right in front of you.
For the record, I was pro-tank. I just hated the “get rich quick” scheme that got shoved down everyone’s throat during it, like the GM didn’t matter and there weren’t 400 other things needed to rebuild the franchise.
I also always felt Eichel was presented like that person your friends and family INSIST you should date. You go on one date, think “Yeah, there’s chemistry here,” but then after every single date your family calls you screaming because you haven’t bought the ring yet or said “I love you.” By month 10, you don’t even hate the person anymore — you hate everybody around you for forcing it so hard. None of it ever felt organic to me, and the losing obviously made it worse.
With all that said, it got me thinking about ex-Buffalo athletes who were supposed to be cornerstones, left town, and immediately became people we wished nothing but crabs and herpes upon. There’s never been that Ray Bourque bringing back the cup to Boston after winning it with the Avs feeling in the 716. In my opinion, Eichel is No. 1 on that list with a bullet. The rest…
Stefon Diggs — In the words of Carmen Jr.… “Whatever happened there?” Because honestly, nobody really knows WTF happened. Did he and Josh Allen hate each other? Did Josh want him gone? Did McDermott and Diggs sour on each other? Did the playoff losses finally break him? Who the hell knows.
The trade was legitimately shocking when it happened, and it hurt Bills fans because most fans defended Diggs while parts of the media spent years trying to turn him into death by 1,000 paper cuts. Once he forced his way out though? Dead to everyone. Watching him chirp the Bills on SNF sucked, and seeing him in the Super Bowl wasn’t exactly a fun viewing experience either. But at least Cardi B bailed from the game because Diggs’ side piece or ex was there, so Buffalo fans can hang that banner.
Danny Briere / Chris Drury — When the co-captains left, it honestly felt like the Sabres fanbase split into civil war factions. I was still in my infancy as a content bro and I NEVER shut up about how badly the Sabres fucked the pooch here. Some fans were furious at Tom Golisano and Larry Quinn [raises hand], while others blamed the players for greed. At the time, it felt like the Sabres organization launched a full-court press to slander both guys. Especially when Tom Golisano — whose hockey acumen rivals a penguin wearing a headset — started bringing up Drury’s plus/minus to justify letting him walk. Then you had WGR hosts trying to paint the players as villains for leaving, even though if you asked them today they’d probably reverse course completely on who was actually at fault. Then the players came back to Buffalo and there was no tribute video, no celebration, just BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO every time they touched the puck.
And then Briere proceeded to absolutely terrorize the Sabres in that 2011 Flyers series with nine points in seven games while skating circles around everybody like it was NHL Hitz.
Willis McGahee — Nobody went from toast of the town to burnt toast faster than Willis McGahee. The story was incredible. Horrific college injury on national TV, shockingly gets drafted by Buffalo, redshirts in 2003, then becomes the offensive MVP in 2004. At the time, he felt like THE guy. Probably the most nationally recognizable Bills player for a hot minute. Then by 2006 it completely unraveled. He started trashing Buffalo women in interviews, complained there was nothing to do nightlife-wise, and then hit DEFCON 1 by basically saying the team should move to Toronto. At that point it felt like he was trying every possible way to get run out of town.
He wanted a new contract and the Bills shipped him to Baltimore for draft picks I honestly couldn’t tell you turned into anybody. The only thing I really remember was him having a huge game against Buffalo in 2007 when the Ravens came in after a 13-3 season and somehow got stunned by the Bills.
Marshawn Lynch — I will ALWAYS be a Marshawn Lynch stan. I’m still irrationally angry the Bills traded him. I also have a deep hatred toward the Orchard Park cops — who I swear treated him like Public Enemy No. 1 every chance they got — and the socks-with-sandals boomer media guys who couldn’t WAIT to run him out of town because he hated talking to reporters.
People acted like he was headed to federal prison because he bumped into some drunk Canadian outside Soho. Meanwhile, half the city was probably doing worse on Chippewa every Friday night.
I’ll never forget some boomer caller going on WGR and trashing Lynch because of his dreads and gold teeth. The racism was leaking through the radio speakers like water through a cracked basement wall. Younger fans LOVED Marshawn. Boomers acted like he was the Antichrist.
Dominik Hasek — There were definitely fans furious that Hasek wanted out and allegedly told Darcy Regier to get shitty compensation or he’d retire, though I never totally bought that story. But Hasek was always a lightning rod here. The Ted Nolan drama. The weird playoff injuries. Retiring and unretiring 47 times. Beating up Jim Kelley. The anti-European bias. Paul Hamilton basically acting like Hasek stole his lunch money for a decade. I’ll always remember his first game back here with Detroit during the 2001-02 season when the Sabres lit him up for like five goals and chased him from the net. The building was losing its mind.
He’s also one of the biggest “what if?” figures in Sabres 2005/2006 season. Part of the reason Ottawa’s goaltending imploded in the 2006 playoffs was because Hasek got hurt and nobody even knew what was wrong with him. Then Ray Emery proceeded to completely shit the bed. I think I recall hearing rumors he always wanted to finish his career here as a backup but the Sabres said no.
Stathead of the week: 10th
The Bills are in 4-way tie for the 10th most all pro players since 2020.
Pretty funny that Brandon Beane has as many all-pros acquired as Doug Whaley.
DAD SHOTS
—Death. Taxes. Donald Trump sucking up all the air in any universe.
The universe today is football. As you all know, Jaxson Dart introduced the president at a pep rally, and his teammate, Abdul Carter, made an innocuous comment on Twitter about it. All hell broke loose. NYC being the media capital of the world definitely gives this story more legs than if it happened in, say, Buffalo. I mean, Tage Thompson wore a MAGA hat at the White House and it didn’t register much in national media circles unless you were Keith Olbermann, and he’s kind of insane.
If anything, it’s pretty silly to fault Carter for his tweet, as he was just reacting to it. Carter is a practicing Muslim, and you don’t have to go too far down Trump’s quotes to hear he’s not exactly a fan of their religion. He could have said way worse.
The person with the worst take was Boomer Esiason. This is the same guy who once told Olympians to shut up and respect the flag when they were asked about the country’s political climate, yet he reacted to Abdul Carter’s tweet as if the kid had declared war on the Republican Party and then said Dart was doing something that was politically innocuous because why wouldn’t you want to introduce the president.
Help me out here, Boomer. You’re upset that an athlete commented on another athlete participating in a political event, but only one of those athletes is supposed to keep politics out of sports? That’s a hell of a double standard.
And the whole “he’s not a man” line felt like something ripped straight from a loud, overcaffeinated 1990s sports talk show segment. It was unnecessary, overdramatic, and completely disconnected from what Carter actually tweeted.
As for Dart, he has every right to do what he wants, and so can we. Of course a white, rich Mormon would like Trump. Tell me a stereotype I wouldn’t guess. There’s always room for criticism when you attach yourself to someone many view [raises hand] as a bigot and someone who has declared war on multiple nationalities, races, and sexual orientations. Heck, the president once called NFL players sons of bitches.
A part that rubs me the wrong way is seeing the, “Well, if it was any other president, would it be an issue?” or “This has happened before” crowd.
You can call me biased if you want, but being biased is refusing to acknowledge what’s staring you in the face. I’m not doing that. I’m just telling you what has happened. If you don’t see daily examples of Trump sounding unwell based on some of his quotes or his multi-colored hands, I don’t give a fuck whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, or “All Lives Matter” versus “Black Lives Matter.” You’ve either gotten your news exclusively from Fox News or muted every political word on Twitter. He sounds insane. He is not like any other president in our history, so stop comparing him to whichever dead president is currently on your favorite piece of U.S. currency. At least Carter stood by his comments and somewhat elaborated while Dart’s rigmarole consisted of military family history and love for this country and nothing about why he loves Trump and his ideas.
With that all said, I think some of these reactions stem from how Colin Kaepernick got raked through the coals for his beliefs, which ultimately led to him being exiled from the league. That leaves plenty of wiggle room for any pundit to criticize or pander to a player’s political beliefs because that’s exactly what happened with Kaep. He started this trend, and every trend that follows is going to be discussed. If you once said “shut up and dribble” but are now ball washing Dart for introducing Trump and yelling at liberal fans, then you’re a hypocrite.
Now, will this destroy the Giants locker room? Probably not. NFL locker rooms are melting pots. There are definitely people with wildly different political viewpoints, and at the end of the day, it’s always going to be a business. These guys want to win, whether you’re for Trump or against him.
—So is Jim Leonhard trying to plant seeds in case the defense stinks?
“I had a vision for what I want it to be, and it might not totally get there in Year 1. We have to be real as far as who we have, what their skill sets are, and I have to be flexible as well.”
On one hand, he’s probably telling the truth, as there are a lot of guys on this defense who were drafted specifically for McDermott. On the other hand, if this defense turns into a junkyard fire because guys aren’t used to their assignments or don’t fit the system, then I’m going to question why you’d do a defensive overhaul when you’re trying to win a Super Bowl. Maybe hire a coach who specializes in a 4-3 defense?
Still, it’s May, and you football jackoffs aren’t making me fall for storylines outside of one blurb per week.
—I just watched the A&E Biography on the Road Warriors, and it was pretty mid. For starters, they spent way too much time talking about Hawk’s drug problems. They brought it up in practically every segment, even when it wasn’t necessary. It felt like the episode was trying way too hard to be Dark Side of the Ring. They only spent about 40 minutes on the NWA/AWA years before jumping to their two relatively short stints in WWE. The only consistently good thing about these biographies is the archival footage.
—Long live Mo Salah. My Liverpool fandom has definitely taken a hit over the past few years. Between having a kid, getting married, and realizing weekends are apparently supposed to be spent doing things like birthday parties, soccer/swim classes, and grocery shopping, it’s a lot harder to carve out two hours in the morning and early afternoon to watch a soccer match. But even if I’m not watching every game the way I used to, Salah remains the player I associate most with Liverpool and honestly one of the biggest reasons I ever got into the sport in the first place.
He was the first EPL jersey I ever bought after watching the World Cup in 2018 and feeling it was time to find a soccer team in 2019. Back then I was one of those Americans trying to figure out what team to support, and between my dad constantly talking European soccer and that asshole who runs the DGWU Twitter feed bullying me into picking Liverpoool, I eventually landed on them. Once I started watching, Salah became impossible not to love. The goals, the speed, the charming expressions, and the ridiculous consistency. He made the game easy to appreciate for a newcomer.
For me, Salah is Liverpool. When I think about the matches during the early mornings, the pouring of Guinness, going to Liverpool pub Carrigans in Manhattan at 730am during my single years, the Champions League run in 2019 and yelling “champions of Europe, we won it 6 times” and all the moments that turned me from a casual observer into an actual fan, he’s at the center of it. Players come and go, and if he’s out the door, there are certain athletes who become the face of your fandom. For Liverpool, that guy will always be Mo Salah.
—Eric Wood was on the Chicken Finger King of West Seneca’s podcast and mentioned that his radio show, which used to be on WGR, is moving to 97 Rock. I wasn’t sure whether WGR was paying Eric Wood directly to do the show, but it seems pretty obvious now that it was tied into the Bills’ deal with Audacy.
—My Knicks vs Spurs Finals prediction was actually right! Knicks in 6.
—With the Sabres’ radio rights still in limbo and broadcasts potentially being produced internally by the team, I do wonder if they’ll decide to go the cheap route and simply simulcast their TV postgame show on the radio, similar to what they used to do with Empire/WNSA. There’s a nostalgic part of me that thinks they should just rebrand the postgame show as Hockey Hotline and take calls. I never understood why they got rid of that format.
—Andy went through an entire bag of wipes in 48 hours because daycare said he needed a refill. I call bullshit. I’m convinced they were using them on other kids. There is no fucking way my son is a horse. We’re also debating whether to throw him a birthday party at the end of July, but it’s insanely expensive to do anything these days. It’s like $800 for 90 minutes at your local imitation Chuck E. Cheese.
I’m of the mindset that a three-year-old doesn’t need a birthday party. Let’s wait until he starts remembering things and actually has opinions on what he wants to do.
—As always, please sure to buy some Homage gear from this link. If you purchase some shirts following this link, your boy gets a kick back.
—If you made it this far, thank you as always. Please like, share, subscribe, support, and troll Pat Moran…Which cheap plug: I’m on his podcast today!
I am subscribed so am I entered for the contest??