Thurman#1

Two to three starters a year is indeed right about league average, with two being significantly below league average and three being a bit above. And I don't give Whaley 2013, nor should anyone, unless they want to have a discussion on how good of an assistant GM he was. Also, you're wrong about Seantrel Henderson. I was always rooting for him, so I wish he had started last year, but he only played in one game last year, week one. He did sign an one year extension with Houston this last January, so I hope he can make things work. But that's six starters in three drafts. No pro bowls and no core guys. Watkins, Preston Brown, Darby, Miller, Ragland and Lawson, in three years. People go on about how bad the Pats are at drafting. (Which is nonsense, really, for a team that always drafts late they're pretty good.) But their 2014 -2016 classes have a lot more guys still starting. And that includes a lost first rounder from Deflategate.

No, he actually did not. That's not how you judge "outperforming his GM peers." Not even close. But let's go with what you're doing here and focus in on Whaley's drafts. Here they are, leaving EJ out, because he was picked under the Nix regime though Whaley obviously loved him: 2014 1) Sammy Watkins 2) Cyrus Kouandjio 3) Preston Brown 4) Ross Cockrell 5) Cyril Richardson 7) Randell Johnson 7) Seantrel Henderson 2015 2) Ronald Darby 3) John Miller 5) Karlos Williams 6) Tony Steward 6) Nick O'Leary 7) Dezmin Lewis 2016 1) Shaq Lawson 2) Reggie Ragland 3) Adolphus Washington 4) Cardale Jones 5) Jonathan Williams 6) Kolby Listenbee 6) Kevon Seymour Any way you can dream up to call that a successful draft record is more of a comment on your recreational chemicals input than on the players. How many Pro Bowl seasons among these three classes? Give you a hint, it's a four-letter word that starts with "Z" and ends with "ERO." How many guys there are still starting? Maybe six if Miller starts where he went? Two per year, if everything goes perfectly this year? And not a single one a core guy for this or any other team? That's pathetic. This is an absolutely wretched draft record. Whaley did much better at pro personnel pickups but looking at his draft record again here made me a bit nauseous. He isn't an idiot. But he also wasn't a good GM.

I'm with him on Devin White. I think the last thing in the world they want is yet another rookie calling the defensive signals at MLB. IMO if they could keep Edmunds at MLB another year and put White outside while he learns for a year for a possible future switch, the pick would make sense. From what little I can tell, you don't really want White anywhere but MLB. I don't think we pick him. And by the way .... Hamp Cheevers? Awesome football name. Hadn't heard of him before. Interesting to know he was one of our 30 visits.

Everywhere. Everything you've written since the useless necrobump. Here's one: We had several QBs who showed more promise than Tyrod after Kelly. Flutie and Bledsoe. Probably Rob Johnson as well.

Gurley went at #10. Zack Martin at #16. Kuechly at #9. Tyron Smith at #9. They're out there. Not every year but reasonably often. Not sure I see one this year unless Oliver somehow falls.

Leaks happen. So do smokescreens and polite evasions. But leaks do happen. As for how many guys had Edmunds going to the Bills last year ... the Bills didn't have Edmunds going to the Bills last year, as Beane has said many times. They never ran that scenario.

I think it's all about getting good running backs, personally. And winning games. And being effective on offense.

To #3? I doubt it. If they were at #7 or close, then maybe, but the Bills aren't going to give up that much.

Yes, McDermott made the pick. But Reid doesn't have all that great a record of picking QBs. He spent about half his career with Vick and Alex Smith. He's never really been known as a great QB drafter. He's a great QB developer. And there's no particular reason to swoop in on a great QB developer's potential draft pick and draft him instead and likely not develop him as well as Reid himself would have. I'd love to see where the article "makes it clear" that Whaley orchestrated the trade. All I can see is that he was on the phone. And that ain't even close to "orchestrating." Point man and boss are not the same thing.

You didn't link!!!! Wonder why? So, since you didn't link, all I can do is guess that it's the post that ends like this: "Conclusions "Unfortunately, our confidence intervals are too wide to draw many firm conclusions, but it may be worth trying out Matrix Turf at a couple more stadiums to see if its low overall injury rate is sustainable in a larger sample. Even when we zero in on lower leg injuries, it doesn't look meaningfully worse than grass. A-Turf, Momentum Turf, and FieldTurf raise eyebrows, but these differences could be due to chance or improper maintenance rather than issues with the product itself." https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2017/turf-type-and-nfl-injuries-part-i Is that the one you mean? The one that also says this: "We're looking at these stadium rates through turf-colored glasses, but the rate in any given stadium is a factor of many things. For example, the home team's baseline health and training staff skill could play a role. We have attempted to control for this by only looking at visiting teams. Climate is another possible factor, but it's beyond the scope of this post. A third possible factor is that some teams are more likely than others to injure their opponents. For example, if we had split the NYC stadium between the Giants and Jets, the Giants would have the fifth-lowest overall injury rate, while the Jets would have been in the top half. To investigate this we could control for the injury rate for Team A's opponents when Team A is on the road. However, that is also beyond the scope of this post."

Left-handed passes, no. 50 TDs, sure you can. Look at what a bunch of coaching did for Aaron Rodgers, who was pretty awful his first two seasons in Green Bay till McCarthy put him in "Quarterback Camp," changed his mechanics and developed him. Also helps, mind you, if you put him in an offense surrounded by top-flight weapons and a really good line. https://www.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/13/themmqb-exit-interview-bob-mcginn-green-bay-packers-milwaukee-journal-sentinel-nfl-beat-writer The MMQB: "You documented how fortunate it was that Aaron Rodgers didn’t have to play the first couple of years—he just wasn’t ready. McGinn: “He was a very poor player here for his first two summers and regular-season practices. Fortunately for him, and he knows that down deep, he didn’t have to play early. His delivery was a mess, bad body language, he didn’t know how to deal with teammates. He learned so much from Brett Favre on how to in some ways be one of the guys and relate, and he became much more of a leader. He was really poor and how many great players have ever had a start like that? Not that many. A lot of scouts look at that exhibition tape those first two years and he was a little bit better the third year, but not to any degree, and then he just really developed. He lost a lot of close games in ’08, but by ’09 he was playing great and by 2010 he was maybe the best in the business." And yet it happened. And the idea that it defies logic defies thought. There are plenty of veepy guys throughout the world of business who directly control the people under them and yet still do what the guys over them say.

Here's what you do when you have questions like this. There's this website called google, and you go there and enter the prospect's name along with "college stats." And you find stuff like the fact that Bosa has played in 29 college games. EDIT: Thank you, Kirby, and others.

You're right, he was a part of those drafts. So were a lot of scouts. Whaley gets the credit for helping.

"How can you not respect a guy who swings for the fences?" Um, with great ease? With very little effort and for obvious reasons? I could come up with more. Swinging for the fences and striking out isn't something a decision-maker should be cheered for. A home run hitter who leads the league in HRs and strikeouts? Maybe. But an executive who leaves the team with a career record under .500? Not hardly. The Watkins trade was a swing for the fences, but it looked awful from minute one. For execs, swinging for the fences means squat. Building an excellent team is what you should be judged on. He didn't do that. And again, that front four you're going on about were all Nix gets.

Being on the phone isn't being in charge. I can assure you of that from many times when my boss had me negotiate things over the phone after telling me what he wanted. I wasn't the one with the power or the decision maker. McDermott was in charge. IMO, it's far too strong to say that Whaley is an idiot. He's not. But he wasn't as good as either McDermott or Beane. He didn't have an overarching plan. And he left us screwed on the salary cap when we were a mediocre team. Our cap looked like a team at the end of a Super Bowl window and we didn't have the wins to make that kind of a fiscal problem necessary. And he didn't draft very well, though his pro personnel decisions were good.

The top ten defense was built with all but two players brought in under Buddy Nix. And the two acquired by Nix were neither standouts. Preston Brown and someone else. Lorax, maybe? I forget, but that's not the heart of that defense. Agreed on Mahomes.

While I agree that perfect BPA is a myth, I think the people who are using the phrase are well aware that BPA is for the best player on each individual GM's board. There is no one board to rule them all, one board to find them, one board to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. I think we all get that. But you're right that each GM's boards have included schemes, fits, and so on. I think some people still want to believe of all those words you used there, that for BPA GMs there is no "need" included when putting those boards together. Which is more of an "in an ideal world" kind of situation.

Very unlikely in several ways. First, that White would be available at #9. And second that they would want White, who seems to be a classic MLB, not a Seth or a Wally (sorry, I'm bored), to call signals as a rookie. If Edmunds plays the Solomon, you've got a rookie signal caller yet again, in a year when they start to feel pressure to improve in the wins column. And have a surfeit of good fast LBs. Doubt it for those reasons.

Read my next post. But what I complained about is that you quoted Jeremiah as saying "Bills more than open to trading back," and then didn't show the quote in your post, leaving us wondering if he'd said that or not. And what you did quote seemed to indicate that the quote came from the conference call. A bit confusing. But I tried to go back and edit it once I'd read the other article, and the interface for some bizarre reason wouldn't let me either edit or delete the post, or touch it at all, really. Has happened a few times lately.

That isn't "how it usually goes." It usually has a million variations as to what the GMs actually do. Relatively few actually trade, obviously, far less than a third. The true method is ... (drum roll) ... different for every team. And no, nobody does absolute BPA, picking a guard for his high first round pick if a potential franchise QB who's second-best player, not the best. Or picking the BPA if he's a 3-4 NT or DE when they run a 4-3. Or picking the greatest punter in the history of the league rather than a pretty good EDGE. Yeah, teams eliminate positions. But generally not many, not the teams that are heavier into the BPA method. But do some teams make BPA a guiding but non-absolute principle. Yeah, and the Bills are one.

Can't seem to edit posts here sometimes, and this is an example. So I have to make a second post. Here's the Jeremiah quote, "But I also hear when it comes to the Bills they’re a team that would be more than open to trading back," but it's not from the conference call but the OneBillsLive interview with Steve and Luke Tasker. Wish I could edit or delete that last one. I'd eliminate it entirely. I'd found it wasn't in the Jeremiah article but hadn't yet checked the Talbot article. Oh, well. Sorry, Alphadawg.

Alphadawg, bad punctuation here leading to confusion. Jeremiah only said, "“You kind of look at it from a 30,000-foot view here, I think that there’s 15 to 16 players that everybody in the league kind of agrees are the top guys, and then after that once you get to 17, 18, all the way to 50 or 60, they’re in all different order there.” The writer of the NewYorkUpstate article is the one who said, "Buffalo could make a slight drop down from No. 9 and still land one of the best prospects in the class while also adding addition picks to select players from the second tier of available prospects." I had to read all the way through Jeremiah's fifteen pages to realize he hadn't said that. Dude, come on!!!!!!!

There's no such thing as a "wrong order" in this case. It's done both ways; some of each succeed and some of each fail. We'll know which this is when we see how things turn out within the next few years. And whether or not the decision looks good won't be decided by "whether Allen is as good or better than Mahomes." It will be by whether the Buffalo Bills turn out to have a team that is consistently competitive among the best in the league, McDermott and Beane's stated goal. Also, a good part of the reason KC was in a great position to take Mahomes is that they could sit him for a year. He might easily not have done anywhere near as well if forced into action as a rook, or with such poor pieces as the Bills offense has had the past two years. Mahomes had a much better situation in nearly every way than Allen. There's no reason to think Beane would have taken Mahomes if he'd been here. He might have. Or he might not have. Had the Bills been planning to draft Mahomes, they might easily have bailed on Taylor to save money. That's what they did the year they decided to actually draft a QB.

You're right that they don't need "extra guys." What you get in the second and third round are not extra guys. Was Matt Milano an "extra guy" from the fifth round?

Yeah, if by sophomore slump you mean a dramatic decline, those aren't all that common, and I wouldn't expect one. Plenty of guys don't improve very much, though. You want to see a lot of improvement from a soph. I'm hopeful.