Thurman#1

Hope he's OK.

IMHO it came down to the Bills not really having had leverage. They wanted to trade down, it now appears pretty clearly and it can't have been that difficult to figure out even back then. It's hard to read how desperate KC might have been but the vibe appeared to be that they wanted Mahomes but weren't jonesing enough to take advantage of. This year's draft is special, and there are QBs teams are dying to get their hands on. The teams with the picks are in extremely strong positions. They're playing teams off each other. Don't think we were able to do that last year.

There almost isn't one. Assuming we get a franchise guy, I'd give up three #1s plus a lot of our bounty this year. Only if necessary, of course. I'm not dying to get rid of them or anything but this is the key moment on team building for the next fifteen years. Go up high and get a terrific QB. I'm the opposite. I don't generally want one guy for every pick. I want 1.2 or 1.3 guys per pick. Or more. Trade back. Accumulate them. But there's one exception and one only and that's a franchise quarterback. Give what you have to give.

I think you've misstated this. It's not about the worst signings, it's about the worst contracts. Nothing wrong with the article. It's a reasonable opinion. Disagreeing is reasonable too, but his points make sense..

But you folks remember how undersold Trubisky, Watson, etc. were before the draft. "Wait till next season" was all we heard on here. This article is a year old, a pre-draft piece from last year. I bet if you asked him now who he'd rather have, Trubisky, Watson or McCarron, he'd probably have a very different answer. IMHO Polian was underestimating Trubisky, Mahomet, Watson, etc., the way most people did at the time.

Which Smith are you getting? 2017 Smith? Or earlier? If he can play at 2017 level, your problems are solved If it's the earlier Smith I still like him but I draft somebody else as well..

Again, those reports might not be conflicting. The first report said the Bills had contacted them. "Contacted." The second report said there had been no discussions. "Discussions." There's room in there for both to be true if they contacted them but only spoke for a sentence or two. I'm not saying I know what happened, just that these reports could possibly both be true.

You say they mostly wanted the #6 pick, but that doesn't appear to have been true. Peter King says the Colts are now actively looking to trade down from #6. They didn't especially want that pick. "Before we analyze the winner and loser in the big weekend Jets-Colts deal (there is neither, by the way), I’ll make one prediction: There’s a good chance the Colts aren’t done trading yet. After dealing from three to six, I could see them moving down one more time before the April 26 first round. GM Chris Ballard said as much to his team’s website Saturday, and I can add a confirmation to that. Ballard’s going to try." https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/03/19/kirk-cousins-minnesota-vikings-free-agency-guaranteed-contract-mmqb-peter-king No particular reason to think the Bills couldn't have made an offer the Colts would have accepted. Worth noting that King continued, speculating that the Colts might yet trade back to #10 or #12 and specifically talked about Buffalo. "The Colts very much need to maximize this draft. It’s likely their roster is the weakest in the rising AFC South. Ballard knows he needs quantity in this draft. That’s why if he could turn the sixth pick into something in the 10 to 12 range and add another second-rounder, I believe he’d do it. At six, he’d likely have a chance at pass-rusher Bradley Chubb or guard Quenton Nelson. At 11, let’s say, he’d have a chance at a desperately needed rangy linebacker like Roquan Smith or Tremaine Edmunds. A second trade would mean Ballard would have turned the third overall pick into five players who would have a chance to start from this one trade alone. "Colts’ picks in the top four rounds now: 6, 36, 37, 49, 67, 104. If I were Ballard, I might trade down from 6 to Buffalo at 12 if the Bills would deal the 53rd overall pick and maybe the 96th pick as well—seeing that the price for a quarterback is more of a premium. But of course, this is probably a night-of-the-draft deal, because the Bills would have to see a quarterback they’d want here."

"Total." Period. It means "absolute." 100%. There's no room for semantics here. Total means total. The minute you say, "the only reason it's not considered total" you're destroying your own point, admitting there is in fact a reason. Yes, they kept a bunch of vets. Expensive, old vets, exactly the kind who would go in a total rebuild. That means it's not total. It's a partial rebuild. And there's nothing wrong with a partial rebuild.

Exactly. Nicely put.

Not many. But nearly all of them have first round picks over the next five or six years. That's what the next three or four drafts are for. And he's likely to need someone to clean the snow off his spot on the bench more than blockers and receivers. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The Eagles don't win that Super Bowl without having spent most of the season riding Wentz.

Yup. And he does this with five different guys with different teams and different agendas. One guy smoke-screening gets swallowed up by the others. Yeah, maybe one guy wants everyone to stay away from Darnold. The others know their teams aren't involved. Involving a lot of guys levels things out. And yes, McGinn is very good.

Picking an RB this early is weird but defensible because of how good Barkley is. Trading up to do so would all but be evidence of traumatic brain injury. And they don't have to be picking the third QB. They could be very strongly convinced that one of the top two teams isn't going QB. They could also be interested primarily in one QB who they think fits their system, who they are convinced the top two teams value less highly. Mayfield, maybe, or even Rosen if they think the top two go Darold and Allen. I think they're not smoke-screening because smoke-screening this because doing so would be like pretending you're going to date Aileen Wuornos over Kate Upton. Not worth the breath.

Is it contradictory? I haven't gone back and checked, but I think the first story said that they had called, and the second story said they haven't had "discussions," correct? I could definitely be wrong but that's what I thought I read.

In this case, you get correct. Virtually all the evidence points that way.

Shaw, this isn't a semantic discussion. It's cut and dried. Yeah, "rebuild" has a million levels and variations and extents. "Total," on the other hand, is a very unambiguous word. There's no way to look at it that does NOT have it mean "absolute," "complete," and "unequivocal." That's what the word means. It doesn't mean dump everyone good, though. It means dump everyone good and getting older. Most particularly if they're expensive. The general rule is 29 or 30 or so, especially at positions where guys don't last. Particularly the athletic positions like CB, RB, WR, speed LBs, etc. Your team will suck for a while. In probably 80% or more of cases it will be three years or more. Guys getting older will be just old enough to be jettisoned when the good years get here. Less than total is partial. And that's what this is, a partial rebuild. Again, if it weren't, you just wouldn't keep Shady. He'll get you a win or two, he'll cost a lot of money and he'll be gone by the time the team will have a chance to win. Keeping him has no upside in a total rebuild. You trade him for picks. Absolutely Incognito too. He'll be used up three years from now, and you don't re-sign Kyle Williams. He's good, and he's old and reasonably expensive. You also don't do a total rebuild in your second year as GM. You do it going in. It's too painful and too long-lasting. You don't want your owner thinking after your fourth year, "Gee, he hasn't gotten things together yet." And even the patient owners think that after four years these days. You do it coming in. And yeah, total rebuilds are rare. But the Cleveland case is a very recent one that makes it clear that this happens. One win in two years. Immensely painful for the fanbase. But potentially extremely lucrative. So painful that the owner couldn't stay the course with that GM. That's the reason you don't do it in your second year as GM. Even owners who say they understand it will be painful and long-lasting often run out of patience.

He was saying $45 mill because they can't count Wood's dead money yet, until he officially retires. Wood's dead cap hit will be $10.3 mill, $2 or $3 mill of which can be delayed till next year.

Pittsburgh took like two decades of using that strategy before they were lucky enough to be able to get Roethlisberger. From when they lost Bradshaw to where they were finally lucky enough to get Roethlisberger at #11 they made do with awful QBs because they never had good enough picks to get a good QB. All because they were pretty consistently good but with QBs like Slash and McDonnell who weren't good enough to win titles. Without the luck to get Roethlisberger (and the Bills trying to trade above them but - DOH! - deciding it was too expensive) they'd still be the consistently good team that never wins titles. Maybe the Bills should have thrown worry about value to the winds and just traded up to get Roethlisberger. The NFL might look a lot different to Bills fans if they had done that. Which has a parallel to this year, by the way.

The trade value chart is a guide. But not an absolute. Teams that have the catbird seat get better deals. Gettelman is in an absolutely enviable situation now, with probably four teams desperate to get that pick and possibly feeling that if they don't get that specific pick there's no good fallback position. He's likely to do a lot better than the chart says.

Yeah, people who remember the Kelly years have a very different POV. I personally remember the Simpson years as well. Guys too young to remember often tended to make their goal the playoffs. That has always seemed to me a distraction. The goal should always be sustained excellence and consistently being good enough to compete for a championship. I think all fans will begin to appreciate that again as we go forward. I like Beane. I have faith in him. But I don't have much faith that there will be a particularly right call in this case. The odds of a major success went down quite a bit when the Jets made that move, IMHO. Love your name, by the way. I had the good fortune to read the book before seeing the movie. The book was even better. I'm a major Goldman fan.

Yeah, you're saying what's going to happen with nothing but opinion to back it up, and even being stupid enough to use the word "guarantee" on something you have absolutely no power over. I got it. And it was, is and will be stupid to confuse opinion with fact as you are doing here.

It's not a total rebuild. I wish it were and that it had happened last year, but it's not. If it were, they'd cut/trade McCoy. They wouldn't have re-signed Kyle Williams. They'd cut/trade Incognito. Total rebuilds essentially mean an acceptance that you're going to suck for an absolute minimum of two years and probably three. You dump ALL your guys over 29 or 30 because by the time you're any good they'll be too old. This isn't a total rebuild. It just isn't. If they had been going to do that, they'd have done it last year and got a high pick this year in the QB-rich draft. But yeah, it's a partial rebuild. One that started last year. And this in no way means they aren't going to trade up. A lot of the point of rebuilds - most especially total rebuilds but really all rebuilds - is to get to a place where you can get your franchise QB. Yes, they're going to rebuild primarily though not entirely through the draft, not because it's a rebuild but because they've said from minute one that that's their philosophy. But trading up for a QB absolutely is building through the draft. The most important part of building through the draft if you haven't got a franchise QB on the roster. Yeah, any GM hates to lose picks. But getting a franchise QB would allay that pain.

Fair enough. Everybody's got an opinion and they're all worth more or less the same. You ask an interesting question. Should the Bills trade the two 1sts this year and then next year's as well. I'd do that in a heartbeat. IMHO it's going to cost more, as the Jets set up a bidding war with the Giants the fat and happy winners. And I'd give more too. There's a limit, but it's a lot closer to all our top three round picks this year and next year's first as well than just the three firsts. We've got to get a quarterback, even if the cost sets us back a year or two. My opinion, always assuming Beane and McDermott like a guy who's available there a lot. Which I think they do.

Trubitsky says hi. He might well have sat the whole year if Glennon had been any good. Mahomes too. These days you can do that. Garrett got $30 mill at the #1 pick last year. $30 mill over 4 years. That's $7.5 mill per year. You can absolutely sit a guy making that if you think that's in his long-term best interest in becoming an excellent player.