Thurman#1

Yup, being on the hot seat generates that kind of mindset and Whaley and Ryan bought in to short-term priorities. Hopefully McDermott is different. Um, well, OK.

Lemme see. What did I say? "a team that lost ... only Woods on offense." Yup. Still makes sense, he's the only starter they lost this offseason on offense. Yes, only Woods. Agreed, though, that they don't have a lot of good WRs. But the defense is in worse shape and he's a defensive coach. Odds are he goes defense with his first pick. He's just going to feel more urgency on that side of the ball. The offense wasn't good, but the defense was worse and then lost more than the offense. My guess is that if at #10 they only think offensive guys offer good value, then they'll trade back.

It's a reasonable argument. Sammy Watkins is a sunk cost. Mike Williams is not. It's not the first pick spent on a WR that usually questionable. It's the second.

Myself, I don't see them drafting a weapon, particularly for TT to throw to. Not at #10. Not on a team that has a defensive-oriented head coach in his first season. Not on a team that had a defense that was worse than the offense. Not on a team that intends to run a lot and throw less. Not on a team that lost Gilmore and Zach Brown on defense and only Woods on offense. Just can't see it at #10. I like Williams, though. A lot of talent.

"Technically" doesn't matter. I mean you're right, but it's beside the point. Even if it's not technically a tradeup, that's in fact what it is. And why it happened is also entirely beside the point. It happened. What matters is not how you get the guy. It simply isn't. It's who the guy you get is. If you're really concerned, then here's what the Bills should do, they should make a trade with whatever team picks Trubisky ahead of them, they should draft the guy that team wants and give him some extra picks the way the Giants did. That way everything will be totally different and the trade that would have been a disaster will work out. Or it wouldn't make the slightest difference. I'm on choice B there. Wentz looks so far like he's going to make the Eagles look very smart for trading up. The Bills considered trading up above Pittsburgh for Roethlisberger. The price asked, we are told, was considered too expensive. Looking back that is one of the worst non-trades of all time. They should have done it, and being traded up for wouldn't magically have resulted in Roethlisberger becoming worse. Haven't a clue whether they should try for Trubisky but if they do, past draft history won't have the slightest affect on the outcome.

There's only one thing you trade up for if you're giving up a first-round pick or more, and that's a potential franchise QB. You don't for a WR. You do for a QB. But it's got to be the right one. And it's hard to be sure. My guess is they don't trade up and don't go QB in the first, but it would be only the mildest surprise. I won't be against it if it happens. Eli worked out pretty well for the Giants in a tradeup. It's about the guy, not how they got him. If they have to trade up to get their guy, then do it. But he'd better be the right guy.

Trolls can back anything up. They just back it up with nonsense, which is indeed the fun part for the sad critters. Folks, time to stop feeding the troll.

Not a disaster, but bad. Now, it they'd gone six wins, then followed that up with eight and then ten, that's a .500 that would look pretty damn good. Instead, first 9-7, then 8-8, and then 7-9. That's not good.

Who is reading Sully? Obviously a lot of people. The reason he hasn't moved on? May have to do with the fact that with Buffett as owner this is a very desireable job situation. Sully was offered a spot at Newsday, a huge paper, and moved here instead. Probably likes it here. But yeah, he says stuff that criticism-hating fans don't like to hear, and he does it consistently. Makes sense to me, personally, that a team that's consistently topped out at mediocre often has bad things said about it.

I'm trying to decide if you're a troll or deeply misled. I'm thinking troll. Very very few WRs or DBs are "low 4.3 at least." If you "need" to be that, there basically wouldn't be anyone playing there. This year four guys, total, ran "low 4.3" and that's only if you include 4.35 as low. Not four WRs or four DBs, but four combine prospects total. In 2016, five guys. In 2015, four guys. In 2014, three. In 2013, four. In 2012, one. In 2011, three. In 2010, three. In 2009, three. 2008 was tied for the best year ever, with eight. In 2007, six (three if you don't include the 4.35 guys), and in the earliest year available online, eight again, and all stalwarts: Tye Hill, Johnathan Joseph, Chad Jackson, Tim Jennings, Michael Huff, Willie Reid, Devin Aromashodu and Reggie McNeal. So in total, only about four to five guys a year are fast enough to meet what you're calling the minimum standards to play WR or CB. Less if you throw out the 4.35s which really aren't "low," are they? That's maybe two WRs and two DBs a year. http://www.nfl.com/combine/top-performers#year=2006&workout=FORTY_YARD_DASH&position=QB-RB-WR-TE-S-DL-LB-CB-OL-SPEC

It's not "by all accounts." That's one version of events. About all we really know is who was there and that everyone seemed to feel positively. We don't know who pulled the trigger and we don't know that if Whaley had tried, he couldn't have stopped it. It's a pretty good bet that if Whaley had said, "Look, I can't work with this guy," they'd have listened, especially so early in their tenure. I blame him a lot for Rex and a ton for his unimpressive drafts. Solid to decent work with FAs doesn't make up for his drafts, IMHO. You'd have to show some data to prove that building a defense is all that much easier. I don't believe it till I see data supporting it. If it were so easy, everyone would do it. Defenses and offenses both go up and down quite a bit with a coaching change and a few free agents very often. I don't think there's any evidence one is easier than the other. It generally amounts to how much draft capital, financial capital and organizational emphasis you put on each side of the ball.

Seymour might be quicker, more sudden, but he's also slighter and less physical than Josh Norman. IMHO he's going to have some trouble against big physical WRs if he's outside. Maybe I'll be proven wrong about that. Hope so. Norman was built a lot more solidly and muscularly.

Maybin was NOT a cute pick? I'm thinking the two of you have completely different meanings in mind for the word cute here. Maybin was a classic cute pick, IMHO. So was Whitner. Spiller too. Watkins the pick, no. But Watkins the trade-up, absolutely yes. We were sure we were much smarter than everyone else and had to trade up for a WR in a year that was a historically terrific WR draft year. Sigh. Manuel. Flowers. Maybe even Lynch though it turned out to be good value. If he hadn't lost interest in all things Buffalo he might have been an all-time bright spot. Maybe not, but he's on the bubble. McGahee too. I supported a couple of those picks at the time, but a lot seemed cute. And most of the cute ones didn't work out. That's a lot for a franchise that hadn't gone cute for more than a decade or so before that.

Yup. And it gets much worse when you're in cap trouble. That's when teams like the Pats can swoop in and structure offers to make it hard for you to match. $6 mill for two years isn't prohibitive. But when you have at this point in the year around $10 mill left and around $5 mill of that will go to the rookie draftees, $4 mill this year - which is how the Pats structured their offer - really is very difficult to match. We screwed ourselves by getting in this cap situation. It's not a Herschel Walker type deal. But yeah, they fleeced us.

There's no correlation between sitting and success because some guys need it and some guys don't. Some guys are NFL-ready and some are developmental. The NFL-ready guys aren't helped by sitting more than they would be by playing fairly badly. The developmental ones are. And nobody argues - nobody - that sitting is some kind of a guarantee for anybody. Some guys just won't be good enough and sitting won't help. Some would be helped a ton. There's no correlation between sitting and success because some guys need it and some guys don't. Some guys are NFL-ready and some are developmental. The NFL-ready guys aren't helped by sitting more than they would be by playing fairly badly. The developmental ones are. And nobody argues - nobody - that sitting is some kind of a guarantee for anybody. Some guys just won't be good enough and sitting won't help. Some would be helped a ton.

I don't think it's as unlikely as some that they carry four QBs. I think it's a logical step for a team at this stage of development. Cardale was always considered a two or three year project. I haven't a clue if he'll ever be a good one, but even if he does, he probably isn't there yet. So no, IMHO, not a shoo-in but that's my opinion of most likely result. 1) Tyrod 2) Yates With them keeping Cardale and maybe even another guy if they draft one.

Yes, he had say. And yes he was the GM in waiting. But did he disagree with any of these picks? We don't know, except for Manuel, the one pick we know for sure he supported. The guy who pulled the trigger gets the blame and the credit. That's the way it's always been, will always be, and should be.

An excellent trade. Under Buddy Nix. The draft is more important than FAs, because draftees are cheaper. If you draft well you don't just get talent but your cap stays in better shape. Trades and FAs are also important but your cap will tend to be strained if that's the main thing you're good at, and you'll end up losing guys like Gillislee (and the other deals we might have done but didn't because of money limitations this year) because you don't have money.

It's a reasonable stand, but arguing that the Bills sabotaged Tyrod is ridiculous. Keeping out an injured guy from a meaningless game isn't sabotaging him. If you want to argue that they sabotaged him, the argument that they should've brought in more WRs last year is a lot more reasonable, though bringing in Clay and making the run game so terrific were the opposite of sabotage, they were great support for Tyrod.

It's a stupid argument. He's saying out of 26 QBs only eight are successes. But if you read all the way to the end you see he's also saying the jury is out on eight more and he's including Jameis and Mariota in that group, not among the successes. That leaves eight successes and ten failures. That's not bad odds. Absolutely they would redshirt a guy like Trubisky if they took him. That's probably a large part of the reason that Tyrod is still here. You're right that if Tyrod were injured things would look a bit different, but IMHO that would be Yates time.

That was his team's record. His record (the stuff he as QB did) was very good. Failure and success aren't relevant yet. There still could easily turn out to be tnree franchise guys in that group of five. Brees still sucked after his first three years. And Bridgewater hasn't been able to play even three years. He could easily turn out to be a very good one. Same as Garoppolo could.

Yeah, nobody else thought Bortles was the best in that class either, did they? Except, you know, pretty much everyone. Skill set had nothing to do with it. He can make all the throws, moves well ... his skill set is fine. He had mechanics problems that never got cleared up, probably because he never had the time to develop. And he has never developed the decision-making speed and precision, which could have been a result of not having the time to ingrain better habits or maybe just not ever having had the pure processing speed. We'll never know. What we know is that we had a plan to maximize his chances, and we were never allowed to put that plan into action. And minimizing a guy's chances, well for obvious reasons it's never a good idea. Wayne, that doesn't even begin to make sense. You know how everyone says, "That's a bad opening with that bad team but there are only 32 openings for NFL head coaches and they'll find someone," and they always do? Same with OCs. Thirty-two jobs only. If he wanted to find someone else, he could. It would not be particularly difficult. There might be four or five top guys who might turn down that promotion, but probably not.

Neither guy is a fossil. I see similarities to HOF OT Tony Boselli, And some not very entertaining humor from some folks on here.

Matt Ryan threw 19 INTs in his senior year. IMHO, it isn't that simple. But I do like Trubisky.

Being QB for a national championship team, maybe? Yes there's info that points towards him not succeeding. There's also info that indicates the opposite. We just don't know either way. So we should draft someone if there's a guy we like and if Cardale shows progress, keep him too.