JESSEFEFFER

There are two PI plays that rankle me. Third and 10+ do not draw a flag on an underneath route and on a throw deep down the field do not make contact with the receiver without looking back for the ball. Both of these are clueless signs of overmatched CB play. Most of the rest come with good, aggressive CB play that contests the route, the ball and the man attempting the catch. I am of the opinion that the pass will be completed unless the CB successfully defeats some part of the process so I was very pleased with his rookie season. He competed very well. As to the article, I respect any analyst that will go beyond the consensus beliefs and actually do some in-depth analysis. it's all the better when the end up agreeing with me.

The way I remember it, Boldin had as much to do with their late season run as did Flacco. Once a super Bowl winning QB gets their big payday the chances of their team winning another have to go down. Maybe way down.

Likely DROY candidates: DE (Ansah, Werner, D Jones, Hunt) LB (Jordan, Mingo, J Jones, Ogletree, Minter, Teo, Alonso, Bostic, Brown, Collins) DB (Milliner, Hayden, Trufant, Rhodes, Vaccaro, Reid, Slay, Banks) DT (Richardson, Lotulelei, Floyd, Williams) The DROY award favors sacks, tackles, and interceptions. That's why DEs, OLBs, and MLBs are the historically favored winners. Situational and/or rotational players are not the favored candidates and that's usually DTs and DBs. If Alonso manages to play all three downs for the entire season, his chances of winning get much better as he will rack up the stats that matter.

Likely OROY Candidates: QB (Manuel, Smith) RB (Bernard, Bell, Ball, Lacy) WR (Austin, Hopkins, Patterson, Hunter, Woods, Dobson, Williams, Allen) .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Follow the logic here. 1) Not all positions are equally favored. Some have zero chance based on the history. 2) To win the award, a candidate has to play. Not only play but be a starter for the entire season or nearly so. This shrinks the pool of probable winners way down.

Pears was injured all of training camp and tried to play on one good leg. Assuming a return to better health, I would not write him off just yet. He was pretty good in 2011.

Trying to play Solomon here but if you were to look at the history of the award and limit the field of potential candidates to those most likely to win by position and draft slot, the Bills are among a small group of teams that have any realistic chance of winning BOTH awards. As it is, I put it at ~ 1/100 chance of winning both. Other teams with a chance to do it are the Rams, Steelers, Vikings, Packers and Jets. Bills (Manuel, Woods / Alonso) Rams (Austin / Ogletree) Vikes (Patterson / Floyd, Rhodes) Steelers (Bell / Jones) Packers (Lacy / Jones) Jets (Smith / Milliner, Richardson) So I agree with the OP that the Bills could do this given the positions they drafted and their opportunities to make an impact but 1/100 is not consistent with "could very well" as some have based their derision on.

Haslett and Conlan were the two Bills defenders to win the AP award. Alonso looks to be cut from the same cloth as a 3 down defender that is likely to make a lot of tackles as a rookie starter. LBs and DEs are the favored choices over DTs and DBs and I'd put the probability at ~ 1/12. QBs and WRs seem more likely to win the award in today's NFL and there really aren't that many RB candidates this year anyways. There are more RB by committee approaches now , especially for rookies. O-line has never won the AP award and when you consider that the winners are usually top of the draft talents (makes sense--they are more talented and more likely to play from day 1) the field of potential winners is much smaller. My guess is that Manuel and Woods give the Bills 2 chances out of 16 or so. Without a calculator, that gives the Bills an ~ 20% chance to win one award and ~1% chance to win both.

Maybe. It looks like a good year for a 3-down linebacker and a WR to win the awards. The offensive award has been won most often by RBs and, of late, QBs and the defensive award by DEs and LBs. This draft did not produce all that many of the traditional candidates.

Teams are likely to have drastically different ejection and/or arrest policies. I'd say that as long as you limited your ticket purchase to those areas populated by season ticket holders that you'd be fine in the Ralph or most anywhere else. Sit in the endzone and you're likely to rub elbows with an angry, intoxicated single game ticket buyers that have decided to forgo the rules of common decency. I can't imagine that the Bills' crowd is any worse than the Raiders', for one.

I wonder what Derrick Burroughs thinks about every time he sees Chris Collingsworth on the air.

Some of my opinions on things I've read in this thread. 1) Chan's failing was not about his ego it was more about loyalty which is not really that much of a character flaw at all. 2) Buddy Nix' Legacy is yet to be defined. It hinges largely on EJ Manuel and how his picks perform in the Mike Pettine defense and less so on Doug Marrone. So its silly to dump crap on his tenure as the history is yet to be written.

Factor in an aging, weaker legged kicker attempting into the wind, a defense that had been historically bad at times but was succeeding this particular day (would not want to give the Rams a jump start with a missed kick and would later fail in the clutch--again) and a patch work offensive line that was having protection issues and had been characteristically poor at the short yardage run game. Add to that the chance that said punt might get downed inside the 5 (and it was) and you get a decision that, no matter what the consensus of opinion wants to make of it, had little negative impact on the game.

In defense of idiot Mayock, he did put EJ @ #2 in his revised rankings after not having had him in his top 5. Said something to the effect that if he was going to make a mistake on a QB, it might as well be the be the one with the best combination of size, speed and arm talent and having the most upside. He really liked him more after his FSU pro day which he attended. The other idiot you were thinking of was McShay, I do believe.

Add Oliver, Neutz and maybe Carlson and that could be 2 or 3 more from the offense that get drafted next year.

Look at Eli Manning's career development. That was almost 5 years of suckitude. The fans and press were on him much of that time. Good thing for him that David Tyree held on to that ball because it bought Eli some more patience. Brees played with just enough inconsistency to have the Chargers draft Manning and then bring in Rivers. It's going to be harder to be patient with a young QB given the recent history of Newton, Kaepernik, RG3, Luck, Wilson and even Dalton, but that used to be the norm. I think as long as the o-line protection is good I'd like to see him play. If it's like it was against the Rams last year then he's better off not trying to learn the job under that kind of duress.

Keith McKellar?

I think a trade down with a QB/WR or WR/QB in the first two rounds is the most likely scenario and I would like/love to see it happen. Buddy expressed some admiration for the Bengals taking Green/Dalton (when he could have had them earlier) and I thought he was being honest there. These are their two biggest needs that I see so it's just a matter of whom they prefer. Trading down gives them a chance to add some defensive help in the 2nd round. Austin is not the type of receiver they have been claiming to want. I take them for their word on that. They been saying it for three years now and still haven't done it. Same with the QB position. They are overdue with adding young, premium talent at both positions. I'll guess Hopkins/Nas-anue-ley

Pats beat reporters are very underwhelmed by what Mallet has shown thus far in his two camps/exhibition seasons. Can't see how that translates into more than a 3rd round pick.

I have asked the question a few times. What made Kaepernick, Locker, Gabbert, Ponder, Taneyhill, Dalton or Weeden any better of a prospect than Smith, Barkley, Nassib, or Manuel? What they have in common is that the new CBA's rookie wage scale and the need for elite QB play makes taking a top of the draft flyer on a guy with "potential" much more attractive than ever before. What it will also mean is that a higher portion of these types will be cut loose before they ever get a 2nd contract with the team that drafted them. I think that OBD has been slow to recognize this new reality and they were still slotting them under the old criteria and were surprised to see QBs they liked go much earlier than they were projecting. BPA and drafting a QB are not compatible concepts. They weren't married to Fitz they just thought they had the luxury of being patient.

Wow. 1560 posts on this guy. I guess this is 1561 or maybe someone else will beat me to it as I type this. The thing I like most about Nassib as a pick is that he knows the offense well enough to run it. This Bills has tailored it him and seen him succeed in it. This may give him an overall advantage on Kolb and Jackson and make it more likely that he will get meaningful snaps in the 2013 season. If the Bills can get him later, 2nd round or trade down, all the better. Then they might know whether to invest a top pick on a QB in the 2014 draft without having to wait around for their 2013 QB pick to learn the offense in order to better evaluate him.

He does fine with tracking punts and kickoffs. Fielding punts on a windy day is not easy at any level. Where he does have trouble is when tracking the ball when running up the sidelines. Specifically on the defensive left side when his back is to the ball and the vision from his left eye is the most critical. He might be severely right eye dominant. That's my totally uninformed hypothesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance

As I recall, he threw multiple picks and had a throw where McKelvin was in perfect position for another but Rice(?) went right over his back for the TD. The Bills could not block Jared Allen and the Bills 2nd and 3rd choices at center had problems executing snaps. That was an ugly game.

My point was that the list of names I provided were deemed worthy of a 1st round pick. I through Weeden in because of his age and the others because they were in the top half of the 1st. Some team decided to "roll the dice" on them. I am asking what made these guys better prospects than what we see in this year's group. Maybe no one at the very top (Newton, Luck, etc.) but still a group of guys that warrant a shot.

If anyone can tell me what made Gabbert, Locker, Ponder, Tanneyhill and 28 year old Brandon Weeden so much better prospects than Manuel, Nassib, Barkley, Smith and Wilson, I'd like to hear it. Flawed college QBs that have potential to be winners are there most every draft. Tom Brady is still an unathletic, girly man. Being successful is more about developing a skillset that can overcome flaws and less about eliminating them.