thebandit27

I hear you. I'm guilty of being a slave to the talent-wins-out mentality too often, especially at WR. I recognize all of that, appreciate it, and don't wholly disagree with it. My #1 objection to trading Watkins has always been this: does it make the team better? And, to me, the answer to that was a clear and resounding no. I realize that they used the pick acquired to trade up for Josh Allen; I suppose that should matter to me, but I tend to default to the idea that if they'd have found another bargaining chip to use.

To be fair, those of us that wanted to keep him recognized that the team had his rights for at least 3 more seasons (4 in reality) before they had to make any kind of long-term commitment to him. They had a 4th season of his rookie deal, his 5th year option, and another year during which they could transition tag him. All with no long-term commitment. That, for me, was the rub.

Maybe, but more than that it was Walt Corey being Walt Corey. His horrendous 3rd down defense allowed the Giants to convert 56% of their 3rd downs that day. Fifty. Six. Percent. Let's not even discuss the atrocities that happened on their final TD drive with Mark Bavarro and Mark Ingram recorded career-best YAC moments on 3rd downs. Yes, the Bills were averaging 6+ yards/carry and should've run the ball more, but they did average 1 point per minute of possession that game. That's pretty darn good.

True...almost certain he didn't have to though. You don't trade up 17 spots and give up a future 1st round pick for anything else (looking at you, New Orleans).

I wasn't a big KJ guy when he came out of Wake Forest, so I need to see it with my own eyes before I'm convinced. That said, it's never a bad thing when a former 16th overall pick starts making waves in a new setting.

I wanted to clear up a misconception that I read in this thread. There was a contention that Josh Allen was not a good passer in the red zone. Well, that's debatable. I looked it up, and Allen actually had a red zone passer rating of 92.8, which ranked 20th in the NFL. http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/leaders.asp?range=NFL&rank=111&type=Passing&year= While that's not great, it's also not anywhere near as bad as some folks claimed.

Shame for him, but good thing they have Glenn to kick out to LT and Boling to play LG. The scary thing is that this means any chance of Bobby Hart not playing RT are probably gone.

I've seen this repeated a few times in this thread, and I wonder why. Just going purely off of play selection, their play-calling didn't change at all in the 2nd half. They called 13 passes to 9 runs (this removes penalty-negated plays, a fumbled snap, and a kneel-down at the end), and their first 2 drives opened with pass attempts to Keenan Allen. Their play selection in the first half was 17 pass attempts to 15 runs. There's almost no indication that they took their collective foot off the gas.

I have to learn to open my mind on him; he got one of the worst all-time WR grades from me during draft prep. He and DeRunnya Wilson; the two slowest, clunkiest WRs I've ever graded. They should move to Finland and open up a tea shop together.

There's about 3 full pages of Ragland discussion in that thread alone. Not sure why my post-draft posts (which I can't find) need to be provided to prove that I didn't change my mind when the Bills picked him. I don't bother with what people say post-draft about a prospect...people tend to let the lens of the when/where a guy is selected color their view of the prospect. Not me. If I say a guy is one thing before he's drafted, then I'm not going to reverse course 2 months later because a certain team picked him in a certain round. Perfect example: I say that I like Robbie Anderson as a 3rd round pick pre-draft, then he goes undrafted and gets signed by one of the worst-run organizations in the game. I'm standing by my evaluation because I saw what I saw. Does that mean I'm going to be right? No. It means that I stand by what I saw. Same goes for Dak Prescott. I had him as an UDFA because I didn't like his work in the pocket or his throwing mechanics. He went in the 4th round to a team with Will McClay running their draft board. McClay is, IMO, the best personnel guy in the NFL. I don't change my evaluation because I saw what I saw. Here we are 3 years later, and it turns out I'm dead wrong on Dak. McClay was right.

You didn't. I said that you didn't know anything about my approach to draft grades, and that's the end of that. I've never taken issue with your evaluations; I only ever said that pointing out a few times you were right as though it should give your opinion any greater emphasis doesn't mean much to me. You have an opinion, and that's fine. If you want a peak at how I evaluate players, the LB thread from the 2016 draft (linked below) is a good sample space. Lots of discussion about different prospects, what systems they do/don't fit, how the position of off-ball 'backer is changing in the NFL, etc

Generally agree with his projections, but I think they'll keep 9 OL and only 10 DBs. As for positional battles, here's what I see: - It's Bolden vs. McKenzie for the WR6 spot. The team clearly wants to keep a gadget-type with short-area quickness, and these two check that box. I don't really see Duke Williams entering the battle unless he looks incredible during TC. - Yeldon vs. Perry vs. Murphy for the RB4 spot. I know special teams is important, but I'd rather keep the guy that shows the ability to run the ball when asked. RBs get banged up in this league; it's a fact of life. - Lewis vs. K. Johnson vs. Pitts for the CB5 spot. I'm assuming that the top 4 CBs are set as White/Wallace/T. Johnson/Gaines (I'm counting Neal as one of 5 safeties in this case). For me, you've got plenty of guys that can play the slot role in T. Johnson, Gaines, Neal, and even Hyde if necessary. I'm not worrying so much about who can handle the slot; I'm more interested in who's the best cover guy. Keeping a 6th corner at the expense of a 4th tackle would be a mistake IMO.

Ignorant regarding how I grade prospects? Yes. I never said you were stupid; I said that you did something stupid. It happens; we all do it from time to time. Don't believe me? Have kids. You'll see. As for my evaluations, search the board. It's not hard.

First off, he was blocked one-on-one on about half of the snaps; it's important that you watch without an agenda (I can type that really fast now that I've written it to you at least 2 dozen times over the past few weeks). Secondly, watch the game. Tech's offense was designed to get the ball out quickly. Here's some football 101 for you: get the ball out in less than 2 seconds and the pass rush is severely limited. As for my takes on individual players, I'm not here to lay mine on the table for measurements. You want to know my takes on individual guys? Go look them up. This board has a search function. I'll remind you while you tout your genius that Sammy Watkins has the best season by a WR for the Bills in the last half-decade. In the last 2 seasons, in the pass-happy NFL, there have been a cumulative total of 35 WRs that had 1,000 yards. In 2015, Watkins had 1,000 yards on 96 targets in 13 games playing for a team that threw the ball less than any other team in football while catching passes from a career backup. His problem has been availability more than anything else. But great call on that one. It's easy to point to first-round players and predict that they're busts. It's actually a 50/50 proposition. That you've only gotten 4 right in 10 years is astonishingly bad actually. You want to impress me? Tell me a player that you were wrong about. I'll learn a heckuva a lot more about your ability to scout players from you telling me what traits you saw in a guy that busted when you expected more from him than I will from your chest-thumping. I'll give you an example: @Blokestradamus can scouts guards like nobody's business. He was all over Danny Isidora in the leadup to the 2017 draft. Izzy ended up going in the 5th round and has been generally lousy (sorry Blokes) for Minnesota. But do you know what I learned about Blokes in the process? That he recognizes contact balance and hand usage when he sees it. Yes, you are trotting out your draft record as though it has any relevance in this discussion. "I was right about Spiller/Watkins/etc and nobody else agreed with me, but I'm cool with it" as though it's going to have some impact on me. You want my draft evaluations? They're on the board for all to see. Like I said: if you have the goods, you don't need to trumpet your own record.

You're talking about a game during which Texas Tech ran over 100 plays on offense, many of which were explicitly designed to take Oliver's pass rush out of the equation. It didn't work well early, but around play 90 you could see that Oliver was gassed. Playing nearly 600 snaps 0-tech at 285 lbs over the course of a season and getting doubled nearly 50% of the time, while playing alongside few other draftable defensive pieces, can do that to a guy. I'm fine with the assessment. What I find stupid is the following: - Comparing Oliver's college evaluation to Donald as an NFL player, while ignoring what talent evaluators said about Donald in the leadup to the 2014 draft - Straw-manning by saying that somehow everyone is claiming that Oliver = Donald - Touting your own draft genius by claiming superior evaluations of 4 players over a 10 year period...if you have to tell people how smart you are, then that means that they can't see it for themselves. Notice that guys like Blokes and Gunner don't need to tell everyone how brilliant their draft evaluations are/were; if you've got the goods then people know it.

You have no clue. If you bothered to spend a quarter of a second looking into it, you'd see that implying that I'm relying on anyone else's evaluation outs you as ignorant. I've spent years on this board writing up profiles on players and doing hundreds of draft work-ups every year. You want me to polish your apples because you had Zay Jones as a mid-round pick? Be proud of that, that's really incredible work. Ground-breaking stuff. It would do you some good in terms of credibility to pay attention to who you accuse of regurgitating rankings. If you don't know, ask a friend.

Oh definitely. I mean, I had him going 8 to Minnesota, and was all in favor of Buffalo taking him at 9. As for one idiot's opinion, yeah, Nawrocki descended into buffoonery...but the point is that there was plenty of discussion regarding Donald's ability to hold up on the interior. Nope, you clearly don't get the point. You posted a link to someone saying "he's clearly not Aaron Donald" because he got beat up against double-teams etc. My response to you was that I had a problem with anyone comparing Donald as an NFL player to Oliver as a college player. That comparison is stupid, because we now have 5 seasons of NFL body-of-work on which to judge Donald. If someone is going to make that comparison, they should be doing so based upon Donald's college tape, but that would've contradicted what the Walter scout was saying. Instead of reading that, digesting it, and acknowledging it, you decided to obfuscate. Why I'll never know.

Nope. Not one single person has done that. Ever. I've seen you accuse people of it (my guess is that you did so in order to cement in your own mind that people are doing it), but that's as far as it goes. In fact, I challenge you to link to one single person ever suggesting anything even close to what you're implying here. Moreover, I pointed out to you that even if you do go through the ridiculous practice of removing week 17 from his statistics, he still showed a marked improvement in his passing from pre-injury to post-injury. It all comes back to that whole honesty thing; for whatever reason, you seem unwilling to just call it down the middle and acknowledge the points that don't support your case. It costs you in terms of credibility, which is a shame, because there's actually a part of you that appears to want to have a substantive discussion about Allen.

Nice to know that you once again refuse to acknowledge what anyone is actually saying and just trundle onward with your rant. I'm only slightly amazed that you somehow got the literal opposite of the point that I was making from my post. But I suppose that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I have a problem with "scouts" using Donald's NFL profile to compare him to Oliver's college profile. It's revisionist. Online scouts said the same exact things about Donald back in 2014: https://www.sbnation.com/nfl-mock-draft/2014/3/15/5473430/aaron-donald-scouting-report "Donald will never be mistaken for a two-gap run stuffer. He struggles to hold his ground against multiple blockers and will get overpowered. But at the same time, teams shouldn't expect him to be that type of defensive tackle. " "Because he's not a classic 315-pound monster, Donald doesn't have the power of some defensive tackles. While he doesn't get pushed around, he doesn't necessarily win because of his strength. " http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/aaron-donald?id=2543485 WEAKNESSES Marginal height and frame is nearly maxed out. Hands are more active than strong -- could play with more pop and power. Overpowered in the run game and ground up by double teams. Gets snared and controlled by bigger, longer blockers. Not a two-gap player. Has some tweener traits -- lacks ideal length and bend to play outside. DRAFT PROJECTION Rounds 4-5 BOTTOM LINE Short, scrappy, instinctive, highly productive defensive lineman who does not look the part, but inspires confidence he can be an exception to the rule. Is the type you root for and has the quickness, athleticism and motor to earn a spot as a rotational three-technique in a fast-flowing 4-3 scheme. Now, make no mistake, I disagreed with the above at the time, and I repeatedly said that if neither Watkins nor Evans fell to Buffalo's spot at 9, they should take Donald, because he's the best defensive player in the draft. But for Walter (or anyone else) to say that Donald didn't have the same reservations to his name is simply revisionist.

If you take out "in his first year starting" that was literally my reaction

Yes, that's the point that I was making. You have to be careful when you play the stats game. Of course, one would be justified in saying that Allen was also playing with nothing but backups--in week 17 and for the 16 weeks before then as well

I think you may have missed the point. And Hunt played more than 1 snap according to PFR, but again, not the point. I don't need to watch highlights from that game; I watched that game. Do you think for a second that I'd miss the kid's first NFL start after I spent 10 months hyping him?

Campbell is likely to be a goner after this season as they drafted Taven Bryan to be his replacement; Ngakoue is probably the EDGE guy that they'll try to keep.

http://www.nfl.com/player/shaqlawson/2555252/situationalstats ^ Situational stats if you're interested By the look of things, 3 of Shaq's 4 sacks in 2018 came when ahead by 15+ points, which more or less says obvious passing situation. Not a lot of context there...here they are broken down further: https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/players/situational-stats/2018/1983523/shaq-lawson/ Maybe that tells you more?