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st pete gogolak

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Posts posted by st pete gogolak

    Rd 2, Pick 33: WR Keon Coleman, Florida State

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, Nextmanup said:

    Clearly you are not alone!  Just listen to me or other fans, listen to NFL scouts and GMs, many of whom had this guy dismissed as sort of a "broken" prospect.  Then others saw the magic deep inside him and think they can get it out of him.  

     

    Obviously the Bills were in that latter group, wanting to take a chance on him but believing in his size and hands (I would guess...that seems to be his 2 big strengths).

     

    I think it's more than fair to label him "boom or bust" as of right now.

     

    No one will know anything about this guy until we watch him play for a year, and even then, he still might excel beyond that.

     

     

     

    I have mentioned this here before, but back during the SB years, my sister worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Amherst, where many of the Bills would eat at.  She served House Ballard and other big guys who would sit with him several times; the House would find what he wanted on the menu and then order the entree x 2, for himself of course.   For real! 

     

    I'm surprised it was only 2.  I'm sure he could put down 3!

     

     

    A guy nicknamed House orders two entrees?  Color me shocked!

    Rd 2, Pick 33: WR Keon Coleman, Florida State

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Motorin' said:

     

    He didn't catch almost every ball thrown to him. His catch percentage was only 57% last season. 

     

    When you watch all targets, you'll notice that he has a defender draped all over him on a ton of plays knocking the ball away. 

     

    Edit: his 2022 catch percentage was better - 66%. With fewer contested catches (18% vs 35%) and a higher contested catche rate (62% vs 33%)

     

     

     

    Those are huge discrepancies between years. Any explanation?  I presume caliber of competition is as good if not better in Big 10 as opposed to ACC. Offensive schemes run by Michigan State v. Florida State?  Something else?

    • Like (+1) 1

    the perils of not moving up - a cautionary tale

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    4 hours ago, dave mcbride said:

    John Butler was a good GM and personnel evaluator both in Buffalo and SD. But he had a very bad 2000 draft, highlighted by terrible players in the first and second round. The Bills needed defensive help going into that draft, and the strong word beforehand was that the Bills absolutely loved Ahmad Plummer (CB, Ohio State) and Mike Brown (S, Nebraska). They also liked Deon Grant (S, Tennessee). Plummer went 24th overall and the Bills took Erik Flowers two picks later, at 26. Even though they had drafted Antoine Winfield in the first in 1999, Thomas Smith was gone after the 1999 season and they had no one else, really, beyond Winfield and Kenny Irvin (Punt Catcher Chris Watson was their third CB). In the second, they were desperate for a safety but stayed put and drafted a fifth round-caliber player at the 58th slot (because he's all who was left), Travares Tillman (S, Georgia Tech). They watched Mike Brown go at #39 overall and Grant at #57 overall, just before they picked Tillman (a desperation move, and Butler more or less admitted as much afterward).

     

    Plummer had four very good seasons for SF but washed out after that because of injury, which was just bad luck. He was on a very good career trajectory and at least gave SF four good years, starting at CB right off the bat. Mike Brown played 10 seasons and was a two-time all pro for Chicago (although he had a bunch of injuries in his latter years). When healthy, he was elite. Deon Grant, despite missing his rookie season with an ACL tear, played for 11 more after that and started in over 160 games with 30 total INTs. The topper? His final game was the February 2012 SB vs NE, in which he started and had six tackles for a Giants defense that held an elite offense to only 17 points. Nice way to go out.

     

    If the Bills had sold some assets (either 2000 or 2001 draft capital) to move up 23 and 56 (Minnesota had both 55 and 56 that year, so was presumably open to a slight trade-down to 58), that draft would have looked a whole lot different in retrospect.  Maybe jumping ahead of Chicago for Mike Brown was undoable, but their later picks suggest to me that the capital would have been well spent on moving up (Corey Moore, Avion Black, Sammy Morris, Leif Larson, Drew Haddad, and Dashon Polk were the remaining picks). The thing is, Butler really did believe in those players they missed out on. Maybe Butler wasn't as aggressive as he should have been given that he was on his way out, but I doubt that -- he still wanted to field a winning team in 2000 (and to be fair, that team started out very well before injuries hit). In any event, the front office had the right instincts for the players they really wanted early on. 

     

    I think you can see where I'm going with this. Beane's MO is to not risk missing on his guy (assuming the player is within a reasonable distance) and this is the reason why. I'm not saying he HAS to move up at all; just saying that there is a potentially steep price one pays by sitting still and "letting the draft come to you." This is assuming, of course, that the player you want is someone you truly believe in, but that should be a given in any trade-up.

     

    Anyway, food for thought.

    Butler had checked out by 2000.  He was basically on his way to SD.  Should have traded back for the Michigan QB in 2000.

    OJ Simpson dead at 76

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    Anyone outraged by Blacks’ reaction to the verdict needs to look at American history.  How would you feel if you had witnessed whites being acquitted of murder by all-white juries  hundreds, if not thousands of times - Emmett Till, Medger Evers, the list goes on and on - when obviously guilty.  The OJ trial didn’t expose the American system of justice.  It just exposed it to a different set of people.

    • Like (+1) 1
    • Dislike 1

    OJ Simpson dead at 76

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    26 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

    Yeah it'd be weird for him to be proven innocent and then found civilly liable.

    Not really if you put numbers on it.  Preponderance of the evidence you need 50.1% for verdict.  Beyond reasonable doubt? No one puts a number on it but assume it’s around 90% - 95% sure person is guilty. So not guilty in criminal case but guilty in civil case, juries believed defendant was between 50.1% and 90% - 95% guilty. Kind of crazy but that’s the system.

    Could Dawson Knox be more of a gadget guy?

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    5 hours ago, akcash said:

    Maybe he could be kind of like the TE version of what Cordarrelle Patterson?


    I’d like to see if Joe can find more creative ways to get the ball in Knox’s hands so he can  show some of that RAC ability and power. 

     

    I think the way to do that is line him up in the backfield more. He’d be an effective weapon catching passes out of the backfield and this is just my opinion, but I would like to see what he could do with some traditional carries.

     

    Not saying he wouldn’t still be a top 2 inline tight end for the most part as I think he’s one of the better blocking tight ends in the league. 
     

    To me it seems he just has a lot of wasted movement in his routes and I think it’s easy for DBs to cover.  On the flip-side though he has  so much playmaking ability with ball in his hands.

     

     

     

     

    I’ve been thinking along the same lines. Line him up in traditional FB spot.  Lead blocker on running plays, move to the line in 12 personnel, slot, whatever.  Could lead to some interesting formations.

    • Like (+1) 1

    Diggs cryptic comments - 2024 edition

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    I wish I could remember who posted it, but a poster insightfully pointed out that Diggs’ 2022 and 2023 seasons were pretty much the same - great first half, lousy second half.  So what the heck is going on?  I certainly don’t buy the age thing.  Thirty year old receivers don’t fall off a cliff.  So again, why the dramatic drop off in consecutive years?

    • Like (+1) 1

    CURTIS SAMUEL A BILL

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    16 hours ago, Trust The Process said:

    Huge safety free agency class and we get nothing. 
     

    Deep WR draft and we sign Hollins and Samuel. 
     

    We trade Bates but we release Morse 

     

    And we sign Morrow and depth guys instead of addressing starters. 
     

    Once again, Beane is doing the opposite of which makes sense. He did the same thing the year we traded for Diggs. The depth at WR was strong in that draft and what Beane chose to do is trade for Diggs instead of drafting Jefferson. We shouldn’t have had to waste additional draft picks and a ton of valuable cap space on Diggs. 

    You know what’s crazy?  The Draft Fairy went to Beane the night before the Diggs trade and told him that Jefferson would be available when it was the Bills’ turn to pick and that SOB still went ahead with the trade!

    • Haha (+1) 3

    Free agency tracker

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    1 hour ago, TheWeatherMan said:

    Did you watch the last 8 games of the season?  

    Someone pointed out that Diggs’ 2023 was a rerun of his 2022. Fantastic first half and miserable second half.  No idea what to make of this other than it’s going to be interesting watching him in 2024.

    • Like (+1) 1

    Bills Memorabilia

    in The Stadium Wall

    Posted

    Given my avatar, it’s no shock I’m partial to the 1965 AFL Topps series.  It’s oversized cards. Each team has a different color background.  Bills are pink of all things.  Most valuable card in the series is the Joe Namath rookie card. I have it, but it’s a little beat up.  My wife gave me the OJ rookie card a couple of months before the murders.  At the time, we lived a couple of blocks away from Nicole Brown’s condo.

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