BADOLBILZ

My guess is there is a good chance nobody even signs him and he tries out for a spring league next season. If he does get an NFL camp look..........I bet he just gets hurt pretty quickly and that's it. You don't just walk away from playing pro football for a couple years and come back in your 30's because you worked out a lot. I hope for his sake he is the exception.........always felt bad for him getting bullied and physically abused by his girlfriend. Dude is a true gentle giant.

No that wasn't an issue........our parents were baby boomers they didn't care about what we watched and like I said, the pervy milf or HS girls working there let us rent whatever we wanted. We had two independent movie rental places growing up and going to the store itself was fun. One of the owners had a son who was a friend of mine and their connection thru owning a bunch of stores and being a top 100 retailer helped him get into film school at Bucknell. He became a producer of tv shows and low budget movies and married a B-movie/Maxim girl who we had watched working on MTV growing up. I didn't run into Blockbuster until I went to college. They corporatized a previously fun process. Yeah they had more copies of new releases. But good riddance. Movie renting process to me was mostly an excuse to be alone with your GF instead of taking her someplace.........like Netflix and chill. Sometimes it worked better if the movie wasn't very good.

The fact that they all use the same system for a highly subjective analysis if proof that it's a great system. I take it all with a grain. I just stacked players in the order I valued them for that specific draft. The numerical value you apply is of not much value if the overall quality of the group is not the same from year to year........which it's not. And using that number system to compare players of other drafts would have more merit if the whole process wasn't so wildly subjective to begin with. But if I were employing a bunch of gym teachers to evaluate talent for me I would probably use a system just like that too. It's corporate 101. Helps keep everyone easily replaceable. You don't want to see what hiring Ivy League minds to create EFFICIENT systems to boil your sport down to an extract does to the entertainment value of the entire process.

Blockbuster was the boneless wing of video stores. No "Faces of Death" or campy porn section that the pervy milf at the counter would let you rent from when she knew you were 14 (like a woman from an @\GoBillsInDallas/ thread). And soon as the age appropriate girls at the counter put on a Blockbuster shirt they were instantly 99% less likely to make bad decisions with their fellow teenage customers. Blockbuster sucked. Bad.

Yeah and the grading is just very subjective. Sometimes the perception that there are a lot of good players pushes a player down the board like Davis was.............but also sometimes the rising tide raises all ships and players who don't warrant the grade get a bump because the class is perceived as special. I've contended that if you put Jonathan Mingo in a lot of prior drafts he is a late 1st round prospect. Now in recent weeks we've actually started to see some acknowledgement of that.....but to my surprise he's largely been viewed as 3rd-4th rounder since the season ended. I think he's still a high risk that early but given that teams gamble on a premium WR who could possibly play the X position........I'd EXPECT he'd be a late first or early second rounder. But IMO the perception that the non-slots in this class are a bunch of underachievers hurts him. He doesn't get the benefit of the doubt for his QB play, etc..

Absolutely. Human nature to do things like copying what worked recently and shunning what hasn't trumps any perception of impartial grading. Hopefully that doesn't change because it's a lot more entertaining watching teams make emotional decisions and the consequences that follow than seeing everyone get the value they should, in theory, from their picks.

I'm sure that's how it works actually. It's just human nature to get shy about over-drafting a position when for 4 years in a row that specific position has failed to meet expectations. Littered with 1st round busts. Maybe the worst stretch of WR drought in NFL draft history. And conversely, a very strong draft like 2014 can lead to overconfidence the next season. 2015 saw 6 1st round WR's and 5 were true draft busts for those teams. Amari Cooper being the exception. 2016 class was an 0-4. Even the 2018 group with Moore and Ridley was a bit too wait and see yet compared to that awesome 2014 goup. But that 2019 WR group was a very imposing bunch of WR's on the hoof including maybe the greatest WR combine performance ever by DK. Deebo and AJ Brown also killed the pre-draft process. That would have been a 6 #1 pick class if it were evaluated in 2015 too.........and would have largely been worth it. Crazy in retrospect how Brown and (typical Patriot head scratcher) Nkeal Harry were the only 2 to go off the board in round 1.

Bad news........by just trading a couple comp picks Brett Veach could likely move way up and get Bijan and relegate the Bills and the rest o the AFC to irrelevance for years to come. You really should start a thread about this take. It has "Mario for Skelton" potential resonance.......one way or the other........IMO.

Yeah because 2019 wasn't actually a weak WR draft. Teams were just gun-shy from the bad WR drafts of 2015-2018. That was a really significant and hard to explain dry spell where a lot of teams got burned.........which re-set the expected value of WR's in the draft. Since 2019 there have been some tremendous WR drafts. Bills haven't got much to show for it but there have been.

Oh gawd the Cardinals are not likely to ake that and eat a penny of salary. RB's depreciate 3 rounds the moment you drive them off the lot.

Jets ended up, potentially, giving up a considerable amount more than their 2 second round picks this year. Good job by Green Bay prying that +65% playing time = 1st rounder deal. That will be a real kick in the Jets nuts if they miss the playoffs and also don't have their #1 pick.

You also think where Bijan Robinson lands ultimately determines the balance of power in the AFC for years to come though, too.

Yep you can always find 5 stars scattered around the board but when you have draft evaluators with close to HALF as many 1st rounders in a given draft than normal.......and that draft also has more 5 stars than average........that's a bit of an unusual combination. If we can't blame covid for disrupting critical, early career development.......then it may also more broadly indicate that the pipeline in general is not healthy. Which is even less encouraging to consider.

Yeah and just maybe this draft will turn out to be an opportunity to steal some talent like Jarrett because some GM's are writing it off as a bad year. I wouldn't throw my process out the window for any draft. A couple years ago this class looked like it might have both a high floor and ceiling. There were A BUNCH of guys who one could envision as #1 overall picks. There are no guarantees that next year or the year after will be better overall groups. I think, as football fans, we all wonder about the impact of lower participation in youth football on the NFL pipeline at positions other than QB. I really would not be surprised to see the lesser roster with the better QB win most of the SB's in this decade(like we just saw).......and that colors my idea on team building if I am a GM.

So 35 of the players eligible for this draft are former 5 star recruits. To put that in perspective for non-followers of college football/recruiting.........there are typically less than 30 in a recruiting class. So to be honest, I think it's been something of a surprise that this draft has ended up being viewed so poorly given the potential a lot of these players showed as recruits and even early in their careers. Last year at this time there was a lot of "yeah but wait til' next year.......Jalen Carter is the best defender on the Georgia team and Will Anderson probably would have been the #1 pick if he declared" etc... Addison, Njigba, Tillman, Hutchinson.........those were all guys who probably would have had 1st and 2nd round grades in a much better WR class if they came out. 2022 just really wasn't a great year for development of players from those 2019-2020 recruiting classes.

That low number is not for lack of 4 and 5 star HS talents. There are quite a few of them in this draft. It's possible that we are underrating some of the talent because Covid really impacted the development of some of these guys. A lot of underachievers in the group for sure though.

Yeah you have to have the whole 7 round mock draft from ESPN+ to really see who is available and the exercise is to select the player you'd select in each round if that's how it actually fell. Of course, changing where one player is selected earlier can change how the rest of the draft goes.

Good points. I am a LaPorta fan. You patched up some holes (on paper at least) later but I think Battle and Pappoe are probably just special teamers who would go much later in better drafts. Would like to get some guard talent in the fold. Takes longer to develop them than secondary and LB(if instinctive) and it's a better guard class than S or off-ball LB, IMO so I like that depth later.

While the Bills haven't had any 1st round busts in the McBeane regime........the only one of them to play to their reputation and have a big impact as a rookie was Tre White. So I think we are accustomed to modest rookie season expectations by now. Aaron Quinn likes to hear himself talk though so it's just a wind-bag being a wind-bag.

He used to be as connected as anyone.........so his opinion still carries some weight.

I'm more concerned about them drafting a WR in round 1 who doesn't have outside versatility.........like Downs. A slot-only is a bad use of a chip that should be invested in a player with a $20M-$30M aav ceiling. Addison is fringy there as well but at least there is a chance he can be a WR1 and starter both inside and out............I just don't see it with Downs..........and I follow UNC closely. But rest assured........if they draft a slot-only we will have a bunch of apologists jumping into insist that they can play anywhere to try to shout down any criticism of the pick.

Gabe Davis and MVS are about as close of a player comp as you will find at the position. MVS is faster but they are both roughly 50% catch rate guys good for 17 yards per reception. Both prone to big games then bad games. MVS lead the Chiefs in receiving in the AFCCG win over Cinci. The question for the Chiefs is whether Toney and Moore play up to their 2021 1st and 2022 2nd round draft pick pedigree if the Chiefs don't decide to add to their WR corps. But their WR1 is really Kelce and he's more reliably effective when needed than Diggs. Diggs can be erased from a gameplan as an outside receiver.........the Chiefs have done it to him. Kelce can't be stopped you can only hope to contain him. So the Chiefs receiving corps starts with a more reliable foundation.

At Clemson, where the game was really just a physical battle, he was. Watkins was.......at the time........the greatest true freshman WR in NCAA history........and that made sophomore DHop WR2 at Clemson that year. As a professional........intelligence comes much more into play though. DHop played it right. I'm convinced he got himself on a great PED program early and worked smart and hard to get to the top. Sammy basically did everything wrong and wasted what should have been a great career.

The depth at CB in this draft is better than safety, IMO. Part of Beane's issue is that he's not great at valuing players yet. Still over-paying and over-investing draft capital. I believe he is a smart guy and is subsequently getting better as a GM. In year 10 maybe he's a great GM. Howie Roseman wasn't the way he is now early in his career either. The key is not doing too much damage while he's learning on the job. He's done a lot of that wrt salary cap. He needs to not waste the value of his draft picks. Three "Day 2" RB's was absurd. That stuff adds up.

Problem is.......pretty poor safety class. Again.........this is why you don't reach for needs..........next year you could find a better safety in round 5 than round 2 this year..........that kinda' stuff happens. Get the best haul of talent/positional value that you can and address the 2024 needs you fell short of in UFA next offseason. The quality of safety you could get in round 2 is not likely to be better than Taylor Rapp..........and he signed for $1.7M. The drop in street value from very good to adequate at safety is precipitous. Same with slot CB.