GrudginglyPessimistic

If there is anything that has proved to be flexible (particularly when there are dollars involved) it is NFL rules. How many years have you followed the NFL if you have any belief that NFL rules are inviolate. A better argument (still fairly fact free but better than ranting this is against NFL rules which were made under a pretty different set of circumstances that exists now) would be to simply point out there has been no discussion at all of this as a direction of Mr. Ralph interest or activity. Yet, on the other side: 1. The counterargument that this seems pretty appropriate for another small market team that depends upon regional appeal as GB makes sense for an exception for Buffalo. 2. It actually is a fair unknown after the market meltdown whether banks would be willing or able to extend the huge loan needed to pay for the Bills to anyone or whether an individual would be in a position in the current market to get leveraged the way even the billionaires would have to in order to come up with the substantial market value of an NFL team. My sense is that if Mr. Ralph kicks the bucket anytime soon for immediate purposes the NFL itself may end up becoming the owner since I think most package of folks I have heard about are likely going to have trouble getting the approval of the vast super vast super majority of owners which will determined qualified bidders from which the highest bidder will emerge. 3. It was shown when even the stupid pols who lead Cleveland (one of the few cities which actually is more poor fiscally poor than Buffalo according to federal census wealth measures) faced off against the NFL when Modell ran off to get cash from Baltimore that they beat the NFL and got the Browns name and franchise rights back. A big part of the threat which won the day for Ohio pols was threatening the NFLs partial antitrust exemption. Schumer has already hinted at unsheathing this cudgel if the only team which plays its home games in NYS tries to leave. I would not be surprised if even if Mr. Ralph's bill specifically says that the team will be sold to the highest bidder, that this will actually be to the highest qualified bidder (does anyone out there really think if the Ayatollah of Iran, Rush Limbaugh or some else deemed undesirable by a key NFL stakeholder was the high bidder that they would have to get the team? Nope). If the NFL were only to declare that the qualified bidder must keep the team in NYS and meet other criteria they set to maintain the NFL business then these will be the only qualified bidders from which the highest bidder can be found. From past events if the league's partial antitust exemption is at risk then the high bidder will have to come from here and a GB like system could well produce the highest bid for the team.

Several obvious points here when one looks at your list and look at your conclusion: I am glad actually you went to a broader list than the final 4 for your conclusion is that though I am not able right now to compare where these teams got their QBs from, the teams clearly got their QBs from a wide variety of sources such as FA, trade, and later round draft picks. Its definitely a QB oriented league but this does not mean a team should draft a QB in the 1st round as in real life there have been a number of franchise and SB capable QBs available through other sources than the draft. In fact, folks like Sanchez who get drafted in the 1st and immediately lead their team deep in the playoffs are far from the rule and even a great QB such as Manning who clearly was a great choice in the 1st (though it clearly raises the point that the very next choice in that draft was a first round turkey QB named Leaf so simply picking a QB in the first is no obvious answer) needed his team to do a bunch before it finally won an SB. Even the Sanchez example of get a 1st round QB is actually one built upon the key of them taking D'Brick and Mangold when they had two 1st round choices to make. The take a QB in the first pick basically comes down to the reality of Bradford, Claussen or Tebow. Feel free to advocate for any of three choices and simply sit back while many give you chapter and verse about why it would be downright stupid for the Bills to trade away even more resources as they likely would have to do to get into the top 5 picks where you will need to be to have a shot at a couple of these guys. Further, even if one settles for the dregs of the third QB taken in this draft with our #9 pick it is likely gonna be a disaster for us for a range of reasons. McClain in a 3-4 and Buluga make a lot more sense to me.

You are right on target that the key to survival and the key to making profits as an NFL owner is the same as it is for any business. The saying is that the customer is always right. One would need to be a fool to think that businesses do whatever the customer says bur profitable businesses identify customers needs and satisfy them. Often this done with commercials which convince some market segment that they had a "need" they did not know they had. The bottomline for the NFL is to identify the market you can get, get as much of its money as you can and then expand the market. Many of the folks who do a lot of ranting about the Bills must leave because it is a small market actually seem to fail in understanding what actually is the market that delivers the bucks to the owners. The local market is important as it delivers a significant chunk of change, However, the local market simply pales in size compared to the TV market which delivers the lionshare by a long shot of money to NFL owners. Why is there no team in one of the largest markets in the country, LA? This is in part because the real money which drives the NFL as a business in the billions of dollars which the TV networks deliver to the NFL to be divided among team owners each year. This is why when Gene Upshaw dictated to the owners that under the new CBA the total gross receipts needed to be the pie for the salary cap and that the players take needed to start with a 6, that the owners rolled over and took the deal (voting down badly an old stick in the mud like Mr. Ralph) to take a deal which guaranteed the plays 60.5% of the total gross. This was because with labor peace and a more guaranteed provision of TV shows to sell beer, cars and soap around the networks were happy to deliver billions to the owners. 39.5% of a bunch of money is worth more than 55% of a little money. The owners were good businessmen and took the deal. As far as moving the Bills, yep it could happen. However, I think it is quite doubtful the market and the money will make it worthwhile to do. True some new owner may get a marginally higher return in a different city. However, there likely would be a lot of grief and risk involved with such a move. The take for an individual NFL owner is gonna be his 1/31st pf the transfer fee and particularly after the division its not gonna be much and actually only marginally higher than a transfer fee from new owners even if the team does not relocate. In addition to that, the NFL seems to have a clear desire to do what any business does which is to expand their market. Getting eyeballs in Europe, Mexico, Tokyo and elsewhere has the likely potential to make the current owners a ton more $ than simply moving the team. Add to this all the pitful picture of abandoned Buffalo fans which will be the NFLs main commercial for years right at the time they are trying to excite foreign municipalities to buy and support teams can be done but moving the team makes it harder. Also add to that the Bills actually have more value to the NFL moving into new markets as being one of the original franchises and new owners get to join into that tradition and again moving the team hurts the NFL. The old days where the owners were plucky individuals who took personal risks to use capitalism to build their teams is gone. We are all socialists now in the social compact reflected in the CBA. After kicking Ed Garvey and the NFLPA's butt in the mid 80s lockout the players threatened to decertify their union and force NFL owners into a true free market. The owners ran and did not run to our current social compact model simply because there is more money to made by the team owner this way. Buffalo is a small market but the real market is eyeballs around the country and soon around the world. Whether the Bills will move or not is unlikely to happen because such a change would not deliver appreciable dollars to the owners who must decide on a move.

This has not actually been the experience with Schobel who actually proved to be such a good athlete that the oddest usage of him in pass coverage in the zone blitz was not simply him covering the odd RB, but he even from time to time took the responsibility of covering the odd WR in the short and even the middle zone. The problem with Schobel have actually been ones of an inability of the coaches to control him (the FO likely was not pleased when he pulled a Jason Peters even before Peters did and sat out all the voluntary practices and demanded a new contract even though he had several well paid years left on it- The FO caved but seemed to swear they would never do that again and Peters ran out of townas the Bills held tough to get exactly the deal he wanted). He also talked the post Jerry Gray coaches to let him keep the weight off he shed to run the zone blitz and he continued to be used often in pass coverage despite big Bills problems with the run. A switch to the 3-4 might be just what Schobel wants and may end the retirement talk if he gets to shed weight like he wants and play OLB. As far as Tebow I doubt that a small but noisy portion of Bills fan and I am quite sure the media will not give Tebow the time that even Tebow rooters like yourself acknowledge he will need to do things like shorten his release. If Tebow comes here and folks routinely throw the specter of Jim Kelly around that this is who he is the expectation that he will win immediately will come with it. Unless Tebow hits the ground running (and passing quickly he also will get run out of town. This is particularly true when the real measure folks will use is putting up Ws. If we spend the 1st rounder we would likely need to spend to get Tebow then this means we do not get either one of the two talented OLBs we need to run the 3-4 (do you really want to go into next season with either Scott or Draft as either of your OLB starters (or maybe both) if they do not use their first round pick to strengthen the LBs. I agree with you that likely Tebow will be very good one day. However, I think it is a better strategy to wait and get him in the next go round after the city with sky high expectations gets disappointed when like a normal player he needs time to develop into an NFL QB. It happened to Farve, to Steve Young and most recently to Drew Brees. How high do you think expectations on Tebow will be and unless he lucks into a situation like RoboQB in Pitts where he joined an SB ready team my sense is he ends up making a stop before he delivers an SB. No one is mistaking Lee Evans for Hines Ward or Whitner for Polamalu and the Bills are a long ways away from allowing a Tebow to develop and not get savaged by the local media and a few loud and noisy fans.

The fairly consistent chatter that Gailey would be open to switching to a 3-4 D (it has not been his or the Bills past habit so the highlighting of this openess may simply be the usual blogger stoker rumor but the talk has been persistent enough I think it is probably real. If so the current Bills depth chart which shows Chris Draft and Bryan Scott as the OLB starters clearly needs two new players if this switch is going to make the team imposing. Draft and Scott played better than expected last year but it is hard to see them sticking around as more than very reliable back-ups at OLB. This would mean the Bills are gonna be in the market for 2 OLBs and really heightens the possibility that our #9 choice may be an OLB. Maybe Graham from MI will still be around. We have a chunk of FA money even running a cap to cash system and taking a run after UFA Dansby from AZ seems like a nit unreasonable possibility. My guess would be though that part of what the Bills have in mind though is actually given a full pre-season to practice and teach him that the Bills are gonna switch Maybin to OLB. True many fans are already declaring his career a bust after he disappointed big time his rookie year. This attitude strikes me as simply premature given his holdout and how this likely retarded teaching him a new position. The Bills coaches has no confidence in him playing DE likely due to his relatively small size for a starting DE and the LB coaches has no confidence in him since they never got or were given the chance to teach him. The end result was that he was not well used. I am disappointed in Maybin as well though as a very good player simply forces the braintrust to put him the field with his play. Maybin did not do this. However, it still seems premature to simply disregard him given that the Bills braintrust already has proven they were not very successful at football. I think much of the anitpathy expressed on TSW about Maybin actually stems from folks being really cheesed at the FO in general. Far from a guarantee that Maybin succeeds but he deserves a shot. Another possibility is that Poluszny returns to the OLB position which he played a lot of in college. He has the speed to do this and the pro cover skills which actually made him a not unreasonable choice for the deep coverage responsibilities of the MLB in our Cover 2. For this move to remotely make sense though we would need a stud MLB. Thus, we would need to go MLB in FA (maybe Brackett from Indy though I do not think he is stud enough. Perhaps McClain drops to us at #9 and this is a viable option. The hiring of Griff Smith by Gailey interests me as rather than wait until his DC hire for him to put together his squad of position coaches, Gailey already clearly sees a need by this team of special attention at OLB. If we go 3-4 I think it increases the probability we go OLB or maybe MLB in this draft.

A great find and way cool. That being said while I actually do not doubt TE can have being scared trained out of him, I actually think his real problem is that he meets my definition of deserving the label injury prone. I define it as missing playing time 3 separate times to three different injuries within two seasons. Edwards missed PT due to a wrist injury, recovered from that but then missed playing time in pre-season (which ain't real ball actually as players will sit out practices when they might have player in regular season but in this case practice time was critical for TEs development as a young player and my sense is this undiclosed or I can remember which body part) was a second injury. He then missed time due to a concussion. Just as Edwards biology allows his hand speed to be a pretty incredible 82mph, my sense is that like RJ Trent's physical make-up is such that if he gets hit hard an injury to some part of his body will occur. Other players like Farve and even Jimbo seemed to be able to avoid injuries despite taking vicious hits or to simply play through the pain. TE unfortunately strikes me as injury prone (applying the objective standard I tend to apply though even it is subject to subjective judgments like whether his pre-season loss of PT was a real injury or not) and the Bills cannot rely on an injury prone QB without having a Frank Reich who can step in for as many as three games as a credible starter IMHO. If TE is in fact injury prone this cannot be trained out of him.

I agree that first rounders are likely to be the best QBs (well duh). I am saying that there are other methods which are better team building methods than drafting a player because other teams routinely do what the Bills have done and run the QBs out of town. Why spend the painful timing losing while training your 1st round pick when there are other 1st round picks and other franchise QBs available in the numerous market places. Add to this # the QBs who are UDFAs you can acquire who have proven that even non-drafted QBs can do the job, later picks, and there are a plethora of methods. The method of picking a QB in the first has a long record of not winning the SB (and actually somewhat long gaps where neither SB QB met your first rounder whom you drafted and developed criteria) until the emergence of Manning and RoboQB. The bottomline is who do you want to invest in specifically. The potential 1st round QBs all have serious question marks which make them look like pretty risky at best and for the most part downright bad choices for the Bills to make. Who specifically from Bradford, Clausen or Tebow do you advocate we take? My sense is that none of them are worth the risk as players to reach up to get them if they go before #9 or seem like good prospects for development. This team would likely be better off strenthening the OL (Buluga looks like the likely choice at #9 or McClain at OLB), In fact my preference would be to trade down but trades are really impossible to predict so most draft boards ignore them. So who do you want, Ryan Leaf, Joey Harrington or Akili Smith.

The problem is that the fluke is picking the 1st rounder and then developing him. The simple fact is that this has succeeded in bringing an SB win once a decade. Instead the field of other methods of acquiring your QB capable of leading your team to an SB win is far more diverse than you describe (drafting a guy in the 1st and developing him is only one way of producing SB winners) and actually until recently with the exceptional wins of Manning and RoboQB this had not produced an SB winning pick since Dallas chose Aikman, I am simply repeating this because I am not making this up. The claim you are making of simply draft a QB in the 1st and develop him is wrong if you claim either this is the only way to do it or that its a simple thing to do. In fact unless you are stone dead certain that Bradford, Clausen, Tebow or someone is Elway, your method seems quite unlikely to work unless some fluke happens.

The thing to realize though is that QBs capable of leading a team to an SB win can be acquired in all sorts of ways and that actually until Manning finally won one and RoboQB led Pitts to a win that no QB drafteed in the 1st round since Dallas chose Aikman had led the team that drafted him to an SB win. Its just really hard to pick a QB capable of winning the SB in the draft (for every Peyton Manning there are several Ryan Leafs). A far better strategy would seem to be to instead try to pick up your franchise QB as a reject who has played the Pro game from some other team (Brad Johnson is the best example as he was actually a two time loser before he proved he could lead a team to win the big one. Likewise, there are tons of examples of franchise (if you want to define leading a team to an SB win) QBs who can either acquired as FAs after they were rejected or walked away from the teams that drafted them (Favre, Dilfer), UDFAs like Warner, a lower round draft like Brady if you want to catch lightening in a bottle or even trade away something of value to get a Steve Young or one of the studs like Elway. Its definitely a QB league but this does not mean at all that you need to look to this year's QB draft class (all of whom have big ? marks making them likely the next JP Losman if you spend a 1st rounder on them.

Not to worry as McKelvin and Jabari both were both Bills for a season. To the extent one plays who replaces whom, my sense is that McKelvin was picked primarily because the Bills had him going several picks before they chose last year and felt McKelvin dropped to them. In general the Bills and the league have an attitude you can never have too many CBs, ao unless they had two lockdown CBs and also a clear nickel CB who is virtually a starter in the NFL these days they Bills and few teams would refuse to pick-up a CB who dropped to us with last year's pick (I think it was the #11 pick). The only thing that might sway them would be if another player they ranked highly at a position of compelling need was still on the board. At the time of the draft when McKelvin was taken the Bills and Jauron were still hopefully looking for pieces to push them into the playoffs rather than the rebuilding mode we are in today. The big impetus for the Bills at that point was not necessarily replacing future FA losses like Greer who would be UFA after the 2008 season but making sure they had a #1 CB after they had let Clements walk the year before. McGee had actually surprised folks who had written him off after he had initial trouble picking up the Cover 2, but he was developing into the #1 CB and there was no thought by anyone that Greer was (or is now) a #1 quality CB. Greer like several other Bills such as Youbouty were candidates for the#2 role. McKelvin was picked with the idea he could eventually become our #1 CB and to boot might immediately give us an alternative to Roscoe Parrish at PR and of great importance allow us to not employ McGee as both a KR guy and #1 CB. The idea of matching McKelvin up with Greer as his replacement does not indicate a lot of understanding of how to build the Bills into a winner.

I also was impressed with Greer at training camp and in pre-season where for several pre-seasons in a row he performed well even going horizontal a couple of times for nice INTs in pre-season. Yet, he never seemed to break out and perform in regular season to match is pre-season output. Part of this was likely the coaches never calling on him in regular season the way they put him in tough coverage as a CB the way they did in pre-season. Part of this though was that actually Greer did not seem to show as much on the field as starters like Clements or even McGee who was playing well when Greer first got here in 2004 and after some initial struggles in Jauron's Cover 2 developed into our #1 CB. Greer as much as we liked him did not perform well enough in the field to generate any whey and cry from fans to start him and apparently he did not show enough in closed practices to win a spot. Greer actually did see a lot of PT as he actually appeared in 16 games a season for the Bills until he got hurt an only did 10 games in his FA year. My sense is that the whines about it being a mistake to draft McKelvin cause we already had Greer actually ignores the fact that such a move not only endorses Greer but also stands firmly behing Parrish as being the Bills answer on punt return duty and it is clear that Parrish is not what we need for this duty. I for one had little problem with the Bills letting Greer go as one of the impacts of us drafting so heavily for CBs and second day pick McGee developing is that on a team with a lot of needs CB is not one of them. Greer strikes me as a player who can be very good on a good team, but on our bad team with a relatively strong secondary he was a player we actually could not afford. So kudos to Greer for picking a good team and his skill and intellect have gotten him a contributing role on an SB team. However, if he had stayed here it would not have been good for Greer and likely not have made much of a difference for us.

Brees is simply another demonstration that the key to getting a franchise QB is not only to be found in drafting a great 1st rounder but actually teams can find their franchise QB on the trade block (as both Brees and actually Favre came to GB) in FA (Favre to MN and other SC winning QBs such as Brad Johnson or Dilfer) or late round picks such as Brady. In fact the eventual success of Manning after he was drafted by Indy and immediate success of RoboQB in Pitts has made folks forget that the last first round pick to lead the team which drafted him to an SB was Troy Aikman who was picked back in the late 80s. Drafting a QB in the 1st can work but is simply a high risk maneuver which would almost certainly be a far worse alternative for the Bills than to instead focus on improving us in the trenches. Particularly in this draft where the best QB Bradford is very good, but brings with him questions of injury recovery from his twice injured shoulder and would be playing for us behind our incredibly young OL which would not be reinforced with the better OL players in this draft picking a QB in the first may well condemn this team to another several years of chasing it tail.

On the QB issue you mention, the decision to go no QB in this draft seems to be a good one. Bradford seems far and away to be the class of this draft at QB, but his history of shoulder injuries is something I think he PROBABLY will overcome (particularly if he has a vet OL protecting him) but is simply too much of a risk for the Bills if he drops to them (and trading away resources likely giving even less help would be crazy). The focus here of getting the help in the trenches on OL we need with Buluga, an OLB player I like in Weatherspoon, and then on the second day turning to a cast of several players to build on the trenches on DL and ST potential players seems quite reasonable. The Bills can roll the dice with a TO type skill player draft but we saw what this approach gets you and instead the fundamentals emphasized in this draft would be a good start by Nix.

Was Maybin a bad choice for 09? Yep (now tell me something which is not obvious) Is Maybin a career bust? NO! An observer needs to be nuts to declare a player a total bust after one season. My sense is that clearly the odds are against Maybin having a good career (though actually they are only a hair above 50/50 for any first round pick to be a starter after his first year based on what reality has been in the past). The odds are actually a good bit higher for a top 10 pick so faulting the Bills for picking a choice who did not produce much as a rookie is quite reasonable. However, even the thinnest analysis should be able to identify likely reasons for this first year error which are simply far more likely than the Bills simply picked an idiot with their top 10 choice last year. More logical explanations include: 1. The mistake the Bills made in the 09 draft was in selecting a player whom they did not see from talking to him at the Combine and also their relationship with his agent that there was a pretty good chance they were not going to make him a contract offer which would bring him into camp on time. If the Bills had gauged correctly that they were not likely to make a contract offer to sign their #1 quickly then they should have selected a #1 whom they knew would be able to contribute without pre-season camp. 2. Maybin strikes me as showing little production in 09 because we always planned to utilize him at a position other than the one which attracted us to him in the first place. The Bills appear to have figured Maybin to be an OLB right from the start based on the LB jersey number they gave him. He certainly demonstrated the speed rusher chops with his achievement at RDE in college. In fact, since he was often lining up against the TE in college rather than the LT he has demonstrated the ability to take on such players and give him OLB duties to this athletic player was quite rational. However, he clearly was gonna need to practice as a Pro in a new position for him to be productive and by not getting him into camp immediately the Bills in essence committed to non-productivity in his first year. It simply is dumb and shows a lack if football intellect for anyone to declare Maybin a bust right now. A disappointment in 09, YES. However, this fault likely falls more on DJ and the on-field braintrust than it does on the FO for picking a player not capable of becoming a solid pro. Maybin may already have lost the critical confidence in his game to become a very good player. However, what seems to strike me as a key to him becoming a success is for the Bills LB coaches and DC next year to construct a D which employs his better talents and for them to personally build his confidence so that he goes out and demonstrates the same speed and skills which got him double digit sacks as a youngster in college. I believe Maybin can be a productive player with solid coaching.

He PROBABLY will be fine and come back in the pros to be the players he was at his best in college. The key word though is PROBABLY. The Bills are simply not a good enough team that it can afford to roll the dice on taking a key player with their #1 who PROBABLY will be a great player. This team has tons of other needs at lots of positions that it seems to just make little sense to roll the dice on a QB that has any injury issues as a college player. In particular since one of those areas of need is the OL such that one is not only taking a risk that Bradford will recover, but by not focusing on strengthening the OL your QB likely is gonna face some pressure on his blindside with a less than proven LT, picking Bradford seems foolish. The Bills may quite likely judge the player available at our #9 pick not to be an LT even if you commit the #9 to some other player like the best OLB available. However, I feel better about us doing this if the QB our lower drafted LT is trying to protect is a vet like Fitzy or someone with the pro experience of Brohm or even the injury prone Edwards rather than POTENTIALLY (not probably but yes potentially injury prone Bradford. Going QB in the first simply makes little sense as a teambuilding strategy for this team.

I agree that the Bills drafting has sucked the last few years, but I'm sorry it is 20/20 hindsight in terms of the faults you are finding. 1. McKinnie over Williams is a hindsight judgment as my recollection is that a great many folks judged McKinnie to be about at the same level talentwise as Williams but in fact McKinnie was such a character idiot I think most posters were quite pleased that we took Williams over him. In fact, though Williams spent his initial seasons here playing his way to well deserved bust status, ironically he looked like a better pick than McKinnie for at least two if not three years as McKinnie actually held out a while his first year and made it a bust for the most part. He followed this up with fairly uninspiring play his first couple of years and added sugar on top by acting a fool on a Vikes loveboat cruise and getting investigated with a real threat of suspension. Quite frankly Williams was clearly a bust but it would not surprise me if he had come here with his infantile nature that Sully and boys would have run him out of town if he came into the toxic Bills situation. 2. Maybin is a clear demonstration of the McKinnie effect that a player needs to do all he can to get signed and into camp ontime. Maybin clearly disappointed in 09, but one would have to be a football idiot to declare any player a bust after one season or declare Okrapo a god after one season. Maybin in particular is still a very young player and was given an LB $ by our stupidstaff because they probably judged he would be more effective at LB than DE. Sure folks said this that or the otherthing but it is simply too early to draw reasonable conclusions after 1 year of play. 3. I like others advocated before the draft picking up Ngata as we badly needed both DL and S help. It may have worked out better if they had gone Ngata way but this one is a pretty close call and this board reflected that on thoughtful review after a few days. Some argued that picking a safety at #8 was a reach. However, folks who made this claim were actually simply wrong as is shown by Huff actually having been picked before Whitner so S did get top 10 picks. This was further substantiated by an S also going at #15 to Miami. The folks who declared picking an S a reach were simply guilty of outmoded thinking because they did not do good enough football analysis to see that the S in the form of players like Saunders in Indy and Polamalu in Pitts were central to SB wins for their teams. The Bills choice did not work out at Whitner never proved on the field to be more than just an alleged Pro Bowl hopeful but really at best simply a good but not great player. Whitner actually turned out to be a better player than Huff who was the safety taken before him, Yeah the Bills drafting has not worked out, but your accusations simply do not hold up as a good explanation of this failure with only the barest of examination, Even the correct designation of McCargo as a bust needs to be accompanied by some deserved kudos for finding a player in Williams in the 5th who won ProBowl alternate nods this year. Hindsight is really not always 20/20 as your claims on the details even when correct (though premature) in general are pretty 20/40 when it comes to the specifics.

I would only be embarrassed if the GM hire did not even pass the laugh test (not having a GM last year was laughable). However, I am not embarrassed if we do not have the BEST (as folks will disagree who is the best) but I will only be disappointed and not really embarrassed as long as the GM hire has some recent success on his resume which means the choice MAY work but MAY not. I mean who would you consider to be the best choice. One might reasonably want a former HC or GM for another team who has won the big game before. However, there is simply no example here in the real world of a man who won it once and then succeeded in winning it again with a new team, Add to that this wunderkind almost certainly got canned because his last teams were losers (Shanahan, Billick for example) or he has been out of coaching circles for a few years (Cowher for example and too boot he has a Marv like record for teams he HC'ed blowing it in the big game. I think the bottom-line is that the true embarassment here is that Mr. Ralph has owned a team he has made incredibly bad decisions with for a decade (or more) having ultimately toxic relationships with Polian, Butler and TD, and also with HCs Phillips, Mularkey and Jauron (here the toxicity was extending and then having to fire him in short order). I mean what did you expect given Mr. Ralph's proven track record? While Nix is clearly not the first person most folks think of, he certainly is a football man with a track record of evaluation success at SD. My sense is he deserves a chance to have the team prove itself with Ws and likely deserves being on a short leash for fans if his team stumbles quickly under his leadership. If you are embarrassed it probably says more about you than about Nix.

While I see your OL outlook as plausible (Wood recovering from a gruesome injury to anywhere near his old form is possible but I have heard no real medical assessment to make me want to count on him in anyway to excel next year), However, the likelihood of getting a QB from this draft who will legitimately compete for the starter job in '10 sounds like little more than wishful thinking to me. For any first round choice it is only slightly more than a 50/50 proposition this player will be #1 at his position on the depth chart at the end of the year. Looking at the specific choices available this year I do not see any of them being available at #9 and being more than a fantasy choice to not need several years to learn the pro game before he becomes a contributor. Sure Tom Brady shows you can get a stud QB late in a draft but even he was not a first year contributor. This team seems far more likely to get a QB capable of leading to even an SB win using the methods other teams have successfully used like an FA pick-up or even a trade. A draftee is far more likely to produce like a JP Losman rather than a Dan Marino and that is the simple reality.

Since the Bills assigned him an LB jersey #58 rather than the usual DL # in the 70s or 80s I had figured right from the start they were planing on ultimately employing him as an LB. Their usage plan was sidetracked by the extended time it took to sign him. I expect with the off-season voluntary workouts and next season Maybin will be employed as a heavier than the norm LB rather than a lighter than the norm DE. I suspect this has always been the plan though it was never implemented in this lost season.

This is true for sure, but the history in this league is that a team is far more likely to find a QB capable of leading a team to an SB victory through a trade, a lower round draft pick, or through FA rather than by drafting a QB in the first. The most recent history because of the achievements of Manning and RoboQB are somewhat illusory as no QB since Aikman has led the team which drafted him to an SB win. If you want to talk real world examples, do you see any of the likely first round choices like Clausen, Bradford or Tebow having the same consensus adulation that Manning had (and even with a strong endorsement of him there was a strong element of Ryan Leaf backers in that draft). It seems to make far more sense for us to look to get our franchise QB through the methods other teams have found methods for finding franchise QBs or at least QBs capable of leading a team to an SB wins that other teams used because even if the chances are high investing in any QB, at least with methods other than investing a 1st round choice the risk is lower. I think we are better off shooting to find the next Dilfer, Brad Johnson, or Tom Brady rather than pretending Clausen, Bradfor, or Tebow is the next Manning or RoboQB. Without a QB you might have nothing and by drafting a QB in the first one increases the chance your pick is going to be nothing and it costs you big time.

I really doubt there is a safe pick meaning one whose chances of success are so great that picking him outweighs the possibility of disaster if he turns out like 50% or more of 1st round choices he is 50/50 to start in his first year. The conventional wisdom is that a 1st round pick will become a reliable starter his first year. I know for the couple of years I looked at in detail (one of which was generally agreed to be a very strong draft) only a hair above 50% of these players were first on the depth chart at their position for the team which drafted them in their second season. Even a choice like a McKelvin who was not starting material for the Bills in his first year was still a contributor to the tea, on ST. A QB either starts or sits. Even worse you probably pay a premium for this player who is 50/50 to contribute. As far as those 3, Aikman and Manning were rated to be likely franchise players when they came out of college. But then so was Ryan Leaf who was taken the pick after Manning so the crapshoot the draft really is is true for a QB as well. RoboQB was a consensus 1st round choice but no one had him QBing a team to an SB as a rookie. Then again no one had Brady QBing a team to an SB win his sophomore. Tebow, Clausen and Bradford are all highly thought of in this draft, yet none of them is a consensus choice to be a franchise choice worthy of a team in need of immediate contribution at several positions. The simple fact of past experience is that a 1st round QB choice virtually at best sets back our recovery time for a year while this youngster learns the game even if he works out (which he may well not). If this team wants to get good the fastest then it seems a far more doable strategy to build the more likely immediate contribution from drafting another position than QB but instead find your franchise QB in the manner more likely that other teams have used like a late round pick, in FA, or even a trade.

I am not torn on this at all. I have long made the case that there was simply no record of a 1st round QB choice delivering an SB win since up until recently one had to go back to Troy Aikman to find one. The SB wins delivered by teams led by Manning and RoboQB ended this as an ongoing flat out argument against ever drafting a QB in the first. However, the examples of Manning and RoboQB while finally providing a real world examples of how a QB drafted by a team in the 1st round can lead or help deliver an SB win to the team which drafted him, the fact remains that for every Manning there is also a Ryan Leaf and that in fact the Akili Smiths, Joey Harrington, Losman's, Boller, et al. outweigh the chances of picking a winner in the 1st round. There are lots of examples of SB winning franchise QBs who are acquired by trade, FA, and low round draft picks (Brady is the best example, Johnson, Dilfer, Elway, the other Manning) rather than by simply drafting a player that other mechanism should at least be considered as options (and actually first options) before simply casting the teams fate to the winds since since even in better case scenarios it gonna take some time before that QB develops. Trying to build a TEAM through spending a 1st on a QB is simply a high risk proposition.

My sense is that while even true fans may be disappointed that we did not hire one of the past SB winners on the market, they also realize that Pete Carroll was not all that impressive in terms of results as a pro coach (somewhere around .500 I think in multiple seasons with 1 playoff appearance) while Gailey made the playoffs both years he HCed the Boys. Even in his .500 season he led the Boys to the division championship. I think most fans look at Carroll who ran out of USC just ahead of pretty possible NCAA sanctions and laugh if they are yucking it up about a coaching hire.

For sure when it comes down to marketing the move. A Cowher hiring would have brought excitement from the fan base likely exceeding but certainly unparalleled since the thousands of season tickets sold in the immediate aftermath of the Drew Bledsoe get. However, we all saw how that turned out. The HC is likely far more important to the team's longer term prospects than the QB, but in terms of the ultimate measure of winning an SB there is simply no record whatsoever of an HC being able to win an SB with a team after he won one with another team. The Gailey hiring strikes me as far from a no-brainer as the right thing to do. However, it does strike me as likely bringing the thing that Cowher likely would have brought which is a playoff appearance relatively soon (he needs to show positive progress toward making the playoffs in 2010 and make the playoffs or come pretty darn close by 2011 or he should be gone). I doubt Cowher would have done better so for me the answer as a fan is wait and see how I feel about the hiring but as always I feel the same way about the team.

The first three words of Lombardi's article are actually the part that is spot on He says, "I don’t understand" The rest of the article is fairly ignorable after the total truth he states initially.