hondo in seattle

On the one hand, it bugs me that Beane is spending less this year on the WR room than the majority of NFL GMs despite having a QB who can throw the ball all over the field. On the other hand, I don't think the cupboard is bare. If a couple guys with spotty or unproven backgrounds step up, and if Brady is good at scheming up an offense, we'll move the ball and score points. Yeah, there are too many ifs but they're not complete longshots. Keeping my fingers crossed.

As a long-suffering Bills fan, I have concern about every opponent. I've experienced too many disappointments and witnessed too many unhappy surprises over the years. When I was in the army, we planned for different scenarios: most likely, most favorable, most dangerous... The most dangerous scenario is Saleh puts together another good defense and Rodgers stays healthy & has a good year.

I can't find this online, but I remember hearing Miller's career was derailed by some eye disease that caused him to lose his peripheral vision. He ran for over 1,000 yards with a solid 4.5 YPC in his promising rookie season with the Bills. He only put up about 500 yards with a 3.4 YPC for the entirety of his remaining NFL career. Anyone know the story?

Fergy had an interesting career evolution. At first, his job was to hand off to OJ. He only surpassed 2,000 yards passing once in his first four years. But in '79 and '81 he threw for 3,500+ yards, which was pretty good back when the NFL was still transitioning from a running league to a passing one. Buffalo Bills franchise records: Highest touchdown percentage in a single season – 7.8 (1975) Lowest interception percentage in a single season – 0.7 (1976) Most sack yards lost in a single season – 387 (1979) Most interceptions thrown in a career – 190 Most sack yards lost in a career – 2,529

I think we retain Knox both for tactical and financial/contract reasons. While Kincaid may be the better receiver, Knox and Kincaid have different skill sets. Knox is the better blocker, works better in contested space, and can run through contact. I don't think McD or Brady would want to give up what Knox offers. Another consideration is that we don't have a bunch of proven wideouts, so we probably want to keep our two 'proven' TEs.

I still think my point is valid but yours is too. It is a very diverse WR room with a lot of different skillsets for Brady to use: big guys, quick guys, man-beaters, zone-beaters, speedsters, possession receivers...

I doubt it, but... One of my wife's relatives owns a construction company in a country I won't malign by naming. The relative had a lot of trouble with delayed and/or failed building inspections for a while. Then she started hiring the building inspectors as 'engineers' theoretically to pre-inspect work. The conflict-of-interest laws there forbid the inspectors who work for her as a second job to inspect any of her projects. But their friends do the inspections. So now the inspections get prompt passing scores. She explains that the inspectors don't want to get their friends in trouble, or potentially cost them a job, by failing them.

GB, I agree with you something like 99.9% of the time. But this one is an exception. NFL refs are trained and selected because of their ability to make good calls instantaneously. I personally love this move. I wonder if he'll also help out at camp.

It almost seems like Beane is trying to fix the WR room with numbers. Get a bunch of flawed but affordable guys with potential upside and see who's good enough to stick.

He felt unloved and underappreciated when the Rams ditched him. This contract is some consolation prize. Hope he spends his riches wisely.

The 1975 Braves had Tom McMillen, Jim McMillian, and the phenomenal Bob McAdoo. As I recall, they said at the time it was the first time in NBA history a team had three Macs. If Von was a Van, this might have been the first NFL team to have three Vans.

Weird Buffalo sports trivia... When did a major league Buffalo sports team have three Macs (actually: "Mc")? The current Bills have two Vans and a Von which is not as unique maybe but still unusual: Van Prang-Granger, and Van Denmark, Von Miller.

I personally wish there was more X-and-O stuff during a broadcast. But, you're right, football tactics doesn't bring in the viewers. It's the drama of individual players and their performances. You're also right that casual fans aren't well educated in the X-and-Os. At least, I'm not. I've watched Kurt Warner and other former NFL players and coaches do video breakdowns of the Bills. And I find myself sometimes thinking something like, "Holy Cookie Gilchrist! I've been watching the Bills for decades and think I know football, yet I didn't notice that when I watched the game live!" If Warner and I sat down on a couch and watched a Bills game together, we wouldn't have the same experience because he'd be seeing it in so much greater depth. It would be like I'm watching on an old, 1950's fuzzy b&w tv while he's watching on a giant 3D IMAX screen. You're right for wanting to defend your daughter, and the women of the world.

It's possible that McD will use more 4-3 this season. But the long-term trend in the NFL is toward more Nickel and Dime defenses. It would seem weird if McD reversed himself.

Yeah, it's the offseason.

I've read enough of your posts over the years to know, (1) you're humbler than you're giving yourself credit for, and (2) you make informed, reasoned arguments. And I agree about judging McD on whether or not he produces a Mona Lisa. Recent draft picks are hard to evaluate. The team on the field is not. We can all see whether the team plays well or not, wins or not. The only question, I suppose, is how much credit/blame to attribute to Beane and how much to McD. That makes for a good debate, I think.

Agreed! While I know a few scientists sometimes let political and personal agendas shade their work, the devaluation of science scares the heck out of me. This is a little overdramatic, but the present anti-science/expert environment reminds me of China's "Cultural Revolution." Pretty soon we're going to send scholars, doctors, and scouts to work on Western New York's dairy farms and let amateurs teach college classes, perform surgeries, and run the Bills personnel department!

Shaw, my main point was simply this: We need to have a little humility. I've seen posters write as if they're smarter about football than Beane and the entirety of the Bills personnel department. These same posters often disrespect the opinions of their fellow posters - which I think is wrong. I had the honor of leading soldiers into combat during the First Gulf War. Before the war, I read some articles about how it was going to be a long, protracted fight against a battle-hardened enemy with significant American losses. This was not the kind of stuff I wanted my soldiers to read. What really annoyed me, and made me laugh at the same time, was the sense of certainty and intellectual superiority that dripped from some of these articles. Of course, the talking heads were cluelessly wrong and American armored units quickly rolled into the Euphrates Valley with minimal losses leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and Iraqi soldiers crying the Arabic version of "No Mas" by the tens of thousands. Non-experts thinking they're smarter than experts is a type of hubris. Just think about amateurs commenting on your own profession, whatever it is. Expertise is too often underrated. But it's also true that so-called experts aren't always expert. Matt Millen, case in point. And there are so many unknown/unknowable variables in predicting which college players will succeed in the NFL and which won't, that sometimes fans will be right and GMs wrong. And I'll acknowledge this, too... my main source of information about the draft is TBD. I always appreciate your commentary, GunnerBill's, etc. I think the collective Bills IQ of TBD is much higher than the collective Bills IQ of the national media. This is my primary source of information about the club. What I read here heavily influences my own opinions. I'm just hoping people can be humble - and kind - with their opinions because we're not as smart as the pros and, even if we were, there's no certainty in this game. Every pick is, to some extent, a roll of the dice. Personally, I've watched video on all our draft picks, reviewed their draft profiles, read the opinions here, and have some weak opinions of my own about the likelihood of their success. Mostly I'm just keeping an open mind and hoping the dice fall in our favor.

Finn, I hear you... I was kind of riffing off of "Debi Downer." I have a wife and two daughters - one of whom is entering med school, something I certainly didn't have the grades to do. Each of them is better than me in many ways. If anyone in my family has monopolized stupidity, it's me.

As a homer, I love this. Thanks for posting. As a sceptic, I had to look up Brentley Weisman. He's a former NFL scout. Hmm.

Shaw, I always value your opinion and you make a good point here. But imagine this scenario. Take the 20 best posters from TBD. Pay them enough so they quit their jobs and study football full time all year long. Send them to scouting seminars with America's best personnel guys. Give them access to an analytics department to provide them with good predictive data. Introduce them to, and give them the contact information for, 100 or so college coaches. Show them tape of every D1 college football game. Let them attend the combine. Have them interview players. If they want to fully vet a player, allow them to hire PIs. Give them an annual budget of $3 million or so to make all this happen. And with all that, you have the Bills personnel department. But you are right about the law of diminishing returns. And someone else brought up the idea of collective intelligence. Maybe no one Bills fan can draft better than Beane and his team. But maybe if we put together a team of the 500 smartest Bills draftniks, they could outperform Beane and his staff. I'm open minded to that idea. I just want and hope others to remain open-minded and humble. Some of the picks will turn out better (or worse) than we think.

I think Fred is woefully underrated by some. I watched him take handoffs, see no hole whatsoever, and still make a positive play. He led the NFL in Yards After Contact in 2011 with a YAC of 3.75. To put that in context, Christian McCaffrey had 2.2 YAC last year. No 2023 qualifier surpassed 2.7. It's easy to gain yards as RB when you have gaping holes to run through. Freddy was given lemons and made lemonade. Additionally, he was an all-around back who could catch out of the backfield and blocked really well. Obviously, he was also a high motor guy. When you combine skill set and effort, Jackson was a very good back. FYI...

The EJ Manuel pick was indeed perplexing. I do remember the remarks about his commanding presence. And comments about his big hands being an advantage in the cold winds of Buffalo. Big hands and a commanding presence aren't enough to make a great NFL QB. The focus on these traits didn't give anyone the impression Whaley did a good, holistic evaluation and I always wondered what the discussions were like among the Bills scouts. What were they collectively seeing? Or was Whaley the only one seeing it? Another perplexing one was Aaron Maybin and his one good college season, indifference toward football, and 'quick first step.' But let's say I sit down at a poker table in Vegas next to a professional poker player. I don't know squat about poker. But I'm smart enough to realize the pro is reading my tells. So I start sending false tells and win a hand. At that point, I'm thinking, "I just outsmarted a know-it-all, arrogant pro!" And I did! My native genius won out!!! Of course, by the end of the evening, he's humming a cheerful tune as I'm on the phone explaining to my wife how I lost our entire life savings. In the end, his mathematical calculations, ability to read opponents, and knowledge of poker strategy overwhelm my meager skill. Beane is like the professional poker player. Except he's not playing alone. He's got an entire team of experts in his ear buds. You and I can win a hand here or there but in the long run, the expertise and resources of the pros will win out. It's fun to second-guess and argue about picks but I'm confident that if Beane's picks were put against the average fan's or sportswriter's (picking in the same spots), Beane would come out ahead. It's only realism to acknowledge that the probability of Beane being right on any given pick is greater than mine. So, yeah, I'm concerned about Coleman's lack of speed and the shortcomings evident in other players we drafted. But I'm keeping an open mind until I see them play in a Bills uni.

Do "execs and coaches" include the Dolphins comptroller? The Dallas strength and conditioning coach? Seattle's scout for the Pacific Northwest? I like the idea of Sando soliciting opinions from subject matter experts. I just wish I knew who the sources were. I don't really care what San Francisco's DC, for example, thinks about Coleman because I doubt if he knows more about him than Kiper. Or the folks on TBD, for that matter. Does Sando tell us any more about his sources so we can have some sense of the quality of their opinions? If they're all GMs, assistant GMs, and national scouts, their evaluations would be valuable. Otherwise, I question their worthiness.

I respectfully disagree. As for my post being a defense of all GMs. There's an element of truth to this. But I specifically mentioned Matt Millen. I've listened to Millen talk. The guy is bright and knows far more about players than the average fan. He still sucked as a GM because the average fan isn't the measuring stick. As a GM, he was up against a lot of other talented GMs with good scouts beneath them. He failed against that level of competition. Drafting is a combination of subjective evaluation and predictive science that is inevitably imperfect. Every GM will have a Donte Whitner on their resume. But the probability of a GM getting a draft pick right is far greater than a fan getting a draft pick right because of all the hours or research an NFL team puts into the process. We simply don't have the resources to do the same level of due diligence. The fact that some fans decried the Whitner pick proves nothing about probability. It's anecdotal. Jeane Dixon predicted Kennedy's assassination. That doesn't mean she was prescient. She also predicted that WWIII would begin in 1958 and made a lot of other poor predictions. But people focused on the big one she reportedly got right. A mathematician called this the "Jeanne Dixon Effect." Fans are the same way. They focus on the random predictions they get right. That doesn't mean they have "insight." I demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the past 20 years of Bills football??? I'm not sure why you want to personally attack me that way. I've watched nearly every Bills game for the past 20++ years. But that's irrelevant. The bigger point is Beane and his staff have a track record of success. It's not a perfect track record. As Tom Brady recently reminded us, there are no rings. But since Beane's arrival, the Bills are one of the winningest teams in the league. Debi does not a similar track record. So, yeah, I trust Beane more than Debi from Depew. When Debi demonstrates the ability to put together a team that perennially reaches the NFL playoffs, that's when I'll listen.