SoFFacet

Saying that you would have preferred Mahomes right now is not hindsight, it's just illogical considering the alternative that we chose and the likelihood that Mahomes becomes something. People coming back some number of years from now in the event that Mahomes actually becomes something and saying, "see?" is an attempt to argue with the benefit of hindsight. You can apply the same Peterman logic to Mahomes, btw. How does such a great special franchise QB slip to 10? If he were so likely to be so great, would he not have gone 1st overall? Are the 9 other teams that passed on him just stupid?

Mistake - CJ Spiller. A high 1st-round pick used on a highly fungible position that also happened to be a team strength. Even if Spiller had gone on to have a good career, this selection made no sense. Fine decision w/ poor outcome - Sammy Watkins (the pick, in isolation from the trade). Numerous other receivers from the same class have thus far had better careers. Watkins was nearly universally regarded as the best WR prospect in years, let alone that class. Evans and Beckham have both done better than expected, Watkins has been beset by injury. Unfortunate for us, but unknowable at the time.

No? What makes you say that?

Mistakes are made when decisions can't be justified given the information available at the time a decision was made.

Does anyone know if Trubisky, Mahomes, Watson, Kizer, or any of the QBs drafted this year will be franchise level? No. When will anyone know? At some point after the draft has taken place. hind·sight. noun. understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed

No, it would mean that both KC and Buffalo got what they paid for. Only by captain hindsight internet warriors with no conception of the probabilistic nature of the universe. See above. You're inventing a distinction where there is none. It is hindsight. KC was willing to take the (frankly low) chance that Mahomes will turn out to be special. There are dozens of scouting/trading/drafting articles that have been written, documenting the plague of evaluation overconfidence that spans the entire NFL. There is an extremely large chance that the trade works out in Buffalo's favor. If it doesn't, that will suck, but that will be the result of information not available at the time the decision was made. Hindsight by definition.

Rookie season, 3rd stringer, limited snaps. It's not like this guy forgot how to play. Gillislee did nothing his rookie year. JW has a fine chance to do a good job this year.

I have no idea where this idea came from, that you need to bottom out to properly rebuild and compete in the NFL. This isn't hockey. New England, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Seattle, KC, Denver, Baltimore... none of these model franchises are good because they bottomed out for a lottery pick. They are good because of good coaching, sustained solid drafting, harmony and longevity in the FO, etc. The only team in the entire league I can think of that is actually a benefitting from a tanked year is Indy.

I've seen some people dispute the value of the 2018 1st. The practical rule in actual trades is to discount them by a round, but people disagree on whether the discount should apply to the counting of total draft capital. There are a lot of different trade charts floating around, as well. If you do discount the value, then according to the chart in the article, the worst case scenario is that Buffalo comes out of the 1st trade at -29. If you don't, then as the article says, the worst case is +75. More likely, KC finishes with something like the 24th pick. With the discount, that is -11. Without, it's +128. Breakeven for the discount is KC with the 20th pick.

This fixation that certain people have against drafting CBs is pretty bizarre. Teams replace free agent departures with draft picks all the time. Teams draft DBs in early rounds all the time. New England is actually one of the foremost practitioners of both. CB was an undeniable need that we addressed with a draftee of at least appropriate value relative to pick number. Right after executing a trade that accumulated a significant amount of additional draft capital. It's possible to complain about the complete process of "replacing Gilmore with White," but this is actually a complaint about the way Buffalo handled free agency, not the draft. So then it would need to be established that Gilmore could and should have been retained. Since that was nearly impossible, it would become clear that what needs actually be impugned is the Bills' handling of the salary cap in the years leading up to the expiration of Gilmore's contract.

Injuries are mostly random.

Elway did McDermott a huge favor.

It's a totally inappropriate use of "data" that only serves to demonstrate that statistics can be manipulated to support anything and that TBN has total contempt for the critical analysis skills of their readership. The 27 events in question are not identical random events, which renders invalid the entire supposition that together they form a probabilistic distribution from which to draw statistically supported conclusions. This flaw can sometimes be overcome by a sample size large enough to average out individualized situations. Perhaps n=10k would suffice. n=27 is not "data." In any case, the article makes no attempt to distinguish between players that clubs readily let go on a rational basis, and players that clubs genuinely wanted to keep but could not. Obviously, a distinction that Bills fans ought to care about.

They're not "betting against him," they are delaying the decision to commit to him, on the extremely rational basis that he has not been good/healthy enough to justify that type commitment, yet. I suspect that SW is a mature enough person to understand that. If he has a good 2017, then yes he would have been worth the option. But the decision took that into account. By passing up the option, they forgo the best case scenario (5th year option, good 2017) to eliminate the possibility of several bad scenarios (5th year option, bad 2017 or season lost due to injury). Blindly chasing after the best case scenario on the basis of what was invested in acquiring him in the first place = sunk cost fallacy. This decision is irrelevant to him signing a franchise tag.

Not a difficult concept. "Steal" can be judged based on process-based or results-based criteria. For instance, OJ Howard at 19 is already a steal from a process-oriented perspective, as Tampa managed to select him significantly after all boards and ratings suggested. A steal, based on the information that was available at the time of the draft. Some other player might be judged to be a steal from a results-oriented perspective, once his career is significantly underway. Howard himself may eventually be judged to be more or less of a steal than currently thought. But none of that information was available at the time that the decisions were made. So steals of that nature are typically more luck-based, and therefore don't make much sense to focus on if an organization's goal is to sustain a record of excellent drafting.

Process-oriented vs results-oriented analysis.

I believe Astro was manually picking him for us in the 3rd round of the latest draftek simulations. Can't see how anyone is upset about this guy in the 5th. Tbh the one thing that puzzles me is that we picked him with our 2nd 5th rounder. Hard to believe that they valued/feared losing Milano more than Peterman.

QB hysteria out of control. For a healthy organization and un-traumatized fanbase, this would not be a significant pick. He's a developmental QB. If he pans out, great. If not, whatever. Any 5th rounder is a long-shot to make a difference.

Ideal physical specimens were picked several rounds ago.

Is it polarizing at all? Low risk, medium reward, relatively expected... how can anyone feel strongly one way or the other?

Yates is 29. Peterman could definitely become a Smith / Dalton / Cousins type.

Quite a relief to see!

Do you even realize how many other types of issues all go into "overall success"? This pattern of reasoning could be used to impugn literally any decision made during the drought, whereas in reality some but not all of those decisions were responsible for the lack of success. It says here that the general strategy of prioritizing DBs in the draft is one of the few things the team has done right.

FS Baker FS Sanders-Williams DL McDowell OT Robinson LB Cunningham WR Godwin WR Jones OG Lamp SS Melifonwu QB Kizer

If a draft is "deep" at a particular position, that means that getting the best one is actually less important than usual, and getting one of the next few is actually a better idea than usual. There are also no guarantees pertaining to exactly how good White is in comparison to his draft peers. Every team has different boards, with different systems, different criteria, different grades. Most independent services had White between 15-30 overall. All of those are just projections. White could end up as the best or the worst CB in this class. But he seems to be a good value at a well-known position of need according to the information available at the time the decision was made. The proposed alternative, "Fixing the right side of the line for good," is an arbitrary fixation. There is no guarantee that Ramcyzk, Robinson, or any other OT would actually "fix it for good." Nor has it been established that doing so would be more important than addressing the need in the secondary. There is also no guarantee that Mahomes, Watson, or any other QB will turn out to be a franchise QB. If there were, they would all have been taken in the top-5 picks. Regardless of whatever careers they turn out to have, there is no guarantee that they would have had an equivalent career in Buffalo. All that happened yesterday was that teams that could afford (KC, Houston, by the virtue of their already strong rosters) to take chances on those QBs, did. Trading down doesn't make any sort of statement about this year, all it means is that they thought this was an incredibly good value (and it was). People need to stop trying to hard to construct narratives. When we traded up for Watkins, people couldn't shut up about how that stated we were "all in" or in "win now mode." Which of course was bull ****.