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Isn't this a La Confora post? Does he have any credibility left?

Here, here. Something we can absolutely agree on.

You do? That pretty much confirms it, he's bad.

I'm really coming around to this. It might have been overreacting the first few times, but at this point... I don't think there's a plan.

The only truth to this is that the Patriots have Brady and that makes the rest of their moves easier. You're delusional if you don't think that Belichick, who's been poaching players in the division for years, doesn't realize the importance in financially hamstringing the teams that he plays most frequently. This is a win-win for them and only because we're in his division. He couldn't care less if we fall for the ploy and sign TD Mike for this outrageous salary. If anything, The Patriots are making us pay for the salary we give to McCoy, a fancy, shiny piece to a puzzle that we shouldn't have at this point. Whaley has scouted well, but I've lost all hope that he's capable of building a championship roster.

There's definitely some truth to this. Our team makes it incredibly easy for RB's to succeed, but both of those guys had an undeniable nose for the endzone. It's mostly baffling how hard it has been for the Bills to retain the players of value on their roster. Hemorrhaging the rest of the team for a "star studded" defense and then hiring Rex Ryan to lead them is one of the worst decisions I've ever seen. You'd like to say the GM needs to get fired, but we all know if was the marketing guy and the owner that did this.

If we retain TD Mike at this price we are falling for the sunk cost fallacy. For the Patriots, this is a win-win. They either get a very promising RB, one that will likely be their starter, OR they force the Bills to overpay for their backup. We would only signing him at this point to either want to get a return on our investment (which is very very low), or to prevent him from signing with the Patriots. I love TD Mike. He runs very hard and was one of my favorite Bills the last two years... but you'd be blind if you didn't notice how easy it seemed to be a RB for the Bills last year. The defenses needed to account for Tyrod as a legitimate rushing threat on each play and we ran out of a run-heavy playbook with an offensive line that was bred to block for long runs. The Patriots out played us here. Accept the loss and pray Mike doesn't pan out for them. That's our only move.

If you wait for the sure thing at QB you will never draft one. I have no problem drafting EJ Manuel, he was the best QB in that draft and it's a shame no one panned out. It happens. It also set the team no farther back than say...drafting Maybin. My only problem with the Manuel pick is that the team did not draft a QB the year before or continue to draft a QB the following year.

Drafting a QB is the only way to waste picks? See here I thought the way to waste picks was by drafting CB's or RB's you don't retain. Or maybe it's wasting top picks on guys like Maybin or Spiller or Whitner or McKelvin or even Mike Williams? It sounds like the whole thing is a lottery, doesn't it? Draft a QB. Keep drafting a QB. If you don't do that you wind up in situations where Tyrod Taylor is the best QB you've had in 20 years. That's right, we're now at a point where we celebrate average starting QB's that are mostly inept as passers simply because as a franchise we've neglected to groom at the very most important position.

Excuse me, but...that's how you interpreted my post? Yes, no one is saying that. No one. If you think that's the counter to your argument then you've completely misunderstood it.

You can't win if you don't score. I'm not sure how you ever get a franchise QB if you don't take shots to get one. Calling out people that want a QB amidst one of the longest playoff droughts in NFL history is genuinely laughable to me. I'm sure we were better off drafting Watkins, Gilmore, Dareus, Spiller, Maybin, Wood, and McKelvin, right? That's how you build a team, right?

Yeah it's almost like we want to win or something.

I feel like Watkins' average is misleading... it doesn't do enough to highlight just how misused he has been. While it may work out that he has had 6.5 targets per game, looking at his season you can see that his high was only 10 targets in a game where had 7 catches. 7 catches was his season high. His next best game was 4 catches. I've seen some people say that our run-heavy offense kept us in games, but actually that should free Watkins in the pass game even more. There's no excuse for Watkins' lack of targets. It makes you wonder why the franchise hemorrhaged so much in order to land him, only to do almost nothing to use him as a weapon in the offense.

I'd like to see some statistics now that the whole five-year option has been around for a while.

I get what you're saying, and I agree that the crusade on Whaley is tiresome, but surely you can't be serious about depth. We often blame our record on injuries and every year we end up playing games with inadequate starters at key positions because no one is "ready" to step up. I would argue that WR depth was TSW's favorite excuse for losses last season. We consistently neglect to groom our depth players into starter positions like better teams. We've had plenty of young safeties the last two or three years, and none of them emerged as anything. The problem with evaluating this team is that the Rex Ryan hiring was so bad that it makes everything else seem inconsequential. I have no idea how to judge this roster or this coaching staff. When Marrone left it seemed like we had a great defensive roster and had a wonderful opportunity to bring in a solid coach and continue on with the plan. Bringing in Rex did not just ruin our team on the field, but on paper as well. If Whaley had a plan it was reversed. Our roster regressed and the team made terribly short-sided decisions.

If? Do we not currently have the worst WR group in the NFL?

And here I thought that I might be too harsh on Russ Brandon.

Just a heads up... I take this direct flight often, and the last two times it was $232 roundtrip. This is not a deal. In fact, if you go on jetblue's website you can get a cheaper fare.

This is probably the fifth or sixth coach now that has been absolutely force-fed down my throat. About three coaches ago I stopped giving anyone the benefit of the doubt until they produce. This doesn't mean I don't like the hire or the coach. I am willing to be optimistic... it's just getting very tiresome seeing the same marketing over and over. They've tried this whole "merge the new with the old" strategy plenty of times now. When Rex couldn't wait to meet with the old players it was met with the exact same praise. Somehow this is different? It's a non-story (I know you know that), but what's sick as that this franchise can't get out of it's own way. There should be exactly zero fluff pieces until they do anything worth praising. It's been nearly 20 years now. That's an absurd amount of time to be pretending last season never happened.

It was a fluff piece pretending that it couldn't possibly be a fluff piece.

This was not a publicity stunt. There were no cameras there to document things. ...written...in an article, with this photo posted beneath it:

Depends on what rules we're playing. Seemed like the league let CB's play in Nate's days.

I haven't seen someone get destroyed this bad in a long time. Well done.

I appreciate JW's contribution, especially to threads like this where speculation is quite high. I think Whaley being muted to the media was long overdue. I have said his public speaking was a serious issue dating back to his first official press conference. I don't think articulating your thoughts like some Ronald Reagan type is a necessary feature of a GM, and if Whaley were some "kid genius" out of the gate no one would care that he can barely finish a coherent sentence without contradicting the one before it. I guess what I'm trying to say is... maybe Whaley could have afforded to completely bomb a press conference had the team made the playoffs one of these years. Being a liability with the microphone and building a questionable roster should put any manager on the hot seat.