AKC

Yes, I see on my calendar that it's time for the annual bout of optimism. Too bad that optimism requires bad rewrites of the time good players spent in Buffalo. We were just forced to commit the 11th pick in the draft to replace that lump of coal. Not to mention we have no idea whether this new lump shines up anywhere near as nice as the last one did.

Look less like the poll was loaded than those screaming for a WR with the 11 pick were in the weeks leading up to the draft!

Correctly applied, a "dynasty" would only refer to a team who had won under successive coaching staffs and/or successive owners. The term is not appropriate where the coaching staff/owners are unchanged. The Cowboys could make the claim because the coaching staff changed, but the *s are not a dynasty.

One should never allow precision to become confused by your own biases.

How about if I name 27 players that NFL front offices feel are better than any of the WRs in the draft? Heck, I'm willing to go out on a limb here and give you 32!

lol?

Thank god for Adam's choice though; I've apparently been misinformed that I was what I ate. I'm much more comfortable knowing I am what I are. I know Popeye was a proponent of a very similar philosophy, and he's a trustworthy fellow.

The only type of player in the draft who might have immediately raised our status to contender was gone 4 spots before we picked. After studying the way the best teams have contemporarily been drafting, and without a sure hit 2 role TE there to go to, the best play for us is probably going to historically be the one we went with. Our management didn't fail us by taking a 2nd round WR at 11, and even thyough I think the defense we're playing right now doesn't have to have as good a CB as we appear to have drafted, the reality is you have to work with the players on the board and we did. I mentioned to a few of the TSW alumni as the draft started that seeing us take a CB would probably be the best move we could make, and I haven't changed my feelings on that. We're razor thin at what I believe is the most important position in football today- but there are few high caliber prospects at the critical spot and in this draft onely one- and he wasn't going to get to us. We know that UDFA are nearly as likely to end up in our starting lineup as 5+ rounders, so the positional side later on in the draft seems less important. Like I said earlier- we got a little better in FA and we got a little better in the draft. With the weaker schedule, and assuming Stroud is healthy enough to start at least 11 or 12 games, we should expect an improvement in the win column in 2008. The downside is that if Stroud has trouble and ends up with a limited contribution, we'll be an embarrassing last in the AFC East and the team everyone in the league will want to play- and run on.

I'd added a study to the board that showed CB as a real priority of the best teams in the league. I've also posted on a number of occcasions that I feel our 22007 CB chart was among the worst in the NFL. After Ellis was drafted the reality for us this year was to follow the trends of the best teams and bring in the best CB- It was not the pick that immediately makes us a force to contend with, but it was the best situation for us on this draft day and this draft class. As the draft went on, the other picks will become more clear- but the first pick this year in taking a cover guy based upon the board we were looking at has a good chance to turn out to be hard to argue in the future. The most important thing that happened was that the team didn't make an error that would have cost us for many years by using that first round pick on a second round talent WR, and in doing so leave a #11 talent CB out there for someone behind us to grab.

With the caveat that if the past 2 seasons worth of injury issues continue to hinder Marcus Stroud's contribution, we'll be even softer against the run than we were last year and we'll be awful as defense and a team. The Jag D required he play a higher % of downs than he will with us, and hopefully that in and of itself helps him to get back towards his play in 2004, his last good season. We did have one of the worst rosters of CBs in the league last year, and help at the top is going to help other areas of the D- giving our lines time to pressure the QB will go a long way in helping the pass D improve on third downs. Our run D on first and second though is still substantially dependent on the health of one player.

It remains a hole- and I think there's plenty of evidence that we won't get to the top before we add a talented TE- but we would not be realistic expecting to be a dangerous playoff team this year. Overall I'd say that #1 we didn't fall for making the terrible error that drafting a #11 WR would have been, and we will improve our third down defense by sitting down the worst of our 07 corners one way or another on that crucial down. Help at CB will end up giving our pass rush package that extra half second that disrupts the opposition, and that leaves us crossing our fingers that our thinnest roster spots outside of TE (OL/S/DT) don't suffer a key injury. We got a little better in FA, and we got a little better over the weekend. A healthy season could give us some promising progress against a very weak schedule.

It does seem the forfeiture of a first round pick for each instance would be more appropriate.

Got some calls about the regular $2.50 Bills draft special being in effect for the Draft Party- I just confirmed it's a go.

Take the train to Downtown LA and grab RTD #4, it'll drop you off a block from the scene of the crime.

We've taken to setting up a stool with a half empty plate of wings in front of it and pretending you're there ;-)

It's always good to have other fans joining us who are interested in exploring and expanding the information available to improve our understanding of the factors influencing the W/L record of the Bills. The more I consider that 20% difference in the Offensive/Defensive investments of the Bills (offense first) versus the best teams (defense first), the more significant it appears.

I don't really find any substantial disagreement with that at all- I'd be surprised if any great GM had a static positional formula they applied on draft day. At the same time, I have no doubt all the good managers do have- if not a formal positional formula- an innate understanding of the more likely positional landmines. For instance, in this season where the WR position is so weak that there's not even a consensus top 15 or 20 pick, I'm guessing that no top GM would even think about reaching out for one of these likely early round busts early even if they had a great need at WR. I never intended the study to support the existence of hard or static rules- but there is the chance it does offer a little bit of a look into the understanding that the best managers have about which positions are the more likely to make your team better in the long haul versus those that are risky enough to find a different means of addressing them unless you're so rooster-sure about a guy at a premium pick level like 11 that you know he can't miss and you take him because you'd take him even if you were picking at the 5 spot.

Without a doubt, it's always interesting to look at the way the best do it versus the worst. I should qualify that- for some of us it's interesting. In my opinion the best team's tendencies have some reveals in the draft- and it'll be fun to watch it play out over the years. One thing that is for sure- there's a difference in the ways the Bills have been doing it and the way the best teams have. Maybe our friend Ramius will take the time to expand the study to the whole league, and we can see some even more revealing patterns as every team's early investment is on display.

My study is complete. It shows that the best teams in the game invest more at thet top of the draft in defense than the Bills, that the best teams invest in TE where the Bills have not and that the best teams substantially favor DL investment over WR while the Bills do just the opposite. You have demanded earlier that the only information you would accept was a complete study of all teams in the NFL and that anything else would be incomplete. If you'd care to do a study of all the NFL teams for the same period, I'm all ears. If instead you wish to display your own hypocrisy by trying to make some point supporting your desire to reach for a WR at the 11 pick, I'm not interested in listening. Let me know when you "complete" the study you insisted would be the only valid use of the positional trending information, or for goodness sakes give yourself a break from embarrassing yourself.

Trend- 1. the general course or prevailing tendency The tendancy of Super Bowl teams to select specific positions early in the draft is precisely what the study reveals. I'll be at the bar before you. I need to do a walkthrough of the scene of the Draft Party and it's two blocks from my office. Slainte'

The methodology used is exactly what has been portrayed- it's an "equity" or "budget' percentage study of the positional drafting trends of Super Bowl teams versus the Buffalo Bills in the most coherent and valuable time window. If you had some background in math, and you took the time to read the methodology I offerd in the originsal post, you could have done something productive with the time you've wasted making false statements over and over and over in this string. But keep saying them- even if no one else is paying attention to you, it's clearly more soothing to you than recognizing you don't know even the most basic rules of establishing a mathemetical study.

A "valid analysis" is based upon an accurate protrayal of the study. My title and methodology clearly states that it is a study of "Super Bowl Teams" trends versus the "Buffalo Bills". If I said it was study of trends of "The Whole NFL" versus the "Buffalo Bills" your false statement would then be accurate. It's especially tough when the math is exactly what it's been represented to be. Facts are the toughest of all opponents, although as is clearly recorded here, that doesn't stop some from contesting them.

If you'd like to study trend from the 1920s to the 1940s, I'd invite you to do it. In my case I thought a contemporary look at the draft offered more meaningful information. BTW, as I mentioned earlier, all this is explained in my orginal post, where the methodology is outlined and detailed. There is a clear decline in Super Bowl teams beyond 5 years, and unlike you I'm more interested in how the Bill's are trending versus the best teams in the league- not the Raiders. 7 years is the average a 1st round pick stays with their original team. You might want to take my original control group (Super Bowl Teams) and post that along with your findings about the Chief's trends to one of their fan message boards- It is interesting that the Chiefs- who won their Division in 03 and went back to the Playoffs after the 06 season, have that DL/WR ratio favoring the DL like the Super Bowl teams, whereas Buffalo's ratio is higher on the WR side, like Detroits. They also have the "drafting more D" trend down versus the Bills, who ignore that trend among the Super Bowl (and as you discovered here, some Playoff teams too) by investing substantially more in offensive players early.

It surely wouldn't give us any trending information. Now if instead, you took the past 7 seasons and considered every pick from all the past 5 Super Bowl teams and gave it the equity value of where the pick was made in teh first two rounds, and put those cumulative trends up agains the Bill's numbers- you'd have something there! (By the way- that's exactly what I've done- you should check it out)

I agree it's curious- although I found it far more enlightening to discover that the Buffalo Bills use a much higher percentage of their draft equity early in the draft on offensive players versus the top football teams of today, and that the best teams spend almost 10% of their round 1 and 2 equity on TEs while we spend nada. But if you think you can learn something by compiling the team colors of all our players Pee Wee leagues, I'll be supportive of you doing the work! It's always good to see someone get off the bench and pitch in, regardless of the quality of their contribution. Welcome aboard!