Shaw66

You describe very well what I see. I don't see an explosive guy, but an extremely dependable guy on all three downs. In fact, I see his as a better Singletary - all round back, but Hall is better in almost every category. Actually, that's the kind of profile that McDermott likes - give me a guy who's just good at everything. (I think of Hyde and Poyer and White like that. And Davis.) So, yeah, I'd be happy to add him. I think we all get hung up on this first round, second round thing. Fact is, where the Bills are picking, there's not a huge difference in the talent that we thing of as second round talent. So, taking him at 25, although technically first round, doesn't bother me. Top 15 is what would bother me for any running back. That is a misspent pick. Best news I ever heard was that the Giants were locked in on Saquon. Dumbest move, ever, with Eli on the verge or retirement.

Well, I finally opened this thread. Kind of amazing that one guy's passion has pushed this threat to nearly 100 pages! I just watched Hall's 2021 highlights. He certainly looks like an upgrade from Singletary, but I have to say I don't see the greatness Ironmaiden sees. I don't see Marshawn Lynch. However, he does look like a quality back, and his receiving skills seem very good. If his name is called at 25, I'll be happy because I'll know that Beane and McDermott will have decided that he's the back they need.

This is fun to watch.

I dont disagree at all about speed for speed's sake. That's why I say he has to be a player. If Hardman is an example, he can be found through round one and into 2, but not beyond that without a lot of luck. But I don't think mismatches alone are what McBeane or I want. They want to stretch the field, so they need speed mismatches. McKenzie has some speed but not the receiver talent. They need a good receiver with deep speed. I wasn't talking about finding a Hill. As I said, I'm not copying the Chiefs. What I said is their deep speed is the model. Bills need to do what the Chiefs did - spend draft capital on a guy like Hardman, rather than a shot in the dark like Stephenson. May be true, and I won't be looking for a bridge to jump from if it happens, but I don't like doing it for anyone other than a qb. He does dovetail nicely with Diggs's contract. He'd step into the #1 spot as he gets his big contract and we kiss Diggs goodbye.

I'm not trading next year's #1, but this year's 1 and 3 to move up to 20 if he's there is a no brainer.

Not that I'm trying to unravel your debate, but I thought I'd add my two cents about what I'd be looking for. I don't know the prospects, so I can't put names to what I'm saying. And I'm not one who believes the Bills need to build to beat the Chiefs or look like the Chiefs, but I think the Chiefs are prototype when it comes to your #2 and #3. Hardman and Pringle. And yes, I think speed is the primary but not sole attribute. Hardman was sub 4.4 and Pringle 4.46. Diggs was 4.46. Davis was 4.54, and I think that's not quite good enough. Davis gets deep, yes, but he does it with deception. When he's on the field, corners aren't worried that he will outrun them to end zone. Now, obviously speed alone isn't enough. The guy's got to have some other characteristics, and we can talk about those, but fundamentally you want two guys, and ideally three, who threaten to go deep whenever they're on field. McKenzie was 4.42, Beasley 4.49, many years ago, and that's why McKenzie stayed and Beas is gone (other reasons, too). But Diggs and guys like Davis don't give you the ability to attack nearly as well as Diggs and sub 4.4 guy who can play, a guy like Hardman. McBeane have been very clear about two things: They want speed, and they want to attack the whole field. You need speed to attack the whole field. That's what Hardman and Pringle did for the Chiefs. Hill was the star, but those other two guys were running to open space a lot. Hill's gone and Pringle's gone, but Valdez-Scantling is there now - also sub 4.4. So, I've thought for a couple of months now that a quality speed receiver is one guy the Bills might trade up for. As I said, I don't know the prospects, but if a speed guy they like falls to mid-teens, I'd be thrilled to see the Bills go up to get him. Or - Hardman was the 5th receiver taken in his draft - take the right guy at 25 or move up in the second round to get him. If the Bills' top four wideouts are Diggs, Davis, McKenzie, and speed guy who's a quality receiver, the Bills can come at defenses with deadly combinations. Two wide plus Knox. Three wide and Knox. Four wide. Group them almost any way you want, and the defense has a dilemma. But the key to it is another guy who has the natural speed to get deep.

Thanks for catching me up. I don't disagree with you in theory, but it doesn't sound like this is the year that that scenario is likely. Beane has already said that he doesn't have 32 first-round guys, and the earlier post about what Breer said in SI also suggests that this draft is relatively thin in top-end talent. Seems unlikely that a guy Beane really likes will survive into the second round. Possible, for sure, but not likely. Seems even more unlikely that Beane would like him so much that he'd trade next year's first for him. If Beane liked him THAT much, who didn't he just use this year's first on him? I suppose there could be TWO guys he was really hot on but again, in a year when the top end seems thin, that doesn't seem likely.

I don't know the actual talent, but what you describe makes sense. Problem for Beane might be that he can't find a trade partner willing to pay a decent price to trade up. It really sounds like a year where the draft pick value chart won't hold, when you're talking about the price for a late-first-round pick. On the other hand, Beane may not have much choice. He has to find some corner talent somewhere, and I don't think he can wait until the fourth round or later to get the kind of help McDermott needs now. Dane and Neal for six weeks and Dane and a recovering White after that doesn't seem like a winning formula.

Sorry, I jumped in where maybe I didn't understand. First, it doesn't sound like there's going to be any true first round talent in round 2. It's exactly the opposite. It sounds like there's going to be some second round talent going late in the first round. But that's beside the point. What matters is what you're trading from next year. It's hard for me to justifying trading next year's round 1 or probably even round 2 unless you're moving up for a QB, and certainly not to move up INTO round 2. If you're taking a day 3 pick or two from from next year, sure, and maybe a third round pick, but not a one or two. The talent just isn't that important. The talent will come to you, as we've seen this year. There's always talent out there. If you have your QB and your middle linebacker, if you have your receiver and your corner, you don't need to chase talent. If the Bills see Uhrlacher in the draft, yeah, trade future picks. But don't trade those picks for anyone else.

I'm not. I'm in it for the long term - just keep building with what falls to you as it falls. Spend to your cap in dollars and use this year's picks, collecting talent that becomes available. Sometimes it will be first pick you move up for, sometimes it will be a high pick that you got from another team in a trade that turned out well, sometimes it will be a free agent, like Miller. But don't mortgage your future by overspending cap or giving up next year's picks. McDermott has to trust Beane to find the talent, and neither McDermott nor Beane should do things that can hamstring Beane in future years. So far, Beane has an excellent track record.

This and the Breer comments that Logic posted are very interesting. If that's a true description of the nature of the talent in this year's draft, then it would be less likely that we'll see Beane move up, simply because it doesn't sound likely that there are any really special guys to move up for. Interestingly, that would mean having the #10 this year is pretty tough, because there aren't any guys you want that badly, and there aren't any teams that want to give you much to move up to your spot. A #10 this year is worth less than a #10 in other years. And that means teams will adjust their draft value charts when considering trades. And you just said what I just said, too - four out of the guys ranked 30-100 is better than one in the top 30 and two in the 30-100. But Beane may find that there are several teams where he is (between 20 and 32), looking to trade back. The market of buyers to move up may be so thin that he may think the better deal is to move at a bargain price. You can see how what Beane says is actually true - you have to be prepared to move in a variety of ways, because you don't know what market is going to look like until you get there.

I think this says what I've been thinking for a while. It could even be a DT. I think McBeane will see a guy, a special talent with character grades that are A+, and they'll go get him. It's possible the guy will fall to 25, but I think it's more likely that they'll see him at 18, a guy they would have taken in the top 10, and they'll call a few teams to see who is willing to move back a few spots. They'll swap firsts to get to 19-22 if the guy continues to fall. DB, WR, or DT. Possibly even OG or TE, but those seem less likely. A team can stumble along with a pretty high level of success without ever having gone after a great player at those positions; you can just back and fill until the right guy falls into your lap. But at DB, WR, and DL you MUST be good or it's hard to be a great team. Also at OT, but where the Bills are sitting now, it's hard to imagine a guy being such a sure thing at OT that Beane would move way up to get him. When you get a chance to get a special guy at the right position, you have to take it. That's exactly what Beane did with Josh and Tremaine. He's done it with others, too, with mixed success. But the point isn't whether the move worked or not; the point is that Beane likes to do it if he sees a guy he likes in key positions. As they get into the mid-teens, if Beane doesn't have one of those guys - a guy he thinks has already fallen too far, then Beane will sit tight and let the draft fall to him. Most likely he'll have a handful of guys - two to five guys - falling, and he'll just take the guy who's highest on his board. The least likely scenario is that no one that he has a first round grade on falls to him, and he trades out. Possible, but I don't see it. Beane likes getting guys; he doesn't like watching others get guys. It will take some real discipline on his part to trade out of the first round. We saw Belichick do it often. It meant Belichick was being hard nosed about how good he thought guys actually were - he wasn't willing to use the pick just because it was his turn. He would rather have two seconds and two thirds than one each, 1, 2, 3. I think the Bills will trade up.

Yes, it could be first or second. It's impossible to know which players are on McBeane's list. We can tell from all the scouting reports who has talent, but Beane and McDermott's list is driven by character issues that they identify in personal interviews, and they don't share what they learn in the interviews until after they draft guys.

I'll write a little more about what I just said. And I'll say that I know nothing about any of these players you mention. I'm talking in generalities. I'm in the guard-conundrum camp with you. If the Bills don't see the next Rodger Saffold in round one, I don't think they go guard. And if they do see him, they probably will trade up to get him. Bills will trade up if they see a player they are confident they will re-sign at the end of his rookie deal. If they think Johnson is that guy, they'll go get him. I just think you miss the point generally about how McDermott operates. I'm guessing that all these guys you mention are very good athletes and very good football players, just not standout players who are likely to be stars. That's okay with McDermott, that's all he needs. I don't remember, but I don't think the NFL world was shocked when White fell to 27 or wherever the Bills took him. Four cornerbacks were taken ahead of White. I think McDermott may have been shocked, because McDermott saw a very good athlete who had the character that McDermott builds his team on - competitiveness, team orientation, tireless worker. The Bills prioritize those characteristics, and what it does for them is allow them to get great play out of guys who are not All-Pro players. McDermott got a lot out of Jerry Hughes, for example. Hughes was someone else's late first-round guy, never a standout, but a guy who contributed a lot in a great defense. The Bills found the kind of character they wanted in Rousseau and in Spencer Brown, along with very good but not standout physical talent. If the Bills find that kind of character in a corner who has shown solid play in college, I expect the Bills will go get him, maybe trade up five spots or so to get him. Neither Poyer nor Hyde is a top-3 or even top-5 safety in the league, when you're talking straight play-making ability. I mean, sure, you can argue that point, but they aren't standout superstars, not Troy Palomalu or anything like that. But together in this system, they are outstanding. I don't think White is a standout corner, either. He's excellent at his position, but he is not the pure shutdown corner teams pay premium dollars for. If Beane can find another White, a guy who's well-rated in the draft but not projected to be an All-Pro, I expect Beane will go after him. That guy may not look like a star to us, but McBeane are looking at things that we don't see readily. A defensive backfield with Hyde, Poyer, and two Whites looks pretty good to me.

Right. I mean, a gamechanger is possible - we could look back three or four years from now and be saying that someone was the steal of the draft, but that isn't likely. On the other hand, I don't know that I would call Tre'Davious a "gamechanger," but he's a great player to have gotten at the bottom of round one. Give Oliver another year or two and see what you think. Give Rousseau another year or two and see what you think. Those guys aren't "gamechangers," but they may have long careers in Buffalo. The Bills have Josh Allen, Stephon Diggs, and Von Miller. They're doing okay in the game-changer department. Gamechangers come out of the top 10 of the draft and occasional surprises. Bills aren't likely to get one this year (unless there's a trade up), but I'm confident they'll get guys who contribute this season.

This is the point so many people miss. The fact that the Bill's are so deep into team concepts, especially on D, makes it easier to insert talented young players with the intangibles Beanr and McDermott value highly. It's what makes "next man up" work. As I said earlier, by the end of the season the Bills will have at least a couple of rookies starting. I'm still expecting a trade up in the first or second round. One or two starters should come in the first two rounds, or a surprise from later rounds. Guard, corner, tight end, running back, d tackle, wide out.

I expect the first round pick (assuming he's taken at 25), will see decent playing time, if not start at the beginning of the season. By November, I expect him to be a starter or regular rotation player, and I expect him to make some plays that have impact. Part of McDermott's process is that the team is always a fairly veteran team, and what they learn from year to year to year carries over. McDermott said once during his first year that once he has his team and system in place, the team quickly raises new comers to the team's level of play. Beane is looking for guys who compete and who have a serious team orientation, guys who will willingly work to get to the level of play of the rest of the team. White and Edmunds, and Shaq didn't have a veteran team to pull them up, and Oliver didn't have an established Dline to move into. If the Bills draft a first round calibre D tackle, for example, he's going to moving into a veteran Dline, not necessarily guys who have been here but who will fit in themselves pretty easily. Same with a corner, a receiver, or an offensive linemen. So, I expect the guy to play and contribute. That's how the system is supposed to work. Second and third round guys should play late in the season, also. These guys are talented, and the Bills know who to integrate new guys with talent. Guard could. Defensive tackle could. Edge could. Wideout could. Tight end could.

In terms of actual outcomes, it probably was the worst trade in Bills history. At the time, it made a lot of sense. Your dad probably was someone who wanted Kemp to go to the bench and Lamonica to start. It was a raging debate for a couple of years. There were arguments on both sides, and the coaches clearly valued Kemp's maturity to Lamonica's occasional loose-cannon on-field approach. But the trade itself was obviously a win-now approach. The Bills had the best defense in the league, and they struggled on offense in a league that was offense-dominated. First the Oilers and Chargers, then the Chiefs. It was clear that the Bills needed to upgrade their offense. By getting Flores to go with Kemp, the Bills figured they'd have at least on veteran to pull the trigger on an upgraded offense. What was the upgrade? Art Powell. He was a true star in the AFL. Not Lance Alworth, Otis Taylor, but right up there as a top receiver. Look at his numbers - 1300, 1400 yards year after in a 14-game season. The whole point was to goose an offense that needed to match points with the Chiefs (sound familiar?), so that the Bills could beat the Chiefs and go to Super Bowl II. What happened after that just didn't seem to matter. Problem was, Powell was washed up or quit playing, Flores's best season (which weren't great) were behind him, and the Bills fell completely flat. Would it have been different with Lamonica as the signal caller? Almost certainly. He was just so dynamic that he caused things to happen on the field. Would he have taken the Bills Super Bowl? No one knows, but at least they would have been a threat.

The Lamonica trade didn't work out, but it wasn't foolish on paper. I'm pretty sure three players went each way. I don't remember them all, but the Bills got Tom Flores, who'd been a solid QB in the league, and Art Powell, who was the talent the Bills really wanted. Guy was an absolute stud receiver. In seven seasons in Oakland, playing 12 and 14 game seasons, he went over 1000 yards, well over, five times. When he got to Buffalo Powell disappeared overnight. Flores never produced. And Lamonica took off. In retrospect, Bills history changed with that trade. With Lamonica at QB, the Bills never would have had a couple of horrible late-60s teams, and they never would have drafted OJ. RIP, Daryl. Never will forgot you.

I'm definitely NOT Billy Shaw. However, I've been using his photo as my avatar for so long that now when I see it, I think it's a picture of me. Billy Shaw was special. He'd fill the OG hole in a hurry!

Albert was out of broadcasting for two years. That's not nothing.

Pics or it didn't happen!

That's an interesting take. I think some guys dwell on the past. DeLamleure gives me that impression. Some guys, like Kelly, live in the present but certainly enjoy the connection to the past. Other guys just let it go and move on - football is what they did in their 20s, but it's not their current life. Whatever the reason, he is a notable absence from the wall.

This wouldn't surprise me. He's been noticeably absent from Bills world, so far as I can recall, for a long time. I wonder whether he burned bridges with people over one thing or another.

I've been saying something similar. I would guess that McDermott is more comfortable about the defensive backfield than most of us are.