SoTier

My point is that scouting -- finding and evaluating prospects -- is much more thorough than it was in the past. QBs with NFL quality arms and other good physical attributes are going to be drafted even if they go to smaller programs or even to Div II schools (like Flacco). Actually, Warner and Romo, who were UDFAs when they came out (Warner 20+ years ago, Romo 12+ years ago), would likely have been drafted today, even if on Day 3, although generally QBs with NFL arms go on Day 1 and Day 2.

I totally agree. They need to take at least one OLer on Day 1 or 2 and at least one or more on Day 3. They need to bring in a bunch of UDFAs, too.

I will agree that the Bills write bad contracts, but my problem isn't players getting injured. How come other teams manage to pay several premier players at the same time and still manage to keep several of their home-grown vets coming off their rookie contracts but the Bills "can't afford" to keep most of the good young vets they develop even though they aren't paying for a premier QB and pass rusher? That should be what chaps Bills fans' butts not that the Bills gave a contract to solid player who then suffered a career ending injury. BTW, Wood was 30 or 31 which is not all that "old" for an OLer who often play into their mid thirties and beyond.

That's all part of not putting winning ahead of profits. The Bills could have had their QB last year but they needed to replace Gilmore ... and don't forget that they also used a second on Zay Jones since they let both Woods and Goodwin go, too. Since the late 1990s, they've used an inordinate number of first and second round draft picks to replace the DBs, WRs, and RBs that they didn't re-sign after their rookie contracts. White is a very nice player, and maybe neither Mahomes nor Watson develop into franchise QBs but they needed a QB in 2017, had an opportunity to take one, and passed on all of them until Day 3. Now, they're exactly where they were last year at this time, only they have the 21st pick rather than the 10th.

Dead on! If Mahomes or Watson go on to become a franchise QB and the Bills fail again to get one of their own, then allowing Gilmore to walk away and replacing him with Tre White may be one of the costliest deals the Bills have ever made ... only time will tell.

Maybe if the Bills put winning ahead of profits, they'd develop a coherent policy/program in regards to drafting/retaining talent and wouldn't be signing and then cutting veterans.

I agree completely. My complaint with the Bills is that they spend so much draft capital replacing the young vets that they let walk that they don't have enough left to draft and develop young talent in hard to fill positions like OL or QB. I'm not going to complain about the Bills extending solid veterans since that's an improvement over how they've operated in the past.

I'm not going to argue that the Bills didn't/don't need an upgrade at center because I agree that they have needed that for a while. I have been arguing since last summer that the interior of the Bills OL needs upgrading and/or better depth because of age and talent level not to mention how frequently OLers get hurt, as Glenn has shown. That Wood was never as good a center as Glenn was a left tackle doesn't mean he wasn't worth extending. There may have not been any better options either on the team or available on the FA market. His deal might very well be the going rate for a starting NFL center. My argument is simply that complaining that Wood's contract was "bad" because of his injury is nothing more than hindsight.

Wood's contract is only a "bad contract" because he can't play football. Would it have been "bad contract" if it wasn't a long-standing condition but a game injury like what happened to Ryan Shazier? Maybe the Bills medical staff should have been more thorough but I don't know that teams are necessarily going to do MRIs, xrays, etc if the player hasn't had a history of a specific injury or complaints about pain. It's just one of those "manure happens" situations.

I don't follow college football, so I don't know if there was some reason for Prescott to fall to fourth round, but I think it's still a little early to declare Prescott a "success" on the same level or better as the Cowgirls' QB he replaced, Tony Romo.

Wilson went in round 3. That's not "late rounds". It's Day 2 ... and Wilson's physical limitation was his height, or more precisely, his lack of it. If he'd been 6'2 or so, he'd have gone in the Top 5. NFL GMs want big, tall QBs so they take chances on lesser prospects like Osweiler (6'7 or 6'8) early but leave short guys like Brees or Wilson or slightly built guys like Cousins to languish.

Totally agree. When a QB from North Dakota State goes #2 in the draft, that means that the scouts are not only scouring the hinterlands, they aren't letting any potential Tom Bradys slip through the cracks like they may have done twenty years ago. These days, a kid who goes in the late rounds is seriously lacking in the physical attributes necessary for an NFL QB, so he's not even a decent bet to make a "solid backup".

You are not going to convince the diehards that Peterman is a dud. Hell, his own incompetence won't even convince some of them that he's not pro material. If the Bills drafted him, they must have seen his "potential" because the Bills have demonstrated their unerring ability to find "QB diamonds in the rough".

My guess is that Plan C is more likely than Plan A or Plan B simply based on the reality that there are limited options for the Bills to get another QB who might be an upgrade to Taylor. My plan C would be to keep Taylor because he's probably the best the Bills can do unless they get Cousins or Smith, and then draft a QB in Round 2 or 3 if there's one who looks like he would at least make a decent backup QB. The Bills need a backup better than Peterman; his only recommendation is that he's cheap.

How, exactly, have the Patriots been "proactive" in "drafting and grooming quarterbacks"? Since Belichick came to NE, he's only drafted backup QBs with the possible exception of Garoppolo. You're confusing the horsehoe Belichick had up his ass when he made Tom Brady the Patriots' sixth round pick in the 2000 draft with prescience. Matt Cassel was a sixth rounder, too. Brian Hoyer was an UDFA. Jacoby Brissette was a fourth rounder. Garoppolo was a second rounder, but you can count the number of second rounders who have developed into franchise QBs in the last two decades on the fingers of one hand and have digits left over. Neither Cassel nor Hoyer played as well for any other teams as they did for NE. Brisette isn't going to make Indy trade Andrew Luck even if his health was guaranteed. As for Garoppolo, he has indeed looked really good in his short time starting in SF but Osweiler looked good for most of the season when he subbed for Peyton, so the jury is still out on just how good he might be IMO. Over the years the Patriots have drafted other backup QBs, including third rounder Ryan Mallett, but none of them has been any better than the scrubs that the Bills have drafted over the years. The Patriots have been better at finding QBs that fit their system, judging QB talent, and putting their QBs in positions to succeed if they get on the field. That Patriots' backup QBs have done well when asked to perform in place of Brady over the years but have failed to find any success as starters only supports the idea that it's coaching and the system that accounts for it rather than any formula or process for "drafting and grooming quarterbacks".

I certainly hope you're wrong because at the very top of the list should be "has the potential to be a great QB". By all accounts, EJ Manuel fit your criteria perfectly, but he missed on my criteria... and he was a bust. The Bills don't need a choirboy but a QB. If the kid has the right physical qualities, has his head on straight enough to keep out of trouble off the field and make good decisions on the field, and is a hard worker, I would certainly be po'd if the Bills passed on him for some lesser prospect because of the largely irrelevant criteria you cited.

I didn't bother to read all 6 pages of this thread but I do have 1 question, SaviorPeterman: are you and Dunkirk Don one and the same or are you his/her/its son/daughter/spawn? My inquiring mind wants to know!

I will probably tune in sporadically ... let's face it, even if the Eagles were up 3 scores to 2 minutes to play, the refs would find a way to help NE win.

The only problem with this idea is that there may not be an upgrade QB available. This is why there are so many "QB needy" teams. Taylor might the best the Bills can do, and if that's true, then they need to face that squarely and not do what they did in 2013 when they cut Fitzpatrick and picked $$$ over wins. We'll never know, but it seems likely Marrone and Hackett could have gotten the Bills to the playoffs with Fitzpatrick. The 2014 team missed by tie-breakers IIRC, and one of their losses came when Orton ran out of bounds rather than trying for the EZ. Fitz wouldn't have done that.

I agree with this with a caveat. QBs are basically two kinds: franchise QBs and everybody else -- a Ryan Fitzpatrick or a Tyrod Taylor or a Nick Foles, and generally, there's one franchise QB in a draft. A good year might yield a couple of franchise QBs, one of which is at the lower end of the franchise spectrum (Matt Schaub, Andy Dalton, Joe Flacco). A bad year like 2007 or 2013 yields no franchise QBs. Generally speaking, franchise QBs go in the Top 5 picks. Franchise QBs who come out of the bottom half of the first round are pretty rare, and about as likely as those who come out of later rounds: Chad Pennington (2000), Aaron Rodgers (2005) and Joe Flacco (2008). Scouting is pretty thorough these days, so there aren't a lot of top prospects QBs "slipping through the cracks" and falling to the 2nd half of the first or into the second or third round unless there are some extenuating circumstances. My caveat is that if you're drafting a QB outside of the Top 5, unless it's truly a great QB draft ( like 2004) or a QB has some "extenuating circumstances", you're drafting an "everybody else". The question is, as a GM and a team, can you live with those "extenuating circumstances" if they come with an otherwise potentially great QB prospect? Tom Brady was a part time player because of athletic department politics. Drew Brees and Russell Wilson are short. Kirk Cousins is built more like a HS basketball player than a pro football player. So, if Baker Mayfield, who is short and supposedly has some baggage, is available at 17, and the Bills traded up for him, I wouldn't be opposed to that because without those two negatives, he'd probably go much higher. I also wouldn't cry in my beer if they passed on him either. Actually, taking a QB in the first round who wasn't a first round talent ought to lose them at least one point IMO. They simply took a QB in the first round just to take a QB in the first round. FAIL! Absolutely. The Bills would have had the 18th pick in 2005, and Rodgers, who had been expected to be the #1 pick and fell for some reason, wasn't taken until #24 by the Packers.

The only 2 veteran QBs who might be available who are actually good are Cousins and Smith. Cousins might not be available and will be expensive. The Bills would have to trade for Smith, and they've been fleeced so many times by Andy Reid that I'd leery of him. Bradford can't stay healthy. Keenum had a great year, but Minny is loaded with talent on both sides of the ball, so it's impossible to predict what he'd do on any other team. The Vikes will probably keep him anyway. Since his big 2013 season, Foles has played 1 great game: the NFC Championship game for Philly, and he's under contract. All the rest are journeymen who at best are about on the same level as Taylor, and many not even that good.

You should have been looking in a mirror when you typed that first sentence since the announcers during the Eagles Vikings game made the very statement that after Wentz went down, the Eagles staff started tailoring the offense to fit Foles which was why he looked so much better the last two games he played than the previous ones: they had changed the offense. Foles looked good over a single season when he was in a run-and-gun style offense for a talented team that took NFL DCs by surprise for a while. He's looked good for a couple of games in an offense that's been altered to fit him on a team that's very talented on both sides of the ball. In between, Foles has failed to impress anybody, and that's why the Bills weren't interested in signing him. Maybe instead of whining about the Bills sticking with Taylor as their starter, maybe you should really ask why the Bills didn't have somebody better than Peterman as their backup ... like Foles, who signed with Philly for backup QB money. The Bills could have signed Foles as Taylor's backup y'know rather than going with a fifth round rookie.

I want option C. Taylor with the Eagles offense backed up by the Eagles defense. Get a clue: Foles is playing in a QB friendly system that Pedersen and his staff have tailored to his strengths. He has one of the best if not the best OL in the NFL protecting him, a top notch running game, and good NFL quality receivers. Tyrod Taylor played in a system that didn't fit him behind an OL that struggled most of the season to protect the QB and open holes for the RBs. He had only 1 NFL quality WR, and only late in the season. Switch Foles and Taylor in 2017, and you'd be whining about why ever did we dump Taylor for Foles. Whether you have a great QB or a crappy one, the guys around him are going to contribute to his success. It's a team game and you can't ignore that. In a better offensive system, Taylor has looked better with less talent (2015 and 2016) than Foles has looked except for 2013 under Chip Kelly and the last two games with Philly. Some really lousy QBs have managed to look good for a few games, so I'd go with Taylor.

Does the phrase "you get what you pay for" ring a bell? That's backup QB money Philly shelled out for him, which for them, turned out to be well spent because Wentz got hurt. Foles is a nice backup QB but a pretty crappy long term starter. His NFL success as a starter didn't last as long as Chip Kelly's NFL coaching career. Foles was mediocre in his last year in Philly, throwing 13 TDs and 10 INTs in 8 games as a starter in 2014. He was traded to SL and sucked there in 2015. He was an uninspiring backup to Alex Smith in KC in 2016 which was why he was a FA in 2017. As for being a better fit for "the Dennison offense", why does it matter? Dennison was a crappy OC with little imagination and an inability/unwillingness to adjust to changing game situations. Good riddance.

Your arguments are simply bogus BS that's based on conveniently manipulated stats like lumping all offensive linemen together to make your point. Even lumping RTs and LTs together ignores the realities of the modern NFL where LTs much more highly valued -- paid -- than RTs, but carry on with proving your ignorance.