SoTier

Pollyannish? Yepper. To paraphrase Bill Parcels, "you are what your record says you are".

The quality of individual players in any draft is not determined by either the other players in that draft or by the hype spread by media talking heads. In the 1983 draft, the greatest QB class ever by result not by ratings of talking heads, produced 3 HOFs plus a decent NFL starter. The KC Chiefs still managed to pick an absolute bust in Todd Blackledge, the second QB taken. In the second best QB class ever, 2004, produced first round QBs Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger ... and JP Losman. Losman was not a first round prospect, and being drafting in the first round with three other QBs who are likely HOF candidates didn't make him any better or worse than he was. FYI, the last time I looked, finding good DBs is a lot easier than finding good QBs. If Mahomes turns out to be a stud and Allen does not, the Bills will have screwed themselves once more ... just as they did in 2009 when they gave away All Pro LT Jason Peters or in 2010 when they gave away All Pro RB Marshawn Lynch. If you don't like my opinions, don't read them or put me on ignore but don't dare tell me -- or any other poster -- to "shut up". FTR, the Bills do not have "one of the best secondaries in the league" but feel free to make up BS to justify your uncritical fandom for a team that's produced only 20 winning seasons in 58 years.

That was my point. How NFL teams have draftees rated is what's important in determining who and when kids get drafted -- and those ratings/evaluations are carefully guarded "trade secrets" as it were. What the media people put out is for "entertainment'. It may sell subscriptions or be click bait or garner ratings, but these guys aren't going to lose their jobs if they say "pick X at #1" and X bombs. By next the next draft, nobody will remember. If the NFL FO's pick too many busts, they're out on the street, so the story about how X loves his mom or Y overcame this or that set back isn't going to factor in to the NFL considerations.

I think that they drafted a QB to placate the fans ... which is exactly what the Bills did in 2013 and 2004, too. Drafting Allen -- and using up so much draft capital to do it -- provides them with the perfect cover if their gutting of the rest of the offense blows up in their faces.

I was actually far more optimistic last season than I'd been in a while. I thought they'd win at least 7 games, and if the D stepped up, 8 or 9. I didn't think they were good enough to win 10 games, which is what I believed it would take to make the playoffs but I didn't count on Miami losing Tannehill for the season or Denver going down the toilet or Baltimore giving a remarkable imitation of the Bills under Rex Ryan in the last game of the season. The offense last season was barely functional, and it wasn't all Tyrod Taylor's fault. McDermott's hiring of Dennison forced Taylor into a system that simply didn't fit him, and Castillo's shift to a new blocking scheme handicapped the OL for most of the season. McDermott and Beane also stripped Taylor of all his viable targets except for Charles Clay. Even the greatest QBs can't shine when they're running for their lives and have no reliable receivers to bail them out. Aside from signing Bodine, there's been nothing added to the Bills offense in 2018. Maybe Zay Jones will prove he's not a bust. Maybe AJ McCarron will prove he's not a career backup. Maybe Vlad Ducasse will have an epiphany in his ninth or ten year in the league and play like a competent RG, something he's never been able to do (that's despite the glowing ratings from the statboys). I didn't mention Josh Allen because I think the best thing that could happen to him is that he doesn't play this year unless it's parts of games late in the season. He doesn't need to get mangled, mauled, and then raked over the coals for poor performances playing with the hot mess that's the Bills offense. Dream on.

More than that, Allen is in just about the crappiest situation a young QB can be put in: a largely talentless offense with a HC and GM who do not seem to value talent, and especially offensive talent. Even the greatest QBs can't be effective, much less shine, without protection and decent tartgets. In Buffalo, Allen won't have much of either, so even if he has ability to overcome all the strikes against him, we may never see him do it. The best thing that could happen to Allen in Buffalo is that he sits out all of 2018, and McDermott and Beane wake up to the fact that a team can't win without offense and get him some help for 2019. I'm not hopeful. I figure McCarron and/or Peterman last half a season before one or both are injured or benched and Allen gets thrown to the wolves. As I said before, McDermott reminds me more and more of Dick Jauron, and Beane is either McDermott's soul-mate or his yes man. It's great when the HC and GM have the same philosophy, but when the underlying philosophy is flawed, it's a disaster. This is 2018 not 1928 ... NFL teams need offense, particularly passing offense, to win consistly. McDermott and Beane seem to view the offense as a luxury at best and a necessary evil at worse. Whatever, the result is the same: turning the decent offensive team of 2016 into a basket case by July, 2018, and that's just such a good spot for a rookie QB to be (that's sarcasm BTW). It's going to be a long, miserable season for Bills fans.

"If the offense is average ...." ??? In what alternative universe do you reside? The Bills don't have a starting QB, and one of their QB is a career backup, another one sucked monkey balls in his limited stints as a rookie, and the third is a rookie who is not considered particularly pro ready. They have a top notch RB who's under a cloud and may miss part or all of the year. They have a decent starting TE, 1 NFL caliber LT, and 1 NFL caliber WR. The supposed "battle" for starting center is between a journeyman starter and a career backup. They have a highly touted sophomore WR who had a horrendous rookie season. The rest of the offense is manned by players who would only see the field as backups and/or STers on most teams in the NFL. The Bills will be lucky to make it into the Red Zone more than once a game ... in other words, the Bills offense will be lucky if it's not the worst O in the league by a significant margin.

It's obvious that most of the posters in this thread have never been involved in even a peripheral way with major college athletics, ie Div 1 football and basketball. I attended a large Midwestern "football factory" university back in the 1970s -- even worked as a tutor for the football team for a semester -- and saw first hand the exploitive nature of big time collegiate athletics. While the situation is better today than back in the 70s, it remains extremely exploitive. "Student athletes" are still recruited to play football or basketball first, and their education is too often directed to simply maintaining their academic eligibility. Most athletes take the minimum number of hours to be considered "full time" students. They spend hours every day in organized practice, and are expected to spend more time in the weight or training room as well as in team meetings. How much studying do you think athletes get done on football game days or on road trips where the basketball team plays 2 or 3 games in 3 or 4 days? Once athletes use up their eligibility or are seriously injured so that they're not able to play, they are kicked to the curb. The schools that are less exploitive are relatively few. They tend to be smaller, less competitive programs, although a few well known national programs like Stanford are among the exceptions. I don't think Rosen's plan is practicable but it's at least a starting point for real discussion on the exploitive nature of big time collegiate athletics.

I wouldn't have objected to the Bills taking Allen with one of their original picks, but it's the trading up that I object to ... and not just for Allen but for Edmunds, as well. A team should trade up for a "can't miss" prospect not for a gamble ... and certainly not for the third best QB in a draft. The Bills decided before the draft that they were going to draft a QB in the first round, and that's what they did, just as they did in 2013 with Manuel. What "evaluations"? NFL teams don't make their personnel evaluations public. The only evaluations that are made public come from various media "draft experts" that range from paid tv/radio/newspaper commentators to various unpaid web writers/podcasters/bloggers, none of whom represent actual NFL teams ... and if the Bills are using evaluations from media "draft experts" to determine their draft picks, then the team is in serious trouble.

Really? Can I have the Power Ball numbers then? A questionable pick is a questionable pick just as a bust is a bust. If Allen busts, he'll be far worse than Manuel because the Bills gave up so much more to get him.

Groy was only active for 5 games in 2015, and started none, which is why you don't remember him. If Groy had truly been "better than" Wood in 2016, why wouldn't he have challenged Wood for the starting spot in 2017? Bodine has been a starter for his entire career, including on the 2014 and 2015 Bengals playoff teams. His play suffered after LT Andrew Whitworth left the Bengals for LA (FYI- the Rams made the playoffs with Whitworth minding Goff's blind side). It doesn't seem likely that Groy will win the job.

Concussions are not "reoccuring" injuries. There is evidence that suffering one concussion can make some individuals more susceptible to suffering more concussions but that's not true for everyone because there are a lot of factors that determine how/why players suffer head injuries. Certainly a QB playing behind a crappy OL (which the Bills have until they prove otherwise) is more likely to suffer a concussion than one playing behind a solid offensive wall that gives the QB a clean pocket (which the Patriots have given to Brady for years).

Nobody knows if any QB taken in the draft will be able to "read a defense and not be pressured into making bad decisions regularly" at any time in his pro career until he proves he can do ii, and that's the problem that GMs face. Their only clues are how QBs play as collegians, but that play can be influenced by a myriad of factors. It's why almost half of all QBs drafted in the first round fail. Aside from his size and his arm, Allen doesn't have a lot to recommend him to be a top ten pick, especially one that a team trades up to get. He simply doesn't have the "pedigree" that a blue chip QB is expected to have. It's why so many fans do not like the Allen pick; if he'd been taken in the late first or in the second -- or if the Bills had not traded so much to move up to get him -- most fans wouldn't have a problem with taking him.

That's an amazingly ignorant statement. Current year draft picks aren't chopped liver, and giving up top notch young veterans who have already been signed to multi-year contracts aren't, either. The Bills gave up a cartload of picks to move into position to take a QB, and it's likely that at least 2 or 3 of those picks will turn out to be good or maybe even great pro players which the Bills won't have going forward for 3-5 years and maybe more. How is that NOT "mortgaging the future"? The only way that the Glenn trade won't set the Bills back several years is if Glenn is finished, Dawkins continues to progress, and Allen is a stud. If Glenn is finished and Allen is a flop, it's a wash. If Dawkins doesn't improve from his rookie performance -- and not infrequently good rookies don't develop into better players -- then the Bills have a gaping hole at LT and still have a below average RT (the position that Dawkins was drafted to fill) which will impact both their passing and running games going forward -- and Allen's prospects for success. Well said. Bills fans buy into the myth that Glenn was "washed up" because of injury because they want to believe that the Bills FO is doing a good job. However, the reality is that Glenn's injury issues only began about mid-2016, and that he basically had one injury that lingered, probably because Glenn/the Bills took a conservative approach to it rather than immediately opting for surgery. In hindsight, that was a mistake but nobody knew that in 2016 or 2017. It's a little early to declare the 2017 trade a "steal" for anybody. It will be all KC if Mahomes is a stud and Allen is not, even if Allen becomes a decent NFL starter on a level with Dalton or Flacco. It will be a wash or slightly favoring KC if Mahomes and Allen are about the same. Yes, the Bills got White, but Milano isn't anything special and Edmunds is unproven. More importantly, the Bills gave up a whole lot more to get Allen than the Chiefs gave up to get Mahomes. Only Mahomes being a bust while Allen becomes a decent NFL will give the Bills the advantage in this trade. It will be a steal for the Bills only if Allen becomes a near elite NFL QB while Mahomes does not.

Don't confuse fanboys with facts.

A JAG and a never-were are certainly good replacements for a two time All Pro and six time Pro Bowl RB because they're available to play and "buy into the process".

^^^ Right-o ... except that the Bills had no problem trading for a WR (Benjamin) who had a history of knee trouble while in Carolina and who had an injury when they traded for him. Glenn's injury was the only significant injury of his career. Unfortunately, it happened to be one that was serious and that took a long time to heal. It may have not been dealt with the best way at the beginning -- I believe they put off surgery for quite a while hoping it would heal on its own -- which may have added to the recovery time. Certainly the injury -- and Glenn's hefty salary -- didn't prevent Cinci from jumping at the chance to improve their OL. Of course, even Marvin Lewis has figured out that his QB can't hit his blue chip WR if he's getting knocked on his arse on most passing plays. Of course, the Bills drafted a QB who has had at least one significant shoulder injury, which could be terminal for any QB's NFL career if it affects his ability to throw the football. Who's to say that that another shoulder doesn't come back to shorten Allen's career? The injuries that have prematurely ended NFL QBs' careers aren't just limited to concussions or should injuries though -- and they can happen at any time whether that QB has a history of similar injuries or not. It takes only one. Well, "3-5 very good NFL seasons" trumps a single mediocre one. Matt Schaub, who was drafted in the third round of the 2004 draft, had about that many good seasons as the starter in Houston while JP Losman whom the Bills traded up to get (giving up their 2005 first rounder BTW) had only 1 decent season, 2006. I'm not saying that Allen will bust, but he's a big gamble, and Beane's/McDermott's squandering of their 2018 draft capital to get him and Edmunds makes it even less likely that he'll succeed. Plain and simple, he doesn't have the talent around him to succeed because outside of McCoy, Clay, Dawkins, and Benjamin -- when he's healthy -- the Bills are utterly lacking in talent on the offensive side of the ball. The offense is little more than a collection of JAGs, busts, and never-weres, and frankly, the Bills don't seem all that interested in improving that. As for the OP, I find the claims of the OP's "source" having "inside information" silly. His "points" seem like the pontifications of an ignorant blow-hard sitting at a bar with his fifth or sixth Genny Cream, and are literally a rehash of all the reasons that anonymous posters on this MB offered over and over again as to why the Bills shouldn't take Rosen. His "explanation" for why the Bills traded Taylor, however, is more original but hardly plausible. Taylor has proven to be pretty durable over his three years in Buffalo despite the doomsters' warnings, particularly before 2017 when he played behind a better OL.

It will virtually guarantee the Bills the #1 pick in the 2019 draft. Without Shady, they had absolutely no offense.

Yes, eventually Brady and Belichick will age out and NE will give up its dominance, but that's irrelevant to whether or not the Bills do better in the next two decades than they did in the previous two. NE's dominance wasn't the reason for the Bills' mediocrity in the past any more than its decline will be the reason for the Bills play in the future. 9-7 and a wild card loss hardly portend the beginning of a dynasty.

The worst game I ever attended was the 2008 game against the 49ers where the Bills lost 12-9 when Lindell's reasonable FG attempt went thunk! against the upright and bounced harmlessly away. That was late in third or fairly early in the fourth IIRC, and Losman had replaced Edwards and proceeded to give a perfect imitation of Tentative Trent. It was a cold, wet day with just enough drizzle to make the whole experience just miserable. My friend and I just chucked it in after that missed FG -- the first and only time I walked out of a Bills game with significant time to play simply because it was plain that the Bills wouldn't be scoring any more points in that game. I had been disillusioned with Jauron prior to that game, but I came to loathe him after that one. I missed that one because I chose to attend the big arts and crafts fair at Letchworth that weekend. Didn't the QBs -- the great Trent Edwards and Derek Anderson IIRC -- together fail to throw for 100 yards combined or something horrendous like that ?

The Eagles had/have talent on both sides of the ball including a solid WR corps and one of the best, if not the best, OLs in the league plus they had a starting QB with a solid year's experience and an innovative, offensive minded coaching staff. How do the Bills compare to that? Very poorly. They are one of the least talented teams in the NFL. They do not have an NFL caliber OL or WR corps. Their QBs have fewer than 10 NFL starts among the three of them, and their "blue chip" rookie's claim to fame is simply his arm strength. More importantly, not only does the Bills HC coach bear a depressing similarity to Dick Jauron in his coaching philosophy -- playing not to lose -- but he and the GM apparently believe attitude and hard work and buying into the coach's "process" trumps talent. Only in an alternative universe where fantasy becomes reality can the Bills win the division ... or even come close to winning half their games. In, this team will come closer to getting the #1 draft pick than making the playoffs.

Actually, what he lacked was a team that was interested in utilizing that new-fangled thing called the forward pass, which really hasn't been the Bills since they sent Drew Bledsoe packing in 2005. Notice that both Woods and Watkins flourished on their new teams, too. I don't think that's coincidence, and it's not just on the QB.

Who is advocating that Beane and/or McDermott be canned? The OP started a thread based on simplistic homerism advocating that Beane be forgiven for his mistakes no matter how serious, and posters have responded negatively to that naive premise. While you may be willing to unconditionally support Beane and McDermott just because they lucked out and made the playoffs, not all fans are willing to do that. I am one of those. I'm skeptical of the current regime because I see too many parallels to previous regimes, which suggests that the current team isn't likely to be any more successful than previous Bills teams.

Except it's not just McDermott's style of coaching -- playing not to lose -- that I find too much like Jauron ... I listed what I thought were similarities to Jauron in my post including McDermott's intolerance for players who don't fall into line with his ideas; his disregard for the offense, most especially the importance of the OL; and finally, McDermott's apparent belief that modestly talent players who buy into his "process" will triumph over more talented players who think for themselves. I don't think the "character culture" is overblown. I think what McDermott and Beane mean by "character" isn't what most fans consider "character". I think McDermott and Beane define "character" as players being willing to support "the company line" without question. Why did the Bills have to take a QB in 2018 if they only had the choice of a supposedly "concussion prone" QB (your claim) or a QB that most draft pundits considered highly likely to bust? Why should Beane "deserve credit" for doing the same self-serving thing that Doug Whaley did in 2013, putting economic considerations (ticket sales) ahead of winning?

How do we know this? Because the Bills got lucky last year and made the playoffs? They've been 9-7 numerous times before. They failed to be competive against the Patriots, losing the first game 23-3 and the second one 37-16. In case you don't remember, that's 1 TD in 8 quarters. They also got stomped by the offensive powerhouse Saints and the defensive powerhouse Chargers. They caught Atlanta napping early in the season and Indy shocked by a damned blizzard late. They smacked QB-less Miami twice. Then they got an absolute gift from the Bengals in the closing seconds of the final game. I'll be impressed when I see fewer games that remind me of 2006-2009.