SoTier

Griffin's problem has been that he never adjusted to the pro game. Even if he'd never been injured, he would have failed once defenses figured him out. It's the very same reason so many young QBs light up the league for a season or two and then crash and burn.

Mea culpa. Dak Prescott. Thanks.

I can see 3 or 4 QBs going in the first round because, apparently like their fan bases, some NFL GMs seem to buy into the a significant amount of the hype and hysteria dished up by the media around the draft. I think that Cleveland's GMs prior to the current regime certainly did that. IMO, the Jests move up to #3 so early and without knowing which QBs will be available smacks of the same stupidity. You are correct in noting that except for 1983 and 2004, most years with 3, 4 or 5 QBs taken in the first round don't actually produce that many successful QBs, much less "franchise QBs" from those first rounders. The drafts since 1983 have seemed to yield 1 and sometimes 2 successful QBs from each draft whether there's 1 QB drafted in the first round or 4 or 5, and in the last few years, there seems to be more successful QBs coming out of the draft from the rounds after the first. The chances of actually getting a "franchise" quality QB (a top notch, long term starter who becomes the face of the franchise) is much less because not all drafts produce one. Between 1999 and 2014, the 2002, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014 certainly failed to produce QBs who were good enough to be considered "franchise QBs" although some of those drafts produced successful QBs. Taking a Daunte Culpepper or Ryan Tannehill or Jay Cutler at 11 or 12 is okay, but taking a Todd Blackledge or Joey Harrington at #2 is painful. Trading up to get a bust like JP Losman is a disaster. Only if the Bills or some other team trade up will 3 go in the top 10 IMO. I don't see any of the teams in the top 10 except Cleveland and the Jests drafting a QB, including Denver which has Keenum as well as 2016 first rounder Paxton Lynch who was hurt most of last season. The problem is that the evaluation skills that NFL teams use to judge draft QBs are woefully inadequate to enable teams to consistently pick good QBs in the draft, so yeah, it's a crap shoot. I can only think of 2 teams in the last 20 years that successfully transitioned directly from one franchise QB to another without missing a beat because they drafted his replacement: NE when Tom Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe and Green Bay when Aaron Rodgers replaced Brett Favre. The NY Jests transitioned from one successful QB, Vinnie Testaverde, to another successful QB, Chad Pennington, but I wouldn't rank either as "franchise QBs". Dallas may be a third team if Deshaun Watson Dak Prescott turns out to be a franchise QB (replacing Tony Romo who was an UDFA). QBs who are #1 consensus picks seem to hit with regularity, but the percentage of successful QBs from the first round drops precipitously after #1, even for QBs drafted in the top 5 or top 10, and is depressingly low for QBs drafted in the bottom half of the first round. My guess is that the success rate for QBs in the first round is significantly lower than for most other positions except perhaps WR. That suggests to me that the evaluation criteria aren't measuring what needs to be measured, which are the very things that separate the Rivers, Rodgers, and Lucks etc from the Harringtons, Losmans, and Carrs. So, unless there's a QB who's the #1 consensus pick in the draft, it's pretty much a crap shoot.

Promises, promises, promises.

If the QBs go as high as the media mavens predict they will, Smith will be available at 12. If the QBs don't go as high as predicted, then there will be 1 or 2 available for the Bills to pick -- if they want one of them, and they might not. As I've said numerous times, we don't know how the Bills have the QBs rated. I don't think the Bills will move up for "a" QB as the Jests apparently are willing to do. I think if they're willing to trade up, it's for a specific QB, which means that they won't trade up before the team they have as a partner is on the clock and their guy is available. Of course, it may be that neither Cleveland nor Giants is interested in trading out of their spots except for far more than the Bills are willing to give. If they can't find a partner or their QB is off the board, then they're going to go BPA at another position, which certainly Smith would be. Whatever the outcome, the Bills need to cross their Ts and dot their Is, and be prepared for contingencies since drafts seldom go the way the hypesters in the media claim it will.

Minnesota. Back in the late 1990s the Vikes went to the playoffs with Brad Johnson (1996 & 1997), Randall Cunningham (1998), Jeff George (1999), Daunte Culpepper (2000). Then they came back in the last decade to make the playoffs 5 out of the last 10 years despite not having an entrenched franchise QB in his prime: Gus Frerotte (2008), Favre (2009), Ponder (2012), Bridgewater (2015), and Keenum (2017). Furthermore, the Bills 17 years of playoff drought wasn't because they lacked a franchise QB. They failed to make the playoffs for so long primarily because of poor FO decisions, from selecting HCs to drafting players to decisions about which FAs to keep and which FAs to sign. The Bills had a franchise QB in Drew Bledsoe from 2002-2004, and failed to make the playoffs. The only year where you actually argue that better QBing would have put them in the playoffs was in 2014 when Marrone dumped Manuel and went with retirement list refugee Kyle Orton who played rather poorly toward the end of the season. Through most of the drought, the team didn't have enough talent on the sidelines or on the field to even be a playoff contender.

You're right about the stupidity. A certain percentage of this fan base has been conditioned to believe that QBs drafted in the top five can't bust. Todd Blackledge, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Vince Young, JaMarcus Russell, Mark Sanchez, and Robert Griffin III all say "hi, fools".

Name them.

Philly was a talented team before the Eagles took a flyer on Chip Kelly, and he wasn't in charge long enough to do a total gut job on the team, so Philly already had a pretty talented team. Even so, the Eagles went 7-9 in Wentz's first season. The Bills weren't all that talented before McDermott was hired, and he proceeded to get rid of more players, including young, talented players like Watkins, Darby, Dareus, etc. They also traded their starting QB and their starting LT, although Glenn was injured most of last season, and they lost C Eric Wood to injury/retirement. Through trades and FA, they've only replaced a few of the players they lost, so they still have massive needs at WR and on the OL plus LB. Even if the Bills use only 1 draft pick on a QB and he develops into a quality starter, it's likely to still take them two or three years to return to the playoffs. If they give up all of their Day 1 and Day 2 picks and some 2019 picks, too, which is what some advocate, to trade up into the top five, they are going to be doomed to more than three years of no playoffs even if the QB they pick turns out to be a quality starter. Even greats like Brady, Brees, and Rodgers need protection and targets ... and defensive help so that they don't have to score 30+ points a game to win.

^^^ So, you two are obviously either privy to what the Bills' FO office staff were thinking last year, or you're mind readers who've personally met with McDermott. So, why are you wasting your time and talent posting on a fan message board rather than trading on connections and/or talent to make some real $$$?

Exactly this. Except for 2004 which was an outlier because of its quality, drafts with 4 QBs going in the first round since 2000 (2003, 2011, and 2012) have yielded only 4 hits among the 12 first rounders (Palmer, Newton, Luck, and Tannehill). Even the 3 successful first rounders from 2004 only raise that to 7/16 which is less than 50%, and the three successes from 2004 were significantly better prospects than the top guys this year. What if there isn't one to be found??? Sorry, but drafting a QB in the first round doesn't guarantee that he'll be successful. Not only were both Losman and Manuel failures for the Bills but so were top ten picks David Carr, Joey Harrington, Byron Leftwich, Vince Young, Matt Leinart, JaMarcus Russell, Mark Sanchez, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert, and Robert Griffin III for other teams. Since Mahomes and Watson have played all of 8 NFL games combined, it's a bit early to declare them successes. Both of these players had significant question marks about how they would adapt to the pro game. Now, one or both may turn out great or really lousy. Come back in a couple of years to see if passing on either of them was a mistake.

Promises, promises, promises ...

If they think Roquan Smith is a better LB than Lamar Jackson is a QB, and they go BPA, that works for me. A first round stud is a stud. A first round bust is an expensive backup. In fact, with all the hysteria over 4 or 5 potential first round QBs, maybe taking a guy in the 2nd or 3rd round is a smart move because those guys get lost in the shuffle. That worked to Cinci's advantage in 2011, and Seattle hit the jackpot in 2012 in the third while Washington did much better with the one they took in the fourth than they did with the one they took at #2 in 2012.

Since when did wealth become a synonym for altruism? As a point of fact, historically numerous wealthy individuals were notoriously tight-fisted and ruthless when it came to their business dealings. For numerous reasons, sometimes because they felt compelled to share their good fortune or sometimes just to avoid taxes, they or their heirs made generous gifts to all kinds of charities both before and after their deaths. People today, both rich and poor, frequently do the same. Y'know, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. Mostly Sullivan's full of BS but he's right on this one. The Bills win-loss record over Wilson's tenure as owner speaks for itself: 21 winning seasons in 54 years, and virtually all of them under only 3 HCs: Lou Saban, Chuck Knox, and Marv Levy. In the last 14 years of Wilson's ownership, the Bills had exactly 1 winning season and 0 playoff appearances when teams with owners who invested in top quality FO and coaching staffs were perennial playoff and Super Bowl contenders despite being operating under the same salary cap rules as the Bills. How many players that the Bills drafted and then chose to trade or not re-sign as FAs went on to become Pro Bowlers, All Pros, or potential HOFers with other teams? How about Antoine Winfield, Nate Clements, Pat Williams, Jason Peters, and Marshawn Lynch? The number of ex-Bills who went on to become key performers for playoff and Super Bowls teams is embarrassing large for a team that never even made the playoffs in the 21st century under Wilson's ownership. Look at how many ex-Bills played in the 2018 Super Bowl. You can dismiss the accusation that Wilson refused to spend on his FO and coaching staffs because you don't like Jerry Sullivan or because you wish to put Wilson up on a pedestal as if he were George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, but it's not going to change the reality that under his ownership, the Bills sucked almost annually except for the Polian-Butler era.

What evidence do you have that teams are doing #2 (trading up) or #3 (gambling on raw prospects) more now than prior to the rookie salary structure was put into place in 2011, and are doing so because of the rookies salary cap? I just don't see it. IMO, it's the media draft mavens and fans obsessed with the idea that getting a top QB solves all their teams problems that drive these ideas. The pros are doing pretty much what they always have done: drafting QBs they like when they get the chance, including trading up on occasion or taking raw prospects. IMO analytics haven't yet proven accurate in predicting QBs' NFL success. - First of all, there's the definition of "success". I don't count "success" as a QB merely being a starting QB for a team. Trevor Siemian starting 24 games might be "success" but only for a 7th rounder, not for a first rounder. If we're talking first rounder, then I want him to be a bonafide franchise QB at least on the level of Jay Cutler, Ryan Tannehill, Andy Dalton or Joe Flacco -- a competent starter who can shine with the right supporting cast and occasionally show flashes of brilliance, and do this for multiple seasons. Your definition of "success" seems much less rigorous than mine. - The second problem is the small sample size. In order to test the assumptions used to develop the number crunching algorithms, you have to have lots of data. QBs generally take time to develop, so there's going to be a time lag between the time they're drafted and when the successful ones come into their own. More importantly, one year of good/great play does not make a QB "success". This means that while the QBs in the 2011, 2012, and 2013 classes have shaken out, the story of the 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 classes remain mostly incomplete. There were 9 first round QBs, 4 second rounders, 4 third rounders, and 5 fourth rounders taken between 2011-2013, for a total of 22. If you go back 3 more years, (2008-2010) you get 7 first rounders, 4 second rounders, 2 third rounders, and 2 fourth rounders for a total of 15. Thirty seven QBs is simply too small a sample, and even if you add in the 43 QBs taken in rounds 5, 6, and 7 between 2008 and 2013, you still only have 80 QBs, probably 60% of whom never got an opportunity to even play in a regular season NFL game. - Finally, I think the increase in the number of QBs coming out of the rounds below the first in recent years suggests that analytics is missing the keys to QB success just like the human scouts have been doing for years.

IMO, there will be at least one QB with a first round grade (in alpha order Allen, Darnold, Mayfield, Rosen) available at #12. I think only 2 QBs will go in the top five, one to Cleveland and one to the Jests, unless the Bills trade up which I don't think they should do unless they are absolutely committed to one of these prospects -- and as you wrote, they all have areas of concern, so maybe not so much. I think that all the talk of all these kids going in the top five is simply media hype fed by the media frenzy that now surrounds the NFL draft. Nobody knows how the pros have these kids rated, and all the talk about this team wanting X or that team pursuing Y is just speculation fueled by wishful thinking or the need to generate clicks/ratings. A few of the predictions might even be right ... after all broken clocks are right twice a day.

Contrary to popular thought, I don't think that the rookie salary scale has much to do with the "rise" of false QB prospects. I think that very few teams are allowing the salary cap implications to determine whether they take a first round QB or not as there doesn't seem any correlation between the quality of QBs taken after the first round before the institution of the rookie salary cap and after. If the rookie salary encouraged teams to draft lesser prospects in the first round, there should be even fewer "successful" QBs coming out of the lower rounds. The reverse almost seems to be true as the most successful QBs in both 2012 and 2013 came from later in the draft. On both sides of the rookie salary cap, when there are attractive QB prospects, they get drafted in the first round and less attractive prospects get drafted later, and teams continue to miss on their QB evaluations. Year - # of first rounders - Best QBs: (by draft order) The NFL salary cap was instituted in 1994. 1994 - 2 Best QBs: Trent Dilfer (1), Gus Frerotte 1995 - 2 Best QBs: Steve McNair (1), Kerry Collins (1), Kordell Stewart 1996 - 0 Best QBs: Tony Banks 1997 - 1 Best QBs: Jake Plummer 1998 - 2 Best QBs: Peyton Manning (1), Charlie Batch, Matt Hasselbeck 1999 - 5 Best QBs: Donovan McNabb (1), Daunte Culpepper (1) 2000 - 1 Best QBs: Chad Pennington (1), Marc Bulger, Tom Brady 2001 - 1 Best QBs: Michael Vick (1), Drew Brees 2002 - 3 Best QBs: Josh McCown, David Garrard 2003 - 4 Best QBs: Carson Palmer (1) 2004 - 4 Best QBs: Eli Manning (1), Phillip Rivers (4), Ben Roethlisberger (11), Matt Schaub 2005 - 3 Best QBs: Alex Smith (1), Aaron Rodgers (1), Kyle Orton, Matt Cassel, Ryan Fitzpatrick 2006 - 3 Best QBs: Jay Cutler (11) 2007 - 3 Best QBs: Drew Stanton 2008 - 2 Best QBs: Matt Ryan (1), Joe Flacco (1) 2009 - 3 Best QBs: Matthew Stafford (1) 2010 - 2 Best QBs: Sam Bradford (1) Rookie salary cap instituted 2011 - 4 Best QBs: Cam Newtown (1), Andy Dalton 2012 - 4 Best QBs: Andrew Luck (1), Ryan Tannehill (1), Russell Wilson, Nick Foles, Kirk Cousins 2013 - 1 Best QBs: Mike Glennon 2014 - 3 Best QBs: Blake Bortles (1), Teddy Bridgewater (1), Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo 2015 - 2 Best QBs: Jameis Winston (1), Marcus Mariota (1) 2016 - 2 Best QBs: Jared Goff (1), Carson Wentz (1), Dak Prescott

The word is "hyena". It's a dog-like scavenger found primarily in Africa. Very well said. Living in a small (by population not land area), predominantly rural county, I can attest to this. Numerous schools in Chautauqua County have gone to combined programs to keep football teams on the field. In this area, it predominantly affects white athletes rather than blacks, but it's a problem throughout rural/small town America but especially in the Plains states where some areas are becoming depopulated.

Actually, ethnicity isn't that at all. It's the fact of belonging to/ identifying with a social group that shares a common national or cultural tradition. In the US it's primarily used to describe European Americans who have strong cultural ties to their European roots (ie, Italians, Greeks, Polish, etc) but is also frequently used to describe Latinos (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, etc). Asians, too, have distinct ethnic groups like Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. It's not usually associated with blacks in the US but there are a few distinct cultural groups among American blacks, most notably Haitians and Jamaicans. Ethnicity is not the same thing or even close to the same thing as "race" or "color" at all unless you go back to the archaic usage of "race" used in the late 19th century when some racist writers popularized the idea of ethnic groups as "races" as in "the German race" or "the Anglo Saxon race". Ethnicity is primarily based on culture. Race is primarily based on physical characteristics, most notably skin color.

This is how I remember it, too, and I've been a fan since about 1963. IIRC, Wilson only rehired Lou Saban because after about 5 or 6 losing seasons, fans had abandoned the Bills. Saban came in and took advantage of OJ Simpson's talent and built a playoff team. That was a consistent pattern as long as NFL teams were dependent upon ticket sales -- the Bills sucked for several years until fans stopped attending games and then the Bills took action, bringing in better coaches/FO people to build a winning team which lasted until the winning HC/GM left because of dissatisfaction with Wilson, and the team would sink into suckitude again. In the 2000s, the money from the TV deals made ticket sales much less important, so Wilson had no reason to do much. I think that free agency and the salary cap also were easy scapegoats for the Bills' unwillingness to pay outstanding players they had drafted and developed, especially in Buffalo where so many fans have blue collar roots. I also think that the rise of Russ Brandon within the Bills organization was more evidence of Wilson putting profit before winning. Before he came to the Bills, Brandon's claim to fame was the gutting of the Florida Marlins the year after they won the World Series, a move which resulted from Brandon dropping the team from having one of the highest salary costs to one of the lowest. It also resulted in the Marlins going from World Champions to the worst team in the league and finishing an enormous number of games behind the pennant winner. If you check Brandon's on-line biographies you won't find any mention of his time with the Marlins but you will find the outline of how he gutted the team in articles about the Marlins baseball team.

Doing otherwise is stupid. The only top five pick that you trade up for before the draft is the #1 pick. A team doesn't trade up into the Top 5 from #12 unless its guy is there. If the team is willing to take "any one of the above", then they're incompetent.

There are a lot of myths circulating among Bills fans concerning Ralph Wilson's affinity for the area as well as his role in keeping the Bills in Buffalo. I've become increasingly skeptical about how much truth actually underlies those myths as the years go by. One thing I do know is that Wilson repeatedly used the threat of moving the team to get very favorable lease terms for the stadium. He also wasn't interested in selling the team, so there's no way to know if there were any individuals or groups twenty or forty years ago that would have purchased it and kept it here. That there was no one who would have bought the team and kept it here is all based on assumptions not facts. BTW, after Wilson died and the team was sold, it has remained in Buffalo. Maybe that had something to do with how Wilson had things set up or maybe it's just that the Pegulas have their own affinity for the Buffalo area ... or maybe it was just a good business decision because there was no better place to move it. Very well said. BTW, saying that Wilson was a cheapskate owner is hardly "revisionist history". Commentators and fans have been saying that for years. I personally have been critical of how the Bills were run under Wilson for years. The bottom line has ALWAYS been more important than winning for Wilson and his minions, many of whom were his family and friends rather than competent football professionals. Many NFL owners pad their team payrolls with family and friends, but most don't put them in positions of real power as the Bills did with Littman. The evidence that the Bills weren't interested in spending on coaches is pretty plain, too. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Bills HCs were spectacularly awful with the exception of Lou Saban and Chuck Knox, both hired after dismal on field performances left tens of thousands of empty seats in Rich Stadium. Except for Chuck Knox, none had any kind of NFL success after leaving the Bills, either. Even Marv Levy didn't have impressive credentials when he was hired, and his hiring was considered "more of the same mediocrity". It's also the opinion of many fans and analysts that the Bills might even have a Lombardi or two if they had had better coaching, especially against the Giants. In a previous post in this thread, I outlined the repeated problems the Bills had in signing their first round draft picks even when these players had only limited options. Some of the old time sports reporters of the day like Larry Felser frequently criticized the Bills for drafting "players they could sign" rather than good players, which may be why so many top Bills draft picks sucked. It wasn't until the Polian era that the Bills started going BPA in any kind of meaningful way. Oh, yeah, and the parade of DBs and RBs drafting in the first round to replace DBs and RBs who left in FA or through trade in the last decade and a half of Wilson's ownership is simply more evidence that the Bills watched that bottom line more than their win-loss record. It's also historical fact is that during Wilson's 54 year tenure as owner, the Bills had only 19 winning seasons, and 10 of those came in the 14 years between 1986 and 2000 under Bill Polian and his protege, John Butler. Most of the Bills playoff appearances also occurred in this period. Since Butler left, the Bills had exactly 1 winning season and 0 playoff appearances in the last 13 years of Wilson's ownership. Since Pegula became owner, despite a poor choice of HC in Rex Ryan, the Bills have already had 2 winning seasons and 1 playoff appearance in 4 years.

Well, let's see ... OJ Simpson held out for months as a rookie. Tom Cousineau, one of the Bills #1 draft picks, preferred to play in the CFL rather than sign for the length of his career with the Bills. Jim Kelly chose to play in the USFL rather than sign with the Bills, and only signed with the Bills after the USFL went belly up. Another first round pick, LB Tom Ruud, also held out for months. Oh, yeah, and in the era of pre-unrestriced free agency as we know it today, even the best players were cheap, especially compared to the owners' profit. It took strikes in 1974 and 1982 as well as a lock out by the owners in 2011 in order for ordinary players to get better wages and benefits, and numerous court challenges that culminated in modern unrestricted free agency in 1992 that enabled the best players to have big pay days.

Exactly this. Ralph Wilson ran his team as a business with the goal of making money. Like many business owners, he watched his bottom closely. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a generous philanthropist in the tradition of other tough businessmen like John D Rockefeller or Henry Ford.

Good points, especially about the problems faced by tall QBs. People, including QBs, can and frequently do learn to control their tempers, especially as they mature. What QBs can't learn to do is process/translate what they see into action faster than they naturally do. They simply can't adjust to the speed of the pro game. It doesn't appear that QBs can significantly change/improve their throwing motions, their ball placement, or their ability to see the field, either. All of these things contribute far more to a QB's success or failure than whether he has a temper -- or whether he's only 6' tall rather than 6'2" or 6'8".