DCOrange

And he's currently projected to be taken right around the Bills current range. Between Roquon, Edmunds, Evans, and Vander Esch, if the Bills hang onto one of their late 1st round picks, they should be able to get a great linebacker prospect which this team desperately needs.

Better, but I think the disparity between Lamar's supporting cast and his opponents versus Allen's actually makes Lamar's supporting cast relatively worse. Louisville was a god awful team offensively being propped up by Lamar while facing ACC competition. Wyoming was also a god awful team offensively (worse than Louisville) but the MWC competition isn't a lot better. I like both Lamar and Allen personally, but the excuses that scouts make for Allen while not affording the same excuses to Lamar is really stupid IMO. For example, Louisville WRs were roughly 2-3 times more likely to drop catchable passes than Wyoming WRs were this year. I think the NFL Comps for those two were way off too while the comparisons for the other 4 guys were all pretty good.

I don't necessarily agree with all the takes in here, but it's always interesting to read this stuff IMO: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2760902-matt-millers-scouting-notebook-scouts-latest-takes-comparisons-for-top-qbs?share=twitter

Who would pay McCown $10 million + bonuses with zero intention of him starting a game? That's crazy talk. You can sign a backup QB mentor far cheaper than that.

Hard to imagine them paying Tyrod's salary on top of what they're already paying Flacco. They can move on from Flacco in a year when Tyrod will be a free agent if they want to. I think Baltimore is far more likely to draft a QB than to trade for one like Tyrod. In this hypothetical scenario, they aren't paying $6 million just for a mid-round pick. They're paying $6 million so that they don't get stuck with Nathan Peterman and a meh prospect as their only QB options.

I would guess that at the moment, Darnold and Allen are their preferred choices, but I guess we'll see. I doubt they're locked in solely on one guy right now.

Yes, unless Rosen/Lamar skipped the combine for some reason, we'll learn exactly how much they weigh/how tall they are.

Hot take: I don't think this should piss people off.

You always knew this stuff was going on, but it was pretty cool to actually read the details of it.

The point with this quote is that Mayock believed Wentz was on Andrew Luck's level as a prospect, AKA one of the best QB prospects you'll ever come across. I don't think it's a big deal that one of those doesn't exist in this draft though. If a QB is good enough to be in the 6-10 range on Mayock's big board, he should probably be the #1 overall pick.

Even ignoring the raw numbers people look to like sacks, systems like PFF say Star was awful this past season and below average the two years before that. Short has been elite every year along with all the other guys that "demand the O-Line's attention".

I don't think he'll get anywhere close to $12 mil per year but we'll see. If anyone touches that, it'll be a mistake. The last projection I had seen for him was around $8 million per year.

Lamar actually doesn't scramble very often. In the Petrino offense, it's basically either a read-option or he'll sit back in the pocket and attempt a pass.

I'm fine bringing him in cheap, but it seems like he still has the reputation of being a good player despite his recent play and that scares me.

Saying that none of them are in the top 5 big board isn't really that much of a stretch to be honest. For example, Mel Kiper and Lance Zierlein each only have one QB in the Top 5 (both of them have their #1 QB at #5). Barkley and Quenton Nelson are probably the top 2 on most big boards. Minkah Fitzpatrick and Bradley Chubb seem to be locked in for most as well. I would expect most big boards will have 0 or 1 QBs in the top 5 with the exception of McShay. Not having a QB in his top 5 doesn't mean he doesn't think they're a great prospect.

I believe Charlie Campbell from WalterFootball was actually the most accurate last year. Mayock was most accurate two years ago. I don't think they'll take another corner in the 1st after doing so last year, but to be fair, if they let Gaines walk, corner is probably one of the 3 biggest needs the team has.

Yes, I've seen a bunch of reports that he could fall to the 2nd round. Seems like people are hearing his draft stock will fall in Randy Gregory style. It sounds like teams are extremely concerned by his off-field issues (which probably means Buffalo would also pass on him).

I'd personally prefer Tyrod to start the season and Lamar Jackson to potentially finish it but I think that's probably the least likely scenario out there.

To be fair, the Bills had a revolving door of sucky play at RG last year, which Groy has played in the past, and he still didn't get a shot at all under the new regime. Rex Ryan certainly seemed to like him, but I'm not so sure we can say the same about McDermott. And if the Bills like Groy so much, he could step in at RG; both RG and C appear to be holes on this roster and Groy can only fill one of them. And at least based on Kiper's mock and rankings, there was a pretty sizeable gap in ranking between Daniels and the closest LB (Vander Esch), DT, WR, and QB, and he already had Buffalo taking a CB.

I think I referenced it in my Josh Rosen bullet if I remember right, but yeah, the intermediate game might be the most important area to be able to successfully throw to in the NFL, and Rudolph's numbers in that range are extremely promising. It's kinda funny; the author mentions in his podcast that he was surprised how low Rudolph's all-around numbers were, but with the numbers he put up in the intermediate range, he actually surprised me in a good way. I've said in the past that I don't think there's anything you can really hang your hat on with Rudolph, but maybe that intermediate game is something. I still don't like him as a 1st or 2nd round pick, but that's something Buffalo could point to and be like "Yeah, this right here is what excites us about him". I don't think age really matters to be honest, especially if you're setting strict definitions of what is and isn't ball placement; it's really just a matter of whether or not you're willing to put in the work to chart everything out.

The percentages are based on whether or not the throw had proper ball placement, so for example, Rudolph completed roughly 52% of his deep balls I believe, but in BlueChipScouting's review of his film, the author charted it out and said only 38% of his deep balls were thrown with good ball placement. It's important to note that for example, he could have thrown a perfect ball but the corner made a great play on it/the WR dropped it; those would still count as good ball placement in these metrics. The color coding compares the QB's to the rest of their peers in that specific distance/location. So for example, look at the "20+ Left" column. Chase Litton completed it 75% of the time. Compared to the others, he was the highest, so his number is green. Rudolph was a distant last, so he was a redish-orange. Of the QBs included, the average was 50%, so at 50%, Darnold is yellow. Lamar Jackson, being slightly below that average, is a yellow-orangeish tint. It's just a Conditional Formatting setting I used in Excel. The author goes into detail about what he considers good ball placement in his podcast, which you can listen to here: https://soundcloud.com/user-743485251/episode-10 He talks about it at the very beginning if I remember right. For example, on the short passes, he looks for passes to be in a very specific spot, basically chest level so that the WR can catch it without over-extending, bending down, etc. so that he can pick up YAC since that's what you need in a short pass. The window for proper ball placement gets a little more generous further down the field. It's certainly subjective; there's no purely objective way to look at ball placement, but ball placement is more important than completion percentage. What I'm really curious about is that I know Benjamin Solak from NDT Scouting did a similar project for all of the QBs in the Senior Bowl and is currently planning to publish his findings for the underclassmen (Darnold, Rosen, Lamar, etc.) around mid-March. I'm curious to see how similar their numbers are. But the main point is that I think it's very important to look at ball placement regardless of the fact that it's a subjective thing. As I mentioned in response to one of the other posters, Benjamin Solak is working on a similar project, and in his, he also breaks it down by situation. You can view his work on the Senior Bowl QBs here; it's incredibly impressive. https://www.ndtscouting.com/solak-2018-senior-bowl-contextualized-quarterbacking-available/

To be fair, he points out that Buffalo could attempt to trade up into the top 10 for a QB, but he doesn't do trades in his mock drafts.

One of the guys I follow on Twitter for breakdowns of draft prospects retweeted a podcast from the guy that runs BlueChipScouting.com and basically, he watched a ton of film of most of the QB prospects and charted their passes for ball placement rather than completion percentage and I threw together a spreadsheet that summarizes the findings. Here's a link to his findings for the top 5 QB prospects. He mentions in his podcast that he plans on publishing the full set for the second tier guys later this week (as you'll see in my chart, there's a lot of holes currently for the Tier 2 guys, but I included as much as I could). https://www.bluechipscouting.com/single-post/2018/02/19/Quarterback-Ball-Placement I split the chart up based on how many yards the pass traveled, so "20+" = 20+ yards down the field, "10-20" = 10-20 yards down the field, etc. I don't think the 4th section of the table is particularly helpful, but I included it anyways; I think splitting it up by distance and direction is much more helpful in terms of drawing conclusions. Edit: Some of the main conclusions that stood out to me: Mason Rudolph's deep ball accuracy isn't nearly as good as his completion percentage would indicate. The author mentions it on his podcast, but basically, a ton of his deep balls forced his WR to come back to the ball rather than leading him, but he also noted that Rudolph was extremely impressive in the intermediate game. It's kind of a theme at this point, but once again, Lamar Jackson looks like a comparable passer to most of the draft class. He isn't in Baker Mayfield's league, but he's not far off from guys like Darnold and Rosen, and he's much more accurate than Allen. Allen's intermediate and deep ball accuracy are still below average, but he's at least comparable to some of the other guys. His short passing accuracy is pretty insane though. Rosen isn't particularly impressive outside of the intermediate passing (which is arguably the most important zone) where he's the best. I'm really curious to get the full numbers on White, Litton, and Ferguson. What we currently have for Ferguson is surprisingly impressive.

It honestly wouldn't shock me if Polian hasn't actually watched Lamar this season and that he's just going off of how he looked a year ago.

If Buffalo drafts him, I'll root like hell for him. I thought he was a really intriguing option last year when he was considering entering the draft and was viewed as a 3rd or 4th rounder. I'd still be okay taking him around that range this year, but like I said, I think he's a low-ceiling choice.