silvermike

I hope Herm sends Spiller an invoice for the $50,000 raise he just earned for him.

He's not going to drop a pancake block on a blitzing Karlos Dansby. But if he checks him for a fraction of a second, then that could get us somewhere.

If Jimmy drops to us, maybe Carolina will trade up with us, and give up a 3rd for the option?

I swear I've heard someone say "There are only four or five players this year worthy of a top-ten selection"

Let's hope they're wrong there.

i wouldn't go so far as to say organization in decay, but the magic is gone in New England. In the 2001-2004 run, they seemed to be able to work magic with everything, landing Pro Bowlers with every draft pick and getting Super Bowl winning performances out of the likes of Antowain Smith. They mercilessly cut veterans the moment they lost a step (Lawyer Milloy) and kept getting value. But then that stopped. Putting together Welker and Moss for Brady was their last great move. Their running game has burned through role players (Sammy Morris) and scrubs (BenJarvus Green-Ellis) and washouts (LaMont Jordan). The defense still relies on the same players, and while they're really talented, there's nobody waiting in the wings besides maybe Jerod Mayo. They're going to be good for a while still, but they're not the class of the league by any stretch. Not anymore. ...not that they won't beat us twice.

Yeah, I think this won't be a big test of Nevergiveup's accuracy. I think he gave us accurate information on the day he gave it, but it's just too fluid to hold him to it. Which makes this all a pretty good gig.

I think the textbook example of a reach isn't in the NFL at all, but when the Sabres drafted Artem Kriukov ten years ago. There's a player who not only didn't provide any value, but presented a risk that we could have invested a 2nd (or 8th) round pick on. But it's very, very rarely that clear. There are only 32 relevant draft boards in the world, and all of them are extremely secret. Sometimes leaks get out, but usually, everyone outside is just making best guesses, and rarely does a year go by when the mock-drafters don't all chain-react whenever Kiper updates the rankings. So if the Bills draft Mike Iupati at #9, and Kiper had him at #45, it would be a reach if Kiper had an accurate prediction of the rest of the day. But if Jacksonville was going to take him at #10, it wasn't a reach at all. Team boards look different. And none of this has to do with what happens any time after the draft. Reaches are completely a way to determine if the teams maximized value based on their subjective predictions on draft day. The important work comes to light when we see if they drafted good players, regardless of how and when.

We've been sort of doubly burned on our 'reaches.' We not only took McCargo and Losman higher than they were projected to go, but their projections were themselves huge inflations of their talent. If we sat tight on our 2nd round pick and took Losman, he might have been considered a steal, but he still would have been a bust. You do have to separate the gamesmanship of the draft itself with the actual value of the players you select. If there are 5 seconds on the clock and no answer from the other 31 teams' GM, you just pick the best player for your team who you don't believe will be there the next time you're up. So if that means you grab Joe Player at #9 because you heard Indianapolis is going to take him at #31 and there's no way to trade up, you do it. But whenever possible, yes, you should trade down to try to pinpoint the right slot for the player, and get your guy at the lowest price, both in terms of dollars and draft value. But it can be very difficult to trade down, and you have to balance it against the risk of losing your man.

Even forgetting Peters, we have direct experience of what Parker does with a #10 overall pick Wide Receiver from last year's Michael Crabtree disaster. Dez Bryant hired the guy with that as the top billing on his resume. Dez Bryant either wants the Michael Crabtree experience or else he hired the wrong agent.

Wow, that deal is really fair to all the teams involved!

No, that's really not innocent. We have a system that's designed to make it very difficult to convict an innocent man and very easy to acquit a guilty man. I'm not saying you should look at all the evidence and decide that he's definitely guilty. I'm just saying that it's not crazy to look at the evidence and still think he might have done it.

This isn't the case of a big market team spending and spending their way to a championship, either. Holmes is on the last year of his rookie deal. According to Rotoworld (http://www.rotoworld.com/content/playerpages/player_main.aspx?sport=NFl&id=3635), he's set to earn $755,000 next year. So nobody passed on him because of the money.

Wacky. That's a solid addition.

I read this thread just to see who's going to get the 1000th post.

If not for Jauron putting the best possible team on the field and getting them to play atop their game, we would have lost to Cleveland 3-0? Apparently? Is that the argument?

That's not what the investigation found. The investigation found that there wasn't enough evidence to convince the prosecutor that he had a reasonable chance of winning. That's not proof of innocence, it's just a determination that it's unlikely anyone could convince twelve jurors that Roethlisberger is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a far cry from an affirmative finding of his innocence. Innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard. Nobody goes to jail until that's met. But it doesn't mean that it's crazy to believe it's still more likely than not that Roethlisberger - or anyone else - did what he was accused of. See O.J. Simpson.

Yeah, we can safely assume that that's just speculation and not inside info. Look at teams who need a quarterback and pursued McNabb, and figure they're the options. If the Bills wanted Vick, they'd have him by now.

+1. It's appropriate to wear a jersey with your own name on the back if it was issued to you by a team you're currently playing for. Otherwise...yeah.

This is funny. I can't tell if the people missing the sarcasm take away from the joke or make it better. Oh well Kidding aside, I wonder what compensation would actually convince Polian to trade us Peyton - not that any part of such a deal would be realistic, but if you were him, when would you start thinking it over? Six first round picks? Ten?

At 268, he's a 3-4 LB, right?

Oh, come on. If you knew for certain that the Bills wouldn't make a huge horking mistake on draft day, what's the fun? It'd be like a field goal you were guaranteed to make. No excitement.

If Berry is off the board, the consensus for the Browns is Joe Haden, so we hold even there.

I think Gaither is off the board - the story seems to be that it was all just to put some pressure on Gaither to get to camp.

Huh. I like that feature a lot. If 1-8 goes like that, Trent Williams should be the pick though, right?