dave mcbride

Agreed, to an extent. Teams bet on talent in the first round, and he had talent to burn - a 4.27 40 time and a rep as a good receiver too. That said, I do think teams today tend to take RBs a little later, so I would say late first round. The best comps I can think of are Reggie Bush and a guy John Butler coveted - Leeland McElroy, who was the 32nd overall pick in 1996. He was a bust, but teams did love him coming out of Texas A & M. As for Bush, he had a pretty good career once you look past where he was drafted.

I am not saying Butler was a whiff at all. He was a great player when healthy.

You are forgetting Jerry Butler.

A 4th the next year, right? Picks with a delay of a year are devalued by a round in the league's draft pick trade calculus, so he was basically traded for a fifth.

Again, the actual number is irrelevant; all that matters is cap percentage that the player takes up. NFL team revenues have gone up a lot in recent years, and there is consistent revenue growth year upon year. Consequently, salary averages go up every year because the CBA mandates that a specified portion of overall revenue goes to player salaries. People get way, way, way too hung up on salary numbers. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ezekiel-elliott-is-not-worth-the-money-he-wants/

He sucks now, CB.

The team is 40-24 when he's the starter and has a lifetime rating of near 100. As for playoff losses that aren't the QB's fault, Prescott has played in 3 postseason games. The Cowboys won once and lost one in which Aaron Rodgers was absolutely out of his mind at the end of the game. The Cowboys' offense certainly played well enough to win that game. Their other loss was to a Rams team that made the SB. The Cowboys defense gave up 273 rushing yards and 459 total yards in that game. Lots of mythology in this thread ... Lots of uninformed fans, it seems ... The salary number is irrelevant - what matters is the percentage of the cap room that the player takes up. Salaries go up ever year in a multi-billion dollar league whose revenue grows every year. Don't get hung up on salary numbers.

Not in 2017, which is what he's referring to (the playoff season).

No.

This.

The Lions lost that game late because their kicker missed a makeable FG. That's always the story with that team - they always have one or more truly gaping flaws, whether it's no credible RB, a terrible secondary, no pass rush, etc. And when I say flaw, I'm talking worst-in-the-league sort of flaw at an important position/set of positions. It's always something, and that's the curse of that franchise. They get a truly elite player like Suh and let him walk. I mean, wtf? He was DOMINANT there, and has been excellent since he left. When he left, their excellent 2014 D (11-5 that season; robbed by Pete Morelli in the playoffs on call as bad as the NRC one) goes immediately into the tank. You think the Bills consistently make bad decisions regarding personnel and overall team building, but imagine being a Lions fan. And let's not forget their first round drafting. They did manage to get Stafford, Suh, and Calvin Johnson with top-2 selections, but when they draft outside the top two they're either taking duds or guards/centers. It's mystifying. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/det/draft.htm

I personally think he's very good but has simply played for a bad franchise. He's truly elevated that team at times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap

Bear in mind that Singletary missed basically 3 and half of the first seven games and that Yeldon fumbled on one of his few touches in the first game that Singletary was fully out (against Cincinnati). I don't think the coaching staff had much trust in Yeldon at all this past season, and he's an experienced receiver. Gore is a non-entity as a receiver, although he will catch the occasional dump-off when everyone else is covered.

College football is all about recruiting. Why anyone would think Daboll could be a good recruiter in the upper Midwest with national stretch potential for 3 star recruits outside the region is beyond me. That's not a criticism of Daboll. There is no chance he'll get this job.

Fair point. Still, that's gotta be a pass play even if you're resigned to firing it out of bounds. Josh has to know that.

Um ... they had a pass play in and he shifted to a second option. The first option was the main play. I mean, I suppose you're technically right, but it's just as likely that Allen misread the play (we'll never know) and/or had a brainlock regarding the time left. The time management was ALL on him, and he had a number of brainlocks that day. The right thing to do was not to shift to GoreFail plunge. Throw it away if necessary and give yourself two more plays.

All I'm saying is that the first option was supposed to be a pass play from what I read. The second play was a run play. Maybe it should have been a different pass play; I don't know.

Somewhere between 17 and 21 percent of attendees at Bills games are from Southern Ontario, so the cited metro area number for Buffalo is off by a good bit. The Niagara region of Southern Ontario has 448,000 people, and I am not talking about Toronto. That is Bills country.

The Gore run was a pass play that Allen audibled out of because he didn't like the look. Don't blame the coaches for that one.

Who won this trade? From the NY Times in 1983: John Elway, the Stanford University quarterback who insisted he would not play for the Baltimore Colts when they made him the first pick in the National Football League draft last week, was traded last night to the Denver Broncos. In exchange for Elway, the Colts received Chris Hinton, the offensive guard from Northwestern who was the Broncos' first pick in the draft and the fourth player taken over all; Mark Herrmann, a quarterback from Purdue who has played three seasons with the Broncos; and the Broncos' first-round draft choice in 1984. Quarterbacks always go earlier than people think in January/Feb.

?? - He missed at most a couple of games at Florida in his entire career at Florida. He was extremely productive in college: https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/players/percy-harvin-1.html

What took him down were injuries and personality/attitude. The first can affect literally anyone in the NFL, and the second was unique to Harvin and probably the biggest red flag on him. I also fully believe that if he had been healthy in Seattle in 2013, he would have had a career season. He wasn't a gimmick player, either; he was one of the most explosive players in the league who could beat anyone around the edge on a rushing play and take it to the house on a five-yard slant. Plus he was a GREAT KO returner, with 6 TDs (including the Super Bowl) in his first 5 seasons. That is rare. Also, unlike Spiller, when Minnesota moved on from Harvin, they actually got a great return from Seattle: a 2013 first round pick, a 2013 seventh round pick, and a 2014 4th round pick.

6-2 is better than 1-7 -- no doubt. That said, the record is deceiving. They feasted on bad teams. Next year, just like the Bills they're going to have to face the AFC West and NFC West.

Fair enough, but I really think that people are forgetting how good Harvin was when he was healthy. He was spectacular both catching and running the ball. He had 52 carries for 345 rushing yards (6.6 ypc) in his third season to go on top of 1,000 yards receiving and a 72 percent catch rate from abjectly terrible QBs.