dave mcbride

32 years old with a ton of mileage and booted off the team that drafted him because presumably they thought he had nothing left. What's so hard to figure out here? Blount looked very slow late last year, and Antowain Smith looked pretty glacial in his final year in the league. Remember Anthony Thomas on the Bills? These guys don't get faster as they get older. They fall off a cliff fast. Re the Pats personnel decisions, they make a ton of them every year - their model is based on a lot of turnover. However, overall they're very, very good at it despite the occasional dud (which happens to every team). Take away Brady, and they're still a 10 win team pretty much every year. They have more hits than misses than the average team, and if you want me to walk you through that, I'm happy to do it. PS - I think you're wrong about what role he'll assume. The Pats don't focus on hard-and-fast roles for players; they focus on what they're good at and having plays that exploit their skills. MG is a different back than Blount, who - by the way - averaged 2.8 ypc in his final six games last year including the playoffs.

This sound like the worst Bills homerism, but I like MG on that team over AP. i think peterson is shot, and i think he's poor in enough areas to make him a very flawed player at this point in his career. I also think he's the best RB of his generation, but those days are in the past. He's also a scumbag, not that that these things factor in much (although I think they might with Kraft after the Hernandez thing).

Yep, and another thing to factor in vis-a-vis the Pats: Peterson is a fumbler. That's not merely a rep; it's actually true, and it also appears to be a disqualifying trait for BB (and one of the reasons why I think Dion Lewis will not be on the team much longer). Check it out:http://www.startribune.com/adrian-peterson-needs-to-get-a-firm-grip-on-fumbling-issue/365551791/ 8 fumbles in 2015. Remember what you know about BB and fumbling.

The same could have been said about LT, Edgerrin James, and Emmitt Smith when they were on the market. My guess is that Peterson is likely done as an elite player. Honestly, I didn't think he was particularly dominant in 2015 either -- at least, not like 2012. They simply fed him the ball all of the time. More importantly, he is 32: an age at which pretty much all elite RBs with tons of mileage fall off the cliff. He's apparently not even going to be starting for NO. I don't think he'd be a good fit in NE's system either. He's a weak receiver and an utterly indifferent blocker.

You don't sound like you're hating on the guy at all. Being a second round pick is a real achievement for anyone, and it's no sign that a player can't play well and even excel when he's both labeled and drafted as such.

Well, the Bills finished second that year according to FO, so they were better!

I see where you're coming from, but the same was said about Terrell Suggs. All he has done since coming into the NFL is dominate.

If he's really that good, I don't have a problem taking a DE who is a beast at getting to the qb. No problem at all.

I'm a huge believer in FO, so you're not gonna convince me. But that's OK--it's fine to disagree. Re points, you have to factor in turnovers that generate points for the opponent, opponents' starting yardline positions, etc. Raw points isn't good enough. The Eagles D was good on a lot of metrics: 2nd in time per opponents' drive, 4th in plays per drive, 12th in yards per drive, 10th in points per drive, and 9th in turnovers forced. And they played the hardest offensive schedule in the league.

It would definitely be short sighted. I'm just guessing that this might be shaping their thinking. People do tend to get gun-shy when they've had bad experiences with similar choices in the immediate past. I could of course be wrong!

Philly's defense was the fourth best in the league, up from 17th the year before. http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teamdef Bear in mind that they played the hardest offensive schedule in the league. They were excellent.

This isn't true. In their 2014 and 2015 drafts, they obtained six genuine contributors: Shaq Mason, James White, Trey Flowers (7 sacks last year), Brian Stork, Malcolm Brown, and Jimmy Garrapalo. Garrapalo doesn't start, but he's good. In 2012 and 2013, they drafted Logan Ryan, Chandler Jones, Jamie Collins, and Alonzo Hightower. I'm already up to ten contributors coming to a team that's always pretty stacked.

After last season's injury fest with our high draft picks, I cannot see them taking Hooker. He had a torn labrum in his hip and a hernia that he needed surgery on, and while he might be healthy by camp, it is no sure thing. This team doesn't strike me as one that wants a guy who has a real injury record given Lawson's experience last year. And yeah, I know that Lawson had surgery after the draft.

More on that Deadspin piece: 'The thesis, so far as I can tell, is I, Michael Lombardi, can tell you how to identify successful quarterbacks. This is rather a bold claim coming from someone whose résumé—after something like two decades spent hiring football players for a living—contains no notable examples of having identified a theretofore unidentified successful quarterback.' In actual fact, Mike Lombardi brought Rich Gannon to the Raiders in 1999. Rich Gannon was a phenomenal player for them.

The Deadspin piece about Lombardi linked to in the other thread is garbage too.

A major problem with this piece: he calls Lombardi a failure. Lombardi worked for three years with the SF dynasty, presided over the building of a good Cleveland team in the late 80s/early 90s, and presided over a mini-Raiders renaissance in the late 1990s/early 2000s. What has this guy ever done? Plus Burneko's take on RG III is entirely unconvincing.

Peter King has us picking Derek Barnett -- http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/04/24/nfl-mock-draft-peter-king-qb-first-round-trades

Yet Belichick has thought enough of him to hire him multiple times. He may be a tool, but I'll take BB's opinion any day over anyone else's in the NFL. For the Lombardi haters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lombardi_(American_football) . Belichick, Al Davis, and Bill Walsh all hired him and worked for relatively long stints with him. The guy has street cred.

?? -- Really?? How do you figure? Please explain. Know that i come from the school which regards Gillislee as objectively good. I also come from the school that prefers known good players to unknowns or guys who look bad to date (Jonathan Williams).

I get what you're saying in theory, but at the end of the day McDermott is replacing a basically .500 coach in Ryan and if they put in a couple of 5-11 / 6-10 seasons (not saying they will!), he is gone. The press from an already angry fan base will be too difficult resist, especially if the coach is a step down record-wise from Ryan and Marrone. If we have a couple of Chan-level seasons, he will be gone after season 2. Bank on it.

To be fair, the Bills are are really getting an early 6th round pick (applying some basic math here) at #163.

Remember when Ralph himself put in the call for Dwayne Wright? For some reason, he was bewitched by him. How he managed to watch Fresno State games is beyond me.

I'd be fine with Howard, personally. Having a great TE is an awesome thing to have. That said, is there a worse team in NFL history at drafting TEs than the Bills? The only one who they drafted early who turned out to be any good was Paul Seymour, and he was an OT in college! And he was basically a glorified blocker in the OJ years. Reuben "Hands of Stone" Gant and Tony "Who???" Hunter are the only other first rounders. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/draft.htm

Huh? I'm referring to the final AP rankings after the national championship game. They played Ohio State (#6), Penn State (#7), Florida State (#8), Wisconsin (#9), and Colorado (#17).

At #163, it's basically early 6th round (5 x 32 = 160).