Orton's Arm

How many free agents signed under the Jauron era have been the "now" players you'd like to see? I think we're better off building through the draft, and by finding diamonds in the rough. Take Fred Jackson, for example. He was an unknown (even to himself!) player who blossomed in Buffalo; and who's likely to give us many good years of play. He wasn't some "name" player on the tail end of his career. If you want guys in that category, look at Chris Villarial, Peerless Price, Drew Bledsoe, Bobby Shaw, etc. Speaking of Fred Jackson, you should note that the Bills never discovered what they had until after they'd released the A-Train (yet another veteran player in the twilight of his career). While the A-Train was around, Jackson never got a chance to show what he could do in a regular season NFL game. Just as Steve Johnson is unlikely to get a chance to show what he can do, for however long Coles is on the roster. (Note: I'm not saying that Coles will necessarily play down to the level that the A-Train did while he was here.) Another poster suggested that Reed, not Johnson, might be the odd man out if Coles is signed. This does not ring true to me. For one thing, Reed is a very solid player in the slot. Witness how our offense suffered when Reed went down with an injury! Also, this coaching staff seems to have a bias in favor of playing veterans as opposed to younger, less proven players. Any coaching staff that would play Fowler over Preston and the A-Train over Jackson is going to play Reed over Johnson.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm not that excited about the idea of acquiring Coles. If we don't sign him, we could go into 2009 with Evans and Johnson on the outside, Reed in the slot, and Parrish as our #4. If Johnson continues to develop, he'd provide us with a big, reasonably athletic possession receiver with good hands who can take some of the pressure off Evans. If we acquire Coles, we'd need to get one of the above-mentioned players off the field to get him playing time. Evans and Reed will still be on the field, so that means the odd man out will be Johnson. Instead of being put on the football field to show what he can or can't do, Johnson will linger on a bench. Is having Johnson on the bench really what this team wants? Do we really want to eliminate whatever chance Johnson might have had to show his talents on the field, in order to showcase a smurf WR entering his tenth year in the league?

Nice pun! As for Dockery, I felt he played too soft to be of much use in the running game. He was also a mild disappointment in terms of pass protection. But, other than those two areas, he did a pretty good job!

You're exactly right with this. And we seem to have replaced the philosophy you've described with the following: 1) Draft for immediate need, even if it means reaching for a player. 2) Spend plenty of first round picks on CBs, even if each and every one goes first contract and out. 3) Spend lots of first round picks on RBs, even if RBs typically have short useful careers. Who cares about the long term when a RB can give you a quick fix? 4) Completely ignore the offensive line on the first day of the draft. Offensive line starters are to be found among overpaid, second-tier free agents.

My bad. I'd gotten him confused with other guys--Jim Ritcher and Will Wolford--who really were first round picks.

I completely agree with this post. The Bills have tried building their offensive line through second-tier free agents, time and time again. And it's consistently failed. (As an aside, you can go ahead and add Jason Whittle and Greg Jerman to your list of Bills' free agent OL signings.) An offensive line needs continuity to be good. And that's exactly what you lose when you try building a line through free agency. Take the Chris Villarial signing for example. He was good for the first year he played for us, then was too old/injured/whatever to play good football after that. Instead of giving us continuity at the RG position, he gave us just one good year year. And that one good year makes him one of our more successful free agent OL signings. Dockery only gave us that one good year; Trey Teague gave us maybe one good year (I don't remember), Melvin Fowler never gave us a good year; maybe Mike Gandy gave us a good year at guard. I can't think of a single post Super Bowl era Bills' OL free agent signing which you can point to and say, "this guy gave us a high level of play for a good four to five years." Compare that to the play we got from first round draft picks like Kent Hull: an entire career's worth of solid play! Others in this thread have pointed out that there are a lot of holes in this team, and that it will be impossible to fill them all via the draft. But there's no reason why we can't use the draft to fill the holes on the offensive line. The Bills could use two first day picks to fill the starting OL positions, and use two second day picks to fill the holes at the backup positions. If the Bills need to use free agency to fill a hole, let to be at some position other than OL.

The last time the Bills used a first round pick on a center, they got Kent Hull. Since his retirement, the Bills have generally tried to fill the center position through second day picks (such as Jerry Ostroski and Duke Preston), or free agency (Trey Teague, Melvin Fowler, etc.). Frankly, I'm tired of this team signing second-rate, free agent centers. The center position has been an open wound in this team's flesh ever since Kent Hull hung up his cleats. We need to solve that problem for good--or at least the next ten years. And that means using a first round on Mack. We could either trade down for him, or else take some other player (hopefully Raji) at #11 overall, and then trade back into the first for Mack.

That pass was clearly underthrown. Lee Evans had to slow almost to a stop, turn around, reach down for the ball, wrestle it away from the two defenders he'd beaten, and then proceed into the endzone. It was a great individual effort by Evans, to help bail out his quarterback for having thrown what probably should have been an interception.

You're dead-on right with that post. I've explored some of the negative consequences of the "reach for need" approach here.

This is an excellent post. As you wrote, TE is a need that should be filled in the draft rather than free agency. But in my dream draft, the Bills' picks would be used on other positions. I'd like the team to take Raji, if he's still there at #11. If not, I could envision the Bills drafting some undersized DE/pass rush specialist, in hopes that he'll become the next Simeon Rice or Dwight Freeney. If Raji is gone, and none of the available DEs are deemed worthy of the 11th overall pick, then you start thinking about trading down. I think the Bills should trade away their second and third overall picks to move back into the first for Mack. If the Bills came away from the 2009 draft with nothing except Raji and Mack, it would be a very strong draft. But the Raji/Mack scenario doesn't leave much room for using a lower first round pick on Coffman. If Raji is gone, and if you're not enamored with any of the DEs, do you trade down for Coffman . . . or for Mack? Or do you try to get both players? Assuming willing trade partners, you could get one pick in the lower first round by trading down from #11, and another another first round pick by trading away your #2 and #3. If we got both Coffman and Mack, Trent Edwards would feel like he'd died and gone to Heaven.

I agree with just about everything you've written in your post, except for the "you just can't keep throwing first round picks at QBs." I know what you meant--that Losman had been drafted fairly recently, and you hate to give up on a first round pick before giving him a full chance to prove himself. But that's exactly what the Bills should have done. The new front office should have recognized that Losman had been selected on the basis of his physical attributes, that most such quarterbacks fail, and that Losman had done nothing to show he'd be any less mentally limited than the rest of the quarterbacks in his category. But mostly, I wanted to reply to point out that the Bills haven't exactly been throwing first round picks at the QB position. I went through the Bills' draft history back to 1970, and saw exactly two instances of a first round pick being used to take a QB: Jim Kelly and J.P. Losman. There were two other instances (that I know of) where a first round pick was traded away to acquire a veteran QB: Drew Bledsoe and Rob Johnson. The Rob Johnson trade was sort of like using a first round pick on drafting a QB, as Johnson was young and unproven. Had he worked out, he would have given this team years of excellent quarterbacking. The Drew Bledsoe trade was more short-sighted. Bledsoe's career had long since passed its zenith, so whatever benefit he'd provide would be relatively short-term. It's less than obvious why the GM of a 3-13 team would sacrifice his first round pick in the 2003 draft for a short term only value proposition. During the '80s--when the foundation for the Bills' Super Bowl teams was laid--the Bills limited themselves to three first round picks on RBs/DBs. The three players they chose with those--Brooker Moore, Greg Bell, and Derrick Burroughs--were not exactly mainstays of the Super Bowl teams. In the '90s, when the team began its decline, the Bills doubled the number of first round picks used on DBs/RBs. Six first round picks were used that decade on those positions. During the 2000s--as this decline has continued--the Bills have already used five first round picks on RBs/DBs, and there are still two drafts to go before the decade is over. In my opinion, the three most critical areas of a football team are the QB position, the OL and the DL. Take the first Patriots team to win the Super Bowl. Their offense featured Antowain Smith as its featured running back, and a competent but unspectacular group of WRs. But they still had a very good offense because they were strong at the QB position, and because the offensive line gave Brady plenty of time to throw. You see the same thing on defense. I remember one year the Patriots won the Super Bowl despite having guys like Earthwind Moreland starting at cornerback. The primary reason for their defensive strength was their defensive line. Having a good line made it hard to run on them, and that line did an excellent job of disrupting passing plays and taking away a QB's time to throw. During the 2000s, the Bills have used just one first round pick on the offensive line (Mike Williams), two first rounders on the defensive line (Erik Flowers and John McCargo) and one first rounder on the QB position (J.P. Losman). Well, two if you want to count the first round pick the Bills traded away for Bledsoe. The '80s Bills used two round picks on the offensive line (Jim Ritcher and Will Wolford), one first rounder on the defensive line (Bruce Smith) and one first rounder on the QB position (Jim Kelly). Clearly, a key difference between the two teams is that the '80s Bills drafted better players at those three key areas than have the 2000s Bills. It's easy to say that the 2000s' Bills should have done a better job of drafting players at those three key positions. But why haven't they? While there are several factors at work, possibly the single most important is the short-sightedness that is the hallmark of recent front offices. One indication of that short-sightedness is the last two decades' strong emphasis on RBs and DBs. Buffalo's DBs--especially its first round CBs--go first contract and out. Running backs--usually even guys taken in the first round--typically have short careers. However, both running backs and DBs are often expected to play, and play well, as rookies. At many other positions, a player generally needs at least two years to become effective. The post-Super Bowl era emphasis on RBs and DBs is indicative of a front office that wants to improve right away, even if it means the first round picks will not necessarily be useful for the long haul. This short-sightedness hurts the team in a number of (sometimes less than obvious) ways. Take the 2006 draft, for example. The new front office and new coaching staff evidently decided the team had to be improved right away. While there was no realistic hope of making the 2006 Bills a good team, the plan, as best I understand it, was to at very least have a decent defense. And it was felt that filling the holes at DT and SS was the most important part of being able to put a decent defense on the field for the 2006 season. Therefore, the Bills went into the 2006 draft with the decision to take a SS and a DT with their first two picks. Suppose that, instead of being focused on the immediate needs of the 2006 season, the front office had instead thought in terms of putting together the long-term pieces of a winning team. They would have gone into the draft with the realization that many positions were areas of need. The plan would have been to fill a few holes in 2006, a few more in 2007, etc. The emphasis would not have been on filling the "most important" holes first, but on getting the very best football players possible when a hole was finally filled. If DT is a position of need, for example, and the best you can do is John McCargo, maybe it would be better to wait until the following year's draft to see if a better player comes along. In the meantime, you use your first round pick on some other position of need, even if that other need isn't as critical or urgent as the DT need. Had the Bills followed this approach, they would not have gone into the 2006 draft with a tunnel vision-like focus on the SS and DT positions. For instance, the Bills might have taken Cutler at #8. A good quarterback is more important than a good SS, QB was a position of need, and Cutler is a better football player than Whitner. And then, after they'd traded back into the first round, they could have taken Mangold instead of McCargo. (Mangold went a few picks after McCargo, and is now one of the best centers in the league.) This wouldn't necessarily have been the best thing for the short-term, because quarterbacks and offensive linemen generally take longer to develop than safeties. But over the long-term, the Bills would clearly have improved more with Cutler + Mangold than with Whitner + McCargo. (And no, this isn't 20/20 hindsight, because I'd suggested, before the draft, that the Bills either take Cutler or trade down and take Mangold. It turns out they could have had both players--had they not been so urgent about filling the holes at SS and DT.) There's another, hidden benefit to using your high picks on players that take a couple years to develop. While your rookie quarterback or rookie offensive lineman is going through his difficult (and painful) adjustment to the NFL, your team is losing a lot of games. If you're in rebuilding mode anyway (as the Bills clearly were in 2006), you're better off going 2-14 and getting a very high draft pick/blue chip player. Having your first season in the rebuilding era be a 7-9 season pushes you down in the draft, causing you to get a lesser player. If the Bills had lost just another game or two in 2006, the 2007 draft could have yielded Adrian Peterson instead of Marshawn Lynch. This front office has done positive things over the last several years. This is a younger, better football team than the one inherited from Tom Donahoe. But too little progress has been made, due to the kinds of avoidable errors described above. Three years into a rebuilding program, a 7-9 record against a soft schedule is at least mildly disappointing. Hopefully, this front office will take a more disciplined/long-term approach to the upcoming draft.

There's a chance they'll sign him out of desperation, or as a stopgap measure. But I think the Jets are a reasonably well-run team: enough so that they won't seriously contemplate having Losman as their long-term answer at QB.

Using our first round pick on any player in the defensive secondary would screw up more than just people's mock drafts!

I'd go along with this, if we get the right situational pass rusher. The Tampa-2 lives and dies by getting pressure from the front 4. if one of those front 4 is the next Simeon Rice, it would be a good use of our first round pick!

This post sounds accurate. Perhaps frighteningly so. I think this team is quite capable of using the 11th overall pick to reach for a LB, while neglecting other, better players who would fill more important holes on this team. This front office generally uses its early picks on positions where rookies make quick contributions: running backs, cornerbacks, safeties, and linebackers. As a result, the Jauron-era Bills have drafted no offensive linemen before round 5. There are three good ways the Bills can handle the LB position: 1. Re-sign Angelo Crowell. He knows the defense, and he'd likely be relatively inexpensive. He was a solid player before his injury. 2. Move Poz to the outside, and put DiGorgio in the middle. Then draft a MLB and an OLB in rounds 3 - 7 for depth. 3. Sign a solid OLB--but not so solid we'd have to break the bank for him. Any of the above options would get us out of using a first or second round pick on a LB. Our early picks could then be used on more important areas of need, such as the offensive and defensive lines.

This is about as accurate as your past predictions of Bills records have been. There's no way any team with Losman under center puts up two wins against the Bills.

In the summer of 2007, Aaron Schobel signed a seven year extension with $20 million of guaranteed money. If we were to cut him today, we'd take a one-time cap hit of $14 million for the 2009 season. Prior to the 2007 season, Chris Kelsay signed a four year extension with $14 million in guaranteed money. If he was released today, we'd eat $7 million in dead space because of him. Releasing the two players would create $21 million in dead space under the cap. On the other hand, we wouldn't be liable for their 2009 salaries, so the short-term cap hit would be considerably less than $21 million. I wasn't able to find a year-by-year breakdown for the players' salaries. However, Schobel averages about $4 million a year in non-guaranteed money over the life of his contract; and Kelsay averages about $2 million a year in non-guaranteed money. Using those two averages as a (very) rough estimate, the net cap hit for cutting those two players would be about $15 million. The Bills are $27 million under the salary cap. If the Bills were to cut Kelsay and Schobel (thus taking a one-time hit of $15 million), they would still be $12 million under the cap. Note that under this scenario, we'd get that $21 million in dead space back in 2010; creating a total available cap room (all else being equal) of $33 million. The thing to note about both the Kelsay and Schobel contracts is that both guys were given a very large amount of guaranteed money, and neither player has lived up to his big payday. Cutting them will rid us of their ongoing salaries, but we'd still be on the hook for the guaranteed money. Given that, I fully expect to see Schobel in a Bills uniform for the 2009 season. With the way his contract is structured, the Bills have a strong incentive to give him the benefit of the doubt for the 2008 season. There's always the chance he'll return to his old form (more or less) once he's healed from his foot injury. Add in the fact that DE is a need position, even with a healthy Schobel on the roster, and there's a strong incentive for the Bills to keep him.

That was hilarious! Well worth watching, and very well done.

Because Harrison will be a year older (and, presumably, a little bit worse) this year than he'd been last year. And because players like Steve Johnson and, hopefully, Hardy, will be better in their second years than they'd been as rookies. That's why Harrison probably isn't an improvement, even over the short term. Also, you have to bear in mind that Harrison's 636 yards came in an offense he's been operating in for years, with Manning throwing him the ball. Have him learn a new offense from scratch, with a QB less good than Manning throwing him the ball, and there goes a lot of that production right there! Oh, and Turk Schonert will be calling all the plays.

No. This team uses too many first round picks on RBs (short careers) and on DBs (almost all of whom go first contract and out). Even in the highly unlikely scenario Lynch never plays another down of football for the Bills again, there are plenty of other needs on this team. Our first round pick should be used on one of those needs.

If I understand your position correctly, the way you'd approach our first round pick is as follows: First preference: take any of five or six guys (including Raji) at #11, if any are available. Second preference: If the five or six guys you're looking at are gone, attempt to trade down a little and take Mack somewhere in the teens. Third preference: If no trade-down is available, take Mack at #11. If that is the way your mind is working here, I'd be strongly inclined to agree. But if we manage to take one of those five or six guys at #11, I'd still feel that we'd be better off trading back into the first for Mack. There's a reason why I'd rather have Mack than our second and third round picks put together. A general manager can always get his hands on Robert Royal or Melvin Fowler-level free agents for a reasonable price. Would our third round pick really provide much of an upgrade over players at that level? Some third rounders would, but those are the exception rather than the rule. If we took a TE in the third, would he really provide that big an upgrade over the players we have there already? Or would we still be talking about TE as a need position in a year or two? If we took a center in the third, could we really rely on him to block those big 3-4 nose tackles? Or would he turn out to be a guy who plays respectably most weeks, but who gets dominated whenever we face a Kris Jenkins or some other big NT? One factor in my thinking is that really good football teams tend to have a nucleus of guys who play at a very high level, and who remain with the team for 10+ years. Compare the nucleus of the Bills' Super Bowl teams to our current nucleus. Back then, we had Bruce Smith, Kent Hull, Andre Reed, Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas . . . the list goes on. This current Bills team doesn't have that kind of nucleus. That's our single biggest problem. If we can come away from this draft with two additions to this team's nucleus--Raji and Mack, for example--plus some reasonably good additions on the second day of the draft, I'd be a happy man.

I looked up the career stats for Trent Edwards and Drew Bledsoe. Let's compare numbers: Bledsoe (first season here) Yards per pass attempt: 7.1 TD/INT ratio: 1.6 Bledsoe (second and third seasons here) Yards per pass attempt: 6.3 TD/INT ratio: 1.2 Trent Edwards (career) Yards per pass attempt: 6.7 TD/INT ratio: 1.0 Overall, Trent is a somewhat better quarterback than Bledsoe had been those last two years, especially when you consider that Trent is pretty good at getting rid of the ball quickly, and Bledsoe had been a sack waiting to happen. But Trent is clearly not performing at nearly the same level Bledsoe had during the first eight games of the 2002 season.

I read the scouting reports to which you'd linked. They convinced me we should seriously consider taking Raji (DT) at #11 overall, if he's available. Then we should trade away our second and third round picks to get a pick somewhere in the 20s, which could then be used on Mack. If no one can block Raji--except, sort of, for Mack--it would make sense to have them both! You point out that this team has a lot of holes, and that, by trading away a third round pick, we'd be filling one less hole. But I feel it's better to do a solid job of filling one hole (Mack) than a so-so job of filling two holes (the second and third round pick). That third round pick in particular may well turn out to be just another guy.

I disagree. Nothing is a greater need on this team than center. For six games a year, our offense is consigned to complete futility. During those six games, we face 3-4 defenses, run by division rivals, which feature NTs that simply can't be blocked by any center on our current roster. With some ugly NT arriving in the backfield almost immediately, all the offensive weapons in the world are worthless. Take a look at the offensive weapons we have right now. If it was a passing play, the Bills could line up Evans and Steve Johnson on the outside, Reed in the slot, Fine at TE, and Jackson in the backfield. This isn't exactly an all-star cast of skill players, but it isn't exactly chopped liver either. Give the QB decent pass protection, and chances are at least one of those guys will come open. Fine will probably give us moderately better production as a pass-catcher than we're used to seeing from players like Robert Royal. It's not ideal, but--with some of the other players we have at skill positions--it's good enough to get us by, at least for now. I agree with what you wrote about building the defensive line: a good pass rush from the front four is a must if the Tampa 2 is going to work. But we also need to build the offensive line. A functional offensive line is a must for any offensive scheme to work.

If I knew he was going to be a Pro Bowler, I'd definitely take him. But probably not at #11. If we don't take him, it sounds like he'll go very late in the first, or early in the second. Why spend more than you have to (in terms of draft picks) to get a player you want? And the other part of your post--about his troubles blocking 3-4 NTs--lends added point to this. Most of the reason we need a center in the first place is because no center on our current roster has ever successfully blocked a big, 3-4 NT. If there's doubt about whether Mack can succeed in this crucial task, it's all the more reason to not overspend (in terms of draft picks) to get him. My dream scenario would be to take an impact defensive lineman at #11, then to use our second and third round picks to trade back into the first for Mack.