Orton's Arm

> Marv turned down many trade down offers(I heard his say this) for the #8 selection. I read several articles indicating that Denver was eager to trade up to 8th overall. The veracity of those articles was reinforced by the fact that Denver did in fact trade up to take Cutler. > That draft was stocked with players at positions of need, serious need for the Bills. Agreed. But I remember Marv saying that he wanted his first two draft picks to be used on an SS and a DT; in no particular order. Going into the draft, the Bills had more needs than just at SS and DT. So why was Marv focused on getting the best combination of SS and DT he could with his first two picks? I think that decision was the result of the following thought process: 1) The Bills needed to be respectable in Marv's very first year. 2) The first step toward getting respectable is to build a reasonably solid defense. 3) The two puzzle pieces most needed for a solid defense were SS and DT. The defense could maybe get away with some of its other weaknesses for the time being, but those two positions had to be fixed right away! One of the reasons Marv didn't take Ngata 8th overall was because he felt that Ngata at 8th overall + a late first round SS would be a worse SS/DT combination than Whitner + McCargo. Also, Ngata wasn't seen as a good fit for Jauron's Tampa 2. > I contend that he made these idiotic moves due to a philosophical devotion to the secondary. Agreed. But that doesn't contradict what I've written above. Marv was short-sighted and he was overly devoted to the secondary. > They wanted to build a team through DBs and RBs which is of course impossible. Also agreed. But if a GM is shortsighted, he becomes that much more likely to use a first round pick on a running back. RBs contribute a lot as rookies, satisfying his need for instant gratification. They have short careers; but the GM doesn't care about that because he's shortsighted. Also, there is this: if a GM wants to upgrade the running game, he needs either to upgrade the OL or the RB position. Five draft picks are required to upgrade every starter on the OL; as opposed to one pick to upgrade your starting RB. Using a first round pick on a RB makes a GM feel like he's doing something to upgrade the running game, without necessarily having to replace every weak link on the offensive line. This kind of thinking also demonstrates short-term focus. A GM with a long-term vision for the team would realize that a good, solid OL needs to be part of that vision. Even if he couldn't achieve the entirety of that goal in one year, he wouldn't let himself get discouraged. He'd keep making additions to the OL's talent, until eventually the OL looked the way it should.

> Your argument here is very thin. At least that's better than it being overweight! > I am assuming you just didn't > think this thru but this is as clear as day. You forget to whom you speak! Of course I thought it through! I wrote that those particular penalties on the offensive lineman occurred because of sloppiness or lapses in concentration. I acknowledge that going a little beyond what the rules allow can also be part of a deliberate strategy. But my example wasn't about that; except insofar as the deliberate strategy in question was rendered necessary by the initial lapses in concentration or sloppiness. To return to the question of Stevie Johnson: there's a certain . . . confidence, arrogance, and/or swagger regarding some of the stuff he does. The unstated message is that if he costs the team 15 yards in a celebration penalty, he's good enough to get that 15 yards right back. To make it seem like a drop in the bucket. You want your team to have that kind of attitude. Trent Edwards could have had a much better career if he'd had more of that attitude. I'm not saying you want guys taking needless penalties left and right--that's going too far--but you want guys who think they could take those penalties and still win. When you do something at an elite level--when you're better than your competition--you can feel invincible. The Bills need more of that feeling, not less.

Several years ago, one of the controversies on this board was whether a seventh round pick who'd looked good in preseason deserved playing time during the regular season. The fact that the discussion has gone from that to this demonstrates how far Stevie has come. As for the occasional 15 yard penalties: it's obvious that the chance to do something a little creative and/or memorable is very motivating to Stevie. I realize there are those who feel it shouldn't be; and that he should completely subsume his ego to that of the team. Let's say for the sake of argument that he gets three personal fouls per year, for a total of 45 yards. Compare that to an offensive lineman who sometimes loses focus or gets sloppy; resulting in 3 holding penalties and 3 false starts per year (also 45 yards). Should Stevie Johnson's 45 annual penalty yards be judged more harshly than the offensive lineman's 45 annual penalty yards? Is it worse to get hit with penalty yards from something that feeds you energy (Stevie) or from a lack of attention and mental energy (the offensive lineman)? An advocate for Stevie might say that if the prospect of autographing footballs in the end zone energizes him; then his elevated playing level would help compensate for those 45 penalty yards. On the other hand, there is no offsetting compensation for the offensive lineman's occasional lapses in focus. You could argue that drawing attention to oneself in a penalty-generating way is selfish. I'm not 100% comfortable with that adjective, because I think Stevie is trying to entertain the fans and even his own teammates with those celebrations. A desire to be entertaining is not typically seen as selfish. But I don't feel that entertainment should be placed ahead of the good of the team. But if Stevie isn't always a perfect example for the team; an offensive lineman with lapses in focus isn't a perfect example either.

I have a more favorable impression of Stevie's personality than do many here. The Bills aren't a perfect organization. As such, they're not going to attract perfect people. Let's say you were a WR of Stevie's caliber; and let's say you were motivated only by winning. As your first contract came to a close, would you sign an extension--or would you leave to go to a team that gave you a chance to win? Stevie gave us three consecutive 1000 yard seasons. That's more than most number one WRs can say. He gets good production even against Revis. He gets open all the time. Could he stay on the field more if he had a better offseason work ethic? Possibly. The day that the Bills roster is filled with perfect players, I'll be the first to say that there's no more room for Stevie. But in the meantime, we should acknowledge that Stevie is one of the best players on our roster. He hasn't robbed anyone, he hasn't raped anyone, he hasn't run anyone over with his SUV. With a guy like that, why not focus on the positives more than the negatives?

> Levy didn't come in with a particularly win-now approach. Shortly after he was hired as GM, he said that if you're building for the future, you're building for someone else's future. At first I wondered whether to dismiss that as just words. Then I saw that his actions were fully consistent with what he's said. > He shed the roster of Lawyer Milloy and Eric Moulds . . . Lawyer Milloy was a much better fit for the Gregggg Williams/Jerry Gray defense than for Dick Jauron's Tampa 2. The plan at SS was evidently to shed an older player and replace him with a first round pick specially chosen with Jauron's defense in mind. Eric Moulds was on his last legs, and achieved almost nothing with Houston after the Bills had released him. > his most significant FA signing was....Robert Royal. I agree his free agent signings were a complete joke. In a number of cases he greatly overpaid for players. (Royal, Peerless Price version 2, Melvin Fowler, Triplett, Dockery, Langston Walker, etc.) Marv--or someone working for Marv--was horrible at evaluating free agents. That doesn't change the fact that Marv intended to win now. He wasn't very good at turning that intention into reality. > He just made it that way the following offseason when he let Nate Clements, London Fletcher, Takeo Spikes and Willis McGahee go. TD had allowed Clements' contract to expire without extending him. Then Marv slapped the franchise tag on him. That gave Marv a hypothetical one year head start over other NFL teams in negotiating a long-term deal with him. Marv didn't take advantage of that opportunity. He said, "We could offer Nate a deal now, but he wouldn't like the deal we offered. This year is his chance to prove he deserves a better deal." Which he did, to San Francisco's satisfaction. Players in the Nate Clements category can potentially be part of your team's core. Marv's decision to not pursue Clements--while instead squandering his "cash to the cap" space by wildly overpaying for third-rate free agents--is yet another indication he did not have a long-term, disciplined plan. > I get what you are saying about the draft picks but they were just bad draft picks not an indicator of a team that was going for broke. I did not mean to suggest that Marv seriously thought the Bills could win the Super Bowl in his first year as GM. His short-term goals were much lower than that; and mostly involved keeping the team respectable. The Bills went 7-9 his first year; so he met his short-term goal. He did so by sacrificing any long-term goals he may have had. Very little about his tenure as GM suggests he was even thinking in terms of long-term goals! > The Bills have ALWAYS over-valued RB's and DB's Granted. Part of that is because RBs and DBs are two of the easiest positions to evaluate. Part of it is because RBs are expected to make major contributions as rookies. TD and Marv weren't the first two shortsighted GMs the Bills have ever had.

Thanks for the correction about the BCS Championships. My reason for bringing up Tebow wasn't just to have an excuse to link to that song! Honest! I also wanted to demonstrate that, just because a QB leads his college team to a lot of wins, doesn't mean he'll be good in the NFL. Vince Young is probably another guy you could put in that category. When evaluating college QBs, I'm much more interested in whether they've established themselves as pocket passers than in their teams' winning percentages.

> I think your opinion was the more prevailing one All my opinions should be prevailing ones! > but the dropoff in target quality was enormous That's true, especially when taking into account the Moulds injury. But by 2004, Moulds was healthy again, and the Bills had a young deep threat in the form of Lee Evans. But the offense continued to be lackluster--so much so that the Bills parted ways with Bledsoe after the season. I'll grant that a big part of the step down from 2002 to 2003 was because of changes in quality of targets. But it's not like the 2004 offense picked up where 2002 left off. Even if Price had remained with the Bills in 2003, he would have represented much less of a deep threat than he had in 2002. This is because teams would have blitzed Buffalo, confident their pass rushers would get to the Bills' QB before Price could get open deep. The only way to beat something like that is reasonably good blitz pickup--a phrase which doesn't come to mind when describing the 2003 Bills. > the greater lesson is that every year should be a win-now year. I disagree. TD and Marv were too shortsighted. That was their undoing. For example: in Marv's first year as a GM, he decided to treat it like a win-now year. He felt the two players he most had to have to win now were a SS and DT; which is why he focused on those two positions with his first two picks of the 2006 draft. Yes, the Bills had a large hole at DT, and a stopgap solution at center. But was John McCargo (DT) really a better pick than Nick Mangold; who went on to become the best center in the league? Was Donte Whitner really the best football player available at 8th overall? In his second year as GM, Marv amped up the win-now approach even more. He used a top-12 pick on Lynch, despite having a perfectly good RB in McGahee; and despite the short careers typically associated with RBs. Both RBs and LBs are known for being able to contribute quickly as rookies; so Marv's first two picks of 2007 were consistent with the "win now" theme he'd established in 2006. The same could be said about TD's strong overemphasis on the RB position during his tenure. Two other examples come to mind of TD's win now mentality: his decision to let Antoine Winfield walk in order to overpay for Troy Vincent and Lawyer Milloy. Also, his decision to trade away a valuable first round pick for another team's aging backup QB. > the Bills seem content with re-building and end up facing small windows The Bills are ADHD. They lack the patience for a disciplined, long-term rebuild effort. Everything has to be right away. They've repeatedly sacrificed the long-term interests of the team in order to be better in the moment. The reason windows are so short is because in the post-Polian era, the team has lacked a core of good players/long term answers around whom to build.

Tim Tebow led his team to two BCS Championships, and two SEC Championships. As Skip Bayless pointed out, all Tim Tebow does is win.

Peyton Manning Blaine Gabbert Just because a particular player looks like he should be more of a winner than another player, doesn't mean he is.

If they're going in that direction, why not trade down from 14th overall; so as to take EJ + some other player? The player we got from the first Manuel-related trade-down (Kiko) worked out okay. Why not go for two trade-downs?

Thanks.

> That's a very poor example of pulling the plug let alone showing the knowledge of when to pull the plug. You forget to whom you speak! > if they did they would have drafted said QB in the 1st round. The Carolina Panthers didn't have a first round pick the year they took Clausen. They took him with the first pick they did have. > Adding to that......the Panthers had the #1 pick and an extremely rare opportunity to > obtain a super high potential draft prospect QB. My point exactly. When deciding whether to draft a replacement for the "QB of the future" already on the roster, one of the factors to consider is the quality of the replacement prospect. As I'd mentioned in my earlier post.

Good post! Counting Stevie himself, there are thirteen guys on your list. Even if Stevie is the absolute worst guy on that list, that still puts him in the top half of number one wide receivers. But he might not be the worst guy on that list. It's worth bearing in mind that a number of WRs listed above had real QBs throwing them the ball. Stevie hasn't had that luxury.

Good points. I agree that the reduction in quality in the Bills' receiving threats made a big difference to the offense. But as important as that change was, I still think that the combination of the Bills' pass protection struggles + Bledsoe's slow decision-making and consequent vulnerability to the pass rush + the example set by Bill Belichick had an even greater effect. The Bills' offense in the second half of 2002 was considerably more lackluster than the first half. IIRC, the second half of 2002 offense was more like the 2003 offense than like the first half of 2002 offense. In the second half of 2002, the Bills' pass protection problems had not yet fully set in.

I don't want to go OT by discussing EJ, so all I'll say here is this: I wouldn't have drafted him in the first place. That said, I have egg on my face already due to my endorsement of Rob Johnson and, later, Trent Edwards. If I'm wrong about EJ, the additional egg on my face probably won't make much difference.

A Skip Bayless thread isn't a Skip Bayless thread until it has this song! Bayless can be dead wrong or over-the-top, as he was about Tebow; and about Landry Jones. On the other hand, the guys in the OP's video made a number of valid points.

> I just am a big fan of patience, especially with young QBs. As am I. > However, the key is to know when to pull the plug. Also agreed. As an example, the Carolina Panthers drafted Jimmy Clausen's replacement one year after drafting Jimmy Clausen. Assuming Newton continues to be as productive in the future as he's been in the past, pulling the plug when they did was a very good move on the Panthers' part. I don't think there's a default answer to the question, "How many years should you give a first or second round QB before you pull the plug?" The answer to that question is going to vary based on why the QB was drafted in the first place, how much he's shown in practice and in games, whether he's making progress and learning, and the quality of the available replacement prospects. If your rookie QB just threw four interceptions in a game, were those INTs sprinkled in among other plays which made him look like a franchise QB? Or are this guy's top 50% plays like Trent Edwards' top 50%?

It takes courage to say something positive about the OP in an environment like this. Cash, I have to give you a lot of credit!

> Watching a ton of tape and saying Nassib was the best QB in the draft is a huge error. It's a little early to be coming to definitive conclusions. That said, the evidence I've seen thus far certainly supports the above statement. > Nassib was a scrub before Marrone and DM turned him into a draftable QB. There are two possibilities: a) Nassib was a lousy QB and Marrone made him look better than he was. Much like Gailey did with Fitz. b) Nassib had the potential to be a somewhat decent QB, but prior to Marrone had been victimized by bad coaching. Of the two, a) seems more likely than b). Or maybe it's a little of both. Either way, Marrone's ability to get the most out of a QB is encouraging. Shortly before the draft, Cosell put together a mock first round which did not include Nassib. The unstated implication was that, whatever he might have said previously, he no longer saw Nassib as a first round talent. > I think one of the things you hold against EJ is he was drafted before the "experts" say he should be. I don't want to turn this into an EJ Manuel discussion. (That's a topic for another thread.) But putting the subject of Manuel aside, the experts have been right a lot too. They called the Donte Whitner pick a reach. They felt the Bills took John McCargo. I remember that back around 2000 or so, a football publication wrote, "[st. Louis Rams first round pick] Trung Canidate is a candidate for criticism." They correctly stated he should have been taken in the third round or later. Most experts felt that Bryant McKinnie--not Mike Williams--was the best available OT in the 2002 draft. By no means am I suggesting the experts are perfect. Like you, I can't recall anyone jumping up on a desk and screaming to take Tom Brady before the sixth round. Same thing with Romo. There have also been times when a player praised by many experts has fallen in the draft. When that's happened, that player has generally gone on to have a lackluster career. The experts are far from godlike. But it is worth listening to the better ones. Not just for where they peg players, but why they rank them as they do.

It's a mistake to drink K-9's Kool Aid. Both in general, and in this instance. I'll grant that thus far, Nassib does not look like a guy who should have been taken in the first few rounds. There's a very good chance he'll never be a long-term starter; or at best will be a failed starter. Where K-9 takes his big, big leap is to attempt to write off all the credibility of a highly respected draft analyst based on one seemingly bad prediction. He hasn't bothered to wait until, say, year two or three of Nassib's career to see how he will really do. Nor is there any indication he's looked into how far along in the QB evaluation process Cosell may have been before making his pro-Nassib statements. A lot of draft analysts change their opinions as they get deeper into breaking down film. In the end, let's say that Nassib has the kind of career many expect him to have. And let's say that Cosell hadn't changed his pro-Nassib opinion after having broken down more film. If both those things prove true; then Cosell will have messed up. Just as Bill Walsh messed up when he recommended Trent Edwards. I don't think you can write off a draft analyst's credibility based on one bad prediction. You have to look at the pattern: is he right more often than he is wrong? K-9 has not taken the time to do that with Cosell; and therefore is not in a position to make definitive statements about his credibility.

I live in the Tampa Bay area. The consensus here seems to be that age has caught up with Vincent Jackson; and that he's no longer the player he was. Thus far Glennon has played better than Barkley. I apologize to Glennon for having rated Barkley higher.

Greg Cosell is the nephew of iconic sports broadcaster Howard Cosell. Greg Cosell is considered one of the most knowledgeable football commentators around. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Cosell

Since you guys don't seem to get what I was doing, I'll give you an answer key. Each of the three stories pokes fun at a football cliche. Below is a list of the cliches being made fun of: Story 1: player X being groomed as player Y's replacement. Literally. Story 2: a player benefiting from "a change in scenery." Story 3: a seasoned veteran

This is a story about a reporter named Jack Hammer. Below are Jack's impressions of an undisclosed NFL team. Enjoy. ************** There was this guy sitting on a bench, with long, light brown hair, blue eyes, and slightly sunburned skin. He looked like he was in a jovial, amused mood at the moment, but could be downright frightening if you got him mad. I decided to stay on his good side. Behind him there was a woman, maybe in her early 20s. She had long brown hair; blue eyes, and freckles. Lots of freckles. She was dressed like a farm girl. She ran a huge horse's comb through that football player's long hair. "That football player is George Smith," a coach told me. "We used a third round pick on him in this past draft. George is currently our backup right guard. Our current starter is planning to retire at the end of the year. George is being groomed as his replacement," he added, as the young woman continued running a groom through his hair. George seemed confident, relaxed, and above all happy about being groomed. ************** ************* I spent several hours in the meeting room. I'd spend maybe ten or fifteen minutes meeting with a particular player, coach, or front office person. Then he'd leave, and someone else would come in to take his place. Sometimes there were two or three people from the team in there at once. Occasionally I'd look out the window. I'd noticed some personnel removing a small storage shed. Then, maybe half an hour later, I noticed them physically digging up and removing the lawn. Then they dug up the trees--at least all the trees I could see out that particular window. When I left the conference room for a bathroom break, I looked out a few other windows, and didn't see any evidence of additional landscaping changes. As I continued sitting in that conference room, I saw men plant new trees--a different species than the one they'd replaced. They added a new lawn: a different type of grass than the old lawn. They'd also replaced the storage shed. The new storage shed had a different shape, was a different color, and faced a different direction. As I was noticing all this, the head coach came in. "You're sitting in Steve Barnes' seat," he informed me. "We used a first round pick on Steve three years ago. Steve isn't meeting the expectations we'd had back when we drafted him. When we mentioned this to his agent, he said Steve might benefit from a change in scenery." As I pondered his words, it occurred to me that all the scenery visible from that particular window had, in fact, been changed. ************** ************* After the meeting room, I went to the sauna. A player was lying on his stomach; on a sort of cushioned table, like you might see at a doctor's office. A woman stood over him, massaging olive oil into his skin. It must be difficult for her to work in all this heat, I thought. I was a little surprised when she sprinkled salt onto the player's skin. I've never seen that done before, I thought. Maybe it's to replace some of the salt he lost from sweating. Then she grabbed some rosemary, and sprinkled that on too. After that it was other herbs: basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano. Then she massaged the player some more, with herbs sticking to her hands, the player's skin, and the table itself. It was quite a mess. The player sneezed a little when she started sprinkling pepper all over him. "That player there is Paul Jones," I was informed. "He's our middle linebacker. We drafted Paul six years ago. He's a seasoned veteran." I paused to consider those words as the woman sprinkled a hint of garlic powder over Paul's back. ****************

Good point. Maybe with more coaching and more time to develop he'd learn to play lower to the ground.