Orton's Arm

In that case, the Bills could add that German guy to the final roster. The one who had all those sacks this past preseason, but who got cut so there could be 5 DTs and only 3 DEs.

How? Nall's done well with what little playing time he's been given. Losman hasn't. The two cases are completely different. If your goal is to avoid the next Rob Johnson, you don't trade away a first round pick for an injury-prone surfer dude QB from Southern California. From what I've heard, Nall handled himself quite well in a preseason game against the Bills. Green Bay's backup offensive linemen were getting dominated by the Bills' blitzes. Nall responded by getting rid of the ball quickly, making the most of a bad situation. So based on the limited information we have, it seems Nall isn't a sack waiting to happen. The only similarity I see between Nall and Rob Johnson is that both did well in the limited playing time they had. Surely you don't think getting yourself a QB who did badly in limited playing time would lessen the chance of a Rob Johnson? I agree you don't want to bet the franchise on a QB whose playing time has been as limited as Nall's. But our investment in him is zero in terms of draft picks, and very little in terms of salary cap space. If he doesn't work out, no big deal. But if he manages to sustain a QB rating even remotely close to the one he's compiled so far, the Bills will finally have found Jim Kelly's successor.

I see that. My point was basically that, based on what I know about Losman, TD didn't learn from the Kordell Stewart disaster. The two situations are too similar to each other for me to feel comfortable at all. Nall's QB rating in the regular season is 139.4 Losman's is 63.5 While QB rating isn't a perfect system of measurement, and while the two players faced different circumstances, these factors cannot explain away a difference of this magnitude. I agree that for the long-term good of the franchise, it made sense to move beyond Bledsoe at some point. But the defense in 2004 had finished second in yards allowed, and ten of the eleven starters were coming back for 2005. With the Bills' 9-7 record in 2004 largely due to aging veterans with little left in their tanks, the team was in win-now mode. TD apparently thought Losman gave the Bills a better chance to win now than Bledsoe could. He was wrong.

I disagree. Take any Super Bowl team. Most of that team's core players will have come from the draft. Yes, there are times when you can use free agency to plug a hole, or to use aging (but still productive) veterans like Rodney Harrison to push you over the top. Sometimes, you can even get a top-tier free agent in the prime of his career, as the Vikings did when they signed Antoine Winfield. But it's rare for players of that caliber to hit free agency while they're in the primes of their careers. Orlando Pace has never seen free agency. Neither has Jonathan Ogden. While you might be lucky enough to sign one or two Antoine Winfields, you won't be able to do much more than that, because there are too few Antoine Winfields, and too many teams trying to sign them. You are, of course, welcome to try to prove me wrong. Find one team--just one--that went to the Super Bowl, and that found half or more of its core players via free agency.

Prior to the 2004 draft, TD's most successful QB pick was Kordell Stewart. Stewart had all the physical tools to succeed, but he just wasn't accurate enough or good enough at quickly processing information and making sound decisions. TD was so convinced Stewart was the answer, he allowed Neil O'Donnell to hit free agency. In other words, prior to coming to Buffalo, TD had zero track record of making sound decisions at QB. Zilch. None. So in 2004, TD decided to trade up for Losman. Like Kordell Stewart, Losman is very mobile, and has all the physical tools to succeed. But also like Stewart, Losman hasn't shown the ability to quickly process complex information either in college or the NFL. This ability is the heart of being a good quarterback. Just as TD chose Kordell Stewart over Neil O'Donnell, he later decided Losman was more ready than Bledsoe to lead the Bills to the playoffs. The 2005 Bills had largely been built with free agents, in an effort to win now. Unless you think Losman is capable of producing immediate results, you don't cut Bledsoe. TD was clearly wrong about how soon Losman would be ready. This gives us yet another reason to mistrust his judgement when it comes to quarterbacks. Not that another reason was needed. If a player like Peyton Manning was the recipient of patient treatment, it was because he'd earned that right based on his college play. If people like myself are less patient with Losman, it's because I don't want to see this franchise waste 30 games--or whatever Losman's supporters claim is the minimum needed--to evaluate a guy who's shown nothing more than physical tools and a pretty deep ball. A player like Craig Nall has done far more to demonstrate a mental grasp of the game, and is therefore more deserving of the regular season evaulation/experience that would otherwise be squandered on Losman.

Hopefully you're as familiar with why McNally and his head coach were fired as you are with their earlier Super Bowl success. The Giants were one of several teams Dr. Z listed as having collapsed due to an offensive line collapse. The pattern was this: no talent on the offensive line led to the offense as a whole getting shut down. Because of this, the defense was on the field too often, got tired, and gave up too many points. The Giants acted as though McNally was such a good offensive line coach he could turn straw into gold. No offensive line coach is that good, not even McNally. I realize there were a lot of holes on this roster, and that they couldn't all be filled in just one draft. That said, I hope Marv and company are smart enough to know that you can't build an offensive line without talent, and that sometimes you have to invest first day draft picks to get that talent. Apparently, this was the year to fix the defense. Next year, we'd better address the offensive line.

Agreed. Roethlisberger said that in his rookie year, he'd only managed to memorize the route for one receiver per play. He'd stare down some other randomy chosen receiver, then throw to the one guy whose route he knew. Most rookie QBs aren't as successful at compensating for their lack of knowledge of the playbook, which is why you see so much atrocious rookie QB play. But once they've learned the playbook, many of those rookies go on to start playing well. Losman had his whole rookie year to learn the playbook and watch film, plus the offseason and camps leading into his second year. So there's one less excuse for him to perform poorly.

The TD era should have demolished any illusions about building an offensive line through free agency. Look at the line TD handed Levy. LT: Gandy (free agent). LG: Anderson (free agent). C: Trey Teague (free agent). RG: Chris Villarrial (free agent). RT: Jason Peters (UDFA). Bear in mind that each of the four free agents that became Bills starters were considered some of the better available free agents when they were signed. Not necessarily cream of the crop guys a la LeCharles Bentley, but the next tier down. But there are a lot more teams looking to sign LeCharles Bentleys than there are LeCharles Bentleys to sign, so the quality of OL free agents we're used to is about what we could realistically expect for the future.

An excellent read. Adams really sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders. It's a shame Wilson didn't choose him to replace Butler. Edit: TD's best draft was back in 2001, when Adams was still with the team. Maybe that's just a coincidence, but I feel it says something very positive about the talent evaluation skill Adams brought to the table.

Ah, you touched on a raw nerve with that reference to trading down.

Unwarranted? Assumption? Somehow? Um, yeah. Maybe there wasn't an offer on the table as generous as the value chart says it should have been. But there's no reasonable doubt in anyone's minds that other teams were offering the Bills something. If you know Whitner's going to be there at #15 anyway, what does it matter if you only got a portion of what the value chart says you should have gotten? You'd have had Whitner plus other picks, instead of just Whitner.

Very funny.

You are of course aware that Denver traded up to get Cutler? The picks they gave to St. Louis to move to #11, they would have been willing to give to us to move to #8. Plus there had to have been teams eager to move ahead of Arizona to take Leinart.

Losman is a poor man's Michael Vick.

Yeah, none of the teams below us had any real interest in Leinart or Cutler.

Good point. If Oakland took, say, Cutler, the Bills would have been faced with either Whitner or Huff. At that point, they could trade down, knowing that if Detroit did take a safety, it would likely have taken Huff.

Tell that to the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. As for the rest of your post, your views tend to be a little rosier than mine. Even if Villarrial stays healthy, he doesn't have much left in the tank. As for our tackles, you want guys who can block elite DEs one-on-one. I don't know that either Gandy or Peters can do that. Reyes is basically a Panthers' reject. While his pass blocking may be good, it doesn't sound like he'll ever be the kind of complete offensive lineman this team desperately needs. As for Fowler, if other teams saw Kent Hull in him, I think he'd have generated a lot more interest in free agency.

The Bills need an offensive line. Not just certain players on an offensive line, but a whole line. There isn't one guy on that line I'm happy to see starting. Not Peters, not Gandy, not even Fowler, and certainly not Anderson or an aging Villarrial. Well, you say, the line played well in the second half of 2004. But which starters are left from that line? Jennings is gone, as are Ross Tucker and Trey Teague, and even Mike Williams. Villarrial is the only OL starter left from 2004, and he's not the same player he used to be.

So those two guys would have "blown" their drafts by reaching for Winston Justice? An interesting point, coming from someone who has the Bills taking Justice #8 in the mock draft in his sig!

Well, since you asked, I remember reading an article about the Dolphins, back when Jimmy Johnson was the GM. There was a defensive lineman Johnson was looking at, and he wondered if this lineman would be available when the Dolphins picked. So he had someone that worked for him buy as many different mock drafts as he could find, to get a better idea of when this player might be selected. Say you were the GM of an NFL team, and you wanted to do a better job than any media outlet of predicting when specific players would be taken. How would you go about doing so? In addition, many are disappointed that the offensive line was once again ignored on the first day of the draft. I know it's a new GM and he's off to a fresh start, but the neglect of the offensive line is a ten or fifteen year pattern that needs to be broken. I guess breaking that pattern will have to wait at least another year.

Suppose Mike Tyson chose to pick a fight with a little old lady. I'd be rooting for the lady to win the fight. But there's a difference between which person I hope would win, and which person I expect to win. I hope the Bills had the best draft. But if you were to offer me a choice between Ferguson and Mangold on the one hand, or Whitner and McCargo on the other . . . that's an easy choice.

This is one of the funniest things I've read on these boards. You have more company than you may realize, though the others aren't necessarily as honest with themselves as you are.

Yes.

You've done a stellar job on this thread, and the post I've quoted is a good example. If your team is a player away, you can maybe give up a little value to make sure you get that player. But the Bills are riddled with so many holes that players from many different positions could come in and help the team. Say they took a chance on McCargo being there in the second, and that someone else took him before you picked. Fine. There would have been many other players available in the second--especially on the offensive line--that could have come in and helped this team.

Don't worry? Don't worry!! The Bills haven't had an offensive line since the Super Bowl years. This staff acquired some depth players for the line in free agency, but nobody you'd really say would be above average for a starter, or probably even average. The first day of the draft is over, and the Bills did nothing whatsoever today to address the offensive line. Yes, there's always tomorrow, and the Bills could meaningfully address the offensive line if they wanted to. I just hope they've placed it at the top of their priority list. Thus far, I've seen little indication that they have.