Orton's Arm

Hawk and Byrd would make an excellent combination. I like it!

There were times when I disagreed with what the article had to say. The top prospect it listed for the Bills was DeCastro, exactly as though taking an OG at 10th overall will be their best option. Not content with recommending that the Bills use the 10th overall pick on the best OG of the draft, the author also hinted they might want to take the second best OG in the draft at 10th overall, should the best one not be available. Levitre has proven that when he plays LT, he needs a TE to stay in and help him block. So the Bills are supposed to spend the 10th overall pick on the OL, while contenting themselves with having to keep a TE in to help the LT? Spending the 10th overall pick is supposed to solve one of your team's most pressing problems! Levitre at LT and Glenn at OG wouldn't solve anything! Interestingly, the LB he saw as the Bills' second-best choice (Kuechley) ran a 4.54; whereas the strong safety he believes is the Bills' tenth-best choice ran a 4.57. If you're spending the 10th overall pick on a safety, he'd better be faster than some random inside linebacker! Especially for a team like the Bills, which has an infinite number of safeties already. I'm not angry at the author of the article for mentioning Barron, because I think he was just trying to make a complete list. But if the Bills actually drafted him, I'd begin making quiet inquiries among Buffalo's physicians, to see if any of them had lobotomized Nix or Gailey.

The theme of my OP is not identical to best player available. As an example: some believe that the best player available when the Bills pick will be a LB, RB, or OG. I have heard arguments made in favor of each of those players, often on a best player available basis. My OP is a call to reject those arguments, unless someone can clearly explain how the LB, OG, or RB will add +1 to the numbers game. Thus far, I have yet to see proponents of any of those three players provide a plausible explanation about how those guys would go about adding +1. The LB, RB, and OG should be rejected on a numbers game basis, even if one of them is the best player available when the Bills pick.

I completely agree that the Bills haven't hit on many elite players in the draft, and that this has been a huge part of their problem. However, this organization has often been run by men grimly determined not to leave any mistake left unmade! Not only have they been picking non-elite players with their early draft picks, they've also been focusing on the wrong positions. Over the last 40 years, the Bills have used 25% of their first picks of the draft on RBs, and another 25% on DBs. If a guy is going to have a career like Antoine Winfield had, and if he's going to spend that career with the Bills, then sure, use a first round pick on him. No problem. But the Bills have devoted first picks of the draft to the DB and (especially!) the RB positions far in excess of those positions' importance. This is because of shortsightedness and the emphasis on the quick fix. RBs have short careers, but also can make a quick impact as a rookie. A GM who wants to make improvement right away will often start by drafting a first round running back. The Bills have squandered numerous first round picks in this manner over the last decade. In addition, they've allowed their DBs with the best combination of youth + talent to go first-contract-and-out, and have used first round picks on their replacements. But to return to my earlier point about the numbers game. I think the Bills should divide prospects available at 10th overall into three categories. 1) Potential franchise QBs. 2) Players who will add + 1 to the numbers game. 3) Everyone else. If possible, the Bills should take a player from category 1 at 10th overall. Unfortunately, it almost certainly won't be possible. This means they need to select a player from category 2; while completely ignoring the players in category 3! Floyd has been mentioned as one example of a player who could add +1 to the numbers game. If, as an NFL player, he will consistently draw double coverage, and will produce anyway, then he'd certainly be an example of a guy who'd make that contribution to the numbers game. If he's the only player like that available at 10th overall, and if the Bills feel reasonably comfortable with him, then it becomes an easy decision. But if there are other players available at 10th overall who could also add +1 to the numbers game, then the decision becomes more complex. At that point, you have to ask yourself which of the category 2 players are most likely to be successful, as well as which seem to have the most upside.

This. 10th overall is too early to take an offensive guard. The only possible justification I could see for DeCastro would be if he could take on NTs and DTs one-on-one--players who would otherwise have required a double team. If he can do that--and thereby free up other offensive linemen--then and only then does he become part of the conversation at 10th overall. I've heard a lot of talk about how great he is, but nothing which would suggest he could single team interior defensive linemen who would otherwise have required a double team. Kuechley won't be blitzing much--at least not with the Bills--because Wannestedt doesn't like blitzing his linebackers. Nor is it realistic to expect a LB to cover a good pass catching TE one-on-one. If Kuechley won't be blitzing the quarterback, and won't be shutting down TEs in one-on-one coverage, then what will he do on passing downs to justify 10th overall? I also agree that Reiff does not seem like he'll become a franchise LT, or even a close approximation of one. Of those three, I voted for Kuechley, on the theory that there's at least a chance of DeCastro doing the one-on-one blocking I described, and a chance--however infinitesimal--of Reiff becoming a competent NFL LT. But even under the absolute, best case scenario for Kuechley, he doesn't come even remotely close to justifying 10th overall.

A lot of times football comes down to a numbers game. Maybe the defense has a NT who can be productive despite being double teamed. The face that one defender uses up two offensive players affects the numbers game. Maybe the offense has a WR who can be productive despite being double-teamed. If one of the offense's players uses up two defenders, that helps the offense with the numbers game. Players can help with the numbers game in another way as well. Suppose a RDE would normally require a double team. But suppose a Pro Bowl LT is able to block that RDE one-on-one. That LT helps with the numbers game, because he eliminates a numerical advantage the defense would otherwise have had. Any time you pick a player 10th overall, one of the following should be true. Either a) he should be a franchise QB, or b) he should consistently add +1 to the numbers game. I don't care that much how he makes his contribution. But if a player isn't going to change the equation for the numbers game, and if he isn't a franchise QB, then he has no business going 10th overall!

I love the idea of adding Kalil. He can be a vital component of this team over the long term. I also agree that LT is a serious and immediate need, and that a LT is probably the third most important position on the football field. (After QB and RDE.) Unfortunately, the Bills also have a hole at the most important position on the football field. If Nix's regime does nothing to seriously address that need this year, and deprives itself of the draft day resources to address the position next year, it all but guarantees failure to win the Super Bowl over the next five years. Kalil is worth trading up for, and I'd be willing to part with both our second and third round picks if that's what it takes to get him. But as vital as this player is, he must not come at the expense of the Bills' ability to draft a franchise QB in 2013!

A "mortgage the future to win today" mentality is the reason for a significant portion of the Bills' draft day mistakes over the past decade. The perpetual fixation on drafting RBs is one example, because RBs are felt to have the ability to make an immediate impact. Letting Antoine Winfield go first-contract-and-out is another example, because over the short-term, it was felt that Lawyer Milloy and Troy Vincent, together, could make a greater impact than Antoine Winfield would have made. (TD was wrong about the short-term. And certainly, Winfield made a much greater contribution to the Vikings, over the long run, than Milloy and Vincent made to the Bills.) The Bledsoe trade was still another example of eating the seed corn. So too was the first round of the 2006 draft. Marv felt the Bills had to become solid right away, and that the best way to do that was with a good defense. He and Jauron believed that the best way to shore up the Bills' defense right away was to add a SS and DT (not necessarily in that order) with their first two draft picks. That's why the Bills focused on SS and DT in the first round of the 2006 draft, and ended up with two busts. The Whitner pick should have been used on Cutler, and the McCargo pick should have been used on Mangold. But Marv and Jauron were too caught up in "win now" to see that; or to seriously consider non-DTs/SSs in the first round. You are correct to assert that the "win now" mentality may well still be present. You may also be correct in saying that Ralph may be applying "win now" pressure; thereby giving Nix and Gailey a valid reason for wanting to win now. But if Ralph is applying that kind of pressure, then he also needs to forbid Nix from doing anything which would shortchange the future. This means no drafting a RB in the first round, and no trading away early picks from next year's draft! If Ralph is pressuring the front office into a "win now" mindset, and isn't preventing them from using measures which would win today by mortgaging the future, then he's setting the team up for exactly the kind of failure it's experienced over the last decade!

I'll wholeheartedly go along with the first half of what you've written, while disagreeing with the second half. A franchise LT is worth trading up for. The Bills acquire a large "quantity" of players every year. You'd think that after a few years of that, the Bills' need for quantity would be filled--at least for a while. However, players chosen for quantity often don't last very long. Kalil will. So why not get Kalil and some quantity this year, and add to the quantity next year? However, I disagree with the idea of trading away the Bills' first round pick in next year's draft. If you don't have a franchise QB--and the Bills don't--you shouldn't be trading away future first rounders for anything except a young franchise QB! Filling that need is that important! Unfortunately, I think that Beerball is probably right. In my mind, the most likely scenario is the following: 1. The Browns move up one slot in the draft to #3 overall. This allows them to take Tannehill at 3rd overall, thereby locking the Dolphins out of that pick. 2. The Vikings move down to 4th overall (the Browns' old pick). They take Kalil there; while also receiving some compensation from the Browns for their trouble. If the above happens--which it probably will--then the Bills should stay at 10th overall. Unless, of course, there's the chance to trade down in this year's draft while acquiring a first round pick in the 2013 draft! Having two first round picks in next year's draft would better position the Bills to take the franchise QB that's their true need.

I'd thought you were implying that if the Bills didn't want to fly Richardson in for an interview, it might be a sign of complacency.

There are two possible reasons for interviewing Trent Richardson: 1. The Bills have ruled out taking him, but want to interview him anyway for reasons others have stated. 2. The Bills are considering taking him if he falls to 10th overall. To eliminate the second option from the Bills' consideration set would not be a sign of complacency, arrogance, or laziness. It would be a healthy sign of discipline. The only valid reason for interviewing Richardson is the first.

You're right. Thus far, Fitz has not shown he's a franchise quarterback. The best measure of that is yards per pass attempt, not yards over the course of a season. (Especially not when comparing seasons from the early '90s against modern day, more pass-happy seasons!) This past year, Fitz averaged 6.7 yards per pass attempt. He'd averaged 6.8 yards per attempt the season prior. While those numbers are better than Trent Edwards' career average of 6.5 yards per attempt, they're not in the 7.2 - 7.4 yards per attempt range a QB needs to achieve to be considered franchise. The reason Fitz isn't there is because of his lack of accuracy. That lack was on display even early in the season. Against the Patriots, for example, Fitz threw a number of inaccurate passes. Some of them should have been intercepted, and would have been had the Patriots' secondary been halfway decent. Fitz did not play at or near the level Eli Manning played during the postseason leading up to his first Super Bowl win. Manning was on fire during that postseason, and was much, much more accurate than we (or anyone else) has ever seen from Fitz. Suppose that the Bills acquire an extra first round pick in next year's draft. And suppose that, this season, Fitz does something he's never done before. Namely, play at the level of a franchise QB. Should both those things happen, there's nothing which would force the Bills to use their extra 2013 first rounder on a QB. I'd probably take a quarterback anyway, assuming there was a franchise QB there to be taken. A franchise quarterback is far more valuable than a successful player at any other position. Nine out of the last 10 Super Bowls have been won by teams with franchise QBs. Teams good enough to win Super Bowls without having franchise QBs are very rare. The Bills don't have the talent to be one of those teams. Nor will the 2012 draft be enough to fix that. A "win now" mentality is unjustifiable, unless the goal is to make the playoffs and get eliminated in the divisional round. Someone suggested the idea of trading away next year's first round pick to move up for Kalil. I love the thought of the Bills taking Kalil, and elsewhere have suggested that they trade away their second round pick in this year's draft to move up to get him. But the idea of trading away our first round pick in next year's draft, for any reason other than to acquire a young, franchise QB, is a horrible one! The Bills cannot afford to part with that pick while their quarterback situation remains in its current state!

The Bills already have two dynamite RBs in the form of Spiller and Jackson! There's been discussion--justified, IMO--about whether Jackson deserves to be considered a top-5 back in the NFL. In limited playing time, Spiller did things, and made plays, that Jackson lacks the speed and athleticism to duplicate. On the other hand, Jackson is the more polished of the two--in part because he's a very polished player, and in part because Spiller is still young and raw. The point of all this is that the Bills shouldn't be attempting to acquire enough dynamite at the RB position to level half the mountains of West Virginia, while ignoring other, far more important positions. Positions at which there's an actual need!

I'd love this idea! It's been said that there are four critical positions on a team: QB, RDE, LT, and CB. Of those, the Bills have holes at three out of four. The most important of those holes, and the hardest to fill, is at quarterback. It's highly unlikely there will be a franchise QB waiting for the Bills at 10th overall. This means the Bills will likely have to wait until 2013 to address the need for a franchise QB. Having two first round picks in the 2013 draft gives the Bills two chances to have a pick high enough to take the franchise QB they need. Or, barring that, those two first round picks could also be packed up and traded to another team in exchange for a pick very early in the draft. While having two first round picks in 2013 does not guarantee the Bills the chance to get a franchise QB, it puts them in a better position to do so. Even if they're ultimately unable to use those picks to get the QB they want, they'd still be able to use them to draft non-QBs instead.

I'd love this idea! It's been said that there are four critical positions on a team: QB, RDE, LT, and CB. Of those, the Bills have holes at three out of four. The most important of those holes, and the hardest to fill, is at quarterback. It's highly unlikely there will be a franchise QB waiting for the Bills at 10th overall. This means the Bills will likely have to wait until 2013 to address the need for a franchise QB. Having two first round picks in the 2013 draft gives the Bills two chances to have a pick high enough to take the franchise QB they need. Or, barring that, those two first round picks could also be packed up and traded to another team in exchange for a pick very early in the draft. While having two first round picks in 2013 does not guarantee the Bills the chance to get a franchise QB, it puts them in a better position to do so. Even if they're ultimately unable to use those picks to get the QB they want, they'd still be able to use them to draft non-QBs instead.

Carucci is not a broken clock. Had he been the Bills' GM during the Levy/Jauron era, I'm sure the Bills' first through third round picks would have turned out much better than they did. They certainly couldn't have been any worse! Donte Whitner, John McCargo, Marshawn Lynch . . . busts every one of them! Surely at least one of Carucci's picks in rounds 1 - 3 would have worked out; which would have been one more early draft success story than Levy had. Not only did Levy's rounds 1 - 3 draft choices all turn out to be busts, but his free agent signings were all flops too. Every one of them. When Whitner was drafted, a number of draft analysts said he was a reach. That means he was a reach, at least according to those analysts. I'll grant that if he'd turned out to be a Pro Bowl player, many of those analysts would have tried to downplay their own previous "reach" comments. But attempts to rewrite history after the fact do not make that history untrue. Whether a player is a reach gets determined at the time he gets drafted, not several years later with 20/20 hindsight! It would be interesting to make a list of the players who were widely labeled "reaches," and to compare those players' success rates against those taken at similar draft positions who weren't considered reaches. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any player widely labeled a reach who went on to justify his draft position. I'm sure there have to be some, but I don't know who they are.

Saying Whitner was a reach was not a case of 20/20 hindsight! There are two reasons for this: 1. As you noted, people said "reach" at the time he was drafted, not just after the fact. 2. Whitner's body of work did not justify first round draft status, let alone eighth overall. Vic Carucci didn't have him rated as a first round talent. Carucci was right. Based on the information available at the time, Whitner was a reach. Sometimes, players perform better than one would expect based on the information available at the time. Stevie Johnson lasted until the seventh round, which means available information didn't justify his selection early in the draft. (If it had, then presumably someone would have figured this out and have taken him before the seventh round.) If you take a player at a much higher draft position than the available information indicates you should, and if you get lucky with him having a great career, you still reached. That's not a good repeatable strategy, even if good luck sometimes shields you from that strategy's expected consequences. In Whitner's case, Marv didn't get lucky. He got exactly the kind of player one would expect from taking a second or third round talent at eighth overall.

Yours is an excellent, well thought-out post. I agree with everything you've written.

My comment was a little tongue in cheek. Though I admit there was some truth to it as well. All this talk about, or even jokes about, drafting Richardson scares me. If you know a person who's been in several gasoline-related explosions already, you do not want to see that person joking around about his plans for the evening--plans which involve lit cigarettes, candles, oil lanterns, using gasoline to start campfires, etc.! Nor is this talk about drafting an OG or a non-pass-rushing LB at 10th overall any better. It's almost as though people are determined to waste the 10th overall pick on a non-impact position! "If I can't blow myself up with gasoline, there are plenty of other explosives out there!"

I'll also agree with this. But as usual, I have a caveat. Teams generally assign grades to players based on their college play, workouts, and numerous other evaluation tools. Suppose, for example, that a team looks at the evaluation it put together, and determines a player's grade does not merit a top-10 pick. But it takes him in the top 10 anyway because of need, desire for instant gratification, a GM who lets himself be pushed around by coaches, or other factors. That player then goes on to have a better-than-expected career, and justifies his top-10 selection. Even though the result worked out well, I'd still disagree with the process which led to that result. To me, this would be the case of good luck masking the effects of a bad process. That good luck will not last forever, which means the bad process should be corrected sooner rather than later. Another example of a bad process would be a team whose draft day grades show little correlation with players' actual long-term successes. A good way to measure this is to look at your draft day grades from five years ago, and determine their level of accuracy. You then ask, "what could we have done differently to have made our grading system more accurate?" Then you look at the drafts from four years ago and six years ago, to see how those hypothetical changes in your grading process would have affected that process's accuracy. The goal here is twofold: 1. To build a player evaluation process which produces accurate results. 2. To take the players your evaluation tools have graded highly; rather than reaching for players based on need. (This does not mean that it's required--or even acceptable--for the Bills to take an OG, RB, non-pass rushing LB, or punter at 10th overall! Position value must be taken into account!)

The point I was making there was that, no matter how good you think a punter is going to be, you don't take him tenth overall. Period. More generally, you should ask not just "how good will player X be?" but also, "how much value does his position have?" Unless a running back is going to be the next Barry Sanders or Marshall Faulk, you don't take him 10th overall. If Richardson falls to 10th overall, then that means that the first nine teams to pick have collectively decided he's not going to be in the Sanders/Faulk category. Even if the Bills' front office disagrees with that assessment, it's much more likely that the first nine teams are right, and the Bills wrong, than vice versa. If the Bills pick, say, a LT or a CB at 10th overall, then all he has to do is be an above-average starter for 10 years or so to make the pick a reasonably justifiable selection. But if Richardson is the pick, he'd have to perform at or near a Hall of Fame level to justify the Bills using yet another first round pick on a RB. Maybe he'll actually do that, but odds are the Bills would just be setting themselves up for yet another draft day failure. (The required performance differential exists because LT and CB are much, much more important than RB, and because the Bills actually need a LT and a CB, but absolutely do not need a RB! ) As for your question, I hate to make predictions about what NFL GMs will do. Even if 31 out of 32 GMs would be perfectly happy to let Richardson fall to the second round, that 32nd GM might snap him up in the top 10! I recall a few years back, the best RB of the draft fell to the 20s, where the Saints picked him up. Richardson may be better than whoever that RB was. I could see Richardson falling into the teens, but probably not too much lower than that. This does not necessarily mean that whichever team ultimately drafts him will be making the best possible use of their pick.

If you have four Hall of Fame WRs, you can put all four on the field at once. The defense can put their best CB on one, double cover another . . . but it's very hard for them to cover all four. If you have four Hall of Fame running backs, odds are three will sit on the bench and watch, while the fourth gets all the carries. At least, that's how it's usually gone for the Bills. "Splitting carries" was discussed, but not actually done, back when the Bills had McGahee and Henry, or more recently Spiller and Jackson. But even if the Bills were to abandon their traditional policy of not splitting carries, you'd still only have one running back on the field at a time. The Bills have sometimes talked about their offense becoming more effective with a two RB set. Generally that's turned out to be a pipe dream. The two back set is talked about a lot more than it's actually used, and hasn't exactly set the world on fire when it has been used. This, despite having both Jackson and Spiller. Besides all this, most of the WRs the Lions drafted didn't work out all that well. Some did, and have become significant components of the Lions' success. Most of that success, however, was obtained by drafting positions other than WR. Finally, WRs tend to have longer careers than RBs. Also, WRs contribute a lot more to the passing game than do most RBs. The passing game is four times as important as the running game, which makes a good receiving corps a lot more important than a good stable of running backs.

It sounds like we're more or less on the same page. I'll throw in one caveat, however. If (for example) a team takes a player 10th overall, then the bar that player has to clear to be considered a success is higher than would have been the case if he'd been taken 20th overall. Lee Evans, for example, didn't have a good enough career to justify his 13th overall draft position, but could have justified a late first round pick. Taking a player a little before you have to is okay, as long as he lives up to his draft position.

There are some things you don't joke about, because they're too serious and hit too close to home. And because they hurt too much. The possibility of the Bills' front office squandering yet another first round pick on a RB is one of those things.

You're right, and I'll go one step further. Had the Bills hired a monkey to randomly throw darts at players' names listed in mock drafts, they would have done better in rounds 1 - 3 than what we actually saw from TD and Levy.