Orton's Arm

I agree with this. I'd love nothing more than to see the Bills do whatever it takes--whatever it takes--to solve their QB problems once and for all! If that means a 1-15 season to acquire some Luck, then we as Bills fans should just suck it up and deal with it. In the long run, it's always better to have a franchise QB than to not have one.

You and I see this situation similarly. A rebuilding team like the Bills shouldn't be afraid to trade away some of its older players, especially those who may have significant value in a trade. Evans is a solid player, and at the age of 30 almost certainly has multiple good years left. Suppose the Bills were to address their need for a franchise QB as soon as possible, which means the first round of the 2012 draft. Rookie quarterbacks tend to need at least one year to adjust. This means that even if everything goes perfectly, the Bills will not become a serious Super Bowl threat until 2013 at the very earliest. By that point two of Evans' seasons will have been expended. If for whatever reason there is an additional year's delay in obtaining or preparing the franchise QB, you're looking at the loss of three of Evans' seasons. Evans is worth considerably less to the Bills than to a team which already has its franchise quarterback in place. At the same time, you have to like Evans' speed, his tendency to not drop passes, and the fact he attracts double coverage. As you pointed out, you can't just give a guy like that away. It's also worth noting that first round receivers have a very high bust rate. A team that tries to fill its need for a receiver through the draft may have to try several times before they get it right. That team might be better served by trading away a second round pick for Evans, exactly like you said. I also think a second rounder is a fair price from the Bills' perspective.

Good points. Just to add to the article and to your post, a few other things probably went into Nix's thinking. 1) Player availability. In this year's draft, the best player available for the Bills was very probably Dareus. Had the Bills gone offense with that pick, they would have gotten a player with a lower draft grade. Possibly there were also times in last year's draft when this proved to be the case. 2) The transition to the 3-4. Back when Nix took over, most of the Bills' front-7 players were better suited to a 4-3 than a 3-4. And not just any old 4-3: we're talking the Tampa-2, which (as implemented by Jauron) placed a premium on smaller football players. 3) When Nix took over, the Bills' front-7 had only two long-term answers on it: Kyle Williams and Poz. Everyone else was either too old, not very good, or both. Since the defensive front-7 required a major infusion of talent anyway, why not take the opportunity to acquire the right players for a 3-4?

The title of this thread is "Aaron Maybin only weighs 228 lbs." Yours is the 228th post in this thread. There's got to be a hidden meaning here . . .

I place exactly zero value on "try to win right away," except to the extent that it's indicative of a long-term effort to build a solid core. Sure, it may seem impressive to acquire a bunch of additional wins in year 1 of the rebuilding process. But when years 2 and 3 roll around and it's clear that year 1 was just a flash in the pan, then what? TD was a master at the "win now" approach. Trading away a first round pick for an aging Bledsoe was classic "win now." Letting Winfield walk so that he'd have the salary cap space to sign Troy Vincent and Lawyer Milloy was "win now." Marv picked up right where TD left off. Going into the 2006 draft, it was felt that the two positions which could most help the Bills "win now" were SS and DT. So that's what the Bills focused on with their first two picks of the draft. In Marv's second year, they used their first two picks on a RB and LB--positions normally associated with an instant impact. Whether Lynch represented the best possible long-term use of the 12th overall pick may not have been central to Marv's thinking. Lynch could help the Bills win now! Shortsightedness, and the win now mentality it implies, is exactly what's been wrong with the Bills for at least the last decade. Year 1 of any given rebuilding program is the absolute least important time to get extra wins. If a team lacks an adequate core--as is the case with the Bills--its primary and secondary focus should be on building that core! As for Parcells' two Super Bowl wins: he earned them as a head coach, not as a general manager. Bills fans know a little something about guys who are better as head coaches than as general managers.

I have a more favorable opinion of the piece. A while ago, I looked at the records Parcells the GM's teams have complied. During his first year with a new team, Parcells the GM's teams attained winning records. (Around 10-6 on average, IIRC.) But in years other than the first year, Parcells the GM's teams have finished at about an average of 8-8. His tenure with the Dolphins is a perfect example of this. In his first year he went 11-5, as you pointed out. But a lot of that 11-5 was based on some lucky breaks, as well as short-term stopgap measures. As an example of the latter, Chad Pennington played well for the Dolphins that year. But he later became injured/ineffective/retired, and there was no realistic replacement on the roster. That's the biggest single reason why the Dolphins haven't had a winning season since Parcells' first year as GM. I agree with the author that the passing game has become far more important than the running game. I also agree that Parcells typically hasn't responded appropriately to this change--mostly because he hasn't been great at adding good QBs to the teams he GMs. I strongly disagree with the author's implication that this new emphasis on the passing game is a good reason to avoid using early draft picks on offensive linemen. Offensive linemen aren't just there for run blocking. They're there for pass protection, which might have a little something to do with improving one's passing game! If you consistently give Trent Dilfer five seconds to throw, then over the course of the game he'll be moderately effective. If you consistently give Kurt Warner five seconds to throw, he'll rip out the defense's throat. The combination of a good QB + good pass protection is a very powerful one. Parcells failed largely because he did not obtain the first half of that equation.

I'm not a huge fan of passer rating myself, and strongly prefer average yards per attempt. I haven't yet formed a strong opinion about total quarterback rating. That being said, I agree with your assessment of Fitz. He can hold down the fort until the Bills' QB of the future is ready to take the field. I noticed that the 4th best QB on their list was Aaron Rodgers, with a total QB rating of 67.9. The fourth-worst QB on the list was Alex Smith, with total QB rating of 40.0. Fitz's TQBR of 48.7 puts him a little closer to Alex Smith than to Aaron Rodgers. Why did I look at the 4th best QB and 4th worst QB on their list, as opposed to the very best and very worst? I did it to eliminate statistical outliers. There was a huge drop-off between their 4th-worst QB (Alex Smith, 40.0) and their worst QB (Jimmy Clausen, 11.7). Clearly Clausen is an outlier. In comparison, the difference between the highest QB on the list (Tom Brady, 76.0) and the fourth-highest (Aaron Rodgers, 69.9) is much, much smaller.

It's possible that Triple Threat was trying to say that the Bills shouldn't use something as valuable as a top-10 pick on a RT, but that it's okay to take a RT later on in the first round. (If this was indeed his point he was a bit sloppy about communicating it.) It's normal for teams to draft interior OL with picks in the second half of the first round. A good RT is more valuable and harder to find than a good interior OL. I'd have no objection to using a pick later in the first round on a RT, as long as he was good enough to be worthy of his draft position.

I don't see Fitz as the long-term answer. But Thigpen isn't the long-term answer either. It's very doubtful he'd be an upgrade over Fitz.

Twice in the last 40 years, the Bills have used their first pick of the draft on an OT. One of those two times was the Mike Williams pick. Over the last 40 years, the Bills have never used their first draft pick on a QB. On ten different occasions they used it on a RB, and another ten times they used it on a DB. Losman was selected late in the first round, nine picks after the Bills had drafted Lee Evans. Sometimes a franchise QB will fall to the late first round, as the Packers demonstrated the very next year by taking Aaron Rodgers late in the first. But those cases are rare, and almost never apply to a QBs like Losman, chosen mostly for their physical gifts. During this past decade, the Bills have had a top-15 pick eight times. Of those times, they did the following: 4th overall: Mike Williams, OT 13th overall, Lee Evans, WR 8th overall, Donte Whitner, SS 12th overall, Marshawn Lynch, RB 11th overall, Leodis McKelvin, CB 11th overall, Aaron Maybin, DE 9th overall, C.J. Spiller, RB 3rd overall, Marcell Dareus, DL DBs: 2 RBs: 2 DL: 2 OT: 1 WR: 1 QB: 0 Not a good way to find your franchise QB! Suppose the pick used on Whitner had instead been used on Cutler (as I'd wanted at the time). Opportunities to draft franchise QBs are very rare. If a team has such an opportunity, they'd have to be fools to take a SS instead. (Especially if that SS is named Donte Whitner.) The fact that it was J. P. Losman's presence on the roster which convinced the Bills they didn't need a franchise QB only makes them look even more inept. The waste of the 12th overall pick on Lynch was exactly the sort of incompetence for which Marv was noted. The only current starter the Bills acquired during the Marv era is Kyle Williams. The Spiller pick was not automatically a bad idea, even though I strongly felt the Bills should have been emphasizing positions other than RB. If Spiller were to become the next Thurman Thomas, the pick would have been a good one. (Especially if the eight or ten guys picked after him have so-so careers.) What are the odds of Spiller becoming the next Thurman Thomas?

I agree that the Bills have been mediocre in evaluating talent, and that that may be stronger than any other single factor in explaining the team's usual lack of success. But it would be going too far to say that is the sole reason the Bills haven't succeeded. Take the situation at RB for example. In 1997 the Bills used a first round pick on Antowain Smith. In 2001 they used a second round pick on Henry, in an effort to upgrade the position. In 2003 they used a first round pick on McGahee in an effort to upgrade Henry. In 2006 they used the 12th overall pick on Lynch in an effort to find an upgrade for McGahee. In 2010 they used the 9th overall pick on Spiller to try to find an upgrade for Lynch. Suppose those draft picks had been used on non-RBs instead. Imagine the 1997 first round pick being used on a player who was as good at C as Smith was at RB. The 2001 2nd round pick could have been used on a player who was as good at TE as Henry was at RB. And so forth. The long run result of diverting all the Bills' first and second round picks away from RBs would have been a significantly stronger and better team. Put another way, the problem with all those RB picks wasn't just that none of them lived up to their draft positions. (Though that was certainly part of it.) It was also that the Bills' blinkered, obsessive, and completely unnecessary effort to upgrade the RB position starved other areas of the team of badly needed early draft picks. Think of this another way. Suppose Team A and Team B have exactly equal ability to evaluate players. Each of the two teams' draft picks always work out about as well as you'd expect for their draft positions. There are no first or second round busts, and there are no late round gems. Team A biases its early picks towards premium positions; whereas Team B does not. Over the course of a seven year period, Team A is likely to end up with the better QB, the better LT, the better RDE, and probably the better pass rushing OLB and NT. Team B is likely to end up with the better OGs, the better C, the better ILBs, the better RB, and so forth. However, Team A will be decent in those areas as well. Team A typically uses its first round picks on premium positions, leaving it with its second and third round picks to obtain decent or reasonably good players at positions of lesser importance. Team A is likely to dominate any contest between itself and Team B. Team B's advantages in areas like interior OL, RB, TE and so forth cannot offset Team A's commanding advantages in QB play, LT, and pass rushers.

I share your concern about the Spiller pick. Both because of questions about whether Spiller will be a good player, and because the Bills had no business drafting a RB in the first round. None. I'm less concerned about Troup. I read an article on him which analyzed his play both early in the season and late in the season. Early in the season there were problems with his stance, which caused him to have too high a center of gravity and to get pushed around. Later in the season his technique improved, his center of gravity became lower, and he became a much tougher problem for offensive linemen to try to solve. Oddly, the Bills decreased his playing time even as the quality of his play improved. It's normal for defensive linemen to not come into their own until their second year. IIRC, Carrington had injury problems his rookie year. The Green signing doesn't concern me as much as it does some others in this thread. Green was meant to be a stopgap measure until a real solution to the hole at RT could be found. For whatever reason Green didn't play nearly as well for the Bills as he had for the Raiders. Sometimes aging players hit a wall, and it appears this was the case with Green.

Not all 7-9 or 6-10 teams are created equal. The team Buddy inherited had only two long-term answers in its front-7: Kyle Williams and Poz. Everyone else was either getting on in years, not very good, or both. There were also problems with the defensive secondary. On offense, there was (and is) no long-term answer at QB, no TE, and holes on the OL. Not many building block players there except for Levitre, Wood, Stevie Johnson, and maybe Bell. Compare that to the Packers. Arguably, Aaron Rodgers is playing better than any other QB in the league. That alone is worth much more than everything Nix inherited from the previous regime. With Aaron Rodgers plus whatever other good, young players the Packers may have had during their 6-10 season, they obviously had a much better core than the one Nix inherited.

The addition of a franchise QB and a solid RT would represent a major step up for the Bills. I realize Fitz had a solid season last year, and that there were plenty of people on the team who played worse than him. It may seem unfair for me to single him out. But Fitz cannot throw the ball with consistent accuracy, and that's not something that's going to get any better. His grasp of the mental aspect of the game is already so good that there's little room for additional improvement there. If your team doesn't have a franchise QB, it's an uphill battle to compete against a team that does. If your intention is to win that kind of uphill battle all the way to a Lombardi Trophy, you'd better be prepared to have a defense and an OL that are every bit as good as those of the Ravens of 2000.

Pouncey was taken 18th overall. By that point in the draft, the highest-rated QBs, LTs, RDEs and CBs are generally off the board. If that's the case, an interior lineman can be the correct pick, especially if he works out as well as Pouncey has. But suppose the Seahawks had chosen Pouncey sixth overall, instead of taking Okung. For the Seahawks, Pouncey would not have been the correct selection, because LT is a much more valuable and harder-to-fill position than C. I'd divide positions into six tiers of importance: Tier 1: QB Tier 2: LT, RDE, CB Tier 3: pass rushing OLB, NT Tier 4: C, RT, WR Tier 5: OG, S, TE, RB, ILB, non-pass rushing OLB Tier 6: K, P, kick returner Obviously others' opinions about the relative importance of these positions will differ, depending on philosophy and the style of offense and defense being run. If a team chooses a lower tier position at a fairly early point in the draft, it's normally considered a safe pick. The idea is that no one would take an interior OL (for example) in the first round, unless that interior OL was very, very good. Suppose that over the years, a team were to use its best draft picks on lower tier positions. Probably most of those picks would work out. But there's problem: higher tier positions will get neglected. The Bills are a good example of this sort of failure. Originally, Jim Kelly's successor was supposed to have been Todd Collins--a second round pick. If the Bills couldn't find an heir apparent to Kelly in the first round, what made them think they could do so in the second round? Then they traded a third round pick for Billy Joe Hobart, exactly as though that had a chance of producing Kelly's successor. Later, they would use the second of their two first round picks on Losman. Later they would try to replace Losman with a third round pick. The Bills could have and should have used their best draft picks to try to obtain Kelly's replacement. (At least in those drafts when good QBs were available for the Bills to pick.) Obviously the Bills did not do so. That caused two problems: 1) The Bills have yet to find Kelly's replacement. The ceiling on this team is a lot lower than on a team with a franchise QB. 2) The lack of a franchise QB has created a vacuum which has sucked in a great many good draft picks over the years. The Colts haven't used a first round pick on a QB since 1998 (when they took Peyton Manning). Since 1998, the Bills have used three first round picks on QBs (Johnson, Bledsoe, Losman), none of whom provided more than three years of starts to the Bills. Opportunities to obtain good, long-term answers at premium positions are very rare. That's why, if you have the chance to obtain a good long-term answer, it's foolish to obtain a player at a non-premium position instead. Over the last 40 years, the Bills have used their first pick of the draft on a DB 10 times, on a RB ten times, on an OT twice, and on a QB never. This neglect of premium positions, and excessive focus on non-premium positions, is a big reason why this franchise has generally obtained disappointing results.

Just to clarify my earlier post: when I stated that the QB would be top-7, I meant that once he adjusted to the NFL, he'd become one of the seven best QBs in the league. I agree that some drafts are strong WRT a given position, while others are weak. As you hinted, that means teams should be flexible about which positions they pursue. But I also think the value of the position needs to be taken into account. For example, a player's overall value could be determined as follows: Quality of player x value of position = player value The above formula would stop you from taking an OG first overall, especially if a franchise QB was also available to you. While teams shouldn't make drafting decisions on the basis of this formula alone, at least it's a starting point. For example, if the top five guys (according to the formula) scored a 550, 520, 510, 440, and 300, then you'd obviously weed out the bottom one or two. And then you'd decide among the top three or four based on whichever position you most want to fill.

I either partially or fully agree with this, depending on how this system would work when the rubber meets the road. (A point which you may be able to clarify.) For example, suppose a team has the first overall pick. Option 1) is to use the pick on a franchise QB. This team needs a QB because the guy they have is close to retiring. Option 2) is to use the pick on a Hall of Fame OG. While the QB from option 1) will merely be top-7 or so, this OG will definitely be the best OG in the league. Obviously the team should choose option 1) over option 2). But what does the system say the GM should do? If the system selects option 2), it's a flawed system. I'll grant that in this particular case a GM can intuitively sense a flawed decision and override it. But if the system produces flawed results in obvious cases like this, it might also produce flawed results in cases where flaws are harder to detect.

I agree Marv was an absolutely terrible hire. As a GM, he made TD look shiny and wonderful by comparison. However . . . I don't remember very many people on this board complaining about the hiring of Marv at the time. It's hard to place too much blame on Ralph for having failed to avoid an error that many here would also have made. (Even though it proved to be a very serious error!) I also agree that had Nix traded back into the first round, it would far more likely have been for Mangold than for McCargo.

Kyle Orton's career average is 6.5 yards per pass attempt. That's the same as Trent Edwards' average. Two years ago Orton averaged 7.0 yards per attempt, and this past season he averaged 7.3 yards per attempt. Fitz's career average is 6.0 yards per attempt. This past season he averaged 6.8 yards per attempt. Two years ago it was 6.3 yards per attempt. Orton has two good seasons to Fitz's one, and Orton's good seasons were better than Fitz's good season. If both were to retire today, Orton would go down as the better quarterback.

I agree with the first bolded sentence, and partially disagree with the second. Clearly the organization had little ability to evaluate potential draft picks, other teams' free agents, or even the players already on the roster. These were the people who kept Fred Jackson on the bench while the A-Train got all the carries, they thought Losman had a legitimate chance to be a successful QB, etc. The reason I disagree with the second sentence is because even if Whitner had been an impact safety, the Ngata option would still have been better. (Though not as much better as has actually proved to be the case.) I'd argue that an impact DL is worth more than an impact safety. But even if one were to argue that an impact DL and an impact safety are of roughly the same value, surely an impact QB is worth more than either! Maybe that goes back to your point about player evaluation, or lack thereof. Had the Bills evaluated Whitner, Cutler, and Losman correctly, the decision to take Cutler over Whitner would have been a no-brainer. The "no-brainer" comment assumes that the Bills had their priorities in order, and had realized that an impact QB is more important than filling holes at SS and DT. I realize this assumption is shaky.

I would love for the Bills to take Luck. I think Fitz is a reasonably competent starter. But he's clearly not in the same category as QBs like Aaron Rodgers or Matt Schaub. This past season, Fitz averaged 6.8 yards per pass attempt--a significant improvement over his career average. Trent's career average is 6.5 yards per attempt. Aaron Rodgers has averaged 7.9 yards per attempt over the course of his career, even though Green Bay's running game is worse than Buffalo's, and even though its offensive line is very seriously flawed. Matt Schaub has averaged 7.8 yards per attempt during his career. Fitz's numbers aren't in the Rodgers/Schaub category because Fitz is unable to throw the ball with consistent accuracy. If the Bills are going to hoist a Lombardi Trophy, they need to think like winners. That means they need to do whatever it takes to have elite players at the most critical positions. Quarterback is the most critical position of all. An elite quarterback would dramatically raise this team's ceiling. The Bills have not won a single playoff game since Jim Kelly hung up his cleats. As much as I admire Ryan Fitzpatrick's courage on the field and his quick, sound decision making, he is not Jim Kelly's replacement. If the Bills get an elite quarterback, build the offensive line, and add a couple key players to the defense, they'll become a team to be taken seriously. Very seriously.

I agree with you that the Bills were unlikely to take a QB in the first round until they'd given Losman a chance. Shortly after the 2004 draft, Dave Wannestadt said he wouldn't have taken Losman with the last pick of the seventh round. Had Wannestadt been the Bills' GM in 2006, it's fairly safe to say he wouldn't have passed up an opportunity to draft a franchise QB just because of Losman's presence on the roster. Nor was Wannestadt unique in seeing, fairly early on, that Losman would likely be a bust. Losman did little or nothing in college to turn himself into a proven pocket passer. His first round draft status was based largely on his physical gifts, and quarterbacks like that are disproportionately likely to fail. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Bills in 2006 thought there was a 50% chance of Losman becoming a good player. If they had identified Cutler as a franchise or near franchise QB, they should have drafted him anyway. Then they'd line up Losman as their starter in 2006. If he played well, he'd be the Bills' starter for however long it took to trade him. The objective would be to obtain at least one, and ideally two, first rounders for him. Then Cutler would become the starter. But if Losman didn't work out, his replacement would already be on the roster in the form of Cutler. The Bills made at least three major errors with their first draft pick in 2006: Thinking that Losman had a significant chance of working out. Failing to realize Cutler would be a borderline franchise QB. (Or else thinking that a 50% chance of Losman working out meant they didn't need a borderline franchise QB.) Thinking there was even a remote chance of Whitner being worth anything close to the eighth overall pick. Come to think of it, there appears to have been a fourth error as well: the thought that the Bills had to have a first round SS right away, even though it was year one of Marv's rebuilding program. (The word "rebuilding" should not be interpreted too literally.) There's no way that a team with as many holes as the Bills had in 2006 should walk into the draft room with the thought that their first two picks had to be used on a DT and an SS! Anyone who thinks like that shouldn't be a GM, any more than someone who believes the Sun revolves around the Earth should be put in charge of a college astronomy department.

This is not the first time this Bills' front office has grossly overestimated a player's value. Chris Kelsay and Cornell Green come to mind as well. This reflects badly on the Bills' FO's competence.

If a Bills fan is watching some other team's TE, it's often because that other team is playing the Bills. The worst starting TE in the league would probably look average against the Bills, and an average TE would probably look like he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Bills fans come away overestimating the value of other teams' TEs.

In statistics, a sufficiently large random sample is generally representative of the whole. For example, suppose you want to determine the average temperature in January for a given county over the last 100 years. 1) You could look up the high and low temperature for every January day over the past 100 years. 2) You could tell a computer program to randomly select 100 dates, as long as each date was in January and occurred within the past century. Then you'd look up the temperature for each date the computer had chosen, and you'd compute the average. Obviously, 2) involves some error. But the estimate you get from 2) will not differ all that much from what you would have arrived at had you performed the much more labor-intensive 1). SImilarly, if you were to watch 1000 randomly chosen plays of Joe Montana's, you could probably make the determination that he's a Hall of Fame quarterback. You wouldn't need to see every single snap he's ever played to figure this out. What's important here is that the sample needs to be random. For example, suppose there's a player who makes two or three attention-grabbing plays each game, but is mediocre the rest of the time. There's a chance fans may come away remembering his big plays only. That isn't a random sample at all! Someone grading this player would need to watch a lot of his plays, so that the ratio of big plays to mediocre plays in the sample would be similar to the ratio which exists in reality. The biggest potential problem I see with using network TV footage is that the cameras are most likely to zoom in on a player when he's doing something noticeable--either positive or negative. This introduces a source of sampling error. That doesn't make their data worthless. But it does mean we should think about the ways in which the sampling error may cause reported data to differ from the true, underlying facts. For example, if the cameras zoom in on cornerbacks only when they're being picked on, the sampling method could overstate the frequency at which CBs around the league get picked on.