Orton's Arm

You're settling for some insanely low standards here. I won't be content until we go 22 and -3. That's right. 22 wins and -3 losses. How can a team lose fewer than zero games, you ask? It just can.

Your link supports a point I made earlier: that less than one franchise-caliber QB enters the league each year. Most franchise QBs currently in the league were chosen in the first round. And yet, during the ten year period between 1998 and 2007, only six franchise QBs were chosen in the first round. (Seven if you want to count Jay Cutler.) Because opportunities to get franchise QBs are so rare, and because Andrew Luck has "franchise QB" written all over him, the Andrew Luck pick is very precious. Going 1-15 in 1997 worked out pretty well for Colts fans, who can now enjoy their Super Bowl win and a decade of having their team in the playoff mix. People need to take the long-term view. They should also realize how hard it is to get a franchise QB, and how important having one is to building a Super Bowl-winning team. Give the Bills that, and a few key additions at other positions, and we'd be talking about a real team here. A team that could Do Something in the playoffs.

Andrew Luck is no loser. That's why we want him in a Bills uniform. To be a great team, you have to have great players.

I strongly agree with the point you're making. But there are some exceptions--albeit very rare exceptions. Steve Young was placed in a bad situation in Tampa Bay, didn't perform as well as the Bucs had hoped, and was ultimately traded away to the 49ers. Clearly the bad situation and bad experience in Tampa Bay didn't "ruin" him--as his subsequent Hall of Fame career would demonstrate. But it did show that a young quarterback, when placed in a terrible situation, won't necessarily be able to show his full potential. But for every Steve Young story, there are probably two or three dozen Joey Harrington stories. Yes, Detroit was a bad situation for a QB. Yes, it's possible the badness of that situation contributed to Harrington's poor play. But ultimately Harrington has proved to be nothing more than a backup/marginal starter, whether for the Lions, the Dolphins, or the Falcons. One difference between Steve Young and Harrington is that Bill Walsh saw significant promise in Young, even despite his struggles in Tampa Bay. He was convinced enough of this that he was willing to trade a second round pick for him. While not every quarterback Walsh liked worked out well, in this particular case Walsh's instincts were spot-on. In contrast, the Dolphins were only willing to trade away a sixth round pick for Harrington (which could increase to a fifth rounder conditional on performance). Most other first round QB busts aren't even worth that in a trade. Ryan Leaf was released outright by the Chargers, Akili Smith was released by the Bengals, and J.P. Losman was released by the Bills. It's worth noting that Harrington achieved significantly more in his post-Lions career than those other QBs had achieved after parting ways with the teams that drafted them.

Thanks to all that guaranteed money, Jamarcus has become . . . a man of substance.

I agree with this post. Just to add to it: the fact that Luck is teaching an NFL quarterback the offense that quarterback will be running in the NFL strongly suggests that the Stanford offense Luck runs isn't that much different from an NFL offense.

Agreed. Add to that the fact that Denver took Tim Tebow in the first round of last year's draft; and therefore may not have quite as much enthusiasm for trading up as the Bills ought to have.

A while back I did some research, and found that over the past decade or so, an average of less than one bona fide franchise QB has entered the league each year. Any QB with a career average of 7.2 - 7.3 yards per attempt was considered a possible franchise QB (depending on other factors), and any QB with a career average of 7.4 yards per attempt or more was considered a definite franchise QB. QBs with career averages below 7.2 yards per attempt were considered non-franchise QBs. With less than one new franchise QB entering the league each year, a typical NFL team will receive a new franchise QB about once every 40 years (IIRC). Given that a franchise QB's career lasts perhaps about 10 years, that 40 year average implies that about one team in four will have a franchise QB at any given time. The Bills last received a franchise QB in 1983, so (assuming this team's experience is average), it should next expect to receive one sometime around the year 2023. Of course, the above is merely an average prediction. About half the teams in the league will experience above-average results. For example, once Favre moved on, Aaron Rodgers stood ready to pick up where he'd left off. Most teams aren't like that. Consider the QB class of '83. The Bills have yet to find a replacement for Jim Kelly, the Dolphins desperately need a replacement for Dan Marino, and the Broncos (with the exception of a few years of Cutler) have not found a replacement for John Elway. (As an aside, Culter's career average is 7.2 yards per attempt, putting him in the borderline franchise category.) Between them, the class of '83 QBs experienced a number of Super Bowl losses. The Dolphins and the Broncos both lost to the 49ers, who are currently searching for a replacement for Joe Montana and Steve Young. The Broncos and the Bills each lost to the Redskins, a team which has been searching for a franchise QB for decades. The Bills and Broncos also lost to the Giants, a team which would subsequently find a franchise QB in the form of Eli Manning. (Like his brother, Eli was picked first overall.) The Bills experienced two consecutive Super Bowl losses to the Cowboys, a team which hasn't had a franchise QB since Aikman hung up his cleats. While there's no such thing as a 100% safe draft pick at any position, at any point in the draft, Andrew Luck is the closest thing we're going to see to a safe/franchise QB. A team with a franchise QB has a much higher ceiling than a team without one. Yes, there is the possibility of getting a franchise QB later in the draft. But as a Bills fan, how many promising possibilities have you seen slip through this team's grasp? Getting the Andrew Luck pick removes the acquisition of a franchise QB from the realm of "maybe the Bills will someday get lucky" and puts it firmly into the realm of "the Bills have a clear plan which is likely to succeed." The pain of a 1-15 season is definitely worth that!

I agree completely. With this many second rounders, you'd hope for at least some of them to be above-average players, perhaps even a star or two. If you were to compare those eight second round picks to eight second rounders from other teams, I'd guess that the tops of their lists look a lot better than the tops of ours. But our 4th or 5th best guy is probably comparable to, or even slightly better than, their 4th or 5th best.

Thanks for the info. I certainly respect Modrak's willingness to publicly praise the picks, regardless of whatever he had said behind closed doors. It would have undercut Donahoe's authority if, the day after the Mike Williams pick (for example), Modrak had publicly said, "I think Williams will be a bust and that we're fools for taking him." I realize the rules of the game are such that Modrak can't say that--at least not publicly--even if that's what he had been thinking. It's unfortunate that more isn't known about what Modrak had said behind closed doors about the players the Bills drafted, before those players had been drafted.

This one's easy. The Bills don't have a franchise QB. Without a franchise QB their odds of winning the Super Bowl are close to nil. Teams which have franchise QBs almost never let them hit free agency. (Drew Brees being the rare exception.) Andrew Luck is the closest thing to a guaranteed franchise QB that Bills fans are likely to see in a long time. Seven or eight years from now, no one will care about how well or badly the Bills did in 2011. But it will matter, greatly, whether the Bills came away from the 2012 draft with a franchise QB. Just as Tom Brady changes the equation for the Patriots, a player like Andrew Luck could change the equation for the Bills, for many years to come.

I would never ask anyone to make public something which had been said in confidence. I would certainly not ask a reporter to reveal his or her sources, unless those sources had given prior permission to have their identities revealed. A statement from you that "I have personal knowledge that X is true" is good enough for me. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to ask you a question. If you don't know the answer, or don't feel comfortable revealing the answer, that's fine. My question is this: what opinion did Modrak have of the Bills' first round busts? Did he approve or disapprove of players like McCargo, Losman, Mike Williams, etc.? I realize he wasn't the final decision-maker, and that the ultimate responsibility for these picks was not his. But was he reasonably comfortable with those and the other first round picks when they were made; or did he strongly warn the Bills against making them? Edit: in response to your more recent post, I probably could have picked a better title for the thread. The meaning I'd wanted to convey was, "please rank the first round picks the Bills made while Modrak was director of college scouting; while acknowledging that we as fans cannot know how much influence Modrak had regarding those picks." But that seemed a little wordy for a thread title. I regret that the thread title I chose created the impression that Modrak was personally responsible for the Bills' first round picks during his time here.

I'm certainly open to being convinced, and some of what I've read states that Modrak was opposed to at least some of the Bills' blunders in the first round. However, the articles I saw didn't cite their sources. I'd be curious to learn if the ultimate source was Modrak himself, after it had become clear that the players in question would be busts. In a nutshell, I'm open to the possibility Modrak was a big part of the problem. I'm also open to the idea that he might have been an island of sanity in a sea of madness. Without personal knowledge of what his opinions about specific players had been, I don't know which of the two possibilities to believe. If you have such personal knowledge, or have seen a report which has convinced you beyond a doubt, I'd love to hear it. I'm not quite as stubborn as I may sometimes seem.

Without knowing what Modrak said about those players, I can't know to what extent (if any) he was to blame for those busts. Again, if he'd argued that players like McCargo and Losman would be busts, and found his input ignored or overruled, I'd hold him blameless. But if he was on-board with the Bills' first round busts and reaches, he was part of the problem. That being said, I agree with one of the meta-messages of your post. Various Bills' front offices have targeted specific positions "we will take the best available player at position X or for purpose Y." In doing so, they have ignored much better players, and players with far fewer red flags, at other positions. It's not clear how much blame (if any) Modrak deserves for the blinkered focus on the SS and small, athletic DT positions in the 2006 draft, or a similarly flawed approach in other drafts.

Of the ten first round picks in my original Modrak list, only two of them (Eric Wood and Lee Evans) have come close to living up to their draft position. There are those who could point out that it's not certain that Wood will become a top-10 center, and that Lee Evans hasn't been the kind of player you hope for when you're taking a WR 13th overall. Arguably, there is a gap between draft-day expectations and results even for the two first round picks who come the closest to living up to their draft position. (Let alone for everyone else on that ten player list.) The question is, how much of the blame for these first round failures should be laid at Modrak's feet? Was this a case of Modrak telling the team that players like McCargo, Lynch, Whitner, Losman, et al were not worthy of first round picks, and getting overruled by whoever was in charge? Or alternatively, was Modrak part of the "consensus" which led to the selection of such players? You wrote that McKelvin and Maybin were Jauron picks. But that alone doesn't get Modrak off the hook. What advice did he give Jauron when those picks were being discussed? One possible way those conversations could have gone is this: Modrak: "If you want another CB, McKelvin will be a very good one." Jauron: "I want another CB. You have no idea how badly . . ." If conversations such as the above occurred for most or all of the Bills' first round misses over the last decade, Modrak was part of the problem. I'll grant it's possible the Bills' drafts might have taken a different direction had Modrak been in charge. For example, if he'd liked McKelvin a lot, but some other player slightly more, Modrak would have drafted that other player. Who might not have been a bust. But Modrak's job wasn't just to find good players. It was to prevent the Bills from squandering first round picks on bad or mediocre players. Unless you're suggesting that he strongly objected to the Bills' first round selections over the last decade (only to have those objections overruled), he clearly did not perform the second half of that job description.

I've complied a ranking of the Bills' first round picks in the Modrak era, from best to worst. Feel free to comment, or contribute your own rankings of the Bills' first round picks. 1) Eric Wood. He shows signs of living up to his draft position. That makes him the best first round selection of the Modrak era. 2) Lee Evans. While he never lived up to the expectations associated with the 13th overall pick, he has been a solid contributor for the Bills. 3) Willis McGahee. Picked late in the first round, McGahee was traded away a few years later for a couple of third round picks. This draft pick was only partially wasted! 4) Donte Whitner. Chosen eighth overall, Whitner has played about as well as you might expect from someone in the late second or early third round. The eighth overall pick is worth 1400 points, while the 15th pick of the second round is worth 430 points. The Bills received about one fourth of what this pick was worth. 5) Leodis McKelvin. While it is a little early to rank this pick, McKelvin looks to be a player who plays very well in stretches, only to get beat through mental errors. Using the 11th overall pick on a guy who should probably be your #3 CB isn't exactly the pinnacle of success, but it's better than anything below. 6) Marshawn Lynch. Taken 12th overall, he was traded for a 4th rounder (plus change) just a few years later. Turning the 12th overall pick into a fourth rounder isn't the kind of alchemy you hope to see from your front office, but the fact the Bills got some value from him makes him the 6th-best selection. 7) J.P. Losman. He had a decent year in 2006; but was otherwise useless to the team. He ranks lower than Lynch because the Bills could get nothing for him in a trade; and because of his subsequent difficulty finding a roster spot in the NFL. 8) Mike Williams. The Mike Williams of 2004 would have represented an upgrade at RT for the 2010 Bills. You hope to get more than just one somewhat decent season out of a RT chosen fourth overall. But as a Bills fan, you don't always get everything you want. 9) John McCargo. There'd been discussion of trading him away for a fifth rounder--at least until he failed the Colts' physical. While a fifth rounder isn't a great return from a first rounder, it's better than nothing. Which is exactly what the Bills would get if they tried to trade away . . . 10) Aaron Maybin. Chosen 11th overall, this player has done nothing for the team. Unranked: Spiller. (Too early to make an assessment.)

My favorite part was Nix's description of Aaron Williams. "We'll start him out at corner, and if he can be one of our top two he'll be a starter. If not, he'll be our third guy and move inside on the slot. But if you get in a bind ... and we don't look to do this ... we think he can move in and play safety because he's a good tackler and a smart guy." I like the fact that they took Williams because of his potential as a CB, not as a safety. Either with or without Whitner, the Bills can get by with the talent they have at safety. There's no call to be throwing second round picks at either safety position! But cornerback is (was?) a much bigger need; and I'd like to see Williams turn into a solid starter and solid contributor for the Bills for the next ten+ years. That article was a very good read. Thanks for posting it!

I just looked at Donte's twitter feed. He made several comments about wanting to stay in Buffalo. "hopefully I'm there in Buffalo to help u guys" "Still, I never said I wanna leave Buffalo." Take it for whatever it's worth.

I fully agree that the Bills' apparent lukewarm interest in Whitner is just one more indication that he was a poor use of our pick. I'd compare that to the Antoine Winfield situation. Winfield would easily have been worth the late-first round pick the Bills used to take him--at least if they'd kept him in Buffalo for the duration of his useful career. You judge the success of a first round pick by the extent to which the player becomes part of the core of your team. In this case, the failure to re-sign Winfield meant he became part of the Vikings' core. But just as it would have made sense for the Bills to keep players like Winfield and Jabari Greer for their useful careers, I'm not sure that it would make sense to hold onto Whitner. He seems to want a princely contract. I don't know that it would be in the Bills' interests to offer such a contract when they get roughly similar play at the SS position from George Wilson. I admit to having mixed feelings about the Bills' round 2 pick. If Aaron Williams becomes a starting CB, and plays at a Greer-like level, and remains in Buffalo for the duration of his career, I'll be happy with the pick. But if he becomes a safety, I'll be considerably less happy. Letting a DB like Whitner go first-contract-and-out, only to use a high draft pick to replace him, seems like a theme we've heard before. Even if Williams proves to be a moderate upgrade over Whitner, I'd care more about the loss of the second round pick than about the moderate upgrade! Plus there's the fact that if Aaron Williams doesn't become a reasonably good starting CB, then the hole at CB would remain unfilled. As Bills fans have learned, a hole at any DB position creates a void--a void which tends to suck in early draft picks. That's why it's so important for Williams to be a good starting CB, and for the Bills to find success at safety with players like Searcy.

I agree that we shouldn't expect the OL to significantly improve until or unless talent is added. Unless Hairston proves to be a fourth round steal, I don't expect a whole lot of improvement until next year. You've also raised an interesting possibility about the potential for a lockout in 2011. A lockout like that could help the Bills in two ways: 1) During the last collective bargaining agreement, the players made very significant gains. This was largely because the owners of large market teams sided with the players (who wanted a higher salary cap), not with the owners of small market teams. A lockout likely means that the owners will gain back the ground they lost a few years ago. In the late '90s, the Bills were in salary cap trouble. These last few years, they haven't come anywhere close to sniffing the salary cap, in large part because increases in the players' percentage make it harder for small market teams to compete financially. Reducing the salary cap would reduce the gap between what the Bills can spend and what teams like the Cowboys and Redskins can spend. 2) The Bills would pick third overall. Carolina would have the first overall pick, and would have spent the first overall pick a year ago on Cam Newton. Without an NFL season, they (presumably) wouldn't be far along at all in the process of figuring out that Cam Newton will be a bust. They'd be looking to trade down. At third overall, Buffalo would have to be a very tempting trade partner for them. Assuming, of course, that the Bills were willing to offer the right price for the Andrew Luck pick. (Which they very well should be!)

The two situations are not parallel. Losman was selected largely because of his physical gifts: his arm strength and mobility. He'd proven relatively little as a college-level pocket passer. In contrast, Ponder is an accurate passer, reads the field quickly, is smart, and a hard worker. (As he's shown by having already earned a master's degree, and beginning work on another.) Back in 2004, Dave Wannestadt said he wouldn't take Losman with the last pick of the seventh round. In contrast, I've seen NFL personnel people whose opinions I respect speak very highly of Ponder. I was very unhappy with the Vikings for taking Ponder 12th overall. But considering their need for a quarterback, as well as what Ponder has to offer, I can see why they did. While reaching in general isn't generally a great idea, you're much better off reaching for a quarterback at 12th overall than, say, for a SS at 8th overall! If you get the QB pick right, the potential rewards are significantly higher. This is especially true for a team like the Vikings, because they seem to have just about all the other pieces in place.

Good post, and you've raised two separate, interesting questions. 1) Do first round picks get more of a break from team management? 2) Do first round picks get more of a break from the fans? Maybe the first question isn't all that interesting. As you pointed out yourself, if players like Maybin, McCargo, etc. had been walk-on UDFAs, they would have been shown the door a long time ago. As for the Bills' decision to let Jabari Greer and Jim Leonard walk: we're talking about the same team which also allowed former first round picks like Nate Clements and Antoine Winfield to leave. Other than the one extra year we squeezed out of Clements via the franchise tag, both were cases of first-contract-and-out. The Bills' DBs with the best combination of youth + proven accomplishment have a very high proclivity for going first-contract-and-out, regardless of draft status. That's obviously something which has to change if this team is to become credible. I fully agree with your comment that Losman received more credit from a lot of fans than his play on the field warranted. I think that some of that was due to his draft status. Some of it was probably due to a human tendency to believe what one wants to believe. A third contributing factor was the tendency, at least among some fans, to over-value physical measurables such as arm strength and foot speed; with the thought that a quarterback's mental traits can be coached. The problem with that is that a quarterback like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning has a significantly higher mental ceiling than someone like Losman. When Whitner was taken, there were a number of fans who stated that a SS at 8th overall would make sense if he was the next Ronnie Lott, or even the next Ed Reed. Obviously, Whitner isn't that. But if, back in 2006, someone convinced himself that Whitner had serious potential to be good enough to justify the 8th overall pick, that initial, favorable view might influence how he sees subsequent events. For example, Whitner's struggles in pass coverage against TEs might be blamed on the lack of a pass rush; or dismissed with "very few SSs can cover the league's best TEs anyway." The emphasis will be on the things Whitner can do (such as hard hits, run support, and generally being near the play), rather the things he can't. But by the same token, the sense of disappointment that many fans (including me) felt when a treasure like the 8th overall pick was so obviously and wantonly squandered, means that there will be at least the temptation to allow that disappointment to influence our view of Whitner's play. Putting aside the question of Whitner completely, I personally would rather have a SS who was good at covering TEs and mediocre in run support than a SS who was the opposite. So I think that my appraisal of him is based on what he's actually done (or in this case, failed to do) on the field, and not as a negative reaction to the general incompetence and shortsightedness of the Marv/Jauron regime. But I can't be 100% sure of this. If Whitner had been drafted by, say, the Broncos, and was in the process of becoming a free agent available for the Bills to sign, how would I view his play? Would I be excited about the prospect of having him in a Bills uniform? I don't think I'd be all that excited, but I can't know for sure.

The above is a very good and well thought-out post. We need more posts like it on these boards. I'd like to expand on a point you made. You wrote: "But sometimes it comes down to two things to be successful and overcome deficiencies: how good your QB is and if you have a pass-rush." I'd like to expand upon a third component as well: the offensive line; and specifically its interrelationship with the quarterback. I think you and I can agree that no quarterback can achieve much while lying on his back. Every quarterback needs at least some pass protection to be successful. But the amount of pass protection a QB requires to succeed will vary from one quarterback to the next. The below list should help illustrate this point. Minimal pass protection required: Aaron Rodgers Moderate pass protection required: Tom Brady High level of pass protection required: Drew Bledsoe Very high level of pass protection required: Rob Johnson Tom Brady (for example) doesn't need much pass protection to be effective. But if you take away the moderate amount of pass protection he needs, you'll completely change the complexion of New England's offense. Similarly, there were times when Rob Johnson was a very effective QB. Those times occurred most often when Tony Boselli was protecting his blind side. In Buffalo, the combination of a QB who needed a lot of pass protection to be effective, and an OL in the bottom third of the league, meant that the Bills' offense often faltered when Johnson was under center. Rob Johnson might have had a much better career if Bill from NYC had been in charge of the Bills' drafts in the late '90s. No defensive backs would have been taken before the seventh round (if even then), but the problems with the offensive line would have been fixed! While you should seek to have an offensive line that's as good as possible, you need to at least make it good enough to provide your quarterback with however much pass protection he usually needs. In some cases, such as that of Aaron Rodgers, that will mean very little pass protection is required at all. Most quarterbacks--including a number of QBs in the Hall of Fame--don't have Rodgers' gift for producing despite a lack of pass protection. Quarterbacks like that will obviously need a better offensive line than Green Bay's if they're going to be effective. Like you, I'm deeply concerned about the Bills' failure to (thus far) find a franchise QB for the future. Hopefully that problem gets solved next year. Until it does, there will be a relatively low ceiling on what this team can accomplish. Let's face it, we're not going to replicate the Ravens of 2000 defense + their OL any time soon. I do, however, have at least some optimism about the pass rush. If upgrading your quarterback play is about just one guy, upgrading your pass rush is about several guys. Some of the required "several guys" have been added. Dareus comes to mind. There's also a chance that either Merriman or Moats can be the pass rushing OLB the Bills need. If Jasper and Troupe can man the NT position, Kyle Williams could become the LDE and provide some pass rush from there. Obviously, you'd still like to add an elite pass rusher to that mix, but at least it's a strong start. At this point, you may be tempted to point out that the problem with a strong start like this is that it will significantly impact the Bills' draft position, making it harder to add either an elite pass rusher or a franchise QB in future drafts. I share that concern, and hope the Bills find a way to (at very least) add a franchise QB in the 2012 draft. Hopefully there will still be some good ones available when the Bills pick.

As Stevie Johnson would be happy to tell you, sometimes guys like that become some of your best players. There are reasons why Bills fans are getting excited about Jasper. Jasper has a surprisingly low percentage of body fat for a man his size; as well as a lot more speed and athleticism than you'd expect from someone that big. Any time you see a guy with his traits, you have to think nose tackle. You just have to! Playing nose tackle isn't rocket science. You just need to be big enough, strong enough, fast enough, and hungry enough that it takes two guys to block you. We know that Jasper is big enough, strong enough, and fast enough. The question is: is he hungry enough?

So the fans view him as the 11th best safety. That seems a little more accurate than the ESPN analyst view.