Orton's Arm

By no means do I claim to have any special insight into Cam Jordan. But if you feel he's not going to become a "sack master" but merely a "pocket collapser," then how do you justify taking him third overall? I feel the third overall pick should be an elite difference-maker--the kind of guy who earns lots of frequent flyer miles because of his trips to the Pro Bowl. If Cam Jordan can give us that, if he's more of a sure thing than any of the other front-7 defensive players available, and if there isn't some player at some other position you like more, maybe it would make sense to pull the trigger. But I don't see using the third overall pick on him unless he's going to be one of the five or seven best RDEs in the league.

I was not "just being silly." I have not seen anyone from the players' union claim that the owners are being dishonest about the revenues they're taking in. I haven't even seen this raised as a possibility. The reason the players' union demanded the NFL's financial statements was to try to make the owners prove they "need" the extra money. But the "prove you need it concept" is a two way street. If the players are demanding that the owners prove they need the money, why shouldn't the owners demand the same of the players? As for the question of whether the players are employees or partners--a good analogy is an auction for something that's rare and valuable. In such an auction setting the tendency is for the winning bid to be too high. For example, suppose drilling rights to a specific oil deposit are being sold. Company A thinks those rights are worth $25 million, B thinks they're worth $50 million, and so on. Ultimately company D wins the auction with its bid of $100 million. There's a chance D was right about how much those rights were worth. But the opinions of A - C might have been correct too. Some of the time the auction price will be the right one (equates to D being correct). But most of the time it will be too high (equates to A, B, or C being correct). Another reason why auctions can produce higher prices than they should can be understood by the following example. An expert (I forget his name) delivered talks to Wall Street brokers, MBA students, and other people like that. Each time he gave a talk he'd auction off a $100 bill. If your bid is the highest, you pay the amount of the bid and get the $100. If your bid is the second-highest, you pay the amount of the bid but get nothing. The auction would typically begin with someone offering $5 or $10 for the $100 bill. That's obviously a great deal. In fact it's a little too obvious, because someone else will generally place a higher bid. So now your $10 bid is being trumped by someone else's $15 bid. You don't want to be in second--obviously--so you bid $20 on the theory that it's better to pay $20 and get $100 than to pay $10 and get nothing. Now the other guy is in second, and his thought process is going to be the same as yours just was. The two of you (or three or four of you, potentially) are going to bounce back and forth, with the price of that $100 bill going progressively higher. Now consider what happens when the price starts getting close to $100. One of you bids $90. The guy in second can pay $85 and get nothing, or he can pay $95 and get the $100. Assuming the second guy bids the $95, the first guy can either bid $100 to try to win the auction, or he can concede and pay $90 for nothing. This thought process pushes the price of that $100 bill up past $100, and is why they have sometimes sold for $400 or $500. Not once has this kind of auction produced a final sale price of equal to or below $100. Not once! Now consider and NFL owner who notices his team is 4-12, but that most of his team's losses were by 7 points or less. The owner figures that by spending a little more money on a few key additions, he can improve his team's record to 9-7 or better. The problem is that each time this owner gains talent (relative to the league as a whole) some other team loses talent relative to the league. Every time this owner's team wins an additional game, some other team must incur an additional loss. In order for this owner's team to move forward, some other team or combination of teams must be pushed back. The teams being pushed back will (presumably) want to move themselves forward again. (With the exception of teams that are far more interested in the bottom line than in winning games.) In practice, this means that teams will get into a bidding war for players much like the above-described bidding war for that $100 bill. Coming in "second" in the bidding war for players might mean that you have a 4-12 roster that's a few players away from 9-7. Or it might mean that you have an 8-8 roster that's a few players away from a deep run in the playoffs. For a really good team, "second" might mean losing in the conference championship game, or even being beaten in the Super Bowl. There's always an incentive to add just a little bit more talent to your team, bid just a little higher for a few extra players. That way you come in "first" (achieving the goal you'd set for your team) not "second" (failing to achieve the goal but spending almost as much as if you'd achieved it). Each NFL team constantly competes with all the others in an auction-like event for the talents of the players. To prevent the prices (player salaries) from getting out of hand (as can easily happen in an auction setting), it was decided to implement a salary cap. The fact this cap is based on league revenues (as opposed to some arbitrary number) does not therefore make the players "partners" with the owners. Still less does it make them "investors" in the league! The players offer a service which the owners wish to purchase. That's a standard employer/employee relationship, not a business partnership.

No, it wasn't. The players are demanding that the owners make a case that they need more money. Why shouldn't the owners demand the same in return from the players?

A lot of times when you come up with some measurement system, it's better at weeding out potential busts than it is at telling you which player is likely to succeed. For example, you might weed out a player with a slow short shuttle time/poor vertical jump. But if a player looked unimpressive on the field, you shouldn't take him on the basis of a good vertical jump + fast short shuttle! Similarly at QB, you might weed a guy out if his Wonderlic was too low, and if other factors seemed to point to an inadequate ability to grasp the mental aspects of the game. But I can't imagine taking a QB early because of a high Wonderlic score. To address the two players in question: you start with player grades based on what you see on the field. Your grade for Jordan would obviously be a lot higher than that for Watt. But then you should adjust for what a player does at the combine. But that's usually more a case of downgrading a player's grade if he didn't get the key measureables you'd expected, than upgrading a player whose measureables exceeded your expectations.

Good article! It makes a very convincing case. While players who meet their criteria aren't guaranteed to succeed, players who don't meet their criteria are almost guaranteed to fail. They've clearly created a useful tool for evaluating would-be draft picks.

You are absolutely right. Preseason serves an important purpose; and trying to shorten it down to two games would harm the sport of professional football. You need all the preseason games to evaluate the talent on your roster. That being said, the owners are too greedy for their own good by charging full price to attend preseason games. Ask anyone whether they'd rather attend a preseason game or a regular season game, and you'll get the same answer every time. If the owners charged a fair price for preseason games (1/3 - 1/2 the price of regular season games), a lot more people would attend. They'd make less money per ticket, but I believe they'd make it up on volume. Plus it would be a chance for people who wouldn't ordinarily spend the money on regular season tickets to nonetheless see an NFL game. That would help bring in new fans--which is good for the league.

The gradual increase in IQ scores to which you've referred is known as the Flynn Effect. (Even though Flynn was not the one who'd discovered the phenomenon.) There are two possible explanations for the Flynn Effect: - It represents an actual increase in general intelligence--or g--the thing I.Q. tests are supposed to be measuring - It represents an increase in something other than g. The information I have seen about the Flynn Effect indicates the latter explanation is the more likely. People have become better at test taking without necessarily becoming more intelligent. One factor which has probably contributed to this is longer periods of education. A hundred years ago, it was perfectly normal for people to receive no more than a sixth grade education, after which they would stop school to work full-time on farms or elsewhere. This meant they had less practice taking pencil and paper tests than most Americans of today. I agree that Vince Young and Losman were able to improve their scores due to the practice effect. When a player dramatically improves his score, the initial, non-practiced score is generally considered the more reliable of the two. That was certainly true in Losman's case at least, as he clearly did not have the mental bandwidth necessary to be a long-term answer at quarterback.

Exactly. The players want the owners to open their books to show why they need more money. Maybe the owners should demand that the players open their books to prove why they "need" 60% of revenues. To present audited statements indicating the major purchases each player has made over the last five years. That could lead to quite an interesting discussion. "Excuse me, player rep, but are you sure that player ____ needed to spend $30,000 on his bar tab? Times are hard for everyone in a down economy. Might he have considered spending only $20,000 on that visit to the bar?" Or, "I see player _______ spent $50,000 on 'bling.' I am not even sure what 'bling' is, but I question the necessity of spending $50,000 on it." If the players aren't willing to put themselves through that, they shouldn't demand that the owners open up their books.

They made me turn into an owl TOOOOOO!

Suppose the Bills were to try to acquire a Pro Bowl 3-4 OLB or RDE in the prime of his career. They begin calling up teams with Pro Bowlers at those positions in order to make a trade. Odds are they'd have to pay a hefty price to get a player like that. They'd have to trade away good draft picks. But now suppose the Bills were to try to acquire a franchise quarterback in the prime of his career via trade. They call up the Packers and ask what it would take to get Aaron Rodgers, they call up the Chargers and ask about Philip Rivers, etc. Whatever the price for a Pro Bowl RDE or OLB would have been, multiply that price by 3.5 when thinking about what you'd have to pay for a franchise QB. At least!! If a Pro Bowl RDE is worth 100, Aaron Rodgers is easily worth 500--and more likely 700. Granted, he's a ridiculously good QB, and your standard-issue franchise QB will bring less to the table than him. But even assuming Gabbert only turns out to be worth, say, 400, that's still a lot more than some OLB or even an RDE is likely to be worth. Going from 400 down to 100 is a lot more significant than going from 100 down to 0.

Hitler's elimination of labor unions was part of his larger social and economic strategy. Before coming to power, Hitler noticed a great deal of strife between labor unions (which were generally controlled by union leaders with Marxist connections) and capitalists (who were often engaged in questionable labor practices and worker exploitation). Hitler decided that, instead of leaving it up to those two groups to negotiate with each other, he would eliminate labor unions, put the Marxist labor union leaders in concentration camps, and dictate the labor arrangements that seemed best to him. Hitler's orders resulted in an increase in wages, a 40 hour work week, significantly increased worker vacation time, and improved workplace safety conditions. German corporations were able to afford all this because of the economic expansion that occurred under the early years of Hitler's rule. Additionally, corporations no longer had to worry about their workforce going on strike. That economic expansion continued throughout the '30s. Hitler's goal was to give the German working class a reasonable living standard--not necessarily to maximize German consumer spending. Early on, the fruits of the German expansion went mostly to achieving Hitler's goal of reasonable living standards for workers. Once that had been accomplished, the considerable additional economic gains that were made went mostly into corporate profits. However, Hitler put tight restrictions on the amount of those corporate profits that could be paid out in dividends. That meant that business owners were not allowed to do anything with the bulk of the profits they made--except reinvest them in new and better factories and equipment, research and development, etc. This was exactly the outcome Hitler had intended. Its result was a significant increase in German industrial capacity--the effects of which were not fully felt until '44. Germany produced 8,000 military aircraft in '39, 15,000 in '41, and 41,000 in '44. But by '44, its military fortunes had deteriorated enough, and its enemies were strong enough, that this increase was too little to matter.

The players have been getting a progressively larger share of the pie. One of the reasons for that is because, as someone pointed out earlier in this thread, neither the players nor the owners of many big market teams really like the idea of a salary cap. The owners of high revenue teams want to be able to outspend their low revenue counterparts! The fact that the owners weren't united with each other in the past is why things got as out of hand as they have, and is why the players have gotten too big for their britches. In a down economy with bills coming due, the owners have clearly realized they messed up during the last CBA, and that it's time to reclaim some of the ground they surrendered. It's necessary for the owners to do exactly that, but it's not going to be a quick or painless process.

I agree the article is lucid, well-written, and interesting. Even thought-provoking. It is not, however, balanced. It was written by a man who'd apparently been in line for being the head of the NFLPA; and who at times sounded a lot like a spokesman for the players. The NFL players are employees. They typically arrive in the NFL with little or no money, are paid handsome salaries, and then retire. But to read Cornwell's article, you'd think the players were "investors" in the league. Consider the following sentence: "NFL players make a $596 million investment ($1 billion of current credits multiplied by 59.6%) in the business every year." Compare those words to the underlying reality that statement is intended to represent. The first $1 billion of annual revenues the NFL receives does not count towards the salary cap so that owners can pay for their non-player expenses. That is not an "investment" being made in the NFL by the players. Suppose a restaurant owner has ten employees, each of whom makes $25,000 a year. His annual revenues from the restaurant are $350,000 a year. The gap between his annual revenues (of $350K) and his annual employee expenses (of $250K) does not represent a $100K a year "investment" in the business by those ten employees. That $100K a year is money that the owner can use to pay non-employee expenses, invest in the business (advertising, building renovations, etc.), or keep for his own personal use. His argument that players are "partners" is similarly weak. He argues that NFL players are partners with the owners because of the NFL's strict off-field conduct policy. However, similar rules exist for other employees in other businesses, without those employees being designated partners. For example, winners of the Miss America pageant are asked to avoid embarrassing incidents, and are subjected to strict personal conduct rules. The existence of such rules does not make them "partners" with whoever it is that sponsors the Miss America pageant. If NFL cheerleaders were subjected to strict off-field conduct policies (which for all I know they are), no one could reasonably point to that as evidence they'd somehow become business partners with guys like Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft. Cornwell uses his argument that NFL players are partners and "investors" in the NFL as a springboard for his next suggestion: stock options for NFL players. This, despite the fact that he points out the following: "Delayed revenues, i.e., revenues generated by today’s investment but not realized within 3.5 years (the average length of an NFL player’s career), are not shared with some the NFL players who actually make the investment." Stock options are typically not given to employees who are only expected to be around 3.5 years. They make the most sense for young, quickly growing companies with a core of elite-level employees who could easily take their talents elsewhere. If a talented young programmer is deciding whether to work for Microsoft or a start-up, Microsoft may well be able to offer him a better salary. But the start-up's stock options will have the higher upside. There is also the problem of dilution. If Microsoft offers stock options to its employees the dilution effect is likely to be minimal, because there's already so much Microsoft stock in existence anyway. If the start-up offers stock options to its most critical employees, the dilution effect will be stronger. But that will presumably be more than balanced out by the fact that those stock options allow it to attract and retain a more talented group of employees than it otherwise could have. Cornwell's proposal would involve a considerable dilution effect. The NFL has a large number of players, and as he pointed out himself they come and go quickly. Think of the long-term effects of giving everyone like that stock options. Suppose you were to give all current players a 5% ownership share in the NFL. 5% ownership may not seem like much. But with the average player career being 3.5 years, that would mean that on average you'd have to give another 5% ownership share to the players every 3.5 years! That's a 28% share over the course of 20 years, and a 43% share over 30 years. Eventually, the NFL would be wholly owned by former players or their heirs. It is clearly not in NFL owners' long-term interests to do that. On the contrary: the NFL owners could cut the salary cap to 20% of shared revenues without the risk of losing very many players to other leagues. (Such as the CFL.) It's in the owners' interests to push as far as they can in that direction; rather than slowly giving away their ownership of the league to the players.

I'm not sure where the above text came from, but I didn't see it when I clicked on the link. According to that link, Wes Welker led the league in dropped passes with 13. Reggie Wayne was second with 12 drops. Stevie Johnson had 8 dropped passes.

Triple Threat's most recent post was good enough that you owe him a better response than this.

The Bills could very easily justify drafting offense with their first two picks!!!!!!! Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Blaine Gabbert is a franchise QB. (I know very little about Gabbert, so this is just a hypothetical.) If he's a franchise guy, the Bills should definitely take him third overall. Period, no questions asked. Then with their second round pick they should take a RT, at least if a RT is the best player available. RT is a hole on this team as bad as any other, and it's critical to get holes on the OL filled. You could potentially make an argument in favor of drafting a TE in the third round. But there's a chance Nelson (the TE) might work out well, so I'd rather go with an ILB (where I know there's a need). A draft of QB, RT, ILB wouldn't fill all the Bills' holes. But a draft of RDE, OLB, ILB wouldn't fill all the Bills' holes either. This team has too many holes to fill in just one draft. All they can realistically hope to do is to replace several inadequate players with solid guys, and ideally with game-changers.

Thanks for your compliments! Seeing as how you're a new fan, I may as well throw together a somewhat more complete history of this team than above. Pre-Polian era (mid '80s and before): mostly lousy teams, but with some AFL championships won back in the '60. Polian era ('mid '80s - early '90s): these were by far the best Bills teams since the AFL-NFL merger. And almost certainly the best Bills teams ever. Bill Polian, the general manager, found players at or near the Hall of Fame level at quarterback, RB, WR, several OL positions, RDE, and elsewhere. That Bills team had an almost unstoppable no huddle offense led by Jim Kelly (QB), Thurman Thomas (RB), Andre Reed (WR), and Kent Hull (Center). They also had a good defense, led by best-at-his-position-ever RDE Bruce Smith. That team went to--and lost--four consecutive Super Bowls. Unfortunately, the man who put all that together--Bill Polian--was fired. Depending on who you believe, he was fired due to a dispute with Ralph, or Ralph's daughter, or with Jeff Littman (a financial guy). Polian has refused to talk about it, so it's not clear which rumor (if any) is correct. After being fired, Bill Polian spent some time with the Carolina Panthers, before heading to the Indianapolis Colts. Polian was responsible for drafting Peyton Manning and for putting together the Colts team that won the Super Bowl a few years back. Butler era: John Butler was not a good a GM as Polian. The offense in particular got older and worse under Butler's watch. Aging superstars on both sides of the ball were not replaced or were inadequately replaced. Nevertheless, Butler did enough good as GM that the Bills were often able to make the playoffs. Mostly that was on the strength of their defense, which was consistently one of the best in the league. That defense was better than the one the Bills had fielded during their Super Bowl glory years. It was very tough to run against that defense. Come to think of it, it was very tough to throw against that defense also! They used a 3-4 defense, with Ted Washington and Pat Williams as their NTs. (They rotated with each other to keep each other fresh.) For a while they had Bruce Smith as their RDE. But even after he left (during the declining years of his career), they were still able to get decent production from the RDE position through Marcellus Wiley. There was one year they had a really good OLB named Bryce Paup. He got 17.5 sacks that year, did a lot of other stuff very well, and was named defensive MVP! Unfortunately, he sustained a serious injury the next year, and was never the same player again. On offense, there was a duel between two quarterbacks. The Bills had traded away a first round pick for Rob Johnson, who proved a good and accurate passer if placed under exactly the right circumstances. Unfortunately, he held the ball a long time and was lousy at sensing pressure in the pocket. The Bills had a lousy OL, so Rob Johnson set a new record for taking the most sacks per pass attempt. They also had Doug Flutie, who was mobile, good at avoiding pressure, and good at getting rid of the ball quickly. However, Flutie was aging, and was only good at throwing short passes. (In comparison with Johnson, who specialized in the deep and intermediate passing game.) During this era the Bills got into salary cap trouble in part because they were paying both those QBs like starters. After the 2000 season, John Butler decided to leave the Bills and join the San Diego Chargers. He was convinced the Chargers would pay him more than the Bills would--so convinced, in fact, that he refused to negotiate at all with the Bills. Ralph got tired of Butler's refusal to negotiate, and fired him shortly before his contract expired. Butler's last draft for the Bills--the draft of 2000--contained nothing but busts. Going into the 2001 season, Wilson hired Tom Donahoe (TD). TD's prior experience was with the Steelers, and he was regarded as a proven, highly credible GM. But while he was with the Bills, TD was short-sighted, over-valued the RB and DB positions at the expense of more critical needs, traded away a first round pick for someone else's aging starter at QB (Drew Bledsoe), and generally made a mess of the franchise. There were some reasonably good seasons during TD's era. But those good seasons were often the result of aging players TD had acquired as a quick-fix solution, and not because he'd built a solid core of talented younger players. TD's first hire as a defensive coach named Gregg Williams. Williams was familiar with the 4-3 defense, so he scrapped the 3-4 defensive scheme which had been so successful for the Bills in the late '90s, and implemented his own defense instead. The offense had been lousy during the late '90s, and continued to be lousy under Gregg. TD fired Gregg after his third season, and replaced him with Mike Mularkey (formerly the Steelers' offensive coordinator). Mularkey did little to fix the Bills' offensive problems. The Bills went 6-10 in 2005. Moreover, many or most of their chief contributors were clearly on the downsides of their careers. The failure of TD's regime had become manifest, and Ralph fired him. Marv Levy (who'd been the head coach of the Bills during the Polian era) was hired to be general manager (GM). In 2006, Marv shocked the NFL and these boards by taking Donte Whitner, a SS, eighth overall. Most mock drafts projected Whitner to go later in the first round, or somewhere in the second. Whitner completely failed to live up to his lofty draft status. In fact, you could safely say that none of the players Marv chose during the first three rounds of the draft lived up to their draft positions. Most were outright busts, while a few (such as Lynch) were eventually traded for a very small fraction of their initial draft day value. (A fourth round pick--which is what we got for trading Lynch away--is worth only a very small percentage of the 12th overall pick we'd initially used to take him.) Marv's two years as GM contributed almost nothing to the long-term good of this team. Like John Butler and TD before him, Marv strongly overemphasized RBs and DBs in the draft, while neglecting the areas he should have been addressing. Marv's choice as head coach--Dick Jauron--proved a failure. He was overly cautious and tended to be vanilla in his schemes. In 2008, the general manager duties were assumed by Russ Brandon, a business guy with no direct prior football experience. It's thought that Jauron (who was still the head coach) was allowed to exercise significant control on draft day. The Bills' first round pick in 2008 was used on McKelvin, a defensive back; which seems like something that would strongly appeal to Jauron. (Who as a player had himself been a defensive back. He later got into coaching by being a defensive backs coach.) The 2009 draft was also run by Jauron + Brandon, and the emphasis was once again on defense. However, the first round pick from that draft--Aaron Maybin--is a bust. Jauron was fired partway through the 2009 season. After the 2009 season, Buddy Nix was hired to be GM. He selected Chan Gailey as his new head coach. NIx displeased a number of Bills fans by using the 9th overall pick on a running back. That seemed to echo the over-emphasis on RB we'd seen under previous failed Bills regimes. In the late '90s, for example, the Bills used a first round pick on Antowain Smith. That wasn't good enough for TD, who used a second round pick on Travis Henry (RB) in his very first draft. Then, just two years later, TD used a first round pick on another RB (Willis McGahee). In 2007 Marv had used a first round pick on Marshawn Lynch. Since you only have one first round pick a year, one second round pick a year, etc., and since you only need one good RB, Bills fans realized that far too many picks were being used on that position.

The most pro-JP receiver on the Bills was Lee Evans. This makes sense. The one thing JP Losman could really do well was to throw long bombs to Evans. And the one thing Evans could do very well was catch long bombs from Losman. So they were a good match. There seems to be similarly good chemistry between Fitz and Johnson. That being said, I agree with you: Fitz doesn't have the accuracy he needs to be at or close to the level of the best QBs in the league. The fact that Fitz is a huge upgrade over Edwards or Losman doesn't mean he's the long-term answer!

I strongly disagree with your criticism of JohnC's post. Each of the points he made are valid. The Bills have not been to the playoffs since the '90s. This team has not drafted well for at least the last decade. Over the past five or six years prior to Nix, our free agent signings were generally not any good. Maybe Nix will turn things around. While some of his free agent signings were a disaster (such as Cornell Green), some others were more reasonable (such as some of his defensive acquisitions). And while the Spiller pick seems disappointing thus far, some of the other guys he found in that draft seem to show promise. Then again, I felt optimistic about the early days of TD, on the theory that he was a proven, disciplined GM who'd fix Butler's salary cap mess. I also felt optimism when Marv was first hired, on the (badly mistaken) theory that he couldn't be any worse than TD. But there's at least one difference between Buddy and his last few predecessors. When TD came to town, he inherited a team with a good defense, good defensive scheme, and with a lousy, predictable, uncreative offense. The obvious solution would have been to hire a head coach with an offensive background--a guy who'd fix the offense while leaving the defensive system intact. Instead, all four final candidates for that head coaching position were coaches with defensive backgrounds. Once he was hired, Gregg did nothing to fix the offense, and replaced our (excellent, Wade Phillips) 3-4 defensive scheme with his significantly inferior, "break but don't bend" 4-3 scheme. Similarly, the Mike Mularkey and Jauron hirings did little or nothing to fix our coaching problems on either side of the ball. In contrast, the Gailey hire looks great thus far. Especially on offense, the Bills have been creative, and their schemes have clearly allowed them to get the most possible use out of the player talent they have. Arguably Nix's single most important decision--which head coach to hire--looks to be a huge success. Hopefully he can follow that up with a successful 2011 draft!

I strongly agree with your all-or-nothing philosophical approach. There's no sense in spending an early draft pick on a QB unless you think he's The Guy. That being said, you can never be 100% sure about a particular player being The Guy. Had Luck been available, you maybe assign an 80 - 90% probability of his being The Guy. No one in this draft is in that category. But there are players in this draft who have some chance of being The Guy. Maybe not an Andrew Luck chance, and maybe not a high enough chance to justify taking them third overall. But a chance. Take Christian Ponder for example. He's an accurate passer, is very smart, a hard worker, seems to read the field well, has solid athleticism, etc. You obviously don't take Ponder third overall. But if he's there in the second, maybe you feel that the chance of him being the next Drew Brees or Matt Schaub is high enough to justify the use of a draft pick. Suppose you were to take Ponder in the second, with the thought that there's a 25% chance of him becoming The Guy. Your reaction to that plan might be, "Why not wait until the 2012 draft, and use a first round pick on a QB that you feel reasonably confident will be the guy?" I'll grant that if it's a choice between Ponder in 2011 or Luck in 2012, I'd go for Luck every time. The only problem with that is that the Bills are very unlikely to have the worst record in the league this next season, which means Luck won't be an option for us. At this point, I don't know of any other first round QBs in the 2012 draft who'd be that much better than this year's first round crop. The best available QB in 2012 might not give us much more of a chance to be The Guy than Ponder gives us. If that's the case, then taking Ponder this year would make sense. Then we'd have this year and presumably next year to figure out whether that 25% chance of Ponder being The Guy was worth taking. If, while Ponder is still being evaluated, the Bills fall in love with some other QB, then obviously they should draft that QB if they can. You don't pass up a franchise QB just because someone on your roster gives you a 25% chance. But the more likely scenario is that the Bills will have had ample time to evaluate Ponder before having the opportunity to draft a Luck-like QB.

Just to expand on your second paragraph: I think that the speed differential is why you see a considerably higher proportion of blacks in the NFL than in the general population. However, the speed differential is less useful at QB than at most other positions, which is why the racial composition of NFL QBs more closely resembles the racial composition of the U.S. population as a whole.

I understand your logic. But there are two problems--three, really--that I can see with taking Peterson 3rd overall. The biggest and most glaring problem is that the Bills have consistently shown they'll let their DBs with the best combination of youth + proven accomplishment leave via free agency. Antoine Winfield. Nate Clements. Jabari Greer. And now (probably) Donte Whitner. If the Bills have decided to do that there is no justification for even considering a DB with a first round pick. None. You use first round picks on guys you expect to be with you a long time, and on those guys only. If you have one elite cover guy + a bunch of decent coverage guys, the QB will just throw it to some receiver not covered by your one elite guy. Conversely, if you have one elite pass rusher + a bunch of decent front-7 players, that one elite pass rusher can create pressure on his own. I've seen serious questions raised about whether Peterson will live up to his billing. If I felt 100% sure that Peterson would be the next Revis, and (more importantly) if I felt 100% sure he'd be the next Revis for the Buffalo Bills over the course of his career if we were to pick him, then I'd view picking him in a much more favorable light than I do now. But my current assumption is that if we were to pick him, we'd basically be serving as a farm league team for the Vikings or 49ers or Saints or whichever other team needed a CB when Peterson's rookie contract expired. But even if Peterson was going to play his whole career at a Revis level for the Bills, that does not necessarily mean he'd be the best possible option for this team. It's always good to add a Revis-like CB to your team--but it's even better to add a very good 3-4 DE, OLB, or (best of all) a franchise QB. I don't know if Gabbert will be a franchise QB, or which of the available front-7 players will have Pro Bowl level careers. But if the Bills like one of those guys a lot, I'd like to see them take him over Peterson.

I agree with most of what you've written, and I think we have the same overall philosophical approach. But there are a couple points of difference: How well a quarterback handles the mental aspects of the game is, to me, of vital importance. Before I'd even consider a QB at third overall, I'd need to see strong evidence that he's going to be very good at handling the mental aspects of the game. I just haven't seen that evidence with Newton. Even if the Bills were to take a QB like Gabbert, or some other non-defensive front 7 player in the first round, they could easily justify taking a RT in the second. RT is as big a need on this team as any. Then I assume they'd go with an ILB in the third. That would give them a starting LB corps of Moats and Merriman on the outside, and Poz and the third rounder on the inside. I realize the defensive front-7 needs more than just that. But it's not like the Bills are going to eliminate all their holes in a single draft. If Merriman proves a disappointment in 2011, then the Bills would go into the 2012 draft looking for an OLB, as well as at least one upgrade for their defensive line.

"Growing the business" isn't necessarily what the average fan wants. Growing the business could mean "overpriced luxury suites," "higher ticket prices in exchange for more luxurious facilities," or, more generally, "an effort to extract more money from fans in the future than had been the case in the past." The only way I can think of, off the top of my head, to grow the business without doing any of the above-described things would be to make the stadium bigger, with lots of new low cost seats. That would allow more Average Joe fans to attend games! The problem is that even that would hurt the fans, by increasing the number of tickets the Bills would have to sell to avoid blackouts. I don't want to come across as though I'd categorically rule out all arguments in favor of a stadium renovation without first listening to them. But there's also a strong argument to be made in favor of keeping things more or less as they are for the time being and collecting the revenue.

I strongly disagree with the bolded statement. Like I wrote in my earlier post, Fitz put up 6.8 yards per attempt this past season. Aaron Rodgers' career average is 7.9, and this past season he put up a staggering 8.3 yards per attempt. You could say that Fitz didn't have a great running game to take pressure off the passing game. But let's look at some stats. Fred Jackson averaged 4.4 yards per carry in 2010. The starting running back for most of the Packers' season, Brandon Jackson, averaged 3.7 yards per carry. You tell me which quarterback was burdened with the worse running game. The Bills' offensive line had serious problems in 2010. But you could say the same thing about the Packers' OL. You described guys like Stevie Johnson and David Nelson as "no name backups." But the question we need to be asking is not, "how much had players like Johnson proven prior to the 2010 season?" Instead we should ask, "how well did Johnson and the other receivers play in 2010, and was WR a source of strength, weakness, or somewhere in between?" I'd argue that the Bills got reasonably solid overall play from their receiving corps in 2010--significantly better play, in fact, than they'd received in 2009. Green Bay's receiving corps played better still, a fact which no doubt accounts for some of the statistical difference between Rodgers' and Fitz's 2010 seasons. But I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of that difference was due to differences in the quality of QB play. Finally there's coaching. Chan Gailey is an expert at getting better statistical performances out of QBs than they tend to deliver either before or after their time with him. Guys like Tyler Thigpen and Jay Fiedler played well under Chan, only to revert to obscurity after they no longer had the benefit of his coaching and play calling. Rodgers received good coaching in Green Bay as well, so that's probably a wash.