Orton's Arm

I'm not a big fan of using TD passes as a way of evaluating QBs. The TD passes stat is going to be heavily biased in favor of those QBs whose offensive coordinators call a lot of passing plays when near the endzone; and biased against QBs whose offensive coordinators tend to run the ball when near the endzone. My favorite single stat for QB evaluation is yards per attempt. There's almost nothing a QB can do to inflate or distort that particular stat. If (for example) Trent Edwards dumps the ball off for a two yard gain, his completion percentage for the play is 100%. But his yards per attempt for that play is only two yards--so he's only being credited with whatever he accomplished. No more and no less. Bearing the above in mind, Trent Edwards has a career yards per attempt percentage of 6.5. Chad Henne has a career average of 6.6, and Matt Leinart has a career average of 6.5. To put that into perspective, Aaron Rodgers has a career yards per attempt average of 7.9. That is admittedly an extremely high average, making him one of the very best QBs in the league. Joe Flacco's yards per attempt average is 7.2, and Jay Cutler's average is also 7.2. Ryan Fitzpatrick's career average is 6.0, and this past season he averaged 6.8 yards per attempt. That average is slightly better than the Trent Edwards/Chad Henne/Matt Leinart category, correctly indicating that he played better than a standard-issue year from one of those three. Last season Fitzpatrick was about halfway between the Edwards/Leinart category and the Joe Flacco category; and was worlds away from the Aaron Rodgers category! Fitz does a lot of things well. He's a good decision-maker, is excellent at pre-snap reads, is highly intelligent, gets rid of the ball in a hurry, and throws it to the guy he's supposed to throw it to. Those and other reasons why he's a significant upgrade over Edwards. But there's one thing Fitz is not, and that's a consistently accurate passer. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of a QB who wasn't an accurate passer after six years in the league, who then suddenly became an accurate passer later in his career. Fitz's lack of accuracy is why his numbers from 2010 were only halfway between Edwards numbers and Flacco numbers. Over the past 10 - 15 years, almost every Super Bowl winner has had a franchise QB. Those which did not either obtained a Pro Bowl season from their QB the year they won the Super Bowl (Bucs, 2002) or else had one of the three best defenses in NFL history (Ravens, 2000). The Bills do not now have a franchise QB. There are very few franchise QBs who seem to be available on the immediate horizon. Luck will be in the 2012 draft, but how likely are the Bills to be in a position to take him? Until the Bills obtain a franchise QB, they're going to be effectively locked out of opportunities to win the Super Bowl. (Let's be realistic here: the Bills will not replicate the Ravens defense of 2000 any time soon.) Even after the Bills draft or otherwise obtain their franchise QB, they'll continue to be locked out of opportunities to win the Super Bowl until that rookie QB has had a year or three to adjust to the NFL. Whichever year you want to win the Super Bowl, you have to have drafted your franchise QB at least a year or two before that. (And probably more.) Getting a franchise QB this year means that we'd be getting the ball rolling, and would put ourselves in position to receive franchise-level QB play in a few years' time. I don't claim to know if Gabbert or some other QB is going to be a franchise guy. But if the Bills feel reasonably comfortable that a particular QB will be a franchise guy, they have to take him. Period. Competence within the defensive front-7 and at RT can be obtained in rounds 2 - 7, with additional help coming in subsequent drafts.

The Bills have a competent starter in Fitz. As I see it, the only point in drafting a QB would be to acquire a franchise QB who'd be a significant upgrade over Fitz. A guy who could do the things Aaron Rodgers did for the Packers when he played a vital role in their Super Bowl win. Fitz is no Rodgers. But neither is Carson Palmer, at least not at this point in his career. The Bills are a rebuilding team, which means it doesn't make sense to trade away early draft picks for aging veterans. If you're using an early draft pick on a QB, there has to be at least a decent chance that he'll turn into The Guy. I just don't see that happening with Palmer. And if it does happen it probably won't last very long. No sense in parting with an early draft pick for another Bledsoe-like eight game flash in the pan!

They could have an interior line of Levitre, Wood, and Wang, and then sign Colon from Pittsburgh as their RT.

Peyton Manning also stayed in school to obtain his degree, even though he likely would have been the first overall pick had he come out early. While there's no guarantee that Luck will be the next Manning, I see no reason to assume that there are serious concerns regarding every highly draftable player who decides against leaving school early.

Thanks for looking into this in more detail and with more rigor than I had. After seeing your numbers, I agree with your conclusion.

You are correct that the increase in the percentage of revenues allocated to the players had little short-term effect, because most players were under contract. Any increase in the salary cap will have significantly greater long-term consequences than short-term effects. If the salary cap was increased to infinity, the NFL would become a lot more like major league baseball. Higher revenue teams could consistently compete, and lower revenue teams would become second-tier. By significantly increasing the salary cap, the collective bargaining agreement of a few years ago pushed things significantly in that direction. Also, what is your source for asserting that Ralph clears tens of millions of dollars every year?

As usual, you discount the intelligence of those who disagree with you. You may think that in doing so you make them look foolish. You are wrong. There is only one person who looks foolish because of your characterizations, and it's not anyone who disagrees with you. Your specific criticisms are no more valid than are your broader characterizations. To whit: 1) The OP suggested that the Bills trade back in the first round of this year's draft in order to obtain the first round pick of some other team next year. As such, his strategy does not depend for its success on the other team losing a lot of games. Even if their pick in 2012 is the 32nd overall, the Bills still end up with one first round pick in 2011 and two first rounders in 2012. 2) The OP's original plan can still produce very solid value for the team even if the Bills decide they don't want Luck. Having two first rounders in 2012 is better than having just one, regardless of whether Luck declares. I would have thought that such a simple, self-evident point would have been glaringly obvious to you. Apparently I was overly optimistic on that score. 3) You wrote that if Luck suffered a career-ending injury, the OP's plan would leave the Bills "with nothing but their dicks in their hands." That criticism is not merely stupid: it is breathtakingly so. Regardless of whether Luck suffers a career-ending injury, renounces football altogether, or gets abducted by aliens, the OP's plan would leave the Bills with two first round picks in 2012. Which, again, is better than having just one first round pick. "Second dumbest idea I've ever read on TSW, only surpassed by the idiots that insisted our best strategy is to lose every game in order to guarantee a chance to draft the sophomore from Stanford." If you honestly believe that, you are not a very good judge of an idea's fitness. The first overall pick in the draft is worth 3000 points. The tenth overall pick is worth less than half of that, at 1300 points. If your team is out of the playoff race anyway, every additional meaningless win hurts the value of your draft picks a lot. Maybe you think those meaningless wins create some highly positive offsetting benefit to your team. But as a Bills fan, I'm something of a connoisseur of meaningless wins. I've seen little to no evidence to suggest that the meaningless wins acquired in one year do much to help the team the next. What long-term benefits do you think the Bills obtained from Perry Fewell's meaningless wins? What long-term value do you see in the meaningless wins from 2002? (Those wins pushed us from second overall in the draft--Julius Peppers--down to 4th overall and Mike Williams.) In what ways--if any--do you think the Bills are still benefiting from all the meaningless wins Jauron obtained in his 7-9 seasons?

Good post! If there's an opportunity for the Bills to obtain the first round pick of a team they expect to have a lousy record in 2011, they should take advantage of that chance by all means! Then they'd have three chances to get Luck: 1) If the Bills go 1-15 in 2011, that's Luck! 2) If the team whose first rounder the Bills acquired goes 1-15, that's Luck! 3) If whichever other team gets the first overall pick is willing to make a trade, that could be Luck as well! There are two ways that 3) could come to pass. Maybe the team with the first overall pick has a recent high draft pick at QB, such as Gabbert or even Newton. Or maybe that team needs a QB and likes Luck a lot, but has a high opinion of some other QB as well. They might decide that having that other QB, plus lots of early draft picks from the Bills, is better than having Luck.

One other thing: I found some parts of the WR article to be convincing, and other parts less so. As an example of the latter, they mentioned that the Patriots' offense improved after they released Moss. But the fact that Moss was playing badly enough for the Patriots to release him illustrates that he's washed-up. The fact that the Patriots weren't harmed by releasing a washed-up WR does not support the argument that WRs are of secondary importance. Neither, for that matter, do some of the final sentences of that article. "Boldin let what might have been a game-winning, 6-yard touchdown pass bounce off his chest with four minutes left and with the Ravens trailing 24-21." Using that example to try to show that good WRs aren't important is a lot like using Scott Norwood's miss to show that having a good kicker is unimportant. It's just not a logical argument to make. I think there's some element of truth to the article's conclusion, but I feel that conclusion was incorrectly supported. If you have a great QB and a solid OL, you can get by with Stevie Johnson or Deion Branch-type WRs. But if you have a Tom Brady of a QB and a Patriots-like OL, adding a non-washed-up Randy Moss to the mix will help significantly improve your offense.

I agree with the core of your criticism of the study. For example, I've seen evidence which shows that most of the good QBs in the NFL are taken in the first round. That's the sort of thing that can easily be obscured by the flaws in the study you pointed out. For example, Peyton Manning and his backup count equally in the author's two deep system. As the Colts' QBs get engulfed in the maw of that study, Manning is treated as having exactly equal value as his backup. Which is ridiculous. That flaw is repeated across the entire breadth of the study, a fact which clearly shows that the study can't be used to show where the good players at any given position are to be found. All the study indicates is where "backups + starters lumped together" are found. While the latter data are not useless, we must be aware of those data's (very severe) limitations. On an unrelated note, those who believe that games are won by running and by stopping the run are incorrect. The New York Times performed a statistical analysis which showed that a 1 SD improvement in your passing game was four times as important as a 1 SD improvement in your running game. They observed the same ratio in passing defense versus rushing defense. I think a big reason for that is the difference between average yards per rushing attempt versus average yards per passing attempt. You'd expect a standard-issue RB to get about 4 yards per rushing attempt. A good QB can achieve 7.5 yards per pass attempt. Those extra 3.5 yards per play that your passing game provides are pivotal in sustaining drives. You could say, "if I got 4 yards a carry every carry, I'd score a touchdown every drive without a single pass play." The problem with that is the random variation. On some plays you may get no gain, or only a couple of yards or something. Other running plays will give you more than 4 yards a carry to bring the overall average up to 4. Suppose your plan is to run the ball on first, second, and third downs, get four yards each time, and get a first down. So you run the ball on first and second down, but things don't go your way. Now you're in third and eight. At this point, the onus is wholly on your passing game to bail you out and allow you to sustain the drive. If your passing attack is good enough to consistently bail you out of 3rd and 8 situations, it's also (presumably) good enough to do a lot of damage on first and second downs too. You need a good passing game to allow you to sustain your running game. But once you have that good passing game, you no longer need a great running game. Sure, it'd be nice to have both. But the Patriots' offense did just fine with Antowain Smith at RB and Tom Brady at QB. A good passing attack relies on a good quarterback to throw the ball, a good offensive line to give him time to throw, and a good receiving corps to catch the passes. All three elements are important, but you could make the argument that the receivers are less important than the other two components. Also, an offense will probably achieve more with a great QB and a merely competent OL than it can with a great OL and a merely competent QB. That being said, a great OL can and will magnify the impact of a great QB. Kurt Warner will give you a very good passing game. Kurt Warner + Orlando Pace will give you a passing game that's frightening!

Donte Whitner was the second-highest draft pick the Bills have had over the last 20 years. (The highest was Mike Williams, taken 4th overall.) Any time you make a controversial pick with such a high draft pick, it's going to create a strong reaction on these boards! I think there's an element of people on both sides of this debate seeing in Whitner what they expect to see. Those who'd opposed the pick from the beginning expect to see a completely useless player. Those who supported the pick expect to see a player who at least partially justifies his eighth overall draft selection. The truth is Whitner is neither. If Whitner had come to the Bills by the same road as George Wilson, we could look at him without this emotional overlay. Whitner and Wilson are roughly comparable players. Whitner is better in run support, a better hitter, and seems to have better athleticism. Wilson is better in coverage against tight ends and seems to have significantly better instincts. Re-signing Whitner offers the Bills two advantages: 1) Better play than George Wilson, at least in some aspects of the game. (But worse play in others.) 2) Better depth at SS. (Wilson + Whitner = more depth at SS than either player alone, regardless of who's starting.) I'd argue the second consideration is far more important than the first; especially because it's not clear that Whitner is the better overall player. How much is it worth to the Bills to have better depth at SS? Should they shell out $5 million or $6 million a year for that better depth? Are there other, better ways that money could be used instead? Are there cheaper ways to obtain good depth at the SS position? The Bills have a bad habit of letting their DBs with the best combination of youth + proven accomplishment go first contract and out. Over the last decade we've seen that happen with Antoine Winfield, Nate Clements, and Jabari Greer. Now Whitner has one foot out the door, making it a grand total of 3.5 DBs lost over the last decade. I'm not a fan of letting DBs go first contract and out, especially because the people who run the Bills' front office seem to think they absolutely must use a first round pick on a DB whenever the secondary has the slightest hole. (The only exception to that rule is when it's been two or more years since the last time the Bills used an early pick on a RB.) All this being said, I'm very far from convinced that Whitner's presence on the roster would add $6 million a year worth to the team's ability to win games. If the Bills are going to throw $6 million at the SS position, they need to come away with a player who's a clear and definitive upgrade over Wilson.

I'd rather see the Bills draft no one with their first or second round picks than watch them used on Peterson and Kapernick! That way the Bills fans wouldn't be misled into (yet another) misplaced sense of excitement! :angry:

I think we're on the same page for the most part--especially when you wrote that "The Arm is wise!" But that being said, I'd like to address what you've written in the bolded text. The previous collective bargaining agreement did a couple things: a) Increased players' share of revenues to about 60% b) Broadened the scope of "revenue." Under the current deal, most forms of unshared revenues count fully or partially toward the salary cap. Together, those two things made it significantly more difficult for smaller revenue teams to compete. Any given team has a lot of expenses to pay for with the 40% of revenues allocated to owners. All stadium improvements not paid for by government, interest on stadium debt, the salaries of the coaching staff and front office personnel, etc. Anyone you see who's Bills-related who isn't a player represents a salary Ralph has to pay out of that 40%. That's the guy you placed your ticket order with, people working concession stands, security guards, parking lot attendants, groundskeepers, secretaries, Chris Brown, website developers, etc. That's a lot of paychecks for Ralph to sign! Plus that 40% also has to pay for Bills-related advertising, whatever costs are associated with training camp, etc. And it's not like Ralph is really getting that 40%! Not, at least, if he wants to spend up to the salary cap on player salaries. As I mentioned in my last post, the activities of other teams drive up the value of the salary cap by acquiring non-shared revenues. Sure, there's nothing to stop Ralph from acquiring non-shared revenue of his own, which is what the Toronto deal was all about. But there are fewer opportunities for such unshared revenue in a smallish Rust Belt city like Buffalo than there are in places like Washington DC or Dallas or NYC. If Ralph spent exactly up to the salary cap every year, he'd have considerably less than the aforementioned 40% left over with which to pay those aforementioned expenses. Now suppose that some other NFL owner somewhere--let's call him Jerry--decides that what he really needs is a new stadium. That new stadium creates new costs, some of which are absorbed by the local government, and some of which are absorbed by Jerry. But Jerry has a plan to offset his share of those costs. His stadium will generate considerably more unshared revenue than the old one did through corporate sponsorships, PSLs, luxury suites, etc. Under the recent collective bargaining agreement, that additional unshared money Jerry is generating serves to increase the overall league salary cap. That drives Ralph's share of the gross revenues down considerably below 40%; and then out of that <40% he has to pay the salaries of guys like Gailey, Nix, scouts, coaches, and all other non-players. Plus a bunch of other expenses. Meanwhile, let's look at things from the other side. Travis Henry had enough money to attract and impregnate ten or more women. Bryant McKinnie had that $100,000 bar tab. Players like Aaron Maybin and Mike Williams have received tens of millions of Ralph's money despite having contributed little more to the Bills' success than have countless college players never signed by NFL teams. There's nothing in me which says, "Travis Henry should have enough money to impregnate twenty women, McKinnie should have enough cash to spend $200,000 a pop on bar tabs, and Aaron Maybin and Mike Williams should be getting double their present salaries!" If college players don't get more than just a scholarship, why are guys like Ko Simpson somehow worth millions? You could very easily structure things in a way which gave considerably less money overall to players without taking any money at all away from someone who isn't being obscenely overpaid. For example, consider the following hypothetical deal: Players get 50% of shared revenues only. Unshared revenues no longer count towards the salary cap. The minimum wage for players is increased to $500,000 per year. Retired players receive an additional $30,000 a year in cash + benefits The creation of a set in stone payment system for rookies; with the salaries of earlier draft picks locked into place for several years. For example, if you're a first round pick, you get $600,000 in year 1 with the team that drafted you, $650,000 in year 2, and so on. Your team is allowed to negotiate a normal deal with you after year 4. In the absence of such a deal, you hit free agency in year 6. If (for example) an undrafted player came into the league, played for three years, and then retired, he'd get $1.5 million under the above system; as compared to about $700,000 under the current system. So you're helping guys like that--which are exactly the kinds of players you should be helping! You're also helping retired players. Those who'd fare the worst under this new system are NFL draft busts, as well as those players who are currently the most highly paid. Those two categories of players are precisely the ones who are overpaid, and whose salaries should be reduced.

I fully agree that the owners are greedier, more short-sighted, and less concerned about building a strong NFL over the long-term than people like Wellington Mara had been. As you've correctly pointed out, they're becoming increasingly focused on box suites and other luxury seating, PSLs, $10 beers, and other revenue-generating mechanisms not inline with the interests of middle class fans. I regard the last collective bargaining agreement as an extension of that greed. The problem wasn't just that it was a 60/40 split of "revenues." It was that the word "revenue" was far too broadly defined. For example, suppose that Jerry Jones concocts new ways to generate still more revenue. PSLs, naming rights, corporate deals and sponsorships, increased concession sales, parking, etc. None of that revenue gets shared. And yet under the collective bargaining agreement struck a few years ago, a very significant percentage of that counts towards "revenue" under that 60/40 split. If (for example) someone pays the Cowboys $1 million a year to be their official dog food provider, the salary cap that Ralph and the Bills are faced with will increase, even though Ralph will never see a dime of that money. The plan, as I understand it, was for the owners of larger market teams to earn a ton of unshared revenue through whatever means they could concoct. That would drive up the salary cap while increasing the profits of higher revenue teams. As the salary cap continued to increase both on an absolute basis and (particularly) in relation to fully shared revenues (such as TV revenue), smaller revenue teams such as the Bills would find it increasingly difficult to compete. The result of all this would be both less parity and higher profits for the higher revenue teams. Fortunately the plan seems to have failed due to the inability of high revenue team owners to gouge the fans as much as they'd planned. Now the owners are going to Plan B, which is to make money by reducing costs. Plan B is much better for us as fans than was their plan A! One last thing before I end this post: I found the article's point about Paul Allen to be particularly unimpressive and, arguably, misleading. Paul Allen was one of the founding members of Microsoft; a fact which has caused his net worth to be in the billions. As of 2010 his net worth was $13.5 billion. An NFL team is worth about $1 billion, give or take. Even if the Seattle Seahawks had completely failed and gone bankrupt, Allen's net worth would still be $12.5 billion. That's plenty of money for him to use to buy whatever yacht he wants. More simply: Paul Allen's yacht was the result of money he would have had anyway, not money he made from the NFL.

As I see it there are a number of key issues here: Overall share of revenue to players Whether small market teams can be competitive Minimum wage NFL players versus highly paid players Rookies versus veterans versus retirees Over the last several years, the salary cap has steadily increased even while revenues remained stagnant. That increase was both unnecessary and unjustified. It's bad for the league in two ways: you don't necessarily want a league's players to be overpaid, because then their attitudes might well become more like those of overpaid and arrogant NBA players with their strong sense of entitlement. Secondly, a salary cap that's high in relation to revenue (as the current one is) makes it harder for lower revenue, small market teams like the Bills to compete. Back in the late '90s, the Bills were in trouble with the real salary cap. One of TD's moves upon first arriving was to release some players to get the salary cap situation under control. Obviously, the ability to spend that close to the salary cap which had been a reality in the '90s has since become a distant dream for the Bills. It's unlikely that the owners of larger revenue teams are going to want to do any more revenue sharing than they do now. If teams like the Bills are to be able to spend up to the salary cap, that cap needs to be reduced. Unfortunately, the owners of higher revenue teams may not necessarily want parity. A high salary cap gives the owners of higher revenue teams the chance to sign players that low revenue teams can't afford. That's why, the last time around, the owners of high revenue teams (such as Jerry Jones) accepted a very high salary cap. It was high revenue teams + players against low revenue teams, and the low revenue teams lost. Jerry Jones has evidently realized he made a mistake. With the economy in a downturn and bills coming due, the last thing that man needs right now is a high salary cap! Other owners of high revenue teams find themselves in similar situations. This time around the owners are likely to reclaim a lot of the ground they lost the last time; because they are far less divided against each other than they'd been. That's a good thing for fans and for the NFL.

I would have been in favor of the Bills drafting Green if both the following were true: 1) they felt reasonably comfortable he'd play at or near a Hall of Fame level. 2) They didn't feel sure they could count on any available defensive front-7 players to play at or near the level they expected from Green. I didn't see Green's workout myself, but if what you say is true it would significantly subtract from my comfort level about him. As far as I'm concerned, you can move a player down significantly because of a bad combine, but it's generally a mistake to elevate a player too much based on a good combine. There's more to being a good football player than just having good physical tools.

There is the apparently widespread misconception that you can take a QB with good physical tools but limited mental abilities, and use some combination of coaching, a good system, time for development, and other factors to eventually compensate for or balance out those mental limitations. Those who buy into this fallacy believe that a QB's demonstrated mental traits represent his level of NFL-readiness and short-term potential, but that his physical traits are more indicative of his long-term potential. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe Leaf would have been better served had he not been thrown to the wolves right away. But his career was doomed to ultimate failure either way due to his lack of commitment to football, and to his lack of the mental abilities that make a QB great. Nearly every other first round QB bust has also occurred not because of some physical lack or limitation on the QB's part, but because of some flaw or shortcoming within the QB's brain. For some it's the inability to see the whole field, or to process large amounts of information quickly. (See Losman, J.P.). For others it's a lack of commitment to the game. NFL strength and conditioning coaches do not assume that they can take a 90 pound weakling and turn him into a powerhouse of an offensive lineman. Why then do some assume that coaches can take a mental midget and turn him into the next Peyton Manning or Tom Brady?

You seem to be implying that the eggheads at MIT and Berkeley are superior in every mental aspect to the "boneheads" at Buff State or Oneonta. That implication is false. Intelligence consists of g + s1 + s2 + . . . + sn. g stands for general intelligence, s1, s2 and so forth indicate specific mental abilities. On average, the students at MIT or Berkeley have higher levels of g than the students at most other schools. But we should not assume those MIT students are endowed with an analogous advantage in every single s-specific trait. For example, MIT students may not be more socially aware and adept than students at some community college. Nor (more to the point) should we necessarily assume that those parts of the brain associated with muscular control will always be more highly developed among MIT and Berkeley students than among students at less prestigious schools. While some s-specific abilities have little direct relevance to football, you obviously want a QB who's very richly gifted with the s-specific ability which allows accurate, finely-tuned muscular control. A QB who can put a football exactly where he wants it to be, every single time.

Your definition of "physical" is considerably broader than mine. Let's say you have two guys in a weight room; and it quickly becomes clear both guys are equally strong. After they're done lifting weights, the guys head over to the basketball court to start shooting free throws. One guy makes a lot more of his throws than the other. I'd call that a mental difference between the two guys. Maybe you explain that by eye-hand coordination, or more practice time (learning) how to shoot, or a better (learned) throwing technique. Regardless, accuracy (whether in football or basketball) is the result of what your brain chooses to do with the strength/physical gifts you have; and is not explainable merely by a player's muscle mass, skeletal structure, or other physical traits. It's true that every player needs a certain minimal level of physical traits to succeed in the NFL. Players who fall below that level are almost never drafted early. Nor should they be: physical traits are easily measured; and there's generally little sense in using an early pick on a guy who lacks the physical tools necessary to do his job. But once you have the bare minimum physical tools necessary to succeed as an NFL QB (such as the arm strength to make all the throws, for example), then your mental traits become considerably more important. Can you read defenses? Can you process information quickly? Can you throw the ball accurately? Do you have the will to succeed? Once a QB's physical gifts are above a certain minimal level, questions like those decide whether he's going to be a successful NFL QB.

Thanks for the link. You mentioned that the report stated that Ponder had "merely average" arm strength. Joe Montana lasted until the third round largely because he lacked a big-time arm. The point isn't that every QB with merely average arm strength is the next Joe Montana--it's that arm strength is overrated. Since you pointed out one of the negatives the report mentioned, let's look at the positives: Christian Ponder, from your link. ************ • Extremely smart with a high football IQ • Good throwing mechanics and a quick release • Very accurate with terrific touch and timing • Nice footwork and able to buy time in the pocket • Decent mobility and can make plays with feet • Is accustomed to working from under center • Can read a defense and go through progressions • Hard working, tough, mature and a team leader • Lots of experience against top-notch competition ************ "Very accurate with terrific touch and timing" makes him a significant upgrade over Fitz, at least in that one very important aspect of the game. A QB's accuracy, football intelligence, ability to read defenses, and dedication to the game are all pivotal to his success. Ponder seems to have all these traits. He has a few more question marks than Andrew Luck, which is why Luck will be taken first overall, and Ponder may last until the second round. But of the quarterbacks in this year's draft, Ponder has the best chance to be successful at the next level. Given that the Bills are very unlikely to have the first overall pick in the 2012 draft (the Andrew Luck pick), I believe Ponder represents our best opportunity to address the QB position over the next two years.

Show me a list of first round QBs who were taken primarily because of their physical gifts, and I'll show you a list of first round busts! I'm sure there are a few exceptions to that rule, but they are rare exceptions. What will make or break a QB at the NFL level is his accuracy, ability to read defenses, ability to see multiple reads on a play, and his other mental gifts. Toughness, work ethic, and leadership clearly play a role as well. It's clearly better to have physical gifts than not, but you should always avoid the temptation to overvalue physical gifts in an NFL QB. Losman, for example, had really good physical gifts. Much better than Fitz's, in fact. I tried looking up Newton's Wonderlic score, but it appears he either hasn't taken the test yet, or else his score hasn't been made public. (If someone knows his score, please provide it and a link.) Basically what I'm saying here is you want to take a QB for his brains and accuracy first, his physical gifts a distant, distant second.

Some consider Newton a legitimate franchise QB. A number of others do not. I'd be very leery of taking him, especially as high as third overall!

This post prompted me to look up the past Heisman Trophy winners. Below is a list of the QBs who've won Heisman Trophies since 1985 Vinny Testaverde (1986) Andre Ware (1989) Ty Detmer (1990) Gino Torretta (1992) Charlie Ward (1993) Danny Wuerffel (1996) Chris Weinke (2000) Eric Crouch (2001) Carson Palmer (2002) Jason White (2003) Matt Leinart (2004) Troy Smith (2006) Tim Tebow (2007) Sam Bradford (2008) Cam Newton (2010) Sam Bradford's career is off to a good start, and Carson Palmer played at a high level for the first five or six years of his career. Vinny Testaverde was also a solid starter. So it's not like getting a Heisman prevents you from being a successful NFL QB. But most of the QBs on that list are not Bradfords or Palmers or Testaverdes. Most are guys like Andre Ware, Gino Torretta, Danny Wuerffel, Eric Crouch, Matt Leinart, Troy Smith, or the many others on that list who failed to develop into solid NFL starters. To say that "QB X won in college, he's likely to continue to win in the pros," is clearly contraindicated by the available data. Most QBs who win Heisman Trophies are failures at the NFL level.

I don't know that it's accurate to count Drew as a draft pick per se, considering how far into his career he was when we took him. A draft pick is supposed to be a guy who's never played a down of football in the NFL, but who's young and will have his whole career in front of him if he works out well. Bledsoe was the exact opposite of all that: he was a known commodity in the waning years of his career; and gave TD the quick fix he was looking for at the QB position, while creating no possibility whatever of any kind of long-term solution. RJ was a different story: being younger and much less of a known commodity than Drew, using a first round pick on him had a lot more in common with drafting a QB than did the Bledsoe trade. I too would be curious about whether there's a correlation between where resources are allocated and teams' subsequent success. But there's something that would weaken the apparent correlation. Normally teams acquire a certain number of unexpectedly talented players later on in the draft. But there's random variation regarding which positions those players actually play! For example, the Patriots took a Hall of Fame QB in the sixth round. Other teams have been able to find very good offensive linemen, WRs, and other very good players at every position on the field in the later rounds of the draft. Any time a team fills a need with a player like that, it's very unlikely to use an early pick on that same position. (The Patriots haven't used any first or second round picks on QBs since they took Brady, for example.) The fact that the Patriots haven't used any early picks on the QB position in the last ten+ years doesn't mean they consider the QB position unimportant! On the contrary. But if you were to throw the Patriots' drafting record into some statistical model, that model would return the conclusion that a de-emphasis on the QB position is associated with winning lots of games. If a team without a QB tried to similarly de-emphasize the QB position, they'd find that a strategy which works quite well for a team with Tom Brady might not have remotely similar results for a team that's lining up Joey Harrington under center. The other problem with all this is that a team which uses a first round pick on a QB and gets it right (Colts, Peyton Manning) won't have to come back to the QB well again for a very long time! The opposite is of course true of a team whose QB draft picks turn out to be busts. I think that a better way of analyzing teams is to do the following: 1) Break a team down into units. (OL, QB, WR corps, RB, etc.) 2) Grade each unit. (OL = B+, QB = B, etc.) 3) Determine the correlation between the strength of each unit and a team's number of wins. With a large enough data set, this will help show you which positions are most important. Knowing which positions are most important will help you allocate your early draft picks!