Cash

Good question! I have no idea. I would guess that there is a rule about it, though. My best guess would be something like there's no jumping of the pick Thursday night, but if the Giants don't get it in on time, they can't submit it until the draft re-opens Friday night. At which point it would be open season between the Giants and Rams as to who picked first.

Wait, they did a Mitch Hedberg hologram on The Sports Reports a la Tupac at Coachella? Awesome!

Rieff played LT in college, not G. I don't think the Jauron Principle applies here. Maybe you were thinking of Cordy Glenn? Even then, he started 18 games at LT in college, including every game his senior year.

Blackmon over Kalil? That's a surprise. Any particular reason why? I would definitely have Kalil #3 on my big board.

Okay, now I think I've got it straight. In a Roger Rabbit-style animated/real life crossover, the Venture Brothers appeared on the Maury Povich show and revealed their mock draft. Who'd they have the Bills taking?

Wait a minute, I'm confused. Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake revealed that he has a twin brother? What does that have to do with the NFL draft?

I think you're thinking of the Bears' running back who pancaked Aaron Maybin last preseason.

Nix also specifically mentioned depth at both DE and DT in the middle rounds. I would expect probably one of each. Right now the backup DTs are Torrell Troup and Alex Carrington, and I doubt the Bills are super into that. Totally disagree on the smokescreen idea. But we'll see. Regarding Kuechly, there's a chance the Panthers take him at #9, so it's still possible he's the no-brainer Nix is thinking of. Plus Nix specifically said the depth at LB is not great, so it could be a situation where he feels he has to get one high or not at all. Not predicting it, just saying you can't rule it out from this chat. I personally am ruling out Floyd based on this and other quotes, though. And if I'm wrong, I'll... not really care, because there's nothing at stake.

Obviously that's the standard move, but Buddy's pretty honest & forthright. If the guy he has in mind is the guy we pick, he'll definitely tell us. If not, he can't come out and crap on the guy he winds up picking, but he'll probably say that the no-brainer was gone without saying who it was. You never know, though. Last year Nix & Gailey made it pretty clear in their post-draft press conference that Dareus was #2 on their board behind Newton. We could see a similar situation this year.

Comment From George WR don't usually make an impact as a rookie is that go into who you might pick at 10. 12:27 Buddy Nix: yes it does. We want somebody to make an impact at 10.

You beat me to it on this one. Very intriguing. Hopefully Buddy tells us who it is after the draft.

12:13 Comment From Nathan Any chance you guys will draft a Tight End at some point? 12:13 Buddy Nix: No, probably not.

More importantly, why was he skipping Mavs practice to talk about the NFL draft?

Yes I would.

And just when this thread got good again, this happens. No one believes either of these statements. These are strawmen. K-9 does not think that a really good QB should be passed over for a slightly better OG. Edwards' Arm does not think that the lowest rated QB is always better than the highest rated OG. Please stop this madness.

Thigpen played pretty well as a spot starter for Gailey at KC a couple years back, so it made sense to sign him. However, training camp and preseason showed that Thigpen had completely lost whatever magic he had. I don't think he gets into a game unless it's a blowout or Fitz is simply too hurt to take the field. If the Bills draft a QB who looks good in camp, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see Thigpen cut. I think the only thing keeping him on the team is that he is an NFL veteran who has started games before, and that brings some value over a guy off the street or Levi Brown.

Well, yeah, of course it's hindsight. BPA stands for "Best Player Available." As it turns out, the best player available was Jason Pierre-Paul. They don't give out trophies for most pre-season Super Bowl predictions, they give out a trophy for actually winning the Super Bowl. After the fact. Similarly, drafts should not be judged on "good idea at the time" criteria, but by how those players actually turned out. Using hindsight. Hindsight is how we tell what actually happened, who won and who lost, and whose draft board was good and whose was bad. Two years after the fact, you don't get to say a guy was the best available if a guy was picked soon after him and turned out better. And by the way, it's not like there was a clear consensus at the time that Spiller was the best player available at #9. The Bills said so after they picked him, because duh, of course that's what they're going to say. But nobody had Spiller going earlier than #9, and plenty of people said it was a bad pick at the time, for very specific reasons that were proven completely correct. That's an example of foresight and hindsight agreeing. Very cool example! I've bolded the key aspect of it: The Steelers were confident enough to "know" that they had better intel on Stallworth than anyone else. Reminds me of the Bills with Jasper last year. They knew no one else had scouted him, so they could wait for their last pick to pick him. In fact, they were so confident in their intel advantage, they would've signed him as an UDFA instead of drafting him, but with the impending lockout, they couldn't sign him until it was over, and someone else could find out about him in the meantime. More on this below. Yes, this is technically true, and I kind of agree with your broader point to an extent, but here's the rub: Brady wasn't actually a good prospect. By all accounts, he got so PO'ed at being drafted so late that he took it personally and worked extremely hard to get way better, and improved greatly after he was drafted. Also by all accounts, the Patriots had no idea how good he could be when they drafted him. (I recently read a really good article on the Patriots' side of things, but couldn't find the link. Sorry.) Now, once they got him into camp, they liked him a lot, so good job by the Patriots there. But the point is that unlike the Stallworth situation, the Pats didn't have superior intel to anyone else. And in fact, couldn't have had superior intel, because the Tom Brady that was available on draft day wasn't that good of a prospect compared to the Tom Brady that came into training camp after being drafted 199th overall. But let's say for the sake of argument that the Pats had known at the time how good Brady would be. I submit that there's no way they still would've waited until the 6th round to take him. Why? Because it's not the 70's anymore. You can't be sure you've got better intel than everyone else. During the draft, you can't "KNOW IT CONCLUSIVELY." You have to balance your confidence level that no one else has your intel against the risk of missing out on this prospect. If just one other team has even half the information you have, they'll probably take him by the 4th or 5th round. (Not to mention that, since Brady went to Michigan, every team had a pretty extensive scouting report on him anyway. But for the sake of the debate, let's pretend it was Eastern Michigan.) In the case of a future HOF QB like Brady, the risk is so high that you'll probably take him by the 3rd or 4th round even if you're 99% confident that you're the only one who knows how good he'll be. In the case of Jasper, the Bills were very confident, because he went to Bethel, and they probably heard from the coaches that no other NFL scouts had visited them. That's not a guarantee, but it makes it pretty likely that you're the only one whose scouted him. And their risk was very low, because even with a full scouting report, Jasper still wasn't that great a prospect. Needed to lose a ton of weight, learn how to play football at an NFL level, etc. It's no surprise that he spent most of last year on the practice squad and hasn't been mentioned at all in offseason interviews with Gailey and Nix. He could still develop into a real nice player, but we knew when he was drafted that any impact he made would be a long ways off, and not in any way guaranteed. But if Jasper had been a guy who could come in and start right away, I doubt the Bills would've waited till the end of the 7th round to draft him. If Stallworth was available in this year's draft, he would probably go in the first or second round. Okay, that's pure conjecture on my part, and kind of BS, but hear me out. I say that either 1.) enough teams would have a solid scouting report on him that he gets into the zeitgeist as a premiere prospect, shows up in all the mock drafts, and winds up being drafted high based on his ability, or 2.) the Steelers still managed to have the best intel on him, but with the prevalence of modern scouting, they would be worried that someone else has found out about him, and wouldn't be able to last beyond the 2nd round before pulling the trigger. NFL coaches tend to be extremely risk-averse with their on-field decisions, and I suppose that they're pretty risk-averse when it comes to losing out on a great prospect as well. I don't know this for a fact, but I think it's probably true.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing. Especially during the first 3/4 of the quotes, which were all negative. Everyone's overrated and everyone should be going a round later. Talk about CYA. I know if I was a GM, hearing that from a scout would tick me off. I know some drafts are weaker than others, but everyone's drafting from the same pool of players. They can't ALL be reaches. If a guy is one of the 32 best prospects in the draft pool, then he's a fine pick in the first round, even if he might be a late second-rounder in a different year.

Peter King and Florio, now that's a dynamic duo of idiocy. I would guess that Alex Smith is the only 1st-round QB since the advent of free agency to play out his entire rookie contract without being cut, traded, or signed to an extension. Very few top 10 picks will see that last year of the rookie deal, because they'll either be busts and cut, or really good and signed to an extension before the last year kicks in.

Bolded statement is the big thing for me. With the average NFL career being something like 4-5 years, his age isn't the biggest deal. If he panned out and became a good starting QB for 6 years, that's still a lot better than most of the QBs drafted in any given year. But I'm VERY leery of the production of a grown man playing against essentially boys. It's rare to see a big age difference in college football, since most guys don't become starters until their junior or senior years, and there's only a 2-year window for guys to come out early. I don't think I've ever seen a real breakdown, but I'd guess that a plurality of the guys picked on Thursday will probably be 5th-year seniors, followed by 4th-year seniors, followed by 4th-year juniors, all between the ages of 21-23. (I also would expect the first round to skew much more towards the juniors than the rest of the draft, because the most elite prospects tend to come out early.) In football, there isn't a huge difference between a 20 year old and a 22 year old, but there is a big difference between a 20 year old and a 25 year old. I don't know how closely anyone follows the NBA draft, but I follow it about the same as the NFL draft, and one of the big lessons that comes up every year is that age is a big factor. The gap's a lot tighter though. A guy who puts up good numbers at age 19 is a MUCH better prospect than the guy who puts up the same numbers at 21 or 22. SU's Wes Johnson is a good recent example off the top of my head. Money college player, but he was 22 (I think) by the time he was drafted. Hasn't done anything of note in the NBA, because he didn't have much room to improve athletically. I'm probably being too long-winded here, but my point is that I don't usually look at age for NFL draft picks, because they're in a pretty narrow range that doesn't matter much. (To me, it would be like comparing two 19-year-olds in the NBA draft and deciding that one had more upside because he was born in February instead of June.) But in the case of a guy like Weeden, the big age difference between him and the guys he played against in college makes me suspect his numbers. Doesn't guarantee anything, but it's something to be concerned about.

Not a conspiracy, but yes, we got lightly screwed. It sucks, but you still have to play the games.

I loved when the editor of this clip would show 3 straight horrible Tebow passes, then put up a card saying something like "Tebow playing almost perfect, but losing due to bad defense and special teams." I also liked how he kept pointing out that the RT would "lose contain" after like 4 seconds of perfect blocking. Yeah, it's very reasonable to expect to have over 5 seconds to just chill in the pocket and wait for a receiver to shake his man by 5 yards so you're comfortable throwing to him.

The Maybin fiasco had nothing to do with draft strategy or positional value and everything to do with poor scouting. The best pick for the Bills would have been Brian Orakpo, who played the same position as Maybin. JPP was BPA, not Spiller. Drafting the best player available doesn't have to mean drafting a guy who specifically plays a position you don't need. And drafting for need doesn't have to mean drafting a guy who can't play. But that's neither here nor there. I feel like the last page or so of this thread has devolved into a typical internet flame argument, with both sides beating up their respective strawmen. Obviously you want to draft good players and not busts, but it's very hard in advance to tell which will be which. (Especially for us fans, who only have very limited scouting access.) And obviously some positions are more important than others, so you'd always take a Pro Bowl QB over a Pro Bowler at any other position. But the question is, how much should positional value be weighed at the top of the draft? In other words, if you're a GM, and you are confident that two players at different positions will both develop into really good pros, which one should you take? One of the frequently-used examples for this debate is the 2008 draft. Most people would agree that Jake Long is a better LT than Matt Ryan is a QB. (Long has made the Pro Bowl all 4 years of his career, and was 2nd team All-Pro in 2009 and 1st team All-Pro in 2010. Most experts consider Long and Joe Thomas the clear top 2 OTs in the NFL. On the other hand, Ryan has made 1 Pro Bowl in 2010, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any NFL analyst who considers him a top 5 QB. Most probably have him as a borderline top 10 QB. Above average, but not great.) So the question is, which are you better off with? I say Matt Ryan, and I don't think it's close. This is why I generally tend to favor drafting money positions in the first round. YES OBVIOUSLY IT IS BETTER TO TAKE A PRO BOWL LB OR S THAN A BUST QB OR LT. Duh. But I don't know who will be a Pro Bowler and who will be a bust. So I tend to prefer guys that, if they pan out, will provide the maximum benefit to the team. Kuechly could easily become a really good player, but just another AJ Hawk. Whitner was and is a good NFL starter at S. But if Mark Barron became another Whitner, that's pretty disappointing at #10 overall. Trent Richardson might have a really strong 5-year career. On the other hand, if we draft a WR, or an LT, or a CB, and he develops into a player who's good but not great, that will help our team a lot more than a S or LB or RB or OG who turns out to be good but not great.

Giving up a 2 to move up 5 spots in round 1 seems reasonable to me.

I saw a stat from Pro Football focus where Samuel was thrown at deep (>20 yards) 12 times last year, and only allowed 1 catch. If the Bills could make it work financially, I'd be all for shipping a 5th-rounder out for him.