Cash

"must have", not "must of". And I agree with the OP's sentiment. There's no way Jauron had so much power that he could pick a player who wasn't at or very near the top of the draft board. At the very least, the pick strongly implies that Modrak et al. had Maybin ranked higher than Orakpo on their Big Board. That's basically a fire-able offense right there.

Tyler Thigpen? Yancy was a mediocre WR for the Steelers in the O'Donnell/Stewart era.

At about the 6:45 mark, Bruce gets double-teamed by the LT & LG, then the C winds up coming over for the triple team. That's respect.

I'll admit it. Right now, QB is definitely not the #1 weakness. It's hard to rank all of the weaknesses on that mess of a defense, but it's got to have the top 3, right? That doesn't mean we have a franchise QB or can necessarily pass on a potential franchise QB in the draft. At least, not yet. But after Sunday's game, I'm beginning to wonder if I underestimated Fitz's potential, and maybe he can be The Guy for us. I still doubt it, but at least he's playing well and fun to watch right now. That's a hell of a lot better than what we've been used to. Also, I just want to point out that the line stopped looking so bad when Fitz took over. The 3 remaining Trent apologists will say that the line is playing much better, and that's why Fitz is playing so much better than Trent ever did. They are wrong.

From what I saw, Kelsay was playing DE in the nickel (4-2-5), and LB in the base 4-3 front. When Stroud got hurt the second time, Kelsay moved to LDE in the base 4-3 front. I didn't pay attention to what happened when Stroud got hurt the first time.

How long is he supposed to hold on to the ball when physically held aloft by a defender, with several others beating on him and trying to rip the ball away? Plays like that are exactly why the "stopped his forward progress" rule was invented. And yet it wasn't called. That sucks, but it's not Shawn Nelson's fault. On the bright side, Chris Kelsay got knocked on his ass on 20% of his snaps today, which represents a season low. Good call on that extension.

Every time I made a point to look, the Bills had a 4 man front. Now, some of those times, they were in the nickel, when every team plays a 4 man front, but a good number of them were in 1st and 2nd down situations. It seemed like their base D was the one Chris Brown was talking about (Edwards/Williams/Troup/Stroud, then Poz/Davis/Kelsay), with Kelsay playing close to the line. A 4-3 Over, for you Madden aficionados. I also noticed that Kelsay moved from OLB to DE both in the regular nickel front and when Stroud came out with injuries.

At face value, it seems like sort of a nonsensical question. Are you supposing that it would've taken a #3 plus a #6 to trade up with the Rams and take Bradford?

Already watched it about 800 times. I'll just agree to disagree. Unless you won't agree to that.

Elbow was out of bounds. Good call, just tough luck that Corner's right foot landed on Boldin's leg. Would've been nice to get the offensive pass interference call there, but that's not reviewable and hardly ever gets called anyway.

On one hand, Kelsay had a nice QB pressure there. On the other, he embarrassingly whiffed on the sack and fell down. Luckily for him, Dwan Edwards and my boy Arthur Moats were there to finish the job. So... good job by Kelsay?

Off an audible, too. That's what you have to like about Fitz. Bills came out in a power run set, Ravens had a run blitz called, Fitz switched to the pass to take advantage. Love it! And we get the ball right back!

Thankfully Kelsay was playing DE (not LB) in the nickel on that last 3rd and 7. He tried an inside move, got popped by the RT, and was knocked backwards onto his ass. ... So yeah, an improvement over his play at LB.

This.

With Poz at OLB and Davis at MLB, apparently. Which is surprising - why wouldn't those be switched? Does Poz still make the defensive calls at that point?

You misspelled "softies."

Thanks for the correction. I guess I got his San Diego tenure confused with his post-San Diego, pre-GM Bills tenure. So I overreached a bit there. Still, he's a first-time GM in his 70s. That's not the sort of thing that inspires confidence.

Take a look at the linebackers we're using in our new 4-3 alignment: Inside Slant Does this make sense to anyone? I have two specific questions: 1.) If the opponent is in a run set but passes anyway (play-action/audible/whatever), can this front stop them? 2.) If the opponent runs anyway, can this front stop them? I think #1 is a massive, massive NO, and #2 is probably a no as well, but I'd like to see it in action first.

It's hard to get into specifics, but I would be happy if there were signs that a plan was in place, and that the plan was a good one and likely to work. A promising QB would help, a foundation of a couple of potential studs to build around would be awesome. Unless the plan was to do nothing for a year, then start rebuilding, I'm not seeing a plan. And if that was the plan, I should be allowed to complain all I want until the rebuilding actually starts. I guess the one thing that would make me most happy would be a proven coach/GM type calling the shots. Buddy Nix is a first-time GM in his 70s, who's spent his entire career as a scout, not even an assistant GM. Chan Gailey's success with Dallas is debatable, but he was definitely a flop at Georgia Tech, and no team other than the Bills considered him for their head coach opening last year. When else has a guy been fired from a coordinator job, then been hired as another team's head coach? That's crazy. I'm tired of seeing crazy moves from my team. I liked the fact that they went hard after Cowher, Shanahan, and Gruden. But after they missed out on those three, the moves they've made have mostly left me puzzled or angry. It's not just that the Bills are bad. It's that they've been bad for over a decade, they're getting worse, and it doesn't seem like they're going to get any better with the current guys calling the shots.

The phrase "building through the draft" is such a joke. It's just something that teams say to get their fans excited. Especially because they usually say that they're building through the draft instead of through free agency. Every team gets draft picks. Every team hopes to hit on all of those draft picks. If they're pretty good at drafting, they don't really need to sign many free agents, and you end up with a team like the Steelers. If they're pretty bad at drafting, they need to sign a ton of free agents, and if those free agents are good, they'll be a good team. But if they're bad at drafting and either sign crappy free agents or don't sign many free agents at all, then you get a team like the Bills. Where are these teams that are forfeiting their picks because they believe in building through FA instead of the draft? You can sort of argue that a team that makes a lot of trades (like the Jets since Ryan took over) doesn't believe in building through the draft, because they keep giving away their picks. But that strategy has been working great for the Jets. They basically traded all of last year's draft for 2 guys - Sanchez & Greene. (Maybe that doesn't count, b/c both were still draft picks.) They traded a 3rd + a 5th for Braylon Edwards, a 3rd for Antonio Cromartie, and a 4th for Santonio Holmes. All three of those moves look pretty good right now. We'll see how that 4th + 5th or 6th turns out for the Bills, but I tend to doubt that both picks combined will be half as good as Marshawn Lynch.

Remember, there were only 2 good tackles in the entire draft, and both went before the Bills picked at #9, according to Nix's post-draft comments. And since we build exclusively through the draft, that means we missed out on any chance to bring in a quality NFL tackle this offseason. Anyway, this announcement gives me some sliver of hope for our team's talent evaluators. The reports have said that Green's had some nagging injury since preseason, but hasn't missed any practice time. If this current injury is an aggravation of the nagging thing he's been dealing with all year, then maybe a healthy Cornell Green isn't totally awful, and maybe signing him wasn't the ultra-boneheaded move we all think it was. We can hope, anyway.

I hate the "it's all luck" line of reasoning. Yes, luck is certainly a factor, especially from the fan's perspective. Maybe the guy who drafted Tim Couch knows that Couch could've been good, but got screwed up by some specific mistakes his coach made in his first couple years. Or maybe he just thinks he got unlucky. Maybe the Raiders were the only team with a 1st-round grade on JaMarcus Russell, and every other team knew he'd be a bust. We don't have any inside knowledge, so from our perspective, it's just bad luck either way. Anyway, just because luck is a factor, and maybe a pretty big factor, doesn't mean that it's the be-all, end-all. If it was mostly about luck, then you'd see the same success rates for QBs drafted in the first round as guys drafted in the 2nd round, and the same in turn for the 5th round, etc. But that's not the case. First-rounders have the best success rate by a solid margin -- about 2 out of 3 wind up as busts. Then the 2nd round -- about 3 in 4 bust. Then the 3rd round, where about 90% bust, and surprisingly the next best is the 6th round, which has about the same success rate as the 3rd. In all other rounds, plus undrafted free agents, 95% or more are busts. Bottom line, it's like a craps table. The house has the edge on every bet, and every bet comes down to luck, but not every bet is equal. If you play the pass line and back up your bet, that's like drafting a guy in the 1st round, or maybe even in the top half of the first round. You've got about a 50% chance of winning money. If you bet numbers, that's like a 2nd-round pick. Hard ways are like mid-round picks, and those awful single-roll bets (snake eyes, yo, big red, buffalo, any craps, etc.) are like 7th rounders and undrafted free agents. Sure, once in awhile some moron will hit snake eyes at 30-1, let it ride, and hit it again, but usually people just lose every single bet they place.

Keep in mind that Ralph is about to turn 92, which is old enough to die without being in poor health. If Wilson passes before the end of the season, any new ownership would have a free pass to can Gailey. Assuming Ralph is the one pulling the trigger, though, it seems unlikely that he'd give Gailey just 1 year in light of his recent "3 year turnaround" comments. However, there's still a chance. Keep in mind that when Ralph put the blame on himself, he said something along the lines of it was his fault for not hiring the right people. So that leaves the door open to the idea that Ralph realizes he hired the wrong GM/coach combo to turn things around, and will make a change at the end of the year.

QB - Fitzpatrick, Brohm (until he actually plays and we get confirmation that he sucks) RB/FB - Spiller, Jackson, McIntyre. Also, I wouldn't go out of my way to cut Andre Anderson, but I wouldn't be specifically inclined to keep him. WR - Evans, Steve Johnson, Parrish, David Nelson TE - Shawn Nelson OL - Bell (still has upside), Levitre, Hangartner, Wood, Wang (until he actually plays), maybe Howard & Urbik DE - Stroud (although I'd try to trade him if we're going to keep playing him at end - he looks terrible), Carrington, Spencer Johnson, maybe Dwan Edwards (has been terrible as a Bill so far, but a good history with Baltimore) NT - Williams, Troup LB - Poz, Andra Davis, Moats, Coleman, maybe Torbor & Ayodele CB - McGee, McKelvin, Florence, Youboty, Corner. Honestly, these guys are not the problem. Same w/ safeties. S - Whitner, Byrd, Wilson, Scott Special Teams - All 3 are solid. Moorman's showing his age a bit, but he's still well above average.

Typo. Should be 5 of 17. I had the same thought as you when reading the article. "Where the hell did we get 14 picks in 2008?"