Cash

No, because I prefer watching football in bars so it's a social experience as well. Plus I don't want to get DirecTV. Plus I don't think the Bills will be worth it next year. But reasons 2 and 3 don't really matter, because reason 1 trumps all.

+1. Sounds like they're planning on using Spiller on kicks & split wide around half the time anyway. So we've really got 2.5 backs, not 3. That's not really a logjam. Worked fine for the Saints last year & for the Giants in 2007. And the Raiders last year, actually. Bush, McFadden, & Fargas all split time and their overall running game was decent, even though the rest of the team was a shambles.

I think you see some signed tonight, and a bunch more tomorrow. Teams usually start trying to sign UDFAs during the latter part of the 7th round. I don't see why that would change now that it's earlier.

If Wang starts at LT and Wood moves to C, we'll start with Wang, then add Levitre, then get to full Wood. One UDFA I like at RG is this guy Myron Ejaculate. Got a good feeling about him.

Positives: Addressed D-line early, especially at NT, the most important position. Got the consensus best player at one position at #9, & wasn't considered a reach. Did attempt to address O-line to some extent, although it may have been too late to make much of an impact. Negatives: Passed a potential franchise QB twice. Passed on some potentially solid starters at LT (Davis, Bulaga, Staffold) once, passed on another (Brown) twice. May have reached for a couple of picks; probably could've traded down & still got their guy(s). Ignored positional value and long-term rebuilding strategy by going RB in the first round. It's really a wait & see, of course. If Buddy's bizarro vision turns out to be true, and the presence of Spiller transforms our 30th-ranked offense, led by Trent Edwards behind Demetrius Bell, into a good offense, then this is an A+ draft. If none of the OTs that they passed on pan out, that would also help the grade. Clausen busting would be a major boost to the grade.

Gotta think Wood would slide over to C if they have any confidence in the primary backup at OG. We'll probably see a C or two brought in as UDFAs, though. Possibly a late UFA signing of a McKinney/Whittle type.

Dude has pretty good size, arms on the short side but proably still long enough to play tackle. Same as teammate Bulaga, I think. NFL.com certainly likes the pick, based on their grading system. It'll be interesting to see whether the Bills see him as more of a tackle or a guard. I'm sure it'll come up in the introductory press conference. For a 7th-rounder, this guy probably has an excellent chance of making the team as a rookie, especially if they like him as a guard. Do we have any backups at OG right now? I thought McKinney was gone, and I can't think of any others (who don't also double as OTs) off the top of my head.

Who's bitching? Nothing wrong with the Brown pick. Or anyone at this point, really. But also no one worth getting excited over. If you get a good player in the 7th round, consider yourself lucky. Overall, the Bills draft is a little disappointing to me, because it really showed how many holes we have, and how there was never any way to fill them all in one offseason. I can't say I'm very happy with the guys they passed up, but the guys they wound up taking look to be fairly solid. The only picks I can question on their own merit are the skill position guys, Spiller & Easley. But honestly, Spiller at least has the potential to shut up me and the rest of the haters. Easley not so much, but whatever, he's a 4th-rounder and should be a good special-teamer anyway. And as I type, the Bills grab another OT. Solid. Could be the next Terrance Pennington or Demetrius Bell. Or better. Or worse. Definite crapshoot at this point.

Back in our heyday, most of our best picks were undervalued small school guys.

Yes, they seem very confident in their selections. Which means they look really dumb if those guys don't pan out.

9.5 inch hands. Anyone who thought Clausen would be a bust due to hand size is forbidden from lauding this pick. ...In fact, everyone should be forbidden from lauding this pick. Ryan Fitzpatrick is one of the more successful 7th-round QBs in recent years, so that should give you an idea of the upside here. But please don't take that as bitching. The fact of the matter is, there's no one on the board who's even a lock to make the team, much less get on the field and make a positive contribution. Can't get excited or upset at this point.

We'll see how he pans out. Certainly good to get another body in at OT. Fifth-rounders and up pretty rarely turn into productive players except on special teams, so we'd best not get too excited or disappointed from here on out.

Born 3/12/87 in Fairfax, VA How many generations does it take for someone to be American? You never hear of 2nd-generation Frenchies referred to as "French NFL players". ...of course, that's partly because there are no NFL players of French descent.

Agree 100%. At least Brohm has a chance of not sucking, however small that is.

Big Cat wins best quick-reaction line! Laughed out loud for this one.

Yes. Now that we've added a 5th-round pick to the mix, we should be set up front. This line was really one 5th-round pick away from being a great unit with tremendous depth. Most guys drafted in the 5th turn into Pro Bowlers, so we can safely move away from addressing the O-line.

Two in base offense, three in short-yardage and goal-line situations. And the Pats lost two TEs this offseason, so it makes a lot of sense to draft two.

Nix, so far, has been true to his statement that there's no point in bringing in an OT unless he can help you right away (which I read to mean start this year). Maybe he really has convinced himself that the offense was 1 player away, and that player was Spiller.

Question for the Righteous Defenders of the Bills: If every pick is such a home run, how many wins will we get next year? As for Easley, he's very much a one-year wonder, which Nix says he doesn't like. Strikes me as strictly a special-teamer unless he really surprises. With that size and speed, if he could catch or run routes, he wouldn't be there in the 4th.

You mean 6'2", 314?

Taken together, a couple of Nix's quotes concern me. Actually, the first one doesn't need anything alongside it to concern me: “We’ve got a lot of needs guys. We’ve got three quarterbacks that have got talent, that we don’t know. All the physical stuff you see, they can play. Now they’ve got to prove to us whether they can or not, not what they have done. We’ve got (0ther) positions where we don’t have three that we can count on." First of all, is this English? Did Buddy get some eloquence pointers from George W. Bush right before this interview? I think he's trying to say that all 3 of our crappy QBs are talented enough to be really good, but haven't proven for sure how good they are. Is that right? It's very confusing. First it seems like he's saying he doesn't know how much talent the 3 QBs have. Then he's saying they can play (which is distressing - did he watch any games last year?). Then he says they've got to prove whether they can or not. Can or can't what? Play? But didn't he just say they can play? This isn't a bit, I'm legitimately confused here. Especially once Nix spins around again and implies with the last sentence that the Bills have 3 QBs they can count on. WOW! Talk about blowing smoke! That line is just utter nonsense. If Nix even entertains the notion of believing it, that's proof enough that he's completely unqualified for his job and has no idea what he's talking about. I mean, I'll buy that Brohm is still a question mark at this point. He's really only played 1 game in his short career, and he barely knew the playbook for that game, so it was excusable that he sucked so bad. (I thought he also threw a bad ball for most of his throws, which is why I've written him off, but hey, it was a small sample size.) But Edwards and Fitzpatrick? How many starts do these guys need before we know what we've got? Fitzpatrick is an okay backup with very poor accuracy. He can fill in in a pinch and make some nice plays, but if he's starting more than a couple of games, you're in trouble. Edwards is fine if you're looking for an 8-12 game QB who doesn't need to attempt passes more than 7 yards past the line of scrimmage. Otherwise, you're in trouble. Edwards has poor accuracy on medium-range throws, especially when his receiver is not stationary (so-so on deep balls; he runs a ton of open WRs out of bounds on 30-yard gains that should be catch-and-run TDs), and tends to turn the ball over a lot when asked to make plays down the field. If your team can win games with handoffs, checkdowns, screens, and curls/hitches, Edwards is a good fit. But he'll probably get hurt and miss some time. Ah, but I digress. The point is that Edwards & Fitzpatrick have shown that they're mediocre at best, but maybe worth keeping around as a decent backup. Brohm has shown nothing positive, but is too young and inexperienced to write off just yet. So there's certainly no way that our GM can claim that we have 3 QBs we can count on. I hope I'm mis-reading that quote, because it just strikes me as completely bat**** loco. Okay, next up, a couple of quotes from separate post-draft interviews: “In the draft you can only take one each pick. We’re in a position where they should give us about three, but they won’t do that." “We’re not much about moving (up or down),” said Nix. ”To move just to be moving, some of those guys I don’t know how they know where the hell they draft. If we know we’re going to gain an advantage we’ll do it, but otherwise we’ll just stay there and get us a good player.” Someone should tell Buddy that if you really want more picks, you can trade down to get some more. For example, the Patriots turned 8 picks into 10 picks today. It's not that hard to understand, but Buddy doesn't seem to get it. We picked Troup at #41, and then the Patriots traded up from #44 to #42 to select Gronkowski. It seems likely that the Patriots would've made an offer to move up to #41, since they were clearly hot after Gronkowski. What were the odds that Troup got drafted at #42 or #43? Probably pretty low. So there's one scenario where the Bills probably could've traded down, picked up an extra pick, and still got the guy they wanted at their original spot. I think this really shows how the Bills lock in on specific guys and get tunnel vision. They probably got a call from New England at #41, but quickly hung up because they were terrified of Troup getting picked at #42 or #43. I also like how Nix is trying to mock teams like NE and Philly for trading so much. Yeah, what buffoons. Too bad they make the playoffs every year. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with staying put. It does put a little more burden on you to nail your picks as opposed to trading down (and trading up puts way more pressure on you to nail that pick). But clearly, the optimal way to draft players would be to get all the guys you want, all at the lowest possible pick. The more you trade, the closer you can come to that ideal - but only if you're smart. Buddy himself says he's never been accused of being the smartest guy in the room, so it's probably for the best that we don't do much trading. Okay, last quote: "You say 'well we haven’t addressed the offensive line yet,' but again we want to take a guy we know can come in and help us and if he can’t then we’re going to go to another guy. If you take a guy that can’t play then you’ve compounded the problem because now you’ve got two that can’t play.” Nix is really overselling his point here. Because if you take this quote at face value, what he's really saying is that none of the tackles we passed over could help us at all; that picking any of these guys would've compounded the problem. That seems rather dubious. Plus, what does that say about whatever OT we wind up drafting in the 6th round? Does that mean he can't help us, or that he can help us, and is therefore better than Anthony Davis or Bryan Bulago or Charles Brown or Bruce Campbell or whoever? Again, I hope Nix is just blowing smoke with this quote, because if he believes what he's saying, it's kind of crazy. There's no sane way he can think that there were only 2 OTs in this draft who could contribute positively to the Bills either next year or down the road.

Unfortunately, with no QB and no passing game to speak of, this team will still be very dull next year. Unless Spiller turns in a rookie Adrian Peterson or 2nd-year Chris Johnson season. Are there any rapists we could trade for at this point? That would make the team less dull.

I think people are basing it on this quote from Nix: "We think we have a good left tackle (Demetrius Bell). He is injured right now and is coming along good." Whereas Nix has not given Meredith any public votes of confidence. And it's not like Meredith is a draft prospect or anything. If he's the guy you like, there's no reason to hide it.

Fixed your typo. You're welcome.

Thank you. I can't believe how many people are THRILLED about going heavy on D, and want more, more, more of the same. That's great, as long as you're not forced to watch the games. How about an offense that can chain together multiple first downs on a fairly consistent basis? Or one that can SCORE AN OFFENSIVE TOUCHDOWN MORE THAN ONCE A GAME. That's not too much to ask. If you're going to suck, which describes the Bills for the last 10 years and also next year, can't you at least be entertaining in the process? Those crappy Bledsoe teams were at least fun to watch. Watching this team the last few years, I wanted to blow my brains out in the 2nd half of almost every game. Even some of the wins were soul-draining and pure agony to watch for most of the game. I just don't get it. These people are fantasizing about rebuilding the 2000 Ravens. That's the fantasy? The best you can imagine? Not the 70s Steelers (HoF QB), 80s 49ers (HoF QB), 90s Bills or Cowboys (HoF QBs), or 2000s Patriots or Colts (Future HoF QBs)? No, let's aim for a team that's unwatchable on one side of the ball, and hope we pick up a Trent Dilfer type who can complete 1 long pass a game. Oh wait, I forgot: We've got THE PLAYMAKER now. Spiller will be good for 1-2 touchdowns a game all by himself. He's so fast that our crappy OTs will play really well! And stacking the box won't work against him, because have you seen his 40 time? I take it back, our offense will be gangbusters.