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How Edmunds turned out in the pros wasn't my point. No one could honestly predict that. He was regarded by many as one of the top linebackers coming out of college.

Back in the '90s and 2000s, it was common for the Bills to use a first round pick on a CB. He'd spend five or (Nate Clements) six years with the team, then leave in free agency. Another first round pick would be used on his replacement. The RB position was similar, except the duration of RBs was often even shorter than for CBs. There was a period of 40 years, during which the Bills used 1/4 of their first picks of the draft on DBs, and another 1/4 on RBs. Leaving only 50% for everything else. Needless to say, the Bills lost more games than they won during those 40 years. When I evaluate the success of a particular draft pick, I look at the quality of the player. But I also look at the duration of play he provided for the team which drafted him. Both Cordy Glenn and Travis Henry were drafted in the second round. Glenn was with the team for far longer than Travis Henry, which is one of several reasons why Glenn was a much more successful use of a 2nd round pick. Edmunds had great athleticism. For certain situations or in certain games he played at a high level. But, his football instincts were poor, and he was bad at shedding blocks. Someone posted a stat that, during his time with the Bills, he was blitzed 70 times or so (I forget the exact number). That resulted in zero pressures. If you take into account both the good and bad parts of his game, he was not worth anything close to the monster contract he got. At least not to me. I would never want to use a first round pick on an off-the-ball linebacker whose game had as many weaknesses as Edmunds' did, and who was only going to be with the team for five years. Harrison Phillips is a very solid player. But, like you said, a very solid player for the Vikings. Just as Wyatt Teller is an excellent player for the Cleveland Browns. I give Beane a lot of credit for drafting both those players in the first place. But he gets anti-credit for failing to keep them. Either player would be a real benefit to the Bills, if added right now. In terms of that draft, I give Beane the most credit for taking Josh Allen (obviously), and the second-most for Taron Johnson. Johnson may not be as good a player as a guy like Wyatt Teller, but at least he's still with the team.

Not to mention how strong that class was after that pick. Edmunds was a day 1 starter and a multi year pro bowler, Harrison Phillips is a starting DT for the Vikings, Taron is Johnson in the 4th (pro bowler), Siran Neal and the dearly departed Wyatt Tyler (multi year pro-bowler) in the 5th, Ray Ray Mcloud in the 6th. That's 4 pro bowlers in his first draft.

I understand what you mean about Allen & Knox, but Edmunds was a talented player in college.

One of the things that Beane appeared to address differently this year and maybe even already last year was picking players who performed high in college as opposed to in the early years of Beane as GM was picking players more based on potential and ceiling. A couple that come to mind were Knox, Edmunds, even Allen. I suppose it made more sense back than as the team was in a more longer term building mode whereas now they are looking to replace players with a new younger version right away.

Kincaid will get close to 120 targets. Cook will get close to 75. I think they are the actual drivers of the offense. Much less Wr centric than years past. People were looking for Edmunds replacement. Benard didn't fit that mold. Coleman, Shakir, Samuel 1 for 1 are not Diggs. In the roles designed, the offense may be more effective without a player being as prolific.

I remember us using a different dime package a few years ago against mahomes. Rather than taking an LB off for a DB and only having one; we took a DL off and left Milano, Edmunds, Taron on the field. I would like to see more of this as LB seems to be a strength of the defense. It would probably be a edge that comes off if were not getting good heat with them anyway.

These are Professional football players... Every single one is oozing with talent All it takes is one guy to understand his situation and seize the reins I wasn't panicked last year either because I knew they had a guy to take the spot... Your number one guy gets all the reps It's hard to improve when you don't get the reps... Bernard and Dodson both are really good football players and one of them were going to pop because they were getting professional treatment ... That was going to Edmunds before Shakir and Samuel are probably going to look two times better because they get practice reps... Then you add in Kincaid and knox who is still a physical freak Our line which is going to be very good... With James Cook and Ray Davis Coleman is going to play well when his number is asked and he's not going to be asked to be a superstar out the gate He's going to be asked to score touchdowns inside the 20

Absolutely correct. If Edmunds hadn't been on the squad, Bernard might have gotten a lot of first-team reps in training camp, and who knows. On the other hand, when he did get in the game as a rookie, he didn't look anything like the player we saw the next season.

Agree with much of what you wrote, but would note that Bernard had to beat out Tremaine Edmunds and Bishop has to be out Rapp (or Edwards). I think Bishop has a much easier task than Bernard did.

Geez he’s already older than Tremaine Edmunds?!?!?

Coleman I think be close to the 1st round average and so should comfortably be over the 2nd round average (I think he has 750 yards plus). I think Bishop starts pretty quickly if not out of the gate. I think he beats this projection as he gets a few sacks from playing close to the line so much. I don't think McD has held back 7 rookies out if he thinks they can play (Benford, White, Edmunds, Taron). Milano and Levi are the only rookies I can think he "held" back and both were super sleepers (Elam is the only other rookie starter, but that was more of an injury need iirc). Carter is tough to beat 0.2 splash per game but probably can beat 0.1 (average without 2023) cause he seems to have a knack for swatting passes (did this metric include TFL @appoo?) Davis will fall short of 500 yards so I think will be below this metric, but would exceed the TD metric if you calculated. I don't think hell get touches that set up for a lot of yards. Also I think Ty Johnson will start as the primary back up to cook so Davis may suffer from only have situational use early.

I think the rookies will be held back a bit early on and take a larger role later in the year. In particular Bishop because McDermott is known for sitting rookies on D longer to learn the schemes. If he plays out of the gate like Edmunds did, it'd be surprising, but also a good sign of his football IQ and ability to play the role he's being asked to play on the D. Hyde and Poyer were amazing players for us for so long for 2 reasons... 1) they're superb athletes and 2) PERFECT scheme mesh of skill set and what was asked of them. It does look like Bishop will be a Poyer type player and projects well to fit. He just needs to take the steps. Coleman I am much less excited about... The kid is likeable but who cares, I want food football players and I just am not impressed. That said, I think they try to get him involved early to see what he can do. They'll platoon WRs to flatten his learning curve a bit but I think they're gonna tear him and see what they have immediately. What his production will look like... Your guess is as good as mine, but his lack of speed and lack of separation in college has me VERY concerned. Carter I think will rotate in sparingly early as he learns the role, but I could see him being much more consistent player by the end of the season. But remember, the Bills rotate D-Line like crazy to keep them fresh. He'll see 35-40% of snaps, and it won't be an indictment of his ability, it'll be because of their rotation. Davis was a nice little pick up who has quietly been praised by college football people. He's a bit older for a rookie and has some more mileage than you would expect from a rookie. But that's not a bad thing in this case because he's coming in as a situational player and to spell cook. He's a great change of pace, and when he gets moving the guy is a bowling ball. He also has a great ability to catch the ball out of the backfield and equally as important, he can pass block. I don't see him getting a massive amount of touches, but I wouldn't be surprised if his snap count is higher than people expect because of his utility ability. At the end of the day he is clearly second fiddle and the only way he's going to get a lot of snaps is if cook gets hurt. We don't want that. But I think he's going to be very productive as a change of pace back and add something to this offense that we have been lacking.

Yeah there was an edge defender list recently where they had Rousseau ranked VERY highly. I chose not to interject/link it because so many people hate PFF. But PFF loves Rousseau. And the reason is that he gets a lot of what qualifies as pressure while maintaining his responsibility in run defense/contain. What fans see is that he hasn't been finishing enough plays. That's what needs to happen for him to cross over from misunderstood to a star. I suppose one could have said the same thing about Edmunds to some extent........but there was a large group of homers who went out of their way to promote a narrative about Tremaine that wasn't true(that he made it impossible for teams to throw over the middle when, in fact, teams were often throwing right at him).

Well yeah. Cornelius Bennett was only like 2 years old during Cookie's last season with Denver. Was probably already hitting harder than Edmunds, though.

Yeah..........as I said all last offseason.........I never had much concern about MLB because everyone who came before Edmunds and filled in for him had success. Preston Brown lead the NFL in tackles in 2017. Julian Stanford, Dodson and Klein all played effectively in relief of Edmunds. I always made note of this to the Edmund's apologists who swore that Edmunds impact couldn't be measured in big plays. That narrative had very deep roots with the shills and their pet homers and yet was essentially abandoned ENTIRELY just a couple games into 2023. And 3rd round off-ball LB's and RB's are like first round WR's.........they should become starters early in their career or the pick is a bust.........and the Bills had expended their last two third round picks on off-ball LB's. This WR situation has been a lingering issue for years that just keeps getting a bit worse each offseason.

I just got a flashback of Edmunds closing his eyes and bending Dane Jackson in two a few years back.

He missed one game last year. Admittedly it was a big one, but even Edmunds, who is huge, missed 9 games in his 5 years with the Bills.

Tremaine Edmunds was only 19 when those first came out.

He usually owns up to his bad takes, though. He has talked over and over about how he was wrong about Bernard (as was pretty much everyone) and that Bernard makes splash plays while Edmunds did not. He also has good takes that are sometimes unpopular. For instance, he was a Gabe Davis critic way before that was popular. He believed in Spencer Brown when most everyone wanted to replace him, then Brown went out and had a good season and was pretty solid all year long. His job is to give his opinion about every single player all the time, so he is going to have misses.

Eh joe isn't perfect but he's passionate and hardworking. But he has bad takes at times too. Hearing him fawn over Edmunds and not see the Bernard fit Is one example. But he's awesome.

It was. Their other second round pick was a safety and their third round pick was a backup DT. They also got rid of their #1 and #2 WR this off-season. I will ask these questions, point blank. Do you think the Bills, over the course of the last 6 years of Josh Allen’s career, have done enough to put offensive talent around him? Your definition of enough may be different than mine, and that’s fine. Do you think the high round investments in defense have paid off? I’m talking about AJE. Rousseau. Oliver. Edmunds. Boogie. Your definition of paid off may be different than mine, and that’s fine. my answer is no and no.

Yeah, I hear ya. I guess my point is that Beane and co seem to love using their early draft picks on really athletic, high ceiling college players and entrusting their coaches to coach those guys up (Allen, Edmunds, Coleman, Elam, etc). I wish they'd apply that same strategy and willingness to late round players, and entrust their coaches to teach those guys to play special teams. In other words, I think they go about it a little backwards sometimes. They pick players that they already know will be good special teamers, and hope they can coach them into being useful on offense and defense. Sometimes, I wish they'd instead pick players that they think will be useful on offense or defense, and then trust their coaches to teach them to play special teams. As long as a guy has a WILLINGNESS to play special teams, if he's a good athlete, then he can theoretically be taught. It's picking nits, because we're talking about late round players. It's also situationally specific. But in the instance of Justin Shorter, they could've foreseen an upcoming need at WR (with Davis set to become a free agent and Sherfield/Harty on short term deals), and concentrated more on finding a guy that had a potentially bright future on offense (Nacua, Wicks, Douglas, etc).

At what point do you actually point the finger at players? 2019: Neal drops an easy pick in Hou territory. Neal later misses a huge sack, we had Watson with 2 guys in backfield 2020: Colts was a bad defensive effort. Players/coaches alike. Ravens, I thought we had a good gameplan. Chiefs, another ok gameplan but our front 4 got totally manhandled 2021: dominate Pats. Missing our best player/all pro Tre killed us against a lethal offense. Our pass rush never showed up, Edmunds looked lost on the field. Milano/Levi blow a coverage during "13 seconds", allowing Kelce to get into FG range 2022: Cincys backup IOL just flat out bullied our DTs. 3-4 key injuries (Daquan, Hyde, Poyer, Tre hobbled). Frazier scheme played scared too 2023: Played Steelers well. Again DL folded, when we needed them to step up. 4-5 key injuries, Benford, Lame Rasul, Bernard, Milano, Daquan/Von still battling at far less than 100% So yeah. Our DL has choked against KC, Cincy, KC again. Too many injuries in 2023 especially, can't stop a Mahomes led offense with the MASH unit we fielded. Coach isn't the reason IMO. If you think we are going to somehow create confusion and blitz Mahomes/etc, nobody wins that way. They have success bc their front 4 causes enough disruption and have a solid back 7. Our front 4 has got blown off the ball by the wind it seems, past few playoff losses

Currently, I see Rousseau as a Tremaine Edmunds type player.. but at a premium position. Which means he's good enough to get paid and I don't necessarily love that team paying him being us. I need to see more pass rush ability from him before I sign him long term to a massive contract.