TMQ calls it like it is

[DarthICE]

Classic Easterbrook. I can't think of one mock that didn't have Maybin going in the first. Yeah, he appears to be on the superhighway to bust-dom, but let's not rewrite history.

 

 

Right, you mean like all the YEARS the Bills have been screwing the pooch in the draft? One year we can bypass and forgive, not a full decade of crap

[pBills]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/100921_tuesday_morning_quarterback

 

The Bills really are the Raiders of the east

 

 

 

Jesus, another Maybin post. Great.

[San-O]

Right, you mean like all the YEARS the Bills have been screwing the pooch in the draft? One year we can bypass and forgive, not a full decade of crap

 

 

Maybe Ralph IS Al Davis?

 

[yungmack]

I'm just glad Greg is ale to take time out from worrying about Christmas Creep, and extra Galactic alien war's to write something negative about us.

Hey, you must be an Easterbrook fan. So you must know he's a Buffalo guy (and that he spells his name "Gregg" with, as he says "the tasty double G."

[Albany,n.y.]

While I must agree it hurts to see Orakpo and Matthews play like gangbangers, my biggest issue is that Maybin has barely seen the field! Just like the McCargo (Spiller pick following the trend) they rarely see the field. I'd rather lose developing young talent taking the lumps than to add a few meaningless wins here or there playing with aging vets with no upside. You can not tell me that Maybin can do much worse than Kelsay has the first two games. Sure he will make mistakes but he has the upside to be better. When they bring the kid in they put him at his worse position: DE with his hand on the ground! I thought he was suppose to be an OLB in the 3-4; when has he actually lined up as one? If Matthews played for the Bills he'd probably be stuck behind Kelsay as well! Maybin as well as Brohm, Spiller,a young RT should be taking at least half the snaps!

Play all the busts! Guys are on the bench because they're not good enough.

[dave mcbride]

Right, you mean like all the YEARS the Bills have been screwing the pooch in the draft? One year we can bypass and forgive, not a full decade of crap

I'm not sure of your point.

[bouds]

How many mock drafts had Clausen in the 1st round this year? Too many.

 

How many mocks had E.Brown in the 1st round last season? Too many.

 

!@#$ mock drafts, unless they're done by a former scout (see Daniel Jeremiah who's now with the Eagles). Don Banks had Youboty in the first round in his '06 mock drafts, we got him in the 3rd. Mock drafts are time wasters unless they're done by people who've scouted for a living. I'm not saying Maybin was a 2nd/3rd round talent, I'm not a football scout so I have no clue, but we shouldn't be surprised by statements like this. Everyone evaluates talents differently.

 

Look at Jerry Hughes with the Colts. Scouts raved about him, so did his college coaches, and yet he can't find the field with the Colts. Granted, they already have 2 outstanding DEs, but he's been deactivated both games and the Colts feel that he's trying to get by on his "athleticism" which doesn't work in the NFL. Hughes needs to develop pass rushing moves, self-admittedly, before he'll step foot on an NFL field.

 

Sound familiar? Except we don't have the luxury to wait on someone's eventual development (if it ever happens). I still I have no idea how a coach whose job security was in question at the time, doesn't lobby the FO to take a NFL ready player like Brian Cushing. Fine, Orkapo/Matthews were seen as tweeners, wtf is Maybin? Take Cushing, a guy who played in a 4-3 under scheme for all 4 years, coached by former NFL coaches and players. I get angry just thinking about it.

Edited September 21, 2010 by bouds

[yungmack]

Last year one of my brothers and myself were arguing over WHICH USC linebacker the Bills would take (notice there was no IF in our thinking). He was a fan of Cushing, I favored Matthews. We both went WTF when Maybin's name was called.

[bouds]

Last year one of my brothers and myself were arguing over WHICH USC linebacker the Bills would take (notice there was no IF in our thinking). He was a fan of Cushing, I favored Matthews. We both went WTF when Maybin's name was called.

 

Would have been happy with either, and I'm not going on hindsight . Both guys played at a big time school, contributed for multiple seasons, played in huge games and played good/great while doing so. I knew Matthews wasn't going to get chosen, but passing on Cushing was even more boneheaded because of his versatility. He could cover and rush, fit in both a 3-4 and 4-3.

 

I was thankful at the time that the Pats traded out of the 1st and passed up on Matthews. I was really worried at the time that they would snag him, especially with OLB being a need. Seeing him twice a year would be murder.

Edited September 21, 2010 by bouds

[Cash]

How many mock drafts had Clausen in the 1st round this year? Too many.

 

How many mocks had E.Brown in the 1st round last season? Too many.

 

!@#$ mock drafts, unless they're done by a former scout (see Daniel Jeremiah who's now with the Eagles). Don Banks had Youboty in the first round in his '06 mock drafts, we got him in the 3rd. Mock drafts are time wasters unless they're done by people who've scouted for a living. I'm not saying Maybin was a 2nd/3rd round talent, I'm not a football scout so I have no clue, but we shouldn't be surprised by statements like this. Everyone evaluates talents differently.

 

Look at Jerry Hughes with the Colts. Scouts raved about him, so did his college coaches, and yet he can't find the field with the Colts. Granted, they already have 2 outstanding DEs, but he's been deactivated both games and the Colts feel that he's trying to get by on his "athleticism" which doesn't work in the NFL. Hughes needs to develop pass rushing moves, self-admittedly, before he'll step foot on an NFL field.

 

Sound familiar? Except we don't have the luxury to wait on someone's eventual development (if it ever happens). I still I have no idea how a coach whose job security was in question at the time, doesn't lobby the FO to take a NFL ready player like Brian Cushing. Fine, Orkapo/Matthews were seen as tweeners, wtf is Maybin? Take Cushing, a guy who played in a 4-3 under scheme for all 4 years, coached by former NFL coaches and players. I get angry just thinking about it.

 

The one thing I'll give the Bills is that at the time, they played a 4-3 scheme and felt that their #1 need was pass rush, particularly from the DE position. Mathews was only projected as a LB, never (at least that I saw) as a DE. And he's one of the most classic fits for a 3-4 OLB I've seen in a while. Wouldn't be nearly as good playing OLB in a 4-3 (moving to DE on passing downs). Still light years ahead of Maybin, though. Defensible pick at the time, bad pick in immediate hindsight, and unforgivable now that we've switched to a 3-4.

 

Cushing is not much of a pass rusher, much more the 3-4 ILB or 4-3 OLB type, like Kawika Mitchell. Plus, it's hard to fault the Bills for passing on the dude until we see him do anything special without the help of steroids. What's Shawne Merriman done since being busted? I give the Bills a pass here.

 

But passing on Orakpo to take Maybin? Orakpo was not really seen as a tweener, much more a straight DE. 260+ lbs. of solid muscle. Washington did wind up playing him at OLB on run downs, but he did most of his damage with his hand on the ground in pass situations, and he would've been an every-down DE for the Bills' 4-3 defense. And he still looks great as a pass-rushing OLB in Washington's new 3-4. There's no scheme in the NFL where Maybin could even come close to Orakpo in terms of on-field production. This is just unconscionable. And yes, there were some concerns at the time about Orakpo taking plays off, and the Bills have had some bad history with Texas players, but there were certainly plenty of red flags around Maybin as well. The bottom line is that these 2 guys play exactly the same position, but one is really good and one is really bad. The entire job of a scouting department is to figure out who will be good and who will not, and they royally botched it on this one.

[The Avenger]

To be fair -- and although I panned the Maybin pick relentlessly and still can't believe they made such a bone-headed choice -- I never read any mock draft that had Maybin dropping to the second or third round.

 

Therein lies the difference between guys who are mock draft pundits and guys who have jobs as talent evaluators in the NFL. You have to remember that even if all the pundits give a guy a high grade and expect him to be taken in a given round it doesn't mean the scouts and front office people agree. Look at Claussen - the pundits all said he'd go in the first round and several teams, including the Bills passed on hime multiple times before he was drafted in the mid second round. Every year there are guys the mock drafter project way higher than they actually go, meaning ALL of the scounts/front office people had a different valuation of a guy than the pundits did.

[berndogg]

Maybe Ralph IS Al Davis?

 

In all seriousness, I don't think that it's a coincidence that the two franchises who have made the worst personnel decisions this decade both have senile control freak owners.

[Sisyphean Bills]

Colt McCoy was a "no-brainer" to the talking heads.

[Wing Man]

Maybin was a first rounder on most boards.

 

My probem with the Bills drafting this decade is it reads like a mock draft. I get the overwhelming idea that the draft day brain trust, if you can call them that, was looking to see who they should be picking, not from their scouts or any meaningful evaluation of football talent, but from the same mock drafts we read. Over and over again, we reached for the position we needed based on the pundits' analysis. Until Nix, I haven't witnessed any sense of direction in our drafting analysis. The result is we repeatedly draft players at high number locations that bust like a water balloons dropped from 30,000ft.

 

Was anyone in the front office competent to make selections? We know it wasn't Modrak. I know I'll catch hell for this, but did Ralph care if anyone was competent so long as he was cheap?

[Mr. WEO]

Therein lies the difference between guys who are mock draft pundits and guys who have jobs as talent evaluators in the NFL.

Ah, there was no difference between the mock pundits and those who have jobs as talent evaluators in the NFL (the Bills any way), regarding Maybin.

[starrymessenger]

Therein lies the difference between guys who are mock draft pundits and guys who have jobs as talent evaluators in the NFL. You have to remember that even if all the pundits give a guy a high grade and expect him to be taken in a given round it doesn't mean the scouts and front office people agree. Look at Claussen - the pundits all said he'd go in the first round and several teams, including the Bills passed on hime multiple times before he was drafted in the mid second round. Every year there are guys the mock drafter project way higher than they actually go, meaning ALL of the scounts/front office people had a different valuation of a guy than the pundits did.

Our Front Office and scouts seem always to agree with the pundits. I guess thats what you do when you don't have a clue.

[plenzmd1]

Trading up for Losman, trading up for McCargo, taking Maybin in the first.

 

Yet.. not a bad record with low round and free agents, freaking strange.

 

but could that be cause our high round picks suck so much their is more opportunity on this team than on others? So if Hardy did not suck so much, does nelson make the roster?

[mob16151]

Hey, you must be an Easterbrook fan. So you must know he's a Buffalo guy (and that he spells his name "Gregg" with, as he says "the tasty double G."

 

Yea I read him occasionally.I can stand him half the time, which makes him my favorite ESPN writer. lol

[Peter]

There were a lot of people who had serious doubts about Maybin. Unfortunately, the Bills did not start having doubts until after they drafted him.

[Fieldys]

Maybin was considered a true stud coming out of college. And as others have stated, to say that he would have dropped to the 3rd round is revising history. Go back and look at the Penn State / Ohio State game in 2008. Maybin was a one man wrecking crew. I have no idea why he can't figure out the pro game or if he has no desire to. It is a bit strange.

 

From another site: "The most specific grading I saw for the players was compiled by a team of analysts on ESPN.com. There was only one category he (Orakpo) graded higher than Maybin (height-weight-speed—he is five pounds heavier), but six in which Maybin graded higher (durability, character, agility/quickness, instincts, pass rushing, run stopping). They were equal in the other three categories."