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Most likely TANK theory I've heard thus far...


#34fan

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This bleacher report piece is pre-training camp June space filler material with no substance for any serious consideration with regard to the Bills and their offseason moves where they have acquired players to make up for many of the losses to the roster. Next!

 

I agree. Dont read BuffaloDung News.

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This is BS. No team has ever gone from cellar dweller to Super Bowl winner in a single season for the very simple reason that if a team jettisons its talent in order to tank, it will take years to rebuild it. That's especially true in the present NFL.

 

Use your head for something besides keeping your ears apart. A football team needs 53 players, not just a QB. A Super Bowl team needs real talent at numerous key positions and a lot of luck. There are only 7 rounds in the draft. About half of draft picks bust or fail to live up to expectations. The average career length for NFL players is just over 3 years IIRC, although that number was from a few years ago, so it may be a little longer. Then there's injuries and suspensions for rules violations. The salary cap imposes a limit on how much a team can spend in salaries in any given season. Rookie contracts for first rounders last for 5 years and for others only 4 years. Too many veteran players are not going to want to sign with a losing team if they can sign with a team with a realistic chance to make the Super Bowl -- and a team with recent playoff runs and repeated Super Bowl appearances constitutes a "realistic chance" as opposed to a team that went 0-16 the previous year, which is why Chris Hogan, Stephon Gilmore, and Mike Gillisless are all Patriots. Oh, and let's not forget the quality of scouting, drafting, and coaching.

 

Moreover, there's no guarantee that there's a franchise QB in any draft. In 2002, neither David Carr nor Joey Harrington were any good. In 2007, 2010, and 2013 none of the QBs were better than backups. In 2006, Jay Cutler was the best of a poor lot, although some considered him a franchise QB for a while.

 

Also remember:

  • In the 2001 draft, Michael Vick was the #1 pick, but Drew Brees was the best QB, first pick in the 2nd round (or what would be the end of the first round today).
  • In the 2004 draft, #1 pick Eli Manning was drafted and then traded to the Giants for #4 pick Phillip Rivers and a carload of draft picks. E Manning has won 2 Super Bowls with the Giants but since Rivers has only been there as a spectator, it's unlikely the streaky Manning would have done better.
  • In the 2005 draft, while Alex Smith was the #1 pick, Aaron Rodgers was the best QB at #18.
  • In the 2008 draft, Atlanta took Matt Ryan at #3 and Baltimore took Joe Flacco (who was Super Bowl MVP) at #18.
  • Despite all the hoopla about Indy tanking to get Andrew Luck in 2012, the best QB to come out of the 2012 draft was third rounder Russell Wilson who has already won a Super Bowl. Luck has not matured significantly beyond what he was as a rookie/sophomore QB, and he might not be as good a QB today as Tannehill (#12) and Kirk Cousins (4th round) who have matured professionally.
The Bills have been bad for nearly 20 years because the FO has been far more interested in making profit than in winning football games, and no QB is going to rescue the team from that reality.
Analytics continue to show that first round QB's fare far better than their later round counterparts overall...if you think you can find a "needle in a haystack" then OK, but your chances are far better with taking one in the first round.

 

Career AV/Game normalized for a 16 game season and 10 year career over the last 19 years of data shows QB first round picks have roughly double the career AV of 2nd round picks, and nearly all of the 2nd round value is coming from Brees and Dalton.

 

People want to say they were "brilliant" picks when you find a franchise QB in the later rounds but reality says they were just dumb luck. If the team thought they were a franchise QB they would have drafted them in round 1, not passed over them several times.

Edited by matter2003
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Hope you're right... As long as you don't mean 0-7... It's a mean schedule..

 

hope you're wrong. no, 0-7 never crossed my mind. as for the schedule, seems like just another excuse to look for reason they wont succeed.

 

the schedule is what it is and if they prepare, as I believe they will with this staff, they'll go out and contend.

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they wont be 1-6...

 

 

 

Hope you're right... As long as you don't mean 0-7... It's a mean schedule..

 

I see 1 loss before raiders game. And I think we beat raiders on our turf this time.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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hope you're wrong. no, 0-7 never crossed my mind. as for the schedule, seems like just another excuse to look for reason they wont succeed.

 

the schedule is what it is and if they prepare, as I believe they will with this staff, they'll go out and contend.

 

Once again, the schedule at this time of year is meaningless. There is NO correlation between this year and last year with most teams, esepcially once you factor in key injuries and suspensions for the game we are playing them in

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I see 1 loss before raiders game. And I think we beat raiders on our turf this time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Now how many coin flip games do you see? Odds are we don't win every single "maybe, but I like our odds" just like we probably don't lose all of those.

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...TANK?.....seriously?...haven't we been "IN THE TANK" for seventeen years without a forced effort?.......

 

:lol:

 

Everyone acts like it's the worst thing they ever heard... After seventeen years, I'm open to hear anything that there's a plan behind... Sure, it's speculative space-filler... But it's interesting to discuss. -If it wasn't, most of you wouldn't have descended on this thread as quickly as you did... It's not a bad word, TANK... To me it's sounds cleaner and less ambiguous than "REBUILD"... Plus, if it results in a ton of leverage come draft time, where's the damage?

 

It's not like we're protecting our reputations.

 

Sure, it's difficult, but let's be mature, and examine the merits of a season where the point might not be winning every game... Or, if you choose, continue pounding the table with shout's of "playoffs NOW!"

 

This board should be big enough to accommodate both perspectives sans the insults.

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You are missing the point. When the team's stated and advertised goal is to only make the playoffs then what you get is a team that is barely good enough to maybe make the playoffs. Yes it takes some time to rebuild (not many years, look at the Falcons) but if you have a clear vision that we are building a SUPER BOWL team which starts with getting a SUPER BOWL CALIBER QUARTERBACK then you are all in on winning at all costs. We have not been building a Super Bowl team. We have been building a wild card playoff team. We don't have a quarterback so let's be as good as we can with what we have and that's not how you build a team. That's how you build a .500 team that competes but isn't good enough to win. And that's h you get stuck in limbo for 20 years

 

I'm not missing the point. Setting impossible goals and achieving them is the stuff of fiction, not reality. In the real world, setting attainable short term goals sets the stage for accomplishing more ambitious long term goals, and that's true for school children and football teams. A student who doesn't master multiplication is never going to become a mathematician or an economist or an accountant. A football team that doesn't learn how to win the game they're currently playing is never going to go on to the Super Bowl.

 

Furthermore, the Bills have not been building a wild card team. They've been "building" a team that wins just enough to keep fans happy enough to have respectable attendance while producing plenty of profit. You can see that in the way they've drafted and in the players they've drafted, retained, and sent packing as well as most of the HCs they've hired over the past 17 years.

  • Example 1: In 2002, they traded their 2003 first round draft pick for Drew Bledsoe. He set Bills passing records and the Bills finished 8-8 without a defense. In 2003, in order to build up the defense, the Bills brought in pricey FAs like London Fletcher and Takeo Spikes, but they stripped Bledsoe of his receivers: #2 WR Peerless Price, HB Larry Centers, and TE Jay Riersma. They wasted the first round pick they got from Atlanta on RB Willis McGahee who didn't play at all in 2003 when they had the serviceable Travis Henry as their starter when they could have drafted a WR, TE, or a RB who could catch the ball.
  • Example 2: in 2004, the Bills traded back into the first round to get JP Losman at #22, giving up their 2005 first round pick -- for the 4th best QB in the draft. They still had Drew Bledsoe, so they weren't in desperate straits, but Bledsoe was getting in the fans' doghouse because like most QBs he needed protection and targets, and with the Bills he had neither. Losman could very well have been available in the second round or, if not, they could have taken Matt Schaub who lasted until the fourth round and turned out much better than Losman. Better yet, if the Bills had kept their 2005 first rounder, they could have taken Aaron Rodgers at #18 since Rodgers lasted until Green Bay's turn at #25.

 

FYI, a team has absolutely no chance to get to the Super Bowl if it doesn't at least make the playoffs.

Edited by SoTier
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:lol:

 

Everyone acts like it's the worst thing they ever heard... After seventeen years, I'm open to hear anything that there's a plan behind... Sure, it's speculative space-filler... But it's interesting to discuss. -If it wasn't, most of you wouldn't have descended on this thread as quickly as you did... It's not a bad word, TANK... To me it's sounds cleaner and less ambiguous than "REBUILD"... Plus, if it results in a ton of leverage come draft time, where's the damage?

 

It's not like we're protecting our reputations.

 

Sure, it's difficult, but let's be mature, and examine the merits of a season where the point might not be winning every game... Or, if you choose, continue pounding the table with shout's of "playoffs NOW!"

 

This board should be big enough to accommodate both perspectives sans the insults.

 

I think the problem with tanking or even just being bottom 5 is that it isn't necessarily successful and it is demoralizing to players and fans alike.

 

The great franchises didn't have to tank to build their team. Patriots, Packers, Steelers, Seahawks, didn't have to tank to get where they were, so is tanking really the formula for success? Jacksonville has had 6 top 5 picks in the last 6 years and look at them? Cleveland?

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I think the problem with tanking or even just being bottom 5 is that it isn't necessarily successful and it is demoralizing to players and fans alike.

 

The great franchises didn't have to tank to build their team. Patriots, Packers, Steelers, Seahawks, didn't have to tank to get where they were, so is tanking really the formula for success? Jacksonville has had 6 top 5 picks in the last 6 years and look at them? Cleveland?

 

Think of it as a strategic reduction in output pending draft order verification. :)

 

Most of the teams you cited endured lousy seasons before breakthroughs... -Just not 17 of those lousy seasons... AND success for them generally meant the acquisition of a Franchise QB.

 

A 3-13 season could have us sitting pretty with a fistful of options come draft time... Those options could translate into stud picks that could produce as early as 2018... Please understand, I'm not trying to sell this thing outright.

 

I'm just dragging it out into the light so we can all have a look at it... It's not a great option, but at this point, it sounds less frustrating than 8-8 with another failed playoff bid. -Doesn't it?

 

 

I have a hard time believing we can ask a steer of professional athletes towards tanking....their brains are just not wired that way....they would lose all respect for the new coaching staff rather quickly....

 

:lol: I KNOW several current/past pro athletes... AND have met some of their agents... I think you could steer a pro-athlete towards anything there's money at the end of... Especially if there's an understanding that this is

 

what's happening from the start.

Edited by #34fan
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hope you're wrong. no, 0-7 never crossed my mind. as for the schedule, seems like just another excuse to look for reason they wont succeed.

 

the schedule is what it is and if they prepare, as I believe they will with this staff, they'll go out and contend.

I keep on hearing that it is a tough schedule and I just dont see it.....

 

Yes...there are some tough teams in there but we literally have a team in our division TRYING to lose games.....Miami isnt going to run on us for 200 yards a game again...not with Reggie Ragland at LB

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Interesting about clay getting cut. Would cost us 4.5 mil extra this year but opens a lot of space next year Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It turns my stomach that an average to good TE counts 9 million toward our salary cap. I am happy beyond words that Whaley is gone.

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