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The Most Scathing Draft Review You’ll Find- Rotoworld’s Evan Silva Rips Into Class and McDermott’s Personnel Evaluations


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We'll know in a few years.  But the Bills got the QB they wanted and it only cost them two 2nd's.  I think overall that's pretty good value.  Going in I was afraid they would give up the entire draft for someone.  So at the end of the day, I'm good with what happened.

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Just now, Agent 91 said:

Maybe he does. The guys haven't seen the field yet. Let's see what the next few seasons tell us.

 

Johnson is a nickel CB and Neal is a hybrid S/LB.  So no, they didn't draft 2 safeties, and I'd take the word of the Bills' coaches over Silva.  Same goes for his assessment of Edmunds.  And adding WR's to this team is a bad thing?

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47 minutes ago, dlonce said:

 

Allen should become a starter as well. WHEN is the question. 

I don’t believe he will sit the entire year.

He better be. Number 7 pick. He has to be a starter and we needed to do a better job getting him to the apex. Dez would be nice but he wont be here when josh starts so why do that. I would have loved to see a RT or a higher WR ti get Josh the type of receiver who plays to his strengths. I really believe in that type of rapport early

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9 hours ago, Doc said:

 

Johnson is a nickel CB and Neal is a hybrid S/LB.  So no, they didn't draft 2 safeties, and I'd take the word of the Bills' coaches over Silva.  Same goes for his assessment of Edmunds.  And adding WR's to this team is a bad thing?

All I am saying is digest all the info you can and make your decision later on. Johnson I dont want but I am intrigued by Neal. But I'll reserve my hate for once the film has been developed and these players have a resume. 

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7 hours ago, Agent 91 said:

All I am saying is digest all the info you can and make your decision later on. Johnson I dont want but I am intrigued by Neal. But I'll reserve my hate for once the film has been developed and these players have a resume. 

 

Exactly.  Save the grades for years later.  Especially if you (read: Silva) don't know where these guys were drafted to play.

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23 hours ago, Midwest1981 said:

Silva is a notoriously difficult grader, anyway, but this is a particularly scathing review. I don’t agree with all of it (though I agree 12, 53, & 56 was an exorbitant cost for 7), but I do have to say that I sure hope the Bills’ plan is to give Allen the Goff/Trubisky treatment. What I mean is giving him the superb coaching, receiving options, and line protection the Rams and Bears have made a conscious and concerted point to do the last two offseasons.

 

Right now Allen has very little of what he’ll need to succeed- and he already has some individual development to do, of course.

 

http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/nfl/79600/174/2018-afc-draft-grades?pg=1

 

I just re-read this and I had to laugh.  He does read like an old curmudgeon who just doesn't like the Bills and is determined to find fault with anything they do.

 

For example, Silva critiques the selection of Taron Johnson and Siran Neal in the 5th: "Johnson tested more like a safety than cornerback before the draft, and Neal’s NFL position is unclear after he shuttled between safety, linebacker, and corner in D-IAA." 

 

In interviews, Beane and McDermott have both made it clear that the positional versatility they see in Johnson and Neal were specifically what attracted them, that they had sent guys to scout them specifically.  IOW to our staff, for >5th round guys expected to contribute on ST and in specialty packages, it's a "feature not a bug" that they're positional hybrids but to Silva it's a reason to diss our draft.    I believe with regard to RayRay McCloud ST chops were specifically mentioned as well.

 

 

18 hours ago, CodeMonkey said:

We'll know in a few years.  But the Bills got the QB they wanted and it only cost them two 2nd's.  I think overall that's pretty good value.  Going in I was afraid they would give up the entire draft for someone.  So at the end of the day, I'm good with what happened.

 

Same here.  My fear in particular was that the Bills would mortgage this entire draft and most of next year's to trade up to 2 - and then draft the 'project guy' Allen.

So I have to give Beane props, he made a modest trade up, completely saved next year's draft, and even manage to draft two 1st round guys this year.  With the 2 1st round picks, the draft looks fairly full.  I think you have to give him props for having and executing a good draft strategy.  Whether the picks work out is the same question for every draft.

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It was an uninspiring draft for a regime that continues to ship out talented players in favor of "their guys".

 

Their guy's include Benjamin(bad knees for a 3rd), Tolbert(couldn't have gone worse), and Star (look what the analytics say). 

 

This is not a very analytical staff and when your top message is culture you are simply not dedicated to building the most talented roster needed to compete year in and year out. 

 

Their "try hard" roster will get beat up and their jobs will be handed off in 2 years to someone interested in acquiring talent.

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31 minutes ago, Jpsredemption said:

It was an uninspiring draft for a regime that continues to ship out talented players in favor of "their guys".

 

Their guy's include Benjamin(bad knees for a 3rd), Tolbert(couldn't have gone worse), and Star (look what the analytics say). 

 

This is not a very analytical staff and when your top message is culture you are simply not dedicated to building the most talented roster needed to compete year in and year out. 

 

Their "try hard" roster will get beat up and their jobs will be handed off in 2 years to someone interested in acquiring talent.

 

Yes, that first round was real uninspiring.  And they obviously avoided adding talent. :rolleyes:

 

I guess you missed last season.  You know, the one where they shipped out "talent" and still made the playoffs in the first year of what should have been a rebuilding season.

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I refuse to click the link and give Silva clicks. He was so butt hurt for some reason last year when McDermott benched Tyrod. He said McDermott put his ego above the team and he didn't want the Bills to make the playoffs because of that decision. He also bashed Bills fans for defending the move and basically said we're idiots because he thinks Tyrod is an special QB because of his running ability and low turnover percentage. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised to find out Silva and McDermott went to the same high school and McDermott got the girl they both liked. His disdain for McDermott seriously feels that ridiculous. 

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Silva is definitely terrible, passive aggressive and sometimes just flat out aggressive, I don't understand why some of these guys behave this way.  I understand that they're inundated with stupidity but what do expect when you're dealing with the lowest common denominator on twitter?   That said, I do agree that we were a bit reckless with this draft, especially given our needs, so I agree with him in many many ways.  Does seem like he has an ax to grind with our front office.  It's weird, some guys (Greg Gabriel immediately comes to mind) drink the McBeane koolaid by the buckets, while a select few hate what we're doing.  Can't win them all.   

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i will say, it went surprisingly to me. i have learned to not even try to guess their moves. however, i would rather look at it like this....

 

say we had our natural draft selections with the 21st pick in rounds 1,2,3.  we drafted allen, edmunds and harrison with our first 3 picks. we essentially lost nothing and crushed it.

 

honorable mention to rounds 4-7 and color me very,very impressed...especially finding the richie clone.

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1 hour ago, bouds said:

Silva is definitely terrible, passive aggressive and sometimes just flat out aggressive, I don't understand why some of these guys behave this way.  I understand that they're inundated with stupidity but what do expect when you're dealing with the lowest common denominator on twitter?   That said, I do agree that we were a bit reckless with this draft, especially given our needs, so I agree with him in many many ways.  Does seem like he has an ax to grind with our front office.  It's weird, some guys (Greg Gabriel immediately comes to mind) drink the McBeane koolaid by the buckets, while a select few hate what we're doing.  Can't win them all.   

 

There's a massive difference between the way guys like Silva (works for a smaller website, will never work for a team) and guys like Bucky Brooks / Jeremiah / Louis Riddick (have worked for teams) provide analysis.  Silva lives in the "hot take" culture and needs to drive clicks, so he makes aggressive stances.  It's done so places like here will say "look what this moron said about our team".  The guys who have worked for the teams and have been in the draft rooms understand how hard this process actually is and it's a little foolish to take a wild stance on a player or organization because the reality is no one knows how it's going to turn out for sure.  They also aren't going to trash teams because they want to keep the door open for a potential return.

 

Silva is trying to make a living and knows he never needs to sit with a guy like Beane in a job interview.  Gruden took a lot of heat because he was too nice to everyone because he knew he wanted to return to coaching.  On the flip side Collinsworth took a lot of heat for a long time for being too critical.  It soured relationships for him and he's had to pull way back in recent years because he was losing info he needed to get.  Guys like Schefter and Rapaport are never going to trash a team because the relationship is important.  The relationship means nothing to Silva, he's never going to break news, so he needs to be "hot takey" and aggressive to drive traffic.

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5 hours ago, Doc said:

 

Yes, that first round was real uninspiring.  And they obviously avoided adding talent. :rolleyes:

 

I guess you missed last season.  You know, the one where they shipped out "talent" and still made the playoffs in the first year of what should have been a rebuilding season.

Yes they made the playoffs on an Andy Dalton miracle and then hung 3 points on the board in a playoff game. 

 

The bar is set real high. We should be worshiping Beane and McDermott for lucking in to the playoff.

 

Truth is their talent acquisition hasn't been impressive and I'm not sure how anyone could reasonable dispute that.

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1 minute ago, Jpsredemption said:

Yes they made the playoffs on an Andy Dalton miracle and then hung 3 points on the board in a playoff game. 

 

The bar is set real high. We should be worshiping Beane and McDermott for lucking in to the playoff.

 

Truth is their talent acquisition hasn't been impressive and I'm not sure how anyone could reasonable dispute that.

 

Actually, by making the playoffs in their first year, the bar was set real high.  There is no other way to look at it.  You can talk about luck or the 3-point performance (hence the reason they traded-up to get a QB this year) all you want, but the fact is they won enough games to put themselves in position to make the playoffs when everyone thought they were trying to tank to get the 1st overall pick. Which means many of their moves must have been good ones.  So while I won't worship them, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. 

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On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 9:40 AM, Magox said:

The word is that the Bills were in a bidding war at 7 with the Cardinals and that they both coveted Allen.   Whether or not you personally like Allen is besides the point and you have to throw out the draft chart if you are going after your franchise QB, specially considering that they were trying to target him at 5.   If you are going after someone at 5 and trading 2 2nds would have been a deal at that slot but now you are still targeting the same guy at 7 and now all of a sudden it's not a good "value"?  That's stupid.

 

They "overpaid" because they were about to lose him to the Cards.  If you believe that you could be getting your franchise QB and you trade away 2 2nds to get him along with a 1st rounder, I would say that is not too much to give up.

When calculating what you gave up to select the qb that you targeted you have to put it in perspective. The Bills did not give up a first round pick for Allen. They traded positions in the first round with the Cardinals and kept their second round pick which they used in another first round trade up. When examining the two second round picks that were given up for the deal part of the calculation one can make is that the Bills gave up their second round pick and the second round pick that was acquired in a deal for Watkins. Last year, this new regime made deals to acquire extra picks for the expressed purpose to use them to acquire a high end qb prospect. That's exactly what they did. So when all is said and done the Bills still had a full draft (three picks in the first three rounds/two first round and a third round pick) and they still were able to get the qb they coveted. 

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On April 30, 2018 at 9:40 AM, Magox said:

The word is that the Bills were in a bidding war at 7 with the Cardinals and that they both coveted Allen.   Whether or not you personally like Allen is besides the point and you have to throw out the draft chart if you are going after your franchise QB, specially considering that they were trying to target him at 5.   If you are going after someone at 5 and trading 2 2nds would have been a deal at that slot but now you are still targeting the same guy at 7 and now all of a sudden it's not a good "value"?  That's stupid.

 

They "overpaid" because they were about to lose him to the Cards.  If you believe that you could be getting your franchise QB and you trade away 2 2nds to get him along with a 1st rounder, I would say that is not too much to give up.

Yeah but we don't know Allen was "our franchise" QB.  In fact, I suspect he was not our #1 choice.


We'll never know what set of permutations played out resulting in doing what we did.  Allen at 7 via trade with Tampa is how it played out.  Doesn't mean that was the plan or Allen our #1 target 5 minutes before the draft started.

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On 4/30/2018 at 9:35 AM, Midwest1981 said:

Silva is a notoriously difficult grader, anyway, but this is a particularly scathing review. I don’t agree with all of it (though I agree 12, 53, & 56 was an exorbitant cost for 7), but I do have to say that I sure hope the Bills’ plan is to give Allen the Goff/Trubisky treatment. What I mean is giving him the superb coaching, receiving options, and line protection the Rams and Bears have made a conscious and concerted point to do the last two offseasons.

 

Right now Allen has very little of what he’ll need to succeed- and he already has some individual development to do, of course.

 

http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/nfl/79600/174/2018-afc-draft-grades?pg=1

 

I can't disagree with Silva's review.  Over the last twenty or so years, "project QBs" like Allen who've been taken in the first round have been singularly unsuccessful, so the prospects of Allen's success aren't promising.

 

On 4/30/2018 at 9:40 AM, Magox said:

The word is that the Bills were in a bidding war at 7 with the Cardinals and that they both coveted Allen.   Whether or not you personally like Allen is besides the point and you have to throw out the draft chart if you are going after your franchise QB, specially considering that they were trying to target him at 5.   If you are going after someone at 5 and trading 2 2nds would have been a deal at that slot but now you are still targeting the same guy at 7 and now all of a sudden it's not a good "value"?  That's stupid.

 

They "overpaid" because they were about to lose him to the Cards.  If you believe that you could be getting your franchise QB and you trade away 2 2nds to get him along with a 1st rounder, I would say that is not too much to give up.

 

I remember claims circulating after the 2004 draft that the Bills "had" to get ahead of one team or another or lose Losman to some other team.   The reality turned out that Losman would have probably been available in the 2nd round, and if he hadn't been, it wouldn't have been a loss at all.  Hopefully, we won't have to say the same thing about Allen, but I'm not hopeful. 

 

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I guess my reaction, besides saying again that knee jerk grades for drafting (grades handed out right after the draft) are worthless, is also to say that there seems to be a great correlation between draft grades and who the grader likes as a QB prospect.  Silva obviously likes Rosen, hence the Bills had a terrible draft, having drafted Allen.  The other thing I've seen a lot of is the tendency of media observers to rate cornerbacks from the perspective on man coverage.  Multiple times I've seen mock drafters suggest Buffalo picks a cornerback because he has a great skill set for man coverage.  Hello!  Buffalo runs zone devense the vast majority of the time.  Taron Johnson's skill set is an excellent fit for a zone defense, particularly foro the slot, where Buffalo happens to have a need.  

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On 4/30/2018 at 9:48 AM, PIZ said:

It won't be long and you will hear about how the Arizona Cardinals coveted Josh Allen and how they were pissed about missing out on him.  Sure they will tell their fans that Josh Rosen is the guy they coveted, but the guy they wanted was Josh Allen.  I have 0 problem with Beane using #12 and the two 2nd round picks because that is the reason he acquired those picks, so NO ONE, including the Arizona Cardinals, could match him.  He even had an extra 1st if he needed to change things up and offer a different combo.  Beane mastered this draft and got his franchise QB.

 

 Good point.  If Allen DOES work out nicely for us, you won’t be hearing anyone go “man, I wish we had those second-round picks from 2018 back!”

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