THE ROCKPILE REVIEW - Credit Where Credit Is Due

[Lfod]

The Pegulas have proven to me that they are great owners. I won't get into any debate over it because my mind isn't changing. I've seen enough to know they care about the team and eventually will get it right.

 

McDermott has proven to me that he is a great coach. It wasn't about sneaking into the playoffs either. It's about how hard he ran his training camp before the season started. Just the reports out of training camp did it for me. Seeing the reports of drills never seen run. Having players complain and fight because it's to hard. All those sweet sweet defensive turnovers. Oh and benching Tyrod Taylor. The offense kinda sucked but at least my dude tried. 

 

Brandon Beane in shades looks like an Agent from the Matrix and that's good enough for me. He drafted one of the Top 4 QBs and didn't give up the future. Glorious!

 

I won't she'd even a spec of doubt upon them. They are the people I support and believe in. I can feel the season approaching and it's time to let go of the doubt and just be a Bills fan. 

Edited May 23, 2018 by Lfod

[Maine-iac]

4 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

All true.   But it sure is nice to root for a team that isn't so obviously disorganized.  It's nice to root for a team that is going to get the most out of its players.   It's nice to root for a team that says - and believes - that every position is subject to an open competition.   It's nice to root for a team with the courage to say, "You know what?   Sammy just isn't doing it for us.   Let's move on."  

 

 

I haven't seen anything yet that makes me think McDermott can turn the offense around and Daboll's  list of accomplishments was not enough to sell me on him either.  On paper he actually looks worse than Dennison if that's possible.  Now we have a big armed project that we've wagered  a 1st and 2 2nd round picks on and will have to push into the starting lineup by at least next year.  Defense or no defense if Daboll doesn't get it together and manage to bring this QB along it will be yet another pass in the repeated cycle from bad defense to bad offense and around again.

[stuvian]

16 minutes ago, BadLandsMeanie said:

Maybe but Iooked into it a bit. Beane had said he had not met with all of them yet. And they he didn't have his board finalized. And the Jets were reported to have done way more work on this early on. But since everyone is lying all the time about the draft, you never know!

there's no question the Jets got there first. I suspect they were at a similar place in their QB evaluations and just decided they needed to be at 3 to get one of the top 3. This is the first such move in all my years of draft watching and looks to be precedent setting. The Jets GM is near the end of his contract and needs to be much more aggressive to keep his job

[Bring it]

Yes, the jets got the 3rd pick. Remember they had a much higher pick to deal to get there. Beane did what he could without going for broke to get to 12 from 21. It’s what he did to get our Qb and keep that other 1st that impressed me. Without it they had no shot at Edmunds. 

 

Toss in Phillips and this is could go down as one of the greatest drafts in Bills history!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

31 minutes ago, BadLandsMeanie said:

Maybe but Iooked into it a bit. Beane had said he had not met with all of them yet. And they he didn't have his board finalized. And the Jets were reported to have done way more work on this early on. But since everyone is lying all the time about the draft, you never know!

 

So...have you seen where Maccagnan said he had met with all of the QB by March 17 when they made the trade?

And do you think Maccagnan had his board finalized by that date?

 

 

[BadLandsMeanie]

2 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

So...have you seen where Maccagnan said he had met with all of the QB by March 17 when they made the trade?

And do you think Maccagnan had his board finalized by that date?

 

 

I don't recall the details really. I have  a feeling you know though. ?

 

I just recall from having read a number of articles that the Jets put in a ton of effort that was unusual even by NFL standards.

[Shaw66]

8 hours ago, BadLandsMeanie said:

I don't recall the details really. I have  a feeling you know though. ?

 

I just recall from having read a number of articles that the Jets put in a ton of effort that was unusual even by NFL standards.

I wonder about exactly what went on.   You saw, I suppose, the MMQB article that detailed all the investigation the Jets did into the QBs.   I know it made me wonder why the Bills didn't do that.  They had the same need as the Jets.  Well, there are several points about that:

 

1.  The Bills have a scouting department, and it's probably the same size, more of less, as the Jets.   I don't assume for a second that the Bills didn't have scouts at a lot of Darnold's games, just like the Jets did.   Maybe the Jets had their GM there and the Bills didn't, but the Bills had a serious eyes looking at the QB prospects all fall.   That's what scouts do in the fall.   They had a ton of data about the QBs.

 

2.  It may be true that Beane hadn't spent a lot of time looking at the QB prospects by the time the Jets traded up.  But that doesn't mean that the Bills as a whole hadn't spent a lot of time.   See 1, above.

 

3.  By January 1, 2018, the Jets knew they'd pick 6th and the Bills knew they had something like a 21 and 22.   That meant the Bills knew that they weren't likely to be picking in the top 4 or 5 in the first round, because they didn't have the draft capital and they didn't want to impair their 2019 draft.   It's called discipline.   If the Bills were picking 5th or 7th in the first round, you can be pretty sure that Beane would have been looking at the QBs intensely in January and February and the Bills might have traded up like the Jets.  

 

4.  It was clear, at least to fans looking at the draft and to the reporters covering it, there wasn't an Andrew Luck, a Cam Newton or an RGIII.   That is, there wasn't one guy, and certainly not two or three, who has a high probability of being a stud QB.   What there were were four guys who looked like they deserved to go in the top 10.   That meant that EVERY QB in the draft was a crap shoot.   That, in turn, meant that although you'd like to have you pick of the four, like the Browns did, your actual probability of getting a successful long-term guy with your third or even fourth choice wasn't all that much different than your first choice.  Football Outsiders, if I recall, essentially had Mayfield first and the other three were essentially pick 'em.  Some people had Darnold sure fire first, others had Rosen.   But everyone recognized potential flaws.   In other words, gettings one of the top four was more important than getting your first choice.   That's not to say you didn't want your first choice - the Bills were happy to trade up to get Allen instead of Rosen (if the Bills didn't care which they got, they could have sat at 12 and one would have fallen).  What I'm saying is that it wasn't as important to get into the top 3 or 4 or 5 as it would have been if there were only two good prospects in the draft. 

 

The point is you play the hand that's dealt.   The Jets didn't out-maneuver the Bills by moving early.  The Bills knew in January that it would be difficult for them to get into the top 5 - 21 and 22 together wouldn't have gotten them close.  They also knew there wasn't an Andrew Luck to make it worth packaging everything they had - 21, 22, two seconds, next year's first, to go get one player.   So they didn't have their eyes on the Colts' pick at three.   The Jets were in a different position.  They were at 6, so getting to 1, 2 or 3 were realistic possibilities.  Maybe they outmaneuvered the Bills in that they consciously tanked the 2017 season (something I'm glad my team didn't do), but once the season ended, they just played the hand they were dealt.  

 

I've become enthusiastic about Allen.   I think he and Darnold were the two best QBs in the draft, and I don't know how to rate them against each other.  Therefore, I don't really care that the Jets got Darnold and the Bills got Allen.  What I DO care is that the Bills didn't trade up to 3 or 2 or 1, because I'd much rather have Allen and Edmunds than just Darnold.   In other words, getting "outmaneuvered" by the Jets meant the Bills got one of the best linebackers in the draft.  

11 hours ago, Bring it said:

Yes, the jets got the 3rd pick. Remember they had a much higher pick to deal to get there. Beane did what he could without going for broke to get to 12 from 21. It’s what he did to get our Qb and keep that other 1st that impressed me. Without it they had no shot at Edmunds. 

 

Toss in Phillips and this is could go down as one of the greatest drafts in Bills history!

Whoops!  Just saw this.  You made the same point I just did about getting Edmunds, and about the Jets starting with 6.  

 

You can't run your draft by watching your divisional opponents and trying to get an advantage over them.   You have to build your team as well as you can.   I mean, take the extreme example.   Suppose the Bills had Andrew Luck.   Would anyone be saying the Bills should have hurried to get to #3 so they could take Darnold to keep him from the Jets?   Of course not, that's absurd.  You'd rather have talent on the Bills than the Jets, to be sure, but that doesn't mean you should run your personnel department by trying to get every good player before the Jets do.   

[Hapless Bills Fan]

19 hours ago, HappyDays said:

 

I will give them credit for one move - trading up for Dion Dawkins. Right now that is looking like a very good move. Every other move they made on offense last year looks bad for right now. Trading up for Zay Jones, awful. Trading for Kelvin Benjamin, undecided at best? He had known knee problems and never really put it all together in Carolina but we'll see what he does this year. Starting Ducasse over Miller, bad. Hiring Dennison/changing the run scheme, bad. Starting Peterman against the Chargers, awful.

What have they done that makes you confident? Buddy Nix drafted a QB in the 1st round too. Having a plan isn't the same as making good decisions. So far I've loved the decisions they've made on defense but mostly disliked what they've done of offense. That being said they have the next 2 years to put an offense together so I'm not saying they definitely can't do it, just that they haven't proven anything yet.

 

For myself, I'd put more of their moves into the "undecided" bin.  Rookies do struggle.  Benjamin "never really put it all together" to the tune of two near-1000 yd seasons in CAR.  Miller vs Ducasse:  I saw at least one scouting breakdown that showed how Ducasse was performing better in the blocking scheme Castillo was trying to implement - which may have been a bad choice overall for the personnel, but it's a bit of a double-dip to critique both the player personnel choice and the scheme.

 

Starting Peterman against the Chargers was Dennison's final straw, I think.

 

What I see is a pattern where Beane (and perhaps McDermott) seem to like to "go for the gusto" with high risk/high reward moves.  In Dennison, they got an OC who was potentially a very good hire - he had been the OC on various high-performing teams - but had question marks as to how much was him, how much was Kubiak.  High risk.  After one season, it was clear that Dennison failed on several important fronts - being in touch with players' game readiness from the practice field (not just the coaching rooms), being quick enough to adapt  overall offensive scheme to his players, and to adapt play calling to the defense (someone on Cover1 did a great assessment of how this was involved in the NO blowout).  So they reassessed him as high risk/low reward and moved on.

 

 

 

 

[elroy16]

13 hours ago, BadLandsMeanie said:

Maybe but Iooked into it a bit. Beane had said he had not met with all of them yet. And they he didn't have his board finalized. And the Jets were reported to have done way more work on this early on. But since everyone is lying all the time about the draft, you never know!

 

 

Are teams allowed to talk to players during the season, or just during the combine or individual work outs?

 

Beane specifically said, I haven't talked to these guys for more than 15 minutes. It gave me the impression that he probably knew what they thought after viewing the tape, but he wanted to get to know the players and hear about their football experience versus strictly seeing them play.

 

I believe last year McDermott said something like, "I want to smell the players breath" after getting hired but before OTAs, meaning he wanted to get up close and personal and really get to know them. I'm guessing that this is similar to what Beane meant and why he wasn't ready to make a call on these QB's until the entire process was done. 

Edited May 23, 2018 by elroy16

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

For myself, I'd put more of their moves into the "undecided" bin.  Rookies do struggle.  Benjamin "never really put it all together" to the tune of two near-1000 yd seasons in CAR.  Miller vs Ducasse:  I saw at least one scouting breakdown that showed how Ducasse was performing better in the blocking scheme Castillo was trying to implement - which may have been a bad choice overall for the personnel, but it's a bit of a double-dip to critique both the player personnel choice and the scheme.

 

Starting Peterman against the Chargers was Dennison's final straw, I think.

 

What I see is a pattern where Beane (and perhaps McDermott) seem to like to "go for the gusto" with high risk/high reward moves.  In Dennison, they got an OC who was potentially a very good hire - he had been the OC on various high-performing teams - but had question marks as to how much was him, how much was Kubiak.  High risk.  After one season, it was clear that Dennison failed on several important fronts - being in touch with players' game readiness from the practice field (not just the coaching rooms), being quick enough to adapt  overall offensive scheme to his players, and to adapt play calling to the defense (someone on Cover1 did a great assessment of how this was involved in the NO blowout).  So they reassessed him as high risk/low reward and moved on.

 

 

 

 

I don't think it's high-risk high-reward.   I wouldn't call Dennison a high-risk, high-reward situation.  McD needed an OC, and almost everyone has to hire untested OCs.   The good ones become HCs or stay where they are.   Dennison was your typical untested OC with a good pedigree.   As such I think he was ordinary risk.   

 

I think the McBeane approach is they want high performance, and they make decisions quickly about guys they don't think are high performers.   So Watkins was gone quickly.   They didn't really try to keep Matthews.   Dareus got moved.   Frankly, I'd guess there were some things they saw in Darby they didn't like.   

 

Dennison was a quick decision.  If in fact Peterman was Dennison's decision, I think you're right - that sealed his fate.   The offense didn't look like it was going anywhere, anyway, but for Peterman to have been as unprepared as he was for prime time meant that Dennison wasn't performing or wasn't evaluating or both.  

 

Beane wouldn't trade his 2019 picks, and he wouldn't give up 12 AND 22 to move up to the top of the draft.   That's caution and prudence, not high-risk.    He traded up twice, and you could say he rolled the dice, but he HAD to get a QB - he had no choice, and Edmunds was about as safe a pick as you could make in the middle of the first round.  

 

 

[Soda Popinski]

On 5/22/2018 at 2:14 PM, HappyDays said:

 

I will give them credit for one move - trading up for Dion Dawkins. Right now that is looking like a very good move. Every other move they made on offense last year looks bad for right now. Trading up for Zay Jones, awful. Trading for Kelvin Benjamin, undecided at best? He had known knee problems and never really put it all together in Carolina but we'll see what he does this year. Starting Ducasse over Miller, bad. Hiring Dennison/changing the run scheme, bad. Starting Peterman against the Chargers, awful.

What have they done that makes you confident? Buddy Nix drafted a QB in the 1st round too. Having a plan isn't the same as making good decisions. So far I've loved the decisions they've made on defense but mostly disliked what they've done of offense. That being said they have the next 2 years to put an offense together so I'm not saying they definitely can't do it, just that they haven't proven anything yet.

Who gets credit for trading Kiko Alonso for Shady straight up?   Because that was just bad business

[Bring it]

7 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

I wonder about exactly what went on.   You saw, I suppose, the MMQB article that detailed all the investigation the Jets did into the QBs.   I know it made me wonder why the Bills didn't do that.  They had the same need as the Jets.  Well, there are several points about that:

 

1.  The Bills have a scouting department, and it's probably the same size, more of less, as the Jets.   I don't assume for a second that the Bills didn't have scouts at a lot of Darnold's games, just like the Jets did.   Maybe the Jets had their GM there and the Bills didn't, but the Bills had a serious eyes looking at the QB prospects all fall.   That's what scouts do in the fall.   They had a ton of data about the QBs.

 

2.  It may be true that Beane hadn't spent a lot of time looking at the QB prospects by the time the Jets traded up.  But that doesn't mean that the Bills as a whole hadn't spent a lot of time.   See 1, above.

 

3.  By January 1, 2018, the Jets knew they'd pick 6th and the Bills knew they had something like a 21 and 22.   That meant the Bills knew that they weren't likely to be picking in the top 4 or 5 in the first round, because they didn't have the draft capital and they didn't want to impair their 2019 draft.   It's called discipline.   If the Bills were picking 5th or 7th in the first round, you can be pretty sure that Beane would have been looking at the QBs intensely in January and February and the Bills might have traded up like the Jets.  

 

4.  It was clear, at least to fans looking at the draft and to the reporters covering it, there wasn't an Andrew Luck, a Cam Newton or an RGIII.   That is, there wasn't one guy, and certainly not two or three, who has a high probability of being a stud QB.   What there were were four guys who looked like they deserved to go in the top 10.   That meant that EVERY QB in the draft was a crap shoot.   That, in turn, meant that although you'd like to have you pick of the four, like the Browns did, your actual probability of getting a successful long-term guy with your third or even fourth choice wasn't all that much different than your first choice.  Football Outsiders, if I recall, essentially had Mayfield first and the other three were essentially pick 'em.  Some people had Darnold sure fire first, others had Rosen.   But everyone recognized potential flaws.   In other words, gettings one of the top four was more important than getting your first choice.   That's not to say you didn't want your first choice - the Bills were happy to trade up to get Allen instead of Rosen (if the Bills didn't care which they got, they could have sat at 12 and one would have fallen).  What I'm saying is that it wasn't as important to get into the top 3 or 4 or 5 as it would have been if there were only two good prospects in the draft. 

 

The point is you play the hand that's dealt.   The Jets didn't out-maneuver the Bills by moving early.  The Bills knew in January that it would be difficult for them to get into the top 5 - 21 and 22 together wouldn't have gotten them close.  They also knew there wasn't an Andrew Luck to make it worth packaging everything they had - 21, 22, two seconds, next year's first, to go get one player.   So they didn't have their eyes on the Colts' pick at three.   The Jets were in a different position.  They were at 6, so getting to 1, 2 or 3 were realistic possibilities.  Maybe they outmaneuvered the Bills in that they consciously tanked the 2017 season (something I'm glad my team didn't do), but once the season ended, they just played the hand they were dealt.  

 

I've become enthusiastic about Allen.   I think he and Darnold were the two best QBs in the draft, and I don't know how to rate them against each other.  Therefore, I don't really care that the Jets got Darnold and the Bills got Allen.  What I DO care is that the Bills didn't trade up to 3 or 2 or 1, because I'd much rather have Allen and Edmunds than just Darnold.   In other words, getting "outmaneuvered" by the Jets meant the Bills got one of the best linebackers in the draft.  

Whoops!  Just saw this.  You made the same point I just did about getting Edmunds, and about the Jets starting with 6.  

 

You can't run your draft by watching your divisional opponents and trying to get an advantage over them.   You have to build your team as well as you can.   I mean, take the extreme example.   Suppose the Bills had Andrew Luck.   Would anyone be saying the Bills should have hurried to get to #3 so they could take Darnold to keep him from the Jets?   Of course not, that's absurd.  You'd rather have talent on the Bills than the Jets, to be sure, but that doesn't mean you should run your personnel department by trying to get every good player before the Jets do.   

Actually, I think you made the point about Beane getting Edmunds by not letting that other 1st go in an earlier topic. I thought it definitely applied here and was worth repeating! He did an impressive job for a first draft as a GM!

 

[Shaw66]

4 minutes ago, Bring it said:

Actually, I think you made the point about Beane getting Edmunds by not letting that other 1st go in an earlier topic. I thought it definitely applied here and was worth repeating! He did an impressive job for a first draft as a GM!

 

Impressive until Roseen goes to four Pro Bowls in his first five years!!! 

 

I agree, he did a good job.   But as we all know, there is only one measure of success in the NFL, and it ain't draft picks.  

 

Time will tell.  

[Bring it]

4 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Impressive until Roseen goes to four Pro Bowls in his first five years!!! 

 

I agree, he did a good job.   But as we all know, there is only one measure of success in the NFL, and it ain't draft picks.  

 

Time will tell.  

Very true!