2007 NFL Draft pix

[obie_wan]

I'm not against starting rookies at all. What I am for is having the team perform better amd I think the Bills will emphasize performing better and making a serious playoff run in 07 bigtime. I think that this is going to be a definite commitment for Ralph and Marv given the long drought in playoff appearances and also the fact that their is no gurantee for the Golden Boys to be running this team forever.

 

The key here it would seem to me is an idea that most seem to agree on that the MLB plays a crucial role in the Tampa 2 and that in particular a good MLB performance is going to be based in large part on the ability of the MLB to make good play reads and not be fooled much by OCs and opposing QBs.

 

I simply do not see a rookie making reads like an NFL vet. Like it or not Willis is a great athlete but a rookie is not gonna be a vet. If I am Tom Brady or any competent NFL QN, I am salivating over the opportunity to go up against a rookie MLB in the tampa 2.

 

I just do not see Marv and Ralph being willing to subject their team to going through the growing pains of Willis simply learning to become a vet through making natural mistakes any rookie MLB will make.

 

yeah - you are right

 

it's better to have journeyman vet who understands where he is supposed to be - but can't get there due to his lack of speed, size and skill than to draft and play a young stud who can actually make plays but may be out of position once in a while.

 

How could I have been so blind.

[Pyrite Gal]

yeah - you are right

 

it's better to have journeyman vet who understands where he is supposed to be - but can't get there due to his lack of speed, size and skill than to draft and play a young stud who can actually make plays but may be out of position once in a while.

 

How could I have been so blind.

 

I think we can do far better than having a journeyman vet as our MLB starter and far better than having Willis as our MLB starter.

 

Given the general public word that the Bills judge Crowell to be back to normal even right now and assuming he stays on track with his rehab, moving him to MLB strikes me as a superior option to drafting Willis as MLB starter. We would still have an LB slot to fill and would need the depth anyway. but having this OLB hole can be filled by acquiring one of several FAs beginning with going after Briggs. In addition, by looking to fill the opening at OLB, it makes it quite tenable to look to the draft and players such as Timmons and Poluszny are seemingly even higher ranked among draft picks by the pundits than Willis from what I see.

 

In addition, though the likelihood is that F-B is gone, I am virtually certain that even despite his failings in stuffing the run, he would be a better performer than Willis at MLB and i would take this option over starting Willis.

 

Sticking with F-B at MLB does raise the concerns that our run defense would still be inadequate with him. However, judging our run D problems to be based in his play is a misread from what I see. He may well initiate tackles to far downfield but I think this problem begins with our DT failings as they should be stopping runners prior to them getting to the second level where LBs are positioned.

 

Even to the extent that one wants to emphasize that Fletch should be hitting and filling the gaps harder. I think that Jauron/Fewell clearly emphasized him being a cover guy (see his league leading LB INT numbers and along with complaints about F-B being too light, one also needs to acknowledge the role of our scheme in playing him back off the line. We might well be switching from F-B tackling guys late to Willis tackling guys late.

[R. Rich]

I use a computer model to simulate the 2007 NFL Draft. Visual Basic on MSExcel platform (if you care).

My 5 round simulation has the Bills picking the following:

 

1) Patrick Willis, ILB Ole Miss

2) Joe Staley, OT Central Mich

3) Ben Grubbs, OG Oregon

4) Jonathan Wade, CB Tennessee

5) traded to St Louis for DE Hargrove

 

My priority lists ILB as top priority. Assuming Flether-Baker bolts and no free agent is signed. If Bills get Briggs, June, Adalius Thomas. etc, I will adjust my model accordingly and repost the results.

 

Assume Clements also leaves, but I assume that Youboty is as good as most any draft pick. Nonetheless, Bill will likely expend a day 1 pick or early day 2 on a CB.

 

DT also a possibility, but model could not find adequate value when Bills picked.

 

Please review at www.drafttek.com. I welcome comments.

 

Warren@Drafttek.com

 

 

Not bad value there, though I highly doubt a few of those moves will be feasible (Grubbs, who is from Auburn, in round 3, when he's moving up the draft boards now? June as a FA signing? Not unless we want an undersized LB who won't help to improve the run D much), but if they were, it wouldn't be too bad.

[2020 Our Year For Sure]

I disagree with your take on the "growing pains" of rookie defensive players. These are the last 8 winners of the defensive rookie of the year award:

 

Jevon Kearse

Brian Urlacher

Kendrell Bell

Julius Peppers

Terrell Suggs

Jonathan Vilma

Shawne Merriman

DeMeco Ryans

 

Six out of those eight players are pure pass rushers, an area of the game where physical ability can reasonably overcome inexperience. Only one of them was asked to play middle linebacker in a cover 2 defense. This does nothing to prove that anyone other than the freakish Brian Urlacher can play MLB in the cover 2 as a rookie.

[Pyrite Gal]

Many thanks for your contributions and work regarding the simulation. Still, the basic idea of trying to reflect (some would say reduce) the draft to a mechanistic process which can be reflected in a formula (even a formula which is being improved in its application by getting more nuanced need judgments for websights such as TSW) simply must have the prominently admitted limitation that the draft simply is not dictated nor defined by mechanistic approaches only.

 

If one wanted to state this in an airy-fairy kind of way one would speak to the human element being a key to making the draft interesting because it is unpredictable or one can state in a difficult to argue against well factual way by simply pointing out deals completely alter the draft outcomes (thus a need that may be simulated in today's order totally changes in the blink of an eye to be met far earlier or far later than the model predicts.

 

How do you deal with this limitation and to what extent are disclaimers about this reality said numerous times so as to make the drafttek approach truly accurate?

 

I guess what I find troubling about the drafttek tool is that there is a point of disagreement among even us psychotic Bills watchers about the nature of our needs and how best to account for it.

 

In general, we all agree that improving our ability to stop the run is a lead need for this team. However, there are large differences in:

 

1. Judgments on how to improve our run D (I argue for example that this task is best accomplished through improving the DL and that an MLB upgrade is important but secondary to this need. If one gets the same performance out of our DL as 2006 the MLB will make tackles downfield the same way Fletcher does even if he is replaced by a better tackler.

 

2. Scheme issues are all important as I argue also that even if one assumes a better tackler at MLB, the results will likely be the same as with F-B as the coaches will emphasize that the MLB do the same thing Fletcher did for us which is emphasize the role of the MLB in pass coverage in the Tampa 2. This emphasis is strongly indicated by Fletch leading both NFL LBs and the team in INTs.

 

3.This means a totally different approach in satisfying even agreed upon needs. Given the role of the MLB in this D emphasizing pass coverage, it makes complete sense to me that you dismiss completely the idea of finding a n MLB starter in the draft and instead use your significant FA resources to find a proven commodity that you know exactly what he can do in the deep zone coverage emphasized in our D by Jauron/Fewell.

 

In essence, I think the simulation represents great work, but the chosen emphasis on getting an immediate MLB starter from the draft simply seems wholly misguided to me.

 

When one adds on top of that while the theory of building a team for the future and thus a BPA approach is by far to me in a perfect world the way to build a winner. One thing which is clear given the Bills 0 for this millenium playoff record and given thst the Golden Boys undoubtedly must have a the future is now approach that is against what I think is the right way to build a team in a perfect world, the imperfections of reality point this team toward only looking at LB in this weak LB draft as development prospects if at all.

 

What do you think it says for your use of draftek if in fact the Bills go completely away from drafting an LB first or in fact they may not even draft one at all depending upon how this draft plays out.

 

My suggestion would be that you might run different versions of the simulations making different assumptions about what the Bills are prioritizing. While this approach would be cumbersome as it gives multiple options for an equation which is chock full of dependent variables and one loses the feeling of accuracy with these many acknowledged variables, quite frankly any suggestion of accuracy regarding the draft is an illusion anyway. A run on a certain position simply makes a particular draft a particular draft.

 

For example while it is true safties are not normally drafted in the top 10 and in fact they often are not even taken in the first round as comparable safeties can often be found later in the draft. Last year, the reality was that Oakland (which has a history of doing wacky things like the unheard of taking of a kicker in the first- I think this worked so so or taking apunter in the first- I think the choice of Ray Guy worked brilliantly).

 

Once Oak took Huff, the Bills had little choice about what to do with their pick as they set up a situation where they had to replace the cut Milloy with a draftee and once Huff was off the table given that the very next picker was likely to take an SS on the first day, they had little choice but to take Whitner even if he was no better than a pick in the 20s.

 

This is borne out in that the Fins seeing this run and judging Allen to be a far better choice than the next SS (likely Bullocks) they took Allen at #15 which would have been a high pick even for Whitner.

 

Even still today their are folks who lament us taking Whitner with our #8 and support this argument by pointing out that incredibly few safeties are taken in the top 10 historically.

 

Yeah, but quite frankly who cares as that was history and they had a choice to make based on reality. We needed an SS from this draft and one of the two targeted were gone and passing on this or trading down would simply have been bad football.

 

In the end, draftek would be a better used too IMHO if it somehow reflected different realities. It may be cumbersome but not to do this means that as soon as their is a significant departure from the expected reality that effects your teams needs then the drafttek simulation is useless. This would have been the case as soon as pick #7 last year from the Bills perspective.

[tennesseeboy]

I suspect I'm in the minority, but I thought Fletcher has done a pretty good job at MLB. If we can keep him for a year or two I'd be more than happy to leave him there and develop a replacement with a third round pick or draft a MLB next year. I just can't blame the inability to stop the run at the line of scrimmage on him, and I've kind of liked his overall play. I might be wrong, and I get the sense most of the posters don't think much of him.

[Astrobot]

Astrobot,

 

You asked me yesterday to run a model with certain priorities for the Bills. I will do it tomorrow, but I will put the results on this forum and not on the web site. I will probably start a new topic however.

 

Also, just a little while ago I ran a new simulation for the web site. Changed Raiders QB priority to #1 and put Russell in front of Brady. It really shook things up downstream.

 

Thanks for your input. Later in the week, the website will feature a new draft with changes for the Bills, Chargers and Giants based upon yalls input as well as fans from those teams sites.

 

Awesome! Thanks for this. We'll be watching for it.

[Pyrite Gal]

I suspect I'm in the minority, but I thought Fletcher has done a pretty good job at MLB. If we can keep him for a year or two I'd be more than happy to leave him there and develop a replacement with a third round pick or draft a MLB next year. I just can't blame the inability to stop the run at the line of scrimmage on him, and I've kind of liked his overall play. I might be wrong, and I get the sense most of the posters don't think much of him.

 

I can mostly join you in the minority of folks that seem to feel Fletcher has done a pretty good job at MLB. He certainly has his limitations in mostly that under hos team leadership his teams have generally produced bad records.

 

This does not strike me as his fault in that as TD has seemed IMHO to be primarily driven by a desire to never have an HC he hired run him out of town as Cowher did, so he hired an GC in GW whom he felt he could trust and if not that he could beat. His apparent paranoia resulted in him doing an excellent job at some phases of his work, but ultimately he did not produce a winner and paid the price for doing this.

 

Nevertheless in regard to Fletcher, I think he has been very good, but the great some how find a way to have their teams refuse to lose and the Bills with Fletch as a standard bearer just have not gotten the job done.

 

Even though I realize his overall limitations, i think it is inaccurate that many have allowed the team's failures to get them to judge him too harshly IMHO and in addition, to his producing some great individual accomplishments I am sure he was credited with more tackles than any other NFL player in the 5 tears prior to this last season and likely pushed that accomplishment to 6 this past year though I have not seen any summary yet, he did exactly what he was told to do in our Tampa 2 and led the NFL in INTs by an LB and the team in INTs, he is an extraordinary talent in that not only has he shown the speed to work sideline to sideline, but he is able to play the deep middle zone in our cover 2, he is a proven ballhawk and excellent ballhandler as he at one point handled short KR duty flawlessly for the Bills).

 

Nevertheless again. since he is on the downhill side of 30, has been the leader of an unsuccessful team, i see nothing wrong at all about letting him walk AS LONG as there is a credible replacement for him next year.

 

This is the problem as there is no one on the depth chart capable of replacing him without a serious drop-off in productivity and though I assume Willis is a good player (though I now have some doubt about him as even being an adequate learner in the MLB spot for us since apparently he did not do a very good job with pass coverage at the senior bowl) but my sense is that we face a pretty big drop-off in D production if he starts at MLB next year and that drop-off will be unacceptable to anyone who wants to win next year as I suspect Ralph and Marv will.

 

The bottomline is that there must be something the Bills (and possibly Fletch) have planned and I would not be shocked if part of the reason they agreed not to tag NC is that they knew they might tag Fletch rather than pay him a long term deal and in the Cover 2, Youbouty actually brings a set of skills (very competitive player with a big body and good demonstrated hand fighting skills which will be deadly in the first 5 yards and his downside assessment that he does not play as well with his back to the QB when he is in deep pursuit is not something required of him in our Tampa 2) which may have the braintrust happy to not franchise him.

 

All-in-all if we can improve the effectiveness of our DTs against the run I have no problem bringing Fletcher back for a couple of years.