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The McGahee Lesson


chinabox

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The Bills used the 23rd pick in the 2003 draft on a guy coming off a catstrophic knee injury (that's still difficult to watch). For better or for worse, Willis is no longer with us -- although I wouldn't say that he's "gone to a better place" -- so what is the take-away lesson from all of this? I call the overall situation "The Willis Experiment" because the Bills seemed to go out of their way to take a chance on a guy who would almost certainly not -- and didn't -- play during the 2003 season.

 

Simple: Don't draft severely injured talent, no matter how good he projects. I tend to think that Willis is misunderstood by the haters, but even more misunderstood by the Ravens, but one thing is true: the Bills lost a whole season of productivity from one of their first round draft picks. This is unacceptable, especially considering how things worked out. Of course, if Willis turned into pre-insanity OJ Simpson, I wouldn't be writing this. But the chances of that happening in today's NFL are not worth an entire season of missed action.

 

Now, I'm not here to play the game of who was available when the Bills selected McGahee (Larry Johnson, Dallas Clark, Anquan Boldin, etc...), but I'm a little jilted at the way Mr. McGahee left. The Bills stuck their neck out for this kid in a time when no one was ringing his phone and he ended up taking the low road out of town. I'm not amused. Never again should the Bills take a risk like they did with McGahee.

 

And that is the take-away lesson.

 

 

DO NOT PASS on a player like Larry Johnson when you want to pick a running back.

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