Archives for March 29, 2011

‘In other words, even though several so-called draft experts have predicted that Buffalo will select a quarterback with the No. 3 overall pick in the upcoming draft, Nix warned that even he’s not sure what the Bills might do.’

‘"Let me just say this to you, and try not to read anything into this and try not to connect the dots, now, but if you wait until you do not have a quarterback to draft one, you’re too late," Nix said. "Now our greatest need is not quarterback. It’s definitely not quarterback. Invariably, if there’s going to be a franchise guy there and one we deem as a guy that can go eight or 10 years, be the face of the organization and take us to the playoffs and win every year, you can’t pass him up."’

‘A crowd of about 750 suite-holders, club-seat owners and sponsors were in attendance at the Buffalo Hyatt Regency to listen to Bills executives Buddy Nix, Chan Gailey and Russ Brandon rally the fans in a state of the team message. An informal poll of 60 fans found two-thirds of them were in favor of the Bills drafting for defense over quarterback in the first round.’

‘”Our greatest need is not quarterback,” Nix said. “It’s definitely not quarterback. However, if there were to be a franchise guy there, one we deem as a guy who can go eight or 10 years, be the face of this organization and take us to the playoffs and win every year, you can’t pass him up.”‘

‘”The key for us with our Toronto experiment is to continue regionalizing our brand, bringing our brand up north. We would be remiss if we did not try and bring in a fan base from southern Ontario, which we all know is a very vibrant fan base.”‘

‘”Blaine Gabbert is coming in, Christian Ponder is coming in. We’re also going to bring in some other guys, defensive linemen, linebackers,” said Nix. “There are 25 (pre-draft visits) scheduled right now and there may be some added, but all positions I think are covered.”‘

‘”It’s not a sin to tell a lie pre-draft,” he said with a wry smile. “Everybody does it. It’s accepted. So everything you hear or read or see, you need to keep in mind that about 10 percent of it’s the truth.”‘

‘We’ll start with Gailey and how the beginning of the football season went. The head coach said, “It was a challenging year. There were a lot of things that were unexpected, caught us off guard a little bit. I know that’s our job not to be caught off guard, but it did. We were trying to do some things with some people that they couldn’t do. We think we figured it out about halfway through and it started to go the direction we wanted to go.”‘

‘Coach Chan Gailey confirmed the player will spend Tuesday at the team’s facility in what will be Newton’s fourth-and longest-visit with the Bills.’