Captain Caveman

I hate Jason Peters. The Bills may have made a stupid move with this trade. Maybe Peters will be a monster in Philly and Wood will suck. Maybe Peters will play pretty well, but Wood will go on to be a HOF type player. Maybe Peters will grow fat and happy with that huge contract. There's many more possible variations. I don't claim to know how it will pan out. Now on the flip side, will you admit they they may have had valid concerns regarding his work ethic, and maybe, just maybe were justified in not wanting to give him a giant contract? And that maybe, the Eagles who were the ones who made a stupid move with this trade.

Players should know this is the deal, and negotiate their contracts accordingly. Still, most fans (and teams for that matter) don't seem to have a problem with renegotiating early when a player shows up and does his job. But in cases where there are questions around a player (e.g. Marshall's string of domestic abuse cases, Peters' work ethic) or when the player tries to renegotiate early multiple times (e.g. Peters) then there is usually some reluctance to renegotiate.

He also won a hell of a lot more games. Just saying.

TD : INT looks great, but upon closer inspection, he averages a sack for every 10 attempts. That was with a pretty decent O-line, and an awesome running game. (Trent's numbers last year, 23 sacks in 374 attempts.) Stats are facts, but they can be interpreted in many different ways. Another fact is that Sage Rosenfels was brought in to challenge for the starting job. As for opinions, most people here seem to think he had one of the best surrounding casts in the league for the past two years, and he hasn't accomplished much.

We have run our own version of the wildcat with Roscoe Parrish.

I'd rather Trent Edwards be somewhat effective when it rains / snows. Not very likely to happen when he's not practicing in it.

They just might go for it.

It happens pretty rarely. One example would be Pennington going to the Dophins last year and beating them in the last game of the season, which happened to clinch the division for Miami. My point is not that Tarvaris the player is worth anything, cause he's not, it's more about him being able to effectively provide much of the offensive playbook from memory to the other team.

Have you seen that TO / Hitler video? It's pretty funny.

Didn't LaCanfora report the Josh Johnson thing too? Not sure how seriously I'd take that.

It took Jauron a little over 2 years to build what on paper seemed like a very good offensive line. That's not such a bad turnaround time, considering where they were when he started. You're right, he didn't do it through the draft. More importantly, they only looked great on paper.

I have to think both Chicago and Green Bay would have to give up an awful lot to get a division opponent's starting quarterback from last year. Even if they don't need him (e.g. Green Bay), they would basically be paying a draft pick for some insight into Minnesota's offense, no? I guess two things might minimize this - 1. Minnesota's offense is pretty much going to be: hey give it to Adrian and see what he can do, or hey, let's have Brett chuck it down the field to some dudes in purple. 2. Jackson may not be the brightest spoon in the garage, and who knows how much insight he could actually give into the Minnesota offense.

They still don't: The team practiced in the rain except for maybe the last 25 minutes. Jauron said, "It wasn't raining quite that hard when we went out.... We just moved the last period of the day inside primarily because as it went on it was raining hard for a good deal of the practice, the field got more and more slick and that was a pressure period. You can get a lot of bodies in close proximities there. We didn't want anybody slipping at all, but in that period, really we wanted to make sure, so that was good."

Yeah, La Canfora sucks. He keeps speculating in huge broad strokes that require only common sense, hoping to hit on one of them.

One last comment: Sage Rosenfels was brought in to take the starting job. Case closed.

So did Fitzpatrick in winning his last three games last year with a lousy team.

He's had the best rushing game, and one of the best defenses for two years running and done exactly squat. No thanks.

I heard he took a dump in the rain this morning.

Nope http://www.nfl.com/draft/history/fulldraft...0&type=team Losman and Evans were 2004, McCargo and Whitner 2006.

True enough. But let's look at the line in those years. LT: Jason Peters (Pro Bowler) LG: Dockery ($49 Million Contract) C: Fowler / Preston (Ok, here were some losers.) RG: Butler (decent starter) RT: Langston Walker (decent starter, large contract) I'm not going to rehash everything that's happened which has made this line obsolete. But in preseason 2008, it appeared that they had assembled a pretty good line, minus maybe the Center position. Again, you're right. But until this year, we looked pretty solid at linebacker. (If not for the Crowell disaster last year, we would have had three very solid players.) This year, we felt we had bigger needs in the draft. I agree, but certainly it would have been nice to pick up a starter in FA. We've had a lot of "disasters" over the past 4 seasons, and I'm not absolving Jauron or the front office of any of them. I'm just saying that drafting too many cornerbacks has not been a major problem. We've had other, much bigger problems.

This would seem to go with my point that it's not the positions, it's the players. Remember, in that same draft, the Bills took McCargo in the 1st round also. Of course, McCargo has proven to be a bust given his sraft status, but at the time we needed a S, and the Bills thought McCargo was the answer at DT. It appeared that we were addressing both needs. No one is happy with the success rate of our draft picks. And yes, we do seem to have drafted a fairly high ratio of defensive backs, but I can buy that since we had been spending money on other aspects (OL and DL included.) It's just that we have not been successful in getting and keeping the right players, both in FA and in the draft.

I think some people were saying in 2006 we had to take a Safety. Last year, we had the option of re-signing Greer and McGee, but at the price Greer signed for I'm not unhappy they passed.

Also, most complaints I've heard here are focused on Jauron, so I haven't expanded this to the past ten years, although I did have a look at the numbers. When looking at the last ten years, the ratio of lineman to cornerbacks drafted gets better (assuming you would prefer to draft lineman.)

Actually, if all positions were equal, in 22 years most people would probably expect 4 or 5 DBs, since that's how many are on the field when the defense is playing. EDIT: Just noticed you're using CB and DB to mean the same thing, so not sure of your original intent. There are 2 CBs on the field in our base package, but 4 DBs, including safeties. We've drafted 3 first round DBs (including safeties) in this decade.

So, I hear this over and over again, and I'm wondering how much truth there is to it. Drafted players by position since 2006 (Jauron's 1st year as head coach.) Year Round Player Position 2008 4 Reggie Corner CB 2009 6 Cary Harris CB 2009 7 Ellis Lankster CB 2008 1 Leodis McKelvin CB 2008 7 Kennard Cox CB 2006 3 Ashton Youboty CB 2006 1 Donte Whitner SS 2007 6 John Wendling SS 2009 2 Jairus Byrd FS 2006 4 Ko Simpson FS 2008 7 Demetrius Bell T 2006 5 Brad Butler T 2006 7 Terrance Pennington T 2009 1 Eric Wood G 2009 2 Andy Levitre G 2006 7 Aaron Merz G 2006 1 John McCargo DT 2006 5 Kyle Williams DT 2009 1 Aaron Maybin DE 2008 3 Chris Ellis DE 2007 7 C.J. Ah You DE 2008 6 Xavier Omon RB 2007 1 Marshawn Lynch RB 2007 4 Dwayne Wright RB 2007 7 Derek Schouman TE 2009 4 Shawn Nelson TE 2008 4 Derek Fine TE 2008 2 James Hardy WR 2008 7 Steve Johnson WR 2007 3 Trent Edwards QB 2008 5 Alvin Bowen OLB 2006 6 Keith Ellison OLB 2009 5 Nic Harris OLB 2007 2 Paul Posluszny MLB 1st day defensive backs (Rounds 1-3): 4 2nd day defensive backs (Rounds 4-7): 6 Total DBs: 10 1st day OL: 2 2nd day OL: 4 Total OL: 6 1st day DL: 3 2nd day DL: 2 Total DL: 5 Some added context; we took a huge hit with the drafting of Mike Williams in 2002, and I can see why the FO may have been hesitant to draft lineman high after that debacle. We also spent more money on veterans playing the OL and DL during these years, with big contracts going to Marcus Stroud, Derrick Dockery and Langston Walker, and decent contracts going to Peters, Triplett, Fowler, Denney, and Kelsay. Since CBs have been getting premium money in Free Agency, one can see why the Bills have opted to use draft picks on defensive backs while spending money on the OL and DL on veteran players. After putting this together, my first thought is that it's not necessarily that we're drafting (and signing) the wrong positions, but unfortunately, too often the wrong players. And I also realize that the draft seems to be a crapshoot, with very few organizations being able to consistently pick well, but without this happening, we don't have much chance of turning things around. I know this isn't by any means a complete analysis, and it would be interesting to see what more successful teams have done in the same period, although they have the benefit of not having to rebuild pretty much from scratch during this time.