JESSEFEFFER

One of the strongest attributes of Joe Flacco is that he starts 16 games every year. This means that Taylor is even more of a mystery as one can't really assess how much he may have improved during his 4 professional seasons. There's no meaningful gauge. Those upset that a 2015 QB draft choice was not used on a QB weren't paying attention. Whaley said that they wanted to address all the team needs in the FA period (missed on a tackle) so that they did not need to draft to fill galring needs. I do not know why people choose to consider drafts isolated from other offseason acquisitons (Mel Kiper, Bill Polian and many Bills fans.) It's seems rather foolish to me.

Seems Darby was picked for many of the same attributes as Gilbert was last year in that they are coveted for the style of corner that they can play. It will be interesting to see which of them has the better career.

I am with the OP. Looking at a draft isolated from other off season activities is foolish. What if they did not resign Hughes? Would they then get some great draft grade for picking some highly rated edge rusher? Getting Tyrod Taylor is the equivalent of any other QB draft acquisition they could have made. He is competing for playing time this year and it seems like they think highly enough of him to give him a 3rd roster spot on their active roster if only for some specially designed, situational plays. Any QB they might have drafted would have had to be good enough to get EJ or Tyrod cut or bad enough to stay on the practice squad without some other team making him an offer. I still see a problem at tackle but it's not likely that Whaley has given up on upgrading the roster either.

There are fans of the draft process and those that make their living from just talking and writing about it and I think it's natural to overstate the value of individual draft picks. Make no mistake, there was a time when that was the only way to build a roster so every pick had a value and it was the be all end all of acquring talent. Now, with only 7 rounds, undrafted free agents, restricted free agents and unrestricted free agents, there are other ways to improve a roster. That's the bottom line. Doing whatever it takes to improve one's roster. What is the value of a BLUE CHIP talent to a team? How many players are there in every draft that are consensus Blue Chip Talents? Is there a realistic discount for future picks compared to current ones? He was picked to make EJ better. BS, if EJ is cut then does Sammy have to go too? OBJ had a better year so trading up for Sammy was not necessary. BS, beause you run the draft based on the information you have. Sammy was their #1 prospect so in their mind they were going from 9 to 1. Ebron to Watkins. I suspect that one injury plagued, rookie year in a pitiful offense is not enough time for an elite talent such as Sammy Watkins to show what he ultimately be. Platitude: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush especially when you can go to Wegman's and buy another bird, There is a value to the known, sure commodity and a discount to the unknown, unproven one.

Just had an electrician at my home that knows Marquise quite well. Unfortunately, its because he has some children who are seriously ill and hospital visits are something Gray does often. He affirmed that Marquise and his lady (not sure if she was a wife or gf) are genuinely decent people. Yes, this stuff matters to me as well. I want the guys that I pull for to be worthy of my support.

I have been paying attention to the Bills since the early '70s and there has not been a less respected head coach than Hank Bullough. The players openly mocked him. We are talking Talley, Smerlas and Smith here.

It's my opinion that EJ was more consistent than what most believe. In his cautious, protect the ball first and try to make a play second style, he was mostly pretty steady. In 8 of his 14 starts he had a tQBR over 50 ( keep throwing this out there to provoke some discussion.) In fact, the 3 of those 8 that the Bills lost were the NE, Cle and Atl games where most would agree that other parts of the team failed in the clutch and not EJ. In games where the whole offense was losing their battles (Houston, TB) EJ's performance just imploded in the most visible way and he became the focus of the losses. I see the Bills becoming a team that will win their individual battles all over the field, including the offense. I guess I am counting on this coaching staff to fix the offensive line which must happen to allow any of their QBs be successful.

I think the Bills had a good gauge on who else was in the market and which of those teams were also interested in EJ (NYJ and Phi?) They were looking at who might jump back into the first round to get him ( maybe at 20+) and had been burned enough over the prior years that they were not going to chance it any further than 16.

For the difference in the value between a 4th round pick and a 7th? That's a franchise altering difference? The only real value to EJ is if he somehow grows into the position. You know, what talented, hard working, coachable human beings with the right attitude tend to do with experience.

Well, if the Browns were so kind as to draft a WR and said WR had a HOF type career that was obviously better than Sammy's, some posters here could B word about that for the next decade too. That would be logically flawed but that would not stop them.

He also is very comparable to Joe Flacco's first season's worth of games.

David Cutcliffe, HC of Duke, has been the go to guy forthe Manning's off season work for much of their pro careers. He was Peyton's OC at Tennesee and Eli's HC at Mississippi. Peyton went to him after his neck surgery to put his throwing motion back together and rebuild his confidence. David Cutcliffe has never played in the NFL or coached in it and, as a matter of fact, never played the QB position.

John Murphy introduced him as having more yardage than Aikman, more completions than Unitas, higher comp% than Elway. Lost his starting spot to HOF QBs more than once. He was the QB on the KC team that routed the Bills on an infamous Monday night game. They could not block Thomas with the crowd noise, Kelly was sacked 6 times and they lost 33 to 6. Showed how a total protection breakdown can wreck an offense filled with HOF/Pro Bowl talent. JJ Watt anyone?

Whether it was Manuel or Orton last year, the O-line simply could not do their jobs well enough for the offense to function. To many breakdowns in protection and not enough push or agility to make anything work consistently. If the line is fixed this year and can get to the top half of the league, the Bills will have a great season. If it took 2nd and 3rd round picks to add to the mix to get it done, I would not care. Whatever it takes. Fix it.

Pro Football Focus credited Sammy with 3 drops. I think there were two drops by others as well. JJ Watt had the single highest game grade ever given to any defensive player. They credited him with 15 pressures and 9 QB hits. I suspect EJ may have had some minor role in this because we heard rumors of missed protection calls and incorrect drops but letting JJ Watt run amok will wreck an offense. I doubt any o-lineman had a positive grade that day but some want to act like the team was performing well and that any other QB would have performed well enough that day for a win. I think EJ did well to take only 2 sacks and still have a shot to win in the last two minutes and failed due to an egregious no call PI on Woods that lead to the Int. Joe Flacco's day against Houston in a December game with playoff implications: 21 of 50 for 195 yds, 2TD, 3 Int and a tQBR of 3.2.

I will interject here about the tQBR in that is superior to the NFL passer rating in some big ways. QB fumbles, sacks taken, the game context of when yards are gained, and anything positive a QB does while running the ball are all ignored by passer rating. Logically, not scientifically, any rating system that includes these things has to better than one that doesn't. Tanneyhill is interesting as there are parallels to EJ in their early careers. The biggest difference is that Philbin has stuck with Tanneyhill after his strings of poor play while Marrone benched EJ after two poor games. RT 2013 games 4-7 16.4, 39.7, 15.0, 29.8 RT 2014 games 1-3 34.9, 27.3, 21.2 (It seemed Philbin was close to benching him here as he would not back him as the starter when the Miami press asked if he would)

I'll add this to this thread. I've been kicking around a concept for QBs that is analogous to MLB's quality start for pitchers (3 or fewer runs in 7 or more innings.) Using FO's/ESPN's tQBR (designed to be comprehensive within game context) and setting the arbitrary bar at 50 (their midpoint of a QB helping or hurting the cause) I came up with the following: Ryan Tannehill has hit the QS threshold in 50% of his starts in every one of this three years in the league. Locker and Bradford (favored by many this off season) are at 42% for their careers. Joe Flacco (I most directly compare EJ to him in terms of what I think he can be) was 37.5% in his first year. Kyle Orton was 4 of 12 in 2014 (my comment is Yikes!!!) Really Doug Marrone. This guy was giving us the best chance to win? Actually, he might have done EJ a favor by hitting the reset button on his career in terms letting him roll into 2015 with something of a chance to be "new and improved." EJ is 8 of 14 for 58% of his starts. I intend to do a more thorough job of this soon but his is what I think it can show vs. the aggregate tQBR for a season or career. Is the number a result of overall bad games that are pulled up by a few great games? This is Kyle Orton's 2014, especially due to the starts vs. the Jets. Or is it a result of a majority of decent games but with a few bad/horrible games (usually weighted greater than good games) that have skewed a rating downward? This is generally true of EJ (TB, SD,Houston.) So this is why I, along with AD7's reasoning, vote NO. This is not blind faith. It is a fact based rationale for wanting to see EJ in this offense, this year.

I am with you AD7 on all these points. I think the part of your post that I bolded best explains the source of most of the animus toward EJ. One could legitimately vote for Tannehill on the basis of where he is in his career path and think he'd be better for this Bills team, this year but that's not me. Some think all you have to do is pick "Mr QB Right" and all can live happily ever after but that's not me. I believe in talent, hard work, character and patience. I really want to see how EJ looks in this offense with these coaches. He just might surprise us all.

Some of EJs detractors are overanalyzing his game to the point that they could never do with any other young QB because of the team he plays for. As if his struggles somehow reveal flaws fatal to his potential and are unique to him. When you look at him within his peer group (other QBs early in their careers) he doesn't look to be behind at all. I have him in the 20 to 40% chance at a long term Bills QB only because I am not so certain how the new staff views him. If they commit to him I'd put his chances at 70% or higher of succeeding on a Joe Flacco level. When I rewatch plays that I initially thought were ones where EJ screwed up I come away thinking that my intial assessment was wrong. For instance, the overthrow to Sammy in the Texans game where Sammy could only get one hand on the ball was actually a pattern where Sammy almost collided with a defender and had to take evasive action, break stride and redirect his pattern. I would guess that this would easily cost him two steps toward the ball. In the SD game, the dig route to Sammy that came in at his shoetops was actually tipped by Kendall Reyes who was driving Pears right into EJ's lap as he swiped at the release point. The last int thrown in the Houston game was an egregious nocall of a defensive foul on Woods that occurred over 15 yards. It started out as an illegal contact and became what would have been a blocking foul in basketball and is PI in the NFL. In 8 of EJ's 14 starts, he had a tQBR over 50. This is actually a decent % for a young QB. Tannehill has been at 50% for each of his three seasons. Flacco was at 50% over his first 32 games and Bradford and Locker are at 42% for their careers. In a direct assault to "he gives us the best chance to win" thinking, Kyle Orton hit the 50 tQBR threshold in only 4 of his 12 games in 2014. When looking at this stat in a game by game basis, you see how two QBs can have similar overall ratings but can get them by different means. There are those that have a majority of poor perfromances with an overall rating skewed by a few outstanding games whereas others can have a majority of decent games skewed by a few horrendous games. EJ is in the latter group which I take as a good sign. IMO, all this is to say that the magnitude of EJ's poor play has been largely over magnified, he has played at a "give my team a chance to win" level more often than than most think and he is likely to become more proficient at his job because that's what human beings with raw ability and good character tend to do as they gain more experience.

The Dolphins made a huge mistakes by entrusting him to be a team leader and giving him free reign over the players' locker room. He made mistakes in that there are lines you don't cross and he was clueless about where and what they are. His next team will not make that mistake and I'd bet Incognito might have learned something from his.

I was not happy with the hire because I prefer a different HC style. I describe it as a sliding scale from Ditka to Walsh and to me Rex has been too far from the Walsh end of the scale. I think that sustained winning comes from a smart, thinking, problem solving leader and not one that favors pulling the emotional triggers. It's the difference between owning the moment (winning the battles) and reinventing your team year after year (winning the wars.) Rex never did come up with solutions to keep their team near the top. Ther offense never improved. So I think the OP was spot on. I was actually angry with the hire but I have since, upon further review, decided to be more hopeful. He seems way smarter than Ditka.

EJ's 14 games are in line with Flacco's start. Of course Ravens fans were complaining about him right up to when they won the Super Bowl with him. And then he followed that with a season of "regression" which was maybe worse than EJ's. Flacco may be a good model for what a successful EJ might look like.

As I recall, DM did go to Whaley to explain the benching. I think they looked at some film together and reviewed some of the calls. We heard stories about how EJ rand the wrong drops and protection calls. Supposedly Whaley agreed with Marrone's decision. EJ did not regress so much as was exposed, imo. He was exposed to JJ Watt and by JJ Watt and it left DM in a tough spot. I was ok with the benching but not the "Kyle gives us the best chance to win" for the rest of the season all the way to the NE game. I have to wonder if Whaley thought the same thing. Kyle did not produce more after the bye week than what EJ had showed and I wonder how Doug Whaley and the "analytics department" viewed that.

Two nice plays from last year. One subtle and the other rather spectacular but both using his mobility: TD to Williams vs. Texans http://www.buffalobills.com/video/videos/EJ-Manuel-80-yard-TD-pass-to-Mike-Williams/4a79965c-80bc-4a56-8a61-85bcf68d745d Pass to Chandler vs. Chargers @ 1:00 minute in: http://www.buffalobills.com/video/videos/Week-3-Buffalo-Bills-vs-San-Diego-Chargers-highlights/291b6f5b-d9ae-4a5f-9604-ac952dafd5d4 Rex is right to think that this type of usage of time and space can be very valuable to an offense.