Sisyphean Bills

He can't be any worse.

Can hear the shovel of dirt hitting the pine boards, eh?

Understudy to the mighty Kelsay!

Having seen him play several times personally, I think your undrafted prediction might be on the mark. The hype doesn't match what I saw, but others can have their own opinions...

Ah, if you say so. FWIW, the scouting profiles are written before the draft. My comment was written after reading the profiles because I don't claim to be an expert on either player nor judge which was the better pick. There was a rather obvious distinction though when I read them and I commented on it since this board is principally aimed at the discussion of football. I don't get a rash when I read Belichick's name either.

Perhaps you should go and punch some of the scouts that wrote up the profiles in the face if you don't like what they wrote.

On the other hand, Wilson is talked up as a very versatile player while Graham is said to be a deep threat only. Not sure the Bills really need to try to compete in the "Who the ?!?" category of the draft. Being the new Al Davis might not be all that.

Go Wolfpack!

Bill Belichick is already losing sleep worrying about it.

I sort of wonder what goes on at Texas. Colt apparently left there not knowing the basics of how to read blitzes or coverages. Being at the bottom of the learning curve doesn't help...

Sorry. Wrong part of the country.

If you want to go with a gambling analogy, then throwing craps is a misleading one. Success in the NFL draft is not purely chance. An NFL team should be expected to do better than pulling names out of a hat. What's more, some teams are better than that. A better analogy would be horse racing. There are professionals that study and know the horses well enough to make money betting at the track. Do they win every bet? Hardly. But, it is possible to win more than you lose with enough work.

Solid player. With Tom Brady in the division, the Bills have to be stout on the corners.

Which draft pick?

If you look at what they did in free agency, it supports the conclusion the Bills are going to the Miami 4-3 over defense under Wannstedt. So, getting smaller guys that can run on the field will fit the Newest Plan perfectly. Guys that were playing OLB or DE in the Edwards "Jumbo Hybrid" scheme could definitely be asked to move inside and the Mega-men that played on the inside might be looking for work with teams that actually run a 3-4 defense... Carrington moving inside makes sense, actually.

Thanks. I did not find that earlier. I think I agree with him though. It wouldn't have been the best utilization of resources to pass on 1 HOFer just to take a less likely HOFer, even with perfect foresight. Indeed, if you knew which players were going to be great and where they were going to get drafted in some "Back To The Future" perfect clairvoyance, then the best approach to maximize the influx of talent would be to pick Tom Brady immediately before the Patriots would have in the 5th or 6th round, not the 1st.

It probably sounds silly to you because no one actually said that picking Tom Brady before the 6th round would've been a lousy pick. On the other hand, if you think he'd have been just as successful if he had been drafted by Bruce Coslet and the Bengals at #4 overall and started from day one, then that is a matter of your opinion and suggests that you come down heavily on the side of predestination over nurture, environment, and work ethic. You may be correct, of course. On the other hand, it may also be the case that putting him in as a starter before he was physically or mentally prepared to handle the job might have ruined him just like many other first round QBs of which there are many, many examples.

Another way of looking at it is that the draft can have more than 1 great player, not to mention that teams need more than 1 great player. A team should really want to collect as many great players as possible with the picks that they have. So passing on a great player that is (nearly) unanimously rated to be a great player to take a player that no one expects to be any good at all but turns out to be great would be a poor decision. (Obviously, no one knows ultimately what the outcomes will be, so you have to play with the incomplete information you have at the time. BTW, who says that Tom Brady would've been nearly as successful ultimately if he was drafted out of Michigan as a top 5 pick? A huge part of his self-proclaimed drive and motivation to succeed was directly the result of him being a 6th round pick and it being implied that no NFL team really expected him to be anything more than a clipboard carrier and scout team QB for a few seasons. As he admits, it really pissed him off.) To use a card analogy, the game isn't over after a single hand; the better card players know that and want to win more than the first hand. To be fair, some NFL teams don't really get this either (Hi, Matt Millen!) and choose to chase after "A Franchise Savior" as their annual draft strategy.

I thought the comment about the scout sitting there and having nothing to say throughout the draft was pretty interesting to read in black and white. It's a real contrast to the "he's a paid professional!" reaction that is so often used to cover up an obvious lack of performance.

Mayock may have been right about Newton's upstairs, but he was wrong about the kid's totally freakish athletic ability. So far, no one has been able to consistently stop him on any level. Question though: do you think having an off-season to prepare and NFL game tape this year will help the defenses?

Ouch!

As long as you're getting personal ... your reply history to my comments is one of condescending tone with a dash of arrogance. I've told you before that your self-proclaimed abilities at mind reading are not up to snuff. When you talk to people face to face, do you start each conversation with a personal slight or hint of superiority? Do people respond well? In recent years, the Bills have drafted a number of project players and guys that they projected to new positions. Aaron Maybin is a prime example. I know other Bills fans that have said the same exact thing on this board in fact. As plainly as it can be said: I meant the recent era (decade plus) of Bills futility. You suggest, not based on asking for clarification, that somehow an attack on Buddy Nix had been made and some sort of defense had to be raised. That's sort of an interesting insight in its own way, but had nothing whatsoever to do with what I was thinking at the time. And, I'm sure you'll think that I am just "making **** up" in this response as you have in the past, so I'm seriously not sure why I bother... As far as Buddy Nix, I am taking the sensible course of the wait and see approach. I have neither praised nor attacked either of the last two drafts, despite what falsehoods you may want to credit to me. Quite to the contrary, while it was very popular on this board to blast the pick of CJ Spiller, I actually defended the pick initially. Debate can be used as a learning tool, and it isn't a bad thing to have people express contrasting viewpoints. This is a discussion board, and it wouldn't be at all interesting if every poster on here was required to lay prostrate at the feet of the hero-for-now, Buddy Nix, for example.

It's not really a good thing to fall in love with a particular player before the draft.

Are you Tom Modrak?