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That is funny!!

You're right, I was hoping to see more from Brohm,... but if he's 3rd, then he's 3rd. We didn't waste any draft picks or big signing on him. We grabbed him off a practice squad and that's what he may be...

Another way to look at it is that TE rose above the crowd and won it. He threw several TD passes (long and short) and put up drives against better teams (Colts, Bengals). He had a crappy film record for Gailey to see coming in, so he had to differentiate himself in action in the OTAs, Training Camp (much more rigorous one than before) and games. While he worked with the first team, none of the QBs were getting routinely destroyed because of the OL. They all had opportunity to make things happen. Plus the 2nd half skill positions on the team; Bell/Simpson running and Nelson/Jackson/Jones are among the leaders receivers in preseason. While I didn't see every game, I didn't hear a bunch of angst about lots of drops. They all had a chance to show what they have and Edwards won...

Here, here!! He's the starter and I'm looking for him to do well. To what end should we be hoping he fails... who's next? If Trent fails the 2 year rebuilding effort becomes 4+ years. By then we'll be booing them in some other city. Every time a starting QB doesn't pan out the organization is set back 3-4+ years. That's the last thing we need.

I don't buy into that. Bills/Gailey are in no position to give reps to someone just to establish a film record for another team. Whatever the QB rotation, its based exclusively on what he needs to see to evaluate who he wants to keep. I don't think he has or should have a concern for anything else... after 10 years of losing you think he's worried about where someone's next job will be?

I guess that brings us back to the original subject of the thread,... Leinart's done that. While its true that they tried to start him in his rookie year, he quickly took a back seat to a probably first ballot HOFer. He learned how to play, he sat/learned, saw what it took to win, went to the SB and still can't do it. He "fell" to the Cardinals w/ the 10th pick, which was considered a steal at the time, with the consensus expectation that he'd go in the top 5. There just isn't any formula... that is the problem. Lets go to the Brady pick by the Patriots, one of the luckiest picks of all time, IMO. If they had any inkling whatsoever that they were drafting even a probable starting quality QB, much less what they got... they would have picked him by the 3rd round. Nobody would risk losing a guy like that to someone else, by thinking he would last till the 6th round. He went to Michigan, its not like he was from some 3rd tier school where they could convince themselves that he wasn't scouted by others... nobody knew, its as simple as that. I was living in Boston when Bledsoe got hurt and they were forced to play Brady. The season was pretty much given up for lost, nobody, even the Patriots had any expectation of what would happen. There was no confidence, yet they went through 2 months of practicing and preseason games with Brady, so they knew him...

I agree with you on not trading up (other than perhaps the rarest of situations). The Bills did that too liberally over the last few years. Ryan Denney, McCargo, Losman and possibly either Wood/Levitre(??) were all results of trade-ups. We'll see on the linemen, but otherwise trading up has bought nothing but busts and at a higher cost as you point out. 2ndly, I agree with all your characteristics of a successful QB. However, by just those standards JP Losman should have been successful. That whole off-season where he was coming into the starting job, all we heard was about his dedication and drive. He moved here in the off-season, lived at OBD, studied film endlessly with Sam Wyche, getting every tip imaginable from Ron Jaworski. There couldn't be a more driven person from every story we heard... all that didn't work. We moved up to get him because we believed that Green Bay would take him to be Favre's successor a few picks later. Regardless of what we think of JP now, at the time of being evaluated, he could easily have been profiled very similar to Favre.

A few years ago, I was messing around and looked back at a draft from 5 years before (I think it was the year Brady was drafted in the 6th round). I looked at every pick and re-ranked them based on how they turned out. Obviously Brady became the #1 overall pick. I struggled to fill 2 rounds of worthy picks out of the 7 rounds plus compensatory.

I'm sure there's been a lot of statistical analysis of everything from physical capabilities to IQ to game stats to starts to conference/team, probably all the way back to high school results/stats I would like to see one of these sites like ProFootballFocus.com try to develop a forecasting capability (they can keep it secret and sell it if it works) and make some calls on the QBs before each draft. After 5-6 years they would have a track record to see if they can do better.

That's the scary part of the whole thing. Nobody in the world has shown that they can consistently pick a quality QB. There's not a single person that can stand up and say that they can do that. Its the craziest part about this game. On the right roll of the dice you get Manning and you go from 10 year loser to 10 year winner/SB (obviously not as simple as just that). You pick Ryan Leaf, Heath Schuler, JP Losman, Akili Smith, Cade McKnown and you set your team back 5 years.

I don't think I had seen anyone post this,... its about a week old Good News / Bad News I don't think there's anything in this that we don't know or haven't debated. They're not anticipating a surprise season. This site is a bit more objective in their reviews than the other sites as they keep comprehensive stats on every play, position and player, so they have decent backup to their point of view.

Can't pin that one on him. "The Ted Ginn Family" was Cam Cameron's infamous pick....

These were impressive sacks against first string. Like I said on the 2nd one, he didn't just beat a double team, but went through it. These weren't jabroni coverage sacks. Oh yeah, and Jim Leonhard looked good too. INT, plus SACK, plus returning punts

A) He's starting B) He had 2 monster sacks in the first Quarter from RDE. Isn't Jets LT, D'brickashaw Ferguson a Pro Bowler? First sack he slammed Sanchez like a ragdoll. 2nd sack he overcame a double team block to dump him again. C) On a more positive front, both Clausen and Sanchez looked pretty bad out there...

Emotions run high about Maybin on this board. I don't have a clue how he'll end up, but Eric Moulds was being shouted about as a bust until he broke out in a BIG way in year #3. Almost nothing from him years 1/2

WOW, I just listened to the press conference on the Bills website and really gave him some BIG TIME love!!! That is good new... Chan seems like the type that doesn't impress easy enough to speak like that about someone. I can't wait for the 3 sack performance in the first preseason game!

You make a good point, but it was discussed by some in a different thread yesterday. Schobel would have been an awful LB. While we know and love his pass rush skills, that's not all a OLB needs. He would have been badly exposed in pass coverage. Belicheck would have a field day with him anytime he wasn't rushing. Good coordinator would find ways to make him cover athletic TEs and he'd be toast. I think this list would have a lot to say about his transition to OLB if he was playing for us...

I generally agree with this, with several things to add I can't stand this ongoing trend of players dealing with their issues through non-communication with the team. Nobody can figure out whether they'll play or not play,.. be at OTAs or not,... retire or not. In Schobel's case HE should have spoken to the GM when he was hired, told him that he didn't want to be part of another rebuilding effort again, that he and his agent wouldn't devalue himself in the media, but that that they should trade him. I have to believe that he could have been traded in that scenario for a 5/6 round pick, which is better than nothing He's devalued himself to be worth 0 to the Bills, despite the size of his contract and the loyalty the organization gave him. He's been saying he's retiring all along and then changing his mind at the last second essentially forcing the Bills to cut him or guarantee $8M. Now we have no leverage and he could get signed by the Patriots. I'm not sure what Buddy could have done differently because Schobel tied his hands with his actions, keeping the Bills from doing anything other than eventually releasing him... so for our "classy" move, we'll see how much "class" we get in return if he signs in the AFC East??

Right on!

I agree with your points... they should have traded him much earlier and given the current predicament he should stay on the Failed to Report list, not released

No way,... Schobel's a football player who know's the score. New regime, new system, change of position, he missed all of OTA w/o even communicating to the team, plus he'd be look to as the veteran leader on a young team. If he was going to play, he needed to be here at the start of camp (day 1). Not make up his mind over the next 10 days or so as he seemed to be saying. He's going to play a single year and pull all this off by walking in late. If the Bills had allowed him to do that we would be screaming louder than we did for Jauron's head...

Agree completely,... Maybin can't just be dismissed based on last year. We have to see what he has... The other thing about Schobel is that I've had doubts about his ability to transition to OLB in the first place. Why would it have made sense to switch him to an un-natural position, for one year. I think we would have been screaming about what boneheaded move that was by week 4. Also, like it or not, we're on a 2-3 year plan, Schobel shouldn't have been retained for the exact same reason that TO wasn't. We need to see what the young guys who have a shot at being the core of this team for the next 4-6 year have.

That's exactly right. The frustration that I have is that the Bills always seem to be waiting for the other teams to set the market. All 32 teams are in the same boat. Somebody has to start signing players. We're several years now that we're right at the tail end. If we're at the tail end a day before training camp begins that's fine, but this is a team that can't afford their #9 pick to not be in training camp when they're trying to right themselves after a decade of futility. I'd love to see some metric that looks at the last 10 years, ranks what order the first round signed in each year and then averages each team across their rankings. I would be real curious to see where the Bills fell??

I think he chose to play baseball instead. He then re-entered the draft the following year and the Raiders to a chance on picking him in the 7th round (or something like that)

So I guess that points to the single common thread in everything.... Ralph Wilson