....lybob

If you are a small market team with a frugal owner you better draft well if you want any chance to be competitive, I thought last years draft was pretty good except for the Maybin pick but that's a pretty big except.

Like every fan I want a Super-bowl team now but I'll take a 2-14 team that is making smart moves to build the core of the team over a team that makes stupid short sighted moves that seem to be motivated by anything but winning football games and keeps spinning their wheels at 7-9.

1st Not sure if Bulaga is there at 9 I think 3 OTs go and Bills will have to decide between Davis and Williams if they want a OT - most drafts have Seattle taking Berry or a QB with their first pick and going OT with their second, I think they get their OT first, and with their second 1st go best player available and if that player isn't a safety their will still be quality DBs into 2nd-4th rounds- 2nd- is Cody still the #2 NT or has Cam Thomas become the new #2, I do think that we may go NT even if it is a reach cause there is only 4-5 in the whole draft and we don't want to be on the outside (barring any trades or shocking salary cuts of a good NT) looking in. 3rd wouldn't mind Brown but not that high more like a 6th or 7th- he's not a starter any time soon so really how does he help the team- unless you want to get Vick and another QB in that mode and design your offense to take advantage of their athletic skills. 4th This would be a nice spot to pick up Jason Worilds he looked good in the combine drills I saw - and has pretty good reviews in the online draft stuff for what that's worth.

Whitner for S. Rogers would be a trade I'd make

I think NE and Minn are good examples of two teams that have used FA effectively along with good drafting and trades.

I agree that now is not the time to be heavy into free agency as we are a team in total rebuilding mode, but there is a time to use free agency- that time is when you are close but a few players short of being a super-bowl contender.

I think Incognito was pretty good and if I thought the Bills were going to take a shot at the playoffs next year I'd be pissed at not tendering him- but lets face it the Bills are going into a total rebuilding mode so you have to think at least 3 years out- expect the Bills to have a really high pick next year for that franchise QB - this year should be all about rebuilding the lines with young players, hopefully Nix drafts better than the previous administrations.

I'm not very impressed with either Bradford or Clausen- I think both players are going to have trouble staying healthy, I think in other drafts these guys would be rated as late 1st - 2nd round picks.

Yeah Bell didn't play well what are the odds- never played football until college where he started out as a DE, then was switched to OT because of injuries, never had an offseason football strength program because he was on the basketball team until his senior year. from Wiki: "Bell's high school had not fielded a football team, so prior to his attending Northwestern State, he had never played organized football. In the fall of 2005, he red-shirted the basketball season and began playing for the school's football team. He was initially placed in the position of defensive end. The following year, injuries struck the team's offensive line, and he was moved to the left tackle position. He earned second-team All-Louisiana honors that season.[4] Bell made a bigger name for himself in his senior season of 2007, having focused solely on football. Remaining on the offensive line, he was named an All-Louisiana and an All-Southland Conference first-teamer. He also became an Associated Press All-American.[4] Bell graduated from Northwestern State in 2008 and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL Draft.[2] The Bills were encouraged by his raw skills, but saw him as a longer-term project, given his inexperience in having played organized football for only three seasons at that point.[7][8] However, the team chose to place him on their active roster, rather than assigning him to their practice squad, where he could potentially have been signed away by another team.[9][10] Consistent with their view of him as a work in progress, Bell was not activated for play in any of the Bills' regular season games in 2008.[11] In 2009, citing the quality of Bell's performance in the Bills' off-season and pre-season training camps that year, then-Bills head coach Dick Jauron installed Bell as the team's starting left tackle for the 2009 regular season.[12] After earning mixed reviews over the first half of the campaign, including an extremely high number of penalties against him, Bell's year came to a disappointing conclusion when he suffered what would prove to be a season-ending knee injury in a Week 10 game against the Tennessee Titans." So they take a guy they know is a project and throw him to the wolves cause they want to pretend they can dump salary without consequence - I hear about coaches and GMs that put their players in a position to succeed but I haven't seen it on this team in a long time- maybe Bell won't make it but to conclude that because he was over-matched last season that he will always be over-matched is very premature.

I'd be very happy with Trent Williams- He was the 1st or 2nd rated OT and then down rated on concerns that he lacked some athletic ability when he moved to LT in his senior year- in the beginning of the year he had a lot of nagging injuries that he played through ( I always laugh, we want these athletes to play through injury and if they do and don't play as well we down rate them)- I think at the combine in the measured events and position drills he showed enough athletic ability to be a LT- reminds me a bit of a little bigger Ruben Brown, he's played RT, LT, and C (due to injuries on the team)in college so in an emergency he could play anywhere on the line.

I agree, no way you want Reed as your #2 but as a 3rd/4th he has value- he might come back at a reduced salary- never understood the T.O. pickup from a football point of view- could of made sense if they were going to keep their Oline together and take a shot but they must have know they were going to make wholesale changes, all it did was stop us from evaluation of Steve Johnson.

As for Mays I think his value might be as a Derrick Brooks type LB

Eric Berry came in at 211 which is not small and had a 43 inch vert and has much better ball skills- being a big hitter is nice but ints rule- people have a high value on sacks because they are drive killers but nothing kills a drive like an int, it may sound crazy but to me Byrds 9 ints is equivalent to 18 sacks and if he had returned any of those bad boys for a TD it'd be worth even more.

Bills take Travis Mays and make him into an OLB- just kidding

1. Trent Williams OT, I think Okung and Bulaga will be gone and maybe Campbell to Oak- One of the upsides of Williams is that he can play any position on the line including center in an emergency. 2. Cam Thomas NT, on the one hand this is little bit of a reach, on the other hand there are a small number of legit NTs and you could be on the outside looking in if you wait too long. I'd also like an OLB like Jerry Hughes or a 3-4 DE like Lamarr Houston but not at the risk of not having a real NT. 3. Tony Washington OT This smaller school OT looked as good as the bigger named tackles in all the drills I saw- He might have moved himself into the 2nd round another later round OL guy I liked was John Jerry, played RT projected to guard but he looked quick and smooth enough to me to play RT in the NFL 4. Jason Worilds OLB, one of our OLBs has to be able to play in space I have concerns about Maybin in that area Worilds looked good in in back peddle locate the ball type drills. 5. Clifton Geathers DE, a dreaded developmental type player but at the very least should have some kick blocking ability 6s and 7s- at least 2 maybe 3 of these picks should go to LBs more suitable for the 3-4 defense

It could make sense only if the Bills could fill a need by moving Lynch- say the Bills could get a 2nd round pick for Lynch which could be used for a NT or OLB- well Jackson and Jones probably could hold the fort for 2 seasons at which time we could spend a high pick on a RB with the beauty being that RBs need almost nil development. This year getting OL together- starting work on DL (NT) and LB next year QB, completing DL and LB not letting holes open up in secondary 3rd year Going after a stud WR in free agency, high pick on RB IF we do things right we should start to make noise in that 3rd year

Maybe Trent Williams is the most intriguing - he's played RT, LT, and C and he's both bigger and faster than Suh and McCoy.

Sea: takes Claussen not Davis and Oak takes Campbell not Williams leaves Bills with their choice of Davis or Williams

The combine is useful if you use it right- basically never upgrade a guy who's tape you don't like- you use it to find separation on guys you have rated very closely and to sometimes to disqualify players who may have had great college careers. Occasionally one of these disqualified players will make good in the NFL and it's a great story when it happens but more often the slow or undersized find they can't compete in the NFL.

I've read this trade - Lynch to SD, Cromartie to Arizona, Boldin to Buffalo -too bad I read it three weeks ago after I posted it.

Not saying Trent Williams was sloppy fat or anything but if all the OTs at the combine were standing around and someone asked me to guess how they'd rate athletically Campbell would have been first and Trent Williams would have been in the bottom third so I was surprised how athletic Williams was- really except for the bench Williams was equal or slightly better than Campbell.

after watching the combine today. 1. Physically Bruce Campbell is the prototype LT- might be a good choice to play Apocalypse in any future X-men movie 2. For a rolly polly looking guy Trent Williams is a hell of an athlete he was the #2 rated OT then down graded on concerns he was strictly a RT I expect him to move up to the 2nd or 3rd OT taken. 3. Anthony Davis looked like he didn't really prepare for the Combine at all or that his athletic ability was a myth- he did have a 33 inch vert which suggests that there's explosiveness somewhere in that massive yet soft body- but the fact that he seemed unprepared has to throw up some red flags I think he drops from 2nd to 5th OT 4. I don't think Bulaga either hurt himself or helped himself 5. Okung is still number 1 6. Bruce Campbell and Trent Williams remind me of Karl Malone and Charles Barkley 7. Don't know who Tony Washington is but he sure catches your eye and looked good in every drill I saw. my new top six 1. Okung 2 Trent Williams 3. Bryan Bulaga 4. Bruce Campbell 5. Anthony Davis 6. Charles Brown

Shouldn't this be, get on the Bills bus or don't whine when we are going down the road towards the Super-bowl and you are left behind in your miserable no Super-bowl doorstep - and just because that bus has broken down every year the last ten years in a row leaving everyone stranded in a seedy part of no play-offs city is no reason not to get on board because this year we are replacing the motor more or less although we only got about a third of the new motor parts and we are going to jury rig parts from the old engine onto the new engine and some of them don't fit to well but I got a huge hammer and I can make those parts fit- so get on board what can go wrong.

There are times when the combine does make a different 1. players who are very productive in college but the scouts think they are too slow,light,short, etc etc then they go to the combine and measure better than the scouts think. 2. The productive college player who has a really bad performance ie a WR running a 4.8, a LB who's listed as 6,3 245 but turns out 6,1 225.

after the combine I expect Charles Brown, Campbell, and Iupati to move up, and Davis and Bulaga to fall a little.