hondo in seattle

I'm with the OP. I pay scant attention to mock drafts. They're more wrong than right. I prefer real facts over wild speculation and wait until the actual draft to get excited. I care nothing about do-over mocks. With all this mental m*st*rb*tion going on, this is my least favorite time of the football year.

Another nice article on match coverage... https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2018/11/08/the-match-game-part-2-how-nick-saban-re-imagined-defensive-coverage/

I once heard an old GM (Ron Wolf, I think) say that it doesn't matter if your first round pick is a bust. If you get two Pro Bowlers out of the draft, it's a very good draft. If you get three, it's a great draft. You've got to get at least one but the goal is to land two. If we got 2 or 3 Pro Bowlers in this draft, I wouldn't care what positions they played. 2 or 3 impact players would vastly upgrade this roster. Having said that, my hope is that at least one of those future Pro Bowlers is an offensive linemen. I'm tired of seeing our RBs futilely running into an uninterrupted mass of gargantuan men and our QBs looking like frightened gazelles running from a pack of hungry lions.

This is both true and Beane's probable opinion. But I think it would be hubris to ignore the statistical data. It ought to factor in the decision making process somewhere.

We have decent starters in every position group. What we need is impact players ... BPA

Agreed. Far too easy to be interesting

We don't need a defensive or offensive player per se. We have lots of guys who can suit up, take the field, and not embarrass themselves. What we need is an impact player. Someone with the potential to change the result of a game. Someone that opponents must account for. Beane will ask himself, "Which player left on the board will make the biggest difference." And that's the guy.

I agree that Dunne is a pretty legit reporter. I think in this case, however, his sources may have been mostly bitter malcontents.

I think free agency has gotten us to a point we don't have any glaring needs. We certainly don't have Pro Bowlers at every position but we have reasonable NFL starters almost across the board. Beane's in a position where he doesn't have to reach or trade up for a position of need. We don't need starters per se in the draft - we need impact players. And we could use an impact player in almost any position group. Beane will probably entertain trades when there's value in it. If he sees a potential Pro Bowler sliding a bit, he may trade up to nab him. Or he may trade down with a partner that offers a deal too good to refuse. Free agent impact players are typically expensive. Beane needs to find them in this draft.

There are 64 starting Guards in the NFL. PFF graded Spain at 35th best. That makes him an average starting Guard.

If I were a GM or HC, I’d want 3 solid starters and 2 Pro Bowlers on my OL. We have a bunch of decent starters and quality depth guys. We lack elite talent anywhere on the OL and I think Beane will look to the draft to fix that.

Yikes. This is hard... so many unknowns. * How much will Allen progress from Year 1 to Year 2? * How will all the new starters on offense gel? * How much will Daboll improve in his second year? * Who are we going to draft? * What other FAs will we sign? 9-7.

I give credit to Chan for making lemonade when given lemons

Seriously, Gug... if someone was willing to pay you to act on a tv show, would you say no? Sounds like a fun experience for him. None of us are consistently noble, charming and big-hearted. You might have met Andre on the worst day of his life. Or his best. You don’t know. One interaction- one moment in time - doesn’t define a man.

This is why I hate this time of year. News gets replaced by endless speculation.

I get the Jim Brown votes. But after watching OJ play, I don't get any other RB getting votes. Back in the 1970s, teams ran to establish the passing game. RBs were the kings of football. Folks didn't talk about "franchise QBs" in those days. Back then, you needed a guy to tote the ball. And you needed a defense to stop the other team from running. The Bills didn't have a good D in '73. Fergy was still raw as a QB. We had one weapon: OJ. If opponents could stop OJ, they won. But they couldn't stop OJ. Usually the winner of the rushing title rushes for 50 or 100 yards more than his nearest competitor over the course of a season. That year, OJ outrushed the next best back by nearly 900 yards. He wasn't simply the best RB that year. He was at another level. He was multiple levels above other backs.

Just voted... still 50/50.

Every offensive position group is better than it was this time last year. 9-7.

I grew up in Cheektowaga but my parents weren't football fans. The first game I watched was a Browns game and I became a Browns fan when I was maybe 9 when the Brownies were still competing in the old Century Division with the Cards, Saints and Steelers. The Bills were hardly on my radar until 1969 when we drafted OJ first overall with tremendous fanfare. I was 10 at the time and quickly became a fan of both OJ and the Bills. I stayed a combined Bills-Browns fan for many years. (Could I have picked a worst duo???). But when the Browns moved to Baltimore in '96, I pretty much turned in my Browns fan club ID and focused my masochistic loyalty solely on the hometown Bills.

It's easy to be a Pats fan. It takes character to be a Bills fan. I wear Bills colors proudly.

I’m excited as the next guy. But even now, how good is our offense? My guess.... QB: C. This is the hardest one to predict. I’m conservatively guessing we’ll move up to average. OL: C. Better than the ‘F’ OL we fielded last year. WR/TE: C. Another upgrade versus last year but still not elite. RB: B. Depends how much Shady and Gore drink from the Fountain of Youth. It seems to me that our O has gone from bad to average. The OL only picked up one quality starter and a lot of depth. If I were Shady, I’d wait for the draft before uncorking the champagne.

I agree with the OP and most of the following commentary. But let me ask - do you guys believe we know have a playoff/SB caliber OL? Most at of the posts about the OL are about depth. I don’t think we have the right 5 starters yet. I wonder if Beane’s thinking we’re another year out with the OL. The guys we have now can hold down the fort and at the same time mentor the guys he’s hoping to acquire thru the draft.

OJ changed the course of more games than Taylor. As a human, he’s scum. But in my lifetime I’ve never seen a player play at a level so significantly above his peers.

I hate when we demonize groups of people. I fought in a war with honorable Americans who were Democrats. I also fought alongside honorable Americans who were Republicans. Both sides have good people and both sides have people who we might wish were better.

When you can still remember the day the Bills signed OJ, TO seems like recent history. But it's been 10 years already? Damn, my life is slipping by fast. I'm starting to worry the Bills won't win a SB during my allotted time on Earth.