hondo in seattle

No surprise. Trading up to 12 is nice but doesn't net us a top QB. Seems evident that Beane intends to go up higher.

My bad. It was Gugny after all.

I don't think PFF grades are predictive of future performance. A player's performance - as graded by PFF and other analytics sites - depends both on scheme and supporting cast. A player miscast in the wrong scheme, surrounded by players who poorly execute their assignments, and coached by a guy who's comparatively weak at preparation (to use an extreme example) isn't likely to score high. Beane and McD know Lutulelei better than PFF. If they think he's a good fit for this scheme on this team, I can only believe them for now until we have on-the-field evidence.

Well that insanity is over.

I just don't know how you can label a GM who traded away his starting QB - with no replacement in sight - as "careful."

Beane's process has to do with the kind of roster he wants to build, how he wants to manage the cap, and so on. McD's process has to do with how he prepares the team, what kind of culture he wants to create, how they practice, etc. The two processes are related but not the same. I don't how much of a timeline there is on this. Usually "process" guys say it'll happen when it happens. You do the work and trust the results will follow.

Welcome to the board! I haven't myself been to a home Bills game since 1973 but have been to away games in a few different cities where it was easy to find fellow Bills fans. The camaraderie of the Bills Mafia is wonderful thing! Maybe it's all those years of shared suffering that brings us together. And from an old soldier -who happens to hail originally from Cheektowaga - thanks for your service even if you're probably a squid, zoomie, or jarhead!

That's exactly why I'm in the wait-and-see camp. Cordy was an excellent starter who unfortunately became both expendable and injury prone. So I kind of like the move. But if this nets us a bench-warmer, it'll be hard to be happy.

The trade up sure looks like the Bills are going for a QB. I'm not sure another trade further up is coming but it wouldn't surprise me. It would be fun to get a peek at the Bills draft board and sit in on their draft meetings. What's the plan? Who's the target?

I guess the question is where morality enters into the Wall conversation. Do we take someone down because they committed a misdemeanor? A felony assault? A rape? A murder? We know our football heroes are not paragons of virtue. They're on the wall for their accomplishments on the field, not their behavior off. Yet it bothers me to see OJ's name honored in our stadium when he's a murderer. How must the families of his victims feel? How would I feel if he killed my son or daughter and the Bills still saw fit to celebrate him? I'm not sure where the line is, but - in my mind - OJ crossed it. His name should come down.

True enough. I don't blame him for his earlier OC gigs with the Browns, Fins and Chiefs. But I can't praise him a lot for his accomplishments there either. My point was that he's largely an unknown because there's little doubt that his time with Saban and Belichick have shaped the kind of coach he is today. We have no way of knowing what kind of OC he'll be.

Daboll wasn't a good OC earlier in his career. But he hasn't worked as a NFL OC since his time with Belichick and Saban - until now. It's hard to know what kind influence those two may have had on him and how much he may have learned over the years. I have zero expectations. We'll know what kind of OC he is when we see the offense he fields.

The unpredictability - and generally low success rate - of drafted NFL QBs is why I'm not opposed to the Nick Foles option. We know that Foles can do well in the right system surrounded by the right cast. We don't know anything about this current crop of college signal callers. Even some of the guys the experts said were can't-miss in the past ended up missing. My other thought is that the sensible thing to do is keep drafting QBs until you find one - every year or every other year. But mortgaging the farm to trade up on a speculative hope scares me. Imaging giving up two 1s and a 2, let's say, to move up and get a guy who doesn't pan out. Draft history says that's what would probably happen. I'd rather use one of our first round picks this year to draft a guy. If we miss, try again next year. Instead of betting the farm on one guy by using three picks, I'd use one pick for one guy - but I'd do it every year until we got a hit.

Draft capital... We should have 2 of the top 65 picks. We now have 5.

I don't think that's it exactly. After suffering the likes of Bruce Mathison, Joe Dufek, Pill, Brian Brohm, Kelly Holcomb, etc, we're just appreciative of someone who isn't horrible. And we're afraid of returning to the Dark Ages with Nathan Peterman under center.

The cap savings excites me. Having Nathan Peterman as our top QB right now scares hell out of me. Anxious to see Beane's plan unfold.

Am I the only one nervous that FivePick Peterman is the only QB on the roster right now?

That's a cool tweet. I was excited about Hyde but very few people would have predicted that much productivity from one day of free agency. Let's hope we have more days like that one in the weeks ahead.

Does that mean the Phins want him or they see him as a first round talent?

As a Purdue alum, I'd love to see Brees in a Bills uni. If he hadn't the bad fortune of playing in the same era as Tom Brady, he'd be a legend already. People would put him in the best-ever conversations. Only 9 times in NFL history has a QB passed for more than 5,000 yards. Brees accounts for 5 of those 9 tallies. Amazing! But as much as I'd love to see it, I can't imagine him ever lining up under center in the red, white and royal blue. Neither the Saints, nor the Bills, nor Drew himself want this future to happen.

Maybe. One of the reasons clubs leak false information is so that when true information is inadvertently leaked it's hard to distinguish fact from fiction. True leak? Fake leak? Hard to know.

Waiting is risky but generally speaking the longer you wait, the cheaper the deals.

I get your point but to be fair, Chris did write..."That's why Bills GM Brandon Beane and head coach Sean McDermott made a firm commitment to further developing the analytic side of their football operation this offseason." Reading between the lines, it seems the Bills were happier with the outsourced analytical information last year than the data produced by their own analytics staff. So they brought last year's consultant inhouse and put him in charge.

He's probably a low-risk, low-reward player investment. But reading his backstory, I find myself rooting for the guy to finally live up to his potential. Especially since he'll be wearing a Bills uni.

I remember more or less the same thing. I thought it was a sore shoulder, though. He did have some kind of minor/recovering injury at the combine.