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I agree with this. I used to be an army officer. Now I'm a businessman. In both fields, the critiques of outsiders were often laughable. That's why I'm careful to criticize the work of professionals in other fields. Football is a little different, because we can clearly see the results on the field. But I will never pretend to know as much about football personnel as any scout - or about schemes as a coach. These guys have years and years of experience that ought to be respected. I suspect if we sat in meeting rooms with Dough Whaley and his staff, and learned everything they knew, we'd end up agreeing with 80%+ of their decisions and would respect the other 20%. Regardless of the percentages, I'm sure it would be an eye-opening experience for any fan.

So we get rid of Shady and tank the season to move up from #10 to #1 next year in the draft? In the wild hope that we hit on that one shot and draft a QB that changes our destiny? Because top 5 QBs are sure things? If this is the "rebuild" option, I'm glad OBD chose a different course. When we look back, we see that some drafts don't even have one franchise QB.

You get rid of talented players when they age, have attitude or injury problems, or become expendable. Shady's 28, has a good attitude, and is far from expendable. Imagine leading a platoon of soldiers into combat. Most of only have sticks and stones as weapons. One (Watkins) has a pistol. Another (McCoy) has a machine gun. Why would you tell Shady to take his machine gun and leave? The only scenario where this makes sense is if we were able to trade Shady for a QB who would be a significant upgrade over Tyrod. And that option wasn't out there.

The Bills had 1.5 legit offensive weapons last season: 1 McCoy and .5 Sammy. Even in rebuild mode, you don't get rid of one of the only weapons you have while it's still useful. That's why I never took the McCoy being moved speculation seriously.

This is a valid point. But, still, I think most teams draft QBs more often the Bills - even teams with franchise QBs already on the roster. Because the Bills aren't a winning franchise, we need our draft picks to pan out. We can't afford to waste picks on long-shots. So we don't roll the dice on QBs. It's a bit of Catch-22. We don't draft QBs because we're bad and can't afford to waste draft picks. We're bad because we don't have a franchise QB.

The word "greatest" is already subjective. There's simply no objective way to determine who's the greatest at a position in football. That's why we're arguing about this. Different people are going to value different facts (yards, SBs, etc) differently and different circumstances (eras, quality of receiving corps, etc) differently. That's what makes this necessarily subjective. If forced to choose, I'd probably pick Brady as the GOAT but I do think the era argument has some meat.

Why do you say such silly things? No Bills fan wants to finish sub .500. Why do you feel the need to knock people you disagree with? Just let the "Tyrod crew" speak for themselves and explain their reasoning while you explain yours.

At the end of last season I was so sure this wasn't going to happen. After seeing Mills in action last year, I just knew DW was going to make RT a priority. But looking at the FA market and how it's been playing out so far, I'm getting nervous.

I suspect jmc has killed off his jmc persona and is now posting another name. Eventually, he'll make another long-shot prediction. If he's right, he'll be revered as a credible source with inside info. If he's wrong - again - he'll just try again under another new name.

It's not a straight line process. They've identified the shortages, examined the FAs, talked to their agents, and signed the ones that made sense. As it turned out - not by design but by happenstance - they ended up with two FBs and 1 WR so far. We can't expect the signings to come in the same order as a priority list. They come as they come. Criticizing the off-season so far is kind of like criticizing da Vinci when he was only 10% done with the Mona Lisa. "Where are the eyes? The eyes are the most important part of the portrait!"

Gugny, it's silly of you to think you know motivations. There are ex-players with no connection to the Bills who aren't ready to crown Brady the GOAT. Guys with their own rings. Jealousy? Maybe. But maybe a reverence for those who came before.

People have short memories and it's easy to declare that the best players of today are GOATs when you never watched the greats of yesteryear. Furthermore, changes in both rules and offensive philosophy have inflated passing and receiving yards - making the stats of today's players stand out. Just to give one oft-forgotten example of a rule change - offensive lineman back in the day weren't allowed to use their hands like today - making both run and pass blocking more difficult back then. And CBs could jam receivers on the line - making passing plays slow to develop. Brady would have been pulverized back then when defensive players were allowed to pulverize QBs. I'm not sure people watching football today are more impressed by Brady than fans years ago were impressed by Otto Graham or Johnny U. But I'm not convinced the great QBs of the past would have been more productive than Brady if they played today. Brady is near perfectly 'designed' for today's game. But - to the OPs point - Brady would have had a very different career if he had been drafted back in the 50s or 60s.

I don't think Whaley has prioritized free agency over the draft. I just think he and his team of scouts are better at evaluating vets than assessing college players. Most of DW's FA acquisitions haven't been that pricey but they have helped the team. Just look at the QB position. The Bills drafted EJ but signed TT as a FA. While TT might not be a franchise QB, he's clearly better than EJ. That's the Bills roster in a microcosm. So I hope DW continues to successfully bring vets onboard. I also hope he gets better at finding players in the draft that can make an impact and remain Bills for a long time.

Good info. The pertinent question is did Tyrod regress in 2016 or were circumstances (WR injuries, different OC calling plays, etc) the cause for his fall in the rankings? I tend to think it was the circumstantial stuff. Another question: shouldn't there be a QB ranking system that only uses QB metrics that highly correlate with winning? Both QBR and passer rating are flawed. I realize no system will be perfect. But I think someone can design something better than the systems we have now. Maybe something that uses these three metrics as the core of the system: ANY/A, NY/A, and TD/A.

Don't you think it's roughly-speaking half roster and half coaching? If we had a cloned Jim Kelly handing off to cloned OJ, etc., we'd win a lot of games even with Rex as the head coach. Since the Bills have been an average team these past couple years, in my evaluation I see a somewhat below-average coaching staff being counter-balanced by a somewhat above-average personnel department.

I see what you're saying but it's not accurate. We drafted Gilmore and got a few good years out of him on a rookie contract. It worked out well for us. But that contract has expired and he's decided to walk. We're not effectively trading Gilmore. You can only trade players under contract. If we traded for Butler, we'd have to give up something of value to receive something of value. Gilmore is irrelevant to the conversation.

I think you were right in the sense that TT didn't always identify and deliver the quick throw when maybe he should have.

You know, of course, there's a middle ground here. I don't think anyone can say that Tyrod had a strong (healthy, talented) receiving corps week in and week out in 2016. In fact, he may have had one of the worst set of targets in the NFL. I don't think anyone can say Tyrod was a particularly good passer in 2016. He often failed to see the open guy. And even when he did, his accuracy was inconsistent.

Matt Ryan stat line was much better last season than his previous 8 seasons. His QBR and passer rating were - by far - the best of his career. In other words, (1) scheme and coaching matter; (2) QBs do sometimes get better. Nobody knows if Tyrod stats will improve the way Ryan's did. However, Tyrod did run an offense that was designed by a coach (Roman) who isn't know for his aerial attack and run by a coach (Lynn) that had no experience with the passing game. It's easy to see why some people expect more success out of Tyrod in a Dennison offense. The point of the article is not that Dennison will fix Tyrod's deficiencies which are real. The point is that last year's offense tended to play to Tyrod's weaknesses instead of his strengths. If so, Dennison might get more productivity out of Tyrod by leaning on what Tyrod does best.

In other words, we have to sign a lot of players just to field a team. And most of those signees will be nobodies. I'm just hoping our new nobodies are better than our old nobodies.

DW might be an above average GM as some claim. He might be below average as you assert. But his W-L record suggests he's merely average. Given how competitive the NFL is, and how much competition there is for a GM position, you need to be really good personnel guy to land a GM gig (excepting Matt Millen and a couple others). Then there's this. Most of us agree Rex was a below-average coach. Yet the team's been winning about half its games. So the roster must have been somewhat above average. And Whaley didn't choose Rex. It's always interesting when people who don't know a profession feel they have the expertise to judge the professionals as "clueless." I guess it makes us feel big and strong when we use strong words. In fact, all we can really do is rate GMs and coaches against their peers. All GMs and coaches know far more about football than us fans. They're far from clueless. The real question is: are they better than the other personnel guys and coaches in the NFL? As fans we can see the results of their work on the field. And so far Whaley performance has been average-ish (below average in the draft, above average in acquiring vets). Let's hope McD proves to be an above-average coach who can build a playoff team with average-ish talent. And let's hope Whaley and his scouts start getting more hits in the draft. The 2017 roster if far from complete and I think it's way too early to judge it.

How do you like the Scouting Academy? What are the most eye-opening or surprising things you're learning there?

Wise words, 2018! And if we keep our egos out of all this, we won't feel the need to attack our fellow Bills fans. It's when our egos are hurt that we lash out. I like this site best when it overflows with Bills comaraderie, not when the contest of egos take over.

This is why I'm glad the Bills rolled the dice with EJ. If you aren't willing to gamble with a draft pick, you'll never get a QB because they're all gambles. Like you, I just wish we rolled the dice on QBs more often.

This is premature. Let's see how it all plays out before concluding the FO effed up.