hondo in seattle

Like it or not, there's a lot of testosterone in NFL locker rooms. Guys get in fights all the time. So I'm curious how much the league will punish him for doing what players do often. IK didn't do anything unusual. He just did it better.

Every year there's at least one guy who outperforms many of the players picked before him. Fans everywhere start unfavorably comparing that guy to their pick. Predicting the long term performance of college players going to the NFL is like trying to predict the weather 4 months from now. You might have mathematically models and do complicated regression analyses based on thousands of data points. But in the end, you just don't know. No player evaluation method is perfect. All you can do is make an educated guess and hope for the best. The Giants bet on OBJ and it worked out. Good for them. Maybe hindsight says we should have picked him instead of Sammy but hindsight will always, always say we could have drafted better. I'm not going to worry about it. I doubt if Sammy will put up great numbers this year, given who'll be throwing the ball and the kind of offense we're likely to run. As long as we win enough games to get to the playoffs, I don't care.

The personnel executive in Green Bay that Tyler Dunne talks to isn't sure if Manuel will ever develop into a good NFL QB. Apparently, Whaley and Ryan aren't sure yet either. So while professional talent evaluators aren't certain yet, you know with absolute certainty. Ridiculous. Most QBs who get drafted never do develop into good starting QBs. So you may be right because the odds are on your side, not because you have some special talent at evaluating what QB traits can and can't be taught. Maybe because I'm old, I've witnessed several QBs who were supposedly not cut out for the NFL eventually blossom. Plunkett, Brees, Deberg - all sorts of QBs - failed to demonstrate NFL caliber skill sets their first years(s) in the league. They struggled with everything imaginable - timing, accuracy, mechanics, reading defenses, progressions - so much so that fans and teams gave up on them. And then they learned and then they blossomed.

I agree with Section122 on a lot of this - especially the part I bolded. I am a fan of anyone who wears the Red, White and Blue of the Buffalo Bills. Whatever shortcomings in their game, I hope they overcome them. I also think it's odd people criticize the pick. A vocal group of fans wants us to draft a QB every year until we get it right. Nix/Whaley drafted a QB. Some believed he was the best QB that year. Was he worth a first round pick? Good question, but he wouldn't have still been on the board if we had waited until the second round. To get the highest rated that QB, we had to roll the dice at #1. Drafting QBs is always a crapshoot. I don't KNOW if EJ will ever be good but... Jim Plunkett, big college star, started for 6 years for the Pats. By the end of his time there, almost everyone agreed the guy could be a good backup in the league but was not a franchise QB. He just didn't have NFL skills. In his 9th year in the NFL, Plunkett was backing up the great Dan Pastorini in Oakland. When Pastorini got hurt, Plunkett had the best year of his career and led the Raiders to the SB where he was named MVP. Some QBs are late bloomers. They continue to improve their skill set during the NFL careers until they're finally good. No one KNOWS if EJ will continue to improve or not. No one can KNOW.

That's a scary comparison. Brings back bad memories.

My thinking was, if the three QBs were performing equally, then Rex will want to go with the veteran guy who's led playoff drives before. Seems to me the trust factor would be higher with MC than the others. So in a tie, MC is the winner. But Alphadawg makes a good point. Everything else being equal, why not go with a younger guy who may still have some upside. We know MC isn't getting better at his age. Maybe if TT or EJ are just playing as good as MC during preseason, they get the nod because of their athleticism and the possibility they may get better as the season progresses with continual playing time and coaching.

Everyone knew EJ was a flawed college QB. There's no news here. Very, very few college QBs - if any - are NFL ready. They all have to learn new skills to compete at the NFL level. The question is, can they learn what they need to learn? Can they take the next step? Obviously, Buddy Nix and others in the Bills organization felt EJ could. Or at least, given the roster at the time, they felt he was worth a roll of the dice. Every college QB has his critics and 99% of the time the critics are right because most college QBs will never become good NFL starters. I'm not impressed by the acumen of these FSU fans. Sorry.

I like Peter King a lot. I don't always agree with him, but he often entertains and frequently provides information not available elsewhere. When he calls, there are a lot of people - from rookie players to seasoned executives - who answer the phone. I don't expect any national media guy to be perfectly versed on the Bills. Imagine trying to follow 32 teams. Nevertheless, his analyses are usually pretty good because they're shaped by the opinions of the experts and insiders he talks to.

I suspect their observations are much like our own here on the board. They probably hope EJ steps up but note his deficiencies. The probably speculate that MC could be a good game manager, but not a game changer. They probably like TT's athleticism. They probably wish we had a true franchise QB. Their conversation might be spiced with a little more expertise, and a little more insider knowledge, but nonetheless generally the same as our own. IMHO.

That's exactly how I interpreted the report that MC is working with the ones. He's going to be playing with the ones on Friday so he needs to work on his timing, rapport, etc. Rex has said or done nothing yet to tip his hand. I am prone to believe the argument that says if none of the QBs separates from the others, MC will be the starter when the regular season starts. And certainly no one so far has outshone the others. But the battle to line up under center has a ways to go yet, I think.

Fans reacting... Enemkpali has been cut? I would have named him team MVP. No jury in the tristate area would convict him. Jets fans need to get a Kickstarter up to pay Enemkpali’s salary, plus a bounty. If people think you can punch a Jets player every time he does something to piss you off, there’s going to be a mob of angry, violent, ignorant people milling around MetLife stadium after ever home game. Actually, never mind, that happens anyway. This is the Jetsiest thing that could possibly happen

I was never convinced any of them would be great but I did have hope for Rob Johnson, TE, JP... and I continue to have hope for EJ. Wishful thinking tends to color my view of QBs, though I never did get on the Flutie bandwagon. Rob Johnson: just needs better protection TE: just needs to take more risks downfield JP: just needs to grow up as a leader

I had wondered when we signed Richie and Percy if the Bills were deemphasizing character. But over the past five years, we've done reasonably well with off-field issues.

Do choir boys win more? This chart shows the correlation between arrests and wins http://imgur.com/6vlss7p

While the Bills signed a couple notorious players this off-season in Percy Harvin and Richie Incognito, the club is a collection of choir boys, relatively speaking... http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2544821-vikings-lead-nfl-teams-with-most-player-arrests-in-last-5-years?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial The Vikes have suffered 18 player arrests over the past 5 years to lead the NFL. The Bills, just five.

I sympathize with your observation. I was watching Jake Locker once go through some passing drills as part of some pre-draft evaluation. I couldn't help but think that a couple of my friends and I were more accurate than him when we were younger. It seemed like he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. But Locker was more athletic than my friends and I. Could throw with more zip and for greater distances. Could read defenses better, release the ball faster, etc. Accuracy is just one of many skills a QB must have. Plus watching on TV is probably misleading. The targets he was throwing at were probably smaller than they seemed on TV. And the moving targets probably moved faster than they appeared to me. As far as game day/full scrimmage accuracy, others make good points about NFL DEs coming at you, trying to throw before the receiver actually makes his cut, throwing to spots at a precise moment in time, getting the ball out of your hand in 2.5 seconds, and so on. Another thing is that the NFL lineman are huge. I remember playing big neighborhood games where I had trouble seeing over the line, and I'm 6'1" playing sandlot. In the NFL, you may only get glimpses of your target in the so-called throwing lanes, and all those guys downfield are moving super fast. It's got to be challenging.

Thanks Astro! While everyone else is obsessed with the QB battle, you're noticing things like great guard play. Given we'll be a running team this year, that's an important and encouraging observation.

Good point, Promo. I think we all looked around earlier this off-season and realized the shelves in the grocery store were bare. The best we could find was Cassel. The best the Pats could find was Lindley. Maybe someone interesting will become available later as teams cut down and the shelves get restocked a bit. Or maybe Doug needs to go downtown to the Buffalo Medical Campus and talk to someone about somatic cell nuclear transfer. If Whaley can't find a QB, we should demand he manufactures one. Kelly would probably donate his genes.

Good to see (read) an articulate, thoughtful athlete.

That was exactly my point when I posted this: I expect more knowledgeable arguments - if not always rational - about the Bills record here than I do in a national newspaper.

I get your point. But I don't think all the assets in the world would have captured a Top 16 QB. The teams that have Top 16 QBs understand their value just as much as you do. They're not giving them up. Same with the teams with top draft picks. If there's a QB there that looks like a Top 16 QB, and your team needs one, you're not trading down. I just don't see a scenario that would have solved our QB situation - though I'm not opposed to rolling the die on picking college QBs that might have long odds. I don't think drafting a QB each year until we find one is a bad idea. But here's what Whaley did. Not seeing a good answer at QB, he acquired the best RB he could find. Gosh darn it, if we can't throw the ball, we at least have to be able to run it. And he surrounded our mediocre QB with guys that will help him look good.

I have us at 10-6 and making the playoffs, too. Why is USA today the headline?

Whaley's remark is not a big knock on who we have. He didn't say we're in QB Hell. We're someplace in between Heaven and Hell. And not having a top draft pick may condemn us to purgatory for a while more. We're not bad enough to have a chance to draft the QB we want, not good enough to win the SB. But I don't get the hate toward Whaley. He's done a fine job building up the roster. He swung and apparently missed with EJ. It happens. I can't think of a single GM that goes 100% with draft picks, or even close. Remember when that great talent evaluator, BIll Walsh, thought Trent Edwards would be a good NFL QB? Sometimes even the best personnel guys are wrong. At least Whaley didn't play spin doctor and say we're set at QB with 3 franchise caliber QBs.

Good job, PP. Dispels the myth that you can't win without an elite QB. You can, but the odds may not be great.

What I hope and what I think are two very different things. What I hope is that EJ takes a huge step forward, wins the job, and plays at least as well as the average starting NFL QB. What I think is that Cassel probably wins the job, and doesn't stink it up entirely but is clearly less-than-average for a starter. We go to the playoffs nonetheless due to our strength at other positions. But there will be disappointments in our QB play this year. It's been a few years since Cassel played well and his overall career performance screams backup. Poor Rex. Entering his 7th season as a HC and has never had the joy of working with a upper tier QB.